Made to Be Broken

Chapter Three

Quinn e-mailed me Sunday. Just a quick note to apologize again for taking off early and to thank me again for helping him… and to ask whether I'd have time for an IM chat that evening.

I said yes to the chat… and spent the rest of the day mentally preparing for the "Let's just be friends" speech. But it never came. We chatted as we always did. There was a case in the U.S. that week of a man charged after beating to death a guy he'd found raping his girlfriend. Quinn wanted to know if I'd heard about it and what I thought. We talked about that for a while, debating the circumstances and the ethics. Then he asked a few spelunking questions and we got into that, swapping stories until I had to sign off.

So nothing had changed. Maybe "the speech" was still coming. Or maybe he'd decided, since I hadn't seemed disappointed that nothing romantic happened in Toronto, that I was okay sticking with friendship and there was no need to discuss it.

Was I okay with friendship? I did feel a pang of disappointment. Was that because I'd wanted to be seduced? To feel what I had last fall, Quinn's enthusiasm sweeping aside my reservations? To enjoy the passionate, reckless affair I'd imagined?

Or was that pang just bruised ego? Maybe more than that – a slap to a still-tender part bruised when I'd been rejected by friends, family, and lover after I shot Wayne Franco.

But I'd been thinking the same thing about Quinn – that we'd be better off as friends – and it didn't mean there was anything wrong with him. There just wasn't enough of a spark to take the risk. Normally when a potential lover says "let's just be friends," it really means "I don't actually like you that much," and the promised friendship never materializes. Quinn still sought my company, still wanted to chat… and chat and chat.

Maybe it would deepen into more someday, when both of us were ready. For now, I could use a friend more than I could use a lover.

Tuesday morning, I was returning from a walk with our only guests – an elderly couple – and saw Emma on the porch, ostensibly filling the bird feeders. That was Owen's job, meaning she was waiting to talk to me.

"Did you let Sammi go?" she asked after our guests had gone inside.

"What? No. What'd she say?"

"Nothing. She hasn't shown up, and whatever her faults, she's punctual."

My first thought was that she'd messed up her new schedule and thought she had Mondays and Tuesdays off. But before she left Sunday afternoon, she'd double-checked with me on what time to be in today. "Have you called her place yet?"

"Yes, and I got a mouthful of Janie's cussing for my trouble. She hung up before I could even say why I was calling."

"Maybe the baby's sick. You know what Sammi's like. If Destiny's temperature hits a hundred, she's off to the hospital. It would be nice if she called to say she couldn't make it, but I'm sure she'll be here tomorrow."

My elderly guests had forgone the campfire Monday night – in early May, I don't blame them – but they'd helped themselves to the beer and drunk more than I would expect for a lovely pair of schoolteachers in their seventies. Fresh air does that to people. I didn't notice that the beer case was empty until late afternoon. We had only two rooms booked that night, and I wasn't sure either would want the bonfire, but if they did, they wouldn't appreciate a dry one.

The White Rock liquor store closed at six on Tuesdays in the off-season. I got there at five minutes past, just as the manager, Rick Hargrave, was backing out of the parking lot.

When he saw my pickup tear around the corner, mud flying behind me, he pulled back into his spot, opened the store, and gave me a case of beer to be paid for next time I was in town. You don't get that kind of service in a big city.

Before I left, Hargrave mentioned that his daughter, Tess, wanted to hold her eighteenth birthday party out at the lodge next month. Tess was Sammi's best friend, which reminded me that I hadn't heard from my errant employee.

The Ernst place was just around the corner. Technically, I should say the "Ernst house," but that elevated the structure to a status it didn't deserve. For my first six months in White Rock, I thought the Ernst place was deserted. No one could possibly live in a hovel so dilapidated that a rumble of thunder would surely reduce it to toothpicks and dust.

Driving by one day, I'd seen a preteen girl walk out and had assumed the local kids were using the place as a hideout. I'd mentioned this to the grocer, expressing my concern that the roof could fall in and hurt them. When he told me that the girl, Sammi, lived there, I'd walked out without remembering what I'd come for.

I parked on the road, walked up the weed lawn, and rapped at the door. When it opened, the stench of garbage and unwashed dishes nearly made me gag. Janie parked herself in the gap. If she had once possessed an iota of her daughter's beauty, it had long since vanished. Her leathery skin was enough to make me want to slather on SPF 60 every time I so much as sat in a sunny window. Add a lifetime of booze and cigarettes, and Janie Ernst didn't look like she was about to keel over; she looked like she'd risen from the grave.

"What the fuck do you want, cop?"

The words flew out in a hail of booze-drenched spittle. To someone like Janie, the biggest problem with me wasn't the circumstances surrounding my departure from law enforcement, but the fact that I'd been a cop at all.

"Sammi didn't come to work – "

"And now you're her parole officer?"

"I was concerned because she didn't call. May I speak to her, please?"

"May I speak to her, please?" Janie mimicked.

"Whoa, that's good. Taking insult lessons from third graders, Janie?"

"Bitch."

"What you say is what you are. Oh, wait, what's that other one? 'I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.' "

The door hit my hand. I grabbed the edge, holding it fast as I leaned inside.

"Why don't I just come in and talk to Sammi?"

"You got a warrant, cop?"

She threw her weight against the door, catching me off guard. It hit my nose and I jumped back, eyes watering. The door slammed shut.

I stepped off the crumbling cement slab and tried peering through the front window, but grime as thick as a blackout blind blocked my view. A blare of noise from within made me jump. I stepped closer to the door. Gunfire rang out. The television.

I returned to my pickup. Even with the doors closed, I could still hear Janie's TV. I glanced at the house one last time, but there was no sign of Sammi, so I started the engine and pulled away.

When Sammi came back to work, I'd make sure we worked something out. Sure, she was smart-mouthed and resentful, but what did I expect? The kid had been raised by dust bunnies.

The next morning, I came in from helping Owen in the boathouse and found Emma stripping the beds, alone.

"Sammi's not here again?" I said.

She shook her head.

"Did she call?"

Another head shake.

Now this was really bugging me. Sammi had said she didn't want to lose her job, then after we'd come to an agreement on better hours, she stopped showing up – giving me just the excuse I needed to fire her. Something was wrong. Time for another run at Janie.