“Considering the nasty soap I’ve been using, it will be like a trip to the spa, I’m sure. You guys must have an account with Granny Clampett or something.”
“Huh?”
“The Beverly Hillbillies? Granny Clampett? She made lye soap in a big black kettle out by the cement pond.”
“Is that a TV show or something?”
Shaking my head, I stripped and stuck my hand out for the toiletries. “Yes. You can catch the reruns on late-night TV. Funny show.”
Looking at her watch, Juanita grimaced. “You need to hurry, Roxy.”
“Okay.”
The plastic bag Juanita handed me was full of hotel-sized shampoo, conditioner, and the fresh-smelling soap. For the first time in weeks, I felt like a normal person.
Once finished and dried, Juanita led me to a side room I’d never been in before. A placard above the door read “Women’s Preparation Room,” and I almost laughed.
Nothing inside that room could prepare me for what I was about to do in front of a packed courtroom.
Nothing.
“Here,” Juanita whispered once we were inside. “When your sister brought your clothes, she also left some makeup. I’ll have to throw away what you don’t use, and please don’t tell anyone I gave it to you. I’d get into a lot of trouble.”
Smiling, I sat down in front of a dirty mirror, shocked L.B. had allowed herself to stoop to the level of delivery girl. “I won’t, Juanita. Thank you for this and for being so nice to me. I do appreciate it. I hope some of the guards at the prison are as nice as you.”
Juanita scowled, her pretty dark brown eyes reflecting a bit of sadness. “They won’t be, Roxy. Those bitches are mean and nothing more than men trapped inside women’s bodies. You’ll need to watch yourself, and I don’t mean just from the other inmates.”
Dabbing at my face, I began the process of putting makeup on. At least the scar on my lip wasn’t red anymore and the shiners were gone.
“Don’t you think my reputation will follow and scare off potential problems?”
“Doubtful. Whoever gets to you will score points. It always works that way when a highprofile inmate arrives.”
“Just like TV, huh?” I muttered.
“Yeah, just like it.”
As I swooped on mascara—thanks, Rebecca, for bringing me Lancôme—I’m surprised it isn’t generic shit, I noticed Juanita seemed antsy. “What’s on your mind, Juanita?”
Glancing around to ensure we were still alone, Juanita sat down next to me. In a low whisper, she asked: “Did you really do it? Kill three people?”
“I did.” The itch to say four danced on the tip of my tongue, yet I held it in.
Juanita grinned. “I don’t blame you one bit. If my husband ever did anything like that to me, I’d consider doing the same thing! Lots of women would, or at least, they’d want to. I’m not saying killing them was the right choice, but in your case, it’s understandable.”
“No, it wasn’t right, Juanita. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t make the same choices. My actions hurt too many people. I snapped in a moment of weakness, and now, I have to live with the consequences.”
“Yes, but you’ve handled things with such class! Most women would make sure to take the stand, tell the world what a horrible person their spouse was, how he’d hurt them and broke them down. Plead their case in front of the court of public opinion! Beg for understanding and mercy. Not you! You did it, admitted to it, and didn’t let your life become a freak circus in front of the court or the masses. That takes guts and tremendous strength. You’ve got a lot of fans in your corner who think you’re great, Roxy. A lot.”
Grimacing, I rose from the bench and started dressing. “They shouldn’t. What I did was wrong. And just like my daddy raised me to do, I’ll take what’s owed to me. What’s the old saying? ‘Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time’?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“I don’t want to do the time, Juanita. I don’t. I threw away my entire life, ended the lives of three others because I’m weak, not strong. Think about all I’ve lost and what I took from others. When you do, I guarantee you’ll no longer be a fan.”
I noticed tears fill Juanita’s pretty eyes before she brushed them away. Nodding once, she didn’t say anything else.
Dressed and shoes on, I took one last look in the mirror. It would be the final time I looked like the old Roxy, just with a scar on my lip and about ten pounds of new muscle. To my surprise, I felt a lump form in my throat.
“Come on, it’s time,” Juanita urged. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need to wear these in court.”
