Anywhere but Here Page 3

  “Lord, honey, what are you doing out on a day like this?” the woman asked.

  “Hi,” Etta said. “I’m looking for the owner. I’m here about the job.”

  The redhead’s smile grew wider. “Is that right?”

  Etta didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she filled her lungs in search of self-assurance.

  “Well, come on into my office.”

  The woman walked around the end of the bar and turned back to the man that had been watching her. “Deegan, watch the bar for me, will you?”

  Deegan answered with one nod.

  The redhead patted Etta on the arm and said, “Follow me, hon.”

  They walked through the bar. The table of card players stopped their banter and watched. The brooding man and seductive charmer paid no attention. The billiard balls continued to clack.

  Tallulah “Tully” Ryan had sat across from her at a desk cluttered with receipts, illegible notes, a Cosmopolitan magazine, three dirty coffee mugs, and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts stained with the same hot pink lipstick that the woman wore.

  “What’s your name, hon?”

  “It’s, uh, Stella. Stella Brown.”

  When she was asked about her experience, Etta realized she couldn’t tell Tully where she was from or the real names of the places she’d worked.

  “I’ve worked all over. I sort of travel around,” she said.

  Tully raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Does that mean I can’t depend on you to stick around?”

  “No,” Etta said quickly. “No, I’m here for a while. I’ve paid three months ahead on my rent. So… I’m here. I’m dependable.”

  “Uh huh.” Tully lit a cigarette and leaned back, her abundant cleavage pouring out of the top of the too-tight, too-low lime green sweater.

  No words were exchanged for what seemed like a long time when, finally, Tully asked, “How do you make a Rusty Nail?”

  “Two to one, scotch and Drambuie,” Etta responded without thinking.

  Tully nodded. “How about a Singapore Sling?”

  “Gin, Benedictine, cherry brandy, lime…”

  Tully held up her hand, smiling. “Alright, alright… you know how to make drinks. Don’t worry, Stella Brown, you aren’t gonna get orders for those here. My customers like their whiskey straight, their beer cold and their women hot. Can you handle that?”

  Etta opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “I uh, I …

  Tully laughed. “Don’t worry, hon, you don’t have to be hot, just dependable. When can you start?”

  “Right now?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “No, I mean… I mean I can start whenever you want.” She was stumbling over her words.

  “Okay, how about Thursday? I can give you four shifts a week. I don’t open until two in the afternoon most days. You’ll work two to close. Sometimes that’s a long shift… sometimes not. Depends on the fishing season mostly. My guys and gals mostly work the catch. If they gotta be out on the water by three or four in the morning, they’ll get their snootful and be outta here by nine or so. If they don’t go out, when it’s stormin’ like now, they’ll be here till midnight or two. Can you handle that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Don’t call me ma’am. You’re too old and I’m too young for you to call me ma’am. Don’t call me Tallulah either, unless you wanna be lookin’ for another job.”

  “Yes, m… yes, Tully.” Etta smiled, and her heart was beating fast with excitement.

  “Okay. I’ll need your driver’s license and social.” Tully reached across the desk.

  Etta’s face dropped—the excitement gone.

  “I uh, I don’t have it. I mean… I lost it.”

  Tully caught the look on her new employee’s face. She leaned back again and studied her new employee’s flushed expression. Then she nodded, put her cigarette in the ashtray and folded her hands in front of her.

  “I don’t know what you’re runnin’ from hon, and I’m not going to ask. You don’t wanna give me your ID. I get that. I don’t want no trouble here. I can’t afford it. But…” she thought for a moment. “So, how about I pay you under the table for now? Push comes to shove and we’ll have to work out something else. How’s that?”

  Later that night, Etta and Salty sat on the sofa, him with a bully stick and her with two fingers of whiskey, staring into the fireplace.

  “I got a job, Salty. You’re going to be staying by yourself sometimes.”

  The dog stopped his gnawing on the treat and, with the bully stick resting between his big hairy paws, he looked up at her as if he knew what she was saying.

