Prime Suspect

by A. W. Gray

  On the way through the den they passed a long, low sofa, a baby grand piano, and a Sony rear-projection bigscreen TV. The sitting room where Lackey had talked to Percy Hardin was on his left, through yawning double doors. Marissa Hardin walked like a majorette on parade, the hem of her skirt popping from side to side in rhythm with her hips, and she threw two quick, hey-are-you-watching-me glances over her shoulder. Women who made sure that everyone was watching their fannies were turnoffs to Lackey; Nancy handled the looks from men as though she didn’t notice them. Lackey followed Marissa around the foot of the stairs, down a narrow hallway and into the kitchen.

  The kitchen might have been as big as the living room at Lackey’s own house, he wasn’t sure. There were what seemed like a hundred feet of counter space, an island stove, a mammoth stained oak table with chairs whose legs were carved into lions’ paws. Also there was a built-in double oven and microwave, and matching refrigerator and standup freezer. Marissa’s hands were soft as a teenager’s; Lackey doubted that she’d ever operated the stove or ovens.

  On the counter stood a ten-speed blender half-full of what looked to be orange juice. Marissa pressed a button; the blender’s motor buzzed and the juice whipped instantly into white-orange foam. “There’s a raw egg in it,” Marissa said, “and I dumped in a little powdered sugar. Want some?” She pressed the switch again; the frothy liquid settled and fizzed. Marissa watched Lackey over her shoulder, her lips parted and her eyes widened slightly. Hey, are you watching me? Don’t I look good? Lackey’s cheeks flushed and he averted his gaze.

  “Yeah, I’ll try a little,” Lackey said. Then, as she looked as though she was going to laugh he said quickly, “Some orange juice ought to hit the spot. About the bathhouse, Mrs. Hardin.” He sat down at the table and folded his hands in a businesslike posture.

  “Marissa, I told you.” She stood on the balls of her feet, rummaged in a cabinet, found two squatty glasses and set them on the counter. As she poured the drinks, Lackey kept his gaze riveted on two huge brass cooking spoons, crisscrossed on the wall above the sink. Marissa carried the now full tumblers over, set one in front of Lackey, then sat in the chair nearest him so that their knees practically touched. “What about it?” she said.

  “About the bathhouse?”

  She sipped, regarding him over the rim of her glass, then licked her lips daintily. “What else?”

  He shifted his legs away from her so that he couldn’t feel her body heat through his jeans. “Well, there are a couple of things,” he said.

  “What things? You saw the plans and said you’d take the job. What else is there? You’re built like a weightlifter.” Marissa’s nose was slender and there was a back-East finishing-school tilt to her pointed chin.

  Jesus Christ, Lackey thought, this is all I need, her husband fucking around on the golf course. He had a sip of the orange juice concoction. It wasn’t bad; reminded him of Orange Julius. “I’ll level with you,” he said. “We need the job, me and my partner, and there’s a problem with money.”

  “Not with Percy,” she said. “That’s one thing he doesn’t have a problem with.”

  “I’m not talking about your money. It’s us. Look, we’ve got quite a few remodeling jobs going that are paying the rent, but to tell you the truth we don’t have the money to do this job for you without an advance. I went over to your husband’s bank this morning and asked for a loan. They wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  She picked up her glass and ran her finger around in the circle of moisture left on the table. She wore clear lacquer polish on her nails. “You didn’t answer me,” she said. “Are you a weightlifter?”

  He nervously scratched his Adam’s apple. “Mrs. Har—”

  “Marissa, dammit.”

  “Okay, whatever. I need this job because I’m getting married in a couple of months.”

  She leaned back and supported her elbow with the palm of her opposite hand, holding her glass off to one side. She smiled. “Why?”

  “Why am I getting married?”

  “I’ve had fourteen years of it and it’s a pile of shit,” she said. “Back when Percy and I were both in college—he was at Princeton and I went to Stephens College in Missouri—back then we’d only see each other during the summers and we used to screw like rabbits. Take it from me, marriage is a pile of shit.”

  “Now look, Mrs.—”

  “Marissa. I’m telling you, if you won’t call me Marissa I’m through with you. Say it.”

