Vapor Trail

quietest guy around, Drew, who quit BCA and became a successful commercial illustrator who specialized in children’s books. Now she had settled into a monstrously gabled and turreted house on Stillwater’s South Hill.

He remembered her standing in the grocery store. She’d looked hollow-cheeked, physically haunted. Excessively lean.

Sort of the way he looked, actually.

Broker shared the Norwegian connection on his mother’s side. Given to dark edges, sometimes moody, possessing a thread of melancholy that tied his inner thoughts in a tightly controlled bundle. And always the potential for storms of repressed emotion.

Speaking of threads. . it would be sensible to avoid Janey, because she used to have this knack for unraveling his little carnal loose ends and giving them a tug.

He stood up and lost his train of thought when he stared down the rows of deserted cubes at a bulletin board that hung on the wall. In huge rushed letters someone had printed: THE SAINT LIVES: HARRY 2, PEDOPHILES 0.

Broker was not amused. He went to the board, erased it, left the office, walked through the lobby and out the revolving doors to the parking lot. He took the Ithaca.12-gauge out of the trunk, stuffed in shells, racked the slide to put one in the chamber, set the safety, and tucked the shotgun in the passenger-seat foot well within easy reach.

In case Harry came flying out of the shadows.

He just wanted to go back to the river, eat a microwave dinner, drink a couple of beers, and put an ice pack on his head. And think of ways to get even with John.

And this was only day one.

Chapter Eighteen

Okay. Showtime.

Angel removed her sunglasses, tilted her hat low over one eye, and concentrated on making herself look like a poster girl for mindless sex. She willed a victim aura into her face; she imagined a neon sign blinking on her forehead: Beat Me; Fuck Me; Blow Your Nose in Me and Throw Me Away.

Angel could move real nice when she wanted to. She moved real nice across the hot sand, stood over Aubrey with one hand plopped on a hip. “Nice camera,” she said.

Aubrey looked up, brightened, and spewed language like spatters of grease. “Hi. Dig you. You like cameras?”

Angel made her eyes enlarge with wonder. “Is that real, around your neck?” she asked.

Aubrey fingered his gold chain, shrugged, then curlicued his finger up in the general direction of her chest. “What about those. Are they real?”

Angel put on her best lip-drooping bored smile. “For me to know.”

Aubrey was up on his knees now, eager; clearly, this was a guy who loved to connect. He fingered the gold chain. “You know how you test to see if gold is real?” he said.

“Not a clue,” Angel said.

Aubrey grinned. He had excellent teeth, healthy gums, and a tongue that jerked around like it could use a shot of Ritalin. His face had been handsome once, before he got soaked in fat. It reminded her of someone.

He was saying, “You bite it.” He winked. “See if it dents.”

Angel folded her arms protectively across her chest but couldn’t quite manage to stifle a grin. “You keep your teeth to yourself.”

“So what’s up?” Aubrey asked, the voice more reasonable. Curious. And distancing. “Do you always talk to total strangers on a beach?”

Angel shrugged. “Just thought I’d tell you. . that stuff you’re loading into the Camels. I can smell it clear down the beach. So can they.” She jerked her head at the lifeguards. “I wouldn’t be doing it in plain view if I was you.”

Aubrey studied her. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Angela.”

He reached up and patted her calf. “Thanks for the heads up. Now, why don’t you run along.”

Feigning a vast indifference, Angel shrugged, turned, and walked back to her towel. Okay, now don’t look over there. Nothing obvious. Let him think. Let him look up and down the beach. Is he bright enough to realize that he’s just talked to the nicest little piece of chicken at Square Lake today?

Angel watched Aubrey stand up, dust off sand, and pull on a pair of baggy shorts. Then a T-shirt, flip-flops, and a long-billed cap. She almost approved of the way he folded his towel, taut square corners. He tucked the towel away, shouldered his bag, and started up the beach to her left and disappeared from the corner of her peripheral vision.

She was careful not to turn and follow him with her eyes. There were always other days. Maybe she’d come on too forward, walking over there and striking up a conversation. Maybe the dope angle wasn’t the most effective gambit. Too overt.

Wrong.

A thick shadow fell across her legs.

“So Angela, what’s your story?” Aubrey asked. He had circled around in back of her and come up on her right.

Angel lowered her eyes. With more clothes on, he doesn’t look half bad. In fact he has this cleft chin in his deeply tanned face that bears a resemblance to. . what’s his name? The actor who’d been married to Bo Derek. Or maybe it’s his manner, which is less intense and is, well, curious. “My story?” she repeated, working to make her voice self-conscious.

He laughed. “I mean, who are you and where are you from, you know. .”

“Oh.” Angel managed to raise a blush to her cheeks. “I’m a teacher; I teach in an elementary school up in Thief River Falls. It’s summer vacation, so I’m down here visiting my sister in Stillwater and” — Angel raised a hand to her lips as if to stifle a giggle- “well, actually, she’s pretty straight.”

“How straight is straight?” he asked.

“Born-again, Evangelical washed-in-the-blood, baptized-in-the-Holy-Ghost straight.” Angel arched her eyebrows and showed the whites of her eyes.

Aubrey squatted down on his haunches, his forearms braced on his quads. “So you’re not exactly picking up on any dope smoke wafting through your sister’s house?”

“You got that right,” Angel said.

“Do you come down here much?”

“Not much. We’re originally from South Dakota.”

Aubrey nodded. “Where about?”

“Rapid City.”

“Sure, Interstate Ninety. Mount Rushmore. I did a shoot at the Sturgis rally and in Wall, you know, tracing the famous bumper sticker back to the source: Wall Drug, South Dakota.”

Angel nodded. “The Badlands. I find the Badlands distinctly creepy.”

Aubrey bobbed his head in agreement. “Theodore Roosevelt said the Badlands look like Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry sounds.”

Looking impressed, Angel said, “That’s sort of nice.”

“Actually, I heard David McCullough say that on C-SPAN, he wrote a book about TR.”

Suddenly Angel blurted, “John Derek.”

“Huh?”

Angel became animated. “The actor. He’s who you look like, I mean your face, here.” Her finger drifted out and up and hovered, almost touching the cleft in his chin. It was very difficult for Angel to actually touch a man’s body anywhere. The funny thing was, in her other life she had to contend with physical cravings that went in the exact opposite direction.