My stomach churned.
“Sometimes I still do it.”
I wiggled my fingers. The tingling was subsiding. “Only clothes were the ones I got out of the collection bin. Grandpa would pick me up by the seat of my pants and just drop me in a bin.” “I’m sorry,” I said.
“I threw the stuff out, they took what they wanted. Wouldn’t spend money on nothing, although they had it.” He smirked. “Found it and took it with me when I left.”
“Raised rabbits and chickens for food. My job was killing them.” A trickle of blood escaped his line of bandages and he wiped at it. “Liked that…liked killing things.” His face twisted in a weird look of joy. “But I like killing women better. Women like my mother…bitches that tell me what to do.” “I’m not like your mother. You don’t want to kill me.”
“Guess I have to now.” Regret.
“No you don’t. You gave me flowers.”
“Like watching you,” he said shyly.
I shivered.
“Saw you out on the beach with that man.”
“What were you doing there?’
“Stayed. Wanted to watch you.”
“You were in the trees when I came up the drive.” He smiled at me again, his lips pulling back from crooked rotting teeth.
A small sound came from outside, nothing big, just a small clunk of metal against metal.
Chapter 76
Lester froze. His head swiveled to the stairs and he drew the gun out of his belt. Rising to his feet, he crept silently to the door.
“What’s wrong?” I asked loudly, hoping my voice would carry outside. “What’s the matter? Did you hear something, Lester?” I was shouting now.
“Shuddup,” he hissed, turning on me. My courage failed. There was a small window in the door. He looked out from all angles, searching for the source of the noise, and then he moved quickly to the other end of the room and searched out the window over the laundry tub.
“Maybe the Havertys came home,” I suggested
His body relaxed a little and he lowered the gun.
“Yeah,” he said but he stayed at the window watching.
“May I have that glass of water?”
He hesitated, uncertain and wary.
“Please, Lester.”
He turned on the tap. The tap sputtered and spit out water, the noise from the clanging pipes making enough racket to hide an army on the stairs. He filled the blue plastic top to a thermos bottle with water and brought it to me.
As he put the cup to my lips, drops of his blood fell into the water. Lester saw them fall and laughed.
I tried to close my mouth against the polluted flow but Lester reached out and pinched my nose. “Drink it,” Lester ordered. “Drink it.”
Rusty tepid water flooded my mouth, poured around the edges and down over the front of me. Lester laughed harder. I was choking now, gulping for air then closing my lips against the rushing water, fighting him.
Something hit the tin roof. Lester dropped the cup and looked up.
Chapter 77
I spit out the putrid liquid.
“A bird,” he said but he kept looking at the roof. “One of those damn herons.”
He looked back at me. Grinning, he reached for me. My head shot forward and I vomited onto my lap. Lester backed away. Vomit filled my nose. My stomach heaved again and then I turned my head and wiped my mouth on my shoulder, my throat on fire from the corrosive bile.
“Maybe we should go,” Lester said. He canted his head to one side, thinking it through.
“Leave me here, just like this,” I begged. “It will be okay. You can go away. I can’t hurt you.” “They don’t know you’re with me, do they?” he asked. I shook my head and croaked out, “No.” “We could drive right on by in your little car, right by my wreck. They’d never know the difference. Never know it’s us.” “Please, Lester. Leave me here . I’ll slow you down.”
He picked up the gun off the table and went to the window in the door.
“Looks all right,” Lester said.
He came back to me and pulled me to my feet by the upper arms. My shoulders screamed in pain as Lester pushed me ahead of him towards the door.
“Wait,” he said when I got to the door.
He pushed me up against the wall and fought the door open, gun raised in his right hand. He looked around the door jamb. He leaned out farther.
Fear helped, terror too. I raised my right leg and kicked him square in the center of his back.
He screamed as he shot off the small landing and out into space.
But what if he wasn’t dead? What would I do if he came back for me? I used my body to slam the door shut and slid down to the floor, bracing my body back against the door.
But he wasn’t coming back. Below me was hollering and shouting. Cops identified themselves and gave orders. I sat with my legs splayed out in front of me and listened.
Seconds later there was a banging on the door. “Sherri,” Styles called, “are you all right?”
I scrabbled away from the door on my behind, crying too hard to answer him.
Styles came through the door with a gun in his hand. Then he saw me on the floor. “Thank God,” he said. He opened his jacket and shoved the gun in under his arm. “What kept you?” I wailed.
Styles knelt down beside me and took me in his arms.