  He couldn’t help looking her over. Most guys Lackey knew would jump at this. What the hell, if it wasn’t for Nancy . . . “Say what?” Lackey said.

  “My name. Yours is Lackey, I don’t have any problem with that. Now you say mine.”

  He swallowed. “Marissa.”

  “That’s better. It will do for starters, anyway. Now, are you a weightlifter?”

  “I did some in the army. Hey, I don’t think it’ll take much. I can get the slab poured and the water and electrical in for fifteen thousand dollars, less than that if it wasn’t for the spa you want.”

  She propped her knee against the table and touched her own tanned thigh. “Oh, I couldn’t do without that. My muscles get sore. I do a lot of stair walking and bicycling.”

  Lackey took another drink and forced himself to look away from her leg. He had to have the bathhouse job. “You don’t think the fifteen thousand would be a problem?” he said.

  She moved her jaw slightly to one side and arched an eyebrow. “None at all. If you can convince me.”

  “Convince you?”

  She leaned over to gently touch his forearm. “That you need it. Come on, Lackey, how badly do you need it?”

  Jesus, he thought, talk about anything. He said, “Well, we could live without it, but I wouldn’t have much of a honeymoon.”

  She pursed her lips and gave the air a smacky kiss. “Poor baby.”

  His jaws tensed. “Look, I’m not sure what you’ve got in mind—”

  “You’re not?”

  “—but I can guarantee you you won’t find anybody to do a better job.”

  She brushed her own thigh. “I certainly hope not.”

  “But that’s all there is, Mrs. Hardin. A new bathhouse and a damn good one.” He folded his arms and met her gaze squarely.

  “Mans—” She paused and studied him, caught something in his look, lowered her eyes. “How much of an advance did you say?”

  “Fifteen thousand dollars. And, tell you what, I’ll get you a receipt for every nickel. It’s just to pay for labor and materials, Ronnie and me won’t take a dime for ourselves till the job’s finished.”

  Lackey supposed that he’d sort of put her down, and he felt a slight twinge of guilt about that. But he had to let her know that all he was interested in was the job, and that the job didn’t include any screwing around. She sure was one nice-looking female, and nine guys out of ten would have taken her up on it. He wondered how it would feel to have a pile of money, own this monster of a home and all, and be married to a woman who kept herself in shape and who came on to guys who dropped by to talk about building a bathhouse. Lackey decided he’d take Nancy and a one-bedroom in North Richland Hills any old time. His breath caught just a fraction as he waited for her answer.

  “Wait here a minute,” Marissa Hardin finally said. “I’ll have to get my checkbook.”

  Marissa stood with the door open and watched Lackey Ferguson go, watched the broad shoulders move under the fabric of his T-shirt, his tapered waist and strong buttocks and legs in faded jeans, as he paused for a moment by the fountain to watch the goldfish, then continued on between the spires and disappeared from view in the yard. She leaned her forehead against the frame, felt the roughness of wood on her skin, sniffed the fragrance of stained oak. Christ, Marissa Monroe Hardin. Jesus H. Christ, the guy must think you’re a thousand kinds of an idiot.

  She closed and secured the door, turning the knob to slide the deadbolt raspingly into place, rattling the chain as she m
oved the metal catch into the slot, then slowly retraced her steps toward the kitchen. A stack of mail was on a table beside the grandfather clock; she picked up the letters and thumbed through them. It was the third time that morning she’d gone through the mail, not really seeing a thing that was printed on the envelopes—using the mail as a pacifier to keep from screaming out loud and kicking her feet. She absently laid the mail aside and continued on through the den, a lithe, smoothly tanned woman whose tennis dress hugged her figure, moving silently in L.A. Gear sneakers with hot pink laces, thinking things over and deciding that Edna Rafferty was totally full of shit.

