Taking On Lucinda

by Frank Martorana

  Bo’s Adam’s apple rose higher and settled back with more vibration this time. “You’re sneaking in the window?”

  “Yes, sirree. Won’t hurt to scare her a little. May be kind of a turn-on for her. At least she’ll get an idea who she’s dealing with.”

  “Good Lord.” The hired man pulled his tattered cap down over his eyes. “I’ll be here when you get back.” His tone made it clear he held no hope of a successful outcome to his boss’s plan.

  May-May scaled an ancient fire escape and crept across a small roof. He eased his way to the window of room 206 and peered through the glass. Nothing but blackness. She must be sleeping. His eyes widened at the titillating thought. He forced his fingers under the sash, slid the window up gently, and listened. Not a sound.

  He pivoted, stepped one leg and then the other over the sill, and then ducked his head into the darkened room. He listened again, letting his eyes adjust. Suddenly, like a demon condensing out of nothingness, Lucinda’s face appeared in front of his so close he could feel her breath. She snarled a primordial warning to get out. May-May was instantly sober as a preacher. He stared point blank into Lucinda’s eyes. They gathered light and reflected hatred. He could count her teeth, glistening with saliva against curled lips. Instinctively, he screamed, but all that came out was a croaking gurgle. He turned to avoid a full-face bite and scrambled back toward the roof.

  A thousand volts of pain roared up his leg, tripped along his spine, and crashed into his brain as Lucinda secured a crushing grip on his calf. He reeled and twisted to get away, but her jaws held and tore into his skin. He pulled himself through the window, dragging Lucinda with his leg, and yelled to Bo. He clawed his way onto the roof, kicking her face with his free leg.

  There was a shout from inside. “Lucinda, let him go!” And suddenly his leg was free. Recoiling away on the pitched roof, he lost his balance, rolled down the slope, and fell to the ground a story below.

  “Bo!” May-May forced the words out of his breathless chest. “Get the truck over here.”

  He heard the pickup’s engine roar to life and tires squeal as he staggered to his feet. Bo pulled alongside, and May-May rolled himself into the bed. With the last of his strength, he signaled Bo to keep going.

  Secure in the darkness of the cab as the truck sped away from Jefferson, Bo’s face broke into a broad smile. He thumped the steering wheel with his palm. Yes, sirree! Sometimes things go right, after all.

  Kent slumped, submerged among a litter of pillows on Stef’s massive velvet couch. Her whole house was oversized. A Realtor would describe it as a sprawling contemporary, ceilings vaulted, lots of glass, angles oblique. Kent called it modern.

  Dinner was fabulous. Stef prepared it herself, and even though it was vegan, it was as satisfying as any Kent had ever eaten. He turned his Amaretto slowly, studying the way it gathered the orange light flickering from the fireplace. Aubrey was curled at the other end of the couch, letting her thoughts drift with the soft chords of the Moody Blues. Her legs were drawn up so that the hem of her silver silk dress was at midthigh. Absentmindedly, she ran her nails lightly along her calf in long sensuous strokes. The cut of her dress was perfectly low across her chest, and she had accented it with a maroon-and-green paisley scarf. She was stunning. Kent felt a warm glow that was more than the liquor. He wanted that scarf—he wanted her!

  He had not had a chance to follow up with Aubrey about their earlier encounter in her room. That had made him uneasy until, during dinner, he felt her tiny shoeless foot under the table. It stroked gently against his calf. The gesture was so sensual and so perfectly timed to his mood that it aroused him instantly. Without breaking conversation, Aubrey flashed him a demure glance laced with womanly humor.

  “I think it was pure genius to let Lucinda babysit Barry,” Kent said. He knew Aubrey would take the bait.

  “Wait just a second, sir. My kid needs no babysitter, and I resent your implication that your dog could exercise better judgment than my son.”

  “Hey. I’m into animal rights. I see no reason my dog should not have a position of authority.”

  “Oh, boy. Here we go,” Stef said and settled back to enjoy the banter.

