Caskets & Conspiracies

  A novel by

  Nellie K. Neves

  Dedicated to Mary and those in the shadows

  May your stories be told and your voices be heard

  Promises are meant to be kept

  Chapter 1

  My glass was cold under my fingertips. The ice cubes rattled as I shifted them. I tried to look like I was lost in thought. The target was only 20 feet away, but if I gave up my position early, there would be no hope of reaching my objective.

  The music was a little loud for my taste. Normally Johnny’s played country western, but tonight the sound was definitely a little more Top 40. I didn’t particularly care either way. At least it wasn’t karaoke night. All I could think about was my deadline, and with only thirty minutes left, I knew I had to get creative.

  The bar was not empty by any means. Two college jocks argued over a game of darts behind me, and a group of soccer moms laughed raucously in the corner, likely a girl’s night out for them, a few minutes to remember that they had an identity beyond their children. Add to those people the regulars—Mick, the mechanic; Arnold, the town drunk; and Renee, the town gossip and journalist—and the bar had just enough people in it to blend in but not enough to hide my actions.

  “Want another, sweetheart?” Johnny asked as he leaned his forearms against the hard resin of the bar top.

  He knew better, but he liked to tease. The glass was just an excuse to sit. The ice cubes granted me an alias. We had done this dance before, and he always found it humorous.

  “I think I’ve hit my limit,” I said, shaking the cubes against the cold glass.

  He managed to keep his smile to himself, though he took a moment to add, “You’re one of a kind, Lindy. Do you think you still have a chance on this one?” His gaze traveled to the far side of the room and rested on my target.

  I watched the couple carefully. He was handsome, mysterious, and infatuated with the woman that hung on him. I narrowed my eyes for a moment but turned my stare on the glass before he could look up. If he recognized me, it was all over.

  “It’s not midnight yet, Johnny.”

  The bar owner wiped the counter, though I wagered it was a tic of his, like playing with your hair or biting your nails. His body went through the motions without a second thought.

  “You’re playing a dangerous game tonight,” he warned. “You know if he sees what you are up to…” He let his voice trail off as he left to stock the bar again, another one of his robotic tics.

  “Then I will make sure he doesn’t see me,” I muttered under my breath.

  I could not use the college boys. I was never any good at darts, and splitting two friends apart would only cause chaos. The soccer moms could work but only if they were not threatened by my youth. One look at their desperation told me there was no chance I could infiltrate them without at least two becoming jealous or petty. That left the regulars.

  Mick’s eyes were red. His wife had died earlier that year, and I was not going to get involved with his tears or drunken confessions. Arnold’s eyes were red, but it had more to do with the whiskey than anything else. Renee had never been an option. She was the only one that saw as much as I did. Her long, red acrylic nails tapped the wood as she drooled over the idea of her next story. Trying to use her to my own advantage would not end well. The rumormonger would see my motives before I ever sat at her booth. There had to be someone else, someone I could use.

  The door to Johnny’s swung open, and I glanced toward the sound. I could see the rain just beyond his frame, but that wasn’t news. It always rained in Washington. I gathered information as efficiently as I could with my quick glimpse. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself. Not yet.

  Gray woolen skullcap that covered his hair. No. Just useless information. Leather jacket, long-sleeved top in a dark crimson. It told me the weather but nothing more. I could hear his boots as I stared at my ice cubes. Heavy, military, or blue collar? I closed my eyes and brought up the mental image I had captured. No ring on his finger. He was single. There was hope. The shadow of facial hair told me he was normally clean-shaven but had held off for a couple of days. Depression? Busy? Maybe his face just got cold? It was not helping.

  Focus, Lindy, I scolded myself.

  The boots started toward a booth. I could hear his movement, strong, sure, and then hesitation. I kept my eyes on the glass of melting ice in front of me but carefully drew my hair back and pulled it all over my left shoulder, exposing my face to his side of the room. Call it an experiment if you will. If the hesitation was caused by me, the action would attract him. If he had merely noticed the booth he was headed for was dirty, then he would continue.

