Finally, there it was. The grin. He said, “I guess I’d better try harder with you.”
“That goes for me too.”
They both laughed.
Then he said, “An exclusive relationship is fine with me. I just want you to stick around for a while...if not longer.”
“Exclusive as long as we are together. No other promises. I’ll be finishing law school and starting my law career. That’s a major passage for me. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen afterward. However, I do hope we’ll be together.”
He pulled her close and gave her a lingering kiss.
“Here’s a toast, Chip. To us.”
They clinked glasses and sipped in silence for several minutes. Then they laughed at the same time.
“You’re now free to get into more trouble.”
“Right now I just want to bask in a wave of peace and calm. And spend my time between my law books and you. And only you.”
“And you...need to be careful when messing around with ‘just sex.’”
“You’re right, and I’ve learned from observing Freddy. You must also watch out for the passion. It can lie quietly inside you waiting until someone rouses it from sleep. Then beware.” She stared down at her drink, idly moving the ice around with the celery stalk. “Then it awakens with a roar, demanding to take control.”
“Sandy, where are you? Where is all this passion talk coming from?”
“Oh...you said sex is dynamite...so is passion.” She had recovered from her private reminiscence. “Sometimes you’re the dynamite and sometimes you’re the fuse.”
“Which am I?”
“Chip, you are definitely one great burning fuse and I’m the dynamite. Around you, I’m combustible. You can set me off anytime.”
He drained his glass in one gulp, stood, and reached for her hands. She stood facing him and he placed his hands on her upper arms and drew her closer. She tilted her head back slightly as he kissed her neck then softly on her lips. While holding the kiss he ran his hands over her back. He felt the curve of her waist for a moment and then pushed his hands on down under her pajamas until he was grasping her buttocks. He pulled her tightly against him almost lifting her. Then he broke the kiss long enough to lift her up completely.
Chapter Thirty-three
Three months had passed. It was April. Spring according to the calendar, but spring doesn’t linger in Florida. Already summer if you believed the thermometer. Sandy Reid had finished her law degree from FAU and studied quietly in her own apartment for the July bar exam. She managed to find time for regular sleepovers with Chip.
Martin Bronner had invited Sandy for dinner, one evening, at his home with his father. He prepared a quite acceptable Coquille Saint-Jacques. The next day the three took an enjoyable trip to the Sarasota Music Festival on Florida’s west coast.
The outcome of Nita Bank’s lawsuit, now in the hands of the judge, was progressing favorably. The resulting buzz had generated a few new clients for Martin. He tried to devote some time to the book he had started writing on the subject of what if Lincoln hadn’t been assassinated.
The latest email from Jamie explained she loved the fishing trip in the Georgia Mountains with her daddy: “...glad I didn’t catch anything because I don’t like seeing the poor little fish die on my hook. Love, Jamie. Daddy says hello.”
Jerry Kagan had suffered a mild stroke, but was recuperating nicely. He had received a lucrative offer from a developer for the building that had housed his law office for fifty years. He teased saying he could retire for good if Sandy would just keep herself out of the next murder in a small Florida town.
Was it strange that Freddy Kidde was still on her mind? Public interest in the Privado Beach episode had faded to zero after State Attorney Moran declared the investigation showed no wrongdoing whatsoever on the part of the congressman. Did Kidde fade away as well?
Sandy had immersed herself in his fascinating story as he was telling it. The once prominent congressman casually encountering a stranded young woman in a convenience store. The stranger had targeted him as a safe, malleable man, but he made the decision to give her a ride. As she listened, Sandy had been annoyed with his pompous manner as he was aloof and judgmental. Then Sandy thought it comical when the hitchhiker revealed she stripped for a living and he then assumed with arrogance that she would be available to him.
It was obvious to Sandy that his fascination became obsessive as he projected Betty Jo’s acceptance of him. But did she encourage him in order to torture him, as he believed, because of deep-rooted issues she had with men? In any case, only after his passion was uncontrollable had he realized she was beyond his reach. By then it was too late; he couldn’t let go.
As upsetting as it was to him personally, Sandy didn’t feel that the obsession was necessarily disabling. It could have been merely another of those haunting preoccupations that secretly demonize the mind of millions. No worse than the demons ordinary people have always lived with. Except, in his case, there was a dramatic final stroke. His misdirected passion was exposed when he failed to report her death.
Now Sandy wondered what happened to poor old Freddy. Did he blame Betty Jo, himself, or just plain bad luck for what happened? She wanted an ending to the story.