  She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, listening to Christine McVie sing “Little Lies” through static on the radio.

  Chapter 5

  On Thursday, Etta turned on the noon news, as usual, hoping the interest in the news of her disappearance had waned. For the first time in two weeks, she felt relieved when they didn’t lead with the story. She left the TV to listen while she went into the bedroom to get ready for her first day of work at Tully’s Pub.

  She had visited a local thrift store and bought a pair of black jeans and three tops that were a little more suited for work than the bulky sweatshirts and baggy pants that she’d been wearing. She put the Doc Martens in the back of the closet and brought out a pair of black canvas deck shoes that she’d found at a discount store downtown.

  Her cash was getting dangerously low. She’d had to get the utilities changed into her name and had paid a fifty-dollar deposit to the gas and electric company as well as the water company because she couldn’t use any references.

  She had also bought a pet door, which cost her nearly sixty dollars because of Salty’s size. By determination alone she had muddled through installing it in the kitchen door. It took her a couple of hours to make a hole big enough with the keyhole saw she’d found in a toolbox in the bedroom closet. It was probably not done right, but at least it was done.

  She dressed in the jeans and a white pullover sweater, put on the new shoes and looked in the mirror while she put in the contacts. She could see a tiny bit of blond appearing at the base of her dyed black hair, but she didn’t think it would be noticeable to anyone else. She figured she could probably let it go another week before she’d have to touch it up. She also needed to get a professional haircut. The choppy ends were sticking out. She dampened her hands and tousled the hair, hoping it looked like an on-purpose style rather than bedhead. She put on the black-framed glasses that seemed to cover a third of her face. Gliding on the brick red lipstick, she felt like her lips were all one would notice.

  That’s okay, she reminded herself. They won’t be looking at the rest of my face.

  As she poured the last of Salty’s food in his bowl and filled his water, she was hoping she could make enough tips to fill up her gas tank and buy more dog food.

  “I’ll leave the TV on for you, Salty. You can watch Days of Our Lives and Kelly Clarkson. You love Kelly. You be a good boy and don’t run off. That doggie door is just so you don’t have to cross your legs until I get back. I don’t know what time that will be.”

  She patted the dog on the head and took one final glance in the mirror by the back door. No matter how much she told herself she looked nothing like Etta Summers, the two little lines on each side of her mouth and the tiny mole at the inside corner of her left eyebrow were definitely and uniquely Etta.

  The storm had stopped, and it was sunny and warmer, so there were few customers at Tullys when she got there. Most of them were just now coming back into harbor, and it would be an hour or more before they’d begin drifting in. A couple of elderly men sat at the end of the bar playing liars dice, jarring their glasses every time their cups hit the bar. A thin, wiry woman was standing at the juke box browsing the selections, but she didn’t play anything. She turned around and walked back to the bar and sat down where an empty
rocks glass was setting next to a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. She lifted the empty glass to her lips and looked up and down the bar. She slid off the barstool and went to the end where the old guys were playing dice.

  “Buy me a drink, Jack?” she asked, leaning into the man.

  He nudged her away and scowled. “Go on, Mary. I ain’t buyin’ you shit.”

  “How about you, Billy?”

  “Git goin’, Mary.”

  She shrugged, obviously used to being brushed off, and walked back to her barstool.

  Etta didn’t see Tully but heard the familiar clacking of billiard balls in the back. She followed the sound and peeked through an open door where she saw Tully bending over the pool table. Her long hot pink nails rested on the rail with the pool stick placed exactly between her thumb and index finger. Stella didn’t say anything but watched as Tully expertly hit the cue ball and pocketed all three remaining striped balls on the table.

  “Wow,” Etta said, walking into the room. “You do that often?”

  “Only when I have to, hon.”

  Tully put her pool stick back into a hot pink case and told her new bartender to follow her. She showed her around, asked if she knew how to run the register, took her into the storeroom and then into the office. She showed her where to find the code to the safe and handed her an instruction sheet on opening and closing routines.

