Black Wood Read online

  She let go of the blind and turned to face me again. “You don’t seem to get it,” she said. “You’re not part of it. You’re some guy who was spying on us, thinking he was writing a book.”

  “I am writing a book. All of this is research. I need to be involved.”

  “But you’re not. Just because you drop off a couple of notes doesn’t mean you’re part of some love triangle.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Look, this is the way it has to be. At least, for the moment.”

  I shook my head, trying to be as defiant as I could in the face of her feminine wiles. “I can’t go on with him not knowing that I’m a part of this whole thing.”

  “Maybe, if something were to happen ... if we needed you to step in ... then, I could tell him. Charlie would probably think it was fine if we needed help. But, right now, everything’s going okay.”

  “Everything’s only going okay because I’m doing the drops. He doesn’t know that.”

  Suddenly, her expression changed. “C’mon,” she said, “don’t tell me you don’t kind of like the idea of it. I’m the only one who knows you’re there.” She gave me some kind of look – batted her eyelids or something, I don’t know. I’d never seen her look at me like that. And with that, she turned and walked out the door.

  What the hell? Was I being played? I have to say, I was quite shocked. I knew she could be manipulative, but that manipulative? Would she really have let me continue to watch, knowing I was there, even though Charlie didn’t? She was playing right into my hands, doing what she knew I would want her to do. It was a double whammy. There was the fact that she would know I was watching, and I would know that she knew I was watching. So, there was this voyeuristic connection there between us. And there was the fact that Charlie wouldn’t know. Effectively, she’d be lying to Charlie. It would be another secret that we would share. It was as if she knew how important that was to me. But she wasn’t doing this for my benefit. The question was: what was behind it?

  What was she playing me for?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I wasn’t there the night Sam and Charlie decided to rob her parents. I wasn’t there because I wasn’t told about the meeting. Maybe I’d been getting sloppy. I’d been waiting for Samantha to come to me with the notes for the drop. I’d stopped observing her all the time, presuming that if there was going to be a meeting that night, she’d tell me about it. This night, she didn’t. Presumably, she made the drop herself. So, for the first time, I wasn’t privy to one of their conversations. And a very important conversation at that. Of course, that didn’t stop me imagining what went on there. I am a writer after all. I felt I knew their voices well enough at that stage to guess at what they might have said.

  I imagined them lying on the blanket, as they did, staring up at the stars through the hole in the forest sky. Samantha would speak.

  “So, how do you wanna do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “Rob my parents.”

  Charlie would have looked at her with that doe-eyed, confused look he did so well. “What?” he would have said.

  “I told you I could get you the money, but I can’t do it on my own. You’ve got to help me.”

  “I don’t hurt people, Sam.”

  “Jesus, they’re my parents. I’m not going to hurt them. I’m talking about making it look like a robbery or something.”

  “Does your father keep money in the house?”

  “No, they keep it in the bank. But all his ATM and credit cards are there. He also keeps a gun in his desk.”

  “What the hell, Sam? What do we want with a gun?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just saying. In case we ever need one.”

  “Anyway, what good would his ATM and credit cards be to us?”

  “We could use them to get out of here.”

  “We’ve had this conversation ...”

  “But what if we found a way to take care of your grandfather?” She would have sat up, animated, as the idea started to form in her head. “Bear with me. We could use the ATM card to get as much money out as we can. Then we could use the credit cards to book a flight, hotels, whatever we need.”

  “They could trace us through the credit cards.”

  “Okay, so we just use the ATM cards. Take out everything we can get.”

  “There’s a daily limit on ATM cards.”

  “So? We take out what we can every day. We’ll have most of it out before they even notice anything.”

  “We’d need to know the pin numbers.”

  “I could find out.”

  “Wouldn’t he have his cards on him, in his wallet?”

  “Not at night.”

  “You want me to break into your house at night, when everyone’s there? That’s too risky.”

  Samantha would have been annoyed but – realising he was right – she would have fallen silent and laid back down on the blanket. And then, after a few moments, the kicker.

  “What about blackmail?” she would have said.

  Charlie would have snorted. Then, realising she was serious, would have said: “I don’t think your folks have done anything worth blackmailing them for.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Samantha would have let that tantalising statement hang in the air for a moment and then said: “My father’s having an affair.”

  Charlie would have looked stunned.

  “He thinks no one knows. Maybe nobody does. My mother lives in a bubble of denial anyway. But I know. With his secretary.” She would have screwed up her face in disgust. “God ... so tacky.”

  Charlie would finally speak. “You want to blackmail your father? You’re serious?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty grand.”

  “Jesus, that’s a lot. You think he’ll pay it?”

  “He’s got it. And yeah, I think he’ll pay it to keep his dirty little secret. It’s what we need to put your grandfather in a home and get us as far away from here as possible.” She would have paused in thought for a moment. “We’d need proof. Photographs. We’d have to get photographs.”

