I didn’t think about it, I didn’t hesitate. I went to her. She grabbed my head with both hands and forced me closer, deeper, into her. I could feel the Wild Turkey bottle next to my ear. She guided the movement of my head, grabbing my ears and hair—first up and down, then back and forth, then pulling me in so hard that I thought I wasn’t going to be able to breathe. Her pelvis buckled under me, and she came with a long grunt, and came again with a scream, and still she made me stay down there, her hands never leaving my head. I told her I wanted to fuck her. “You’re not going to screw me, Mr. Lansdale,” she hissed, “you don’t deserve to; bad boys like you don’t get to have any pleasure.” If I tried to get free, I was afraid she’d hurt me, leave scratches. How would I explain that to Tina? I couldn’t think of Tina at a time like this. Cassandra sighed, and then a gush of warm, salty fluid filled my mouth, splashed across my face and into my hair. She let go of me and I fell back, urine in my mouth. Her fluid spurt into the air and arced, like a fountain. I stood. I felt really stupid, and embarrassed, standing there.
Cassandra lay still on the couch. “Go away now,” she said.
I no longer wanted her. I wanted to get the hell out of there, and I did.
I wanted to run, but I walked stiffly, entering my house from back. In the garage, I got out of my jeans and hid them where I could deal with them later. I took my shirt off as well. I opened the dryer, found a towel, and wiped my face. I found a pair of slacks and a T-shirt in the dryer and put those on.
I expected Tina to be awake, to ask where I was. But she was asleep, where I left her.
I went upstairs to use the bathroom. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked horrible. I took my clean clothes off and had a quick shower, washing the smell of my neighbor from my hair. I brushed my teeth, to get her taste out. Naked, I went downstairs to the bedroom, and slipped into bed next to Tina. She stirred, and nuzzled against me. I started kissing her. She kissed me back. She was half-awake as I mounted her, and went back to sleep after I quickly spilled my seed, grateful for that much needed fast relief.
11
The phone rang at ten-thirty in the morning. I had a bad hangover.
“Did you enjoy it?” her voice said. “Did you like last night? I bet you did. I know I did.”
“Who is this?”
“Who the hell do you think this is?” Her accent was heavier. “No need to act coy, Mr. Lansdale. The wifey is at work, the son is at school, it’s just you and the cute little girl with the dinosaur.”
Jessica was, in fact, sitting on the living room floor and playing with her dinosaurs, making dinosaur roar sounds out of her mouth, making her dinosaurs fight, and then kiss and make up.
I took the cordless phone into the kitchen. I could hear Cassandra Payne breathing.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Getting a glass of water.” I turned on the faucet, and filled it with water. I drank.
“Feeling parched?”
“A little.”
“I’m going to have to get the carpet dry-cleaned,” she said, and laughed.
It was then that I knew last night wasn’t an alcohol-induced hallucination. I rubbed my right temple.
“Come over,” her voice said.
“What?”
“What,” she mimicked me. “I said come over.”
“My daughter is—”
“Bring her.”
“No,” I said. I couldn’t believe she’d suggest such a thing. Then again—I could.
“It won’t take long. Come over,” she said, “now.”
I peeked in on Jessica. She’d be okay for a few minutes, she always was. “All right,” I said, and hung up the phone. I went outside.
Cassandra opened the door before I knocked. She grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me in. She was in a black bra and thong underwear. She kissed me on the mouth. It was a long kiss, our tongues attacking each other the way Jessica was making her dinosaurs attack each other: an age-old battle. The kiss went on for a good few minutes. I ran my hands up and down her body, feeling her taut, thin frame.
“I want to fuck you,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I just wanted a good morning kiss. Now get back home and watch your little girl.”
I didn’t want to go, of course. She pointed at the door and said, “Leave, now.” I did as she mandated.
Walking across the street, I wondered if Bryan saw me. I had a weird feeling someone was watching what I was doing.
Jessica was still playing.
I don’t think Bryan knew anything, and if he did, he was doing a good job of concealing it. Cassandra left in her car half an hour following our kissing encounter. Forty-five minutes later, Bryan came over and we began our ritual of drinking beers.
“Lawrence Payne’s funeral is tomorrow morning,” he said.
I nodded. He knew something, he just wasn’t going to say it.
“The more I think about this, the more I don’t like it,” he said very carefully.
“What do you mean?”
“A murderer, living across the street from me. From you. From all of us. We’re good, law-abiding people, Philip. We’re good people. And she’s a killer.”
I didn’t remind him that this was something we speculated, and not a fact.
“I used to be a cop,” he said softly.
I knew he still wanted to be. I could understand—there were many things I wished I still was.
During dinner, I answered the phone. I looked at the Caller ID and recognized the number, because I’d seen it earlier today.
“Good, you answered,” Cassandra Payne said.
Tina was talking to Matthew about something.
I turned away and lowered my voice. “Now isn’t—”
“Hush. You don’t need to talk. Just listen, you pervert. You like to peep? Peep on me tonight. At midnight. No, make it twelve-thirty, make sure wifey is in snoreland. Come to my window. We’ll play and we’ll have fun and we’ll see what happens, hmm?”