  The boots thumped against the floor, but they moved toward me instead of away. I looked up to the ceiling and sighed, hoping I looked the part of a lonely wallflower. I turned my face away as I heard a stool scraping the floor as it was pulled out. Glass in hand, I swirled the ice cubes as if I were deciding to have another or go home. It helped to actually think the thoughts. If I believed it, they believed it too.

  Johnny noticed the newcomer first. “Ryder Billings, when did you get back to town?”

  I kept my eyes averted as if I were uninterested, but I heard the sound of hands clasping and the telltale thump of a manly hug across the bar.

  The stranger’s voice was deep, surprisingly deep for his average frame.

  “I’ve been in town off and on for about a month now. Just keeping a low profile.”

  I could feel his gaze fall on me even though I could barely see him in my peripheral vision. I stared at my glass, then the mirror behind the bar, and back to my glass again.

  “Are you back with your parents again or…” Johnny’s voice trailed off as Ryder started to chuckle.

  “No, man. I’ve got my own place now.”

  “What are you doing? I mean, do you have a job yet?”

  “I’ve got a little of this, a little of that. What? Are you offering?”

  “Whenever you want, just let me know.” Johnny obviously noticed Ryder’s interest in me and decided to stir the pot so to speak. “Heck, with you behind the bar, I’ll make a fortune on ladies’ night.” Then addressing me, “Don’t you think, Lindy?”

  I feigned surprise and turned to face them. No ring. I knew it.

  “I’m sorry, Johnny Were you talking to me?”

  He loved watching me work, and his good-natured smile came easy. “If I had a good-looking guy like Ryder behind the bar, don’t you think I’d make a killing?”

  Ryder showed off his physique as if he were on an auction block. I took the moment to look him over more thoroughly. Slightly crooked nose. Likely an old injury from a fight. Scar on his right hand but no marks from stitches. He avoided medical treatment. Tough or scared? The jacket he wore looked old, but by instinct I knew it was expensive. Knowing my time had come to an end and any more hesitation on my part would appear suspicious, I shrugged indifferently and turned back to my melting ice.

  “If they’re into that sort of thing, I suppose.”

  The truth was if Ryder were behind the bar, there was a good chance Johnny could retire within a week. Dark, brooding eyes, just enough confidence and bravado to unnerve a girl, and yet a boyish charm that kept it all innocent.

  My challenge was unspoken, but accepted.

  “Are you into that sort of thing?” Ryder asked.

  I did not answer. I needed him to focus all of his attention on me for the plan to work. And, really, the truth was not going to help me at all. What could I say? Actually, I find you incredibly attractive, but I have no interest in starting anything. I just need to use you for the next twenty minutes.

  If only. But lies got me farther in my line of wor
k.

  Ryder turned his attention to Johnny. “Let me buy her a drink. One more of whatever she’s having and another for me.”

  I caught Johnny’s gaze. The smirk and raised eyebrows seemed to ask if he should put a glass with three ice cubes in front of Ryder as well. I pretended as though the barkeep had forgotten my drink.

  “It was a Coke, Johnny,” I lied.

  “Of course it was.” Johnny loved being in on the game and quickly fetched the drinks.

  In the time he took to pour them, Ryder slipped onto the bar stool next to me. I could smell his cologne even though it was not strong. Maybe it was the way he leaned slightly into my space. His hand extended toward mine. “My name is Ryder Billings.”

  I looked at his hand and then looked up at him with a coy smile. “I know. I heard Johnny.”

  His hand dropped to the counter as Johnny slipped the glasses of soda in front of us. “You’re gonna make me work for it, aren’t you?”

  My head slightly tipped as if to say, “Maybe.”

  “You’re just drinking Coke? Do you always abstain or just tonight?”

