Homewood reminded me a little of Boulder, Colorado, minus the heavy tourism. Thirty thousand or so had the privilege of living in this idyllic little burg, where mountains edged a sky so blue, clouds should’ve paid rent for the privilege. I felt lucky to have a contract take me to such pleasant if dull surroundings; it helped make up for having to kill somebody as harmless as Janet Wright seemed to be.
Dusk was settling when Janet emerged from the library with her friend Connie and another librarian, whose name was Don, my surveillance had gathered. A nerd.
From my rental vehicle—a blue Taurus (was that all these fucking rental agencies had these days?)—I watched as the librarians paused to chat and then go their separate ways.
Janet’s vehicle was parked on the street—I’d observed her going out and feeding the meter every two hours, during the six I spent in the library. She got into the little yellow Geo, mid-’90s vintage, started it up and pulled away, moving right across my line of vision.
Her rear bumper had stickers that I could have predicted—she was still advertising KERRY/EDWARDS 2004, among other lost leftist causes—and started my own car and took off after her, in slow pursuit.
I followed her, usually with a few cars between us, through sleepy Homewood, from the downtown and on through a quietly affluent residential section; it was the kind of place Norman Rockwell could have painted, though had he spent much more than an afternoon here, he might have hanged himself out of boredom.
Soon the town had disappeared, as had my cover traffic, and she was out into the countryside, making my job harder.
Already my point was proven about the staleness of my client’s research: Janet Wright was not headed in the direction of her own apartment, the address for which was the first place I’d checked out getting to town. Nor was there anything in the written reports indicating that anything out this way was a regular stop of hers.
When Janet Wright turned down a lane into a deeply wooded area, I almost missed it; then I caught the tail of her Geo between the trees, and drove on. Pulled into a driveway half a mile later, turned around, and followed.
In five minutes, I caught sight of her pulling off the lane into a private drive. Cutting my speed to almost nothing, I waited until she was well out of view, then moved on by, and parked alongside the road, what there was of it. I walked back and slipped into the trees along the private drive; the snow on the ground was minimal, my shoes crunching on leaves and twigs underneath the dusting, and I was in no danger of earning my Inconspicuous Tracker Merit Badge. But I didn’t worry about that—I could see her getting out of her Geo, fiddling for her keys in her purse, clearly oblivious to my presence.
Still, my hand was on the nine millimeter in my jacket pocket. You never knew.
The Geo was parked in front of a secluded, expensive, sprawling home, not quite a mansion but oozing money, modern in the Frank Lloyd Wright manner, a story and a half with lots of wood and stone blending in nicely with the surrounding naturescape.
At the front door, she stooped on the stoop to pick up a newspaper, then gathered mail from the mailbox.
I was closer to the house now, and watched through a side window as she entered, mail and paper bundled in one arm, entering via a key in her other hand, pushing the door open—it was a little stubborn. A security tone kicked in, and a dog began to bark...from the sound of it, a small one, lapdog likely.
Which was good. A pinscher or a pit bull can ruin your day.
Janet went to a touchpad by the door and entered a code. I had an angle through the window that showed me her fingertips doing it, and I committed the numbers to memory, even if I did have to move my lips.
At a table near the door, already piled with rolledup newspapers and stacked magazines and envelopes, the librarian stood and sorted through the mail, putting individual items into their respective piles. Throughout, two things were a constant: I watched; and the dog barked.
She spoke to one of us, in a loud firm voice: “Just a sec, Poochie! Gimme a sec.”
Housesitting, most likely.
Through a kitchen window I watched as she unpenned the small dog—a little black-and-white rat terrier—who danced and yapped and danced and yapped for Janet. She knelt and petted it and it stood on its hind legs and lapped her face and whimpered orgiastically. About thirty seconds of good-girl-good-doggie talk followed. This I did not commit to memory.
I’d missed it, but while she was down there, Janet had attached a small leash to the dog, and when she and the doggie headed toward the back door, near the window I was peeking through, I damn near blew it.
