by Mary Monroe
“Yeah. He’s in the men’s room. Are you still with John?”
“Yup! He’s on the phone with his wife.”
“What’s up?”
“Did Reed call you?”
“Not yet. And I hope he doesn’t.”
“I hope he doesn’t either. I’m having a great time. Ooh-wee, girl! John is such an amazing man. If you know what I mean.” Joan giggled.
“So you keep telling me.”
“Are you going to be with Elbert much longer?”
“Nope!” she said quickly and with more emphasis than was necessary. I knew how much Elbert bored her. “After we finish lunch, I’m going straight home.”
“Good. I’ll call you a few minutes before I leave to let you know where to meet me. You remember our plan?”
“Of course. I went to the mall last night. I have the dummy shopping bags for you in the trunk of my car.”
Reed was so suspicious these days; I never came home empty-handed after a bogus shopping trip with Lola. Despite his many flaws, he was not gullible enough to believe that a woman could spend several hours at a mall and not buy anything.
“I know you probably told me already. And if you did, I forgot. So tell me what I bought this time.” I giggled.
“A couple of blouses and some sexy lingerie. Will one bag of merchandise be enough? I have three this time. One is full of men’s items you can give to Reed so he’ll think you were shopping for him too. I bought shaving lotion, half a dozen undershirts, and four pairs of those sissified socks he likes.”
“I’ll take all three bags. Thanks for looking out for me. I appreciate your help.”
“And I’d appreciate you paying me. You know my paycheck from the grocery store doesn’t go far when I have to pay for all the high-end stuff you like.”
“I’ll give you a blank check today. Remind me to treat you to lunch next week. You can choose the place. But puh-leeze, not Denny’s, Wendy’s, or one of those gut-busting chitlin joints! We gain weight just being near those places. And the next time we really do go shopping, I’ll treat you to a Neiman Marcus spree.” I laughed.
“You’d better bring one of your high-limit credit cards, because I’m going to make up for the last two times I picked up merchandise for you and never got paid,” Lola teased.
“I will. I’ll even throw in a few hundred bucks cash as a bonus. Oh! Before I forget, you need to give me all the information about your date tomorrow with that dude from Chicago. I’d like to be prepared in case your nosy stepmother calls me if you don’t make it back home in time to pick her up from church.”
“I’ll e-mail or text it when I get a chance.”
“You don’t sound too excited about this date.”
“I am excited. But I still get skittish before I meet a club member in person for the first time.” Lola let out a long deep breath. This was usually a sign that she was about to complain about something, so I braced myself. “I’m having fun and enjoying all the great sex, but sometimes I wish there was just one man in my life.”
I groaned and shook my head, something I often did during our conversations. “Well, if you are right about Calvin, you will have just one man in your life soon.” I paused because I could no longer hear John talking. “I have to hang up now!” I abruptly turned off my phone and skittered out of the bathroom.
John had stretched back out in the bed. He grinned as his eyes roamed over my body. “Is everything okay, luv?”
“Like that old song says: ‘Everything is beautiful,’ ” I sang in a husky tone as I crawled into his arms. “Let’s order another bottle of champagne.”
Chapter 4
Calvin
I USUALLY KEPT MY CELL PHONE TURNED OFF WHEN I VISITED MY FIANCÉE’S house. Too many other women had my number and called or texted me when I least expected it. Sylvia Bruce was the love of my life, but she was as nosy as every other woman I knew. I’d caught her going through my mail one night when she’d cooked dinner for us at my house a couple of days before Christmas last year. “I was just checking to see if you received that cute card I sent with Santa drinking a glass of wine,” she claimed. I had received the card and had told her, so I knew she had been snooping.
Whenever Sylvia visited my house now, I made sure my mail and cell phone were not within her reach. And I always “swept” my house before she came over. I had to make sure that there was no evidence of another woman’s visit. Some were notorious for leaving a tube of lipstick or a hairpin behind. Whether they did it on purpose or by accident, it was not cool.
Dealing with women had become so tangled I had to be on guard at all times. A man in my position had to be extremely careful because I had some deep dark secrets that I planned to take to the grave. The main one was, I had murdered so many women I’d lost count. I had dumped numerous bodies in various places such as deserted alleys, ditches, and wooded areas along the interstate routes I drove from one end of the coast to the other. I’d even dropped one nasty bitch down an abandoned well in a remote area near Modesto. So far, only three or four (or was it five?) of the black ones had resembled Glinda. With the exception of a big-ass, pie-faced Native American cow and a couple of Latinas, all the others had been white. And there would be more . . .
* * *
My homicidal rampage had started about six years ago. Some details had become so fuzzy over the years, I wasn’t even sure of the exact date. Up until then, I had never harmed a woman. As a matter of fact, I had been raised to despise violence. I didn’t count the men I’d killed in Afghanistan during my stint in the marines. Killing had come with the territory. After all the bullets and other mayhem I had dodged over there, I’d come home to face my worst enemy yet: my cheating wife and first victim.
