Caught Red-Handed

by Jan Burke

  “Really, Sam, I don’t think it’s any of your concern.”

  Before he could answer, they heard Marietta from behind them. “Sam!” she wailed as she tried to catch up to them with her own cart. “Sam, get over here and help me.”

  “Your master’s voice,” Leila said, and started to load her groceries into her car.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said angrily.

  “Leila, is this fellow bothering you?”

  She turned to see the man from the store. He had pulled up next to them and rolled down his window.

  Sam looked so dismayed, it was all she could do not to laugh out loud. “No, he’s an old friend,” she said to the man. “He was just going back to his car to help his girlfriend.”

  They all turned to see Marietta stomp her foot in impatience.

  “Girlfriend?” the man said. “I only see his daughter.”

  “Oh, no,” Leila said, unable to stop the laugh. “That’s his girlfriend.”

  “Now see here—” Sam began, but fell silent as the man opened his car door and stood next to it. He was at least six inches taller than Sam.

  He extended a hand. “David Kerr,” he said amiably.

  Sam shook the hand awkwardly. “Sam Barrington,” he mumbled. To Leila, he said, “I’ll call you later,” and excused himself.

  “Thanks for the rescue,” Leila said to David, when Sam had left.

  “A pleasure. As your knight in shining armor, do I deserve to know your last name, Leila?”

  “Leila Anderson,” she said. “It was going to be Leila Barrington before that sweet young thing happened along.”

  “You’re hopelessly stuck on him, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, we’re two peas in a pod. My ex-wife shops here with a fellow I call ‘Junior’ on Tuesdays. If you want to return the favor, I’ll meet you here tomorrow night at six.”

  Leila laughed and agreed to see him there the next evening. She said goodnight and whistled as she drove home.

  * * *

  On Thursday night, Leila invited Alice Grayson to dinner. They giggled like schoolgirls over Leila’s recounting of the last three days. Tuesday night, David’s ex-wife had ignored the young man she was dating, nearly pushed Leila aside and said flat out that she missed David and would like to see him for dinner sometime soon.

  David had thanked Leila, and they promised to keep one another posted on their progress.

  On Wednesday, Sam had stopped by her office to ask her to go to lunch, an unprecedented event.

  “I’m worried about you, Leila,” he had said.

  “Why?”

  “How well do you know this David Kerr?”

  “Not well at all.”

  “That’s what I mean! And you kissed him in the store!”

  “I believe he kissed me.”

  “You’re mincing words and you know it. Okay, so you were kissed, but you allowed it. Right in front of everybody! That’s so unlike you!”

  “Maybe I’ve changed, Sam.”

  He sulked in silence for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure I like the change. I liked you the way you were before.”

  “You dumped me the way I was before.”

  “Leila! That’s an unkind way of putting things.”

  “It was an unkind way of doing things.”

  He had the good grace to look guilty, but said nothing.

  “It’s true, Sam. You all but said I was passionless. And I can see why you thought so. It’s my fault, really. I hope Marietta gives you all the passion you can bear.”

  “There’s more to life than passion.”

  “Really? Such as what?”

  “Stability, reliability, companionship.”

  “Don’t forget faithfulness.”

  He turned red and looked away. After a moment he said quietly, “I really hurt you, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, Sam. Thanks to you, I have a whole new life.”

  “With David?”

  “No, probably not with David.”

  He seemed about to say something, but he hesitated. She decided not to wait for him to make up his mind to tell her what it was. “I’d better get back to work, Sam.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” he answered distractedly.

  As they stood outside the door to her office building, he suddenly hugged her, nearly throwing her off balance. “Listen, I’m really quite fond of you, Leila. We are friends, aren’t we?”

  “Of course,” she said, freeing herself from his embrace. “Goodbye, Sam.”

  * * *

  “Excellent!” Alice exclaimed. “Although I’ll warn you, Leila. Watch out for Marietta. From what you’ve told me, she won’t take any of this very lightly.”

  Leila invited Alice to come over on Saturday afternoon. “I’ll be planting the roses in the back corner. I called my friend, Arnie, and ordered another loveseat. He’s going to try to find one similar to the old one. He thinks he can have one here by Monday, so I need to get the roses in place.”

  On Friday, Sam came by her office at lunch time again. Leila had already agreed to have lunch with some of her coworkers, and summoning all of her willpower, she told Sam she would not be able to join him. “Let me take you to dinner, then,” he said.

  She hesitated. “What about Marietta?”

  “She’s got an aerobics class until ten. She has aerobics every night,” he added glumly.

  “All right, I’ll meet you for dinner. Where?”

  “Café Camillia at eight?”

  She smiled. The restaurant was a favorite of hers, and Sam knew it. “Fine.”

  * * *

  That evening, she put on a rather daring dress, one she had bought on impulse. Impulse, she thought, liking what she saw in the mirror. What a heady new feeling this occasional obedience to impulse had given her! When she arrived at the restaurant, Sam was already there, nervously wringing his hands. When he saw her, he looked as if someone had just sent enough electricity through him to light Manhattan.

