by Nick James
“God, about time. I was about to start without you,” Emily said. She was lying on her side facing him with the covers pulled back. She wore a pendant around her neck, possibly a diamond, although at the moment he was focused on other things. She looked at his reaction and said, “Looks like you’d better climb in and let me deal with that.”
He slipped in next to her and gave her a kiss. She pulled the sheet over the two of them as she rolled up against him. She placed her hands on his shoulders, climbed on top of him, began to rub herself against him and in short order started to moan.
* * *
They woke a good hour later, within seconds of one another. Emily was wrapped in his arms.
“God, I needed that,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but I worked up an appetite.”
“You said dinner was in the oven?”
“It is. I’m going to put the garlic bread on and make a salad. Take your time getting dressed, then come on down.” She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, rolled out of bed, and walked out of the room.
The kitchen smelled of garlic and rich sauce. Place settings were arranged on the counter with two lit red candles in crystal holders. The candle flames glittered off the white subway tiles between the counter top and the upper cabinets. Emily wore a pair of cream colored shorts and a black t-shirt.
“Hope you like lasagna,” she said pulling a pan out of the oven. She held the pan between two thick pot holders and quickly placed it on a metal trivet sitting in the middle of the counter. Then she reached back in the oven and pulled out something wrapped in tin foil. “Garlic bread,” she smiled.
They inhaled the green salad in minutes, toasted one another with a sip of wine, then cut into the lasagna. Bobby had seconds, while Emily prepared a dessert of ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce.
After dinner, they adjourned to a small den and watched a movie, had another glass of wine, and were back in bed making love at just a little after eleven. Emily shook him awake sometime in the middle of the night. “Bobby, Bobby,” she whispered.
As he slowly came awake his first thought was she can’t want it again. The digital clock read just a few minutes after four.
“Bobby, I heard someone downstairs.”
His eyes flashed open and he quickly rolled out of bed. He stepped over to his suitcase, opened it, and took out his pistol. He stood and listened, but couldn’t hear anything. He looked at her sitting up in bed, moonlight from the window illuminated her skin and she almost glowed. He was about to say some wise-ass comment when something bumped out in the hallway. Emily rolled out of bed and hurried into the bathroom letting out a little cry as she went. “Shit, shit, shit.”
He stood in the bedroom, watching her flee from sight. Just as she disappeared, the doorknob jiggled and started to turn. He crouched down alongside the dresser as the door suddenly swung open. A figure stepped into the room, took four quick steps, and from a distance of about three feet fired into the bed. The deafening explosions flashed in the dark like momentary flares and Emily shrieked from the bathroom.
Bobby could make out the figure in the dark. Watched him turn his head when Emily cried, his attention now directed to the bathroom. The figure held the pistol out in front of him and took a step toward the bathroom. Bobby aimed and fired. The figure grabbed his neck and Bobby fired again. Something heavy suddenly clunked off the wood floor as the figure took another step, then crumpled to the floor.
“Mikey,” a voice called from downstairs, “you get ‘em?”
“Get up here,” Bobby called, then stepped over to the body spread out on the floor. A pistol lay at his feet. Bobby picked it up just as the voice called from down the hallway.
“Where the hell are you, man? Mikey?”
Bobby turned on the bedroom light crouched down against the wall and pointed the pistol at the open door.
Footsteps out in the hallway grew closer as a voice said, “Quit screwing around, we’re gonna have to…” A large figure in a plaid shirt stepped into the room. He held a can of beer in his hand and got a surprised look on his face. He seemed to freeze for a half-second.
It was all the time Bobby needed. He pulled the trigger, and kept pulling, slamming rounds into the young man’s body. The plaid shirt seemed to jerk backwards with every round. He looked for a moment like he was just going to turn and walk away. Bobby kept on squeezing the trigger until it clicked empty and the guy fell face down in the hall, bouncing off the floor with a loud thunk. A number of dark splotches began to soak through the plaid shirt, growing in size. The can of beer lay on its side, spilling the contents out onto the floor.
“Bobby?” Emily cried in a little voice.
“Stay there, Emily. Are you okay?” he asked and then waited. “Emily, damn it, are you okay?”
“I think, yes. Yeah, I’m okay.”
“I want you to stay there, keep the light off. Don’t come out. Everything is all right out here. Can you do that, just stay in the bathroom?”
“Do I have to?”
“Yeah, let me just get things straightened out here. Just stay in there, it’s okay, they’re gone,” he said stepping over the body next to the bed and pulling the bathroom door closed.
He quickly got dressed, pulled on a pair of jeans, his dark sweatshirt, and slipped into a pair of shoes. He rolled the body over that was next to the bed. He was a young guy, maybe early twenties, dark hair shaved along the sides and the back of his head, long and combed straight back on the top. Bobby felt his pockets, pulled a wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, and opened it up. The driver’s license listed his age at just nineteen. He pulled the license out from behind the plastic window, then checked the cash, a thick wad of hundred dollar bills. He didn’t bother to count them, just stuffed them in his pocket. He grabbed the body by the ankles, dragged him out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out the front door. He dragged him down the front porch steps, the kid’s head giving a dead thump on each one of the split log steps.
