ALSO BY LINDA L. RICHARDS
The Madeline Carter Series
Mad Money
The Next Ex
Calculated Loss
The Kitty Pangborn Series
Death Was the Other Woman
Death Was in the Picture
Death Was in the Blood
The Nicole Charles Series
If It Bleeds
When Blood Lies
Anthologies
Vancouver Noir
Thrillers: 100 Must-Reads
Fast Women and Neon Lights
Copyright © 2021 by Linda L. Richards
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-60809-420-2
Published in the United States of America by Oceanview Publishing
Sarasota, Florida
www.oceanviewpub.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.
—PAULO COELHO, The Zahir
CHAPTER ONE
I AM ON a plane. There are always planes. That’s an important part. They say it’s inefficient and ineffective to break cover in your own community. Me, I say it a different way that means the same thing: shitting in your own backyard makes no sense at all.
So, I am on a plane. It’s a hop this time. The where does not matter, but if I say “Atlanta” you’ll get the idea. In the terminal, when I pick up the rental car that’s been reserved for me, I look it over approvingly. It is dark and somber. Unremarkable. Mid-sized. A sedan. If I turn my head quickly, I’ll forget what it looks like. I tell the oily-haired kid behind the counter that I’ll take it and he nods without concern because there was never any question.
I leave the airport and I drive like someone who knows where she’s going. I don’t, but I fake it. I’ve got SatNav in the rental, Google Maps on my cell phone, and I’ve got the general idea.
I end up in a beautiful neighborhood with wide, tree-lined streets. You can tell it’s an affluent neighborhood because even the supermarket has trees and plants right next to it and the bagboys look pale and well scrubbed, like they’re home during midterms, working to make beer money. It’s a nice place.
I find the house without difficulty. It looks as I’d imagined it would. The house is antebellum, with columns in a big yard with a well-manicured lawn. The house is a white so bright, it’s like a clean tooth in the center of a big green mouth. A long driveway curves through the lawn and ends at the entrance to the garage where a porch swing is idle next to the closed front door.
I circle the block a couple of times. Not much is going on. If anyone is home, they’re keeping quiet inside and their car is tucked into the garage.
I pull my dark and perfectly nondescript sedan up across the street from the house. It’s warm here in “Atlanta.” Somewhere, someone has a window open and strains of a Strauss waltz float across the air. Behind the house, I see a pool. It gives me an idea.
I sit in the car and dial the number I was given. It seems to ring for a long time. Finally, someone answers. I force on a clean and happy smile and I make it touch my voice.
A man answers and sounds exactly as I’d anticipated.
“Hi there,” I say, the chirp in my voice at a careful place. It echoes the smile. “This is Brandee calling from Super Bright Pools. I wanted to make sure you were happy with the servicing you got earlier today.”
There is a pause, but it’s not very long. I feel I may have tipped my hand too far. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself it won’t matter for long.
“Listen, Brandee, we don’t have any pool service. I clean the pool myself.”
“I’m sorry,” I say in the same odd chirp. “But are you certain. Maybe if you checked with your wife …”
“My wife’s not here,” he says. I hear the call disconnect sharply. And though he’d meant to be rude, I feel myself smile into the phone. He’s given me more information than he knew, including the fact the he is alone in the house. Now I know what to do.
I leave the car, approach the house. I am silent. Like a cat.
The first two windows I try are locked, as is the garage door. The third window is not latched, and it doesn’t take much for me to open it all the way, slide through. Had I not found the window open, it would have slowed me down, but it would not have stopped me. And, in any case—in almost all cases—there’s a window open somewhere. Not in my house. Not anymore. But, what the hell: I like to think you can learn from other people’s mistakes.
Once through the window, I’m in the prettiest laundry room I’ve ever seen. The walls are white and pink, striped, and the room smells good. Clean. There’s a little desk in one corner, the surface of it in tidy disarray. There are clothes, neatly folded, on top of the dryer. His and hers, nothing for children. It wouldn’t have made any difference if there were, but still. I’m relieved. There’s a part of me that can’t help it.
When I leave the laundry room, I think I’m mouse-quiet, but he must have very good ears.
“Desiree,” he calls out. His voice is honey and old scotch. Oakwood: gnarled and rich. “I didn’t expect you for a while.”
He turns a corner and he doesn’t see Desiree. Instead, he sees a woman in her thirties, someone he possibly wouldn’t look at twice were he to pass her at the mall. She is neither tall nor short. If someone were to ask him to describe her, he wouldn’t be able to recall much of anything in detail. Though, of course, he does not get that chance.
“How the hell did you get in here?” There is no panic in his voice. No fear. Only surprise.
“Vince Landry?”
He gives a small, almost imperceptible nod but doesn’t say anything.
