Choosing Charleston

by T. Lynn Ocean

  Me surprising Trent with a picnic lunch at the construction site, or snuggling up to him on the sofa while watching a movie. Us, all dressed up, going to a charity ball. Together. Him, cooking me scrambled eggs at his house, after a night of physical bliss. The two of us, walking and talking and sharing complaints and thoughts and ideas and dreams.

  “I’m talking about your girlfriend,” I said. “Terry.”

  Trent put down his glass of tea and smiled. Taffy brought him the tennis ball. He tossed it straight up into the air a few times, and caught it, teasing the dog without meaning to.

  “Well,” I began, since he hadn’t responded. “You said she spent the night at your place. She was your alibi, remember? I assume she’s an old girlfriend you happened to run into. Or maybe she’s your current girlfriend.”

  He tossed the ball into the grass and started laughing.

  I got angry. “Look, maybe your social life isn’t any of my business. But you can’t just go around kissing people like you just kissed me while you have a girlfriend that you sleep with on the side!”

  Taffy pushed the ball into his hand and Trent threw it again and laughed some more.

  “What’s so damn funny?”

  “I was just imagining,” he managed, “me and Terry sleeping together! He’s bald, has a scraggly gray beard and weighs about two-fifty. Wait until I tell him about this!”

  “He? Terry is a he?”

  “Yes, Carly Stone. Terry is a he. He owns a heavy equipment rental company and we’ve been friends for years. We went back to my place that night because I wanted him to look at some blueprints for a parking garage and we ended up drinking ourselves silly. I wasn’t about to let him drive home, so he crashed on my sofa.”

  “Oh.”

  Relief outweighed the embarrassment that drew a blush to my cheeks, and I didn’t care if he was laughing at me. I just wanted him to kiss me some more.

  “I’m not laughing at you,” he said, reading my mind again, the laughter still erupting in spurts. “And as soon as I stop laughing I want to kiss you again.”

  He did and we did and I suddenly felt as beautiful as my evening had become.

  We drank our tea and watched Taffy chase a butterfly and tried not to think too much. I asked Trent who would be at the big meeting and as I listened to his answer, I struggled to think about business instead the lingering taste of his mouth on mine.

  “Jo Jo will be there, along with a personal assistant, the vice president of marketing and one of their attorneys. Of course, Pop and Jack will be there. I spoke to your brother-in-law to see if Tuesday worked for him. He’ll be there with your sister and his boss – the top dog at In Home Now. I’m sure your folks will be there. So that’s, what, twelve people? Not including us.”

  “Good grief! I’ve got to get busy! I’ve got a lot to do before then!” I said, a mental list forming. “I’ll have to put together a draft of the proposal and a benefit sheet for each party. Run some projections of sales numbers and the estimated value of publicity and goodwill. Get a clean drawing of the existing layout of Daddy’s store. Arrange for a caterer to bring in some pastries and juice and coffee…”

  “Carly.”

  “Yes?”

  “Kiss me.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Except for a chase scene taking place within the confines of the television set, the house sounded quiet as I made the first trip from my car to the kitchen toting bags of groceries. It was too quiet and I wondered where Granny and Taffy were. I knew Mamma and Daddy were working at the store, taking a final inventory before the liquidation sale. But when I’d left them, Granny and Taffy were watching a movie.

  I called out to Granny but got no response and clapped my hands to call Taffy, but she didn’t come. I wondered if the two of them had gone next door to Miss Rose’s house and decided to walk over after I finished unloading the groceries. Even though all of the neighbors knew Granny, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of her wandering around the neighborhood.

  Mamma had told me it was okay to leave Granny by herself for short periods of time and I’d only been gone half an hour. In the past when she was by herself, Granny had always stayed at home. But since her disease might progress, we had to be on the lookout for changes.

  I made a second trip to my car and was returning with a large watermelon when a feeling of unease rippled through me. The fine hairs at the nape of my neck stood upright. Before I could set the heavy melon down on the kitchen counter, I sensed someone else in the room and spun around.

