by Willow Rose
Rhonda looked at the cat on her desk next to her computer. He liked to sleep right next to her picture of her daughter and her husband, who lived up in New York now.
What will they think? What will they think of me when they find out what I’ve done?
The cat stretched and a pen fell to the floor. It rolled across the wooden floor and stopped close to Rhonda’s feet. She picked it up. Then she chuckled. The pen was one she had bought when visiting Hemingway’s house in the Keys ten years ago.
Why did you do it, Rhonda? Why did you have to do that stupid thing?
Rhonda shivered and forced herself to think about her daughter. She had found all the old photos and gone through them all morning, while tears streamed from her eyes. Pictures of Kate when she was just a child, then of the grandchildren from just a few years ago. So many good memories, so much love.
We had a good run, didn’t we? We had fun.
Rhonda sniffled again and wiped her nose on a tissue. Then, she looked at a picture of her belated husband. John had been everything to her.
“I’m sorry for this, John,” she whispered. “I never meant for it to go this far. Life was hard after you left. I had nothing. This was my way out. But it ran off with me. I got greedy, I guess. I’m sorry.”
She looked at her husband and thought he looked back at her with contempt.
Will they ever forgive me? They’re all gonna be angry, aren’t they? They’ll resent me for this.
The cat purred in his sleep. Rhonda petted his head gently, wondering what was to become of him.
“Hopefully, Kate and the kids will take you to New York with them once all this is over,” she said. “You’ll like it there. Take good care of the kids for me, will you?”
Rhonda touched the cat’s fur again and stroked it gently. The cat purred and rolled to the side. He was still sleeping.
How wonderful it must be to be a cat. Just sleep through everything. Not a care in the world.
She had filled his bowls with water and food, in case it was a long time before they came. It probably wasn’t necessary, since they were just across the street and would come quickly when they heard the noise. She put the letter by John’s picture on her desk. She leaned over and kissed the cat, before opening the drawer and pulling out the gun.
“I sure hope I’ll see you on the other side, John,” she whispered through tears.
Without giving herself even a second to think about it twice, she put the cold gun against her temple and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-Three
January 2015
Abigail and Austin were in the front office when I arrived at the school. They were sitting in the chairs looking angrily at me when I entered through the glass doors.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said, feeling awful. “I lost track of time.”
“That’s okay, Jack,” Elaine said from behind the counter. She smiled. “Everybody is late from time to time.”
I turned and looked at the two angry faces. They got up, Abigail with a deep annoyed sigh. They walked to the car, giving me the cold shoulder.
“Guys, I said I was sorry,” I said.
“You promised you would be on time. School’s out at two-thirty, not three-thirty, Dad,” Abigail growled reproachfully.
“I said I was sorry,” I repeated, and started the car. I turned to check that they both had their seatbelts on before I backed out of the parking lot.
“Where were you anyway?” Austin asked.
“I had to talk to this guy,” I said.
“Is he a murderer?” Austin asked with excitement.
“Well…No one is guilty until we prove otherwise, but he did have my interest,” I said diplomatically. Truth was, I had a bad feeling about Peter Walker. He was definitely hiding something. I just had no idea what it was. He had been at the scene of the crime shortly before she was killed. He had a motive. A good one. And he had no alibi for where he was at the time of death.
“Wow,” Austin exclaimed. “That’s so cool. Are you going to lock him away?”
I loved that Austin thought my job was so interesting. It was one of the few things that could get him really excited.
“Maybe,” I said, and hit A1A towards my parents’ motel. “But you know that first we have to find enough evidence, and so far, we don’t have much on this guy.”
“But he is your suspect, right?”
“He is one of them, yes.”
“Cool.”
I parked the car in the lot in front of my parents’ motel, grabbed the kids’ backpacks, and walked inside. I had texted Emily and told her to come here after school. She went to Cocoa Beach High and had band-practice after school today.
Abigail hadn’t uttered a word since the school. I put my arm around her and pulled her closer.
“So, how was your day?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Good. Until you forgot about us.”
Abigail was always the one I had to work on longer to get her to forgive me. Austin forgot right away when I messed up, but not Abigail.
“I didn’t forget you. I was just a little late. And I did say I was sorry. Can you forgive me?”
She stopped and looked into my eyes. She was so strong, I couldn’t believe it. At her age. So determined, so willed at heart. She was the type who could amount to something if she set her heart on it. She was going to rule the world one day. Maybe be president. For now, she ruled my heart, and that was more than enough.
“Okay, Dad.” She petted me on my arm. “I know you do your best. Just don’t do it again. Have Grandma pick us up instead, okay?”
“That’s a promise. Now, let’s go see if Grandma has something we can eat. I’m starving,” I said, and grabbed her hand in mine. Austin had already disappeared into the back.
“Me too,” Abigail said. “But, just between you and me, I really don’t like the snacks Grandma has.”