Holding out my wrists, I let Juanita cuff me. Memories of the night I’d tortured Carl burst forth, but they were sort of fuzzy, like watching an old TV show, and disappeared quickly.
My shoes made a strange sound on the concrete as we walked through the halls. I was glad the courtroom and jail were attached so I didn’t have to go outside and be accosted by reporters. Enough of them would be in the courtroom, and at least inside, they couldn’t ask me questions or take pictures.
Juanita stopped at the door leading inside. “I’ll walk you to the table with your attorney and then remove the cuffs. Ready?”
Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes. “Ready.”
The second the door opened, I was bombarded with stimulation. The courtroom was packed, eager faces staring at me while watching me walk across the floor. Reginald, dressed in a black suit with a red tie, looked dapper and serene. My throat locked up when I noticed Liz, Rebecca, and Carol in the first bench directly behind him.
Oh dear Jesus.
My lovely daughter looked awful.
Dark circles rimmed Carol’s eyes, tears spilling down pale, gaunt cheeks as I passed by. The sounds of murmured voices rose. A wave of dizziness threatened to overtake me, but I pushed on, determined to do what I came here for before passing out.
Now that would be a headline!
Juanita removed the cuffs and walked over to stand by the side door. The smell of Reginald’s expensive cologne made me sad because it was the same scent Carl wore.
Leaning over, Reginald whispered: “You’re sure this is what you want? The second Judge Clemmons takes the bench it’ll be too late. I can always change the plea to not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, because God knows you’re certifiable.”
“I’m sure, Reginald. Trust me. And remember, once the case is over, we’ll need to talk. I do get to have private visits with my attorney in prison, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then let’s do this.”
“All rise for the Honorable Harold Clemmons.”
Here we go, Roxy. I mentally hummed “It’s the End of the World,” by R.E.M., changing the lyrics to “It’s the end of the world as I’ve known it, and I don’t feel fine.”
***
The nightmare was over in less than half an hour. As part of the plea deal taking the death penalty off the table, I answered the judge’s questions, admitted to all three murders, asked for mercy for my wayward ways, and poof! I was sentenced to life in prison.
That certainly wasn’t part of the rulebook or my life plan. Demerit!
Sobs from behind me made tears of my own escape. Carol wailed: “No, Mom. No! What you did—it’s not right!”
Looking at Reginald, he nodded once. Turning, I stepped over to the railing, reaching out for my daughter. Carol buried her face in my chest. The imprinted smell of my child, feeling her thin body quake in my arms, experiencing every bit of her pain and sorrow, I wept. “I love you, Carol Claire. You’ve always been my reason for living.”
“Mom, why? Why did you do it?” Carol sobbed. “It was so wrong!”
Juanita was back. I felt her fingers around my elbow. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Davenport, but it’s time to go.”
Rebecca and Liz both stood, each taking one of Carol’s arms, prying her body from mine. Unable to stand, Carol collapsed into Liz’s wa
iting arms. Through the blur of my tears, I locked gazes with Rebecca and mouthed, “Promise me?”
With tears cascading down her cheeks over the big bandage covering a broken nose, Rebecca nodded and whispered: “Promise.”
Well, well, well. The Grinch really did grow a heart.
I’ll be damned.
All it took to do so was watching her older sister go to prison.
The song “Cold Hearted Snake,” by Paula Abdul seemed appropriate, so I hummed it inside my head as Juanita led me out of the courtroom. If I still had a cell phone, that’s the song I’d assign to Rebecca. She’d lost the moniker of Lunatic Bitch.
I owned the title now.
CHAPTER 13
Coming Clean
The second week of my incarceration—oh, just saying the word is a demerit—I finally had a visit from Reginald. True to my word, I told him everything from beginning to end, except for the little rotting secret at Eternal Slumber Acres. By the time I finished the sordid tale and explained the rules he was to follow, he looked like he was about to throw up. The news aged him in seconds. I wondered how long it would be before he made an appointment with his doctor for another injection of Botox to erase all his new worry lines. Minutes? Hours? Days?
