I weep.
Detective Shiny Shoe nudges a box of Kleenex at me.
“I understand you have a big trip planned. You understand, if I let you go tonight, you can’t take that trip. You have to stay in town.”
I blow my nose with more power than I intend, the loud honk much like a horn in the tiny interrogation room. He’s really letting me go.
“Yes, I’ve been planning a trip around the world. I go to Paris tomorrow to search the antique markets for a 1960s’ Chanel nude pump with a black toe. It shortens the foot while elongating the leg, you know. And then—”
“And then, you continue your elaborate escape while shoe shopping in Paris.”
“No. I was going to say, I’m going to Florence to shop leather. Did you know you can stay in a centuries-old villa overlooking Florence where Dante himself stayed? From the villa, I can walk to the bus stop and go to a variety of artisan shoemakers and then the Duomo. I have it all mapped out. It’s my dream come true.”
“You’re not going on your dream-come-true trip now. Understand?”
“You can check the booking dates. You’ll see my plans were made long before last night’s events. Why would I risk my trip? Why would I want her blood on my shoe?”
“I did check, which is why I’m not arresting you now. Lock your doors tonight and call me if anything out of the ordinary happens. And I mean anything.” The detective stands, pockets his Chapsticks, and places his card in front of me, suddenly in a rush to leave the tiny room of eau de lemon cigar curry.
“I can leave? Just like that?”
“Uh-huh. Like that.”
“Free,” I say, though I don’t know how I’ll get home without my car. They carted me up here, wide-eyed and annoyed, all my neighbors peering out their windows
“And Faerie? I don’t have a wife. I buy my own shoes, possibly secondhand at times,” he says with a slight shrug and a grin before glancing at his loafers.
He taps them once as if beckoning me. I squeeze my legs together and waddle to the bathroom, my heart pounding. I’m free. Free! But what did he mean about locking my door tonight? The detective sounded like he thought I might end up with a stiletto in my carotid, with all his call me for anything.
When I step out of the precinct washroom, he waits. He leans against the wall in a black leather jacket. Combined with his growing stubble, it gives him a rugged look that makes me suck in my stomach and swear off Lay’s potato chips.
“I’ll take you home, Faerie.”
I follow on the heels of the Italian loafers.
“It’s the house that looks like a giant shoe, right?” he says, giving me a side eye.
“Shut up,” I say under my breath, unsure if he heard and unsure if I care.
On the silent drive home, I count fourteen Chapsticks in his car. He parks and I go to open my car door, but he holds up a finger for me to wait.
“I mean it, Faerie. If anyone comes to the door tonight, don’t answer it. Call me—immediately—don’t even think.”
Don’t even think. I nod and grimace, choking down a hysteric laugh. I wander into my empty house, the faint smell of bacon lingering in the kitchen. I try to remember something, but the something’s out of reach and all I can think of is my shoes. I lock the door behind me and peek out the window to watch the detective walk away.
I go straight to my shoe room and gather my favorite pairs, my arms full. I drop them on the bed as they’re sleeping with me tonight for safety. I arrange them on the bed, placing them at careful angles so I can see them all, and try to decide on Pair One’s replacement for the trip. So torn between a navy patent with a gold heel and a black studded stiletto, I’m about to choose my Chuck Taylors when out of the corner of my eye, I see that my closet door sits ajar. I rush over and shut it, annoyed by a memory. Then an icy thought crawls up my spine and it’s the something out of reach: I don’t remember cooking bacon this morning.
A blinding light floods my bedroom window, making my heart race. I lunge forward and crawl across my bed to crack open the blinds and peer out. Despite Jack’s arguing it was unnecessary, I had installed the brightest motion detecting lights I could find a few years ago. Now, anyone who steps into my backyard after twilight gets a nasty—click. A figure stands there.
“It’s Detective Bergeroo, Ms. Culpepper. I’m checking out your grounds. Can you turn your lights off?”