He hurried back upstairs and rolled the body over in the hall. He was older than the kid, but not by much. A redhead with a thin red beard. Not what you’d call attractive and just as dead as the kid. Bobby rifled his wallet, pocketed another wad of hundred dollar bills, and pulled his driver’s license. He grabbed him by the wrists, dragged him out the door, and pulled him alongside his equally dead partner.
He hurried back into the kitchen, found a bucket and a mop in the laundry area, and raced upstairs to clean up the blood. Bits of flesh and muscle were splattered against the log wall of the bedroom. He quickly cleaned up the area, mopped the floor a half dozen times, each time running downstairs to rinse out and then refill the bucket.
He called to Emily each time he came back into the room. “Almost finished, just hang on a little bit longer.” He’d done the best he could in the bedroom, finished cleaning the hallway, and gone back into the bedroom to pull the sheets off the bed. “Won’t be too much longer, Emily. I’m just going…”
The bathroom door opened and Emily stood there, naked, eyes puffy from crying. “All this isn’t bad enough? You expect me to stay locked in the bathroom like some misbehaving school girl? Enough, I’m a big girl.”
“I just didn’t want you to…”
“Oh, God. Look what he did to our bed. Are you kidding me? Those were new sheets, a hundred-and-ten bucks for the set. And he ruined them. Is he dead?”
Bobby just sort of stood there with a shocked look on his face.
“Well, is he? Because if he isn’t, I’m going to kill him,” she said, then sort of grabbed herself and started shaking all over.
“There were two of them.”
“Oh, my God,” she sobbed.
He didn’t know how long he held her. How long they held each other. Eventually she sort of forced herself out of his arms and slipped on a bathrobe. “I’ll deal with this. I’m guessing you got some things to attend to outside.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
He was in t
he quonset hut. He set a coil of rope on the back of the ATV, then started it and drove up to the cabin. He wrapped the rope around the young guy’s ankles, then dragged him away, just like he’d done with Angie Benedict’s brother. He dragged the body down the winding trail, deeper into the woods until he spotted the large pine tree on the small rise. He untied the rope, took hold of the ankles, then dragged the body through the dead leaves, pine needles, ferns, and over the rise. He dropped him next to the tree limb that marked where Angie, her brother, and Nate Anderson had been buried. He jumped on the ATV and hurried back to the body with the scraggly red beard.
As he wound the rope around the body’s ankles, he looked up and saw Emily watching him out the window. She didn’t back away, didn’t lower the blinds; she just stood there and watched. He gave her a friendly wave as he hopped back onto the ATV and she waved back.
He left the two bodies lying next to one another. The distant horizon was turning pink and he figured it would be a lot easier to deal with the situation in the daylight. He drove the ATV back to the outbuildings then turned and headed up the trail away from the cabin. About halfway to the road, he saw what he was looking for, a burgundy SUV, fairly new, with tinted windows. He pulled alongside the vehicle and tried the driver’s door. It was unlocked and sure enough, the keys were still in the ignition.
He pocketed the keys, then hopped back on the ATV and drove to the cabin. Emily was in the kitchen, sitting at the counter sipping a cup of coffee. She looked up at him as he came into the room, but didn’t say anything. He noticed she’d applied some make-up and brushed her hair. He caught the faint scent of perfume.
“I’d take some of that coffee, if there’s any left.”
“There’s plenty, I just made a fresh pot,” she said, then took a mug from the cupboard and filled it. She pushed the mug across the counter toward him.
Bobby grabbed it and took a long sip. It was hot and tasted good. He set the mug down and looked at her.
“So just who in the hell are they?” she asked, then crossed her arms and scowled.
“I don’t know who they are. I have the driver’s licenses with their names, but I’ve never seen them before. Their licenses list them as coming from the city. One of them, that bastard in the bedroom, was only nineteen.”
“And you don’t know who they are?”
“No.”
“How stupid do I look, Bobby? They came here looking to kill you.”
“Me?”
“Oh what? They were after me? Give me a fucking break.”
“Emily, does the name James Antonnini mean anything to you?”
Her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened like she was about to say something, only she didn’t utter a sound. “I already told you. I didn’t know him.”
“I know that’s what you told me. It’s just that I don’t happen to believe you. You seemed to know more about him than just the passing thought that you wanted to go to Key West someday. You seemed to know he had a condo there. What was it you said? He liked to watch the moon rise on the beach, wasn’t that it?”
“I’m not sure what it is you’re getting at?”
“Okay, two things. I don’t care if you knew him, I don’t care if you were in a relationship with him. It’s not important,” he said.
Emily looked at him, maybe making up her mind, deciding something.
“It was before me, or even if it wasn’t, it really isn’t important. Honest. What is important is that we know what’s going on here. Why would these two guys drive close to two hundred miles just to shoot me? How would they even know I was here?” he said, at the same time trying to recall if he ever saw that burgundy SUV in the rearview mirror. They could have followed him up here yesterday afternoon, probably did.
“Are you going to call the police?” she asked, and seemed to look uncomfortable with the thought.
