“You’re a sweet tease, Gina,” he shouted over the music.
“I’m hungry,” said Connie.
He was on his feet. “Don’t stop dancing. I’ll getcha some food.”
“There’s frozen pizza in the freezer,” she called. Then Gina was grabbing her belt loop and they were back to dancing, trading a fiery joint between the hammering beats.
“Think he’s cute?” asked Gina.
“I thought so. But now I think he’s a little sleazy.”
“Just a little?” The two burst out laughing. “And the plastic surgery. Gawd.”
“I didn’t notice anything other than the contacts.”
“Well, look close. I think I see scars here and here.” Gina gestured around her eyes. “And the nose and chin? Puh-lease. Gimme some good sunlight and I’ll tell you the surgeon.”
Shakespeare yelled out from the kitchen, “No tellin’ any jokes ‘less I’m there to hear ‘em!”
It only made them laugh all the harder, drawing up around them that wall that leaves all men out. Girlfriends to the end.
“Gawd, if Mitch were here,” snorted Gina.
“He would die.”
“I mean, what’s his problem? Shakes is just a guy. That’s all. So they disagree. That’s what politics is about.”
“Know what I think?” Connie leaned closer to her. “I think Mitch is scared of him.”
Gina squealed with laughter. “Big Mitch afraid of that little guy?”
“Not so little,” laughed Connie.
“You saw it, too?”
“I got pizza in the microwave. But look what I found in Mrs. Dutton’s kitchen…” Shakespeare returned, braving the blasting wave forms of disco. He carried a silver tray, upon which were three Waterford flutes and a bottle of Dom Perignon.
“Oh my God. That was a gift…” Connie’s hand went to her mouth, leaving the joke for Shakespeare to finish.
“ ‘From the Democratic Party of the Great State of Texas,’ ” continued Shakespeare, reading from the card that was still affixed to the bottle. “May I?”
“Be my guest,” she said, her voice suddenly sharpened to a hard point.
Bang! The cork ricocheted off the nearest beam and rolled underneath the couch while Shakespeare was quick to pour. Gina raised her glass. Then Connie. And Shakespeare made the toast. “To Mitch. Hope he has a good ol’ time with all those jackasses in D.C.”
“Fuck him,” said Connie under her breath, before guzzling the champagne. And as inaudible as her words were, Shakespeare was looking at her as if he knew exactly what she’d said. As if he’d actually heard. Had she said it? She was drunk, then stoned, then sweat-soaked from the dancing. Control was gone. Was she suddenly speaking out of turn?
That’s right. Fuck him.
That was the look Shakespeare gave her. It was powerful. Something she hadn’t quite seen from him. It unnerved her deeply.
“Gotta pee,” said Gina, as if her announcement was newsworthy. She tripped out of the living room.
Alone with Shakespeare, Connie lost her lust for dancing and flopped into the big, wing-backed chair. “My feet can’t take this.” Her eyes shut, only to open again as she found gentle hands caressing her arches. Shakespeare was on his knees, her feet held against his chest, thumbs digging down toward her heels.
“Now, don’t say you don’t like this? Cuz it’ll hurt my poor-boy feelings.”
She answered by withdrawing again, behind closed eyelids, floating a sigh that sounded like a bare hum against the silence. The music had stopped. And the footrub felt too good to resist.
“Been awhile, has it?”
“Since what?” asked Connie.
“Since Mitchy rubbed your pretty feet.”
Connie instantly tugged both feet up to her chest. “I didn’t like that.”
“You said it, not me.”
“I said what?”
“Who turned off the music?” asked Gina, returning from the bathroom, oblivious. Without a second thought she stumbled over to the turntable and flipped the record over.
“Fuck him,” answered Shakespeare as soon as the music returned to volume. From his pocket he pulled another joint, lit the number, and held it out for Connie.
“So who’s dancing?” begged Gina.