When the newspaper reported Glinda’s mysterious disappearance, a lot of people didn’t even know she was my wife. She had refused to take my last name when we got married because she didn’t want to lose her “independence and identity.” Well, that was something she’d never have to worry about again. If she had not taunted me and attempted to leave me on our last night together, she would still be alive. But she’d pushed a button that I never knew I had until then.
I had enjoyed taking Glinda’s life, but doing it only one time had not been enough. I wanted to relive the experience as many more times as possible. And the only way I could do that was to kill other whores like her until I had satisfied my thirst for revenge.
But homicide was a very risky business. With today’s technology, busybody witnesses, and smarter cops, people who had committed murders decades ago were being rounded up in droves. The last thing I wanted to do was spend the rest of my life in prison, so I knew I had to “retire” soon.
I had recently selected my final victim from a source that had become a predator’s playground: an Internet dating site. If everything went according to my latest plan (I’d revised it numerous times), Lola Poole would be dead within the next two or three weeks. I had to get rid of that slut before Sylvia and I exchanged vows in June. The last thing I wanted to do was go on my honeymoon knowing that that bitch was still breathing.
Yesterday, which was Friday, I delivered some state-of-the-art appliances to a department store in Bakersfield. I loved being a long-haul truck driver. Being alone on the open road allowed me to enjoy my solitude and clear my head. I’d been scheduled to do another haul on Sunday, but this morning when I called Monty, one of the best bosses in the world, and told him I’d proposed to Sylvia last week, he gave me up to five days off—with pay—so she and I could celebrate our engagement with some of our close friends in Vegas tonight.
It was 1:35 p.m. Our flight was not scheduled to leave for another six hours, so Sylvia had decided to cook dinner for us. I loved to eat, and she loved to cook. Her mother’s family was from Brazil, and her father and his folks were from Louisiana. When it came to good food, I got the best of both worlds. Today it was one of my favorite meals: collard greens, buttermilk corn bread, blackened flank steak, r
ice and beans, and yams. We planned to eat an early dinner so we wouldn’t gobble like hogs at our engagement party.
Our luggage was already in my Jeep Cherokee. Sylvia was taking a bubble bath, and I was slumped on her living room couch. When my cell phone vibrated, I pulled it out of my back pocket to see who was calling. I groaned as soon as I saw the caller ID. The only reason I didn’t scream profanity and slam my fist on the coffee table was because I didn’t want Sylvia to hear the commotion. I answered the call and said in a cheerful but low voice, “Hello, Lola.”
“Hi, Calvin. I hope you’re having a nice day,” she squealed, sounding like the pig she was. Every time I heard her disgusting voice, I flinched.
“Yes, I am. Are you?” I replied, speaking as cordially as I could.
“My day is going okay, but it could be a whole lot better. . . .”
I chuckled. “I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way.”
“But I always try to look at things from a positive point of view. I mean, my day could be going a lot worse.”
Why this woman took the time to call me and talk such mundane dribble was a mystery to me. “That’s a good attitude to have, Lola.” I was just about to tell her I was busy and had to hang up, but before I could get another word out, she sniffed and rambled some more.
“Um, you’ve been on my mind a lot since our last date, so I just called to say hello.”
It had been only a week since our last rendezvous. Before that, we’d been intimate only one other time. “I was going to call you this evening,” I lied. “You’ve been on my mind a lot too.” My last statement was true, but painful. This miserable, disgusting whore was on my mind every day.
Glinda’s body and my second and third victims—women who resembled her (which was the reason they’d died)—now occupied a large freezer in my garage. It had room for only one more woman, and that was Lola. I had started planning her murder the first time I saw the picture she’d posted on the Internet. Her incredibly close resemblance to Glinda and the fact that she was also a whore had sealed her fate. Before I had stumbled across Lola, I had developed so much rage, it didn’t matter whether my victims reminded me of Glinda or not.
Chapter 5
Lola
IT WAS SO NICE TO HEAR CALVIN’S VOICE AGAIN. I HAD PROMISED MYSELF that I would be patient and wait for him to call me, but I’d called him at the spur of the moment anyway. Just hearing him say that I’d been on his mind made me tingle.
“Is this a bad time for you to talk?” I asked. “I was at loose ends and thought I’d give you a call.” It had been about three minutes since my conversation with Joan.
“I can chat for a minute or two. I’m glad you called, Lola. What have you been up to since our date last Saturday?”
“Not much.”
“Come on, now. Don’t tell me you’ve been sitting around twiddling your thumbs.”
“Uh, no, I haven’t.” I had turned down a date with a computer guru from Chicago for tonight and we’d agreed to hook up tomorrow afternoon instead. I couldn’t go out tonight because I had promised my stepmother that I’d help her clean off the back porch. With all the junk we had dumped there, it could take several hours. However, if Calvin asked me to see him tonight, Bertha would have to clean off the back porch by herself! “I do have plans for tomorrow, but I could change them,” I threw in hopefully. If he asked me to spend some time with him on Sunday, I wouldn’t hesitate to put the computer dude off again.
His response disappointed me. “That’s nice. Have a good time tomorrow,” was all he said.
