Trevor (Strong Manor #6)

Chapter 2

Trevor was reading over the paperwork that they’d gotten when Debra/Lavender had been taken away. It didn’t seem so bad, only reading how she was going to be jailed, but when you had an active imagination like he did, he could see all kinds of horrors awaiting the child. No matter what she’d done, he couldn’t think of her as anything other than a small kid who had gotten herself in trouble. Jade snorted when he said as much to her.

“Do you know how she killed her victims? Any idea what she had put the family through before they finally died from their extensive wounds?” He said he’d only read what he’d seen in the paper for her. “Yes, well, they watered it down a great deal. The public outrage would have been more than anyone would have been able to stomach.”

“Because she was a child?” Jade told him that it was because she was a monster. “I’m sorry, but how does a kid know how to be a monster? I mean, she was literally a child living with a ninety-year-old woman. How did she get around that even?”

“She would, along with the two men that she had near her at the time would, sneak into the homes and do the damage then. But with a family back when she was ten, she went back there for three nights in a row to do what she did to them.” Jade asked him if he thought he could handle it.

“When you put it that way, no, I don’t know that I want to know. I’m curious, I’ll tell you that, but I’m also afraid since you’re calling her a monster. What did she do?” She asked him again if he was sure that he wanted to know. “I believe I do. So that I can get the image out of my mind on what she did as to what she actually did.”

“The Palmer family was a family of five. Three children and the parents. They were well-to-do church-going people that were well-liked in the community that they lived in.” He said that he’d read that. “What you won’t read is how she killed them. The children were let off easy, in comparison. Their ages were ten, the same age as Lavender, eight and four—two boys and the youngest a girl. She killed them by hammering a nail into their temple. Not with a nail gun, but she actually hammered the nails into their heads while what we think the others watched on. After killing them, she put them into their rooms, not even in their beds, but just tossed them inside the room and didn’t bother them again. But not the parents.” He asked if this was far worse. “The woman died last, but while the man was alive, she played with them both. The man had several nails in his body, from his head to his toes. The nails were hammered in, and he was alive during this time. While still alive, she flayed his skin off his body. It must have been something new to her, but the first slices were clumsy and too thick. As she did more to his body, starting with his back, she got better at it. Seemingly, practice makes perfect. Also, his penis was missing. That’s important.”

Trevor started to make a joke, but it froze in his throat. The thought of someone having their dick taken off made his own cock hurt. Adjusting himself, he continued to listen to Jade as she seemed to be reliving the horrors of the house.

“He was found hanging from the upper floors. As soon as the front door was breached, the police ran into him, causing several of the seasoned officers to be sick. He’d been hanging there for several days before anyone noticed that they weren’t doing their usual things like church and office.” She looked out the window, no longer looking in his direction as she continued her tale. “The Feds were called in, and that’s when I had a front-row seat to what she’d done. All I can say for sure about what I’m about to tell you is that putting her in the type of jail cell that she’s in frightens me because of my fear of her getting out and continuing on her way to perfect her ways of killing. Then there was the mother. Christ, when I think about what she had gone through, it makes me sick again. The woman did suffer. There is no doubt about that. She would nearly kill her, back off a bit, then do more to her.” She glanced at him before saying anything else. “She took a long rebar piece of metal and, again, pounded into her head. We’re assuming it was her head first because she didn’t fight her much after it was through her head. The rebar then went down along her spine, through her neck to her bottom. It came out of her rectum and then…and then she bent her feet in a way that made it so that the rebar was through her feet. All of this was in order to put her on a spit and roast her.” She looked at him. “Her arms were chained to her body like someone would do a turkey. Her knees had been sewn together with the same chain that was around her arms. The man’s penis was found during autopsy inside her vagina, then sewn shut. Christ. For four days, the woman was put on this thing and rolled—”

“Enough. I get the picture.” He stood up, pulling Jade into his arms, and held her while she sobbed. It hurt him to his very core that this had hurt someone like his sister-in-law like it did. And he would bet that this would be a part of her nightmares for the rest of her life, too. “I’m so sorry that I was flippant about Lavender. I’m truly sorry that I made you relive it again, too. I love you, Jade.”

