Sweet Cherry Pie Read online

  As amenities go, the decrepit camper is about a half step up from the Starlight Motel. It boasts a couple of outlets and a box fan, and she has to shower at the YMCA down the road from the bar. Why couldn’t she have a cousin with a beach house at Hilton Head and a garage full of classic cars? Still, it beats slinking home with her tail between her legs.

  “This is the good life,” she mutters.

  She’s about finished swabbing out the glasses with a bar towel when Mike pops his head into the kitchen. “Someone here to see ya.”

  She narrows her eyes at him. “Give you a name?”

  “Naw,” Mike says. “Big fella, three hunnert pounds at least. Says he’s in business with you.” He glances at the cook, Lawrence, then leans closer. “He hunt like you and your sister?”

  “Unless he sells Mary Kay, I’m going with yes,” she says. “I’ll be out there in a minute.”

  Great. One of the best things about Mike’s place is that it’s very specifically not a hunter bar. Mike’s in the know, thanks to the long Dupree tradition of hunting. But he steered clear of that life, and he doesn’t leave the lights on for hunters. The odds of anyone who knows her coming through are slim to none.

  And yet here we stand.

  As she walks out of the kitchen, she pauses at a mirrored beer sign in the hallway. Her face is shiny with sweat, and she’s got soap suds in her hair. She sighs and brushes it away, then flips her hair over her shoulder with all the sass she can muster.

  This is a hiccup. You don’t take shit from anyone, she reminds herself.

  Charity walks out of the narrow back hallway into the mostly empty bar. The jukebox plays the Eagles for a handful of regulars eating Mike’s five-dollar burger and onion rings special for lunch. A couple of guys still wearing their blue work jackets from the plant are pushing the “five o’clock somewhere” policy and draining a bucket of longnecks at one of the high-tops.

  As she squeezes past the corner pool table, a hand slips over her hip and cups her ass. “Hey, sugar.”

  She seizes the meaty wrist, whips it around, and turns to look the drunk in the eye. Grease-stained mesh cap, splotchy red blossoms around his nose, brown eyes watery and wide. Per Mike’s request, she’s not packing, or he’d have the barrel of a .45 buried in his soft palate. “I am a lot of things, but I am not your sugar. And unless you want to lose this hand that surely substitutes for a woman in your life, I suggest you keep it to yourself.”

  “Hey, I was just being friendly, and—”

  She twists it harder, and his glassy eyes scrunch up in pain. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “Okay! I’m sorry.”

  “You’re damn right you are,” she says. “You wanna be friendly, try leaving a decent tip, you cheap bastard.” She drops the hand like a piece of rotten garbage and ignores the muttered “fuckin’ bitch” from behind her.

  Mike gives her a pained look as she walks up to the bar. “You need to be nice. I don’t want trouble here.”

  “I am being nice.”

  “Benny’s harmless,” Mike says. “Just ignore him.”

  “Then you let him grab your ass every time you walk by,” Charity says. “And trust me, when I quit being nice, you’ll be the first to know. You haven’t had the pleasure of seeing me on bad behavior.”

  Mike sighs and shakes his head. She knows—and hates—exactly what he’s thinking: Just like her mama. “Your friend’s over there.” He starts filling a pitcher of beer and tips his head toward the far corner of the bar.

  A mountain of a man sits on the corner stool, watching an old Packers game on ESPN Classic on one of the wall-mounted TVs. A few years ago, folks would have said he’s a big boy but he ain’t fat, but times, they have a-changed.

  Randall Haynes is still a bear of a man, but since his third divorce, he’s apparently been self-medicating his sorrows with Krispy Kremes and beer. A green flannel shirt that could double as a tent for a Girl Scout troop strains over his broad back, suspiciously lumpy over the holster in his waistband.

  She takes a deep breath. Even without her present state of stranded in Bumfuck, Nowhere, it makes her nervous every time she runs into another hunter. Until six months ago, Charity and her sister, Patience, had been inseparable. But ten years of resentment over their mother Harmony’s murderous turn finally boiled over. Even after seeing the mangled bodies of their family with her own eyes, Patience still can’t accept their mother would really do what she’d done. Some part of her has always blamed Charity for the fact that they are, for all practical purposes, orphans.

