When Jennifer Jordan stared at her best friend with a lifted brow, Amber Saint Clair only smiled without a hint of apology for her comments, waggling an empty margarita glass invitingly. Subtle lighting glowed on the small group of women sitting with them at a marble-top table. Music from a grand piano at the edge of the lobby was played loudly to be heard over the buzz of voices in the crowded bar of The Peabody Hotel, a popular gathering place for locals and tourists.
Jennifer ignored the temptation to concur. Instead, she slung the strap of her purse over her left shoulder and said, “Sorry, but I need to get home and work something out with him.”
“Why? You know it’ll end the same way.” Amber stared across the table, her tawny eyes reflecting gold light. “As usual, he’ll ‘closing argument’ you into silence and compliance.”
Frustration knit Amber’s arched brows in an expression that Jennifer recognized, and she swallowed a sigh of agreement. Please, God, not another futile confrontation with him tonight.
Leaning forward, Jennifer managed to fake a playful smile as she said in a sultry stage whisper, “But making up after an argument is so much fun. Literally...and figuratively.”
While the others laughed, Amber made a crude sound, her brow arching even higher in an expression of disbelief. “You’re joking through those pearly whites and we both know it.”
Sometimes best friends can be a pain in the ass, Jennifer reflected. “Be good, Amber, or I’ll have to remind you of the times you’ve been wrong or stubborn about men,” she teased.
“Don’t pay any attention to her, Jen, just go on home and have some fun,” Darcy drawled, her words slurring from the effects of two jumbo margaritas. “We’ll stay here until we get outrageously drunk and throw our panties into the fountain so the ducks can play with them.”
“Oh, yes,” Amber said, “go join Jack. I’ll call tomorrow to see if you survived him. Now, let’s see if we can get that waitress over here for another round,” she told the others.
“Behave yourselves, ladies, and I’ll see you soon. I’ll call you tomorrow, Amber.”
Amber scowled, nodded, and exhaled a loud rush of air before Jennifer departed.
Well, it could be fun, Jennifer reasoned as she drove the few blocks from the hotel to the apartment she shared with John “Jack” Jackson, if she did not suspect that he would not back down on his latest quarrel with her. She only knew that neither would relent, not this time. Damn, what did he expect from her? To be a doormat? To obey his every whim and wish? To let him be the boss instead of a partner in their relationship? Somewhere along the way, he had changed, and not for the better. She did not know why or exactly when the alteration began, but it had. It was not as if she could change her entire personality and behavior to suit his desires. She could not become someone else, though God knew she wished she could at times, but for other reasons.
Jennifer’s hands tightened on the steering wheel as annoyance nibbled at her. She was who she was, and he would have to accept that reality, her eccentricities and all. After she had exposed them to him, he had told her she was “excessively wary” and “stubborn”, but she had reasons.
She wheeled her white Lexus into the garage of the converted warehouse that was now expensive apartments overlooking the bluff of the Mississippi River. Expansion had come to downtown Memphis in the form of trendy apartments and luxurious homes. A famous actress lived only a mile away down Riverside Drive. Gleaming yachts were moored off Mud Island, visible from the terrace of the fourth floor apartment she shared with Jack, his apartment.
The garage entrance and center-driving lane were sufficiently lit, and the attendant was still in his booth. Security was tight almost everywhere after what happened in New York, the Pentagon, and in Pennsylvania last month. Terrorist attacks. Twin Towers gone, downed airplanes, and bomb threats on America soil! How could those horrible events have happened and would more occur? Her feeling of longtime earned sense of security had been shattered, just as everyone else’s. She needed to feel safe again as she had as a young child, before that first horrible tragedy struck when she was only four years old. That was the event that had made her what she truly was.
Jennifer parked in her assigned slot, locked her car door, and walked rapidly toward twin elevators. Low heels on her pumps clacked against a concrete floor, echoing eerily. The lengthy walk to the elevators made her nervous at night or if the attendant was gone. Perhaps, she reasoned, she experienced anxiety because the yellow-bulb-lit-center-area with unilluminated surroundings of thick concrete pillars and various sized vehicles reminded her of that moonlight clearing in Shelby Forest that was surrounded by darkness and peril long ago, also during the changing of seasons.
