Sole Witness

by Jenn Black

  She strolled into the living room, grabbed her pack of Virginia Slims and her Hard Rock Casino lighter, and flopped onto the lumpy couch.

  Still no word about Little Miss Model… wait.

  Murder on Cypress Circle. Had to be hers. Amber grabbed the remote and jacked up the volume full blast. She almost toppled off the couch when the announcer spoke.

  “Tragedy struck last night on Cypress Circle. Twenty-eight year old Kimberley Jackson was gunned down while visiting Lori Summers’ south-side home. We go live to–”

  Amber’s senses shut down without the television muting. A loud, rushing noise filled her eardrums as if she held conchs to her ears and listened for the ocean.

  Kimberley who? Visiting Lori? God freaking damn it. How could this happen?

  She fumbled for the channel changer, shut off the TV, and hurled the remote at the wall. The plastic shattered, sending tiny buttons and AAA batteries flying.

  No way was this happening. If Lori wasn’t dead, where was she?

  Amber threw on a pair of shoes, grabbed her purse, and flew down the highway. Work would be so surprised when they saw her—five past nine was her usual. Today she’d show up fifteen minutes early.

  Who cared what they thought. She had to know.

  Half an hour later, she pulled into her employee parking spot and nearly forgot to hide her gun in the trunk before heading inside. She cast the obligatory smiles at her coworkers as she beelined for her desk.

  “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she muttered. Why did computers take forever to boot up?

  Finally. She logged in and double-clicked the Isla Concha Member Accounts icon. She had to start over three times because her fingers jabbed at the keys too quickly and jumbled up the letters.

  At last, Lori’s account flashed on the screen.

  Recent transactions… click. Come on, come on… there. At two fifteen a.m. the Shell Motel logged an eighty-three dollar charge. Unbelievable. Lori Summers, alive and well.

  Amber never made mistakes. Never. And she refused to accept failure.

  She snatched another sticky note from her desk and googled Lori’s new location. Who the hell was Kimberley Jackson? With fingers shaking with anger, Amber typed the name into the Isla Concha account system.

  Nothing.

  The shrill ring of her phone jarred Amber from her concentration on the screen. God, why did there have to be customers?

  “Thanks for calling Isla Concha Savings & Loan. Amber Tompkins speaking.”

  “Amber.”

  Crap. Not George again. Didn’t he have anything better to do than bug her? He ran the bank on the freaking beach. Surely somebody out there needed money.

  “Hi, Georgie. How can I help you?”

  “It’s Wednesday, Amber. You said you’d let me know today. About Saturday. Can I count on you? Please?”

  She so did not have time for this. Any other day, he was obnoxious enough, but today she had an escaped murder victim to deal with.

  “Georgie, I’m real busy here. Can I call you back?”

  “But you were supposed to call me back today, Amber,” he whined.

  Amber debated chucking her phone against the wall. She hoped it’d shatter even better than her remote. “Georgie, Wednesday isn’t over. I just woke up. Can I please call you back?”

  “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll be waiting, Amber.”

  Joy.

  Amber replaced the receiver and tried to regain her flow of consciousness.

  Once she took care of Lori, who else did she have to worry about? Maybe that preggo pig. What was her name? Can’t think, can’t think… Okay, what was his name, Mr. Hottie Pants? Hamilton. Dave? David? Amber tried both in the system.

  Nothing.

  Why wasn’t it mandatory to be an Isla Concha customer? She wished she could keep tabs on the world. Forget it. She had Lori in the crosshairs. Amber stared at the yellow sticky note and shoved it in her purse.

  Tonight.

  No, not tonight. Tonight wasn’t soon enough. What if Lori left the motel by then?

  Sooner. God, what time was it? Nine thirty-five.

  How soon could she take lunch? Maybe noon. She could say she had a dentist appointment, might be late coming back. She’d be to the motel by twelve thirty, find and kill Lori, be back to her desk by a quarter after one.

  Yeah. That’d work.

