Hush Hush by Erik Carter (best short novels of all time .TXT) 📗

but I found this. It had slid between the baseboard and the wall.”

He handed Brett a pink sticky note that said:

Weasel

407-555-2822

“Weasel?” Brett said.

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Brett pointed at the number. “Called?”

“Yeah, I called. Got a disconnect notice.”

Brett regarded the note. A long moment. Then he placed it on his thigh.

Jonah hadn’t meant for Brett to keep it.

Brett looked away, thinking. And his eyes brightened fractionally.

“TCB,” he said.

“Huh?”

Brett pointed.

Ah. The poster.

A black-and-white advertisement for BTO’s second album, 1973 album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II. It featured an image of the LP, a gearshift thrusting out of its center, and emblazoned at the top was, “BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE IS PULLING AWAY.”

The album featured BTO’s hit song, “Takin’ Care of Business,” sometimes shortened to TCB, as Brett had called it.

Jonah grinned. “‘Takin’ Care of Business,’ yeah. Gotta love the classics.”

There was the tiniest lifting at the corners of Brett’s mouth.

He was human, after all.

“There’s also this,” Jonah said and reached to the lower of the two tiers of the coffee table, grabbed the VHS tape which bore another sticky note, a classic yellow one, with his name written in Amber’s handwriting—JONAH.

“When we went to the couples therapy, the doctor had us record new vows. Do-over vows. We gave the tapes to each other, but we weren’t to watch them until the other person said we could. Amber hadn’t told me I could watch it yet. Like I said, I know in my heart that she’s passed, but I still can’t bring myself to watch it. Here.” He handed the tape to Brett along with the remote he’d been fiddling with. He grabbed the other remote, the one for the VCR, and handed it to him as well. “Probably just personal stuff, but there might be something relevant for us. You never know. I’ll go to the other room for a few.”

After ten minutes of afternoon television—a smutty talk show featuring a disturbed family from Ohio screaming at each other while the host tried to maintain a semblance of control—Jonah muted the twenty-inch TV on the nightstand. He stepped to the closed door, put his ear to it, listened hesitantly. Had Brett watched the tape yet? He couldn’t hear Amber’s voice, and he didn’t want to.

No sounds from the other side of the apartment.

He did smell something, though, coming not from the hallway but from the room he was in. Stale, earthy, musty. The odor of seldom-washed sheets and a pile of dirty clothes in the corner by the vertical blinds covering the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. The odor of arrested development. The bedroom had that smell for two years. Amber moved in for two weeks, and it vanished. And for two months since, the smell had returned.

He stood from his seated position at the foot of the bed, went to the closed door and listened again. A voice. But not Amber’s. A deep, crackling voice. With pauses. Brett was on the phone.

Jonah went down the hall, found Brett using a cellular, sitting where he’d left him, the television behind him showing the VCR’s bright blue standby screen. Brett was hunched over the coffee table, writing on a small notebook.

For a moment, it looked to Jonah like Brett was drawing something, which was perplexing. Then Jonah saw that he wasn’t drawing but making small circles. He was mind mapping, a technique Jonah had learned in college—a means of visually organizing information.

“Yes, sir,” Brett said and collapsed the phone, put it in his pocket.

Jonah pointed to the TV. “Well?”

Brett shook his head. “But there’s this.”

Brett flipped back a page on his notebook, picked it up, held it out for Jonah.

On an otherwise blank page, Brett had written, Morrison Mission, 399 Roland Street. Stuck on the page beneath Brett’s notation was Amber’s pink sticky note.

“Old number,” Brett said and put his finger to the phone number Amber had written. “Homeless shelter.”

“How did you figure that out?”

Brett traced his finger up from the sticky note to the address he’d written. “Let’s go.” He snapped the notebook shut, stood, and headed for the door.

Jonah remained where he was for a moment, then chased after him.

Well, okay then.

Chapter Five

A Fiero.

Silence hadn’t been in one of these for a while. A bit of a modern automotive classic, an icon of the previous decade. Did anything say 1980s more than a Pontiac Fiero?

Jonah hadn’t destroyed the car—the thick, sticky shine of Armor All on the dash proved he did spruce it up from time to time—but the stained seats, littered floor, and mildew smell said that the machine’s future didn’t lie in a car museum.

Silence was riding shotgun. He would let the local do the driving, leave his rental car at the apartment complex. He’d long ago abandoned petty pissing-match competitions of choosing who got to be behind the wheel. Now he based the decision on expedience. It was efficient. C.C. had always told him to work smart, not hard.

Jonah fired up the engine, which came to life with a belch and a stench. He then peered up, through the windshield, at the sky. In typical Florida fashion, the weather had done a quick change, the sunlight now replaced by a swirling gray sky, ready to spit rain at any moment.

Jonah grabbed the shift knob and began to release the clutch, but before they could move, Silence spoke. There was something he needed to know, and he needed to know now, before they made another move.

“Contention?” he said.

Jonah turned. “Huh?”

Silence motioned toward the apartment. “You said, ‘contention.’” He swallowed, lubricating his throat for a few more words. “With Amber. Reason for couples therapy.”

Jonah’s fingers twitched on the shift knob, which was smeared with black goo—more excess Armor All, dirtied by hand grime. A long inhale whistled through his teeth, a hesitant breath that would surely precede resistance.

Silence countered with preemptive insistence. “Must know.” And when Jonah still hesitated, he added, “You must be open.”

Jonah looked down at his fingers on the shift knob. Bit