Games of the Heart Read online

  He heard Ron finish up and looked forward. Pastor Knox came back to the podium to deliver the prayer and Mike bowed his head with the rest. Then he lifted it when Pastor Knox mumbled, “Amen”.

  George Markham hit the podium to inform them the service was over and they’d be moving to the cemetery to lay Darrin to rest. People got up from their seats, shifted, moved and Mike stood too, turning immediately toward Dusty.

  But when he did, she was gone.

  * * * * *

  “Thank you for coming, Mike.”

  He was standing with Rhonda and Debbie on the porch just outside the door to the farmhouse and Rhonda was giving him her good-bye. There was a crush of people in the house. The dining room and kitchen tables along with every surface in a common area were covered in platters of food or bowls of snacks. He was holding Rhonda’s hand, squeezing it and looking into her eyes.

  They were done, he knew, at least for a time. She couldn’t look at him without seeing him bent over her dead husband, trying to get his heart pumping again. She might never be able to look at him without remembering what they shared.

  He would need to avoid her until she gave him the all-clear and he knew that might never happen. This happened to cops, not frequently, but it happened. You shared a tragedy, you delivered bad news; in a small town it was hard to avoid the man who gave it to you. But you did it all the same.

  He wasn’t happy about this with Rhonda. Darrin was a friend, without him, Rhonda, in normal circumstances, probably wouldn’t continue to be. Not by either of their design, they would just drift apart without a common anchor. He liked her, she was a little flighty, a little oversensitive, but she was a good woman and now she and her boys needed all the friends they could get.

  But it was not his choice and he sighed, squeezed her hand deeper and let her go.

  She smiled a small, joyless smile and drifted back into the house.

  Debbie moved to him and hooked her hand around his elbow, propelling him over the porch and down the steps to the walk.

  “You doin’ okay?” he asked softly.

  “No,” she answered honestly.

  “Right, honey, what I mean is, you gonna be okay?”

  She looked up at him, took a small breath and replied, “Yes. I’ll be all right.”

  Mike nodded knowing even before he asked the question that she would. Debbie was like that. She loved her brother, he knew, but she was the kind of woman who sorted her shit in short order and moved on. She’d do the same after losing Darrin and she wouldn’t waste time with it.

  He moved with his long since ex-girlfriend toward his SUV as he asked, “There a reason Dusty didn’t show at the cemetery or here?” He jerked his head back to indicate the farmhouse.

  Debbie was looking at him and he watched her face get hard.

  “Is there a reason she didn’t show at the service?” she surprisingly returned and continued. “Is there a reason she gave us such shit about this whole thing? Is there a reason Dusty does anything?”

  Mike stopped them by his SUV, turning to face her, feeling his brows had drawn.

  “She was at the service, Deb,” he informed her and he saw her brows draw together.

  “She was?” she asked as she dropped her hand from his elbow.

  He nodded. “She stood at the back against the wall.”

  Debbie studied him a split second before she rolled her eyes.

  “So Dusty,” she stated. “Silent rebellion. Nothing ever changes.”

  This didn’t connect. Standing at the back of the viewing chamber in a funeral home during her brother’s memorial service, she didn’t look like a rebel. She looked like a confident woman who knew who she was but who was also in pain.

  “What’s she rebelling against?” Mike asked.

  Debbie’s head cocked irately to the side. “Uh…everything?” She asked just as she answered. “She’s Dusty, Mike. You know how she is. She’s a pain in the ass. She always has been even way before everyone saw it. Rhonda’s a freaking mess. Those boys are numb. Mom and Dad are close to losing it. And what does Dusty do? I’m hundreds of miles away, just like her, trying to deal with Rhonda, Fin, Kirb, set up a funeral for my freaking brother and she’s handing me shit. I didn’t need shit. I needed help. I have a job, a home, a life and I had a brother to put in the ground and she’s handing me shit. Same old Dusty. It’s never changed.”

