He stared at her. She was serious. Still a
hundred big ones to her was not going to happen. “How would we do
it?”
“First you have to say, yes.”
“I’ll say yes to only fifty grand, and you
get my condo.”
“I get the condo?”
“Yeah, I’m leaving. You can have my beautiful
condo with the pool and all.” He raised his head and squinted at
her. “And
you
do the shooting.”
She frowned. “Not me...you have any idea what
shooting a gun would do to my nails?”
“Any other way you’ll hold it over my head
and blackmail me for the rest of the money.”
Of course, she’d blackmail him for the rest
of the money. “All right, fifty grand, I get the condo, except
you
do the shooting. I’d never talk, since it would be
obvious I had conspired with you.” She put on her most innocent
face. “I’d be a fool to say anything.” She smiled reassuringly. He
wasn’t buying it.
“Do you have a gun, dear sister?”
“Come on, you’ve got your own damn gun.”
“Answer me. Do you have a gun?”
She screwed up her face impatiently. “Yes, I
have a gun, but I hardly ever shoot anyone with it.
“What is it?”
“A .38 Police Special.”
“Oh really? How nice. Fifty thousand to you
and I use your gun.”
“Why my gun?”
“In case something goes wrong, or you
cause
something to go wrong. The cops will find your gun,
and you’ll be on the hook.”
She shrugged her agreement.
“So, it’s a deal. You plan it all out, where
and when, and let me know.”
“I can give it all to you right now. Margo
does Yoga at the Community Center until seven tonight. There’s an
overgrown lot next to the parking lot. Hide in there, and shoot her
when she walks back to her car.”
“What? That’s not a fifty grand plan. Not
worth fifty cents.” He paused; maybe it’s not so bad. Fifty and
he’s rid of her and gets dear sister off his back at the same time.
Maybe plant the gun, so they blame dear sister for the murder.
After considering a moment, he said, “Maybe it is that simple, if
it goes down that easy. Tonight, huh? Yeah, that’s good. Get it
over with. I’ll get her in the parking lot.”
“I’ll phone her and make sure she’s going
tonight.” She was thinking, no way would she phone someone who’s
about to be killed and leave a record of her call somewhere for the
police to find.
“Where’s the gun?”
“Where’s the fifty grand?” she asked.
“First you give me the gun, and then I’ll go
get the money and bring it back.”
“I don’t like that. Where’s the money now, in
your condo?” she asked, thinking he’d be foolish to give her the
location.
He hesitated too long.
“How’s this?” she said. “I’ll get my gun and
follow you in my car. You go in, bring out the money, and we’ll
swap.” That sounded good. She’d keep the gun in her hand and follow
him in. She wondered if three hundred grand would fit in her
handbag. “You’re sure the money is in your condo?”
“I’d hate to put you to all that trouble. You
wait here. I’ll go get your money. When I come back I give you the
fifty, and you give me the gun.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if I—.”
He reached over, grabbed her jaw between his
fingers, and squeezed tightly smearing her lipstick and distorting
her face into an oblique grimace. “Forget all your double-crossing
thoughts. Let’s get serious. Here’s the deal my little half-sister
all bitch. You set up Margo. I shoot her. But with your gun. If
that doesn’t prove you’re the killer, it’s at least enough to prove
you’re in on it. We’re going to play this my way, sister. So, none
of your cute tricks.”
She jerked away from his hand; her eyes were
ablaze. She pushed her long blonde hair back off her face and
rubbed her jaw thinking of all the ways she’d pay him back for that
outburst. Yet, he’s talking fifty thousand for her, and he does the
heavy part. She could set up an alibi for herself for the time of
the killing and say he stole her gun. If in fact he does get away
without being arrested, she’d definitely go back and blackmail him
for more money. She’d own him for the rest of his life.
“Okay, I’m out of here,” he said. “You sit
here and wait for me.”
After he went down to his car, she took the
revolver from her nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed wiping
the gun clear of fingerprints. She then made a phone call to
Detective Chip Goddard of the Park Beach Police Department.
