“Oh my God! You’re her,” she shouted at my back.
I froze in my tracks and glanced back over my shoulder.
“Oh, please don’t go.” She motioned me back to the counter. “Just give me a sec.” She returned her attention to her customer and handed his credit card back to him along with his purchase and a thank you. I had to give her points for not telling him to “have a nice day.” Then she came around the counter and grabbed me in a big hug, or as big as it could be considering her huge belly. Was she that far along? And why was she hugging me?
She backed away, holding my hands and practically jumping up and down for joy. I prayed her water wouldn’t break. Wouldn’t that be something? Me, delivering my cheating ex-husband’s bimbo bride’s baby on the bamboo floor of the business we built.
“Oh, my gosh. I have so wanted to meet you. This is so totally awesome.”
Doesn’t she realize she had an affair with a married man who happened to be my husband at the time? Or is she a complete dimwit? “Uhh, same here,” I said, reclaiming my hands. “I really came in to—”
“Have you had lunch?”
“No.”
Heather grabbed my hand and dragged me to a table in the bistro. “Look.” She pointed to a chalkboard menu. “We still have your favorite sandwich. We call it ‘The Katydid.’ You know, with the cheese and tomatoes and honey and—”
“Yeah, I know what it is,” I snapped, annoyed they were using Pop’s pet name for me.
Heather’s enthusiasm dropped a notch, but she persevered in spite of me. “It’s super popular.” She pulled out a red metal chair for me. “Sit here and I’ll go order.”
“What would you like to drink?” she called from the counter.
Something that would dull my senses, like a double shot of Novocain. “I’ll take an iced tea.”
“No problem. Is green tea okay?”
Not a fan of green tea. “Sure.”
She brought two iced teas to the table and sat down, turning her ginormous belly sideways, so she could reach the table. She appeared ready to pop any minute and I was thinking we should move to a larger table.
“So…when’re you due?” My curiosity winning over my reluctance to ask.
She groaned loudly. “September 5th.”
I tapped my calculator fingers on my lap. May, June, July, August, September. She was only four months along. How could she be so big?
She read my mind. “Triplets. She patted her beach ball tummy. “We are so blessed. Can you believe it?”
“No, I can’t,” I said rather ungraciously.
“Oh God, I am so stupid. I know how much you and Chad wanted kids and how devastated he was when you were unable to conceive,” she said with an oh-you-poor-thing look on her face.
Chad had told her that? It was pretty darn hard to get pregnant when your husband doesn’t want kids, and he vigilantly checks your birth control pills every night and always, I mean always, wears a condom.
Heather mistook my look of shock, followed by a renewed pulse of anger and betrayal, for disappointment. “Oh, look what I’ve gone and done. I’ve made you feel bad. I am so sorry.”
And then she burped. It was an amazingly long, loud, and rumbling burp, like an 8.9 on the Richter scale, followed by a few hiccups, interspersed with after-shock burps. The bistro went quiet as the other patrons waited for the inevitable explosion that was sure to follow a belch of that magnitude. Then she clasped her hands to her sternum and winced. “Oooooo…heartburn.”
The next look she saw float over my face was relief, for me—that I wasn’t in her shoes, but she took it as sympathy for her.
“Ohhhh. You’re so sweet.” She winced again and took a sip of iced tea.
Our lunch arrived and I was surprised to find myself suddenly ravenous as I bit into my Katydid sandwich. Heather had ordered spicy black bean soup. Probably not a wise choice, so I decided to eat fast and vamoose.
“So, Katy, I don’t want to sound rude or unfriendly, but why did you come in? I mean, this has got to be a little weird for you.” She eyed me as she stuffed a piece of jalapeno cornbread into her mouth.
It was definitely more than a little weird, and I was wondering what the heck had possessed me to come into the store. Oh yeah, breaking the ice on my terms. How stupid was that?
I put down my sandwich. “I have two reasons why I’m here. First off, I saw the wedding announcement in the paper the other day and it really hurt. Chad was still married to me when the two of you started fooling around behind my back, you know. But I’m sick and tired of worrying about running into you and Chad, like I’m the bad guy, so I decided to bite the bullet and face the enemy and get it over with.”