She wasn’t certain if he’d take her phone call. Perhaps he blamed her for bringing his world crashing down. She wasn’t certain if he still lived down in Jensen Beach, or if his phone number still worked. She knew she had to try.
After his answering machine message, he heard her voice, picked up, and said hello. He sounded weak, “I’ve been screening my calls, Miss Reid. Only people with nasty comments, death threats, or sick jokes phone me now.”
“I never realized there were necrophilia jokes,” she said. “I felt compelled to call you, Freddy. I’m not sure why. I guess because I was involved and still haven’t processed it all.” For some reason the curtain wasn’t closed in her mind.
“Glad you did. May I call you Sandy again?”
“I read a series of articles about you in the New York Times, about a month ago. How they forced you to resign your seat in the House of Representatives, forced out of Congress. That had to hurt.”
“I’m still mentioned in the press, thankfully less frequently now. It remains torture. I still cringe as I turn each newspaper page, wondering if my name will be mentioned. My colleagues in DC turned their backs on me. The House Ethics Committee, made it too uncomfortable for me to stay. I once knew everyone who mattered. Everyone liked me. Now I’m inconsequential. You don’t want to be caught with a dead woman.”
“Being innocent is often never enough,” she said into the phone.
“Ellen left me, you know. Can’t blame her for that. No relative will acknowledge me.”
“I imagine accepting an suspected necrophiliac might push the limit for some families.”
“And outside the family as well,” he said. “My secretary broke the sound barrier getting out of here. Didn’t stop to clean out her desk or take her precious plant. We belong to several civic associations. Have always supported a multitude of charities, the museum, the symphony. They don’t call even for donations anymore. I went over to the club only once. My family built that club and now I’m persona non grata. I knew they were laughing at me. Everyone is against me it seems. Suspicion and rumors will always be there. A lifetime of work gone. My name will always be linked to necrophilia—a word I’d never even thought of before in my entire life.”
“I don't think one word can describe a man’s life.”
“Perhaps, but everything I’ve accomplished will now carry that footnote. Humiliated and ruined nonetheless.”
“Sounds as though you’ve been judged harshly.”
“I’ve family money and some congressional perks I’m entitled to, so I never need to leave the house again. It will be safer that way. No one can spit on me. Perhaps I’ll let my nails grow like Howard Hughes. Did you know you could get home delivery of grocer
ies on the Internet? I have everything I need...except respect.”
“You aren’t blameless. You could have done things differently that night.”
“Should never have left. My political survival instinct told me not to hang around a dead naked female.”
“Correction. She wasn’t naked when you left her with Toby. She had the bikini bottom on. Right?”
“Right. Leaving seemed a reasonable decision at the time. What a tragic mistake. Now that I’m calm I can reason like that, but at the time....”
“Since you did leave, you should never have paid Toby any blackmail. Why did you?”
“I thought I was in the clear. Then he showed up at my house. I felt guilty. I panicked. I couldn’t risk having any connection to the incident. He guessed I wouldn’t risk exposure even if innocent. I don’t know. I just paid him, that’s all.”
“There’s something else unresolved in my mind, Freddy. When I was at your place trying to get you to come forward, you mentioned you had followed the story in the paper and they played up the fact that her pubic hair was waxed, or shaved. The titillating fact, I think you called it.”
“Yes, I remember our conversation.”
“That interesting bit of information was never released by the police. They held it back on purpose. I checked and it was never in the papers. Not even in the police report. You told me her bikini bottom was never removed while you were there. How did you know she was shaved, Freddy?”
Silence on the phone.
“Freddy...how did you know?”
“She showed me once during the trip.”
“She what!”
“That evening when we were sitting there drinking and laughing in the Marriott lounge. We’d had a few. She was getting high. She glanced around first to be certain no one could see what she was up to. With a devilish smile on her face, she told me to drop my napkin and look under the table...she did it to please me. Isn’t that amazing? I was delighted. Didn’t I mention Candy did that?”
“You mean Betty Jo.”
“Just when she realized she loved me and wanted me, our affair was cut short by that tragic accident.”
“What affair?”
His voice sounded different, “Don’t you understand the heartbreak I suffered. We’d be together right now in this house. We would have had it all if not for that tragedy. I’ll always have Candy.”
“You’ll what?”
“She was naturally reticent at first, but gradually came around as the trip progressed. As she grew to know me, she became more warm and loving.”
“Warm and loving?”
“We had grown close by the time we got to Florida. She had me fooled at the start with her little hard-to-get game. She was clever. But then it became obvious to me. She pretended to reject me as a ploy to heighten the excitement we’d share at the end of our trip.”
