9
N INA PICKED UP A SANDWICH in Meyers at the deli and ate it while driving, wondering how long a long Monday could last. A margarita might have temporarily eased her own misery, but that would only lead to more trouble, so she settled for a V8. Although Dr. Mai’s reaction had not been entirely unexpected, his vehemence unsettled her. To prep herself for her next appointment with the girls from the campground, she turned into the Starlake Building parking lot, mentally rehashing the meeting she had hosted in her office with Brandy and Angel four days before, on Thursday.
The two women had shown up at Nina’s office for an emergency appointment late in the afternoon. Although they refused to say why they needed to see her so hastily, Sandy squeezed them in before leaving to run an errand. “The girl that called sounded scared. Terrified.”
“An abusive husband?” Nina asked. Sad that that would be her first thought, but experience taught unhappy lessons.
“I don’t think so.”
One wore her peroxided hair short in rough layers, the other had swinging shoulder-length brown hair, but Nina needed only one look at their wide gray eyes. “You’re sisters,” she said, rising to greet them.
“Angelica Guillaume and Brandy Taylor,” the blond said, shaking her hand. “Call us Angel and Brandy. Thanks for seeing us on such short notice.”
They flopped into the orange client chairs, but Nina could see their casual ease was a pose. The muscles in their identically wiry legs remained tense, as if ready to propel them right back out the door. To give them a minute to orient themselves and calm down, Nina waited while they commented on her view of Lake Tahoe and admired the Washoe baskets on the wall. Nina quickly figured out that the blond, Angel, acted as leader. Twenty-three to Brandy’s nineteen, she wore a hip-hugging skirt and a tiny black cotton shirt that stopped just below the rib cage. Her face was in sharp focus: red lips, each lash carefully highlighted with mascara. Brandy, considerably taller and vaguer, wore a cotton floral skirt and loose sweater. She drooped behind her sister.
“What can I do for you?” Nina asked.
“Brandy saw a murderer,” Angel said.
Nina pulled out the legal pad. She took notes while they told their story in fits and starts with constant sisterly interruptions. The trouble had started right before Labor Day weekend, the week before.
“Brandy. You can’t just leave Bruce and run away to our house every time you have a fight,” Angel’s husband, Sam, said. “If you’re going to marry the guy, you’ve got to learn to work things out-”
“This wasn’t a fight. It’s over.”
The phone rang, Bruce again. Sam wanted to talk to him but Brandy snatched the phone away, slamming it into the cradle. “This is none of your business!”
“Like hell it isn’t!”
At that point, baby Jimmy and two-year-old Kimberly began to bawl. Sam, heading for the bathroom, the Tahoe cabin’s only refuge, tripped on a bag of groceries and let loose with a string of shouted curses. The children cried louder.
Angel turned off the kitchen faucet and saved the day, bustling in and plopping the kids in front of cartoons with crackers.
“We haven’t had a minute to talk, Angel,” Brandy complained. “I have nowhere else to go. I’m sorry if I’m getting on Sam’s nerves, but I’m hurting!”
“Don’t worry about Sam. He likes you, but he gets cranky when we’re all crammed in here like this. Listen, Bran, let’s do like we used to when Mom and Dad got weird on us,” Angel said. “Let’s split. It’s a long weekend. Just give me an hour to arrange the kids and someone to cover me at the salon.”
Unfortunately, by the time they had located two musty sleeping bags and properly provisioned themselves with graham crackers, chocolate, wine, marshmallows, and sweet rolls from Raley’s, the campgrounds at Richardson’s, D. L. Bliss State Park, and Nevada Beach were full. The ranger advised them to try the Campground by the Lake, right smack in the middle of South Lake Tahoe.
“Damn,” Brandy said. “Why didn’t we think of this? It’s Labor Day weekend, the worst time in the world for camping. We’re stuck in the center of town-unless you want to drive some more?”
“We’re not likely to find any vacancies for miles around here and it’s actually a really nice campground. Let’s see if we can find something. I’m sick of driving around and we still have to put the tent up.”
