Anywhere but Here Read online

  Mary must have been on her last few dollars because she stayed for one drink, and when no one else came in, she left.

  Etta turned on the television and quickly turned the channel to the news. She watched for a moment and realized it was getting really cold in the bar. She lit the wood burning stove and Salty planted himself right in front of it for a nap. She went to the storeroom to get a case of beer, and when she came out there was a man bent down by Salty, scratching his ears.

  “Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

  When the man turned around, she saw that it was the sheriff that she’d seen the week before at the park.

  “Oh, hi,” she said, ducking her head and walking over to turn off the television. The nervous feeling in her stomach returned. She didn’t need her sister or her own picture to pop up on the screen in front of a cop.

  Dan Baker was not dressed in his uniform. He wore a pair of jeans with a red plaid flannel shirt. He was obviously off duty. He stood up and walked to the bar and sat down.

  “Stella, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Stella?”

  “Oh, yes, Stella. Can I get you something?”

  “I actually came by to see my mom, but I’ll take a Knob.”

  She turned away and took the Knob Creek from the back bar.

  “Straight?” she asked.

  “One cube of ice,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrow, the one with the mole next to it, and smiled. “Okay.”

  She put one cube of ice in a rocks glass and poured the shot then set it in front of him.

  “That’s eight.”

  “Hmm? Oh, yeah,” he said, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet. “My mom taught you well.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Tully.”

  Surprised, she said, “Tully’s your mom? How old are you?”

  He laughed. “I’ll be forty-nine my next birthday. Actually, Tully’s my stepmom.”

  “I guess I could be his birth mom, if I’d started young. Actually, I got Danny in the divorce settlement, too.”

  Etta turned around to see Tully coming into the pub.

  “So, I see you’ve met my new bartender.” She walked up to Dan, and he bent down and kissed her cheek.

  “Yeah, we actually met at the park last week when she was walking old Salt,” Dan said. “Mom, you wanted me to come by and give you a hand in the storeroom?”

  “Yes, hon, I need you to put up a couple of shelves for me. Stella, you got this?”

  Etta nodded. “Yeah, well, so far the only customer was Mary.”

  “Poor old Crazy Mary,” Dan said. “She still giving blood for drinks?”

  Tully laughed her throaty deep laugh and patted him on the back. “We do what we must, son.” They went into the storeroom, and for the next few hours she heard hammering and cussing as Dan put up shelves for his mom.

  The shift was slow. There were only a few of the regulars in, and a tourist couple had wandered in after having dinner at Trident. All evening, she watched as Dan Baker walked out of the storeroom to talk to his mom in the office and then go back into the storeroom mumbling to himself. Twice he came to the bar for another shot of whiskey and once for a glass of water. After the last customers had gone, Tully came out of the office and said she was going home.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and close up, Stella. Hand me the till and I’ll lock it up,” Tully said.

  Etta settled the register and started counting the till.

  “Don’t worry about that, hon. Just give me the till and the tape. I’ll square it up tomorrow.”

  She did what she was told. She closed the vent on the stove and turned off the lights in the pool room. As she was coming out, she ran into Dan.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “No, my fault,” he said brushing his hands together. “Mom,” he called out. “Your damned shelves are up.”

  Tully came out with her coat on and said, “Now, take this poor girl for a drink at the Wharf. She could use a drink, couldn’t you hon?”

  “Mom, please!”

  Tully laughed. “Lock up, Stella, and let my son show you a good time. You look like you could use a good time.”

  Blushing, she watched Tully leave and went to get her coat from a hook by the front door.

  “Don’t mind my mom. Her heart is in the right place,” Dan said.

  Etta smiled and called Salty from his place in front of the stove. The dog got up, yawned and sauntered over.

  “So, how about it?”

  She opened the door with the keys in her hand. “How about what?”

  Dan stepped outside and turned around to her. “How about a drink? I think you’ve earned it working for Mom.”

