Authors: Jada Ryker
“Do you want money?” he gasped, his face flushing in anger.
“We have no interest in your money. In exchange for our silence and your continued freedom, you will become the model son. Under my personal supervision, you will visit your mother once per week. You will concentrate exclusively on making those visits happy for her. You will tell her, at length and in great detail, what a wonderful woman she is and how happy you are to be her loving son.”
Squirming and sputtering, Witherspoon wiggled helplessly. “That’s extortion! You can’t do that to me!”
Clay shook his head sadly. “Extortion. It is such a harsh word with negative connotations. I prefer to think of it as friendly persuasion.”
He glanced over toward the bed, still gripping the hapless Witherspoon. “I see the solicitous Mrs. Flaxton is blocking Mrs. Witherspoon’s vision of our—negotiations—quite effectively. Since Mrs. Witherspoon is rather hard of hearing, there’s no reason for her to ever know the details of our deal.”
The shorter man struggled against the hands holding him to the wall. “Why are you doing this? Why do you care?”
“I have many reasons, although I’m not sure how many, if any, of them you would understand. For one, every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of his or her age. Secondly, I can’t sit idly by and allow a helpless, vulnerable person who cannot fight back to be attacked by the one person she loves most. Also, and perhaps most compelling, it so happens I have had numerous conversations with your mother. She worked long, grueling hours in a food-processing factory for twenty years after her husband, in the throes of a mid-life crisis involving your eighteen-year-old babysitter, left her and their four young children. Your brother was killed in an automobile accident ten years ago. Five years ago, your sister’s abusive husband killed her, your other sister, and himself. That leaves you, miserable and despicable as you are, as the last child to make a mother’s last years pleasant and comfortable.”
Unceremoniously, Clay released the rumpled man. He stared down in contempt as the younger man slid down the wall. “You can begin right now by apologizing to her.”
Keeping one eye on Clay in case he made any sudden movements, Witherspoon gingerly moved to his mother’s bedside. Althea, after a questioning look at Clay, finally relinquished her position at the sobbing woman’s side and moved noiselessly to Clay’s side.
The chastened son bent his head over his mother’s semi-reclining figure. When Althea saw his mother cower away from her son in fear, she surged forward. Clay placed a restraining hand on her arm, and shook his head at her. Silently, he tugged at her gently until she followed him into the dimly lit hall.
“Is it safe for us to leave the miserable little sleaze ball alone with her?” queried Althea with a concerned frown.
“I think so, since he’s terrified of the consequences of not being kind to her. However, to be sure, when we pass the nurses’ station on our way to the dining room, I’m going to ask the nurse in charge to check on her.”
He was as good as his word. After they’d crossed the spacious, common living area of the facility, Clay stopped at the adjoining, brightly lit nurses’ station. He bent over the red-haired, white-uniformed Ms. Crimpton and spoke to her. She nodded briskly, and closed the patient’s chart within which she’d been writing notes. After she’d disappeared down the hall, Clay escorted Althea to the deserted dining room.
“By the way, what was that tapping sound I heard coming from your room?” Clay pulled out Althea’s chair.
Althea squirmed, reluctant to tell him about her fiction writing. “I’m working on an article for
The Teacher’s Monthly Magazine.”
Clay turned away to pour cups of coffee. “It was the sound of a manual typewriter. My goodness, I haven’t heard that tap-tapping in years.”
Her steaming cup in front of her, Althea stared at Clay as he stirred sugar into his coffee.
He looked up suddenly, catching and holding her gaze. One silver brow rose in silent inquiry.
Without thinking, Althea blurted her thoughts. “Either you’re a paradox or I’ve very unfairly misjudged you. Since I came here, I assumed you were…” Althea hesitated.
“Shallow?” Clay supplied smoothly. “Vain? Lacking in substance?” His face was completely expressionless.
Althea tried to look past the image he had presented and cultivated, and into his soul. “I thought you lacked a fire in your spirit, and now I know you’re so full of passion it seems to spill out of you. I didn’t bother to look below the surface. I know better than anyone not to make judgments without all of the facts, yet that’s exactly what I did.”
She allowed him to see her gentle admiration. “Had I stumbled onto the scene alone, I’d have certainly dialed 911. Your solution was brilliant and sublime, and will result in the best outcome for Mrs. Witherspoon.”