“Me either,” I whispered, thinking of the dry crackers I had the last time I was there in the afternoon. I was hoping she would make me a burger or a fish sandwich. Maybe a crab cake. She was very good at those.
“But, don’t tell her,” Abigail said. “She’ll get sad.”
“Oh, and we don’t want that, do we?”
“Nope.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
January 2015
“Is that you, Son?”
The old man was sitting in the darkness of the living room when the Snakecharmer entered through the front door. He had parked his wheelchair in the corner and the Snakecharmer wondered how long he had been sitting there.
The blind old bat.
“Grandpa!”
The old man smiled as his grandson threw himself in his arms. “It is you,” he said with an exhale.
“Yeah, Dad. It’s us,” the Snakecharmer said. “Who else would it be? Are you expecting company?”
“No,” the old man said, chuckling. “Who would want to visit and old blind fool like me?”
“We bought cake,” the Snakecharmer said, and placed a grocery bag on the table. He turned on the light in the room. “And beer.”
The Snakecharmer opened one for himself, then threw his body on the couch while the boy went into his room. The house was one of those from the fifties, with three bedrooms and two old baths, across the street from the beach, and looked like a bungalow. It was small, but it fit the three of them perfectly.
“Everything all right, Son?” his dad asked.
The Snakecharmer placed a beer in his hand. His dad chuckled again. “Ah, the little things. It’s funny how you learn to appreciate them when you don’t have much. Like a cold beer on a warm day.” He lifted the beer and sipped it. He made a satisfied sound. The area where his eyes used to be was completely disfigured. They had removed his eyes, since there was nothing left from when the acid hit. The skin on his face looked like it was melted. Most people who looked at him felt bad, or discomfort, but not the Snakecharmer. The Snakecharmer liked to stare at his father’s d
isfigured face, and would do so for a long time every now and then. And he was doing so now while drinking his beer. Staring and drinking, while the anger inside of him arose, the anger towards those bitches still out there that he had to rid the world of.
“Cake, you said?” the old man asked.
The Snakecharmer laughed. His dad loved cake. Cake and beer. A strange combination for many people, but not for his father.
“I’ll get us some plates,” the Snakecharmer said.
“Don’t forget to feed the snakes,” the old man said, and sipped his beer again. “They seem hungry. Been making a lot of noise today.”
The Snakecharmer looked at the glass cage in the corner. He approached it and stared at Mango, his favorite snake. A sixteen-foot Burmese python. One of those that could swallow a child, or that you heard of eating its owner if it wasn’t fed. He loved that snake, even though he never took it on the road with him. The snakes he used for that were two Coral snakes that he kept in the cage next to the python. They ate mostly insects and were easy to control, as long as they were fed. Drago and Django were their names.
“I won’t,” the Snakecharmer said, and stared at the python sleeping on its branch. “I stopped by the pet store on my way here and bought some.”
The Snakecharmer had loved snakes ever since he was a small child. He used to catch them and play with them. He would let them bite his hands and arms and look at the blood as it dripped onto the ground. It was mostly black racers that he played with, but he also caught rattlesnakes and skinned them and put their skins up on the wall of his room.
“How about that cake?” his dad asked.
The Snakecharmer chuckled. His eyes still didn’t leave the python. He couldn’t stop staring at it. Snakes fascinated him. The way they moved so quietly. Then he pulled out two mice in a small container. He caught one by the tail, lifted it above the tank, lifted the lid, and dropped it inside. Then, he waited. Waited with his eyes fixated on the snake who was now waking up and moving towards the mouse. He stared at the mouse, while sensing its fear as it faced the mighty snake. When the snake made his move so fast the mouse hardly realized what happened, and swallowed the mouse in one bite, he laughed.
It was that easy being the predator.
Chapter Twenty-Five
January 2015
My mom made a ton of crab cakes for me, and I ate till my stomach hurt. I washed it all down with a sweetened iced tea, homemade naturally. We sat on the deck at the beach and watched the waves while eating. Abigail grabbed a couple of dry crackers and ate them, while smiling.
She was getting to be quite the actress.
After eating, the kids wanted to run down to the beach and fly a kite. I found an old one in the closet inside my parents’ living quarters at the very end of the building. While walking along the doors to the many rooms, I thought about how much I loved this place. At first, when my parents had told me their dream of investing in a small motel on the beach, I thought it was the stupidest idea ever. I couldn’t believe they would rather spend their pension on this, instead of enjoying the money and relaxing like they were supposed to when growing old.
But not my parents. No, they always had to have something to do. It had always been like that. My mother loved to cook and take care of others, while my dad loved to have guests and be with people. He talked to everyone who arrived at the motel, and some of them ended up becoming their friends. People returned because of him. He created such a warm atmosphere, people were willing to accept old buildings and bad plumbing. The rooms were nicely decorated, my mom had made sure of that. She had a great flair for decorating and made sure all the rooms looked nice and were clean. She didn’t clean them herself, but had Jennifer, a small nice Asian woman to take care of it.