  “I’m afraid it’s a one woman show on most Thursdays and Sundays. Now that you’re here, I’m going to try and take those nights off. I’m getting too old to work seven nights a week. We’ll be here together on Fridays and Saturdays, and tonight, of course. They’ve been out all day trying to make up for the last three days of the storm, so they’ll be thirsty. We’ll be busy later.”

  They went out to the bar and Stella followed her to the end where the two elderly men were still playing liars dice. Each of them had a pile of dollar bills in front of them.

  “Who’s winning, boys?” Tully asked.

  “The lying sonovabitch is cheatin’ again,” the younger of the two grumbled.

  The older one laughed, revealing a mouth only half full of teeth. He also had only one good eye. The blind eye had no iris at all and looked as white as the cue ball that Tully had swept the table with.

  “Stella, this is Bill. That lying sonovabitch is one-eyed Jack.”

  Jack put his hand out, and Etta shook it. It looked and felt like worn leather. Bill lifted his draft and said, “Here’s to ya, Stella.”

  “Hi. Nice to meet both of you,” she said.

  Tully said, “I wouldn’t make that claim yet. You don’t know them well enough.”

  “I’m going back to get a case of Bud. Why don’t you pour Crazy Mary there another shot of well gin. She takes it straight up, no ice in a rocks glass. Mary, you hear that? One on the house and then you’re out of here.”

  Mary perked up and said, “Thanks, Tully.”

  “I’m tired of this game,” one-eyed Jack said. “Poker dice. Best two outta three takes all.”

  Tully left to go to the storeroom and Stella poured Mary another drink. As she set the glass on a clean napkin, she heard a familiar voice on the television. She turned around quickly. The two old men weren’t paying attention to the TV. She went to the other end of the bar where the television was and watched as her twin sister, Ella, stood in front of a podium and microphone. Ella’s husband, David, stood beside her, as always, lovingly supporting her.

  “Please,” Ella pleaded, “if anyone has seen my sister, please get in touch with the police. Etta, if you’re out there, please call me. I understand if you’ve just decided to leave Mike. And Mike Summers, if you’ve hurt my sister, you will pay. Believe me, you will pay.”

  Ella began to cry and turned to her husband. He put his arms around her as the camera broke away.

  “Wow, you kinda look like that woman.”

  “What?” Startled, Etta turned around.

  The woman Tully had called Crazy Mary was watching the television and was sipping on her gin.

  “Yeah. If you had long blond hair and didn’t wear glasses, you’d look just like her,” Mary said squinting her eyes at Etta.

  Just then, two dice cups hit the bar at the same time, and Etta jumped. As the younger one, Bill, lifted his cup, he laughed and yelled, “Woo hoo! I got ya, you cheatin’ old fart. Lookie there. Three sixes.”

  Jack slowly lifted his cup and chuckled. “Full boat you little jackass.”

  He raked the stack of Bill’s money with his leathery hand and said, “Come to papa.”

  Bill threw up his hands and then drank the rest of his beer. “Now that you got all my dough, you gotta buy me another beer.”

  Jack laughed again and told Etta, “Set ‘im up, little lady. I’ll have another one, too.”

  Feeling like a vacuum, she pulled two more drafts, and with shaky hands she set them in front of the old guys.

  Ella thinks Mike’s done something to me, she thought and wondered how she could use that to her advantage.

  She took a cocktail napkin and dabbed the sweat that had appeared on her face. Crazy Mary was watching her the whole time.

  Chapter 6

  She stared at her phone, afraid to pick it up, afraid that she’d cave and call her sister. Even though it had been a long time since she and Ella were close, it wasn’t Ella’s fault. She’d been right. She hadn’t liked Mike from the moment she and David had come to meet him before the wedding. Ella had tried to talk her out of marrying him, said there was something not quite right about him and that she didn’t trust him. But Etta had been so much in love with Mike that she couldn’t see him as anything but perfect, couldn’t listen to him being criticized. It tore a gaping hole in the already strained relationship between the twins.