  If they hadn’t been together non-stop for ten years, they might have been able to ignore the tension. But Patience can’t resist picking at it, like a scabbed-over wound, and it finally festered and exploded in a screaming match that belonged on Jerry Springer. Cue Patience taking off in the middle of the night with half the guns and half their money. She left Charity the truck and the sinking feeling that her life was turning into a country song.

  Now every time she runs into someone she knows, it goes one of two ways. Either they want to know where Patience is, or they’ve already heard her sister’s version of the story from their brother’s cousin’s buddy, and they want to know if it’s true.

  Randall could go either way. They’ve known him a long time, but Patience ironically never had too much patience with him. Charity doesn’t care much what people think of her, but there’s a fine balance. She can live with “bitch” and “crazy.” Hell, depending on the source, those are high compliments.

  But if people think she’s going to abandon them when the shit hits the fan, then she’s got a problem. Charity Pierson leaves no one behind, despite what Patience has been telling some folks. After what happened with Brock, she’s not looking for a permanent partner. But if she ever gets ass-deep in something she can’t handle alone, she needs to know her reputation is still decent enough that someone would come to her aid.

  She steels herself, then sneaks up behind Randall and puts one hand on the back of his thick neck as she purrs into his ear. “Is that a .38 in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

  “Can’t it be both?” Randall grins as he twists on his stool to see her. The old wood creaks ominously under his bulk. “Cherry fuckin’ Pie.” He sticks out one thick slab of an arm and claps her on the back in a rough hug. He reeks of beer and Mike’s onion rings, although it’s strangely comforting. Underneath is a hint of gun oil and aftershave. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Temporary detour,” she says, extricating herself from his beefy hug. “You?”

  “My boy Elijah Tanner and his crew rolled through here a few days ago and said they thought they saw you. Thought I’d come and say hello.”

  She snorts a laugh and skirts around the edge of the bar. Without speaking, she takes his empty glass and fills it with Yuengling from the tap, watching the foam intently. She’s almost got the hang of this.

  “I was drinking Bud Light,” he says.

  “Well, I won’t hold that against you,” she replies, stopping right before the foam pours over the side. “Try that. It’s on me.”

  He nods appreciatively and takes a long drink from it. Watching him closely, she rests her elbows on the bar and leans toward him. He’s not shy about getting a good eyeful of her cleavage while he drinks. Some things never change. “So how’s life, Cherry?”

  “Randall Haynes, don’t you dare insult me.”

  “I’d never,” he drawls. “Am I not being genteel enough for someone of your station?”

  “We both know you didn’t drive your ass all the way down here from Kentucky just to say hello. You’ve got my number. What do you really want?”

  “I’ve been keepin’ real busy hunting in Lexington. They got a serious problem with ghouls up there. I’m up to my nutsack in the damn things. They’re popping up as fast as I can carve stakes to put in their hearts. Damnedest thing.”

  What the hell is he really doing here? He hasn’t brought Patience
up yet, and he’s mostly avoided the topic of how the hell Charity ended up slinging beer in a South Carolina shithole.

  Well, if he’s not bringing it up, she definitely isn’t. “You getting the stakes blessed properly?”

  He chuckles and takes another long drink from his beer. “Course I am,” he says. “I may be slow, but I ain’t stupid. Got a Baptist preacher up there who’ll bless a whole cord of wood for fifty bucks a pop.”

  She shakes her head. “If it’s that serious, you gotta go Catholic. Maybe it’s the celibacy thing, but they swing a lot more mojo than the Protestants.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Scouts’ honor,” Charity says, holding up a mock salute. “I guess God takes you more seriously when you forgo the pleasures of the flesh.”

  “Duly noted. Anything else?”

  “You checked the graveyards? They’ve probably got someone out there buried with something nasty. Happens all the time. Lots of Civil War action up around Lexington, too.”

