“I can do that for you,” insisted Alexia.
Myra shook her head. “You might not believe it from the looks of my private rooms, but I do clean up after myself and divas still do dishes. Well, on rare occasions, anyway. If and when I actually attempt cooking.” She smiled.
Working together, they cleaned the kitchen in less than fifteen minutes. As they did so, Myra experienced a never-before feeling – that this must be what having a daughter could have been like. She shook it off. Too late for children. Her mood sank at the thought that it was too late for many things. She couldn’t let such thoughts drag her down. She was known for being lively, the life of the party. How could she not live up to that, even at the end?
Myra’s fatigue returned, but she refused to be a bad hostess and offered to show Alexia the rest of her home, including her study. The unused parts of the house remained sterile, while areas of private use showed the usual clutter of a single woman, albeit that of a single woman of wealth and refined tastes. Just outside her study, Alexia came to a halt and gazed at the framed prints on the walls.
“Sweetie…and George! I love that comic strip, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen these before.” She leaned closer to the glass of a nearby print and scrutinized it. “These are much more risqué than the ones I’ve seen in print.”
The nearest eight-by-ten sketch showed Sweetie in bed with a book, while scrawny George stood at the doorway dressed as a Chippendale stripper at Christmas holding a sprig of mistletoe high in front of him. To George’s “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Sweetie replied, “No! No! No!”
“Who’s Weston? I thought the authors were Sanders and Ross.”
Myra smiled. “These are among my most precious possessions. I have a Picasso and a Monet. You saw those, but I’d give them both up to have more of these. This is secret number two about me. I’ve idolized Sweetie since her first appearance. Her irreverence. Her wit. Even her sarcasm. She is a diva among divas.” She paused to let that sink in. “These, Alexia dear, are signed originals by the creator of ‘Sweetie…and George,’ Betsy Weston, who, sadly, is no longer with us. Sanders and Ross took over for the publisher when Weston sold them all rights to the series and disappeared.”
Myra watched as Alexia scanned each print, chuckling at most of them, laughing loudly at several.
“What happened to her? These are much funnier than the current ones.”
“Ahhh, what happened to Betsy Weston is a mystery awaiting revelation. One that I think we’re both going to find … what word should I use? Interesting? Too simplistic. Troubling? Perhaps. Intriguing? I hope so. I hope it has the makings of a great book because that’s what you’ll be working on.”
Myra could sense that the young woman was indeed intrigued.
“What do you already know about her?”
“She came from Asheville, North Carolina and moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where she freelanced creating cards for Gibson Greetings. When she came up with this idea, the company thought it too risqué, as you put it, and turned down her idea. So, she struck out on her own, built the series up and then suddenly sold it and disappeared. Do you remember my mentioning to you that I’d been to Asheville about ten years ago? I thought I had a lead on more of these originals. Ended up being only that one.”
She pointed to a drawing of Sweetie in a garden with George bent over in the distance, his butt crack prominently showing. The caption read, “The old fart! I asked for hemerocallis and all I see is hemorrhoids.”
“I found it in an old motel that locals told me had been a brothel at one time. The current owner told me each room had an original at one time until that building burned down in the early eighties. Only the office and owner’s quarters survived and that’s why he still had that one. He met Betsy once in the mid-70’s when she went back to Asheville for the funeral of Sally Fleming, her inspiration for Sweetie.”
“Are there others out there somewhere?”
Myra shrugged her shoulders. “None that I’ve been able to locate, but I believe there is another small collection in Arkansas. These are one-of-a-kind originals that some think are more priceless than the Picasso, but value is in the eye of the beholder and like all collectibles, the true worth is set only when someone buys it.”
Alexia stood and scanned each sketch over and over. Myra wished she could read minds, to get a glimpse of what Alexia was thinking at that moment. She hadn’t told Alexia everything she knew about Betsy Weston. No sense scaring her.
