by Lynn Kostoff
Time, Ben thought. That’s what they all needed.
Last night, in the fading arc of their orgasms, Anne and he had finally talked about the long shadows thrown by Anne’s ex, Ray, and Ben’s wife, Diane, over their days. Her head on Ben’s chest, his arm cradling her spine and his hand resting on the rise of her buttocks, Anne told him about Ray and a marriage that imploded after nine years. In the beginning, Anne planning her freshman year at the University of South Carolina, Ray her high school sweetheart, their relationship run on the reckless intoxication of opposites, one that eventually ran aground when a condom slipped, Paige becoming a dot on a nine-month horizon, Anne dropping the college plans and marrying Ray because that’s what you did, and they stayed married because that’s what you did, and Anne overlooked Ray’s all-night drinking sessions with his buddies and the sleeping around because that’s what you did for the sake of family, and three years ago when your father’s Alzheimer’s was diagnosed you took him in because that’s what you did, and then you awoke one morning a month later and found that your husband had left you, so you kept on working at the Salt Box and budgeted and watched your money and raised your daughter and cared for a father who didn’t recognize you most of the time because that’s what you did.
Ben’s turn, when it came, was troublesome. Though Anne was quietly encouraging, Ben stumbled on his words and choked on his life. He could not explain their love. He started, backed up, and started again, managing only to turn her and their life into grist for a made-to-order sentimental romance with a tear-jerker ending.
Ben kept starting and stopping. Anne rested her hand against his cheek and, a moment later, she reached over and turned off the bedside lamp.
In the dark, Ben found his voice. He told Anne everything. Life before and after Greg Hollinger and his Beretta semi-automatic. Everything between Ben and Diane’s meeting and first kiss to Diane bleeding out in the parking lot of Central Cleaners on a cold and clear January afternoon, and the ghosts of the children they never had following him around his apartment at three AM.
When he finished, Ben let out a long breath and then kissed the top of Anne’s head. She said something he didn’t catch. He leaned across her to turn on the lamp, but Anne put her hand on his arm, stopping him, and in the dark, they’d made love again.
Time, Ben thought.
That’s all anyone needed. Anne and he had found each other. It didn’t matter how quickly or gradually it had happened. That was the point. It happened. That’s what mattered. Your life started on the other side of that.
Ben checked missed calls before repocketing his cell phone. Three from his old partner in Homicide, Andy Calucci, all after midnight over the last three nights when Ben had been at the house with Anne. He made a mental note to call Calucci back later.
Ben took the voice-activated recorder out of Jack’s pocket, then replayed and erased the afternoon’s non-sequiturs and white noise. He gathered up the dish and glass and made sure Jack had taken all his meds. The local news started. Ben stood next to Jack and watched a dumb show sequence of images. The mayor. Buddy Tedros. Stanley Tedros. Stanley Tedros’s house and backyard. Ross Tines, the Magnolia Beach Chief of Police. The main gates at Stanco Beverages. The mayor again. The shot of the beach that was used on the city’s website as the home page.
Jack looked over and up at Ben. “You’re that policeman,” he said.
“Yes I am.” Ben waited for Jack to add something, but he returned his attention to the television screen and a commercial for half-pound hamburgers.
Ben checked his watch, figured Anne and Paige would be at least another half-hour minimum. He checked the to-do list taped to the front of the refrigerator and decided to start a load of laundry. Anne had gone in to work early to compensate for the time she’d taken off for the parent-teacher conference, and he knew she’d be tired, more than tired, by the time she and Paige got home.
He walked down the hallway off the living room into Anne’s bedroom and began stripping the sheets. They held a faint tidal flats smell and a series of pale Rorschach Blot stains from their lovemaking.
He bundled the bedclothes in his arms and hesitated for a moment next to the bedside nightstand. Then he started for the wash room. He dropped the clothes in the toploader and emptied the hamper. He set the water level and temperature and cycle. When the washer filled and began agitating, he added bleach.