So, that’s what his name is. “The lights will go out on by themselves in fifteen minutes.” I turn back on my pillow, ignoring the bleaching white light, and waiting for his reply to that. You didn’t say please, Detective Bergeroo.
Something rustles. I sit up. The rustle’s followed by a metallic zinging sound. Outside? No. Inside. Unless he’s capable of teleportation, it can’t be the detective, and now my heart thunders in my ears as I squeeze the covers between my fists. A muffled male roar follows the zing. I now realize it comes from a cubicle off its track in the shoe room.
I grab the baseball bat that I’ve kept by my bed ever since Jack moved out. On tiptoe, I ease toward the shoe room, realizing I hear breathing that’s not my own.
Someone’s in my house. They left my closet door open and they ate my bacon. I need to get to the door and call Detective Bergeroo-Shiny Shoe. He has to still be nearby, doesn’t he? I make it out of the room and down the hall.
Ooomphf. The impact of a hand over my mouth slams my head to the wall. I drop the bat from the force, the aluminum pinging as it rolls away on the wooden floor of the hallway.
“You crazy bitch.”
Jack, with bacon breath and the stolen cherry leather stiletto in his hand, is red-faced and fuming. He shakes the shoe heel at me and squeezes me to the wall as I struggle for air.
“We were just playing a joke on you. Why’d you have to kill her? How sick are you? You killed her with a shoe!”
I manage to gather enough of his flesh between my teeth to bite until he releases me, and I then scream for Detective Bergeroo. I try to run, but Jack drags me down and gets on top of me. He presses the shoe heel against my neck. I get hold of his thumb and bite again.
My front door busts open, the wood splintering, and I hear running footsteps coming toward us in the hall. I picture Detective Bergeroo, his service weapon drawn, but all I see is the looming face of mad Jack, howling in pain. The shoe heel and its sharp edges are only inches from my throat. Jack presses it down and I feel it pierce my skin.
“Drop the shoe, Jack.” Detective Bergeroo grabs him by the shoulders and twists him off of me. “Faerie, are you all right?”
To my horror, I see Jack raise the shoe over the detective’s head and start to swing.
A boom. My ears vibrate in pain, the shock waves pulse through me, and time slows. Jack freezes. He falls on top of me.
Liquid warmth grows between us, and I’m not sure if it’s his blood or mine. I try to breathe under Jack’s weight and I watch the ceiling morph black around the edges until I hear Detective Bergeroo’s voice again, calling me, and then I feel his hands prying Jack’s hands from my neck. He shoves Jack’s body to the side, the metallic smell of blood rising in the air.
He pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket, and presses it to my throat as I stand up, flinch to get away from the dead body, and swipe up the fallen stiletto along the way. What a kill shot, Detective Bergeroo.
“Well, Miss Culpepper. I guess you see now why I let you go tonight. We already had dirt on Jack. Something to do with his girlfriend having another boyfriend, some damning emails, and a rank search engine history.”
I let out a low whistle.
“Oh, thank you, Detective Bergeroo,” I say. I throw my arms around him, and with shoe dangling in tow, I kiss those hot lips so he can’t see my face or read my mind.
It sure didn’t take much to get rid of those two.
No one messes with my shoes.
Back to TOC
The Unbearable Sweetness of Ice Cream
Bonnie Korta
Clar
e Sanders opened her refrigerator and pulled out a pint of Red Raspberry gelato and another of Dark Chocolate Fudge Brownie. She returned to the rocking chair in front of the window and spooned alternating flavors directly from the cartons into her mouth. She ate and watched and rocked. Snow transformed the cityscape of Richmond with its Confederate statues and converted tobacco warehouses into ghostly shapes. The rocking and the ice cream did its usual trick, and induced Clare into a trance that carried her above the urban condo and the dilemma that plagued her.
As always, the sweet cold made her think of her grandmother. Summers, Mamaw churned ice cream every few days. In winter, when it snowed, she made snow cream with fresh snow, raw eggs, cream, sugar, vanilla. The memory made Clare feel loved.
