Bad Girl and Loverboy

by Michele Jaffe

  The next day she had found a yellow rose on the windowsill with a note on it that said, “I hope you feel better. Your friend, Harry.”

  She’d had to search her mind before realizing that Harry was the boy who lived next door to her, in the house on the corner. He must have heard her fighting with her mom, seen her upset. In fact, God knew what he had seen. She knew she should be embarrassed, but instead, gazing at the flower, thinking someone cared about her at all made her cry. She had peered out the window looking for him that day to say thank you, but she did not see him. When the flower dried out, she put it in the jewelry box with her money and her other prized possessions and forgot all about it. At least until four months earlier, at the opening party for her restaurant.

  It had been a mad scene, and she had used an entire bottle of waterless antibacterial lotion, applying it after every time someone hugged her, just trying to stay clean. Unable to take it, she’d ducked outside and stood next to a tree, smoking a cigarette and looking into the restaurant, her restaurant, at all the people inside claiming to love her. She kept wishing Trish had come in from L.A. for it. Kept wishing for her dad.

  “Ms. Sebastian?”

  She looked up to see this man, gorgeous, standing next to her. He said, “I won’t ask you to shake, it seems like you’ve had to do enough touching for one night,” and she could have fallen in love with him there.

  But it got better. He cleared his throat and said, “You probably don’t remember me. I lived next door to you for a few years when you were growing up. On Cottonwood Avenue? Harry?”

  “The boy who gave me a yellow rose.” She stared at him, trying to match the pimply face of that fat boy to the stranger here.

  “You do remember.”

  “I still have it. It was the first flower anyone ever gave me.” And there hadn’t been that many since then, she thought.

  He smiled and looked more like the boy again, but still handsome. Handsome and happy.

  The next day her partners in the restaurant and the manager, Norton, demanded to know what had happened to her. She’d disappeared in the middle of the party. Was she sick?

  Yes, she said, not sorry about the lie. She wasn’t about to tell them that she’d left with Harry. That they had gone to ride a roller coaster—a roller coaster!—because she’d said she needed to clear her head. And then he’d taken her home and left her at her door like a gentleman. She had hugged herself with joy that night as she fell asleep in her flannel nightgown, remembering the way he’d held her hand during the roller coaster ride. The way he had kissed her on the lips gently at the door and promised, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  And he had. Called her and said, “I wasn’t going to. I was going to make you wait, wonder how I felt about you, because I know that’s supposed to be good for relationships. But I couldn’t. I have to see you again tonight.”

  For three months it was like a fairy tale. They spoke every day, saw each other every night. She had been determined to do everything right this time, follow all the rules, be a good girl. She hadn’t even slept with Harry until their one month anniversary. He knew that she’d had a difficult childhood, and he wanted to help her forget that. He was an expert at dealing with bad memories, he told her. That was why he had dropped his stepfather’s last name and replaced it with his real father’s. A name he was willing to share with her if she would do him the honor of becoming his bride.

  He’d said it like that, old-fashioned, and she had thrown herself on him, trusting him in a way she’d never trusted anyone. Marriage, family, “Honey, it’s me,”—all of it in her grasp.

  “Just put whatever happened behind you and move on,” he said. “Don’t dwell on it. Don’t go to the places that make you think of your father. Be with me, here.”

  She had tried so hard, but the pull of the past was too strong. She had started forgetting to call Harry sometimes because she was sitting outside the houses, the ones that held all her memories. She had nothing else.

  She could still see Harry’s lips moving as he told her it was over. “This is taking over your life,” he said that day in his office. “There isn’t room for me. You have too many issues to work through.”

  She knew what he was really saying. He was saying that he couldn’t love her. That no one could.

  Eve wondered if Harry was listening to Hits from High School now, wherever he was. It was their favorite radio show, and he’d once dedicated a song to her on it, “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” calling her his cheeseburger because she could be so silly.

  She had her fingertips on the knife case when a knock on the window of her car made her jump. Looking over, she saw a woman in a sweater set standing there, smiling and motioning that she had something to say.

  Eve pushed the button to lower the window, letting out a cloud of cigarette smoke that made the woman laugh. “On a bit of a health kick?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just wanted to tell you that we’re about to start opening the presents. So you might want to come inside and cheer the new mommy on.”

  Eve stared at the woman, uncomprehending.

  “Aren’t you a friend of Kelly’s? Here for her baby shower?” the woman asked. She pointed at the house next to the one Eve had grown up in. “Kelly O’Connell.”

  “No. I’m waiting for my friend Harry to get home. He lives next door.”

  The woman put a hand up to her mouth. “Oh my. I’m so sorry. When I saw you sitting out here I just figured you were shy and—well, my mistake. You know, there’s plenty of cake to go around inside if you want to join us.”

  “Thanks, but I am on a diet.”

  The woman smiled again and said, “Well, if you change your mind,” and went back inside to rejoin the others.

