by Mary Monroe
Today was like every other Friday at the store—busy and so boring I couldn’t wait for five o’clock to arrive so I could rush home and get ready for my date.
At eleven, I gave Joan another call, and this time she answered. I invited her to have lunch with me because I had something funny to tell her. “Can’t you tell me over the phone?” she asked.
“I could, but I won’t. I’d like to see the look on your face when I tell you.”
She met me at Jenny’s Kitchen at noon. Before we started eating our ham sandwiches, I bragged about the date I’d set up with the real estate mogul. She howled with laughter when I told her about the banker and what he’d said about me being pretty “for a black woman.”
“Thanks for alerting me about that jackass. There’s a message in my in-box that he sent last night.”
“Humph! I see he’s not wasting any time trying to hook up with a black woman. I’m surprised he waited this long.”
“That’s probably because he’s tried every other black woman in the club already and they turned him down.”
“Unless you’re hard up for some action this weekend, I advise you to ignore that fool.”
“Don’t worry. I already have something lined up with one of my regulars, but I’m not sure I’m going to go. I’m not really in a dating mood right now.” These were words I never expected to hear from Joan.
“You aren’t in a dating mood?” I snickered. “I guess hell must have frozen over.”
“Please don’t tease me,” Joan said with a pout. “I get enough of that from my family.” She bit into her sandwich and started chewing like a cow. I took a plug out of mine and did the same thing.
I waited until we had both swallowed our food and sipped some lemonade before I spoke again. “I’m sorry.” I cleared my throat and gave her an apologetic look. “Which regular? And why do you think you might not go?”
“DrFeelGood is back in town and according to him, he’s ‘dying’ to spend a few hours with me again.” “DrFeelGood” was Ezra Spoor, one of the most prominent plastic surgeons in the state of Florida and Joan’s frequent sex partner. “I would love to spend some time with him, but I’m worried about Reed. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to leave him alone for a few hours Saturday afternoon.”
“So he’s still acting peculiar?”
“Uh-huh. Last night he said something that really disturbed me.”
“What?”
“He told me that he’s enjoyed being married to me. Then he babbled on about how much fun we used to have. . . .”
“What’s so disturbing about that?”
“He was talking about us in the past tense. As if one of us is not going to be around much longer.”
“I wish you wouldn’t talk like that. Like I said before, I think you’re making something out of nothing. If Reed is in a more cheerful mood than he usually is, like you told me the other day, enjoy it while you can. I really don’t think you need to be too concerned about him committing suicide.”
“You’re right. I should know by now not to jump to conclusions when it comes to Reed. I think I will keep my date with the good doctor. At least it’ll be a distraction so I won’t have to think about Reed.” Joan gulped and said in a loud and happy tone. “Oh shit! I just remembered that Reed’s going hiking with Dr. Weinstein this weekend!”
“That’s even better. You can spend even more time with your ‘nothing but A-list celebrity clients plastic surgeon’ from Palm Beach.” I laughed. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow and we’ll have a long chat about the date I’m going on tonight. That is, if Bertha’s not breathing down my neck all day.”
“She does that every day,” Joan said impatiently.
“Some days she does it more than others. Especially lately. She’s been riding my back all week about cleaning out the garage and doing a bunch of other chores around the house. Last night after work when I stopped off at the mall, she called my cell phone twice. When I didn’t answer, she called the stores I had told her I was going to. If I tell her I’m going to be with you tonight, she might bug you, or even come to your house the way Reed did the last time you told him you and I were going shopping. I told Bertha this morning that I was going to visit a winery with Lana Brooks this evening.”
Joan finished her lemonade and let out a mild burp. She excused herself and gave me a puzzled look. “I just remembered something. Lana married that hot Italian musician two years ago and moved to Rome. She hasn’t been back here since. Why are you using her as your alibi instead of me?”
“With you being so worried about Reed, I didn’t want to add to your load right now. There is no way Bertha can track Lana down. God, how I wish it was Calvin I was going to see tonight. I’m going to go crazy if I don’t find out soon where our relationship is going.”