  I set the tiny black straw between my lips and took a sip. Bubbles burned my nose and made my eyes water, but I squelched my discomfort and set the cup down again while maintaining my sweet-as-a-fawn disposition.

  “I like to stay sharp.”

  “Then why come to the bar?” Ryder questioned. “I think they sell Coke at the Stop-N-Shop still.”

  He was baiting me, or at least he thought he was.

  “I like it here.”

  “Oh, yes. The classy ambiance of Johnny’s dive bar,” he kidded before he sipped the soda from his own glass.

  “I come for the music,” I lied again.

  He could see it was a lie, and it only intrigued him more. “Do you dance?”

  “Not often,” I admitted, “but under the right circumstances, maybe.”

  His grin was slightly crooked, and I knew he was enjoying our give and take. “You from around here? I don’t remember you, and I really think I would remember you.”

  “Well,” I sipped the soda again and wanted to scream as the bubbles burned my nostrils, “you’ve been gone apparently.” I hoped the tears would make my eyes look bigger. Why did it have to bubble so much?

  The soccer moms had migrated to the jukebox. Most still had a drink in hand, and two looked as though they had downed them a little too fast as they swayed to and fro even before the music started. When the selection began to play, three of them began to howl like coyotes, and I could not help but giggle.

  Ryder laughed along as he watched them. “How about that dance? Are the circumstances right yet?”

  The ladies howled and whooped as they danced the dances of a youth gone by. It would have been sad if it were not so funny.

  “I don’t think the circumstances are good for anyone.”

  “You may have a point.”

  He grimaced as one of the moms tried a dance she had obviously seen on the Internet and hurt her back in the process. “Those videos should have health warnings on them.” He mimicked the announcer at the end of every pharmaceutical commercial, “Shaking your rear in this fashion may lead to lumbago, hip dysplasia, and even a burst spleen. Please only proceed under the direction of a medical professional.”

  I stirred my drink with the straw as I chuckled at his joke. Taking a moment, I looked to the corner. The target was still there, and my cover was intact, but my position was not ideal.

  Ryder shifted slightly and asked, “What do you do in this little town of ours?”

  I borrowed his phrase from his conversation with Johnny. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that.”

  Ryder shifted again, laughing to himself. “You aren’t going to give me anything, are you?” I kept that coy smile plastered on my lips. He tipped his glass from side to side, watching the liquid shift and slide. “Is there a boyfriend coming to meet you? Is that it?”

  I shook my head, still smiling.

  “Is there a boyfriend at all?”

  Slowly, deliberately, and with the shiest of smiles, I shook my head.

  He was pleased. “I find that hard to believe, but I will count my lucky stars.”

  My mind worked at a million miles a minute. Time was running out, and I was still unsure of how to change my position. His stare followed me with a question behind his dark brown eyes.

  “You’re a thinker, aren’t you?”

  “I may have been accused of that a few times in my life.”

  That was a gross understatement. I had been studying human behavior since I could remember. How many kindergartners can deduce the paste-eater by the way he holds his hands? How many teenage girls can see that their best friend is after her boyfriend by the way she tapped her nails against her teeth? All I did was think. Think and analyze.

  “Well, I like thinkers,” he replied, leaning a little closer. “And I think you look a little lonely tonight.”

  I could spill my drink. No. That wouldn’t give me cover. I could give in to that dance he wanted. No. Position but not opportunity. I could kiss him. No. That wouldn’t help anyone.

  The women still danced to their anthem between the tables. Well, except for the one with a hurt back. Johnny had fetched her ice and a cab.

  Ryder brought my attention back around. “What is it then? Why not drop your guard a little? I don’t even know your name.”

  Johnny had used it earlier, and I was completely underwhelmed by Ryder’s power of observation. Didn’t everyone log names away for future use? Probably not.

  “I’m not interested in any relationship right now. That’s all.”

