Ride Like the Wind-His Story

By E. Leona Wallace

When David moves to a small town in the mountains, he's looking for stability and a fresh start for his children. What he stumbles into instead is a lakeside murder investigation. Meanwhile, his debauched, soon-to-be-ex wife Tara becomes entangled in the dark world of illicit substances, black market remedies, and a mysterious stranger named Johnnie. Who is this man and why is he so interested in Tara and her children? What did David witness on the lake the night he arrived and how is it connect

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628383621

Book preview

Chapter One

His Story

He had heard it said somewhere that the best way to get out of trouble was to get out of Dodge. He wasn’t certain where he had heard it, but it seemed the best thing to do in his current circumstance. So with the heat index rising and the windows down, he was cruising to an unknown destination. Actually, he had a job interview halfway across the country. Maybe some distance from her would help.

Her! Even when he wanted to get away from her, he still wanted to be near her, but she was no good for him and he now knew it. It had taken eleven years to finally understand that. He had tried everything he could think of to help her get past first one problem and then another and another with a never-ending trail of problems. She just didn’t know how to keep herself on an even keel and now she was beyond his help. She had chosen the one path he could not travel with her: men. He first realized that she was having an affair more than five years ago, but, for the sake of the kids, didn’t want to believe it. Then she had to get away, so they moved. Even now he was not certain what had transpired to make her turn tail and run, but run they did. Then, in their new location, she seemed to be content at first, but then another man came into their lives. After the third or fourth guy to wander through, he learned to become their friend because he knew what they didn’t; she was a user and when she was done with you, you were a goner. He still wasn’t sure why she had stayed married to him for as long as she did. Apparently, she enjoyed the cover of marriage for her exploits. Besides, he was her meal ticket and she knew it. Someone had to feed and clothe the kids and pay for her playthings.

So he was headed for a new destination in his life. He had extracted himself from her as best he could, but he had to leave his children behind, at least for the time being. He figured that it wouldn’t be long before she decided she wanted her freedom and then he would have the kids. He just needed to give her enough rope to wrap herself up in this idea first. In the meantime, he was making preparations to move on with his life and to eventually take back his kids. So he was on the road and driving down the highway, viewing scenery he had never before seen in any of his travels.

As he rounded a long bend in the highway, the mountains came into view and he realized just how far he was from home. It would be difficult for her to reach him here. Just as well, since she seemed to have a way of getting him wrapped into her web every other time he had attempted to get away. She was too close before, but here, here among the mountains with its moose, deer, and bears, here he could get away. Here he could become a mountain man and be himself again. Of course, all of this depended on his getting the job. Oh, Lord, please, he prayed as the beauty of the mountains enveloped him like a blanket of blues and greens. Please, let me make a new life here among your mighty heights.

The farther he traveled into these mountains, the more he began to see. It was as if his travels brought him to a greater awareness of his surroundings. He noticed a small pond sparkling in the sunlight with the wild heather around it. He noticed the purple lupine growing wild among the rocks. He saw the clouds attempting the cross over the mountains and getting an angry gray in the process. He would have to roll up the windows soon, but the mountains had also cooled the air, so the lack of wind in the car would bring a welcomed warmth.

His interview wasn’t until tomorrow, but he was ready, so ready to get back to work. It had been a solid year in which he had tried a number of odd jobs trying to determine if there was a new line of work that would suit him as well. But in the end he was back at the Mac working with images for the new client. It was what he was best at and he enjoyed doing it. Manipulating the images to be whatever he wanted was a challenge, but he loved it. He could turn the sky to the brightest blue or the darkest gray. He knew how to change the spring leaves into autumn splendor. Some of his colleagues considered him an artist, and in his own way he truly was one. That was why he saw the details of the plants and scenery around him. He was envisioning them in other colors or shades or shadows where there currently were none. The camera on the seat beside him had become his companion, seeing what he saw, helping him to focus on the details of the still life artistry that passed before him every day. The photography was an outlet, but it also gave him a sense of being part of a much bigger plan. It also captured the images of his family, his kids, so he would never forget what they looked like. He would take photos every time he saw them to ensure that he had a running album of them as they grew up.

The kids were his lifelines when she caused so much trouble. They needed him as much as he needed them. They were growing into wonderfully resilient people. Duke was his son, brilliant and so misunderstood by his mother. She treated him as though he was retarded when in reality he was in the same category as Einstein and Edison. Jess, his beautiful daughter, had grown up too quickly, often in reality playing the part of the parent in those situations where she had to deal with her mother. At the age of seven, Jess was more mature than her mother, but she still wanted to be just his little girl.

