Chapter 20

Trixie refused to talk to him about what happened back on the boat. It was pretty clear that they had been fighting, but once Neil had told his story, Trixie treated the kid like a little brother.

Krom dropped her off at the house but planned to pick her up later to take her back to his place and order a pizza. He was sure that telling Trixie that he was a changed man wouldn’t hold much credibility to her. He’d spent so much time being an asshole to her, he would be lucky if she trusted him to try to show her that he was looking for a serious relationship. Sure, he wanted to have sex with her- she was the best that he’d ever had- but as strange as it felt to admit it to himself, it wasn’t just about sex.

Right now, he was on his way to meet up with William Kelly. The small safe was intact and as heavy as it was, he was certain that it wasn’t drugs that he was transporting over the state line. He was curious, but not enough to fuck this transaction up. Kelly was a paying customer, and it was always good to have friends in both high and low places.

They met at one of those picturesque roadside parking areas, and Krom set the waterproof white box inside the trunk of Kelly’s Corvette. There was a woman’s profile that he could see through the small rear window, and he could have sworn that he’d seen the woman before. It wasn’t his business, and he shut the lid before shaking the man’s hand, collecting another envelope, and reversing out of the parking space.

He didn’t bother to look inside the thick envelope; Kelly was called a lot of things, but dishonest in his business dealings wasn’t one of them.

Twelve miles from home, his right rear tire blew, and he didn’t have a spare under the bed of the truck. Someone had snatched his damn tire. After stomping around for a few minutes and throwing rocks at the ditch, he broke down and called a mechanic service that specialized in business type of vehicles. The fuckers charged big bucks, but when you needed them, they came.

Between the travel time, and the flat tire that he had to call the mechanic to change, it was too late to run over to the farm and try to lure Trixie away from the women that had set themselves up as her protectors. At least for tonight. He needed to make a plan, and so far he was not doing so hot in the romance department. This situation called for opening himself up to possibly get shot down.

He was no coward, but the thought of Trixie maybe rejecting him for being such a dumbass, well, he wasn’t ready for the hurt. Sexually, he was confident that she couldn’t bitch about not getting her fair share of enjoyment. What she didn’t know was that he always had to fight back his own orgasm when her pussy started to quiver around his dick or fingers and tongue. It was a rush for him, a weird feeling of power, and it was an addiction. He grinned as he pictured himself standing like some superhero with his chest puffed out and fists on his hips.

He had to wonder if Trixie saw him as Superman, or more like Mighty Mouse after she screamed through the pleasure. He was afraid to ask her.

He pulled into his driveway and was shocked to see Betsy sitting on his front step. She was sleeping, propped against the post holding the stoop over the concrete slab. He hurried over to find out what was going on. She didn’t answer him when he called her name. He touched her shoulder and nudged her, but she didn’t wake up.

“Fuck, this is just great.” He called for an ambulance, and he debated on whether to call Dillon. He ended up calling him. Dillon answered on the third ring, and he didn’t sound very awake. His speech was slightly slurred, and Krom wanted to laugh. It had never occurred to him that Dillon might be drunk. Without saying hello or kiss my ass, he told him to get ready.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, be ready to go for a ride, and make sure you brush your teeth. I don’t want to have people ask me if the Sherriff is drunk. The ambulance is pulling in the driveway right now; that’s the sirens that you hear. I found Betsy on my doorstep; she’s unresponsive.”

It took almost a half an hour for the paramedics to get her stabilized and loaded up for transporting. Krom got back into his truck and drove to his brother’s house. He was still getting used to the idea of having a brother. The idea was growing on him. Not to mention it helped that he actually liked Dillon, even if he was a cop.

Dillon was waiting at the end of the sidewalk by the road when Krom pulled up. He swung the door open and shoved the envelope that was still on the seat over towards Krom. The flap opened, and a few of the bills could be seen. Dillon looked at the envelope and looked at Krom.

Krom waited for the question, but all Dillon did was shake his head and stare out the side window while they rode to the hospital. When it became clear that Dillon wouldn’t try to find out what the stack of cash was for, Krom decided to tell him.

“The money is legit. I got paid, and the client isn’t the kind of man that writes checks. I earned the money. It’s clean, so you don’t have to worry that I’m doing illegal shit.”

Dillon was now looking at him, but he still didn’t ask any questions. Krom wondered what he was thinking and said. “Look, I told you the truth about the money. As for Betsy, I have no idea what she was doing at my place. Maybe she locked herself out of her house again. I got home and there she was. When I couldn’t get her to open her eyes or say something to me, I knew that she was in trouble. I told you, I’m not her favorite person on any day, so whatever she was at my house for must have been a good reason.”

As soon as Krom parked the truck, Dillon was jumping out and heading to the doors of the after hours entrance.

Krom shoved the cash into the console and locked it before heading into the hospital behind his brother.

*****

Trixie listened to May and June bitch about the new health inspector that had gone through the kitchen at the Lodge with a white glove and upper lip sneer that was hilarious to see June try to imitate.

May laughed and clapped her hands when June tried to quote the county official. June was standing with her pointer finger of her left hand held up to her own nose and was looking at it cross-eyed while mimicking, “Chellme qwere dju cheep da m a y o naze.” Her right hand was spread on the back of her hip, and Trixie laughed at the two women until tears flowed down her face.

