Chapter 12: Anchors aweigh

Ted's point of view

I grabbed Lisa and ran toward the parked cars even though I didn't think we would make it. The Pinto accelerated hard, the eyes of her brother slitted above a snarl. I felt an instinctive need to close my eyes when he slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt just a few feet from us. The rough idle of the car didn't last long as it sputtered into silence.

We stopped running and panted as we stared at the little bastard. Arthur sneered at us as the car door opened with a sharp metallic groan. He was wearing what his car suggested he could afford; ratty jeans, a torn western shirt and sneakers I would have thrown away years ago. A day's growth of stubble finished off his lean face. I didn't really think he looked much like Lisa or her mother.

"Sorry about that," Arthur said in a completely insincere tone. "The accelerator stuck when I tried to pull up and talk with you, Sissy."

He might as well have just waved a red flag in front of Lisa. If steam had started pouring out of her ears while her head started spinning, I wouldn't have been a bit surprised.

"Goddammit, Arthur!" she shouted as she started toward him, her hands balling tightly into fists. She struggled with me when I wrapped my arms around her to hold her back. It was like a rerun of the confrontation that she had gone through with Price at my house. I made a mental note to myself that she did have a sharp temper when riled.

"Let go of me, Ted," Lisa finally said in a low voice. Her tone brooked no argument, so I let her go. She stood her ground and glared at her brother. "I'm done with this childish bullshit, Arthur. Is it time for me to get a restraining order to keep you from being an ass to me and bothering the staff up here? You should know better than to think they have mother's stuff here. They certainly have no keys for you!"

Arthur laughed mockingly back at Lisa. "Like some piece of paper from an illegitimate government will keep me from going where I want? Please, save it for the poor saps who have been duped by this so-called democracy. I'll go where I want, talk with whom I please, and I will have what is mine!"

Lisa rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Don't roll out that damned separatist crap for me again. If you want to believe it, that's fine. Just leave it at home in whatever fleabag rat trap you're sleeping in this week. What are you being denied this time?" she asked, her foot tapping impatiently.

Arthur leaned forward, the sneer never slipping from his face. "I want my share of mother's estate."

Lisa laughed in Arthur's face. "Fat chance of that!" Arthur turned red but Lisa rolled right over whatever he was going to say. "Let me lay out the facts for you, genius. Mother isn't dead! I know that comes as a shock to you, but she's right in there. That building you were in a while back. Remember it?"

"Save your lawyer crap, Sissy. She is never going to wake up. Mother is as dead as if she were in the ground. All she is now is a machine that turns food into shit. You should have some mercy on her poor body and let it die."

There was no way in hell I could have caught her this time. Lisa snarled and climbed him like a squirrel. She was all over him like white on rice, beating on him with her fists.

The cretin flinched and then tried to shove her off, but she just popped him in the face.

"Owww!" he cried as he backpedaled.

That gave me the space I needed to grab her again. She struggled hard and snarled at him.

Arthur held out his hand and looked at the blood on it from his nose. "Bitch, I should call the fucking cops on you and your gigolo! This is assault!"

Lisa stopped struggling and laughed at him. "What? The big, bold separatist needs to call on the authorities he says are illegitimate and illegal? Does anyone else see the irony in that? I thought you lived off the land and solved your own problems?"

That struck the mark. Arthur snarled and took a step forward but stopped when I pushed Lisa behind me. "Stay out of this, dickhead. This is between me and my bitch sister!"

I shook my head. "Not anymore. I'm making this my business. Hit the road before I help you hit it my way." I out-weighed the scrawny bastard by thirty pounds or so and none of it was fat. I raised an eyebrow in invitation. "Like your sister, I solve my own problems. You should take a page from her: solve this one yourself and leave."

"Fuck you," he snarled even as he backed away from me. "That bitch of a sister has been living off Mother's money, so why shouldn't I get my fair share? I will get it, one way or another!"

"You idiot!" Lisa shouted back at him. "I live off my own money and all Mother's does is pay for her care."

With the first real menace I had heard yet, he laughed. "You'd like me to believe that, wouldn't you? Well, I have news for you, bitch. I do solve my own problems and you better reconsider before I solve you."

