“I can tell this is a bad idea. I don’t know why I even told you.”
“’Cause you want me to rescue you,” Dwayne said equably, and that sent me into overdrive. Every time I think I like him, he makes me crazy. It was far better when we were just compatriots. Buddies. Partners. And the hell of it is, I fear deep down I might be the only one of us who truly feels all this angst. I think Dwayne likes me fine, trusts me, is attracted to me, in fact. He’s just not as worked up about the whole thing as I am.
“I’m not even having this talk,” I said, walking away from him, toward the edge of the dock. “You want to tell me about what’s going on over there, then tell.” I swept an arm to encompass the south side of Lakewood Bay.
“Maybe I’ll buy your cottage,” Dwayne said as if the idea had just struck him. “Then I can be your landlord.”
“What fun,” I snarled.
He started laughing so hard I thought he’d split a gut. What is it about men that makes them goad me? Maybe it’s not just me. Maybe it’s the whole female gender.
No, it’s probably just me.
When I didn’t think it was a full-on laugh-riot, he finally pulled himself back from the edge of hilarity. Taking off his hat, he swept a hand through his hair, sank back on the lounge, then turned his attention back to his new friends. I watched the transformation as he gazed across the bay, his expression sobering.
“There’s trouble over at Rebel Yell,” he said. “They have two teenaged girls. The younger one’s been crying her eyes out. The parents alternate between trying to talk to her and losing patience and yelling. She hasn’t been yelling back, which is a change.”
“For the better, it sounds like.”
“Not so sure. Something’s eating at her. I think the gal’s got some big secret.”
I should add that Dwayne says all this with a drawl and a lot of “g” dropping, like he’s from the South somewhere, although that hasn’t been firmly established yet. Sometimes my vast ignorance of Dwayne’s history bothers me. He seems to be on a need-to-know basis only, when it comes to talking about his personal life. Since the Violet thing, I’ve steered clear of any discussion about his history that might provide more insight into him. I’ve known Dwayne for nearly five years as an acquaintance, and our friendship has developed largely because Dwayne wanted me to come work for him. A part of me thirsts for more information—bits of data that I can obsess over whenever I start thinking maybe, just maybe, Dwayne and I could be a “thing.” But that other part of me—the sane part—wants nothing to do with him. He could be bad for my mental health.
“High school secrets,” I mused. “Test cheating, alcohol stealing and drinking, pot smoking, pregnancy…”
“I vote pregnancy,” Dwayne said seriously.
“Who’s the daddy?”
“That’s what I need you to find out.”
“Hell no.”
“She’s a good kid. Gets good grades. Plays soccer. Or played. I think she quit the team. Lots of yelling over that. Her older sister’s a piece of work. Bossy. The parents are always trying to get her to behave, but you can tell she just tunes them out. Reminds me of Tracy.” He grimaced.
Tracy is Dwayne’s niece. And yes, she is a piece of work. Luckily, she lives in Seattle and neither Dwayne nor I have seen her since a spectacularly horrible few weeks last summer.
“But she’s protective of the younger sister. When she thinks of it, anyway.”
“This is a family problem between Mr. and Mrs. Rebel Yell—the Wilsons—and their two daughters. Not for me to get involved.”
“You’re good with teenagers.”
“Do you hear yourself?” He reached for the binoculars again, but I snatched them away from him. “So help me God, Dwayne. I can’t have you look through these one more time. Now, what did you mean by that? I’m not good with teenagers.”
“They’re your best sources of information. I wish I had your gift,” he said, and with a muscular twist from his deceptively relaxed position, he grabbed my arm and the binoculars and wrested them from me. “Steal a cripple’s binoculars,” he muttered.
He was lucky I didn’t smack him alongside the head with them. No one makes me want to act infantile quicker than Dwayne Durbin. It’s like a bad sitcom where you just know the man and woman are going to get together because they’re either acting like they’re going to throttle each other, or they’re goofily trying to one-up the other, or they’re each trying to set the other one up with their best friend with hilarious results.
Half the time I cannot believe my own embarrassing thoughts.
Dwayne’s blue eyes assessed me. “No witty comeback?”
“Teen pregnancy? Dwayne, I’d be useless to the girl. She needs to talk to her parents about it. Maybe she already has. Maybe that’s what the yelling’s about.”
“They’re always yelling. If she’d told them, something new would have happened.”
“You’re making up a soap opera. You don’t know anything.”
“She’s been hanging around at Do Not Enter with a bunch of other kids. They’re drinking and sneaking around. Pretty cagey about it, but I’ve kept an eye on them. They string colored lights. Little ones. Just enough to give themselves some illumination, but not draw too much attention.”
“Do the parents have any idea?”
“No one does, otherwise they’d be busted. There are a lot of guys hanging around. The girls seem to wait to be picked.”
“You have kept an eye on them.”
“I’ve had to watch from inside,” Dwayne admitted. “If my leg were better, I’d go up to the attic and watch from there.”
Dwayne’s cabana has a steep set of stairs to an attic whose roofline makes it hard not to hit your head against the slanted walls. To my knowledge, it’s full of boxes and junk, like Ogilvy’s garage.
“If your leg were better, you wouldn’t have started watching them in the first place,” I murmured.
“Probably.”
“Look, Dwayne, I’m meeting with Gigi later today. I met with Sean last night. I’m finally moving on the Hatchmere case. You were right when you said things would get going. I’m busy, and anyway, it’s not my place to step into some teen scene with sex, drugs and alcohol.”
Dwayne said, “You know those guys, the ones who smile and act responsible and polite in front of parents. The ones who lie through their orthodontia-perfected teeth. Who play sports and give talks on the responsibility of today’s youth. Who denounce drugs and alcohol, then get wasted every Friday night after the football game. The ones who lie to their parents and feel powerful about it. Who promise that they’ll take good care of their younger siblings, then damn near kill them with alcohol poisoning the first chance they get. You know those guys,