  “And how would we do that?

  “It wouldn’t be easy. Unless ...”

  “What?”

  “Unless we had someone who could observe them.”

  ***

  It was study night the following night. Convenient for her. It was warm and balmy, so we took our lemonade out to the back porch.

  “I met Charlie last night,” she said.

  “What? Where?”

  “The Black Wood.”

  “A planned meeting?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Ask me to arrange it?”

  “We were capable of arranging meetings before you showed up.”

  “I know but ...”

  “I needed to speak to Charlie in private.”

  “About what?”

  “What part of ‘private’ don’t you understand?” She paused. “Okay, look. We’re planning something big.”

  Once more with the mob language.

  “Something big?”

  “Yeah, real big. Something that’s going to get us out of here. I’ll let you in on it, but I need you to do something for me in return.”

  I shifted nervously in my seat. What was coming next?

  “I need you to observe someone.”

  Well, that wasn’t so bad.

  “Observe who?”

  “My father.”

  “Why would you want me to observe your father?”

  “Because we’re going to blackmail him. You, me and Charlie.”

  “Whoa ... you’re going to blackmail your own father?”

  “Sonofabitch has ruined my life, why wouldn’t I? My parents have fucked me from day one. Bringing me up in this shitty fucking town, keeping me here. They think they’re going to send me off to college and then drag me back here. They can think again. They’r
e going to pay for me to get out of here.”

  “What makes you think there’s anything to blackmail him for?”

  That’s when she told me about the affair.

  “With his secretary? How would he keep that a secret? I mean, in this town ...”

  “It’s a small town, but he’s a clever man.”

  “And what makes you think he’ll pay up?”

  “Once again, it’s a small town. This gets out, his reputation is ruined.”

  “How much are you going to ask him for?”

  “Enough to get me and Charlie out of here.”

  “And what’s in it for me?”

  “You get to be part of it. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Samantha, this is crazy. You’re talking about blackmailing your own father.”

  “I don’t care. How else am I going to get the money to get out of here? He doesn’t want me to leave. He wants me to stay here for the rest of my life. You heard Charlie, born here, die here. That’s not me. So, how else am I going to get the money? Ask him for it? That’s not going to happen. This is the only way.”

  “I don’t know if I can be a part of it.”

  “You fucking dweeb, you’re so full of shit.”

  “What?”

  “You’re all full of talk ... we’re an epic love story, we were meant to be together, you were meant to write the story. Blah, blah fucking blah. Now it comes to the crunch when you could actually do something, you pussy out.”

  She was tearing me a new asshole.

  “Jesus, Samantha, what you’re suggesting is highly illegal.”

  “Hang on, you don’t have a problem following and eavesdropping on me and Charlie, but you have a problem following and eavesdropping on my father?”

  “I have a problem using any information I find out to extort money from the man.”

  “How about you don’t worry about that. You leave that to us. I just need you to find out what I need to know. Can you do that for me?”

  Was that what I wanted? I wasn’t sure anymore. Everything was moving so fast. It started out as a small act of observing and now it had snowballed into this criminal scheme that I was part of.

  Or was I?

  There was actually nothing to tie me to Samantha and Charlie. I could walk away, let them get on with their crazy scheme. They wouldn’t find anyone else to do it. If they were going to go ahead with it without me, they’d have to do it themselves, which wouldn’t be easy. Either one of them would be spotted a mile away tailing her father. And, if they were caught, what then? They’d spill the beans about everything – the plan to blackmail her father, their secret meetings that had gone on behind everyone’s backs, and how it was they managed to do it. With me, the go-between. Not the study partner at all.

  But there was nothing to link me; it was my word against theirs. A drug dealing, delinquent up on assault charges and a hometown queen gone wrong, sneaking around behind her parent’s backs. While I – the honours student – who offered to help Samantha study, I could just feign innocence.

  I don’t know what they’re talking about. We’ve been studying, that’s all we’ve been doing. I don’t know anything about the Black Wood, or Charlie, or blackmail plots.

  Simple as that. Just walk away. Walk away and never look back.

  Who was I kidding?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  We went to the Black Wood the next day. She’d arranged to meet Charlie there but had said nothing about me. She told me to stay out of sight. I did as I was told, just glad to be there. I saw Charlie arriving. He walked up to her and they kissed ferociously. He was about to start opening her shirt when she grabbed his hand.

  “Wait ...”

  “What?”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  His face took on the startled expression of a cartoon character, his head spinning in different directions to see who was there.

  “Sam, what is this?”

  “Relax, it’s okay.” She turned her head towards me. “Come out.”

  I moved slowly and purposefully out of the shadows and towards them. I wasn’t sure if he was going to pounce on me.

  “What the hell is this?” Charlie said.

  “If you just give me a minute, I’ll explain,” I said.

