by Nick James
“Maybe,” she said reaching for the wine bottle and refilling both their glasses. “It would be a good idea to work up a little appetite, come on.”
She took Bobby by the hand and led him upstairs to her bedroom. She set her wineglass on one of the end tables next to the bed, lit the candle on the end table and two more on the dresser opposite the four-poster bed.
She raised her hands over her head, grabbed the bed post behind her, leered and said, “Let’s get started.”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
It was sometime after noon, Bobby wasn’t sure exactly what the time was and he really didn’t care. They were sitting in the Jacuzzi in the bathroom just off Emily’s bedroom. The pumps were rumbling and bubbles from the bottle of bubble bath Emily had dumped in were flowing over the side of the porcelain tub and onto the tile floor. The walls were all mirrored so no matter where he looked he would see Emily. Bobby was resting, leaning back in the tub on an aircushion with his eyes closed. Emily sat facing him, with her feet in his lap, actively working on Bobby.
“Do you think I’m a nympho?” she casually asked then sipped from her champagne flute.
Bobby didn’t open his eyes, but focused on her feet gently caressing him, she had extremely talented feet. “I think you have an incredibly large sexual appetite, you are clearly uninhibited and gorgeous to boot.”
“But not a nympho?” she sounded disappointed.
“Do you want to be a nympho?” he asked, sensing her disappointment.
“Umm-hmmm.”
“Then you are one, in fact you are the craziest, wildest nympho I’ve ever met.”
That brought an immediate smile to her face and she set the champagne flute on the edge of the Jacuzzi then crawled toward him running her tongue over her lips.
* * *
“Feel like a little ride?” Emily asked.
Bobby took a large bite of his chicken sandwich and signaled to wait just a moment while he chewed and then swallowed, buying time. All the while he was thinking that she really was a nymphomaniac, not to mention stark raving mad.
“Maybe give me another thirty minutes or so to recover and then I’ll be able to…”
“No dopey, not that, although I really wouldn’t mind if you wanted to go another round. Actually, I was thinking we could hop on the ATV’s, that kind of ride. I’ll give you a little tour of the property and we can see some of the sights.”
“Yeah, that sounds great. In fact I’d really like it.”
Fifteen minutes later Bobby was topping off the gas tanks in the two ATV’s. They were in one of the outbuildings, a large garage actually with the ATV’s, an old pick-up truck, a table saw, a work bench covered with tools, two snow blowers, a snow plow and all sorts of shovels and rakes hanging on the wall.
He’d made a mental note that Emily didn’t bother to lock the cabin door when they left and that the outbuildings hadn’t been locked either. They fired up the ATV’s and with Emily in the lead headed down a little trail that Bobby hadn’t noticed when he drove in yesterday.
The trail led them on a winding tour through the forest that lasted the better part of two hours. She stopped at a little waterfall, drove along the edge of a private lake, forded three streams, and stopped on top of a hill where they could view Lake Superior in the distance and a cellphone tower in the opposite direction. Then she wound their way through the woods where it appeared a human being seldom ventured. Bobby came away with the thought that he’d found the perfect place to hide a body, or quite possibly two.
That evening he prepared steaks on the grill for the two of them and kept Emily’s wineglass full in the hope that she’d pass out and he could get a decent night’s sleep. She did pass out, eventually, although not before she attacked him for close to two hours. Every time he thought she’d fallen asleep she seemed to wake from the dead with a new perversion in mind.
Once she was finally out he rummaged through her dresser drawers and then went through every cupboard and drawer downstairs in the kitchen looking for a spare set of keys. He thought about taking Emily’s keys and getting copies made, but he had no idea where he would get that done in the middle of the woods, and even if he did find some place still open he wasn’t sure he could ever find his way back in the dark. He did note that there didn’t seem to be an alarm system anywhere.
He took his time searching through the other bedrooms on the second floor but didn’t find anything of interest. He wandered downstairs again and poked around, eventually ending up in the small study back by the screen porch. He found nothing on the bookshelves other than books. The desk held pens, pencils and a five dollar bill which Bobby pocketed just before he spotted a key ring labeled “Spare Keys.” He tested the key in the front door lock, just to be sure it worked, then tucked the keys next to the five dollar bill in his pocket.
There was a small wooden, two-drawer file cabinet in the study that held paid utility bills, real estate tax information, a notice from the state DNR regarding hunting season from three years ago, and then way in the back behind the files, three pistols and a box of shells. Bobby examined the smallest pistol, a five shot .38 caliber and his plan suddenly came together.
Chapter Seventy
He was in the kitchen on his second cup of coffee, paging through a year-old National Geographic, when he heard Emily upstairs. She appeared in the kitchen doorway twenty minutes later wearing the T-shirt Bobby had left on the bedroom floor and looking a little worse for the wear.
“Pour me a cup of coffee, baby, black, while I try to find the aspirin. God, my head is killing me,” she groaned.
Bobby poured her coffee and set a faded mug labeled Minnesota North Stars on the counter next to her while she pawed through the contents of a cabinet.
“You’d think we’d have some fucking aspirin, Jesus my head feels like it’s going to explode.”
