The Sweet Golden Parachute Page 12

  “Claudia’s not very happy about Bement being involved with Justine Kershaw. How do you feel about it?”

  “I envy him,” Mark said softly, gazing out the window again. “He’s happy. To hell with the rich bitches his mother wants him to date. To hell with Stanford. None of that will make him happy. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I’m just hanging on by my fingernails. If it weren’t for Danielle, I’m not sure I’d be making it at all.” Mark shot a quick look at her. “We’re not involved, if you’re wondering. Danielle’s like the sister I never had. She lets me talk. She believes in me.” Mark trailed off, his eyes puddling with tears. “I fell in love with a woman of great beauty and privilege. Eric married a Sheetrocker’s daughter who absolutely no one would mistake for Angelina Jolie. And yet I’d trade places with him in a second. He has work that gives him great satisfaction. And a goodhearted woman who is truly there for him when he…”

  Des’s pager beeped at her now from her belt.

  “I’ll have to take this,” Des said, grateful for the interruption. She was starting to feel suffocated by the man’s warm, wet blanket of selfpity. “You’ve been real helpful, Mr. Widdifield.”

  He shrugged his soft shoulders, sorry to be losing his audience. “I hope I didn’t go on about myself too much.”

  “Not at all. You did good.”

  “Trooper, you’re a terrible liar.”

  She reached for her cell phone as she darted out the door. It was Luke Olman who’d paged her. She got through to him while she was heading back down the promenade toward her cruiser. “What do you know, Oly?”

  “How much that Gullwing is worth, for starters,” the investigating detective replied. “The Hemmings Motor News website has one listed for—get this—$325,000. This isn’t a car. It’s a highend antique. Nobody’s going to return that thing by nightfall. Or ever. It’s gone.”

  “Color me down with that. Pick up anything on canvass?”

  “One tidbit from the guy who drives the recycling truck. Know that commuter parking lot on Old Shore Road next to the I95 onramp? When he was on his way to the town garage early this morning he saw a huge tractortrailer idling there. This was at maybe a quarter past six.”

  “The longhaulers pull in there sometimes to catch a few zees,” Des told him as she reached her cruiser and got in. “As long as they’re gone by rush hour, I leave ’em be. Did he notice any markings on it?”

  “He didn’t, no. Think it might connect up?”

  “It might,” Des said, mulling it over.

  “Des, I ran that criminal background check you asked for. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t.” She felt her pulse quicken. “Just had a hunch.”

  “Well, this is something we definitely need to pursue. I’m heading back up there now. Would you mind sitting in? You know these people.”

  She rang off and started her cruiser back toward Four Chimneys, thinking she wouldn’t mind stopping by Eric’s farm to see if the Kershaw brothers had shown for work. If they hadn’t, it would lend a whole lot of credence to the idea that they’d suddenly gotten a few thousand ahead.

  The sun was starting to burn through the morning fog as she eased her way back up through the gentlemen’s farm country. The trees alongside the road were still iron gray and bare, the wild lilacs and blackberries nothing but brambles. But the sunlight on her face felt warm through the windshield, hinting tantalizingly at spring for the second day in a row.

  As Des slowed down to make a left into the driveway of Four Chimneys, she noticed a ray of that sunlight glinting off of something shiny in the roadside brush. Her first thought was that it was an empty beer can that a thoughtless passerby had tossed in there. Her second thought was that it looked like something bigger. More like a bicycle. She didn’t have any current stolen bike reports. Wrong time of year. Still, she pulled onto the shoulder and got out for a closer look.

  It was a beatup old mountain bike with two grocery carts chained to its rear rack. She recognized this odd little conveyance at once—it belonged to Dorset’s Can Man. Although why old Pete would ditch it in the brush near the driveway to Four Chimneys she could not imagine. The grocery carts were empty. Typically, he’d have himself a pretty full load by the time he made it this far up Route 156. Yet there was no sign of his haul. Or, for that matter, of Pete himself.

  Des was standing there in the ditch, trying to puzzle it out, when she noticed the trampled, slushy mud beyond the bicycle. Someone, it appeared, had dragged something deeper into the woods. She stepped her way carefully through the thicket for a better look.

