Worth Any Price

by Jacqueline DeGroot

  Walking into the master bedroom, he gave a heartfelt sigh. He peeked into the bathroom and the beam from the flashlight ran over the walls of the huge fiberglass Jacuzzi. They’d had a bad leak in the wall one year and had to redo the whole bathroom. For a Christmas gift, Kel had bought them the tub, hoping it would help his mother’s occasional lower back pains and his dad’s sore muscles since he was no longer around to help him with the yard work. He clicked the button and shut down the beam. He didn’t want to see the thing that had caused all the problems.

  Feeling his way back down the hall, he tossed the journal on top of the box and then gathered the box under his arm. This was all he needed to get out of the house. Now he could sell it. He’d made his good-byes, if not his peace with the past.

  He took the box out to the car then came back to make sure the house was secure. He mentally reminded himself to mail the realtor a key. He wasn’t coming back.

  On the way back to Wilmington, his cell phone rang. It was one of the officers on his team. “I just thought you’d like to know that the preliminary autopsy came back on that kid’s body. She was beaten and raped. She was dead before she was wrapped up with the tape. This wasn’t our man. They think it was her stepfather doing a copycat to cover up her death.”

  It wasn’t their man. The words rang over and over in his head. It wasn’t The Voyeur who had taken this girl and killed her. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t because he hadn’t stopped him that another child had died. It wasn’t because he was so distracted by Laura that he couldn’t think straight. The relief was staggering and he had to pull off the road to come to grips with it. He asked the officer a few questions, then clicked the phone shut. He sat behind the wheel watching cars go by doing well over the speed limit. After a few minutes he turned his head and stared through the spotted windshield. He had more time. It wasn’t over.

  He drove straight to Wrightsville Beach and to TIDES AWASTIN’. When he knocked on the door, he had a smile on his face.

  “Kel! Hi, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I should have called first.”

  “No, we’re just having a little tea party before bedtime. Come on in.”

  In the center of the family room was a miniaturized dining room table complete with chairs. He didn’t know his furniture that well, but he thought it was French Provincial. The table was set for four. A large Winnie the Pooh and an oversized doll that looked very pricey occupied two of the chairs.

  “Her grandparents ordered the furniture in Europe and had it shipped. We just got it today. Would you care for some tea?” Laura flashed a wide smile and gestured with her hand for him to take Winnie’s chair.

  “Oh, I’d be delighted,” he said and was rewarded with a huge grin from Kayla.

  “We have crumpets!” she exclaimed.

  “Well, that’s just wonderful, I adore crumpets,” he said as he took his seat and Kayla reached for the teapot to serve him.

  “Milk?” she asked, when he declined she frowned so when she offered the sugar cubes, he took three in his lukewarm, very light brown tea.

  Laura whispered, “caffeine” and he understood why the watered down version. It was getting close to Kayla’s bedtime.

  The plate of “crumpets” was formally passed and he helped himself to dainty little pieces of a Thomas’ English Muffin.

  They play acted with Kayla until bedtime and Laura took her upstairs to bed.

  When she came down, Kel asked her if she’d found time to ask Kayla what she remembered about the night she was taken, and to ask if the “really smelly smell” could have been dirt and grass. He wanted to know specifically if she thought she could have been put into an oversized golf bag.

  “She doesn’t remember that part Kel, or at least not yet. She only talks about the sirens and the breathing noises and how hungry she was and that she was afraid she’d ruined her new overall pajamas by going to the bathroom in them.”

  Kel shook his head. The poor child had been through so much. He was just going to have to let this part go. He’d gone back to all the children, but none could remember the specifics he’d asked about. The trauma had just begun for them and they had been too terrified to lock in things to remember. Now, they were all trying to forget the whole horrible ordeal and not remember the details.

  “But she did say she remembers smelling yucky poop, if that helps any.”

  “That actually helps a lot. I believe that might be the smell of fertilizer. Thanks.”

  Kel helped her clean up the mess from the tea party and then on impulse blurted out, “My mother died several months ago and I have been straightening out her affairs.”

  “I’m sorry. It must be hard losing your mother.”

  “Yeah. I just came from her house over in Benton. I’ve been working on getting it ready to sell. That’s were I spent my vacation this year. That’s where I was when all this stuff with The Voyeur started happening. I cut my bereavement time short to get back to work.”

  “Do you want to talk about it, over something a bit stronger than this?” she held up the tiny teapot.

  “Yeah. What have you got?”

  “Coffee, some wine. I can make you a cocktail as long as it contains vodka or tequila, and I think there’s some brandy in one of the cabinets.”

  “Some wine sounds good. Will you have some with me?”

  “Sure.” She took a bottle of Riesling out of the refrigerator and he opened it and poured some into the glasses she held. Then they walked over and sat on opposite ends of the sofa.

  “So spill it, why did you go to Benton today?”