But I got behind a tree in time, and then she was walking the terrier in the expansive, unfenced back yard, being careful not to walk in spots where the pooch had already made a deposit.
Over the next fifteen minutes, I kept watch as the woman and dog returned inside, and the woman put water and food down for the dog, re-penned it, then went around the house, watering plants.
Housesitting, for sure.
She was in the dining room when she finished the watering, and that’s where and when she began unbuttoning her blouse.
I kept watching as the blouse came open and a pinkish excuse for a bra was revealed; then the blouse and bra came off and nice breasts were revealed. Though she was in her thirties, no sag at all was apparent, full almost-C cups with half-dollar-size areolae and nipples that extended perhaps a half inch, soft.
She dropped the blouse and the bra to the floor, casually, and walked back into the kitchen, topless. There she stepped out of her skirt and revealed a half slip, which she also shed, letting me in on one of Victoria’s best secrets: lacy-edged pink panties cut high on the hip. Then she stepped out of those, as graceful as a dancer but so much more natural, moving on, leaving the clothes behind, littering lingerie. Her ass didn’t sag, either, her back beautifully dimpled above the firm roundness.
I paused for a moment. Shadowing this woman to fill a contract was one thing; but watching her disrobe seemed wrong, somehow.
Still, surveillance was surveillance....
Taking to the trees again, I scurried around the house, tripping on a root but not quite falling, and found my way to the rear of the place, where glass doors looked in on a swimming pool room, fairly elaborate, about two-thirds the size of the similar area back at Sylvan Lodge, and similar faux-rustic.
I positioned myself where I could see her as she entered—she was nude now, and wholly at ease, because how could she know some asshole was watching her, getting a hard-on?
But who could blame my dick for getting stiff? This was a nice-looking woman. No shaved pussy for my librarian, this was a full, old-fashioned bush, maybe trimmed back just a little, dark blonde and a nice contrast to her pale, creamy flesh. She had a classic shape, five foot five with a rib cage providing a nice display area for the perky rack, waist wasping in, hips flaring out. Her legs were a little heavy by today’s standards, but fuck today’s standards.
This was a woman.
A woman who walked to the deep end and dove in.
Which to witness, I don’t mind telling you, was in its way thrilling.
So I watched her swim. I watched her swim for a long time, taking her relaxation at the end of her working day by stroking the water, smoothly graceful, and then on her back, a dreamily sensuous if unintentional performance, and why wouldn’t it be?
She was nude, and she was beautiful.
And so I did my job, keeping her under surveillance, and my dick throbbed in my pants. Which is where I left it. I wasn’t going to unzip and jerk off or anything.
Jesus.
What kind of guy do you think I am?
Seven
Pushing the southern outskirts of Homewood, Sneaky Pete’s was one of those slightly upscale country-western bars where shitkickers were not welcome but young professionals were. In the low-slung brick building’s barely lighted parking lot—asphalt not gravel—you’d be more likely to see a Navigator than a Ford F150. Once
inside, the music was that painfully homogenized country pop of the Faith Hill and Brooks and Dunn variety; the only saving grace was line dancing having gone out of fashion.
This was just your typical middle-class/upper-middle-class meat market, and a guy in his fifties had to work to look inconspicuous among all these twenty- and thirty-somethings.
It helped that the place was packed—this was Friday night, and lively with laughter, clinking glasses, and the promise of hooking up. Even though I was not a smoker, the notion that a bar like this was A SMOKE-FREE ENVIRONMENT seemed wrong, even wacky. Would entire generations of Americans grow up going out Friday and Saturday nights, not coming home with their bodies and clothing reeking of smoke? Another communal experience lost....
I was not able to sit as near Janet and her friend Connie as I would have liked. They were in a booth to my back, with a cluster of tables between us. But I was facing a bar with a mirrored wall, and my lip-reading skills came in handy.