  The curtains were not closed all the way and Eve caught occasional glimpses of women leaning forward to laugh out loud, or of their lips making o’s of appreciation for whatever gift Kelly was unwrapping. Some of them happily eating lemon squares and cookies with cherry jam in the middle, not worrying about the calories. She pictured how she must look to them, sitting all alone in a car filled with smoke, one of the sad single women they read about in magazine articles.

  Part of her hated all of them with their perfect hair and wedding bands and husbands who reached for them in the middle of the night. But she knew it wasn’t really hate, it was envy. She especially envied Kelly at the center of her adoring group of friends. They had everything and she had nothing. No one. It wasn’t fair. Why did they get to be happy when she felt this way?

  Madonna had stopped singing and the deejay of the Hits from High School Hour came on, Daisy Deluxe. She said she had an updated bulletin about the Home Wrecker killings, that the police were actively seeking a person or persons unknown in a green hatchback car.

  Eve froze, her cigarette hanging in midair.

  “And if you are listening, Home Wrecker,” Daisy Deluxe said, “I want you to know I think you are a monster. I hope they get you soon, and when they do, I hope you rot.”

  “Home Wrecker,” Eve whispered under her breath, feeling her hands shake. The woman had no idea what she was saying. Those were the most awful words Eve could imagine. She remembered the day she had first heard them, first been called them, the worst day of her life. The name had followed her to Los Angeles, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and now, despite everything, had found her here.

  She had driven to Harry’s house by accident, but now she decided that she had to see him. Needed to see him. It was time to stop putting this off. She thought she would wait for him behind the house, surprise him, so she walked up the driveway and sat on the top step of the back door, half in the light, half in shadow. Hi, Harry, she would say. I wanted to see you before I killed myself.

  And he’d say, No, don’t, you can’t. Let me take care of you. Because he had to. She knew he couldn’t resist a damsel in distress.

  And then she’d be inside. Then she would do it. She realized she was crying and w
iped the tears from her face on her sleeve.

  A quarter of an hour later he pulled in, looking handsome and tired. He hadn’t seen her at first so she stood up and said, “Hi, Harry.”

  Before she could move on, everything changed. The look on his face was one she never could have imagined. Not surprise. So much better then surprise. Like he was happy to see her. Like she was good. He dropped his briefcase, all his papers, right there and ran to hug her. “Eve,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about you all day. I tried calling you at work and at home. After our last conversation, I’ve just missed you so much. It’s like I dreamed of you, and you showed up. Have you been crying?”

  “Yes,” she said, falling into his embrace. Wondering what she should do with the knife in her hand.

  CHAPTER 22

  Cate had finally agreed, with persuasion from Brandon, that meatballs did not have to be perfectly round to be edible, and after dinner, a bath, a promise from Windy that she could paint the walls of her bedroom with rainbows, and a few more pages of The Little Prince, had gone happily to bed, clutching Soccer Barbie.

  When Windy came back downstairs from kissing both Cate and Barbie good night, Brandon had finished the dishes and was flipping through fabric swatches while he watched the Mexican soap opera he had taped that afternoon. A woman was sobbing on the screen, clutching at a man whose lips barely moved under his mustache as he said something with his eyes narrowed.

  “Didn’t we see the same scene last week?” Windy asked. Since her Spanish was virtually nonexistent, she could only follow the story lines through the images.

  “LouLou and Diego have a very dramatic relationship,” Brandon told her. “Fighting is their way of saying ‘I love you.’ They’ll make up again after the commercial.”

  “But she is always crying. Or looking tense.”

  “She thrives on it.” An advertisement came on and Brandon hit pause. “I don’t want to sound like your mother, honey, but why don’t you get yourself into your bed?” Doing his imitation of Mrs. Thomas’s accent, a cross between Charo and the Godfather.

  “Is that your sweet way of saying I look like shit?”

  “Más o menos. More or less.”

  “Thanks. I thought I would go through that last box from the move, get it out of the way, and then go to sleep.”

  “Sure,” Brandon said, keeping his face neutral, and restarted the video.

  The box, plain brown cardboard, was sitting on the bottom shelf of the bookcase that stood next to Windy’s desk in the living room. Going through the Waters family’s photos and keepsakes that day had reminded her about it. She had meant to unpack it right after they moved in, but was always too busy or too tired. It mostly contained papers, things she needed to file, and a few old photos. She went over to it. Slid it off the shelf. Stared at it. Listened as Brandon sang along to a commercial in Spanish. And put the box back.

  She was too tired tonight.

  She sat down on the arm of the couch. Brandon paused the tape again—a different woman was on the screen crying now; didn’t anyone have a good relationship?—and looked at her.

  “What is it, honey?”

  “I am really sorry to do this, but I think I need to ask you a favor. I might have to work some crazy hours the next few days. Would you mind—”

  “Not at all,” he interrupted. “Leave the Minx to me. I don’t have anything going on and it would be a pleasure. We’ll finally finish decorating her room. Who knows, we might start on yours. I’m thinking Moroccan kasbah.”