As Arthur got back in the Pinto, the door slammed with a creak, and I pulled Lisa behind some of the parked cars. At first, I didn't think his car would start at all, but it finally caught and he stomped on the gas, only to have it die again. I shook my head and smiled. Arthur slammed his hands against the steering wheel and cranked it laboriously back to life. Then, at long last, he wheezed out of the parking lot and down the road in a cloud of smoke.

"Call this a subtle premonition, but I don't think we're on the invite list to his next clam bake," I said in a sotto voice.

"God!" she shouted and slapped the tailgate of the truck next to us with a solid thump, setting off its alarm. "That asshole has really done it this time! I will swear out a restraining order and toss his skinny ass in jail if he fucks with me again!"

"I don't think he is all there," I pointed out. "He's not going to lay off. He's going to keep pushing your buttons trying to get what he wants. You need to just do it."

"I know," she growled. "It's just hard. He's still my brother."

Sliding my arm around her shoulders, I started walking back toward my car, away from the wailing alarm. She slid her arm around me and sighed.

"Why can't I have Stan for a brother? He's such a nice guy," she groused.

I laughed. "Because, then you'd be my sister, and that just wouldn't do!"

She smiled and shook her head. "You know what I mean. Someone like him. Never mind, I'm stuck with Arthur. I only pray he never breeds." She shuddered under my arm.

When we got to my car and I unlocked it, Lisa noticed something was wrong right away. "Shit! The tape and appointment book are gone!"

We looked all around the inside of the car, just to be sure, but they were gone. The ticket stub from Seawolf Park was between her door and her seat. I looked at the passenger side door and could see a tear in the weather-stripping. I'd been slim jimmied.

I raised an eyebrow. "Should we call the police?"

She laughed without humor. "And tell them what? That someone broke into your car and stole some evidence that we stole from a crime scene? That ought to go over well. Or tell them someone jimmied your car and took nothing before locking it up behind them?"

Shrugging, I nodded. "That does make a certain kind of sense. Well, do you think it was your brother?"

She shook her head. "I doubt it. Why would he want them? Also, he's not that neat. He'd just bash in the window, I think. My bet is that someone else was watching Calvin's house and followed us, somehow."

I shrugged. "If nothing else, it tells us that the information was important. At least they don't have the keys you have. If, of course, we ever figure out where to look for the locks they open."

We climbed in my car, and I pulled out of the parking lot. Lisa sat there looking at the only remaining thing from Calvin's house, the ticket stub, frowning.

"Where now? Back to Houston?" I asked.

"No," she said slowly. "Head to Broadway and then over to fifty-first street. This ticket may be more important than it looks. The keys are labeled S.W.P. and it's possible that means Seawolf Park. I don't know why I didn't make that connection before."

I made the turn onto Broadway. "Because you didn't have time to really look at it with all the other information?"

Lisa nodded. "That's as good a reason as any." She turned in her seat and looked out the back window. "Now I'm paranoid. Let's go past fifty-first and go through the McDonald's drive through. A Big Mac and fries are called for, and maybe we can tell if we are being shadowed." She pulled her cell phone out of her purse. "I promised we would call Hawk if we found anything. It's a little late but I need to clue her in."

As I drove south, I listened in on her half of the conversation.

"Hawk, Lisa. We have some new information."

She nodded.

"I'll make it quick and you can call me back when you are free to talk. We found a tape at Calvin's and his appointment book. Murphy showed up, but we got out without him seeing us. The tape showed the Galveston DA passing cash to someone I don't know."

Lisa looked over at me and took a deep breath.

"Then I got stupid and left them in the car when we stopped to check on my mother. Someone jimmied the car and took them."

She pulled the phone away from her ear and I could hear the elevated buzzing coming from it.

"I know! I was stupid! You can join me in tearing myself up for making such an amateur mistake. My idiot brother was there but I don't think..." She listened to an interruption. "No, he's not that smart. He'd just smash the window. Listen, before you go, we have a ticket stub that was in the appointment book. S.W.P. on the keys could be Seawolf Park."

More buzzing and Lisa shook her head.

"No, I'll be careful and look for tails but we need to get there before someone has a chance to figure out to look there, if they can, from the other evidence. I won't wait, but you can come down when you can, or we'll call after we look around."

