The Feminine Touch

by V. J. Chambers

  “Predict? That means you pick what you think will be popular and make lots of those pieces?”

  “Exactly.”

  “What happens if you predict wrong?”

  “Well, we always do to some extent. Sometimes we make too much, sometimes not enough. If we make too much, then we just put the excess on sale right before Christmas, and we usually move those. Anyway, she pays us for what we work, and if you manage your money right, it can last awhile, so for me, it’s basically my full-time gig. I maybe pick up some shifts at Dino’s Bar and Grill now and again if I need the extra cash, but mostly, I owe everything to Siobhan.”

  THE PAST

  About a week after the art room got repaired, Nash saw Siobhan in the hallway with Pike. They were at his locker, and he had pushed her against the wall. He was kissing her.

  Nash felt gutted. Crushed. Furious.

  She had said she wasn’t with Pike.

  Nash didn’t know why she’d lie about that.

  He thought about confronting her in Advisory, just ripping away whatever textbook she was looking at and saying, “Hey, what was that all about? Why didn’t you tell me you had a boyfriend?” But he didn’t do that, because Pike was in Advisory too, and he’d see, and he’d probably get annoyed about it.

  So, Nash just seethed quietly.

  A couple of days later, he saw her buying tickets for the winter formal. The student council was selling them at a table in the main hallway in the mornings and at lunch. It was morning then. She was smiling as she handed over the money.

  “Stag or drag?” said Natalie Holmes, who was manning the table.

  “Drag,” said Siobhan, and smiled wider.

  Nash had a sudden urge to go up and grab her by the shoulders and scream in her face that she shouldn’t be with Pike, that she should be with him instead, and that she was an idiot if she thought Pike was good for her.

  Pike was nothing like her. He was irresponsible and defiant. Instead of getting his homework done early, he didn’t bother doing it at all. He was always getting in trouble. He sold drugs, for God’s sake. The only place Pike was going to get Siobhan was down at the police station, bailing him out. Furthermore, Pike was just the kind of loser who never made it out of this hick town, and he was going to drag Siobhan down with him. And Siobhan wanted to get out. Nash knew she did.

  Not that Nash had anything to offer her. He was skinny and gawky. He wasn’t ugly or anything—not covered in pimples or morbidly obese—but he was nothing special either. He was bland and unimportant. He wasn’t the kind of guy that girls ever noticed.

  Maybe he’d make it out of this town, but he’d have to work to do it. If Siobhan wanted out, she’d have to work too. He couldn’t be anything to her except a friend and teammate. A partner.

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. Siobhan was with Pike, and Pike would probably literally kill him if Nash tried to step on that, so Siobhan was off-limits.

  That Friday, Pike came into school with a black eye. He made no bones about the fact that Siobhan had done it. He said she was a crazy bitch who’d hauled off and clocked him for no reason.

  Nash heard him talking about it in Advisory that day. Before the bell rang, Pike was in his desk and a few people were clustered around him.

  “So, a girl beat you up?”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? I’m not going to hit her back.”

  At that moment, Siobhan appeared in the doorway to the classroom.

  Everyone looked straight at her.

  She took a shaky breath and then ran out of the room.

  Everyone in the class reacted—either with gasps or laughter or excited conversation. Nash got up and went after her.

  It was probably stupid, because she was probably going to the girls’ bathroom or something, and he couldn’t go in there. But he went after her anyway.

  He found her at the end of the hallway. Light was coming in through the window, illuminating her hair like a halo. She had her back to Nash because she was bent over the trashcan. She was ripping something up.

  “Hey,” said Nash.

  She whirled, and now Nash could see what was in her hand. It was the tickets for the winter formal. She’d already ripped one up, but the other was still whole.

  “What the fuck, Classic Rock?” Her voice was choked, like she was fighting tears. “You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Pike’s a dick,” said Nash.

  She sniffed. “Yeah. He is.”

  Nash reached out and gingerly patted her shoulder.

  She sniffled again, her lower lip trembling.

  “You want to talk about it?” said Nash.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged and took another trembling breath.

  “If you hit him, I bet he deserved it.”

  She nodded. “He, um, he… I told him to stop. I told him no. He didn’t listen, so…” And now all her tears seemed to be overtaken with a fiery rage. She clenched her hands into fists, crushing the other ticket.

  “Geez,” said Nash. “I’m sorry.” He was feeling rage too. He should go punch Pike too. It wouldn’t actually hurt the guy, and Pike would just mop the floor with him afterward, but it would be worth it.

  Sioban turned back to the trash can. She threw her ticket in.

  “Hey, wait,” said Nash, going over and digging it out of the trash. “You shouldn’t let that asshole ruin this for you. Those tickets aren’t cheap. You should go to the dance.”

  “No way,” she said.

  He tilted his head. “I’ll go. If you go, I’ll go.”

  She gave him a small smile, and her eyes got bright. “Yeah?”

  He nodded fiercely. “Yeah.”

  “But I ripped up the other ticket.”

  “Maybe I already have a ticket.” He didn’t. That was a lie.

  “Really?”

  He spread his hands. “You never know.”