“It’s not her fault her son was so overcome by greed and envy it obliterated everything else from his brain.”
Nurse Crimpton strode quickly through the common area, and resumed her seat behind the counter of the nurse’s station.
“Now, Mr. Napier, what did you mean earlier when you said we needed to talk?”
Clay started to tell her about the argument between Jonah and his grandmother. He stopped when Althea raised her palm and nodded her head. “Oh, you heard it as well. Did you speak to the police officer? According to him, your friend Ms. Adair was the last person to see Jonah alive. Did she tell you what Jonah was so anxious to discuss with her?”
“Marisa said Jonah was shot before he could tell her.” Succinctly, Althea repeated what Marisa had told her.
Clay nodded his silver head, digesting Althea’s words. Meditatively, he tapped the table with a manicured finger. “The more I think about it, the more convinced I am Ms. Adair could still be in danger. What if the killer decides she knows too much? We have to do something to help her.”
Surprised, Althea exclaimed, “I’d give my life for Marisa without a moment’s hesitation, but let’s face facts! We’re just a couple of old people confined to a nursing home. I’m getting stronger every day, I can walk, but I still have to use a cane to get around. We can’t rush around like detectives in a mystery, following clues and questioning suspects.”
Clay grasped Althea’s thin hand. “I’m convinced Jonah’s murder is connected to this nursing home.”
“How can you possibly assume any such thing? He had a life outside of this place, and not a very savory one at that. What if it’s something to do with that?”
Clay silently considered her words, and then shook his head in emphatic negation. “After what passed between Jonah and his grandmother, I’m convinced his murder is connected with the nursing home. He saw something here.” Althea gently slid her hand out from under Clay’s and with one finger traced aimless patterns on the table. “You may be right,” she agreed slowly. She raised her huge, troubled eyes to Clay’s determined face. “But what could he have seen here to make him such a threat to someone that he had to be killed?”
“I don’t know,” Clay admitted, furrowing his brow. “But we do have some possibilities. One, what if Jonah saw another employee engaging in illegal or illicit behavior? We know it’s not unheard of for hospital or nursing home employees to steal patient’s narcotics or painkillers to sell on the open market. What if he stumbled onto a drug ring? Second, let’s think about any unusual occurrences around here. What about the ghost some of the residents have whispered about seeing gliding through the halls?”
“Goodness, all of those possibilities are making my head spin!” Althea pounced on his last statement. “That’s pure nonsense about a ghost! Old eyes begin to fail, and elderly minds get fuzzy and confused, by age and by large quantities of medication.”
Clay leaned over the table, his nose nearly touching Althea’s. “Do you think I’m blind and confused?”
Althea’s eyes widened. “You saw this supposed ghost?”
“One night, I was unable to sleep. I was reading a book in my room, hoping to get drowsy. I heard a strange noise in the hall. My first thought was it was one of the staff passing through. However, I was feeling restless, so I threw down my book and opened my door a crack to take a look. When I looked out, I saw a silent figure dressed in voluminous folds of white, beginning at the top of the head and cascading down to brush the floor.
“I’m a very pragmatic man who has never believed in the supernatural. I grabbed my cane, determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. I slipped out of my room, and followed the figure. Although I tried to move as quietly as possible, it must have heard my cane tapping on the floor, for it suddenly darted around the corner. By the time I rounded the corner, the hall was deserted.”
Apologetically, Althea suggested, “Perhaps you fell asleep over your book, and dreamed the whole thing.”
Clay reached into his jacket pocket. “Did I dream this?” he demanded, holding out an object for her inspection.
The metal was cold in her long, slender fingers. “A flashlight?”
“I can’t imagine the spirit of a dead person, if such things did exist, would need such a mundane item as a pocket flashlight to light its way. Do you?”
“I would say this is tangible proof someone is dressing up to fool us all. But why? And what can we do about it?”
“We can find out everything we can about any other sightings of the person. Then, we will set a trap for the ‘ghost,’ catch it, and unmask it!”
Althea’s mouth dropped open. “Are you insane?”
“If we work together, I’m convinced we can do it, and solve Jonah’s murder at the same time. We have our sharp wits and—” he smiled faintly, “we certainly have plenty of time on our hands. Do you think you’re up to it?” Challengingly, he extended his hand toward her.
