Oscar was watching my every move, wagging. “We don’t want to hurt Roberta’s feelings, do we, little guy?” After I drew a heart on the sticky note and stuck it to the refrigerator door, we took our goodies and headed for the guesthouse where I had my office.
I did all of my writing in the guesthouse. In fact, I did almost everything in the guesthouse. It had about eleven hundred square feet with a cozy living room, a gourmet eat-in kitchen, two guest bedroom suites, and its own attached two-car garage. That’s where I kept my Jaguar. The guesthouse felt like a home to me. The main house, with its ten thousand square feet, multiple master suites, personal gym, intercoms, and butler’s pantries, reminded me of an impersonal luxury hotel.
The outside of the guesthouse matched the main house, with tumbled taupe-colored brick and stone on the exterior, and a bronze standing-seam metal roof commonly found in the south. The guesthouse had a two-car attached garage on one side, and a cabana for the pool on the other side. French doors opened out from the guesthouse living area onto the deep cabana, and outdoor bathroom facilities provided showers and changing areas for pool users.
Oscar made a pit stop along the way and kicked up mulch and grass all over my shoes. “Thank you very much,” I said. He wagged.
It was time to return some phone calls and face the music. I sat at my desk and placed the first dreaded call to my agent. His assistant transferred me, and Howard picked up immediately.
“Ben,” he said. “I’m glad you got back to me. Good news! Winston-Salem Publishers has decided to run a second printing of Deception. A hundred thousand copies this time.”
I was shocked and didn’t know what to say. “That’s fantastic, Howard.”
“They’re also forwarding a ten thousand dollar advance.”
“Ka-ching!”
“You got that right. But the main reason I wanted to reach you today is that I’ve managed to book a TV interview for you tomorrow on Carolinians In the News. The interview will take place at channel fourteen studios in Raleigh at nine o’clock.”
I cringed. “Jeez, Howie, you know I hate doing interviews. I’m just not very good at it.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “You’ll be fine. Besides, you have to strike while the iron’s hot. We need to get as much publicity as we can, as soon as we can. The host will be Sally Briggum, and I’ve forwarded you the list of questions she’ll ask. It should be in your email. Also, Ben, word is out that you’re a member of the police task force investigating the Headless Corpse Killer.” There was excitement in his voice. “Briggum may ask questions about your involvement, but if she doesn’t, find a way to bring it into the conversation. What fantastic publicity!”
I reluctantly agreed to do the interview, and hung up the phone. After I ate a couple of grapes and shared a piece of cheese with Oscar, I reviewed the list of interview questions. Most of them pertained to people described in the book, including the killer, his family and friends, and the investigating officers. This might not be so bad after all.
The next call was still looming over me, and I took a deep breath as I phoned Steve Patterson, my divorce attorney. What now? He was nice enough, but I had never spoken to him when my blood didn’t boil. Maybe this call would be different. Maybe he just needed a signature we missed on some tiny, little document. Yeah, right.
Seconds later, I was on hold listening to the same background music I’d heard countless times before. Sickening, easy-listening acoustic-smooth jazz. The sound of it made me nauseous.
He finally picked up. We exchanged the usual niceties, and then he said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“I figured,” I said. “Lay it on me.”
“Jennifer has filed a motion for an addendum to the property settlement. She’s asking the court to award her fifty percent of the royalties, past, present, and future, for your book, Deception.”
I shot out of my chair like a missile. “Jesus Christ!” I shouted. “I thought this property settlement thing was over a long time ago. Can she do this?”
“Unfortunately, yes. There’s no mention of Deception in the property settlement. She claims you were working on this project when the two of you were still legally married. Is that true?”
I narrowed my eyes and burned a hole in the wall. “Well, yeah. I had done most of the research, but I hadn’t finished the manuscript. Also, my decision to write the book is what she used as an excuse to throw me out and divorce me in the first place. She said it wasn’t ‘a real job.’ Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“In this instance, that’s all irrelevant,” Steve said. “You completed substantial work during the marriage which served as the foundation for the published book. Future revenues will be considered community property. She’s also claiming she was the breadwinner, financially supporting the family during this period.”