  Back in the day, Mike had not understood Debbie and Dusty’s relationship. Whereas everyone adored Dusty before she’d turned, Debbie hadn’t. She’d explained more than once how her little sister worked her nerves, not occasionally, often. They fought all the time.

  But even with Debbie’s explanations, Mike didn’t get it.

  At first, he’d thought it was because Dusty often pushed her way in when Mike was at their house to be with Debbie. He had to admit, this was frustrating considering the fact that, if he had his chance, he wanted to be making out with Debbie and feeling her up and he couldn’t do that with an animated twelve year old around. Strangely, Dusty, being Dusty, he always got over his frustration quickly and started teasing her to make her giggle, trading wisecracks, something Dusty was really good at, and just goofing around. Debbie liked attention and he figured she didn’t like her little sister taking his. Mike tried to stop it but he couldn’t. Dusty was that appealing.

  Later, after he’d taken Debbie’s virginity, their relationship hit a different zone and he was far more capable of gently extracting Deb and himself from Dusty. He was a teenage boy so he had better things to do than goof around with a thirteen year old kid.

  Even so, Debbie’s attitude toward her sister never changed so he knew it wasn’t that.

  He never got it except to think that when Dusty changed, Debbie always saw something others had not until it came out.

  Still, this time, it didn’t connect. The Dusty standing at the back of the funeral home was not the Dusty he last saw twenty years ago. And she had no anger in her face, no hardness.

  Just pain.

  “If she’s here, she’s protesting,” Debbie went on throwing her hand back at the house. “Leaves me, Mom and Dad, Rhonda, the kids all to deal so she could have her little drama. Well fuck that. We’ve got enough real drama to handle. She can have her own imaginary one. Dusty was always good at living in an imaginary world.”

  Mike wanted to know what Dusty was protesting. He also wanted to know what shit she gave Debbie about the funeral. And he wanted to know these two things more than was healthy. He understood it immediately. And it annoyed him.

  It also annoyed him because he couldn’t deny that Debbie was right. Dusty appeared at the service but disappeared before she even spoke to her grieving parents, sister, sister-in-law and nephews. She didn’t deign to appear at the graveside. And now, with a house full of people which would mean, in a couple of hours, a house full of mess that would need to be cleaned up, she was nowhere to be seen.

  Evidence was suggesting she hadn’t changed. She’d gone from a generous, fun-loving child to a selfish, sullen teenager, skipped town the minute she could and stayed away as much as she could. Her brother was dead, his family, which was her family, suffering and she was absent.

  “Sorry, honey,” he muttered. “Shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  Her smile was small but it was sincere when she whispered, “If you didn’t, I couldn’t bitch about it. So…thanks.”

  “You know where I live,” he told her. “As long as you’re here, you need to bitch or anything, find me.”

  Her head tipped to the side and she studied him again before saying softly, “And you haven’t changed either. A woman meets a lot of men in her life. They all have types so they all have titles. Sucks for me that when I was too young to get it, I met The Good Guy.”

  He didn’t know if he heard regret in her voice or not. He also needed to shut this down. He enjoyed Debbie in high school. But with her tailored, expensive suit, her sturdy, low-heeled not stylish pumps, her minimally made
up face, her hair cut in a short style that meant she didn’t have to waste precious time to fashion it, time she could be using to make money and bust balls as an attorney, she was not his thing. He couldn’t say she wasn’t attractive. What he could say was for reasons he didn’t get and didn’t want to, she did her damnedest to hide it. He’d learned to pay attention, read the signs, weed out the red flags and move on. He’d learned the hard way. Twice. He wasn’t going through that again.

  “Thanks, sweetheart,” he muttered, leaned down, brushed his lips against her cheek then straightened away. Even as he moved back several inches, he lifted a hand to give her upper arm a squeeze before he continued on a mutter, “You take care.”

  Debbie Holliday was far from dumb. She saw the brush off and he registered when she did. This meant her earlier comment held regret. She was hoping for reconciliation. Not, he knew, a real one. No, she wanted a reminder she was alive. She wanted to participate in the good parts of living. She wanted familiarity and nostalgia. She wanted her ex high school boyfriend to fuck away the pain of losing her brother.