This trip was a double idea; one, he could run away from her, and two, he could set up a place to bring his children when the time came that she no longer wanted them. It was unfortunate that he had to leave them behind. They would have loved the mountain scenery he was seeing. In time they would, all in good time, if he got this job.

So his mind ran in circles, small and large, reaching just within the car and reaching out to the town that sat seven states away from him. He sat as he drove thinking about the job and his interview, thinking about her, thinking about his kids, thinking about a new life, circle after circle connected and yet separate. So he would ride like the wind to begin a new life, to begin for his kids, to begin for himself.

Chapter Two

Her Story

He was gone, out of her life, and yet he was still with her. She needed him. More accurately, she needed his income. The only thing she ever did was take care of kids. She had no skills; she had no education past high school. How could she ever take care of her own kids?

Her parents had taught her that whenever things got difficult you either ran or you got Social Security Disability. She had applied for disability payments. She had invented all kinds of ailments over the years to get her hands on the drugs that kept her going. So with her history, she applied for disability because she was incapable of handling a normal job.

But now her kids were starting to give her trouble too. She gave everything she had left to those kids and they kept coming back at her. She was really having a tough time with the in your face attitudes that were coming at her so often these days. Duke wasn’t requiring her the way he used to need her help with everything. Her son was becoming self-sufficient. If she didn’t know better she would have thought that Duke had begun to essentially ignore her. Her only son really had made strides these past six months. Duke was now leaving the special needs classrooms she had worked so hard to get him into and was in a regular classroom. While it felt good that Duke could do that, it also felt like a betrayal. From his infancy she knew Duke was different and she worked so hard to make this child even more different by making him need her all the time. Then Duke needed extra help in school, so she got him in the special classes with other children like him. But there were never any children like Duke. The other students were always so far below Duke’s thought process. So she had him tested and WOW; he was a junior Mensa, a genius. She always knew Duke was different and the test proved her right.

Then there was Jess, her beautiful daughter. Jess was very quickly becoming a handful. Jess argued about everything, fought with Duke, didn’t listen, and did whatever she wanted. One would have thought that Jess was sixteen, but she was only seven. That was why she worked so hard to keep Jess under her thumb. She had to get Jess under her control especially now that He was gone.

She needed these kids so He would continue to send money. Without them, she had no means of buying her cigs and beer. Of course there was always her other means of getting the things she needed: her body. There was never a dearth of guys who were willing to clean up the yard or help with the cleaning that she could not do, if she gave them something in return. She never thought of it as a bargaining chip because she had learned long ago that she liked it. In fact, she loved it, loved it so much that she could never get enough of it. It was really different for her to stick with only one guy for as long as she had with him, but he got tired of the racier and racier ways she wanted to try to have a bit of fun. He became distant and she had to go elsewhere to fulfill her needs. He never knew about the first few men who had trailed through her married life; at least she didn’t think he knew. Then he found out or decided he didn’t want to hide it anymore and things were never the same again.

Well, right now she had the best of both worlds; technically He was still her husband and he sent money every week for the kids, but she also had a special friend who kept her and the kids from missing him. At least that’s what she told herself. She did get jealous of the amount of time her friend spent with Jess, playing with Jess, touching Jess, hugging Jess. It had to stop.

Dealing with all of this, when her world should be pampered luxury, made her angry. Sometimes she even considered ending it all. Long ago she had vowed to her then mother-in-law that she didn’t think she could handle teenagers. She had said that it would be better for the kids to be dead than to go through puberty. There were times when all of that sounded so clean, so sane, so great a relief that it sounded like paradise to her; to die with her children all at the same time. Perhaps even now she could accomplish it all. He wouldn’t like it, but what did she care what he wanted. The kids belonged to her. He had no rights to them because she couldn’t live without them.

Chapter Three

The exit off of the highway led to little more than a paved track running through the deep woods on either side. Even the highway was not much of a highway here at these altitudes. As he slowed his speed and drove through these woods, he began to see cabins in the woods, homes for people. He must be close to some sort of town as the houses became more prevalent yet almost invisible in the woods that surrounded everything here.

As suddenly as the sun appeared over the mountain, he entered a clearing that was evidently the town of this area. There were a few shops, an old-fashioned gas station, a fire station with one truck, and the town hall with a police station all on the main road that he traveled. Homes lined the remainder of the clearing and shot off on tracks that went off of the main road. Many of the tracks were no larger than the width of a car. He wondered how they managed in the winter with snow piled high along the edges.

