The two pieces of land were within a block each of their respective parents. Again, without consulting her, Chet started construction on houses near both their parents. He and his dad’s company had spent two years working on a labor-of-love French Provincial two-story out by his parents. And a quick construction of a half-finished two-bedroom starter home near her parents. So Rocky, the new Queen of the Junior League of Texarkana, spent her last two years living in a twelve-hundred-square-foot doll house with an unfinished bathroom. And sure, Rocky and Chet walked away from the sale of their house with about a hundred grand. But over the two years of false starts and delays, Chet spent most of the money on race cars and golf clubs and a motorcycle and two new trucks and a four-wheeler and any other grown man toy he could find. They were left with little money and no house to show for it. So when Chet took her for everything, Rocky shook off her initial indignation with a shrug of the shoulders.

  The drive from Rocky’s parents’ house to Chet’s took less than two minutes. Chet stood outside waiting on her when she pulled up. He wore a pair of khakis and a bright green polo shirt. He had put on a few pounds and grown his beard out to distract from the fact he had lost a few more hairs on top over the past month. A pair of Ray Bans, with a tacky neck strap strung from earpiece to earpiece, hid his eyes. But he flashed a wistful smile as Rocky stepped out of the car.

  “Hey, Rock.” Chet shook his head. “Mm, mm, mm. I always did love to watch you crawl out of a car in a dress.”

  Rocky froze. She cycled through this meeting in her head a hundred times. She rolled through any number of quips to any number of statements. But she never, in any of her imaginings, pictured a greeting which could make the bile rise up her throat quite as far as it just did. All of her comebacks and snarky insults left her in a moment of absolute disgust. She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair to buy herself some time. And then she said the first thing that popped into her head. “I fucked your brother.”

  Chet’s mouth dropped open. He pried his sunglasses off and let them hang at his chest by their gaudy lanyard. Rocky breezed past him in a flutter of hair and perfume as he stammered and stuttered, trying to get any words to leave his mouth. Rocky bounced up the steps and into the house like she still lived there. She scrambled to think of a next move. Chet’s younger brother, Chance, was at least seven years younger than Rocky. The Arnolds had him a little late in the game, a pleasant surprise. He became the babied golden boy of the family, and Chet grew a little envious. The thought of Rocky sleeping with Chance would drive him insane.

  Of course, she had not slept with Chance.

  The technicality gave Rocky some slight twinges of guilt. Chance would deny her claim. Chet wouldn’t believe him. The scandal would drive a wedge in the family. And Chance wasn’t a bad kid. Rocky kind of liked him. But, she reasoned, Chet’s mother always hated Rocky. And Chance was her baby boy. So she would side with Chance, leaving Chet out in the cold. And that guilt she could live with.

  Chet came storming into the house. “Rocky, what the fuck are you telling me here?”

  Rocky whirled around. “I didn’t feel like I minced words. Do you want me to say it again?”

  Chet’s eyes watered. “While we were married?”

  Rocky frowned. “Oh, no. I never slept with your brother while you and I were married, Chet.” It felt good to be back to the truth.

  Chet heaved breaths and stomped around the house.

  Rocky tapped her fingers on the table. “So, were you able to find those papers?”

  Chet laughed. “Rock, can you give me a second? I’m a little discombobulated here.”

  Rocky’s eyes grew wide.

  Chet nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? I’m improving myself, Raquel. Word of the day. They got a calendar and everything.”

  “Wow, Chet. I’m impressed. In a Leap Year? Going straight for the deep end, buddy.”

  “Don’t think we ain’t talking about this, Rocky.”

  “Aw, sweetie. Next year maybe Santa can bring you an English usage calendar.”

  “My own brother, Rocky?”

  Rocky scowled. “Come off it, Chet. How many girls did you sleep with while we were married? Huh? How many? I know you counted. You’re a notches in the bedpost kind of asshole. So how many? Five? More?”

  “This ain’t about me, Rocky. How many guys did you sleep with? Huh?”

  Rocky shook her head. “None!”

  “Bullshit. I know you were fucking somebody, Rocky.”