  And Mike had no intention of doing that. He had a good memory and he’d initiated her to lovemaking. He’d had one girl before her so he was no expert. Still, as their teenage sex life carried on, he’d used her to learn how to give as well as take. She’d used him to learn how to get whatever she could. She was into experimentation, which he liked. But in the end, she was a selfish fuck. It wasn’t a nice thing to think but it was true. And everything he knew about her now screamed she hadn’t changed.

  He didn’t need that shit.

  He released her arm, tipped up his chin, opened the driver’s side door to his SUV and swung in. He switched on the ignition and pulled out, navigating the dozens of cars that lined their lane, feeling then seeing Debbie standing in her black suit on the walkway cleared of snow watching him go.

  And he went.

  The drive to his townhouse, which was in a development right next to the Holliday Farm, was, at most, five minutes. And it was this because he had to drive to the entrance of the development and navigate the streets inside it to get to his place. If he could drive his 4x4 across the field separating his townhome from the farm, it would take around twenty seconds.

  But he didn’t drive to his townhome. His kids were with his ex-wife, Audrey for the weekend.

  And there was a possibility that Dusty Holliday was in town. Her brother dead, her sister in from DC, her parents up from Florida. And she was pitching her silent fit instead of standing with her family and helping them deal.

  And this pissed him off. Too much. More than was rational. But he didn’t fucking care. He’d known her brother since he could remember. He’d gone to church with her family the same. He took her sister’s virginity. He’d given her his time and attention. And an hour and a half ago, he stood by her brother’s graveside watching his body lowered into the ground.

  Someone had to pull Dusty Holliday’s head from her ass and with Darrin, a year older than Mike, under fresh dirt, Mike decided it was going to be him.

  * * * * *

  They had two hotels in town, both of them situated close to the on ramp to the freeway.

  And he was a cop. A cop with a badge.

  Seeing her and her clothes, he went to the more expensive hotel, gave her name and flashed that badge.

  Without delay, they gave him her room number.

  He used the stairs rather than the elevator. This was habit. With a job, a house and two teenage kids he had full custody of, he didn’t have the time he wanted to work out. So he habitually found ways to be active.

  He’d played basketball in high school but was not near good enough to play at his alma mater, Purdue which had a rich basketball history and recruited the best they could get. Still, with his frat brothers, they played basketball as often as they could, three, four times a week.

  After college, he’d stayed fit because he liked it and he stayed fit for the job.

  But when he married Audrey, his life changed.

  He worked his ass off to pay the bills she accumulated. He didn’t have time for basketball with buddies or to hit the gym since, until he made detective, he worked two jobs. When he made detective and the hours meant he had to let go of the other job then, later, when he got quit of Audrey, he took it up again. One-on-ones with Colt or Mike’s partner Garrett “Merry” Merrick. Or two-on-twos, Merry and him against Colt and his friend Morrie. And he played with his son, Jonas. He also hit the gym. But after the divorce, when Audrey didn’t look after their kids during her part of their joint custody, he fought her and got them full. They were teenagers and busy, social but still, they managed to take a lot of time. This meant his four-weekly visits to the gym and once weekly one-on-ones or two-on-twos got cut back to twice-weekly gym visits if he was lucky and once or twice a month basketball games.

  So if he had the chance to do something physical, he did it as a matter of course.

  This time he did it also in hopes of cooling his temper.

  It didn’t work.

  He hit the fourth floor, moved through the door and followed the signs to her room number.

  Without delay, he knocked.

  Then he waited.

  It couldn’t have taken more than a minute but that minute was too fucking long and he was about to knock again when the door was open.

  And there she was right in front of him.