  “Okay.” She smiled wider, lifting her chin. “We’ll go to the dance.”

  “Like, um, together?” he said.

  “That’s what we’ve been talking about right?” she said. “You drive, okay? Pick me up at seven.”

  “The dance starts at seven.”

  She laughed, snatched the ticket back out of his hand, and headed for the girls’ restroom, leaving him alone in the hallway.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Well, I have to admit when Nina told me she was going to go up there and work for that Siobhan woman, I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the prospect.” Marilyn Campbell had invited Nash and Zoe into her house, a modest one-story rancher with cheery curtains on the windows. She’d given them both tall glasses of iced tea to drink during the interview. She had one as well. She took a sip from it. “I mean, I don’t really have anything against those gays. Pastor says to hate the sin, not the sinner, and there are days when I’m not even sure if it really is a sin. Still, it was strange to me, and I wanted to protect my little girl.”

  “To be clear,” said Nash, “your daughter is an adult.”

  “Oh, she’s all grown up, yeah. She’s got two babies of her own, in fact, my sweet grandbabies. But that don’t mean that she’s not my baby girl. She always will be.”

  “Of course,” said Nash.

  “Do either of you have children?”

  “Nash does,” said Zoe.

  “Then you understand how it is,” said Marilyn.

  “Sure,” said Nash. He understood wanting to protect a child, anyway. He wasn’t sure if he would be worried about an association with a lesbian.

  “Anyway, I shouldn’t have worried, because it has been just great for us. Nina makes all this pretty jewelry, and she gets paid nicely, and it really helps out. She was married to this, pardon my language, rat bastard who just run off on her with some other woman. He left her with two little kids and no way to support them. I did my best to help, basically by watching those kids for her while she went off to work. But she had to commute nearly an hour to get a decent job, and all her paychecks were
going to gas, and then this thing with Siobhan came up. It was just… a godsend.”

  “I hear that Siobhan likes to help people,” said Nash.

  “Yes, absolutely. She’s a really giving person.”

  “Just because she provides jobs?” said Nash.

  “Well, no, not just that,” said Marilyn. “I think she maybe singlehandedly has saved Dino’s Bar and Grill more than once. Sometimes, I’d hear some rumblings that the owner Roy Dino was having some real trouble making ends meet, and all of the sudden, Siobhan would be having some friends into town from elsewhere, some of her Etsy friends or something. And she’d need catering. She’d call up and order all this expensive food and pay three times what it was worth, and the place would stay open. You know, that place employs a lot of people, and it’s a fixture for the town. I think if it closed down, the town would just fold up and die. I think Siobhan knows that, and she does what she can to keep the place running.”

  “Keeps the restaurant going?”

  “Well, the whole town, really.” Marilyn took a drink of her tea. “You know, from some things that Nina’s told me, I get the impression that Siobhan doesn’t have anywhere to go home to. No family or anything like that. And I think she thinks of this whole town as her extended family.”

  “Wow,” said Nash. “That’s quite an undertaking.”

  “Yes, it is. But she is our guardian angel.”

  “What would you think if someone accused Siobhan of a crime?”

  Marilyn laughed. “What kind of crime?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Nash. “Murder.”

  Marilyn guffawed. “If someone told me that, I’d tell them they were clean out of their minds.”

  * * *

  “I did what you said,” Ariel was saying.

  “Oh yeah?” Nash was sitting on his bed, clutching the phone. “What did I say?”

  “You said I should give oatmeal another chance,” said Ariel.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Nash. “So I did. How did that go?”

  “You were right. I like oatmeal now. It’s delicious.”

  “Fantastic,” said Nash, grinning.

  There was a knock at his door. He got up and went over to open the door. Zoe was there, holding a piece of paper in one hand. He covered the receiver with one hand. “Not right now, Zoe. I’m on the phone with my daughter.”

  “Who’s Zoe?” said Ariel.

  “Just someone Daddy works with,” said Nash to Ariel. “I want to hear all about oatmeal.”

  Zoe came into Nash’s room and sat on the bed.

  Nash furrowed his brow and shook his head at her.

  Zoe waved the piece of paper meaningfully.

  “Well, there’s not really much else to tell, Daddy,” said Ariel, giggling.

  “What did you have with your oatmeal?”

  “Juice.”

  “And was it just plain oatmeal, or did you put in cinnamon or—”

  “Brown sugar and raisins.”

  “That sounds amazing.”

  “It is.”

  “Sometime, we’ll have oatmeal like that together, you and me.”

  “Really? For real?”

  “I promise,” he said.

  “Mama says I have to get off the phone now because it’s bed time.”

  Nash sighed. “Okay, sweetie. It was good talking to you. I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Tabitha’s voice came on the phone. “Hey, Nash, you’re going to have to keep this up. You have to call day after tomorrow.”

  “Not a problem,” said Nash. “It’s a date.”

  “You better not disappoint her.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I swear.”

  And Tabitha hung up the phone.

  Nash hung up too and sighed. He seemed to always sigh after a conversation with Tabitha.

  Zoe hopped up off the bed. “You have to see this.”

  Nash put his phone in his pocket. “My daughter’s mother is, like, making me feel insane. She acts like I’m irresponsible or something, but she never even gave me a chance to be part of Ariel’s life until now.”

