From my knees, clutching the fallen book to my chest, I looked up for Jerry to thank him, but he’d closed the opening in the door and was gone, back to the desk chair he used as a La-Z-Boy.
I spread them out and sat on the cold floor with them. I picked them up, one by one, hugging them, inhaling them, then running my fingers over all the surfaces. I turned each one over, gently shook them, and of course nothing fell out. I lined them up by size.
The smallest was Sit Still and Wait for It, by Sasha Jones. I could have fit it in my back pocket had I had one. The next was a previously well-loved paperback romance, The Missing Secretary, by Lilly Jasmine. Lastly, largest, and the bestseller as far as I was concerned, A Bypass Surgery Survivor’s Guide to a Long and Healthy Life, by P. Derrick Ameston.
I didn’t wake up screaming that night.
TWENTY-ONE
Bradley Cole had warned me that he wouldn’t be back until he had news, but he’d failed to warn me that with hope, which he’d given me, it would be a long wait.
Receiving the best news ever, that my father was recovering, didn’t provide the relief I thought it would. Initially, of course, it did; I cried, danced, laughed, and relived every moment of my childhood. I fell to my knees and assured God I’d keep all the prison promises I’d made, and after an entire day of that, I collapsed in relief. The biggest relief? No more endless hours of imaging my father without life or my life without my father.
But I had to fill the hours with something, and as they dragged on, his healing actually served to make my situation worse: I had to get out of here and get to Daddy before someone else did. I had to get out of here before Daddy put two and two together and came up with trouble. I had to dig myself out before Daddy was forced to. If my father learned of my predicament, he’d have a heart attack.
I got that Bradley Cole wanted me to Sit Still and Wait for It. Regardless, after another day, I began pacing my four-by-six cell, and read The Missing Secretary twice, the good parts more times than that.
I replayed the twenty-eight minutes with Bradley a million times, picking it to pieces, and tried to make sense of the book titles. Where in the world was Natalie? I used Fantasy as a sounding board when she had time, but she was more interested in the Bradley Cole angle than anything else. “Girl,” Fantasy said. “You’ve got it bad for him.”
“He is pretty wonderful.” I looked at her. “And I miss his clothes.”
The rock through the window had to have been George, and the accompanying message asked more questions than it answered. The note around the rock had three words, written in block letters, and underlined twice: IT WASN’T HER.
It wasn’t her? Her who? Bianca?
“Why would he throw a rock through my window?” Bradley had asked.
“So he wouldn’t be recorded by the condo’s security cameras,” I answered. “George’s story is a long one, and he operates completely under the radar.”
“He’s the cab driver who parks at the VIP entrance, right?” Bradley asked. “Where the shooting took place?”
I nodded.
“Then he saw the whole thing. All we have to do is track him down.”
“No,” I shook my head. “He only knows who it wasn’t. If he knew who it was, he’d have said.”
“I’ll find him.” Bradley promised.
“That will never happen,” I said. “George is so long gone it’s as if he was never even here.”
The note under the door had been from No Hair. Bradley paraphrased it for me: No Hair said this was my own fault for snooping around in his desk. While he knew of my predicament, there wasn’t a lot he could do about it, seeing as how I’d left a trail.
“The note said you left your hair in his office and that she walked right to it. He doesn’t say who ‘she’ is or what ‘it’ is. Do you know, Davis,” Bradley asked, “who ‘she’ is, what it means by ‘you left your hair,’ or how you left a trail?”
I couldn’t answer because my life was flashing before my eyes.
“The note said he was with Richard Sanders.” Bradley’s voice was far away. “But it didn’t say where.”
I couldn’t respond because the world’s worst news was sinking in.
“Davis?” Bradley waved a hand in my face. “Can you fill me in?”
“Sorry,” I shook the cobwebs out. “George is saying Bianca didn’t shoot her husband, and No Hair’s saying I forgot my wig, and my prints are on the gun.”
Bradley Cole could not have been more confused. “No what?” he asked. “No hair, did you say? I’m very confused on the hair issue.”
I couldn’t explain because I was too busy thinking about lethal injections.
“What gun, Davis? You shot a gun that day? Your prints are on what gun?”
“Doe!” A guard interrupted. “Time’s up.”
Bradley Cole reached out and placed his strong, warm hands on top of my cold shaky ones. The room spun around me at his touch.
“Don’t worry,” he’d said. “I’ll dig into this. Don’t worry, Davis.”
Seven ridiculously long days and nights had passed since that meeting, with no word from him other than the books. There were times I wondered if I’d dreamed it.
“Stop fretting,” Fantasy advised. “He’ll be back.”
She’d no sooner finished repeating the comforting words to me on my eighth day of solitary confinement when the intercom in my room squealed. “Doe. Your lawyer’s here. Transport in ten.”
“See?” Fantasy asked. “I told you.”
* * *
Now that he was my attorney of record, I could meet with him anytime, and we didn’t have to do it in the crowded visitation room, although honestly, I’d have done it with him anywhere: crowd, no crowd, judges, videographers, zoo animals, I didn’t care.