  He looked at me and then at her; it looked like he was about to bolt at any second. I walked towards him, put out my hand, and said, “Hi Charlie.” He looked at me warily and then at my hand, but he didn’t shake it.

  “What the hell are you doing, Sam?” he said.

  “What else am I supposed to do? He knows everything.”

  He looked at me. “You’re blackmailing us?”

  “No. Of course not. I want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  I looked at Samantha. She nodded. “Tell him,” she said. “Tell him everything.”

  So, I did. His eyes grew wider and wider, the further I got into my story.

  “This is bullshit,” he said to Samantha. “Either he’s crazier than batshit or there’s some other angle he’s working.”

  “Oh, he’s crazy alright,” she said. “But he can help us.”

  As before, I chose to take the slight as endearing.

  “What does he know?” Charlie said.

  “Everything.”

  He looked at me. “What do you know?”

  “I just want to help you.”

  “Why don’t I just break your fucking neck and bury you right here?”

  I hadn’t thought about that.

  “Why would you do that?” I said. “I’m going to be useful to you.”

  “Right. How?”

  “Because you two can’t be seen to meet. Especially now that you’re doing this thing together.”

  He eyed me warily. “This thing?”

  I nodded. “Samantha’s father.”

  “Whoa!” He threw his arms up and stepped backward. “You told him about that?” he said to Samantha.

  “Look, it doesn’t matter,” I told him. “Here’s the thing. You two can’t be seen together again. But there’s no way you can do this thing without meeting. So, you’re going to need a go-between.”

  “Nobody ever knew Dale and I met,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, but you two ... no matter how secret you try to keep it, somebody’ll find out.”

  “You mean because you’ll tell them ...”

  “No. I didn’t say that.”

  “I’m getting insinuations ...”

  “I’m not insinuating anything. I’m stating cold, hard business facts here.”

  “And what’s your cut?”

  “I don’t care about money.”

  He snorted. “Bullshit.”

  “It’s not. I don’t want money. Just let me write the book.”

  “What book?”

  “About you ... and Sam.”

  He looked at her. “It’s Sam now?” She shrugged.

  “Samantha. Let me write the book about you and Samantha.”

  “What ... are you gonna make us into Bonnie and Clyde?”

  “No. I’ll tell the truth.”

  “That’s not a book, that’s a fucking confession.” He turned to her. “If we ever got caught, they’d have everything in black and white.”

  “I won’t use your real names.”

  “Oh, great. That’ll make all the difference.”

  “Look, I’m sorry I observed you without telling you. But I’m telling you now. I’m being upfront with you. There’s no ulterior motive. This is what I want. And this is what I’ll do for you in return.”

  Charlie stared at me for what seemed like days. Finally, he said, “How about you give us a minute? I need to talk to Samantha.”

  I went back to my previous position, but I could still hear them. I could always hear them. They knew that now.

  “So, what do you think?” Sam said.

  “I think this is crazy.”

  “No, Charlie, this is perfect
. My father was practically throwing me at this guy hoping we’d be friends.”

  “No one’s going to believe you two are friends.”

  Charming. I didn’t know how much more of this my ego could take.

  “We’ve already been through that,” she said. “We’re not friends, we’re study partners. I go to his house a few days after school. Once my Dad sees us hitting the books, he’ll buy it. After that it’ll be easy.”

  “Easy?”

  “Yeah. He can be go-between for us. He can pass messages, run interference. Right now, whenever I leave the house, my Dad wants to know where I’m going. Half the time, I think he follows me. If he thinks I’m going over to his house, then he won’t have any reason to suspect me of anything else. I’ll be free to come and go as I want. And most importantly, he can get us the proof we need.”

  “This is fucking creepy. This guy has been watching us from day one? He’s seen us ... doing it?”

  “I know, it’s fucked up. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  “Yeah, there is. We can kick his ass and make sure he doesn’t do it again.”

  “Or we can use him to solve this problem we’ve got. It’s a big problem, Charlie. You know it and I know it. There’s only so much longer this is going to go on. We’re going to get busted again. And if that happens, we’re fucked for good. The whole thing goes up in smoke. Is that what you want?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you fighting this so much?”

  “Because it’s fucked up. What was all that shit about writing a book about us?”

  “I don’t know. He’s crazy.”

  “And you want to trust what we’ve got going with crazy?”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  Charlie sounded like he was running the scenario through his head. “I think we’ve got to have a better choice than this,” he said.

  “We don’t. You think I’d be doing this if I thought we had?”

  “Fine. If we need to find a go-between, we’ll find someone. Someone else. Someone who isn’t batshit crazy.”

  She lowered her voice, thinking I couldn’t hear her. I have exceptional hearing.

  “Batshit crazy is good. He’s obsessed with us for some reason, I don’t know why. Maybe he wants to fuck me or be you, or maybe he wants to fuck us both. I don’t know, and I don’t care. We can use that. He will do anything we say.”