She pulled the phone away from her ear again and winced at the volume. Covering the mouthpiece, she smiled wryly at me. "She's not happy that we are not waiting but she only has a minute to talk."

Putting the phone back to her ear, she interrupted Hawk. "Look, you need to go. We'll call if we find anything. Good luck, and be careful." Without waiting for a response, she disconnected and sighed. "She is going to chew me out when she catches up with me."

"Can I watch?" I asked with a grin.

She laughed and slugged my arm. "Silly! That's not what I meant! Men!" Then she leaned over and kissed my neck in a way that sent shivers down my spine.

"If I didn't need to look for people following us, I'd let you watch me chew you out while we drive down the street," she whispered in a sultry voice as she nibbled my ear. "Have you ever had a blowjob while driving?"

I felt myself stiffening. Little Ted sure was all in favor of that idea but she was right. Now was not the time. "No, but you're right. That needs to wait."

Lisa reached down and massaged me through my pants, but nodded. "I promise to make it up to you as soon as a good opportunity presents itself." Reluctantly, she released me and returned her attention to the rear of the car.

I saw the McDonalds up ahead and tried thinking of food to relax my hardness. Deep breaths. By the time we were in the line at the drive through, it was at least a little more comfortable. We both ordered a Big Mac meal. She went for the diet drink to my Dr. Pepper. I parked the car so we could watch traffic as we ate.

She sat turned in her seat and split her attention between me and traffic outside as she ate. Big bites, no dainty nibbles, for this woman. "God, I love their fries! I don't care what is in the grease, they taste like heaven!"

I laughed and nodded my agreement. "That they do. It's a good thing I cook in a lot, or I would weigh a ton just from them."

Lisa waved a finger at me. "Don't you get on my case for eating them, Ted Stansbury! This has been a stressful day! Cut me a little slack, will you?"

Holding up my hands in surrender, I smiled. "I would never criticize. I love your curves."

Then I looked out and around. Still nothing or no one that looked like they were following us.

"Lisa, did you enjoy this morning?" I asked her while sipping my drink.

She nodded. "I did. I hadn't ever been attracted to a woman like I have been to Hawk. Not love, just physical attraction and curiosity. I used to think most women were bi-curious at some point in their lives. Now, I don't know if that's true or just me."

She looked at me and licked the salty fry taste off her lips. That made me hard again in an instant.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but as great as you are at oral sex, she was... She ate me better than I have ever imagined. She knew right where to go and what to do."

I shook my head and smiled. "That's only to be expected, I guess. She knows what feels good. I'll talk with her and let her give me some pointers the next time we are both between your legs."

Lisa shivered in reaction and I could see her nipples poking out clearly. "God, that sounds like heaven. I enjoyed going down on her, but it was nothing like sucking your cock, swallowing you into my throat, feeling your come coating my tongue. That's the kind of oral sex I love."

Then she smiled wickedly. "But enough about me. Did you enjoy Hawk's first blowjob? Sliding your tongue into her wet pussy? Going where no man has ever gone before?"

I laughed and did my best William Shatner imitation. "You're making me feel like Captain Kirk. My... God... Spock... This woman is so... Sexy! We'll see if I go where no man has gone before next time, if she's decided to take the plunge. Actually, I enjoyed it but I don't have the same emotional connection with her as I do with you. Our connection makes sex with you deeper, tremendous. With Hawk, it's just having fun. I wouldn't do it without you there because you make it the experience I want."

Lisa set her food down and pulled me into a hug, kissing me. "That is so sweet! I..." She clamped her mouth shut and clapped a hand over it. "I almost said it!" she said through her fingers.

I raised my eyebrows. "Almost said what? Go ahead, I won't get upset."

She lowered her hand. "I almost said I love you. I don't really know if it's true, yet, but I feel like it's going that way."

Kissing her softly, I nodded. "I feel the same way. I don't want to jinx it by saying that too early, but I feel the same way. I won't get upset if you do or don't say it. Deal?"

Lisa kissed me again. "Deal."

When she pulled back to continue eating, I decided we'd better start driving, or I'd take her right here in the parking lot. I ate as I drove, turning on fifty-first and driving until I crossed the bridge to Pelican Island.