by T. L. Hart
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Now that’s what I call a good day at the office!” I was delirious with my ambush of Gregory. “Did you see the look on his face? He’s lucky I don’t have him arrested—the pervert. I didn’t think even Gregory could be so disgusting.”
“Think again,” Aggie said. “You know, I understand the blackmail notion.” She touched the envelope of photographs. “But how did he know to put the dirty deed off on Max Sealy? You know about it from me and Jo, but none of that made the papers.”
“When he found out that I was volunteering at the Outreach, he was all snotty about the company I was keeping—all those liberals and homosexuals, don’t you know?” I laughed aloud, recalling his horror. “He said his buddies at the country club gossiped that Max had gotten away with something seriously bad.”
“You think they meant Cotton’s—make that your murder?” Aggie shook her head so hard that her long braids whipped the air. “Girl, do you know how crazy that sounds? Drivin’ around town with my dead best friend—well, let’s just say I’ve made some weird adjustments for you.” She rolled her eyes. “Do you believe Max could have been the killer?”
“That’s what Gregory implied.” I shrugged. “Don’t underestimate him. He’s a real jackass, but he’s smart and very devious.”
“Yeah maybe,” she said, “but I wish you could have seen how righteous you looked up there when you handed old Gregory his walkin’ papers. Fierce! You surprised me almost as much as you did him,” she said. “You never told me he was stealing from you. How did you figure it out?”
“Little bit of information from my bank. Little gut instinct. Lots of bluffing.”
“Remind me not to play poker with you, girl,” Aggie said with a laugh. “And I thought I was good.”
“Just glad it’s over. If I never see him again, it’ll be too soon for me.”
“You better want him to stop making Sealy mad.” Aggie whistled through her teeth. “I could feel the hatred. Having the cops grill him got him all macho about Jo leaving him for you. I don’t think he’s playing with a full deck.”
“I’d say he’s one sandwich shy of a picnic.”
“One brick short of a load.”
“His cheese has slipped off his cracker?” I loved this little word game. Ag and I had spent years collecting the corny sayings, getting points for any new ones we found.
“His bread is still doughy in the middle,” Aggie responded.
“Good one. Five points.” I lost this round and gave the award gracefully. “Where did you find that one?”
“Made it up.”
“No you didn’t.”
We were interrupted in the contest by my cell phone playing the distinctive opening bars of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana.”
“Girlfriend, you cannot keep that ringtone.” Aggie groaned her disapproval as I dug my phone out of my pocket. “I’ll be embarrassed to be out in public with you. If that phone rings in front of anyone cool, I swear I’ll walk right by like I never saw you in my life.”
“Walk on, sister.” I laughed as I flipped it open. “I’m an unrepentant Fanilow.”
I tuned out her groan as I answered. It was Jo—rattling on so fast I barely got a word in edgewise before she hung up.
“The romance must be winding down,” Aggie teased. “You look like you got dumped.”
“Just for the evening. Seems Jo has been summoned to stem a crisis at the Biggs’ campaign headquarters. She was flustered and said not to wait up. She’s going to have to get some papers from her place and she’ll probably stay there tonight.”
“Yep, it’s over, all right.”
“Like hell it is.” I laughed. “If you heard what she promised me to make up for being gone…”
“No please. I’m not able to handle the graphic details without a drink or two.”
“Okay, since I’m off my leash for the night, let’s go get a great meal and I’ll get you loopy.” As much as I liked the evenings with Jo, the notion of a night out with Aggie sounded great. “After the day I’ve put you through, I’m buying.”
“Honey child, with the money you have, until further notice, you’re always buying.”
“Sounds like a deal to me.” I grinned and goosed the car into high gear. “Let’s go spend my money and think of something different to do tonight.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“When you said let’s do somethin’ different, I was thinking you meant eating at The India Palace or somethin’ like that.” Aggie was slurring her words a bit, which wasn’t surprising after the pitchers of beer we had with our pizza. “This is a whole ’nother somethin’ you got us into.”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said, not so sure I had made the right call. “You weren’t trying to talk me out of it.”