“Spare me. She might have been the only one of us with a traditional job at the time, but I was collecting unemployment insurance, and that was almost as much as she was bringing in.”
“I’m sorry, Ben, but you’re probably going to lose this. She may not get fifty percent, but she’s going to get something. I wish you’d told me about the book while we were still in the litigation phase.”
I hadn’t told Steve about it because it was my first book, and I didn’t really expect to finish it. There were only a handful of people who were aware of the project, like my dad, but he knew I was not highly educated and laughed at me. I didn’t want to face that humiliation again.
“One more thing, Ben. Please don’t call Jennifer. It will only make things worse. Remember what happened last time?”
When I hung up the phone, I was seething.
“That bitch!” I spat out. “That fucking bitch!”
Oscar cowered and fled to his bed in the corner of the living area. He lay there shaking, wide-eyed and frightened, staring at me.
I was livid. How could anyone be so damn mean and vengeful? I wanted to go over to her place—which used to be our place—and rip her fuckin’ heart out and—
Catching myself, I suddenly stopped and snapped back to reality. What kind of sick, twisted, irony was this? I’d just had a taste of the maniacal rage that might drive a person like Jack Plum to do the savage things he’d done. It was very sobering.
My hands were shaking as I walked over to the bar and filled a rocks glass half-full of scotch. I downed it in three swallows, refilled the glass half-full again, and set it on the end table. So much for a phone call to Steve being different. His track record was still perfectly intact.
I had intended to spend the afternoon doing research, but suddenly I found myself drained and weary, unable to keep my eyes open. Oscar was still watching me with worry on his sweet, little face. I gently picked him up and stretched out on the sofa. He curled up in a ball as close as he could get and burrowed his head under my hand, the tension beginning to fade as I softly rubbed his long, velvety ears.
My research could wait while I closed my eyes for a few minutes.
I was jarred awake by Julie’s voice coming over the intercom telling me to come to the main house for dinner. The clock on my desk said quarter past five. We’d been asleep for almost three hours, and the room was now draped in shadows. I would curse myself later when I was lying in bed wide awake.
Oscar and I made our way to the kitchen after a short detour to irrigate a few plants in the garden. When I opened the back door, he immediately darted to his bowl, which was now full of food. I’m not sure what it was, but it didn’t look too bad—chunks of medium-rare roast beef with vegetables and gravy. If there was such a thing as reincarnation, I wanted to come back as my dog.
Everyone was sitting at the dining room table except for Roberta, who was pouring Julie a glass of milk. I ruffled Julie’s hair as I passed behind her chair and stole an apprehensive look at Maggie. She looked exquisite in blue jeans and a soft pink shirt.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said, and kissed her lightly. Her short da
rk hair was slightly tousled, and she smelled of soap and lavender. “I’m surprised you made it home for dinner. I thought you were working on the corporate taxes.”
She looked around the table. “I’ve had enough of my job for today. I wanted to spend the evening with my family.” There was a hint of tiredness under her beautiful brown eyes, but her smile told me things were okay between us again.
I gave Maggie’s mother a light kiss on the cheek. Nora always dressed for dinner, and as such, she wore a blue and white floral dress with diamond earrings and a matching diamond bracelet.
“Nora, you sure look spiffy tonight,” I said. “In fact, you are one hot lookin’ babe.”
She picked up her napkin and put it in her lap, beaming. “Benji, you always say the sweetest things.”
Julie giggled. “Yeah, Grandma. You look hot.”
Maggie frowned. “For Pete’s sake, Ben, quit flirting with my mother.”
“Watch out, Benji,” Nora said. “My little Magpie’s rather cranky today.” Maggie ignored the comment, but I could see her jaw muscles tense.
