After a time, Martha got to her feet and looked around the yard. The sight of her own body lying a short distance away made her flinch and close her eyes. Her fear of seeing what she really looked like, especially in death, made her stand that way for a moment before she marshaled the fortitude to actually look at herself.
She was smaller than she had believed herself to be, an actual little old lady. In her mind came Johnathan Winters’ wonderful character, Maudie Frickert, who rode a Harley, lived in a nursing home, and enjoyed listening to her fellow inmates digest their dinners. She found herself a little shocked by her cavalier attitude toward her own dead body, but she felt so much better than she had in so long that the freedom from what she had been far outweighed the loss of the husk that remained in the yard.
Her body lay on its left side, knees drawn up to nearly a fetal position, the head tucked down toward the chest. Her right hand still clutched at the left arm, just below the bicep, no doubt a reaction to the pain. Her face, however, appeared relaxed and at rest. Although Martha vividly remembered the heart attack, she could not recall her actual death. Looking at her calm face, she believed that she must have had an inkling of what was to come that had made her smile. Perhaps the promise of relief had aided in her passing.
She moved to the body and was attempting, unsuccessfully, to smooth the skirt down in a more modest manner when her neighbor of six or seven years, Mary McClugen, exited the back door of her home to place a sack of kitchen trash in the covered barrel that resided on her tiny patio. Mary froze in the middle of that chore and, dropping her bag to the cement below her feet, uttered a small cry and came running, literally vaulting the four-foot chain link fence that Martha’s late husband, Noble, had insisted they install. Mary slid to a stop on her knees beside the body, shouting Martha’s name. Martha answered her, standing as she was, less than three feet away, but Mary could not hear or see her. Mary shouted Martha’s name a few more times and even lightly slapped the body’s cheek, but to no avail. After a moment or two, the obviously stricken woman sank back on her haunches, straightened the body’s rumpled skirt, unclipped a cell phone from her waistband, and made the inevitable call.
Unnoticed, Martha watched as the paramedics came and went. Unseen, she maintained her vigil as the police waited on a representative of the Coroner’s Office to make the official pronouncement. Beyond the awareness of the living, she looked on when her body was removed for transport to the Blair Funeral Home. Glad it was finally gone, she had no desire to accompany herself to the final round of indignities that would be visited on what she once was. Instead, she followed Mary into the house as her friend gathered numbers from the list beside the kitchen wall phone, and then back outside while Mary made sure the place was locked up. Martha attempted to follow her home. As she tried to tag along when Mary went through the gate between their properties, she could not. It was not as if something outside was keeping her in, it was as if she were being restrained by some force that kept her from going out. As she approached the boundary she could almost lean forward against the pull of some power that lay behind her; an ethereal tether that tied her to the yard she in which she had spent so much of her life. If she stopped struggling against it, the bond disappeared. If she attempted to overcome it, it balanced against her strength and would allow her no headway. Fascinated by the phenomenon, Martha walked the property line of her home, finding the same restriction wherever she went.
Nor could she enter her house on her own. It made no difference if the doors were locked. It was as beyond her to grasp a knob or latch as it was for her to leave footprints on the grass. Had she been alive, this new situation would have vexed her intolerably, but she was not and it did not. She accepted this vagary of her new reality with calm ease, returned to the backyard, and went to her beloved fishpond.
Martha had added the pond to her back yard about three years after her husband’s death. It measured twelve by twenty feet and was slightly over five feet deep at the big end, three at the small. In it she had built barriers to protect her water lilies and bog plants, then she had installed two-dozen, minnow sized, Japanese Koi. During the nearly ten years since their introduction, the fifteen fish that had survived the first two years had grown to massive size, a couple over thirty inches long. They knew her, and she knew them. With the exception of very cold weather when the pond iced up, she spent time with them daily, lavishing on them the same care and concern she had displayed for other meaningful entities in her life. Over time she added a rock garden and waterfall. Once, her creation had appeared in the style section of the Kansas City Star.