Nope, not days. Reginald M. Greenwood, Esquire, probably had his plastic surgeon on speed dial and would call from the parking lot since he certainly wasn’t a stranger to using chemicals to look younger. Judging by the tightness around his eyes and neck, he’d gone under the knife at least once, too.
“You make sure my sister adheres to the rules, Reginald. I mean it.”
Shaking his head, Reginald stood, pacing back and forth in small circles on the ugly, mint green floor. The tiles looked like they’d been in place since the dawn of time. They were stained, cracked, and so out of style. Mint green. Seriously? Who picks that as a color palette choice?
“Crazy. No doubt about it. Life in suburbia fried your brain. Trying to keep up with the Joneses cracked you like a fragile egg.”
“Reginald, you gave me your word. I would hate to have to tell the world you knew about all of this and agreed to help me.”
Reginald’s gaze could have melted steel. “And I don’t intend on going back on it, even if I wanted to because the attorney/client rules still apply. Damn! I could lose my license, and there’s a slim chance I could be charged with all sorts of things from to fraud to aiding and abetting and even facilitating murder. If just one piece of this comes out, the questions will begin, asking me how much I knew before your allocution hearing. Jesus, Roxanne. You’ve really put me in a bad spot.”
“Trade places with me then you’ll understand what being in a bad spot is all about. Trust me.”
“I’m having a difficult time grasping all this.”
“Welcome to my world.”
A stain of red spread up from Reginald’s neck to his face as the enormity of what I shared hit him. “Let me see if I got all this right. You killed Coco.”
“Yes.” Ding dong the little bitch is dead!
“Snuck out of your house, half-drunk, in the middle of the night, got her to let you into her bedroom window under the false pretense something was wrong with Carl, then killed her by forcing her to ingest your sleeping pills.”
“You’re on the straight and narrow road, Reginald.”
Glaring at me, Reginald snapped. “This isn’t funny, Roxanne! Not in the slightest.”
Careful, counselor. Those worry lines are like rabbits fucking in the woods—they multiply at a phenomenal rate when under stress. “Sorry. Guess I inherited my father’s twisted sense of humor.”
“You came back home and disposed of your clothes, though you don’t recall where. And the police never found them.”
Reginald wasn’t asking questions at this point. He was just rehashing what I’d said, so I didn’t respond. I’d let him run with it.
“But you didn’t kill Carl or Ginger?”
I shook my head.
“Jesus, no wonder no forensic evidence tying you there was ever found! None at all. No hair, fiber, fingerprints. Cash used on the bus; the sunglasses. Just like you wrote it down, except you didn’t do it.”
God, I wish I had. I really did. Though I didn’t enjoy the label of killer, I preferred it only hovered over my head rather than another’s as well. “No.”
“Because your drunken ass came home after killing a 16-year-old neighbor girl, wobbled upstairs, took a shower, stuffed your clothes and the empty pill bottle in a sack and then passed out on the bathroom floor! And you left your fucking journal on the table downstairs—detailing every single crime. My God, Roxanne! What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, Reginald. I was drunk, angry, and really, really pissed off at a lot of people! Try putting yourself in my shoes just for a minute. Every hit I took during that month ate away at my sanity. Drinking didn’t help the situation, either. There might be other issues as well that helped cause this, but none of that matters now.”
Spinning around, Reginald’s face drained of all color. “What does that mean? There’s more?”
Oops, I almost made a significant slip! Reginald would have a heart attack if I spilled the news about Benny’s rotting corpse, and the diagnosis from Dr. Critchon. “It just means I snapped, Reginald. Rebecca’s little game was the last straw. I tried to hold it together, but I lost the battle. Do I regret killing Coco? Part of me does, yet part of me wants to give myself a high five for taking the tramp out before she ruined someone else’s life. Sick, huh? The worst part about this whole nightmare is not the murders. It’s who did them and why.”
“You didn’t realize what really happened until Detective Tuck showed you the photo from the bus, did you?”