  And that’s when she found Pete.

  CHAPTER 9

  Last winter, on the night I turned fourteen, my two older brothers got me high on Jose Cuervo and weed and took turns raping me. They raped me pretty much every night after that. At first, I tried to fight them. But I was much better off if I didn’t resist or cry for help. Because if I did stuff like that they’d beat me so bad I could barely get out of bed the next day. So I would just lie there and let them do what they wanted. They had me outnumbered. And there was noone to answer my cries for help. My mother was dead. My father was always passed out drunk pretty. And it wasn’t like he cared anyway.

  Besides, I could take it.

  That’s one thing I can do like nobody else. I can take it.

  After a few weeks, when the thrill of banging me wore off, they started passing me around. Every day after school, their friends would come by the house and do me in my room. Sometimes a half-dozen or more of them would line up outside my bedroom door. Before long, I’d done pretty much every guy in their class. My not-so-secret nickname around school became She’ll Do Ya. That’s what they called me.

  Me, I stayed high pretty much all of the time.

  My brothers did this to me for the coolness of it. And they did it for the money. They collected off of me, all right. If the guy was a friend of theirs, I cost twenty. If he was some rich jerk, and believe me there are lots of those in this town, I was fifty. Condoms were mandatory. I got none of the money they collected. Not one cent.

  This town is really small and proper and New Englandy. You would die if you saw how pretty it is. Anyway, it didn’t take long before word about me got out. One of the rich jerks told his father, who is this big-time state judge. The judge didn’t get in my father’s face about it. He went right for my brothers. And now here’s the part that shouldn’t have surprised me but totally did. The judge didn’t come down on them. He just wanted in on it for himself and his own friends.

  So now I’m doing the dads.

  I’m trying to think if there’s a single upstanding do-gooder in this town who I haven’t done. Nope, can’t think of one. Not unless you count my pediatrician because that would be even too weird. I’ve done every big shot in town government. I’ve done my minister, whose whole thing is preaching Moral Values. I’ve done my history teacher, who’s always lecturing us on how we all have to stay vigilant against terrorists and other such evildoers. Guess what? The evildoers are already here. They’re passing themselves off as upstanding, freedom-loving citizens. Which they’re not. I can tell you that they’re not.

  A lot of them own boats. One of their favorite things is to take me along on their fishing trips. Maybe four men go. All of them rich and important. My brothers collect a hundred apiece from them. Even more for overnighters. I don’t like the boat trips very much. I’m always afraid they’ll throw me overboard and leave me out there to drown. They all trust each other. But me they aren’t so sure about. I’m the one they fear. If I ever decided to out them, I mean. Actually, it amazes me they haven’t thrown me overboard by now. But I’m still here. I guess the reason I am is they’d miss doing me. Plus, they probably figure no one would listen to me anyway, right? Why would they? I’m just some underage skank. If I did try to make trouble they’d probably just shove me in a hospital somewhere for drugged-out teen nymphos. Absolutely no one would believe me.

  You b
elieve me, don’t you? The reason I’m asking is that there’s more I want to tell you. I’ve been kind of afraid to tell anyone this because I’m, well, ashamed to admit it. So you have to promise you won’t think less of me when I tell you. Do you promise? Okay, then here goes:

  Lately, I’ve started to enjoy it.

  So began Justine Kershaw’s raw, brutally frank short novel entitled She’ll Do Ya.

