A Margin of Lust

by Greta Boris

  Emily flew out from behind Jason and tackled Art. Tyler was right behind her.

  "Dad, we didn't know what to do. You said don't let anyone in, but they're police." Tyler's face crumpled.

  "You did just fine, buddy. Don't worry." Art put a hand on his shoulder. "Why don't you and Emily go with Jason? He's going to find a movie or something for you guys to watch."

  Art and the police officers settled in the living room. As soon as the kids disappeared, he turned to Investigator Sylla. "So, what's this about?"

  "Do you know where your wife is, Mr. Bishop?"

  Art's heart beat an arrhythmic measure. "She may be at a friend's. I'm not sure."

  "She hasn't contacted you?"

  "No." The words made him seem so distant from Gwen. "I was gone, camping," he tried to explain.

  "We need to find her. A friend of hers was found dead."

  Art's eyes widened. "Who?" Maricela's face flashed through his mind.

  "Lance Fairchild. He worked at Humboldt."

  "She was working with him on a Laguna Beach house, but I don't think they were close. I'm sure there are other people from the office—"

  "The cleaning lady found him in your wife's listing in Dana Point this morning."

  "A man? Do you think it's the same killer?" Art asked.

  "It doesn't look like it. But we'd like to talk to your wife. As I mentioned, it was her listing."

  "Yes, but all the agents have access to the lockbox—"

  The investigator interrupted, "Her key was the last to unlock the lockbox, and a neighbor saw her there."

  "She was supposed to be doing paperwork. That's why she missed the camping trip," Art said.

  Investigator Sylla's face softened. "We believe she met Lance Fairchild at the property and there was an altercation."

  Art looked at the woman mutely. Was she implying Gwen and this Lance were planning to... planning to what? "Look, detective, I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but I can assure you my wife wasn't planning to hook up with some guy in her client's home. If they met there, it was for business. Maybe Lance had an interested buyer or something."

  "He was found naked. In the bathtub." Sylla's voice was flat.

  Art's hand balled into a fist. He wanted to hit something. "So, maybe he met somebody there after Gwen left."

  "Maybe," Sylla said. "The sooner we find her, the sooner we can get her side of the story."

  "I'll call her," Art said and pulled his phone from his pocket. "Let's get to the bottom of this. I'm sure—"

  "We have her phone."

  "You have her phone?" Art stared.

  "Yes. Several of your wife's personal items were left at the scene."

  "Wait. Wait." Art exploded from the couch. "You're saying you found my wife's cell at a murder scene? Did you stop to think maybe the person who killed Lance took her?"

  "Anything is possible, Mr. Bishop. That's why we need to speak with Mrs. Bishop—so we can clear things up."

  "No, I mean, she could be in danger," Art said, his voice rising.

  "As I said, anything is possible. I hope we can count on your assistance in locating your wife."

  "I don't know where she is," Art almost screamed. "What are you doing to find her?"

  Tyler appeared in the living room doorway, his face creased with worry. "Is everything okay, Dad?"

  Art crossed to him and hugged him hard. "Everything's fine, buddy. We're just talking."

  "Where's Mom?" Tyler's voice was muffled by Art's chest.

  "That's what we're trying to figure out. The police need your mom's help with a case."

  "Have you, your brother, or your sister heard from your mother?" Investigator Sylla addressed the boy.

  Tyler shook his head.

  "Why don't you go into the den?" Art forced himself to speak calmly. "Let me talk to the officers."

  They sat in silence until Tyler was out of earshot, then Sylla said, "I understand how upset you must be. I want you to know we're doing everything we can to find your wife. Help us. We need a list of names and numbers, anyone she's friendly with. Anyone she might go to if she were in trouble."

  Sylla's voice was sympathetic. She sounded sorry. Sorry for Art that he was married to a two-timing murderer.

  #

  As soon as the police left, Art called Mike McKibben. Maybe Mike could find out something from his cronies at the station that might shed some light on what was going on. He didn't pick up, so Art left a message. Then he set up the kids with calm words, Saturday cartoons, and donuts and headed to Maricela's condo. He wanted to talk to her before the police did.

