Murder and Mayhem

by Hamilton, B L

  “Can I get you anything else?” she asked.

  “Nothing for me, thanks. Do you want something Nic?”

  Nicola shook her head. She still couldn’t understand how her fairytale life had turned so bad in such a short space of time. When the waitress left she continued, “I don’t know what happened –” she broke off, glanced at him quickly then frowned at the table. She said in a low voice, “Maybe he was into drugs.” She faltered. “I don’t know. But he’d changed. He was not the same man I fell in love with.

  “Steven’s mother often gave me money. She asked me not to tell Steven where it came from. When he found out he went into an uncontrollable rage. And then he became violent.”

  Danny was shocked. “So what did you do?”

  “I left him.”

  “Oh Nic, I had no idea.”

  “How could you know? We never talked about it.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I got a place of my own but had to leave Backman, Cain, because Steven kept coming around making terrible scenes. He accused me of having affairs with just about every man in the office.

  “So I quit, packed up and moved to Los Angeles. But he tracked me down. Then I heard he owed a lot of money to a lot of people who came looking for him–and he disappeared. I never saw him or heard from him again.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Five, six years,” she said as she sorted through the packets of sugar in the container, distractedly.

  “What about his family? Did they hear from him during that time?”

  Nicola pushed the container to one side. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. By then I had moved to San Francisco. I’d only been there a couple of months when Mom rang to tell me Steven’s father had died from a heart attack. I wanted to go to the funeral but I was afraid Steven would be there–so I stayed away. I felt sorry for his poor mother. She was a lovely woman.”

  “Did he have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No. He did have a twin brother but he died in a boating accident when the boys were teenagers. Fifteen, sixteen, I think. That’s what makes it so sad. When his father died, Steven was all the family his mother had.” Nicola sat staring into her empty cup. When she lifted her eyes they were moist and streaked with red.

  Danny looked around and signaled the waitress. When she arrived with the bill, he did a quick calculation, added a large tip and handed her the money.

  When they stepped into the cool night, the faint glow of moonlight washed out from behind dark clouds and created shadows on the sidewalk. The air hung heavy with dew–and unresolved tears.

  * * *

  She decided to go for a walk, hoping the night air would clear her head and blow the sad memories away. She remembered how he had protested when she told him. He didn’t like the idea of her walking the streets on her own at night, even though it was in the center of town.

  “I’ll call Jinko. Tell him I’m not coming,” he’d said.

  “Don’t be silly, the streets are full of people, and, besides, there’s a cute little top in a store down the road I want to try on.”

  He opened his mouth to offer further resistance but she cut him off.

  “Danny, I’ll be fine. Stop fussing and go!”

  “I don’t like to leave you like this.”

  “I’d rather be out shopping than sitting in a hotel room feeling sorry for myself.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he’d said.

  “If you’re with me, I won’t be able to take my time. Women hate men tagging along when they’re shopping. They get impatient.”

  “I promise I won’t,” Danny said.

  Nicola laughed and pushed him towards the door. “Just go, so I can get on with the serious business of shopping.”

  When he bent down to kiss her, she whispered into his mouth, “If I’m asleep when you get back, promise you’ll wake me.”

  He caressed her cheek with the back of his hand. “Count on it, sweet thing.”

  * * *

  He stood in the shadows watching. As she came through the doors of the hotel, she turned left and headed downtown, not up, as he had expected. She tossed her head as she walked her heels click-clacking on the concrete sidewalk as she hummed in time with the beat in her head. The incandescent moonlight shone on her chestnut hair creating a halo as it fell about her shoulders in waves.

  He walked in the shadows, his sneakers making no sound at all as he hid in dark doorways and created no shadow along the pavement–or reflection in shop-front windows.

  She turned the corner and glanced behind, then hurried on, softly humming as she thought of the night ahead.

  As she walked past an alley where drugs deals were made and sex was sold he came up behind her. His hand closed over her mouth as he dragged her into the shadows.

