Tag: Psychological Thrillers

Chapter Two – Cadaver Hunting

Beneath the ice of sleep, the dream world rages lush and powerful. Real life glowed faintly, inviting her from the depths, but Persey turned away. The Bird Lady, dead by the time Persey turned ten, was found only here. In the real world the past had vanished; but in dreams everything continues forever.

In the inky depths below her something shivered, transmitting a humming, like a hive. As she flew above a well she gazed down, and a Thing blinked back at her. She understood it waited to be granted form. Without shape it could never emerge.

Persey never had dreams turn sour. Was this a nightmare, then? The eyes regarded her with peculiar intensity, Digger’s very expression when he tried to plant thoughts into her mind.
The thing soared across the abyss and lapped her with its tongue. Gasping “Don’t let it out!” she opened her eyes.

It was Digger, of course, voyaging all the way to sleep to pull her out. She smiled and rubbed his black and tan head, whispering in his silky ears, “The more I know people, the better I love my Digger.”

If Digger was in the bed that meant Roy was gone, because Digger never dared ascending when the alpha male was around. A hundred dollar bill adorned Roy’s pillow. Fun money. Play money. Probably he returned to the party guaranteed to go all night long. He would help Jarod with both fallout and mop-up; emotional, legal, environmental – you name it.
She was alone in the black and white bedroom lit to brilliance by multiple skylights, a room decorated only with nude photographs of herself. This was a private place and it was bliss to be alone; to spend the day playing, entertaining any idea flitting past, without worrying what others might read on her face.

Waiting for coffee in the rose granite and green marble kitchen, Persey stared out at the silent woods and summoned her unsettled thoughts. That man was at the forefront. That man who had so satisfyingly aroused her last night, now she was angry at him. He probably thought she was a dummy. He had lectured, showing off, while she stood silent. A slow burn suffused her body.
How he had postured, describing the life of a criminal profiler! He knew nothing about her, probably cared less. He’d guessed things about her, hazarding that she couldn’t be married to a cop (that was God’s truth, anyway.) This woman who prided herself on mystery was surprised that he saw wifehood.

After all she adorned her fingers with opals only, that unlucky stone. He couldn’t know that the Bird Lady once told her that which is unlucky for other people would always be lucky for her. The stranger proclaimed aloud his terrible curse:

“Women like you are never free.”

She should have smacked him, she could see now.
Never free! She was the freest creature on the planet. He knew nothing.

Let others drudge in offices; she spent her days playing, she and Digger adventured wherever they chose. She glanced at her watch. It was still too early to call Cinda and Bish to find out how they’d survived the party. She tried to warn them but they’d begged for invites – Jarod’s gatherings being legendary – and because Roy refused to host them this was the only way Persey could return their many kindnesses. She was especially worried about Bish, a poet, an intellectual, with a high voice and a Scottish kilt. Frankly she was afraid they would eat him alive; but maybe he would like that. You never could tell.

With luck, all they would have this morning was ruined clothing and a matching pair of hangovers.
They’re adults, thought Persey, I told them I always leave early and they’d have to look after themselves. But guilt didn’t depart so easily. Maybe Roy was right and “friends” were more trouble than they were worth: “People gettin’ into our business.” But he had Jarod. He didn’t mind Jarod getting into his business; quite the reverse, since in fact, he’d recently made him partner. To Roy this was different – they had been blood-brothers since Special Forces – saved each other’s lives repeatedly to hear them tell it. And the fact that Jarod was a cop smoothed Roy and Persey’s existence in countless ways.

Thinking of Jarod was disgusting and unpleasant and she didn’t have to do it today. Today was a day marked out for adventure. Since she was decently clothed in camisole and flannel shorts she could brave the binoculars of neighbors to carry her coffee out to the cool deck where she settled in an Adirondack chair to examine the county map.

That man! The things she could have told him! He had no idea she was an orienteer in college, for example. Much of what he described – like making a grid search– she had already done or knew how to do. She unfolded the county map and tried to locate the “body dumps” he’d told her about, just off the Green Trail. Both corpses turned out to be prostitutes from Philadelphia, a good hour’s drive away. What were the odds?

She knew he was trying to scare her when he implied a serial killer might have descended on their bucolic neighborhood. There was no crime worth mentioning around here; even Jarod had a hard time scaring up enough drug dealers to constitute a full day’s work. What was that man’s name? Ned McSomething. His own bosses didn’t believe his premise that only a local would know the trails at night. Bodies dumped in plain sight might indicate others, better hidden. The smart thing to do would be to search; but the higher-ups forbade.

So he’d found a pretty girl at a party to complain to about his bosses; not uncommon, in Persey’s experience. To a man, every woman was a sounding board.

When she’d mentioned she and Digger often ventured off the Green Trail, because she preferred her dog leashless, he’d actually had the nerve to tell her to stay out of the woods.

One thing Mr. Stay-Out-of-the-Woods hadn’t bothered to find out about her was her appetite for exploration. In the course of it, she’d learned something she bet he didn’t know. Close by the Green Trail was an abandoned utility easement. She and Digger avoided it because it was partially swamp, but it was a great place for four-wheeling. The key to behavioral profiling, McSomething had said, was to think like a criminal. How hard could that be? Killers were just people determined to evade the consequences of their actions; everybody had tried that. Serial killers were the most interesting, he’d said, because they were the smartest. That made them Big Game, the most fun to catch.

Thinking like a guy with a body on his hands, Persey asked herself, who would carry a body if they didn’t have to? That easement must cross the road somewhere; but frankly she had no idea where.

From the top of Tallwood Drive she recalled seeing the pylons. There was a cliff on which the houses teetered, but she welcomed challenge. It would be fun. They were a perfect team; her innate sense of direction and Digger’s inborn affinity for dead things. God bless him, he just loved digging them up.

Draining her caffeine allowed her to fantasize about the pleasure of being proved right, summoning up Ned’s impressed face when she told him; his condescension sparking, however grudgingly, to appreciation. She was thirty- three, coming into what the Bird Lady called her “power time”, her life’s most important gifts should be emerging soon. She had wished lifelong for some kind of talent others would remark on; anything besides her looks. Good looks seemed to be the one thing everyone desired, but Persey had learned from experience what a weak prop they were on which to hang a life.

Taking her coffee upstairs, she changed to sweatshirt and jeans, Ned’s card in one pocket, cell phone in another. This one time it could be a valuable tool instead of Roy’s annoying tracking mechanism. How many cell phones had she “lost” in an effort to dodge surveillance?
She grabbed a water bottle and stopped in the garage for one of Roy’s machetes. When she opened the garage door Digger began dancing in anticipatory excitement. Truth to tell, Persey felt the same way.

Tallwood Drive was a street of McMansions with Frenchified roofs and Palladian windows. Judging by the amount of play equipment in the yards, the neighborhood appealed to parents with very young children, but there seemed to be no one home anywhere, as if a bad fairy had struck everyone invisible the moment they signed the mortgage papers. The children played elsewhere while the parents toiled. Or perhaps they were all in meetings with divorce mediators and social workers quarreling as tight money wove its anhedonic spell. In any case, it was to Persey’s benefit that the place was deserted. She parked at the end of the cul de sac.

Not even the most primitive path to the woods was visible from the street. People with houses like these expect trails to be manicured, but Persey preferred the road less taken. Wasn’t that the point of a life free from deadlines and performance reviews? She had all the time in the world for crazy things like this. Even if she found nothing, what did it matter? What Detective McKick didn’t know couldn’t puff him up with superiority. It would be just another walk for Persey where hers was the only footprint. And there would be plenty of other places left to search.
She escorted Digger boldly through one of the side yards, choosing the garage side where the developer scrimped on windows. If someone challenged her for being on private property, she could say Digger had jumped the leash. She had one in her pocket, just in case. But she must have felt some residual guilt, because she jumped at the sight of a still figure that turned out to be a tarpaulin-shrouded barbecue. On the scale of misdemeanors, walking through

someone’s side yard was nothing to feel especially guilty about. But the Bird Lady used to say that the people who have the most reason to feel guilty never do. They leave that to the rest of us.
A squirt of adrenalin was pleasurable, in fact. Was this what the killer felt as he lugged his smelly prize? Wondering whether this would provoke the final confrontation? She could feel the addiction potential. Easier to focus on that rather than the emotional impact of an actual corpse.
Truth be told, Persey was kind of squeamish about some things. She hated horror movies and preferred polishing silver while Jarod and Roy indulged in a slasher flick. Her frame of reference about death was constructed by the Bird Lady. In childhood they’d presided over so many animal funerals. The dead are part of the landscape, the Bird Lady would say, and we all benefit. Mud to mud, so to speak.

