Dead Stripper Storage

by Bryan Smith

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Open the door and I’ll tell you.”

  “Yeah, okay. Just give me a minute.”

  He let the blind slat slide back into place and backed away from the door before she could say anything else. Panic and indecision again threatened to paralyze him. Here was another seemingly impossible situation. Mary was clearly determined to see him. Persuading her to go away seemed unlikely. He could claim he’d come down with something contagious and didn’t want to risk giving it to her by opening the door, but he doubted she’d buy the excuse. The only thing he could think to do was open the door and talk to her without allowing her inside. He would have to take the preemptive step of barging his way out onto the porch and closing the screen door behind him. Otherwise, he knew, she would push her way past him and enter the house uninvited. She was too assertive that way. Giving her even an inch would be dangerous.

  Pete flinched when she banged on the door again. He belatedly realized more than a full minute had passed.

  She called out to him again, voice raised higher this time. “Is something wrong in there, Pete? I’m very worried about you. If you don’t open up soon, I may have to call the police.”

  Pete winced.

  Oh, shit.

  He couldn’t fathom what could have Mary worried enough to summon the police here. Okay, yes, he was embroiled in an undeniably serious situation. Someone had been murdered. The killer had come into his house. These were things that would prompt concern in anyone who cared about him, if they knew about them. Mary, however, couldn’t possibly know there was a murdered woman in his house. This fact alone made the level of concern she was displaying difficult to understand. Short of murder—or the threat of murder—what could have her so upset? And why was she concerned at all? Until just now, he had been convinced she didn’t give a damn about his well-being one way or the other.

  He ran a hand through his hair and made a sound that was part laugh and part whimper.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  She banged on the door yet again.

  “Seriously, Pete, open the fuck up! I’m getting out my phone. I’m calling 911 right now.”

  “Stop!”

  The ferocity in his own voice surprised Pete. There was an unmistakable desperation in the sound, a factor that might prompt her to dial 911 even more quickly. He started shaking. It was only moments ago that he’d felt such relief at deciding to leave the cops out of this thing. Now Mary was on the verge of making it an issue again. He was starting to feel as if everybody and everything in the universe was conspiring against him.

  He had to find a way to calm her down and buy some time. Pete sucked in a big breath and blew it out. He moved closer to the door and resumed speaking in a calmer but still forceful tone. “Mary, do not call 911. I promise you I’m okay. I’ll open the door in just another minute or two, I swear.”

  A silent moment elapsed.

  Then Mary said, “Okay, Pete. But another minute or two is all you get.”

  He again backed away from the door and looked at the beautiful dead woman on the couch. Inspiration struck. It was a crazy notion, but he recognized right away it was something he had to do. Not opening the door within the next couple minutes wasn’t an option. He was positive Mary would follow through on her threat to call 911 if he didn’t. Unfortunately, opening the door came with other risks. His intent to barge his way out there and close the door behind him was all well and good, but there was a chance Mary might move faster than he could and push her way into the house. Even the slimmest chance of that was more than he was willing to risk.

  Something had to be done about the dead woman. Right now. There wasn’t time to drag her out of the living room and stuff the corpse under his bed or in a closet. But there might be just enough time to get creative and possibly arrange things in a way that conveyed a false—and less damning—impression.

  He went to the hallway closet and pulled the door open, grabbing a blanket from the stack of them on the middle shelf. Next he grabbed a pillow from his bedroom and raced back out to the living room, where he set these items on the coffee table and psyched himself up to do the unpleasant thing that needed doing.

  Doing this meant abandoning any lingering concerns about contaminating the corpse with his DNA. This was the point of no return as far as being able to opt for a more rational course of action. It meant an absolute, unbreakable commitment to breaking the law. There was no time to think about it any further. He had to act now or resign himself to dealing with the cops after Mary made that call. On a detached level, he was dimly aware of resentment stirring within him, a bitterness at Mary for meddling in his business at this most inconvenient of times. He shoved the feeling down deep inside, made it something he could either deal with later or forget forever, depending on how things worked out.

  He took hold of the dead woman by her ankles and stretched out her legs. The corpse was surprisingly pliable. Until this morning, his limited knowledge of the postmortem reality of dead human bodies had been gleaned entirely from movies and TV shows. There was none of the stiffness he’d expected to encounter, which allowed him to manipulate the body without much difficulty. This was a lucky break. He wouldn’t have to force the body into the desired position. As he worked to get the body arranged the way he wanted it, however, he couldn’t help reflecting on the more disturbing implications of its current condition. She wasn’t stinking yet and rigor mortis had not yet had time to set in. And she was still warm. All of which meant she must have died a very short while ago, perhaps not long at all before he woke up. The sun might already have risen by then. It made him realize how narrowly he might have missed a confrontation with the killer, a thought that made him shudder.