  The knife sliced cleanly across her throat, severing the carotid arteries and jugular vein, leaving a gaping wound like the painted smile on the face of a clown.

  She dropped to her knees, her face frozen in a look of surprise, then, as if in slow motion, she fell forward–like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her blood pooled on the blackened concrete, seeped into cracks and spread across used condoms and discarded needles and the filth of human detritus. In the distance, the sound of voices drifted up to the alley, but she did not hear them.

  Suddenly the sound of thunder resonated loudly through the night, and jagged streaks of white lightning lit up the black sky. Then the rain fell and washed the still-warm body clean.

  The water swirled around the gutters and flowed down the drains, taking all the incriminating evidence with it–lost forever in the mighty Hudson River.

  NINETEEN

  My sister’s voice cut through my concentration.

  “So that’s it then?”

  I saved any changes I’d made while I was reading through it, shut-down my laptop… and looked up. “That’s what?”

  “That’s it. She’d dead. Danny has finally killed her.”

  I shrugged.

  Rosie glared at me, indignation writ clearly across her face. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

  “As I’ve said before you’ll just have to read the book.”

  A downy-soft pillow connected with my head. “Tell me,” she growled.

  “If I tell everyone what’s happening, how am I going to make any money from the book?” The warning toot of the UPS van caught us unaware as it rounded the corner and stopped at the mailbox out front.

  “Oh, mail’s in.” I jumped off the bed and as I raced out the door another pillow sailed through the air and bounced off the wall.

  When I walked into the room, Rosie was scrolling through my laptop.

  “No point you looking in there,” I said as I dropped the missile pillow onto the end of the bed, picked up the other one and tucked it behind her back.

  “Why not?”

  Being a master at obscuration, I said, “Because I haven’t written it yet.”

  “Does this mean you won’t reveal who the killer is until the end of the story? Or does it mean you haven’t decided how you’re going to end it yet?”

  “Something like that,” I muttered distractedly as I read the return address on the top corner of an envelope.

  Rosie closed the lid and pushed the laptop to one side. “You are so damned infuriating. So, what’s in the post, anything interesting?”

  “Bills, bills and more bills,” I said as I tossed the envelopes on the bed like dealing a hand of cards. I stopped, turned one over and read the sender’s address, shrugged and added it to the pile.

  Something suddenly piqued my interest. “Oh, look, here’s one for Drew.” I waved the envelope in the air. The address across the front was written in a flourishing hand, a rarity these days. In the top left corner, a South Carolina Post Office box number.

  “Oh goody,” Rosie said and held out her hand.

  I lifted the envelope to my nose, and sniffed.

  “Perf
ume?” she asked her eyes bright with excitement.

  I passed the envelope under her nose and then handed it to her.

  Rosie screwed up her face and added it to the growing pile of discards. “Drew can have that one too.”

  I shuffled through magazines glancing at the covers, sorting as I went.

  “Is there any good stuff there for us?” Rosie asked.

  “Nup. Just a couple of business magazines for Drew–and a motorcycle magazine for the over-the-hill Harley Hoon. I sighed. “Well that sure was a waste of the mailman’s time. You’d think he could have at least brought us a couple of fashion magazines or catalogues from Nordstrom or Macys,” I said as I glanced at the cover of another magazine. “Who reads this junk?”

  I looked at the name in bold print on the cover, Cody Albertson. “What do you suppose Cody is up to?” I said as I handed what looked suspiciously like a girlie magazine to my sister. Rosie gave it a cursory glance and tossed it to one side.

  “Who knows what teenage boys are up to these days? It’s probably for a school project.”

  I don’t know how she figured that out but I was willing to give Cody the benefit of the doubt–until I get the chance to quiz him.

  Suddenly I stopped. “Well, well, what do we have here?”

  “What?”

  I waved a catalogue addressed to C. Albertson in the air. “Now what do you suppose Cody would be doing with a ladies underwear magazine?”

