by Linda Wisdom
“Ah, yes, Sophie. You might as well pack it in where she’s concerned. She can spell. She just likes to make people think she can type a hundred words a minute instead of twenty. Some of us have turned reading reports she’s typed into a game to figure out what the words really are. I have to admit, she keeps us on our toes. Being a city employee, along with having the prestige of being the mayor’s favorite niece, who dropped out of college a year ago because she didn’t think she could handle the heavy load of two classes, makes her just perfect. Thanks to those qualifications, she’s impossible to fire.”
“And to think I was the lucky one. Now, as to you paying off your debt—I gather you’re not going to pout if I gloat?” She buffed her nails against her shirtfront in an “I am so great” attitude. Even if Josh couldn’t see her doing it, it made her feel better.
“Doc, you can gloat all you want. Turns out Sally has a nasty habit of bringing guys home and then rolling them. The guys never filed charges because they were too embarrassed. Except Cal forgot to tell her that he had trouble getting it up, or maybe he hoped she would wave some magic wand and help him get a hard-on. Anyway, she got pissed when he couldn’t come through with the hot and heavy sex she expected and called him a few choice names. When he got up to leave, she shot him. Her lawyer says PMS made Sally go off the wall. I can imagine all that will come out in court. So to speak.,” he chuckled.
“I guess no one told her a good vitamin regimen could easily take care of that monthly problem. Since I won the bet, I get to choose the restaurant.”
“Don’t you trust me?”
Lauren laughed. She was already looking forward to spending an evening with him. “That hurt-little-boy routine went out of style a long time ago, Counselor. Besides, McDonald’s doesn’t carry the type of cuisine I enjoy when someone else is picking up the check. I intend to break the bank, big boy. I understand Rothschild’s has excellent food. Tomorrow night at seven?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Good. And Counselor,” her breathy voice didn’t match the wicked grin on her face, “I have a very large appetite.” She replaced the phone receiver on Josh’s sputters before she burst into laughter.
Sophie appeared in the doorway. “I can’t find asphyxiation,” she announced, holding up the dictionary.
Lauren resisted that violent urge to again snatch the gum out of her mouth. She reminded herself to be grateful the woman didn’t blow bubbles. “I’m sure it’s in there under a-s-p-h.”
Sophie blinked. “P-h? I thought it was an s-f.”
“Perhaps if you viewed a few posts, you could figure out how to spell the words.”
The girl blanched and quickly recovered. “You can’t force me to do that. Besides, that kind of thing is disgusting.”
“I can’t? You’d be surprised what I can do when I put my mind to it, Sophie.” Her soft voice held a core of steel. “I will not have this department held up to ridicule just because you don’t want to learn your job. You might also want to remember that the people doing that so-called ‘disgusting’ thing helps pay your salary.”
With a quivering lower lip and dramatic sniff, Sophie abruptly left.
Lauren looked at the clock. It was barely 10 a.m. and she already felt as if she’d put in a full day.
“My next trick will be to pull the wings off several flies,” she announced to the air.
…
The prospect of dining with Lauren the next evening flew out the window when Ginnie told Josh that Kevin was on line three.
“Nada, buddy,” the detective told him, when he asked if there were any clues.
“Shit!” Josh slammed his hand against the desktop. “How can there be not one hint of a screw up on her part? She hasn’t left anything close to a clue. It doesn’t make sense.”
“It does if you look at it one way,” Kevin suggested. “This lady knows everything there is to know about you. She gets in your house as easily as if she has a key to the front door, and we already know you didn’t give any keys out when you moved in and you’ve even changed the locks. She goes through your things, leaves you home-cooked meals on nights you work late, cleans house, even does your laundry, sends you flowers when you win a case, and includes cute little gifts. Hell, she even baked you a fucking birthday cake! This is not your run-of-the-mill fatal-attraction-type broad. This is a lady who has more than a few screws loose, and I hate to think what would happen if those screws decided to fall out.”
“Trying to figure her out is your problem! So why don’t you find out what’s going on and spell it out for me instead of playing these same damn games she likes to play,” he ordered.
“Fine. Ten-to-one the lady is someone you see pretty much on a daily basis. This is a person who knows you almost as well as you know yourself. She’s someone who has access to your schedule. She’s obviously jealous of any sign of you having a relationship, and she doesn’t mind using some pretty nasty little methods to terrorize the women you’ve dated. Her methods are also turning more vicious, and I’ll be honest, that scares the shit out of me because the day could come she changes direction for her nasty games.”
Josh didn’t like what he was hearing. “Are you thinking she could turn violent toward me?”
“That’s already happening. Look what she did to your clothes. She ripped them up so bad you had to buy a whole new wardrobe. I don’t know about you, but I see that as the action of a woman who doesn’t have all her marbles. Although, there was the time my wife deliberately backed the car over my favorite fishing rod and reel,” he reflected on a sad note.
“If she wants me that badly, you’d think she’d want to meet with me face-to-face and get it over with.”