She hung up.
“Who was it?” Tina asked.
“David,” I said. “About the game Saturday.”
“You’re going to play?”
“The stomachache is gone,” I said.
“But the gut isn’t,” she laughed. Jessica laughed with her. Matthew looked at me, wanting to know what was so funny.
I glanced down at my growing belly. It was looking bad. What did a woman like Cassandra Payne see in an aging, bloating guy like me?
Still, I was at her window at twelve-thirty sharp.
“I know you’re out there, Mr. Lansdale,” she said, “and don’t say, ‘I want to make love to you’ or ‘fuck you’ or ‘poke you’ or whatever terminology you feel like employing tonight. Go back home now. Tomorrow, I bury my husband’s remains. I have to get a good night’s sleep, I have to prepare for a very tedious and sad day. His family has come in from England, you know. They wanted his body flown over there, but Lawrence wanted to be buried here, if he died. That’s what he always told me. ‘Don’t bury me back home,’ he once said, ‘bury me in America.’ Which is what I’m going to do.”
She came to the window, on her knees. I wanted to kiss her.
“Friday night, Mr. Lansdale,” she said, “come back Friday night at the same time, and let’s see how we shall transgress our little affair.”
That word. Affair. I guess this was what it was—I was being unfaithful to my wife, in certain ways, in many ways. I was committing adultery and I wanted to keep doing it and I wanted to “transgress.”
In the morning, I questioned myself. I told myself about all the trouble this could cause—to my life, my peace, to everything. And she was most likely a murderess; she didn’t seem to be taking her husband’s death too hard.
She was gone most of Thursday, picked up in the morning by a limousine, dressed all in black—plain black dress, shoes, hat, and veil, she was the mourning wife.
That afternoon, Bryan said, “Maybe it’s time I dropped the hint t
o the boys in Homicide.”
“Now?” I said. “So soon?” I pictured her in jail, far from my reach, and spending my life never knowing what it was like to be inside her.
“I’m having a real headache with this,” he said. ″A moral problem. I used to be a cop. I know, I say that a lot. I can’t get this off my mind. I have to tell Homicide what we think, and let those boys take it from there.”
“I think we should still wait,” I said.
“She’s burying the man today. Next, she’ll gather up his assets, the insurance, and split back to England. Or maybe some other country without extradition. She’ll get away with the perfect murder, and we can’t let her do that.”
“No, we can’t.”
“If the cops find her to be a suspect—if they let her know she’s a suspect—”
“So she’s not?” I said.
“Not?”
“A suspect. In their eyes.”
He started to pace. “Not that I can determine. Why would they think so? They think she’s the poor unfortunate widow.”
“Maybe she is,” I said. “Maybe we’re wrong.”
Bryan said, “We can’t be wrong. She lied about not leaving that day. And there’s the sneaky fellow from Las Vegas—”
I nodded.
“Still,” he said.
“A few more days,” I said, “that’d be good.” I felt like I was convincing him.
He nodded, and cracked open a beer. “A few more days, and then we’ll see what happens. I have a feeling in my gut something is going to transpire that will crack this mystery. It’s an exciting feeling, huh, boy? Gives you goosebumps.”
“Yeah.”
Early that night, as my kids ate dinner, I noticed the black limo drop Cassandra Payne home.
Tina returned at one o’clock in the morning. I was sitting in my office. She was drunk. She hadn’t driven home. She’d taken a taxi. But I didn’t notice the taxi, or the time.
She stood at the door to my office. “I’m sorry,” Tina said. “I didn’t call. You must’ve been worried. You were waiting up for me.”
“What?” I looked at the clock. “It’s late.”
“The girls and I got carried away. Little too much to drink, wasn’t watching the time. I’m sorry.”
“Are you okay?”
“I did the smart thing and took a taxi home.”
“Where’s your car?”
“At the bar. We’ll have to get it in the morning.”
“Okay.” off
“You’re not mad at me?”
I smiled. “These things happen, honey.”
“I’m ready to go to bed. Do you want to go to bed?”
We went to bed together. She smelled like alcohol, and so did I.
“I kinda feel like shit,” Tina said.
So did I.
“It’s the booze,” she said. “We’re drinking too much, Philip. Maybe we should stop.”
My wife and I lived in different worlds.
She wanted to fool around. We kissed and touched.
“How come you never flirt with me?” she said.
“What’s that?”
“You know, flirt.”
“Married people don’t flirt.”
“I don’t see why not,” she said.
I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t in the mood for martial intercourse. Tina used her mouth, which always worked in the past, but not tonight.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She kissed me. “These things happen, honey. I’m tired anyway. Good night.”
“Good night.”
It was two o’clock.
She paid for her extravagance in the morning. Her head was pounding and spinning. She called into work sick, saying it’d be okay because her supervisor, a woman, was with her last night and would understand. I took Matthew to school, left Jessica with her mother. Coming back, I saw that Cassandra Payne’s car was gone. Where’d she go so early? Tina was making coffee.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked.
