Ghosts And Shadows

GHOSTS AND SHADOWS

THE NOVEL

Daniel Quentin Steele

Copyright 2012 W. E. M Publishing

Smashwords Edition Licensing Notes

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CONTENTS PAGE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

PART ONE

BREADWINNER: THE END OF THE BEGINNING

They were always a bad idea – but it had never stopped them before!

PART TWO

A MIRACLE FOR MARCY

He had killed two men. His wife was dying in an inoperable coma. And his job as a street cop had been taken away. It was Christmas Eve and he’d given up believing in miracles. But miracles can spring from unlikely sources.

PART THREE

GHOSTS AND SHADOWS

They had a good marriage for 35 years. Until ghosts and shadows came between them. And, when he asked her for the truth she gave it to him. Hugh Davidson was a top official of the powerful Hunt Bank in Jacksonville, Florida. He was the Trouble Shooter, the Problem Solver whose job was making problems go away, legally or however necessary. But, how do you give up a woman you’ve loved for 36 years, even after she’s broken your heart?

Chapter 1 – What Are You Wearing?

Chapter 2 – What To Do After the End Of the World

Chapter 3 – Closing It Out

Chapter 4- Moving On

Chapter 5- Collateral Damage

Chapter 6- Hard Times

Chapter 7- Sad Stories

Chapter 8- The Saddest Story

Chapter 9 – Usually You Have To Die First

Chapter 10 – Hot Times At O’Brien’s

Chapter 11- Ghosts In the Light

Chapter 12 – Sometimes You Can’t Get What You Want, But…

OTHER STORIES FROM THE FIRST COAST

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The three stories in this volume are interconnected, although the connections may be tenuous in some cases. But all of the stories take place in the First Coast universe, that section of Northeast to Central Florida running from the Florida border to south of St. Augustine/Daytona Beach, primarily from the opening years of the 21st century, 2000 to 2012 or thereabouts.

The characters in these stories may not know each other, but all of them affect and impact on each other’s lives. Just as things happen in the world we live in. And they are all love stories. Not romances, because love stories sometimes end badly. Sex plays a large part in the First Coast stories because we are creatures of flesh and spirit and a lot of times love and sex are so closely intertwined that we can’t tell where one begins and the other ends.

The flagship of the First Coast stories is When We Were Married. This is a four-novel series featuring William Maitland and his current and then ex-wife, Debbie Maitland-Bascomb. Maitland and/or Bascomb are characters in all three of the stories here. Theirs is the Uber-love story, template for all the stories that have been and will be written about the First Coast. Two volumes of their story have been published with the first of three parts of the third volume released in April and the second scheduled for early August. The third part will be released before year’s end and Volume Four will be released in 2014.

I hope readers enjoy these stories. More will be posted shortly in collected form, and separate novels will follow. I welcome reader comments.

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

No man is an island,

Entire of itself.

Each is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thine own

Or of thine friend's were.

Each man's death diminishes me,

For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know

For whom the bell tolls,

It tolls for thee.

~John Donne~

PART ONE

BREADWINNER:

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

Jacksonville

Fall, 2003

He had an itch just above the outer rim of the halo that was driving him crazy, but the metal harness erected around his neck and head to keep him from thoughtlessly snapping his spinal cord and leaving him a quadriplegic wouldn’t allow him to quite reach and scratch.

He bellowed, Nurse, even as he punched the alarm to bring help. He had a feeling the nurses were simply getting tired of his relentlessly pushing the button and were simply monitoring the devices showing his heart beat and blood pressure and would only come in if he stroked out or if his heart stopped beating.

Finally a 60-ish hoyden with the figure of an NFL fullback and the smile of a Gestapo interrogator stepped through the door from the hallway into the Intensive Care unit and gave him a weary and only slightly sympathetic glance, taking in the halo, the cast on his right arm and right leg.

Mr. Sandler? What is it now?

Ah, Nurse McKenzie, I knew the evening wasn’t complete without seeing your smiling and lovely face.