Jade cried for twenty minutes or so. He continued to hold her even after Jenson, her husband, and his brother came into the house to find her. After he walked away, nodding once as if he understood what was going on, Jade pulled away and looked up at him.

“Her age is important to her being locked away because she will only perfect her ways of killing as she gets stronger. And she was nearly there now. We might never have been able to figure out that she killed those people if not for the fact that there was a single fingerprint in the blood on the body of one of the children. We all feared that as she got older, she’d be better at not leaving a trace behind, and we’d be looking for her all over the world.”

“I’m sorry.” She nodded and laid her head on his chest. “Whatever is being done to her, it’s not nearly enough.” Jade agreed with him. “I’ve been looking over the specs on the place that she is now. They’re certainly not taking any chances of her getting out, are they? I mean, they concreted her into her cell so that she won’t be able to bribe her way out of there. I had a thought that she was going to freeze to death in the winter but she won’t, will she? She’ll simply live because they want her to die.”

Going back to his condo, he realized that he’d missed several calls. Listening to his messages as he walked back, he heard from the bank to see if he had applied for a loan through one of their branches and several calls from the realtor to ask him if he wanted to see any other houses. He’d not yet heard back from the couple selling their home, and he was getting nervous about that.

Stomping the snow off his boots when he got home, he looked around the condo and laughed. He’d been packing since he’d put a bid on the house, and it caused him to have to search the boxes for things when he needed them. In his mind, he wanted to be ready. It was his brother Maverick that suggested that he slow down. The couple had thirty days or more to move out. Of course, he had to tease him a bit, too, for jumping the gun.

Deleting all the other messages, it was just spam, he called the relator to ask if she had any houses to show him that weren’t small. Of course, she told him, she had more larger houses that people didn’t want any more than she did smaller ones. He didn’t care to be cramped up in a house anymore. Taking the dogs out so they could do their business, he heard from the couple about the house. He’d gotten the house. Then, he was asked if they could have the next two weeks to move out. Trevor told them they could, thinking it was better than he’d thought, and told them that he was going to need that time to get things to fill out the house.

“We’re going to auction off the things in the house that we’re not taking. Would you like to come by and see what you might want to purchase? It’s entirely up to you, but the house has more bedrooms than what we’re going to be moving into, so we aren’t taking any of them with us. Just the master suite of things.” He asked how they would be pricing things. “The auctioneer told us that he could maybe get a few people gathered up, and we’d do it right in the rooms. It will all be sold at the same time per room. We just want out of this big house and move into something smaller on our daughter’s land.”

“I’d love that. And if I win the bid, it will be one less thing that I have to worry about getting.” He was almost giddy with the prospect of getting his house laid out so soon. Of course, he’d never seen the bedrooms, being too excited to get the house when he’d been there, but he thought that if he didn’t like it, he’d just not bid. Or perhaps bid low with the hopes of getting them cheaper and replacing them as he found things that he liked. “You tell me when you’re going to do it, and I’ll be there. I love this idea. Thank you.”

“We’re just so happy to be getting into something smaller, young man, because we’re not as young as we used to be, and stairs are killers. The deciding factor was when my wife fell down them, breaking her wrist and foot. No more stairs for us, we decided.” Trevor told him how sorry he was to hear that. “You’ve no idea what it was like to find your wife lying on the floor sobbing about how she hit her head on the floor and her wrist and foot hurt badly.”

He said that he’d call him back when he had a date and time. Trevor did a little dance in the snow when he closed the connection. The puppies were having such a good time in the yards that he had a hard time wrestling them into listening to him. Taking the dogs back in the condo, he knew that the dogs were going to love the fenced-in back yard, too.