  He explained about Snow’s Cut, the little girl, his feelings of inadequacy, his mixed emotions when it came to his childhood home, and then the discovery of the copycat.

  “My father really screwed up my mother’s life. I’m still trying to deal with the anger I have about it. I just wish so much that things had gone differently for them.”

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning,” she said as she tucked her long legs under her. He remembered those legs brushing alongside his in the motel bed and a frisson of heat went through him.

  “I’ve never talked about it, to anyone. But, I guess there’s no harm in the telling now that they’re both gone. It’s hard to believe that they are sometimes. Their love was so special once. Everyone used to comment on it. For over twenty-five years they were the most devoted couple you can imagine.

  “Then one day my Dad found out that he had cancer. It scared him and he started doing things he’d put off for years. And trying new things. Suddenly he was all up for trying new things, some of them pretty risky. I guess he wanted to live life to the fullest, experience it all.

  “Well, that’s what caused the whole problem between him and Mom. He wanted to try everything, at least once.

  “Here’s where it gets a little weird. One night some fellas at the local bar were getting a bit raunchy and telling off color stories about oral sex. Well, it seems my Dad had never had the good fortune of feeling a woman’s mouth on him that way, so he went home to mother and tried to coerce her into it. Well, she wouldn’t have anything to do with it. She flat out refused him. And no matter how he argued, she wouldn’t relent.

  “So, he told her that if she wasn’t going to do it, he’d find someone who would—that he wasn’t going to the grave without experiencing what these fellas had described at length as the ultimate orgasm.

  “She told him, ‘Fine! You just do that. But don’t come back here if you do.’ She was furious with him and as far as she was concerned, they were finished in the bedroom department.

  “Well, it didn’t take dear old dad long to find a willing woman. He began seeing this young floozy pretty regularly, but as he still loved my mother, he tried to keep the affair
secret. He didn’t want to lose my mother and he didn’t want to give this woman up either, as he was having wild, incredible sex. But he did something really stupid and got found out by the woman’s red nail polish.”

  “Her red nail polish?”

  “Yeah,” he bit out harshly. “Her nail polish.”

  “What did he do, let her paint his nails?”

  “No. What he did was bring her to the house. My mother volunteered for a lot of things. One day she was committed to work at the library all afternoon. This woman wanted to see the house my father lived in. I think she was trying to figure out how well off he was. Well, he took her there and when she saw the Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom, she just had to get him in there for a little dalliance. While she was in there, her acrylic nails scraped the sides of the tub leaving little telltale streaks of red.

  “Mother, meticulous housekeeper that she was, saw the marks the next day and knew exactly what they were and how they had gotten there. She had acrylic nails herself and knew that the darker polishes left those kinds of marks. However, she’d had French tips for the last few years and they didn’t leave any marks on the fiberglass. She knew that another woman had been in her tub. She called my dad on it, and he either wasn’t a very convincing liar, or he didn’t even try. That part, I never knew.

  “Mom sent him packing and he wound up moving in with the woman with the red nails. Only now the woman wasn’t satisfied with just the bedroom romps, she wanted the whole deal. She’d seen our house, figured there had to be more money than my father had alluded to, so she insisted that my dad get legally separated. Then she used every trick in the Joy of Sex book to get my father to file for a divorce from my mother so he could marry her.

  “While my dad was waiting until the time he could file for a divorce, he saw several different doctors. One gave him some hope of recovering from his cancer, so he started undergoing treatment and began racking up huge medical bills. Meanwhile, mom got herself a really good attorney and she ended up with most of dad’s retirement. When the woman realized there wasn’t going to be any money in this for her after all, she dumped my father.

  “A few years after that, the cancer flared up and he got too sick to take care of himself. He had hardly any money left so he asked my mother if he could please come home to die. She let him back. She took care of him until he died a few months later. But nothing was ever the same again. He had killed their love. She never forgave him for what he did to her, or at least she hadn’t meant to forgive him. Shortly after he died she developed Alzheimer’s and as it progressed she forgot he’d had the affair and left her. She lived the last fifteen years of her life alone, so madly in love with him that she wouldn’t look at anyone else with any serious interest.”

  “Wow, that is so sad. Geez, the fingernail polish. Mmm, mmm, mmm, you just never know do you?”

  “No. No, you don’t. And that’s why I feel the way that I do. I’ve seen a great love die. If theirs could, anybody’s can.”

  “They let it die, Kel.”

  “What do you mean? My mom didn’t let it die!”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “How can you say that? She didn’t do a damn thing wrong!”

  “When he came to her and asked her for special sexual favors, couldn’t she have at least tried it?”

  “Laura, think about what you’re saying! What if I wanted to try it with whips in front of an audience. Am I supposed to think my wife will be all right with that?”

  “Well, you have to draw the line somewhere. Oral sex that way is pretty, well, normal though, isn’t it?”