We were allowed thirty minutes in a private room: all glass walls, guards on every corner, and speakers that could be turned on should the penal system think I was spouting off geographical coordinates to all the bodies I’d buried.
Bradley could bring his brief case, any documents related to my defense, and his cell phone, although no signals got in or out of the bunker. He had to leave his keys, weapons, and any street drugs for resale he was sneaking to me at the door.
Today he was wearing a white button-down oxford shirt under a navy blue knit sweater and khaki pants. His shoes were the Italian loafers that at last sighting were on his closet floor tucked between my (Meredith’s) Tory Burch peep-toes and Michael Kors black clogs.
I was wearing blue prison scrubs.
Honestly, we gooed at each other for the first little bit like he was there to pick me up for the prom. I wondered if I might be imagining it. Maybe it was just me doing all the gooing.
“How are you holding up, Davis?”
I nodded, smiling. “I’m better,” I said. “Better.”
“You got the books,” he said.
“I did. I love them all. Although there’s not much to Sit Still and Wait for It,” I said. “Dull stuff.”
He laughed. “I didn’t read it. But if you’ll write me a little review, I’ll post it on the Internet for you.”
Things got real serious real quick. “So he’s okay?”
Bradley’s voice was soft. “He’s fine, Davis. He’s doing fine. He’s making a great recovery.”
I squeezed my eyes closed, swallowed hard, and tried not to blubber.
“I picked up the phone to call a dozen times,” he said, “and couldn’t figure out what to say. So I got in the car and drove to scenic Pine Apple, Alabama.”
He reached for his cell phone, pushed buttons, and passed it to me. Our hands touched, and a guard banged on the window with his baton.
I scrolled through the underwater photos, underwater because I began crying as soon as I saw the first image of my father, dressed in gray wool pants and a pale yellow V-neck sweater that hung on him like he was a wire hanger, strolling the rows of Mother’s winter garden beside my parents’ house, my mot
her and sister at his elbows, my niece apparently running circles around them.
“Sorry I couldn’t get closer.”
“Oh, God, Bradley, please don’t apologize,” I rearranged the tears so they were all over my face instead of two boring rivers. There were more than twenty images, and in all of them Daddy looked so thin, and so scary pale, but he was alive, smiling in several shots, and seemingly not too much less of himself after the heart attack and surgery. I fell against the chair back, exhaling the breath I’d been holding for so long with the proof in my hands. I clutched the evidence against my chest, and Bradley looked a little nervous for his phone, or maybe jealous, because most days, today being one of them, I skipped the threadbare sports bras. They were itchy.
I could live the rest of my life with Fantasy as my only friend, Bradley as my only link to the outside world, these prison scrubs my entire wardrobe, the prison walls my only view, as long as my father was okay.
Finally, I passed the phone back to him, our hands meeting again, and mouthed two words I’d uttered a million times, but never before from the rock bottom of my heart. “Thank you.”
He waited patiently until I indicated that I was ready for more, and when he saw that I was, he landed an envelope on the table between us. Meredith’s handwriting jumped off the white paper.
“Oh, crap.” I stared at it.
Bradley Cole didn’t move a muscle.
Davis,
What the hell. You’ve pulled some stunts in your day, but this one takes the cake.
Daddy’s going to be fine.
I got a crazy phone call telling me you were in Asia, or Africa, I can’t even remember it was all so scary-horrible-chaos those first days, but I do remember this—I didn’t believe a word of it. Once we got Daddy home and I turned on a television, I knew exactly where you were. I left poor Mother alone with our very ill father, buckled Riley up, and drove to the prison only to sit there—with my CHILD—for TEN HOURS, DAVIS, to be told over and over again that you weren’t there, and that I couldn’t see the Jane Doe they were holding on the casino shooting. What the hell, Davis?
No, Mother and Daddy don’t know, although Daddy’s on the right track, and he’ll know soon. You had a little grace period as your father was TOO SICK to even worry about you, but that’s over, and he’s snooping around. Yes, as always, I’m trying to cover for you, making up phantom phone calls and even sending Get Well cards.
Seriously, Davis.
Meredith
After reading it several times, I turned the letter over so Meredith would stop screaming at me. “When did you get this?” I assumed my sister had just slipped it underneath the door at the condo.
“I’d been in Pine Apple ten minutes when she walked right up to me and said we needed to talk.”
“No!” This felt no different than the time Meredith caught me smoking pot and I had to wash the dinner dishes on her nights for months on end. No telling what this would cost me.
Bradley nodded. “I thought I was being sneaky.”
“Yeah,” I looked away and sighed. “She was raised by a police chief.”
“Your hometown’s really small, isn’t it?”
“It is,” I agreed.
“I liked her store,” he said.
It didn’t seem to me that Bradley Cole would be wasting time making small talk about the Front Porch if there wasn’t something else about his meeting Meredith that he didn’t want to tell me.
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
I crossed my arms and waited.
“She said for me to tell you that she wasn’t an idiot,” he said, “and that your ex-husband is nowhere to be found.”
“And?” I asked.
He took his time. “She said the whole town thinks you’ve run off with him.”
