by John Moralee
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I saw Lucy at the bus station.”
“And?”
“That was it.” He grinned then, a cold sneer. “They didn’t ask me if I’d told anyone else. Like you, for example. But that doesn’t mean they won’t ask me some more questions. You didn’t come to the poker game, did you? Where were you?”
“Carson, what are you implying?”
“Me? I’m implying nothing. Just asking. Me, I don’t care about Lucy Ash one way or the other. But you had a thing for her. Did you use your thing on her last night? Maybe get a bit carried away?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
Carson shrugged. “Well, then, I’m sure you’ve been an upstanding citizen and told the cops about being in a bar with her?”
“How did you know that?”
“The cops had a description of a guy sounded roughly like you. Seems he was in The Haven with Lucy for a couple of hours. Then they left. You left. And now Lucy shows up with a seriously sore throat. It doesn’t look good, Brody.”
I wanted to punch him. “What do you want?”
“You figure out what my silence is worth, buddy. You know where to find me, when you’ve decided.” Carson patted the roof of my car. “This would do, I reckon.”
He walked off towards his old, dented Ford, laughing and laughing.
*
Nina was in the kitchen, drinking a glass of cranberry juice. She heard me come in and looked up from her Nora Roberts paperback. “Did you hear about the murder of Lucy Ash?”
“Yes,” I said. I hung up my coat and took a seat. “I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you yesterday. I saw Lucy last night.”
“You saw her,” she said. “Dead?”
“No! Alive. I … I had a drink with her. We talked. And then we left and something happened.”
Nina pushed her paperback aside, her mouth wrinkled at the edges, half-smile, half-frown. “I think … I think you’d better tell me everything.”
*
The Haven was quiet and dark and anonymous, the sort of place where nobody remembered anyone’s name. Maybe I didn’t want anyone to see me with Lisa and come to the wrong conclusions. I wasn’t thinking about having an affair, but I was in a crazy, disconnected mood, as though I’d been lost and had just found a sign directing me to civilisation. Just seeing Lucy Ash made me feel young again. And I was curious about her life. What had she been doing? Where had she gone? We sat at a table in the neon-lit gloom and I only had one beer because I was driving, but she had one tequila slammer after another. She looked very unhappy. You don’t drink like that if you’re not. She needed to talk and I needed to listen.
“Do you find me attractive?” she asked.
“You’re beautiful,” I said, not knowing where the conversation was going, but liking it and feeling guilty for liking it.
“Beauty is a curse,” she said, and stared at her drink. “I’ve always been doomed, Brody. Because of this.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “People expected so much of me. And demanded so much, too. Too much. Always too much.”
I asked her what she meant. She looked at me as though I were a little kid with no idea of how the world worked. Compared with her, I guess I was.
“Do you want to know why I left?”
Somehow I knew I wouldn’t like the answer. The Enigma of Lucy Ash would be destroyed if I said yes. But I was curious. “Yes.”
“I was always prettier than the other girls,” she said. It was not a boast or conceit, but the truth. “Men could not resist my looks.” She paused. “Not even my own father.”
She let the words drift across the smoky room. Father. Father. Father. The beer in my mouth tasted sour.
“You’re father abused you.”
“Since I was eight or nine. He would creep into my bedroom and make me do things, horrible things. I was so afraid of him, I could do nothing. He got what he wanted. And I taught myself to let it mean nothing. It was just my body he was using. Just this beautiful body.”
“That was why you stole his car and disappeared?”
“I thought of running away many, many times. But I knew he’d find me. So I waited until I was eighteen. I stayed long enough to take what mattered to him – his money. I cleared out his bank account, cancelled his car insurance, then I took it all with me. And I took out several large loans on his house. He owed me.”
I recalled Terrence Ash had died in poverty about six months ago. After Lucy went away, he had lost his house, his wife, his job … everything. At the time people had assumed it was because he couldn’t cope with the loss of his daughter. Now I knew the truth.
“You couldn’t come back until he died?”
“Yes. Not while he was living. I hope he felt guilty for the whole of his life, but I doubt it. Maybe having no money hurt him, though.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“I went to Las Vegas. I bet it all on a single spin of a roulette wheel. I bet on black.”
“Did you lose?”
“No, I won. Maybe if I’d lost, I would have left Vegas. But I stayed, gambling. The money lasted about three years … then I earned it in other ways. I now have $400,000 in the bank. I’m thinking about buying a nice house in a nice neighbourhood.”
Other ways. That sounded sinister. I wanted to ask what other ways, but she was pretty drunk. Looking at my watch, I saw I was late for the poker game. It was about nine-thirty and it was dark outside.
I started driving her back to the B&B, but on the way she kept putting her hand on my thigh. I moved her hand away each time, but she persisted. Her hand managed to elude me while I was driving. She caressed my chest, undoing a button so she could slip her cool, silky hand under my shirt. I could hardly concentrate on staying on the road, but I extricated her hand from my chest.
“Lucy,” I said. “No.”
