Twenty-Two Grace
The bar is busier than I thought it’d be. I can hear the music from outside the door and I realize I’m craving something like this and I need to be careful. Tonight isn’t about getting wasted and forgetting my demons. Tonight is important. I need to stay in control.
The smell of smoke nearly takes me out when I step inside. I forgot they still allow smoking inside here. I also forgot that people still smoke.
I scan the room as I walk to the bar and take a free seat.
I’ve been inside before, but only briefly when Mrs. Grant from across the street asked me to run down here and tell her husband that she was going into labor.
Cell phones weren’t common in those days.
Especially here. Raven is always behind in tech.
I was twelve. I walked inside and everyone’s eyes shot to me. I shouted out the message I’d been sent to deliver and watched Mr. Grant jump to his feet and run past me. I lingered for a second until the bartender, mean old Teddy Birmingham, yelled at me to get out.
Teddy Birmingham is dead now. He died before I did.
I don’t know this bartender. She’s young and barely looks old enough to be here.
I order a vodka soda and tell myself I’ll drink it slow.
I sip it quietly while I get a sense of what’s going on around me.
There are two older guys a few seats down at the bar. They chat casually.
There’s a group of people at the pool tables, a handful of men and a few women.
I can’t tell just yet if I know them or what their dynamics are with each other.
There’s an older couple at one of the booths against the wall.
And in between the bar and the booths are high-top tables where a group of guys laugh and talk louder than anyone else in the bar.
Some are middle-aged, some younger. These are my group of cops.
I chug the rest of my drink and order another one. I’ll drink this next one slow. When I get my new drink, I stand and take it with me to the jukebox. It’s one of those new ones I can do from my phone, but I need to put myself in the sight of the men, and I can’t do that being quiet at the bar.
I tap the screen to look through different songs and land on one that I like but won’t piss off the entire bar.
When I walk back to my seat, I take a route that passes right by the group of men.
I feel eyes on me. I glance over and make eye contact with a guy that looks about my age, maybe slightly younger.
I smile at him and return to my seat, hoping it’s enough.
I order a basket of fries, sit back onto my stool, and sip my drink.
When the guy doesn’t come up to me after a few minutes I start strategizing another way to get into a conversation with one of them.
Maybe I’ll just walk right up and inject myself into the group.
The bartender delivers my fries and I reach for one, but another hand reaches from behind me and takes one.
I spin around, about to defend my fries with physical force, but stop when I see the guy I smiled at.
“Mind if I take a few? I could use something to soak up the booze,” he says with a grin.
Normally, I’d tell him to order his own fries and possibly add a few expletives, but this is my plan in motion, so I smile back.
“Help yourself.”
He maneuvers onto the stool next to me and takes another fry. Close up, he looks like he’s in his late twenties or early thirties. He’s attractive in an understated way. He’d probably be more attractive if I weren’t still harboring resentment over my stolen fries.
“I’m Garrett, by the way.”
He holds out his hand and I shake it. His palm is warm and thankfully dry.
“Grace,” I say.
“Oh, I know who you are, Grace Chandler.” He chuckles. “Everyone knows who you are. The girl back from the dead.”
“I didn’t die,” I say.
He nods slowly, his lips curled up like he’s thinking about how I’d taste. “No you did not.”
I do my best flirting and keep ordering us rounds of drinks. He doesn’t notice that I’ve stopped ordering myself drinks. As long as I pretend to sip from my empty one, he stays focused on me. And on my cleavage.
A few of his friends come up and try to mess with him but he shoos them away. I ask him questions about his job, which I clocked the moment I saw him standing in the group he was in, but pretend to be surprised when he tells me he’s a police officer.
He tells me he’s been an officer here for the past five years. He moved here for the job from Traverse City because he wanted to be a cop but not in a bigger city. He lives in an apartment above the deli one block from here. He wants to take me home.
I make him work harder for it.
“I can’t go home with a strangerrr,” I say flirtatiously. I try to sound drunk.
“I’m not a stranger, baby. We’ve been getting to know each other all night.”
I put my hand on his leg and lean into him. “You have to tell me a secret.”
“A secret?”
I nod. “Friends know secrets about each other.”
He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. He sways to the side, and I reach out to keep him from falling.
“Hmmm . . . I can’t think of one.”
“Oh, come on! You’re a cop. I’m sure you have plenty of secrets.”
“What does me being a cop have to do with secrets?” he says.
I scoot to the end of my stool, my legs between his knees. I whisper conspiratorially, “Have you ever done or seen something you weren’t supposed to?”
He laughs, shaking his head. I look over my shoulder and think maybe being in proximity to his cop buddies is keeping his lips tight.
“Do you want to?” I ask suggestively.
His eyebrow quirks up and I take his hand.
“Go say goodbye to your friends,” I say with my hand on his chest.
He grins and stumbles over to the group of men, and I lean over the bar to pay my tab. She waves me away. “I put you on his tab,” she says.
I smile. “Thank you.”
He’s back with his arm around me, and I try to look at least half as drunk as he is as we walk out so it doesn’t look like I’m taking advantage of him.
This would be a lot more suspicious if I were a guy and he was the woman, but because it’s the other way around, his friends hoot after him, happy to think he’s about to get laid.