“Of course not. I’m drunk. What kind of buddy passes up an adventure like this?” She waved her flashlight around, casting eerie shadows in the dimly lit hall of the indoor storage facility. “I didn’t know we were going to have to bribe ole Norman Bates at the front desk to get in, though. I swear you better not have a body stashed in a freezer or I’m outta here.”
As I’d pulled out my wallet to pay for the pizza, the two keys I’d found in the box of my stuff Aggie had stashed in the equipment locker fell out. It was Aggie who figured out that they were keys to this storage place, but I couldn’t remember whose idea it was to get a cab, stop for flashlights and go treasure hunting in the middle of the night. Sounded more like me.
“Don’t be an idiot, Ag.” I was trying to seem more certain than I was feeling. “Just because I had a couple of keys with the name of this place printed on them doesn’t mean you have to act like this is a Hitchcock movie. It’s probably a box of receipts or some old furniture. You remember more of my life as Cotton than I do. What would I have to hide in a place like this?”
“Beats me, but you always had a devious streak,” she said. “Not bad usually, but this is probably where you stashed all the corners you cut to make everything work.”
“Sssh,” I giggled. “You’re going to wake Norman’s mother.”
We both thought that was funny, but I think you had to be there to appreciate the humor. Oh, yeah, and you had to be tipsy.
There was enough light in the hallway from the row of dim bulbs to find space 117. Even though the building was advertised as temperature-controlled, it must have meant temperature-controlled for hanging meat. I couldn’t see my breath fog up when I breathed, but after coming in from outside, it felt freezing.
To be truthful, although it would have been a nice, spooky touch, the door didn’t squeak when we turned the key but slid open silently. It didn’t look any more promising once we got inside and shut the door. In the center of the room was a single large black backpack. Other than a few less than spectacular cobwebs, that was it. No furniture. No boxes. No body.
“This is kinda weird,” Aggie said. “Who’d pay for a whole room to stash a backpack?”
“I’ve got a weirder question.” I glanced around the dimly lit room, shining my flashlight into shaded corners. “Since I’ve been out of commission for a while—who’s been paying the rent on this space?”
“Sure as hell wasn’t me. Didn’t even know about it until an hour ago.”
Aggie stepped closer and put her light beam right on the bag. “Pretty dusty, so I’d guess no one’s been here since you left it. Maybe you paid ahead.”
“Not likely since I was always scraping to get a few bucks for the Outreach. I wouldn’t waste money on something like this.” I hesitated. “Would I?”
“Not without a good reason,” she hedged. “What could you possibly have in there? And a backpack was definitely not your style. If you couldn’t stash it in your back pocket, it was too big.”
“Not one of the things I remember, but I’m getting a bad feeling about this.” I moved closer and we stood staring down at the backpack as if it were a live thing. “The best thing
is to open it and look inside instead of playing twenty questions. Here, hold this.” I thrust my flashlight at her. “It’s not like it’s a bomb.”
“Heavy.” I lifted it slightly to find the front and unsnapped the clasps on both sides of the big canvas tote. “Okay, here we go.”
“Let’s have a little light.” I flipped the top back and motioned for her to come closer. “C’mon now, Aggie. Whatever’s in here isn’t going to bite.”
Aggie focused the flashlight on the interior of the bag and neither of us had much to say for a long stretch. It wasn’t that we’d never seen anything like it before—just not so much and not so unexpected. We continued to stare until Aggie reached in and pulled out a bundle of hundreds.
“Holy moly.” She was beyond cursing. “Where did you get this kind of money?”
“I have absolutely no fucking clue.” I wasn’t kidding. “My God, do you think it’s real?”
“I don’t think you’d be hiding it in here if it was Monopoly money, do you?” She broke one bundle open and fanned out the stack of unsmiling Benjamin Franklins. “This is freakin’ me big-time, Cotton.”
