Body Rides (18 page)

She grinned. ‘Wouldn’t want to spoil you. Let’s go in the kitchen, I’ll make us something to drink.’ On their way to the kitchen, she asked, ‘How does vodka and tonic sound?’

‘Fine,’ he said. But there must’ve been something wrong with the way he said it.

‘What’s the matter?’

He shrugged.

He already felt guilty about his plan to keep the bracelet a secret. He didn’t want to start lying outright, so he decided on the truth. ‘It’s what
we
drank last night. Elise and I. Vodka and tonics.’

Marta lifted her eyebrows. She looked curious, maybe a little disappointed. ‘Have a party with her?’

‘We were . . . sort of trying to recover, I think. After we got away from the guy.’ He met her eyes, and knew she could probably see the misery in his. ‘We thought we’d made it,’ he said, ‘that I’d saved her and everything would be all right.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Marta murmured.

‘Anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s what we had. Vodka and tonics.’

‘Would you rather have something different?’ Marta asked.

‘Well . . .’

‘How about margaritas?’

‘Okay. Good idea.’

Before starting to make the drinks, she took out a package of tortilla chips. She opened the bag and handed it to Neal. ‘Help yourself. This may take a while.’

She crouched down, opened a cupboard, and lifted out an electric blender.

‘So,’ Neal said. ‘What have you heard? I was asleep all day. I didn’t get a chance to watch the news, and you showed up just at five . . .’

‘Well, if they’re after you, they haven’t announced it.’

‘That’s good,’ Neal said. He popped a tortilla chip into his mouth. It was crisp and salty, and tasted good, so he ate a few more.

Marta set the blender onto the counter and plugged it in. Then she took out a couple of drinking glasses. ‘Last I heard,’ she said, ‘they don’t have any suspects at all. They haven’t really said very much.’ She crossed the kitchen, opened another cupboard, and took out bottles of tequila and triple sec. ‘Just that the victim was a woman named Elise Waters, and she used to be a diving champion. Won a silver medal in the Olympics.’

He was surprised. Elise had told him about being a diver, but he’d never suspected she might’ve been
that
good. He usually followed the Olympic Games on TV.

Had he actually
watched
Elise dive, admired her beauty, studied how the swimsuit revealed her body, cheered her on, seen her on the podium when they awarded her the silver medal?

Probably.

If so, however, he had no memory of it.

‘What year?’ he asked.

Marta shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. I think they might’ve said, but I don’t remember.’ She brought the bottles over to the blender.

‘What else did they say on the news?’ he asked.

‘Well, that she’s married to some guy who was out of the
country when it happened. And how it was very brutal, the way she was killed. She was . . .’

‘That’s her
ex
-husband?’ Neal interrupted.

‘They didn’t say ex.’ Marta set down the bottles.

‘She told me that she was divorced from him. A guy named Vince?’

‘I think so. Vince something. He’s supposed to be an actor, but I didn’t catch his last name. I don’t think it’s Waters, though.’

‘But they’re
not
divorced?’ Neal asked.

‘Not on the news
I
heard. You know how they get it wrong, though.’ She took out a measuring cup. ‘Elise told you she was divorced from the guy?’

‘Yeah, she sure did.’ So much for the will, he thought. Not that he’d wanted anything . . . Funny for her to make such a grand offer, though, if she still had a husband.

‘Maybe the divorce wasn’t final yet,’ Marta suggested. ‘Isn’t there a six-month waiting period, or something?’

‘I think so.’

She stepped past Neal, opened the freezer compartment of the refrigerator, and took out a plastic bin full of ice cubes. ‘Well, maybe it’s just that the waiting period hadn’t ended. Some people might consider themselves divorced even if they’ve still got a few months to go.’

‘I suppose.’

Back at the counter, Marta tossed a dozen ice cubes into the blender.

‘I’ll take it,’ Neal said.

She handed the bin to him, and he returned it to the freezer. ‘Would you grab me a couple of limes while you’re over there?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’ He opened the refrigerator, spotted a plastic bag of limes, and took out two.

‘Anyway,’ Marta said, ‘it looks like hubby didn’t do it. From what I heard, he was in Hawaii at the time of the killing. He’d been there for about a week. In Honolulu, I think they said.’

‘I know
he
didn’t do it. But who did, that’s what I want to know?’

‘They don’t know. Or if they do, they aren’t saying.’

Neal watched her fill the measuring cup with tequila and empty
it into the blender. As she filled it again, he said, ‘The bastard is all shot up. How hard can he be to find?’

‘I don’t know.’ Marta dumped in another cupful of tequila, then a third. Then she picked up the bottle of triple sec.

‘Not to mention,’ Neal said, ‘I shot up his van.’

‘It was a stolen van, I
do
know that.’

‘So they found it?’

‘In the driveway of the house. You shot it up, huh?’

‘Sure did.’

Marta looked over her shoulder at him. ‘You killed an innocent van.’

‘Didn’t want the bastard to get away in it.’

She added a cupful of triple sec to the tequila and ice inside the blender. ‘A car was stolen from a house down the street sometime during the night. They think that’s how he got away.’

‘I bet they’re wondering who disabled his van. I mean, I only put about six bullets into it.’

Marta took out a knife. As she split the limes in half, she shook her head and said, ‘There was no mention of any bullet holes. Not that I heard, and I caught the whole story on the four o’clock news.’

Neal supposed the police must’ve decided to keep quiet about someone shooting up the van. There were often details that the investigators kept from the press – or tried to: so there would be secrets known only by themselves and the suspects.

‘Did anybody hear my gunshots?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. You can go in and turn on the news, if you’d like.’

The suggestion alarmed him. He shrugged and shook his head. ‘Maybe later. I want to find out what’s going on, but . . . It can wait.’