She was old. She was tired. Her legs were stronger since she’d broken her hip, but not even near normal. Certain she’d completely lost her mind, Althea took the proffered hand and briskly shook it.
Clay’s eyes were focused over Althea’s shoulder as he gently let go of her hand. They widened.
“What is it?” Althea twisted around.
Through the large window, Althea saw an ambulance with red flashing lights, followed by two police cars with blue lights flashing, pull up to the front of the nursing home.
“What in heaven’s name?” gasped Althea. “Is one of the residents sick or hurt?”
“We get plenty of visits by ambulances…but the police escort tells me something is horribly wrong.”
“Whoever hits the target gets to go first!”
Thick smoke and dim lights made the dancer on stage look fuzzy and unreal. Marisa squirmed in her chair at the edge of the circular stage. She wanted a beer, but she knew she couldn’t. She was in the strip club to investigate and gather information, not fall off the wagon.
“Come on, Trinity, take the first shot at my target!” Diana laughed, curving her red lips and making eye contact with the men seated in an irregular circle around the stage. With an exaggerated swinging of her muscular hips and her long, straight black hair, the stripper pranced across the stage to Marisa. All eyes were trained on her jauntily bouncing naked breasts.
Trinity. Marisa shuddered in revulsion. She’d hoped never to hear the name again. Marisa peered up at her friend. Diana executed a series of graceful dance moves on her six-inch Lucite heels, black leather straps crisscrossing the well-developed calves. She paused in the middle of the stage, flexing her tanned thighs, her long, blood-red nails expectantly holding open the black leather g-string.
As a rabid body builder, Diana had a strong, muscular body. Daily weightlifting and strenuous exercise kept her fit, and her long hair and beautiful face kept her from appearing too masculine for the taste of the primarily male customers. However, since she was twenty years—plus—older than the other dancers, Diana had needed a gimmick to differentiate herself from the flock of late-teens and twenty-something strippers. While the dim lights helped disguise the laugh lines at her eyes and her muscular body was in better shape than the majority of women her age, it was impossible to hide the effects of gravity with a g-string.
Diana had hit on the perfect way to capture the capricious attention of the strip joint customers. With the televisions jammed in every corner of the club constantly tuned to football, baseball, basketball, even log rolling, Diana was well aware of the competitive nature of males. Accordingly, she made the first dance of her set into a game. She challenged those seated at the stage to try and throw balled up currency into her held open g-string. It was always a huge hit, both with the older men and the younger guys.
Marisa gave a mental shrug. She wasn’t having much luck in her private detecting. She might as well participate in the activities. Besides, Diana would be hurt if she didn’t start the action for the men around the stage to follow. Marisa grabbed one of the dollar bills from the pile in front of her. Carefully, she rolled it into a ball. To please her friend and also to distract herself from her harrowing day, Marisa wildly threw her balled up money and missed.
Diana laughed. “See,” she cried to the men as she strutted around the stage, “She throws like a girl!”
Pushing back his cowboy hat, an older man energetically balled up a bill. “Her paltry little dollar ain’t gonna work, let’s try this fifty!” Carefully squinting one eye as he gauged the distance to the open g-string, he launched his money.
The other men howled with laughter when he hit her in the navel and the wadded up bill bounced to the stage.
Amid cheering and hoots of derision, the men took turns throwing their balled up bills. Diana turned to Marisa again and winked at her through the fall of thick, black hair. “Try it again, honey, you know you want the first stage dance with me!”
Marisa plucked another dollar from her stack. Before she could wad it into a ball, someone slid into the chair next to her and pressed a balled up dollar into her palm. Marisa drew back her arm and launched her missile.
With a cry of glee, Diana moved her g-string to catch the ball.
“Aha, Trinity gets the first dance!”
Since the majority of the men who came to the club loved to see two women together, no one denounced Diana for her blatant chicanery.
Diana smiled seductively as she slid toward Marisa.
Moving in time with the classic rock music, Diana danced gracefully in front of Marisa. As she bent over to whisper in Marisa’s ear, the dancer’s long, dark hair slithered over Marisa.
“Oh, Marisa, it’s been ages since you’ve been in here! I’m so glad you’re here!”