The conversation I am about to report I admit took some filling in with my imagination, when my vision was blocked by patrons or wait staff, including the bartender (or ’tendress—a good-looking brunette in her mid-twenties in the red-plaid shirt and jeans that all the help wore, though she had her top tied into a Daisy Duke’s halter).
And I could actually hear some of Janet and Connie’s discourse. The nature of the loud music and yelled conversation made it possible to hone in on them, and pick some of it up.
Janet, in her emerald silk blouse and new jeans, was probably the most conservatively dressed woman in the joint—her blowsy gal pal Connie, for instance, was in a low-cut red sweater, an angora number that would’ve put a big grin on Ed Wood’s face, and jeans camel-toe tight.
They were drinking margaritas—on their second round.
And Connie was saying, more or less, “Honey! You should go after it—really.”
And Janet shook her head and said, “But you’re more qualified, Con. Plus, I can think of three people with more tenure than me!”
“You’re the qualified one, Jan—you have the degree.”
A guy stopped alongside Connie, facing Janet; he was angled enough that it made him a tough read, but I got it: “My wife won’t have to work.”
Rick.
Hadn’t recognized him at first—there were dozens of Ricks in Sneaky Pete’s. But this was a specific Rick, Rick the prick, the abusive boyfriend who had dropped by the library this afternoon, in his ongoing campaign to make this young woman’s life miserable.
Slender, taller than I remembered, he wore a brown leather jacket and black jeans, a glimpse of darker brown shirt beneath. A good-looking guy, as vapid sons of bitches go.
Connie said something I didn’t catch, but Rick said, “Fuck you very much” to her, and shoved in beside Janet.
He was turning toward her, so I only got part of his face, but figuring out what he was saying wasn’t tough—he wasn’t exactly Noel Coward.
“Very funny,” he said to her.
She didn’t look at him, concentrating on her margarita, or pretending to. “What is?”
“Keeping me waiting.”
“Is that what I did?”
“I waited my ass off at the Brew for you, for half a fuckin’ hour.”
Now she looked at him. Her expression was commendably withering. “We weren’t meeting. We didn’t have anything set up.”
He shook his head, peeved. “So you make me go lookin’ for you? Lotta bars in this town. That any way to act?”
Connie, staring daggers at their uninvited guest, said, “Do you mind? We were talking.”
He leaned toward the big-hair blonde. “Probably you were talking....You mind giving us some privacy?”
“Let me see, let me give that a little thought—how about, I don’t frickin’ think so.”
Rick’s expression turned menacing. “I think so.”
Connie looked at Janet.
Janet, reluctantly, nodded to her friend.
Disgusted with both of them, Connie got up and left. She hadn’t gone two steps when a guy asked her to dance, and they went out onto the floor and bumped loins to Kenny Chesney.
Rick came around to the other side of the booth, to sit across and make eye contact with Janet, who wasn’t cooperating.
Leaning halfway over, he said, “I wasn’t kidding, you know. About marriage.”
Janet’s eyes widened and she began to shake her head. “The last thing I want to do is marry you, Rick.”
“That’s not what you said, before.”
“That was weeks, maybe months ago. That was when...when you were still being...nice.”
“I’m always nice to you!”
She just looked at him.
He shrugged. “Well...I’ll be nice in the future. How’s that sound?”
“Insincere.” Now she leaned forward, and worked hard at softening her expression. “Rick—we’re over. You must know that. Can’t you see? Let’s just walk away friends.”
Suddenly he was out of the booth and reaching for her, dragging her out of her seat. He said something I didn’t quite catch, but along the lines of: “We’re gonna talk this out, now.”
Then he took her roughly by the arm and hauled her through the bar, toward the door. She was protesting, and I didn’t have to read her lips to catch what she said—hell, everybody in the place caught what she said: “Rick! Please! No...no....”
Half the eyes in Sneaky Pete’s were on the unhappy couple; the other half were making a point of not looking, ignoring what I gathered was a familiar scene around town.