In the woods, the going got rough. Persey tried to use the machete as little as possible, but even so, her arm was getting sore. If only she had four legs, like Digger. The angle downhill was approaching ninety-degrees. Well, she had picked out the hardest path first. Once she got through this, everything else would seem easy by comparison. That made it a good place to start.
Persey told Digger, who believed everything she said, “The only way forward is through.”

When she reached the bottom of the hill, she was so exhausted she was trembling and Digger was covered with burrs. Ahead of them was the swamp, where the massive electric pylons danced in a line, buzzing faintly just like the Thing in her dream. She’d got that right, anyway. This ready-made path was something only a local would know. From this angle could see it must cross Bread and Milk Road somewhere. Even if she found nothing, she would locate the entrance and tomorrow search from the other end.

She began laboriously tracking back and forth across the swamp in a zigzag, jumping from burdock to burdock muddying her sneakers up to the ankle. As in dreams, time became meaningless. Alpha waves, the Bird Lady used to say, told you your calling. Time disappeared and you and the task became one. It was like sex, really.

No sign anyone had been through here recently, electric company personnel included; the path was overgrown. Digger was enjoying himself enormously. Fur that had once been tan and brown was now all brown. His whiskers drooped with mud. He looked more like a chocolate lab than an Airedale.

The smell alerted her. At first she thought it might be swamp stink: decaying vegetation. But as she closed in she knew exactly what it was, and her hunter’s heart sped up. At long-ago summer camp, the counselors used a decaying sheep’s head soaked in poison to attract and assassinate bugs. Called “The Big Stinky,” the smell was powerful enough to repel humans. Just thinking about

that odor could turn you inside out. But the bugs loved it, flocking joyously to their deaths.
And the bugs loved this. With the stench came motion, a whirling yellowed boil of maggots. It seemed the flesh was melting as she watched.

Persey blanched, but Digger rushed forward to join the carnival of worms. Persey barked “Stay!” and Digger halted, searching her face guiltily.
The only human part she could see was a hand, a hand so bizarrely normal, it was just like a person taking a nap under a blizzard of worms. Chipped red nail polish and one wrist encased in dangling white plastic. Around what should have been the face a seething mass of maggots reveled furiously; the mouth gagged open to reveal one gold tooth. Was this the buzzing hive that stalked Persey’s dreams?

Sudden fear knocked the wind out of her; it was easier to collapse than think such thoughts. She put her head between her legs and saw even the grass beneath her flecked with red. She panicked; fearing radiating lines of death rushing from the corpse to infect her, but looking closer she saw the red was not blood, but tiny scarlet cone-shaped mushrooms, sprung up to drink the dew. Until this moment it had been a game, a way for her to flaunt her secret expertise. Roy – and more importantly his mother, Babe – were always awaiting the pregnancy announcement. They were horrified merely by the effort of an ordinary run; imagine what they’d think of this.

She gagged back vomit, thinking of the baby she would never have. Those two blew past all her objections. She had no right to like her life just the way it was. But her secret weapon was Roy, she knew him better than his mother did. Two unhappy childhoods were enough, and he couldn’t stand competition. The baby idea was just to pacify Babe. When the fertility doctor failed to find her IUD and passed her as fertile, she’d realized the heavens sided with her; even unworthy prayers are sometimes answered.

When her stomach returned to normal she pulled out Ned’s card and tried the number marked “cell”. But of course there was no signal. There never is when you really want one.

She eyed the nearest pylon speculatively. How far could you climb one of those things before you got electrocuted? Well, she was about to find out. She could feel the humming right through the metal. Digger crouched distractedly at the base, barking. When she reached the middle crossbar she slung her arm over the support and tried the phone again. His voice said “Yeah?” on the first ring, as if resuming an interrupted conversation. It was a very bad connection.
She felt a little teen-prank thrill of superiority; she knew all about him, but he knew nothing about her.

She heard the smile in her voice as she said; “You might remember me from the party last night. We had a conversation about two corpses found on the Green Trail. You thought there might be others, deeper in the woods. Well, I found one.”
“Is this a joke? You’re who?”

She felt annoyance now. God, he was slow on the uptake. “Honestly, it’s not a joke. This is a bad connection, and it could cut out on us any minute. I’m trying to tell you, I located another body. A dead person. Obviously a victim of your serial killer. Do you know where Bread and Milk Lane is?”
“Who is this really?” His voice was skeptical, but there was still lots of raw charm in that gravelly burr. Was that what piqued her about him? That voice and that scar suggestively furrowing his neck; a scar so deep it looked as if his head, once detached, had been sewn back on.

She couldn’t conceal her exasperation. She didn’t care to be treated like a desperate housewife. “This is Persey Royall and we met last night. You gave me your card. I found a body. A dead one. I thought this was your business. Or would you rather I dialed 911?”

“No, no, no.” Had he remembered who she was? Or did she flatter herself? “You’re where, again?”

“Do you know where the electric pylons cross Bread and Milk Lane?”

“It’s probably on the utilities map. I can find it.”

“Better use an old map. It’s where I’ll be in twenty minutes. Then I’ll have to walk you in…it’s a bit of a hike.”

“I can’t believe this.” He swore.
“Believe it,” she said. She decided not to explain that she was hanging twenty feet up a humming pylon.

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
As she climbed down she remembered how he’d complained just last night that his superiors didn’t take him seriously. Now he wasn’t treating her seriously. Digger, distressed by exclusion, began to howl.

It took longer than twenty minutes to find the road, but the going was easier and at least the terrain was relatively flat. She should have come in this way; she wouldn’t have needed the machete. Ned was nowhere to be seen, but since the pylons were visible above the trees, Persey felt certain she had the right spot.

She sat down exhausted on the grass verge and began pulling prickers out of her hair and clothes. Her head was swimming and she still felt a little sick. Of course she’d always had a fragile gut – couldn’t get her weight over 100 no matter what she ate. It didn’t take much to turn her stomach into a clenched fist.

She had never seen a dead body in her whole life, not even relatives. At this safe distance from The Thing, she questioned what she had actually seen. She better not be making a fool of herself. It had looked to her like a person, but could she really tell? Maybe she was making a fool of herself. If her vehicle had been nearby she might have tried to sneak away. Let him take it from here. Maybe he didn’t remember her name; she hadn’t given him a card. He hadn’t

inquired who her husband was. He could find her through Jarod: “platinum blonde, 95 pound female who left the party early” didn’t match anyone else that Persey knew. She stretched out on her back and felt her muscles melt to water. Hot tub would feel good after this.

Ned drove up alone in an unmarked police car. He wore a Kentucky University sweatshirt, a red ballcap and sweatpants boasting a design of oily handprints. His face was dotted gray with stubble and his eyes looked tired. She gazed up at him, bemused. There he was, the man from her fantasy, complete with curly iron-gray sheepswool hair and scarred throat. She’d been almost ready to think he couldn’t be real. Would he blush to know he had been the subject of a sexual fantasy? She would if he knew. Thank God he didn’t.

“I was at the gym,” he said. “What gives?”

She closed her eyes. That was the police for you. She knew them well, if only through Jarod. Their prime technique was to make you tell the same story over and over until you spit up on yourself.
“Hey.” Now his voice was concerned. He tried hoisting her to her feet. “Jesus,” he said, “So you’re a cadaver diver. I remember you now. You’re either the bravest person I’ve ever met or the craziest.

You look awful. What are you playing at?”

“Feel the fear and let it go. “ That’s what the Bird Lady said.

“I found your damn body. You said it was there to find. Remember how I told you I hike every day? Well, I just varied my path a little today and…there it was.” It was almost true. Why flatter him by confessing how specifically she’d tried to please him? It was never a good idea to let a man know he’s had an effect on you.

He was still looking at her like he wanted to drive her to the nearest psych ward and have her screws re-threaded. Just a stroll in the woods, huh? She knew her sweatshirt and pants were ripped, her arms scratched bloody and her hair still full of brambles. The humor of it hit her and she fell backwards and started laughing till the tears came.

Digger was jumping up against McKick, licking him and barking.
McKick looked down at her, frowning with his hands on his hips. “I recognize hysteria,” he said. “Typical reaction to a fresh kill, so I’m inclined to believe you.”

“Fresh?” She couldn’t stop laughing. “Hardly. It was way past its due date.”
He couldn’t seem to get over his aggravation. Some people just don’t want assistance.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been up all night. Explain to me how the hell you did this again?”
She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Seems I have a gift,” she said. She stood up slowly. Stifled the final laugh.

His response was short, “Well, you’ll admit it’s a very strange thing to do.” He wasn’t like his party self at all. Was it because she was fully clothed this time and last night her nipples had been practically hanging out? She began to feel annoyed. Betrayed, even.

