by Sean Dexter
“Tempting,” she said, running her finger along my jacket collar, “but I really need you to take care of this. Come back tomorrow night?”
“I’ll bring pizza from the mainland.”
“Chinese. And a bottle of wine.”
“And candles?”
“And Marvin Gaye.”
I’d have to remember to toss the Marvin CD in the car before I came back.
*****
Back on the mainland, I drove out to Medina, where I’d grown up and where Corbin had a house. He lived in one of those pricey subdivisions that sprang up after I’d graduated high school, all cookie-cutter McMansions. Lately, they’d been mortgaged to the hilt as real estate replaced the Internet as the gold rush du jour. If I knew the type, Corbin probably bought his place when homes were more reasonably priced, giving him a mortgage payment less than what some people paid for their cars. It would explain how he could afford to hire Gypsy.
As I pulled into the subdivision, I noticed some red, white, and blue lights flashing on one of the side streets. It turned out to be the street I wanted. Two Medina County Sheriff’s cruisers and an ambulance sat in front of the Corbin’s house, a two-story oversized ranch with a large yard. Slowly, I pulled around the cruisers and parked in front of the next house. As I walked up to Corbin’s, I saw his car, a 2003 Expedition, with its tires slashed, windows shattered, and a few dents in the sides. Someone was angry.
A deputy, a tall black guy named Warwick, stopped me as I approached. “Hey, buddy, in case you can’t see, we’ve got a situation here. You press or something?”
I pulled out my PI license and identified myself. “I was hoping to catch Mr. Corbin at home on a matter for a client. I take it he’s injured?”
“He hyperventilated.” Warwick studied my license before handing it back to me. “Kepler. You George Kepler’s son? The Lodi Police Chief’s?”
“Guilty.”
“Yeah, I know you. You had that dirtbag partner when you were on the Brunswick force. Hold on a second.” He turned and yelled for his partner. “Jerry, you want to talk to this guy? I think you know him.”
Indeed I did. Jerry Ream, who seemed to have doubled in size since I’d last seen him about a decade ago, emerged from the darkness. Back then, he was one of my dad’s best friends in the sheriff’s department. Now, he sported lieutenant’s bars on his uniform now. So sticking with the Sheriff’s Department had been good to him. “Nick Kepler as I live and breathe. Heard you went private a couple of years ago.”
“It’s been a while,” I said. “Listen, I came here to talk to Mr. Corbin about a matter for one of my clients…”
Ream’s expression told me he thought I was bullshitting him, but what the hell. We both had played this game before.
“Obviously, he’s a little busy at the moment,” I continued. “What’s going on?”
Ream just rolled his eyes. “Corbin called us about an hour ago and said some maniac busted into his garage and smashed up his shiny new SUV. When he came down to investigate the noise, someone, and this is a direct quote, ‘dressed like a ninja’ kicked him repeatedly in the balls, then knocked him out. When he woke up, the place was trashed.”
I whistled. It sounded the same as Gypsy’s story, only she wasn’t at home when her place was attacked.
“Want to hear the worst part?” said Ream.
“The ball busting wasn’t enough?”
“No. Whoever did it took a dump right on his bed. That, not his swollen balls, is why he asked for an ambulance.”
I felt the cold settle heavily in my stomach. “I think we’d better talk.”
*****
I had to give Deputy Ream a sanitized version of Gypsy’s story, pegging Corbin as one of a series of well-off boyfriends she dated. Ream didn’t buy it.
“So your friend’s a call girl,” he said.
“My friend has a history, yes, but she hasn’t turned a trick in years or worked a metal pole since last spring.”
“If you say so.”
When he asked where Gypsy was, I said, “Middle of Lake Erie. That’s all I’m prepared to say at this time.”
Ream didn’t like it but told me I’d better produce her location when he asked for it. He did not ask for it yet.
After an hour, during which I did not talk to Corbin, I went home. I wish I hadn’t.