  Amber called up Lori’s account again and stared at the screen.

  Shell Motel, get ready. The huntress was on her way.

  * * *

  Lori bolted upright, lungs hitching with panic. She clutched sweat-soaked sheets around her legs and forced her breathing into a regular rhythm.

  Motel. Kimberley. Everything going wrong.

  Even while she slept, she couldn’t escape. Her dreams were filled with twisted memories. Skydiving with Sara, watching her drown. Shopping with Kimber, watching her convulse with bullets. Asking Daddy for a treat on his way home…

  Lori turned on the cheap television to drown out the onslaught of her whirling mind. She hobbled into the bathroom, one leg caught in the blanket. Didn’t look like this day was starting out much better.

  Under the shower, however, her thoughts slowed and she began to make sensible plans. First item of business: clothes. And a toothbrush.

  With a towel encasing her hair and another wrapped under her arms, Lori padded to the bedside phone and dialed the operator.

  “Shell Motel. May I help you?” came the harried male voice.

  “Yeah, this is room…” Lori checked the tag attached to the metal room key. “117. Can you send over a toothbrush? Oh, and where’s the closest breakfast?”

  “There’s a diner a half-block south, called Auntie Lou’s. I got a toothbrush, but you’ll have to come get it yourself. I’m the only one to man the desk.”

  Lori sighed. “Fine. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  This place was positively archaic. No plastic door cards, no room service…

  Well, at least she was on the ground floor. She’d have slept in her car before she’d have taken some high-rise elevator. The last thing she needed was a panic attack.

  The motel hairdryer was earsplitting but hot, and in no time Lori was clean, dry, and in the same grass-stained clothes she’d worn yesterday. Great. She checked her cell phone—still full battery.

  That much worked.

  She dialed the police station and asked for Davis. After being on hold for what seemed like forever, his voice came across the line amidst a cacophony of static.

  “Hell… there?”

  “Davis?”

  “Lor… you? Call… mobile.” His voice echoed as though he spoke through a tunnel.

  “I don’t know your cell number.”

  “What?”

  Cripes. Lori held the phone an inch from her lips. “I do not have your number!”

  “Call… station. Give… number.”

  “Okay, one second.”

  She hung up without waiting for an answer and dialed the station. Surprisingly, the man who answered gave her Davis’s number without question. Davis answered on the first ring.

  “Lori?”

  It was so good to hear his warm, deep voice.

  “I’m here,” she answered.

  “Sorry about that. They patched it through and sometimes it screws up like that.”

  Lori sat on the edge of the bed. “I was surprised they gave me your number.”

  “I told them to. Just because I couldn’t hear you doesn’t mean I couldn’t radio in.”

  “Oh.” Duh.

  “Where are you?”

  “Motel.”

  “Thought you were going to your mom’s.”

  Lori closed her eyes.

  She wasn’t proud of her relationship with her mother. Never had been. Kimber had been the first and only friend to meet her—and Mom hadn’t spoken any more highly of Lori, even back in high school.

  “Changed my mind. I’m at the Shell Motel.”

  “W
here’s that? On the beach?”

  “No—it’s off the highway. Exit forty-two.”

  “Right. Listen, I’m sorry about last night. It wasn’t like you thought. Exactly. We were just doing exclusionary comparisons. You know, to prove it wasn’t you.”

  Whatever. “Okay.” Lori made a pile out of the uneven motel pillows.

  “So… were you calling just to check in? They said you asked for me specifically.”

  She did, didn’t she.

  Lori smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. She could’ve asked for Detective Carver just as easily. Davis was still the first face that sprang to mind.

  After all these years, it rankled that her traitorous heart still felt just as strongly for him as ever.

  This time, however, she was all grown up and not going down that road a second time. He’d dumped her once. He’d do it again. Besides, now he was a cop. No way was she going to involve herself with someone who could die anytime.

  Not even for Davy.

  “You still there?” he asked. “Did you need something or what?”