  “Well, I would,” Randall says, “But I don’t know a curse from my asshole. Thought maybe you could come on the road with me and check it out. Seeing as you and Patience—”

  And there it is. “I’m gonna save you the trouble of finishing that sentence,” she says. “I don’t need a partner.”

  This is turning into déjà vu. Right after Patience ditched her, Charity drove out to Chattanooga as a favor to an old friend. She met up with Brock McDonnell there to clean out a house completely overrun with poltergeists. Like her, he was on his own, and found himself a little over his head. At first glance, he seemed okay. Sure, his brain hadn’t developed as fast as his biceps, but he could handle a gun and didn’t flinch when a poltergeist flung a three-hundred-pound antique armoire at him. The one-time deal turned into a partnership with excellent fringe benefits, and things were great for a few months, right up until she realized her hard-won cash was disappearing at an alarming rate. Turned out Brock had the penchant but not the talent for back-room poker games. She was about to call him on it when he disappeared in the middle of the night with the remainder of her cash.

  When she woke up to find the empty envelope—because the bastard left her the empty fucking envelope like a slap in the face—she heard Patience’s voice as clear as day in her head. Don’t trust anyone, Charity Lee. No matter how pretty they smile, most people are just waiting for you to give them a glimpse of your throat so they can rip it out.

  She’d have argued with Patience until the morning she woke up to that crumpled white envelope. Thank God she had twenty bucks shoved in the pocket of her jacket, and she had the wisdom not to spend it all on ammo to put in Brock’s lying ass. Since then, she’s been a lone wolf limping her way through life, and Randall isn’t about to change that.

  Randall raises one bushy eyebrow and peers at her over the edge of his beer glass. His big nose is crooked, a break that was set badly and stayed that way. “Really? ‘Cause it looks to me like you’re cooped up here serving beer to hunters instead of being one.”

  “Just a hiccup,” she says. “Besides, you’re apparently one to talk. Where’s Rusty?”

  Randall sighs. “His wife said it was her or the job.”

  “And he chose her?” As long as she’d known him, Randall’s cousin, Rusty, had considered hunting to be one long frat party, complete with all the beer and frisky women he could handle. Despite looking like Danny DeVito’s ginger cousin, he has some gnarly scars and a strange charm that somehow gets him laid as often as he wants. The pale line around his ring finger has never stood in his way.

  Randall lets out a derisive snort. “I’ll be surprised if they make it a year. She’s never had him home more than a week at a time, and he ain’t worked a real job in fifteen years. He’s miserable.” He shrugs. “Just sayin’. You’re a decent hunter, and—”

  “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Haynes,” she says. “I’m a fantastic hunter. I know you remember who bailed your fat ass out in Daytona. You and your dipshit cousin both.”

  “Undead bikers,” Randall says with a shudder. “Damnedest thing. Just goes to prove that you ought to be out there, not in here. You can ride with me, and I’ll—”

  “Save it. Not interested.”

  She desperately hopes it doesn’t show, but there’s a fleeting moment where she considers swallowing that big fat lump of pride and saying yes. She’s been all alone for close to two months, and it sucks. Randall’s not so bad.

  No.

  Randall might seem like a stand-up guy on his scruffy surface, but he’s probably got a thing for horse racing or hookers, and she’s not going down that road again.

  His mouth quirks up in a smile. “Well, the offer still stands. You’ve got my number. Give me a call when you get tired of this bullshit.” He drains the beer, slaps a twenty down, and eases off the straining stool. “Keep the change. Looks like you can use it.”

  4. THRICE DENIED

  “SORRY, HON, COULDN’T PATCH IT. You’re looking at a new tire for sure, and your back two are about bald. Looks like they’ve seen some serious mileage. You really ought to get the whole lot replaced,” the mechanic says. “I can get you a decent deal, replace all four with a warranty for about nine hundred.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  He coughs. “Uh, no ma’am, I don’t believe I am. You want me to go ahead and do it?”

  “Not unless I can pay you in smiles and bar napkins,” Charity says. “How about just one tire?”

  “It’d still run you about four hundred with the windshield,” he says apologetically. “No package discount that way.”