He came to one of the tracks that appeared to be in much better shape, one that could accommodate at least two cars easily. A sign at the end of the track pointed and advertised a small inn. This was his destination. Another pointing sign informed him that the business where he would have his interview in the morning was also off this same track. That would be convenient. So he turned left off of the main road and meandered down the winding, hilly street. The street led him past some stately homes that must have housed the elite of the town at some point in the past. Some were constructed of red brick while others were wooden structures. There were even a couple of stone exteriors. He thought about how much maintenance these homes must need and decided the stone exterior wasn’t a bad idea. The winter winds would have a hard time getting through the stone. There would need to be plenty of insulation though. Many of the houses had seen better days and looked like old ladies in their outdated dresses, worn and tattered, but still stately.

A carved sign up ahead told him the inn was on the right. He slowed to turn into a well-kept driveway that led into the woods. From the street there was no sight of the inn at the end of the drive. He slowly drove through the trees wondering just how far into the forest he needed to go and wondered if this place really existed. Then he saw the clearing and in the clearing was a lovely, old, stone home. This one was much larger than the others on the street and must have been built by the richest man in these parts. Two stories with glistening windows set in proper proportions along both stories. The roof was also stone, slate to be exact, and seemed to melt into the walls so that the house appeared to have been molded together and set in place. A porch greeted the visitors and protected the front door, but it was the side portico that gave the house its stately elegance. A notice directed visitors to park under the portico and enter the inn through the side door, so he pulled the car up under the two-story tall portico made of native granite and marble.

As he stopped the car, the side door opened and a very short, older woman waited for him to enter. She seemed rather impatient with him as he took a moment to gather a few items that he did not want to leave in the car. As he walked around the car, he tried to absorb his new surroundings like a dry sponge, but had little time as the woman had begun to tap her left toes on the top stair. She really was impatient and so he decided to end her turmoil and mounted the two large steps leading to a large foyer area. The woman closed the door behind him and walked over to a low counter that was set to one side. As his vision became more accustomed to the darker interior of the room, he realized the counter was actually a large, dark, old desk. It was beautiful with carvings along its front edge. The woman had seated herself behind the desk and pointed to a chair that sat in front of the desk indicating he should sit, so he did. She then took a large book out of the desk-drawer and, for the first time, spoke.

Mr. Turk, we pride ourselves on prompt service here at the Stone and Pine Inn. We have been expecting you. Please sign the register and Jody will show you to your room. Jacob will bring up your luggage and, if you will leave me your car keys, he will see that the car is garaged until you need it.

Since she had not given him any moment to speak, he had not had a chance to tell her that he was not Mr. Turk. So as she turned the register toward him he quickly interjected, I’m sorry, but there must be some mistake. I am David Wallingford, not Mr. Turk. I believe that I am in the correct place. I contacted you last week by phone.

The old lady looked confused, pulled some other papers from the desk, and continued to rummage in several drawers until she located a pair of thick, old, tortoiseshell eyeglasses. She rested the heavy pair on her nose and took a better look at the man sitting across from the desk. Humph, was all she said and went back to the papers on the desk. David sat silently as she rifled through one stack. Finally, she pulled one paper to the top and read the notations scrawled across the page.

Then she looked up at him, I apologize that I took you to be Mr. Turk. We had been informed that he was on his way up the hill to us. I am certain that he will be here shortly. It is not often that we have more than one visitor at any given time. So, Mr. Wallingford, please sign the register and we will still get you to your room so you can settle in before dinner. We dine semi-formally so please wear a sport coat. Dinner is at 7:00 p.m. That should give you time to get acclimated to your surroundings. You are free to wander through most of the house, but the family quarters are all marked as off-limits. We do require our privacy.

That’s fine. I am a bit tired and may take the opportunity to get in a quick nap before dinner. Financial arrangements were exchanged and he was ready to get to his room. The house had begun to fascinate him and he was ready to explore more than this little foyer.

At this point a lanky youth in his early twenties entered the room. Jody, please show Mr. Wallingford to the Lake Room, said the old lady. She remained seated as the two men left the room for the recesses of the house. The lad was ready to tell tales of the rooms that flanked the long, wide hallway. He mentioned the library, the dining room, which he would need to remember, the grand ballroom, which flanked the length of one side of the hallway, and the solarium. Jody rattled on and on about the need to close off the grand ballroom and solarium for most of the winter as the heating bills were astronomical when opened. However, during the Christmas Holidays, parties were held here, which opened these rooms for the guests who paid dearly to cover the high heating bills. As the young man spoke, David found his mind wandering to the beauty of the items on display here. Whoever had set up the decorations for this house knew what they were doing. The items did