Ben went back to the kitchen for a beer. He cracked it, not bothering to ink his wrist with a hash mark, and walked into the living room and stood next to Jack, who must have changed channels because the news was over and in its place was a horror film featuring a stocky man in the process of being transformed into a werewolf. The special effects were low-budget and the color watery. The volume was still muted.
Ben looked down the hall.
He walked back to Anne’s bedroom and went to the nightstand. Anne and he kept the condoms in the top drawer. Ben opened the one below it.
The journal was bound in imitation leather. Anne’s initials were embossed on its cover. Along its spine was a small sleeve for holding a pen. There was no clasp or lock.
Ben sat on the edge of the bare bed and opened the journal.
On the first page, Anne had written “My Time, My Life” and below that, the date, a September ninth three years ago.
The next page was blank.
As was every other page Ben flipped to.
He looked around the room. He closed the journal and put it back in the drawer. He went to the kitchen for another beer. He hesitated, then inked his left wrist with a single hash-mark.
He pulled over a chair and joined Jack in the living room. They watched the stocky man, now a full-blown werewolf, run through a park, then stop to tilt back his head and silently howl at a moon full and burning and wreathed in clouds.
TWENTY-NINE
SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHY she’d done it. Ben Decovic had asked her about the traffic jam, and Corrine Tedros should have just told him she didn’t remember any problems, but Croy Wendall having killed Stanley off schedule and under different circumstances from the ones they’d originally set up had left Corrine uneasy, a little too vulnerable, and Ben Decovic had had the same effect on her, Decovic tall and gaunt and God-haunted, looking like he belonged in one of the stained glass windows Corrine had seen in the Greek Orthodox Church during Stanley’s funeral, and when Decovic had pushed the questions about the timeline and her whereabouts, Corrine had lied, and the lie had been easy and automatic, but it had returned with a new set of teeth, and it kept returning, and though Corrine wanted to believe that everything was still all right, that she was simply overreacting, the phone call from Terri Illes had left her in a simmering panic.
Decovic had been around to talk to her too. Corrine had no doubt Terri Illes had used the interview to slander her. Terri was a permanent fixture at the Magnolia Beach Country Club, all social position and tanning beds and book groups. She was married to one of those mid-level managerial types at Stanco Beverages who always stood closer than necessary when talking to Corrine and tried to hide the fact he wanted to get in her pants by giving her boyish grins and telling self-deprecating stories about his golf game.
During the course of the twenty minute phone call, Terri had tormented Corrine with her sympathy and concern, continually evoking Stanley’s death and her shock at its violence, repeatedly offering a sisterly shoulder for Corrine’s grief while subtly taunting Corrine by withholding the particulars of Ben Decovic’s line of questioning.
Afterwards, Corrine kept replaying her own interview with Decovic. She hadn’t expected to have to account for her whereabouts more than once. She thought she’d had that covered, but then Croy Wendall had thrown everything off by killing Stanley almost five hours later than he was supposed to. Still, she told herself, everything in her statement came down to her word against Decovic’s.
Except her reply to his offhanded question about traffic problems. That and her follow-up lie about having t
o stop at Walgreens for tampons.
Her period had started this morning.
Corrine wondered if Decovic was planning on getting around to talking to Buddy.
Two periods in one month. It’d be a little hard to explain that one away.
Buddy, though, was still too broken up by grief to ask for sex. Corrine could play the same card if she had to and put Buddy off until her period ended.
That left Decovic’s question about the traffic problem.
It probably meant nothing.
It nagged though. She had a feeling about Decovic. Corrine had dealt with cops before and recognized the type.
She debated with herself over the next fifteen minutes and then put in a call to the Magnolia Beach Police Department and asked to speak with the dispatcher in the Traffic division. When the call was transferred, she put as much honey and helplessness as she could in her voice, telling the dispatcher she worked for a local insurance agency and needed to double-check the date and time for a claim involving an accident on Queensland and Old Market Boulevard.