  Rocky laughed. “Chet, I barely slept with you when we were married.”

  Chet pointed at her words. “I know. Believe me. So you had to be getting it somewhere. Was it Chance?”

  “No. I told you. Never while we were married. I never slept with anyone, Chet.”

  Chet curled his lip in a skeptical expression. “Yeah. I’ll bet. So why does some guy keep cruising by here to see if you’re home, huh?”

  Rocky turned to scan the counter for her papers, but Chet’s statement got her to spin back around. “What?”

  Chet nodded. “Yeah, you know him. I’ll bet you’ve been giving it up to him for months, haven’t you?”

  “Chet, what are you talking about? What guy? What does he drive?”

  Chet flung a hand out toward the road. “Old brown pickup. Older guy. You always said you liked older guys.” His voice cracked. “So why Chance, Rock? Why?”

  Rocky shook off the question with annoyance, brushing a hand around to sweep the irrelevant topic away. “I don’t know. He’s better than you in bed. Whatever. Tell me about this guy. What does he look like?”

  Chet started to cry. “How much better?”

  “Jesus, God.”

  “Is he,” Chet struggled to get the words out, “is he bigger?”

  Rocky put her head in her hands and swallowed. “I can see this is not going to be very productive.” She raised up. “Do you still have my nine millimeter? The one you bought me?”

  Chet shook his head. “Well, yeah. It’s got a goddamn pink handle, Rocky. You don’t think I’d be using it, do you?”

  Chet had gotten the pistol for her for a birthday. He made sure to get one with a pink handle, so she would never forget she was the woman in the relationship. Of course, when they took their concealed firearm course together, and Rocky outshot everyone, including Chet, she turned to him and asked, sweetly, “Want to switch guns?”

  After several more awkward attempts to ask questions about Rocky’s fictional escapade with Chance, Chet shuffled to the back of the house to retrieve Rocky’s gun and a file folder of tax papers. As he handed them to her, he stared into her eyes with such sadness, regret. He tried to say several things, but only managed to whisper, “What do you say, Rocky? One more time for the road?” He continued to lean closer, closer, licking his lips and inching toward her face.

  Rocky leaned back, putting a hand to his chest to stop him. “Actually, Chet,” she said as he continued to lean in, Rocky having to press hard against him to stop his momentum, “he is bigger.”

  Chapter 17

  Rocky left her ex-husband dealing with his discombobulation on the porch steps and drove across the highway to park behind a cluster of trees on her uncle’s property. The cover allowed her to watch her old house to see any brown trucks cruising by. She rolled down her windows and got comfortable, pulling up a book on her phone to read. With the windows down, she would hear any approaching vehicles or other movement in plenty of time to look up from her slutmance novel.

  After about an hour and a half with no brown trucks, Rocky heard a car pulling up behind her. A long gravel driveway to the home of her aunt and uncle stretched off into her rearview mirror, which meant anyone coming would be a relative. She checked the mirror and found Jen climbing out of her car with a perplexed expression. Jen climbed into the passenger seat of Rocky’s car and gestured across the highway, “Rocky, are you spying on Chet?”

  Rocky shook her head. “Not primarily, no. I mean, he did leave on a four-wheeler to ride off into the woods about thirty minutes ago, which I found strange. I took the opportunity to drive over and rifle through his truck for something of mine I left there. But I would not say I am spying on him.”

  Jen closed her eyes. “Rocky, please tell me you got your paperwork from him.”

  Rocky nodded. “Oh. Oh, yeah. A good while back. He tried to make out with me.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yep.”

  They both watched back and forth through the trees up and down the highway for a moment. Jen winced. “Rock, what are we doing?”

  Rocky rubbed her hands together. “We are watching for a brown truck.”

  Jen nodded. “Okay. Why?”

  “Chet said one has driven by several times. He assumed the truck belonged to someone I’m fucking. I’d kind of like to know who it does belong to.”

  Jen sighed and shook her head. “That’s it. Drive.”

  “What?”

  “Drive, Rocky. We are going to get a drink.”

