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Guest Spot: Barbara Scott’s CAST A PALE SHADOW

Please join me in welcoming talented psychological suspense author Barbara Scott back for another week of wonderful entertainment!  This week, I asked Barbara to provide us with another of her wonderful excerpts, and she provided an excerpt from CAST A PALE SHADOW!  Read away, and enjoy! - Esther Mitchell

From Barbara Scott:

CAST A PALE SHADOW  was too long.  Faced with having to make cuts to meet the publisher’s guidelines my editor, the talented Gail Delaney, author of the Phoenix Rebellion series, advised me to consider cutting sections in secondary character’s points of view.  This helped focus the story on the hero and heroine.  Here’s a scene that was lost as a result.  It gives some insight into the character of Bob and Edie Kirk, the heroine’s parents. Think of it as getting the DVD release with extras.    

 

 

 

On the cutting room floor:

    Bob Kirk had not gone to work that afternoon.  He had a good excuse, better than most he used, but of course, his secretary was not given the whole truth.  She would cover for him.  She had enough practice, and he always made it worth her while.  He had spent the bulk of the day on his favorite stool at the Riverview Tavern.  The bar was named for its street and not its scenic aspect.  The river to be viewed was more than a mile to the east and obstructed from view by the trucking companies and warehouses that cluttered most of the north St. Louis riverfront. In any case, the regular customers of the establishment would have been unable to see anything beyond the frosted, nicotine-stained front window with its blinking neon Budweiser, Coors, and Miller signs and had little interest in viewing any liquid but what filled their glasses, which Danny, the barkeep, kept flowing as freely as Old Man River.  
 Sending Trissa flowers was very far from Bob’s mind at the moment.  A thought so sweet would have been cauterized by the acid memory of how his own daughter, the vicious little bitch, had destroyed, perhaps for good, one of his only assets in this life, his face.  Every time he looked in the mirrored backbar he felt like shit.  It took two stiff drinks to give him the courage to look up again, and when he did, another round would start.  Only the shadowy dimness of the bar and Danny’s penchant for taping hand-lettered notices to the mirror gave him any respite.  If he angled his head in a certain way, the worst of his damage was hidden between the Jim Beam bottles and the yellowed card that read “Only your wife will keep a tab on you!”  

He was well on his way to flushing out the incriminating details of last night.. Gin had a way of absolving one’s guilt.  He had already half-convinced himself that the lie he had tried out on Edie was indeed the truth.

 “My God, Bob, what happened to you?” he remembered her screaming when he’d opened the front door to let her in from her mercy mission to her sister.  “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, look at your face!”

 “Get in and shut the door first,” he’d growled in response.  “I don’t want the whole neighborhood knowing our business.  If you had been here where you belong taking care of your own family instead of your pain-in-the-ass sister’s, none of this would have happened.”   

It had not been easy on him to spend half the night at Barnes, made to wait like some common street drunk.  So what if Barnes was supposed to be one of the best hospitals in the whole damn country.  Everyone knew if you wanted to be treated right, you went to a Catholic hospital; you went to St. Andrew’s.  But how could he have gone there and taken the chance of being recognized in his sorry state? 

“Ellen’s sick, Bob, you know she’s sick.  I had to go,” Edie had mewled in that whiney voice that drove him up the wall even when he didn’t have a hangover and sixteen stitches in his cheek and jaw.  “Did you get into a fight?  Did somebody try to rob you?” 
“Your daughter did this to me!”
 “What?  Trissa?  What are you talking about?  Where is she?  Trissa, get down here this instant!” she immediately hollered up the stairs.  It had pleased him to see her righteous indignation on his behalf.  It had encouraged him in his cover-up. 
“She’s not here.  She ran out.  She cut me with a knife like some two bit whore from down on Cherokee Street, then she ran.”  He made sure he was under the full glare of the kitchen light before he turned his wounded cheek fully toward her, the better that she should see and appreciate what mutilation the child of her womb had achieved.   

Edie pulled back in dismay.  “I— I can’t believe this!  Did you slap her again?  Lord, I knew this would happen some day the way you treat one another.”  

 It was just like her to think him to blame.  They’d gang up on him if he’d let them, these women that he fed and clothed and sheltered.  “You’re damn right, I hit her.  I caught her sneaking in here when I heard you tell her to stay home and study.” 

“She went out?  Where?” 

