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  Ben radioed in his location, and Juanita, the dispatcher, laughed and said, “Right on schedule, as usual, Decovic. Tell your honey hello for me.”

  Ben took out his flashlight and walked up a blacktopped driveway, pausing a moment to check the lock on the garage door and then moving into the backyard and the long tangle of shadows that the mercury light perched on the lip of the garage roof could not unknot and scatter.

  He walked the perimeter of the yard. Then he returned to the front of the house and knocked on the door. Ben reattached the flashlight to his belt and listened to the click of the deadbolt.

  “All clear, Miriam,” he said.

  “Thank you.” She stepped away from the door. “I’ve already poured us a cup.”

  All the lights in the house were on. Ben followed her into the living room, Miriam Holmes taking a seat on the couch, Ben dropping into a green plaid easy chair angled so it faced an ancient color television on low and tuned to CNN.

  “Thank you, once again, for checking,” Miriam said. “You must think it silly, but the news these days, it’s just full of such stories that an old woman like me can’t help but worry some.”

  Ben smiled. “You’re not old, Miriam. And a little worrying about the state of the world is ok, too.”

  She nodded slowly. “Better safe. That was what Fredrick always said, and it’s still true.” She pointed at the cup on the table next to Ben. “It’s going to get cold.”

  The house was small and cluttered with memorabilia and possessions from the forty-seven years of marriage Miriam and Fredrick Holmes had shared, everything anchored in place by Miriam’s memories. The fireplace mantel was thickly clustered in photographs. Ben sat in Fredrick’s favorite chair. He drank his coffee from a cup belonging to the set of china Fredrick had bought her on their thirtieth anniversary. He knew the story behind the print of Charleston’s Rainbow Row hanging above the couch, the one behind the braided oval rug on the pine floor, and the two small sweet grass baskets on the end table.

  Just as he knew the story of Fredrick Holmes’s last day on earth, all the details of the Thursday morning in an Indian summer October three years ago: Miriam having started the coffee, Fredrick, though retired, up early and already dressed for the day and standing at the front window, waiting for the delivery of the paper, which turned out to be twenty minutes later than usual, Miriam bringing two cups of coffee into the living room just as it finally arrived, Fredrick opening the door and Miriam taking his place at the window, watching him start down the lawn surrounded by that early autumn light and brilliant color, a calendar day she remembered calling it, the lawn still bright green though the trees had turned, Fredrick moving with his characteristic purposeful stride, a moment and a morning like so many others in their lives, until she noticed a sudden hitch in Fredrick’s step, and a second later his heart exploded and Fredrick collapsed, and forty-seven years of marriage ended as abruptly as fingers hitting a light switch, no time for 9-1-1 or EMS calls, for defibrillators or nitro or for even setting down the two cups of coffee Miriam was still holding.

  “I hate to be a bother,” Miriam said. She remained perched on the lip of the couch.

  “You’re not,” Ben said.

  “What you hear,” she said. “The world and all. What goes on. So many disturbing things.”

  Ben nodded.

  “If only …,” Miriam began. She looked away for a moment, her gaze lingering on the fireplace mantel and the photographs crowding it.

  Ben felt his smile tighten. He drowned it in the coffee cup.

  “Hostages,” Miriam said, “to Fortune. That’s what Fredrick used to call them. I never fully understood what that meant until he was gone, and they moved away.”

  Ben worked on a nod. The mantel held a crowded chronology of a boy and girl moving toward early adulthood, but even though he was sure Miriam had told him their names, he drew a blank on them. A small blossom of panic opened in his chest.

  “An old woman going on and on.” Miriam pulled and straightened the sleeves of her housedress. “I don’t know where my mind is tonight. I just remembered I forgot to bring out the pound cake. Everything is turned around. Even the weather. It’s too warm and dry for the first week of March. I can’t remember one like it.”

  Ben got up from the chair. “That’s ok, Miriam. The coffee was fine.”

  “I’ve already cut you a slice,” she said. “I’ll wrap it up. Won’t take a minute.”

