Carolina Crimes

by Karen Pullen

  “I really don’t deserve you,” Jake said, his voice rich with practiced intimacy.

  “Can I get that in writing?”

  He chuckled.

  She hung up and methodically made her way to the back of the shop, shutting off certain lights and turning on others, setting night alarms. She went through her office and into her workroom, switching on the high intensity light over her workbench. Its strong incandescent glow drenched the stacked sheets of richly colored glass and the array of small, delicate tools.

  Tonight she’d give Jake a dinner he loved, she thought as she reached for the ceramic canister in which she kept her glass sweepings, the unusable slivers and shards of her mosaic creations. Raw oysters and clams on the half shell—a Dionysian feast, as he liked to call it—slurped down whole by devotees in pursuit of the perfect aftertaste, where grains of pearl grit were just a part of the sea’s great gift, a sign of authenticity, and a small price to pay for a true connoisseur.

  A true connoisseur like Jake.

  She tipped the canister and dumped the bits and pieces, the glass refuse of her art, into a Ziploc.

  Then she slipped the bag into her purse, doused the workbench light, and went to fetch their dinner.

  ACCIDENT PRONE, by RF Wilson

  Dappled shadows filled the parking lot of the Botanical Gardens. The late afternoon air was still warm, but a slight chill in the shade suggested that summer was coming to an end. More cars were leaving than arriving. Anthony looked in the rearview mirror, started the engine, and began to back slowly. Within seconds there was a gentle thump. In the mirror, he saw the other car at a right angle to his. He sat still for a moment, took a deep breath and got out.

  The driver was a young woman, twenty-something he figured. Cute, blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. Alarm spread over her face.

  “Oh,” she gasped. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you. I looked behind me and didn’t see—”

  Anthony held up his hand like a traffic cop. “It’s okay. I don’t think we were going fast enough to do any serious damage.” It looked like his bumper had slid a foot or so along hers. Some dust had been rearranged. A small scratch on her little Ford matched one on his Honda.

  “Oh, God, my father will kill me.”

  “You can hardly see anything’s happened.”

  “My father will see it. He will. He just got this car for me a month ago.”

  Anthony thought about how he’d react if his daughter had a fender bender in a parking lot, whether or not he’d even know about it. His face flushed with anger thinking about the years that had gone by without hearing from her. He wrested his attention back to the present.

  “Birthday present?” he asked.

  “Graduation. I got my master’s degree this spring.”

  “Congratulations. Oh. I’m sorry. My name’s Anthony Sturgess.” He held out his hand.

  She took it. “Lucy Bennett.”

  “Well, Lucy, I don’t think this is worth calling the police or the insurance companies over, do you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Looks like we backed into each other. No damage to speak of. Nobody at fault. I’m okay with this if you are. Why don’t we pull our cars back in and relax for a minute? You look pretty upset.”

  As if he’d given her permission to cry, her tears came freely. She was shaking. He gave her half a minute to calm down, then said, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee? There’s that cafe just down the street.”

  She caught her breath and said with a slight chuckle, “You know, I’d really like a drink.”

  “Me, too. But you probably don’t need to be drinking and driving right now.”

  “I’ve got some vodka at home.”

  It sounded like an invitation.

  “I’d like to follow you,” he said, “make sure you get home alright. You’re still shaky.”

  “No, that’s—”

  “It’s no trouble. Really.”

  She shrugged. “Okay, if you want.”

  Her apartment was a few blocks away in what he assumed was student housing with the misleadingly bucolic name of Magnolia Gardens on a wooden sign in disrepair. An end unit in a four-unit yellow brick building edged with untended shrubbery. He parked near her, got out and followed her to her door.

  “You okay?” he asked. “I really think if you don’t tell your father, he won’t notice. But, I tell you what. I think those scratches will rub out. I’ve got some polish at home. What if I come over tomorrow morning and see what I can do?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know. But I’d like to.”