Nineteen
(Spring – 1969)
**********
Betsy ran past the police cars with their rotating beacons, past the main drive and office, and approached the brothel from the rear service drive and private garden. The yellow ’65 Mustang convertible sat outside the garage doors. The police hadn’t thought to secure that area, so she eased past the car, alert to anyone hiding inside or behind it, and entered the garden and patio. She gazed through the large glass sliding doors into the living area to see the girls crying and shaking. Jim moved from girl to girl, trying to console each one. Everyone seemed to be there except Jennie, Billie, and Sally. Betsy’s heart ached at that realization. Jim looked up as she entered the room and rushed over to her. He took her softly by the shoulder and ushered her back outside onto the patio.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Please, sit down.” He pointed to a pair of wicker chairs. After sitting next to her, he continued. “I-I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s tragic. Nothing like this has ever happened here before.” A tear fell from his eye and he swallowed. “I, uh …” He took a deep breath. “Billie’s dead and Jennie’s critically wounded. This john, went by name of Ned, wanted to have two girls tonight. We tried to talk him outta Billie, you know, because… But this guy insisted on Billie and Jennie and offered twice the rate for both. All we can figure is Billie didn’t want to oblige him. He went into a rage. Shot her, Billie, in the chest and then Jennie in the back as she tried to run from the room. Then he took off. Police are out huntin’ for him now.”
Betsy struggled to breathe and to understand the why and how of this grim news. She inhaled deeply and wanted to scream. Why had this happened? Suddenly she felt like an angel of death. Everyone she loved, everyone she touched, was gone or hurt. JT, Jimmy Bob, Jennie, Billie, and Lester. Would Sally or Jim be next? Who was behind this? Dewey? Her pa? Or was she somehow cursed?
She felt drained. She’d cried over Lester, and Roscoe. Where would the tears come from for Jennie and Billie? She steeled her emotions as she responded. “They got him,” Betsy answered as tears now flowed down both cheeks. Her speech choked with emotion, she gave Jim a synopsis of the events at the bus yard, including something she’d heard by a policeman on the side, that the man had come to town on the bus and must have wanted it to escape. The comment made sense to her now.
A smile crept onto Jim’s craggy face. He stood and walked to the door, which he pulled open to address the women inside.
“Ladies, there’s nothing to fear anymore. Betsy nailed the S-O-B. He won’t be comin’ back here no more.”
Betsy stood, grabbed Jim’s shirt from behind, and pulled him back near the chairs. She explained her predicament. Jim’s face turned serious again, as he stiffened upright and stuck out his chest like the theatrical hero he might have been once.
“Not here, he won’t. Young lady, you’ve become like family here and you will be protected here.”
Betsy appreciated the man’s posture and bravado, but the truth sat on the other side of the fence behind her. Jennie and Billie had felt protected, too.
“I need to get to my room,” Betsy replied.
Jim hemmed and hawed. “Not tonight. Police have the whole area cordoned off. They wanted to search your room, but Sally was there, told them you had the only key to the padlock. After awhile, they stopped asking. I guess they’d already learned what happened at Lester’s. You should be able to get back in first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, we’re all camping
out here in the living room and Sally’s at the hospital with Jennie. She said she’d call with news.”
Betsy never slept that night and from her random peeks around the room throughout the night, none of the others had either. About 4 a.m., Jim came into the room and announced that the police were finished with their inspection of the crime scene and had released the property back to the owners, with a stern caution to stop all illegal and immoral activities. The ladies murmured.
“Hey, we been down that road before. We lay low for a couple of weeks and they stop bothering us,” said Jim.
“Any word on Jennie?” asked Joan.
Jim shook his head. “No news is good news, so I’m told. I imagine Sally will be back soon, one way or another. She knows she’s got things to deal with here.”
Betsy raised her hand as if she were back in school, and then, embarrassed, lowered it. Jim chuckled. “Yes, Miss Betsy?”
“Can I get into my room now?”
The man nodded. “Need a bodyguard?” He smiled.
