Kizer, Tim

by The Bike (Suspense Thriller)

  Kelly's mother's name was... She had a simple name—Jane. Seven years ago she was... No, he didn’t remember her age. Women are often silent about the date of their birth, especially after they hit thirty, and Jane Frey had probably never been specific about hers.

  So what was his Mom and Dad’s opinion about George and Jane Frey? Quite possibly, they had had no opinion at all. Or he hadn’t cared to find it out: in the end, it was him getting married, not his parents. At age thirty three he’d been able to make decisions independently. He remembered now that his Mom and Dad had displayed little interest in Kelly's folks.

  Did his parents like Kelly? Sure. Why wouldn’t they? He married her, therefore she had to be a decent person.

  George Frey. Whatever happened to him? Was this man still alive?

  Is George Frey alive? Interesting question. Whether you remember it or not, the end result will be the same—a headache. If he died, he did this trick during the six years which had fallen into that black hole in your memory. This hole is still very dark and empty. You have no recollection of any of the Transformers movies being in theaters and you’ve just rediscovered that O.J. Simpson had gone to prison, so it should be no surprise you forgot the death of George Frey, the father of the woman you’ve been cheating on.

  Anyway, if George is alive, he will call you, okay, buddy?

  Why hadn’t he called, if he was alive? Maybe he was not interested in Frank Fowler anymore? Well, it was a possibility. How old would George be now (provided he had not assumed the room temperature yet)? Let's see... Frank’s best guess was seventy six, which seemed to be the average male life expectancy in America. George could very well be still alive and kicking, and a quick online search on the white pages might be all it would take to find his phone number.

  What for?

  Well, if you think about it, he is not your relative anymore and hasn't been since the day Kelly vanished. The day she was raped; the day her body was thrown in Lake Erie. Once Kelly died, George Frey ceased being your father-in-law and became just a lovable grampa in his late sixties. A mere acquaintance.

  Okay, he would refrain from searching for George Frey's phone number. Instead, he would have his breakfast and kill a couple of bottles of cold Heineken.

  Right after he checked his mail.

  6.

  Letter. He had received another letter from Michael Bluth.

  The sender’s address? 5151 Maple Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14019. Chances were the address either was made up, or had nothing to do with Michael Bluth.

  Michael Bluth had struck again, ladies and gentlemen.

  By the way, Frank had heard this name before, years ago. He wished he knew where.

  One thing was for sure: this Bluth guy lacked creativity. The message remained the same:

  “Dear Frank, I know you killed your wife, and I can prove it. You are a reasonable person. I’m sure you don’t want to go to prison. All I need is a $20,000 loan. Please think about my request very carefully.”

  The letter was typed in the same no-frills Times New Roman font as the note Bluth had sent him earlier and met the same fate: Frank tore it to pieces and flushed it down the toilet. As he crossed the living room, he glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 9:36. Time to go to that Chinese place—what was its name? The Great Wall?—and get some teriyaki chicken.

  And don’t forget to wipe off the stains in the bathroom.

  While dressing for the outing, Frank realized that, even though he hated himself for it, he was dying to know who had sent him this stupid letter. What idiot was trying to blackmail him?

  However ridiculous it sounded, he was being blackmailed and the guy didn’t seem to let up.

  Wipe off the stains in the bathroom, Frank.

  Why should he do it?

  Frank entered the garage, opened the driver’s door of his new ride, BMW X5, which he had bought last night: he had needed to clear his mind and car shopping was as good an idea as any.

  Wipe off the damn stains, Frank. Wipe them off now because you will forget to do that later.

  It’s okay. They’d been there for a month, let them be there for another months, he didn’t give a damn.

  Frank eased into the driver’s seat, hesitantly looking at the door to the house. The new car smell was seductive and soothing.

  The clock is ticking, Frank. You've already wasted fifty five seconds bumming around. Wipe off the stains now. Important things often fall through the cracks. You will delay getting rid of them over and over again and eventually forget to do it. And then someone else will find them. You don’t want that to happen, do you, partner?

