“Didn’t your mama tell you not to talk to strangers?” Roy said. “I mean, unless they find you tied up naked. Hardly any choice in that case.”
She laughed again.
Forest’s cell phone rang. “Private caller,” it said. “Hey, girl,” he said, knowing it was Heidi. “We’re good, everything’s fine—but we just have to make a little run to the French Quarter right now. Sorry. See you in about an hour.”
“What are you telling me?” Heidi’s voice was furious. “Forest McElroy, if you don’t show up, I swear to God, I’ll hunt you down and lop off every one of your appendages. Joint by joint.”
“Baby, take it easy. We gotta do a good deed, that’s all. We’ll be there.” And he hung up. “Hoo boy, is she mad!” he said to Roy.
Allison giggled. “Girlfriend?”
“Wife,” he said. “It don’t get much worse than that.”
“He’s not kiddin’,” Roy said. “Forest’s wife is so ugly, stones turn to stone when they see her comin’.”
“Roy, that don’t make no sense at all,” Forest said grumpily, but Allison giggled again, and Roy kept her entertained all the way to the French Quarter with amusing anecdotes about how mean the wife was, how bad her cooking was, how bad she smelled, anything he could think of. By the time they got there, the girl seemed pretty cheered up.
“Where shall we drop you?” Roy said.
“Oh—anywhere. I’ll find my friends.”
Yep. A runaway all right.
“Look, you got any money?” Forest pulled out a hundred-dollar bill he’d taken for luck out of the pile he and Roy had just boosted.
“Hey, thanks,” she said, and as soon as the truck slowed down, she was gone. Just opened the door and split the second she could.
Roy looked at his buddy. “No kiss good-bye?”
“That was one scared rabbit,” Forest said. “Listen, we gotta report this. What if that dude really is a murderer or somethin’?”
“Well, I’ve been thinkin’ about that. What do we say? ‘Hey, we found this chick tied up while committing a burglary and maybe the home owner’s a suspicious person?’ Listen, the dude’s probably no worse than your average pervert—probably just wanted to think about her all day, tied up like that, then come home and let her go. After—you know.”
“Hell, she couldn’t be but fifteen—that makes him a criminal right there.”
“Yeah? How we gonna prove it?”
He had a point there. Forest decided to think on it awhile. The main thing right now was to get out to Airline Highway and find a fleabag motel and unload the money and count it. Then they could get some cheap suitcases to put it in and then…well, maybe split up and each go off and be rich.
Forest’s phone rang again. He looked at it. “It’s her.” He tossed it out the window. “Plenty money to get another.”
More than they thought. Closer to two than one million. They were high-fiving and jumping all around when Roy said, “The hell with the suitcases. Let’s get drunk and do it in the morning.”
“No, man. We gotta be responsible. We gotta do it now.”
“We can’t leave the money here.”
“Hey, I thought you wanted to get drunk.”
“Oh, yeah. Damn. We shoulda taken some out and got the suitcases first. Now what do we do? Can’t even go get a burger.” One could go, of course, and leave the other to guard the loot, but as close friends as Roy and Forest were, neither of them considered that one for a minute—each one of them knowing the other way too well.
“Only one thing to do—gotta bag it up again, take enough out for expenses, and take it with us to get what we need.”
Forest shrugged and started putting his pile back in its plastic leaf bag, all but one package. “We’ll split this up, okay?” he said. “Just pack up.”
When they were finished, they picked up their bags and opened the door, whereupon they were greeted by Mrs. Heidi Handshaw, her right hand closed over a little white-handled gun. “Hi, guys. Nice job. Put the stuff in my car, okay?” She pointed to a little white Taurus, not at all the kind of car a rich lady ought to have.
“Say wha…?” Roy said.
“Hey, Heidi, honey,” Forest said casually. He prided himself on thinking on his feet. “Get out of our way, now. You’re not gon’ shoot us.”
“Maybe not,” she said, “but my buddy over there wouldn’t think twice about it.”
“Over where?” Roy asked, just as something big crashed into him—the guard from Belle Reve, a big redhead, running at him sideways. And Heidi did shoot, taking off some of Forest’s arm hair.