It helps that I am who I am. A local legend now.
Me leaving with him will be the talk of the town by morning.
We stumble our way to the deli and up the stairs to the apartment above. He struggles with his keys, but eventually we make it inside. I grab his face and pull it to mine, kissing him deeply. Then I pull away.
“Make us a drink.”
“Okay,” he says, his eyes still on my mouth.
The apartment is small and the bathroom is easy to spot.
I check the mirror to clean up my makeup and fluff my hair.
I look through his cabinets and drawers, but there’s nothing interesting.
Before I go back out to him, I stick my hands into my bra and pull my breasts up and in to make my cleavage more noticeable.
Then I turn on the voice recorder on my phone and slip it into my back pocket.
He’s in the kitchen when I return, still sloppily trying to put together a drink.
“I got it,” I say. “Go sit down and get comfortable.”
He smiles and follows my directions. In another life, I might actually like him.
At least enough for a night or two. But this is not another life, and I slip the small baggie of a crushed Ambien from my jeans pocket and sprinkle it into his Jack and Coke.
I give it a stir with my finger and take it to him in the living room.
He sits on the couch, slouched into it with his knees set wide apart.
I straddle him and hold the drink to his lips, slowly tipping it up. He takes a drink and I pull the glass away. Kiss him. Then exchange my mouth for the glass again. I do it a few times until the small drink is nearly gone.
“Tell me a secret. Tell me something bad,” I say, using as seductive a voice as I can without sounding like a bad phone sex operator.
I lean forward and run my tongue across his bottom lip. He groans. I pull back and look at him expectantly.
“You like bad boys, huh?”
I try not to roll my eyes. I nod instead and bite my lip.
“You like a bad cop?”
“I love a bad cop.”
I pray this doesn’t go any further before I get information. The Ambien is in his system and he’ll be useless soon. I take my shirt off and let him take in my nearly bare chest.
“Tell me if you want to see more.”
He groans again.
“Okay, okay. Sometimes . . .”
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes, we steal drugs from the evidence locker.”
“Mm. I need more than that.”
I slip a bra strap off my shoulder.
“I planted drugs on an arrest one time,” he says, his eyes on my chest.
That’s interesting. That’s what Brooke says happened to her.
I slip the other strap down. He’s practically drooling and I don’t know if it’s because of how drunk he is or because of the breasts in front of him.
“We use the drugs to party sometimes too.”
“Does the sheriff know that?”
He nods and his eyes start to droop. I flick him on the forehead and his eyes pop open.
“Oh, yeah. He knows,” he says. “He tells everyone what to do. For now, anyway.”
His words start to slur. I’m running out of time.
“What do you mean for now?”
Garrett’s head bobs toward his chest and I shake him.
“Huh?”
“What do you mean he tells everyone what to do for now? Is he retiring?”
He laughs with his eyes closed. “Mmno. There’s a couple guys. Some guys.”
I wait but he doesn’t say anything else. I slap him softly. “What about the couple guys?”
His head pops back up but his eyes stay closed. He starts to snore.
I climb off his lap, fix my bra, and put my shirt back on before rinsing out his cup and leaving it in his sink. I don’t know how helpful that information is. I try to think through what he could have been saying. Frank tells everyone what to do. For now. He isn’t retiring. There’s a couple guys.
When I put it all together, it sounds like maybe there are a couple guys who don’t intend to keep listening to Sheriff Gibbs for long.
Whatever that means. But then I think about my interview down at the station.
The way the younger officer kept trying to get him out of the room and didn’t seem to want to listen to Frank.
Maybe there’s a power struggle going on.
And then there’s the stuff he said about the drugs. He planted them at least once. At Frank’s instruction? Maybe. But again, I don’t know what that means for me and the things I’m trying to figure out.
If they’re willing to plant drugs, would they be willing to plant photos on my dad’s computer? I know they’re willing to kill. Maybe willing to kill my dad. Maybe Morgan. I don’t know why though.
So damn much I don’t know.
I turn the recorder off on my phone. Garrett snores on the couch while I search his apartment.
I find his ID badge in his dirty clothes basket and slip it into my pocket.
It’s like the one Frank used at the police station.
I find family photos in a drawer of his entertainment center.
One of him and his parents on his graduation day.
Another of the same day with his parents and a little girl around eight or nine that he has on his shoulders.
A little sister, I think. It’s slightly endearing.
I’m about to finish up and head out when I see something in his coat closet on the floor, behind a pile of shoes.
I bend down and push the shoes aside. It’s a plastic bag full of something white.
I grab it and examine it. There’s a sticker on the bottom.
I flip it over and read it. Evidence 87909. Cocaine.
They just keep this stuff in their houses?
I put it back and push the shoes back into place.
Before I leave, I walk over to Garrett and unbutton his jeans.
Then I slip my bra off from beneath my shirt and toss it into the corner of his couch.
He’ll think we slept together and then he’ll be a lot less suspicious of me and his missing badge.
I let myself out and walk the quiet, dark streets.
It’s cold tonight and I didn’t dress for the weather.
I consider stopping back by the bar to grab my car, but I don’t want to run into Garrett’s friends so soon after leaving the bar with him.
So I take the road behind the bar for a lesser chance of being seen.