Now I’d lost my appetite, and Heather looked like a pregnant nun caught in church. Her face crumpled, her eyes filled with tears, and it looked like she was having a hard time swallowing her mouthful of cornbread. Great, now I’d be accused of killing my was-band’s former mistress, now extremely pregnant wifey. I handed her iced tea to her, and she drained the glass.
“I guess that was a little blunt, Heather. Confronting you was not on my list of things to do today. It never occurred to me that you might be working here. I honestly thought I would be seeing Chad.”
She swiped at her tears. “I am so, so sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone. I didn’t even realize Chad was married when we started dating, I swear. And then I got pregnant, and that’s when he told me he was married. Gosh, I thought I would die. I’m not that kind of person.”
“But you’re only four months along. That doesn’t add up.”
“I miscarried after he left you.” Her shoulders slumped and despair literally oozed out her pores. “It was a really rough time.”
My indignation softened in spite of my righteous anger. I guess I wasn’t the only one who’d suffered. “Heather, are you truly happy?”
“Yes.” She paused a moment. “I admit, at first it was super hard after I found out he was married. I mean, what a jerk.”
Couldn’t argue with that.
“But that miscarriage did something to him. I think it made him grow up.”
Finally.
“I feel so guilty about everything, but I do love Chad more than anything.” She patted her belly. “Except for maybe these little ones.” She beamed a Madonna smile (not that Madonna) and burped again. “But now that I’ve met you, my happiness won’t be complete until I know you’ve found the right person.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” It was time to change the subject. “Let me show you the other reason I came in.” I handed her the petition, and she read it between slurps and burps of soup, while I wrapped my sandwich in a napkin to take home.
“Oh, wow, this is so awful,” she said, when she finished reading it. “I don’t even remember this.”
How could she? She was probably in preschool at the time.
“I’d like to leave a few petitions here at the counter. I need to gather as many signatures as possible before his parole date.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears again. “This is so noble of you. Chad never told me what a nice person you are. In fact, he said—”
I held up my hand to stop her. “Heather. It’s okay.” The last thing I wanted to hear was what he’d said about me. He was her problem now.
“But you’re not at all what I expected. Gosh, I really feel totally bad now.”
I found myself liking this dimwit and that totally annoyed me. I hoped Chad would treat her better than he’d treated me.
I made a graceful exit and went back to the parking garage where Veronica waited. After I climbed in and buckled up, I sat a moment and thought about what had just transpired. It irritated me that I could no longer hate her.
“Dammit.” I smacked the steering wheel. And then I remembered I’d left my sandwich behind. “Double dammit.”
TWENTY-THREE
Friday, May 10
1996
In the deepening gloom of the eucalyptus grove, Li
ndsay pushed aside the layer of damp leaves she’d hidden under and sat up, only a few yards away from where the boys stood. “Please, I won’t tell. I promise. Just don’t hurt my mom.”
Erik’s lip curled into an ugly sneer. “Pinky swear?”
“When this is over,” said Jake. “I never want to see you again, got that?”
“Works for me.”
“Come on, Lindsay.” Jake approached her. “I’m sorry about Erik. He’s drunk and scared. We’re all scared. We never meant to hurt you and no one’s going to hurt you now, I promise.” He held out his hand to help her to her feet. “Let’s get out of here.”
She ignored his hand, trying to stand on her own, but her back seized, forcing her to accept his help. She glanced fearfully at Erik as Jake gently pulled her to her feet. As she staggered towards the edge of the grove, she flinched with each step, emitting involuntary grunts of pain.
Erik lost patience with her slow progress and grabbed her by the arm, nearly yanking it out of the socket. “Let’s move it!”
He hustled Lindsay out of the forest into the open meadow and shoved her ahead of him. She stumbled to her knees, nearly paralyzed by the excruciating cramp in her back. She didn’t think she would be able to stand up again.
Jake bent beside her and whispered in her ear as he helped her up. “Try hard, Lindsay. I don’t know if I can control Erik.”
His gentle words gave her courage and she forced herself forward, gritting her teeth against the agony. When they reached Phil, he was alert and sitting up against a rock. His scalp wound had stopped bleeding and congealing blood covered his face, neck, and shirt front.