She said, “I’m feeling better. I took some Advil.”
She showered, and we drove to the bar she was at last night. Jessica played with her dinosaurs and Pokémon in the backseat. The bar was in Pacific Beach, two blocks from the ocean. It looked more like a club.
“I pictured you and the girls in some small, quiet hideaway,” I said, “not a hip and happening joint like this.”
“It’s always somewhere different every week,” she said softly.
That afternoon, she decided to go into work after all, call it half a day. She didn’t like sitting around the house when she had a lot of cases piled up. She was afraid of getting behind, she said. I nodded. The only thing on my mind was twelve-thirty.
At twelve-thirty. I was at her window.
Before I left, I asked, “When will we meet next?”
She said, “I’ll let you know.”
“Good night,” I said.
“Cheerio,” Mrs. Payne said.
12
She showed up at the baseball game Saturday afternoon. It was the last thing I expected. But I wasn’t surprised; she was a woman of unpredictable conduct.
I don’t know how long she’d been sitting in the bleachers. David pointed her out to me, as we left the field and it was our team’s turn at bat. “Isn’t that our neighbor?” he said, and pointed. He seemed uncomfortable about her presence. It was her all right, in khaki slacks and a tank top, wearing those damn sunglasses, and a scarf around her head, like she was being incognito. She didn’t acknowledge me when I looked right at her.
“What the hell is she doing here?” David said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
In the dugout, I told Bryan.
He turned, saw her, and said, “Oh shit.” He made a face, and shook his head.
“It’s her,” I said.
Bryan was gradually becoming visibly upset. “It sure is. Now why the hell would she be here?”
“I don’t know,” I said, softly.
“She’s never been here before, has she?” he asked.
“I don’t believe so.”
“How does she know about our games?”
I didn’t know that either. I certainly didn’t tell her.
“This is odd,” Bryan said.
“Yeah.”
“Something’s fishy,” he said. “Something smells like halibut.”
I felt self-conscious knowing she was watching, and terrified not knowing why she was here. I was scared that she was up to something, that she had a plan, that maybe she was now plotting my murder. It occurred to me, then, that she was doing her own spying, when I thought I was being pretty clever.
I sucked in my gut when I went up to bat. I wanted to impress her, and there was no one else here to impress—neither my wife nor my kids were all that interested in Saturday’s middle-aged men’s ball game. I wanted to hit a home run just for her—I wanted to hear her cheer and, hell, I wanted to hear the whole small crowd roar. I wanted to knock that ball right out of the park.
I was trying too hard. I struck out.
The Fritzes lost the game.
I didn’t want to face her in this defeat. I imagined she’d smile, kiss my nose, and say, “It’s only a game, Mr. Lansdale.”
But she was gone.
After a game—victory or defeat—the team always went to this certain sports pub and grill that had cheap beer and great food. I just wanted a few pints and a bacon cheeseburger … and sink into a corner.
Bryan wouldn’t leave me alone.
He sat with me, and his expression was grave. I wondered where David was, he seemed to have just disappeared.
“Philip,” he said, “this is bad.”
“How we lost?” I was being facetious; I knew what he was referring to.
“That was bad,” he said, grinning for a moment. He leaned forward, drinking his beer. The grin was gone. “I mean Mrs. Payne. She must be on to us.”
“How could she?” I
said. “Does she have bugs in our homes? Does she know every move we make, every conversation we have?”
“She’s observant and smart,” he said. “Every killer is extremely cautious after the crime. There’s no other explanation. Her being there today was no coincidence.”
I couldn’t argue. “No. It wasn’t.”
“She was giving us a message,” he said.
“A message? And what is the message?”
“She was saying, ‘I know you’ve been watching me, so now I’m watching you.’ It was like a warning.”
“Come on, Bryan,” I laughed, “you’re getting carried away.” I didn’t want to tell him that these were my exact thoughts. I could have told him the truth right then and there, and maybe that would’ve cleared up the mystery. I didn’t have the courage to tell him. I felt small, sitting across from this ex-cop who had more balls than I ever would.
I realized that there were many traits in Bryan that I admired, and that I would like to have in my own makeup—but it’d never be. I was a coward, a louse, and I was putting our investigation into jeopardy.
I never would have made it as a cop. I couldn’t make it as a lawyer.
“Then you tell me why she was at the game, Mr. Smarts,” Bryan said, snapping me out of my self-pity. “You give me a good reason.”
I wanted to. I wanted to say, Maybe because I’m fooling around with her.
“I’m going to have to tell Roger,” Bryan said.
“You think you should?” My spine was crawling.
“For our sake, yes.”
“She’s not some psycho killer,” I said.
“How do we know this?”
I drank my beer.
Bryan said, “He’s out of town. Roger. Family thing. Monday, I’ll tell him what we suspect, what we know, and he can take it from there.”
That night, after midnight, the phone rang once.
I was lying in bed.
Ten minutes later, it rang once again.
Tina was sound asleep. I went into the kitchen, to the caller ID machine. It was her number. Before I could call her, it rang again, and I quickly picked it up.
“You’re there,” she said softly.
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