“I’m Brandee,” I say, going with my original story, despite the fact that I probably don’t look much like anyone’s idea of either a pool service person or a customer service rep. Also, despite the fact that none of the story I’ve woven for him will matter in a few minutes.
“But I told you …” The confusion is clearing from his face now. A thundercloud is on the way.
“I’m sorry, but I have some papers …” I reach into my purse. It is Coach—authentic Coach, not something you’d buy on Canal Street—and my fingers touch the cold skin of my Bersa Thunder .380. I can feel the cold of the steel even through the nitrile gloves.
I see Vince Landry’s eyes widen when he gets a whiff of the Bersa. It’s a pretty gun, but I know he’s not admiring her beauty.
I don’t give him any warning and I don’t give me any, either. Not much, anyway. Just before I plug three silenced shots into his chest, I think about my son, now gone. I think about my flat iron and the hair that didn’t actually benefit much from straightening on that day. I think about what I then had and what I do not now have. It’s like a life flashing in front of my eyes. And for about twenty seconds, I feel good. I feel whole again.
And then Vince Landry is dead at my feet, the light fading from his eyes as the blood begins to drain from his body, and I get a move on because I know that if I want that feeling again—the feeling of go
od wholeness—I have to shorten the distance between where I am now and where I want to be.
CHAPTER TWO
FIVE YEARS AGO, I was someone’s wife and someone else’s mother. Their names don’t matter now, though they mattered a great deal then.
I had a job. Let’s say I worked in an office, because that’s close enough to what it was. I got up early in the morning, anyway. Put coffee on while I was still wearing my bathrobe, then hurried through the shower while the coffee brewed. Every day.
Before I left for work, I’d stop by his room. We had a big house, far out of the city and that commute, it gave me hell. I had to leave for work an hour before he even got up for school. So my routine: I’d drop by his room and lay a kiss on his forehead.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” I’d say, or some other dopey thing like that.
And mostly he’d fuss, because what nine-year-old kid wants to be woken up long before he has to get ready for school? But I’d wake him up anyway, usually with a glass of juice or milk. And I’d demand a hug and a kiss, and while I roared down the highway on my way to the city, sometimes I’d think about the sweet smell of him. And I’d smile at the memory and at the hopes and dreams I had in my heart, because that was the thing that pushed me out the door in the morning, that kept me running when maybe I could have walked. There was going to be a future, and I was going to make it happen, and I didn’t think about the fact that I was buying that future with my own youth. I only thought about the need and desire and must-haves that were right in front of me.
It all seems so stupid now.
That last day, though, that was different.
I was running late. I didn’t stop by for a hug and an infusion of that sweet smell. I didn’t even stop to grab a coffee or do any of the things I usually did.
I flattened my hair. It seems an odd detail to remember. I used the flat iron on my hair. I can still feel the hot weight of it in my hand. I remember because I’ve wondered about it since. Wondered about it every single day. Did I leave that iron on? Is that how it happened? The insurance people—and the cops—they didn’t say so: they couldn’t pinpoint it quite that way, and me … well, I didn’t dare ask. By then it didn’t matter anyway, because it was all too late. Don’t ask a question, that’s what my mother always said. Don’t ask a question unless you really want to know.
Cause and effect, right? That’s what it boiled down to. And, whatever the cause, here was the effect: the fire killed my child very quickly. At least, that’s what they told me. And I’ve never been sure if they told it to me because it was true, or because they wanted to try and wipe the haunted look out of my eyes. I don’t think that it did.
The fire killed my son, but it didn’t kill my man. Not right away, anyhow. It half-killed him just enough that he never recognized me—not ever again. But before he died, I owed everything we’d had and shared and more for the medical bills that would make it all right again. That would try to make it all right again. And it was then—of course it was then—that the world lined up and showed me the way it would be from then on. Life is good that way. It takes care. It shows you symmetry when you never thought you’d see it again. That’s the thing I tell myself.
And now? Well, now my life makes no more sense than it did then. But there is occasional purpose. And there is money—at least I never want for that. And there are times—really, just moments so brief you can almost hold them in your hand—when you don’t feel the pain or regret or loss for the future you worked so hard for, you practically shoved it out the door.
CHAPTER THREE
AFTER THE ACCIDENT—DIRECTLY after—there was only pain. When I think back on that time, I see a cold, dark hole. I think, for a while, I still had a job. I know there was someplace I went in the morning, without kisses. Without coffee. I don’t remember exactly where I was, but it rained a lot. At least, I think I remember a lot of rain. All my world was very gray.
I would sit at the hospital, with the man who had been my husband. Who was then still my husband.
I would sit with him and I would lift his half-dead hand and I would talk to it and to him. I knew it was useless, but I did it anyway. If I hadn’t had him to talk to, I would have been alone. I wasn’t ready for that.