Lately, she felt as if something or someone evil lurked in the dim shadows around and beyond the vehicles or behind columns. Waiting...Watching...An obscured threat...
Logic and Jack told her it was ridiculous, even “paranoid” to be afraid of wild imagination. Memory promptly provided contradiction: a blood stained four year old found cringing in fear and cold beside her murdered father and babbling about a scary beast in the trees who had been singing “Bingo” to her. The horrid and unsolved crime was now labeled a “cold case”, and her account of the incident dismissed as delusions of a traumatized and frightened child. She had been seen by a child psychologist and then a psychiatrist to rid her of those impossible ramblings, until she was old and smart enough to agree with him and her weary mother so she could escape continued and useless treatments. She was fortunate they had not committed her to a psych ward during her initial hysterics and continued refusal to accept “truth and reality”. After she realized that no one was going to believe her about the Beast, she had been compelled to dupe them to halt the standoff.
A cardboard box containing their blood and dirt stained clothes, investigative notes and gruesome photos sat on a metal shelf with her father’s name, date of death, and case number written in black magic marker on one end. Twenty-seven years had passed and no new evidence had surfaced to re-open his case. No justice had been done. It was as if everyone—except her and the shooter—had forgotten about Wade Jordan’s evil slaying in the woods like an animal.
No, Jennifer had not forgotten “Daddy” or that frightening episode. Beast’s shadowy image remained imprinted indelibly in her mind’s eye, featured subtly in all of her freelance artworks. A “quirk” that Jack disliked and mocked. It was something she could not change, even if she could control that inexplicable impulse. It had come to a choice, perhaps an ultimatum: either she had to capitulate, or they had to break up, or he had to accept the presence of Nimue.
The left elevator’s doors finally opened, and she stepped inside with a feeling of relief. Her wide green gaze scanned the darkened areas of the garage for an unseen threat until they hummed shut. Polished surfaces reflected her blurred image. The muted light overhead made her auburn hair look almost maroon, a dark cloud nestled against her pale face and throat. She eyed the beige jacket, slacks, and shoes on her slender five feet seven inch frame. Her concession to color was a vivid blue blouse, a paean to Amber’s insistence she wear something other than her usual “drab” clothes.
“You look like you’re trying to blend into the woodwork,” Amber had once teased. Her best friend had threatened playfully to go into her closet and throw out all of her black, gray and beige clothing if she did not buy and wear something that made her “stand out and look alive.” Amber had urged, “Stop hiding from the wicked world, Jen. Wear brighter lipstick, and a smidgen more make-up. Accentuate those green eyes and flaming locks. Wear French panties, or none at all, to make you feel free and sexy. Do something daring, girlfriend, and you’ll feel better, stronger.”
Saying and doing such things were easy for Amber with her golden beauty, ready laughter and enjoyable personality. As for herself, Jennifer felt safer and calmer when blended into the background of public life and places, camouflaged from whatever had heightened her longtime alert
and apprehension recently. It was not terrorists, as Amber and Jack believed, but why argue?
There had been a brief period during her psych therapy when she almost had convinced herself Beast was only a delusion created by the mind of a petrified child. If only to end her torment and insistence of her mother and doctor, she had urged herself to believe what she saw was nothing more than an odd shaped tree with vines swaying in gusts of wind; and the “glowing eyes” were only moonlight playing on those of an owl or other nocturnal creature. But the song, the eerie singing, could not be explained away. Then, she had reasoned that Beast was not evil, perhaps an angel in disguise sent to comfort and protect her at a cruel and vulnerable moment. That was why it had not harmed or approached her and had sung that familiar song to her.