  Lori cleared her throat. “I– I wondered if it was okay to come home. I left without packing a bag and I don’t have any clothes.”

  “No clothes?”

  He paused and Lori rolled her eyes. Men.

  “I’ve got the same clothes I had on yesterday, Davy. I don’t have any clean clothes.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “So, can I go home now?”

  “Unfortunately not. Still processing the crime scene. No civilians.”

  “But I live there.” Lori punched a pillow. “It’s my house.”

  “Still a civilian.”

  “What am I supposed to do, buy all new clothes?”

  “No… It’s just that your bedroom was the scene of the crime. Tell you what, let me know what you want and I’ll swing by and pick something up for you.”

  Lori considered the wisdom of authorizing Davy to loot through her panty drawer. Then she considered the attraction of wearing the same mud-stained outfit for the next Heaven-knew-how-many days.

  “Fine. Just about everything is hanging in the walk-in closet, and there’s a backpack on the floor. Use that.”

  “What should I grab?”

  How to describe coordinating fashion to a man? “I don’t care. Try to make matching possible. Don’t forget deodorant, my toothbrush, and… some underwear.”

  Silence emanated from the phone.

  “Underwear. Right.”

  Lori chose to ignore the husky edge to his voice. “How soon can you come?”

  He paused. “What?”

  “How soon can you get here, Davis? Get your mind out of the gutter.”

  Men.

  “Oh. Maybe an hour. Why?”

  “I’m starving. There’s a diner down the block. You want to meet me there, instead?”

  “Sure. What is it, Auntie Lou’s?”

  Lori blinked. “You’re weird, Davy.”

  “What? You’ve never eaten at Auntie Lou’s?”

  She glanced at the alarm clock. “It’s a quarter past eleven. See you in an hour?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  Lori snapped her cell phone closed. One hour. A tiny hotel room that stank like a cigarette box and still-damp clothes from the night before. Maybe she’d head over early, kill some time.

  No sense hanging out in this dump.

  Before schlepping over to the diner in wet high heels, she swung by the front desk for toothpaste and a toothbrush. She could get that much done, at least.

  The clerk was a tall, skinny man with olive skin. Maybe Latin. Maybe not.

  He gave her the brush and a take-out menu for Auntie Lou’s, which made no sense since she had to walk over there either way. Lori just smiled and thanked him and headed down the block.

  The outside should have prepared her for the inside.

  The diner bulged on the corner, about the same color and dimensions as one of those silver, bullet-shaped Airstream RVs but five times the size. A massive, asymmetric backboard boasted a neon sign proclaiming “Auntie Lou’s” in flashing letters.

  The whole effect was sort of 1960s Americana meets the Jetsons.

  The thick scent of grilling hamburger assaulted Lori’s nose from the moment she pushed open the asymmetric door. She changed her mind about breakfast and began to think about lunch.

  Tiny booths clustered along the outer walls. Each old, warped table staggered under silverware, paper placemats, and tableside mini-jukeboxes.

  A long U-shaped breakfast counter hogged the center of the restaurant, surrounded by metal-rimmed turquoise swivel stools, attached to the floor on their single stands. Old men dotted the seats, each wearing matching leers when she walked through the door.

  Lori shrugged it off and fed herself the usual justification.

  Since she didn’t have the most brilliant mind, her chosen career set her body up to be objectified. She couldn’t complain when men did just that.

  Even creepy old guys.

  If they didn’t like looking at her, she wouldn’t have had a job. But she didn’t have to like being leered at.

  Now, more than ever, she wished she’d started her talent agency after all. She’d be glad to trade Lori Summers, supermodel, for Lori Summers, businesswoman.

  Lori glanced around for a hostess and didn’t see anyone. The hand-lettered sign read “Please Be Seated,” so she wandered around the diner, peering at all the sepia-toned photographs of pre-condo Florida adorning the walls.

  She chose a corner booth and ordered a vanilla milkshake from a bouncy waitress in a checkered apron.

