Deadly Housewives (v5) (epub)

by Marcia Muller

  By now, they’d had quite a few mojitos and Roy evidently wasn’t firing on all cylinders. “You mean the guy’s a drug pusher or something?”

  Heidi’s teeth showed, and water warbled over rocks. “You got it,” she said. “It’s what they call a pill mill. I figure Caulfield raked in about a thousand dollars in the twenty minutes I was in there.”

  Roy was still working it out. “So, was it a fake doctor or something?”

  “No, I think he was real—he had a diploma on the wall. But his English wasn’t so good, and maybe he has a little trouble building up a practice. Also”—she paused—“I’m sure he’s very well paid.”

  Well, they had a big ol’ laugh over that one—of course the guy was well paid—Mr. Caulfield was basically running a money factory. The question in Forest’s mind was how to get hold of a whole big chunk of the goods.

  “You mentioned, like—half a million dollars?” he said.

  “Actually,” Heidi said, and licked her lips, “that would be a conservative estimate. Did I mention my cleaning lady also works for Mr. Caulfield? One day I lifted her keys and duplicated them.”

  “Uh-huh. And checked out Mr. Caulfield’s house.”

  “I figured there had to be something good in there. But, gentlemen, I could never in a million years have guessed.”

  Roy was about to jump out of his chair. “What? What the hell was it?”

  “Well, think about it. If you’re taking in that much money—and so very illegally—you are going to want to hide quite a bit of it from—”

  “Yeah! The IRS!”

  “You got it, Roy. But Mr. Caulfield apparently has quite a bit to learn about the fine art of money laundering, because guess what he’s got in his oversize McMansion?”

  “Cash, by any chance?”

  “Garbage bags of cash. Great big black lawn-size plastic bags three feet tall when full—and, my sweets, they are positively overflowing.”

  Forest was trying not to salivate, and Roy was, too, but it was getting the best of him, anyhow—Forest could see a little bit of drool in the corner of his mouth. “Check this out,” Heidi said, producing a plump green bundle, which she handed to Forest. He leafed through it.

  “All hundreds.”

  Heidi nodded. “A hundred of them. Ten thousand dollars. I—what is it you say?—I liberated them.”

  Roy leaned back, foot crossed over ankle, regaining his composure, or pretending to. “Well, if you can get into his house, why not liberate the whole mess for your pretty little self? We ain’t never noticed you bein’ generous before.”

  She said everybody knew her there, and she’d been able to claim she was taking in Mr. Caulfield’s mail while he was away, just that once, but how could she get away with removing two great big garbage bags? Well, she might, but the risk wasn’t worth it.

  “And you think we could get away with it?” Forest said.

  “You’re gardeners, right? That’s what I told the guard. Gardeners are always hauling large plastic bags.”

  “You also told the guard my name.”

  A delicate pink briefly stained Heidi’s porcelain skin. “Ah, yes, the guard. Well, one little bundle for him.” She snatched the money back from Forest. “In fact, this one. We’ll never notice it’s missing.”

  “Yeah?” Roy crunched ice. “What’s our cut?”

  “Half, of course. I owe you guys. I know that.” Her eyes looked like little pieces of the sky.

  “That’s for sure, sweetheart,” Roy said. “The part about you owing us.”

  “Boys, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. Mr. Caulfield can’t even report a burglary, do you realize that? Because he’s not supposed to have that money. For all I know, he won’t even notice it missing for a while. You’ll never find a better setup than this one.”

  “What about alarms?”

  “Well, that’s the good part. He leaves his off for the cleaning lady—afraid if she knows the code, she’ll rob him on her day off, I guess. How screwed up is that? Anyhow, I know all this because she happens to be my cleaning lady, did I mention that? But he’s too cheap to pay for a whole day—shares Thursdays with Mrs. D’Amato down the street. Mimi’s at her house in the morning and Caulfield’s in the afternoon, but the alarm’s off all day. That’s how I got in that other time—went while she was at Mrs. D’Amato’s. Anyhow, tomorrow’s Thursday—you could just do an instant replay.”

  Forest was doubtful. “Sounds pretty stupid to me—leavin’ your alarm off like that.”