“Are you okay?” Jake asked him. “You look terrible.”
“I’ll live.” Phil noted Lindsay’s dirty clothes, clenched jaw, mascara-streaked face, and bloody nose. “What’s going on?”
Lindsay broke into hiccupping sobs, barely able to enunciate her words. “Please. Please don’t let him kill my mother.”
Phil looked incredulously at Jake. “Did you say that to her?”
“Not him.” Lindsay pointed at Erik. “Him.”
Erik acknowledged her accusation like it was high praise. “What can I say, folks? She left me no choice.”
“You’re such a prick,” muttered Phil.
“Yes, I am. But I think me and Lindsay have finally agreed to a deal we can both live with. No college, no car, and no dead mama…if she keeps her mouth shut.” He turned to Lindsay. “Are we good, Lindsay?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, averting her eyes, terrified of him.
Erik leaned toward her, cupping his ear, causing her to shudder. “I’m sorry, but I couldn’t quite catch that. Are we good, Lindsay?”
“God, leave her alone!” Jake clenched his fists, desperately wanting to pummel Erik’s smug face into a bloody pulp.
“Not until I can hear her answer,” said Erik. “Lindsay?”
“Yes!” She hugged her bone-chilled body, gasping for breath.
“I think you both owe me a big apology because I just saved your sorry asses.” Erik said, grinning at them in expectation. “What? No apologies. Oh, well.”
As the sun worked its way towards the horizon, the temperature dropped to the low sixties. Lindsay shivered in her damp summer clothes, crying inconsolably. Her face was grimy and splotchy, twigs and leaves were stuck in her long, tangled hair, and her swollen nose dribbled bloody snot into her chattering mouth. In her heightened state of panic, she didn’t feel the urine trickling down her legs.
Erik looked at the girl with revulsion. “I must have been really shit-faced, ’cause I can’t believe I actually wanted to fuck you.” He shoved her towards the boulders where Phil sat. “Sit down and shut up while Jake and I figure out what to do.”
Erik’s hard slam into her shoulder knocked her off-balance, and she pitched forward against the rock. They all heard the ominous crack of her skull when it connected with the granite. She collapsed on Phil’s lap, convulsing.
“Why did you do that?” screamed Phil, trying to still her spasms by clamping his forearms over her shaking body and holding her head.
A split second passed and her convulsion stopped, leaving her deathly still. Jake dragged her away from Phil and laid her flat on the ground. “You really hurt her!”
“She’s all right.” Erik nudged her ribs with his shoe and she didn’t move. “She knocked herself out, that’s all.”
Jake crouched beside Lindsay and took her wrist. “I don’t feel a pulse.”
Phil leaned over Lindsay and felt the carotid artery on her neck. “I don’t feel anything, either.”
“You know CPR, right?” asked Jake, his voice loud and shrill.
Phil hoped he had the strength to do it. “Yeah. You need to move her away from these rocks first. I need room. Be careful with her neck.”
Jake pulled Lindsay’s limp body further away from the boulder. “Oh God. Oh God. Come on Lindsay. Please be okay.”
Phil had injured his head, neck, and left shoulder in the car crash and movement was torture as he bent over her motionless body and checked for breath from her nose. He tipped her head back, put his mouth over hers and blew in twice, then placed his hands on her chest and compressed it rapidly several times before moving back to her mouth.
Jake hovered over her still body, nervously shifting on his feet and wringing his hands. “Oh God, how did this happen? Please Lindsay, please don’t die.” He looked at Erik. “You could help. This is all your fault, you know.”
Erik held out his hands in a placating gesture, a look of innocence pasted on his face. “It was an accident and you know it, so what am I supposed to do?”
“You have your cell phone?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So call 911.”
Erik pulled his cell from his jeans pocket and flipped it open. He had no intention of calling anyone and would have faked it, but there was no cell coverage anyway. “Crap. No bars.” He strolled to the SUV and leaned against it, waiting for them to realize Lindsay was dead.
Phil continued to compress her chest, although the effort was almost more than he could bear and he feared he might collapse at any moment. “Six, seven, eight, nine…”
Jake saw her twitch and crouched beside her. “I think she’s coming around.”
