Previously Loved Treasures (Serendipity #2)(51)

It was a small room, too small for anyone to hide anywhere, but the reality of that didn’t register. Joe continued across the room, first falling into the dresser and then bouncing off a wall.

“Rowena,” he called. “Rowena, get your ass out here!”

With almost a full bottle of whiskey under his belt, Joe swayed like he was standing on the Tilt-a-Whirl. The floor moved beneath his feet, and the walls slid away when he tried to reach for them. He smacked into the closet, then lurched toward the bathroom.

“Rowena, I know you’re here!”

Still screaming her name, Joe bent to look under the bed. As he leaned forward he passed out and went down face first against the iron bed frame.

~

It was two o’clock in the afternoon when Joe woke. One eye was swollen shut, and his head felt like a hammer was banging against it. “I need a drink,” he grumbled and struggled to his feet. For the moment, he didn’t think about Rowena or Sara. He wasn’t interested in where they’d gone or when they’d be back. His only thought was to get a drink and stop the pounding in his head.

Stan’s Bar was two blocks over. Stan opened early, and Stan made a damn good drink. Joe needed a Bloody Mary, and he needed it now. He looked around the parking lot. The truck was gone. “Bitch,” he grumbled, believing Rowena responsible.

Stan’s wasn’t that far; he could make it on foot. Joe started walking. Not so much walking, but just pushing one foot in front of the other and shuffling along. Twice he had to stop and lean against a lamppost to rest, but moments later he went back to moving his feet in the direction of Stan’s Bar.

It took Joe forty minutes to get there, and by the time he arrived his throat felt parched and his head pounded like a kettledrum. He lumbered to the door, grabbed the handle, and pulled. The door didn’t budge. He pulled again and again, then kicked the door and pounded with his fists. Nobody answered. When the throbbing in his head became unbearable, he picked up an empty trashcan from the street and hurled it through the glass window. While the bits and pieces of glass were still raining down, Joe stepped through the window and headed for the bar. He was tipping a whiskey bottle to his mouth when the police arrived.

~

Judge Barker was the law in Mackinaw, the only law. He was the one who said what was fair and not fair and he doled out punishment as he saw fit. Stan was the judge’s brother-in-law.

Joe’s head still throbbed the next day when the judge banged his gavel and said, “Fifteen days for drunk and disorderly conduct. And,” the judge added, “it’ll be a whole lot longer if you don’t fork over the money to pay for Stan’s window.”

“Screw Stan!” Joe yelled. “Screw the window!” But by then the officer was dragging him out of the courtroom.

~

Joe didn’t have the money to pay for Stan’s window so his fifteen days became three weeks of sitting in the Mackinaw jailhouse. For the first five days it was pure hell. His stomach convulsed every time he thought of food, and he couldn’t hold on to a cup of coffee because of his hands shaking. Twice he managed to slosh a few sips of the sludge, but both times he gagged and threw up more than he’d swallowed.

After the first five days, the hell settled into a day in/day out misery. A misery he didn’t deserve. Getting drunk was a poor excuse for throwing a man in jail, he reasoned. On any given Friday, half the men in Mackinaw got drunk. Of course, those men went home and found their woman in bed where she belonged. Joe started thinking back on why he was in jail. That’s when he came to the conclusion it was Rowena’s fault.

For the entire three weeks Joe cursed her. If not for her, he wouldn’t be here. If Rowena wasn’t playing a smart-ass cat-and-mouse game, he wouldn’t have had to search under the bed. He wouldn’t have fallen. He wouldn’t have needed a drink to nurse the pain in his head.

“This is the thanks I get,” he muttered. “I take care of her and the kid, and this is how she pays me back?”

After a while he could almost see Rowena lounging on the bed back at the motel, laughing at his predicament. “Nobody shits on Joe Mallory and gets away with it,” he vowed.

That’s when he began to think of the various ways he could get even. When Rowena’s laughter began to haunt his sleep, Joe realized that no matter what the cost he had to get out of jail. He started banging on the bars and hollering until the guard on duty finally came.

“Okay,” Joe said, “tell Stan I’ll give him my truck to pay for the broken window.”

Two weeks earlier he’d remembered parking the truck at Easy Aces, but until now he’d said nothing about it. The truck with its bald tires and leaky radiator wasn’t much, but at least with it he had a way of getting around. With it, he had a way of hauling crap from one place to another and putting money in his pocket. Without it he was screwed, but giving it up was his only way of getting out of jail.

It took another two days before Joe was released. As soon as he set foot on the sidewalk he headed for the motel figuring he’d find Rowena.

When Maggie, the owner of the motel, saw Joe coming, she flagged him down. “Don’t bother going back there. I done cleaned out your room.”

“Where’s Rowena?” Joe asked.

“Gone.” Maggie twitched her mouth to one side. It was the same expression she used when she spoke of the drifters who ran out on their bill. “Seems kind of funny, her leaving the same time you did.”