Smolder (The Road to Rocktoberfest 2024)

28. Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-eight

Sandy

Thursday morning, Skyler went to the police station to look at the footage the cops had pulled from the neighborhood cameras, so I decided to go for a run. He didn’t live far from the high school, so I took off in that direction.

It was my first opportunity to get a feel for the area where he lived and worked. I hoped it would give me more insight into Skyler and whether I had a chance in hell of convincing him to stay in San Jose with me. His family was in the area, though I wasn’t sure if that was a plus or not, but I knew he cared about River and now Arlo, even if the young man wasn’t for sure his half-brother.

We hadn’t been doing much besides spending time together and doing little repairs around his rental. I’d replaced his back door the vandals had wrecked, and Skyler had reorganized the kitchen. His friend had tried to help him out by putting things away where she would have wanted them, but my guy liked things a certain way. Who could blame him?

I ran in the direction Skyler always pointed when he referred to the school, and I was surprised to see it was as large as it was. There was a well-maintained football field with a man walking behind a broadcast spreader. He was either seeding or fertilizing, but the field looked damn good already.

I went through the gate and jogged across the field to where the man was stopped taking a drink from a metal water bottle. “Sir? Can I help you?” he asked as he stared at me.

“Are you seeding or fertilizing?” I had a lawn care service take care of my own yard because it hadn’t been my priority for the last year, and I had no idea when certain maintenance needed to be performed. I didn’t ask questions.

The caretaker grinned. “Seeding. We seed twice a week during the season and once a week in the off-season. We fertilize in the late fall. Are you looking for something?”

“A friend of mine teaches here, and I was just checking things out. He doesn’t live too far, so I thought I’d swing by on my run. I’m Sandy Kensington.” I extended my hand, and he shook it.

“Didn’t you play for the Breeze?”

I chuckled. “I did. You a fan of the Breeze?”

“Nah, but my son is. We have some colorful viewing parties when we watch games where our favorites play each other. So, who’s your friend who works here?”

“Skyler Ashe, the band teacher. I guess he and the band use the field a lot too.”

The man, who hadn’t shared his name, grinned. “You mean when Sutter would let the band practice. He took pride in bullying Mr. Ashe and the band and incited the players to do it as well. Skyler, though, is a true firecracker. He was diplomatic and talked to the kids about the problems with bullying right there in front of Sutter, which used to piss the man off something fierce. It was fun to watch. All the band kids respected him a lot for how he stuck up for them.”

Pride swelled in my chest at hearing how great my guy was and how much people revered him. “Yeah, he is fantastic, isn’t he? I’m lucky to have him in my life. You like the area? Did you grow up here?” Seemed logical that Midwesterners stayed close to where they grew up. I’d played with a few guys who returned to their Midwestern roots in the off-season.

“Grew up in Atlanta and taught school there for fifteen years. I like it here more.” We chatted for a few more minutes, and then I excused myself to finish my run.

There were a lot of nice neighborhoods in little West Peoria. There were a lot of toys in yards and bikes on driveways, much like where I grew up. Marsh and I would play with other kids in the neighborhood until it was time to go in for dinner, just like kids did in many cities and towns across the country.

Letting those memories surface had me missing those times. My parents didn’t want anything to do with me now, and there was nothing I could do about that, but I could figure out what was going on with Marshall and try to fix the rift between us.

I returned to Skyler’s house and realized I’d locked myself out. He was still gone, so I reached for my phone in my pocket, only to remember I’d left it inside plugged into the charger. I went to the side yard that faced his neighbor’s house and turned on the hose, taking a drink. I chuckled at how kids today had likely never done the same thing. Times were constantly changing.

“Hello.”

Turning off the hose, I glanced over my shoulder to see a little white-haired woman wearing an apron with flowers and a ruffle around the pockets. She was carrying a tall glass with a straw sticking out of it.

“Hi there. I’m Sandy, a friend of Skyler’s. You’re Mrs. Flannery, right? Seems I’ve locked myself out.” I didn’t want her to think I was here to break into his home again.

“Yes, I’m Mrs. Flannery. I’ve seen you working around the house. Would you like a glass of lemonade?” She offered the glass to me and damned if I wasn’t thirsty. I took the glass and sipped some through the metal straw, finding it sweet and tart. The perfect thirst quencher.

“This is delicious, thank you.” I hadn’t forgotten my manners, even with all the testosterone I’d been exposed to my whole life.

“Would you like to come up on the porch and sit for a while? I spoke to my daughter, who works at the police station, and she said they’re not nearly done with Skyler. Come sit down and have some zucchini bread. I bought some beautiful zucchini at the farmers’ market on Saturday.”

I wanted to say I had something else to do, but I was locked out of the house, so how much could I really have to do in a pair of running shorts and a tank top? “Okay. I’d love to, but I don’t want to take you away from what you were doing.” That sounded polite enough.