I didn’t want to take a chance on hearing him say something else I didn’t like, so I decided to end the call. “I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing. It was nice talking to you.”
His next response didn’t disappoint me. “Lola, I can’t wait to see you again.”
I gasped. “Just let me know when . . .” I stopped talking because I was afraid that if I kept yapping, I’d say something real stupid. And when I recalled some of the stupid shit I’d said to him during previous conversations, I winced. There had been times when I had come off acting and sounding like a giddy teenager. Despite the fact that I didn’t look my thirty-two years, it was important for me to present myself as a mature and intelligent woman. Even with all this in mind, I said something stupid anyway! “I hope our next date will be as wonderful as our last one. There are a couple of other tricks I’d like to show you.” I held my breath and slapped the side of my head. If I could have kicked my own ass, I would have done that too.
Calvin laughed. “I can’t wait. Baby, I hate to cut this call short, but I have to go now.”
“Oh, okay. . . .”
“Thanks for calling.”
“Bye, Calvin,” I said quickly. He didn’t say another word. The next thing I heard was silence.
Before I could turn off my phone, Joan called again. “It’s you-know-who,” she announced. “I’m still with John.”
“I figured that,” I said dryly. “How much longer are you going to be with him?”
“Well, he’s friskier than usual, so it could be another couple of hours or so.”
“Where is he?”
“He had to go out and get some more cigars. Reed still hasn’t pestered you yet?”
“Nope.”
“Good. It’s bad enough I’ll have to spend this evening with him and the boring-ass Weinsteins, so I’m going to milk this date dry. Are you still with Elbert?”
“Yeah. He was late picking me up and we had to wait thirty minutes for a table. Now I think he’s got the runs.”
“Why do you think that?”
“He’s in the men’s room for the second time in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Yuck! How unromantic,” Joan snickered.
“Bye, woman!” I snapped.
* * *
I preferred upscale restaurants, but Denny’s was closer so it was a very short ride from my house. I didn’t like to spend any more time alone in a car with Elbert than necessary. Joan once referred to him as a “mercy fuck without the fuck” and accused me of “dating” him only because I felt sorry for him. She was half right. I dated Elbert because I felt sorry for myself. I didn’t like the fact that I had so many expectations when it came to men. Good sex and socializing in bars were two of my favorite pastimes. Elbert didn’t do either one. He told me on our first date back in January that he had not been intimate with a woman since his divorce almost ten years ago. There were a lot of other things I did that Elbert didn’t do. He never lied and never said or did anything to hurt another person’s feelings. And he was as devoted to his mother—who lived with him in a big house he owned—as I was to Bertha. She was crazy about him because his mother was one of her closest friends. And he managed a meat market so he gave her all the free meat she wanted and that made her very happy.
“Lola, you get better looking every day,” Elbert told me right after we had ordered our burgers and fries. Because of his handsome features, well-groomed shoulder-length dreadlocks, and toned body, I didn’t mind being seen in public with him.
“Thank you,” I muttered before I sipped from my water glass. “The same goes for you.”
“I’m so glad you had time for me today,” he went on. He dipped his head and gave me a shy look as he stirred his tea, the strongest beverage he ever drank. “It means a lot to me and it makes me feel better about you not being able to go with me to the hot air balloon race. . . .” I swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in my throat. It took so little to make Elbert happy. I was so glad that my presence meant so much to him, especially since that was all he wanted.
“Well, I did have to move a few other things around so I could have lunch with you and we’ll go to the balloon race some other time. I can’t stay too long because I have to help Bertha clean off the back porch when I get home.”
The main reason I had agreed to have lunch with Elbert was because I had canceled a date to go to the bingo hall with
him last Saturday so I could spend a few hours with Calvin. I knew it had hurt him and I had not given it much thought at the time, but afterward I’d felt guilty. Spending time with him today was my way of making it up to him.
“Oh! Before I forget, I have some good news and some bad news,” he said with an excited look on his face.
“What’s the good news?” I turned my head so that I was gazing at him from the corner of my eye.
“They sold raffle tickets at the bingo tournament you canceled out on last Saturday. I bought the ticket that won first prize: a ride for me and a guest in a stretch limo from my house to San Jose, dinner, and tickets to a comedy show.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“Everything’s been scheduled for Saturday after next.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll be your guest if you want me to,” I said quickly.
Elbert scratched his neck and gave me a serious look. “Uh . . . that’s the other part of the bad news. I didn’t think you’d be available, so I promised Mama I’d take her. One more thing—it’s on the same day as that outdoor gospel concert you said you’d go to with me, so we won’t be able to do that either.”
“That’s all right, Elbert. I understand.” I was already feeling down in the dumps because Calvin had not been able to talk to me for more than a few moments when I’d called him earlier. Now I was feeling even lower. I prayed that I would find out soon where my relationship with him was going. If he decided to get serious with me, I’d stop going out with Elbert because I was tired of disappointing him. It was not fair to him, or me, to continue such a dead-end relationship too much longer. Just as I was about to say something else apologetic to Elbert, he spotted one of his friends on the other side of the room.