  Her hair was no longer down but in a messy knot with thick, spiky locks shooting out of it everywhere at the top back of her head. She was no longer dripping silver and wearing black but wearing very faded jeans and an equally faded and beat up once burgundy now washed out tee. The deteriorating white decal on front had a cowboy in chaps and spurs being thrown from a bronco with western-style words that demanded you, “Eat it, cowboy!” underneath and in an arch over it, it said, “Schub’s Texas Saloon and Hoedown”. Her feet were bare, toes tipped in the same wine as her fingernails and he registered she couldn’t be more than five foot seven but was probably closer to five foot six. He knew this because, at six one, he had quite a ways to look down at her.

  She still had on her makeup and silver bracelets on both wrists.

  And she was staring up at him, eyes wide, lips parted, visibly shocked.

  “Mike,” she whispered.

  And that, again irrationally and again he didn’t give a fuck, pissed him off.

  Dusty, comfortable, removed, sitting in her hotel room relaxing.

  Yeah, it pissed him off.

  So he pushed past her and walked in her room.

  It was nice, clean, well-decorated. He’d been in one of these rooms once when someone had OD’ed in one two years ago. Other than that, never.

  There was a beat up but stylish tan leather satchel on the luggage stand. A scattering of her jewelry with a cell phone and a keycard were on the nightstand. Her blazer, skirt and turtleneck were tossed, clearly without thought, on the chair. Her cowboy boots both on their sides were in front of the chair where they’d been dropped and forgotten. Her big, fringed, black suede purse looked like it had exploded on the desk. There was an MP3 player on the bed, the covers not smooth, the pillows piled against the headboard and depressed. She’d been lying there, enjoying music.

  This, he saw, hadn’t changed. Not ever. She’d shared a room with Debbie who was obsessively tidy. Dusty had always been…not. In any way. She did her chores as given to her by her mother but her side of the room always looked like a tornado had been through it. Mrs. Holliday used to nag her about it but had given up. Debbie fought with her all the time about it. Dusty never gave a shit. Dusty had better things to do and she made this point clear when she found a plaque in a gift shop, bought it with her allowance and put it on her side of the room. It stated, “Boring women have immaculate homes.” It was a daily “fuck you” to her sister. Mike had always secretly thought it was hilarious. Debbie hated that fucking plaque, it drove her insane. And no matter how many times Mike explained that her
getting angry about it was feeding Dusty’s glee, she just kept right on getting angry about it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He heard her voice, soft, musical and he turned to face her.

  She’d sung in the children’s choir at church in addition to both the junior high and high school choirs. She’d had a lot of solos. Her voice was pure and sweet, reminiscent of Karen Carpenter. Even when she had her turn, she never quit singing. She went to competitions with the choir all over the state, won ribbons and trophies and led the choir to county, sectional, regional and, in her senior year, state victories. She cleaned away the grunge for that, he’d heard since Darrin had told him about it, again proudly. She loved singing so much she gave up the grunge to do it. Her speaking voice, even when she was younger, was nearly as beautiful as her singing voice. He’d always thought so.

  And it hadn’t changed.

  And, fuck him, with maturity, it was also a lot fucking better.

  “Your Mom and Dad, sisters, nephews, they’re all at the farm,” he informed her.

  “I know,” she replied quietly.

  “They could use your help,” he went on.

  “I –” she started but, pissed, Mike talked over her.

  “Rhonda’s a fuckin’ mess. Your Mom looks like she’s been hit by a freight train. Your nephews have both closed down. Your Dad’s usin’ so much energy not to unman himself in front of company, it’s a wonder he doesn’t collapse and you? You’re kickin’ back in jeans and a tee, listenin’ to tunes and maybe contemplating what to get from room service.”

  Her face changed, he saw it and he understood the change. Even if he wasn’t a cop and his ex-wife hadn’t made an art of deceit to hide her overspending, both these giving him years of experience reading people, he would have understood the change.

  She looked like he’d struck her.

  Mike didn’t care. She needed to snap out of it.

  So he held her eyes and kept going.

  “I don’t get you, Dusty. I didn’t get your bullshit twenty years ago. I don’t get it now. No, strike that, I definitely don’t get it now. This is your family. These people love you and they just put your brother in the ground. Seriously, I wanna know and you’re gonna fuckin’ tell me. What in the fuck is the matter with you?”