Women of the Mean Streets

by J. M. Redmann

  Why not?

  *

  In a school renowned for dowdy mothers, Lynette Moore was one of the dowdiest, gone to seed in the way only a truly preppy woman can. She had leathery skin and a Prince Valiant haircut, which she sheered back from her face with a grosgrain ribbon headband. Her laugh was a loud, annoying bray and if someone failed to join in her merriment, she clapped the person on the back as if trying to dislodge a lump of food. On this particular Thursday afternoon, Lynette stood on the sidewalk, speaking animatedly to one of the teachers, punching the poor woman at intervals. Sally, waiting her turn in the carpool lane, thought how easily a foot could slip, how an accelerator could jam. The SUV would surge forward, Lynette would be pinned against the column by the school’s front door. So sad, but no one’s fault, right?

  No, Sally loved the school too much to do that. Besides, an accident would take out Ms. Grayson as well, and she was an irreplaceable resource when it came to getting Dutton’s graduates into the best colleges.

  Three months, according to her accountant. She had three months. Maybe Peter would die; he carried enough life insurance to pay off the mortgage, with plenty left over for the children’s education. No, she would never get that lucky. Stymied, she continued to make small talk with Alan Moore at baseball games, but began to befriend Lynette as well, lavishing even more attention on her in order to deflect any suspicions she might harbor about Sally’s kindness to Alan. Lynette was almost pathetically grateful for Sally’s attention, adopting her with the fervor that adolescent girls bring to new friendships. Women appreciate good listeners, too, and Sally nodded and smiled over tea and, once five o’clock came around, glasses of wine. Lynette had quite a bit to say, the usual litany of complaints. Alan worked all the time. There was zero romance in their marriage. She might as well be a single mom—“Not that a single mom is a bad thing to be,” she squealed, clapping a palm over her large, unlipsticked mouth.

  “You’re a single mom without any of the advantages,” Sally said, pouring her another glass of wine. Drive home drunk. What do I care?

  “There are advantages, aren’t there?” Lynette leaned forward and lowered her voice, although Molly was at a friend’s and Sam was up in his room with Lynette’s Duncan, playing The Sims. “No one ever says that, but it’s true.”

  “Sure. As long as you have the money to sustain the standard of living you had, being single is great.”

  “How do you do that?” Asked with specificity, as if Lynette believed that Sally had managed just that trick. Sally, who had long ago learned the value of the non-reply, raised her eyebrows and smiled serenely, secretly.

  “I think Alan cheats on me,” Lynette blurted out.

  “I would leave a man who did that to me.”

  Lynette shook her head. “Not until the kids are grown and gone. Maybe then. But I’ll be so old. Who would want me then?”

  Who would want you now?

  “Do what you have to do.” Another meaningless response, perfected over the years. Yet no one ever seemed to notice how empty Sally’s sentiments were, how vapid. She had thought it was just men who were fooled so easily, but it was turning out that women were equally foolish.

  “Alan and I never have sex anymore.”

  “That’s not uncommon,” Sally said. “All marriages have their ups and downs.”

  “I love your house.” Logical sequences of thought had never been Lynette’s strength, but this conversation was abrupt and odd even by her standards. “I love you.”

  Lynette put a short stubby hand over Sally’s, who fought the instinctive impulse to yank her own away. Instead, it was Lynette who pulled back in misery and confusion.

  “I don’t mean that way,” she said, staring into her wineglass, already half empty.

  Sally took a deep breath. “Why not?”

  Lynette put her hand back over Sally’s. “You mean—?”

  Sally thought quickly. No matter how far Sam and Duncan disappeared into their computer world, she could not risk taking Lynette to the master bedroom. She had a hunch that Lynette would be loud. But she also believed that this was her only opportunity. In fact, Lynette would shun her after today. She would cut Sally off completely, ruining any chance Sally had of luring Alan away from her. She would have to see this through, or start over with another couple.