The dispatcher ran it for her and then told Corrine there’d been no accident report filed for the date and time she’d given him.
It had taken four tries before she got through to Raychard Balen. By the time he was on the line, Corrine’s nerves were shredded.
Balen kept telling her to calm down.
Corrine couldn’t. She was lost to the same confusing mix of helplessness and rage that she’d felt when she stepped up to the placard of Stanley Tedros at the grocery store.
Balen said he’d look into the matter, and if the police showed up again, not to talk to them unless he was there.
Corrine had not liked the sound of that.
She told Balen she wanted him to do more than look into it. She wanted him to shut the thing down completely.
Balen had again told her to calm down and said he’d get back to her.
That left the rest of the afternoon.
Corrine had learned to watch her liquor intake, and except for a couple of bad stretches in Phoenix, she stuck to social drinking and usually confined it to nothing stronger than wine, but after talking to Raychard Balen, she’d spent the rest of the afternoon fighting the urge to sandblast her anxiety with the bottle of Beam in Buddy’s liquor cabinet, going so far on two occasions as to pour the drinks, Corrine smelling the malt whiskey’s sweet promises of escape, however temporary, before she dumped them down the sink.
It felt as if Stanley Tedros had followed her around the house all afternoon.
Buddy was putting in long hours at the Stanco plant since Stanley’s death, and when he finally got home, he drove them to a barbecue place outside town. The Pig’s Skin that was touted for its mustard-based sauce and Low Country hospitality, all of which translated, as Corrine had correctly assumed, into an unpainted building with all the charm of a shack, rows of rough-hewn picnic tables, plastic silverware and paper plates overflowing with greasy shredded meat, rice, cole slaw, and slabs of white bread, gallons of over-sweetened iced tea, and a clientele comprised of locals who rubbernecked and stage-whispered when she and Buddy entered and took their seats. Buddy, between bantering with the waitress, had run through his plate and most of Corrine’s.
He’d waited until the drive back before he mentioned that James Restan had called and reinstated his offer to buy out Stanco Beverages and the rights to Julep.
“And you’re just getting around to telling me about it now?
” He downshifted for a sharp curve and added, “I wish I’d never mentioned it at all.”
“You mean keep it a secret?” Corrine said. “That’s what you want our marriage to run on?”
Buddy took the curve and shifted up, the engine missing a little on the acceleration. “No, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “I wish I’d waited to bring it up, that’s all. You’re upset now. It’s been a nice evening.”
“What did you tell Restan exactly?” Corrine could feel the missing beat in the car’s engine through the floorboards. It was like a mangled bar of music in a favorite song.
“I told him I wasn’t ready to make a decision right now. I owe that much to the employees, but mostly to Uncle Stanley.”
“But we talked about this, Buddy. The offer, it’s good and might not be around for long.”
Buddy nodded. “I know. I’ve been thinking about some things though, and I told Restan it didn’t feel right to decide anything one way or another until Uncle Stanley’s murderer has been brought to justice.”
Corrine momentarily closed her eyes. “What did Restan say to that?”
“He wished me luck.”
They followed the lines of the coast, and Corrine watched the ocean break in and out of view, the waters dark and wrinkled by lines of waves, a pale moon riding the horizon. The air coming through the vents was warm and swampy. A sharp pain moved high into Corrine’s chest.
“I’ll admit James Restan’s offer is attractive,” Buddy said carefully, “but you know, I’ve been looking over Stanley’s plans to keep Julep within Stanco and to expand operations and distribution, and they have some merit too. He may have been on to something.”
Corrine pounded her fist on the dash. “You’re serious? You mean you’re going to run Stanco yourself? You never said anything about this to me.”
“Calm down,” Buddy said. “I said I was considering keeping Stanco and Julep in the family. I was going to talk to you about it.”