It was not a private hospital room. The money was all gone by then, and the bills were piling up more quickly than I could even count. So, in the hospital, my husband had a roommate. The roommate was tall and effete, with long-fingered hands and remarkably long hair. The man’s wife was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, have still ever seen, with dark, kohl-rimmed eyes. I’ll always remember the slash of deep red lipstick in her waxen face on those days. Those early days. She wore worry and fear like a cloak.
In the days I sat with my comatose husband behind the curtains drawn around his bed, I gathered that the tall, effete man’s name was Julian and that he was in desperate need of some expensive surgery that the couple couldn’t afford. Their desperation was palpable and stemmed from the fact that they had been bilked out of a great deal of money by an art dealer. Julian was an artist, and proceeds from his work had been withheld. Had this not occurred, the surgery could have been afforded and their future altered. Assured. It was all, quite literally, a matter of life and death.
They could not have known I listened. They would have been too self-involved to even think about there being anyone beyond the curtains that surrounded my comatose husband most of every day. They would not have known I was there, praying at my husband’s bedside at a time when I still had a God to pray to. But in between praying and talking softly to my husband who could not, in any case, understand, I would listen to their hushed discussions. It passed the time.
Over a period of days, while Julian became ever more delicate and haggard, the two of them hatched a plot. They would hire someone to kill the person who had done them such an injustice. In doing so, their funds would be released back to them and the surgery could go on. That was their thinking. But the wife, Clara, couldn’t find anyone to do the deed. Over the course of the days I listened, she reported that she had made discreet inquiries but, in truth, she didn’t even know where to begin. Who does, when you think about it? What “nice” people know where to look to hire someone when they need someone killed? It’s just not generally a middle-class activity. That’s not a bad thing.
“You couldn’t find anyone?” The rain on the window was a live thing that day. You could hear it beating rhythmically on the glass, some dark jazz tattoo. It didn’t drown out the desperation in Julian’s voice, though. I could hear that desperation from across the room, louder even than the sounds the words themselves made.
“I’m sure there’s someone out there, but I don’t know where to look.” I heard something dire in her voice and I peeked out from a join in the curtain. Her eyes looked smokier than ever. Twin pools of despair. “Think about it,” she said to him. “Even asking the wrong person could land me in jail.”
“But, surely, for ten thousand dollars we can find someone willing to put a bullet into him.”
“It’s not the money, Julian.” Their voices were hushed, their tones low, but the polished linoleum carried the words to me on ghost hands. “Like I said, I don’t know where to look.”
“I’ll do it.” My own voice surprised me, and they looked surprised, too, seeing me step out from behind the curtain in that way. My voice had a disused sound, like I hadn’t spoken in a while. Maybe I had not.
Their heads swiveled towards me in a single motion. It was as though neither of them had ever seen me before, though by then Julian and my husband had been roommates for weeks.
“Where did you come from?” she said.
I pointed back at the curtained area. “My husband is in a coma. I sit with him sometimes. I … I’ve been listening. For a while. For days. I know your story.”
“And you said you’ll …” Clara was searching but she didn’t find the words she was looking for. I helped her out.
“The
man. Who took the money from you. He needs to be dead. You can’t find anyone to do it. I have nothing more to lose.” I indicated my nearly dead husband and thought about the child they could not see. The house. The dreams. The life. I said it again: “I have nothing more to lose. And I need money. Ten thousand dollars?”
They both nodded, without speech.
“All right, well, I need that, too. Tell me what you want done.” I thought about it for a few minutes more, but that was enough. And then, “Tell me what you need me to do.”
And so it begins.
And so it began.
CHAPTER FOUR
SEVENTY-TWO PERCENT OF hits are contracted due to matters of the heart. I saw this fact on CNN, so it must be true.
Oh, sure, sometimes those matters of the heart extend to money or the protection of children or some other connected matter. But in seventy-two percent of cases, there is some element of love and loss. CNN says it, but I’ve seen this, also, with my own heart.
I think about that sometimes. About what would be different if I’d done the sensible, contractual thing in my own marriage. It hadn’t been about love for a long time. There had been the child to raise—and I may not have loved his father anymore, but our son sure did. So the child to raise and the shared life to protect.
What if I, in good seventy-two percent style, had not straightened my hair and made coffee on that day? What if, instead, I had taken out a contract on my husband’s life? This story would have had a happy ending then, do you see? No massive loss, no soulless searching, no wandering the landscape, a gun in my Coach. One could argue: Well, what of the husband? But he’s dead now, you see? And the going was not without discomfort. And a great deal of pain. Oh, I killed him in the end anyway, of course. But that was a different matter. By then it was a mercy killing, and I don’t think that’s the sort of contract CNN means.
The news piece had other facts, different statistics. For instance, they said, the most common method of fulfilling a contract was with a firearm.
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