Marisa turned her mouth to Diana’s ear. “I need to talk to you about another dancer, the one who used the stage name Goth Girl.” Not wanting to upset Diana during her dance, Marisa did not add that she’d stumbled onto the stripper’s body in the graveyard less than an hour ago.
“Pull up her top,” chanted a particularly boisterous young man, his hoop earrings catching the light as he raised his arms in parody of what he wanted Diana to do.
Diana noisily kissed her cheek. “There you go…
Trinity
.” The dancer gave her an outrageous wink.
Marisa sensed the gaze of the man seated next to her. Unobtrusively, she turned her head toward him. She didn’t want attention or trouble. Eye contact with a person in this setting could lead to unwanted attention. A familiar woodsy scent tickled her nose. All she could see was the back of a shorn head above a dark windbreaker jacket.
With a sigh of relief, Marisa turned away.
When a hand touched her bare arm, she closed her eyes in exasperation. “No,” she said firmly, and pushed the hand away from her.
“Trinity, don’t be so cranky!”
An arm slid around her waist as the other woman sat down heavily in the chair next to her.
“Sarah!” Marisa laughed and leaned over to kiss the other woman’s dimpled cheek. “There was a guy there and I thought he was getting grabby!”
At the last moment, the dancer twisted her head. Marisa’s kiss landed on her plump lips. “Grabby, yes; guy, no!”
“You’re incorrigible!” Marisa eased away as Sarah’s hand stroked her knee under the edge of the stage.
“It’s good to see you, honey! Where have you been?” Sarah reached inside her tight green tank top and arranged her bountiful cleavage. When the women weren’t dancing, they were required to wear clothes. Otherwise, the men would get their naked women views for free, rather than giving them money on the stages.
“Around,” Marisa avoided, definitely not wanting to talk about her rehab. “How’s your boyfriend…” She rummaged around her head and only found the image of a slithery reptile. “…Snake?”
Sarah rolled her heavily mascaraed blue eyes. “Driving me crazy, as usual. I have to work in this damn place every night until four in the morning. You’d think Jake could at least answer his cell phone when I call him!”
Marisa had lost count of the number of times over the years she’d frequented the strip club, and found Sarah crying by the bathroom sink with her cell phone. By the time Marisa came out of the stall to check her make-up, Sarah would have switched from tears over her errant boyfriend, aptly referred to as Jake the Snake, to fury. Her cheeks streaked with running black mascara, she’d be alternately begging and threatening on his voicemail.
Leaning close to Sarah’s ear so she could hear her over the load music and drunken laughter, Marisa asked, “Why the hell do you stay with him if he makes you miserable?”
Sarah’s eyes were very wide. “Because I love him, of course.”
“Sarah, have you ever wondered what it would be like to feel comfort, safety, security in a relationship? Would you like to have a partner who treats you with dignity and respect, who at a minimum answers your phone calls?”
Sarah pushed her flirty blonde curls out of her eyes. “Trinity, I know you’re different. I can tell you’re educated, I know you drive a nice car, and I bet you have a cool job. You have a life outside of this place. You come here, pretend you’re one of us, drink, and you have a great time. It’s all a fantasy for you. For me, it’s not pretend. It’s real. I’m a stripper and I take what I can get.”
Before Marisa could react, Sarah whirled out of her chair without a backward glance.
An older man slid into Sarah’s vacant seat. He smiled at her tentatively. Before he could stutter out the words to ask her if he could buy her a beer, Marisa brusquely refused. She gathered her money from the edge of the stage in front of her, and pushed herself to her feet.
As she rose, she bumped into the held high tray of a waitress. It tottered alarmingly, sloshing drinks, but didn’t fall.
“Whoa,” cried the waitress. The exasperation on her pretty face turned to excited recognition. “Hey, Trinity, where have you been, girl? I ain’t seen you in ages!” She deftly slid the tray onto a table. At barely five feet tall even in her killer heels, the scantily clad girl had to reach up to hug Marisa. Even then, her smiling face hit Marisa in the breasts.
“Kitty, my favorite waitress in the world!” Marisa happily kissed the younger woman on her glowing cheek. “Can you make time to talk?”
“Here, Kitty, Kitty!” A raucous male voice called incongruously.
“Sure, Trinity, I’ll get a break soon and I’ll look for you.”