“Oh, nonsense. Come have a seat. I’ll be right back.” She took the empty glass from me and walked back to her front porch, slowly climbing the steps. Her hand touched the railing, and it wobbled, causing her to almost lose her balance.

Skyler had talked about the little old lady a few of times. She’d been the person who called the police when Sky’s house had been originally broken into.

“Mrs. Flannery!” I raced over to catch her before she fell and broke something.

“Thank you, dear. I’ve been meaning to see if I could find a handyman to come fix that, but you know, at my age, it’s easy to forget some things.”

Hell, I had nothing to do while I waited for Skyler to come back. “You got some tools? I’ll take a look at it.”

“Oh, I couldn’t ask you to do that.” She took my hand and pulled me into her little house, which was a mirror of Skyler’s. However, her house looked like a flower garden had thrown up all over it. I didn’t realize there were that many ways to use a floral print.

Mrs. Flannery took me to the kitchen, where she opened the cabinet under the sink and pointed. The top of the red metal box was wet, so I ducked to see the pipe under the garbage disposal was leaking.

“Uh-oh. Looks like you’ve got a leak under your garbage disposal.”

“The garbage disposal? It hasn’t worked in a week. How can it leak?”

Instead of trying to figure that out, I went to work on the front porch railing. “The wooden brace is split. Do you have any wood I can use to replace it?”

“There might be something in the garage. Mr. Flannery had his workshop out there. I haven’t been in there since he passed away.” She opened the side door of the building behind her house that was just like Skyler’s, but instead of an organized space with hooks holding brooms and snow shovels as my guy had, there was crap everywhere.

Stacks of lumber of various lengths. Random pipes tossed in a corner. A plastic bucket filled with screws, nails, and washers. Tools everywhere. It looked like a raccoon had organized it after years of scavenging.

I grabbed some scraps of wood, a saw, and a handful of screws and nails, hoping I could find one that worked. I returned to her front porch to find another glass of lemonade and a plate with the zucchini bread she’d mentioned, so I went to work fixing the railing, stopping to enjoy the treat as I worked. Once that was repaired, I cleaned up the mess and took the unused wood back to the garage.

When I returned to the front porch, I picked up the glass and the empty plate—the zucchini bread had been delicious—and carried everything inside.

The cabinet under the sink was open, and everything inside was now on the counter. There, on the floor by the sink, was a bag from Lowe’s. When I looked inside, I wasn’t surprised to see a brand-new garbage disposal still in the box.

There was a stack of clean rags on the floor, along with a small jar of plumber’s putty and a roll of plumber’s tape. Pliers and a pipe wrench were nearby.

Two hours and a YouTube video I watched on Mrs. Flannery’s cell phone by a self-identifying masc lesbian installing a garbage disposal later, I stood from the floor, flipped the switch, and was relieved when the disposal came to life. Mrs. Flannery had been frying chicken while I’d been working, and the smell had my stomach growling like an angry bear.

There was a knock on the door, so Mrs. Flannery went to answer it as I started replacing the things under the sink. Thankfully, I heard Skyler’s voice before she found something else that needed to be done. “Is Sandy here, Mrs. Flannery?”

“Oh, yes. He’s been helping me while he waited for you to come back. How was it at the police station? Did they find who did it?”

I went to the living room, where Skyler stood at the door, a smirk on his handsome face. “They’re still going through the footage because nobody knows when it happened. I rang the doorbell several times, Mrs. Flannery. Is there something wrong with it?”

“Oh dear. That’s right. That nice Officer Aames told me it was broken when he checked it on my cell phone. I’ll need to contact someone to come look at it.”

Skyler glanced up and winked at me. “I’ll call a colleague who teaches computer classes at school to see if he can take a look. We’ll get you fixed up.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Skyler. That’s very sweet of you. Can you tell him I’ll be going to the salon tomorrow morning? And if he comes in the afternoon, I’ll make us a nice cream tea.”

Mrs. Flannery packaged up some fried chicken. “Thank you, Sandy. It was kind of you to fix the front railing and install the new garbage disposal. Heat up some green beans to go with this, boys. It’ll be delicious.”

We both thanked her and walked across the yard to Skyler’s house. He let us inside and began laughing hysterically.

“What?”

“She suckered you! She’s a pro at guilting people into helping her with things around her house for free. She probably has more money than most of the folks in town, but she refuses to pay for repairs. I’ve been on her roof fixing shingles and reattaching her gutters more times than I can count. I had her window screens repaired, and I’ve been putting them up for three years now in the spring. She gets her daughter and son-in-law to take them down, clean them, and store them in her basement before they put up the storm windows in the fall.”

“Now you tell me.”

Sky kissed my lips gently and pulled back to look into my eyes. “I’m sorry you got roped into helping her, but she makes the best fried chicken in town. Let me heat up some green beans like she suggested.” Skyler went about opening a can and pouring the contents into a bowl to microwave them while I set the table.