  She smiled. A drink out in the company of someone who appeared to be decent sounded great. Then she remembered how she thought Mike was decent.

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I have Salty here. But thanks.”

  Dan nodded. “Sure. Maybe another time.”

  “Yeah.”

  She turned and walked to her car, wondering if she’d ever be able to trust someone again.

  Chapter 7

  For the past few months, Etta’s entire focus had been on getting away from Mike Summers. She was sure if she’d stayed, he would have killed her. He’d already hurt her on many occasions. She knew if she could get away, she’d figure out some way to put a stop to what he was doing. So now she had gotten away. It was time to put another plan together. She didn’t even know where to start.

  On Monday, her day off, she spent several hours online trying to learn about trafficking—who was vulnerable, what the signs were, how it could be stopped. There was a lot about the victims but very little about the perpetrators and how to catch them. She had always thought it was just young girls that were the victims of this crime. She found out the victims come in every age, from every background and country. She found out the victims were men, women, children… entire families sometimes. She also found out people were trafficked for many reasons. It wasn’t always prostitution or sexual exploitation. Sometimes it was for forced labor or servitude. They were people who worked on farms, in fields, as domestic help. They were from other countries and from next door—from poverty-stricken areas and affluent ones alike. Sadly, she realized that sometimes it was happening in your own home.

  She began going over every detail of her two years with Mike. She remembered that the turnover in his office seemed heavy. Mike told her it was because most of the part-time office staff were young women trying to pay for their education or young mothers trying to supplement their income. They didn’t stay long and weren’t dependable. She had even referred one young woman to him for a job. She had met Julie at a coffee house that she used to frequent. Julie mentioned she’d just been laid off and was looking for work. She’d given her Mike’s card and said she knew he was looking for someone to help out part-time. A few months later when she asked about her, Mike said Julie had quit. Now she wondered if she’d played a part in someone becoming a victim to that horrendous crime.

  “It’s slave trade,” she said when she turned off the laptop. She was beginning to think she had little to no chance of stopping it, but if she could find someone who would believe her, maybe she could get one of them off the street, safe a few lives.

  Salty put his paws up on the window and barked. Stella got up and looked out just in time to see Dan Baker getting out of his cruiser.

  “Great. Not now.”

  She thought about hiding in the bedroom until he left, but her car was in the driveway and Salty was barking at the window. She wondered why the man was there. She had hoped she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in seeing him socially. As he walked up the steps and saw her standing in the window, he waved and held up an umbrella. She opened the door before he knocked.

  “Hello, Sheriff,” she said without enthusiasm, but Salty was standing beside her wagging his tail.

 
; “Good morning, Stella. I stopped by Tully’s to have coffee. She said you left this umbrella and asked me to bring it to you. She thought you might need it since rain’s in the forecast.”

  She was annoyed. “That’s not why she sent you here with an umbrella that isn’t mine. It’s pretty obvious Tully is trying to set us up, and just to set the record straight, Sheriff, I’m not interested.”

  He backed up a step and held up his hand. “Whoa, Stella, hold on. Maybe you took Tully’s teasing last night a little too serious. She does that with everyone. She doesn’t mean anything by it. For that record that you want to set straight, I was just being friendly. I do it for any newcomer in town. So, if this isn’t yours, I’ll take it back to her after work.”

  He turned and started back down the stairs. She suddenly felt foolish, and she could feel the color rising in her cheeks. “Wait. Sheriff…”

  He stopped and turned around to face her. She could she his jaw was clinched. That’s all she needed was to make an enemy of the Sheriff.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just tired, and I… well it’s just been a tough few weeks. Listen, thanks for bringing that by, even though it isn’t mine.”

  She pushed the screen door open and asked if he wanted to come in for a cup of tea or coffee.

  He hesitated, rolled his eyes and then came back up the stairs. “Sure. I guess it’s not the first time someone has misinterpreted Tully’s intentions, not to mention mine.”