They amused themselves surfing the radio until they got to the campground at the corner of Rufus Allen Boulevard and Highway 50, finding it also full. “Let’s take a look anyway,” Angel said.
“Oh, forget it. It’s getting so late. Let’s just go back to your place and try again in the morning. Shoot. Sam’s going to hate it if we come back tonight. Did you see what he did when we drove away?”
“He has got a silly way of waving good-bye.”
“That was his victory salute, Angel.”
“He’s just kidding. He loves me madly,” Angel said. “I’m so hot he couldn’t do anything else. Watch this.” She leaned out the car window and gave the ranger on duty at the entrance a sexy smile and a long look down the front of her tank top and they were through the gate without paying the day-use fee in about a second, giggling like when they were kids.
Sure enough, around a bend toward the back, they found a family of five pulling up stakes on a large dome tent. “Ze miracle she is arrived,” Angel told Brandy, then, out the car window, “You leaving?”
“Sure are,” said the wife, tossing a picnic blanket and cooler into the back of an old blue minivan. The kids were stuffing bags of chips and cookies into brown bags, handing them off like a bucket brigade toward the car.
“Any chance we could grab your spot?”
The wife laughed. “Believe me, you don’t want it.”
Angel put the car into park. She and Brandy both got out of the car and approached. “Why not? Is it haunted or something?”
“You could say that.” She jogged her head in the direction of the next camp over. “Coupla lowlife rowdies.”
“They come over here and cause you any trouble?” Brandy asked.
“No. Nothing like that. Drinking, carousing. Using foul language. People like that are trouble, just being alive.”
Brandy reached into her purse. “Here,” she said. “Here’s thirty bucks for your campsite. You already paid, right?”
The woman’s face brightened. “Yes, we did. Only for the one night. But not this much.”
“We’d be so grateful if you’d just let us camp here tonight.”
“Just so you know what you’re getting into. You’ve been warned.”
While setting up the tent and bags, they had a good laugh over old farts who couldn’t take a joke or a little profanity now and then. Luckily, setting up the tent turned out to be a snap. They saw no sign of the so-called troublesome neighbors and decided the people in the orange tent next to them must have zoned out early.
By ten o’clock, they had a fire crackling, had stuffed themselves full of sweet goodies, and started in on the wine. So fun! Trees and stars surrounding them like comforters, and all of it totally safe, just like summers at camp.
“I hate drinking wine after I eat. You waste the full effect,” Brandy said. “Harder to get to that pleasantly blurry, sentimental stage.”
“Hasn’t stopped you. You have definitely reached that place.”
Brandy leaned back against a log and twisted her hair into a bun in back. “What a relief to be somewhere quiet. You know I love your kids,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle, “but it’s nice to get away.”
Angel took the bottle. “I’ll drink any chance I get, mainly because I never get any. Two kids put a crimp in your style. You have to be a grown-up all the time.”
“Hey, next week’s sign for the salon! Don’t put a crimp in your style!”
“I like it. Maybe you should try to get a job with that advertising agency you worked at while you were at college-”
“Out of business. I ca
lled before I left Bruce.”
“Ah, and so we arrive at the night’s topic,” Angel said. “Why you left. What happened? He’s got another girl?”
“Nope.”
“You’ve got another guy?”
“I never!”
“He works too much?”
“I don’t mind that. He’s trying to gather a nest egg for both our sakes.”
“Mom’s driving you nuts with wedding plans?”
“Yes, but no.”
“So tell, before I slap you silly out of frustration.”
“I went off sex.”
“What?”
“I can’t make love with him anymore,” Brandy said. “So how can I marry him?”
“Criminy, Bran. This is serious. Is he kinky? Does he want you to wear rubber strappies and a head thing with studs or something?”
“No. He’s a little-old-fashioned. That’s one big reason I fell in love with him, you know? It’s simple with him. Roses, candles, naked bodies, beautiful music. All the love you want when you want it. You know, Angel, he’s my real love. That’s why this is so hard.”
“Well?”
“Let’s just say it’s me.”