  “As glad as I am to hear you say that, I have to disagree with you. You draw the line where one or the other is uncomfortable. She was uncomfortable with it. He should have done without.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It’s just a shame they couldn’t work it out. Maybe counseling would have helped.”

  “I can’t see either of them agreeing to that.”

  “Well, except for their last year together, they had a pretty good life, right?”

  “Yeah, but she had ten miserable years alone after her memory forgot the bad stuff.”

  “Then she must have loved him, even then.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, she didn’t see anybody else again, did she?”

  “She dated a little, but no, she never saw anybody seriously.”

  “She didn’t think she could ever love that way again. I’ll bet if her memory hadn’t changed she still would have loved him.”

  “No, she wouldn’t have.”

  “It’s a shame we can’t ask her, ‘cause I think she might have.”

  “You didn’t even know her.”

  “I know you. And I don’t think the acorn falls far from the tree.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that I’ll bet when you finally fall hard for someone, it’ll be for keeps. For always.”

  “Then I mustn’t ever let that happen. It puts too much control in someone else’s hands.”

  “When you love someone Kel, you trust them. It’s a package deal.”

  “You loved someone.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t the kind of love we’re talking about. I always knew I was settling.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “I got tired of waiting for it to happen. I wanted to be a wife and a mother. All my friends were getting married and it seemed to be the thing to do. So when Ryan proposed, I convinced myself that this would probably be as close as I’d get to my dream. I snatched the golden ring and then I watched as it slowly turned to brass. But I know one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’d do it again.”

  “What, get married?”

  “Fall in love. I want what your parents had once upon a time. If I had what they had, I wouldn’t let it die.”

  He took a big gulp of his wine and just stared over at her. What would it be like to be loved by a woman like her, he thought. What would it be like just to have an affair with a woman like her? But he knew that Laura was not the type to have a casual affair. He suspected she was an all or nothing kind of girl, and she deserved to have someone faithful and true. But marriage wasn’t for him. It was too painful. He’d never forget how two people who had really loved each other hurt each other so badly.

  “I’d better go. I have a full day tomorrow. Thanks for listening to my sob story.”

  “I’m glad you came over,” Laura said as she gracefully unwound from the sofa and walked with him to the door.

  With her body language, she tried to show him that she wouldn’t mind if he kissed her goodnight. She stood close. She tilted her face up to fully meet his. She smiled winsomely and damned if she didn’t even bat her eyelashes. But either he was impervious, or this thing with his mother had really affected him in a bad way.

  “Well, goodnight!” she called after him as he walked down the front steps.

  He turned and waved, then gave her a cursory smile. “Make sure to set the alarm.”

  Then he was gone, driving away in an old purple car that reminded her of a Cutlass. Purple. That just didn’t seem like Kel.

  She turned back just in time to hear the phone ring. She shut the front door and locked it before running for the phone.

  “Yes? Oh, yes. I did ask Kel to have you call me. Yes, we should. I would like that very much. Okay, I’ll see you then. I’ll look forward to it.”

  She replaced the phone gently in its cradle and tilted her head in wonder. Paige Lawson wanted to meet with her. She agreed that maybe they could help each other. She had tried the number Kel had given her for Meggie Ryan many times, but there was never anyone at home. But at least Paige wanted t
o talk.

  She turned off the lights and went upstairs. She had been asleep for two hours when she remembered the alarm. She wasn’t sure what had caused her to wake up, but now she wasn’t sure whether she had set the damn thing or not. She patted Kayla on the back and smoothed the covers over her shoulders, then went downstairs to check. The lights were flashing, showing that it was set. She pressed the display panel just for kicks to see what time she had set it. Twelve-thirty. That couldn’t be right, it was only one o’clock right now. Maybe she hadn’t been asleep as long as she’d thought. She hadn’t looked at the clock when Kel left, maybe it hadn’t been as early as she’d thought. She shrugged and went back upstairs. Well it certainly wasn’t anything to worry about, no one would come into a house and set an alarm that had been off.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Harold Satterfield walked the beach, staying close to the dune line and ignoring the couples strolling at the water’s edge. He tossed the key ring into the air and caught it repeatedly, enjoying the heft of it and listening to the keys clink together. All his girls’ keys were here, he had collected them over many months. He had keys to all of Laura’s houses, even to some of her daddy’s beach houses.

  He hadn’t been able to resist using the key. He wanted to see if he had been right, the keys had been tagged and he had been careful to copy the tags when he had copied the keys. He’d had six places to check, but he had finally found her. But tonight wasn’t the night, he had to find a way to get more of those little blue pills. He wouldn’t do well by her without them. He had a source, but the man hadn’t shown up this week. He’d be there tomorrow though, he was always there at the high school for the home games, and he’d get more Viagra. These days he needed help in the romance department, each day it was getting harder and harder to accept the fact that he was getting older, but it was becoming a hard, cold fact. His body was not what it used to be, but as far as he was concerned it was still pretty damn good.