“Me too.” I pulled my hands back and moved back a couple of inches. “No way this is mine. Maybe we’re in the wrong unit.”
“Yeah. I bet your key will open any lock in the place.” Aggie dumped the money back in the bag. “We need to get out of here now.”
“Don’t sound so scared, Ag. It’s making me nervous.”
“You need to be nervous, woman,” she scolded. “We’re in a creepy room in a bad part of town in the middle of the night, half drunk and elbow deep in dirty money. Be very scared.”
“First of all, calm down.” I was thinking, still fuzzy from the beer, but making an effort not to panic. “We didn’t break in—we have the key. We aren’t driving so being a little over the limit is no crime. It just seems creepy because the lighting isn’t so good.”
“And you got an explanation for why this money is here instead of in your account in a nice well-lit bank?”
“Not at the moment, but it’s not like someone is about to jump us and grab it. It’s been here a while, safe enough.”
“You sure about that?” Aggie swept the flashlight beam around the room. “See that little red light up there?” I followed the pointing light beam.
“Yes. It’s a security camera. What’s so strange about that?”
“It’s inside the unit. Security is to watch the hallways for intruders.” She grabbed my arm and tugged me toward the door. “Let’s get out of here now and think about why later. I don’t like our faces on some stranger’s camera fingering a stash we don’t have any business with. And I don’t know that Norman Bates out front hasn’t already tagged us to whoever’s bugging this place. Let’s go.”
“I’m coming.” Her reasoning swept away any lingering beer-fuzz. “You really think someone is watching this place still? After all, as far as anyone knows, Cotton Claymore’s been dead almost a year. Why would you think they’re still watching?”
“They haven’t taken their money back yet, have they?” She was half-dragging me down the hallway. “Whatever you did, they obviously are keeping an eye out for someone. Maybe they think you had an accomplice.”
“You think they’ll be looking for us?” I had enough on my hands without this development. “Gregory. Max. The peeper. This is getting ridiculous.”
“You want ridiculous?” Aggie pushed me into the waiting cab and told the driver to go. “We’ve been blaming Max for bashing you all this time. Could be we have another contender for the dirty deed.” She looked down at the flashlights she still held in her hands and clicked them off. “Any other little surprises you haven’t told me about?”
“Now how the hell would I know of any more surprises, if I can’t remember them?” I was finding this situation a little absurd now that we were putting distance between us and the storage facility. “For all I know a bunch of space ninjas from the fifth dimension has me under surveillance for crimes against the Mother Ship. Unless I tell you otherwise or the hit squad shows up, I’m calling it a night.”
Chapter Forty
Ten days passed without the ninja hit squad’s arrival, so Aggie and I let down our guard and drifted back to our routine at the Outreach. We still glanced around to make sure no one was listening when we talked about the stash of cash or wondered who it belonged to and why Cotton had gotten involved in such a risky situation. Mostly, we tried to forget about it. Talk about not thinking about pink elephants.
“Molly had a good idea about the kitchen remodeling,” Aggie said. We were going over a list of projects for repair and updating that were looming for the Outreach. “Her cousin has a hook-up with an appliance dealer. Thinks he might donate a new stove and dishwasher for a tax write-off.”
“Any idea when he thinks he might?” I asked. “If we wait for maybe-so’s to make up their minds, people are going to be eating cold cereal with plastic forks. Get the stuff in here by next week. I’ll cover it.”
“Yeah, you know where you can get your hands on some money, don’t you?” Aggie grinned. Time and distance made big worries seem not so bad.
“I’ve got a checkbook. I don’t have to go scrounging. You—”
The dulcet tones of “Copacabana” floated from my cell phone. Ignoring Aggie’s groan, I checked the caller ID.