  She opened her door. “You want to come in? Have some of that vodka?”

  He stopped at the threshold and scanned inside. Fighting panic, he took a breath. It wasn’t that the place was dirty, just disordered.

  “You okay?” she said.

  “Sure. I’m fine. Just got a little light-headed there.”

  While she was retrieving the vodka from the freezer, he fought the urge to gather up CD covers that had cascaded near a stereo system, pick up and fold clothes that had been tossed haphazardly around.

  She returned with two rocks glasses, each with three fingers of clear liquid over ice. Vodka was not his drink of choice but it went down easily. She finished hers in a few gulps and went back to the kitchen, returning with the bottle.

  “This is taking the edge off,” she said.

  He felt his own edginess slipping away. “You probably don’t want to overdo it.”

  “Now you sound like my father.”

  He winced. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. He’s not a bad guy. Just a little overprotective.” She wobbled some as she stood up. “I feel like crap. I’m going to take a shower.”

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  “Oh, I’ll just be a minute. You can stay.” She tottered some more but made it to the bathroom without incident, carrying what was left of her second drink.

  While she was gone, he endured a growing uneasiness with the room’s disarray. A phone in another room rang several times. According to his watch, she hadn’t been gone more than ten minutes when she returned, hair dripping, dressed in a silky, kimono-like robe, smelling of soap. There was a time when he could have named the fragrance.

  She poured herself another inch or so of booze and stood by the front window drying her hair. The late afternoon sunlight revealed she was wearing nothing under the flimsy garment.

  “You had a phone call,” he said.

  She went into her bedroom, returning with a cell phone to her ear. “God, I wish he’d quit calling,” she said, as she flipped the cover shut and threw the offending appliance into a drawer.

  “I probably should go,” he said.

  “No, really. Stay. I can use the company.”

  “I believe you are, as they say, in your cups.”

  “‘In your cups.’ What does that mean?”

  “It means you’re drunk.”

  “Oh, not so much. Besides, I don’t have to go anywhere.” She leaned against him on the couch, holding a glass. “You don’t have to go yet, do you? This has been such a crappy day.”

  He put an arm around her shoulder. “Hey, hey. We’re gonna fix it. It’s gonna be all right.”

  “It’s not just the accident,” she said. “I just broke up with my boyfriend. Two nights ago. I found out he’d been sleeping with an old girlfriend. The whole time we were going out.”

  He pressed his mouth against her wet, fragrant hair. She lifted her tear-stained face towards his. They kissed.

  * * * *

  Afterward, in her bedroom, she said she hoped he didn’t think she was a slut. She’d never done anything like that, spontaneous sex with a stranger.

  “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t do this much either. Sex with a stranger,” he said, but did not add, “young enough to be my daughter.” He felt an ache in his chest, sadness replacing anger as he thought about the girl he h
adn’t seen in nearly twenty years. “Now I really ought to be going.”

  “Love ’em and leave ’em, huh? Or, is it, wham bam, thank you, ma’am?”

  He laughed, embarrassed.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Really. I know this wasn’t on your calendar for today. You’ve been really nice about…the whole thing.”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow and rub that scratch out. It’ll clean up. At least so your father won’t notice it right away. If he does, you just say you don’t know how it happened. You noticed it one day when you were leaving a parking lot.”

  “You don’t have to come back.”

  “No, really. I’d like to.”

  She was slipping on the kimono when her phone rang. She looked at the caller ID and shook her head.

  “It’s him, my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend. Again. He hasn’t quit harassing me since I told him we were over.”

  Anthony pulled on his shoes. “Do you feel safe?”

  “You mean, do I think he’d actually hurt me? No, but I’ve seen him outside some of my classes. He’ll be, you know, just standing there, leaning against a tree, looking at me.” She shivered. “And there will be these calls where there’s nobody on the other end. Creepy.”

  “He’s stalking you. That’s serious stuff.”