  Frank put his feet back on the garage floor, steering himself towards the right decision.

  Tick-tock, Frank. Are you planning to spend the night here?

  Why wipe them off at all? Was it somehow connected with Bluth's letter?

  Maybe it is, maybe not. Does it matter? Wipe them off now, buddy. By the way, do you know Kelly's blood type? Is it different from yours?

  He didn’t give a shit about Bluth and his fucking letter. If he had to eliminate the stains only because some moron has attempted to blackmail him, he won’t do it.

  Don't be nervous, buddy. It is imperative for you not to be nervous.

  He was not nervous. He was absolutely calm.

  Then why do your temples feel so heavy? Why all this perspiration on your forehead? Get rid of the stains. Go to the bathroom and destroy the evidence. How much is Bluth asking for?

  Frank got out of the car, with his eyes fixed on the door to the house, as if his instructions were about to appear on it. He smiled.

  Bluth wants twenty thousand dollars. You’ve got the cash. Just give him the damn money.

  He chortled. Bluth sincerely hoped that Frank Fowler would crap his pants and bring him twenty grand. There was a major disappointment in store for him.

  Wipe off the stains. You've been debating this longer than it would have taken you to simply go and do it. Go to the bathroom and eliminate them. Do it not because of the letter but for the sake of cleanliness.

  Frank stepped back into the house and headed to the bathroom.

  Bluth was clearly insane. Otherwise how would you explain his absurd accusations?

  ‘I know you killed her.’

  Besides, Bluth claimed he could prove it. He was crazy, and this letter should be regarded as a fantasy of a lunatic. He must have read about Kelly in the newspapers and decided to have some fun. He had found the Fowler residence address in the white pages; it wouldn’t have been very hard to do. And the neighbors had probably told him that Frank had wound up in the hospital after the car crash. Or he could have bumped into a newspaper report about the accident.

  Frank turned on the light in the bathroom and went inside. He tore off two squares of toilet paper from the roll, grabbed a window cleaner spray from the cabinet, and stepped to the tub. After staring pensively at the stains for half a minute, he squatted, sprayed the stains with the cleaner, and began to wipe them off with the toilet paper. Once the spots were gone, he flushed the paper and quickly left the room.

  But what about the twenty grand?

  He was not going to engage in charity, no siree! Forget about the twenty grand.

  Maybe Bluth was one of his neighbors? Some idiot neighbor who considered this to be a hilarious practical joke?

  By the way, another wacky memory had surfaced in his mind yesterday, when he dropped by the office on his way to the car dealership. He remembered buying a large safe a couple of months ago. The memory was triggered by the elegant Sentry executive safe in the office of the managing partner, who had invited Frank to talk about his recovery progress and the date of his return to work. The details bubbled up in the hours following his conversation with his boss: he and a man named Alex had bought that massive six-foot tall, steel-plated sucker on Craigslist at a very attractive price. When Frank came back home, he examined every square foot of his house, looking for the safe, but found nothing resemb
ling the image that had popped up in his head. All he had was a small Quarter Master safe with a digital keypad in the study.

  Who was Alex? Frank hadn’t remembered that yet. Was he missing a leg? Frank had no clue. Did the safe have anything to do with Kelly? Most likely not.

  Frank entered the garage, climbed in behind the wheel, and started the engine.

  What if Bluth had actually seen something suspicious? He might have seen the killer: there was a high probability that the psycho had borrowed Kelly’s car to move the body out of here. Bluth had seen the killer handle the corpse, mistaken him for the owner of the house—and the happy thoughts of a big payday had begun to spin in his head. Mister Fowler had put his wife's body in the car! It must have been a body, that large human size sack had contained a dead body! And the dates matched, too: Kelly Fowler had disappeared the same day Frank Fowler had been carrying that huge tote around the house, hence Frank had murdered his wife. Let's write him a letter, scare the shit out of him, and score twenty grand.

  Bluth says he can prove that you killed her, buddy. What if he really can do it? He may be insane, but what if he does have proof? It is possible, isn't it? You must take that into account.