  “Leila?”

  “Yes, Sam, what’s the matter?”

  “You—you look lovely.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  But throughout dinner, Sam hardly spoke a word. He looked unhappy. She began to think that the whole evening was a miserable failure. Maybe he was wishing he hadn’t invited her to dinner.

  “Sam?”

  He looked up at her, startled.

  “Sam, are you regretting this?”

  “Oh. No, not at all.”

  “You don’t seem very happy.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why? Have I done something wrong?”

  “No, I have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “Forgive me, Leila. I haven’t been good company this evening. I’ve got some thinking to do.” He glanced at his watch. “Marietta will be home soon. I’d better go.” He motioned for the waiter and paid the check.

  He walked her to her car. Suddenly, he said, “Leila, do you still care for me?”

  “Yes, Sam. You’re still my friend.”

  “I don’t mean as a friend. I mean, do you think you could still care for me?”

  She smiled at the anxiousness in his voice. “I think you already know I do.”

  “What do you see in me, Leila? I’ve cheated on you, broken our engagement, been a cad. I didn’t want to admit it before, but I have been.”

  “I agree. But I think it has been for the best. We each had things to learn, didn’t we?”

  “I’m just afraid the tuition may have cost me too much.”

  “Talk to Marietta. I admit I don’t like her much, but she deserves to k
now how you really feel. Then come and tell me how you feel about me. But not until then, all right?”

  He nodded, then watched as she drove off.

  * * *

  Leila had just finished mixing a huge bag of mulch into the garden soil when she heard the sound of the gate opening. At first, she thought it was Alice Grayson, but she turned to see an odd vision of Marietta, taller than usual, gliding toward her. Then she realized Marietta was on skates. Of course, Leila thought, the latest fitness craze. They were a fancy, in-line pair, with fluorescent pink wheels. As Marietta drew closer, Leila saw that her face was a hard mask of fury, and she was flying toward Leila like a Valkyrie on Rollerblades.

  “You bitch! You miserable old bitch!” she shouted, and tried to grab on to Leila.

  Frightened, Leila dropped the shovel and started to run toward the house, but the skating Marietta was faster. Leila was amazed at the other woman’s agility. Marietta caught hold of Leila’s hair and yanked hard. Leila came to a halt and Marietta slammed into her. Leila toppled to the ground, landing facedown in the dirt. Marietta fell on top of her. In no time flat, she had her hands around Leila’s throat, choking her.

  “Sam is mine! I won’t let you have him!”

  Leila couldn’t breathe. Her head pounded as she tried to pry Marietta’s fingers from her throat. But Marietta was strong, and her fingers didn’t budge.

  “Let her go,” Leila heard a voice say, but everything around her was swimming out of focus.

  “No! I’m younger, I’m prettier, I’m stronger—”

  “You’re dead,” the voice said, and Leila heard the shovel ring out once again. She fell into darkness.

  * * *

  Sam and Leila were sitting on the loveseat. Two rosebushes grew on one side, a third on the other.

  “Marietta still hasn’t come back,” Sam said. “I think she’s left me for good.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if you never see her again,” Leila said.

  “I suppose you’re right. She went absolutely insane when I told her that I had decided to beg you to take me back. The language she used! Called me things I never imagined anyone would ever call me. And when Miss Grayson called that evening to tell me that Marietta had come by to attack you like that—” He looked at the bruises on her throat and winced. “I’m so sorry, Leila. You should have called me sooner.”

  “I didn’t want to worry you. I’m fine now, really.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad Miss Grayson called me. I guess it was while I was over here with you that Marietta cleared all of her things out of our old apartment.”

  “Alice was a great help that day,” Leila said, thinking of the apartment key that was now in a jar of buttons. She leaned back against Sam, who put his arms around her. “I’m glad you came over to see me.”

  “Of course! You needed me.”

  They sat in silence for a while, Sam holding Leila close, amazed by how strongly he had felt about her lately. Oh, he had thought of her often during the few months he had spent with Marietta, but somehow, something had changed in Leila since she had lived in this old house. He looked at the riot of colors around him. Amazing, he thought. And this loveseat. That seemed so sentimental, so unlike the old Leila.

  “You planted this garden yourself?” he asked in wonder.

  “Yes, all except this corner. Alice Grayson helped me with this one.”

  “Ah, that explains the loveseat.”

  Leila merely smiled.

  It seemed to Sam that he had never desired her more.

  GHOST OF A CHANCE

  It wasn’t hard for the ghost to awaken me.

  It was the second night after David died, and my grief was still so great as to thin my sleep to gossamer. Just about anything would cause me to wake up suddenly, reach for his side of the bed, feel the emptiness there, and then the emptiness within myself; next would come a tightness in my chest, the pressing weight of the sudden loss of my husband.

  Some might believe I saw the ghost because I so wanted David to be alive, I imagined he had come back to me. The only problem with that theory is, it wasn’t my husband’s ghost.

