Justice Rain (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 11) Read online

  Toward the end McBride and Chris ended up partnering with Lucy and Gertrude respectively, and the old gals weren’t that bad -- good reflexes at the net, ball control decent too -- their only glaring weakness was the low ball-stuff, they couldn’t get down to those very well.

  They shook hands -- or actually, a pickleball tradition that Chris couldn’t stand -- they sort of butted paddles, like you were high-fiving the other person with the edge of yours, and all Chris could think of was all’s we’re doing is denting each other’s.

  After which McBride said, “Hows a about you girls join me, my place, for a little iced tea. Chris you can come too, I think I can’t handle them both.”

  Lucy and Gertrude giggled a bit and huddled out of earshot, and Lucy said, “We accept the generous invitation. We’ve decided we can trust you boys not to pull any funny business.” And they giggled more, not unlike a couple of girls.

  Gertrude asked what they could bring and McBride said just yourselves, and the women said in that case they better get cleaned up a bit first, and Chris and McBride headed back to his place.

  “No . . . other fireworks tonight, then?” Chris said.

  McBride shook his head. “No set schedule there. You kind of . . . feel it happening, or you don’t.”

  “Ah,” Chris said. “Speaking of which, I appreciated the referral. Reba. We had fun. I’m going to check out her art, in the bank.”

  “Yeah, well,” McBride said, “I’ll be interested in getting your take, on that.”

  Chris had an idea where he was going with it, but hey, you were going to still give the gal her due, with an open mind. He said, “Something else from Reba last night -- guessing you know about it, since you’ve achieved a specialized degree of intimacy with these people.”

  “Spit it out,” McBride said.

  “Karolina. With the college deal. And Jeeminy, the kid that age already.”

  “I know, it didn’t add up either, the kid. But I have heard about it, the admissions part. Doesn’t seem like a big concern. Some lawsuits flying around, sure, but unlikely to filter down to someone like her.”

  “Hmm. Reba indicated different, that they’re worried about it. She told me to start reading the papers.”

  “Well, could be then. You have to understand, the particular time Karolina mentioned it to me . . . she wasn’t worried about too much in general, as I recall.”

  “So it didn’t trickle down,” Chris said. “The urgency factor.”

  “Exactly.”

  There was a knock on McBride’s door and Lucy and Gertrude were standing there smiling, spiffed up a bit, even a little rouge applied to the cheeks it looked like, and Gertrude had a big box of See’s candy under her arm.

  “I told you,” McBride said, settling everyone in the living room. “You’re not allowed in, you bring stuff.”

  “We like breaking rules,” Gertrude said, and the women were having fun with it, and Lucy added, “Her sugar level’s too high, they tell her. That box, it’s been on her kitchen counter since Christmas.”

  “So dig in at your own risk,” Gertrude said, and McBride was good to his word with those iced teas, and Chris commented that, “Visiting South Carolina once, as soon as you sat down in most any restaurant they asked did you want sweet or unsweetened tea -- whether you didn’t want tea period, that wasn’t an option.”

  McBride said, “Had the same experience there. Dabbled in real estate in Columbia a bit, the neighborhood near the university.” Chris was thinking, this guy’s been all over the place, you can’t one-up him on anything.

  Lucy said, “Texas, we don’t have much sweet tea. I think it’s more a southeastern custom.”

  “It is,” Gertrude said. “It goes back to Prohibition. The sugar syrup was the best alcohol substitute they could come up with.”

  “Interesting,” Chris said. “So you used to teach history?”

  “I did,” Gertrude said. “In Rhode Island. So anything on the 13 colonies, I suppose I’m fairly solid.”

  “Sheesh,” Chris said, “I was just throwing it out there, I didn’t expect a hit.”

  “Gertie’s a smart one,” Lucy said. “She frequently corrects me.”

  “I do not,” Gertrude said.

  “You do so,” Lucy said.

  “Truly? When was the last time, for instance?”

  “Well, okay fine. We went to the baseball game, I explained to the gentleman next to us, why the pitcher wasn’t batting.”

  “Okay, and you had it wrong,” Gertrude said. “But technically I was correcting the gentleman, and not you.”