“Just when we think we know a lot about stalkers, we turn around and learn something new,” Kevin pointed out. “Some prefer fantasy to reality. That way they don’t have to worry about rejection from their fantasy lover. They’ve set their victim on a pedestal. Made them seem larger than life. They want to worship them from afar because it’s safer that way. That’s why they creep into their houses when they’re not home to be around their things or hang out in their offices where they can memorize their schedules and study them like some school assignment.
“They also don’t want that person to have anyone else grow close to them, because if they do, those people will have to be gotten rid of. But that object of infatuation better not do anything that makes them less than perfect because they can be brought down, too. We both know what that means. And we have those where if they can’t have their idol, they’re going to make damn sure no one else does.”
Josh considered the stalking cases he’d prosecuted in the past and stories he read in the newspaper. Few ended happily. For a brief moment, his ex-wife came to mind. Would she do something like this? He couldn’t envision the cold-hearted and very proper Stephanie doing his dishes, but anything was possible nowadays. Although she’d be more prone to bring her maid along to handle the dirty work. “Yeah.”
“We’ve already increased the drive-bys in your neighborhood, but no one’s ever noticed anything out of the ordinary. A lot of the houses around here are set far back from the street to offer privacy, and a lot of women work outside the home now, so not that many people are home during the day. Do us both a favor and stay away from the opposite sex until we find out what’s going on. And especially, keep your pants zipped. The next lady in your life might end up with something a lot nastier than some undertaker delivering black roses.”
Josh felt the rage and frustration boiling inside. “I can’t put my life on hold because one person has decided to fixate on me for some unknown reason.”
“You can if you want to keep that life.”
…
It was always so easy to just walk in wherever she wanted to. As usual, the deadbolt hadn’t been secured, and the door lock was a joke. Obviously, she didn’t expect anyone to stop by when she wasn’t home.
“Hi, honey, I’m home,” she called
out, stepping into the kitchen.
She looked around. No dirty dishes in the sink, only a rinsed coffee cup left in the dish drainer next to a neatly folded red print towel. A Bekins box marked “china” stood against the wall. How easy it would be to drop the box a few times until she could only hear the sounds of broken dishes.
She found more packing boxes stacked in the center of the living room and family room. A cream-colored couch decorated with throw pillows in swirling shades of teal, purple, and hot pink was pushed up against a wall to make room for the boxes with a chair in the same fabric pushed up against a flat-screen television and stereo system housed in an entertainment system. She walked inside and examined the glass-topped coffee table that held only a couple medical journals.
“The woman has no sense of how to decorate.” she sneered, dismissing the room. She always believed in primary colors such as red and black. They gave a person a feeling of power.
She also checked out the in-home office, studying the personal computer. She thought about turning it on and seeing what secrets it held, then decided it could wait until another time. She knew she’d be back.
She continued down the hallway, pausing only to glance into a bathroom and what she guessed to be a guest bedroom with a queen-size bed and chest of drawers before she found the master bedroom.
“Bland,” she pronounced, studying the soft cream-colored walls as she walked into the room. She examined a small floral painting on the wall by the door. “Just like her.”
She ran her fingers across the top of the dresser, and then looked at them for signs of dust. She wore thin latex gloves to ensure she didn’t leave any prints behind, so she felt comfortable touching anything that caught her fancy. She enjoyed handling the things in front of her. She felt it gave her additional insight into the person that lived there.
And with that insight came power.
She moved into the large walk-in closet and surveyed the contents. She pulled out one dress and held it in front of her. She snarled when she noticed the size tag. She starved herself and exercised constantly to remain a size six, while this bitch was a two. Some things just weren’t fair. She carefully replaced the dress in the closet before she gave in to her inclination to rip it to shreds. This wasn’t the time to declare her presence.
She moved on to pull open dresser drawers, to study the delicate lingerie folded neatly between layers of tissue paper. Not a jumble of brightly colored clothing, like her drawers.
“No one keeps things this neat,” she sneered, closing the drawer that held bras in a variety of vibrant colors. “She’s either very anal retentive, or has a housekeeper who puts it all away for her.” She pulled open another drawer and found silk chemises and camis. She resisted the urge to take one as she finished exploring each drawer. She recognized a cream-and-black silk nightgown as one she’d admired in Victoria’s Secret at the mall a few weeks ago but hadn’t bought because she’d known it wasn’t her style.
The jewelry she discovered was good quality costume except for a pair of diamond stud earrings and a diamond pendant tucked away in a small midnight-blue velvet pouch secured in the bottom dresser drawer.
She angrily envied the brass headboard and footboard, the quilted comforter splashed with shades of soft yellow, blue, peach, rose, and soft green. She clenched her hands to prevent them from picking up the comforter and ripping it.
She found the doctor’s reading material in the bedside table; a few mysteries and a horror novel featuring a half-naked vampire on the cover.
“Josh is much nicer looking.” Her fingers found something hard and unyielding under the pile of magazines. “Well, what do we have here?” She pulled out a deadly looking handgun. And found it loaded. “My, my, Lauren, aren’t you full of surprises? I never would have imagined you for the violent type. I do hope you have a permit for this nasty little item. Josh doesn’t like women who break the law.”
She next wandered into the blue-and-peach-decorated bathroom, opening bottles of bath oil set on a shelf above the bathtub so she could sniff the contents of each. The dusting powder matched the fragrance of one of the bath oils.