  After getting the dead woman stretched out on the couch, he turned her so she was facing the back of it. This required reaching beneath the torso and getting a good grip on it before heaving the body over. Handling the corpse in so intimate a way triggered a primal revulsion, making his stomach flutter. It was an instinct possessed by most of the living, he knew, this need to flinch away from the physical reality of death, but he didn’t have the luxury of doing that right now. He removed the woman’s platform heels and set them on the floor next to her purse. Then he slid a pillow under her head and spread the blanket over her unmoving form, taking care to pull it up high and cover her bruised neck. After that, one last subtle adjustment, turning her head so her face would be almost completely out of sight to a casual observer. You wouldn’t be able to tell she wasn’t breathing unless you leaned over her and checked, which Mary had no reason to do.

  Pete stepped back a bit to observe his handiwork. He thought the body’s position on the couch looked naturalistic. She looked like she was curled up in a semi-fetal position, with her knees bent slightly and her arms tucked in against her stomach.

  He sighed. It would have to be good enough.

  The whole process had taken less than five minutes. He knew this from the clock on the cable box. Unfortunately, the time elapsed was still more than double the time allotted him by Mary, who still hadn’t piped up again. This might all have been for nothing. The cops might already be on their way.

  There was nothing he could do about that now.

  He’d done this thing and there was no taking it back.

  After a quick dash into the kitchen to disarm the alarm system, he went to the front door and opened it.

  FIVE

  “It’s about fucking time.”

  These were the first words out of Mary’s mouth as he opened the door and started to step outside. She put a hand against his chest and pushed him back inside, closing the door behind her as she followed him into the house.

  Pete’s hands curled into fists at his sides, an instinctive effort to keep himself from shaking. The last thing he needed was for her to see how deeply rattled he was feeling. He considered trying out a phony smile, but he figured the strain in the expression would be immediately obvious.
His heart pounded. Sweat formed in his armpits. He could only hope more sweat didn’t start pouring down his forehead.

  “Sorry to barge in this way, Pete, but—”

  She stopped talking the instant she realized someone else was in the room with them. A corpse instead of another living person, but she wouldn’t know that. Or so he hoped. If she somehow intuited the nameless woman’s status as one of the deceased, he didn’t know what he’d do at that point.

  Break down crying, probably.

  Her head swiveled slowly toward the couch. She gave the unmoving form beneath the blanket a prolonged moment of silent appraisal. There was a smile on her lips when she again looked at Pete. It was a smile with a bit of a smirk in it. “I’m sorry, Pete, I didn’t realize you had company.”

  He chuckled softly and ran a hand through his hair, one of his most telling nervous habits. He always did that when he was feeling anxious. Mary knew it, too. Hopefully in this case she would interpret it as embarrassment at having been caught with a comely female guest by his ex.

  “I, uh, yeah. Yeah, she’s, uh … asleep.”

  Mary’s expression became more smirk than smile. “I see that.” Her gaze flicked to the floor, an eyebrow arching when she saw the handbag and platform heels. She looked at Pete and smiled. “Nice shoes.”

  Pete nodded. He ran a hand through his hair.

  Dammit.

  “Yeah.”

  He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Such was not the case for Mary. “They look like the kind of shoes a certain type of professional woman would wear.” There was a playful glint in her eyes. “A dominatrix, perhaps. Or maybe an exotic dancer.”

  Pete frowned. “What?”

  “Your friend wouldn’t happen to be a stripper, would she?”

  Pete shook his head. “Of course not.”

  The denial came instantly to his lips, but only because the possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He didn’t hang out in strip clubs and didn’t know any women who took their clothes off for a living. It just wasn’t a part of his world. But maybe Mary was right.

  Mary gave him a cockeyed look, tilting her head slightly. “Hmm.”

  Anxious to push the conversation in a different direction, Pete coughed and cleared his throat. “Look, can we take this to the kitchen? I don’t want to wake my friend. We had kind of a wild night, maybe drank a bit too much. Maybe a lot too much. I’m trying to let her sleep it off.”

  Mary’s expression was one of blatant disbelief. “My, my, Pete. I didn’t know you had nights like that. They certainly never happened when we were dating.”

  His face reddened. “Um …”

  Mary laughed and indicated the archway behind him with a tilt of her chin. “Relax, Pete. I’m just giving you shit. It’s good to see you loosening up some. By all means, let’s take this to the kitchen.”

  Pete nodded and led the way.

  Once they were seated at the small table in the kitchen, Pete began to feel even more flustered as he belatedly took note of some of the things he’d always found attractive about Mary. The full lips. The artful way she applied her eye makeup, making her green eyes look big and expressive. Her pinned-up long blonde hair, worn in a way that made him think of actresses from a bygone era. It was Saturday, but she looked as if she were still dressed for work, wearing a beige pencil skirt that reached her knees and a pinstriped top. As always, she managed to make the somewhat conservative attire look sexy.

  They had been sitting there close to a full minute when Pete realized she was just smiling at him and not saying anything. “Um, can I get you a drink or something?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Awfully early in the day for a drink.”

  “I didn’t mean booze.” Pete frowned as he remembered the lie he’d told about his fictional wild night with the dead woman. “Besides, another drink is the last thing I need right now. But I could get you a water or something. Maybe put on a pot of coffee.”

  She shook her head. “No need for that. It’s funny, though. You don’t have that morning-after-a-bender look. In fact, you look sort of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. As if you had a solid night of sleep.”

