No way out

Chapter Ten

Roni Chase’s office was behind me, one of four tenants in what used to be a Denny’s restaurant, the logo still visible in white letters painted on the asphalt parking lot. The owner of the building had gutted and subdivided it into Chase Bookkeeping, Payday Loans Today, New Life Chiropractic, and Andy’s Bail Bonds, each with its own entrance.

I hauled myself off the bench, leaving Peggy Martin’s ball up for grabs, certain that Lucy would catch it for now, and grabbed the one with Roni Chase’s name on it. I stopped in the parking lot, watching Roni through the plate-glass storefront window of her office. She was sitting at her desk, holding a pen in her right hand, twirling it from one finger to the next and talking to someone whose back was to me. He was wearing blue jeans and a denim jacket, leaning over the desk, hands planted, his head bobbing. I couldn’t see his face, but hers was set hard and tight. She pushed back from the desk when I stepped through the door, folding her arms across her chest and cocking her head toward me, signaling that they had company.

“You take walk-ins?” I asked, letting the door close, blocking the exit.

Her guest straightened and turned, arms loose at his sides, cool dark eyes taking my measure. He had close-cropped dyed blond hair, a natural brown chinstrap beard, and a pierced eyebrow. The T-shirt under his open jacket was stretched tight across his body. He was ripped, flexing his hands, balling them into fists, shaking them loose and ready. I put him at five-ten, one-eighty, mid twenties, willing and probably able.

Roni dipped her chin, the corners of her mouth curling into a reluctant smile. “Sure, why not. I’ll catch up to you later, Brett.”

He gave her a narrow look, jamming his hands into his coat pockets. “You remember what I told you,” he said to her.

“Yeah, like I haven’t heard it a million times before.”

“I mean it, Roni. I’m not buying your funeral dress yet. You keep this shit up, I’ll let the county bury you in a pine box in your goddamn underwear.”

She got up, came around to the front side of the desk, hands on her hips. “And let all the money you’ve been saving for my dress go to waste? I don’t think so.”

“Girl, you are out of your mind.”

I stepped aside, holding the door open for him. He hesitated as the wind blew in, fluttering papers on Roni’s desk, and gave both of us a last look, shaking his head, pointing at her, talking to me.

“I shit you not, dude. She is absolutely fucking out of her mind.”

He climbed into a Ford Fusion parked in front of Roni’s office, backed up, spun the wheel hard, and fishtailed toward the street, wheels spinning on loose gravel.

I looked around her office: maple desk and credenza, low-backed swivel chair, flat-screen computer monitor, printer on a stand, twin file cabinets, a fern in one corner, a ficus in another, and paintings of seascapes and meadows on the walls. Her mother’s office, not hers.

“Brett who?” I asked.

“Staley.”

“Let me guess. You and Brett have a history.”

She laughed, easy and relieved. “A lot of history. His family and mine.”

“He your boyfriend?”

“Depends on the day.”

“Is he a client too?”

She cocked her head, hesitating before taking a breath. “No, but I do work for his father, Nick. He has a little grocery on St. John. Brett works for him but not for much longer.”

“Another victim of the recession?”

“Yeah. When times were good, Nick bought a couple of rental properties, figured real estate was a safe investment for his retirement and the mortgage broker made him a sweet deal. That was when the banks would finance anyone with a pulse and a ten-dollar balance in their bank account. Then, when the economy soured, he used the rent money to keep the grocery going instead of paying the mortgages, and now he’s going to lose his store and the rental properties.”

“You think he’ll take it better than Frank did?”

“You can’t tell how anyone will take something like that. He’s an ex-Marine who still thinks he’s a drill sergeant and Brett’s one of his grunts.”

“Let me guess. Nothing Brett does is good enough for his old man. The harder he tries, the worse it gets. So he puts on the tough guy act to convince you and him that he’s a man.”

Her eyes popped, and her chin dropped. “How could you possibly know that?”

“My old man was a Marine. Rode my ass until one day I took a swing at him.”

“You hit your father?”

“In the mouth. Knocked him to his knees. I was eighteen and angry.”

“What happened?”

I let out a sigh. “He got a fat lip and I broke a knuckle, but I got his attention. He started cutting me some slack, and things smoothed out after that. I found out years later that he bragged to his buddies how his kid had tagged him. He was proud of me for not taking any more crap from him, even if he couldn’t tell me to my face.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m pretty sure if Brett hit his dad, his dad would be bragging to his buddies about how he broke every bone in Brett’s body.”

“Hey, I’m not recommending it. I’m just saying how it was for me. That stuff about your funeral dress. That about what happened at LC’s?”

She went back to her desk chair, motioning me to a pair of black leather chairs in front of the desk. They were the nicest furnishings in the office, Roni’s mother understanding that the customer came first. I sat opposite her. She ran one hand through her hair, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, nodding her head.

“Yeah. Brett’s a romantic.”

“Romantic isn’t the word I’d use to describe him.”

She laughed. “I know, but he’s all hard muscle and soft heart. I think he was more scared than mad.”

“The woman I was with, her boyfriend got on me the same way Brett got on you.”

She sat up. “Got on you? Why? What did you do?”

“Left my gun at home.”

“That’s what I don’t get. Why do men always assume they have to save us?”

“That’s the way people think about the ones they love.”

“Oh, c’mon. It’s more than that. It’s the you’re the weaker sex so watch me flex my pecs bullshit mentality guys are born with. You saw the way Brett looked at you when you showed up.”

I nodded. “He lifted his leg a little bit.”

“Like you didn’t. Jeez, men are so pathetic. You should have seen yourself. You had a look on your face, eyes all bunched up, mouth tight like you were about to spit and couldn’t wait for Brett to start something.”

She was right. That’s what I’d done with the gangbangers from the bus, and I’d done it again with Brett. The first time, I knew it. The second time, I was oblivious, on autopilot.

“You don’t even know me,” she added. “And you were ready to throw down with someone half your age and twice as tough because you thought you had to save me. What is up with that?”

I shrugged. “We’ve all got a history.”

“Yeah, and who’s going to save us from that?”