  “That’s ok,” Ben said. “I really should get back to the car.”

  “Won’t take a minute,” Miriam said.

  She turned and hurried into the kitchen. Ben glanced at the photographs. He spidered the front of his uniform, touching the buttons, his fingers abruptly falling away when he reached the center of his chest.

  Then Miriam was back, smiling and pressing a square of pound cake wrapped in wax paper on him, thanking him again and wishing him godspeed, and Ben was out the front door and moving across the lawn, the wind running through the trees and threaded with the faint cries of gulls, Miriam at the window watching, as he retraced Fredrick’s last steps on the way to the cruiser parked curb-side.

  THREE

  THE BATHROOM DOOR off the master bedroom was open and leaking thin clouds of steam. Buddy was in the shower, singing an off-key rendition of some Beach Boys song that had been on an oldies station on their drive back from Uncle Stanley’s earlier.

  Corrine had yet to undress or completely calm down. She paced the length of the bedroom, still feeling the weight of Sunday, the peculiar way that time gathered itself, swelled, and pressed against her insides.

  She held her hands out before her. They would not quite stop shaking. She was not sure if she felt angry or apprehensive. The warm, queasy feeling still nested in her stomach.

  Corrine told herself she would not think of Phoenix.

  She would not think of Betsy Jo Horvath or Wayne LaVell.

  She was Mrs. Corrine Tedros now.

  She had never been in Stanley’s plans for Buddy. Stanley was big on plans, especially if they originated with him. He’d always intended for Buddy to settle down with one of the eligible Greek women in the community, and when Buddy ended up marrying Corrine, Stanley had gone Old Testament and pronounced, I don’t give it eighteen months. You’ll see.

  And kept saying it. Publicly and privately.

  At times, he made it sound like a statement of fact. At others, it came across as a prediction, a warning, a command, threat, or promise.

  But never as a question.

  From the shower, Buddy sang about California Girls.

  Corrine stopped pacing and kicked off her shoes. They were low-heeled sensible shoes that along with hose and the navy blue dress were standard fare for Sunday dinner with Stanley. Something conservative and wifey.

  Once again, she’d made the mistake of expecting more out of Buddy than he could deliver. Corrine had coached and prodded, counted on his making a strong case for the Restan buyout of Stanco Beverages, but Buddy had characteristically rolled over at the first sign of disagreement from Stanley.

  The buyout would have changed everything.

  She’d be stuck in Magnolia Beach until Stanley died. Or until he tried to make good on his pronouncement on the marriage.

  When Buddy finally inherited Stanco Beverages, there was no guarantee that the current buyout offers would resurface or if they did, that they would be as lucrative as the present ones.

  Right now, the Restan offer was the kind of money that changed things forever.

  Julep was the beverage of choice at the moment. No one, let alone Stanley Tedros, could have predicted its meteoric rise and reign among men and women from thirty to fifty, particularly white-collar workers. Julep was embraced as the first genuine adult soft drink. Its relative scarcity, Stanco Beverages being the sole manufacturer and distributor, only added to its allure. It was a marketer’s wet dream. The public was already sold on Julep; they simply wanted more of it.

&n
bsp; Restan and the other two reps for the soft drink conglomerates were talking figures attached to a dizzying number of zeroes for the right to give that public what it wanted.

  Corrine had hoped Buddy could get Stanley to come around. Buddy’s parents had died in a car accident when he was six, and Stanley, who’d never married, had taken in his brother’s son and raised him as his own. Stanley Tedros might have wanted to bill himself as a hard-working, self-made entrepreneur, but at bottom, he was a Greek and big on family and blood ties. Buddy, if anyone, should have been able to convince Stanley to take Restan up on his offer.

  The problem, though, Corrine knew, was and would always be Buddy himself. He had no backbone. Stanley might have mentored him in preparation for taking over the business, forcing Buddy, after he’d graduated from college, to learn it from the ground up by making him work on the line and then methodically moving him through each of the company’s divisions, and Buddy might have dutifully done everything his uncle asked, but in the end it was a lost cause, the equivalent of a Doberman trying to train a Chihuahua to be an attack dog.