“How was your day, dear?” I was teasing him because I was sure it was agonizing to sit and stare at a computer screen for hours.

“I saw some footage of someone wearing a West Peoria High School hoodie and a pair of shorts running away from my house the night after I posted on the school’s electronic bulletin board. Officer Aames basically told me I brought it on myself. I guess I did.”

I wrapped my arms around him. “Baby, you didn’t expect one of those little peckerheads to do what they did. You were trying to be a nice guy by updating your students on what you were doing on your summer vacation. There’s one little bastard in every crowd who ruins things for everyone.” I knew that to be true because I had been that little bastard back in the day.

The next day, while Skyler went to the police department to look at more footage, I ended up cleaning out Mrs. Flannery’s garage. Lo and behold, I found an old BMW convertible under a tarp with a bunch of shit stacked around it.

Skyler and I cracked up as Mrs. Flannery acted surprised to see it, claiming she’d forgotten all about it.

July 31 st Gaslamp Concert Venue, Long Beach

I stood at the side of the stage with Skyler while we waited for the guy Marshall hired to finish connecting the speakers to the sound system. “Have the guys been working with Hardy? I’m afraid you’re going to drop dead with all this practice you’ve been doing with both bands.”

I was worried about Skyler. He was having trouble sleeping. I’d found him up at all hours of the night pacing the house. River was back home with his dad and mom and Sky’s mom. Arlo and Goldie were staying with Goldie’s dad. JD was back home with Ripper, and Sky was with me.

He still hadn’t told anyone what happened to his house in West Peoria. I’d insisted we go couch shopping, and it was supposed to be delivered when he was back home.

It was another reminder that he was going to leave sooner than I wanted, but I’d decided I’d fly home with him when he had to go back and fly out with him when he had to perform.

Hardy was staying with us at my house in San Jose. The kid stayed high most of the time, so he wasn’t any trouble. He was watching SpongeBob every time I hunted him down. I didn’t give a shit what he did during his off time, but we’d brought him to San Jose to play with Accidental Fire, and if he wasn’t going to do that, he needed to go back to Baltimore.

“I gotta keep him from getting high so often so he can learn shit. He’s a great drummer, but he’s a pothead with no motivation. I’m not sure what to do about him, and I can’t leave Accidental Fire high and dry.”

The roadie guy finally motioned for everyone to take the stage for the sound check. Marshall was sitting at one of the tables with Regal Ashe as they waited for the kids to do their sound check before it was the older band’s turn. They had brought in some unknown guy to run the soundboard, and the fucker wasn’t friendly at all.

In the back of my mind, I wondered if Regal might have something to do with the break-in at my place or at Sky’s place in Illinois. I had no evidence to base the theory on, but something bugged me about the guy and the way he stared at me and Skyler.

I stepped over to Marshall, who was acting all nervous again. “I’ll be right back. Keep an eye out for them.”

Marsh nodded, so I went out to the bus parked on the lot behind the venue on the Pacific Coast Highway. When I approached the bus, I saw Clancy, the driver, sitting in a camp chair with an e-reader and a cigar. He wasn’t thrilled with the music the guys played, so he chose to sit outside and watch the bus. He did come into the venue and help me watch out for the guys during the show, and I was grateful. The guy was a fucking wall.

“Is Hardy still in there?”

Clancy laughed and flipped the ash from his cigar onto the parking lot. “I smoke one of these a day, and you know how offensive they are. I can’t sit inside that bus when that kid gets his smoke on. I don’t know how we’ll ever get rid of that smell before we return it to Kingman.” Kingman was the dealership I rented the fucker from.

“This stops now. Open it.” Clancy nodded and clicked the fob to open the doors. The wall of smoke that hit me had me backing out of the bus and hacking up a lung.

“What the fuck?”

Clancy chuckled. “What the fuck, indeed.” He went back to his e-reader, and I went up the steps to see Hardy Boyer sitting at one of the tables with a fucking trash can on his head as he smoked a pipe.

I picked up one of Skyler’s drumsticks from the window ledge and started beating the fuck out of the can until the kid dropped the glass pipe, breaking it, and threw off the trash can.

“What the fuck you doin’, man?”

I grabbed the little bastard by his shirt and jerked him up from the seat, raking his hips over the edge of the table, which probably hurt. I didn’t give a shit.

“You aren’t here to smoke pot and fuck around. You’re here to get to know the goddamn band and learn the music. If you’re not going to do that, I’ll put your ass on a mother fucking Greyhound bus and send you back to Lynette. When I call Kathleen to tell her why I’m returning you by snail mail, I’m going to tell her she owes me for this fucking bus because we’ll never get that goddamn skunk smell out of here.”

Was I pissed? About a lot of shit, but I didn’t think I was being too harsh with the guy. He needed someone to get him to see he wasn’t on a holiday. He had a purpose, and if he wasn’t going to live up to it, then he was off my fucking dime.