But after becoming an artist and working at home, the strange creations had begun. Good or Evil, real or illusory, Beast had come to life in her subconscious mind and slyly in her works. She had not noticed his appearance in the beginning. It was like a game of Where’s Waldo or the optical illusion drawings where one held a picture of swirly lines or repetitious images close the face and stared at it until a cleverly obscured image sprang forth almost in 3-D. As she was touching up one of her freelance paintings, which were always woods scenes and mostly in the fall season, she recalled finding Beast masking himself in a clump of thick wind-swept grass. After checking her past paintings, she discovered him “hidden” in all of them! How, why, when, he got there, she did not know, but she knew soul deep she had put him there, as if during trance painting.
The intimidating discovery had caused her to question her sanity. Then, it frightened her after she realized she was still haunted by her father’s killer and that awful day long ago. It caused her also to realize that perhaps she had seen Wade Jordan’s murderer, that she was a witness to that crime, and her subconscious mind was trying to bring forth the villain’s identity. So far, no real person’s face had replaced Beast’s, and perhaps never would if she hadn’t seen it clearly. Until or if she “saw” the evil person, she had nothing to tell the police, nothing to reopen the “cold case.”
The intimidating discovery also caused her to be relieved she had not signed or sold any of those paintings at that point. That was when Nimue had come to life, their creator’s guardian, in the event the murderer worried about her remembering him one day. That was when she had realized why she stayed on-guard, wary, apprehensive, camouflaged: fear that the killer was waiting....Watching....Ready to attack her if he suspected she could expose him...
Maybe you’re just being paranoid. He knows you didn’t recognize him. That’s why he waited around for so long, to make certain you weren’t a threat to him. If he’s seen or purchased any of your paintings and guessed who Nimue is, he has to realize you don’t remember him.
Darkness greeted the agitated woman after the doors opened on the fourth floor. Only the muted overhead light from inside the elevator erased a square section of blackness ahead.
Damn, why can’t the manager keep things running smoothly and safely! She pushed the red Stop-button on the control panel and fumbled inside her purse for her extra key chain with a small penlight attached to it. It lay entangled with a comb and other items at the bottom, and she pulled it free as she grit her teeth in annoyance. She thumbed on the switch as she punched the release button and exited as the buzzer sounded with impatience at being stalled beyond its time limit.
Inky shadows gnawed at the narrow stream of light that she wielded like a mini sword. Plush carpet over thick wood colors cushioned her footsteps, and usually muffled most sounds from the four domiciles, two located on each side of the structure. She noted that an odd smell hung in the air. It grew stronger as she made her way down the long corridor, as they lived at the end apartment. She wrinkled her nose and frowned. She surmised the pest control company must have done their October spraying and must have used a new chemical, a terrible odor and malfunctioning lights about which she would complain to the manager tomorrow.
Jennifer realized she was walking slowly, dreading and expecting Jack’s black mood. Her nerves were rattled because she knew he would still be angry. She knew him, or used to know him. Jack did not get over disagreements—no, quarrels—easily or quickly. Maybe she should tell him the truth, the whole truth. She did not consciously paint the same almost obscured Beast in all of her freelance works; she just did it, and she did not know how. The why, she suspected. The haunting image was just there in the finished paintings, lurking somewhere in the trees, bushes, or grasses.
Beast’s presence seemed to flow from her brush, from so deep inside it was a visceral reaction instead of a conscious decision, as if it were done during brief hypnosis. It was as if the monster insisted on plaguing her by secreting himself onto every canvas except her professional works. None of her wildlife illustrations for textbooks had even a miniscule hint of the sinister creature. She signed her contracted works with two fanciful J’s: J J, with the date below them. Her freelance paintings carried the signature Nimue. Only her business manager—and Jack and Amber—knew the identity of Nimue, and all were sworn to confidentiality, her mother left in the dark. Nimue, the real name of the Lady Of The Lake in King Arthur and Merlin tales. Nimue was fanciful, magical, the contrast between Good and Evil, whisperer about the forgotten, the unknown. Lady watched. Lady waited. It was the same with her and Beast. Together, they were Nimue.
