The Price of Candy (34 page)

So now what? She and Chip had gone together
merely four months and she’d no idea if he had expected exclusivity
with her. He was no kid. He’d had at least two hot lengthy affairs
that she knew of. The last one was with a legal secretary at the
courthouse who lived with him in this house for nearly two years.
Meaning they made love in his bed right here and he put all those
great moves on her right here.

She gave the drinks a final stir and returned
to the living room. He just stood looking expectantly. She handed
him his drink. “The answer is yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, he succeeded. I cooperated fully. We
got to know each other somewhat trying to investigate all of this.
I know that’s not an excuse. For some reason I was attracted to him
and I wanted it to happen. It was just sex. A one time, after
dinner thing. I’ve no further interest in him. It was an adventure.
Just sex, no love, just fantasy. But I’m guilty. The deed is done.
I realize once is all it takes to ruin our relationship. Whatever
it does to us, I’ll have to live with.”

“Go on,” was all he said.

“We hadn’t talked about an exclusive
relationship, but now that I’ve strayed, I’m thinking exclusive is
what I what. I don’t want you doing anything on the side. I don’t
want a permanent relationship, but while we’re together, I do want
it exclusive. I’d be scared to death if you did it. I know I should
say okay, I hereby grant you a free one. You have it coming and you
deserve it. Sorry you can’t have it. Sound selfish?”

For a moment they stared at each other.

“Yes?” she said. She waited for him to flash
his engaging grin. The classic one she’d fallen for at the start.
That grin always got her.

Finally, there it was. The grin. He said, “I
guess I’d better try harder with you.”

“That goes for me too.”

They both laughed.

Then he said, “An exclusive relationship is
fine with me. I just want you to stick around for a while...if not
longer.”

“Exclusive as long as we are together. No
other promises. I’ll be finishing law school and starting my law
career. That’s a major passage for me. I can’t tell you what’s
going to happen afterward. However, I do hope we’ll be
together.”

He pulled her close and gave her a lingering
kiss.

“Here’s a toast, Chip. To us.”

They clinked glasses and sipped in silence
for several minutes. Then they laughed at the same time.

“You’re now free to get into more
trouble.”

“Right now I just want to bask in a wave of
peace and calm. And spend my time between my law books and you. And
only you.”

“And you...need to be careful when messing
around with ‘just sex.’”

“You’re right, and I’ve learned from
observing Freddy. You must also watch out for the passion. It can
lie quietly inside you waiting until someone rouses it from sleep.
Then beware.” She stared down at her drink, idly moving the ice
around with the celery stalk. “Then it awakens with a roar,
demanding to take control.”

“Sandy, where are you? Where is all this
passion talk coming from?”

“Oh...you said sex is dynamite...so is
passion.” She had recovered from her private reminiscence.
“Sometimes you’re the dynamite and sometimes you’re the fuse.”

“Which am I?”

“Chip, you are definitely one great burning
fuse and I’m the dynamite. Around you, I’m combustible. You can set
me off anytime.”

He drained his glass in one gulp, stood, and
reached for her hands. She stood facing him and he placed his hands
on her upper arms and drew her closer. She tilted her head back
slightly as he kissed her neck then softly on her lips. While
holding the kiss he ran his hands over her back. He felt the curve
of her waist for a moment and then pushed his hands on down under
her pajamas until he was grasping her buttocks. He pulled her
tightly against him almost lifting her. Then he broke the kiss long
enough to lift her up completely.

Three months had passed. It was April. Spring
according to the calendar, but spring doesn’t linger in Florida.
Already summer if you believed the thermometer. Sandy Reid had
finished her law degree from FAU and studied quietly in her own
apartment for the July bar exam. She managed to find time for
regular sleepovers with Chip.

Martin Bronner had invited Sandy for dinner,
one evening, at his home with his father. He prepared a quite
acceptable Coquille Saint-Jacques. The next day the three took an
enjoyable trip to the Sarasota Music Festival on Florida’s west
coast.