After that, she dug through the drawer Lauren kept her makeup in, studying colors of eye shadow and blush, even feeling bold enough to try one of the blushes on her cheek, then wiping it off after she decided the color wasn’t for her. The bathroom cabinet yielded little other than a bottle of Tylenol, some Alka-Seltzer, and a packet of birth control pills. The latter bothered her the most. Had they been seeing each other on the sly and she hadn’t found out about it? She’d have to do a little more checking.
She only wished she could find some illegal drugs. Something to pin on her.
“Why bother with anything else? She’s a doctor and can prescribe herself any old thing she needs.”
Everything she picked up was replaced in the exact same spot with meticulous care. She didn’t want to give Lauren any reason to suspect someone had been there. This was the best part of the game to her. She’d found out long ago she enjoyed walking through a person’s house, touching their things, finding out their secrets, all while making sure she left no trace of her presence.
She should have gone to Josh’s house. She enjoyed her visits there the most. No matter that he’d changed the locks a couple times and even recently added a security system. She was still able to go in whenever she wanted to.
She laughed to herself as a memory surfaced. She wondered if Josh ever noticed that one of his T-shirts was missing. She’d slept so much better since she’d exchanged her nightgowns for the shirt. If she closed her eyes and thought real hard, she’d almost believe it was him wrapped around her instead of the soft cotton.
Her eyes flew open; the rage she’d kept so carefully tamped down was beginning to surface. For a moment her hand trembled violently, as if it would suddenly develop a mind of its own and sweep the granite countertop surface clean. She turned away before her darker side emerged. It was time to leave.
She changed her mind. She wanted to leave Lauren with something to think about. She wanted her to wonder if someone had been in her house. She wanted her to worry a little. Nothing overt. No, it had to be something very subtle.
She looked around until she found the perfect method. She moved toward the dresser and picked up a bottle of perfume, touching the frosted glass tip to her pulse points. She waited a moment and sniffed her inner wrist. Not a fragrance she would normally wear, but the idea of wearing the bitch’s perfume taken from her bottle was too much to resist.
She applied the scent to each wrist, behind each ear, between her breasts, and behind her knees. She then, very carefully, placed the bottle’s top on the dresser’s surface. A drop of perfume fell onto the highly polished wood, leaving a smudged spot. She stepped back to study the picture it made.
Perfect.
Chapter Four
Lauren sensed a difference in the atmosphere the moment she stepped inside her house. A dark memory started to intrude, making it hard for her to breathe. She abruptly shoved it out and found it easier to take in air as she decided to see if the uneasy feeling was only imaginary.
She first looked around her kitchen, searching for something, anything, out of order that would cause the subtle shift in the air she felt. She even took a quick inventory of the contents of the cabinets and pantry.
“Stop with the imagination,” she ordered herself, as she braced her hand on the counter and used her toes to push her shoes off while reaching into a cabinet for a wineglass. “You’re just overtired and looking for the bogeyman.”
She pulled a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and filled a glass. She decided a hot bubble bath was in order before she could even think about dinner.
But her unsettling feeling refused to go away as she looked around the kitchen. As she walked down the hallway, she couldn’t stop herself from pausing at the doorway to each room and taking a quick look inside. That troubled feeling deep in her bones refused to leave her, al
though she couldn’t find anything out of place. As she looked at her computer, she felt the urge to turn the power on and see if any of the files had been looked at. She suddenly shook her head to rid herself of the feeling and left the room before she gave in to her paranoia.
From the moment she walked into her bedroom she knew her imagination wasn’t going overboard. Lauren’s first thought was that someone had taken her gun, but a quick search in her nightstand drawer proved it was still there. While looking around, she finally realized what bothered her: the scent of her perfume lingered in the air.
“Good going,” she chided herself, seeing the perfume bottle top lying on the dresser. She was disgusted with herself as she picked up the cut-glass stopper and stared down at the polished wood, now marred by the liquid dripping from the glass. She couldn’t believe she’d been in so much of a hurry that morning that she hadn’t put the top back on the bottle. She couldn’t even use the excuse that perhaps her cleaning lady had done it, since this wasn’t her day to come in. She replaced the stopper and promptly headed for the bathroom.
She began running her bath water and pouring in bath salts before quickly stripping off her clothing. It wasn’t until Lauren had settled back in the hot water with a sigh of relief that an unsettling thought struck her so hard she almost bolted out of the tub to recheck all the door and window locks to make sure they had been secured.
She hadn’t worn that particular perfume today.
…
“I want to thank you for talking to the group on such short notice. I couldn’t believe our scheduled speaker canceled at the last minute.” Gail walked with Josh out of the high school building into the parking lot. “There’s always someone who can tell them how to build their self-esteem, but the important thing they need to hear is that there is hope, if they’re willing to take the chance. And the only person they should hear it from is a member of the bar.”
“I didn’t mind doing it. Although I wasn’t sure at first that they would be willing to listen to me. They might have preferred hearing from a woman prosecutor.” Josh shifted his briefcase from one hand to the other as he pulled his car keys out of his pants pocket.