  “Hello, Carly,” Robert said.

  Shock and a jolt of something foreign that may have been fear ran through my midsection and I dropped the watermelon. It hit with a thud just inches from my toes and split into pieces, splattering sticky juice and seeds.

  He stood several feet away with his feet spread and his arms crossed over his chest. His stare was locked on me like a laser on a target and he radiated an aura of sheer anger.

  “Robert,” I said. “You startled me.”

  He’d appeared out of nowhere and it occurred to me that he had been hiding, waiting. There wasn’t another car parked in the driveway or the street. And even when we were on good marital terms, he would never just help himself to Mamma and Daddy’s house if nobody was home.

  “Looks like you won’t be eating that tonight.”

  Although he was referring to the sticky mush of watermelon, his eyes never left mine. His face was cold and blank and devoid of expression. But his eyes fumed.

  I forgot about the complaining hunger in my stomach, the fact that I had to pee and the melting ice cream in the back seat of my car. My heart pounded in my chest and time slowed as my senses zeroed in on the situation.

  Instinct told me to make a dash for the door and run to a neighbor for help. But Robert stood between me and my escape route. And on top of that, a sinking feeling told me Robert knew where Granny was.

  “Where’s Granny?”

  He stared at me, not moving.

  “What are you doing here?” I hoped my voice sounded calm.

  “I’m your husband,” he said and moved closer to block me against the kitchen counter. He reeked of booze, bitter and stale. A residual odor that resulted from a night of solid drinking was leaking from his pores.

  But the man before me acted entirely sober. “You suddenly have a problem with talking to your husband?”

  “I don’t have a problem talking to you, Robert. But I don’t appreciate you sneaking up on me like that. And just for the record, I wish you’d quit referring to yourself as my husband. You’ve never been a real husband to me. It was a mistake to marry you.”

  Robert kept advancing toward me, seemingly without moving his feet, and I quickly found myself sandwiched between him and the counter. I sidestepped out from between the two. But in a move that matched mine, he kept my body trapped between him and the counter.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Carly.” His words were without inflection. Flat, like the expression on his face. “You didn’t make a mistake when you married me. I made the mistake in marrying you. I thought you would make the perfect mother for the son I am going to have. I thought you were good breeding material. But it turns out you’re a stupid small town girl, happy to be born and bred in this piss hole. I got you out of here and was going to make a good life for us. But you had to keep taking birth control pills… because you didn’t want to make my baby!”

  I tried to calm him by talking sensibly. “The timing wasn’t right for a baby. I wanted to wait a few years.”

  He ignored me. “And then you went and really screwed everything up. You started it all by making a big fuss over the woodpeckers. And then you went and blabbed to the police. But, see, it’s going to end with me. I’m going to end it.”

  “End what?” I asked and immediately wished I hadn’t.

  “It, Carly. I’m going to end it. Or should I say, end you?”

  A chill traveled the length of my spine. He wasn�
��t making sense, but his voice was drenched with venom and I got the general meaning. I’d seen Robert angry a few times before but the anger had always been directed at his job or his boss. Never at me. I’d always been the one to console him. And I’d never before witnessed the evil look emanating from his pupils.

  I tried to reason with him. “Robert, if you had bothered to tell me what you were doing, I would have known what was going on. Instead, I had to find out through research. I had no idea you were the landowner until it was too late. And as far as screwing up your business plan, I didn’t do that.”

  I sidestepped away from him, just a few inches, hoping he wouldn’t notice. Again, his move matched mine and I was still trapped between him and the kitchen counter. I couldn’t reach anything to hit him with, and he stayed just far enough away so I couldn’t knee him in the crotch like I’d seen at a self defense demonstration in New York. I thought about quietly trying to dial nine-one-one, but the cordless phone was atypically in its handset across the room and my mobile phone sat uselessly in the front seat of my car.