The outcome of Nita Bank’s lawsuit, now in
the hands of the judge, was progressing favorably. The resulting
buzz had generated a few new clients for Martin. He tried to devote
some time to the book he had started writing on the subject of what
if Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated.

The latest email from Jamie explained she
loved the fishing trip in the Georgia Mountains with her daddy:
“...glad I didn’t catch anything because I don’t like seeing the
poor little fish die on my hook. Love, Jamie. Daddy says
hello.”

Jerry Kagan had suffered a mild stroke, but
was recuperating nicely. He had received a lucrative offer from a
developer for the building that had housed his law office for fifty
years. He teased saying he could retire for good if Sandy would
just keep herself out of the next murder in a small Florida
town.

Was it strange that Freddy Kidde was still on
her mind? Public interest in the Privado Beach episode had faded to
zero after State Attorney Moran declared the investigation showed
no wrongdoing whatsoever on the part of the congressman. Did Kidde
fade away as well?

Sandy had immersed herself in his fascinating
story as he was telling it. The once prominent congressman casually
encountering a stranded young woman in a convenience store. The
stranger had targeted him as a safe, malleable man, but he made the
decision to give her a ride. As she listened, Sandy had been
annoyed with his pompous manner as he was aloof and judgmental.
Then Sandy thought it comical when the hitchhiker revealed she
stripped for a living and he then assumed with arrogance that she
would be available to him.

It was obvious to Sandy that his fascination
became obsessive as he projected Betty Jo’s acceptance of him. But
did she encourage him in order to torture him, as he believed,
because of deep-rooted issues she had with men? In any case, only
after his passion was uncontrollable had he realized she was beyond
his reach. By then it was too late; he couldn’t let go.

As upsetting as it was to him personally,
Sandy didn’t feel that the obsession was necessarily disabling. It
could have been merely another of those haunting preoccupations
that secretly demonize the mind of millions. No worse than the
demons ordinary people have always lived with. Except, in his case,
there was a dramatic final stroke. His misdirected passion was
exposed when he failed to report her death.

Now Sandy wondered what happened to poor old
Freddy. Did he blame Betty Jo, himself, or just plain bad luck for
what happened? She wanted an ending to the story.

She wasn’t certain if he’d take her phone
call. Perhaps he blamed her for bringing his world crashing down.
She wasn’t certain if he still lived down in Jensen Beach, or if
his phone number still worked. She knew she had to try.

After his answering machine message, he heard
her voice, picked up, and said hello. He sounded weak, “I’ve been
screening my calls, Miss Reid. Only people with nasty comments,
death threats, or sick jokes phone me now.”

“I never realized there were necrophilia
jokes,” she said. “I felt compelled to call you, Freddy. I’m not
sure why. I guess because I was involved and still haven’t
processed it all.” For some reason the curtain wasn’t closed in her
mind.

“Glad you did. May I call you Sandy
again?”

“I read a series of articles about you in the
New York Times, about a month ago. How they forced you to resign
your seat in the House of Representatives, forced out of Congress.
That had to hurt.”

“I’m still mentioned in the press, thankfully
less frequently now. It remains torture. I still cringe as I turn
each newspaper page, wondering if my name will be mentioned. My
colleagues in DC turned their backs on me. The House Ethics
Committee, made it too uncomfortable for me to stay. I once knew
everyone who mattered. Everyone liked me. Now I’m inconsequential.
You don’t want to be caught with a dead woman.”

“Being innocent is often never enough,” she
said into the phone.

“Ellen left me, you know. Can’t blame her for
that. No relative will acknowledge me.”

“I imagine accepting an suspected
necrophiliac might push the limit for some families.”

“And outside the family as well,” he said.
“My secretary broke the sound barrier getting out of here. Didn’t
stop to clean out her desk or take her precious plant. We belong to
several civic associations. Have always supported a multitude of
charities, the museum, the symphony. They don’t call even for
donations anymore. I went over to the club only once. My family
built that club and now I’m persona non grata. I knew they were
laughing at me. Everyone is against me it seems. Suspicion and
rumors will always be there. A lifetime of work gone. My name will
always be linked to necrophilia—a word I’d never even thought of
before in my entire life.”