  Rosie snatched the glossy magazine from my hand, tore the plastic cover off and started flicking through the pages.

  “He a teenage boy for crying out loud, where else is he going to get his kicks. Certainly not from my underwear drawer!” she said.

  “Mine either,” I had to admit.

  As we flipped through the pages, the sound of our laughter echoed through the rooms and dripped through cracks in the old hardwood floor. And my sister’s house felt like a home once more.

  *****

  Nicola looked up from the book she was reading when Danny walked into the room; his clothes were soaked through, his hair dripping water.

  “Oh my God, Danny, what happened?”

  “I got caught in a sudden downpour. You would not believe it. Out of the blue the rain came bucketing down, and then it stopped just as suddenly as it started.”

  Nicola slipped out of bed and grabbed a pair of jeans off the back of the chair. “Why don’t you jump under the shower while I’ll take your wet clothes to the laundry room and run them through the dryer?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Nic. I’ll just wring them out and throw them over the top of the shower to dry overnight. If they’re still damp in the morning, I’ll lay them across the back seat of the SUV to dry out. I’ve got other clothes I can wear and I can always buy more if I need to.”

  Danny lightly toweled off and dropped the towel on the bathroom floor. When he entered the room, his naked body glistened with light beads of water that clung to his skin. His damp hair fell in ringlets across his forehead and along the nape of his neck.

  He walked over to the bed and as he grabbed hold of the sheet and tossed it aside, Nicola’s hair fell around her face in a shower of brass and gold. She tossed her head back and gave him a seductive smile.

  Danny’s eyes traveled over the contours of her body taking in every curve and crest, from her mound of Venus, up over the slight rise of her tummy, the gentle curve of her hips. His eyes stopped on her milky white breast and watched the nipples harden and become tiny rosebuds, then rose up her throat to her lips and her eyes. As they held each other’s gaze neither spoke, neither moved. The only sound in the room was the sound of their breathing; and the gentle sigh of the wind as it ghosted through flimsy white curtains on the partially open window.

  Nicola ran her tongue over her lips and swallowed hard as Danny climbed onto the bed and hung suspended above her. Water dripped from his hair onto her face and pooled in the hollow at the base of her throat. He leaned down and licked it, like licking an ice cream.

  The erotic sensation of his tongue on her skin sent shivers of pleasure coursing through her body.

  Taking his weight on his elbows, he eased himself down and thrust gently between her slightly parted thighs where he found that soft, warm place that held a woman’s mystery. Stunned by the sensation that coursed through his body, he looked into fiery green eyes filled with love and desire as she laid bare her soul to him.

  “Oh my God, Nic, what is happening to us?” He wanted to possess her like no other woman he had known before. His mouth came down on hers in a passion so intense his body stopped moving.

  As Nicola wound her legs around him, cradling his body in her hips, Danny cupped a hand under her buttocks and raised her up. He could feel the beat of her heart against his chest as they moved slowly at first, their bodies in tune with each other, but as their passion increased so did the rhythm.. Harder, faster, pressing against each other, their breathing coming in short sharp gasps, their bodies wet with exertion.

  Suddenly Danny arched his back and groaned. His body shuddered, his breathing, heavy and ragged. Nicola cried out as the intense climax coursed through her body and took her to a place where the rest of the world slipped away, and nothing else mattered.

  * * *

  Danny gathered her into the curve of his body. Nicola lay with her head on his chest and listened to the gentle rhythm of his heart beating and the slow, steady sound of his breathing. Comforted by the touch of his hand as he stroked her hair, she sighed contentedly and drifted off to sleep.

  Danny watched the rise and fall of her chest as her breathing settled into a pattern. He was beginning to realize that Nicola was unlike any woman he had known before. She was warm, she was caring, she was sexy and she was fun to be with–and he liked the feel of her body as it nestled into his. A perfect fit.