Getting online when he got back in his place, he looked for prices on bedroom sets. He wasn’t really sure what was in the rooms. Were there two dressers or one? Did they have nightstands or not? So to get himself a good pricing, he wrote down what he thought it might well cost for the entire room full of things for himself. Also, what he thought individual prices might be on each item. It was a great deal more expensive than he realized. Even putting in the cost of wear and tear on things.

Making dinner for himself, he played with the dogs. They really were a great source of entertainment, but they were also very messy what with knocking things over and slobbering on everything. He couldn’t wait until they were bigger so that he could get them to settle down. However, watching some people’s dogs in the complex, he did wonder what he’d gotten himself into by taking two dogs instead of just the one. Smiling to himself, he knew that everyone had taken a couple of the pups, so he wasn’t too worried yet. He might even send them off to training school to have them behave when he wasn’t around.

At about half past six, the Courtrights called back. There was going to be an auction in the morning. They wanted it finished with what they had to move out as yet and that there would be three more groups there. He was happy about that but also going to take his dad with him. Or his mom. She’d glare at the other groups if they outbid him, and he’d win that way. He wasn’t his mommy’s baby for nothing.

It just so happened that his mom was busy with her tea club—he didn’t understand why they called it that, rarely did they ever drink tea—but his dad was free. Going to bed that night, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to sleep as his excitement level was through the roof. Christ, he was about as excited as he’d been as a kid when Christmas and his birthday rolled around.

~*~

Henrie wasn’t sure why she’d been asked to drive her truck to the address that was on the paperwork. Sure, it was a big house, and she knew that things needed to be moved out, but she wasn’t going to lift anything, nor was she going to assist in it either.

There were rules with her company and one of them was you do not get involved with moving things that are not a part of her company. Like the company she worked for delivered couches to stores all over the state of Ohio and West Virginia, but she only had to back her rig up to the distribution center, and they did all the lifting.

Having to take her rig to a person’s house without being told there would be help made her nervous about what was going to happen. After parking in the long U-shaped drive, she got out and went to find a Mr. Peabody and ask about why she was there. At so fucking early in the morning too.

Finding the owners of the house, they were confused as well as to why she was there, the man told her where to find Mr. Peabody. This was costing him nearly four hundred bucks an hour, according to the sheet she’d been given. She hoped that this wasn’t going to be an all-day move. She had to work at ten tomorrow, taking a load to West Virginia. Peabody was standing in the hall next to what appeared to be a bedroom.

“There you are. You’re late.” She told him that she was on time, she didn’t expect to have to walk around for forty minutes in trying to find him. “Well, you’d better be on standby in the event that I win the bids. I have to have things moved out as soon as I win them.”

“I’m assuming that you have loaders.” He asked her what she was talking about and Henrie knew this was going to happen and stretched her neck until it popped twice. “I don’t load my rig. That’s on you. I drive to and from, but that’s the extent of my contract with you.”

“No, I asked for someone to come and pick up the loads for me. That would be you. I hope you’re stronger than you look because this is some heavy shit that they’re selling. And I plan on buying it all.” She pulled out a copy, not the original work that he had signed. “See right there, it says that you’re going to be picking up loads that I purchase.”

“Picking up loads, I’m not going to be loading it. That’s on you to take care of.” He was shaking his head even as she pulled out her cell. After telling the dispatcher what was going on, she was told to hand the phone over to him. While he argued with her dispatcher, she decided to have a look around. It was a beautiful home, and she could only dream about living in something like this.

The first bedroom that she looked in had her whistling at the pieces. They were huge, but she could tell that they weren’t any of that plywood stuff but solid wood, more than likely oak. Even the sleigh bed, being about a king, she would guess, would weigh more than five hundred pounds by itself. That wasn’t even including the mattress that went with it. Smiling at the couple that was in the room when they smiled at her, Henrie backed out of the room to find that Peabody was still on the phone with her company—him getting louder all the time. She went into the second bedroom and then on to the third. That was where she fell in love.

