Linwood Barclay - Far From True

Gilchrist reappeared, holding up something small and white, about the size of a business card.

It was, in fact, a business card.

“This rings a bell,” Gilchrist said. “Didn’t a Cal Weaver used to work for the force?”

When Crystal Brighton, still in her pajamas, came into the kitchen, I glanced in her mother’s direction. I was sitting at the table, having a cup of coffee, and suddenly realized how this had to look. A strange man — well, not totally strange, given that Crystal and I had already met — here for breakfast?

But Crystal didn’t look at me, her mother, or anything else but the clipboard she held in her left hand. She had a pencil in her right and was doodling even as she walked.

Crystal nudged a chair out and took a seat.

Lucy said, “Crystal, you remember Mr. Weaver.”

She looked up from her drawing for half a second, took me in, and went back to her work as her mother set a glass of orange juice in front of her. “Yes,” she said.

“There was a fire last night where he lives and the fire department wouldn’t let him stay the night, so I offered to let him stay in the guest room.”

That caught her interest. She looked at me. “How big a fire?”

“My apartment wasn’t destroyed,” I said, “but the smoke smell is everywhere.”

“Was anybody killed?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

Lucy came around to Crystal’s side of the table and put a bowl of Cheerios in front of her.

“What are you drawing on?” she asked.

“Paper,” Crystal said.

Lucy took the clipboard from her, removed the top sheet, flipped it over, and winced. “For God’s sake, Crystal, it’s the electric bill.”

“Only on one side,” she said. “The other side is blank.”

“How many times have I—” Lucy cut herself off. Maybe she didn’t want to tear a strip off her daughter in front of me. “Please don’t do that.”

Crystal turned to look at me and said, “Did the graphic novel I gave you get burned up in the fire?”

“No,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s still in the car.”

“Did you read it?”

“Not yet,” I said. “But I’m going to. When I do, I’ll let you know what I think.”

She turned her attention to her cereal, shoved a spoonful into her mouth and chewed.

“Better get a move on,” her mother said. “You slept in.”

“I woke up in the night,” she said, “and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Well, that’s too bad.”

I felt it was time to go. I took one last gulp of coffee and stood. “I should be on my way. Going to see just how bad the damage is. Thanks for everything. Nice to see you, Crystal.”

“Don’t go just yet,” Lucy said. “Let me get Crystal off to school.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised she wanted to talk to me privately, given that we had slept together only a few hours earlier. I was wondering whether that had been such a good idea. I liked Lucy. I liked her a lot, in fact. The time she had spent in the guest room with me, while tentative at first, had turned passionate, even aggressive, quickly. Lucy had assumed a leadership role I was more than happy to concede to her. I wondered whether, after all she had endured in the last couple of days, she needed to feel she had control over at least this part of her life.

“Sure,” I said, nodding my understanding. “I can hang in for a few minutes.”

But I hadn’t been making an excuse when I’d said I had to go back and check my apartment. Odds were I’d have to find another place to live, if not permanently, at least for a few weeks. If the building was deemed unsafe, I’d need permission just to get my stuff out of there.

What little of it there was.

I thought of Celeste and Dwayne. No way was I bunking in with them while I apartment-hunted. I’d find a motel outside Promise Falls. And I certainly wasn’t moving in with Lucy. I was open to the idea of seeing more of her, but it was a little early to start sharing quarters. And it wasn’t fair to Crystal, having some man she didn’t really know living under the same roof with her.

“Come on, sweetheart,” her mother said. “You’ll be late.”

Crystal shoved one last spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth, then ran back upstairs, clipboard in hand.

“I like her,” I said.

Lucy gave me a dubious smile, as though she didn’t know whether to believe me. She followed Crystal up to the second floor. I could hear muted conversation — mostly from Lucy’s side — about the brushing of teeth, the collecting of homework, the remembering of lunch. That, I guessed, was the brown bag on the kitchen counter. Several minutes later, Crystal returned, snatched the bag off the counter, pivoted, and ran for the front door.

“Read my thing,” she said as she passed me.

“You bet,” I said as Lucy returned to the kitchen.

At the door, we heard Crystal say, “My shoelace is undone!”

“Then fix it!” Lucy said.

We heard some sighing and shuffling, and then the slam of a door.

“And she’s gone,” Lucy said. She filled a mug with coffee, leaned up against the counter, and took a sip. “I think maybe I could use something stronger.”

I smiled but said nothing. I was thinking how much I missed the chaos of a youngster in the house.

“I liked last night,” she said, then grimaced. “I mean, I’m sorry you got burned out and all. But aside from that.”

“Me, too,” I said, standing. I closed the distance between us, slipped my arms around her waist, and pulled her toward me.

Lucy set her mug down, put her arms around my neck and her mouth on mine.

Things went like that for a while. This time, when she went to unbuckle my belt, she was better at it. She slipped a hand down there.

“I don’t have to go in today,” she whispered. “I’m on a bereavement leave. But I can do my bereaving later.”

And I could put off possible apartment-hunting for a while, too.

My cell phone rang.

“Let it go,” she said, her lips on my neck.

“ You let it go,” I said. “I should get this.”

I put some space between us, reached into my jacket for my phone, and held up my pants with my other hand.

“Hello?” I said.

“Cal, Barry Duckworth. Where are you?”

David Harwood was still half-asleep. He’d heard his cell ring, grabbed it off the bedside table, put it to his ear, and said, “Yeah?”

Randall Finley said, “Let’s do it.”

“What?” David asked. “Do what? What the hell time is it?”

“It’s uh... almost five thirty. This is the day. I’m going to announce. I’m ready. I told you I was ready to move. Things are coming together.”

David threw back the covers, got his feet onto the floor. He switched the phone to his other ear. “Randy, listen to me. We’re not ready. You can’t just go out there half-cocked. We don’t have a final platform drafted. We don’t even have a slogan. You need to be more organized before you begin.”

“I’m fully cocked,” the former mayor said. “I’ve got an issue, something to run on, to kick-start things. We can put something out there, stir up some shit, and work on the rest of the stuff over the next few days.”

“What issue?”

“You’ll see.”

“Randy, listen, you can’t keep me in the dark. If you want me to run things, you have to let me run them.”

“You are — don’t you worry — but we’re moving ahead. Call whoever it is you call. TV, Albany papers, fucking CNN, I don’t care. Just get people out here. I’m counting on you to use your connections. You worked in the media — you know how it works. Let’s make it for noon. We’ll do it in the park by the falls. Nice background there, with the water coming down.”