  Danny put his lips against her hair and whispered softly, “I love you, Nicola Madison.”

  TWENTY

  When we walked into the room we saw Louanna and Chartreuse engaged in conversation with the woman sitting next to Chartreuse. As we got closer, I noticed a smattering of colored sprinkles clinging to Louanna’s top lip, and on the front of Chartreuse’s hospital gown.

  “Hi girls, how are you both doing, today?” I asked.

  “Hi Bee, we’s bin doin’ real good,” Louanna said with a bob of the head.

  “And you, Chartreuse. Are you feeling all right? We missed you girls yesterday,” Rosie said.

  “Oh, that’s ‘cause they moved my time a-gin, Hon,” Chartreuse said.

  Louanna waved her hand in the air dismissively. “But I toll ‘em we wanted to be on this time ‘cause our friends are here. So they moved us back a-gin,’ she said obviously proud of her small victory over the usually unbending establishment. Many have tried–few succeeded.

  “Way to go, Louanna.” When I gave her a high five I couldn’t help notice her nails.

  “Hey, did you girls get your nails done, again? They look real good.” I tried not to focus on the bright patterns lest they give me a migraine of flashing lights and colored auroras; a bit like an LSD high–or so I’ve been told. But I have never taken drugs. Let me re-phrase that. As that famous orator, Bill Clinton, once said, I did not inhale.

  The two women waved their hands in the air wanting to give us the full effect of the artwork.

  “Whachoo think of the color?” Chartreuse asked.

  “Oh, I think the color is great. Was it that little Korean girl who did them?”

  Louanna jumped to her feet. “Ko-re-han! She haint no Ko-re-han–she Chinese.”

  Chartreuse jumped up so fast she almost knocked me flying. “I tol’ you before, Louanna that girl haint no Chinese. She Jap’nese!”

  Rosie decided now would be a good time to beat a hasty retreat. “See you girls later,” I said as she grabbed hold of my arm and steered me to a couple of empty chairs, at the back of the room, next to her friend.

  “Hi Linda,” Rosie said as sh
e dropped her bag on the chair and headed to the change room.

  “Hey there, Linda. What’s happening girlfriend?” I said.

  Linda tossed out a glance from under her brow, mumbled a greeting and started to pick at a loose piece of skin on her thumb.

  “What are you reading?” I asked, trying to engage her in everyday conversation like normal people do.

  “A magazine,” she said–and breathed a heavy sigh.

  “Well, yes. I can see that. But what is the magazine about?” I suspect Linda only reads books with pictures–and lots of white spaces.

  Linda shuffled uncomfortably in the chair. Her eyes seemed to glaze over.

  “It’s upside down,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “The magazine. It’s upside down.”

  Linda’s face turned red. She flipped it around and hid behind the shiny covers.

  When she returned, Rosie noticed Linda’s head was buried behind the pages of the magazine. She raised her eyebrows in a question mark.

  I shrugged in a don’t-ask-me-fashion, handed her my bag and stood up to leave.

  “Excuse me, ladies, but I should not have had that last cuppa,” I said and headed for the restroom.

  “Oh don’t hurry back on my account,” Rosie called after me, turned to Linda and said,“ I hate to tell you, Linda but I’m afraid she’s been at it again.”

  The magazine slipped from her finger onto the floor the glossy pages fell open to a double-paged photograph of Freddie Mercury in full make-up wearing a skin-tight spandex bodysuit. Rumor has it the fire department had to cut him out of it after a concert. Fact or fiction–I’ll let you be the judge.

  “Y... you um... means... she’s k… killed s... someone else?” Linda stammered.

  Rosie picked the magazine up off the floor and handed it to Linda. “Not only that, now there’s the sex.”

  “S... sex?”

  “I swear to you, Linda, since my sister has taken up serial killing, her sexual appetite has grown. You should hear it.” Rosie noticed the woman on the other side of Linda lean in close.