Jack disliked and ridiculed “childish and silly notions” of Beast’s presence, and her choice of and using a pseudonym, a contract he had drawn up for her, and the way they had reunited. In July, he had begun urging, later demanding, she exclude the creature, “take your art seriously” and take public credit for her woodsy works, which featured forest scenes with or without native animals, and sold quickly, easily and for a good price. From somewhere deep inside her mind’s recesses, she could not capitulate, even if it cost her their relationship and made his behavior worsen weekly, sometimes daily. She had told him she did not want or need intrusive and disruptive publicity and the hard work of art shows to increase sales; she wanted privacy. She wanted safety and obscurity from the evil human beast who had slain her father, if he were still alive and around... As a highly successful lawyer, John Jackson could not understand or accept her “secrecy any longer.”
If she told anyone it happened without her control or awareness, they would think she was crazy. That was why she had told only three people—if “Uncle Sam” was not included on that short list—that she was Nimue. She had not told the entire truth, even to Amber who would urge her to see a “shrink” or go to the police with her suspicions, so she endured feelings of guilt. Her mother could not handle knowing about Beast’s survival and return, so Linda had not been told, as her mother only wanted peace and escape from anything to do with that horrific night of death and loss.
Jennifer’s thoughts were jerked back to reality as she coughed again and her eyes smarted. The smell was stronger and worse now as she neared their apartment entrance. The pungent odor stuck in the back of her throat and taunted her nostrils when she took a deep breath, and coughed several more times. Her nose detected the additional smell of fresh paint, a scent she knew well from her occupation. Odd, the end of the corridor was pitch dark. She focused the penlight on the fire escape door. No wonder the hallway was so black; someone had painted the door’s window an obsidian color that blocked out the landing’s and moon’s lights. She told herself to hurry and get inside as her penlight’s battery was getting dim and flickering. Soon, its energy would be drained and it would be totally dark. Hopefully, Jack was home and the power was on inside.
Jennifer realized the dog she had heard barking, faintly at first, then louder now, was their pet. The animal sounded frantic and its barks slightly muffled. Jack must have left Baby out on the terrace and forgotten about her again, as he had a bad habit of doing lately. He always had an excuse about getting lost in a legal brief or summation, his world narrowed to law books and ob
scure cases.
How, she fretted, could she continue on and especially marry a man and have his children when he could not even take proper care of a family pet? He had become an impossible partner. If only she could tell him the whole truth and he would believe her, maybe they could... No, that would never happen. It was past time to end their misery, to break their engagement, to move.
Jennifer wished she had stayed with the girls, drank too many margaritas, and even thrown her lace panties into The Peabody Hotel fountain inside the lobby. Maybe she and her friends could have marched along on the red carpet with the row of ducks and their uniformed escort after they left the water to enter a private elevator to be carried to the roof to their palatial dwellings for the night. That was a popular event morning and night with both locals and tourists. She could have had fun tonight, could be having fun right now, except she had felt compelled to come home early to resolve matters with Jack. Now, this added annoyance, their dog left out to bark for Heaven only knew how long. The manager would be knocking on their door first thing in the morning to complain about the noise and perhaps fine them. She was surprised neither the manager, nor any of their neighbors, nor the police were pounding on their door at that moment. Yet, except for Baby’s muffled barking, it was silent, too quiet. It was as if no one was home tonight to complain about the noise, and stench and hall lights. Any lingering guilt over their earlier quarrel was smothered under rising irritation.
Jennifer arrived at their door and reached for the knob to insert her key. Her action caused the door to swing open, and her momentum propelled her inside the dark apartment. She dropped the penlight and it scurried away like a fleeing mouse, one she did not chase.
“Jack, I’m home. You left the door unlocked again. What happened to the lights on our floor? That hallway is black as soot. Why is Baby outside barking her head off? The manager and neighbors are going to be furious with us.” The awful smell was worse inside the apartment, and she frowned in displeasure again. “What in Heaven’s name is that terrible odor? Did you burn something or did the exterminator come tonight?” No response. “Jack, are you here?”
Necessary Evil Page 38