  “Sure, whatever you want,” she said, not really paying attention. “I feel so bad. Abandoning Cate and you for work. It’s just that—”

  “It’s just that it is your job, honey. That is what you do. Watching the Minx is what I do. And frankly, I want you out there doing it. Someone has to catch the bad guys.”

  Why did this make so much sense to everyone but Bill? Damn, she had forgotten to call him back. She said, “Thanks” to Brandon then went into the kitchen and dialed Bill’s home number. No answer. He’d said he’d be home and he always answered when he saw her number on the caller ID, even when he was sleeping. Unless he was angry at her.

  She would have to make it up to him. Again.

  She could not blame him for being mad, she knew. Not when she herself was still uncomfortable thinking about what had happened eight months earlier at that crime scene in Virginia. About the twenty seconds of consciousness she had spent lying in a pool of her own blood, not knowing what else the man was going to do to her, only knowing she would never see Cate again.

  When her therapist asked about it, she shrugged and said, “It was a wake-up call.” Two centimeters to the left or right and it would have been a death sentence, the knife hitting her heart or lungs, but it only got ribs, nothing vital. She was fine. There was no reason to dwell on it.

  She had been on the job when it happened. Eight months earlier a man had walked into the police station to file a report, said he knew where a murder suspect was hiding. From what he said, the way he acted, the officers trusted him, followed up his lead, and arrested the man they found. The man they arrested kept protesting that he was innocent, but that mostly amused them, especially after the preliminary forensics work-up showed there were hairs on the victim—a twenty-two-year-old woman named Tawny Marks—that matched the man in custody’s in color, texture, and length. That was pretty good, but what made it better was that he turned out to be the woman’s estranged husband.

  But even as she delivered the lab results on samples she herself had collected at the scene, something inside Windy said this man was not the killer. She knew better than to act on instinct—instinct lies, evidence never does—so she needed to return to the crime scene to look for more information.

  Deep down she also knew she trusted her instincts less because she felt so personally about the case. She did not know Tawny Marks, the victim, but she had seen wide scars on her wrists, old ones, and asked Tawny’s sister about them. Tawny had been through hell—her own demons, inside, the sister said. She had tried to commit suicide, slitting her wrists, when her marriage went bad. She had been the one to destroy it, Tawny knew—had an affair with a plumber. Her husband, the one in custody, had found out but had said he would take her back if she wanted. She had opted to leave. It was a low time for her, drinking, drugs, and she hadn’t felt she deserved a man like her husband. But surviving the suicide attempt—it was a fluke, she overfilled the bathtub and flooded it into the neighbor’s house downstairs so the super went up to her apartment—had shaken sense into her. Since then she had taken her life back, quit drinking. She was doing better. Great, even.

  The sister’s interview gave the cops plenty to work with on motive for the estranged husband—jealous spouses were great murder suspects—and gave Windy a need to find Tawny’s real killer. Anyone who could piece their way back together after hitting bottom, who faced their demons, got her respect. And deserved justice.

  She went back to the tiny apartment where the woman had been killed and started working the scene again, and while she was under the bed collecting a sample she heard a noise and felt a hand close around her ankle.

  She froze. Froze as she was dragged out on her stomach. Froze as the hand flipped her over. Froze as she stared up at the man standing there, a man she recognized as the one who had pointed the cops to the estranged husband. A man who recognized her as the sheriff. It only took him a second to flip open his switchblade and stab for her heart.

  That was when her twenty seconds of consciousness started, lying there, furious and terrified and unable to move, as the man grabbed the two hundred fifty dollars under the mattress he’d come for, kicked her once, and took off.

  It came out later that the man who had attacked her was the real killer. Tawny’s husband’s hairs were found at the crime scene because she had invited him over, hoping for a reconciliation now that she was feeling better. The real killer was the plumber she’d originally run away from her mar
riage with. He’d found out that she was thinking of getting back together with her husband and lost it, shot her. And when the bitch fell down, dead, he explained at his allocution, damned if she didn’t do it across the bed, and he’d been too afraid to move her to get the money out from under it, so he’d had to wait and come back later.

  Windy learned the facts in the hospital when she regained consciousness, her chest a mass of bandages, her eyes searching only for Cate, thank God there she was in the corner, sitting on her grandmother’s lap. In some ways, seeing her daughter again had been the happiest moment of her life.

  In some ways it was the worst. Because survival brought with it terror, doubt, and recriminations. From her mother, her in-laws. Herself. What had she been thinking? Was this acting responsibly? What if something had happened to her, where would Cate be? Was this a good job for a woman?

  The day before she was released from the hospital her mother-in-law had come to see her, Evan’s mother. There was no one else there and she got right to the point. In her conservative cream colored suit, leaning against the table because she didn’t want to touch the chair in the room, saying, “Evan’s death has been hard for all of us. But you, Windy, you have to stop acting like your life doesn’t matter. You have to stop taking risks like this. If you can’t be safe and do this job, you should quit. I want my granddaughter to be raised by someone responsible.”