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to stay calm. Robert was angry and hostile but would he really try to hurt me? In answer to my question, the instinctive part of my brain responded. Yes, he would. He was already wanted for murder. He had nothing to lose. I tried to think. And prayed to God that Granny had simply taken Taffy for a walk.

  “You didn’t screw up my business plan? You didn’t screw up my business plan!” He laughed and the sound was crazed. “You didn’t screw up my business plan,” he repeated, then stepped forward and shoved me, hard. I stumbled backward into the counter but stayed upright. The center of my chest stung where his hand hit.

  I tried to stay calm and sound authoritative. “Don’t touch me again, Robert.”

  The next shove came with amazing speed. I jumped sideways to deflect the blow but slipped on a chunk of watermelon and went straight down. I landed on my hip and scrambled away from him.

  “I swear, Robert. You touch me again and you’ll regret it.”

  “Baby Doll, I regret the first time I ever touched you. You wouldn’t make me the child I deserve and on top of that, you stuck your nose into my financial business. You’ve ruined my life.”

  I got to my feet and backed away, putting some distance between the two of us.

  “Robert, where is Granny? She hasn’t done anything to you. It’s me you’re mad at. Tell me where she is.”

  “They’re after me, you know. I’m on the run because of you. You make me kill the birds. You blab to the cops. You set me up at the hotel, which by the way, didn’t work because I saw a cop scoping out my room.” He shook his head with disgust. “You’re not being a very good wife.”

  I heard a muffled bark but couldn’t be sure if it was real or imagined.

  “Is that Taffy I just heard? Is she with Granny somewhere in the house?”

  Although his glare remained locked on me, it seemed as though he couldn’t hear. He ignored my questions.

  “Robert, I didn’t make you do anything. Now, please tell me where Granny is.”

  “Forget about the old woman already, you stupid bitch. She just kept going on and on about you and your boyfriend. I told her to shut up, but she wouldn’t.” He shrugged his shoulders. “And then she has the nerve to say I don’t have any manners? So I shut her up with my fist. She’s back there in the bathroom, with the yapping dog. I put her in the bathtub. She looks kind of funny. Passed out, with her feet sticking up and all. Kind of like something out of Beverly Hillbillies.”

  Over the noise from the television, I definitely heard muted barking. I turned and sprinted toward the bathroom that the barking seemed to be coming from, but Robert was quicker and tackled me before I even got out of the kitchen. He slammed me into the tile floor and the instant I rolled over to get up, a white explosion blew through my vision. Pain reverberated in my skull as though a jackhammer had punctured it. Blood ran from my nose, or maybe my mouth, and I realized he’d punched me in the face.

  “Yeah, Baby Doll, you did. You did make me do it,” he said, kneeling over me, one hand gripping the collar of my shirt and the other poised for another punch. “And now they think they’re going to bust me for arson. I should have just poisoned the birds. The only reason I set the fire was to cover up the burned out nest holes.”

  The raised fist dropped slightly. “I’m busting my ass, climbing a ladder in the dark, trying to find the freakin’ holes. And setting them on fire. Then I say to myself, how will that look? Smoke just shooting out the sides of trees? Something like that could keep burning, slow, for a long time. It could smoke for days. So it occurs to me to set a ground fire. Brush fires happen all the time. Sparks could have easily gone into the holes and caught the nests on fire.”

  I shoved his hand away and scooted backward on my hands and feet. I tried to get up but slipped again and actually saw the second punch arcing toward my head before I felt the impact. This time his balled fist made contact with the side of my jaw and my head rocked back as pain exploded through my face. I felt blood squirting somewhere inside my mouth and my teeth rattled against each other.

  When my eyes came back into focus he was squatting beside me, shaking his head from side to side, seemingly talking to himself.

  “It would have worked just right, too, except for that dumb ass came poking around with a flashlight.”

  “Jerry,” I said, struggling to keep from panicking. Or blacking out. I had to stay calm and get help. I had to find Granny.