  Mitch took a peek at it over his Cocoa Puffs after Des left for Four Chimneys. He’d intended to sample the first few pages, then tackle it in earnest after he’d filed his Sunday column on Safety Last!, a forgotten Harold Lloyd slapstick classic. Instead, he spent his entire morning reading She’ll Do Ya from start to finish as the fog hung heavy outside over Long Island Sound and the foghorn sounded from the Old Saybrook lighthouse. Not that reading it was easy. Mitch was so shaken by Justine’s novel that he felt outright physical revulsion. But he could not put it down. Never before had he encountered a voice quite like that of her unnamed fifteen-year-old storyteller. It was pure and piercingly honest—the voice of a tough, savvy young girl who has suffered so much emotional and physical cruelty that she is beyond all illusions, all hopes, all dreams. Mitch found her stubborn will to survive inspiring. Also heartbreaking. Because somehow, in spite of everything, she is still a child who wants nothing more than to be loved:

  Doing them is pretty much the only attention I ever get. Otherwise, I’m invisible. My teachers never call on me. The other girls don’t like me one bit. Can’t imagine why. And it’s not like a boy wants to ask me out for real. I own a mirror. I know I’m not much to look at. But if I do a boy then I’ve pleased him, right? Especially if he’s this one boy, Tommy, who I totally like. And who knows? Maybe Tommy likes me, too.

  I promise I won’t lie to you. I’II tell you everything that happened. Or as much as I can remember. Some of it’s still a haze. I kind of like it that way. That’s why I stay high a lot of the time. If I’m straight I think too much. Listen, I hope I don’t shock you too much. But I’m telling you this so you can learn something about the world you live in. I’m real. I’m walking among you. I’m your daughter, okay? And, hey, whatever you do, don’t take it too hard. Because it’s not so bad. Really, I don’t feel that bad. I don’t feel anything at all.

  Mitch could barely get up out of his chair when he’d finished reading She’ll Do Ya. It was easily the most disturbing thing he’d read in years. Somehow, Justine’s confessional novel was more than one girl’s visceral cry for help. It was a cry from a million confused, rudderless young people all across the land. She had a remarkable gift, especially considering that she was a twenty-three-year-old college dropout with no advanced writing training. Not that She’ll Do Ya was without its flaws. The subplot involving that one particular boy, Tommy, went nowhere, for example. But the talent was there. All she needed now was a good editor. Truly, Mitch believed this was the work of a major new voice in American fiction. Assuming, of course, that it was a work of fiction.

  Was it true?

  As he turned the pages, Mitch couldn’t stop asking himself this. Was he, in fact, reading Justine’s autobiography? Had Stevie and Donnie raped her when she was fourteen? Had Dorset’s leading male citizens plundered her, one by one? Had her father tolerated it? Or had Justine dreamt this all up? How could anyone her age dream up such morally depraved stuff? How could she tap into such pain?

  It had to be true.

  Mitch found it hard to conclude otherwise—which made She’ll Do Ya even more disturbing than it already was. Mitch was so bothered that he couldn’t work, couldn’t think. All he could do was plug in his beloved sky blue Fender Stratocaster—the same make Stevie Ray Vaughan had played—and sit in with Taj Mahal on The Natch’l Blues. Jesse Edwin Davis’s tasty riffs on “Corinna” left Mitch plenty of room for his own brand of soaring, high-decibel blues. And so he jacked up the power and he played, reaching for that high note, finding it, squeezing it as Clemmie hid upstairs under the bed. Mitch had no talent. None. But he had the juice. And the love. And, right now, he had the feeling.

  It had to be true.

  Which made She’ll Do Ya more than just a compelling read. It was a blistering one-hundred-fifty-page statutory rape indictment against her twisted warpo brothers and a whole lot of Dorset’s leading male citizens. Seemingly, Justine had kept quiet until now because she didn’t think anyone would believe her. After they’d read She’ll Do Ya, everyone would. And Dorset would no longer be that quaint, beautiful Yankee Eden on the Connecticut Gold Coast. It would be the ugly little town with the ugly little secret about those dirty men who had done unspeakable things to a young girl.

  No wonder she hadn’t wanted Bement to read it. No telling what the hotheaded love of her life would do to Stevie and Donnie when he got full wind of this. Assuming, that is, Bement didn’t already know about it. But how was that even possible? In a town this size, how could Bement not know? What about Rut Peck? Did he know? Mitch figured not, because if the old postmaster had any idea what She’ll Do Ya was about then he wouldn’t have encouraged Justine to pass it on to him. But she had. And now Mitch was sitting on pure dynamite.

  It was true. It had to be true.

  Or did it?