“I am.” Connie accepted the offered joint, sucked back the mind-numbing smoke, and returned with Gina to the dance floor.
“It’s not adultery if you’re on location,” said Rene, lying naked across the king-sized hotel bed, her face over a plate of cold pasta.
“What’s that?” asked Mitch, who wasn’t hungry. He’d pulled himself up to the headboard, pillows behind his head and on his lap.
“It’s not adultery if you’re on location.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m told it’s something they say in Hollywood. I heard it from some camera guy I met in Florida who was doing a commercial for a candidate.”
“So we’re on location. Is that it?”
“If it makes you feel better.”
“Can we change the subject, please?” The deed was already done. There was no taking it back. For two hours they’d fucked each other sore. It was break time. The lights were on, the food was cold, and the temperature hadn’t changed a lick.
“Tell me about your father.” Rene switched direction.
“You know about my father. You wrote the campaign bio.”
“Hey, I know bullshit when I write it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it bullshit,” he said. “I’d call it none of the public’s business.”
“Ooh. Watch your mouth, now. You’re a public figure,” she said sarcastically. “And the public has a right to know.”
“About me, maybe. But not my old man.”
“Do I hear a few skeletons rattling?”
“Nothing that could hurt me. He taught me that the facts of life were up for interpretation.”
“He bent the rules, men,” she tried to confirm.
“Wherever he could. A classic hypocrite of a parent.”
“You must have one story to tell your little Rene,” she teased, never leaving the pasta, but sliding her foot up the inside of his thigh and wiggling her toes.
“One story.”
“And forever I’ll hold my peace.”
Mitch slid away from the headboard, taking the pillow from behind his head and placing it on her butt. Resting his head back on the pillow, he stared at the ceiling.
“Okay. I was eight. It was a Little League game. The one game my old man decided to show up for. I was playing catcher. Hollice Waters was at bat—”
“Busted. You’re making this up.”
“Honest to God, truth.”
“Hollice Waters? Mr. Poison Pen?”
“The one and only.”
“But you weren’t teammates.”
“Not that year. Anyway,” he continued, “Hollice knocked one down to third base, but on his way to first, he threw the bat. He didn’t know I was running right alongside him.”
“You were going to back up the throw to first.”
“Very good.”
“I’m not as much of a girl as I look.”
“Where was I?”
“The bat.”
“Right. Anyway, it caught me right in me mouth.”
“Ouch.”
“All it did was chip a tooth. A little blood. No big deal. Batter’s automatically called out.”
“Hollice was out”
“Yes. But that wasn’t good enough for my old man. He wanted Hollice out of the game. He walked right out onto the field and started screaming at the umpire. I remember it was some poor high school kid whose dad worked on one of my dad’s shrimp boats.”
“So what happened?”
“My dad said that either the umpire throws Hollice out of the game or he was taking me home right then and there. Now, Hollice and I are standing there. Both of us want to play. And my old man is out in the middle of the field, screami
ng at some seventeen-year-old who’s scared his father’s job’s on the line.”
“He threw Hollice out of the game.”
“Damn straight he did.”
“Then what happened?”
“I wanted to walk off the field in protest. But my father said that if I walked off the field, I’d never play baseball again.” Mitch shrugged at the thought. “So I stayed and played. Hollice went home and he never played baseball again.”
“No way.”
“That’s how it happened.”
“A parent could argue that it was just your worried father protecting you.”
“It was an accident. And it was all about him,” said Mitch. “It was always about getting his way. In business. With my mother. With me. He’d win at any cost. Arguments. Finances.”
“Yeah. But did he ever lose?”
“Yup. To a bunch of lawyers who’d invested in a bogus shrimp distributorship. So when they couldn’t collect on the judgment, he married some hooker he’d met in Las Vegas, put all his assets in a trust with her name on it, then filed for bankruptcy protection. The marriage, of course, didn’t last. He retired to San Diego. End of story.”