T
he following
morning, Sandy Reid stood in the front doorway of Chip Goddard’s
house and watched as he waved and headed his brown unmarked Crown
Vic out into balmy Florida. She came over the previous evening
expecting him to have the morning off, expecting to be serenely in
his bed at this hour drowsily waking beside his warm body. However,
that morning they had called the city detective in on some newly
discovered body. Now he was off into his mysterious land of
miscreants and their misdeeds.
She had met him over a year earlier, after he
had arrested her brother on a murder charge, and she hurried down
from her job and law studies in Philadelphia to the small Florida
ocean side town to defend her brother. Some shameless flirting with
the detective had led to a few sneaky meetings over coffee. She
succeeded in convincing him to lose interest in her brother as a
suspect and to gain interest in her as a lover. That trifling
attraction had progressed to steady dating, frequent sleepovers,
and leaving Philly behind. Recently, she finished her law studies
and passed the bar exam in Florida.
Once back in his kitchen, she finished her
coffee, rinsed the carafe, and tossed the coffee grounds into the
trash. That’s when she noticed she had thrown the grounds on top of
a small book lying in the waste can meant for garbage.
She carefully lifted the book out with two
fingers and brushed it free of trash. It was in the wrong bin. She
smiled at the charming Old English, lavender and lace design of the
book jacket, heralding a collection of Emily Dickinson love poems.
Where did this come from? Chip must have been cleaning out his
college bookshelf. Love poems? Really? Although far from an
uncultured dolt, he wasn’t likely to play Cyrano to anyone’s
Roxanne. Although she could count on him to come up with a romantic
gesture at just the right time, reading rapturous love sonnets to
her wasn’t in his play book.
She shrugged and tossed the poetry book into
the correct container for recyclables. She glanced at her
watch—might as well open her law office early. Even though she had
scant work to do at the office, she didn’t want to waste the day
sitting around his empty house.
The book left her mind until evening, after
she closed her office for the day and came back over. They sat on
the screen-porch that ran across the back of his house sipping wine
and looking out on the back yard rimmed with full blooming Hibiscus
bushes of all tropical colors. The sun had set much earlier, yet
evenings are seldom cool during a Florida summer. No breeze that
night. Yet, they were comfortable wearing shorts and sitting under
the draft of the silent slow-moving wicker blades of the ceiling
fan.
“Your dead body today...homicide?” she
asked.
“Nasty. Guy shot in his shower. Not my
case—it’s Jaworski’s. He joked if his wife ever shoots anyone, it’d
be in the shower stall so the blood wouldn’t get all over the
room.”
“There you go,” she said. “You have a clue
already, the murderer is a woman.”
“Yeah, normally I’d bet on the wife, however
this has a different sense of viciousness about it. Cold-blooded
like the perp just opens the shower door, shoots him, and walks
away.”
“Was the water still running and the shower
door found closed?”
“How’d you guess?”
“A woman would take time to close the shower
door after shooting him so water wouldn’t spray the bathroom
floor.”
“I’ll mention that to Jaworski.” He smiled
and fell silent.
Enough sharing of his job for one day, she
figured. She didn’t want him describing details anyway. She could
tolerate most crime scenes and dead bodies didn’t bother her as
long they were all cleaned up and under a nice white sheet. “Hear
that cicada?” she asked.
“That’s a male vibrating for its mate.”
“Save the innuendos for later, please. I’ll
tell you when to start vibrating.” The thought brought the love
poems back to her mind. With a slight laugh, she asked about his
interest in poetry. “Did you find an old poetry book lying around
from your college days? You ever wonder how many old English Lit
books have made the journey from the bookcase to the attic, yet
never to the trash? I wonder how many homes have at least one old
textbook that somehow just can’t be thrown away?”
He glanced over at her not catching on.
“Emily Dickinson...Love Poems. In the
trash.”
“Oh that.” He went on explaining
matter-of-factly. It seems a former girlfriend had phoned yesterday
with the usual, how was he, how had he been doing? He brushed her
off politely; he wasn’t interested in connecting again, especially
with her. She said she understood, nevertheless they should meet
briefly anyway, as she had something that should be returned to
him.
Sandy couldn’t help raising an eyebrow.