  Rocky frowned. “I am busy, Jen.”

  “No, Rocky. You aren’t. You are sitting here staring at your asshole ex-husband’s house watching for some imaginary brown truck he made up in his asshole head. You need to drink and laugh and get hit on and forget about Chet for a while. Just leave my car here. It’ll be fine. Now, go. Go. Drive.”

  Rocky groaned but rolled up her windows and fastened her seatbelt with a begrudged pout, pulling out from behind the cluster of trees as she did. They made the fifteen-minute drive back to Texarkana and let themselves slip into Palermo gossip as Jen scrolled through an app on her phone dedicated to publicizing local mug shots. Rocky drove them to a steakhouse chain restaurant in Texarkana because she happened to like the piña coladas they made there. Jen made every effort to get them seated at the bar, but Rocky insisted on a booth by a window about as far away from any semblance of a crowd as they could get.

  Jen made a face as they sat down, “You’re never going to get hit on all the way over here.”

  Rocky’s eyes grew wide. “Exactly.”

  A passing waiter threw a little side eye toward them both and mumbled, “I wouldn’t be so sure,” as he passed by with a tray of drinks.

  Jen howled laughing at the pained expression on Rocky’s face. But after a couple of drinks, the waiter’s prediction came true. He showed back up with a piña colada and a cape cod on a tray. He smirked and rolled his eyes. “Hate to say I told you so, but …”

  Rocky sighed. “I figured. He’s been staring at us pretty hard for the past half hour.”

  The waiter started to set the drinks on their table, adding, “Not to tell you how to live your life, but they’re both pretty huge tools.”

  Rocky shook her head. “Wait. Both? Who sent these? The guy at the bar, right?” She nodded toward a nondescript guy in jeans and a t-shirt—shaggy, dark brown hair and a touch of face stubble. He sat alone at the bar and nursed a beer.

  The waiter peeked back over his shoulder at the man. “That guy? No.” He pointed at two college-age men at a table. They were grinning from diamond studded ear to ear with smiles as greasy as their hair.

  Jen let out a noise of disgust. Rocky couldn’t stop looking back and forth between the greasy pair and the solitary man, who called for his check and fished in a pocket for his wallet. Rocky snapped back to the moment and started waving off the drinks. “Wait, wait, wait. No. We are not taking these.”

  The waiter chuckled. “Oh, don’t worry. They never touched them.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not taking them.”

  He frowned at Rocky and glanced over to Jen, who shrugged. “Yeah, she’s not going to back down. You might as well take them back.”

  Rocky twisted in her chair and face the interior of the restaurant. “Or …”

  Jen groaned. “Rocky. Just let it go.”

  Rocky motioned slyly to a table of three large men in motorcycle leathers. At a table next to them sat two teenage girls—maybe fourteen—who entered with them. The girls carried all the awkward mannerisms of the daughter and friend of one of the men or even daughters of more than one. “I want you to take them over there.”

  The waiter frowned. “To those guys?”

  Rocky nodded. “Yes. Well, kind of.” She pulled out a twenty. “I’ll pay you twenty bucks to take these to those bikers and tell them Guido and The Situation over there asked you to take them to the girls. But you don’t feel right about it. You just wanted to make sure they are of age before you serve them alcohol.”

  As Jen buried her face in her hands, the waiter’s grin grew. “Save your money. I’ll do this one on the house.”

  Rocky turned away from the bikers and begged Jen to give color commentary on what happened. As Jen ducked her tittering chin into her chest and tried to watch through her fingers, Rocky overheard the man at the bar still trying to get his check by calling out to the bartender, “Pardon me? Could I get my check?”

  Rocky shook her head. “Did you hear that?”

  Jen cringed. “Yes. They are getting so pissed off. I think they’re getting up. Rocky, you’re going to start a fight.”

  “No, no, no. Not that. The guy. The one at the bar. He said ‘pardon me.’”

  Jen glanced back over her shoulder at the man before turning back to the awkward scene in front of her. “Okay. So?”