If it snows all night, Clare thought, I’ll make myself a batch, if I can find any snow not speckled black by Richmond pollution.
She hugged herself, happy at the idea. Maybe her Mamaw witched her with that snow cream. Maybe that was why her freezer was so crowded with Breyer’s, Turkey Hill, Häagen-Dazs, and her new fave, Talenti, that she barely had room for a healthy frozen dinner. When Blue Bell was taken off the market due to listeria, Clare had rushed to another county to buy up the last carton of Banana Pudding. She still hoarded it. She mourned the loss of that brand and any retired flavors like a death in her family.
Her ice cream was arranged by flavor, but she shoved the Ben and Jerry’s behind the others so she would not have to look at them. They brought back too many memories of Edmund.
Just thinking his name jolted her out of her ice cream-induced trance. She looked at her bookcase and realized she hadn’t read a book since she met him, hadn’t even wanted to. While he was in her life, for the first time ever, reality was better, more compelling, than fiction. The Elegance of the Hedgehog, All the Light We Do Not See, and The Trail of Crumbs lay on her coffee table, awaiting her attention. She wished she could pick one up and dive in, but it was too soon.
She did not write anymore either, although she still collected journals with beautiful covers. She picked up one from the table beside her chair. Its cover showed a green woman with red hair flying through a swarm of butterflies and feathers. She wanted to be that woman and fly away from this condo. She heard the empty pages call to her: “Write on me, write on me, write on me.” But not yet.
When both cartons of gelato were gone, Clare felt the walls of her condo close in. She’d grown up on a four-hundred-acre farm and often felt trapped in the four-hundred-square-foot space with its trendy Shockoe Bottom address and its exorbitant adjustable-rate mortgage.
Even her life felt confining. By day, Clare worked as a kindergarten teacher. She loved children although the likelihood of having her own family at thirty-five seemed dim. She was sick of being an old maid, a spinster, a thirty-something bachelorette who lived alone and was contemplating getting a cat. That’s what led her to kismetmatch.com. Kismet Match seemed so much more thorough than other services, considering astrology and food preferences as well as multiple domains of compatibility. She began to spend her evenings on her computer, hoping to make a love match.
She suffered through dozens of awkward first dates. The men who sounded so good on paper, perfect matches for her, were duds, peculiar looking, no gift for gab, no sense of humor. She was beginning to doubt Kismet Match’s whole system and question her own self-awareness. Then she had an idea. She created an alter ego, Fleur Doucet Sandoval, poet, trust-fund baby, world traveler, and philanthropist. It worked.
Enter Edmund Carpentier, professor of philosophy and religious history at Randolph College in Lynchburg. They met for coffee in a public place, and found they had everything in common. Just as she’d always dreamed, Edmund wrote poetry for her and did not understand why she could not get hers published. Edward gave her helpful critiques of the poems she pilfered from other poets’ collections. They had long conversations about books and ideas and walked hand-in-hand as they toured Poe’s house and Patrick Henry’s church and picnicked along the James River. He bought her a Queena Stovall print of a baptism in Pedlar River after she told him how she dog-paddled out of that same river after her own baptism. And he shared her love for ice cream.
Even on this night, alone in the condo, after all that had happened, her earlobes tingled with memories of Chunky Monkey and Woodstock Fantasy painting her nipples and Cherry Garcia drizzled over her body. She shivered, remembering how Edmund whispered, “You are so delicious.”
Their affair flourished from June until December on Edmund’s weekly trips to Richmond, random weeknight evenings, early Saturday mornings, never on a Sunday. Although Edmund had not proposed, Clare was so sure about their future, she wondered if he might surprise her with an engagement ring for Christmas. But no, he was going to make a presentation in Boston, then visit his parents in Maine.
“Take me with you,” she pleaded.
“Next year.” When he promised her that they would spend New Year’s Day together, she swallowed her disappointment and allowed herself to get high on the Rum Raisin ice cream he spooned into her mouth.
