Rebecca York - Solid as Steele

The place was at the south end of town—the low-rent district—and she gave the familiar location a critical look as they pulled up in front of the one-story bungalow. The lawn and shrubbery were scraggly, the porch sagged and paint was peeling from the wooden siding. Home sweet home.

Embarrassed that one of her friends from Baltimore was seeing this house, she climbed out and headed up the cracked sidewalk with Mack right behind her.

She thought about him as a friend, she realized. Maybe associate was more accurate. Or maybe they were playing detective and suspect.

At the front door, she stopped and knocked. From the corner of her eye she saw a curtain move in the dirty front window and guy with a ruddy face and thinning hair look out.

Clark Landon. Too bad Mom’s boyfriend was there.

He opened the door and stared at Jamie.

“What’s the Princess of Baltimore doing here?”

“Mom asked me to visit.”

“But that’s no reason for you to stop by, is it?” he shot back.

Mack cleared his throat. “I asked Jamie to show me around Gaptown.”

Clark took notice of the man standing behind Jamie and straightened his shoulders. “And who the hell are you?”

“Mack Steele. A friend of Jamie’s.” He didn’t say, “Nice to meet you.”

If Mack hadn’t been right behind her, she might have turned and left, but now she was trapped by her own bad idea.

“Hey, Gloria, you won’t believe who’s here. It’s your hoity-toity daughter.”

He stepped aside, and Jamie and Mack walked into the living room, which was cluttered with two beat-up sofas, an old-style clunky television set and beer cans on the maple coffee table. The brown carpet had turned several shades darker since Jamie had been home last. To the right, in the kitchen, the sink was piled with dirty dishes. The house smelled like cabbage that had been cooked a week ago and left out.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, wondering how she could have brought Mack here.

As they stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, Clark grabbed a corduroy car coat from a hook beside the door.

“I’m going down to Louie’s,” he said, then stepped out the door, slamming it behind him.

“Friendly,” Mack muttered.

“He and I never got along.”

“He’s not your father, right?”

“Mom’s longtime boyfriend.”

She closed her mouth abruptly as Gloria Wheeler shuffled into the living room. Jamie tried to see her from Mack’s point of view and took in a woman in her late fifties with graying hair dyed black-cat dark, a ruffled yellow blouse and beige polyester slacks, the outfit finished off with scuffed red slippers.

No hug. No kiss. And she didn’t invite them to make themselves comfortable.

Mom just stood with her hands on her hips and gave Jamie a long look, then switched her gaze to Mack.

“I wasn’t expecting you to drop by, and Clark sure didn’t warn me that you had someone with you,” she said in an accusing voice.

Jamie wondered what difference that made. Would Mom have rushed around cleaning up? Would she have had the table set so she could offer them tea and cookies? Or maybe she’d have changed her clothes and put on real shoes before coming out here.

“We were in town,” Mack said, “and Jamie mentioned that she wanted to stop by.”

“In town for what?”

“I’m a private detective on a case. Since Jamie’s from here, I asked her to show me around Gaptown, Mrs.…?”

“Wheeler,” she supplied as she looked Mack up and down, then switched her gaze back to her daughter.

“You’ve taken up with another detective?”

Jamie answered in a rush. “I haven’t taken up with him.”

“I was a friend of Jamie’s husband, Craig,” Mack said.

Mom’s knowing smile made Jamie cringe. What did she think? That they were sleeping together?

“I guess it was a bad idea coming here,” she said.

Gloria shrugged. “You said it, not me. You too good for Gaptown now?”

Unable to contain her exasperation, Jamie asked quickly, “If you didn’t want me here, why did you write to me?”

Gloria tipped her head to one side, considering. “I didn’t write you.”

“But I got a letter from you last week.”

Gloria’s voice hardened. “Not from me you didn’t.”

Jamie swallowed, wondering why her mother was lying, but she knew from experience that making a point of it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “I guess this was a mistake,” she murmured. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

“Suits me.”

Without waiting for Mack, Jamie turned and fled the house. On the porch she took a deep breath. Behind her, she heard him say, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Wheeler.”

Yeah, sure.

Then he was hurrying after her down the sidewalk. When she’d climbed into the car, she kept her gaze down as she fumbled with her seat belt. Her hand was shaking, but she finally got it hooked.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was obviously a mistake dropping in there.”

“Yeah.” He pulled away from the curb, and they rode in silence for a few moments until Mack cleared his throat.

“Was your mom like that when you were little?”

“Like what?”

“Mean. Self-centered. And not much interested in keeping her house or herself neat.”

“She was never much for housework, but she wasn’t so mean when I was little. I think she started reacting to her life.”

“Some people cope better than others.”

“She’s a very dependent woman who can’t function without a man to take care of her. Not that Clark Landon does much for her. My dad drank. She couldn’t leave him either. After he died, she went looking for another man and ended up with Landon, unfortunately.”

She sat tensely in her seat, expecting some kind of cutting remark about Gloria from Mack. Instead he pulled up along the curb, under the branches of a maple tree and turned toward her.

“I understand better than you think. My home life was no sitcom, either.”

That surprised her. “What do you mean?”

He laughed, the sound low and rough. “From what I can pick up on short acquaintance with Gloria, I guess my mom was the polar opposite of yours. When I was ten, she decided that she was tired of taking care of a husband and two kids. One day my older brother and I came home from school, and she wasn’t there. We went looking for her and found out she’d cleared out the clothes she wanted and left the rest for Goodwill.

“There was a note on the kitchen counter telling my dad not to try and contact her, and that she’d taken her share of the money in their bank account—which turned out to be most of it, since she said she’d been an unpaid housekeeper for years. That was the last we heard from her.” He sighed.

“I don’t actually know if she’s dead or alive. I guess, being a detective and all, I could investigate and find out, but it doesn’t seem worth it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie murmured as she tried to imagine what his childhood must have been like.

“Yeah, well, I guess neither one of us had the pleasure of growing up in a stable home. After she bailed out on us, Dad did the best he could, but he had to work, which left me and Sammy on our own a lot of the time. At least there was an upside. It made me self-sufficient. I learned to cook and do my own laundry. And I can sew on a button, come to that.”

Jamie searched his face, touched that he’d revealed so much to her when he could have simply kept silent. She’d always thought of him as stable and grounded, and now he was letting her know that he’d overcome some serious obstacles. He was doing something else as well. Trying to help her understand that his visit to her family hadn’t shocked him. She appreciated the effort.