We sat quietly for a beat.
“So?” Bradley took a tread-lightly breath. “You and your ex?”
I wondered if he was asking regarding my current state of affairs, or life in general. It didn’t matter; the answer was the same.
“Honestly, Bradley,” I said. “I’d rather be here than anywhere with my ex-husband.”
“Okay, Davis.” He shifted in his seat. “Time to tell me the whole story.”
I did the best I could.
“You realize,” he said at the end, “I’m not a criminal lawyer.”
“Bradley,” I replied, “I don’t care if you’re a Tootsie Roll lawyer.”
I didn’t leave anything out.
He listened intently, made notes but asked no questions, and made only one comment at the end: “It’s eerie how much you do look like her.”
TWENTY-TWO
On my fifty-sixth day in prison, Teeth washed up in the St. Bernard Bay, ninety miles west of the Bellissimo. His dentist identified the body over the phone. It didn’t take long to find the cause of death, as the bullet was wedged so tightly in the base of his skull that even the ocean residents hadn’t managed to free it. It came from the gun with my prints on it. For the moment, it was Metairie, Louisiana’s problem, but it was only a matter of paperwork before it would be mine.
The object of my dreams—and truly, I mean it, I’d been dreaming about him since the first time I’d climbed into his bed—had said he had good news and bad news.
“Which do you want first?”
Thinking there might be bad news about my father, I demanded it.
He told me about Teeth.
“Oh my God.” I was incredulous. “This isn’t bad news,” I cried. “This is the straw that will nail my broke-back camel’s coffin!”
“No,” Bradley Cole was calm, “it’s not.”
“I’m going to be charged with it! This is devastating!” I was pacing, crying, and panicked. “I didn’t really like Teeth all that much, and there’s no doubt he had something to do with all this, but I sure wouldn’t have wished the guy dead!”
“Please sit down, Davis.” He patted the chair beside him.
He reached for and found my hand underneath the table, which gave me all manner of new sensations to add to the electric-chair sensations I was already entertaining.
With his free hand, he pushed paper in front of me. It was the ballistics report from the Richard Sanders’ unpleasantness. I used my teeth to turn the pages to avoid letting go of Bradley’s hand.
(No, I didn’t.)
After looking at the report from every possible angle, I turned to him. “Am I reading this right?”
Bradley Cole nodded. “You are.”
According to the ballistics report, the bullet that hit Richard Sanders had whizzed above his ear back to front. Shreveport Cranial Trauma Center agreed: entry posterior, exit anterior. He and Bianca had been face-to-face, and Bellissimo surveillance backed it up with forty-four zillion stills. The shot that hit him had come from the bushes behind him, not the wife in front of him. Bianca had squeezed off a round, and they had recovered the casing, but the estimated trajectory indicated she had been aiming for someone in Hot Springs, Arkansas—not her husband. Taking a hard look at what had really happened, it was amazing the shot that did hit Richard Sanders didn’t go through him, then into Bianca.
So, who shot J.R.?
“How did you get this?”
“I’ve got people.” Bradley Cole’s eyes danced, and I reached up and ran a hand through my blonde hair, because his words made me think of Natalie getting me an appointment with the hair person Shreveport, Sacramento, whatever his name was. Bradley had people. Natalie had people. Why didn’t I have people?
I suppose I had a strange look on my face, because Bradley studied me intently, then asked, “Where in the world are you going with this, Davis?”
I looked at him. “I was thinking about my hair.”
Bradley nodded slowly. “Of course.”
Things got very quiet, and very personal.
“You are amazing, Davis,” he whispered, our heads close.
“So are you, Bradley,” I whispered
back.
Honestly, I couldn’t feel my nose. Or my toes. Or much in between. It took forever to get back on track, because, as my Granny Dee used to say, love is a many splendored thing, and I was completely splendored by this man. Eventually, though, the prison clock ticking, the subject of Teeth’s big dead body landed between us, shoving all the would-be romance aside.
“They’ll still charge me with it,” I said, my heart rate having finally returned to normal range. “They have my prints.”
“Even if, Davis, it’s in another state, so there’s a small window of opportunity before Louisiana comes knocking.”
“Opportunity for what, Bradley?”
“Ah!” He had the most dazzling smile. “That’s the best news! I think I can get you released before a charge is made on the Louisiana murder.”
It made no sense. “How?”
“I file a motion to dismiss the attempted homicide charges in Mississippi based on the ballistics report.” He tapped the papers on the table.
We stared at the ballistics report that clearly exonerated Bianca, which is to say the ballistics report that clearly exonerated me.
“That will never happen,” I said. “It will take six weeks of court proceedings to dig through the report. By then, I’ll be knee-deep in the Teeth deal.”
“Well, we’re asking for the moon,” he said, “but we’re shooting for a star.”
“The bail star.”
“Right,” Bradley Cole said. “Then we’ll prove it was Bianca holding the gun, and let her worry about having the charges dismissed.”
I had stars in my eyes.
“What if we don’t find her before I’m knee-deep in the Teeth deal?” I asked.
Double Whammy (A Davis Way Crime Caper) Page 24