  She grinned. “Well, you asked me for a drink, so I thought…”

  “Actually, Mom asked me to take you for a drink. There was no ulterior motive on my part,” he said.

  I’m an idiot, she thought.

  As he walked into the small living room, he noticed the television was on, but there was no sound. She asked him to sit down. Salty immediately jumped up on the sofa next to him.

  “Salty, get down. Sorry, he kind of has the run of the place,” she said.

  “As it should be.” He ruffled Salty’s collar.

  She made him a cup of coffee and had her tea while they talked about his job and how he’d grown up in Fort Landers. He talked about how his dad had been quite a bit older than Tully. His mom had died when he was very young. Stella felt comfortable now that the idea of Tully trying to matchmake was off the table.

  Dan told her when Tully and his dad married, the young woman slipped easily into the role as mother, even though she was only fourteen years older than Dan. They were more like best friends than stepmom and stepson.

  “Mom likes to pretend she and my dad didn’t get along, but she was crazy about him. He was her, too, though they fought like cats and dogs. After the last big fight, she said she’d had enough, and she actually filed for divorce. I’ve always thought it was just to scare him. Dad died shortly after that. Their divorce was never final and I doubt it ever would have been.”

  Dan was thoughtful for a moment. “She’s a good woman. Maybe a little rough around the edges, but Dad saw through that.”

  She asked about Tully’s background and where she came from. Dan said she hadn’t had the best parenting.

  “Maybe that’s why she was so good at it. She didn’t want a kid to be left to his own devices like she was. She had it rough. Then she fell into some trouble. She trusted the wrong people.”

  Stella asked what happened. Dan shook his head and said she’d gotten tied up with some people who promised to send her to beauty school, gave her a room to stay in at their house. Come to find out, they ran a prostitution ring. They locked her away with some other girls and kept her there for nearly a year. Her parents thought she’d run away, and when she couldn’t be found, they assumed she might have been dead.

  Stella looked at him, her eyes wide. The color had drained from her face. “Human traffickers.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, but she was one of the lucky ones. She escaped. Even at sixteen she was gutsy. She went to the police and told them everything she knew. She testified against the ones who were keeping her and the other girls in the house, but they never caught the ringleader. She was lucky they didn’t come after her or her family. I guess they thought they had bigger fish to fry.”

  “That’s how they control them. They threaten them and their families.” Stella said, thinking about the photos in the file that was lying beside her laptop.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what they do. That nasty business is so widespread that stopping even one of them doesn’t make a dent in the problem.”

  He pointed to the television. “It’s like that poor guy’s wife. She could have been kidnapped by someone like that. She’ll probably never be found. They’re good.”

  She looked up and saw Mike being interviewed by some reporter. She picked up the remote control and turned it off.

  Dan continued talking, but she hardly heard his words. When he left, she knew what she had to do. If anyone could help her, it would be someone who’d been through it. She got in her car and drove to Tully’s.

  Chapter 8

  Tully wasn’t officially open until two, and she never eased that rule. She said she couldn’t get her paperwork done while she was trying to herd alcoholic cats. However, she always had some of her regulars around if she was there. She didn’t mind if they didn’t interrupt her work. She provided a large urn of coffee, and Frannie Gorman usually brought in a dozen donuts or pastries from her bakery, The Sugar Stop, a couple times a week.

  Frannie never charged Tully, and Tully never offered to pay because she didn’t order them. She knew why the woman did it. She’d dated Dan a few times. Tully suspected Frannie was trying to get on her good side so she would urge Dan to take their relationship further… like to the alter. That was never going to happen. First because Tully thought Frannie was boorish, and second, because at forty-eight, Dan Baker was a confirmed bachelor and had no intention of marrying anyone.