This time the girls giggled. One of the older hookers, asked, “Sure she does. Do you know one?”
Betsy didn’t find it funny. Jim’s question needed no answer, but the last thing she wanted was for Jim to get hurt. Her pa could break him in half with one hand. Dewey would use his knife or gun, but the result would be the same. She didn’t want anyone else hurt on her account.
Jim gave the woman a strange look and then returned his attention to Betsy. “I’ll come along anyway. For good measure.”
Betsy walked across the patio area, through the gate and to her room, inspecting the door as soon as she got to it. It looked undisturbed, as did the large window, as far as she could tell. She unlocked the padlock, entered the room, and gazed about. It, too, looked just as she left it.
“Lock up behind me and I’ll keep an eye out while you’re here.” He backed out of the room and Betsy did as he asked. She checked her hiding spot and found her money and papers as she left them. Relieved to find her things undisturbed, she laid back on the bed to think. What should I do next? she asked herself. Exhausted, she quickly fell asleep.
A series of knocks on the door awoke her from a deep sleep. Confused and dazed, she sat up to get her bearings and realized the sound that woke her was indeed someone at the door. Betsy slipped off the bed and checked the peephole in the door, to find Sally there, tearful and haggard in the early dawn light.
Betsy unlatched the locks and let the woman into the room. Sally plopped down in the nearest wooden chair, distraught and disheveled.
“Jennie’s gone,” she whispered. “She made it out of surgery, but had lost too much blood. Oh dear God …”
Betsy sank onto the bed at the news and wept.
The woman held her head in her hands and spoke to the floor. “Less than a year to go in school. Then she was going to make something of herself, get out of this awful business.” Sally’s ample chest heaved with a sob. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted for my girls, the chance to do what they wanted, not what some pimp ordered them to do. She would have been my first to complete college.”
Sally took a deep breath and looked up to Betsy. “Thank you.” She paused, and then with a coldness in her voice that Betsy did not expect, she said, “Thank you for avenging their deaths. I was at the hospital. The killer didn’t last as long as Jennie. For whatever that’s worth.”
Betsy’s heart dropped at the realization she had killed him. Intentional or not. Self-defense or not. That he deserved it or not. The man was dead, from her actions.
The look on her face must have given away her despair, because Sally moved to sit next to her and put her arm around Betsy’s shoulders. “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have known what would happen. It would have been you or him on that bus, with Lester wounded and Roscoe dead. He had the gun, not you. What do you think he would have done? Let you go? You had to do it, and he deserved it. I talked with a detective at the hospital. They see this clearly as self-defense. You aren’t in any trouble. None at all. In fact, the man told me the DA has agreed. ‘Course, if he hadn’t he’d be hearing from me and that’s not something a man in an election year needs. They won’t be holding you for anything.”
Betsy knew in her head that Sally was right, and she knew with time, her heart would come to accept that as well. Today, however, she had to face up to what had happened.
Sally continued, “Lester made it through. The doctor said your quick thinking with the pressure dressing might have just made the difference. I think Lester’ll do just about anything you ask of him now.” She paused and locked onto Betsy, eye to eye. “He told me about the man at the bus stop. Your father?”
Betsy nodded.
“What do you want to do?”
“I think I need to leave. Find someplace else.”
Sally returned the nod. “Well, I know this won’t come easy, but you’re gonna leave in style. In my last brief conversation with Jennie, before her surgery, she made one request. Sally held up a set of car keys. “It’s yours. She willed it to you on her deathbed, to help you find your son.”
Betsy lost her breath. “I, uh, I can’t, I …” she stammered.
“Look, they co-owned it. It’s paid for, and there sure ain’t no next-of-kin I care to take time locating. This Mustang is yours now, girl. I can get you a title transfer by tomorrow. It’ll take the state a week or two to process it. They can mail it back here and I’ll get to it to you, wherever you are.”
Betsy nodded.