  It turned out to be patently simple for Corrine to lead Buddy through the steps of eventually proposing to her. Corrine had read him correctly from their first encounter when she’d been waitressing at Sonny Gramm’s supper club in Myrtle Beach and been tapped one Friday night to cover a bachelor’s party in the banquet room. Buddy and a bunch of his former frat brothers meeting in Myrtle Beach, acting like bad little boys, spilling their drinks and oogling the two by-the-numbers strippers performing to bad Areosmith, Corrine making sure Buddy was included in her station after another waitress pointed out who Buddy was, Corrine knowing just how to move and how far to lean over and how to flash a smile that promised more than the two strippers could ever hope to deliver, and by the end of the night making sure she delivered on that promise, giving Buddy the fuck of his life, and then the next morning retracting that promise with a nicely timed bout of tears, a carefully constructed heart to heart full of orchestrated remorse and guilt and fear that Buddy would get the wrong idea about her, Corrine going on to bookend the session by blindsiding Buddy’s vanity, quietly telling him with averted eyes that Buddy had unlocked something in her that she didn’t know was there, a level of sexual ecstasy that she had never experienced before that left her feeling vulnerable, happy, and afraid at the same time because she didn’t know what all this meant or where it left them.

  They were married three weeks later.

  Corrine had been Buddy’s first and only real rebellion against his Uncle Stanley’s influence and plans for him, and she’d worked hard to make sure Buddy’s loyalties were divided, but though Corrine might have gotten Buddy, in the end it had not been on her terms. Stanley Tedros had monkey-wrenched her plans. She’d gotten worried that Buddy had been on the verge of caving in to Stanley’s plans that he marry a nice Greek girl. Corrine had done everything she could think of, but Stanley was immune to her charms and continued to stonewall her, and Corrine eventually had to jettison the MGM-scale wedding she’d envisioned and push Buddy into an on-the-run elopement and honeymoon in Hilton Head.

  Stanley had countered by giving them a house as a belated wedding present, forcing Corrine to once again downsize her desires and trash the blueprints for the place Buddy had promised to build for them and then manufacture some enthusiasm and appreciation for the two and a half story that mimicked one of three possible floor-plans in a subdivision named White Pine Manor, full of young professionals in west Magnolia Beach.

  Corrine swallowed her resentment and went into full wifeymode whenever Buddy and she were around Stanley, but it didn’t seem to do any good. She couldn’t get Stanley to buy into the package. He might pretend to for a short time, but inevitably he would begin to torment her, taking small potshots, tossing out insinuations that always threatened to become the Judgment Day accusation or revelation that Stanley, biding his time, was happily waiting to deliver.

  The drumming of the shower stopped. A couple moments later, Buddy stepped into the bedroom with a towel knotted at the waist. He moved to the bureau and mirror and picked up a comb. Corrine asked him if he’d left her any hot water.

  “Plenty to go around,” he said.

  “Good. I want to take a long, hot bath.”

  Corrine finished undressing. She caught Buddy looking at her in the mirror. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  “You could talk to him again,” Corrine said. “And try a little harder this time. Maybe if I wasn’t there, he’d listen.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Buddy said, running the comb through his hair. “You’re too high-strung.”

  “That’s not the problem here, Buddy.”

  “Ok, ok,” he said. “I’ll talk to Stanley first thing in the morning. Give it another try.”

  “Don’t forget what James Restan said about the stock options.”

  “I know, I know,” Buddy said.

  Corrine dropped the clothes she had bundled in her arms. She wasn’t in the mood, but Buddy was the only thing she had to work with right now.

  She turned and pulled down the covers on the bed. Buddy unknotted the towel at his waist and followed his bobbing erection to her.

  He’d put on weight in the last five months, a good fifteen pounds thickening his waist, and it was just starting to show up in his face too, blunting his features so that Buddy appeared to be exactly what he was: a thirty-two-year-old boy who was edging his way into early middle-age, one of those men whose eyes and smile were always at odds with the rest of his flesh.