  “Lucinda didn’t look too authoritative when you were sneaking her up the back stairs into our hotel room. She looked pretty timid.”

  “She was just out of her element. That’s all.”

  “I hope she doesn’t try to make Barry’s room into her element.”

  “I can see Lucinda now,” Kent said, “strewn across Barry’s bed, shedding gobs of hair onto his pillow, fleas leaping in all directions.”

  “God, why would anyone want a dog even if it wasn’t morally wrong?”

  “You just don’t see what Barry and I see in her.”

  “I guess not.”

  Stef was stretched on a thick throw rug in front of the fire. “Quiet times like this are when I miss Armani the most. He used to sit and listen to my problems. Never said a thing, just listened. God, I miss him. To think what could be happening to him.” She looked as though she would cry.

  Aubrey rose, crossed to Stef, and wrapped her arms around her. The two women rocked long and slowly in a ritual of grief and consolation. Kent watched misty beads of sweat form on Aubrey’s back. Heat from the fire gave her skin a salmon shine.

  He wanted to throw open the french doors behind him, let cool air rush in from the patio, but somehow he was paralyzed, immobilized with desire for Aubrey. The telephone’s abrasive ring startled him back to reality. He glanced at his watch, it was nearly three in the morning.

  “Who would be calling now?”

  The women untangled, and Stef begrudgingly pushed herself to her feet.

  “Heaven knows.” She resigned herself to the intrusions all business owners endure. “I’ll take it in the bedroom.”

  A few moments later she returned. There was an incredulous look on her face. “That was Barry.”

  Aubrey stiffened.

  “He’s fine,” Stef said.

  “What happened?”

  “You are not going to believe this, but apparently, someone tried to break into your hotel room.”

  Instantly Aubrey was on her feet. “You’re sure he’s okay?”

  “Absolutely. He sounded a whole lot less upset than I would be.” She looked at Kent. “Barry said Lucinda chased the burglar away.”

  “Is he still on the phone?” asked Aubrey. “I want to speak to him.”

  “I told him he should talk to you, but he said he didn’t need to and that he wanted to get back to Lucinda. You know”—Stef sounded mystified—“he sounded more thrilled than frightened.”

  “The dog is amazing,” Kent said. “You told him we’d be right there, I hope?”

  “Yes. He’s to keep the doors locked and keep Lucinda beside him till he hears his mother’s voice at the door.”

  Aubrey was already at the foyer collecting her coat and purse. “Thanks for a wonderful evening, Stef,” she said. “I really mean it too.”

  Stef held the door for the pair. “I’ll call you for a full report tomorrow.”

  Barry bubbled with excitement as he told Aubrey and Kent the story.

  “Man, you should have seen it! I was sound asleep and all of a sudden I feel Lucinda shoot off the bed like she was after a raccoon and head into your room, Mom.” Barry bounced one palm off the other in a gesture of something launching. “Then there’s all this growling and yelling. I get in there, and Lucinda’s got this guy’s leg. She’s trying to pull it in, the guy is trying to pull it out. And she’s crunching him—hard.” He grimaced and squeezed both hands into tight fists. “I didn’t know what to do, so I yelled at her to stop. Boy, I wish I hadn’t. I think she’d have chewed it clean off.” He gave Lucinda an admiring pat on the head. The big hound nudged up against him. “Anyway. She let him go, and he disappeared. I
think he actually fell off the roof.” The boy laughed. “That crook had a bad night.”

  “Can you describe him?” Kent asked.

  “Only that he was big. It was too dark.”

  “You didn’t see any strange people or cars around this evening, did you?”

  “No.”

  They questioned Barry for a few minutes before deciding that he had no information to give. They settled the boy into bed, and Lucinda jumped in beside him. Aubrey didn’t protest.

  “Got anything to drink up here?” Kent asked as he took a chair in Aubrey’s adjoining room.

  “Just some bourbon. Want one with water?”

  “That’ll do.”