  Edna Rafferty was Marissa’s tennis partner at Colonial Country Club—they were to play a doubles match in an hour and a half—and to hear Edna tell it, she was banging half of the men on Fort Worth’s west side along with the front four on the Dallas Cowboys football team. If hubby’s too busy to take care of you, Edna said, then you’ve got to get it somewhere, honey. Edna’s husband Donald was a film distributor and spent a good part of his time on the coast, which, Edna said, fit right in with Edna’s sex life. Edna said, Edna said, Edna said, Marissa wondered how much of what Edna said was real and how much was fantasy. She pictured Edna alone in her bedroom with a row of vibrators, naming one Tom, another Charley, still another Troy Aikman. The image of Edna and all those electronic lovers caused Marissa to giggle out loud as she went into the kitchen.

  The problem was that Marissa really didn’t want an affair, never had and never would. She knocked herself out keeping her body in shape—two miles of jogging three times a week, workouts with ankle weights while Twisted Sister blared from the stereo, endless hours of tennis even though in truth she despised the game— for one reason and one only: She wanted her god-damned husband to quit screwing around and become her lover.

  In the past three years Marissa had had sex with her husband fourteen times. Exactly fourteen, and anyone who wanted to bet her that it was really approximately fourteen would be wasting their money. She vividly recalled each time—could give the date and time of day, in fact—and each time she’d gotten the feeling that Percy was forcing himself. Jesus Christ, forcing himself, as though making it with his own wife was something he was required to do.

  So. Was Percy screwing around? Definitely, though with whom she didn’t know, and the thought of him in the sack with another female made Marissa sick to her stomach. And if her husband was screwing around, did that give Marissa the right to do the same? Of course it did, but there was this one little problem. It had been so many years since she’d been with another man—a total of two times, in fact, and those had been in high school—that she didn’t have the slightest idea where to begin. And here she’d gotten up the nerve to make some moves on this contractor guy—not that it had taken all that much effort, the guy was quite a hunk and Marissa really wouldn’t have minded following through with it—and the guy had rejected her. Had rejected Marissa Monroe Hardin right there in the kitchen of her million-dollar home. Just who in hell did he think he was messing around with?

  Marissa sat down at her kitchen table, took an angry gulp of her orange-juice-and-egg shake, picked up the phone and pressed the buttons. She listened for a moment, then said, “Edna?” Then listened some more and said, “I did it. This contractor guy came over, and Christ, was he a hunk. Four times we did it, can you believe it?” And felt a twinge of conscience as she hunched over the table to hear Edna Rafferty tell a lie of her own.

  4

  Lackey decided that he wasn’t going to talk about the rich lady sort of coming on to him. There just wasn’t any point in telling anyone, half of them wouldn’t believe it had happened to begin with, and the other half wouldn’t believe that Lackey had turned her down.

  He pictured Ronnie Ferias’s reaction: “You’re telling me that there she was, this good-looking rich broad and she was offering it and you were turning it down? You are one dumb chingarro, you know that?”

  Or Nancy’s: “Come on, you expect me to believe that? I mean, we’re both adults, Lackey. And by the way, you can forget about building any bathhouse over there. Turned her down? What a bunch of caca.” Caca, that’s what she’d say. Nancy never cussed unless it was in Spanish, where Lackey would have to go and ask Ronnie Ferias what she’d said. And then half the time Ronnie would tell him wrong, and then Ronnie and Nancy would get a big laugh over it.

  No way. Lackey Ferguson was going to keep his lip buttoned and go on about his business. But done it he had, walked right into that Astrodome of a house, turned down the lady’s damn-near-straight-out offer, and now he was leaving with her fifteen-thousand-dollar check in his pocket.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  He stopped in his tracks near the curb, twenty feet from the nose of his pickup, put his hands on his hips and lowered his head. The check. He’d been so glad to get her to write the check that he hadn’t even noticed when she’d asked him to spell out his name. She’d made the check out to Lackey Ferguson, personally, and Lackey Ferguson didn’t have a bank account. Dammit, he should have had her make the check payable to F&F Construction, for Ferguson and Ferias.

  Well, he still had time to fix it. She was right behind him, standing there in her doorway, wondering how this dumb construction worker from North Richland Hills had walked out without taking her up on her offer. All he had to do was turn around, retrace his steps to the porch, ask her to . . .

  But he couldn’t take the chance. What if the lady changed her mind? Odds were that she might, once she thought it over.