“That much is settled then.” Sally rose from the bed and took a step toward the door. “I’ve got things to tend to.” Tears welled up and spilled onto her cheeks, as she left the room. Just outside the door, she turned back to Betsy. “Make something of yourself, Betsy Weston. You’re a survivor. You got what it takes, so don’t end up like me.” She turned and scurried back through the gate to their living quarters.
Betsy pondered the comment for a moment and rose from the bed to close and lock the door. She’d only taken one step toward it when a hulking dark figure blocked the doorway, a silhouette she’d known all her life. He stepped inside and closed the door. She was trapped.
“Mornin’ girl.”
“H-how’d you get back here? Get away from me, you drunk! Or I’ll scream and the owners’ll come running.”
“Yeah, like I’m scared of them. First off, I ain’t drunk. Might be in an hour, but not now. Second, didn’t come to make trouble. So just hush up, or you’ll never know what I come to tell you.”
Betsy stepped back, but refused to sit down. He might be sober, but he would never be trustworthy.
“Got wind of someone asking ‘bout a baby. Give it up, girl. Never was no baby. No birth certificate on file anywhere. Made sure of that. You’ll never find him and I ain’t never gonna admit to anything but his being stillborn. Might be the boy’s not even in this state, so how you or some lawyer ever gonna find him without me? Just give it up. Just know he’s with a good home, a home what can give him the things you’ll never be able to give ‘im.”
Betsy looked at her father with fear and loathing, knowing that without a birth certificate filed somewhere, her only proof lay buried at her old home. Yet, trying to reclaim that evidence was akin to suicide. If Dewey knew she was responsible for Ned’s death, her death would be a slow and painful one. Plus, his point about the futility of searching county by county, even if just in adjacent states, rang true.
“Why? Why’d you do this to me?”
He pulled a thick, legal-sized manila envelope from inside his coat and tossed it on the bed. “I promised your mama I’d do one thing for her after she was gone. Promised lots of things, but weren’t really able to make good of ‘em, ‘cept this one.” He paused and stared at Betsy for a minute as if trying to see something in her that he’d lost years earlier. “You know, I weren’t never cut out for this father stuff, so I make no apologies. But, this is one thing I can give you, the dowry your mama saved and saved for you.
You might not believe it, but I loved your mama more than anythin’, and I promised her I’d give it to you on your weddin’ day. Since I ain’t likely to ever see that, here it is. She also left you her favorite necklace. It’s a family heirloom passed down from her great grandma. She hoped you’d like it.”
Betsy picked up the envelope and saw that it remained sealed. Had her ma packaged it and sealed it? If so, she found it surprising that her pa had left it undisturbed all these years. Without looking up, she repeated, “Why did you take my son away from me?”
When she looked up for an answer, her pa had already stepped outside. He turned back toward her and said, “I know you hate me and can’t say as I blame you. As your pa, I’m doing you one last favor. Best you leave. Dewey knows you’re here.”
Twenty
**********
Don’t you worry none, hear?” Counselor Albritton said, as he ushered the older couple to the front door of his office. “I will make sure your family’s land is protected from the developers.”
The old woman turned to the lawyer and grabbed his hand. “Thank you, Sir. That land’s been in my family since before the War of Independence.” Her frail voice sounded reassured. “I don’t think I could live, if it fell into the hands of the likes of those nasty men who came to our door and tried to force us to sell.”
“Yes, Sir, Mr. Albritton, that land’s meant to go to our grandchildren and great grandchildren. We’re obliged that you’re helpin’ us make that possible.”
“Mr. Carlson, Mrs. Carlson, consider it done.” He smiled, and thought of his childhood days of crossing his fingers behind his back. He watched as they climbed into their decrepit sedan and crept off his lot onto Canoe Place and Valley Road. The old man was the kind of elderly driving hazard who incensed the drivers who came up on him as he crawled along the narrow, twisting, two-lane roads of the area and caused those stuck behind him to pull out their hair in large clumps.
Killer Reads: A Collection of the Best in Inspirational Suspense Page 66