But she wasn’t listening. She spoke in a husky, sexy whisper. “I know you always wanted me, Brody. I would like to sleep with you. All it will cost you is $500.”
$500. It was like being stabbed in the heart. “You’re a prostitute? God, Lucy, what went wrong?”
She folded her arms, staring at the road. “What went right? What went right? Jesus – stop the car. I want to get out. Now!”
“I’m taking you home.”
“No! Stop here.”
We were passing the park. I knew it was dangerous at night, but Lucy grabbed the wheel and forced me to brake. She opened her door and the internal light lit her once beautiful face in yellow. I could see the make-up on her neck and the lines around her eyes. Suddenly she looked her age. Suddenly she looked like a middle-aged woman who had thrown her life away.
She got out and walked into the park, swaying her hips in a provocative way.
I called out to her, but she didn’t answer.
The next time I saw her, she was dead.
*
When I finished telling Nina, I waited for her response. She was expressionless except for her watery eyes, which stared into mine, every few seconds her focus changing from one of my eyes to the other, as though she were striving to read the honesty of my words. Her breathing was short and tense.
“What did you do then?”
“I drove around a while, then I came home.”
“You didn’t kill her?”
“No.”
She accepted it with a slight nod. “Brody?”
“What?”
“If she hadn’t been a prostitute, would you have slept with her?”
“How can you ask that?”
Nina pursed her lips. “I need to know. I’m not oblivious to the fact you haven’t been very happy recently. Would you?”
I shook my head.
“Say it.”
“No. I would not have slept with her. Betraying you would have destroyed me, Nina. You have to believe that because I love you. Maybe I didn’t realise how much that meant until I saw Lucy Ash
again, saw through the stupid dreams. I would never have an affair. Never.”
Nina released a long sigh. She looked relieved. “Okay. I believe you. But the question is, will the cops?”
“They’ll have to. I’ll do a lie detector if they want.”
“Those things aren’t reliable. Good liars can pass, and nervous honest people can fail. So much time has passed since she was discovered that coming forward now would look suspicious. Like you’ve been thinking up an alibi.”
I knew that. “But Carson knows. If I don’t tell them, he will. Unless I bribe him.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I know.”
Nina said, “Who else knows?”
“The police have a rough description of me in the bar. Beth knows, too.”
“Our daughter knew before me?”
“Yes,” said a quiet voice in the doorway. Beth was standing there. She must have listened to our entire conversation. Her eyes were red and puffy and her throat was swallowing over and over. “I saw daddy with her at the park. I was in the arcade with my friends. I saw you drop her off, Daddy. And I thought … I thought you’d done it with her. And I got so mad at her that I followed her. I followed her until she stopped, where she was waiting for a client, I suppose. She looked so arrogant, so beautiful. I just wanted to frighten her. I had my scarf in my coat and I thought of a movie where this man strangles a girl. I sneaked up on her and put the scarf around her throat. She was taken by surprise. I pulled it tight. I wanted to scare her. I wanted to hurt her, too. It seemed to last a minute. Then she stopped struggling. I sort of snapped out of it then, realising I’d gone too far and killed her. I didn’t mean to. I left her there, not knowing what to do. I’m sorry, Daddy. I just didn’t want her to break up my family.”
Beth held out the scarf and I took it, the murder weapon. Then she fell into her mother’s arms, weeping. Nina looked at me over her daughter’s shoulder. There was panic in her eyes.
“What are we going to do, Brody? What are we going to do?”
Beth was sobbing and so was Nina. I’d caused this, I knew. It was my responsibility.
“I’ll take care of this,” I said. “The only thing connecting Beth to Lucy is the scarf. I’ll get rid of it.”
Before Nina or Beth could say anything, I went out to the garage and took down a can of kerosene that I used for our summer barbecues. I carried the scarf and the kerosene out into the back garden, which had a tall fence so the neighbours could not see in. I was about to douse the scarf when Nina came out.
“Don’t,” she said. “Beth wants us to take her to the police. She can’t live with a lie.”
“This is my fault,” I said. “I have to protect her.”
Nina was stern. “It’s the best way, Brody. She has to do it. For herself. We’ve always taught her to be responsible for her actions. We can’t be hypocrites now.”
I wished I could take back the last 24 hours. “What if they charged her with murder?”
“It’s her decision.” Nina was holding back tears.
I picked up the scarf and walked inside.
The three of us drove towards the police department, Beth sitting in the car without moving, just staring at her own hands.
I felt sick. I was taking my daughter to the police to be arrested and charged with murder. We arrived and a detective agreed to see Beth in an interview room, with us present because she was a minor. Beth told him her story, which he recorded on tape. He didn’t ask any questions.
“Well, I have some good news and some bad news.”
“What’s the bad news?” I asked.
“The bad news is Beth will have to be charged.”
Nina let out a moan.
“What’s the good news?” I said.
“She won’t be charged with murder.”
I was surprised and confused. “She won’t?”