  Nope, he was going to have to take the check as it was, carry the check over to the Ridglea Bank and cash it at the window. Lackey pictured the look on the snooty banker Merlyn Graham when the contractor turned up with a fifteen-thousand-dollar check from Mrs. Percy Hardin. Eat your heart out, Mr. Graham, bet you’ll think twice before you turn the next guy down for a loan. Lackey didn’t like the idea of carrying all that cash around, but later he could get with Ronnie and deposit the cash in the construction company’s account. He dropped his hands to his sides and went around the pickup’s nose to the driver’s side. His and Nancy’s wash job was perfect; even the edges of the sideview mirror were spotless. There was one mote of dirt beneath the doorhandle; he bent to clean it with his sleeve.

  Lackey got in and started the engine. There was a pop from the stereo speakers, then Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton filled the cab’s interior with perfect off-key harmony: “Islands in the Stream.” He pulled slowly from the curb and picked up speed, his thoughts on the check in his pocket and the reaction from the highbrow banker when Lackey showed up at the pay window. He was so caught up in his thoughts that the white Volvo bearing down on him from the opposite direction didn’t register until it was almost too late. Jesus, he was going to . . .

  The Volvo was speeding and was hogging the road, its tires a good foot over the median. Lackey reacted on pure instinct; he whipped the steering wheel to the right. His full weight slammed into the door with an impact which jarred his neck muscles. Rubber squealed as he fought to keep from jumping the curb. The Volvo flashed by on his left, and for a fleeting instant the Volvo driver’s face was scant feet from Lackey’s nose: bulldog face with a pinched expression, thinning brown hair combed straight back from a sloping forehead, a big bent nose like a parrot’s beak. The face disappeared as the Volvo rushed past with a draft that rocked the pickup slightly on its springs.

  The pickup came to a jarring halt. Lackey’s breath escaped his lips in a relieved whoosh as he shifted his gaze to the sideview mirror. The Volvo hadn’t even broken stride. Its window was down; a long arm extended and a bony hand clenched into a fist, relaxed, then formed the universal fuck-you sign. The guy in the Volvo was shooting Lackey the finger.

  Lackey gripped the wheel, shook his head and gained control of himself. What an asshole the guy had to be. Lackey gave the pickup a little gas and moved on. This west side of town was dangerous. He needed to get on back to North Richland Hills.

  Evere
tt Wilson’s sentiments were that the yokel in the pickup could get out of the way or get run over, and if the dumb prick didn’t like it he could step the fuck out on the curb. Everett Thomas Wilson was one full-growed man that you didn’t want to fuck with, and he’d just as soon the guy in the pickup find it out the hard way. The truck had made one helluva racket, fishtailing and squealing its tires, so Everett decided he’d better make the block before going in the house and killing the woman.

  Which was what made Everett different, to his way of thinking, from the ignorant bastards in the Texas Department of Corrections. Most of those fucking morons would have gone on in and done the woman with the neighbors gaping out their windows, which was one reason they were still in lockdown while Everett was breathing the free.

  There wouldn’t be no more accidents like the last time. And a pure accident it had been, no doubt about it, the dumb-lucky patrol car happening by the house in Houston’s Bel Aire district just as Everett was climbing in the window. Probably the two cops had been driving up and down the street hunting a place to take a nap and had happened on poor unlucky Everett Wilson instead. Well, that shit’s over with, Everett thought.

  Absolutely no way had Everett known the little girl was sleeping in that bedroom. He’d known it was the child’s room, sure he had—Everett Wilson never did no job without staking out the territory. But how could he have known the little girl was in there copping z’s? He’d pled guilty to Attempted Burglary on a pretty cushy plea bargain, but the cop’s notation in his file about the girl in the room had caused the Texas Department of Corrections to house him with the sex offenders. Jesus Christ, who’d have believed it? A bad motherfucker like Everett Thomas Wilson sleeping with a bunch of lousy perverts. Two extra years in the joint it had cost him, because Everett Thomas Wilson hated perverts so much he’d beat the crap out of two or three of the bastards, and had spent most of his time in solitary. Which hadn’t set too well with the parole board, a guy in the hole all the time, even though he’d never have gone to solitary to begin with if it hadn’t been for the stinking perverts.