He watched her throw an Excedrin bottle onto the kitchen counter as she continued to rant. “Damn it, all sorts of junk for sore backs, appetite suppressants and having the shits. I just have a pounding hangover.” Her voice had gone up an octave or two as she continued to throw plastic containers out of the cabinet, bouncing them off the granite countertop.
Bobby stepped up behind her, placed both hands on her breasts and squeezed, applying more and more pressure until she slowed down. He reached across the counter next to the toaster where she’d thrown the Excedrin bottle and opened it up. “Here, take two of these with your coffee while I get you some juice.”
“How did I miss these?” she said then tossed the tablets into her mouth and reached for Bobby’s coffee, “Oh, God, come on, please start to work.”
He set a bottle of orange juice on the counter, filled a tall glass then spooned in two heaping spoonfuls of sugar.
“What the…”
“Trust me, bad girl, this will go a long way toward fixing that headache. Let me cook you some breakfast and…”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Once we get some food in you things will start to improve.” He pulled two frying pans out of a drawer and set them on the stove, then placed strips of bacon on one and adjusted the burner. He cracked eight eggs into a bowl, sliced up some red pepper, black olives and basil and dumped them into the egg bowl as well, then whisked the mixture for a half minute before he dumped everything into the frying pan. The mixture sizzled as it hit the hot pan.
Emily sat quietly at the counter and sipped her juice.
“Make sure you finish that orange juice. Right now your body is craving that sugar and it will go a long way toward ending your hangover.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m starting to crave right now,” she said and raised her eyebrows.
“Maybe after your breakfast, if you’re a member of the clean plate club.”
“Sorry I was so bitchy earlier,” Emily said once they’d finished the meal. Then she got up and carried their plates over to the dishwasher.
“How’s the head?”
“Ab
out a thousand times better. Thanks for putting up with me.”
“Don’t worry about it, my pleasure.”
“You know what I think might really help right about now?” she smiled.
Chapter Seventy-One
Bobby sat in front of the living room fireplace with his feet up on the coffee table sipping a bourbon and enjoying the solitude. No one wanted to be tied to the bed, use the floor, do it on the kitchen counter or watch Father of the Bride on Netflix. Emily had proven herself to be an uninhibited, sexually deranged, warped individual who could very well become a valuable asset.
They had left the “House of Pain,” his name for her cabin, not more than a half hour apart. He’d headed north, the opposite direction from home and made a U-turn maybe a mile up the road then pulled onto the shoulder just within sight of the county road and waited until he saw her car turn onto Highway 61 and head south back toward St. Paul.
He waited another ten minutes then drove south to the town of Silver Bay, where he had copies made of the set of spare keys and then drove back to the cabin. This time the cabin was locked, but the new keys opened it without a problem. He put the spare keys’ back in the desk drawer and took the .38 and the box of rounds from the file cabinet. On his way out the door he grabbed what he thought were the four best bottles of wine from the rack and rearranged the remaining bottles to hide the fact.
The three outbuildings were locked as well, but again the new keys opened them without a problem. He was still fifty miles from home when the first text message came through on his phone. There were a total of three messages waiting for him by the time he’d pulled into the underground parking at his condo. He turned off the car and pulled out his phone.
The first message read, ‘Thank you for a wonderful time, fancy a little get-together later tonight?’
The second message read, ‘Starting without you…’
“The third message read, ‘Your loss, call me…’
Certifiable, he thought, and decided not to respond until the morning. He sipped some more bourbon, reached for the Sunday paper he’d purchased on the way home and smiled. The paper was open to the obituary section and there it was, third from the top in bold black letters. A warm feeling washed over him as he reread the announcement he’d been waiting for.
Amato, Vincent, aged forty-six years, died unexpectedly. Survived by his sister, Angelica Benedict (Dennis), brother Thomas. Preceded in death by parents…
“Unexpectedly.” Bobby thought, chuckled to himself and took another sip.
He remembered Emily telling him about Angie and Dennis, “We were sort of an item, Dennis and me, well, until he dumped me for her.” Small world.
There was a visitation Monday evening with the funeral scheduled for Tuesday morning downtown at Saint John Bosco Catholic Church. The burial would be out at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. He glanced at the .38 laying next to the box of shells on the coffee table. The fun had only just begun.
Chapter Seventy-Two
A number of the paralegals had taken Tuesday morning off to attend Angie’s brother’s funeral. Bobby made a point of letting Bennett Hinz know he was working that morning, all morning.
The actual internment had been listed in the paper as private. Bobby phoned the Willwerscheid Funeral Home on the pretext of wanting to send flowers to the gravesite and learned that the service had been scheduled for 3:30 Wednesday afternoon, the day after the funeral. Bobby was there in the cemetery waiting, but from a distance.
In fact, he was so far away from the small gathering that he was using a pair of binoculars to focus in on the group. Including the priest there were barely a dozen individuals, surrounded by acres and acres of white government headstones all in perfect alignment. Angie, looking just a little worse for the wear, was still attractive in black; her husband Dennis didn’t seem to be in attendance. To the left of Angie stood her only remaining sibling, her brother Tommy. Bobby recognized him from the night Angie and her two brothers paid him a visit, Tommy was one who’d spit on the wall in the condo.