  She clenches her jaw and grinds the heel of her hand against her left eye until jagged lightning arcs across the blackness. “Can you keep it at your shop until I call you back?”

  “Sure thing,” he says. “Call me back whenever you’re ready. I can get the tires from Columbia in two days. Won’t take no time at all to replace them.”

  She slams down Mike’s phone. With the windshield, that’s over a thousand bucks in repairs to the truck. She’s not sure if she wants to cry or kill something. Probably both. There’s no way she’s going to make it much longer cooped up here with Mike. She hasn’t slept in days. After five days, she’s up to about three-fifty in cash, which is going to get her jack shit.

  How did Patience do this for all those years? Charity could rustle up a bit of petty cash here and there, but somehow her sister always found the money when they needed it. She kept gas in the truck and ammo in their guns. And she never seemed stressed about it. Even on a good day, Charity lies awake at night wondering how the hell she’s going to get through the next week.

  Fine. She’s been on her best, countdown-to-Christmas, number-one-on-the-nice-list behavior. Mike said be nice, and she’s plastered on the fake smile and said her pleases and thank yous for five days. But nice is overrated. If she’s stuck here much longer, she’s going to burn this place to the ground. Her soul is paved with blacktop, and she needs to breathe the night air, tasting the hot electric of adrenaline. Randall was right about that. She belongs out there.

  Mike’s office is a man cave decorated in old beer promo posters and a handful of framed Sports Illustrated covers. He’s got his own bathroom with a shaggy blue toilet cover and a stack of Men’s Health magazines. She ducks in and examines herself in the mirror. With a contortionist twist, she adjusts her bra until there’s an impressive display of cleavage peeking out from the low-cut top. Another dab of cherry-red lip gloss.

  Game time.

  The bar is packed for college game day, and the USC game is playing on all of the big screens. Mike fills pitchers and buckets of beers as fast as he can. He’s got extra help for the night, a scrawny kid named Nance, whose mother clearly wanted a life of abject misery for her offspring.

  She sidles up to the bar, where Mike’s got a fresh pitcher poured and a bucket of longnecks on ice. Sweat pools in dark crescents under his arms.

  “Where you been? Never
mind. I need to send Nance to the store for ketchup. You take the pitcher to Eddie and Carl over there at twenty-three, bucket to the guys at the dartboard,” he says breathlessly, turning away without waiting for her response. He slings a damp towel over his shoulder and approaches the redhead at the corner of the bar. She looks way too polished and proper to be somewhere like Mike’s. “What can I get for you, sweetheart?”

  Charity can’t hear her order, but it’s probably a diet, sugar-free, gluten-free Cosmopolitan or something equally prissy. She plops the plastic pitcher onto a tray, tucks the bucket of beer under her arm, and pushes into the crowd.

  As she works through the room, she’s doing reconnaissance. Normally she’d hang near the bar, but she doesn’t want Mike to catch wind of her game. Far as he knows, she’s still being nice. And what Mike doesn’t know can’t hurt him.

  There’s a cluster of high top tables in the center of the bar, each crowded with men wearing red and white. The crowd ripples constantly as people move around, squeezing together and bumping each other to make room. It’s loud and chaotic. Perfect storm.

  She bumps a few hips on her way to Eddie’s corner table. No one even looks at her. She leaves the fresh pitcher with Eddie and delivers the bucket to the dartboard. She stands and scans the crowd. The high top near the jukebox catches her eye. They’ve piled up a stack of shot glasses, two pitchers, and a precarious tower of empty pint glasses on their table. They’re hooting at the TV, eyes turned up and completely oblivious to anything but Gamecock football.

  Bingo.

  Charity slinks up to the crowded table and leans in. She doesn’t miss it when half the guys look away from the game and stare unapologetically at her rack. This is what stage magicians call misdirection. Stare at the pretty boobies and pay no attention to my hands. You’re feeling very sleepy. “How we doing, gentlemen? Can I get you anything?”

  “You on the menu?” one of them asks with a leer. He has on a red USC ballcap that reads COCKS across the front.

  Not if we were the last man and woman on earth, she thinks. Instead she lets out a fake laugh and says, “Oh, stop it.”