Widow's Row

by Lala Corriere

  Equipped with few survival skills, the females likely found themselves fraught with desperation. Adrift for over a week, they were blistered and burned from the harsh elements. The medical examiner concluded that their raw thirst, clearly coupled with lack of survival skills, must have led Meg and Emily Marasco to consume copious amounts of seawater. Their purplish lips and bellies became bloated beyond ghastly proportions.

  Simple dental records positively identified Meg. DNA hair samples confirmed the body of Emily.

  I could only imagine Jonathan fearing they also suffered endless hallucinations before their deaths.

  “Holy shit. That’s a horrible story,” Kate said. I narrated the details to her after we dismounted the ranch horses following an impromptu ride.

  “It’s devastating,” I said.

  “Sounds like you’ve started lending a sympathetic ear, maybe even a heart.”

  We were leading our horses back to their stalls where Rudy would be waiting for us. Ever since he heard about the snake we encountered on the trail, he insisted I give him a timeline for my riding excursions.

  “We actually had coffee together this morning. Ari walked in on us right when I was asking Jonathan to go to The Raging Bovine with me. He freaked out and dubbed us Desi and Lucy. Granted, it must have been a pretty bizarre scene, given the history of us housemates.”

  “You and whacko Marasco? I’ll say. And you give me shit about whacko George.”

  “How was your weekend in Mexico?” I really didn’t want to hear about her trip with Baird, but I also felt ashamed about sharing so much of Jonathan’s personal life.

  “Fucking A-Bubba weird, and wonderful too.”

  “That’s a whole lot of information.”

  “Well, I know you don’t want to hear about how fucked-up we got, so I’m trying to spare you the sordid details. Simply stated, he knows a lot of locals, they get us into the local clubs, and the local four-twenty. Before you know it, I’m totally... loco!”

  “Four-twenty?”

  “Come on. You’re kidding. Cannabis.”

  “I forgot you were fluent in Spanish.” My amusement turned to wariness, “Kate, you need to be careful across the border. You’ll wind up locked away in some jail and no one will ever know you’re there.”

  “No way. That guy gets coddled down there like you won’t believe. They put fancy yellow sheets on his hotel bed. Probably the only sheets like that in the country. Not to mention, George has every policia and bodyguard in the city watching over us. One guy got a little fresh with me in a nightclub, and bouncers were all over him, surrounding our table and escorting us out to the limo. They slammed the doors, pounded on the trunk, and had us whisked away. I felt like a celebrity being shielded from the paparazzi. It was so cool!”

  We approached the large storage barns on our way to the stables. It reminded me. “Know of any good storage places around here?” I asked, pleased to find a reason to hear no more Baird stories.

  “Say what?”

  “I signed that new lease with Ari, but he informed me there was no storage space available. I need to find a place for all my D.C. stuff, and quick.”

  “Holy crap. You mean to tell me he won’t rent you some lowly corner in one of these monstrosities? What the hell does he have in these buildings?”

  “You tell me. Didn’t you tell me George Baird is renting them?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me, but I’d never been to The Raging Bovine without taking a barstool on Widow’s Row. I followed Jonathan’s lead to a table on the opposite side of the dance floor.

  The cocktail waitress took one look at me. “Yeah, I know. Your color’s red. What will it be?” She glowered impatiently at Jonathan and he ordered the same.

  “You’re a real regular, I take it,” he said.

  “Just the only wine drinker in the place,” I laughed. “Not that I’m a snob.”

  “Of course not.”

  He had shared much of his life with me over leftover lasagna. Now the tables turned. He began asking me questions and I answered all of them, including the fact he was still on my official list of suspects who wanted me out of Trinidad, dead or alive.

  “What about your manuscript?”

  “My agent has turned up an interested editor on the non-fiction.”

  “Why don’t you sound so happy about it?”

  “Don’t I?”

  His eyes searched mine, as if possessing some innate ability to read corneas.

  The silence annoyed me. “They want me to name names.”

  “I don’t get it. What names?”

  “David Anderson. The man I got off scot-free. The child molester. Benny’s killer.”

  Jonathan cranked his neck and brought his chin deep into his hands, now propped on the table. “I don’t like it.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not like I don’t already have one too many enemies. The fact is it’s all a matter of public record.”

  “Any word about your dad’s neighbor lady?”

  “Naomi’s still out of town. She must be having her papers and mail held. When I drove by there nothing was piling up.”

  “Are you spying on her?”

  “Just helping look after her property while she’s gone,” I winked.

  Thanks to Kate, I could actually do a decent two-step, and when the band played something vaguely familiar and definitely lively, I asked Jonathan to dance. His lead was smooth, but the song was livelier than I bargained for. When, for me, it became more toe-stepping than two-stepping I begged off the dance floor. Jonathan grinned ear to ear. For the first time, I could see his full dimples.