Roberta and I sat down. She stared at me with the I’d like to slit your throat look, but I was safe, at least for now. Roberta never delivered any of her disapproving lectures in front of Maggie or Nora.
The main course consisted of thinly sliced beef rolls wrapped around slices of prosciutto and mozzarella served in a delicious tomato sauce. I’d never had anything like it before.
“It’s ‘brajole,’ Ben, isn’t it good?” Julie took a bite and closed her eyes.
Roberta watched her and smiled. “Rollos de carne, sweet thing.”
Cheesy golden brown potatoes au gratin and steaming buttered broccoli rounded out the rest of the meal. I had to confess that Roberta was perhaps the best cook I’d ever known.
“Ben,” Julie asked, “can Oscar sleep with me tonight? He can come upstairs while I do my homework.”
“Sure, but he’ll need to go out before bed and also, very first thing in the morning. And make sure he steers clear of the pool.”
Julie nodded in agreement. “I will,” she said, smiling.
After dinner, the adults lingered and enjoyed a small glass of sherry. Then Maggie and I retired to the master bedroom suite and left Roberta and Julie to clean up. Nora had already turned in and would probably sneak out her sitting room door and smoke a cigarette on the east terrace.
Five years earlier, the master bedroom suite had been occupied by Maggie’s parents. But when Maggie’s father died suddenly from a heart attack, Nora could no longer bear to be in that space without him. She moved into the smaller master suite the day after his death and wouldn’t go near her former quarters.
The main house had six bedroom suites, each with an en suite bathroom and a private sitting area. In addition to the two master suites on the first floor, there were four guest suites upstairs. Our master suite, which was the largest in the residence, included a private office off one side and a large sitting room off the other, opening onto a private, enclosed terrace with a hot tub.
Maggie turned down our bed, her jaw muscles working again.
“What’s wrong,” I asked.
She tossed the bed’s luxurious throw pillows in the blanket chest and frowned. “I hate it when Mother uses those cute little nicknames for us. It just makes me cringe.”
“She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s just her way of showing affection.”
“I know, but Benji and Magpie? She’s reduced us to a dog and a bird!”
I laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she snapped. “I’ve had a hell of a day at work today. I just want to relax, and I don’t want us to be referred to as animals. I mean, for heaven’s sake, why doesn’t she just call us Coyote and Walrus?”
Still laughing, I went to the bar in the sitting room and opened the wine refrigerator. Maggie and Nora both had excellent taste in wines and kept all of the wine refrigerators well-stocked. Periodically, they would go out with a few friends on a just girls grape day. It was all very secretive and mysterious, but from what I could gather, they did brunch, followed by wine tastings, and then they did lunch, followed by more wine tastings, and then they did some other clandestine girl stuff. They always came back late in the evening, a teensy bit tipsy, with the back of the Escalade packed with cases of wonderful wines.
I selected a California chardonnay from Wente Vineyards, opened it, and poured two glasses. When I returned to the bedroom, I handed a glass to Maggie. “Here,” I said, “come and sit on the chaise, and I’ll rub your shoulders.” She sank down heavily and I began giving her a slow massage. Maggie wore her dark brown hair short in sort of a pixie cut, and it accentuated her beautiful, satin, ivory skin.
I tenderly kissed her neck and whispered softly in her ear. “Do you like this?”
“Mmm.” She sighed. “Very much.” The tension in her shoulders began to melt, and she moaned gently. “But you don’t fool me for a minute.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You only brought me a glass of wine and started rubbing my neck because you want to have sex with me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Well … yeah!”
CHAPTER 5
Shortly after midnight, I was lying next to Maggie wide awake. Damn it! I slid quietly out of bed, pulled on my robe, and headed to the guesthouse.
The moon was bright and low in the sky as I walked across the back yard. I could hear the lonesome sound of some wild animal baying in the distance, and I wondered where Jack Plum was tonight.