  Heidi made a little noise like pfui. “Forest, this is Belle Reve—a highly upscale gated community, in case you didn’t notice. You’d have to have a tank to get in here if you didn’t belong. Truth is, Caulfield’s probably the only one in the whole place who even bothers with an alarm—and I think we know why, don’t we?”

  Forest and Roy thought about it. Finally, Roy said, “Sounds reasonable, I guess.”

  “Why don’t you two take a swim? Think about it awhile? You can skinny-dip, you know—look at the fence.” Sure enough, she had just about complete privacy back there. Forest was wishing Roy was about five hundred miles away. Something about this chick…

  “Think I will,” Roy said, and he peeled off his shorts, causing Forest to wince at the mental comparison he was making. Roy didn’t even have a cell phone, women called him so much. All he had to do to get laid was go to the beach, a bar, the mailbox, the drugstore, and chicks followed him around like a litter of puppy dogs. He could take his pick, but he wasn’t even a little bit particular. To him, pussy was pretty much pussy. In all the time Forest had known him, he’d never planked the same chick twice except for Heidi’s predecessor, the first Mrs. Handshaw, but that was for the cause. “You coming, Forest?” Roy said.

  Last thing Forest was about to do was give Heidi a chance to compare his pink peckerwood jelly belly with Roy’s perfect tanned six-pack. Roy pumped iron every day, in or out of the joint. Forest liked to exercise his right elbow, that was about it.

  “Nah. Might have me another mojito.”

  Heidi squeezed his knee and shot him a little close-mouthed Mona Lisa thing as she got up to get it. She gave him another squeeze when she got back. “Forest,” she said,

  “you may not believe this, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Listen, I really thought I was in love with Ben Handshaw when we met. You kind of shook me up a little. I mean I was already committed, you understand? But you…I don’t know—you moved me.”

  Uh-huh, Forest was thinking. “So what went wrong here?” he said.

  Heidi looked away. “Oh…you know. Drinking. Gambling.” She pulled up her dress to show a bruise on her thigh. “Even that. He never hits me where anyone can see.”

  “Well, why not just divorce him and take his money?”

  “Did I mention the gambling? There isn’t that much money, honey. Besides…we’re not exactly married. Nobody knows it here, but…well…you know.”

  “I hear you.” He heard her loud and clear. Rich guy has affair with Heidi, catches wife with Roy, uses that to dump her, but then thinks, why take on another cheating bitch? Forest could relate. Except there was a piece of him that…he couldn’t explain it. There was just something about this chick. She was drop-dead gorgeous, there was that. But there was something about her that seemed like it might break—she seemed so fragile and ladylike, he wanted to hold her and protect her and…he stopped himself. Whoa, don’t go there, boy. He knew this chick. She really was the devil in a blue dress—or she would be if she went in for blue. Wasn’t nothing in the world she wouldn’t do to get what she wanted.

  “I was just wondering…later, when this is all over…? I mean, is there a chance?”

  “Baby, you want to know something? You’ve always been the one that got away. There’s not a chance, there’s a certainty.”

  They kissed on it, like Forest knew they’d have to. But he hardly felt a thing—or at least hardly anything more than Roy was probably accustomed to feeling. />
  Later, over a couple of brewskis, Roy got into a little negativity. “I don’t know, man. I can’t get over the feeling she’s setting us up for something.”

  “I don’t think so—she hit on me again.”

  “You? She hit on you?”

  “Well, yeah. When she could have had you. Thinks I’m sensitive and gentle, I think.”

  Roy spewed beer.

  “Yeah, I know. My own mama wouldn’t make that kind of dumb mistake. So what was she after? I’ll tell you what she was after. She’s trying to rope me in again. Like she did the last time. So we won’t screw her out of the take. But think about it—that means there’s gonna be a take—there really is somethin’ in that house, man.”

  Roy considered. “Could be.” He nodded, his long hair bobbing on his shoulders. “Know what? I don’t like the deal she offered us. Why should she get half and we only get a fourth each? Let’s ask her to go thirdsies, see what that does.”