  He had just ripped that stupid letter to pieces and sent it down the sewer where it belonged. He might do exactly the same thing to Bluth when he came for the money. He would pulverize that moron, he would find a way.

  Admit for one second that it’s you who killed Kelly, buddy. Just admit to yourself, nobody can read your thoughts.

  He had not killed Kelly, and he was not going to admit it. He was not even going to think if he should admit. Screw Bluth and screw the stains. And you know what? He had changed his mind and now was heading to Olive Garden; he had forgotten when he had last dined there.

  Once he pulled out of the garage, Frank stepped on the brake pedal and waited for the garage door to descend all the way down. He wasn’t paranoid about someone sneaking in; it was just a sudden whim, okay?

  Someone knows you murdered your wife, pal. It doesn't matter whether it’s true or not. If Bluth has proof, you are in trouble.

  But he hadn’t killed Kelly! He hadn’t killed her and therefore nobody could have seen him do it or have proof that he’d done it.

  Bluth will call after this letter, and you ought to be ready for his call, partner. What are you going to do when you meet him?

  This scammer wouldn’t dare to call and there would be no meeting. Bluth was just playing a stupid practical joke on him—for shits and giggles as they say. The day Kelly had disappeared, he had come home around six o’clock, waited for Kelly till morning, then called Josephine and a couple of Kelly’s friends. No one had had anything useful to tell about Kelly’s whereabouts.

  How do you know what you did that day? Josephine told you, right?

  Yes, she had told him. And he had no reason to doubt her account of events.

  It's bullshit! You lied to Josephine, pal. You didn't wait for Kelly till morning; you murdered her and buried the body in the landfill. You killed your wife at six and were back on the couch by nine.

  He had called Josephine and Kelly's friends, but none of them had known where she had been. Two days later he and Josephine went to the police. His wife was murdered by a psycho; he used Kelly’s car to take the corpse out of the house. Later he buried the body, or burned it, or tossed it in the lake, or dumped it in the landfill.

  Bottom line: he didn’t care what the killer had done with the body; he hated jail; he respected the law; he did not kill his wife.

  Look, twenty grand is not that high a price for freedom, pal. You don’t have to provide for a spouse or a child now, so you surely can afford it.

  Arrested Development, a sitcom on Fox, that’s where he had heard the name ‘Michael Bluth.’ Seemed like the blackmailer was a fan of quirky comedy shows.

  Chapter 8.

  LAURA

  1.

  Laura Hutchinson had always suspected that Albert was not the sharpest tool in the shed. For example, would a smart man steal inventory from his employer, especially if it was not some pop-and-mom shop with no internal controls, but a fairly sophisticated enterprise? If she hadn’t been Albert’s boss, he would have been exposed and fired a long time ago. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have gotten this job in the first place, had she not been the boss. Why had she married him? Love is blind, as they say. It’s not very often that a man you fall in love with turns out an Einstein. Actually, it’s quite rare. Besides, Al obviously had good genes: he looked at least ten years younger than his age.

  However, no matter how great a lover Albert was, his latest peccadillo would be hard for her to ignore. Yes, if he thought that she would keep her mouth shut while he fucked around, he’d got another thing coming.

  Fire was burning in Laura’s heart as she drove to Amherst, the fire of resentment against her husband, who seemed to be having an affair. Why else would Al have taken two weeks off if not to hang out with some young babe with fake boobs? He wasn’t spending his time off with his family, that was the fact. Moreover, Albert had spent the last two nights away from home under the pretence of working on some project for his brother-in-law. Okay, Laura admitted that she was not twenty anymore, that her butt was not as tight and athletic as ten years ago when they had gotten married. However, everybody said she didn’t look a day over thirty five, which was a compliment for a forty-two-year old woman. And all her male friends told her she was hot.

  Today she was going to take a peek at the whore her husband might have been banging and to see who had a sexier ass and bigger breasts. Yesterday she had managed to sneak into Albert’s car and to write down the last three addresses he had entered into the GPS. Right now she was on her way to the address in Amherst, which was about half an hour away from her house in light traffic.