Even though she was now dead, Martha held no fear for the fish. Her granddaughter-in-law, Cheryl, would receive the house. Cheryl and her two daughters, Amanda and her older sister, Sarah, would be glad for the home. All three of them, especially little Mandy, loved the pond and enjoyed the fish almost as much as Martha did. The house, Martha’s modest estate, plus some additional income from a trust she had established in Cheryl’s name, would be very welcome. Since Martha’s grandson, Cheryl’s husband Paul, had vanished, things had not been easy. When Paul went into undercover work with the State Police, she’d had many reservations about his safety. The nearly two-year investigation into his disappearance had led to no conclusions or answers, and the case was still listed as open, but the simple truth was that there was no Paul and no explanation. Nearly everyone connected to the case believed him to be dead, but without proof, Cheryl was not entitled to any insurance or pension benefits.
Martha approached the pond and watched the fish swim toward her. Smiling as they clamored for food and attention, she felt sorry she could not enter the house and get some pellets to toss into the water. They would just have to wait for Cheryl and the girls if they wanted to eat.
“Babies, babies, babies,” she said. “Begging from me won’t help. There’s nothing I can do. You’re too greedy, anyway. You’re not even grateful! After everything I’ve done for you, you still just want…”
Martha’s head swam and she sank to her backside on a stone at the water’s edge. For over an hour she had moved among paramedics and policemen, onlookers and do-gooders and rubberneckers, and not one of them noticed her, even when she waved her arms and shouted. But these fish, her beloved Koi, had come to her for food. They could see her.
My dearest God, the fish could see her.
*****
CHAPTER TWO
Crockett freshened Satin’s coffee as she sat in a kitchen chair and stared blankly into the middle distance. He gave her a few moments to gather herself before he asked the inevitable question.
“Who’s threatening your daughter?”
Satin gave a small start and looked at him as if he’d just appeared out of thin air.
“Train,” she said.
“Train?”
Satin nodded.
“And Train would be…?”
“This immense black guy.”
“I see. And Train’s pissed off at your kid because she kicked his bicycle over at recess, right?”
Satin stared at her coffee for a moment, then turned her eyes to Crockett.
“What?” she said, trying to focus.
Crockett smiled. “I need a story here,” he said. “At this point in time you are not an overly effective communicator. If I’m not digging into your private life too far, talk to me.”
Satin eyes were full. “You are my private life, Crockett”.
Crockett smiled. “Relate,” he said.
Satin took a hit of her coffee and collected herself.
“Danni and I are not close,” she said.
“Danni?”
“Danielle. Danielle Connelly. She kept my husband’s last name. I went back to my maiden name.”
“I believe you once mentioned you were a grandmother?”
Satin nodded.
“What was Danielle’s married name?”
Satin shook her head. “Danni was never married. She had Lucy when she was eighteen.”
“No shit. Same age I was when I had Danni. She ran off when she was seventeen. I didn’t hear from her for over a year, then she just showed up one day with a baby and expected me to give her a place to live, food to eat, and baby sit the kid anytime she wanted to go out and party. Now and then she’d be gone for a couple of days at a time, and show back up high or drunk, sleep for twelve hours, and take off again. Meantime, I’m a mom again. Christ, Crockett, I paid for daycare for the baby so I could work and support everybody while Danni came and went without a care in the world.”
“That’s bullshit,” Crockett said.
“There’s a lot of bullshit in this story. Danni’s no dummy. She graduated high school when she was still sixteen. She’d skipped two grades.”
“Jesus,” Crockett said. “Why the hell does a kid that bright run off and blow it all?”
“She blamed me for a situation with my husband, I guess.”
“Her father?”
“No. I didn’t marry her father. When she was six, I married Lee. He started molesting her when she hit puberty. It came early for her. I didn’t know about it until she was nearly fifteen.”
“Oh, hell. You go to the cops?”