The sharp pain in Corrine’s chest blunted and then broke down and reappeared in her stomach. She rested her head against the passenger window.
“What about our plans?” she asked after a moment. “Everything we talked about?”
No strings. That was the whole point of the buyout. No strings. They were going to travel. Go wherever and do whatever they wanted. The money would be there. Stanley wouldn’t. They’d return to Magnolia Beach a couple times a year. There’d be nothing to hold them to one place.
Corrine wanted Paris first.
That’s what they’d talked about after Buddy had formally announced their engagement.
“It’s not like we’re going to give them up,” Buddy said. “We have our whole lives. There’ll be time.”
Buddy shifted and then reached over and rested his hand on her shoulder. It took all of Corrine’s willpower not to flinch.
“He raised me,” Buddy said and let his hand fall. “Whatever you might have thought of him, Stanley took me in and gave me a good life. It doesn’t feel right to move on the buy-out right now.”
The queasiness Corrine felt was warm and thick, and the motion of the car and the spill of its headlights intensified it. She fought back the urge to take off her seatbelt.
The reward Buddy had posted.
The tape recorder he’d bought and left at Jack Carson’s.
And now this.
She glanced over at her husband.
Must be nice, Corrine thought, to be able to afford a conscience, to have a past and a life you’d want to call your own. Her husband would never understand that there were lives that left no room for anything but themselves, just as he would never understand how far someone would be willing to go to leave them behind.
THIRTY
BEN DECOVIC PARKED THE CRUISER in the lot adjacent to the tennis courts at the south entrance of the city park, then got out, taking a path along the treeline to a small clearing that held a cast-iron barbecue grill, a dark green metal trash container, and three pre-cast concrete picnic tables.
Leon Douglas showed up ten minutes later. He was wearing a bright orange Clemson T-shirt, a large white tiger paw imprinted on each shoulder, and he had shaved his head. He also wore a pair of wire frame glasses Ben didn’t remember seeing on him before. He figured Leon was practicing passing himself off as a college student since the first wave of spring break was officially starting, and there would be untold opportunities for separating the students from their cash and credit cards and sundry vacation possessions
.
Leon plopped down across from Ben at one of the concrete tables and opened the paper bag Ben had set in its center.
Leon immediately began shaking his head. He held up a long tube of Sweet Tarts. “How many time I be telling you it Shock Tart I like? Make me wonder what you hearing when I tell you anything.” Leon cracked the top on the soda.
“Ok, Shock Tarts,” Ben said. “Check.” He leaned back and waited.
“An old pocketwatch,” Leon said, unwrapping one end of the candy, “a gold one. That’s what I’ve been hearing around.”
Ben shrugged. He was surprised it had taken this long for the word to get out. The Department had withheld the detail of the killer taking Stanley’s pocketwatch after Buddy Tedros had verified that Stanley always wore it.
“You get cops popping up at every pawn and fence in town,” Leon said, “all of them asking did anyone try to lay off a watch, and after a while, the word, it get out. Lot of people wouldn’t mind tapping that reward.”
“Anyone or anything credible concerning that?” Ben asked. “
Man, if there was,” Leon said, “I’m on my own way straight to Mr. Buddy Tedros.”
Ben asked if Leon had dug up anything on his missing Glock. He’d expected, by now, that Leon would have turned up something or that the semi-automatic would have been confiscated after some standard-brand Saturday night mayhem.
“Nothing yet,” Leon said. He took a lime Sweet Tart and threw it at a blue jay perched on the lip of the trash container.
“Sonny Gramm then,” Ben said.
“Heard Mr. Sonny got a rodent problem and got a new alarm system install at his home.”
“Old news,” Ben said. “Unless you know who did it.”
Leon shook his head no, then thumbed a pink Sweet Tart into his mouth. “There was some action two night ago, the Passion Palace though.”
“What kind?”