by Cathy Lamb
It was very serious.
* * *
“Darling. I’m going to come and see you soon.” I gripped my phone as my mother’s voice shrilled down the line. I could tell she was driving as she was semi-shouting.
Why had I even answered? I had so much in my head I could almost feel my brain cells popping. I was in Portland, on the sidewalk in front of Jed’s building downtown, after our meeting. “Mom, it’s not a convenient time for a visit. Not right now.”
“What? You’re breaking up. By the way,” she shouted into her phone, blowing my ears out, “I did what you said. I’ve been wearing the trampy cowgirl porn outfit for Dell. He loves it. Then, I thought to myself, why stop there? I bought a sexy waitress outfit and a sexy monster outfit and a sexy Tinker Bell outfit.”
Sexy monster? Sexy Tinker Bell? “Excellent news, Mom. I am not going to let myself get a vision of that scene, but I’m proud of you, but about you coming to see me—”
“Let’s say that Dell and I are getting along better. In fact, he was so nice to me I told him that he was right and I didn’t need two thousand dollars a month anymore for my personal expenditures, and I don’t. Why, you ask? Because I’ve bought a women’s clothing boutique in town from a woman named Evelyn!”
What? She bought a clothing boutique?
“This is how it happened: I went shopping in town one day at Evelyn’s—that’s the name of the shop but I’m going to change it to Jocelyn’s Fashion Boutique. There was a Help Wanted sign and I went in to apply because you told me I should get a job to be independent. After I shopped around I told Evelyn that she should hire me because most of what she had was poorly chosen and not fashion forward. She seemed offended and all huffy puffy at first, but then she smiled and said, ‘Have you ever thought of owning your own clothing store, Jocelyn? You’re so fashionable! Everyone admires you and your clothes. Why, you’re the most in-style, hip person here in town!’
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, I am that!’ Why be falsely modest? I could own a clothing boutique! The women need help out here. All these ranchers and farmers, they look like ranchers and farmers, Natalie! Can you imagine? Dusty. Boring. Not how women should look at all. They never wear heels. They rarely wear dresses. And where is their makeup? I could sell makeup, too, and do makeovers so these women won’t look like pig farmers. Every woman needs makeup. You’re remembering to put on lipstick, aren’t you? Your lips are pale without it.
“Anyhow, I said to Evelyn, ‘I’ve never thought of owning a clothing boutique, but I do know a thing or two about fashion.’ And then Evelyn said, ‘It would be so hard for me to give my boutique up because it has been such a money maker for me, but I might think about selling it. I am seventy-two, after all. But I would only sell it to someone who appreciates modern style and design, as you do, Jocelyn. Your glamorous outfits are impeccable. You look like a movie star. You never miss a step!’
“Evelyn has never been so nice to me. I think her snootiness was because she was jealous of me, because she is frumpy dumpy. Anyhow, I immediately thought of Dell giving me a teeny, tiny loan for my new boutique and I said, ‘Evelyn, I’ll buy your Evelyn’s!’ We shook on it, Evelyn and I, like real businesswomen! She said that she trusted my, and I quote, ‘financial solvency. ’”
Despite the disaster I was dealing with, I tried not to laugh as I saw the wheels in Evelyn’s head turning. She wanted to retire. She was selling clothes in a small, eastern Oregon town and wasn’t making much money, but if she could sell it . . . When my mother showed up she saw her prize chicken. She knew my egotistical mother, with a heavy dose of flattery, could be convinced to buy it.
Jocelyn was married to Dell, a wealthy rancher, whom Evelyn had probably known for decades. Dell could supply the money. It was a newer marriage. Wouldn’t Dell be indulgent? Wouldn’t he want my mother, a spoiled and obnoxious woman, off the ranch every day? Poor Dell. He hadn’t understood what he was marrying, had he? A fluffed-up doll. A selfish gold digger. Here in town, they’d all tried to warn him!
Evelyn was already searching for a condo in Florida, I was sure of it. She would head out for warmer weather, laughing in the plane and tossing back straight shots in celebration, toasting my shallow, silly mother who needed only a bit of fake flattery to make her buy a downtrodden shop, whose clothes she didn’t even like.