  Well, when she called that night, she wouldn’t go for it, which pretty much decided Forest, who’d in truth been wavering a teeny little bit on the issue of leaving her high and dry. The matter was now closed.

  They loaded up a couple black plastic bags with newspapers and went into the house at noon the next day. It was a fancy-ass Tudor-style house with marble floors and chandeliers that were probably each worth more than Roy’s pickup, but even Forest could see how tacky it was, and Graceland was his idea of elegance. It was the white piano that tipped him off, in addition to the general whiteness of everything else, which was mostly leather with great big ugly brass studs on it. “Man,” he said, “if I had this dude’s money, I’d get me some actual antiques.”

  “Not me, bro’,” Roy said. “Know what I’d like? I want me one of them pulpits people make into bars.”

  “Well, if Heidi’s not lying, I’d say it’s only a matter of time.”

  Bless her cheatin’ little heart, she wasn’t, it turned out. The bags of hard, cold cash were exactly as advertised, in a storage cabinet in the den, a high-up one you had to get a ladder for, not the sort of place a cleaning lady would look, but a thorough burglar would. And the current Mrs. Handshaw seemed pretty thorough.

  They even pawed through them to make sure the money went all the way to the bottom and wasn’t just salted on top. “Hey,” Roy said. “This thing’s for real.”

  “Yeah.” Forest could barely whisper. It was almost like being in church. For a moment they were both so quiet you could have heard a mouse squeak. But all house hold rodents held their peace. The sound they clearly heard was human.

  Roy was on it first. “Hey, man, what’s that?”

  Forest noticed his buddy’d just lost his tan. “Shit! Somebody’s here. I knew this goddamn thing was too good to be true. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait a minute.” Roy held up a beefy hand. “It sounds like cryin’. Like a chick, bawlin’ her eyes out.”

  “Not our problem, Roy. We’re lookin’ at ten to twenty here.” (Actually, he had no idea what the penalty was for burgling in Louisiana, but who cared? What ever it was, he couldn’t afford it.)

  Like a fool, Roy was already padding down the white-carpeted hall, holding up a hand for Forest to keep quiet.

  Like another one, Forest padded after him, but he knocked into some kind of weird sculpture that hung on the wall. The crying stopped. “Bert, is that you? Please come and untie me, baby. I can’t even feel my hands anymore.”

  Forest and Roy froze. “Please, Bert! Oh God, I’m gonna die here! I want my mama!” And then she started crying again.

  “Sounds like a kid,” Roy whispered.

  About then the chick started praying, one of those Catholic things they pray in Louisiana. “Hail Mary, full of grace, Our Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women…oh, Blessed Mother, help me! I swear I’ll never do anything bad again; I’ll devote myself to Jesus—oh, God, I don’t deserve to die trussed up like a pig. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!”

  “Jesus, shit! This guy could be a serial killer.” Roy looked like death. He wasn’t the type you’d think would go in for rescuing damsels, but Forest had once seen him take on three guys who were pestering a woman in a bar. No way was he leaving now; Forest knew him. And no way Forest was, either. The way he looked at it, you had to make a living some way and robbing the rich happened to be his, but he could not walk away from this. His mother, rest her soul, would hunt him down and haunt him the rest of his life.

  Roy pushed open the door closest to the sounds, and there, tied to a big old four-poster bed—hands and feet both—was a naked girl, looked about fifteen, and the prettiest little thing Forest had ever seen. Least her face was—he was too embarrassed to check out the rest. It was a face red from crying and it now turned dead white. “Omigod,” she whispered. “Please. Please don’t kill me.” And then she squeezed her little eyes shut and braced herself, shaking from neck to toes, like she was freezing. Most pitiful thing Forest had ever seen.

  Roy ripped his shirt off and covered her torso, cradling her head and crooning to her. “You’re okay, honey. We’re the good guys; you’re gonna be fine.”

  She opened her eyes as Forest went to work on the knots in the black silk bands that held her feet. “You’re the cops?”

  “Not exactly. More like, uh…Superman and Batman. You just take it easy now, we’re gonna get you outta here. You got any clothes?”

  She started crying again. “He cut them up! Cut up all my clothes right in front of me.”