  “You’re full of crap,” Lucy said.

  “Testy, are we, all of a sudden,” Gertrude said.

  “Okay ladies,” McBride said.

  “You guys go at it, it seems,” Chris said. “Little feistiness though, not the worst thing. They probably have studies on that.”

  “Only when one of us is dead wrong,” Gertrude said.

  “Which I wasn’t,” Lucy said. “Jeffrey, and Mac, you fellows are familiar with the designated hitter rule, right?”

  They both nodded. Gertrude said, “But it wasn’t interleague play. It was spring training rules.”

  “Where was this?” McBride said, and the whole subject was hitting a little too close to home for Chris, meaning that guy on the Giants -- what the devil was the guy’s name -- that he’d had to deal with last winter.

  Lucy said, “The Rancho has various excursions. This was the end of March, an A’s game in Mesa. They were playing Colorado.”

  “You should come next year,” Gertrude said to Chris and McBride, and they both nodded with fake enthusiasm, like that could be a possibility, yeah, and Chris knew he’d never do that and was pretty sure McBride wouldn’t either.

  “You do have to book early,” Gertrude said, “but it tends to be a lot of fun.”

  “It was,” Lucy said, “until you had to be right about everything.”

  McBride cleared his throat. “You know what, it’s perfect out right now. Balmy. Why don’t we head outside.”

  Chris wondered what that meant but they all got up, and off McBride’s back bedroom was a little terrace, no bigger than Chris’s for sure, but it overlooked open space that might have been actual original desert, and there were signs of a red rock canyon in the distance.

  McBride produced a couple chairs and the four of them squeezed out there. Chris said, “Outside seemed a little shaky, the concept, but you have a clear exposure, not bad at all. Mine overlooks people and asphalt.”

  “Very nice indeed,” Lucy said. “Thank you for hosting us . . . Our routine doesn’t vary much, it’s quite simple, as one might expect.”

  Everyone was quiet for a while, and McBride was right, it was peaceful, it felt good to let yourself stare into space.

  Gertrude said, “All right, on a serious note. I feel we’re among friends here, that I’m not overstepping . . . Lucy has gotten through an always difficult anniversary. So yes, your hospitality -- and the timing -- is much appreciated.” She reached over and squeezed Lucy on the shoulder, and obviously the earlier banter, the spring training game nonsense, was a moot point.

  McBride was pretty direct, the short time Chris had known him, and it wasn’t surprising that he said right away, “What anniversary was that?”

  Lucy adjusted her position a bit. “Oh my dad. He passed away May 24th. It’s a bit difficult each year. But it’s sweet of you to ask.”

  “How long ago?” Chris said quietly. You didn’t want to butt in, but they were sort of there already.

  Lucy did an exhale thing and said, “It’s been 53 years . . . They say who knows where the time goes.”

  More silence now. Chris was doing some mental calculations . . . And the story she told him by the pool, where she claimed she and her dad witnessed an unidentified flying object, when she was four . . . No matter how you put it together, she had to have been just a kid when her dad passed away.

  Chris, quietly again, s
aid, “So 1965?”

  “Unh-huh,” Lucy said.

  “It’s okay,” Gertrude said to Lucy, “you can talk about it.” Nodding her head as encouragement . . . And to Chris and McBride, “It’s good therapy for her.”

  Lucy considered it a moment and said, “We all say it, our dad was a wonderful man. In my case it was true . . . he was my world. One hundred percent . . . Then he got in some trouble, and -- my dad -- passed away -- in the state penitentiary. In McAlester, Oklahoma.”

  Now they really did all sit around for a while, this was tough to hear, and wrap your head around. Jeez. First of all, the guy ending up there -- and secondly the guy dying in there. How would something like that come about?

  Finally McBride said, “If you don’t want to go any further, that’s understandable, but I’ll ask. What kind of trouble was it, that found your dad?”

  “I’ll never know,” Lucy said. “Clearly there were some inner demons at work. But he kept that side from me, like the hero he was . . .”

  “Her dad robbed a bank,” Gertrude said.