“Hello sweetie,” I began, noting that it was Jo’s number, but I was cut off by her near panic-stricken monologue. “No, don’t go back in the building…call 911. We’ll be there in ten minutes.” Aggie was hanging on my every word. Hearing only my end was enough to let her know the trouble was serious. “Five minutes then. Don’t touch anything. Call the police and keep the car door locked. It’ll be okay, baby.”
I snapped the phone shut and grabbed my keys. Aggie was out the door before I was. We were in the car and on the way in less than a minute. I put my foot nearly through the floorboard, stomping hard on the accelerator. The Beamer leaped forward at the demand.
“Jo went shopping for a couple of hours. When she came back to her car, there was a bunch of dead flowers under her windshield wipers.”
“That’s spooky, but calling 911 may be overreacting a little bit.” I could always count on Aggie to be the voice of reason, thank goodness. “Did they leave a note?”
“Not on the car, but when she got to the apartment and went upstairs, someone had spray-painted the hall and left a couple of stuffed animals—toy cats with our names pinned on them.”
“Okay, kinda crazy, but not enough to get too uptight. Stuffed kitties are pretty tame as stalkers go.”
“Not when they are nailed to your door and dripping fake blood.” A new wave of fear hit my stomach. “My God, it better be fake blood.”
When we got there I was relieved to find it was nail polish. Blood-red nail polish.
The color of the polish was repeated in the spray-painted message scrawled on the wall halfway down the hallway and onto the door to my apartment: DIE LITTLE PUSSY LOVER’S
I know something is seriously wrong with me, and I wouldn’t have admitted it to a living soul under penalty of death, but my first thought was not of the safety of my lover or imminent danger from a deadly stalker. It was the apostrophe. I had an almost overwhelming urge to get something to cover up the apostrophe.
It was awful enough to be the target of a deranged mind, but an illiterate, deranged mind was somehow too low a blow. There was also a missing comma after DIE, but I was willing to let that slide.
* * *
“They were about as helpful as the last time,” Jo fumed, closing the door on the retreating backsides of two members of our local constabulary. “Am I being too critical or did they basically tell us they couldn’t do anything until someone was injured or dead?”
“Oh, no, honey,” I reassured her. “They dusted for fingerprints. They took the poor crucified plush toys. They made a report.”
“I’m sure that has Sealy shakin’ i
n his thousand-dollar ostrich boots.” Aggie was furious. “I’m not waitin’ for him to get a new baseball bat this time around.” Her hand rested on the gun nestled in its holder at her waist. “I’ll probably get to jail before he does, but if I catch him snoopin’ around this part of town, he’ll make it to hell before I do.”
“Ag, you can’t go around shooting people, no matter how much fun it would be.” I loved her for being willing to do it though. “I think a second visit from the police will make Max very aware that they’re keeping close tabs on him, too close to continue this.”
“You don’t know him,” Jo said. “He’s gotten used to being able to do anything he wants to—he was a sports star in Texas. Don’t you understand what that means? He spent his whole life having people handle things when he screwed up. Can’t pass that exam? No problem. Make that speeding ticket go away? Happy to do it, son. Look the other way when you bash your wife’s lover in the head? We all know how that went.”
“I think the smartest thing we can do is get out of town for a few days—have a little fun and let things cool down around here.” And let me work on a plan that will end this for good, I said to myself. “Who’s up for a long weekend in the country?”
“Last time you dragged me to the country, I had sores on my ass for a week,” Aggie said. “If you think I’m going back to that rustic bed-and-breakfast and horseback riding hellhole, you have another think coming.”
“No horses, I promise. And totally modern and luxurious. Luckily I have a therapist who thinks of me as a friend after all we’ve been through. Dr. Carey said during our last session that she thinks I could use a break. She has a house at Cedar Creek Lake that could make the front cover of Texas Monthly, according to Andrew. He’s stayed out there and says it’s paradise. What say the three of us go up tomorrow and spend a week fishing and hanging out?”
“We can’t run away from this forever,” Jo said. “He’s not going to suddenly get religion and give us his blessing.”