This afternoon he was dressed in a white shirt, dark tie and a black suit that looked like it had been purchased for the occasion. He seemed to be unaccompanied, no one holding his arm or leaning in close. He glanced around once or twice, not nervously, but possibly checking things out. Was he thinking maybe he might be next? Bobby would have to be careful.
The graveside service was short, no more than ten minutes. Bobby watched for a moment as handshakes and hugs were quickly exchanged and then everyone hurried to their cars. Bobby did the same and followed them out at a discrete distance.
Tommy drove back into the city in a grey Nissan, took a left at the second stoplight and then another left just two blocks later. He entered a neighborhood of post-World War II ramblers, drove another block then pulled to the curb. Just as Tommy opened the driver’s door Bobby drove past then watched him in the rearview mirror as he walked up the sidewalk, climbed the three concrete steps and fumbled for the key to the front door. Bobby went around the block and drove past again to get the address and the license number of Tommy’s car.
He was there, a half block down from Tommy’s house the following morning just before six, sitting in his car waiting, watching. Tommy left his house about an hour and a half later, glancing up and down the street before he got in his car and drove to a small storefront on West Seventh. The sign over the door had the innocuous name of St. Paul Supply. Bobby drove past the place again at noon. Tommy’s Nissan was the only vehicle parked in front of the place.
He drove past later that same evening on his way home. Tommy’s car was gone, a sign in the window next to the door listed the business hours as 8-5, Monday through Friday. Peering in the window gave Bobby no indication as to what it was the company actually supplied.
* * *
It was just after nine Thursday night when Bobby’s phone rang.
“Missing me?” Emily said when he answered.
“Who is this?” he joked.
“Shut up. I’m back up here and all alone, wondered if you’d consider keeping a girl warm tonight.” Her speech suggested she was somewhere past her first bottle of wine.
“Believe me, I’d love to keep you warm and do a lot of other things to you as well, but I’ve got to meet with clients tomorrow morning. Besides, isn’t your mother up there with you?”
“She left for home this morning, apparently too many memories and she doesn’t like to drive at night.” From the sound she made he guessed she took a healthy sip of whatever she was drinking. “I may just have to find an alternative then if you can’t get up here tonight,” she said and giggled.
“Let’s see, if I leave right now I could be there just before two in the morning.”
“Really?”
“No, I’d end up in some ditch before I made it halfway.” Suddenly what sounded like noise from a small, battery-operated toy came across the line. Bobby shook his head, she was indeed certifiable.
“Too bad you can’t watch, want to listen?”
“Tell you what, Emily don’t let me interrupt, why not get some sleep and come down to the city tomorrow. I’d love to cook you dinner.”
“Hmm-mmm, interesting offer. Okay, if you insist, what time?”
“I’ll see you around seven if that’s okay?”
“Better rest up, lover boy,” she said. Then the revving sound of the toy came across the line and she hung up.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Bobby was sitting behind the wheel again a little before six in the morning waiting. Only this time he was parked down the street from Angie’s apartment. He could see her cream-colored Kia parked on the street. It had a white oval sticker with a black capital ‘I’ signifying Italy stuck on the rear door. About a half hour later a man came out of the building carrying a small suitcase and hurried to the car. He tossed the suitcase in the back seat, climbed into the Kia and waited. Her husband Dennis, Bobby presumed. He proceeded to watch him drumming his finger
s on the steering wheel while he waited a good five minutes before he climbed out of the car stared at the building for a long moment, shook his head and hurried back inside.
Ten minutes after that the door to the building opened and Dennis half ran to the car. Angie followed behind him, taking her time and not looking very happy. Bobby couldn’t hear, but they were clearly exchanging words as he held the car door open for her.
She stopped for a moment in front of the open door and said something. Her body language suggested an attack mode. Eventually, she climbed into the passenger seat. He slammed the door and hurried around to the driver’s side. They sped past a moment later. Dennis was looking straight ahead as he accelerated down the street. Angie appeared none too happy as she applied makeup using the rear view mirror with her mouth going a mile a minute.
* * *
Bobby stopped at Regions Hospital to see Noah Denton. He visualized pressing a pillow over Denton’s face until he stopped breathing and wondered if he could place the pillow behind Denton’s head and make it back to the visitor’s chair before a nurse came in. He replayed the scene in his head over and over until he found himself standing outside the door to Denton’s room. The red card was still placed on the doorframe as a warning to all who entered.
Bobby quietly pushed the door open, hoping to find Denton asleep. He was sorely disappointed.
“Oh, Christ,” Denton growled. He was standing at the end of the bed with the aid of a metal walker, dressed in a blue hospital gown and white support stockings that rose up well above his knees. “I really haven’t got time right now, Custer.”
I’d love to push you down the nearest flight of stairs, Bobby said to himself and the thought brought a smile to his face. “Great to see you up and about, Mr. Denton. Tremendous progress,” he said and glanced around the room, still not so much as a daisy or a card from anyone. He noticed Denton was off the IVs, and he chalked it up to another opportunity missed.