“You said you knew you’d never get her. She was unattainable. She was calling the shots. Freddy, you’re babbling somewhere between fantasy and reality.”
“No, no. It was me she wanted. We both were thrilled because we were close to the torrid adventure waiting for us when we got to Ft. Lauderdale. She wanted us to be together all along. She longed for me, but needed to be assured that I would accept her. She agreed to become my mistress after all. She wanted to dance for me. We would have been lovers for years. I’d leave my wife for her. She was so perfect, so gorgeous.”
“You once told me she was plain looking.”
“No, Candy was beautiful. She was a present from the gods.”
“Freddy, you’ve sacrificed everything for a foolish passion.”
“When a beautiful woman opens up to you, and gives you her love. You experience something so marvelous that you can never adequately remember it, yet it can never be taken away.”
Oh, my God! She had it now. She knew what had happened. “You’ve told me all I need to know, Freddy. Goodbye, I never want to talk to you again.”
“I close my eyes and I see her young face and the longing look in her eyes. The soft, sad look of a beautiful woman offering her love and destined to die so young. I’ll never love again. It’s enough to know I’m a rare and fortunate man who once shared love with the perfect woman. Don’t you see? That’s why I had to go back. Candy was right where I left her, still untouched.”
“Freddy, I’m hanging up.”
“She took me, not the other way around. She enveloped me, enclosed me. It was her last desire. She wanted it that way. Candy will always be happy about that. It was the perfect ending to our marvelous adventure together.”
“Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper, the strength had gone out of her voice. “Sex would be a marvelous adventure if it didn’t make some people go crazy.”
Sandy closed her phone and let it fall from her hand. She broke down and fell sobbing across her arms.
The End
About the author:
Rod Hoisington has a background in business and education and lives in Vero Beach, Florida.
The Price of Candy is the second novel in the Sandy Reid Mystery series and is available in paperback from Amazon.
How it all began...
Read and enjoy the first Sandy Reid mystery
One Deadly Sister
*****
Five Star Mystery Novel Rating
Irrepressible protagonist Sandy Reid is living and working in Philadelphia when she gets a life or death call from her estranged brother in Florida—she tells him to go to hell. She doesn't need this. She's holding an old grudge and resents having her life in Philadelphia interrupted. Her brother Raymond isn't looking for trouble, he simply wants to get past his Philadelphia divorce and start a new life in a small Florida ocean side town.
Unfortunately, woman-trouble comes looking for him. He arrives just as someone decides to murder the local gubernatorial candidate. Raymond doesn't have a clue about women and gets seduced and framed. He hasn't bothered with his sister up north for years, but now as a stranger in a hostile town, Sandy is his only hope. After briefly enjoying his misfortune, Sandy reluctantly decides to at least check out her brother's predicament.
This small step leads to an ever-increasing entanglement of deceit, double-cross, and danger, as she can't leave well-enough alone and goes after the real killer in this fast-paced mystery.
This book is available in print at most online retailers
eBook versions available at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rodhoisington
Read what critics are saying about
One Deadly Sister
“...a clever plot enfolds, firmly supported by interesting characters. If you like mysteries, you’ll enjoy this one. No loose ends.”
-- Gene Hull, Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers
“A very creative and enjoyable first novel...grabs hold of you early on and you can't get away from it...”
--Betty Gelean for ReviewTheBook.com
“...this novel has an excellent plot which keeps readers glued to the pages until the very end. Great, strong, enjoyable characters...a great read!”
-- Goodreads.com
“...murder mystery at its best...a great and realistic story line that will keep you guessing til the end.”
Michele Tater, ReviewTheBook.com
“If you enjoy mysteries that keep your mind guessing and racing until the very end, you don't want to miss this story.”
“...an excellent mystery story that provides a plot full of twists, surprises, an array of colorful characters, and even a dash of humor. ...well formed and keeps readers captivated while the entire story quickly unfolds.
-- Feathered Quill Book Reviews
“(Stayed up) 'til the wee hours of the morn', coz I was busy reading a quite interesting novel entitled One Deadly Sister”
-- DelGal’s blog
“...The mystery plot is well developed, there are an ample number of colorfully drawn suspects, and the secondary characters are delightful. No doubt the first in a ser
ies, One Deadly Sister is a terrific opening chapter for this pair of amateur sleuths.”
-- Hidden Staircase Mystery Books
“...If this story line does not get your full attention, then you need to check your pulse. I, for one, can hardly wait for the publication of the next Rod Hoisington mystery novel.”
-- P. A. Lavins, Book Critic (Washington, D. C.)
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The Price of Candy sr-2 Page 26