However, in a way, Clare felt relieved because it gave her more time to consider how and when to reveal her true identity to Edmund. A confession was overdue. The longer she waited, the more enmeshed she became in her assumed identity and all the lies she told to build and support it. She wanted to be sure that he was as committed as she was before she showed her hand. Surely, Edmund would see it for what it was—an innocent little charade, the creation of a more interesting existence, just pretend.
She imagined Edmund putting his hand under her chin. “How could you think you were not enough for me? Fleur, Clare, I don’t care what you call yourself. It’s you I love, you I want.”
She imagined the name Fleur braided into their love story over the years, something they could laugh about with grandchildren, something Edmund could incorporate into a toast for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. New Year’s Day was the perfect time for new beginnings.
She spent Christmas with her widowed mother on Pedlar Farm, near the farm where Clare had grown up. They reminisced about the past and gossiped about the present, but Clare did not tell her mother about Edmund.
They dressed to go to church on Christmas day and Victoria Sanders told her about the new young minister at the church. “He’s way too smart for Pleasant View, but he seems to have a knack for dealing with country people. He’s about your age, I think.”
“Maybe you should introduce us. Can’t you just see me as a country minister’s wife?”
“I do think you would like him, but he’s got a darling little wife, pregnant with their first child.”
“I’m working on finding someone,” Clare said. “Might bring you a big surprise when I come home for Easter.”
As they passed a sign in front of the church, Clare noticed the name of the minister, Edward Campbell, had the same initials as her prospective husband.
She and her mother slipped into the back pew. Clare scanned the crowd for familiar faces, waved at her friend Wanda Foster there with her husband and two children. The choir processed down the aisle, followed by the right Reverend Edward Campbell.
Clare stifled a gasp. Edward Campbell and Edmund Carpentier were one and the same. How could she have been so stupid? Professor of philosophy? How could she have been catfished at her game?
A common Southern Baptist minister was all her Edmund—no, this other woman’s Edward—was. Clare looked up at the painting of Christ as Good Shepherd that always comforted her. But this time, Jesus looked right through her. Clare felt completely alone in a crowd of people she’d known all her life. She wondered if Edmund used ice cream in bed with that other woman.
Bile rose in her throat as she admitted she—Fleur/Clare—was the other woman.
As the minister began the call to worship, Clare mumbled something about the bathroom to her mother. She stumbled from the church, staggered over to the decorated Christmas tree, and vomited. When it was over, sh
e decided not to run from the situation. She rejoined her mother and when the service finally ended, they made their way out to where Edmund greeted the congregation. When it was her turn to shake his hand, she looked straight into his eyes while her mother introduced her to the man she had been sleeping with for months.
If Edmund was nonplussed, he gave not a clue, just said, “How do you do, Clare? A Fleur by any other name would smell as sweet.” The sound of his voice still made her tremble, made her crave ice cream.
He turned to the woman beside him. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Kirsty Campbell.”
Kirsty was a Barbie-doll blonde with a nice round baby bump. “We go down to Richmond all the time, Clare. My folks live in Windsor Farms and Edward has all those committee meetings. You and I should get together sometime. Shockoe Bottom Starbucks?”
“That would be nice. I am sure we have a lot in common.” Clare looked right at Edmund when she said it. “How about Cold Stone Creamery?”
She was relieved when she and her mother left. “Aren’t they nice?” her mother asked.
“They are everything you said they’d be and more.”
Clare spent most of the rest of her visit huddled under blankets in her old room, counting the stars on the ugly beige wallpaper.
Her mother plied her with her childhood favorite, fudge ripple, along with the juicy country gossip Clare usually loved, but nothing seemed to ameliorate the funk she’d fallen into.
“What’s wrong with you?” her mother asked.
“Too much ice cream,” Clare said as she finished the fudge ripple.
She wanted to call Edward/Edmund’s wife to burst that happy girl’s bubble, but decided against it. Kirsty was the one true innocent in this whole affair.
Carolina Crimes Page 6