  Why not? Might as well ruin her diet while she was ruining her life.

  The one thing she wouldn’t stand for, however, was ruining anybody else’s lives. Davis had to catch the killer before more people were caught in his crossfire because of her. She had a bad enough history as it stood.

  Everyone who loved her, who trusted her, died.

  * * *

  Davis stood in Lori’s bedroom feeling like a Peeping Tom.

  Other technicians bustled around the room. It wasn’t as if he were alone in here, sniffing her panties. For the first time in his life, however, he could see how a man could be driven to such a thing.

  The drawer before him was a candy store of delights.

  Tiny wisps of white lace, stretchy scraps of black fabric, flower-studded g-strings, silky bikini-style panties… even what looked like a pair of Wonder Woman underoos. He didn’t know why that turned him on, but it did.

  Everything about her turned him on.

  You’d think he’d be over her by now. Twelve years, man. That’s a long time to carry a torch. Especially when he was the one who did the dumping.

  Davis stuffed a handful of assorted panties into a side pocket of the canvas backpack.

  More than his father, he blamed his mother for talking him into breaking up with Lori.

  Although why he’d listened to either of them was beyond him. Mother stayed in a loveless relationship because she married money. And his father stayed because he hadn’t gotten a pre-nup.

  It was as simple as that.

  Silk slid through Davis’s fingers. No way could he pick and choose tiny underthings without imagining Lori wearing them. She’d have to make do with what she got, Wonder Woman and all. She was a wonder woman.

  On the surface, Juliana had seemed a good catch. She wasn’t as sexy as Lori, of course, but she had pigtails and pom-poms and country-club lineage.

  In retrospect, big deal.

  Lori hadn’t wanted a pre-nup. Juliana did.

  Davis slung one backpack strap over his shoulder and stepped into the walk-in closet.

  Wire shelving ran around the top of the walls with a matching bar underneath for hanging clothes. Every inch burst with color.

  He’d wanted Lori in a powerful, frantic way that he’d never felt for Juliana.

  Even now, just the scent of Lori’s clothes
made his heart spasm. But at eighteen, his parents were an immovable force.

  Davis thumbed through the closet, forgetting to breathe when he came across a long black dress very similar to the one Lori had worn to the winter formal. That had been the first night they’d made love. He’d told himself he’d never let her go.

  In the end, he’d followed his parents’ dictate like a sheep.

  Juliana was heading to the same university, not that she planned to ever do anything so vulgar as actual work. Lori was still heading into her junior year.

  His mother called Lori his ‘white trash mistake’—but then his mother didn’t think much of anybody. Oh, the irony, when Lori’d first shown up on TV…

  Davis found a stack of khaki shorts and stuffed them in the bag.

  He should’ve sung his own tune. Danced to his own drum. Married Lori right out of high school like he’d wanted to. Snuggled her every morning. Made love to her every night.

  His father would’ve followed through on his threat to disown him, but who cared? He hadn’t gone after partner in the law firm anyway.

  Davis selected a few random blouses and tucked them into the bag.

  Everything went with beige, right? She’d make it work.

  Lori looked good wearing anything. Or nothing. He ought to know. Tangled hair, satin and sweat, hot breath on his neck, his heart pounding like his…

  Bad train of thought.

  He headed for the bathroom to toss some toiletries in the bag. What had she said? Deodorant and a hairbrush. Or was it a toothbrush? Better bring both.

  How much had Lori changed? Was she like Juliana now, the sort of woman who prized money over values, preferred a slim stomach over a family?

  Davis shoved as many little bottles into the front pocket of the backpack as he could.

  He’d never believe that.

  He should’ve married her back when she might’ve said yes. Taken the chance before life had turned them into two very different people.

  But that was then, and there was no going back.

  Davis zipped the backpack, nodded goodbye at the technicians on the scene and headed for the diner.

  Auntie Lou’s had always been a rockin’ place. His parents would die rather than lower themselves to such a level, and that’s probably why he loved it so much.