“You told me there were more bodies to find and no one would look so I looked!”
“I also told you to stay out of the woods, as I recall,” he said, attempting ineffectually to brush her off. Digger eyed them like a nervous umpire, ready to rule on inappropriate touching.
So he recalled their conversation! Maybe better than she did.

“I’m guess I’m just not used to having this effect on people,” he went on. “Usually nobody listens to me. My wives don’t listen to me, my kids don’t listen to me, my superiors certainly don’t listen to me.”

“You’re married?” She asked too fast and could have kicked herself.

“Divorced.” He didn’t seem to think it was a peculiar question. “Twice. Listen, it’s not you I’m angry at. I’m angry at myself. If there’s really a body there, I’m in a peck of trouble.” He couldn’t resist pulling a briar carefully from her hair. But not carefully enough. Glittery pale hairs still stuck to it. He shook it as if loath to throw this talisman away.

“It’s really there.” She blinked at him. If she decided to hallucinate something, it wouldn’t be a city of maggots. “Why would you be in trouble?”

“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m ardently hoping you just found a deer carcass.”
She snorted. “I know what a deer carcass looks like.” She and the Bird Lady had buried them, a time or two.

“Don’t be offended if I don’t call the forensics van just yet. I’m going in. Is there any special…?”
“Follow the pylons. You’ll smell it.” She shuddered. “Take Digger.”
“I think we’ll keep the dog away from the scene,” he said. “Let him stay here with you.”
He opened the front seat passenger door. “Please don’t answer the radio or play with the controls.”
She was beyond insulted. Again she felt like smacking him. Did he think she was five? “Now why would I do anything like that?”

“I really don’t know what you would or wouldn’t do.” He went to the trunk and pulled out a scratchy army blanket. He opened a rear door for Digger, just managing to get the blanket in under the filthy paws.

“Sorry,” she apologized.

“Don’t worry,” he told her shortly. “It’s seen worse.”
She could imagine. Maybe that was the genesis of this whole thing, her
superb imagination.

It was hot in the car. Deliciously hot. She fell asleep singing the childhood ditty: “The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out…”

Nature red of tooth and claw. The Bird Lady wouldn’t have been shocked by any of it. One of the tales she’d shared with a six-year-old Persey was the story of a man who cut out his sister-in-law’s tongue so she couldn’t tell on him. Then the sister became a nightingale and flew away…
When she awoke, he was leaning in the window looking at her, machete in one hand and a can of Red Bull in the other. He was panting. She opened the door, but slowly. Because in truth he was a little scary looking, the urban legend man accosting a car. She defused the moment as best she could for both of them.

“Quite a sight, wasn’t it?”

“It was lively,” he agreed. “Maggots love injury sites. They prefer their dinner pre-chewed, just like the rest of us.” He brandished the machete. “This yours? Looks recent.”
“It is,” she told him. This crime stuff was hard. You had to think of everything! “Guess I forgot it. Sorry.”

“You can see why we really can’t have newbies crowding around. You altered a crime scene.”
She was stung. Newbies! “I found the crime scene!”
“Correction,” he said. “You found two body dumps. It’s part of the picture but only part. We need to find the crime scene and triangulate between that and the body dumps to find his lair. Where he lives. This whole area is a jeopardy surface. ”
She clamped her lips mutinously. She hated being lectured, and she loathed jargon.
He pattered blithely on, a natural pedagogue. “There’s a very old skull nearby. Totally skeletonized. I’d say it’s been there at least three years. If we’re lucky he’s beginning to repeat himself. We catch them if they start to get sloppy…” He sipped his Red Bull. “You know, this stuff isn’t bad warm. Want one?”

Yuck. She ignored him. “Maybe there are two killers?” She sat up in an effort to clear her head.
“Dare we hope?” he asked sardonically. “No. It’s the same guy. Plastic handcuff ligature creates a pattern injury. Bad news/good news. Too many corpses means he’s revisiting dumpsites. Revisiting dumpsites makes him predictable. Predictability makes him easier to catch.” He tossed the empty can and the machete on the floor of the back seat and climbed into the driver’s side.
“So where’s your car?” he asked. “Please don’t tell me you took a cab.”
This was the thanks she got? Not what she’d envisioned at all. Last night he’d as good as told her she was a useless but cute little gal and today she’d found something he couldn’t.
“But I proved you right,” she said. “Aren’t you going to call the crime guys?”

Once again he made that insulting noise in his throat, looking at her as if she suffered from a bad case of television.

“Here’s what happens if we play it your way,” he sighed. “I get suspension for shooting my mouth off about an ongoing confidential investigation to a girl I just met – which, frankly, they won’t even believe. They’ll assume we had to have been having some sort of relationship because I’ve never been that sort of idiot before. You get to see the inside of a police station because it will take you months – literally months – to convince them that you just happened to find two bodies your first crack out of the box. You may never convince them. You’ll call your husband and if he has any sense at all, he’ll get you a lawyer, the more expensive the better. The lawyer won’t believe you either and he’ll tell you not to talk. I hate to admit this about my agent-of-the-state compatriots but they like their dinner pre-chewed as well. They have a fatal weakness for a bird in hand, as opposed to say, staging a massive hunt for a bird in the bush.

That’s been the trouble all along. The fact that you won’t talk means they have to open an investigation on your life. And your husband’s life. And the lives of your family, friends, what the hell, throw in the Mexican maid and the Japanese gardener. I don’t know what I was thinking. I must have been high, and since I don’t drink, maybe I was high on beauty.”

“I don’t have a Mexican maid or a Japanese gardener,” she said, struggling with mixed emotions. Once again he’d accused her of being nothing but a trophy wife. On the other hand, he’d complimented her looks. Nice.

“Or,” he said, “We can play it my way, which unfortunately involves a little modest subterfuge, but, trust me, in the service of the greater good.”

“Don’t you dare suggest we give the guy a pass.” Persey’s anger ignited.
“Never. I say I found it. I admit it’s altering evidence, but it wouldn’t be the first time necessity mothered invention. You, once again, don’t say anything. Because they never find out about you. And because I’m me, no polygraph, no hot seat. Hopefully we find the guy because of this evidence and case closed, community protected.”

“So you want the credit for my find?”
He showed her his phone. “Or we call the lawyer now. Pick one. I’ve brushed up against the best.”
As if in sensitivity to her clamoring thoughts, he turned off the two-way. She unwound slowly in the resulting silence. Silence was her natural music.
“You don’t need to stay in touch?”
“I’m off duty,” he said. ”Worked all night. I only keep it on because I’m used to it.”

“Background music,” she agreed, understanding. Like those white noise machines the fertility therapists use. Trying to trick you into speaking your most secret thoughts…
She needed time to think. Men always pulled these stunts. How could she agree to a deal that subverted her cleverness and enterprise? On the other hand, Roy hated lawyers. What would Roy say when he found out about all this? What would his mother say?
“Is it too late to take you up on that drink offer?” she asked wearily.

“Never too late,” he joked in his gentlemanly manner. “I hate drinking alone.”
They sipped companionably for a moment. Red Bull wasn’t bad warm.
He said, “So, seen any good movies lately?” and she laughed. The unexpected pleasure of last night, when two strangers at a party had a little conversation about criminal profilers and serial killers, was mysteriously re-created. It was a little too intimate, if anything. They were steaming up the windows. What was it about this guy that made her feel so comfortable? He just seemed so at home in his skin he allowed her to feel at home in hers. Not the reaction she was used to getting from men, which was probably why Bish, who had been sprinkled with more fairy dust than testosterone, was her best male friend.

Jarod, on the other hand, made her want to evaporate the way he looked at her. Like he wanted to drag her through his teeth. And because he was Roy’s best friend Roy was all smiles. Didn’t punch him out the way he deserved.
Red Bull packed a jolt, which was what Persey needed right now. Imagine telling Roy she needed a lawyer! Just mentioning the word would trigger a diatribe. And Babe would have conniptions. It would be horrible if she ever succeeded in her quest to keep Persey between the mall and home. She chose to believe too much exercise and too little food was responsible for the empty nursery .
Persey sipped. “I accept. On one condition,” she said.
He shifted the car into drive. “And that would be?”
“Don’t leave me out. Tell me how the investigation’s going.”
He was driving now. She couldn’t stop him; impossible to prolong the
moment. Time to return to their lives.

“I guess I can do that,” he said, but he looked straight ahead. She heard
reservation in his voice. He was lying to her. According to Jarod, cops lie to witnesses all the time. They have to. They need to be the only ones who know what’s going on.
”Four bodies,” she prompted him. “They’ll have to listen to you now.”
“They will for a fact,” he agreed. “Now it becomes a tango with the Feds, and in any dance with the Feds, we have to play the girl.”

