Find pace, p.1
Find Pace, page 1
Find Pace
By D.K. Greene
Find Pace; A Pace Morrow Mystery, Copyright © 2022 by D.K. Greene
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, places, or candy are coincidental, unless they have been adapted to fit this work in a fictitious way.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgments
Dedication
One: Pace
Two: Dan
Three: Bill
Four: Pace
Five: Dan
Six: Pace
Seven: Bill
Eight: Dan
Nine: Pace
Ten: Dan
Eleven: Bill
Twelve: Pace
Next in the Pace Morrow series:
Also by D.K. Greene
About The Author
Acknowledgments
As I probably say in every book I write, Find Pace would not have come to the page without the support of an ever-growing network of people.
I can never thank my wife and son enough for not only living through an actual con-artist scheme with me, but also putting up with me talking incessantly about how one day I'd write something about it. My wonderful editor, Cora Corrigall, knows exactly how to catch my attention for the things that matter, and makes it look like I know how to write. I am blessed to have the support of too many friends to list, and a network of Super Star readers who keep me busy thinking up new stories.
Dedication
This bit of fiction is dedicated to "Little T", who deceived me, and my extended family, for several months.
Thanks for the stories.
One: Pace
The young dog snapped a mouthful of needlelike teeth at her chin. Not ready to let her fluffy captive free, Pace squeezed him tighter. She closed her eyes and memorized the soft fur writhing against her skin. She absorbed his warmth in her chest and inhaled the musky stink of his sour dog breath. Her concentration broke into a fit of giggles when his tongue slithered across her neck.
She opened her eyes. Her mom, Temperance, stood with a leg propped on the edge of Pace’s bed. She lifted her skirt and ran a pair of safety-scissors along the inside of her stockings. Her practiced hands peeled the nylon apart in a jagged ripple, exposing her inner thigh. Temperance’s flesh was bright as moonlight breaking through the run of charcoal nylon and she hummed a pleasant tune while she worked, switching legs, and running another snare from ankle to knee.
Patience ignored them both, focusing on her own puppy. Just like Pace and Patience, he was the polar opposite of his twin. He sat unmoving at Patience’s feet, like a stuffed animal waiting to be carried to the toy chest. His unblinking eyes swam with excitement while Patience balanced a bone shaped biscuit across the bridge of his nose.
Temperance picked up Pace’s favorite t-shirt. It was crisp white with ruffled pink sleeves; She-Ra and Swift Wind printed on the front. She sawed at it with the scissors until the fabric stretched and tore and tossed the ruined shirt at Pace’s feet. Temperance pointed the scissors at the puppy writhing in her arms. “We aren’t keeping those stupid, flea-bitten dogs. If you even think of asking, Bill can take you to the pound right along with them.”
“They’re not stupid,” Pace mumbled. Her puppy grabbed a loose strand of her auburn hair between his teeth. Pace tried to pull her head away, and he took the motion as an invitation for tug-of-war. She winced when he yanked her hair, but still refused to set him down.
This was her last chance to love him. She’d never see him again after today.
“Beaumont will remember me forever,” Patience announced.
Two weeks earlier, Bill surprised the twins with the young golden retrievers for their ninth birthdays. It had been hard for Pace to act excited, this being the fourth birthday they’d had this year. She never liked the revolving calendar of make-believe birthdays, but she hated the silent truth that she didn’t know when her real one was. While Pace had pretended to smile and laugh, Patience had acted ecstatic with effortless flair. And maybe she really had been happy. After all, she’d spent every waking moment since then teaching Beaumont tricks from videos Bill found on the internet.
Pace hadn’t bothered to name her puppy.
Temperance poured a half-empty bottle of congealed chocolate milk over a pair of pants and tossed them at Patience. “Don’t be an idiot. The second somebody else starts feeding him, you’ll be old news. After a few pats on the head, that mutt won’t remember you exist.”