Mr. Sandler, I’m sure there is someone, maybe a long gone mother or a woman that hasn’t had sex in decades, that would find your humor amusing, but right now I’m close to the end of a double shift, my feet hurt and you’ve been pushing that damned button every 30 seconds for most of both shifts. Please tell me what you need.

I’ve got an itch that needs scratching.

He could swear she almost smiled a real smile.

I’m sure you have an itch, but there is not enough gold in Fort Knox to persuade me to scratch it for you. Not that I’m sure there wouldn’t be any number of single mothers, underpaid, whose children are in desperate need of life saving surgery, that might momentarily consider touching your body to scratch that itch before deciding there are some things there is NO amount of money high enough to consider doing.

Despite the fact that his heart had been crushed, his life had shattered into little bitty pieces within the immediate past, his body was broken and the sons of bitches that had put him in here were probably having a good meal, a fine wine and/or fucking some tight-bodied bitches right now, he couldn’t help smiling at the old battleaxe.

If you were 50 years younger, Nurse McKenzie, I would seriously think about relieving you of the burden of your untouched virginity. I really am taking a shine to you.

Oh, blow it out your ass, Sandler. I’m close enough to retirement and they are so short of nurses that I don’t need to kiss anybody’s ass anymore.

I take it that’s a ‘no’ as far as scratching my itch?

She didn’t even reply, just turned on her heel like a battleship wheeling around and marched out. Robert Sandler tried to wriggle his forehead hard enough to get some scratching action done, but that proved to as effective as he’d been afraid it would be. So the only thing left to do was try to use his good hand to try to scratch the various itches that cropped up within reach.

He was scratching when the woman he wanted least to see in the entire world stepped purposefully into the room.

He had been, despite the broken neck, broken arm, bruised leg, various and sundry deep bone bruises, needles poking into his flesh in various uncomfortable spots, almost happy for a while there. He had managed to focus so completely on the violations to which his body had been subjected that he had been able to forget what had led him to this hospital bed.

He looked at the tall, frosted blonde in the immaculately cut skirt and blouse outfit that probably cost more this entire stay in this hospital room would run him, and realized just by standing there and breathing she was hurting him more the three assholes who had put him here.

He could close his eyes, but that was the only way he could escape her now. He was chained to this damned bed. He started pushing the button for the nurse again. Maybe they could run her out, but somehow he doubted it.

How are you Robert?

The question was so stupid he had to roll his eyes and snorted.

That question sucks on so many levels it’s hard for me to figure out how to answer it, Gail.

She moved a little closer, glided actually. It was one of the things that had always made him almost gasp watching her move. If it hadn’t been such a waste of her college education, he knew she could have made a great dancer. The other thing that always made his breath catch in his throat was the succulent roll of those heavy and fantastic Double D breasts under the exquisitely designed blouse. Most women with tits that big looked at least a little slutty when they jiggled around, but Gail didn’t jiggle. They just swayed genteelly, the way he imagined a metronome on a piano moved gently back and forth.

To take his mind off those tits that he would never place his lips around again, he said, "I'm actually hurting a great deal, or I would be if it wasn’t for all the pain killers they’re pumping into me around the clock. Your boyfriend and his thug friends broke at least three bones in my neck. That’s why the halo. If I hadn’t been very lucky, I’d be sitting here wondering if I could afford to hire someone to wipe my ass and feed me for the next 40 or so years. But they didn’t break the spinal cord.

The broken arm does hurt, actually, even with the pain killers. The docs tell me your boyfriend and his thugs broke three major bones and a few more small ones. My leg hurts like hell. That’s the bone bruise. It throbs with my heart beat. That’s actually the one the docs tell me will probably hurt the longest. Oh, there are a half dozen other minor hurts, but that pretty much sums it up. Does that answer the question? And, oh, by the way, why the hell are you here? I thought there was some hospital rule about not allowing cheating fucking slut wives in to torment their injured husbands?

No, actually there isn’t one that I’m aware of, she said, moving to stand beside his bed and park her ever- present banker’s black leather satchel on the stand beside his bed. Even if they had one, Robert, you know well enough that I’d be able to get around it. If I want to do something, it gets done.