Men! She turned her head away and looked out the window. Always looking for the next hill. Making everything a contest.
“So where’d you say you left your vehicle?” he asked again.
She hadn’t said. “Top of Tallwood Drive.”
He was mysterious again, confident, a man who used words like “vehicle.” “I can find it.”
As he drove, she reflected on this new link between them. Some people say
deception is more intimate than a kiss.

When I heard my brother-in-law was dead, I thought my sister had probably done it. Apparently I was the only one who thought so, because my sister, an aggressively born-again Christian, is a Perfect Person. A martyr. St. Hayley. I recalled a conversation we’d had years ago, when I’d been needling her about her newfound identity, reminding her of all the things she couldn’t do.
“No more adultery,” I said, although as far as I knew she’d never been unfaithful to that unfaithful
bastard.

“True,” she’d remarked.

“No more lying. Not even tiny social lies. You’ll have to tell everybody the plain, unvarnished truth. No more friends.”

“That’s not true,” she’d said. “There’s a wider truth we must be faithful to. It’s spiritual dishonesty we have to fear. Spiritual dishonesty is a splinter in the body of God.”
Hear that? I call that “Jesuitical”. That kind of “I know better” reasoning can justify anything. My husband talks like that, but he’s a lawyer. He says there’s no truth, only juries.
“How about justice?” I’d demanded and she smiled at me with that superior smile.
“God’s in charge of justice.”

See? A person like that could justify murder! Then she made it worse by talking about how there’s always both forgiveness for sin and sin. If you can be forgiven at the last minute, no matter what you’ve done, can’t you ultimately get away with anything? It bothers me because it’s so obvious, but I can’t get anyone to agree.

“Think she did it?” I asked my husband.

“Hayley? She’d have to stand in line,” Simon.snorted. “Plenty of people had a bigger motive than she did.”

That wasn’t true. There was all that insurance money, plus she’d had to live with him every day. The screaming, the vomiting, the violence. Dave was a piece of work. Now she was free to do whatever she wanted. Sell the house, take a cruise, live abroad. Of course by her lights she couldn’t have sex without marrying someone, but maybe that doesn’t matter either, with forgiveness shimmering eternally on the horizon. On the other hand, that kind of money brings parasites. I’ve heard women in abusive relationships are closet masochists. Right out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“If she did it, would you defend her?” I asked my husband.

“Nah,” he said, knotting his tie. Busy guy. Always on his way to somewhere, looking like a fashion plate as always. “Shouldn’t have a relative for a client.” He considered. “Unless she couldn’t get anybody else.”

“If I murdered you, would Al defend me?” I teased.

“That would be tougher.” He laughed. “You wouldn’t be ridding the world of an incubus, you’d be robbing the universe of a first class litigator.”

He has an answer for everything. Litigators “She did it,” I said. “I know.”I don’t know why I kept after him. Maybe I have to.because it’s so rare that when he looks at me, he’s thinking
thoughts with me in them.“I doubt she’d have the strength,” he told
me. “Somebody gave Dave’s head a pretty good pop.”

“So she hired someone. Of course she’d be in that person’s power forever.” Masochistic, right?
“Or somebody did her a favor,” my husband returned. “Danger invites rescue. You think chivalry is dead?”

He’s supposed to be the cynical one!

At the funeral I searched Hayley’s face. I don’t know what I expected to see. The Mark of Cain? What I did see was a person tired and worn, who hadn’t been sleeping. No makeup, hair a mess, black jacket and white skirt — at a funeral? She looked more the way she looked when Dave was acting up. Of course maybe getting your head bashed in behind a bar is the ultimate act-up.
She gave me a hug. Can’t ask a person if they’re a killer, not in the receiving line. I was forced to move on. After the receiving line she rushed upstairs. I saw a friend of hers from Al Anon take up a plate of food and what looked like a glass of wine. Why not? She wasn’t the one with the problem.
I chose a seat with Simon and the lawyers. Telling war stories as usual. Simon’s partner Al waved a sandwich at me to acknowledge my presence.

“Good eats,” he said. Like I had anything to do with it. Woman equals food in his equation. I took advantage of the pause in their conversation to revert to my favorite topic.
asked.

“Think they’ll catch the guy that did it?” I
“If he’s dumb enough to use the credit cards,” said Al.
“You’d think he would have taken Dave’s car,” I suggested. “Clean getaway.”

Al shrugged. “Must have had a car of his own.”
“Some “desperate thief”, then. What was Dave even doing there? The bartender said he wasn’t even drinking in that bar.”
“So he got loaded somewhere else,” said Al.

“Those guys always lie,” said Simon, wiping his mouth with the hand that wears the law school ring. Ugly bulky tacky thing. “Bartenders. They don’t want trouble.”

See? No joy for me in this situation. Everyone was celebrating Dave’s death. Good riddance, they were thinking. I imagined our situations reversed, with me the widow and Hayley attending Simon’s wake. Simon’s family is Italian, there would be a lot of screaming and crying, I can tell you. He supports everyone. Would Ihave the nerve to disappear, the way Hayley had done? No, I’d have to stay to be pawed over and criticized. Everything I do is wrong. Thank God I only see those people once a year.
If Simon died, I’d take a cruise first thing. Although I should probably go to the gym for a year before putting on a swimsuit. We have a family membership but only Simon uses it – who has the time? Hayley is thin enough but those stretch-marks of hers make her look like she’s been clawed by a tiger. She needs surgery but of course she can afford it now.

I got the idea at the super market. I was standing in line, scanning the impulse purchases, and they had a stack of those lined tablets people who never write letters buy when they have to write a letter. Of course I‘d need one of those untraceable self-stick envelopes: no DNA. Use gloves. Simon says they get fingerprints off paper, now, all the time.

It was so much fun. I wrote the letter with my left hand. No way they could trace it to me. I wrote, I SAW WHAT YOU DID AND YOU WON’T GET AWAY WITH IT and signed it GOD. A hoot, right? I used a “Love” stamp (nice touch) and the address was one of those return stickers my sister puts in her Heart Association collection drive packets. Must be tons of those around! Then I mailed it at the box closest to her house – it’s on my route to the hairdresser – I didn’t even have to get out of the car. Just thinking about it gave me pleasure for days, although I wished I as there when she opened it.

Two days was all I could stand. I called her right before lunch.

“Hayley? It’s Maxine. How are you holding up?”
“Better. First night without pills.”

Maybe she hadn’t opened it. I cursed the Heart Association sticker idea. If she thought it was a donation maybe someone else opened it. Didn’t tell her, threw my letter away.
“Anything I can do? Need food?”

“God, no. The freezer’s groaning.” She hesitated. “You could come over tonight and pack up Dave’s things for Goodwill. My women’s group is coming. I warn you – there will be praying.”
Great! “No thank you,” I said stiffly. “Anything but that.” Dave wouldn’t have allowed her “witches” anywhere near his house. I imagined lengthy ceremonies to evict his drunken, aggressive spirit. Possibly they would even try to intercede for his sodden, bossy soul. Ugh. Let’s face it. Dave belongs in hell. But he won’t be alone there.

“Could you take Kevin and Deanie for the weekend? I’m going on retreat.”
“Sure,” I heartily agreed. “No problem. James and Heather love being with their cousins.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll set it up.”

Now aren’t I a good sister? But when I got home Simon had strewn our marital bed with suits and shirts. Packing for a trip. It’s a kingsize so I still found a place to perch.

“Hey,” I said, “I just agreed to take Kevin and Deanie for the weekend.”

“Not like they’re any trouble,” he told me, carefully matching socks and ties. He’s fussy about his clothes. He always looks good. A litigator is an actor, he says. “Trial Lawyers Association. Gotta go. The kids’ll be fine with movies and pizza. Video games. Isn’t that all they care about?”
He has no idea in hell what looking after four kids single-handedly is like.
“Back Sunday night,” said Simon. “I’ll be at the Helmsley Palace.”

The Helmsley Palace! That’s where we had our honeymoon! Such a wave of erotic longing washed over me I almost came all over myself then and there. Simon was such a good lover, and I was a virgin. But every time I told him to stop he stopped. It took us technically – a whole week to become man and wife. But what a week! Had I felt such arousal since? God knows where Simon got such control – I didn’t know and I didn’t ask. Both of us have tried telling our kids during “facts of life” discussions that you don’t have to go “all the way” to achieve the sexual nirvana MTV is telling them is out there, but I suspect it’s falling on deaf ears. Along with everything else we say.
Single-parenting is not for sissies. The video was plugged in, the pizza was ordered and I was making popcorn when Deanie came in to tell me she’d forgotten her retainer. Perfect. Of course I said I’d go, telling Jamie in the garage — he was showing Kevin his dirt bike — that he was in charge for an hour and giving him the pizza money. They’ve got my cell number.