“If we stay, nobody will have to forget us,” Pace said. Forgetting the puppy in her arms, she slapped her hands over her mouth and her puppy hit the floor with a yelp. Temperance’s eyes flashed like lightning. The young dog scrambled to his feet and skittered under the bed when Temperance stepped forward. She swung her hand through the air and hit Pace across the ear. Pace whimpered through the fingers trembling at her lips. “I’m sorry.”
“Damn right, you’re sorry. It’s your fault we have to leave. Bill’s already sick of you. He doesn’t want to see either of you ever again.” Temperance pointed from one twin daughter to the other, then grabbed the edge of their dresser and yanked until it tipped on its feet and crashed to the floor.
The collapse of the bureau’s drawers and press-board frame startled Beaumont out of his trance. He dropped his treat and hurried to join his brother under the bed. Temperance turned over the girls’ pretty pink toy box and the dolls and games Bill had filled it with tumbled to the ground in an avalanche of disappointment. Pace felt her sister touch her arm. She clasped hands with Patience and pressed her eyes closed again.
Pace was sure what her mother said about Bill being sick of her was a lie, but the words still hurt. She didn’t know what Patience thought while Temperance ripped across their room like a hurricane, but Pace prayed God would send Bill home to stop her.
It felt like a lifetime before the air stilled. A puppy cried, and Pace pressed her eyes tighter. With her eyes shut, she could imagine the room was still clean and whole. She changed her prayer, asking God to make her blind so she wouldn’t have to look at what her mother had done.
“Change your clothes. We’re leaving.”
The floorboards shuddered beneath Pace’s bare feet when the door slammed shut.
“Are you ready to look?” Patience whispered.
“No. Are you?”
“I don’t know where my clothes are,” Patience said. “I have to open my eyes.”
“Okay.”
Together, they counted. When they got to three, Pace squeezed her sister’s hand, and both girls opened their eyes.
Their mother had destroyed everything. Doll heads stared wide-eyed at the ceiling; their naked bodies discarded on Patience’s bed. Chunks of pressed wood littered the floor and oblong divots showed where Temperance’s feet had landed in the ruined dresser. Clothes looked like they’d been tossed from the funnel of a twisting tornado and glass from their broken mirror glimmered dangerously between the layers of filth.
Pace sucked in a long, rattling breath at the sight of huge, off-kilter letters scrawled across the wall in charcoal. Bill had bought the special pencils for Pace to draw with. She couldn’t read what her mother had written with them, but the jagged lines and sharp angles made it clear the message wasn’t friendly.
“I’m going to ask for video games next time,” Patience said.
“I want a cell phone.”
Patience picked up the wet, chocolate-stained pants Temperance had prepared for her and knocked glass shards from a shirt missing a sleeve. “Who are you going to call?”
Pace changed out of the brand-new pajama top she’d been wearing and pulled on her ruined She-Ra t-shirt. She looked down at her chest. At least the scissors hadn’t gone through She-Ra’s face. “I’d call Grandma.”
“We don’t have a grandma,” Patience said.
“Not right now. But maybe we’ll get one next time.” Pace dug through the mess until she found her tattered shoes. Bill promised to take them shopping for new ones tomorrow. If only Temperance had kept pretending a couple more days.
The twins coaxed their puppies out from under the bed and carried the nervous animals through the house. Pace kept her eyes locked on the floor in front of her feet, ignoring Temperance’s continued rampage. Outside, they locked the puppies in the large dog run where they’d be safe.
“I really liked it here,” Pace whispered. Her puppy jumped against the chain-link fence and barked at her. Did he know she was leaving?
“Don’t say that,” her sister warned.
Pace bit her lip and nodded. She followed Patience into the house. Their mother’s cyclone of rage had ended. Now, she sat at the head of Bill’s dining room table smoking a cigarette. She flicked ash into one of his baseball caps, put the butt of her cigarette between her lips, and breathed smoke while she counted a stack of bills.