“Drop your bundles, gentlemen,” she said, but actually they already had. The guard scooped them into the Taurus, and then scooped up Heidi, who kept the gun trained on Forest and Roy till the damn car was in motion.
“Say wha…?” Roy said again.
“Get in the truck, Roy. Let’s chase ’em!”
What do you know? The car wouldn’t start. “Big surprise,” Forest grumped, and Roy got out to look under the hood.
Allison! Forest thought. Tied up all night, all morning—she should have had to pee. Should have been bustin’. So she hadn’t been there that long. The kid was a booby trap of some kind. He thought about the way she’d left so suddenly, the hundred-dollar bill still clutched in her hand…
“Wait a minute,” he said aloud. “She didn’t have her backpack with her.”
“What’s that?” Roy had returned. “They took our spark plugs, by the way.”
Forest was rooting around on the floor. Sure enough, while Roy was spewing out all that dumb-ass chatter about Forest’s so-called wife, the kid had managed to drop it on the floor and stuff it under the seat with her feet. Forest pulled it out. “Whaddaya bet this thing has a GPS in it?”
“Holy shit,” Roy said, catching on right away. “How we gonna tell? Wouldn’t know one if I saw it.”
But there was some kind of thing in it had to be one.
“Goddammit,” Roy said, “I knew we couldn’t trust that foreign broad. How come you were so confident?”
“Let’s go get a beer.”
And so, as usual, they discussed the matter over their favorite adult beverage.
“She outthought us,” Forest said.
“Elementary, Dr. W. For the second time.”
“See, what she did, she pretended to want my studly pink body, but she knew I wouldn’t buy it. I thought I was supposed to think she was tryin’ to keep me from double-crossin’ her, but actually, she figured out we were already planning to, so she wanted us to think she was trying to get us not to, because that way we’d think everything was okay.”
“Not sure I follow that, bro’.”
“She wanted us off guard. Subconsciously thinkin’ she was tryin’ to lure us to the meetin’ place. So we wouldn’t suspect nothin’ about the naked girl in the house.”
“Who ya think she was?”
Forest shrugged. “Runaway, probably. Just like she said. Heidi probably paid her a few hundred bucks up front, and then we gave her another hundred. She wasn’t gon’ ask no questions.”
“Well, look. This ain’t no problem, really. We just go to Belle Reve tomorrow and ask for Mrs. Handshaw. Then we shake her down and go on our merry way.”
“What if her buddy’s in the guard house?”
Roy shrugged. “We beat the shit out of him. What the hell’s your problem, man?” He pronounced it “hail.”
Forest grinned. “No problem at all.” He drank up.
Next day, there was a different guard waiting for them, in a different uniform—a young, insecure one who didn’t even seem to know who Mrs. Handshaw was. “Well, locate her!” Forest snapped. “She’s expecting us.”
Shaking his head, the guy went to get his boss, who, Forest was relieved to see, wasn’t Heidi’s buddy, either. He was a beefy guy, name of Claude, a lot older than the others. Maybe an ex-cop. “You guys got a problem?”
“Lookin’ for Heidi Handshaw—Mrs. Be
n Handshaw; 405 Pelican Drive.”
Claude scratched his head. “Dr. and Mrs. Inglesby live at that address,” he said. “You sure you don’t want Mrs. Inglesby?”
“The lady we want’s a blonde with blue eyes and a great laugh. About thirty-two, I’d say, but maybe older. Slight accent—could be Dutch. That Mrs. Inglesby?” Forest wasn’t sure about a damn thing about Heidi at this point—she could be Icelandic for all he knew.
“Accent, you say? Hang on a minute.” He brought back a file and extracted a picture from it. “Is this her?”
“Yeah. How come you got a file on her?”
“You boys mind coming in a minute? I think we got somethin’ to talk about.”
Roy and Forest exchanged glances. This didn’t sound good. But on the other hand at least Claude would be where they could see him—if he tried to call the cops, they’d be right there to stop him. They climbed down out of the truck, and when they were settled in Claude’s neat little office, he said, “What made you think this little gal’s named Mrs. Handshaw?”
Forest’s stomach did a somersault. “How come you got a file on her?” he repeated.
