Talk of the Town
Talk of the Town
This book is dedicated to
“The Critique Ho’s,”
who made Hamshank stop tearing up
on the Ferris wheel:
Kimberly Fisk, Pipper Watkins,
and Tracy Rysavy.
“Hot Damn” all around, girls!
So much for the honeymoon.
Sam Grayson scanned through the “Woman Seeks Man” ads in…
The ten o’clock air was October clear, like amber. Kelly…
PALMER’S EMPORIUM was painted in black letters on the plate-glass…
They went four blocks north to the neatly landscaped Grayson…
Sam drove up to the Williamsons’ house in a cream-colored…
At nine o’clock on Sunday morning, Sam Grayson came through…
Sam could see the lights of a Ferris wheel and…
“Caroline Prosser, please.”
It was red velvet, strapless, and gathered across the front…
Kelly took three steps out toward the sidewalk thinking the…
“How was the benefit? Grand as always?” Faith slid a…
He was in love with a wanted woman. Her perfume…
Kelly was rummaging in his fridge wearing his black silk…
She was a country bride this time. A November country…
Lynnette slid out of the sheriff’s office coffee room quietly,…
The next morning she found herself tucked into a twin…
Christmas Eve morning was like a picture postcard in Paradise.
“I did not ask the caterer to make the angel…
October
So much for the honeymoon.
Kelly Atwood bent down and pressed her fingertips against her husband’s neck to see if he was still alive. His pulse thumped against her touch. How about that, she thought. Raymond takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. Even though she was mad enough to have done him in, it was a relief that she hadn’t.
Out cold
. Kelly had never knocked anyone out cold before. For that matter, she’d never hit anyone at all. Raymond’s slow-motion descent backward onto the glass coffee table and the thousands of little shattered safety glass cubes glittering around him had a cartoon-like quality. His head had made the most amazing thud.
She was almost as stunned as he was. Almost.
She rubbed her cheek where Raymond had slapped her. Her return punch had been a purely spontaneous act of self-defense. She’d do it again in a heartbeat.
Raymond clearly hadn’t expected her to throw a left hook. He’d probably forgotten she was left-handed, which was funny, because he was a stickler for details. Something she’d found rather endearing a few hours ago when she’d married him.
That was before she’d found the little
detail
of a large bag of cocaine in the lining of his suitcase, all packed for their Jamaican honeymoon, and confronted him. Leave it to her to feel around the bottom of a bag for more shoe room.
Kelly noticed her one-carat marquise wedding ring had made quite a dent in Raymond’s nose, which was still bleeding. Echhh. She twisted the ring off her finger and flung it on his chest. Jerk!
The ring clattered to the floor. She felt hot anger rise inside her. She had trusted Raymond. He was the one who made her feel so secure. Oh, yeah, mature, hardworking Raymond.
Once Ray’s hand had made contact with her cheek, Kelly had known the truth. She’d been taken in by a truly talented con man. The other truth was that thirty seconds was too long to stay with any man that laid a hand on her.
A faint moaning sound came out of Raymond and startled her into action. He’d probably be mighty upset when he came to. She’d better get out of here—and fast.
Kelly ran into the bedroom, grabbed the car keys, half the wad of traveler’s checks, and her six cashmere sweaters. Like hell she was leaving her cashmere sweaters. She dumped out some of the tropical beach clothes and stuffed the sweaters into her honeymoon suitcase.
From the living room she heard another moan. This time it had more life in it. Panic hit her like a 7.3 L.A. earthquake. She snatched up her best Italian boots, her suitcase, her purse, and bolted for the front door. No time to think now, just
run
!
Kelly ran down the hall, took one turn, and plowed right into a short, round, dark-suited man. She and the man went sprawling, her suitcase popped open, and its contents flew in every direction.
She mumbled an apology from the floor, un-tangled herself, and started gathering up her sweaters. The man growled like a dog, got up, and flung her purple and black satin Frederick’s of Hollywood honeymoon bustier off his face.
“Let me help you there, ma’am,” came another voice. A man stepped out of the shadows. He was tall and thin but looked very muscular. Great, she thought, Laurel and Hardy. Instead of
lending her a hand, Laurel picked up the suitcase, emptied it again, and ripped out the side pockets with his big muscles.
“Hey, you moron!” Kelly shrieked. She clutched her purse close to her. No one was taking her money. Ignoring her, Laurel chucked her belongings on the carpet and stalked away, followed closely by Hardy.