“That fucker was holding out on us. There’s almost a thousand bucks here.” Temperance looked up from the cash and winked. “Always check the freezer when you clean house. If somebody’s trying to curb their spending habits, you’ll find cash, and if you’re lucky, some of these.” Temperance picked up a plastic bag with a block of ice inside.
“What’s that?” Patience asked.
“Credit cards.” Temperance set the bag down and blew a trio of smoke rin gs. The first expanded in a ripple of air, allowing the smaller ones to float through before disappearing.
When Pace was little, she’d idolized her mom. She’d seemed so cool with her party tricks and independence. The show lost its luster when Pace got old enough to notice Temperance only used her charms to trick people into liking her. Pace didn’t want to trick people. Wouldn’t they just like her if she was nice?
Temperance cut through Pace’s thoughts. “People worry about spending too much money. They freeze their credit cards in ice so they have to thaw them out before they can use them.”
Pace filed the information away with the other things their mom taught them. Where to find spare house keys. How to copy someone’s signature. How to fake an illness. To look for money under mattresses, inside sock drawers, toilet tanks, and now, in frozen blocks of ice.
Temperance tucked the cash in a pocket sewn inside the lining of her tattered jacket. She carried the gallon-sized bag of frozen cards to the kitchen and dropped it in a pot of water on the stove. The girls packed their pockets with snacks from the pantry, then stood in the corner to wait while their mother chain-smoked cigarettes and watched the water boil.
Once Temperance freed the credit cards from their frozen prison, she put them in her hidden pocket with Bill’s cash. She refilled the plastic bag with water and returned it to the freezer. She crouched in front of the girls with a bright smile and held her arms out wide. “Give Mama a hug.”
Pace was glad her mom couldn’t feel the sour tremble of her stomach or sense the way her skin crawled when they embraced. The air in her lungs froze in place, as solid as the ice Bill used to hide his credit cards, and she counted the seconds until Temperance let go.
“Let’s get out of here,” Temperance said, and she pushed the girls away.
“Can we get Happy Meals?” Patience asked.
“Oh, no baby. We’re not taking the car. We’re going on a hike. Doesn’t that sound fun?” Temperance rubbed her hands over her pockets. Pace knew she was checking to make sure neither of them had picked through them during their hug. When she confirmed her last pocket was still full, she frowned with disappointment. Was the disapproval because Pace and her sister hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity to pick her pockets, or because they hadn’t given her a reason to punish them?
Temperance tousled her own hair, stuck her lip out in a dramatic pout, and struggled through a dramatic sobbing inhale. In the space of a few breaths, she transformed from a pleased con woman to a battered wife about to cry. “Oh, girls. I’m so sorry he touched you.”
Pace hated this story whenever her mother used it, but especially now. Bill wasn’t a monster in men’s clothing like some marks Temperance took on. He was a sheriff who bought puppies for little girls’ birthdays, fed them ice cream for breakfast on Tuesdays, and read stories out loud at bedtime.
Temperance was setting Pace and Patience up to tell everyone he was a dangerous man who skulked around in the middle of the night like a storybook villain come to life.
They followed Temperance out through the garage, leaving the car Bill bought them locked inside.
“Our dolls!” Patience said when they’d made it a few steps from the house. She turned to go inside and retrieve the battered toys that had travelled with them for so long.
“Leave that trash behind.” Temperance grabbed Patience by the collar of her shirt and yanked her back. Pace bit back tears while their mother carried on with her story, practicing it for herself, and letting the girls know what she expected them to say if anyone bothered to talk to them. “I should have known it was too good to be true. He was like a knight in shining armor until we got married. Then it was like he flipped a switch. He only wanted me to move in so he could hurt you girls. Thinking of that grown man lying in bed with my babies. It’s disgusting.”