  He paced the small front stoop while he waited for her to answer the door. Worry, fear, and anger swam through his gut in an acid sea. The door opened. Julissa's face brightened into a sunny smile when she saw him.

  "Mr. Bishop."

  "Is your mom here?" His tone was clipped. Her face fell. "Sorry, but I'm in a hurry," he said forcing more warmth into his words.

  "Come on in. I'll get her." Julissa threw open the door and yelled over her shoulder. "Mom. Mr. Bishop is here."

  Art moved into the small living room, but he didn't sit. He was too restless. Maricela entered holding a mug. "Can I get you some?" she asked.

  "No, I'm fine. I need to talk to you." He cocked his head toward Julissa who leaned against the doorframe.

  "I can take a hint." She pushed off and disappeared down a hallway.

  Maricela sat in an overstuffed easy chair, forcing Art to perch on the edge of her couch if he wanted to make eye contact.

  "What's going on?" The lines of her face deepened with concern.

  "When I got home the police were at my house."

  "Dios mio." She covered her heart with her hand.

  "Gwen's missing. They're looking for her." Art hesitated.

  Maricela was still recovering from the shock of finding a body. He hated to upset her, but she would hear soon enough.

  "Someone was found dead in her Dana Point listing," he said.

  "What? Who?" She paled.

  "A man. Lance something. The guy she was working with on the Laguna house." Art watched Maricela's face. He needed to know what she knew.

  "Fairchild." She looked at her hands.

  "Yeah, that was it. Who the hell is this guy, Maricela?"

  "He's an agent. He worked at Humboldt." Her voice was subdued.

  "I know that. What I don't know is why the police think Gwen may have killed him."

  Maricela's head shot up. "Killed him? That's ridiculous. Gwen wouldn't kill Lance... Wouldn't kill anyone."

  "I know that too."

  They sat without talking for several ticks of the cuckoo clock on the wall. Art broke the silence. "What aren't you telling me?"

  Maricela looked to the ceiling for help. "It's nothing."

  Art waited.

  "I told her he was a player. I told her to watch out for him."

  A stone dropped into the turmoil in Art's stomach. "What do you mean?" He steeled himself for the answer.

  "They were talking about becoming partners. A business team, you know?" Maricela's words were hardly more than a mumble. "I don't think anything was going on between them. I don't. They flirted, but..."

  Art didn't want to hear more. He would have gotten up. Just left the house. Except Gwen might be in danger. If she wasn't, when he found her, he was going to kill her.

  "Thursday or Friday something changed. Gwen was upset, but she wouldn't talk about it to anyone but Lance. You could tell they had a secret."

  Art stood and began pacing again, as if he could walk away from her words.

  "I kept telling her he was like Enrique, not a good man, but she wouldn't hear it. I'm sorry, Art."

  "Is that it?" he said. He didn't think he could take anything else.

  "I saw them coming out of The Leaky Barrel together on Thursday. I remember because I thought it was strange. Usually, we only go on Fridays. And it was early. Only like two o'clock."

&
nbsp; "So you haven't heard from her? You're not trying to protect her?" Art asked.

  "No. I wouldn't lie to you." She reached out a hand and touched his. "I haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon."

  Art's cell phone rang. It was Mike McKibben.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Time was meaningless in the dark. It could have been three in the afternoon or three in the morning for all Gwen knew. She dozed from sheer exhaustion, but pain from the tape pulling at the small hairs on her arms, pain from forced inactivity, pain from the blow she'd received the night before prodded her awake.

  Only the nightmares seemed to last for hours. Every time she slipped into unconsciousness, she entered the same continuous loop. She was on a farm with her father, helping him on his large animal rounds. She stood, a small figure, looking up the barn. It was larger and darker in her dream than it had been in real life.

  She entered through the heavy door. The smells of hay and dung and something worse flew at her and clung to her skin like mold spores. On her right was a high window. The hay bales beneath glowed golden in the beams of light streaming from it. Her father was always there in the sunlight, smiling at her.