“I wore my princess porn outfit,” my mother shouted, “and then I asked Dell for the loan, and he said yes. I’m going to earn all of my own money with my clothing boutique! Everyone will come from miles around to get my fashion advice and buy my clothes. Only designer clothes, though. These small-town mice need a lesson in how to dress. First thing I’ll buy for them: high heels.”
“I’m not sure that farmers and ranchers need heels, Mom, but I think this sounds like an exciting project.”
“I’ll help women look their best. Dressing well says something about your character and social class. When you’re dressed in rags and appear poor and your shoes don’t fit right and your coat is too small, people treat you like you are less than others. Like you’re nothing. Like you’re a disease, or have lice, or you’re stupid. They’ll treat you like you’re poor white trash. I can help women to not appear poor and trashy.”
“You could. But don’t tell your customers that you can help them to avoid appearing poor and trashy. About the visit. I don’t know when you’re planning to come, Mom, but not this week—”
“You’re cutting in and out again, dear. Ta-ta. I’ll be coming to visit you very soon. It will be a surprise! I’ll show up and we’ll go and get our nails done. My treat. Last time I saw your nails . . . all I can say is that this is what mothers are for! Making our daughters prettier when they need help. Bye now.”
Bye now, Mother Monster. You’re like sandpaper.
* * *
Jed called me two hours later with the answers I needed. He was fast. He was sizzling smart. I would tell Zack what he said as soon as he walked in the door that night. Now I knew exactly what Zack should do. It scared me to pieces, but we’d fight this one out together.
Chapter 18
I never heard him come in.
I had taken a walk. Not a long walk, but a short walk. That I could walk at all and not resemble a drunk penguin was an accomplishment. I had to clear my head. It was crammed with everything that Jed told me.
I was drenched in rain when I got back to the apartment. I slammed the door and hurriedly hopped in the shower because I was freezing. When I was done, I wrapped a towel around myself and headed toward the bedroom, and there he was. In my family room. In my home. How had he gotten in? But I knew. In my race to get warmed up, I had forgotten to lock the door.
Ronnie Hotchkiss. The brother of Willie Hotchkiss, whom Zack killed in self-defense.
Ronnie was even larger up close, like a bull, his bald head shiny, his beady eyes dark, skittering, and dangerous. His eyes had an odd light to them, but even scarier was the way his fingers were wriggling at his side. As if they couldn’t help themselves from moving, as if they couldn’t wait to touch me. He had pulled the drapes shut and turned off the lights. It was dark and shadowy, only a sliver of light coming through the middle of the two curtains in my family room.
“Hello, Natalie.” He grinned at me, as if he was glad to see me, as if we were friends. As if I would smile back and say hello.
“Get out.” My voice was strong. I held tight to my towel.
“No, thank you. I believe I’ll stay here.”
His small eyes stared straight at mine, then they traveled down my body.
I was terrified, my breath stuck in my throat.
“I’ve wanted to be alone with you for a long time.” He laughed, dark and rumbling.
“We’re not alone. I have neighbors.” I tried to make my voice brave. It wavered. “They’ll hear me yelling and they’ll come.”
“Nah. They won’t.” He giggled then. High-pitched. “It’s the middle of the day. Most of them aren’t home. Plus. Thi
s neighborhood.” He giggled again. “It’s a bad one. For poor people. Like you and Devon. You’re poor now, aren’t you, Natalie? No one’s coming.”
I thought about the guns. One under the dresser in our bedroom. One in the kitchen, top shelf. One by the front door in the drawer of the side table. I couldn’t get the one in the kitchen or the side table, as he would block me, but I could make a run for the bedroom.
“You’re so sexy, Natalie. All those blond curls. Big lips. Big boobs. Devon doesn’t deserve you.”
“If you don’t get out of here now, I’m going to scream.”
“Scream,” he said, his voice soft. “And I will have my hands wrapped around your neck so quick, your neck will snap.”
“What do you want? Zack has already paid you. As you can see, we have no other money.”