  “Nash, listen,” said Zoe. “I was downstairs in the studio because I was looking for a pen, because I didn’t have one. I went into Siobhan’s office, and there were no pens anywhere. A big old computer that she apparently uses for her Etsy stuff, but no pens.”

  “I mean, why can’t Tabitha just trust me? I haven’t screwed up anything thus far. You know, I’ve never even been alone with my own daughter?”

  “That’s horrible. Listen. I start opening up drawers to look for a pen, and I find this instead. It was like shoved in the back of the drawer, just sticking to the back at an angle.”

  “I think I maybe need to see a lawyer or something. I don’t want to turn it into a legal battle, but if Tabitha is never going to let me see Ariel—”

  “Would you look at this?” Zoe shoved it in his face.

  He took it from her, perturbed. “What is this?”

  “It’s a wedding invitation. For Simone Smith and Nathan Parker. In Hollywood, California.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Nash sat down on the bed, scrutinizing the invitation. “I don’t get it. What’s this all about?”

  Zoe was pacing. “I don’t know. She marries people.” She pointed at Nash. “You’re the one who said that women serial killers were more likely to kill their husbands, weren’t you?”

  Nash furrowed his brow. “Is this guy dead?”

  “I have no idea.” Zoe picked up his laptop and sat down on the bed next to him. “What’s his name again?”

  “Nathan Parker,” said Nash.

  Zoe typed. She waited. She gasped.

  “What?”

  “He’s dead all right.” Zoe looked up at Nash. “Get this. He drowned.”

  “So?”

  “So, didn’t Bart drown?”

  “I don’t know. I assume we’d need autopsy results to know that,” said Nash. He took the computer from Zoe. He googled Nathan Parker and Simone Smith. A wedding announcement was the first search result. He clicked on it. A picture filled the screen. Siobhan in a long, flowing white gown next to a good-looking man with dark hair in a tailored white suit. He shut the computer. “I don’t get it. What does this mean?”

  “They have a name for women like this, right?” said Zoe. “Black widows.”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t fit.”

  “She’s married more than one man under an assumed name, and they’ve both turned up dead,” said Zoe.

  “Yeah, but black widows kill for money. She’s loaded. If she got any money from Bart, she donated it.”

  “Maybe she donated money from Nathan Parker too,” said Zoe, picking the computer back up. She lifted the screen and then typed.

  “Anything?” said Nash.

  “Nothing. Simone Smith didn’t donate any money that I can find. Or if she did, it wasn’t reported on.”

  Nash shook his head. “None of this makes any sense. None of it. I don’t understand why she’s here in this town, being the benefactor to everyone. That’s not the Siobhan I knew. She wanted to get out into the world and do something with herself. At least that’s what she always told me. But maybe she was just trying to manipulate me.”

  “Look,” said Zoe, “you had this theory that maybe she was convincing men to kill for her, that she’d been doing that since high school. So, maybe it’s the same with Parker.”

  “Why kill him, then?” said Nash.

  “Same reason she killed Bart?”

  “I theorized that he was going to blow the whistle on her,” said Nash. “You think that happened again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe she didn’t kill Parker. Maybe his death was accidental. Maybe there’s nothing hinky going on there.” He rubbed his chin. “I’d tell you to do a search for missing women in the L.A. area, but I think we’d be spi
tting into the wind. If she was making Parker kill for her, we may never know.”

  “What’s our next move?” said Zoe.

  Nash thought about it.

  * * *

  “Wait, what are you saying?” Charity looked back and forth between the two of them. “You think she killed someone?”

  “We don’t know,” said Nash. He shot an annoyed glance at Zoe, who had hinted at the idea that Siobhan might be a female serial killer. “But it seems like dead people are accumulating around her. And always when she’s off under a secret name, like she’s trying to hide it. She married this man. That doesn’t bother you?” He handed her the invitation.

  Charity looked troubled. “It does bother me. But I can’t do anything about it. She’s not going to change, and I’m in love with her, so the choice is to either break my heart and leave or break my heart and stay. At least if I stay, I still get to be near her sometimes. It’s better.”

  “Do you think she’s capable of violence?”

  “Well…” Charity twisted her hands together. “If I tell you something, can it be off the record? You don’t record it, you don’t take notes, you don’t report on it? Ever?”

  Nash hesitated. He didn’t like it when things were off the record. But it was better to know. If he knew what it was, then he could figure out how to convince her to go on the record about it. “Sure. I promise, it will go no further.”

  Charity took a deep breath. “You know how I told you that I was having troubles with my daughter’s sperm donor before I met Siobhan?”

  “Sure,” said Nash.

  “Well, I don’t have problems with him anymore, and I think Siobhan may have taken care of him somehow.”

  “What do you mean?” said Zoe.

  “He was a piece of shit,” said Charity. “He was my roommate. We found each other through mutual friends, and he had this place with an extra bedroom, and I needed a place, so I moved in there. I didn’t have any, like, attraction to him, but he was always making these comments… I just ignored him, because guys can be like that. I needed that place. I didn’t want to rock the boat too much.”