  Bill and one-eyed Jack took up their usual barstools at the end of the long bar. They had stopped at The Gravy Boat and picked up biscuits and gravy to go and brought it over to Tully’s for free coffee and a few games of liar’s dice. Hanson’s Distributing had left six cases of Pabst by the storeroom door, and Tully had followed the driver out complaining that he was supposed to stack it in the storeroom. Rich Bauman, captain of the troller Seas the Day, was having coffee at a table and arguing with a mechanic from Duffield’s Marine over a repair bill. He said that the bill for the repairs to the boat were way out of line.

  “I’ve already lost two weeks of bluefin fishing because it took you so damned long to fis her. Now it’ll take me the next two weeks of catch to pay this bill. I ain’t ever gonna catch up.” It was obvious Rich was fighting a losing battle, but he was never one to shy away from an argument.

  John Deegan sat at the opposite end of the bar reading the FreeBee. He kept to himself, but he made a point to stop by Tully’s at least two or three times a week to see if she needed any help. He was a retired Merchant Marine whose wife had passed away a few years ago. He had more than enough money and too much time on his hands, and he also had a crush on Tully. Always the gentleman, and much too shy, he never made any advances toward her. He simple admired her from afar, and he was always around to help out when she needed him.

  That morning, they were all getting on Tully’s nerves, and the skinny woman who was sitting across the desk from her was on her last one. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought Crazy Mary had an eating disorder. Mary had two addictions… alcohol and sugar. Since she’d spent her monthly plasma allotment already, she was filling in with the free donuts. The evidence was the powdered sugar all over her lips and her polyester blouse.

  “Mary, what is it that you want? I’m busy trying to balance my books here,” Tully said.

  Mary leaned back in the chair with a mollified look on her face, holding her phone up so Tully could see the picture.

  “I took that picture when she wasn’t looking, and I got the other one off the internet. See, it’s her. I knowed it was her first time I
seen her. They showed her picture right on the television. See? Look at that picture and then look at the other one. She don’t fool me. She’s got that little mole up there on her eyebrow. I wonder what she’s up to. They might call me crazy, but I know what I know,” Mary ranted.

  Tully looked at both pictures and told Mary to send them to her email, then she dismissed the woman and asked her to keep it to herself.

  Mary stood up and pulled up her too-short pink polyester slacks. She crossed her arms in front of her flat chest and said, “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t keep it to myself. There’s prolly a reward. I could sure use a nip of gin right now. You think I might could have one? Just one little shot?”

  “Mary go home. If you have money, you can come back for your gin after two,” Tully waved her off.

  “Hmph, I guess I’ll have to call that newswoman.”

  Tully glared at the woman and said, “Get out of here, Mary.”

  Mary straightened her back and turned on her tiny feet in yellow high tops that were too big for her. She stomped out of the office.

  Tully sighed and shook her head thinking of Etta. “Oh, hon, what’s happened to you?”

  She already suspected that Stella Brown was really Etta Summers. She’d seen the resemblance herself. She picked up her phone and scanned the contacts and called Dan. The call went to voicemail, so she left a message and said she wanted to meet him at the Sheriff’s Office as soon as possible. She knew he could help her find out why Etta Summers changed her name and left her husband. Tully had rarely been wrong about people. She’d learned to survive by her instincts, and her instincts told her that the woman she had hired was a good person… one that was in trouble.

  “Deegan, hon, can you watch the place for me for a while? I have to run an errand,” she asked.

  “Sure thing, sweetheart,” Deegan said, watching her put on her leopard print raincoat.

  At the same time that Etta was in her driveway getting ready to go down into Trident Harbor, Crazy Mary was inside Harbor Liquors buying a four-liter jug of Paisano Red with her last ten-dollar bill. She had enough change left to buy a can of food for her cat. On the way out of the liquor store, as the clerk was ringing up another customer, Mary took two candy bars from a shelf and dropped them into her shopping bag. She pulled her sweater around her skinny body and walked toward the tiny trailer she called home.