  On her left was a loft shrouded in shadows. If there was a window on that wall, it was blocked by the mountain of hay piled in front of it. Under the loft, tucked into the corner of the barn, was a pigpen. It drew her with an irresistible force.

  She had this same dream often when she was a child. Sometimes she'd yell herself awake before she saw the sow. Other times she'd wind up in the pen with wild, red eyes trained on her. Screams and squeals mingled. Small, pink shapes darted around her feet. Brown teeth flashed. A white, hairless mountain of flesh charged her again and again, backing her into a smaller and smaller space until there was no corner left to hide in.

  Shivering and panting, she would bolt up in her bed clutching her covers and cowering into the headboard. Then her mother would be there, smoothing her hair, speaking soothing words.

  "Finish the story, Gwen. Your father came and banged that pan against the pen wall and yelled at that old pig. You sneaked right past her snub nose, and out through the gate. You weren't hurt. It was a close call, but you are just fine. Think about that, honey. Think about that now."

  Gwen's father had warned her to stay away from the sow, who'd just had a litter of piglets, but she begged to see them. He'd relented as long as she promised to stay outside the pen.

  She hung over the fence and watched the babies for a long time. They were so cute, like wind-up toys, trotting around on short, stiff legs with their Slinky tails making tiny circles in the air. But pretty soon watching them didn't scratch Gwen's itch. She wanted to hold a piglet. Just for a minute.

  She eyed the sow lying there on her side snorting and snoring; she didn't look too worried about her babies. Besides, Gwen wouldn't hurt the little things. Didn't her dad say she was the best vet-in-training in the whole county? She knew what she was doing. He'd taught her how to hold kittens and puppies and chicks. Piglets were much sturdier than chicks.

  She slipped past a twinge of guilt into the pen and shut the gate softly behind her. She tiptoed to the closest piglet. It wasn't even a foot off the ground before it let out a shattering, ear-piercing squeal. The sow vaulted to her feet.

  Gwen dropped the piglet and slammed against the wall of the pen. The sow charged. She moved with more speed than Gwen thought possible from an animal of that size. Gwen's father, motivated by the same need to protect his young, must have moved just as fast. If he hadn't, she wouldn't be having nightmares about it today. She'd have been torn apart.

  Bobby White, one of the boys who lived near the farm where it happened, heard all about it. At school that week, he told her the story of a farmer who went to feed his hogs and never came back. When his wife went to look for him, all she found were bits and pieces in the slop.

  Bobby said those hogs would have eaten every last bite of him if their dinner hadn't been interrupted. Sometimes that unnamed farmer showed up in her dreams missing fingers, toes, and other important body parts.

  After that, fear of dark, close places became Gwen's constant companion. For a time it seemed she'd shaken off the worst of it when she was in college. It had become manageable at least. But claustrophobia found her again through the dead eyes of Sondra Olsen.

  Now whenever Gwen jerked awake, panic waited for her. It scurried from the coal black corners of the room and crawled up her legs and arms. It wrapped itself around her chest. No one is coming. Nobody knows where you are.

  Her greatest comfort was also her greatest distress. Mo was obsessed with his sister. He needed Gwen to lure Fiona to the house. But the fact that Gwen wasn't the object of his mania was a small comfort. Mo didn't have anything personal against the other women he murdered. They'd been strangers to him.

  She had many hours to wonder what he'd do if Fiona came to the house. How did you unravel a mind as tangled as his? He tore his hair out by the handful and rambled about his sister's unnatural powers one minute, then spoke logically the next. Hot rages erupted from his icy calm. His grip on reality was tenuous. She didn't doubt his plan was to kill both of them. At times, she was terrified Mo wouldn't return, that she'd be left here in the dark. But mostly she was terrified he would.

  Thump.

  Gwen sat as straight as she could and strained her ears. Had she heard something? She listened so long and hard, the silence became a sound. A high-pitched, monotone whine filled her ears. Long minutes passed. The thin tinnitus became hypnotic. Her head nodded.

  Thump. Clack. Clack. Clack.

  Gwen's chin shot up. She heard muffled voices. A woman's. No, two women. A man's deep rumble. Laughter. There were people in the house.