  A second round of unordered drinks awaited us at the table when we returned. I stiffened my back.

  “What’s wrong? Do you think they’re poisoned?” Jonathan almost made a joke.

  He followed my gaze. Kate and Baird were making their way toward our table, Baird unmistakable with his bald head and yet another shiny blazer. Kate flashed me a toothy smile along with a way too revealing décolletage.

  I remember I’d told her we’d be there.

  She was pitting whacko against whacko, I guess.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  An Ally & Trouble

  Baird slugged down a Maker’s Mark, then caused an uproar ordering a Manhattan. I thought the waitress was going to slug Baird for the insult he delivered when she asked him what was in Manhattan.

  Kate stuck with tap beer, but her dilated pupils told another story. She’d been dipping into other reservoirs, most likely less liquid and more powder.

  “Just how do you know my father?” I asked Baird.

  “We go way back. I’m a judge. He’s a lawyer. Hell, don’t make me go there. Makes me feel old.” He goggled down Kate’s chest, grabbed her tiny waist and pulled her into his keg-style belly.

  “Are you from D.C.?” I wanted to know how far back Dad and he had known each other.

  “Denver.”

  “Then that is a little odd. I mean, if you were a judge in Denver. Did a multi-state case bring the two of you together?”

  “Supreme Court Justice,” he corrected. “Don’t get me wrong, Rosebud. I respected your daddy. Still do, but that was a long time ago.”

  Kate glared at me, then snapped into round two of whacko meets whacko. “So, Jonathan, we’ve met before, remember?”

  “Yes, I do remember.” For the first time, he touched me. Jonathan’s hand reached for mine across the table. He folded his fingers atop mine and gently squeezed. “You were with Breecie, enjoying an afternoon of wine out at the ranch. I’m afraid I could little afford the time to join you.” His eyes caught mine, and maybe unsure of himself, his hand moved to the tabletop.

  Kate’s jaw dropped. Baird’s opened. “Shit. Who the hell would turn down that offer?”

  “C’mon, baby. Take me for a spin. Maybe even a turn on our mascot.” Kate hooked Baird’s arm in hers, and pulled him off to the dance floor and the mechanical bull known only as Rage.

&n
bsp; “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said.

  “For what?”

  He fumbled with his wine glass. “I don’t know for sure. I guess...well…how do I say this? Is that guy a friend of yours?”

  “No. I don’t like the man. Then again, maybe I’m not quite the judge of character I thought I was.” I reached for his hand, gave it one squeeze, then left it where I’d found it on the table.

  We talked the night away, aware most patrons never did such a thing at The Raging Bovine.

  “Do you see yourself writing full time?”

  The question boggled my mind. No one ever really seemed to care what my future might hold. “I see myself writing a lot. I know I have another story in me. But there’s something else I have yet to do.”

  His finger pursed his lips. “Don’t tell me. You’re either going to be the next Oprah, or Maya Angelou, or maybe... what is it I’m thinking? Maybe a mommy?”

  “I’m flattered. That’s a batch of talent you just mentioned. The truth is I never paid my dues. I never worked the Public Defender’s Office the way a lot of newbie lawyers do. I’m thinking maybe I can do that. Or maybe legal aid. You know, pro-bono or maybe dirt-poor pay working for people that would give you the moon if they only had it to give. What about you?”

  “It might be time for me to put up a shingle and start brokering again. I’m pretty good at it, and I guess I can’t stay in Ari’s basement forever. Someone’s bound to start annoying me.” He winked and his dimples reappeared at the same time.

  The band announced an upcoming break, which told me Kate and Baird would be meandering their way back to our table. “Shall we go? There’s better views and better wine out at the ranch.” I reached for my purse.

  “Absolutely,” he said, tossing bills down on the table to cover our tab of ‘rot-gut-reds’.

  “Wait a minute. I pay. I asked you on this date.”

  “Oh, so this is a date?” He pulled us away from the table before I could dip into my purse.

  Walking toward my Jeep, it was hard to miss Baird’s Mercedes parked near a side wall. “Dumb, too,” I said.

  “Excuse me?” Jonathan didn’t recognize it.

  “That’s Baird’s car, dark tinted windows rolled up tight, and he has the damn top down.”

  I walked toward the car for a closer look. I had to stand on my toes to see the envelope on the passenger seat. It was hand addressed to Mr. George Baird, with a Denver post office box. The lower left corner was marked ‘confidential’. “Ah, shit,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “My dad. That’s my dad’s handwriting. See how the ‘m’ and the ‘g’ are bigger than the other lettering. You know, exaggerated.”