“It’s not money I want anymore, Natalie. I’m getting out of town.” He took a few steps forward, slow, almost jaunty. “It’s you I want. I want what Devon wants most. I want Devon to know I had you. He doesn’t deserve a pretty bitch like you in bed every night. But I do.”
I thought I might collapse. My whole throat dried out. At the same time, I thought, I will fight. I will fight him with all I have.
“You’re looking much better than you were when you were knocked out cold in the hospital, although seeing you lying down, defenseless, that was exciting for me. If I wasn’t worried about people coming in I would have enjoyed myself on you. I went home that night and all I thought about was you. You, you, you.” There was that giggle again. “You’ve been in my head for months now. Delicious and sexy. All I could do then was leave you the Barbie. She reminded me of you. Busty. Skinny. I could hardly breathe thinking of you as I carved her up. Especially when I put the knife between her legs. Did anyone tell you about the Barbie?”
“You’re sick.” I felt as if I were liquefying from fear, but I also wanted to kill him.
“Ah, I can see they did. You, Natalie, are my Barbie.” He smiled at me and took a couple steps closer, stalking his prey. “You’re sexier now than you were before the accident, and I thought you were a fine slut then. Your hair is so curly. I want to wrap your curls around my fingers. I want to yank your head back when you’re on your knees.
“Your body has grown lush again. I like my women to have something to hold. Something to bite and squeeze.” His eyes stared right at my chest. “You have no idea how much time I’ve spent thinking about that ass of yours and how it will look when you’re facedown on the mattress.”
He was repulsive. Demented. I would not give in to this sick beast. I did not want to be facedown on a mattress with that pig rutting above me.
“You’re disgusted, aren’t you?” His face suddenly twisted, and he raised his voice. “You’re disgusted even thinking about me being naked on top of you, inside of you. Making a baby with you. You bitch. I know women exactly like you. They think they’re better than me. You’re as bad as Devon.
“I searched for that son of a bitch for years.” He started yelling, his fingers moving faster. “I even hired a private detective. Devon killed my brother. Willie didn’t deserve that. Devon intervened in a fight between him and his stupid girlfriend, Stephanie, that whore. My brother wouldn’t have killed her. He knew how much a woman could take before she died.”
I tried not to sway when I felt my blood rush out of my head.
“We started practicing on animals when we were kids. Our mom would wail on us. She’d use a rope, a belt, her fists, and we’d go out and do the same thing to the animals we caught in our traps. Our momma taught us a thing or two.” He sniffled then, his face falling. His chin trembled, then stopped as he snapped his head back up. “Hey, you know what happened to Stephanie after she betrayed my brother and he died because of it?”
I shook my head. I would keep him talking.
“I beat her up for my brother.” Ronnie clapped his hands, fingers moving like snakes. “Later. After she was out of the hospital. And you know what she did after that?” He picked up one of my china teacups with the pink flowers and threw it. It shattered over the couch. He picked up one of my white ceramic vases and threw that, too. “She left. In the middle of the night. Poof. Gone. If I ever find that bitch, I’ll go after her, too. She was trying to break up with my brother. Who does she think she is? Who do you women think you are? You think you can walk off whenever you want, climb into bed with some other man?
“My dad and my uncle, they knew how to treat women. Knew how to treat all of their wives. The man is the head of the house, he’s the boss, and sometimes you have to treat a woman like a rebellious horse. Smack ’em. Show ’em who is in charge. Break ’em. I saw my dad do it with my own mother.”
He took a deep breath, then, unbelievably, he started to cry, his shoulders hunched. When he spoke, even his voice was different, as if he were a child. “I miss my brother. I miss Willie. He was my best friend. Always tried to protect me from our parents when we were little. From the belts. The wooden spoons. The branches. Always tried to take the blame so I wouldn’t get hit. He always made sure I ate before him. When kids picked on me, he beat them up. We slept together in the same bed, and he used to read me fairy tales. Yep. We read fairy tales.” He wiped his wet face with his sleeve. “But we knew they were all lies, lies, lies because of what we were living in at home. I miss him. I have always missed him. Every single day I miss my brother.”
The tears suddenly turned off, his face returned to hard stone, and he picked up one of my Grandma’s antique perfume bottles and pelted it across the room.