  Mitch needed to find out for certain. He just needed to take care of a personal matter first. Something that wouldn’t wait. So he snatched up his cell phone and speed-dialed the number in Vero Beach, Florida.

  And when he heard that familiar voice at the other end, he said, “Hi, Mom… Nothing’s wrong, I’m fine… I do not have a cold. My voice sounds perfectly normal. I just have a somewhat weird favor to ask of you.…”

  Honestly, she looked so innocent and bug cute seated there on that uncomfortable metal bench that it was hard to believe Justine Ker-shaw had ever done anyone.

  She’d smiled at Mitch with genuine delight when he’d shown up at her cash register. Told him she’d meet him outside in, like, eleven minutes—not that she was counting. “So what do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Your novel. I’ve read it.”

  “Is that right?” Justine’s left knee began to jiggle convulsively. And Mitch swore she’d just sucked down half of that cigarette in one drag. “And?…”

  “I have to ask you something. Did those things really happen to you?”

  Justine looked at him in bewilderment. “Why does that matter?”

  “People will want to know. Your editor, your readers, the media.”

  “The media? Whoa, cupcake…”

  “Not to mention the police. Terrible crimes were committed, Justine. Someone has to pay.”

  “Okay, I definitely don’t care about that.”

  “Exactly how much does Bement know?”

  Justine stubbed out her cigarette, her dark eyes scanning the crowded parking lot. “Bement is very sheltered. But we love each other and we’re together in every way possible. That’s all I feel like saying about him right now, okay?”

  “Not okay. Justine, did it really happen to you or didn’t it?”

  “It happens to young girls like me every day, and no one ever gets in trouble. I’m surprised you even mentioned the P-word. Did you already tell your girlfriend about it?”

  “I haven’t told anyone. I came directly here. I need to know whether—”

  “Oh, hell!” Her gaze had fallen on a mud-caked Toyota pickup that was sputtering its way across the parking lot toward them. “That mean old bastard’s always checking up on me, bugging me…”

  The pickup drew up before them in the fire line, its engine clanking, its back end crammed with black plastic trash bags that seemed to be full of empty bottles and cans. An angry looking Doberman was barking out at the world from the passenger seat.

  Milo Kershaw got out, snarled at the dog to shut up and sidled over to them. He was a chippy little runt in his sixties, with shrewd eyes and a down-turned mouth that gave his face a decidedly nasty expression. “What do you think you’re doing out here, little girl? Su
pposed to be working for a living, not flirting with the boys.”

  “I’m on a break,” she answered coldly, lighting another cigarette. “And I told you to leave me the hell alone.”

  “Don’t care what you told me. I’m still your father. Besides, I was on my way over to them machines at the A&P.”

  “Since when are you such a big recycler?”

  “Never mind since when.” Milo pointed his chin at Mitch. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m Mitch Berger, Mr. Kershaw. Pleased to meet you.”

  Milo shook a finger at him. “You got one hell of a lot of nerve sniffing around my girl, considering where you been dipping yours lately.”

  Mitch stiffened. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

  “Oh, I think you do,” Milo said fiercely. “I’m talking about you and that high and mighty afro-disiac of yours.”

  Mitch climbed slowly to his feet, clearing his throat. He had at least six inches on the little man, not to mention a solid eighty pounds. “I don’t think you want to take this conversation where you’re taking it, Mr. Kershaw.”

  “Get lost, old man,” Justine ordered him. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “That’s how you talk to your father now?”

  “That’s how I talk to ignorant racists who don’t know when to shut up.”

  “I should slap your face for saying that to me.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” she responded, flicking her lit cigarette at him.

  Milo swatted it away. “Tell your black bitch to stay away from me and my boys,” he said angrily. “Or there’s no telling what might happen.”

  “You’d better get back in your truck right now, Mr. Kershaw,” Mitch said to him as calmly as he could. “You’d also be wise to steer clear of me in the future, or I may have to beat the crap out of you.”

  Milo let out a harsh laugh. “Who are you kidding, you marsh-mallow? I could take you apart in sixty seconds.”