“
Waitress! I am waiting for my drink
!” The bellow seemed to shake the ice in the glasses.
“Be right there!” Kitty trilled gaily, as her rolling eyes met Marisa’s. “My God, it is so crowded tonight! All six stages open, girls dancing, so many guys packed in here, you can’t swing a dead cat! Great tips, but they are running my legs off! Don’t you dare leave without talking to me!” She lifted the tray and skittered away.
Over the loudspeaker, the emcee announced the next set of dancers. She paused to listen to the fake-cheery tones of the emcee. Darn, Diana was still dancing. Kitty had to wait for her break. “—and on stage five, it’s Zia!”
Oh, thought Marisa in excitement, ZIA! When she’d frequented the club before, she’d noticed Zia and the Goth Girl appeared to be good friends. She needed to question Zia. Without warning, she wheeled hard to her right to make her way to the back of the bar.
With a jarring bump, Marisa found herself in a firm grip. The woodsy scent filled her nostrils.
“Stop it!” Marisa pushed against him angrily, dimly aware of a latent strength in the solid body.
One of the hulking male employees loomed over her. Because the club wanted to create an atmosphere of a classy gentleman’s club, rather than that of a tawdry, blue collar strip bar, the male employees dressed formally in tuxedos and pristine shirts. In accordance with the dress code, their faces were clean shaven and their hair neatly cut short. In contradiction with his attire, Anton’s brows and aggressive stance signaled a body breaking threat. “Trouble, Trinity?” He yelled over the noise.
In the strip bar, Marisa always felt perfectly safe. The management always peppered the crowd with huge bruisers in their evening clothes, whose prime directive was to keep the customers’ hands off the dancers. The concept was similar to the requirement of the girls wearing clothing if they were not dancing. If customers could touch the women for free or see their naked bodies for free, why would they spend money in the club?
“Hi, Anton.” Marisa felt a sense of relief out of proportion to the incident. “This guy grabbed me—” She turned.
A young, thin man with a stiffly moussed Mohawk and hoop earrings, dressed in a black t-shirt and baggy black jeans sliding down his skinny hips, was standing closest to her in the jam of bodies. He was trying to check out the women without obviously looking at them, as if ogling naked women in a strip bar was somehow not cool.
Experimentally, she sniffed him. Alcohol and a faint smell of pot filled her nostrils, but no woodsy scent.
With a snarl, Anton grabbed the young man and picked him up.
“No, no, no, Anton, that’s not him!” Marisa dropped her money. “Stop, Anton!” She frantically pulled at one of his bulging biceps. She couldn’t get both hands all the way around it.
Anton turned to her, his huge hands easily holding the squirming boy.
The young man’s hoop earrings danced and his legs dangled. Like a huge dog with a chew toy, Anton shook him.
Twisting, he screamed at Anton to release him.
Marisa punctuated her words with desperate pulls on his arm. “That’s — Not — Him!”
Her words penetrated with only a few seconds’ delay. “Oh, sorry, man.” Anton carefully set the disheveled boy down.
The young man’s eyes bulged. “My mother is a lawyer! She is going to sue your asses off!” In his fury, his sputtered and his saliva flew. The cocky Mohawk was now wilted, and waved limply with his agitated head movements. “After my mom gets done with you, I’ll own this place! I’ll be the boss!”
“Now wait just a minute—” Anton wasn’t a mental heavyweight, but he knew his superiors would be royally pissed if the club was sued and Anton was named in the lawsuit. He craned his neck desperately, torn between wanting his boss to handle it and needing to hide the whole embarrassing incident from his boss’ sharp eyes.
As the young man’s anger melted away in the wake of his pleasant fantasy of owning the club, Marisa looked at his face more closely. His face, in spite of the thinness of his body, was rounded and appeared unformed, as if childhood was closer than adulthood. On his soft chin, a few hairs were evidently being cultivated as a goatee.
“First thing I’m doing is firing your primate ass!” He laughed, showing perfect teeth.
As she had aged, Marisa had noticed that it had become more difficult for her to guess the ages of the younger generation. However, compared to some of the eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds who worked at the hospital, the guy in front of them seemed very young. Although the staff carefully checked identification in order to enforce the over twenty-one rule, even those of people in Marisa’s age group, it was possible for forgeries to slip through.