  She began to cry again.

  “I guess I could stay a little bit longer.”

  * * * *

  On Monday, Anthony kept to his workday routine, rising at 6:30 sharp. His pulse rate was 132 when he ended his workout at 7:00. After showering, his heart had slowed to sixty beats per minute. He dressed, ate a bowl of granola with blueberries and sliced banana, took his vitamins with orange juice, and was out of the door at 7:35, picking up the newspaper from the driveway on his way to the car. He pulled into spot #7 in the office parking lot at 7:52 and was hanging his suit coat on the rack at 7:54.

  The headline on the front page of the Mountain Section read, WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN CAMPUS AREA APARTMENT. Her name was Lucy Bennett. She was a graduate student, twenty-three years old. Anthony read the article closely for other details. According to the paper, the police didn’t know the cause of death. He knew that may or may not have been true, that the police often withheld information in the course of an investigation.

  When his phone rang, he felt intruded upon.

  “Mrs. G. on two,” the receptionist said.

  He heard the slight chuckle in her voice. “Thank you, Karen,” he sighed before picking up, prepared to talk to the woman known around the office as the client from hell. She had been bringing her taxes to the company for twenty years, and Anthony had been her accountant for the last five. “Yes, Mrs. G.,” he said, closing his eyes. As expected, she launched into her litany of woes and complaints. He knew them by heart, most of them about her children stealing her money and altering records so no one could tell. Several times, he’d asked her, “If no one can tell, how do you know they’re doing it?”

  While she was droning on, his mind drifted to the idea of calling the police, although he didn’t know what he could tell them. The girl’s boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, had been harassing her with calls, but the police could tell that by looking at her cell phone. They might not know that the guy had also been stalking her.

  “Mr. Sturgess?” Mrs. G. asked.

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. G. You were saying?” While the woman continued her catalog of misery, he thought that if he did call the police, he’d have to describe his afternoon of drinking and sex with Lucy Bennett.

  By the time he returned his attention to his client, he had decided against contacting the authorities. If they connected him to the dead girl, they would come to him.

  At 4:55, he backed up the files on his computer. At 5:00, he stood and put on his suit coat. A traffic snarl on Merrimon Avenue slowed him down, and he didn’t get back to the condo until 5:25, seven minutes off schedule.

  Inside, he exchanged outside shoes for slippers. After a stop in the bathroom, he made his way to the bedroom where he hung up his jacket. He tossed the shirt into the laundry basket, hung up the trousers and put on his black warm-up suit. In the kitchen, he poured a generous shot of Scotch, added a splash of water and a twist of lemon, and shook his head, wondering how someone could prefer vodka. The chicken fettuccine dinner in the freezer looked good. He set the oven for 425°, took his drink into the living room, switched on the TV, and sank into his reclining chair.

  This was his favorite time of day. Nothing to do but watch the news and sip his drink. In a few minutes the oven would be ready and he would put the meal in. The oven would signal that the chicken was done in time for Wheel of Fortune. That would be followed by Jeopardy, and then he would get on the computer, check email and the stock market until nine, when Justified came on. He’d be in bed by 10:10.

  At 6:50, he took his dinner from the oven and removed the foil cover to let it cool. As he was preparing the TV tray, there was a knock at the door. It seemed to him that any time anyone came around for this or that, Girl Scout cookies or some damn cancer drive, he was just about to sit down to dinner. The knock was repeated, louder. He opened the door to a couple, a black man and a white woman.

  “Anthony Sturgess?” The man flipped open an ID wallet.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Detective Thomas, Asheville Police Department. This is Detective Matheson.”

  The man wore a crisp, white shirt under his neatly-pressed brown suit. The knot on his tie was taut. The woman’s dowdy blue suit didn’t completely hide her decent figure. Nice legs. She wasn’t as meticulous as her partner—the blouse under the suit a little wrinkled, a spot on the skirt.