  Aubrey poured from a bottle on the bureau, added water from the bathroom sink. She handed him a hotel tumbler two fingers full and collapsed onto the bed. “Ice is down the hall.”

  “This will be fine.” He sipped in silence.

  Aubrey lay on her back, eyes shut. Her taut facial muscles told Kent she was not asleep.

  “Would it be too much to hope,” she asked, “that a man breaking into my room is just coincidental bad luck, or would you guess it’s somehow tied into everything else that’s going on?”

  “Knowing what we do? It would only be a guess. I’d say the thing to do is tell Merrill about it in the morning and see what he comes up with. I’m just thankful that Lucinda was here.”

  “Me too.”

  “Fleas and all?”

  Aubrey rose onto her elbows. Her eyes showed a mother’s gratitude for her child’s safety. “She’s earned her welcome anytime, fleas and all. I hate to think what could have happened.”

  “Well, don’t, because nothing did. They’re both in there safe and sound asleep.”

  Aubrey stroked the bedspread. “It’s almost time to get up. You could rest here for a while. It would make me feel better.” She caught his dubious look. “Just sleep.”

  Kent was too tired to debate the wisdom of accepting her offer. He stretched out next to her and slept as if in a coma.

  By rushing through treatments and appointments, Kent made it to the police station by late morning. He sat in Merrill’s office, wondering why’d he bothered to tell the chief about last night’s break-in. Merrill signed a fistful of papers an officer brought to him, answered several phone calls, and fielded a half-dozen questions posed by heads poked through his office door, all while rebuffing Kent’s speculation.

  “Come on, Kent. These things go on all the time. Rich-looking tourists and businesspeople are sitting ducks.”

  “We’re talking Jefferson here, Merrill, not New York or Chicago.”

  “It happens here too.”

  “But it’s quite a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  Merrill made a gesture of helplessness. “Not really. Aubrey Fairbanks is probably the most high-profile person in town. A single woman. She’d be a prime target.”

  Kent pushed the form he had completed across the desk back at his brother. “That’s all I can do? Just fill out a report?”

  Merrill slid it back. “Ms. Fairbanks has to sign it.”

  “Jesus, Merrill.”

  “I’ll tell you what.” Merrill reached for the telephone while he spoke. “Normally a written report would be the end of a deal like this. We’d just keep our eyes and ears open and look for stolen property, which there apparently was none in this case, to turn up. That’s all our manpower and budget will allow.”

  “The ol’ budget line again.”

  “Let me finish. I’m going to call the hotel. If the maid hasn’t been through the room yet, for my brother and the new love of his life, I’ll get a couple of guys from the state police lab to take a look. Lift some fingerprints maybe. Fair enough?”

  Kent grimaced at the wall clock as Merrill dialed. Eleven o’clock. Why hadn’t he thought to call off the maid?

  He thumped the chair arm with the heel of his hand while his brother asked a few questions to someone at the Red Horse Inn and then politely apologized for the interruption and hung up. “It seems we’re out of luck. Not only did the maid do her thing, but also as we speak, the hotel maintenance man is smearing his prints all over the window as he repairs the faulty latch. Hey, we tried.”

  Merrill hesitated, studied his brother’s angry face. “I’ll tell you something. Maybe it’ll give you a lift. I’m planning to stop out and see Tammy today. Don’t tell her that, if you run into her. She might take off. If I can, I’ll see what May-May has to say.”

  “Well, that’s something. See if you can get an idea where he was last night.”

  “Will do.”

  Kent was just finishing one of his pat lectures to a college-age woman on the importance of heartworm prevention and cuddling the puff-ball chow pup it was intended for when Sally informed him that his brother was on the telephone. He handed the proud owner her new buddy and took the phone with much greater haste than usual for Merrill’s calls.

  “I thought you might like to know how things went this afternoon,” Merrill said. “At least you’d want to hear about it firsthand instead of in the paper tomorrow morning.”

  “Yeah, so what’s up? You made it to the farm, I take it.”