“How the hell do I know where?  But on her back most likely.” 

“What?”
 “Lying and smart-mouthing me when I confronted her about it, too, like she always does.  You know her lip.  You heard her threaten me with the police the other day.  As if the police had any right sticking their nose into a father’s business!” 
Edie had had to sit by that time, her head in her hands on the kitchen table.  “I don’t understand it.  I’ve never seen her with anybody.  There’s never anybody coming around, calling.  When I was her age, there were always boys around, nice boys, meeting the folks, sitting on the porch.  But not Trissa.” 
“You think that kind of boy’s going to come up to the front porch when she keeps them entertained in some back seat?  But I’m sure they’re all Johnny-on-the-spot the way she flaunts herself.” 

 “Trissa?  But–” 

“But, but nothing.”  He could tell she had her Mother Hen feathers up.  “You see, this is what she counts on, you siding against me.  This is why something like this can happen,”  he jabbed at his laceration to make his point, “And she thinks she can get away with it.” 

“Please, Bob, tell me exactly what happened.  Trissa?  I just can’t–” 

“I’ve been telling you.  She came home, I asked her where she’d been catting around at all hours, and she flew at me like some wild creature, accusing me of vile, unnatural things such as I never thought to hear from a daughter to her father.  God knows who puts such thoughts in her head, locking herself in the closet half her life like she has, like she’s got something to hide, like I ain’t changed her dirty diapers, or spanked her little ass when she needed it.”

   

It had almost sounded like the truth to him.  Hell, it could have been the truth.  What did he know?  He’d been drunk enough to have forgotten.  But surely he hadn’t been drunk enough to do what he half-remembered wanting to do. 

“Bob, Bobby, my God, did you touch her?  Did you–?  Like–? Not like Rita?” 
“God!  Jesus Christ!  God damn it, yes, I touched her,” he’d crashed his fist down on the table, sending his coffee cup flying, its dregs splattering the front of them both.  “You want me to show you how I touched her?  Come here, I’ll show you!”  Before she could cringe away, he’d snatched her up by the collar and drew his hand back to smack her doubting face but he decided it wasn’t worth it, and he’d walked out and left her there. 
  “Bobby.  Bobby, I’m sorry.  Don’t go, please.  Bobby!” he’d heard her calling after him as he slammed out of the house.  To hell with her.  To hell with them both.  He had other places to go, other women who would more than welcome him. Or would they?  He caught another glimpse of himself in the mirror and winced.   

Danny, astute bartender that he was, saw his distress and was ready with the shaker to refill his glass.  Putting lie to his bedraggled sign that warned “The only thing on this house is the roof” which clung by one corner below the neon Anheuser-Busch eagle, Danny pushed aside the crumpled bill Bob tried to place on the bar. 

“For medicinal purposes,” he said.  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Bobbo, it’ll probably heal up into a decent and distinguished scar.  Knowing you, you’ll wrench the heart out of some poor gal, telling your stories about how you got it.” 

 And Danny, who didn’t know the real story any more than Bob would after enough gin had sluiced it out of his system, was probably right.    

 

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 1:42 pm and is filed under Guest Spot. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “Guest Spot: Barbara Scott’s CAST A PALE SHADOW”

  1. Barbara Scott Says:
    July 22nd, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Thanks, Esther.

    Charming folks, right? Trissa’s conflicts did not arise in a vacuum.

    Join me on Esther’s loop today and we’ll talk about what writers do that may never exist beyond the confines of the hard drive.

    Or comment here.

    Remember, pop up and say hi in either place and you have a chance to win a choice from my July prize basket. The winners will be chosen next Tuesday.

  2. Kimberly Killion Says:
    July 22nd, 2008 at 8:52 pm

    Here’s what I’m thinking, Barb…Bob needs his own book. :)
    No loss in the cuts, you can save it for later.
    Cool entry for a blog. I enjoyed it.

  3. Barbara Scott Says:
    July 22nd, 2008 at 10:20 pm

    Alas, Kim, Bob is no more. So unless he’s a ghost… Now that’s another book entirely.

  4. Angie Fox Says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 4:46 am

    Great excerpt! I like the idea of catching a peek at what ended up on the cutting room floor. Although I have to say that if this is what didn’t make the book, I’m looking forward to reading what your editor considered the best of Cast a Pale Shadow.

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