“No. I knew it would be his word against hers. I threw him out. Told him if he ever came near Danni or me again, I’d kill him. I would have, too. She hates him. She’s never forgiven me for not knowing what was going on, I guess.”
Crockett shook his head. “And you haven’t forgiven you either, huh?”
“Almost. Guilt is a real sonofabitch. Probably why I’ve put up with so much crap from her.”
“Probably.”
“I let her come and go and took care of her daughter for about three months until I got fed up. Told her she’d have to get her shit together or get out. No matter what she thought of me, I was not going to enable her to be an unfit mother.”
“How’d she take that?”
Satin sipped her coffee and grimaced. “As usual, I was the villain, of course,” she said. “But I was also a free ride. A week or so later she came home claiming she had a job as a waitress at some truck stop in Independence or Grain Valley or somewhere, working from eight at night to four in the morning.”
“Uh-huh,” Crockett said. “I assume that was a lie.”
“Oh, yeah. But I didn’t want it to be. So, for the next few months, I worked all day, took care of the baby at night, and put up with a daughter who was running around until all hours of the morning, who never turned a lick to help keep the apartment up or contribute to the financial end of things, and laid around all day in a stupor doing very little to care for her child. Then one night as I’m putting Lucy to bed, the phone rings. I let it go while I finished with the baby. When I checked the message, it was from some guy named Benny wondering why she wasn’t at work and complaining that there were customers waiting for her. He threatened that if she screwed up one more time, she was fired. The last thing he did was call her a dope-headed little cunt.”
Satin went to the counter and freshened her coffee as Crockett, controlling the standard male impulses, kept his mouth shut and waited. She returned to the table, shrugged, and continued.
“I checked the phone for the return number and called it. I got a message machine advising me I had reached Heels, the Kansas City area’s finest gentlemen’s club, with live and lovely entertainment twenty-four hours a day, both on, and off, the stage.”
Crockett slid his chair back shook his head. “Shit,” he said.
“Ya think? The next day was Saturday. Danni came home as usual. I left the baby with her after lunch and drove out to Kansas, just outside the city limits on K-10 on the way to Lawrence, to check out Heels.”
“How’d that work out for ya?”
“I went in the place and was stopped in a vestibule area by this huge black guy who informed me that unescorted women were not allowed inside unless they were looking for a job. He went on to say that, while I was one fine looking piece, I was a little old to be a dancer.”
Crockett couldn’t help it. He grinned.
“Fine,” Satin said. “Keep it up, laughing boy.”
“Keeping it up has never been a issue with you.”
“Oh, shit,” Satin muttered, fighting a smile.
“Continue with the story,” Crocket said. “I find myself getting very involved with the plot. I’m nearly emotionally erect.”
Satin stood up, leaned over the table, and kissed him on the cheek. “So,” she said, sitting down, “while I’m trying to decide if Ishould kick this big fucker in the family jewels, this other guy walks in. Short, chubby, balding, about forty. Introduces himself as Benny, and asks if I’m looking for a job. I told him maybe I was. He took me inside and bought me a drink.”
“Nice place?”
“Lovely,” Satin said, not rising to the bait. “Bar with stools, booths facing the room around the outside walls, tables in the center, and a stage on the far wall. Two girls on stage dancing and rubbing on each other, twenty or thirty guys around, some of them with lap dances in progress. The women on stage were stripping. The lap dancers were wearing nothing but high heels and G-strings.”
“Oh, my,” Crockett said. “Exactly where is this place?”
Satin ignored him. “Benny gets me a scotch and tells me how attractive I am, how they don’t use dancers much past age twenty-five, but that if I wanted to make some real money, there were three private cubicles in the back for special guests, and that I could make as much as seven or eight hundred bucks a night. Of course, the house took fifty percent. He then went on to say that I could start that evening if I checked out okay and invited me back to his office to determine my worthiness to be employed at such a fine establishment. I told him I’d be in touch, and left. On the way to my car, I saw a guy in the parking lot getting a blowjob in a Lexus.”