Felt a surge of independence climbing into the car and driving down the darkened street. No wonder Simon loves leaving us behind, all warm and cozy, headed off to his other life. Well I have another life too! I’m an Anonymous Letter Writer. Plus now I’m Maxine, Girl Detective, searching for the bloodied sledgehammer or the hitman’s threat note: Pay Up or Else.”

Hayley’s house was substantially different without Dave’s dark spirit. You could just feel it. That hideous den of his was emptied of its ugly sports memorabilia and beer signs; repainted and furnished with chintz and wicker. You could just see the church ladies sitting down to their cups of tea.

But when I entered Hayley’s bedroom I got the worst shock. It was completely empty, carpet torn up, furniture gone. Like she was running away. Except there were ladders and tarps and paint swatches. She was erasing him from her life. Who could blame the lucky bitch? But my problem is, where to search when your suspect has no desk, no bedside table and everything’s in boxes? I’d waited too long.

She’d moved into the guest bedroom, a monastic cubicle with a cross above the single bed. But there was a bedside table, and the table had a Bible, and the Bible was stuffed with papers, and that’s where I found what I was looking for.

It didn’t have an address, it didn’t even have a signature but I hope I know my husband’s handwriting. He said he respected her decision but his feelings would never change. That he would always be “there” for her. He said, “I want you to know there’s someone on this planet who loves you utterly.”

When I took the letter I was blind with pain and rage. It was like he’d killed something in me with that letter. Something in me was stillborn because it needed another person to bring it to life and I had never had that person. Because my own husband was “there” for someone else.
Was she “rewarding” him right now at the Helmsley Palace? Was she speaking to his hands the way I used to, saying “here” and “here” and “here”? Faster, slower, deeper? And whose fault was that? Not mine, because I had always done everything that was ever expected of me. I took the letter because I knew then I could make him finally speak the truth to me. But what happens if the truth is that I’m alone and I’ve always been alone and I’ll always be alone? Where’s the justice in that?

II.

Unfortunately, Ron was already pacing and angry when I got home. I guess it was an evening of firsts. I felt first guilt, then a cold, unpleasant wedge of fear across what was left of my gut. But in our game of emotional isometrics it wouldn’t do to show him. I had to force myself to act unconcerned as I strolled through the kitchen door.

“You went out,” I said, tossing my purse to the chair. Missing, dammit. “So did I.”
“You were out with some guy,” he sneered. “How could you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Lucky guess or did Ron have spies? Here was something Bolio obviously hadn’t thought of. Me either, for that matter.

“I don’t know his name,” I said, walking past him up the stairs. “He just happened to be there so I talked to him. You talk to people, I talk to people. I’m sure your spy told you we never touched each other.”

He was following me up the stairs too closely. It was all I could do to keep from running. Showing fear would be fatal; I would lose my upper hand. I found myself thinking frantically about possible weapons, methods of escape. Slam my door shut and jump out the bedroom window?
Now!”

“I don’t believe you!” he barked. “Strip!

Physical fear is a disgusting and unforgettably horrible experience. Ron was drunk, but not enough to help me out. His eyes glowed insanely. If I’d had a gun I would have rescued Bolio then and there. In all our time together I had seen Ron this mad plenty of times; just never at me. Because I never challenged him. How had I ever lived with this man? Kidded myself that I was free?
I started undressing because I knew I had to or he would tear the clothes off me. What was he after? I could no longer read him. He pushed my garments aside and put his hands on my body – hard. “Where did you get those marks?”

He pried my thighs apart. I tried to back away from him, almost tripping over the bed.

“You made them yourself, this morning. Don’t you remember?” I bruise easily. Cost of doing business. “Twice.”

He flipped me to my stomach. He had a lot of strength. “You’re lying. Who have you been with? What did you do?”

Out of his back pocket he pulled the handcuffs and began to smack them menacingly against
his palm. At the sight of them I began to shriek and babble. I’ve never liked confinement or restraint – this was not a game I cared to play. As I’d suspected, my fear only emboldened him. He handcuffed me right to the headboard. I couldn’t help showing fear, so I needed Plan B. Maybe if I just cooperated with everything I could calm him down. I wasn’t guilty after all, not of what he thought. He bent over sniffing me. Sniffing me like a dog.

I kicked at him furiously. Big mistake. He stared at me as incredulous as if I’d aimed a punch. Then he started taking off his belt. I began screaming, but out on the country there was no one to hear. We were both out of control.

“Don’t come near me! Don’t touch me! I’m leaving! I’m calling the police!” I said everything except, “I’ll kill you,” which was the only true thing. He was a dead man from that moment.
He beat me, rhythmically, shouting, “Don’t -Ever-LieTo-Me-Again!”He said he only hit me six times – but I wasn’t counting. I floated away.

I floated away because I hate being trapped. Closed my mind because, in spite of everything I’d ever thought, everything I’d ever felt, everything I’d ever done, my life came down to the fact that I was the sort of person to whom this happened. That was the truth about me.
Was there blood? It hurt a lot. He said, “You brought it on yourself.”

I could tell from his face that he was the scared one now. That meant there were marks. Now the police would lock him up for the night on just my say so. He knew that. He uncuffed me, asking solicitously,

“Are you going to be good?”

I pulled the comforter up over my head and snuggled down into a hot fetal nest, the way I used to when I was a little girl. Gone. I didn’t want the police. I planned for better than momentary satisfaction. I am a cultivator and my plans were flowering hugely.

I heard him talking to himself, stomping around and muttering, something about putting a roof over my head, giving me gas money, being entitled to respect. Entitlement? On the “fairness planet,” he would be squashed at birth like the bug he was. It was up to me to squash him.

“Well, I’m going on a rubber run,” he said. “Now that I can’t trust you any more.”
I didn’t want him out in the world, babbling to sets of sympathetic ears about his horrible, ungrateful
devastation of an evening. So I lowered the comforter. “Nothing happened,” I said. “I guarantee
you. I swear to you. You’re the only one.”

Was there something in him that was wishing I was lying, so the beating would be OK? Who cares? Try too hard to understand someone and you let them invade you. I had to play through. My conciliatory attitude inflated his confidence.

“Well, next time I won’t just beat your pretty ass,” he said in a big voice for the trees to hear. “I’ll
toss you out.”I reached for him. Hardest thing I ever did.

I proved it.
Next day I was very sore. I woke up first as I always did, stepping out of bed over the pants I’d sucked off him. I made coffee, brought him a cup. As he drank, he looked me over with a fond smile.

“Let me see your tail.”

I turned. He pleated my buttocks with his hands, petting his handiwork. “Nothing. It’ll be gone in a
week.”

He found me sitting out in the garden with a glass of wine. No comment on how early it was to be hitting the bottle.

“I’m going to PepBoys. Need anything?”

What the hell would I be needing at Pep Boys? Thank God for dark glasses. I didn’t trust myself to
answer. dinner?”

He persisted. “Got everything you need for Cyanide? Rat poison?“Sure,” I managed.“Enough wine?”

He was teasing now. He liked that I was hitting the bottle. Not so superior now, was I? He could see I’d turned some sort of corner, but he couldn’t tell where that left him.
heard.”
“Liquor stores aren’t open on Sundays, so I He rattled his keys. “I’ve got connections.”

“Sure then.” Let him be seen buying illegal booze all over town. “St. Emilion.” There’s a touch of my old self. “Nothing later than ’94.” Blowing smoke, but he wouldn’t know. He never knew.
He drawled, “Right.”Then he was gone. Free! I went straight to
the phone and hit 2 on the speed dial.

Would Bolio be in the office on a Sunday, cooking the books, trying to make sense out of his own addicted senselessness? And if so, would he answer? He did, on the second ring.
possible.”

“I want him dead,” I said. “As soon as “What happened? What’s up?” He kindled
at my change in tone.“He beat me up last night. First time.”

“Could be a problem. Is it visible?”“It could be a problem! Hell, it’s more than
a problem. I almost killed him myself.”“We don’t want you to have too obvious a
motive, that’s all.”“No. Not visible.”

“Well, what happened?”

“Someone saw us together, you and me. But they didn’t seem to know who you were.”

“We might be able to carry it off tonight. Make sure the liquor flows. Stay away from the stuff yourself. Right before bed, take him out to the garden to look at the moon, or whatever. I’ll do the rest.”

I prepared steaks the way Ron liked them, rubbing them with garlic and mustard, pounding them thin. While I worked, my mind wouldn’t stop whirling. Back when I was having chemotherapy, they threw a therapist at me. She made much of the fact that I’d lost my dad at age 5. Lays you open to subsequent depression, she said. Making it sound like that caused the cancer.