“I don't think one word can describe a man’s
life.”

“Perhaps, but everything I’ve accomplished
will now carry that footnote. Humiliated and ruined
nonetheless.”

“Sounds as though you’ve been judged
harshly.”

“I’ve family money and some congressional
perks I’m entitled to, so I never need to leave the house again. It
will be safer that way. No one can spit on me. Perhaps I’ll let my
nails grow like Howard Hughes. Did you know you could get home
delivery of groceries on the Internet? I have everything I
need...except respect.”

“You aren’t blameless. You could have done
things differently that night.”

“Should never have left. My political
survival instinct told me not to hang around a dead naked
female.”

“Correction. She wasn’t naked when you left
her with Toby. She had the bikini bottom on. Right?”

“Right. Leaving seemed a reasonable decision
at the time. What a tragic mistake. Now that I’m calm I can reason
like that, but at the time....”

“Since you did leave, you should never have
paid Toby any blackmail. Why did you?”

“I thought I was in the clear. Then he showed
up at my house. I felt guilty. I panicked. I couldn’t risk having
any connection to the incident. He guessed I wouldn’t risk exposure
even if innocent. I don’t know. I just paid him, that’s all.”

“There’s something else unresolved in my
mind, Freddy. When I was at your place trying to get you to come
forward, you mentioned you had followed the story in the paper and
they played up the fact that her pubic hair was waxed, or shaved.
The titillating fact, I think you called it.”

“Yes, I remember our conversation.”

“That interesting bit of information was
never released by the police. They held it back on purpose. I
checked and it was never in the papers. Not even in the police
report. You told me her bikini bottom was never removed while you
were there. How did you know she was shaved, Freddy?”

Silence on the phone.

“Freddy...how did you know?”

“She showed me once during the trip.”

“She what!”

“That evening when we were sitting there
drinking and laughing in the Marriott lounge. We’d had a few. She
was getting high. She glanced around first to be certain no one
could see what she was up to. With a devilish smile on her face,
she told me to drop my napkin and look under the table...she did it
to please me. Isn’t that amazing? I was delighted. Didn’t I mention
Candy did that?”

“You mean Betty Jo.”

“Just when she realized she loved me and
wanted me, our affair was cut short by that tragic accident.”

“What affair?”

His voice sounded different, “Don’t you
understand the heartbreak I suffered. We’d be together right now in
this house. We would have had it all if not for that tragedy. I’ll
always have Candy.”

“You’ll what?”

“She was naturally reticent at first, but
gradually came around as the trip progressed. As she grew to know
me, she became more warm and loving.”

“Warm and loving?”

“We had grown close by the time we got to
Florida. She had me fooled at the start with her little hard-to-get
game. She was clever. But then it became obvious to me. She
pretended to reject me as a ploy to heighten the excitement we’d
share at the end of our trip.”

“You said you knew you’d never get her. She
was unattainable. She was calling the shots. Freddy, you’re
babbling somewhere between fantasy and reality.”

“No, no. It was me she wanted. We both were
thrilled because we were close to the torrid adventure waiting for
us when we got to Ft. Lauderdale. She wanted us to be together all
along. She longed for me, but needed to be assured that I would
accept her. She agreed to become my mistress after all. She wanted
to dance for me. We would have been lovers for years. I’d leave my
wife for her. She was so perfect, so gorgeous.”

“You once told me she was plain looking.”

“No, Candy was beautiful. She was a present
from the gods.”

“Freddy, you’ve sacrificed everything for a
foolish passion.”

“When a beautiful woman opens up to you, and
gives you her love. You experience something so marvelous that you
can never adequately remember it, yet it can never be taken
away.”

Oh, my God! She had it now. She knew what had
happened. “You’ve told me all I need to know, Freddy. Goodbye, I
never want to talk to you again.”