“Jesus,” Crockett said.
“When I got home I confronted Danni about the phone call and my trip to the strip joint. She got defensive, then admitted that she’d been dancing at the club and that she’d had a fling with the big black guy. That’s when I learned the only name anybody ever called him was Train.”
“The locomotive as opposed to the air conditioner, I bet,” Crockett said.
“The man is a monster. Seven or eight inches taller than you, three hundred and fifty pounds, maybe more. Shaved head, mustache, all dressed in black, shoulders like bowling balls. Massive. I only stood beside him for a couple of minutes, but he seemed to suck all the air out of the room.”
“Terrific,” Crockett said. “The bigger they are, the harder I fall.”
“Danni told me that he was the bouncer at the club and was also involved in running the place. She’d tried to break it off with him, but he wouldn’t leave her alone. That’s why she hadn’t gone to work. He’d told her that if she wouldn’t be with him, he’d fix it so she couldn’t be with anybody. Danielle said she saw him beat up three or four college boys one night. He liked it. She packed up her clothes, took the baby, and left. For two weeks I had no idea where she’d gone. Then my sister called from Sikeston. Said Danni had been there with her, left the baby at her place, and took off to Oklahoma or Arizona, or somewhere. That’s when I left the city and moved to Hartrick.”
“You have a sister?”
“Yeah. She’s almost ten years older than I am. We don’t get along. She was always jealous of me. I was the baby in the family. Velvet resented that.”
“Velvet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Satin and Velvet,” Crockett said. “You don’t have a brother named Oilcloth or something, do ya?”
“I heard from Danni around last Christmas. She’d come back to town, was dancing at a club south of Independence on 50 Highway part time, and working three days a week at a Babette’s.”
“What’s a Babette’s?”
“A string of stores in this area that sell all kinds of kinky clothes, costumes, boots, sex toys
, porn movies, stuff like that.”
“You seem pretty familiar with the inventory.”
“I visited her at the store once. Very neat and clean. Not sleazy at all, if you discount a wall full of battery powered fulfillment and racks of DVDs with bunches of naked people doing obvious things to each other on the boxes. A lot of the dancers and models get their clothes at the Babette’s stores. That’s how Danni got her job there. She was a customer before she was an employee. I looked around. They really do have some cute things that you damn sure won’t find at Victoria Secrets.”
“Maybe we should go shopping.”
“Not necessary. Danni’ll be out to my place early this afternoon. Train found her. She’s scared.”
“Can you reach her?”
“I could call the store.”
“Good. We don’t want this idiot to find out where you live. Tell her to make sure she isn’t being followed. If she is, and she can’t shake the tail, tell her to call you and we’ll meet her someplace.”
“We?” Satin asked.
“Sure. If you’re in this, so am I. Worse comes to worse, I’ll have a talk with the lad.”
Satin peered at him. “Crockett,” she said, “this guy is a force of nature. He’s almost a fucking continent.”
“Hard to stop a train. Easier to derail one.”
“What are you gonna do?”
Crockett slipped into his best Godfather dialect.
“I’ll make him an offer he can’t comprehend,” he said.
*****
Cheryl and the girls arrived in the late afternoon and came into the back yard. Cheryl’s house key fit only the rear door. Martha watched as the three of them went into the house, but declined to go with them through the open door for fear she might become trapped inside until she could follow one of them out again. She was rather surprised to find she felt no sadness in leaving her only surviving relatives. The joy of her own freedom canceled anything as mundane as grief or depression. Her perspective on life and death was radically altered. Knowing that the girls would soon come to feed the fish, she waited by the pond and turned her attention to the begging koi. It wasn’t long before the door opened and Sarah and Amanda came walking in her direction, their hands cradling fish pellets. Three-year-old Mandy left a trail of them behind her as she walked. Cheryl shouted from the doorway.
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