It felt good to laugh, and the three friends kept up making fun of people that none of them liked. The list was long because even if the others hadn’t met the disliked one, they all agreed that “My enemy is your enemy” thinking was how they rolled.

Trixie was only half joking when she offered to help the girls make the inspector disappear. “I know a place to stash her, and as long as she has her clipboard with her when they find her dead carcass, it will be assumed that she got trapped down there while inspecting for radon or something.”

It felt odd to joke about that cellar, but she felt something deep inside of her chest lighten up when she talked about the hell-hole. Trixie may have been joking around, but the only real sleep that she’d gotten since she had been imprisoned, was lying with Krom’s arms surrounding her.

Not that she would ever admit that to him. His ego didn’t need the boost. She had never seen him hesitate or appear to be unsure of himself. Even when they were on the boat, and she peeked out of the cabin to see how pissed he was on his cousin’s behalf. Even when he was mad at the young man, he still could see reasons for the kid’s actions, and she fell a little bit further in love with him.

May was flitting around the kitchen like she was expecting company to show up at any minute, but since it was after seven o’clock at night, her behavior was odd. She was a creature of habit, and everyone knew it. She was also very superstitious. If she spilled salt, she would pour a few grains into the palm of her hand and toss it over her shoulder. Since she could never remember which shoulder that she was supposed to toss the salt over, she repeated the salt tossing over the opposite shoulder just to be on the safe side.

June was smiling softly at her best friend, and Trixie wondered what the two women were planning to do. They were wonderful friends, and she loved it when the girls decided that they needed to cook up a Salvadoran feast on certain days of the year. This was new behavior as far as Trixie could remember. May was never silent, and June was in on whatever this was.

“Okay, you two; what are you up to?”

May turned her head away, and June stood up to walk over to her and gave her shoulders a squeeze. She bowed her head and lifted May’s head up. “You have to say, girl, they will know soon anyway. Be happy, no one here will harm you.”

May was smiling, and tears were trailing down her dusky cheeks, but she nodded and reached out for June’s hands. “I’ll tell them all when everyone is here. I’m not sure that I can say it more than once. You know I’m scared. What will they say when they find out that we will have a baby? I am so afraid of that, you know. Can we work enough to pay for the baby being here too?”

Trixie knew that her mouth was hanging open. The two in front of her seemed to have forgotten that they were not alone. She was still trying to decide if this was a good thing or bad. She had never seen either girl with a man and had always assumed that they were more than friends. No one here cared if they preferred each other above others. This news was going to be a shock to everyone.

May was weeping louder, and June was patting her on the back trying to sooth her. Trixie couldn’t help it; she had to say something.

“I swear, not only are the prettiest two women here the most talented- Oh no, now they have to go one further and show us all up by having a baby? What the hell? You two are making us all look like deadbeats you know.”

She stood up and walked over to the surprised women. “I need a hug, especially after hearing your news. Come on.” She embraced the two women that were already locked into a clutch.

They were all grinning, and May was wiping her eyes, when they heard Hilda say, “Okay, this is news,” from the doorway.

May instantly started blubbering and walking towards Hilda with her hands out, begging her not to throw the two of them out on the street. If the fright on the Salvadoran women’s faces hadn’t been so real, Trixie would have grinned at the dramatic scene.

May was speaking in a mixture of Caliche, Nahuatl was the specific dialect and the name of the small community, and English. Hilda had done her homework when she decided to take the women into her home. She bought a program to learn how to speak Spanish, but the women laughed at her attempts to communicate with them in their native language. How was she to know about the regional dialects anyway? Her rusty high school Spanish was pitifully below the ability that someone would need to understand everything that May was wailing about.

The women had been raised by elderly parents and had been so willing to leave the town for the excitement of the big city, they’d ended up in the clutches of the man that called himself their protector. He was gone now, and their parents were also long dead. Hilda understood that May was pleading with her to not throw them out, but it hurt to know that the women thought that she was so heartless to begin with.

June was obviously fed up with May’s drama and told her so. It did no good until she walked over in front of Hilda and apologized for the way May was carrying on.

“This one, she is the attention one. She know that you not push her into the street. She wants all eyes on her.”

May could not see around June to gauge Hilda’s level of sympathy for her, and wailed louder, almost screaming her jumbled words.

June rolled her eyes upwards and turned around fast. Her open hand caught May on the cheek, and whatever she said to May appeared to gain her cooperation, because she shut down the screams abruptly. When June raised her arm and pointed to the doorway into the sitting room, May sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand as she slowly walked out of the room.

She turned back to face Hilda and shrugged again. “She is a water can since we learned of the baby coming. So drama.”

Trixie watched Hilda as she stood in the doorframe. The little woman looked bewildered for the first time that Trixie could remember. When she spoke, both women could hear the hurt in her tone. “Why would I toss her into the street? I’ve listened to her when she called me ignorant, I’ve even allowed her to kill chickens in the shed to make dinners. What could she possibly be afraid of?”

June reached out to pull her into a tight embrace. She was trying to reassure Hilda that they loved her and, of course, they trusted her. “As soon as that one has the baby, I will pop her on the dumb skull. She is always crying and wanting attention; she knows that you will not remove us.”

Trixie smiled and grinned at Hilda, who was staring at her with narrowed eyes. She decided it was best that she left the room while the blonde was dangling an inch off of the floor held in the strong arms of June.