Erik rushed over and stood behind the boys. “Are you sure? Could just be those weird muscle spasms that can happen after death. I ran over a dog once, and it flopped all over the road. It was gnarly.”
Phil felt her artery again. “I think I feel something.” He bent close to her face. “Yes…she’s breathing.”
“Oh, thank God.” Jake went down on his knees and watched her face. “Should we keep doing CPR?”
“No. She’s breathing on her own,” said Phil, exhausted and overwhelmed with relief.
Erik squatted on the other side of Lindsay, opposite Jake and Phil. “You sure she’s breathing? She looks dead to me.”
Phil kept his eyes on Lindsay. “You are one lucky dude, Erik.”
“How’s that?”
“Because now you’re not a murderer,” said Jake.
“Whoa! Wait a minute. You know it was an accident. But it would’ve been a whole lot better for all of us if she had died, ‘cause now we’ll all go to prison for sure.”
“But not for murder,” said Phil. “It’s better this way, Erik.”
“God, you are such a fucking saint, you know that, Phil?”
Lindsay groaned softly and her eyelids fluttered spastically, revealing the whites of her eyes. Her hand jerked out and brushed Erik’s knee.
“Oh, no you don’t!” he screamed, and violently lunged forward over Lindsay.
Phil and Jake scuttled back to avoid contact and landed on their rear-ends. In the next instant, Erik’s hand smashed down on Lindsay’s forehead, crushing it with a stone.
“Problem solved,” muttered Erik, coldly staring down at Lindsay’s bludgeoned face. He leaned back on his heels and flipped the blo
ody stone between his hands. “Now no one’s going to prison.”
Jake howled an unearthly primal scream and hurtled himself over Lindsay’s body, slamming Erik to the ground. He wrestled the bloodied stone from Erik’s grasp and then unthinking, reared up to beat Erik with it when Phil shoved him off and straddled him to hold him down.
Jake struggled fiercely. “Please, please, let me kill him. Let me fucking kill him. Please.”
“I can’t let you do that. God knows, I wish I could.” Phil clamped down hard on Jake’s squirming body with his legs, his hand pressing Jake’s windpipe to control him, and then the fight went out of the boy and they both collapsed to the ground.
Finally Jake asked, “Why? Why did you kill her? We weren’t going to hurt her, remember? That wasn’t the plan. We were just going to talk to her, you know, convince her…”
Erik stood up, found the stone and flung it far into the ravine beyond the boulders and turned to Jake. “You actually believed that was the plan?”
Jake sat up and whispered in defeat, “Yes.”
“Wow. I thought you knew. I really did. I mean, come on. We abduct her and take her into the woods and then just let her go?” He snorted with a cruel laugh. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“Nothing left to do now but to turn ourselves in.” Phil pushed himself to a sitting position, feeling woozy. His wounds were seeping again and thick blood oozed down his face.
“Are you serious?” said Erik. “After all this, we’re just going to turn ourselves in?”
Jake and Phil gaped at Erik, each silently loathing him, their mutual fear of him making them vulnerable.
For a moment, Erik wondered if Jake and Phil might gang up on him. He knew he needed to maintain the upper hand. “Look. I get it. This is awful. Really bad. But nothing we do can change what’s happened.”
Phil said to Jake, “Every time we listen to him, we just dig ourselves in deeper and deeper.”
Erik hovered over them, his face unreadable, his tone dead calm. “And you’re both going to listen to me one more time.”
Jake slumped over, hugging his knees to avoid eye contact with Erik. “What?”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t talk and look at her, so hold on a sec.” Erik’s tone became amiable, as he casually picked up Lindsay’s feet and dragged her body several yards away. “Guess I don’t have to worry about her neck now.” He dropped her limp legs to the ground and returned to Jake and Phil. “Like I said, our problem’s solved. Dead girls don’t talk, so we’re in the clear.” Erik paused, tilting his head impishly. “You can thank me anytime now.” He crossed his arms over his chest and waited, wearing a self-satisfied grin.
Pamela Frost Dennis - Murder Blog 01 - Dead Girls Don't Blog Page 15