She stood there and just breathed deeply a few times and he knew she was doing it deliberately. She knew how her tits affected him, knew it and had always used it. He could never stay angry at her when she started stripping. It was too late for that now, so she was just using them to rub salt in the literal and figurative wounds she and her fucking boyfriend had inflicted on him.

I’m sorry about what happened, Robert. You know that. Cameron shouldn’t have gotten into that fight with you, but you had to go and show up at the party and try to embarrass him. You had to know he wouldn’t stand for that.

Sandler smiled bitterly.

Of course, you can’t have a cuckolded stupid fucking husband show up while you’re parading your latest fuck toy around to all your friends and try to spoil your evening. What else could he have done, right?

She just shook her head, the way a mother would at the antics of a bad two year old.

Robert, it’s been two months. You knew I was with Cameron. You are I are over. We were over. So he was showing me off. He’s in love with me. He’s proud of me. I love him. Everything was going fine until you showed up. You never go to those parties. When you showed up and started making trouble, Cameron- he just lost his temper. I know you won’t understand it, but men, powerful men, don’t take that kind of shit the way you do by turning the other cheek. They remove problems.

He didn’t have much luck with that, did he now?

He didn’t know that you knew that karate shit, Robert. I really never thought about it that much, myself. It was just another one of those silly things you wasted your life on. Who the hell actually uses karate in daily life? So you caught him by surprise. But-

She gestured to his body lying in the hospital bed and he knew what she was about to say.

So how much good did my black belt do me? Not much, darling. Not when two guys cold cock me from behind and they and Cameron spend a few minutes pounding on me. Hard to do much by way of self-defense when you’re unconscious.

As I said, I’m sorry Robert. I didn’t want you hurt. But Cameron and his friends got carried away.

Yeah, I guess so, but at least I’m still alive. Did the cops even question him, or did the fact that it occurred in the River Club, where I’m not a member, and he had 90 percent of the accumulated wealth of Jacksonville to testify that I came in and started everything wind up with the cops apologizing to him and your friends for interrupting their evening while they hauled my carcass off?

He wasn’t arrested. There is no criminal report on the evening. Did you really think there would be one?

He closed his eyes for a moment but unfortunately when he opened them she was still standing there; frosted hair framing a face he would never be able to forget, cold blue eyes above an aquiline nose and lips that were plump before plastic surgery had made that the style.

I repeat, Gail, what are you doing here? Haven’t you enjoyed yourself enough cheating on me and then rubbing my nose in it in front of all our family and friends?

Normally, I wouldn’t have come. I know that all I’m doing now is hurting you more than you were hurting before. I got over you. I know you’re not over me. But-

What?

She picked up the satchel, snapped the clasp open and took out a document. She handed it to him.

One little embarrassing glitch has developed. There was a freelance camera crew invited by the Gilyardes. You know they were going to get that Community Appreciation Award for helping the homeless at the party that night. Or maybe you didn’t know, but they wanted a video log. And-

He couldn't help laughing.

Oh, God, don’t tell me. They actually filmed the assault.

Every bit, from beginning until they took your battered body out of there.

So what’s the problem? Your family alone has enough clout and money to bury it, don’t you?

Gail took out a solid gold pen. It had been a graduation present from her grandfather and had once belonged to Theodore Roosevelt.

"I won’t go into details, but it wound up in the hands of Molly Davenport. You know, she’s the flaming left wing liberal nutjob who is always being quoted in Folio about how terrible and corrupt Jacksonville and Northeast Florida is. She’s planning on running against the State Attorney next time and she’s hidden the video and made copies.

"Which means that although State Attorney Edwards, being an old and good friend of our family, would normally not push it, he won’t have any choice in this matter. And in any case, that assistant of his, Maitland, handles day to day operations.

"Again, normally, I’d just hand this mess over to Hugh and he would make it go away. But…Hugh checked into things and Maitland has a bad case of integrity. Hugh really doesn’t think we can buy him, he won’t scare, and Edwards is fond of him and wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Now, Maitland is married to Debbie Maitland. You probably remember her. I know you could never keep your eyes off her tits. I could have asked her to talk to her husband, but Hugh said that might just make things worse.