  “What?” Robert demanded, distracted from his rant.

  “His name was Jerry.” I swallowed a mouthful of blood before I gagged on it.

  “Who gives a shit what his name was? He didn’t have any business being out there in the middle of the night.”

  “But did you have to kill him?” My tongue was thick and I had trouble getting the words out.

  Robert cocked his head to think. A maniacal gleam appeared in the eye I could see. I looked around, hoping to locate something to grab and use as a weapon. But the nearest thing was a kitchen chair and it was out of reach.

  “No, I don’t suppose I had to kill him,” Robert said finally. “But once I knocked him out, I figured I could make it look like he was the one who set the fire. So I drug him over by the woodpecker trees. And then I let the diesel run from the truck. I had to bust the lock on the valve, but it was easy.”

  “You killed a man, Robert.”

  “You made me do it.” He stood, jerking me up with him. “You’re the one who stuck your nose in my business.”

  I tried to pull away, but his grip on me tightened. “It was your fault, and his fault, too. He shined a light right in my face. I couldn’t take the chance he would remember what I look like.”

  I didn’t need to hear anymore. I didn’t want to hear anymore. If I didn’t do something, he would kill me, too. I needed to keep him talking.

  “What do you want from me?” I couldn’t feel the right side of my face and my ears were ringing. I willed myself not to show fear.

  “What do I want from you?” he said, pulling out a kitchen chair and shoving me onto it.

  I considered fighting back with kicks or punches or scratches but knew I’d lose. He was heavier and stronger and quicker. My best chance was to keep him talking as long as I could.

  “What do I want from you,” he said again and pulled the coffee maker off the kitchen counter by its cord. The glass pot fell to the ground and shattered. But all he’d wanted was the length of electrical cord.

  With a single jerk, he ripped it out of the appliance and threw the coffeemaker into the sink. I figured he was going to tie me up with the cord, or worse, try to choke me. I jumped up and drove my head into his gut.

  The blow took him by surprise and I managed to dash around him. But not away from him. The impact of a chair slamming into me was lightning quick and low down. My legs buckled and even though I couldn’t feel it, I sensed that my right knee had been serious
ly damaged.

  He pulled me off the floor as though I were weightless and dragged me into a fresh kitchen chair. I noted with a sense of detachment that my knee was twisted at an odd angle and I didn’t struggle when he busied himself tying my wrists together with the electrical cord, behind my back. I had to figure out a way to buy some time.

  “What I want from you, is, I want you to suffer. I want to show you what happens to people who mess with Robert Ellis.” He yanked the cord tighter with each word. “I want to repay you for ruining my life.”

  My hands felt fat and numb. When I tried to move them, I discovered that he’d not only tied them together, but had woven the cord through the back of the chair.

  “Let’s talk, Robert,” I managed to say through a puffy bloody mouth, still thinking my only way out was to keep him talking and hope that someone would come home. “You don’t have to be here, doing this. People make mistakes and we have a legal system that gives you certain rights. There is another way.”

  “Another way to get even with you? Oh, there are plenty of ways I could do that. Maybe I should just take you somewhere and keep you locked up, like they want to keep me locked up.”

  Using my hair as a handhold, he yanked my head backward and in that instant, I saw a flash of something through the window that looked like Trent’s white work truck. It had to be. It had red lettering on the sides and a big toolbox in the back. And it was pulling into Mamma and Daddy’s driveway.

  “That’s not going to happen,” I said, energized by the sight of Trent. “I’d sooner die than be locked up by you.”

  He sighed and the feel of his breath was revolting. “That can certainly be arranged. I mean, they want to send me to the clink for killing some idiot that was out nosing around in the middle of the night anyway. So what if they pin another one on me? Besides. Even if I get off the murder rap, they’ll put me in jail for wasting a few birds. Hell. I didn’t even get them all.” A corner of his mouth went up in thought. “I should go back and finish the job.”