  And what did all that talk about moving out of state mean? A week ago, Albert had announced that he’d been thinking about leaving Buffalo.

  “My brother-in-law asked me if I want to run one of his businesses,” he said. “He’s got a dozen of them all over the East coast. I promised him to think about it.”

  She sat there motionless, stunned, her eyes fixed on his content face. She hoped he was joking.

  “Are you talking about leaving Buffalo?” she asked.

  “Yeah. But you don’t have to move if you don’t want to, that’s fine by me. I know how much you love your job, and it’s a great job. I’d hate for you to lose it because of me.”

  Her jaw dropped then and there. Did he just say he was going to take a break from their marriage, or in other words—to dump her?

  “I do love my job. And I can’t say I feel like leaving Buffalo,” she said. She adored her job: an executive position at a medium-sized hospital was not something you would easily throw away.

  “As I said, you don’t have to come with me. That job may not even last. I just want to try something new, to see what I’m capable of.”

  She had decided to refrain from making a scene. She had quickly regained calmness and continued leafing through the In Touch Weekly magazine that sat in her lap. It was her way of handling tough situations: pull yourself together, never lose self-control, pretend as if you don’t care. Turning hysterical rarely worked, if at all; it took restraint and patience to cope with men. She also kept in mind that men were obstinate and that their obstinacy was often irrational and senseless.

  Anyway, she would deal with this wacky idea of his later. Right now she was focused on tracking down his mistress.

  By the way, speaking of work, she’d been tempted to discuss the issue of the inventory theft with Albert since she had found out about it two years ago, but for some reason she’d never acted on this desire. Well... Honestly, she knew the reason: Albert’s family seemed somewhat intimidating to her. Whenever Laura saw his sister Josephine, which had happened at least every other month in the past eight years, she had in her mind this image of a young girl growing up on a farm somewhere in upstate N
ew York, who would help her parents prepare the product for the market by skinning the rabbits and beheading the chickens without batting an eye.

  2.

  Laura sat in her car, staring at the street in front of her. She had parked two blocks away from her final destination just in case Albert was at his lover’s place at the moment or was about to arrive there. She had begun to wish she had rented a car for this covert visit instead of driving her own.

  Laura wanted to let herself cry. She felt as if she was the unhappiest person in the world. Her husband was a real dick, and she didn’t have the resolve to say it to his face. She wasn’t afraid of getting beaten up; she was worried that Albert would simply shrug it off and go on with his day with not a care in his heart.

  Lord, why are you torturing Laura?

  Moron! Jerk! Imbecile! Oh what an idiot you are, Albert Hutchinson!

  Laura heaved a loud groan. She should have probably left Albert a year ago, when she had bumped into Roy Kirsch, a guy that had had a crush on her in college and become a successful owner of three restaurants in downtown Buffalo. Roy had been single and still had feelings for her after all these years.

  Laura sobbed and then looked in her purse mirror, concerned that the tears could ruin her makeup. Thankfully, her makeup was fine.

  Yes, she should consider divorcing Al. Their son was old enough to understand her reasons and would easily survive without seeing his father every day. He would probably be glad to have one fewer adult to give him hard time.

  Divorce. Only divorce would suit her. Why should she suffer from Albert's stupidity and unfaithfulness? She was an independent twenty-first century woman. He said he wanted to move out of state and didn’t give a damn if she followed him? Okay, let him go, but first she would divorce him. She had a great six-figure job here in Buffalo, she had no plans to relocate anywhere in the near future, and she didn’t appreciate being treated as a fall back woman.

  3.

  Laura grabbed the sun hat, which was part of her disguise along with the large sunglasses she had on, and got out of the car. She put on the hat, straightened up, and stood for a while, with her right elbow on the top of the car door, waiting for her leg muscles to wake up. Hot wind blew at her face, and she cringed slightly. Heat causes heavy sweating; you could begin to stink like a pig in an hour. Damned heat.