Overkill(82)

He’d never been so bored.

The only ever Mrs. Ned Bingham had tolerated him for three years before he put her out of her misery and asked for a divorce. She’d accused him of loving coaching more than he loved her, and she’d been right. She’d predicted that one day he would regret giving her up for football, but she’d been wrong.

“I’ve steered clear of the altar ever since.” He’d related his sketchy marital history at Melinda Parsons’s request while they sat at her kitchen table nursing mugs of herbal tea.

“No children?” she said.

“A few hundred.” When she looked at him quizzically, he said, “All the boys I coached. Some of the names I don’t remember, but I can see all their faces. They cycled in and out along with the football seasons, but I recall every player I ever blew a whistle at.”

“I bet they remember you, too.”

He hacked a laugh. “Oh, I made sure they would. I was rough on a good number of them who had potential, but lost opportunities because they didn’t apply themselves. I couldn’t stand to see bright possibilities going to waste. So I was even rougher on the ones who had real talent.”

“Like Zach Bridger.”

He chuckled. “No, none of them came close to being like Zach. He was one of a kind. In my book he is one of a kind.” He gazed down into the steeped brew that smelled like dead flowers and tasted like the stagnant water they’d died in. Out of politeness, he’d managed to swallow a couple of sips.

“Zach’s the best player I ever saw,” he said. “He played with heart, with everything in him. Over the length of a coaching career, you only get one like Zach, and only if you’re lucky. Lucky like winning the Powerball when it’s up above five hundred mil.”

“Then what went wrong there at the end?”

“He never lost his skill or drive. He lost the mind game. That woman was the death of it.”

“Rebecca.”

“Hate to talk bad about her, considering, but she was ruination personified.”

Melinda stared pensively into the near distance. “We don’t get to choose who we love. We simply do, and we can’t help ourselves.”

“But see, that’s the real tragedy of it. Rebecca didn’t love anybody but herself, and Zach didn’t love her. Like near everybody else, he became enamored with the idea of them as a couple.

“He got caught up in all the hype, which she stoked. She dressed the part, acted the part. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Sexy, and knew how to use it. What guy in his right mind would stop to think long-range about the substance and true nature of this hot romance? Anyway, he didn’t.

“Paparazzi started trying to catch a photo of an engagement ring on her finger, and one day she was wearing eight carats.” He raised his shoulders. “It was like that. She knew a good thing when she saw it. She laid claim.”

He pondered the contents of his mug again, adding, “What I hate? She has a much more binding claim on him now than she did before.”

Melinda didn’t have to ask Before what? Neither mentioned that night at the Clarke mansion and her husband’s involvement, but it hovered between them like the unsavory aroma of the tea.

After a brief silence, she said, “Neither he nor Ms. Lennon had reason to be kind to me, but they were.”

“Honey, they don’t hold anything against you. Else why would Zach have asked me to come over here and keep you company?”

“It was very thoughtful of him, in light of what they’re going through. Who do you think is behind leaking the videos and pictures?”

“They think Eban Clarke.”

“So do I,” she said. “It’s sly. Like something he would do.” She hesitated, then said, “Is there anything to the implication about them?”

“I can’t say.”

She smiled. “That means yes.”

Just then her cell phone rang. She nearly knocked over her tea mug in her eagerness to snatch it up. When she looked at the readout, her hopeful expression collapsed. “It’s my dad.” She answered. “Hi, Daddy. Fine. No, Cal’s not here right now.”

She pushed her chair back and left the kitchen table, moving into the other room for privacy. Bing got up and busied himself at the sink, placing their supper dishes in the dishwasher.

He’d resented Zach’s asking him to babysit her, but now he was glad he’d been here today for this young woman when she’d needed a shoulder. Bing figured a stranger’s was easier to cry on than that of someone who knew her well and had probably warned her not to marry a man with a background as sullied as Cal’s.

Soon after he’d arrived, she’d had one long crying jag while wringing the life out of a tissue, asking repeatedly, “Why doesn’t he call me? Where is he? What’s happening?”

Now, she reentered the kitchen looking stricken and pale. Whatever her daddy had told her, it wasn’t good. “What is it, honey?”

“Cal was at work this morning, but he left early.”

“Did he tell anybody why, where he was going?”

She shook her head. “He left without saying a word to anyone. No one saw him leave. They just noticed him gone.”

“Has he ever just walked out like that?”

“Not since I’ve known him. Not since he went to work for Daddy. Daddy didn’t think much of it. He figured something had come up, that I needed Cal at home, or that he wasn’t feeling well. But then…” She stopped, swallowed with difficulty. “But then he discovered that the gun he always keeps in his desk drawer is missing.”