So, Hugh hasn’t really been able to come up with any way to make this all go away. Unless…

What?

She pointed to the document she had handed him while unscrewing the top of the pen she held. He read it past the first half of the first page and got it.

So he’ll let everybody walk if I sign this statement confirming that I came in without an invitation, started the fight and received all my injuries when I was being subdued.

She held the pen out to him.

That’s about the size of it, Robert. Please sign it.

He looked at the document, at the pen, and then up into her blue eyes and laughed until his sides literally hurt.

I say this with the greatest of respect to my wife and woman who would have been the future mother of my children. Get fucked!

She put one firm hand on his shoulder, one of the few parts of his body that didn’t hurt, and said, I know it’s tempting to say that, but please listen to me.

No, you listen to me you miserable bitch.

He felt his voice rising and tried to somehow keep himself from thrashing around damaging his spinal cord. He threw the pen across the room.

"I have loved you for more than 10 years. I was faithful to you, no matter what you may think about Cynthia. You on the other hand, were screwing around with crap like Cameron Hapwood. I go to sleep every night with the picture of him screwing you in our marital bed burned into my brain. I fucking begged you like a ball-less wimp to come back to me and you all but laughed in my face. Then when I go to confront the bastard and try to get my wife back, he and his friends do their best to kill me.

And now, you unbelievably fucking miserable excuse for a human being, you want me to lie so your boyfriend and his friends will get away with breaking my bones and nearly leaving me paralyzed. Let me put it simply. No way. No how. Never.

She just looked at him and then glided over to the other side of the room and picked up the pen, giving him a wonderful view of that fantastic ass that he’d pumped happily God knows how many times over the years. As she picked up the pen, a new nurse, younger, poked her head around the corner. Gail just shook her head and the nurse bolted.

It didn’t surprise Sandler. The Hunts, and she had been a Hunt before becoming a Sandler temporarily, donated a good chunk of the yearly private contributions to keep Shands Medical Center of Jacksonville open. They also had allies on the Jacksonville City Council who made sure that the city was always generous in its support. When the Hunts said jump, most sane politicians asked how high.

She pulled a chair up and sat down beside him. As she did, he very carefully started ripping up the legal document she had handed him. It was hard to do one handed, but it could be done.

She didn’t try to stop him. She just stared at him and then placed one hand over his immobilized left hand.

You don’t have to sign it, Bobby. You can be hardnosed. You were always the most stubborn man I’ve ever known. Granddad said when you had made your mind up, the Lord God himself couldn’t make you change your course or run. You probably never knew it, but he always liked you. He told me one time, ‘the boy’s a fool, but he’s his own man. You don’t often see that anymore’.

He blinked, fighting back sudden unexpected tears. He wasn’t crying for the stiff necked, rich and powerful man who had told him he wasn’t good enough for his granddaughter. The tears came as he remember the withered remains of a strong old man as he lay dying surrounded by family. He had asked for ‘the Sandler boy,’ and when Sandler had approached him, the old man hadn’t said anything but just took Sandler's’ young hand in his two old hands and squeezed for a minute before closing his eyes for the last time.

The sudden unbidden tears were for an old man he’d cared for more than he ever realized, and for the woman he had loved beyond anything he’d ever imagined possible before meeting her.

If she saw the tears she said nothing about them.

"It will cause a lot of problems for Cameron. He might even serve time though I don’t believe any jury in this town will ever convict him. But it doesn’t matter, Bobby. Even if he had to serve time, I’d be waiting on him when he came out. I love him. We fit. We’re good together.

"I was sorry when I found out that you’d seen us – in bed. I honest to God didn’t know you were coming in then. I’ll admit, I wasn’t thinking much about you period. It seemed like my whole world revolved around him and I just couldn't get enough of him. I know this will hurt, but you have to know. In business meetings I’d watch him do what he does, and I got wet. I got so wet I had to go to the bathroom and rub myself.

"There were times I could only make myself wait until the meeting had ended, pull him into an empty office