  She had always felt inferior to her sister. Ella was outgoing and smart. Everything always seemed to come so easy for her… school, marriage, children, career.

  She’s been better at everything all our lives, she thought. I bet she’ll love saying ‘I told you so.’

  But Etta knew it was her own lack of self-confidence that had driven a wedge between her and her sister. She even thought that perhaps she’d subconsciously chosen her phony name out of jealousy.

  “Stella? Ella? Jeez, you’re pathetic,” she said to herself.

  No, she wasn’t going to call Ella, but she had to do something soon before someone else got hurt. Even as she thought that, she knew that people were being hurt every day. She sat at the big table with the manila folder in front of her. She opened it up to the photograph of the dead woman.

  “That’s how they scare them. It’s how they get them to do what they do.”

  She had found the photos in Mike’s desk not long after he had beat her the first time. He caught her eavesdropping on one of his telephone calls. He had been talking to someone about a shipment arriving from Mexico. A shipment… like it was a cargo of produce. At first, she thought perhaps he was talking about drugs. She confronted him and he became enraged. That’s when he beat her. He told her she’d keep her mouth shut or he would shut it for her permanently. She knew he had meant it.

  The young woman in the photo was lying face down, naked, with her hands and feet tied together in back of her and a bullet through her head. Mike had not been talking about drugs. When she saw the photo, she knew. There was a piece of bloodstained paper lying next to her that read in large print, “Martina tried to escape.” The photograph under that one was of an old man sitting in a recliner. He looked like he was just sitting there asleep, as natural as could be, except for the bullet hole in his forehead and the sign in his lap that read, “This was Martina’s father. Too bad.” Mike was involved in human trafficking, and these photos were used to scare the victims.

  She had been terrified, but she knew she had to do something. She couldn’t turn a blind eye to what he was doing. She knew he had accomplices, and she also knew some of them were high up in city government. She suspected the police chief. She w
asn’t sure about the mayor. She didn’t know who to trust. That’s why she had to get away, to find help. All she had to do was find someone she could trust—someone who could help her and help those poor women.

  It was time to go to work. She had survived the busiest nights at Tully’s, Friday and Saturday, and she’d made good tips. When she mentioned to Tully that she had a dog, her boss told her she could bring Salty to work with her. Tully was familiar with Salty. Hank had been one of her best customers.

  “After old Hank died, Salty disappeared. My son searched all over for that mangy mutt. I guess he went on an adventure. He must have known when you showed up that you were an easy touch,” Tully had said.

  Etta had really enjoyed working with Tully. She couldn’t believe when the woman said she was sixty-four. Her makeup, though heavy, was applied perfectly, and her hair was so full and well-styled, Etta suspected, because Tully wore wigs. She told Etta she’d been a beautician and had owned a couple of salons before she and her husband divorced. He was the original owner of the pub. Tully said she got the pub in the divorce settlement.

  Etta closed the folder and put it in her dresser drawer. Then she turned off the television, which she had begun keeping tuned to the local news station, and then clipped the leash on Salty’s collar.

  “You get to come with me, tonight, Salty. You have to behave yourself.”

  She locked the doors and opened the back of the Subaru for Salty to jump in.

  It was Sunday, and she’d be working by herself. She felt better taking Salty along with her. When she got to the pub, Crazy Mary was waiting at the door. Tully said that Mary got about a hundred dollars a month by donating plasma to a private company. She could always tell when Mary had donated because she was a daily customer for about a week afterwards. The rest of the month, Tully said to watch Mary and not let her bother the customers because she was notorious for begging drinks.

  “I used to feel guilty about taking the old woman’s money, but hell, if she doesn’t get her booze here, she’ll get it somewhere else. I kind of feel sorry for her,” Tully said, “but I don’t want her buggin’ my customers.”