  Lucy said, “He did, and they sentenced him to 12 years. That would seem harsh, but a gentleman was killed in the robbery . . . My dad went away when I was 9. We’d travel up there to see him once a month on Sundays. It was through a fence, but you could reach out, he’d hold my fingers . . . One Sunday a few years in, we get there, and someone’s shaking their head, they tried to contact my mom they said, but anyhow that dad had a heart attack last night and died.”

  “She thinks he died of a broken heart,” Gertrude said.

  Lucy nodded. “A broken spirit.”

  She started to sob, and Chris was thinking ooh boy, this wasn’t part of the script tonight . . . but he and McBride both got up and stood on each side of her, and McBride told her to go for it, it’s all for the best . . . and a couple minutes later Lucy was okay and attempting to make a joke, though it wasn’t real comfortable trying to laugh at it.

  “Tell them the other part,” Gertude said. “The 2018 update, or thereabouts.”

  “Oh,” Lucy said, waving her hand. “Gertie here, she has a propensity for making mountains out of molehills.”

  “Blackmail doesn’t sound like a molehill, under my definition,” Gertrude said.

  “What she’s driving at,” Lucy said, “since you boys will wrestle it out me anyway now -- someone’s been asking for money, yes. But I’ve dismissed it as a non-viable threat.”

  “What kind of threat,” Chris said, “exactly?”

  Lucy said, “Gosh Gertie, see where you’ve taken us now? Darn you.”

  “Someone has surfaced,” Gertrude said, “who claims to be connected to that robbery.”

  “Not surfaced as in suddenly appearing,” Lucy said. “I’ve been in contact with the young man for some time.”

  “What young man?” McBride said.

  “For how much time?” Chris said.

  “Luce, go ahead and spill the beans,” Gertrude said. “It won’t kill anyone.”

  Lucy said, softer, “This person says he’s the grandson of the poor man shot in the robbery . . . The man was an innocent bystander. He wasn’t shot by my dad or his accomplice, but very sadly by a security guard who tried to stop the robbery . . . who wasn’t actually the bank’s security guard -- they didn’t have one -- he was one of those men who picked up and delivered money, in the armored vehicles.”

  No one spoke.

  Lucy continued, “A few years ago I was introduced to Facebook by an old classmate. It’s been wonderful, for the most part. I’ve rekindled some 3rd grade relationships. I’ve joined a few groups. One of them is a Norman, Oklahoma, widows and orphans community . . . It’s not exactly as it sounds, but it encompasses folks who lost a loved one while growing up in the Norman area.”

  No one spoke again, until Chris said, “So this grandson . . . he’s messaged you, I’m guessing.”

  “He has. I’m told I could have handled my privacy settings better. On the other hand, I don’t like to hide from people.”

  “How much money is he looking for? McBride said.

  “Thank you,” Gertrude said.

  “This man,” Lucy said, “who has me calling him Alan -- he’s been perfectly polite -- and he wants 10 thousand dollars.”

  Chris said, “Off the bat? . . . Or he’s escalated his . . . demands.”

  “It’s been perhaps two years, all told,” Lucy said. “At first, and for a good while, there were no demands. The young man simply stated, with no malice behind it, that he wished he’d had a chance to know his grandpa better. That he was reduced to hearing about him largely through bits and pieces of stories his dad would tell, from growing up with the gentleman.”

  “He was feeling her out, she means,” Gertrude said. “Which is how bad customers engineer it.”

  “I would agree,” McBride said.

  “Any other threats mixed in?” Chris said. “As opposed to the non-viable ones you mentioned?”

  “Not especially, no,” Lucy said, “which is why I never brought it up to my kids. They’d no doubt want me to go to the authorities, and my instinct is there’s no need, and that would only turn my life upside down.”

  “She’s not a fan of intervention,” Gertrude said.

  “What was the reason the grandson wanted money?” Chris said.

  Lucy said, “I suppose I never questioned it. I mean wouldn’t you? On some level?”

  “Want money?” McBride said. “That’d be human nature I guess, if you never lived to know your grandpa. Or barely . . . That you’d want to pick someone to go after. I mean we see those lawsuits now, some poor guy dying of cancer, the family is going after a chemical company because the guy sprayed his flowers with Roundup on Saturday mornings for 30 years.”