“’Cause she’s my employee—or was till this morning, when she didn’t show up for work. She ever shows her skinny butt around here again, I’m gon’ kick it halfway to Baton Rouge. I can’t run this place with these half-assed temps.”
“She’s a guard here?” Forest asked, but just for form’s sake—if she was a guard, everything fell neatly into place.
“I already told you. She was a guard.”
“Dr. and Mrs. Inglesby on vacation, by any chance?”
“Now how’d you know that? They’re in Tuscany for a month.”
“Uh-huh. And do the guards have access to keys to the residents’ houses?”
Claude was starting to looked panicked. “Not usually. But sometimes they do. They make side deals to feed cats, take in papers, things like that.” He shrugged. “It’s against the rules, but they do it. You askin’ for any particular reason?”
“It might interest you to know my buddy and I’ve been swimming in the Inglesbys’ pool. And your guard served us some really great mojitos over there—probably made with the Inglesbys’ rum.”
“Oh, shit. I knew I shouldn’ta—”
“She came without references, did she?”
“Yeah, but she had a really good sob story. And that great laugh.” He looked like a broken man.
“Okay, she took you in, but she sorta took us in, too—least my buddy Roy here. They had kind of a thing goin’, ya know what I mean? And now he’s missin’ some money. You mind givin’ us a name and address?”
Claude said no, he couldn’t do that, it was strictly against the rules, but Forest pointed out that things were a little irregular here, and anyhow, there was some more to the story Claude might want to know about.
Roy started at that, but Forest shot him a chill-out look.
“Tell you what,” Claude said. “I gotta answer a call of nature. I’ll think it over on the way.”
And he walked out of the office, leaving the file where it was. Forest opened it. “Jesus Christ,” he said, handing it over to Roy. It said she was Rosa Klebb, of 121 Fleming Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. “This ain’t her!” Roy said.
“Think, Roy. You ever heard that name before? Like in a movie or somethin’?”
Roy thought, and the light dawned. “The babe in the Bond movie. The one with the poisoned blade in her shoe.”
“Yeah—Fleming Street, get it? Whaddaya bet there ain’t one in New Orleans?”
“Well, I’ll be goddamn.”
“Yeah.”
Claude came back. “Sorry, but I just can’t let you boys look in a personnel file. You seem like solid citizens, though. Maybe you could let me in on the rest of the story.”
Forest filled him in about the guard who was in it with her, the big redheaded dude. “Oh, Lord, Billy Acree. Been here for three years. I been on vacation for a week. Left Billy in charge.”
“I got a feelin’ you seen the last of him, too.”
“Shit on a stick.” He slumped, mouth turned down.
“Well, good luck findin’ ’em, Claude. Hope they didn’t do too much damage.”
“Hey, wait a minute. You boys ain’t gon’ report this, are you?”
“You kiddin’? We wouldn’t do a thing like that to you. Maybe they didn’t do a damn thing but borrow the Inglesbys’ swimming pool.”
They backed the truck out of the guard house drive and took off. Forest kept his mouth shut for the next little bit, thinking things through, and finally Roy said, “What do we do now? I gotta know where to point this thing.”
“Well, I got an idea. How about if we look at this thing optimistically? We each took out a pack of bills for expenses—that gives us about ten thousand each. Not bad for a couple days’ work, right? So maybe we go back home and pay the rent.”
“You don’t want to track down the bitch and rip her hair out?”
Forest had thought that one out, too. “I don’t think so,” he said. “You gotta admire the woman’s skill. Gotta give her credit—she’s the best little con artist I ever seen in my life.”
“Hey, Forest—hello? She just did us out of two million bucks.”
“Naaah. Just one when you think about it. We were tryin’ to do her out of the second mil, remember?”
“That’s a technicality.”
“Okay, let’s do one little thing—let’s go over and clue old Bert Caulfield in—let him try to find her. We can just say she and the carrot top offered us the gig and we turned it down. Ain’t nothin’ he can do about us, anyhow. Can’t report the theft—can’t kill us in front of his whole staff.”
Roy brightened. “Hey, maybe he’ll give us a finder’s fee if he gets the money back.”
“Don’t think I’d count on it, my man, Anyhow, there’s only one thing I really want at this point.”