Someone had smashed open my door, overturned my file cabinets, and… I’m sure you can guess what they left on my bed. At least they didn’t slash my furniture. Whoever it was, though, did piss all over my clothes.
“Fuck,” I said to no one in particular. I called a locksmith and my landlord then started to clean up the files. While I waited, I took my clothes downstairs and hogged all four coin-up machines. The bed clothes went straight to the dumpster.
I had most of my clothes in dryers when the locksmith came. By the time he finished, I’d organized the files into neat piles I could sort out later. Sleeping at home was out. I’d have to go to the Days Inn up the street. But first, I had to call Gypsy.
She did not answer. Looking at my watch, I wondered if she’d gone to sleep already. I called again. Still no answer. Maybe she was charging her phone. I called Tom Landrum’s island number, knowing the phone had been turned back on specifically for Gypsy to use.
“Hi, this is Kate,” said Tom’s wife on the answering machine. “And this is Tom. And we’re doing it on the beach!”
That message stopped being funny around 1998, which is when Tom and Kate Landrum bought the place. It also told me something was wrong.
I took a chance and dialed Put in Bay’s dispatch. I got the Ottawa County Sheriff’s Department instead.
“Chief English is off duty,” said the dispatcher, a bored woman sitting somewhere comfortable in Port Clinton. “Is this an emergency? Try calling 911.”
“Ma’am,” I said, letting enough irritation to creep into my voice to let her know this was urgent, but that 911 was not an option, “there is a woman in Put in Bay who is in serious danger. Chief English knows who she is. Please have him call Nick Kepler, or at least ask him to swing by the Landrum house to check on Miss Lincoln. Can you do that for me?”
“I’ll relay the message.”
I couldn’t wait. I was out the door and halfway to Port Clinton when I realized I had no idea how I’d get out to the island this time of night.
*****
The hovercrafts made two round trips to Put in Bay daily in the off-season, no exceptions. Everyone put their boats in dry dock for the winter back in October. My best bet for getting to the island was either to rent a motorboat or hire a helicopter. Neither option looked likely at nine o’clock at night. I took a chance with the hovercraft service, though. What did they do if a craft broke down?
The other question was: Who got to Gypsy? And how did they know? As near as I could figure, Gypsy told Jane where she was going to calm her down. The hate in Jane’s eyes told me she saw Gypsy as more than a call girl, the same as Corbin. Only Jane was aggressive and angry. Corbin was timid and awkward. It made more sense for the more intense person to trash three homes and shit in the beds each time. I’d dealt with jealous types of both sexes before. When men wanted to leave a calling card like that, they usually masturbated to make their point.
Corbin didn’t strike me as the type to do either, not when he hyperventilated while talking to the police. I arrived in Port Clinton around nine that evening. It was a clear, cold night, but windy. I had to find a way out to South Bass Island, where Put in Bay lay. The only chance I had was the marina, but I’d already resigned myself to spending the night on the mainland until the hovercraft made its morning run.
But I was not prepared to do that.
A few boats remained in the marina. Some of them even had lights on. Fortunately for me, so did the manager’s office.
He answered after I pounded on the door for a couple of minutes, an older man in a dirty captain’s hat puffing on a cigarillo. “Do you know what time it i
s? What do you want?”
“You have a skiff you use to get around the marina?”
He scowled at me. “Why?”
“I need to rent it.”
He slammed the door in my face. I pounded again. He threatened to call the police on me if I didn’t leave. I explained that my wife took ill and was out in Put in Bay. I needed a way out there. It was an emergency.
He debated whether he believed me or not. I pulled three twenties out of my wallet, having hammered my bank account on the way in.
“Please?”
He shut the door on me again, this time not slamming it. When he returned, he said, “Over at number three. You fuel it up over on South Bass and when you get back. You damage it, you bought yourself a boat.”