The room was done up in earth tones. Browns, blues, and rusty reds that made her want to live out the rest of her life in here. The bed, another sleigh bed, seemed to be about the same size, but this room had end tables on either side of the bed as well as two large dressers that looked to be made of the same wood. Something like a dark chocolate did when she splurged on it. There was also a full-length mirror of the same wood that took up an entire corner of the room. She’d bet anything that the prices of these pieces would be around five grand total, if not more. And the man who had made arrangements to have her pick up the stuff didn’t look as if he could afford one room, much less the six that was up on this floor.

“The two rooms over the garage have been emptied, so we don’t have to go over there.” The younger man who joined the well-dressed couple started talking as soon as they entered the room. “They’ve been broken down already and are in the garage. That’s where they’ve been storing boxes as they load them up.” She wondered if they had movers to load up their moving truck or not. She came into the hall just as Peabody was screaming at someone on the phone.

His face was red and ruddy looking. She knew the auctioneer as she’d been to several of his auctions before. The man was trying in vain to calm the man down. When Peabody tossed her phone at her, she barely caught it out of the air. Donna, the dispatcher, was still talking when she put it up to her ear to see what was going on.

“It’s me.” Donna told her to hang on a moment until she calmed herself down. When she let out several long breaths and counted to ten three times, she seemed to have a better control over herself. “Are you all right?”

“No. Good lord, Henrie, how is he talking to you?” She said that he’d walked away before speaking to her. “Well, don’t you dare try and load that stuff up on your own. He didn’t pay for loaders, and I’m not going to be messing with him anymore. Just drive. That’s all you were hired to do.”

“I told him that. That’s why I called in rather than to argue with him. Though I have to admit, he does seem to like the sound of his own—” The couple with the younger man came to ask her something. Telling Donna that she’d call her back, she put the phone in her pocket. “Yes, what can I do for you?”

“He’s showing off.” The woman leaned in and whispered her observation. “The man was just saying to the auctioneer that he wasn’t going to have you take anything. He was just trying to intimidate anyone who tried to bid against him. That he was so sure that he was going to win the bids that he hired you to come here and pretend.”

“I hope he realizes that I’m not pretending with him. The company I work for is getting four hundred bucks an hour, and they’re not messing around.” The woman laughed. “I’m Henrie Banister. I work for Banister and Banister Drivers.”

“My name is Lisa, and this is my husband, Barkley. Our son, the man who bought this house is Trevor. He was invited here to see if he wanted the furniture that was in the rooms so that they didn’t have to be moved. I do believe this furniture isn’t going to go cheaply, do you?” She told her that she didn’t know much about wood or furniture that was made from it. Her firm only delivered it to stores. “What a lovely job. Do you get to see much of the country?”

“No, ma’am. Just a couple of states.” She tried to back away, but she pulled her right to her to continue talking. It was a little disconcerting to be talking to a stranger about what she did for a living. “I’ve been riding and driving since I was twelve. You have to be twenty-one to drive a big rig.”

“Oh, Banister. I know that place. We’ve used them a few times when we wanted something moved. Very good company. Are you related to them?” She told her that they were her grandparents and parents. “Oh, how lovely. Did you hear that, Trevor? She works for her family, too. I love it when a family can pull together and be a part of something larger. Good for you. Trevor, this is Henrie Banister.” She went on to tell him how she was related to them.

“I should be getting back to my rig, Mrs. Strong.” She wasn’t given a last name, but she knew who they were. Instead of releasing her arm, she took her hand into hers, telling her she might as well watch the show as she thought it was going to be fun. “All right, I suppose. I can stay for a few minutes.”

Henrie knew on some level that she wasn’t going to be leaving her side until the entire show, as she called it, was over. Staying out of the way, she was dismayed to find that she was standing very close to Trevor when he turned and winked at her.