“Did you see a doctor?” Angel asked, really concerned. “Maybe you could take testosterone shots or something. I’ve heard they make you horny.”
“You’re the geezer. You’re closer to running out of hormones than me.”
The flap over the door to the tent came loose in the wind and Angel got up to tie it back down. “Here I come out in the night and I’m forced to drink wine and eat chocolate and listen to insults from my punk sister. Life so sucks.” She walked back over to throw a log on the fire just as two faces peered out from inside the orange tent about fifty feet away-a yawning girl with long black hair and a man, unshaven and ragged-haired but a muscular hunk nevertheless. He said, “Get a fire going, woman,” but in an affectionate, relaxed voice.
Brandy and Angel broke chunks of chocolate off their Ghirardelli bar as they watched the girl next door pile sticks haphazardly into the fire pit. She saw them watching and gave them a wave. They waved back. She started to sing. “She sounds like a sick cat,” Angel decided after they had a chance to listen for a few seconds.
“I did see a doctor a few weeks ago,” Brandy said a few minutes later. “A head doctor. He was such a dork. I felt like he didn’t take me seriously.”
“Bran, don’t you love Bruce anymore?”
The wine hit, or something, because Brandy started crying then, big jagged sobs. “That’s what really stinks. I love him as much as ever. I just don’t want him to, like, touch me.”
“Have you told him?”
“Are you kidding! I can’t hurt him like that!”
“Aw, Bran, go on, cry awhile. Here, have some more wine.” And that was about it, Brandy polishing off the rest of the bottle and crying and saying she loved Bruce, who must be a quickie Dickie, that was Angel’s instant speculation, but she was going to wait awhile to tell Brandy.
They went to bed shortly after, just as the fire next door got hot. After another half hour or so, loud music started up at the next site over. They peeked out, seeing a boom box and two floppy figures dancing by the fire.
“How nice for them,” Brandy groused, “but isn’t the routine you dance first, then crawl into a sleeping bag together?”
“Oh, ease up. It’s amore.”
Campers from across the way got involved at this point, telling the couple to please turn the music down. They did, and a temporary hush descended upon the campground. Then a motorcycle with an engine like a 747 pulled up. The biker joined the couple. The music went up again, as did, after some time, the voices. Back and forth, something about money paid out, money owed, money not paid out, love and sex and other personal realms. Angel and Brandy listened avidly. Other campers complained again, but gave up when the boisterous campers ignored them. After a good half hour of arguing, a fistfight started between the biker and the camper guy.
“You goddamn lying, cheating, scum-sucking piece of-” Thwack.
“Where do you get off coming here with an attitude like that? Phoebe chose me, Cody, not you. C’mon, baby.”
“Phoebe’s been two-timing them,” Brandy guessed. “I think the one who spent the evening tucked into the tent with her is named Mario.”
The thunk of a fist contacting skin was followed by a shoving match.
“Round Two, I guess,” Angel said wearily. “Well, we were warned. Should we do something? Get the ranger?”
“A hundred people are listening to this. Someone else will get him eventually.”
They sneaked a look through the netting, hiding in toward the edges.
“She looks scared,” Angel said. “You know what? I don’t like the way this looks at all. We should do something.”
The studly camper, Mario, shoved by Cody, the biker with long hair, landed against their tent, almost crushing Brandy’s leg. “That’s it,” Brandy said, as he lurched back to the fray. “I’m going for the ranger!”
“They’ll see you,” Angel said. “I don’t want them to know anything about us. Use your mobile phone and call.”
Brandy dug around in her bag while the fistfight escalated into a free-for-all just a few feet from their tent. Incoherent screams and cries rent the night. Only Phoebe made any sense at all.
“Help!” she screamed. “Help!”
After the ranger came to bust it up and Cody thundered away on his bike, things settled down at last, the dogs quit howling, and the kids stopped crying, but now neither Brandy nor Angel could sleep. They lay in their bags for the next couple of hours checking their watches and chatting quietly.
“I have to pee,” Brandy said.
“So, enjoy. You know where the bathroom is.”