Joan rolled her eyes and gave me an exasperated look. “I was hoping we’d have a conversation that didn’t include him. The man you need to focus on is that hot real estate tycoon you’re going to be with later. This morning I read what you posted on the club’s blog about your upcoming date with him, so I checked out his profile. He’s better looking than Calvin and he has a lot more going for him. Calvin is . . . well, I’m sure he’s a nice person, but after all, he is only a truck driver.”
“He’s ‘only a truck driver’ to you, but he’s a lot more than that to me, Joan!” I snapped. “It’s been years since I cared about a man half as much as I care about Calvin.” I stopped talking because I’d almost lost my breath. I composed myself and continued, speaking in a sterner tone. I wanted to make sure Joan knew she’d pushed the wrong button. “I could say a lot more, but I won’t. You’ve heard it all before, so I don’t have to keep telling you how much I want to be with Calvin. A woman who lives in Mexico bragged on the blog about her upcoming date with him, so I checked out her profile. Girl, that horny Latina is barely out of her teens. And she looks like Salma Hayek, Jennifer Lopez, and Sofía Vergara all rolled into one.”
“Ouch! That’s so painful! I saw her post this morning and I checked out her profile too. I agree with everything you just said. If she was a hurricane, she’d be a category five. I was waiting for you to bring her up.” Joan sighed and squeezed my hand. “Look at it this way—at the end of the day it’s not a big deal. In the first place, we’re in a sex club and hooking up with other members is what we all do. You know from the reviews that a lot of women have slept with Calvin—and will continue to do so as long as he’s in the club. If it bothers you, stop obsessing over him and look for a soul mate who is not in a sex club.”
“I wish I could. Some days I wish I’d never answered his first message. But I’m glad I did, because in spite of everything, I still think he’s the one for me.”
Chapter 27
Calvin
IT WAS AMAZING HOW MUCH A WOMAN COULD CHANGE IN JUST A FEW weeks. Since I’d proposed to Sylvia last month, she had lost at least ten pounds—which she could not afford to lose—and she was beginning to show her age. Despite her body looking like a beanpole now, and the new lines on her face, she was still attractive and had a lot to offer a man like me. She was from a good family, but they were some of the most annoying people I knew. I tolerated them because they catered to me almost as much as Sylvia did. I also liked that she made good money as a pharmacist. She loved her job, so I didn’t have to worry about her giving it up anytime soon and leaving all our financial responsibilities to me. It was hard to find a woman with more going for her than Sylvia. I often told myself, and other people told me as well, that I couldn’t have chosen a better woman to marry.
But Sylvia was still not enough for me.
I couldn’t wait for Tuesday to come so I could get my hands on RedHot Maria.
It was Friday evening, a few minutes past seven. I was in my bed with my head propped up on two pillows, and my laptop was in my lap. I was browsing news links on recent crimes along the interstate. Other than a few road rage incidents and several accidents that had been cau
sed by drunk or careless drivers, there was nothing of interest to me this time. So far, there had been no mention of any nosy hiker or busybody road worker stumbling across Melanie’s body.
Sylvia had stopped by on her way home from work and we’d made love an hour ago. As usual, she had already dozed off. She looked so peaceful lying next to me with locks of her thick hair covering one side of her round face.
One of the few things I didn’t like about Sylvia was that she had become a light sleeper in the last couple of years. When I coughed to clear my throat, she abruptly opened her eyes and mumbled some gibberish. She sat bolt upright and looked at me with a dazed expression on her face. “I’m sorry, honey. I forgot where I was,” she slurred.
“Well, thanks a lot,” I mock whined. “I guess I’ve lost my touch if you can forget I’m in the same bed with you after all we did a little while ago. Did you forget about that too?”