  Jonathan peered over the driver-side window. “Maybe,” he said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “You don’t understand. I need to see what’s in that envelope.” I maneuvered my arm over the window, reaching my fingertips down as far as I could. Jonathan backed away. He was still on my list as a possible threat to my life, and now I was the one acting like a thief.

  The car alarm started blaring.

  Jonathan warned me of the trouble headed our way.

  Three men in wide-brimmed straw hats were tromping across the parking lot, heading directly toward us and making no attempts to conceal their gun holsters on their belts.

  Chapter Forty

  The Unforgiving Past

  The hostile bouncers neared us as I snatched at nothing but air, reluctant to remove my rummaging arm from inside the car. I was still trying to reach the envelope.

  Jonathan came to the rescue, suddenly slurring his words. He rambled on about how he’d had one too many and accidentally stumbled up the side of the Mercedes, setting off the sensitive alarm. He spoke in an unfamiliar crazy drawl, “Hell, this car is so damn fussy I bet it wouldn’t let me huff a little beer breath on it without hollering.”

  The cowboy bouncers understood both stumbling and beer breath, guffawed at our predicament, but stood firm to watch us leave.

  We obeyed our unspoken instructions and backed away from the car. In spite of my natural inclination to burst out laughing at Jonathan’s Academy Award performance, I was still painfully aware my fingers were just inches away from snatching the envelope addressed by my father.

  Maybe, finally, I could have had some answers to the plague of questions consuming me.

  After a fitful night of elusive sleep, I rose early to take a two-hour hike around the ranch and up into the surrounding mountain trails. I hoped to clear my head. Instead, it was like a bug-fogger went off in a closed garage. My mind clouded with even more angry uncertainties about my father.

  My mother loved him, of that I was certain. If my father was in any way responsible for her death, oh my god, I couldn’t think that. It couldn’t be.

  But the betrayal? My mother wouldn’t have accepted that. Never. And the gun?

  I crossed the grounds back toward the main house in time to see the opening touches on a major transformation. Rudy and a couple of his helpers busied themselves suspending large pleated flag buntings and bows from the eaves and around the deck rails of the stately front porch. Another team of workers pounded the final stakes into the ground where they’d raised a gigantic tent.

  “Fiesta tonight, Senorita,” Rudy flashed his crooked grin.

  “I can see that,” I laughed. “What’s the occasion?”

  “You American. You party on Fourth of July.”

  “Yes, but today’s June thirtieth.”

  “Si, but Ari says bigger party had on Saturday.”

  By the looks of the catering trucks pulling up through the main gate, Ari had invited the whole county.

  Inside my apartment, I spent the remainder of the day doing something I never thought I would do. I pored over my old court documents on the child molester, David Anderson. I found all my notes. My opening statements, my roster of evidence, my closing arguments, and all the smooth finesses in between that carried me through the phases of the trial and toward an unjust victory.

  Not stopping for lunch, I moved quickly on to my next project. The non-fiction manuscript neared completion. I started editing it page by page, one final time, inserting Anderson’s name throughout the text and pleased at the feeling of final justice. I didn’t know he was guilty. I didn’t know he was guilty.

  Of course, I was the one who would look like an idiot. Anderson, now behind bars for the subsequent murder of Benjamin, had earned the ultimate right of protection from public opinion. It now seemed odd to me that it didn’t matter that he was locked inside. What mattered was they, the angered public, were locked outside. He was safe.

  I’d shunned the clamor of activity outside my windows all day, but when the sound of nail hammering became the clinking of glasses, and the smell of smoking wood chips turned to grilling meats and vegetables, I was eager for the respite. Tossing on a favorite red sundress with the functionless but oh-so-sexy matching scarf draped around my neck, I pulled my hair back into a chignon and prepared to watch Ari in action as host. The very concept creeped me out and fleeting images of a Jonestown crossed my mind, but the smells were too intoxicating. I skipped down the stairs in my laced-up red espadrilles, all the while my cynical mind racing on. I couldn’t recall. Had Jim Jones fed his guests in Guyana first, before their mass suicide?

  Kate was easy to spot in the growing crowd, only because Baird’s shiny head played havoc with the rays of the setting sun.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” she giggled.

  “Actually, I didn’t get an invitation. I just found out this morning,” I said.

  “Hell, this is an annual event. No invitations. But I will say a rumor flew around town that this year was going to be fancier than the usual.” Kate twirled around in a full circle, her white dress doing a Marilyn Monroe thing. “Shit, last year it was up to poor Rudy and Rosa to dole out hotdogs and beans faster than the dealers rake in chips in Vegas.”

  Baird turned and headed f
or the bar after politely including my drink order with Kate’s. Surprise. Surprise. Another sign maybe I was a bad judge of character.

  Kate grabbed my arm and leaned her face toward me. “How the hell do you think Ari is paying for all this?”

  “I don’t know. He can’t afford it on my rent money.”