  “There’s a room, over our garage. It used to be Peter’s office.”

  She grabbed the bottle of wine and her glass. She was going to need to be a little drunk, too, to get through this. Then again, who was less attractive in the large scheme of things, Alan or Lynette? Who would be more grateful, more giving? Who would be more easily controlled? She was about to find out.

  *

  Lynette may not have been in love when she blurted out that sentiment in Sally’s kitchen, but she was within a week. Lynette being Lynette, it was a loud, unsubtle love, both behind closed doors and out in public, and Sally had to chide her about the latter, school her in the basics of covert behavior, remind her not to stare with those cow-like eyes, or try to monopolize Sally at public events, especially when Alan was present. They dropped their children at school at 8:30 and Lynette showed up at Sally’s house promptly at 8:45, bearing skim milk lattes and scones. Lynette’s idea of the perfect day, as it turned out, was to share a quick latte upon arriving, then bury her head between Sally’s legs until 11 a.m., when she surfaced for the Hot Topics segment on The View. Then it was back to devouring Sally, with time-outs for back rubs and baths. Sally’s large, eager mouth turned out to have its uses. Plus, she asked for only the most token attention in return, which Sally provided largely through a hand-held massage tool from the Sharper Image.

  Best of all, Lynette insisted that as much as she loved Sally, she could never, ever leave Alan, not until the children were grown and out of school. She warned Sally of this repeatedly, and Sally would nod sadly, resignedly. “I’ll settle for the little bit I can have,” she said, stroking Lynette’s Prince Valiant bob.

  “If Alan ever finds out—” Lynette said glumly.

  “He won’t,” Sally assured her. “Not if we’re careful. There. No—there.” Just as her attention drifted away in conversation, she found it drifting now, floating toward an idea, only to be distracted by Lynette’s insistent touch. Later. She would figure everything out later.

  *

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Sally told Lynette at the beginning of their third week together, during one of the commercial breaks on The View. “Peter found out about us.”

  “Ohmigod!” Lynette said. “How?”

  “I’m not sure. But he knows. He knows everything. He’s threatening to take the children away from me.”

  “Ohmigod.”

  “And—” She turned her face to the side, not trusting herself to tell this part. “And he’s threatening to go to Alan.”

  “Shit.” In her panic, Lynette got up and began putting on her clothes, as if Peter and Alan were outside the door at this very moment.

  “He hasn’t yet,” Sally said quickly. “But he will, if I fight the change in the custody order. He’s given me a week to decide. I give up the children or he goes to Alan.”

  “You can’t tell. You can’t.”

  “I don’t want to, but—how can I give up my children?”

  Lynette understood, as only another mother could. They couldn’t tell the truth, but she couldn’t expect Sally to live with the consequences of keeping the secret. Lynette would keep her life while Sally would lose hers. No woman could make peace with such blatant unfairness.

  “Would he really do this?”

  “He would. Peter—he’s not the nice man everyone thinks he is. Why do you think we got divorced? And the thing is, if he gets the kids—well, it was one thing for him to do the things he did to me. But if ever treated Molly or Sam that way…”

  “What way?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. But if it should happen—I’d have to kill him.”

&nbs
p; “The pervert.” Lynette was at once repelled and fascinated. The dark side of Sally’s life was proving as seductive to her as Sally had been.

  “I know. If he had done what he did to a stranger, he’d be in prison for life. But in a marriage, such things are legal. I’m stuck, Lynette. I won’t ruin your life for anything. You told me from the first that this had to be a secret.”

  “There has to be a way…”

  “There isn’t. Not as long as Peter is a free man.”

  “Not as long as he’s alive.”

  “You can’t mean—”

  Lynette put a finger to Sally’s lips. These had been the hardest moments to fake, the face-to-face encounters. Kissing was the worst. But it was essential not to flinch, not to let her distaste show. She was so close to getting what she wanted.