  “How can I help you officers?” he asked. Best to be polite, though visitors would make a shambles of his evening.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions, sir,” Detective Thomas said. “Do you mind if we come in?”

  He did mind. He’d have to reheat his dinner if not throw it out, and he’d probably miss Wheel, but he didn’t suppose he had much of a choice. He invited them in, asking them to change their shoes for slippers that were lined up near the door.

  “They’re disposables,” he said. “You won’t catch anything.”

  They took seats on the couch and declined his offer of coffee.

  Anthony sat in the armchair across from them. “What’s this all about?”

  Detective Thomas looked in a small notebook he was carrying before asking, “Mr. Sturgess, do you own a blue 2007 Honda, license plate…”

  As the policeman recited the plate number, Anthony knew it was a rhetorical question on their part.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you know this woman, sir?” Thomas said, leaning toward Anthony with a photograph of the girl. It wasn’t a new shot, but there was no mistaking her.

  “Yes. If it’s who it looks like. I met her Saturday.” He said it matter-of-factly although he could feel sweat gathering under his arms and at his neck. “We had a little scrape in the parking lot of the Botanical Gardens. Why?”

  “Do you know the woman’s name, sir?” Thomas asked.

  “Lucy…Lucy…” He was surprised he couldn’t remember her last name. “I’m sorry, that’s all I can remember. Lucy something.”

  “Lucy Bennett. She was found dead in her Magnolia Gardens apartment yesterday morning,” Thomas said. “And your car was outside her apartment Saturday afternoon.”

  “If you saw her Saturday, you may have been one of the last people to have seen her alive,” Matheson said.

  “You think I know something about her…death?” He hated that he couldn’t control how fast his heart was beating.

  “Right now we’re collecting information. Like Detective Matheson said, we believe you may have been one of the last people to see her alive. What happened after this accident?”

  Anthony bit his words. “Well, like I said, it was just a bump. Nothing that needed the police or anything. But she was pretty shook up.” He took a deep breath, calming himself. “I
offered to buy her a cup of coffee. She said she’d rather have a drink. So I followed her home to be sure she was okay and she invited me in.”

  There was another pause until Thomas said, “And then? After she invites you in. Did she have that drink?”

  “She poured us each a vodka. All she had, she said. I’m a Scotch drinker, myself, but, when in Rome, you know?”

  “And then what happened?”

  “We talked some and I said I had to be going. As I was about to leave, her phone rang but she ignored it. That happened a couple of times and she’d just look at the caller ID. She said it was her boyfriend. Or rather, ex-boyfriend. She’d found out he’d been cheating on her, and she didn’t want to talk to him. Said he’d been hounding her ever since she told him they were through and that he was following her around. She started crying again. I told her I’d come back Sunday to rub out the scratch.”

  “And that was it?” Matheson asked. “You had one drink with her and you talked for a while.”

  “We had another drink.”

  “And then?”

  He’d thought about this. They hadn’t said who had seen his car. If it was a nosy neighbor or a surveillance camera, they might know how long it had been there. And there were tests they could do on her and, after all, there was no crime in it.

  “We had sex. Her idea.”

  There was a pause. Anthony’s face was flushed, his hands sweaty.

  “Mr. Sturgess, do you know how old Ms. Bennett was?” Matheson asked

  “Early twenties, I supposed.” He felt heat rising in his face.

  “Twenty-three. And how old are you?”

  Anthony looked at the detective, thought she could probably lose ten, fifteen pounds. “Forty-four. Yes. I know. I am old enough to be…to have been her father. It is unseemly. But I wanted to be sociable. She was very upset. I didn’t want to say, ‘Sorry, see you around.’”

  “Yes. Very thoughtful of you, Mr. Sturgess,” Matheson said. “Was the sex consensual?”

  “You mean, did I rape her?” Anthony felt his heart beat faster, was afraid he might lose control. It never occurred to him this would be an issue.