“No! Everything was so jumbled inside my mind that morning. Can you blame me? I’d been betrayed by my wretched sister, got into a freaking fight with her the day before and then woken up from a horrible dream. A dream that played out in reality the way I wrote it, so, of course, when I heard about Coco’s death, then Carl’s, and Ginger’s, I immediately concluded the dreams were memories. I lost it after I saw the picture. Everything became clear then and I knew what I had to do.”
“To save Carol,” Reginald responded, rubbing his damp forehead.
“Yes, to save my daughter. It’s one thing to wake up and discover you’ve killed, Reginald. Quite another to realize your daughter did, too. I couldn’t handle the guilt and shame. It’s my fucking fault!”
“What did she do with both sets of clothes, Roxanne? The knife? The pill bottle? We need to know and make sure they’re never found.”
“They’re long gone, Reginald. Don’t worry. My daughter’s no fool. She made sure of it.”
“You’re putting your life—and my reputation—in the hands of the girl who killed her father and a woman pregnant with her half-sister in cold blood! Oh, and one, mind you, who left the journal out in plain view—”
“Best not to let your emotions get the upper hand, counselor. Look what happened to me when I did.”
Gritting his teeth, Reginald huffed: “Location, Roxanne! This is critical! The knife and clothing are the only pieces of evidence tying Carol to the murders!”
“Fine, worrywart. She took everything and tossed them into the dumpster at work. The trash was emptied that morning. I sure do wish she’d have included my journal, but wishes don’t always come true, right?”
“How can you be so cavalier about this? I mean, how do you know for sure Carol got rid of the items? I thought your only visitor when in jail was your sister? Did Carol tell you?”
“That’s who I called from your phone: My sister. I figured Carol had already told her the truth, and I was right. I told Rebecca she’s the one who started this mess and it was time for her to step up and help Carol. I admitted to killing Coco. Rebecca shared the happy news about her niece using the instructions from my drunken ramblings as a guide to kill Carl and Ginger. That broke ol’ L.B.’s spirit. Other than our b
aby sister Rachel, Rebecca only truly loves another person, and that’s my daughter.”
“L.B.?”
“Oh, sorry. Nickname. Means lunatic bitch.”
Reginald snorted. “Of course it does. Your entire family is nuts. I should have gone with my gut instinct and forced you to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, because you’re certifiable. You don’t belong in here—you belong in a straightjacket.”
“Watch it, counselor. It was a man who drove me to that point. A man who suffered terrible bouts of blue-brain stupidity that culminated in his death. Carl wasn’t the first and he certainly won’t be the last Neanderthal controlled by an engorged penis.”
“Touché, Roxanne,” Reginald answered. Stopping by the window, he looked through the bars for a few seconds with a strange, haunted look on his face. “You took the fall for your daughter. As a father, I understand the desire. I wouldn’t do it, mind you, but I understand. So now, you want me to make sure Rebecca follows through with her promises. Ensure Carol attends therapy sessions, finishes college, and to handle all the legal aspects of the house, vehicles, and your mother’s home?”
“Correct. You aren’t in charge because that’s all Rebecca’s punishment for starting this mess. She gets to step up to the plate and act like a loving, caring aunt and daughter. You’re simply providing backup, legal, supervisory backup. You’ll be the voice inside Rebecca’s mind, pushing her to do the right thing by her niece and mother.”
“How do you know Carol will agree to all of this? What if her mental state is too far gone and she kills again?”
“She won’t, Reginald. Just like I won’t. We weren’t closet homicidal maniacs, for Godsakes. Okay, maybe I was after years upon years of wearing the fake mask of a serene, suburban housewife. Carol is still young, so there’s time to undo the damage. We are simply two women pushed over the edge by circumstances out of our control. We’ve always been close, except for the horrible puberty years. My daughter mimicked my actions, much to my dismay. I won’t let her do it again.”
“This is so wrong, Roxanne. Carol needs—”
Okay, legal beagle. You just overstepped your bounds. No one tells me what my daughter needs. No one. “The discussion is over. You need my daughter to overcome this tragedy almost as much as I do if you want your precious reputation to be spared. Do it, Reginald. Help my daughter walk down a new path, become the woman she was meant to be, not a duplicated copy of me. Please?”
Marriage Made Me Do It Page 15