“Thanks a bunch, guys!” Kelly yelled again. Stuffing things back into the bag, she sat down hard on the top to get the clasp closed, then dragged everything with her the six feet to the elevator. Hitting the button with a stray high-heel shoe, she threw the rest of her loose clothes and the suitcase in when the doors opened.
This day was getting worse by the minute. As the doors whooshed shut, she whacked the parking-level button, took a deep breath in, and let out a long, searing, cleansing scream.
That felt better. Sort of. At least she was safe in here. It would take Ray at least twenty minutes to get his brain back in gear, and Laurel and Hardy were headed in the other direction looking for their next hall mug victim, no doubt.
Staring at her dark reflection in the bronze glass elevator walls, she began to laugh—a sort of hysterical,
I’ve-lost-my-mind
laugh—at the comical picture she was seeing. Most of her abundantly
caked-on makeup was streaked on her cheeks. Her short, modern, off-white leather and lace wedding gown was completely disheveled, and a ripped veil hung sideways on her jet-black dyed hair. Yep, she looked about as attractive as a psychotic crow.
To top it off, here she was on the run. Just like when she was a kid. She’d run away so many times, fed up with her mother’s terminally bad taste in men. Fed up with the drinking and drugs that finally ended up killing her mom.
Her suitcase had been permanently packed under her bed since she was about twelve. She’d slept in train stations and fast-food rest rooms, and learned how to beg strangers for money.
Kelly closed her eyes and felt the pain of memories ache in her chest. She’d gone back to her mom, or been returned, a dozen times. Then, finally, when she was barely old enough to make it on her own, she’d run away from her mom’s San Francisco hippie flophouse, all the way to L.A. She was just sixteen. She’d worked hard, clawed her way through life, and finally found a way to make decent money.
Then Raymond had come along and given her life an upgrade: elegant apartment, nice car, and beautiful clothes. Even though he was her boss, she’d felt like a partner in their swanky Europe-
an designer showroom. The clothes were beautiful, she was proud of the line, and she’d worked hard to make it a success.
She’d let all that blind her to the fact she’d been stupid enough to end up with someone just as screwed up as her mom. Raymond just did a better job of hiding it under his tailored Italian suits and the touch of gray at his temples. At this point she wondered if that gray was real. Well, that was all over now.
Another wave of sick emotion struck her. She bit her bottom lip hard. She’d be damned if she’d give Raymond her tears. Kelly stared down at her leather lace-up bridal boots; like old-fashioned 1880s shoes. She’d loved them this morning at ten when she’d gotten married.
Maybe she could dye them. She dyed everything. She was the dye queen. Her hair had gone from blonde to red to black. She couldn’t even remember her natural color. Hell, she’d dyed bedspreads and sewed them into clothing when she was living in the backroom of a tattoo parlor at seventeen—a very creative runaway.
So, yes, she was running again. But she sure had a good reason at the moment. Even so, when was she ever going to stop? She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She was twenty-eight. She needed to change this pattern.
“How profound, I have a pattern,” she
snapped, tired of her own psychobabble. It was the best theory she’d gotten out of the twenty books she’d read on the subject of growing up the child of an alcoholic, but sometimes you had to stop reading and start living. All those books don’t mean a thing unless you apply the knowledge to real life. “This is the last run, Kelly, old girl,” she said out loud to the elevator walls.
Where
to run was the real question of the moment. She sighed and pressed her hand against her own reflection in the mirrored panel. Where could she go that would let her stop running forever?
The door opened on the parking garage level to reveal a slick yuppie couple. They stared at her. She could just imagine what they thought:
“Skip, there seems to be a Bride from Hell in that elevator. Yes Muffy, it’s shocking
.” The couple moved to take the next elevator over, whispering to each other.
“Just having a bad hair day,” Kelly explained loudly. She used her foot to shove her suitcase between the doors so she could finish picking up her things. Over and over the automatic doors whapped against the bag. It made kind of a nice rhythm.
She gathered her belongings, took four steps out of the elevator, ditched her veil in a trash can, and headed toward Raymond’s precious black
BMW, pulling the keys out of her purse as she walked. Raymond wouldn’t even think to head after her here, at least for a while. He would never believe she’d have the nerve to go for the Beemer.
The parking garage was lit with mercury vapor lights that made everything look eerie. Her high heels clicked and echoed in the emptiness. Kelly punched the key alarm off, unlocked the car, and popped the trunk.
There in the trunk was Raymond’s neat and tidy black attaché. He was so organized, already packed. There was no time to waste rummaging through it now. He could find it and the car later. She pushed it aside and loaded her things in the compartment, then shut the lid.