“He must’ve loved it when you told him you were going to be a lawyer.”
“When I graduated from Stanford, he sent me dead flowers and a note saying that I was now one of them.”
“It’s a wonder you ever talk to him.”
“We don’t talk, really. We trade phone messages. He’ll occasionally ask for legal advice.”
“Do you give it?”
“Sure. But I send him a bill.”
Rene laughed so hard, the bed shook. “You send your father a bill?”
“What’s worse is that he never pays.”
Harder, she laughed, her casual cool breaking wide open. This was Rene Craven. Naked to the teeth. Earthy and sexually inclined. When the laughter died, she curled herself around him in such a way that he could smell her sex. His arousal was swift Rene had him in hand, sitting astride his hips, guiding him deep inside her until they were joined. Candidate and cohort She straightened up and looked down at him. “So this is the high ground?”
“Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Just checking out the view, mister.”
“And how is it?”
“Getting better all the time.”
They screwed for the last time that night, with Rene falling off into an exhausted and snoring sleep. Mitch lay awake for some time, then finally resolved to call Connie…
…and confess?
Hardly. He stuffed his guilty conscience. He was being courteous. Connie didn’t know where he was, and should she have needed to talk to him, God knows she’d have been loath to call Fitz and ask him which hotel he had landed in.
He crept from the bedroom, slid the door shut, and dialed from the phone next to the sofa. Connie’d probably be asleep. Would she wake or let the machine pick up? He was conflicted. The machine would be easier to deal with. He’d apologize for leaving without talking to her, then leave the hotel and scheduling information. Then again, mere was a tugging deeper inside him that wanted to hear her voice.
But the phone rang and rang and rang. There was no machine to pick up and no answer from his wife. Ten rings. Eleven rings. In that brief time he wondered, had she turned the machine off out of spite. Or was it not picking up due to something so simple as a power outage?
Fifteen rings.
Clearly she wasn’t going to answer no matter what the problem. Still he hung on, deciding to give it twenty rings and try her again in the morning.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty rings.
Mitch hung up, noting the knuckles on his hand clutching the receiver had turned white in a kind of death grip. Rene caught his eye. She was standing in the bedroom doorway, naked as a new day.
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Then please come back to bed.”
NINE
THE SKIES over Cathedral were clear and without a cloud to interfere with the brilliant three-quarter moon. As for the telephone machine, it wasn’t malfunctioning, nor had Connie turned it off.
The party had lasted until around midnight when Connie’s body had finally succumbed to all the abuse. With the Bee Gees still pounding over the stereo, she’d suddenly had enough and bid her guests a speedy good-night. Somewhere in her memory she recalled reminding Gina to lock the door behind her and leave the key in the mailbox. Then she’d started up the stairs for bed.
It hadn’t crossed her mind to ask Shakespeare to keep the evening’s festivities from her husband. Or even Gina, for that matter. Caution had been left in the ashtray. As she shut out the downstairs music with the door to the master suite, all she was hoping for was a dreamless sleep and not too big of a mess to clean up the next morning. Her head was already hurting from the thought of the oncoming hangover. So shortly before tumbling into bed, she followed Gina’s remedy of two full glasses of water, one B complex vitamin, and two aspirin to thin the blood. She dropped her work clothes in exchange for one of Mitch’s T-shirts and crawled into bed, making sure to leave the bathroom light on as was her habit when her husband was gone. She checked the clock before closing her eyes. It was a blurred 12:16 A.M.
Downstairs, the party was far from over. Gina had made up her mind that it would serve Mitch right to fuck his worthy opponent on the floor of the very room where he read his Sunday paper: a screened sun porch off the living room. With the records stacked on the turntable and the music turned down to a moderate decibel, she and Shakespeare spilled the lounge cushions to the Astroturf floor and began a sweaty tangle of wet tongues and groping hands.