  Rocky held her hands out to Jen pleadingly. “Pardon me? Jen, come on. Pardon me. Just like the guy.”

  Jen shook her head. “What guy?”

  Rocky scrambled to get up and gather her purse. She dropped the twenty in front of Jen and whispered, “The Neighborly Knave. The Courteous Crook. Whatever we’re calling him.”

  Jen tried to grab Rocky. “Where are you going?”

  Rocky slipped her grasp and darted for the door while cursing and commotion distracted everyone around her as a rowdy group of bikers made their way toward the greasers. Rocky tossed back, “Meet me at the car in five minutes.”

  Jen tried to whisper-shout, “What?” But Rocky was gone.

  Once outside, Rocky broke into a trot over to her Lexus. She fell into the driver’s seat, ass up, and fished through the middle console until she came out with a cell phone. She had pulled the burner phone from Chet’s truck just a couple of hours earlier and left the cell charging in the console of her car ever since. She punched the power button to make sure the screen came to life, and then closed her door and straightened her dress.

  Fiddling with the phone, Rocky started to make her way through the parking lot, rounding the front of the restaurant and coming up the single row of cars on the far end. Past the carry-out spots, she came to a back parking lot dotted with cars in about half of its spots. She zig-zagged in between cars and trucks until she rounded the corner from a minivan and found what she had been searching for.

  An old brown pickup truck.

  She reveled in being right for half a second before dropping the burner phone into the bed of the truck and hurrying back up to the restaurant. She hugged a corner of the building over by the carry-out door, waiting and watching. Anyone walking to the brown truck would come out the other end of the building and walk right through Rocky’s line of sight without ever being able to see her.

  Sure enough, within seconds, the solitary man from the bar, having finally gotten his check amidst all the ruckus, jogged out into the parking lot and made his way to the brown truck. The engine roared to life with the sound of an old muffler and pulled out of the back of the lot, speeding away.

  Once clear, Rocky ran along the back of the building toward the other side where she parked her Lexus. As she rounded the corner, Jen walked out and flailed her hands at Rocky in confusion. “Rocky! What the hell are you doing?”

  Rocky waved Jen on. “Come on! Hurry! It’s him! The guy! It’s the guy!”

  Jen shook her head. “What? Rocky, how do you know?”

  Rocky kept ushering her toward the car. “An old brown pickup, Jen! It is the guy!”

  Jen made it to the Lexus and started around to the passenger side. Rocky shook her off. “Oh, no. You need to drive. I’m going to track him.”

  Jen frowned at her. “What? Rocky, are you drunk?”

  Rocky cocked her head and shrugged. “Yeah. I guess there’s also that. You should really drive.”

  Chapter 18

  As Rocky stared at her phone and barked out directions, Jen drove and fretted, “Rocky, what the hell are we doing?”

  Rocky pointed. “Take a left. This is how I caught Chet at the hairdresser’s.”

  “Waitress.”

  Rocky shrugged. “I’ve heard it both ways.” She pointed frantically. “Right, right, right. Yeah, I got one of these burner phones and turned on the Find My Phone feature. You can track it on this website.”

  Jen nodded. “That’s what you got out of Chet’s truck today?”

  Rocky nodded. “Take another right up here. Yep. Charged it all afternoon. You never know when you’ll need something like this.”

  Jen laughed. “Something like this? A tracking device, you mean? You never know when you’ll need a tracking device?”

  “Yes, Jen. We are tracking a murderer, here.”

  “Burglar.”

  Rocky spoke out of the side of her mouth. “Never stole anything. Now, slow down. I think he stopped.”

  Jen pulled to a stop on the side of the road in front of a vacant house with a For Sale sign in front. She gasped. “Um, Rocky? Look where we are.”

  Rocky peered up from her phone to find Jen pointing at a street sign. “Holy shit. We’re on Elizabeth. And he’s parked one street over. This is his neighborhood. Where the first break-ins happened. I was—” she raised her hands up in an awkward robotic dance, “I was right. Right, right, right, r-right-right-right.”

  Jen rolled her eyes. “Okay. Yes. Maybe you were. So now what?”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25