Kelly slid into the soft black leather seat, shut the car door with a snap, and flicked the locks. The dark tinted windows would hide her for a few minutes.
From the side pocket of her purse she pulled the wad of traveler’s checks she’d taken from his dresser. Three, four, nine,
ten
of them at a thousand dollars each, and a few smaller ones. That was about nine thousand more than she figured she’d grabbed. Raymond must have been planning to do some purchasing in Jamaica.
She fingered the wad for a few minutes and counted the checks again. She knew the money
had come from their savings. For two years they’d been putting quite a bit into a mutual fund, supposedly with the idea of buying a house.
When she divorced Raymond, she would ask for a settlement, since her income had been combined with his to cover the household expenses for the last two years. So this was a good start. An early withdrawal. Enough money to start her life in a new direction.
She decided to call this money “damages.” Which reminded her she should stop at the bank and clean out half of whatever was left in their account. Altogether, if he had taken out, say, twenty thousand, and she was holding half of that, she probably had another three thousand due her.
Maybe she would put the money down on a small house somewhere in a town where no one knew her. The kind of town where women still quilted and sang in the church choir. She had a pretty good soprano voice. When she started singing her favorite carol, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” her voice croaked. No warm-up.
A woman passed by the car and looked at her through the dark window, startling Kelly. Better move it. She twisted the key to start the BMW and watched with relief as the gas gauge needle registered a full tank. She’d have to get rid of this car quick.
It’s one thing to knock Raymond out, but mess with his car, and you are roadkill.
Of course, he liked to conveniently forget that the car was half hers, or at least a quarter. She’d contributed a big chunk to the down payment. That was enough to justify its use for a few days. She looked nervously behind her for the first time in five minutes.
Kelly popped the parking brake, pushed the transmission into drive, and moved her ass. The chain-link gate rose as she zipped the parking card through the scanner. One left turn and she was out of the building, with the freeway only ten blocks away. She hit every red light in the history of Los Angeles before she finally found the on-ramp.
She cranked the fine car through its paces, into fifth gear, then opened up a path down the Hollywood freeway. Twenty minutes and she’d hit Interstate 5. In a split-second decision she picked north. The traffic was merciful to her this afternoon.
In her rearview mirror the boxy buildings of L.A. rose sharply behind her. Unclenching her fingers from the steering wheel, she punched the CD button and leaned back against the black leather seat. Patsy Cline was singing “Crazy,” and that was just
sooo
true.
North was a good direction. She’d lived in Seattle with her mom for a while, in a formerly
grand old house where they had rented a room. She had happy memories of exploring the crannies of that house and reading a library copy of
Little Women
curled up on a faded red velvet window seat. Her mom sure as hell wasn’t Marmee, but that book gave her a vision into another way that life could be: a life where people actually took care of each other. God, she’d been sad to leave that old house. She’d even managed to make a couple friends in school for the nine months they stayed.
A glimmer of a memory was carrying her north.
The ride was sweet and smooth and dotted with Dairy Queens from L.A. to Oregon. It’s amazing how much highway you can cover driving like a bat-out-of-hell with a radar detector. When she finally got too tired she parked at a rest stop and slept in the car. Good thing her cashmere throw was still in the back seat from their last evening out.
A few hours later she shivered awake, startled by a car door slamming next to her. A pair of old women were letting their poodles out for a pee. There’s nothing quite like that cramped-up, coffee-deprived, life-has-gonereally-whacked-and-that’s-why-I’m-sleeping-in-
a-car feeling. Kelly uncurled herself out of the car and stretched. The air was cool and scented with a mixture of evergreen and pine.
She was supposed to be in Jamaica having breakfast on the hotel terrace with her new husband right about now.
The ladies with the poodles came back to their white Cadillac and gave her some pretty odd stares. Maybe she’d be a little less conspicuous if she changed out of the bridal duds. She probably looked like a hooker with the strapless lace-up bustier bit and its matching skirt. Not to mention the satin bustle and bow.
Raymond had picked out this dress for her. It was Italian and considered very
chi-chi
back in L.A.
But not at a rest stop in Oregon at, what, six in the morning? Boy, those ladies were up early on a Sunday.
In the rest stop bathroom she stripped off the leather wedding dress and climbed into a comfortable black spandex skirt, high-heel boots, and her favorite black cashmere sweater, then zipped up her black leather jacket to stay warm. She was Cat Woman now. Raymond would never catch her.