  “Trust me,” Lynette said.

  Sally wanted to. But she had to be sure of one thing. “Don’t try to hire someone. It seems like every time someone like us tries to find someone, it’s always an undercover cop. Remember Ruth Ann Aron.” A politician from the Maryland suburbs, she had done just that. But her husband had forgiven her, even testified on her behalf during the trial. She had been found guilty anyway.

  “Trust me,” Lynette repeated.

  “I do, sweetheart. I absolutely do.”

  *

  Dr. Peter Holt was hit by a Jeep Cherokee, an Eddie Bauer limited edition, as he crossed Connecticut Avenue on his way to Fancy Japanese Restaurant, a place where he ate lobster pad thai every Thursday evening. The driver told police that her children had been bickering in the backseat over what to watch on the DVD player and she turned her head, just a moment, to scold them. Distracted, she had seen Holt and tried to stop, but hit the accelerator instead. Then, as her children screamed for real, she had driven another hundred yards in panic and hysteria. If the dermatologist wasn’t dead on impact, he was definitely dead when the SUV finally stopped. But the only substance in her blood was caffeine, and while it was a tragic, regrettable accident, it was clearly an accident. Really, investigators told Holt’s stunned survivors, his ex-wife and two children, it was surprising that such things didn’t happen more often, given the congestion in D.C., the unwieldy SUVs, the mothers’ frayed nerves, the nature of dusk, with its tricky gray-green light. It was a macabre coincidence, their children being classmates and all, the parents being superficial friends on the sidelines of their sons’ baseball games. But this part of D.C. was like a village unto itself, and the accident had happened only a mile from the school.

  At Peter’s memorial service, Lynette Mason sought a private moment with Sally Holt, and those who watched from a distance marveled at the bereaved woman’s composure and poise, the way she comforted her ex-husband’s killer. No one was close enough to hear what they said.

  “I’m sorry,” Lynette said. “It didn’t occur to me that after—well, I guess we can’t see each other anymore.”

  “No,” Sally lied. “It didn’t occur to me, either. You’ve sacrificed so much for me. For Molly and Sam, really. I’m in your debt, forever. It will always be our secret.”

  And she patted Lynette gently on the arm, the last time the two would ever touch.

  Peter’s estate went to the children—but in trust to Sally, of course. She determined that it would be in the children’s best interest to pay off the balloon mortgage in cash, and his brother, the executor, agreed. Peter would have wanted the children to have the safety and sanctity of home, given the emotional trauma they had endured.

  No longer needy, armored with a widow’s prerogatives, Sally found herself invited to parties again, where solicitous friends attempted to fix her up with the rare single men in their circles. Now that she didn’t care about men, they flocked around her and Sally did what she had always done. She listened and she laughed, she laughed and she listened, but she never really heard anything—unless the subject was money. Then she paid close attention, even writing down the advice she was given. The stock market was so turgid, everyone complained. The smart money was in real estate.

  Sally nodded.

  Den of Iniquity

  Lori L. Lake

  After she recognized Gordon Chasney, Ava Tanner spent weeks trying to figure out a way to kill him and get away with it. Shooting? Stabbing? Poisoning? Mow him down with her car? Her favorite method involved crushing him. She imagined him in a giant vise, screaming as bones cracked and blood spurted. The vision was so ruthless that she shuddered and felt nauseated even while she maintained a fascination for every murderous idea she teased into being.

  But murder would be too quick. What she really wanted was to hurt him, make his pain last, humiliate him the way he’d shamed and abused her. Most of all, she wanted to relish the fact that he’d know who she was and be aware, before the end, that he was paying for what he’d done.

  But she couldn’t think of a single way to accomplish this. He was well over six feet tall, built like a lumberjack, and had physical power and agility she could only dream of. Though only five-two, she possessed an unexpected wiry strength, but she knew her 125 pounds was no match for him.