“Come with me.”
“What?”
“C’mon, Angel. Don’t make me go alone. Remember that story Sam told about the night the bears came to your cabin and broke into that refrigerator you keep in your garage?”
“There was only one bear and he was dinky.”
“Sam said that dinky bear knocked the refrigerator over, broke open the door, and ate all the frozen meat. When you came out in your nightgown to scare him off, he chased you across the yard. You screamed, too.”
“Oh, chill, Brandy. I haven’t heard a peep from anything or anyone since the ranger came.”
“Please? I’m scared.”
They pulled on flip-flops and sweaters, examined the road carefully for shadows, and stepped outside into the stinging-cold night. Brandy waited for another latebird lady to finish washing up, then used the bathroom in private while Angel stomped the concrete to heat up her toes, keeping a watch outside for bears or strangers or anything at all, but the dark made it hard to see much except lights reflecting off the lake in the distance. Hard to believe they were right in the middle of the city of South Lake Tahoe.
“Gag me,” Brandy said, when she finally came outside. “It smelled like vomit in there. That poor woman partied too hearty for her own good.”
“She did look terrible, except that I loved her hair,” Angel agreed. “Should have stuck to chocolate and wine like us, huh? No ill effects, except maybe that we’re jumpy as little bunnies.” They walked through the darkness toward their camp.
“Wait!” Brandy whispered suddenly, putting a hand out to stop Angel. She pulled her sister back toward the side of the road.
“Is it a bear?”
“Shh!”
“Let’s go. You’re not three years old anymore. No need to be so damn scared of the dark.”
“Shut up!” Brandy hissed.
Angel shut up and looked in the direction Brandy’s nose pointed, seeing nothing.
“It’s so dark,” she whispered. “What are you looking at?”
Brandy’s finger shook as she pointed toward the orange tent next to their site. “There’s enough moon to see.”
Angel stared but saw nothing speci
al.
“He’s gone now.”
“Who?”
“I saw someone leaving that tent.”
“So what?” Angel said. “When you gotta whiz, you gotta whiz. You’re living proof.”
“But, Angel, didn’t Cody-the biker-leave after the ranger came around?”
“Yeah.”
“How come he’s back, then?”
“No idea. You sure you saw Cody, Brandy?”
“Unless Mario suddenly grew his hair long, has lost about fifty pounds and gone all ugly, and looks just like Cody.”
“Where’s the bike, then?”
“He knew he’d wake up the whole camp if he came in on that thing so he parked it out on the street?” Brandy guessed.
They puzzled about it for a minute or two, but the camp remained silent and peaceful, so they went on back to their tent, slept for the few remaining hours of the night, and got up the next morning, deciding to strike out early for a hike up to Beauty Lake and a new campsite at Wright’s, out of town and out of the whole city campground B.S.
“They found her body in her sleeping bag, dead, the next morning when the ranger tried to roust them out of the site,” said Brandy. “Mario was still asleep, right next to her!”
“You seem sure Cody is responsible for the woman’s death,” Nina said. She had paused in her note-taking. The office door, slightly ajar, told her Sandy was probably listening.
They stared at her. “Well, heck, I don’t think there’s much doubt,” Angel said. “Cody came back, Brandy saw him. And even a drunk wouldn’t jump back into his sleeping bag and pass a peaceful night next to the dead body of his girlfriend like Mario did. If Mario had done it, he would have run straight across the state line, across Nevada, and all the way to Colorado before he stopped to breathe.”
“Ms. Guillaume, Angel, you mean to tell me your husband didn’t mention a murder at a campground to you over the weekend? We don’t get many up here.”
“He never saw the story or he would have freaked.”
“Why didn’t you go straight to the police when you got back to town on Tuesday?” Nina asked them.
“I’m ashamed to say, we don’t always read the papers,” said Angel. “We just saw an article about what happened this morning. It’s so sad! It’s just terrible! That poor girl. Cody must have snuck back and strangled her in the night. Mario was so drunk, maybe he didn’t even wake up.”
Unfit to Practice Page 12