Chapter 78
Thanksgiving was over. Christmas came and went…New Year’s too, but the festivities hadn’t lightened my fears, hadn’t shielded me from panic if darkness came and Clay wasn’t home. Time and celebrations hadn’t stopped me from needing human company every hour of the day and night. And there were new nightmares among those of being lost, of wind and the rain pounding and blood dripping into water. Nightmares of being tied and helpless while huge, peeling hands reached for me.
The carpenters, electricians and a dozen other trades had moved in and out of the Sunset. It smelled of new paint and carpet but I missed that rich smell of perfume and old leather. That would never come back but the Sunset was pretty much its old self thanks to Clay, and outside a huge banner across the front announced the re-opening date coming in three days’ time. And it was ours. Well, ours and the bank’s. If debt was a measure of wealth, I was a very rich woman.
I stood in the dark of the restaurant looking out past the speeding cars to the beach and the gulf beyond to where the last vivid rays of the sun slowly faded. Reds and oranges: blood and pain.
Clay came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, planting a kiss on my cheek. “Well, what do you think?” “It looks the same,” I told him, “but it isn’t.” He bent to put his cheek along mine. “ Give it time.” He rocked me gently. “When people come back and start telling you all their problems, when you start eavesdropping…” I turned to him. “What are you talking about?” “You can’t lie to me, Travis, you’ve got beer jugs for ears. You listen in on every conversation and you know everything that’s going on in this town.” He tapped the end of my nose with his finger. “You like knowing.” He wrapped me back in his arms. “All that will come back and when all your friends are going in and out, it’ll feel like home again.”
Home. Home is where the love is. He was right about one thing: the Sunset had always felt like home to me.
But I was still anxious. “I worry about what I’ve got you into, all the money. What if I can’t run this place?”
“You’ve been running this place for years no matter whose name was on the lease. You’re just a naturally bossy woman.” I tried to turn on him but he held me tight.
“Don’t worry.” He kissed my neck. “This place will be fine. You’re going to be fine too.”
I snorted my disgust. “I can’t sleep and I’m still afraid. That’s fine?” “Give it time.”
“What if that fear never goes away?
What if I always have these nightmares?”
“Then we’ll learn to live with it.”
Someone pounded on the door. “Shit,” Clay said, “can’t people read?” He released me and went out to the foyer.
I turned back to the dying sun. “But how do you learn to live with fear?” I whispered to my reflection in the darkening glass. Over the horizon the sun gave off one last flash of crimson, fighting against the night.
The sound of Styles’ voice pulled me away from my dark thoughts. The old neat, buttoned-up Styles entered the dining room, all weakness and uncertainty gone. Crisp and well groomed, his even features showed nothing but quiet confidence.
We went to the bar and did the small talk thing, and then Styles said, “I really came to tell you that Cathers wrote you a letter.”
A punch in the gut. “I don’t want it.” I didn’t want Lester reaching out to me in any way, didn’t want any connection. “Burn it.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t bring it. The district attorney is keeping it for evidence. Cathers was his grandparents’ name, the name he used in New York State. He used his mother’s name in North Carolina. That’s why we didn’t have him on the list of suspects.”
“Why did he write to me?”
“Guess he wanted to explain to someone. Like it or not he feels some link to you.” “That’s what scares me.”
“I know,” he said, his voice quiet.
I fought back the terror. “You read the letter?” “Sure. That’s how it is. We open outgoing mail.” His mouth turned up. “Remember that if you’re ever arrested.”
Given our past history Styles probably expected me to need this piece of advice.
“The sick bastard wouldn’t say boo to us but he spilled his guts to you. Seems there were other women he’s killed. We’ll find them. And we’ll use this letter as evidence to convict him. It’s a watertight confession.”
I shivered and wrapped my arms around my chest. “He’ll think I betrayed him.” Clay slipped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me tight against his side.
“Don’t worry,” Styles said. “He’ll likely be executed. At the very least he’ll get life but one thing’s for certain, he’s never going to get out, never going to get close to you again.”
“They do get out…murderers I mean. You read about it all the time.”
Clay’s hand tightened on my shoulder.
Styles leaned forward. “It’s not going to happen. And if it did, if by some fluke he got out, he’s never going to get near you. He’s a dead man. Promise.”
Styles meant it. Tears welled up in my eyes. I gave him a little nod, the best I could manage. I’d be as safe as anyone could hope to be. The fear thing was something I was just going to have to learn to handle. “Let’s have a drink,” I said.
THE END
Sex in a Sidecar Page 25