“I have wanted revenge on Devon for twenty years. I vowed on my brother’s grave that I would get him, and I have. I got Devon. I got his money and I got his woman. I can’t wait until that towel comes off of you. I can’t wait to see you naked. I’ll have you all to myself. You’ll like it. You like the rough stuff, right? I know you do. When Devon walks in, he’ll know that you cheated on him. I’ll tell him everything we did together.”
He yanked one of my hanging hummingbirds from the ceiling and threw that against the wall, too. Then another one. And a third. “I’m killing your birds, Natalie,” he whispered. “One by one.” He smirked.
I would run to the bedroom. I would jump the bed and fly to the dresser and grab the gun. He would be right behind me, but it was all I had. I would die fighting. I would die punching and hitting and screaming.
“Natalie. I like the way your name sounds on my tongue. Natalie, Natalie.” He ran his tongue over his lips, then stuck it straight out at me. “Tasty. You know how I found Devon? Did he tell you? US Home Building magazine. He was on the cover. Famous homebuilder, Zack Shelton. I saw it when I was on a job site. What a coincidence. How does that happen? Everyone thinks we Arkansas boys are stupid, but we ain’t. I remember everything.” He tapped his head. “Photographic memory.”
“I’m one of the smartest men you’ll ever meet, and I have never forgotten Devon’s face. When I saw his face on the cover, I looked him up, found out where his company was, his home, you. I found out everything. All by myself.”
He took a couple more threatening steps closer to me, slowly, as if he wanted to tease me. “Smart me. I am so smart.”
I thought I might be sick. Sick with fear. I understood that saying now.
“You know, Barbie, I’ll tell you a story.” He leaned toward me and started whispering, that odd light in his eyes back. “This is funny. Devon ran off, right, so he wouldn’t go to jail. Changed his name. Never came back home to Arkansas again that I know of. Anyhow, Stephanie went to the hospital in the ambulance. She was hardly moving and she was covered in blood when they put her on the stretcher, and I was glad of it, seeing my brother dead on the ground like that. I hoped she would die. She was the one who started all of it, thinking she could break up with my brother and shack up with some other man.
“But my uncle and my dad, they can’t go to the hospital and tell her to shut the hell up because they’re crying over my brother. That whore
Stephanie.” He slammed a fist into his hand, three times, his face scrunched and red. “She told the doctors and the county police that your husband saved her life. She couldn’t talk right at first because of the lesson my brother taught her on his truck and her jaw and nose were broken, and she had to go in for a bunch of surgeries, but that’s what she said. Devon saved her life. That bitch didn’t even show up for my brother’s funeral, can you believe it?
“So because my dad and my uncle were personally involved, my dad being the police chief and his brother the DA, and it was my brother killed, the whole case had to leave our county. So another district attorney, a stupid woman named Delle Lindberg, interviewed Stephanie and she talked about all the times my brother had to teach her a lesson, and how she’d broken up with him months ago, and how he was stalking her, and how she’d already called the police for the stalking twice.
“Stephanie, that slut, told Delle that my dad and my uncle squashed the stalking investigations. Then Delle started investigating the night Devon murdered my brother and talking to a whole bunch of people who knew us, and do you know what, Natalie? Do you know,” he yelled, “do you know, do you know?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“The DA named Dumb Delle quietly called off the chase for your husband.” He put one finger to his lips. “Shhh! That DA hated my father and my uncle. She later took both of their jobs. Said they were corrupt. Liars. Unfit. We found out how many people were against us after that. It’s an open case still, who killed my brother, but no one was working it anymore because of Stephanie and what she said. My dad and my uncle were told that it was clearly a case of defense for another, or some stupid phrase like that, and self-defense for Devon.”
That was what I’d learned, too. From Jed. It was ironic, it was grossly, horribly ironic, that this violent man, today, was telling me what I already knew. The case wasn’t officially closed. It had never been announced as closed. But Jed found out that the authorities in Arkansas were not actively pursuing the case at all and hadn’t since shortly after it happened. It was self-defense. There had not even been an indictment.