The good-looking brunette bartender was bringing me my third beer. She looked toward the door, and said, “Pity. Hope he doesn’t hurt that poor kid, again.”
I said, “Isn’t anybody going to do anything about it?”
She raised an eyebrow. “You see anybody doing anything about it?”
I threw a five-spot on the counter and said, “Drink that last one yourself.”
“Anything you say, Daddy...”
When I was exiting onto the parking lot, half a dozen tobacco addicts were coming back in hurriedly, pitching their smokes sparking into the night. They apparently had no desire to be witnesses to what Rick might do to Janet.
Those two were the only ones in the lot, besides myself, and Rick had her cornered against a big blue Navigator, his hand against the metal, her face turned away from his, eyes shut tight.
“Two people,” he shouted at her, “who love each other oughta be able to talk to each other! God! Fuck!”
He used his keys to click open the vehicle’s door and shoved Janet in the front seat, rider’s side. He was about to shut her in when I put a hand on his shoulder.
Rick whirled, and took a few seconds to size me up—I’m not small, but to him I must have looked no threat, just some ancient asshole sticking his nose in.
He brushed my hand off his shoulder. “Go away. Not your business, dude.”
I punched him in the throat.
Rick went down on his knees, clutching his neck, trying to breathe, not having much success, gurgling, his face scarlet, his eyes popping.
From the nearby rider’s seat of the SUV, door still open, Janet Wright was taking this in with huge eyes...though not as huge as Rick’s.
“Excuse me,” I told her, and I took Rick by the collar of his leather jacket and dragged him like the sack of garbage he was across the asphalt. Hauled him through some brush and into the surrounding trees. Deposited him in a small clearing.
Finally able to breathe again, Rick had not, however, found his way up off the ground.
Hurt in more ways than one, he managed to squeak, “You...you coulda killed me!”
“No,” I said. “Next time I’ll kill you.”
“What the fuck...fuck business is it...of—”
I bitch-slapped the prick.
The sound surprised me—it was as loud in the night as a gunshot, and the woman in the SUV probably heard it, too. I hoped t
o hell she wasn’t like some abused women, her next move running off and getting her poor abuser some help.
Rick was down on his knees, as if praying. If he really was praying, he was keeping it inside his head, because the “dude” wasn’t saying anything—just whimpering.
I knelt before him and I locked my eyes onto his face, though his eyes tried to escape.
“Do you believe I’ll kill you?” I asked him.
“Yeah...yeah...sure.”
But I wasn’t convinced he was convinced.
I took the nine millimeter from my jacket pocket.
He drew in a breath, eyes and nostrils flared.
“Open wide,” I said.
“Fuck you!” he said.
The epithet gave me the opening I needed, and I inserted the nine’s snout.
I asked him again: “Do you believe I’ll kill you?”
Rick, all but deep-throating the barrel, nodded, his eyes white all around, something like “yes, yes” emerging from his throat.
“That’s too bad,” I said. “Because I really didn’t want you to.”
And I ripped the gun out of Rick’s mouth.
Rick’s hand clutched his face and blood streamed through his fingers in little red ribbons. As I’d intended, the weapon’s gunsight had carved a notch in the roof of his mouth and maybe chipped a tooth.
He was crying now.
“Anything you’d care to say to me?” I asked.
He lowered his hand; his mouth was a bloody mess, his teeth smeared red; one was, in fact, broken.
Good.
When he spoke, it was through bubbling blood.
“I won’t go near her,” he said. “Won’t ever go near her again.”
I shrugged. “Don’t decide all at once. Sleep on it.”
I whacked him with the nine millimeter and he went to sleep even before he collapsed in a pile in the brush.
The nine’s snout had a little blood on it, which I wiped off on the kid’s newer-than-new jeans, giving them a little character, wondering if Rick would know, when he woke up, how very lucky he’d been.
The Last Quarry Page 6