“My mom is playing matchmaker.” She sputtered at him. “Don’t worry. I’m on to her. I’m assuming that you’re single?”

“Yes. But I have no desire to be matchmade with anyone.” He said he didn’t either. He just wanted to fill his house out. “Well, good luck with that. I think I’ll go to the truck.”

“Don’t. Please. She’ll just find someone else to introduce me to, and I’d rather just be able to focus on the bidding.” She nodded, not at all sure why she was giving in so easily.

When the auctioneer started telling the rules of the day, Peabody pointed out that she was there to load the things that he bought, all the furniture into her rig right away. Before she could tell him again that she wasn’t, he looked at her like he’d murder her if she said a word to the contrary. She didn’t think that anyone in their right mind thought that she could lift even the mattress off the beds much less the entire rooms full of furniture. It was, as Mrs. Strong said, a scare tactic so he could intimidate the other bidders.

The bidding always started out incredibly high. Although she didn’t think that ten grand was a bad price for the stuff in the first room. When it got down to five hundred, the bidding began.

Trevor won the first room. It had been close, and Peabody was pissed off. Henrie was so excited for Trevor that she hugged him. Embarrassed now, he smiled at her, and she could see why the entire world was waiting with bated breath for the last Strong man to get married or at least find himself a wife.

He was charming and beautiful. Men she knew were supposed to be handsome, but he was simply beautiful to her. His hair was a shade or two darker than his mother’s, not including the little bit of gray that she had, and he had an air about him that made you think that he knew he was good-looking but just didn’t care. She thought that was what everyone saw in good-looking men. Not her. She didn’t want anything to do with charm and good looks. That had nearly ruined her mom and dad’s life together.

Her dad had been out of the picture since she’d been about four. Her parents had married only to give her a last name. Mom had had enough and got her trucker’s license and took to the road. Dad thought that, for whatever reason, he still could rule her mom. He found out the hard way that not only could he not rule either of them, but his looks never played into her mom’s life with him. She thought that he’d been nice and that was as far as she went with him.

“Henrie?” She looked at Mr. Strong when he said her name. “We’re moving to the next room, honey, and Trevor is telling his mother that you’re his good luck charm. Are you coming?”

“He doesn’t even know me.” The older man laughed and said that Trevor was having fun with his mom, that she’d been going out of her way to see him married. “So long as she knows that I’m not the marrying type. I have just what I need now. Not some man that will be expecting me to—I’m going to shut up now. Yes, I’ll go with you. But I’m not his charm or anything else of his.”

Trevor won the next four rooms with only two more to go. Peabody wasn’t being a good loser, going around and knocking against things that Trevor had won in the rooms. When they were on the last two, Mr. Courtright pulled him aside and asked to speak to him. Trevor grabbed her hand, pulling her along with them out into the hall and into one of the already purchased bedrooms.

“If you get the last two rooms, we’ll give you the ones over the garage. We never expect to get as much as we have been. Thank you for that, but it’s fun to see that other man get his nose bent out of joint about you winning. I told Sally that I’d almost make up the difference if you were to get to your limit and help you buy them anyway.” He laughed. Wren, his name was said he’d not had this much fun in a very long time. “I swear to you, I’d sell off the rest of the house if I knew it was going to be this much fun.”

Not only did Trevor win the last two rooms and get the other furniture, but Sally said that she was going to sell the dining room table as well. They’d only just figured out that they weren’t going to have room for it.

By the time the bidding was to begin on that for the house, Peabody was dressing her down for cahooting with the enemy. She didn’t even know what that meant. She’d only been standing around until Trevor started holding her hand. As soon as the bidding war was over, she got into her rig to get the paperwork for the job today. And just as she thought that he’d do, Peabody said he wasn’t paying as she hadn’t done a damned thing for him. Henrie called her grandda.