  Pete’s guts started twisting up again at these words. She was barely making any effort to hide her skepticism regarding his supposed wild night. He again endeavored to steer the conversation in another direction. “You said you had something urgent to tell me. A matter of life and death from the sound of it. What could possibly have you so worried that you were on the verge of calling the cops?”

  “I overheard something last night. Part of a conversation I wasn’t meant to hear. I didn’t take it seriously at first, but I got to thinking about it this morning and started to get scared. I decided I needed to warn you.”

  Pete shifted in his chair, frowning again. His only concern up to this point had been humoring Mary long enough to allay whatever fears she had and send her on her way. Now, though, his curiosity was genuinely piqued. “And this conversation you overheard had something to do with me?”

  “That’s right. By the way, I apologize for all the noise I made at your door. I was just desperate to get your attention.” A corner of her mouth twitched, that smirk threatening to make a return. “It’s amazing your friend managed to sleep through all that.”

  Pete opted to ignore that last remark. “Where did this conversation take place?”

  Mary had set her purse on the table. She drew it closer now and took out a pack of cigarettes and a cheap plastic lighter. “You don’t mind if I smoke.”

  The way she said it was more like a statement than a question. Pete wasn’t a smoker and in general didn’t like for others to smoke in his house, but he’d made an exception for Mary when he’d been dating her. Desperation for sex had a way of causing a guy to at least temporarily suspend his usual rules. He’d done everything he could to smooth that potential path to the bedroom. She never did sleep with him, though, and the smell of cigarette smoke had lingered in the house for months afterward. It seemed he was still harboring a trace of bitterness in the matter, because he was tempted to be petty and deny her smoking privileges.

  Instead, he got up from the table and opened a cupboard above the sink and took down a package of red plastic drinking cups. He tore the plastic open, took out one of the cups, and returned the package to the cupboard. At the sink, he turned on the cold water tap and put about a half inch of water in the cup. He set the cup on the table and sat down again.

  Mary made a tsk-tsk sound and shook her head as she tapped a cigarette out of the pack. “All these months later, Pete, and you still don’t have a proper ashtray?”

  He shrugged. “It was never an issue again until today.”

  She grunted, flicking the lighter and applying the flame to the tip of the cigarette. “Nevertheless, a man should be prepared for any situation. That’s what my father always told me. Any proper household should have at least one ashtray on hand for guests.”

  “Well, I don’t. I guess I’m not the man your father was.”

  Mary leaned back slightly in her chair and blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling. “You can say that again.”

  Pete sighed. “I’m beginning to suspect the real reason you’re here is just to mess with me. Are you going to tell me about this conversation you supposedly overheard or not?”

  Mary took another, shorter drag on the cigarette, exhaling more smoke. This time it drifted across the table toward Pete. “Gosh, you were never this short with me when we were dating.” She laughed when she saw his look of consternation. “Hey, I get it. You wanted to fuck me and were on your best behavior. Who knows, maybe you would have gotten somewhere if you’d been more like the guy I’m seeing today. Someone who stands up for himself, I mean.”

  Pete shifted again in his chair, becoming steadily more agitated the longer she avoided the supposed reason behind her visit. “I stand up for myself.”

  She laughed with more vigor than before, tossing her head back as the
sound rolled out of her. The hearty laughter made her breasts move beneath the pinstriped top in a way Pete found distracting despite his overriding desire for her to finally get to the point and make a quicker exit from his house.

  “Like the way you’ve been standing up to Shane Watson all these months, you mean?”

  Pete felt a fresh touch of heat in his cheeks. He tugged at the collar of his T-shirt. The armpits of the shirt were becoming damp again. His discomfort wasn’t just his anxiety over the concealed dead body in his living room. The whole Shane Watson thing filled him with shame. He didn’t like being seen as weak and unmanly in the eyes of an attractive woman, even if that impression was nothing less than the absolute truth.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “Come on, Pete. Everyone knew what was going on. We saw how he treated you, like a big playground bully picking on a scrawny wimp. I’m just sorry none of us ever did anything about it.”

  Pete said nothing to that. He just sat there and stared at her, silently willing her to get on with it.

  Mary puffed more smoke at the ceiling. “I know you’re getting annoyed with me. I can see it in your eyes. But this is actually relevant to why I’m here. That conversation I overheard last night? It was between Shane and the guy who was his best buddy at work. Jake Edgerton. You know him, right?”

  A feeling of apprehension came over Pete at hearing that name. He did know Edgerton, unfortunately. Shane and Jake Edgerton were cut from the same mold. Edgerton was as handsome as Shane and nearly as obnoxious. He smirked and snickered along with Shane whenever Pete had the misfortune of getting anywhere near them. Though he didn’t engage in any direct physical abuse the way his friend did, Pete had always sensed it was only because the man had a slightly more developed sense of self-preservation. He was willing to go right up to the line in terms of acceptable workplace behavior. Unlike his friend, however, he never quite completely crossed that line.

  “I know him, yeah,” Pete said, his tone more subdued than before. “What were they saying about me? And where the hell was this?”