“No.” The detective continued, explaining what he was talking about. “We received the autopsy report. It revealed two things. The first is that Lucy Ash was strangled until she became unconscious. She wouldn’t have bruised as much if she’d been dead. Dead bodies don’t bruise. The second thing is she died of a stab wound at the base of her spine. We kept that a secret until we got the killer. We got a confession just a few minutes before you came here. The killer was a junkie crack dealer called Spenser. He hangs out in the park. He found Ash in the bandstand, recovering from what your daughter did. To him, she was just a drunken whore he decided to rob. She was quite alive until Spenser robbed her of $600 and her credit cards. She woke up when he was robbing her. He stabbed her for giving him trouble. He immediately spent the money on drugs and used her credit cards at an ATM, which was why we found him so easily. We caught him with the knife and the credit cards. He’s been charged with homicide.” He looked at Beth. “You’re very lucky, miss. Very lucky indeed.”
Beth nodded almost imperceptibly. Tears tracked down her cheeks.
When we left the police precinct, it was late and dark. It was a long ride home and everyone was exhausted. It looked as though Beth would be given a few hundred hours of community service, but no jail time as a first offender.
I thought of Lucy Ash, the girl and the woman. She must have known the park was dangerous. It made me wonder if, perhaps, Lucy Ash had come home not to live, but to die, free of her father for the first and only time in her life. Maybe that was all she wanted. Maybe.
That was the enigma of Lucy Ash.
A Deadly Prelude
He looked at the small town and felt compelled to stop. There was just something that appealed to him about the way the light fell through the trees along Main Street, the shifting patterns of light and dark. It had been a long time since Delaney had noticed anything like that and took any pleasure from it, but he did that day. He was taking a wild detour, just driving for the sake of driving, trying to enjoy the day, trying to forget Miami. He did not have many opportunities to be alone with his thoughts. It was nearly noon, but the streets were quiet and traffic free. With his windows open, a sweet breeze cooling his face, Delaney could hear birds chattering and the rhythmical creaking of a BUY COCA-COLA HERE sign that looked as if it had been painted fifty years ago. He stopped at a gas station and asked the old man at the pumps if there was somewhere he could get a cold drink and something to eat. The old man did not recognise him, fortunately. The man directed him to a bar on the corner, telling him they served the finest seafood in South Carolina. Delaney parked his Saab and walked over, stepping inside the cool interior and into a different world.
When he first heard her singing, he thought it was a record on the jukebox. Her voice hit him like a jolt of electricity. It resonated within his body, making his spine ripple. He walked to the counter and ordered the Meal of the Day and a Bud while looking for the jukebox, interested to know what was playing. But there was no jukebox playing.
There was a young woman playing a guitar on a tiny stage in the partial darkness. She had to be eighteen, nineteen. She was singing a bluesy song, accompanying herself on a well-used Gibson J-45.
Delaney had never heard the song before, but it seemed familiar, like seeing an old friend again. He listened to three amazing songs, entranced by the sheer emotional power of her performance, then realised she was making them up as she went along. Such talent was rare, he knew. She had a skill for lyrics and music that made her shine. She was special.
When Delaney had been her age, he had been like that, able to make music out of nothing but his own feelings at that moment, expressing himself in the way he wanted. Now, Delaney never picked up a guitar. At 45, his musical career was over. He earned a good living from his backlist of albums and the two nightclubs he owned in Miami, but he no longer played music because he was no longer inspired; he no longer possessed the burning soul that this complete stranger did. He asked the bartender about her.
“That’s just Kimberley Moon,” he said, as if that explained why someone so talented was playing in an al
most empty bar in a hick town.
“Does she play here often?”
“Every day between noon and one. Kimberley keeps the customers happy, so I don’t mind that fancy jazz stuff, though I prefer country music myself.”
“How much do you pay her?”
“Pay her?” The bartender grinned, revealing yellow teeth. “She does it for free.”
Delaney took his beer and sat in the middle of the front row. For a time, he was completely, wholly absorbed in Kimberley’s music, taken on a journey of rarely tapped emotions, her music disturbing memories of his childhood, his adolescence, his middle years. By closing his eyes he could see her words as clearly as pictures. When it was one p.m., she stopped playing and shyly thanked her audience for listening. Delaney clapped, but no one else did. There was no one else present. She looked embarrassed, cringing slightly as she packed her guitar away and quickly made her way off stage through a side door. He half-expected her to come back, but when she did not, he paid his bill. He followed her outside into the hazy sunshine, but she was gone. An irrational panic struck him – he had to talk with her! He dashed to the street corner and looked all directions, but could not see her.
“No,” he muttered.
He needed to talk to her, to tell her how talented she was. Damn - he was in a position to help her career! With a few calls to the right people, he could get her a record deal and some studio time to make an album. He knew she would be a huge success. All she’d have to do was play like she had done today. He returned to the bar and caught the attention of the bartender.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Can you tell me where Kimberley’s gone?”
“I don’t know, fella. She comes and she goes, but I don’t ask her anything. I don’t like prying into other people’s business. I always get the impression Kimberley don’t like questions.”