  Buddy climbed into bed and over her. “Oh Corrine,” he said. “You’re the last word on lovely.”

  Corrine closed her eyes and a moment later felt Buddy’s lips on hers, gentle at first, then increasingly insistent, Buddy, like all the men she’d known, impatient to move those lips down her neck to her breasts where need eventually betrayed them. Long ago, Corrine had discovered a simple truth: all men want the tit. And she had come to understand the power that truth bestowed.

  Corrine arched her back. Buddy mouthed and sucked and dropped a hand between her legs.

  “Oh honey,” Buddy said. He worked two fingers inside her.

  Corrine let herself slip into the sequence of practiced responses that would result in a believable orgasm on her part, Buddy moving inside her now, Corrine murmuring encouragement, lifting her hips and letting them fall with each thrust, Buddy’s weight pressing on her.

  Corrine kept her eyes closed.

  Along the way, she began thinking of Stanley Tedros.

  She could see him on the back of her eyelids, an image that slowly sharpened and came into full focus with the clarity of a Polaroid photo developing.

  A funeral home. Stanley in his casket. Arms crossed on his chest. A carnation in the lapel of his omnipresent brown suit.

  Stanley dead. She could see it. Absolutely and once and for all.

  Corrine felt Buddy’s breath coming in shorter and shorter bursts on the side of her neck and then something else, a tremor from deep inside her that followed its own demands, and she was suddenly wet, Corrine squeezing her eyes tighter, carrying the image of Stanley in his casket with her as Buddy moved in and out and said her name over and over again, her body suddenly taking over, running ahead of her and crashing in an orgasm that was every bit as histrionic as the one she’d been preparing to fake for her lawfully-wedded husband.

  FOUR

  THE AFTERNOON LIGHT WAS CLEAR and unsparing and reminded Ben Decovic of the lighting at a line-up. It set its own terms, requiring you to look closely, and then waited for the rest of you to catch up and recognize who or what was suspect.

  Decovic U-turned the cruiser at the county line and approached the city limits and a sign reading

  WELCOME TO MAGNOLIA BEACH, SC

  “The Other Myrtle Beach.”

  More boomtown boosterism.

  The sign was new, the brainchild of the Magnolia Beach Tourist Bureau and City Council. The s
ame one was planted at each of the city’s compass points, the slogan duplicated on the home page of the city’s website as well as on the borders of the brochures and flyers funneled through hundreds of travel agencies across the country.

  He’d heard someone say the bureau and council were working to fund a series of commercials to be run on the major networks.

  He’d been living and working in Magnolia Beach for ten months.

  At the time, it seemed as good a place as any to start over.

  Decovic followed Ocean Drive into North Shore, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. North Shore had yet to be trammeled by the development mania. It was hit and miss middle class, most of the houses built in the forties and fifties with generous lots by current standards and filled with magnolia, pine, and live oaks. The neighborhood reminded Ben of a radio station whose signal wavered in and out of focus. He drove past blocks of homes maintained in a time-warp Norman Rockwell respectability, bordered by others sliding toward a low-rent destiny straight out of Erskine Caldwell.

  The light followed him.

  His fingers twitched on the steering wheel. He reached up and adjusted the visor.

  What’s there and what’s not, he said to himself. Keep the line between each clear. That’s all for now. Enough for now.

  He glanced down at his left hand and the pale blue ink smudge on the inside of his wrist.

  Decovic passed a scattering of home-based small businesses. A welding shop. Florist. Lawnmower repair. Sewing and alterations. Second-hand clothes and used appliances. A corner grocery. A bait and tackle shop.

  He was the first to respond to the call from the Bull’s Eye.

  Edwin, the owner, was waiting for him outside in the oyster-shell parking lot. Flanked by a couple of muddy pickups and pampered muscle cars, he waved at Ben and then glanced back at the bar’s entrance. True to its name, the entire front of the building was haphazardly papered in fading shooting-range targets, most of which were trembling or flapping in a steady ocean-laced March wind.