“We can. I will, if you think it’s for the best. But, if I do call them they’re going to be asking the same questions I am, only they’ll be a lot more serious and a lot better at it than me. So if you had any relationship with that guy, let me know what it is and we’ll deal with it.”
“I may have known him a little bit better than I said.”
“Okay. That’s a start. I’m guessing you had an affair. Right?” he said and conjured up the images of her and Antonnini in bed.
She looked away for a long moment, then faced him and nodded.
“And then you found out he was married and so you probably ended it,” he said giving her some room. “Maybe he promised he would divorce his wife, or maybe you even got pregnant and had an abortion, but he basically dumped you in some way, shape, or form. Correct?”
“Not exactly,” she said.
“Emily, that happens to a lot of people. It’s life. It happened to me. I know, it’s messy, ugly, heart breaking, but in the end we get over it. What we don’t do is send two guys to kill you. So what happened?”
She seemed to deflate, then bit her lower lip. “You’re going to think I’m a real class-A bitch.”
“Emily, I just shot and killed two guys I’ve never seen before. I almost shot and killed Greg Lindgren a week ago after he broke into your house and tried to steal your computer. What’s going on?”
Chapter Thirty
Emily took him by the hand and brought him into the den where they’d been watching TV the night before. Her computer was on the coffee table. As she sat down, she let her robe open slightly, then turned to face him, sitting sideways on the couch, drawing one leg up and exposing herself.
Bobby reached over, gently lowered her leg, and then pulled her robe closed. “That’s not going to work. Is this the computer Lindgren was after?”
She nodded.
“So show me.”
“You promise you won’t think I’m terrible?”
“Emily, did you get a good look at what I dragged into the woods earlier? In another hour, I’m going to be out there burying those two idiots. I think that gives me the right to find out what in the hell is on your computer that has everyone so upset.”
She seemed to think about that for a moment, then nodded. “Just promise me you won’t make any snap judgements and that you’ll listen to what I say. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay, I promise.”
“I mean it.”
“Emily, please.”
“Okay,” she said, opening up her laptop and turning it on. It made a musical chord as the startup noise. She waited for a minute while it uploaded programs, then swiftly moved her fingers across the pad bringing up a file. She clicked on the file, then looked at Bobby as a number of files were displayed. The same files he’d had for months, Antonnini’s file was among them. She clicked on Antonnini’s and the images were suddenly displayed. The two of them, Emily and Antonnini, in compromising positions. She looked up at Bobby waiting for some sort of reaction.
“So you have images like this for all those names?”
“Yes.”
“And Lindgren is one of them?”
“The most recent,” she said in a half-whisper, looking back at the computer screen.
“So, you must either be holding these over their heads or what? Are you blackmailing all these guys?”
“That’s a pretty harsh term. You remember when I told you about Denis Kemper?”
“The guy you were going to marry? The guy who left you at the altar?”
“Yeah. I decided that I’d get back at him, or to be more precise, people like him. They’re all married, every one of these men, and they’ve given me gifts and taken me on trips, and basically left their wives for me. Well, except they didn’t leave them. To them, I was just a great piece of ass on the side, and that was all. So, you know what I did?”
“What?”
“I let them do whatever gross, perverse act they wanted to do to me. I told them I wanted pictures so I could always remember and then, I really fucked them. Every single one of them. They each pay me a very nice monthly sum. Nothing too e
xtravagant, well, with the exception of your friend, Mr. Lindgren, who just had his rates raised. And, if they ever even think they can get away with not paying, I’ll send those images to their wives, and then they’ll take them for every last cent in divorce court.”
“Well, I guess that works, unless you’re dead.”
“But you told me Antonnini is dead. That’s what that detective told you. Right? He was killed down in Key West. Shot on the beach. Shot twice as a matter of fact.”
“Yeah.”
“So if he’s dead, how come these two came up here and tried to kill me? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Bobby had to think fast. “It makes sense if you think about the business they’re in,” he said, trying to buy some time.
“It does? How?”
“Well, it’s not the sort of thing you just arrange with a phone call, or go online and place an order. I’d guess Antonnini had to plan this for weeks, no, actually, probably months. Trying to find someone and still remain anonymous. I’m guessing those two didn’t even know he was already dead. If you can believe the way they do in the movies, he probably paid them half in advance and you know, half when it was confirmed that you were dead. Probably paid them in cash.”
That last bit reminded him he’d have to count the money he’d pulled out of their wallets, get a sense of what Moncreff had paid the two of them. “I’m going to bury those bodies a little later this morning.”
“Where?”
“Back off that trail where you took me on the ATV. It’s in the middle of the forest, no one will find them.”
“You’ll dig deep enough so the wolves or bears won’t get them?”
He hoped he hid his surprise at the question. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. In fact, I should probably get to it. They left an SUV back on the trail coming in. We’ll have to get rid of that today, too.”
Emily seemed to think for a moment, then said, “Get the SUV off the trail and park it in the large outbuilding, there’s room in there. We can move it tonight, once it gets dark.” She slid off the couch, walked into the kitchen and was back in the den in less than a minute, holding a pair of yellow rubber gloves. “Better put these on before you touch that SUV. No point in leaving finger prints.”