  Ava had finally tabled her dreams of murder and brainstormed for another solution…which was why she broke into Gordon’s house. If you could call it breaking in when no breaking was involved. She was amazed at how casual he was about security. Her own doors were never left unlocked, and the windows in her small apartment didn’t open far enough to allow anyone over two years old to wriggle in. Not so at Gordon’s.

  She’d watched him off and on for weeks. One day, while he mowed the backyard, which was nicely secluded by tall hedges in which she was hidden, his mower ran out of gas. He walked off toward the gas station four blocks away, red can in hand. Ava waltzed right through the back door into Gordon’s unlocked kingdom.

  The house smelled of stale beer and burnt meat. On the stove, a pair of wizened bratwurst sausages surrounded by a heap of dead sauerkraut lay in a black frying pan, burnt almost beyond recognition. From the spatter around the pan, it was clear they’d been there a few days.

  Wrinkling her nose, Ava passed through the kitchen, then hastened through the living room and down a hallway where the smell wasn’t so strong. The crappy-brown shag rug cushioned her every step. Somebody had probably paid big money a couple of decades earlier to lay this expanse of carpet throughout the house.

  A pair of crooked shades blocked the morning sun, but she could still make out stray socks and little clumps of underwear here and there. What was it with him? Didn’t he see anything below knee level? Items on his dresser top—watch, pen, pocket change, penknife, checkbook—sat in orderly fashion, and in the bathroom, he’d lined up his shaving cream, razor, aftershave, deodorant, and toothbrush holder in a row on the counter. But she had seen dustballs scattered liberally throughout the house, and she nearly kicked over more than one empty beer can sitting next to furniture.

  The next room, instead of being a second bedroom, looked like a cross between a sportsman’s paradise and a home office. A den of iniquity, she thought. An eight-point deer head mounted on the wall was flanked by two fish so shiny they appeared to have just leapt out of a lake and suddenly found themselves attached to ovals of decorative wood.

  Gordon’s desk bulged. Paper, envelopes, old phone books, and other junk overloaded every drawer. A stack of receipts and a three-ring binder, obviously from the auto parts store where he was employed, were piled on the computer desk on top of random slips of paper and a handful of music CD jewel cases. The corner of a photo peeked out from under a pile. Ava hastily donned a pair of latex gloves she used when she changed toner in her printer and lifted the papers on top. Gordon had printed out a picture of a naked woman, her breasts pendulous and her private parts splayed open for all to see. Feeling queasy, Ava covered the photo, careful not to let any of the paper pile cascade to the floor.

  She forced herself to stop focusing on the stacks of junk and the wildlife rotting on the walls, and moved to the comp
uter, which she was delighted to find was humming away. One touch brought up the screen. Still standing, she opened a browser, typed in an address, downloaded and installed a program, and closed the browser.

  How long had she been inside? Ninety seconds? More? She calculated that it would take Gordon six or eight minutes round-trip to the gas station. To be on the safe side, she set her watch timer for three more minutes. She swiftly examined his computer applications and files.

  Within thirty seconds, she found his cache of dirty pictures. She didn’t bother to open the multitude of video files, but she clicked on the first in a series of photos. With a gasp, she plopped into the desk chair, feeling light-headed. There was no doubt—Gordon Chasney was the one. Shots of naked women and frightened-looking teenage girls—beaten, bound, and sexually used—made her so sick to her stomach that her breakfast rose up in her throat.

  “Not here, not now,” she said aloud, then looked around, shocked that she’d spoken. Even though she still had another minute, she’d seen enough. Now if she could only find his keys. She took a deep breath to center herself, closed the photo files, and hustled from the room.

  He made it easy for her. A key rack hung next to the front entryway. She hunted through all the dangling metal, searching for a key to the back door. She took his ring and several individual keys to the kitchen door and started fitting them in the lock. Voilà. Not only was there a backdoor key on his ring, but also a spare, which she tucked in her pocket.