  I had awakened from my fitful sleep that night because the room felt cold; I opened my eyes to see a man standing at the foot of the bed. Until I was fully awake, I almost thought it was David. Like David, he was about six feet tall, with dark brown hair and big, brown eyes. He was handsome, but I discovered that even handsome men who suddenly show up uninvited at the foot of my bed can scare me. This one did. I opened my mouth to scream, and he vanished.

  I was more than a little upset, but I convinced myself that I had dreamed the whole thing, and fell back into a restless slumber, full of dreams of David dying. The next morning I felt grumpy and ill-at-ease. It was the day of David’s funeral, and there wasn’t anything on earth that was going to make me feel good about that day. As I looked in the mirror, I became even more certain of that. I looked like a blouse someone had left to wrinkle in the dryer. My blond hair framed a colorless face and I had dark shadows under my blue eyes.

  “You’ll be just fine, Anna,” I said to myself. At forty-two, I wasn’t in bad shape. The lines that had appeared on my face weren’t etched too deeply. Gave it character, my father said. I was getting more character every year, but I’m not the type to fret over it. At least, I hadn’t been until she came along.

  I wondered if she would have the nerve to show up at the funeral. I wouldn’t know her if she did. When he made his confession, David never told me her name, and I never asked for it. As far as I was concerned, it was important not to know the name of the woman David had met at the St. George Hotel every Wednesday for fifteen weeks. For fifteen weeks, on the night I taught a class in—of all things—ethics, Ms. X had taught David that he could still lure a woman to bed. I wondered if they had laughed about that. He wasn’t laughing when it ended. “A temporary madness,” he had told me, weeping as he did. “Forgive me,” he pleaded.

  To this day, I’m not able to be very precise about why I did forgive him. At the time I was outraged, hurt, angry, humiliated. The pain of betrayal remained; whatever trust was between us had taken a torpedo broadside. But the ship didn’t sink, it just listed.

  Maybe the reason I stayed with him wasn’t really so complex. David and I had been together for twenty years; and in that twenty years I had come to love him more than anyone else on earth. He was a habit I couldn’t break. Fate broke it for me.

  David had made his confession six months ago, and strove to be the ideal husband in the time since. Together we tried to renew our marriage, and somehow, we were making it. On the morning of the day he died, he told me that he was working on something that would really make me proud of him. I had no idea what it was. “I’m proud of you all the same, David,” I said to the haggard reflection in the mirror. Ten minutes later I was still sitting on the bathroom floor, sobbing.

  I pulled myself together, hoping I wouldn’t shame myself at his funeral. As I put on a plain black dress that David had always liked, I held on to the anger I felt toward his killer. David had come to the college to pick me up that night. I was on my way to the car when I heard the shots. The college is in a part of town that has become rougher over the years, and I didn’t think much about hearing gunfire. It wasn’t an everyday occurrence, but it wasn’t that rare. When I saw the crumpled form on the steps that lead up from the parking lot, I didn’t know it was David until I was only a few feet from him. He was unconscious, and bleeding to death. Nothing, not even a ghost in my bedroom, will ever terrify me the way those moments did, when I held David as he died.

  No one saw the actual shooting, but several witnesses saw a blue Chevy speeding away from the scene. No one knew anything else. No model, no license plate, no description of the driver, no mention of how many people were in the car. No motive, just someone who got their kicks by driving around firing guns at
people. There was some speculation that David had been hit by gunfire aimed at someone else, since other bullets were found lodged in a nearby tree, a wall, another car. “Random violence” seemed to be the theory of the newspapers.

  I was one of the believers in the theory. No one would want to kill David Blackburn. The man had cheated on me, and I didn’t want to kill him. I didn’t know anyone with a stronger motive.

  The funeral was well-attended, with or without David’s former lover. The priest didn’t know David, but did the best he could to say generically comforting words. My family tried to brace me up, and succeeded in large degree. David’s parents were long dead, but his sister sent a wreath; she had wanted to come to the funeral but couldn’t manage the airfare from Maine to California, and refused my offer to buy the ticket.

  There were neighbors and old friends, and a large contingent from Emery & Walden. David was the Vice President of Human Resources for Emery & Walden, a local manufacturing firm that employed about twenty-five hundred people. Many of the employees had contact with him, and trusted him as someone who would treat them fairly, as someone who had concern for their well-being. He often acted as a buffer between them and Mr. Winslow Emery III, the self-involved young man who was now at the helm of the company.

  Today Winslow Emery looked tired and worn. It was understandable—he had attended a lot of funerals lately. Five days earlier, an acid tank at Emery & Walden had ruptured, causing the deaths of three workers. OSHA was investigating. David had been troubled by the deaths, as he was by the suicide of the plant manager, who apparently blamed himself for not responding to worker complaints about the tank.

  I thought about David championing that troubled soul. His name, if I recalled, was Devereaux. I watched Emery walk away from David’s grave with the gait of a man twice his age. A good-looking blonde walked next to him. She had introduced herself to me as Mr. Emery’s secretary, Louise. Emery didn’t seem to notice her.