Jennifer was like family to all of us, and often joined us for dinner. Her daughter lived in Daytona Beach with her husband, and other than that, Jennifer didn’t have anyone around here. We didn’t mind being her family.
“You found one!” Austin exclaimed, excited when he saw the kite in my hand as I approached the beach. I took off my shoes and dug my toes into the sand. It felt good. I was a beach boy and never liked to cramp my feet into socks and shoes much. But I had to at work. Even though I preferred to be barefoot or wear flip-flops.
“Yes. Let’s put it up,” I said, and looked at the trees to determine the wind’s direction. I was quite the weather-geek, and at my place at the condo I rented, I had put up a weather station in one of the trees, hoping no one would complain about it. I followed the winds and temperatures closely. The wind was still blowing out of the north. It was supposed to shift later in the day, I had seen in my weather app. I was looking forward to that. If the wind was off-shore all night, it would make perfect conditions for surfing in the morning. And the swell was supposed to build in the coming days, so it could turn out to be epic.
“What do I do, Dad?” Austin asked, as I handed him the kite.
“Let me show you.”
I had barely finished my sentence before the phone rang in my pocket. At first, I thought about letting it ring. This was my time with the kids, but then I remembered it might be about the case. When working a big case like this, I couldn’t just fall off the surface of the earth.
“One second,” I said, and grabbed the phone in my pocket.
“Ryder.”
It was Weasel’s raspy voice.
“We have another one.”
I swallowed hard. “Say what again?”
“Another dead body on West Bay Drive. You won’t believe it. It’s right across the street from the Bennetts’ house.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
October 1984
It was a small wedding. Just for the family. Annie’s mother wanted it to be that way, since it was obvious to everyone why they were getting married.
Annie never told her family that Victor wasn’t the father of the child she was carrying. There was no need to. It would only upset them. Besides, Victor wanted to be the father; he wanted everyone to think he was the father, so they both pretended and kept smiling.
“Victor is such a nice guy,” Annie’s mother told her after the ceremony, when they were eating appetizers from their plates in the backyard of Victor’s childhood home, where his parents insisted the ceremony be held.
They didn’t seem as fond of Annie as Victor was. Especially not the circumstances under which the marriage had been arranged.
“And he has money,” Annie’s Aunt Anita whispered and swallowed one of the salmon appetizers. “Nice score. So what if he isn’t among the handsomest of men? At least he’s loaded.”
Annie couldn’t stand hearing her mom and aunt go on about Victor and how perfect he was. As a matter of fact, she had a hard time going through with this wedding at all. The baby was growing rapidly inside of her, and it was very visible now. Victor’s mother couldn’t stop staring at it in contempt. Annie felt that her white dress was too tight. She felt like she was about to suffocate. And, worst of all, she couldn’t stand what was ahead of her. She couldn’t stand the thought of having to spend the rest of her life with that geek, Victor, and having a child when she wasn’t sure who the father was.
At least you don’t have to go through it alone. At least he cares for you. At least he’ll make sure you never need anything.
“Are you all right, darling?” Victor whispered, as he rescued her from her mother and aunt. He took her hand and pulled her away from them. They took a stroll in the garden. It felt good to get away from the people and the pretending. Behind the estate was a small park. They found a bench and sat down. Annie didn’t care if her white dress got dirty, but could hear her mother’s voice tell her to never sit on a dirty bench wearing white. Would that voice ever leave her head? Would she ever be free from her parents?
Part of her couldn’t stand the future she had in front of her. Looking at Victor, it felt like she had just married her parents. It was nothing like she had planned. Her life wasn’t going t
o turn out anything like she had planned on those lonely nights in her bedroom as a child.
“You look pale.” He kissed her on the cheek.
The kiss made her shiver in disgust. She lifted her eyes and gazed at him. Then, she forced a smile. Just like she had when he had told her he would marry her and make an honest woman of her. Just like she had done when the priest had told him he could kiss the bride and Victor had lifted the veil. She faked it.
“I’m fine, darling. I’m just really tired. That’s all.”
Victor smiled calmly. “That’s the pregnancy.” He put a hand on her belly and felt it. His touch made Annie shiver again. She tried to hide it and lowered her eyes.
“You’re probably right. I feel so tired all the time lately. My doctor says it’s normal. And with all the throwing up, it’s only natural to be tired.”
“You have a life growing inside of you. It’s a big thing, darling. You need your rest. Our baby needs his rest.”
Annie gasped lightly and looked into Victor’s smiling eyes. It was the first time he had mentioned the baby between them as being his. Annie looked into his eyes, wondering if he really meant it or if he was just acting. Was he really capable of forgetting how this baby had come to the world? Would he really be able to consider it to be his? Never once had he asked about the circumstances. All he knew was, Tim had gotten Annie pregnant and wouldn’t take responsibility. It was like he didn’t even want to know more.
“There you are,” Annie’s mother chirped and grabbed Annie’s hand. “The photographer is here. You two love birds better get back to the party.”