She looked at him.

Can’t I hide anything from her?

‘Might be easier to take,’ he explained, ‘after a margarita or two.’

‘Most things are,’ Marta said. She held one of the lime halves over the blender, and squeezed. Its juice spilled out of her fist. ‘I forgot the margarita salt. Do you want to grab it for me?’ She nodded toward the liquor cupboard. ‘It’s in a little white plastic tub.’

‘Sure.’ He crossed the kitchen, crouched, and opened the cupboard door. The tub was in front. ‘Got it.’

As he returned, Marta said, ‘We should probably go ahead and tape your statement before we sit down to watch the news. And before you get too polluted.’

‘I won’t get polluted,’ he told her.

‘And I can’t. Not on a work night.’

As Neal opened the salt container and set it on the counter, Marta finished squeezing the last section of lime. Instead of tossing that one into the sink, she used it to rub the rims of the glasses. Then she set it aside, turned one of the glasses upside down and pressed it into the tub of salt. When she lifted it, the sticky rim was thick with white, clinging salt.

‘Go easy on that for mine,’ Neal said.

‘Health nut.’

‘I’m just not a salt nut.’

‘Would you rather have none?’

‘I guess so.’

Without dipping his rim in the salt, she placed the two glasses side by side. Then she put the lid on the blender. ‘Here we go.’ She thumbed the switch.

Neal cringed at the sudden noise.

The clear, greenish mixture seemed to lurch. The ice cubes leaped and whirled. An instant later, the blender was full of froth. White froth with a hint of green hue.

The machine went silent.

Marta peeled off the rubber lid, lifted the container off its base, and poured the concoction into the glasses. It plopped into them almost as thick as a milkshake. After the pouring was done, Neal heard the quiet fizzy sound of the bubbles breaking up. Murky green fluid, clear of froth, rose from the bottom of each glass until only a head of white foam remained.

Before drinking, they clinked their glasses together. A few crumbs of salt fell off Marta’s rim.

‘Here’s to the future,’ she said.

‘For those of us who have one,’ Neal added.

When he saw how sadness filled her eyes, he wished he hadn’t said it.

‘I’m sorry,’ he told her.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. ‘I know you’re hurting.’

They both drank. Neal’s margarita felt cold and soft in his mouth. It was sweet and tart. As it went down, it spread a soothing warmth through him.

Marta lowered her glass. She had pale froth on her lips. She wiped it away with the back of her hand. Watching Neal’s eyes, she said, ‘Did you . . . fall in love with her?’

‘I don’t know. In a way, maybe.’

In a big way, he thought.

‘I only knew her for a couple of hours,’ he explained. ‘It was all so strange. I mean, I saved her life. She was beautiful and . . . very nice. She was a lot like you, I think. Maybe that’s why . . . I guess I sort of fell in love with her, there for a while.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

‘You would’ve liked her. Really. And you probably would’ve met her, too, if . . . things hadn’t gone bad. She asked us to come over for a barbecue, and to swim in her pool.’

Marta looked surprised, a little relieved, but wary. ‘You told her about me?’

‘Sure. You were the reason I didn’t stay the night with her.’

‘She asked you to spend the night?’

‘Yeah. But I wouldn’t.’

‘Because of me?’

He nodded.

She stared at him, frowning slightly, slowly shaking her head. Finally, she spoke again. Softly, almost as if talking to herself. ‘My God,’ she said. ‘Elise might still be alive if you’d stayed. Or
you
might’ve gotten killed. But you didn’t stay. Because of me?’

‘None of it is your fault,’ Neal said.

‘But I’m sure part of it.’

‘Sort of, I guess. If you want to look at it that way. But . . .’

‘Funny. I don’t even know her, but I had a hand in getting her killed.’

‘No. Not really. Things just happened.’

‘Man, oh man.’ She shook her head, then tilted up her glass and took several swallows. When she lowered the glass, her lips were frothy again. ‘Let’s do that video tape.’

Marta refilled their glasses. Then they went into the living room. While Neal waited on the sofa, she brought in the bag of tortilla chips. Then she disappeared for several minutes. She returned with a VCR camcorder in one hand, a tripod in the other.

‘I’ll have this set up in a jiffy,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to move, though. We don’t want all that light behind you. Maybe bring in a chair from the dining room.’

He did as she suggested, and placed the chair off to the side so he wouldn’t have the window to his back.

When the camcorder was fixed atop its tripod, Marta sat on a chair behind it. ‘The tape’ll show the date and time,’ she said as she leaned toward the viewfinder. ‘So we’ll have proof as to when we did this.’

‘We won’t be turning it in, though. Right?’

‘You might
want
to, at some point. You know, if you need to clear yourself.’

Neal finished his margarita, then peered at the camera’s lens. ‘That isn’t going yet, is it?’

‘Nope.’

‘How’s this supposed to clear me of stuff I
did
?’

‘You didn’t kill Elise.’

‘No, I know that.
Boy
, do I know that.’ He tried to laugh. ‘But I carried a concealed weapon. A
loaded
weapon. Which is a felony, and which is the main reason why Elise and I decided to stay away from the cops in the first place, last night. So I wouldn’t get busted for carrying. Isn’t that a laugh? They do that, you know? You use your gun to save yourself, next thing you know, you’re behind bars.’ He tried to take another drink, but found nothing left except a patch of foam at the bottom of his glass. ‘I mean, I have a Constitutional right to bear arms. Or I
had
one. Back in the good old days when we
had
a U.S. Constitution. So I use my gun to save Elise from this
asshole
, but then we can’t even go to the cops about it . . . suddenly
we’re
the criminals . . . so we sneak off and he
gets up
and comes after her and finishes the job. Isn’t
that
wonderful? Isn’t
that
beautiful?’