  He frowned deeply, though the smile somehow remained there as well. “A name is hardly a relationship.”

  “Maybe I am worried it could become one.”

  “Would it be so bad?” Eye contact was hard to maintain. The confidence he exuded was like staring straight at the sun. Ever so slightly, his teeth ran over his bottom lip, releasing it after just a moment. “I’ll be your huckleberry. That’s just my game.”

  It was a variation of the line spoken by Doc Holliday in the western classic “Tombstone.” I knew it too well. My dad was an aficionado of old westerns: the movies, the books, and even a pair of revolvers encased in glass that he claimed belonged to Wild Bill Hickok. It should have been comical to me. But those dark chocolate eyes, the bravado with which he spoke, and the way he seemed to know exactly how to let the words roll off his tongue with deliberate timing and candor left me unhinged. Not just the me that I pretended to be, but also the me that was hidden beneath the mask. For a second my heart raced, my cheeks flushed, and I was reduced to nothing more than a common female entranced by a silver-tongued devil.

  The soccer moms’ cheers broke through our moment, and I was grateful. They had infiltrated the dart game, obliviously and incorrectly assured that the younger men found them attractive. More likely they had become a humorous distraction for the college students.

  “Looks like everyone is making friends tonight.” Ryder raised his eyebrow as if daring me to also make a new friend.

  One of the blonde moms said far too loudly, “No one would ever believe that I am playing darts with a couple of hot guys.”

  It had ceased being funny. It had crossed the line to sad, but thankfully the alcohol left them unaware of their own pathetic actions.

  Another mom pulled out her phone. “Oh my gosh! Selfies! We have to prove this night happened.”

  The college boys were happy to comply and even plastered kisses on two of the women’s cheeks for the camera. It was a train wreck. Or particularly mangled roadkill, the kind where you cannot even tell what it was in the first place. I could not look away from their desperation.

  Like a bolt of lightning, the inspiration struck. Leave it up to completely wasted matriarchs to give me my escape and solution.

  I pulled my phone from my purse and cocked my head innocently.

  “When in Rome?�
�� I asked.

  The smile spread wide on his face, displaying straight white teeth. “If you insist.”

  Ryder slipped from his stool and stood behind me. The angle wasn’t quite right, not for what I needed. I twisted my stool and felt Ryder’s arms wrap around me. It was more than forward, but I needed his head out of the way, so I allowed it. If I was going to be honest about the whole thing, it wasn’t the worst torture I had ever been through.

  I held the phone high, looking for the perfect angle. I couldn’t capture it. I took one, then another.

  Ryder only laughed, “My eyes were closed. Do it again, and smile this time.”

  I watched the couple in the screen of my phone. I had fifteen minutes left. There was not time for anything else, but for once the woman was not all over the mysterious man in the corner. An arm around her shoulder would not be good enough.

  Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss her. I chanted in my head as I pretended to line the picture up perfectly. I pressed the button again. With enough cropping, it might work.

  “One more,” Ryder instructed, bending lower, “you have the camera so high, we are barely in the shot.”

  I knew one more try might make the cut.

  Kiss her! I screamed in my thoughts. Just kiss her!

  Ryder lowered the camera so that our faces filled the frame. “See. This is better. Not that long-shot stuff.” He snapped a picture of us, both appearing happy and carefree. If he ever looked closer at the muscles around my eyes he would see the telltale sign of a fake smile and unabashed anger. He had cost me my shot.

  “Wait,” I said as he started to move away. “My smile looks funny. How about one more?”

  Ryder happily obliged and moved back into his position, arms over mine, face next to my ear, and I refocused the camera and found my target again. They had gotten close once more. It was time for goodnight. Now or never. Fifteen minutes left, and no time to waste.

  “Are you ready?” Ryder asked. He had moved closer than he was the last time. I could hear the moms giggling like teenage girls, Johnny drying cups behind the bar, and the music. Distractions. All distractions.