  Forest had her legs free now, but she winced. “Hurts.”

  He started to massage them. “Still hurt? The feeling coming back? Tell you what, Roy, you go finish up in there and I’ll take care of this little girl. Find her some clothes and all.”

  Roy was looking slightly greenish. “Yeah. I was just thinkin’ that.”

  “Take your shirt, though.” Man was so shook up he’d forgotten his own shirt.

  Forest untied the girl’s hands, told her to rub them for circulation and rummaged in a chest of drawers until he found sweats and a T-shirt for her. Shyly, he handed them over, averting his eyes, but he was so nervous he figured he’d better keep talking.

  “I’m Forest, by the way. We—uh—came over to do some gardening and came in the house for a drink of water. My buddy’s just loadin’ up the trash now. Can I—uh—get you anything else?”

  “My purse,” the girl said. “Maybe he didn’t throw away my purse.”

  Forest looked around, saw a raggedy backpack on the floor near the chest. Picking it up, he said, “This it?”

  She grabbed it like it was full of gold bars and rummaged till she found a little coin purse. “Oh, thank God! He didn’t rob me.”

  Honey, you just escaped a serial killer or something, he thought. That’s all you can think about? And then he remembered she was just a kid. And probably didn’t have two dimes to rub together. “Did he hurt you?” he said.

  “You friends with him?” Once again, she was holding the backpack like maybe it could somehow save her life. She looked like a scared little bird.

  “No. No, you’ve got nothing to worry about. We’ll take you to the—uh, cops or something.”

  “No! No, I can’t—”

  He was hoping she’d say that. “Okay, take it easy. We’ll take you home, then.”

  “No!” Louder this time.

  Forest was starting to get it. “You a runaway or something? What’s your name?”

  “Oh, sorry—it’s Allison.” She shook hands with him, her palm sticky with sweat. Her face twisted into something that was almost a smile. She hadn’t said whether Caulfield had hurt her.

  Forest said, “You sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes. Yeah, sure. Just scared, that’s all. If you hadn’t come along—”

  “Yeah,” Forest said. He usually hated people who said there was a reason for everything, but he hated to think what might have happened if he and Roy hadn’t happened to be there right then, relieving
Mr. Caulfield of his cash. “Let me just check on my buddy.” He walked to the door of the room. “Roy? How you comin’ out there?”

  “All loaded up,” Roy said, already padding down the hall. “Let’s get this young lady out of here. Honey, I’m Roy.”

  For him, she managed a real smile. She was still clutching the bag. “Allison. Can we go now?”

  “You got it.”

  “Roy,” Forest said. “Miss Allison’s a runaway—that right, missy?”

  “Listen, lots of people know where I am,” she said, her eyes pretty well terrified. Forest realized he’d sounded kind of sinister.

  “You’re fine, baby. Really. If you don’t want a ride, you don’t have to go anywhere with us. I just thought—”

  Roy said, “What do I have to do to convince you we’re the good guys? Hey, I know, I’ll call my mama—you can talk to her. Forest, gimme your phone.”

  Allison laughed. “No, listen. It’s okay. I’ve just kind of—”

  “Yeah. Been through a lot.”

  They went out the side door, where their truck was parked in the carport. Forest saw two black plastic bags in the bed of the truck and cocked an eye at Roy, who nodded that he’d made the switch.

  Forest tried to motion the girl into the vehicle, but she hung back. Then he got it—she didn’t want to sit between them. “Hey, listen, I’ll sit in the middle. You can be on the side, where you can jump out if you get nervous. Look, we might be Bert Caulfield’s gardeners”—he made sure Roy heard that part—“but we have it on good authority he’s not a nice man. All we want to do’s get you home.”

  And out of our hair. He was ashamed of himself for thinking it, but this was no time to babysit.

  “Not home,” she said. “I can’t go home. How about the French Quarter?”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Once they were under way, Roy said, “So, what happened, Allison? How’d you wind up with a guy like Caulfield?”

  “Bar,” she said, so low Forest could barely hear it. “Fake ID.” That pretty much said it all, he thought—runaway picks up rich guy in a bar, he takes her home, and nobody even knows she’s missing.