“Sure, I know, sucker. You still want to get in her pants. Know how they talk about the kind of guy you shake hands with and then have to count your fingers? I don’t even want to think about—”
Forest cut him off. “Shows how much you know, bozo. That chick’s Satan spawn, I’ve long since accepted that. But she’s an artist, you gotta admit it—an actual artiste.”
“So what’s the thing you want?”
“I’d just like to know her real name,” Forest said dreamily.
GDMFSOB
Nevada Barr
All Walgreen’s had was a little kid’s notebook, maybe four by five inches, the binding a fat spiral of purple plastic, the cover a Twiggy–Carnaby Street–white boots–flower power mess of lavender and yellow blooms.
Jeannie put it on the café table, opened it, and carefully wrote, “Goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch” in her best schoolgirl cursive. The juxtaposition of sentiment and sentimentality pleased her.
Next she wrote, “Divorce Rich,” then sat back, looked at the words, and took a long luxurious sip of the cheap but not inexpensive Pinot Grigio a harried waitress in too-tight jeans had brought her.
Rich thought she drank too much. Of course she drank too much. She was married to a goddamnmotherfuckingsonofabitch. She drew a neat line through the word divorce.
Divorce was out of the question. Mississippi, usually such a liberal, cutting-edge innovator, was old-school when it came to matrimony; marriage was sacred. Unless both parties agreed, the only grounds for divorce were adultery, impotence, or if felony could be proved.
Not that the GDMFSOB wasn’t engaged in one or the other at any given time, but Good Old Rich put Jeannie in mind of the Baptists: you knew they were doing it; you just couldn’t ever catch them at it.
And Rich would never grant her a divorce. Not if it meant giving up the “income stream from the family business,” as he euphemistically referred to her earnings as a sculptress.
No. Divorce wasn’t happening.
That left suicide and murder.
&nb
sp; When Rich had been particularly demeaning, Jeanie’d had the occasional fling with Dr. Kevorkian, but, in all honesty, she had to admit that she was a decent individual. She paid her taxes—and his—kept a tidy house, and got her oil changed every three thousand miles. And Rich…
Rich was boring.
Not casually boring; he was a bore of nuclear magnitude. More than once she had witnessed him turn entire dinner parties to stone, seen guests’ eyes roll back in their heads and their tongues begin to protrude as he replaced all the available oxygen with pomposity. Not being a jobholder himself, he felt uniquely qualified to lecture on the subject. He told her cleaning lady how to clean, her gallery owner how to present art, the man who cast her work how to run a foundry, her agent how to sell sculpture.
Suicide was out. It would be wrong, un-American even, to deny the world her lovely bronzes while simultaneously condemning it to Rich’s monologues.
That left murder.
In the ordinary run of things, Jeannie didn’t condone murder. She wasn’t even a proponent of capital punishment. But her husband wasn’t in the ordinary run of things. He was extraordinarily in need of being dead.
“Kill Rich,” she printed carefully beneath the crossed-out “divorce.”
Another long swallow of wine and contemplation.
Over the eight years of their marriage she had shared all the nasty bits with shrinks, groups, AA, and half a dozen girlfriends. There was so much dirty laundry lining the byways of her past they rivaled the back alleys of Mexico City on wash day. Should anything untoward befall Rich, she would be the prime suspect.
There must be no evidence. None.
She scribbled out everything she’d written then tore out the page. Feeling a fool, but being a nonsmoker and thus having no recourse to fire, she surreptitiously soaked the page in the wine and swallowed it.
As easily as that, she decided to kill her husband.
Setting her glass on the uneven surface of the wrought-iron café table, she watched the wine tremble as minuscule earthquakes sent out barely perceptible tsunamis and she thought of the things people die of.
Drowning, burning, choking, crushing, goring by bulls, hanging, falling, dismemberment, being devoured by wild beasts, poisoning, exploding, crashing in cars, boats, planes, and motorcycles, disease, cutting, stabbing, slashing, blunt trauma to the head, dehydration, hypothermia, heatstroke, starvation, vitamin-A poisoning from eating polar bears’ livers, snakebite, drawing and quartering, asphyxiation, shooting, beheading, bleeding out, infection, boredom—Lord knew Rich had nearly done her in with that one.
Deadly Housewives (v5) (epub) Page 3