Death, she said, would be “processed” by my five year old self as rejection. “Narcissistic injury”. When I told her I didn’t believe in wasting time in depression, she made one of those “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” modern therapy comments; said, “Maybe you don’t allow yourself to feel it.” That remark has bugged me all my life. If I was going to start getting even, that dame would be on my list. Blaming my poor dead dad for cancer. Telling me she knows my feelings better than I do.

If I had ever been depressed I was no longer. Instead, I was galvanized, pulsating with excitement in every cell. Call it “The murder cure”. I laughed out loud as I imagined myself writing a book, becoming famous, touring the talk shows. “Sometimes You Just Have to Kill ‘Em.”

“Well, Geraldo, all I can say is it worked for me.”
I set the table with my best linen, china and silver, things used only once or twice a year. Ron would be impressed. He never knew they weren’t my antiques. I had always tried to convey the impression I was wellborn, a mysterious wealthy family somewhere off in the mist. Of course I’d bought all the things myself. Presents to myself.

If I am the one who gives them their meaning, I might as well give them their existence. That’s the way I look at it, whatever people say. The only thing I really want is that chainsaw mermaid. Everything else is a substitute. If while looking for her I found a wonderful piece of china or silver instead, it was like a gift from my dad.

I actually tried telling that damned therapist about my chainsaw mermaid, and how much she meant to me, about how I lay in bed imagining her looking at me from the woods, peering through the trees, and it gave me such a sense of reassurance. I felt so safe. But the stupid therapist said, “Why does she feel she can’t come inside?”

Because she’s a garden sculpture, you idiot! That’s what I wanted to say. Instead I clammed up, because I was too sick. But the real question is, why didn’t I go out into the woods to join her? I couldn’t go, because I was only five years old, but I was not five years old any more. The woods were beckoning, dark and deep. Boiling with life and possibility.

Ron was late coming home, and when he did, it was obvious he’d been boozing. When he saw my slinky black dress, heels and makeup and the ornamental table, he thought just what I wanted him to think, which was that I was trying to make up to him. Apologizing for upsetting him so much he had to hit me. Big You, Little Me.

He pinned me up against the kitchen wall and gave me a tongue bath. I wondered how many bars he’d visited. All of them, I hoped.

“Got you something,” he told me, after he’d scored my thong as a trophy. “Come and look.”
My trophy was a fairly new looking, bright blue Pontiac GrandAm. I knew him too well to even imagine he had put it in my name. It was just about the most repulsive thing, outside of Ron himself, that I’d ever seen. Don’t care for “push” presents.

“Only thirty thousand miles on it”, he bragged. “Sure beats that ancient Beamer of yours.”
In Ron’s world, everything “beats” something. I guess it’s beat or be beaten. You bought your own coffin, Ron, I thought. I had a hard job convincing him not to take us out for a spin. Told him you can’t keep red meat waiting!

For his last meal I fed him all his favorite food. Ranch dressing on his salad, cheese poured all over his vegetables – restraint was gone for good. He didn’t offer St Emilion – lowballed me with California Riesling instead – but I was only pretending to drink so it didn’t matter. Ron, who considers wine an affectation, swilled several bottles of Magic Hat.

Was I going overboard? Was he too drunk to realize I wanted him to explode? But he accepted it quite unironically in tribute to his kingliness. He even finished my dinner.

“You go sit in front of the TV,” I said. “I’ll clean this up.”Should I make coffee? I didn’t want to sober him up one iota, but I needed the stuff myself. Hell, I could throw brandy in his.

As I was carrying plates out through the pantry I was annoyed to discover the light was off. I know I’d left it on. Must have been the bulb.

But then Bolio detached himself from the darkness and stepped into my path.
“Having fun yet?” he asked, touching my neck. Left hand-right hand. Tried to kiss me.

I smelled scotch, cigar and sweat. He wore a suit but no tie, and his shirt was partially unbuttoned. I was angry that he had broken with our plan and let his gambler out and enraged that he’d been drinking, but I couldn’t do much with all those plates in my hand. I tried to push around him, but his hands grabbed my shoulders.

The light went on. It was Ron, screwing in the bulb and gaping at us, too stupefied to speak. He shook his head as if to clear hallucinations.

Bolio lunged for him, grabbed his head and smashed it into the glass cabinet. Glass shattered everywhere, spraying out into the room in fine particles. I dodged away from them into the kitchen. They clutched each other and went down on the floor, rolling back and forth in the tiny space.
Ron had the upper hand of knowing the room. He grabbed a drawer, pulling the contents down on himself. Uh, oh. Knives. He was on top – it looked to me as if Bolio was losing. His cell phone skittered across the floor.

But it was Ron who lost when I slapped the brandy bottle against his head. It didn’t break, but he went down and stayed down.

“Thanks,” said Bolio.
I wanted to shriek at him for betraying our plan. But I never cuss when I can get even. “He dead?” I
asked instead.“Not hardly. Better tie him up, he could
come to at any moment.”

“How are we going to explain this mess?” We were out of the plan and floating free.
“We’ll take the crime scene elsewhere. Clean it up. Tell anyone who’s interested he was going to replace the cabinet fronts. We’ll break the window on that new car of his and hope they can’t tell one kind of glass from another. Got any bungee cords?”
I went to get them.

“And a couple cans of whatever he was drinking. Full.”
Ron up.

“Bottles.” I produced them as he trussed “I suppose that will do. Ready to roll.”“I’ll get my coat.”“You won’t need it.”

“Will too.” I certainly didn’t tell him why. My coat pockets have gloves.

“Nice new car,” said Bolio as he bundled Ron into the front seat of the Pontiac. I followed them in Bolio’s diesel Mercedes. At the railroad crossing Bolio propped Ron up in the driver’s seat and began removing the bungee cords.

Ron was coming to, moaning. I came slowly up behind Bolio and from my pocket whipped out the handcuffs, cuffing both him and Ron to the steering wheel. I counted on a moment of drunken, frozen amazement to be able to steal the car key and I got it. I threw it across the tracks.
Bolio couldn’t puzzle it out. With all his best efforts, best intentions, the house kept winning.
“What’s this?” he demanded drunkly. “No time for this, babe.”

“I’m not your babe,” was all I said. See? Save your breath for the important stuff. It was already almost midnight, so I got in his car and drove away.

I would have liked to stay and tell him I’d figured out who reported seeing me with a man to Ron, but I could already hear the train. Maybe Bolio salted the earth a bit, never wasting an opportunity to point out to Ron how little I gave for what I got.

Bolio was banging on the hood and screaming so loudly I was afraid he’d rip out the steeping wheel. But he hadn’t managed to do it by the time the train blew through.

As soon as I got home I called the police. My husband and his lawyer had a terrible fight. Something about money. When it turned physical and they started smashing things, I ran upstairs. Then they drove away in Ron’s car. Since they were drunk as well as angry, I was scared, so I took the lawyer’s car and tried to follow them but I couldn’t find them. I was afraid something awful was going to happen.

The police were extremely uninterested in things that were about to happen. No emergency that they could see. So instead of cleaning up I took a nice hot bubble bath, with music and candles. I was still in the bath when I got the call about the train crossing.

Bolio was right. There was a lot of money. But I was most surprised to get a check from the Client Security Fund, some special fund that compensates people for thieving lawyers. The attorney who brought me the check was such a nice young man. He explained with great seriousness how apologetic the Bar Association was, but in a whole barrel of apples one or two are often bad, and poor Mr. Bolio was infected with the disease of gambling. Maybe they’ll find a cure someday, said the nice young man handing me the check.

Actually he was infected with the disease of losing, I thought, but I certainly didn’t say so. And they’ll never find a cure for that.

1

Seems criminal that a person has to wait thirty-nine years to acquire a garden, but that’s what happened to me.

My father was a sculptor — a master of transformations. His day job was arborist so his tool was a chainsaw. He made many fantastical creatures to populate our wild garden — dragons, demons, griffons. My mother believed too much in personal freedom even to weed – thus giving my father’s creations their perfect background. When my dad asked me what I wanted him to make for me I said, “Mermaid” – the Little Mermaid being all the rage that year. So she was born – a chainsaw mermaid to watch over me through the sumac saplings. Then my father died and life assumed a different mien.

Turns out there is no freedom without money – a brutal fact with which my mother seemed unprepared to cope. When the process servers came, the things I’d always known were sold piecemeal.

I’ve haunted junk shops and garden stores ever since, certain I would someday find something of his again, and when I did not, well, it only proves how unwilling anyone would be to part with such masterpieces. But everyone has to die eventually, right? Someday I would find them. And!the right garden to put them in.