  Gwen tried to scream through the duct tape on her lips. Only a strangled cry emerged, loud to her ears but not loud enough to carry through the ceiling. The footsteps and voices were directly above her now.

  Gwen planted her feet on the floor and began rocking the wooden chair back and forth, back and forth. The legs clattered against the stone. She blasted her humming yells. After several minutes, she stilled. Had they heard her? Was help coming?

  Silence.

  She heard footsteps again—quiet at first then growing louder. They must be coming from the upper story. The house wasn't in escrow yet. It must be a real estate agent showing the property. She was sure she'd heard the click of high heels.

  The steps now resonated from the front of the house. If it was an agent, she might show the basement. It was packed with the refuse of years past, but still, it was a selling point.

  The door. Open the cellar door. She willed them to find her.

  She felt, more than heard, a sound so soft it may only have been a displacement of air. Hope bubbled into her heart. One of the women's voices broke into the stillness. It echoed through the basement hallway. It came so close Gwen could almost make out the words.

  She threw herself into a frenzy of rocking, stomping, and muffled screams, then stopped as quickly as she'd started and listened for the effect.

  Nothing.

  About to give it one last effort, she heard the voices again. Not close this time but faint and muted.

  Another thump. A door? The front door?

  Minute after quiet minute passed. A tear slid along Gwen's check and pooled in a pocket of duct tape. The high whine of silence filled her ears again. Panic crept up her legs.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Art's car made its way, almost of its own accord, into the parking lot of Humboldt Realty. He'd been sitting, staring out the windshield at Gwen's office for at least ten minutes. He was waiting for her to walk through the glass doors embossed with the company logo into the sunshine.

  It wouldn't happen. Logically, he knew that. For one thing, her car was missing from the crime scene.

  The words "crime scene" wouldn't compute. Crime scenes were things in CSI episodes and news stories. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea they also exist
ed on bright sunny days in suburbia, or that his wife had anything to do with one.

  Mike McKibben's call hadn't been encouraging. Maricela was correct. Lance was a player. According to many who knew him, he'd had several affairs in recent months. The police were tracking down his various lovers. However, the cops' favorite scenario to date was that Gwen had murdered Lance in a fit of jealousy and was now hiding out.

  The fact that both Gwen and Lance were real estate agents and three other agents had recently been murdered was looked at as coincidence. This seemed even more illogical to Art than sitting in front of Humboldt Realty and waiting for Gwen to appear.

  A man walked out the front door of a small shop a few doors from Humboldt. He placed an easel next to the entrance and walked inside. A minute later, he came out again carrying a blackboard. He adjusted the board on the easel. Art could read the writing from where he sat. "Wine tasting from 1:00 to 5:00. Flights of five for $15." The name of the establishment was printed in bold, black letters on a sign above a large display window—The Leaky Barrel.

  That was the place Maricela said she'd seen Gwen and Lance on Thursday. Art also had a hazy memory of Gwen telling him she'd discovered a red wine she loved that could only be purchased at a small shop near her office. The wine had a funny name, Ravishing, or something like that. It had reminded him of a romance novel.

  Mike told him the police found several opened bottles of red wine in the Dana Point house. He knew this was at best a fuzzy clue, but it was the only clue he had. He got out of the car.

  He didn't know what he'd say to the proprietor. He had no plan. Social niceties no longer mattered. He placed himself somewhere near the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs right now. All he cared about was getting his wife back. He'd worry about what she did or didn't do when he found her. If this was the last place people had seen her and Lance together, maybe he would find out something about what happened.

  He opened the door of the shop and jumped. The clanging of a ship's bell rang in his ears. The man Art had seen outside appeared through a doorway behind a small bar and smiled through a neatly trimmed goatee.

  Art had never thought about where the word "goatee" came from, but when he looked at this man, it was suddenly obvious. The shopkeeper looked like a well-groomed mountain goat. He was Pan or Bacchus from a classic painting—-appropriate, or ironic depending on how you looked at it, for the owner of a wine shop. Art half-expected to see a pair of horns jutting from the cap on his head.