  Merrill continued in his melodramatic drawl. “Oh, I made it all right. Just not on my terms.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning an hour after I talked to you, we got a call about a farm accident, and do you know where it was?”

  “Can we skip the guessing game, Merrill?”

  “At Maylon’s place. A fatality.”

  An invisible hand grabbed a fistful of Kent’s intestine. “You’re kidding me.”

  “As I live and breathe.”

  “Who got killed?”

  “Tammy.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Kent said, and it came out like a prayer. “What happened?”

  “The way it appears, she got off a tractor to untangle some fence wire that was caught underneath, and it rolled over her. Crushed her head.”

  The grotesque image of Tammy dead under a tractor made Kent more angry than sick. “Where the hell was May-May?”

  “In the house. And get this, he’s laid up in bed with a bad back. Says he fell off a roof.”

  “No kidding.” Kent’s words dripped sarcasm.

  “Funny thing was, he had one leg elevated with pillows and packed in ice. I could tell it hurt like hell when he moved it.”

  “I’ll bet. Dog bites do hurt like hell. I wonder what roof he fell off.”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “It seems to me that a farm accident would be a good way to disguise a murder.”

  “Like a blunt object to the head then plant the body under a tractor wheel? I thought of that.”

  “Yeah. And we know from Copithorn that May-May’s pretty good at blunt objects to the head and planting bodies. At least dog bodies.”

  There was momentary silence from Merrill’s end. “Killing a dog is a whole lot different than killing a person. Anyway, I tactfully told the investigators to be thorough. We’ll have to see what they come up with.”

  “You have a chance to ask him where he was at the time of the Copithorn fire and the break-in to Aubrey’s room?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Surprise, surprise, he had an alibi for both. Gave me half a dozen names I could use to confirm them. And another thing, you told me about a cat mill and some other dogfighting stuff near the house. Remember?”

  “Yeah.”

  “None there now. Not a trace.”

  “Goddamn outlaw.”

  Their conversation lapsed into details of the accident and how the people of Jefferson would react. It ended with their usual agreement to keep each other informed.

  After he hung up with his brother, Kent busied himself around his clinic, but his thoughts were o
n Tammy Mays. She had been right on target when she accused him of liking his role as middleman between two important women. She said this time the dogfighting was different, that it was big, really big. Was she right about that too? Was it big enough to get her killed?

  And what about May-May? Merrill said the cat mill and all his other dogfight trappings had disappeared. Was May-May starting to realize he was in over his head?

  He pondered that possibility. Not likely.

  Chapter 19

  Lester Ross reached over to the coffee table and pulled a fat torpedo from a mahogany humidor. He slipped off the ring and squinted at the tiny print. Monte Cristo Number Two. He snipped it, then moistened it by running half of it in his mouth. He padded in sock feet to the front windows of his condo as he fired it with a gold lighter.

  He stared out the expanse of glass that captured midtown Austin, a breathtaking inner-city stretch of the Colorado River with its stylized wharves, docks, and high-rises. He loved the city, its grinding noise, frantic pace, even the proximity to crime. It fueled his nervous, hyperactive temperament.

  He had tried rural life, had actually been born into it, and he’d hated everything about it. Of course, the big difference between then and now was that now he was rich. Back then he was just the oddball son of Milton Ross, soybean and cotton farmer of Dawson Grove, Arkansas, in Chicot County—a stone’s throw from the Louisiana border, a light-year from anything cosmopolitan.

  As a boy, Lester was antsy, highly motivated, strangely fixed on his future. He was aloof and pretty much disliked by the rest of Dawson Grove’s citizenry. He made no bones about it— he was going to make something of himself. That attitude just did not set well around Chicot County, where any attempt at self-improvement was considered uppity.

  Computers came on the scene when Lester was fifteen. He became a charter member of the Dawson Grove High Computer Club. Unlike most of his benighted peers, Lester realized early that computers were the way of the future. He welcomed them with open arms, submerged himself in their technology, and mastered each new byte of information.