They had met for coffee yesterday evening, he
explained. She put the book of poems on the table saying she had to
give it back to him. He protested saying he’d never given her such
a book and didn’t want it. She insisted that he had forgotten, it
stirred too many painful memories for her, and she couldn’t bear to
throw it away. He took it as he left to placate her and tossed it
when he got home.
“I threw it in the trash,” he said. “That was
bad, right? I should have donated it to the used book store.”
A former girlfriend had phoned? And they met
yesterday? “What’s her name?” Sandy tried to make it sound
casual.
It didn’t work with the detective; he dealt
with human nature all day long. He caught her meaning and smiled.
“It’s old news, Sandy, before I met you. Never actually a
girlfriend, I saw her once, maybe twice. We never got it on, which
is what you’re asking.” He reached over and squeezed her thigh
reassuringly. “Forget it. Her name is mud. End of story.”
It had better be the end of the story for the
girlfriend as well, she thought.
Sandy recalled her own fondness for Emily
Dickinson. She told him, “I remember:
‘Wild nights, wild nights.
Were I with thee, wild nights should be our luxury.’
How does
the rest of it go...I can’t remember?”
“What does it mean?”
“Whatever you want it to.”
“Poets have it made,” he said. “What they
write doesn’t have to make sense.”
“I loved that poem. Typed it out and pasted
it above my study desk in law school. To tell the truth, I had a
little unrequited love thing going with this hot drama major at the
time. Some of the liberal arts girls were changing their majors, so
they could audition and get close to him. I’d never go that far.
Okay, maybe it occurred to me.”
She was tempted to go into the kitchen right
then and rescue the book from the trash to see if that particular
poem was in there. Yet, if he didn’t want the book that was fine.
She certainly didn’t want any reminder of a former lover
around.
After dinner that night, Chip had taken a
shower and was watching TV in the bedroom, while waiting for her to
come in. She was reading in the living room, when her mind went
back to the book of poems. Perhaps the Emily Dickinson poem she
loved was in that book. Who was she kidding? For an instant, she
was back in high school curious if he had inscribed it with “Love
Forever” or something tender and sexy.
The former lover had obviously contrived to
return the book as a device to start up with him again—Sandy was
sure of that. No doubt all glammed up for her one last play for
him, sitting up straight with stomach in and boobs out, smiling
seductively trying to lock eyes with him as she pushed the book
across the table, perhaps accidentally touching his hand.
Sandy wasn’t dead serious about Chip; even
so, she had a good thing going. Her career as a defense attorney
working for herself was just getting started. Although it was too
early to think about marriage, she certainly didn’t want a former
lover mixed in with her very satisfying romance. Unfortunately,
being in love does make you vulnerable to such emotional
upsets.
Would she be broken-hearted if she lost him?
Sure, but it wouldn’t be fatal. So far, it was a satisfying, loving
relationship, and they don’t come along too often. When they do,
you hold on to them until...well, until you want to let go.
How much or how little she loved him was
beside the point; she wasn’t ready to give him up and certainly
didn’t want anyone else on the scene. She recalled her grandfather
once telling her, “Honeychild, y’all hold on to what y’all got,
until y’all gets, what y’all wants.” She smiled remembering her
grandfather was from up in New England but enjoyed doing his cowboy
drawl.
She was on her way to the kitchen and headed
for the trash bin, when he called to her from the bedroom. “Be
right in,” she answered. She retrieved the book from the recyclable
bin and sat at the kitchen table.
She was pleased to note the coffee grounds
hadn’t stained the old-fashioned filigree book jacket. Strange. She
now noticed the book cover was slightly smaller than the book. It
didn’t quite fit. She flipped through. It wasn’t a printed book of
poems at all. It was handwritten with a few blank pages at the
back. It appeared to be someone’s diary.
She scanned a few pages and could see they
were well-thumbed. In the margin of the first page was boldly
written:
“Crazy stuff this guy!”
Her curiosity easily
overcame her guilty voyeuristic feeling, and she couldn’t stop
reading. The first sentence started,
“After the first date, he
finally got around to what I wanted when I first saw him!”
She
shouldn’t be reading this; she snapped the book closed. Who on
earth had written this?