Bill had a fancy lawnmower. He drove it around the yard every week until the lawn looked like a humongous green checkerboard. He’d told Pace how much he loved the neatly trimmed squares. She lengthened her stride so she wouldn’t flatten the edges. His house was a wreck now. The least Pace could do was make sure he’d still have the tidy sea of grass to enjoy.
They reached a low fence at the edge of the yard and Temperance lifted the twins over the wooden railings one at a time before climbing over herself. She slapped herself across the face while they walked into the forest and put enough effort into the self-abuse to grunt from some hits. “When I pulled him off you, he said he’d kill me if I tried to stop him. That was when I knew we couldn’t stay.”
Temperance led the way through thickening brush. Pace glanced over her shoulder before the red-brown log cabin vanished from sight. It looked safe and inviting on its little hill framed by young pine trees. She stared too long and Temperance wrenched her arm. A shock of pain raced through her shoulder, but Pace knew better than to cry. She bowed her head, let her long hair flop forward to hide her watery eyes, and walked faster.
“We have to leave before Bill comes back,” Temperance hissed in a loud whisper. “We can’t let him find us.”
They walked until Pace’s legs felt like spaghetti. Temperance kept them away from any open areas, guiding her little family through the cover of trees with low, tightly knitted branches. Oregon blackberries grabbed at their arms and legs, and soon purple-black stains streaked across their clothes. Thorns scratched Pace’s arms, and a couple caught her cheek. Temperance seemed to enjoy thrashing through the brambles around her and marched on without a care.
Temperance pretended to trip when the woods opened to a patch of soft ground. Her arm landed heavily on Pace’s shoulder and the weight of her mother’s momentum shoved her into the dirt. Pace’s knee struck a rock and her hands skidded across the forest floor. She lay against the earth for a moment, huffing the scent of the damp soil with long, ragged breaths.
Pace pushed herself up and lifted her palms to her face. Blood rushed to the surface of small slashes in her muddy skin. Patience groaned in the dirt beside her. Pace looked up through the branches and sent a wish to the woodland fairies. If God wouldn’t stop Temperance from hurting them, maybe the forest magic she’d seen in fairytale movies could help.
“Oh my God. Are you girls okay?”
Temperance lifted Pace from the cool dirt and pulled her into a tender embrace. Her hands, often so brutal, were gentle. Temperance helped Patience out of the dirt, too. A gash across her forehead was bleeding, but just like Pace, she knew better than to cry.
Temperance wobbled from side to side, mimicking the way people on TV rocked babies to sleep. The motion made Pace nauseous. It reminded her of the summer before when a man her mother knew took them out in his canoe for a picnic. Pace had got seasick and thrown up all over him. Only after Temperance had lifted his wallet had she asked him to take them back to shore.
Pace swallowed, willing the memory and the return of the burning ball of nausea to fade away.
Deeper in the woods, they heard a scream followed by a wild squeal of laughter. Temperance turned towards the sound. She grasped Pace’s hand so tight she thought her fingers might break. Temperance moved in the direction of the noise, building momentum with each footstep. Pace tried to keep up, but her legs were too short, and she tripped.
Temperance didn’t stop. She dragged the girls into a full run. Temperance panted in quick, practiced breaths, and let out a wail that pierced Pace’s ears.
“Help!” Temperance’s voice rang through the forest, clear as a bell. Patience screamed like a truck was about to run her over. Pace kept her mouth shut until Temperance buried her fingernails into the back of her hand.
“Help,” Pace said loud enough to satisfy her mother. They burst through a wall of thick underbrush together, but Pace didn’t see the ledge in time to stop her peddling feet. She saw a house surrounded by open fields, far beyond the forest’s edge. Temperance let go of her hand and Pace felt her mother’s fingers at her back. They didn’t claw at her like spindly hooks trying to pull her to shore. Instead, they grazed her in a gentle push between her shoulder blades, almost light enough to feel like a mistake, until the ground dropped away and left Pace hanging in empty air.