*****
A cold November evening two weeks before Thanksgiving makes a lousy time to go out on Lake Erie. Beyond the breakwall, the water becomes choppy. Waves would spill over the side into the boat, and I prayed I had enough gas to get to Put in Bay. It was almost fifteen miles. Thank God I could see the Perry Monument from the mainland when I set out. I could navigate by that and the stacks of the nuclear plant. It still took me about an hour to get out to the island, and another twenty minutes to find Tom Landrum’s condo from the water.
Another boat, a bigger one, had been grounded along the little rocky spit of sand Tom and Kate jokingly called their private beach. It was hardly a beach, and the joke did not seem funny now. I brought the skiff ashore there and stopped, sitting in the boat for several minutes.
I needed to take in the house before I went in, guns blazing. It was dark. I saw the faint light of counter lights from the kitchen inside, the only sign the house was occupied. Beyond that, the only light came from streetlights on the other side of the house. I checked the Browning and the spare clip I’d brought. Both were dry. Time to go inside.
I’d no sooner had my set of keys out and stepped on the back deck when someone said, “Hold it.” I slipped my finger out of the trigger guard and held up my hands, gun in one hand, keys in the other.
“I’ll just take that,” said a familiar voice as someone took my weapon. “You’re Kepler.”
I turned around, hands still in the air. “Good evening, Chief. Any idea whose boat that is out there?”
“I assume you mean the big one,” he said, handing me back my weapon, butt first. “Found it beached right after you called. Coast Guard says it belongs to a dentist in Avon Lake. My guess is he’s filing a stolen boat report now.”
I stuck the Browning in my waistband. “Have you checked on my friend?”
“She hasn’t answered her door. And without a 911 call or something more concrete, I can’t enter the premises.”
And Tom and Kate left for Florida right after Tom handed me the keys that morning. Wonderful. “I have access. I suppose letting you inside covers you.”
“She paying rent?”
“Yes.”
“That makes you a tenant.”
I gently turned the lock and slipped inside, making as little noise as possible. English, being the law, moved ahead of me to secure the house. I covered him, old cop instincts taking over. We heard sobbing upstairs. We headed up, English no doubt as thankful as me that the Landrums had the place recarpeted last spring. We made our way to the bedroom, soft light spilling out into the hall. I flattened myself against the wall near the door and nodded to English. He raised his weapon and stepped inside. “Freeze.”
I stepped in behind him, my own gun at ready. What I saw broke my heart.
Gypsy knelt over Jane, who had a nasty gash on her forehead. She looked up at English, then me. “I swear, Nick. It was self-defense.”
*****
Things got strange from there. English had to arrange for a chopper to take Jane into Port Clinton with a concussion. He questioned Gypsy at the house and did not need much convincing that Jane had beached the stolen fishing boat. Gypsy had not locked the front door when I’d left earlier. After all, out of the less than one hundred fifty residents of South Bass Island still around this time of year, which one would break into an occupied home? The story she told us depicted a woman unhinged.
At first, Jane acted worried, telling Gypsy that it was not safe for her here on the island, that she should come with her to a place she had in Pennsylvania. When Gypsy asked how she got to Put in Bay after the hovercraft had stopped running for the day, she went into a rage, screaming about how she wanted to protect her, how she was the only one who cared about her.
“Tell me I’m just a client,” she screamed.
“You’re my friend, Jane,” Gypsy tried to tell her. “But you’re a client, not my lover.”
“But Corbin…”
During this confrontation, Gypsy’s cell phone, then the house phone, rang. When English came by after I called him, he shined his flood light on the house. That was when Jane became violent. She tackled Gypsy, taking them both to the floor and out of sight of the windows. What shocked Gypsy was the knife. She had no idea Jane, a lawyer, carried such a weapon.
When English left, she held the knife on Gypsy, pleading with her to see reason. All men were users. Yes, Jane had paid Gypsy for sex, but Jane wanted to be lovers for real. And wasn’t it obvious Corbin had done all that damage to her apartment and Kepler’s?