“Pffft!” Sylvia gave me a dismissive wave and a harsh look. “Oh, don’t be such a crybaby. You know when I go to sleep, I’m off in another world. That’s what you get for letting me drink three beers in a row.” She kissed my cheek and squeezed the soft bulge between my legs. “You’re still fiddling around on the Internet? How come you’ve been doing so much of that lately? What’s up?” she asked, squinting as she glanced at my monitor screen.
“Nothing’s up, baby. I missed the evening news on TV today and a couple of days last week. With so much going on in the world these days, I like to stay informed. One of my coworkers got robbed at gunpoint at a truck stop on his run down to Encino last week.”
“That’s a damn shame. Was he hurt?”
“Nope.” I waved my hand as I logged off and closed my computer. “The same dude was involved in a road-rage incident with a carload of drunken punks a few weeks before that.”
A concerned look crossed Sylvia’s face. “Honey, I know you enjoy your work, but do you ever think about doing something different? Being a long-haul truck driver is not like it used to be years ago. It’s bad enough that you don’t work regular hours and days, but it’s getting more and more dangerous out there too. Yesterday, I read that a woman’s body was found along the side of the highway south of Sacramento. And she’s not the first one! A few months ago, some campers found the skeleton of another woman in a ditch in the same area. That’s one of your routes! I had no idea it was so dangerous!”
“Dangerous for women, maybe; but I’ve never had any trouble.”
“Anyway, the killer didn’t rape or rob this woman I read about yesterday, but he took her engraved class ring. That maniac was so vicious, he didn’t just strangle that poor woman; he twisted her neck and turned her head completely around. The cops said it was the most bizarre thing they had ever seen. They even called in the FBI because they think a serial killer might be on the loose in that area.”
“Why do they think that?”
“According to the FBI profiler they interviewed, most serial killers usually don’t start out doing something too extreme to their first few victims. Especially something as gruesome as twisting a person’s head all the way around. He thinks that the maniac who killed the hitchhiker has killed before and will do it again if he’s not stopped. With the FBI involved, it’s just a matter of time before they catch that bastard. And when they do, I hope they send his ass straight to death row.”
I gulped and silently cursed myself. I was slipping. First, the careless shit in Vegas and now something that had attracted the goddamn FBI! If I had not twisted that bitch’s head around, it would have looked like just another run-of-the-mill strangulation, something that anybody could have done. I was so glad I had almost completed my mission. Lola’s murder would definitely be my grand finale. “Hmmm, I read the paper almost every day. I wonder how I missed that story.”
“I almost missed it myself. It was just a paragraph at the bottom of page four.”
“I’m surprised that I haven’t come across anything about it on any of the news sites I’ve been Googling lately.”
“Well, I guess you didn’t look long or hard enough.” Sylvia yawned and scrambled out of bed. “I’m going to fix myself a sandwich. You want a snack? You look hungry. I can fix you something before I leave.”
“Yeah. I guess I could use a bite or two. If you don’t mind, could you make me a BLT on rye?”
“Calvin, you know I don’t mind. As long as you don’t mind waiting a few minutes for me to cook the bacon.”
“Take as much time as you need,” I said.
As soon as Sylvia left the room, I got back on my computer and went straight to Google. This time I searched using words that were more to the point than ones I had previously used: murdered woman found with head turned completely around. A link popped up right away, and I clicked on a report that was only two paragraphs long. My eyes burned as I read about my latest crime. I was pleased to know that the cops had no leads and the FBI agents were baffled. I was surprised that those grandstanding show-offs would admit being “baffled.” The article went on to say that a lot of crimes committed on the highways rarely got solved. The victim, thirty-three-year-old Melanie Crukshank, had a lengthy criminal record. She had outstanding warrants in three states for everything from armed robbery to attempted murder. She had even been arrested for allegedly smothering a meddlesome elderly neighbor to death. The case had been dropped on a technicality. Now I knew I didn’t have to worry about the cops spending too much time trying to find Melanie’s killer. She had probably committed more crimes than I had! I’d done the world a favor by getting rid of her. I chuckled and rubbed my hands together.