  “What was your dad’s name?” Chris said, trying to keep it casual. But when Lucy told him, he filed it away.

  Gertrude said, “Shall I open the box of See’s candy?”

  McBride said that might hit the spot, and he’ll break out the ice cream as well, and he went back in the kitchen with her.

  Chris said to Lucy, “That’s a tough hand you’ve been dealt . . . You’ve worn it well.”

  She smiled.

  Chris said, “The UFO, what was the story there?”

  Lucy took a deep breath. She said, “It was my grandpa’s house. In Hillsdale, New Mexico. It was 1956. There was a silver mine there, but they closed it following the Korean War. That was the whole reason for the town, the mine . . . obviously I learned all of this later -- Anyhow, my grandpa stayed to the end, until he finally passed away. He was stubborn just like my dad. It was him, and maybe one other person, literally, left in the town. All the other houses were mine-workers’ cottages, and abandoned.”

  McBride called out there, did anyone want something real to drink, some booze, that he’d be happy to concoct something tropical -- and Chris spoke for Lucy and said yes please, they wouldn’t mind.

  Lucy said, “My dad was deciding what to do with my grandpa’s stuff. He said there wasn’t a lot worth saving, but let’s see what was in the back, in the blacksmith shop my grandpa had. The shop was across the yard in an old cedar barn with a weathervane on top. It was nearly dark out.

  “In later years I remembered how the air felt thick, like something was pressing down on you, even though there was no wind at all. Then we heard this high-pitched hum, and we looked toward the base of the mountain. Something round and silver and large -- wider than my grandpa’s house -- was floating slowly toward the ground.

  “When it was about as high as a telephone pole it stopped in the air and started spinning. There was a grinding sound, and some brown material shot out from the bottom in a puff, and then the big round silver thing started to rise. After a minute, it moved very fast, faster than anything I’d ever seen, and it disappeared into the clouds.”

  A moment. Chris said, “Wow . . . and that was it?”

  “That’s not enough?” Lucy smiled.

&
nbsp; “What did your dad say?” Chris said.

  “My dad stood still, looking up into the sky for a long time. Finally he took his pipe out of his coat pocket and began packing it with tobacco. He told me that what we had just seen then, it was real but it wasn’t. He said it would be our secret, and no one else’s . . . Then he picked me up and held me tight, and he didn’t put me down until we’d closed up the house and were back in the car.”

  Chris saw that Lucy had her face in her left hand.

  “You felt safe,” he said. “With your dad.”

  She nodded, and Chris figured what the heck and he went to her and and leaned down and embraced the woman, and she responded, and it felt nice -- on his end for sure, and hopefully on hers as well.

  Until there was some noise, the screen door rattling, and Chris broke off the embrace, and said to McBride and Gertrude, “Not what you think.”

  “Yeah right,” McBride said, passing out the beverages, “we’ve heard that one before. The oldest line in the book.”

  “Really,” Gertrude said.

  Chapter 8

  Saturday after breakfast Chris decided to mosey on over to the bank and do his due diligence and check out Reba’s art.

  Though when breakfast ended he was almost too full to go over there. One more perk of this place -- they’d frequently have guest demonstrations in the rec center, usually involving crafts and home products but sometimes gastronomy-related stuff as well, and this morning you had an executive chef from a supposed high end restaurant in Chandler -- though the guy explained they were also expanding east into Santa Fe next fall -- but the crux being, when the guy finished his demo, you could eat.

  And not just bite-sized samples but the real McCoy, paper plates and plastic forks but who cares, and you had a choice of three breakfast entrees so Chris went with the ‘waffles’ torpedo’.

  You got in line and up front there was a long table and the guy himself adjusted the waffles onto Chris’s plate, the guy fully decked out in the all-whites and the big chef’s hat.

  And man that was superb -- narrow, diamond shaped waffles rising high out of the middle of your plate like a tower, secret batter ingredients, syrup drizzled over the works just right -- and in the interior you discovered bits of fresh fruit, and lo and behold, bacon.