“What about Kepler’s apartment?” asked Gypsy.
That was when Jane decided to kill her.
Only, you have to understand something about Gypsy. The first time I met her, she tried to stab me. I was a cop at the time, and I had every right to haul her in for assaulting an officer. Something told me not to, even though only sheer luck kept me from getting cut. She later admitted she’d intended to kill me. She intended to survive.
Jane did not know that part of Gypsy’s history, the street days, the heroin days. Not all of it. When she lunged at Gypsy, she attacked a woman who had grown up around knife-wielding thugs, been forced upon by rednecks holding a gun to her, and beaten by pimps, pushers, and the odd cop who saw her as resisting arrest. She learned to fight back the hard way.
Getting away from Jane, she ran upstairs to the master bedroom, where she located a nine iron Tom Landrum used to drive off the back deck. Jane did not find a scared, cornered girl, ready to surrender. She found an angry woman tired of being used and swinging a golf club.
That was it for Jane.
But it got stranger from there. English took it upon himself to call Ream in Medina about a suspect in custody who may also have vandalized the home of one Brian Corbin of Medina, Ohio, before stealing a boat and heading out to Put in Bay.
Ream said Corbin confessed to vandalizing Gypsy’s apartment then doing his own to deflect suspicion. He broke down after a deputy noticed that a sledge hammer in Corbin’s garage had paint that matched his SUV’s, but the house had showed no signs of forced entry. However, he could not have vandalized my apartment, which I finally admitted to English.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” he asked.
“Well…”
English looked at Gypsy and nodded. “You two better hope nothing more comes out of this on her end.”
So who trashed my place?
The next afternoon as the hospital released her to police custody, she admitted to trashing my place and hoping to frame Corbin for it. Crazy.
*****
I spent the night at Tom’s condo with Gypsy. We slept together but did not make love. I wasn’t surprised. The next morning, to Chief English’s relief, we left on the first hovercraft back to the mainland. I did not hear from Gypsy for over a month after that.
Two days before New Year’s Eve, 2002, I got a phone call in my office from “that woman,” as my secretary Elaine called her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’m okay, considering.”
There was a long, awkward silence, almost a full minute. I didn’t want to hang up on her, but from her breathing, I could tell she was upset.
“
Nick,” she said. “I want to finish our deal.”
“Gypsy, you don’t have to…”
“Please?”
“You want me to use you?” I said it before I could stop.
She gasped, or maybe sobbed. “I took a bullet for you. The least you could do is let me do this.”
There was no saying no. Before Jane Monroe’s rampage, I had been perfectly willing to go through the pretense of being Gypsy’s last “john.” I knew it was more than that, though. Once I handed Gypsy the dollar for her services, she was symbolically free of that life forever. “Do you have plans for New Year’s Eve?”
“I plan to thank someone for saving my life over and over. Can I do that, Nick? Please?”
I sighed. This still weirded me out, but at the same time, I knew we’d end up together sooner or later anyway. “Promise me this is for you.”
“Nick…”
“There’s a scar on your shoulder from a bullet that had my name on it. I need this to be about you.”
“Your place?”
“Yours. Let me make you dinner.”
“Only if I can make you breakfast.” Her voice sounded different now. She was talking through a smile. “I’ll see you at seven.”
Two nights later, I kissed that scar as Gypsy and I thanked each other for saving each other’s lives.
*****
Jim Winter was born near Cleveland in 1966. In 1991, he moved to Cincinnati to marry the love of his life. He finally met her in 2008 and married her before she could change her mind. Jim is the author of Bad Religion, Road Rules, Northcoast Shakedown, Second Hand Goods, and The Compleat Kepler. He has previously reviewed for Crimespree, January Magazine, and Mystery Scene. He lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Nita, and stepson, AJ. Visit him at http://www.jamesrwinter.net
The Smell of Perfume
by
Graham Smith