Ron never wanted to be a homeowner, just like he’s never wanted to get married. “Steps to the grave” is what he calls such behavior. He’s more concerned about
premature burial than Poe ever was. But he’s been so successful in the construction business that finally his lawyer made him see reason, by actually accusing him of throwing money away. That lawyer is the only person I’ve ever heard of who can make Ron do anything. His technique? Numbers.! Show Ron the numbers, and prove to him he’s wasting money.

If numbers aren’t my thing, neither is begging or cajoling. The really worthwhile things in life are without numerical expression. If a person can’t figure that out for themselves then God help them, I say.!! Ron already has a sneaking suspicion my brain is better than the one he’s got and he wastes too much time trying to convince himself of the opposite. It’s a sore spot – one he irritates himself.
I was less than thrilled about moving, after finally getting the garden at the rental place just the way I like it. I could hardly imagine that Ron, acting alone (or even with his lawyer) could come up with a house acceptable to me.! Partly because Ron is!the King of Deals – he won’t buy anything unless the price is an absolute steal.!What else can you expect from a man who chains his wallet to his pants? So I took it for granted the place he bought was a dump. Rental agents have legal standards they’re required to maintain, but you can slap a “for sale” sticker on anything. Since Ron’s expertise is construction,! he’s not bothered by little details like missing roofs or bathrooms. He likes to pee outside anyway.

I’m happy to say I was very surprised. Yes the house – and garage – were a dump and going to be an eternity of work – but that garden! Or “yard” as Ron calls it. Huge! Gorgeous! So overgrown – very reminiscent of the garden of my childhood. Haunted by the ghosts of perennials – hollyhocks and roses and dahlias and poppies– poking up through the weeds. Shadows of espaliered pears and pollarded crabapples. So much room! I was dazzled. I was in love. It was big enough for a water course – a koi pond or even a waterfall. A garden you could get lost !in. Delicious challenge!

I was unwise enough to let Ron see my rapture. Afterwards I heard him on the phone with his lawyer worrying about what constitutes common law marriage. Would I get some kind of legal hold over him by sharing his legal residence?! (He didn’t know I was listening, natch.) His lawyer reassured him that we don’t live in a common-law marriage state and Ron was all relieved. The property was in foreclosure – too good a deal to allow to slip away.! Some other guy’s grief was Ron’s tax break, because the garage was big enough to store business equipment and there was room enough for a home office. So after offer and counteroffer, scaring me half to death, he bought the place.

Don’t ask me what Ron’s problem is. I’ve got too strong a gag reflex to study anyone’s psyche closely. All I can say is Ron appears to operate on the basic theory that women are always trying to force men to do things they don’t want to do and the only manly stance is Resistance. In our relationship, I’m cast as the Nazis and he’s the French Underground. Emotional isometrics.!
At the beginning of our relationship he used to try to get me to take any position, just so he could pick the opposite side. If I switched, he switched. I’m too wily for that now.!I don’t care about marriage. I was married before and it was sufficiently unpleasant that I wouldn’t care to go through anything like it again. The short version is, I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and my husband bailed. He was the type who has to be having sex every minute and if you’re under the weather, he’s out the door. And no kids? Dealbreaker.

I! beat the cancer – I’m a survivor. Forget marriage. I’ve explained all this to Ron this over and over, but Ron thinks women automatically lie about everything. At the start of our relationship it was condoms, condoms, condoms. He’s a double bagger — he just wouldn’t take my word for anything.
“That’s what they all say,” was his wittiest retort. We must have had sex 180 times before there came that one time when he “wasn’t prepared.” Of course that makes them want it even worse.!I said,“Don’t worry,! baby, I took care of it.”

Bit of a euphemism for massive organ removal, wouldn’t you say? But things improved from that day forward.!!As a cultivator, bound by the cycles of the seasons, I cultivate patience. I care about potential, about becoming. One thing I learned from my mother is, don’t waste energy. Allow nature to take its course. I respected Ron enough to allow him to take his course; he would love me or not, as he needed to; we would stay together or not. Whatever.

We’d been together five months – approaching the Critical Half Year – when I got The Speech. He had to wire himself up with a few beers first so I could see something big was coming. He told me he was never getting married and he never wanted children, and I could live under his roof and cook his food and tease his penis but that was it.

I probably gave him the shock of his life by telling him it was fine with me. Whew! I was afraid he was going to tell me to get a job but as long as he pays the bills
and lets me do what I want I consider myself lucky. I’ve got too many plans of my own to sign my time over to someone else.

So I gave Ron my speech. I said that since the condom’s disappearance I had assumed we were a monogamous pair, but if he ever wanted to partake of foreign delights, I would appreciate its reappearance. I wouldn’t say a word of criticism – he was as free as a bird. But I’d be grateful for protective impulses. I’ll share, but I don’t gamble with my health. He said “OK.”
Although I considered we had an ironclad agreement I couldn’t resist being a bit curious about him. I wasn’t surprised to discover that his most potent fantasy is being handcuffed to a bed. “Control freaks!”

Careful not to wear her out I saved Dungeon Mistress for our “special” nights. His other fetish seemed to be taking nude pix of me – I have a great body and I don’t mind showing it off – but I draw the line at action fare. And I was gratified to see the condom never again reared its ugly head.
In a relationship like ours, “Love” is a forbidden word. You don’t want to hear Ron on the subject of love – it’s his least attractive side. He totally buys into the self-interest explanation of why people do things. “Love” doesn’t exist – it’s just dressed-up lust, a social lie people tell to make themselves feel better, yada yada yada.

He’s “freed” himself from all that. I did feel sometimes like I was having sex with a fifteen year old – he’s not that much younger than me – but if he’s immature, he has other qualities. I learned not to scare him with the things he can’t understand. It just messes with his hard-ons.

I’m the Queen of Deals myself — I haunt consignment and thrift stores. It’s amazing the treasures you can find. That night I wore my red silk Halston with the long skirt – slit right up to here – and no blouse beneath the jacket.! It doesn’t need a blouse unless I lean way forward, which I wasn’t planning to do. I put on long dangly jet earrings and all my rings.

I enjoy being alone in restaurants — I insist on one set place so everyone can see I’m not expecting company. I love the whispering, the speculation; whatever they guess about me is wrong. I even enjoy the occasional attempted pickup, but so far I haven’t been tempted to accept.
Ron keeps his weirdnesses well hidden – he’s a handsome man with a gorgeous body – and he knows what I like in bed — so he’s actually made my standards higher. If he’s intellectually lacking, well, a game of intellectual chess usually results in boudoir disappointment, I find.
So who could seduce me? Perhaps a man the exact opposite of Ron – wearing, say, a Tom Ford suit with art deco cufflinks; blond, foreign, cosmopolitan.! None of those hanging around our corner of the world.! Not so far.

I’d been busy with the move and I hadn’t had the opportunity to study the “fine dining” pages and pick a place to patronize, as is my usual amusement. Plus, now that we lived in the country I really didn’t want to go all the way to town. The Smithy was the furthest outpost I could think of where the food was impressive, the ambiance acceptable and the decibels dulled so I steered the BMW there.
At the entrance to the restaurant I was hurrying from the parking lot as fast as possible in stilettos when I bumped into somebody.! Come to think of it, he bumped into me.
“Renata,” he said. “Right?”

“I don’t know you.” I halted abruptly. This was not my dream man, but he was wearing a suit. He was about my height with a receding hairline and long, messy salt and pepper hair. An unkempt moustache. Looked a bit like the manager of a rock group or somebody of that sort.

“Oh yes you do, Renata. You know me quite well. It’s true we’ve only talked on the phone, but we have so much in common. I’d like to buy you dinner tonight.”
Hmmmm. Nothing familiar about those bloodhound cheeks, those sad, sad eyes. But he was right. The voice I recognized.

“Brad Bolio,” I said. “You’re Ron’s lawyer.”
“Right.”! We were standing in the doorway blocking traffic. He took my elbow and steered me inside.

“How did you know I was coming here?” I asked. “I didn’t even know myself till about twenty
minutes ago.”

“I followed you. I’ve been following you for days.”

Questioning my memory, I hadn’t noticed him – I hadn’t noticed anybody. But thirty-nine-year-olds don’t expect stalkers. !So I allowed myself to be led to a table. I noticed he chose the darkest corner.

I ordered the grilled salmon; he selected the lobster ravioli and a bottle of St.Emilion. A vintage that can lead you astray.

With the long habit of saying the exact opposite of what I’m really thinking, I said, “It’s kind of flattering to be followed. What did it tell you about me?”
“That you’re a deal taker and a risktaker. I already knew you were clever and cultured. Ron brags
about you. “

Jawdropper. I had to struggle not to react. Ron, bragging to others about the very things he criticizes in me?! Be still my heart!

“I assume you know he has nude pictures of you on his phone and he shows them to everyone. Waitresses, cops, flagmen. People he’s just met. They’re his calling card.”