I entered the guesthouse through the cabana and turned on a couple of lights. There had been many nights in my career when I had worked until the sun came up in the morning. In fact, I did some of my best work alone late at night with nothing to distract me. All I needed was a strong cup of coffee and total silence.
Nora had given me a single-serve coffee maker a few weeks ago “just because,” and I had yet to use it. Tonight was going to be the night. I selected an espresso cartridge and fired the baby up.
Sixty seconds later, I brought my steaming mug to the desk, powered up my computer, and placed an internet order for three books pertaining to the psychology of serial killers and sexual deviants. Hopefully, this case would be solved before they arrived.
I then began searching the internet for stories about people who had let strangers into their homes and were then robbed, beaten, or worse. I took a sip of my personal espresso and began reviewing them.
One was about a woman who had let a man dressed like a priest into her house, and was then raped. Other stories included women who were duped by neighbors or men posing as postal workers, police officers, or delivery men.
After making PDF copies of the relevant stories, I filed them away in a new folder on my desktop. It was now after two in the morning, and despite the espresso, sleep was beckoning. I brought my coffee cup to the sink and turned off the lights.
The moon was still bright and threw long eerie shadows on the ground as I walked back to the main house. I could no longer hear the wild animal—even he was probably asleep, like most of the civilized world.
It took me another hour to drift off to sleep, and I could feel it the next morning as I showered and dressed. I was just tying the knot in my tie when the quiet was interrupted by the sound of raised voices out in the great room. Roberta was delivering a tirade in Spanish, and I could only make out one word—Oscar. I walked out to find Roberta scolding Julie and pointing at Oscar, who was standing in front of her wagging.
“What’s up?” I asked.
Roberta huffed.
“Oscar peed by the back door,” Julie said sheepishly. “I know, Ben, I should have let him out earlier. I’m sorry.”
I scowled at her and winked. “I’ll clean it up, Roberta,” I said.
Roberta pointed to me, then to Julie, and finally to Oscar. “You, and you, and especially you!” she said. “All useless!” She motioned for us all to get out of her way.
&nb
sp; Maggie, who had finished dressing, entered the room. “What’s all the commotion?” she asked.
Oscar adored Maggie and tore off to greet her. He started off in the right direction, then zigzagged and headed straight for the large, antique oriental floor vase to the left of the fireplace.
“Watch it! Watch it!” Maggie shouted, as he veered away from the vase and into her waiting arms. She picked him up and looked at me. “Jesus, Ben, that vase cost five thousand dollars, fifteen years ago.”
I looked at the ugly vase. “I’ll bet it’s worth almost half that much today,” I said. Maggie stuck her tongue out at me, and Julie giggled.
It was half past eight when I arrived at the channel fourteen news studios and checked in with the receptionist. A security guard escorted me to a makeup artist who did her best during the next fifteen minutes to make me look presentable. A few minutes later, I was on the set, nervously tugging at my necktie. It suddenly felt like a boa constrictor choking the life out of me.
Sally Briggum, a pretty black haired woman in her early thirties, approached me and introduced herself. She reviewed the questions with me that she would be asking, while she tried to ease the terrified look from my face. The interview would be recorded and edited later. If either of us screwed up during the recording, there would be another take.
We took our places, Sally in an overstuffed armchair, and me on the matching guest sofa next to her. There were three cameras: camera one was behind me to my right and aimed toward Sally; camera two was used to capture both of us; and camera three was focused on me. We both sat motionless for a few seconds, waiting.
“Three, two, one,” and a small light illuminated on camera one.
“Good evening,” she said. “I’m Sally Briggum. Welcome to Carolinians In the News. We are honored to have as our guest this evening, Benjamin Tucker, author of the bestselling true crime thriller, Deception. Welcome, Ben.”
“Thanks, Sally. It’s great to be here.”
“Ben, everyone is buzzing about Deception. How did you come to write about a cold-blooded murderer who avoided detection for so many years?”
Vengeance is Mine - A Benjamin Tucker Mystery Page 3