I glanced toward the door. I could smell the bacon cooking and I could hear Sylvia in the kitchen humming some silly tune. I logged onto the Discreet Encounters website. I grinned when I saw that Maria had left a post on the blog about how excited she was about our upcoming date. My grin turned to a grimace when I saw a post that Lola had left about a date she had scheduled for tonight. “Stay busy, bitch,” I whispered as I glared at her stupid, rambling post. “The more dudes you fool around with, the better. When they find your skanky body, the list of suspects will be so long, the cops will have to work overtime.”
Chapter 28
Lola
MOST PEOPLE WHO WORKED WEEKDAYS LOOKED FORWARD TO Friday, but I didn’t. Since Libby moved in, it had become my least favorite day of the week. Spending the weekend in the house with her was torture. I was so glad I had a date for tonight. If I had a good time, it would be easier to get through Saturday and Sunday.
When I got home from work that evening, Libby was stretched out on the living room couch watching a game show. She was still in her bathrobe. Several beer cans and a McDonald’s bag were on the coffee table in front of her. I smiled and greeted her as I walked by, but all she did was shrug her shoulders. She didn’t even look up at me. What Jeffrey saw in her was a mystery to me. He had everything going for him, so I couldn’t understand why he had settled for a frump like Libby. Not only was he good-looking and pleasant to everybody, he made good money as a firefighter and he eagerly helped with the household bills. He also did a lot of maintenance work around the house, and he was useful in other ways. Libby and Kevin were two of the biggest, laziest deadweights I knew. Not once had Bertha asked them to help us clean out the garage, or anything else for that matter. I had cleaned off the porch all by myself, and I couldn’t understand why Bertha kept talking about “us” doing this and doing that when I was the one doing it all. She had so many other things on her plate, I never said a word about her not lifting a finger to help me clean off the porch. I had a feeling I’d be the only one cleaning out the garage, the kitchen closet, and all the other places she had been complaining about for the past few months. I didn’t mind doing so many chores by myself, but only if I could do them when I felt like it. And this Friday evening I did not feel like it.
Other than wondering when I was going to see or talk to Calvin again, the main thing on my mind now was the date I was about to
get ready for. Lester and I had agreed to get together at seven p.m.
Bertha was cooking one of my favorite meals: collard greens and deep fried chicken. It was a wonderful break from the chitlins and pigs feet that she had been cooking several times a month since I was a teenager.
“That sure smells good,” I commented as I entered the kitchen.
“Thank you, sweetie. After dinner, we can get to work cleaning out the garage or the kitchen closet,” she told me. She looked so serene standing over the stove in her heavily starched apron stirring butter into the cooking oil heating up in the deep fryer.
“Uh, I won’t be eating dinner at home this evening,” I said, giving her a quick peck on the cheek. Despite our ups and downs, she meant a lot to me and I wanted to do all I could to help her enjoy her golden years. She had been good to me, and I still went out of my way to be good to her.
Bertha whirled around, an extreme look of disappointment on her face. “And why not?” she asked sharply, wiping sweat off her face with the dishrag.
“Um, I’m taking the train to visit a winery with one of my former classmates. Don’t you remember I told you that before I left for work this morning?”
“No, I don’t remember you telling me that.” Bertha gave me a sulky look, but a few seconds later, she smiled. “Well, that’s nice, and I’m sure you’ll have a good time. We can do some more cleaning tomorrow, but just make sure you get back in time to give me a perm tonight. You told me the other day you would. I’ll save a few pieces of chicken for you anyway.”
“I just gave you a perm last month. I used one of the strongest relaxers the beauty salon had, so your hair should be okay for at least another three or four weeks.”
“Yes, you did relax my hair last month, but my bald spots are itching, and the hair I have left doesn’t cover them the way they should so that means it’s time for me to get a touch-up.”
“Okay, but it’ll probably be too late when I get home tonight. I’ll do it in the morning.”