This info was less welcome. If he was trying to get a reaction out of me, he’d scored. My one hope was in all this darkness he couldn’t tell how dark I’d reddened.
Brad Bolio eyed me glitteringly.

“I ask myself why the hell do you put up with him?” He answered his own question. “I’m guessing you’re addicted. Addicted to comfort.”
The wine was delicious. I pushed away the forgettable food to concentrate on its dark delight.

“You’ve got me,” I said. “I’m a lazy risktaker.” I always think of my father when I drink. Why? He used to get down on his knees to speak to me. No man has done it since.
“Unfortunately,” Bolio was saying, “I’m a risk-taker too. And the house keeps winning.”
A gambler! Poor bastard.

“I’ll bet you have a system,” I said.! I’m not a dumb risk taker. I would never bet against the house. The odds are deliberately stacked in favor of the house and everyone knows this. The key is to be the house.

“Let me show you something.”! He produced a black eelskin document case from his breast pocket and removed a folded square. He wore three big rings – Catholic high school, college and law school rings, judging by appearance. They’re usually the gaudiest. His precise movements didn’t match that big lazy body, so I psychoanalyzed him for amusement. I can smell “internal conflict”. I visualized the gambler in fisticuffs with the attorney, picturing each in a variety of hats. Cowboy? Coonskin? Maybe a Cardinal’s hat to go with those ostentatious rings. He produced a cigarette lighter – gaudy and bejewelled – and lit it so that I could read the paper.

It was a marriage certificate, made out for Ron Valerio and me. Ron’s side was signed; a line awaited my signature. Somehow, in the midst of packing and unpacking the UHaul, it seemed we had found the time to go to Vegas.

“Who are these witnesses?” I demanded. “They’re going to know it wasn’t us.”

“They’re professional witnesses,” said Bolio. “A Franklin is the only face they recognize.”
“It really looks like his signature,” I teased. “Must be one of his surprises. I wonder when was he going to tell me?”

“It ain’t real, sweetheart, but the minute you sign it, it’s legal,” and Bolio stretched it helpfully out on the table and offered me a pen. “What Ron doesn’t know won’t hurt him. There’s a will, too. I’m a Renaissance man with many gifts – I’ve been signing Ron’s name for years. Sign here so you will no longer live in sin.! Then everybody’s happy.”

Maybe after a day of hard work, on an empty stomach and three glasses of wine, I was as high as a kite, because I signed. But I still wasn’t getting it. I was certain Ron knew all about this. It was some kind of underhanded legal maneuver – like, we’re married if it suits Ron financially, and not when it doesn’t. That touchstone. A marriage of convenience. I tolerate ambiguity less well when drunk.
challenged.

“Did Ron ask you to come here?”
Bolio summoned the waitress and addressed her flirtatiously from beneath his lashes. “This lady is cut off,” he said. “Get her a double espresso.”

“Hey, I signed,” I said. “So how come I don’t get another bottle of wine?! You could always drive
me home.”

Bolio sighed. “Because I have something very serious to discuss with you and you need your wits about you. And no, Ron definitely doesn’t know I’m here.”

The waitress delivered my espresso with a smirk. I felt like giving her the finger. I was starting to feel rebellious but also antsy. Ron wouldn’t like me doing things behind his back – had I just done something stupid? Messed up my future? But if Ron’s signature was forged, couldn’t I claim mine was forged too? But would I get away with it?

Bolio poured cream so carefully over a spoon it floated on the surface of his coffee. Flashy dude.
“Ron is very, very rich,” he said. “And he maintains a huge position in undeclared cash. But not as much as he thinks he’s got because when I was in a jam I helped myself to some of it.”
“And now you can’t pay it back.” I guess the party was over. Regrettably the espresso was working.! Time to smarten up.

“I’d rather not pay it back,” said Ron’s attorney. “I’d rather kill Ron actually, but for that I need
your help.”

“Why on earth do you want to kill Ron?”
That got a reaction out of me.
“Doesn’t everyone? Don’t you? Isn’t he the most irritating bastard you’ve ever met? He won’t marry you and he doesn’t love you. He says emotional involvement is for suckers. You got nothing, lady. I expected you to be smarter, actually. After you’ve worn your pretty fingers to the unattractive bone fixing up his brand new house, what’s to keep him from kicking you out and moving in a younger cutie?”

Of course that had always been a possibility. I simply enjoyed believing Ron couldn’t find anyone as wonderful as Wonderful Me. But Wonderful Me was definitely getting older and missing most of her insides. What if he got some cootchie pregnant? Ron wouldn’t be the first man to decide in his fifties that what he really wanted was a family. I had a sinking feeling Bolio knew plenty of things I didn’t know. But I was hinky. There was still that possibility of a setup.
“Are you recording this?” I demanded.

“Why would I? I’d have to be crazy – since I’m doing all the talking, and you’re doing all the listening, right? So listen a little. I need an heir I can trust. You can’t lose! – it’s all gain.! He’ll leave a huge estate. There’s even insurance. We split fifty-fifty and you clear a cool mill after taxes. Did you know he paid cash for that house? Can you imagine such a thing in this day and age? The house would be yours. The cars would be yours. There’s no family around to spike your play. The partners will almost certainly offer to buy you out of the business. I could negotiate that for you. You don’t want to get ripped off.”

I knew better than to show the rage I was beginning to feel but my remarks were fairly cutting. “And we’ve established how trustworthy you are. My affairs would be so safe in your hands.”
He was game; a game advocate. And so he advocated. “Look at it this way. We’d each be contributors to the body of the crime, so if we tell on each other we’d be telling on ourselves. My assessment of you is you’re too smart. You enjoy the finer things of life but spend all your time at flea markets. Here I am offering a free upgrade. Want to spend a lifetime in jail? Neither do I. I’m his executor, I’ll see his estate through probate, then we’ll say sayonara. I’m even willing to do all the wet work. The way I see it, all you’ve got right now, is Ron, and if you knew Ron as well as I know him, you’d realize that’s less than nothing.”

Before meeting Ron I was in sales, so I recognized this technique. Give the sucker two choices – yours and something horrible. Don’t let them think about what could go wrong. This is the same way he probably manipulates Ron.

“Don’t assume-“ I hissed with a little too much heat but he held up his hand.

“I’m not assuming anything. I’m asking. You can certainly refuse and that’s the end of it. I wouldn’t dare kill him if you say no, so his life is in your hands. I’ll pay the money back and look for other opportunities.” He shook the eelskin document. “Here’s your bonus for even talking to me about it. Goes in the safe and mum’s the word – only gets found if it needs to get found. All I ask is you sleep on what I’ve said for a week. One week. OK?”

He leaned over the table, gripping my hand in both his. A musky, heated smell of desire poured off him. He said troatily, “You’re settling for way too little, lady.”

Finally a come on! I pulled back and loosed my hand. Cocked a brow.
“Is there a Mrs. Bolio?”

He threw down his napkin. “There’s a
question I didn’t expect.! Should I be flattered?”

I guessed clever Mr. Bolio was still a secret to himself. “You know all about me. Tell me all about you.” I liked seeing him nervous. Unsettled. He rattled his rings against his coffee cup.

“There are no co-conspirators, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.”

“There are three Mrs. Bolios. All of them are too expensive. However, they are not in the picture at
present.”

“Got a girlfriend?”

“All my exes live in Texas,” I hummed. He shook his head. “Can’t dignify her with the title.

“So here’s my final question. Wives or girlfriends –who do you treat better?”

His mouth worked his moustache nervously. He realized he was auditioning and he didn’t
like it.

“I’ll agree with Ron about one thing. Marriage is best avoided,” he said shortly. “My advice to you is pass through engagement and head straight for widowhood. You’re going to be a very wealthy widow. I recommend it as the best of all possible worlds.”

Of course it didn’t answer my question. But it only raised my suspicion that the truth about Mr. Bolio was that his right hand and his left hand had never even met. When I drank the last cold little bit of espresso, I was sorry to see it go.

“Do you know how you’ll do it?! Have you gotten that far?”

Now he was on surer ground. “He makes it pretty damned easy by driving drunk every Saturday night. It’s not a question of how.! It’s a question of when. I favor jamming a beercan under his pedals and stranding him unconscious across the train tracks with the midnight Acela coming through. There’s a bad crossing the town fathers have been dithering about fixing for years. Three deaths there already. Simple but effective.”

Sounded functional. As the suicide hot line counselors say, his method was sufficiently lethal.! I rose abruptly.

“OK. I listened.”

“You’ve got one week,” he reminded me.
“Call me. I’m number two on your speed dial.”
That was also true. Over my shoulder I saw him paying for our dinner in cash. Ron’s cash, presumably.

To be Continued…