Gina fancied herself a sexual stalwart, despite the scuttlebutt that she was a notoriously lousy encounter. All awkward legs and arms, she had a habit of making sex a wrestling match. Shakespeare was quick to handle her, reaching underneath her tennis dress and tearing her panties clean away with a single tug. She reached for his belt buckle. But he stopped her cold.
“What?” she pressed.
“You’re too easy.”
She took her heel and poked it hard at his chest. “Is that what you want? A fight?” She poked him again.
“I want to be teased.” His blue eyes gleamed, his eyebrows raised.
“I know.” Gina smiled. “You want more money. But you forget. I’ve already contributed the maximum legally allowable to a po-li-ti-cal can-di-date.”
“Money, I don’t need,” sneered Shakespeare. He unzipped his pants and pressed against her, teasing her without mercy. “What I need is information.”
“Like the nasty about Mitch Dutton?” She grinned at the idea, groping for his erection with her fingertips. “So you got any rubbers?”
From his shirt pocket he removed a very small white envelope. “I got better than rubbers.”
“Yeah?”
“I got the best sex you’ll ever have.” From the packet he let slip two blue capsules into the palm of his right hand.
“What is it?” she asked, already having forgotten about the condom.
“Gotta fuck me to find out.” Shakespeare put one capsule in his own mouth and left the other for her to beg for. Gina’s mouth opened wide and he let the bomb drop.
There wasn’t much to remember after that. If it was the best sex she’d ever had, she would never recollect. After she’d swallowed the blue capsule, it was two more minutes of tumble and tease before her lights went out.
Shakespeare had never swallowed his capsule. He’d left it between his cheek and gum like a wad of tobacco, quickly spitting the capsule out while he briefly went down on her.
Leaving Gina unconscious on the sun porch, he methodically gathered up his pants and shoes, tying them up with his jacket and leaving them on the kitchen counter. Next, with a bottle of Windex and paper towels, he moved efficiently and with remarkable memory around the downstairs and wiped away any traces of his presence. Fingerprints. Saliva samples.
All evening he’d been careful of his hands, keeping them to his sides, drinking only from the same glass.
Leave no evidence of your crime, friend.
Once he felt confident that he’d wiped the house clean of any evidence, he stepped briefly out the kitchen back door with two New York steaks he’d earlier removed from the freezer instead of pizza. He’d time-defrosted them in the microwave, and now it was time to feed them to the dogs, Merle and Pearl. Shakespeare hadn’t figured them for any kind of serious guard dogs, but chose not to take any chances. The dogs lunged for the raw steaks, allowing him time enough to reach up with a push broom and pull down the one telephone wire that connected the Dutton household to any kind of emergency services. Afterward he circled farther left to the unlocked electrical box located near the outer doors of the study. Once there, he easily found the master switch and cut the power to the house.
Rubber surgical gloves.
The last item on Shakespeare’s list. Once totally undressed inside the Dutton kitchen, he removed them from the buttoned rear pocket of his trousers, worked them onto his hands, and then started up the stairs. The floorboards creaked. Most likely, though, if Connie heard him, she’d think he was Gina.
She loves me. She loves me not. She loves me. She loves me not.
In the dark, his instinct prevailed. It was a Victorian house, large and open with all upstairs rooms off the hallway at the top of the stairs. There was just enough moonlight for him to venture that the double doors to the right and down the hallway from the stairwell would be the master suite. No longer the candidate—or the exonerated con—he was now the predator.
Connie’s eyes opened and blinked. The battery-powered backup on the digital clock read 1:36 a.m. Everything else was blurry, unfocused, and darker than she remembered. She rolled over. It took her another fuzzy moment to realize the bathroom light was out.
But she’d left it on…
Then again, she’d been drunk and stoned and…
A hand across her mouth. She wanted to scream! But nothing came. It was, after all, only a dream!
“Ain’t no dream, little missus,” said the intruder. “This is really happenin’!”
Dark Horse Page 22