by Ray Garton
“He does? Already?”
“Yes.”
Anna frowned. “Then why did he pee in the kitchen?”
“Uh… “
”You didn’t leave him alone for awhile, did you, Kendra?”
“Uh… “
”Kendra? Are you blushing?”
“I, uh, I was playing with him,” Kendra said. “And he got so excited, he piddled.”
Anna still frowned. She felt strangely suspicious of her daughter – strangely because it was something that had never happened before. She’d never before had any reason to be suspicious of Kendra. But the stammering and the bright pink flush of her face was vaguely suspicious.
“That’s all,” Kendra said.
“You were playing with him.”
“Yes. On the kitchen floor. He was chasing my hand in circles. He got dizzy, and – “ She giggled. “ – oh, you should’ve seen him, Mommy, he was wobbling all over the place, and all of a sudden, he just squatted and peed. It was my fault, I shouldn’t have done that to him.”
There seemed to be nothing suspicious about Kendra’s story. Anna did not know if Kendra was even capable of lying to her. Kendra had never, to Anna’s knowledge, lied to her. Why should she start now?
“Just don’t get him so worked up indoors, okay?” Anna said. She looked down at the little dog, who was looking up at her, impatiently awaiting some attention from her. Anna patted the cushion beside her, and Dexter hopped up on the couch. She petted him, and he wagged his whole body. She rolled him on his side, then onto his back and rubbed his tummy. “You like that, you little devil?”
Dexter made a playful sound in his throat.
Anna lifted her hand and the dog struggled to get back on his feet. She petted him some more.
“Dexter seems to have made himself at home here,” Anna said.
“Oh, he has,” Kendra said. “He’s made himself right at home. Haven’t you, Dexter?”
The dog immediately flew from the couch and ran to Kendra. She bent down and picked him up, held him to her chest like a baby. The dog furiously licked her face.
“Are you going to keep dancing?” Kendra said.
“Good question.” Anna thought about it. The job was still temporary, even though she’d be working nine-to-five for a while. She couldn’t rely on it. So she would have to keep dancing. “Yeah, I guess I will. This job won’t last long.”
“What if they get rid of the woman and they want you to come work for them for real?” Kendra said.
Anna smiled – for real made her smile. “Then maybe I’ll think about not dancing. But for now, it’s not a secure job. I have to keep dancing. It’s good money. I can’t let that go.”
“Mommy, when am I gonna get to come see you dance?”
“I’ve told you, they sell liquor there, so it’s adults only.”
“Then when are you gonna dance for me? I never seen you dance.”
“It’s nothin’, honey. Believe me. You’re not missin’ a thing.” She stood. “But you know what? I’m not gonna dance tonight. I’m gonna call in sick. I’ll tell ‘em I twisted my ankle, or something.”
“Wouldn’t that be a lie, Mommy?”
Anna went to the door and got her purse from the floor, took out her pack of cigarettes. She went to the kitchen table, put down her purse, and flipped up the lid on the cigarette box, took out a cigarette, and lit it. She went to the refrigerator and took out a beer. She cracked it open and sat down at the kitchen table.
“It’s a white lie, honey,” Anna said.
“A… white lie?”
“Yep. That’s something they’ll never teach you about in school, or in Sunday school, or at Vacation Bible School. So don’t bother asking your teachers about white lies.”
“Then… will you tell me what a white lie is?”
“Sure, that’s what I’m gonna do. White lies are the harmless little lies you have to tell people to get through life. They don’t hurt anyone. Sometimes, they even make people feel better, help them have a better day. For example, if your boss asks you if you like her new dress, and you think it’s ugly, are you going to tell your boss you think her dress is ugly? No. You’re going to tell her it’s lovely. That is a white lie. Nobody’s hurt, and the boss has been complimented, which is what she was expecting, anyway. A white lie isn’t a sin. God understands white lies. He lets us slide on those. They’re harmless. Understand?”
Kendra frowned the whole time she listened, concentrating intensely on her mother’s words. “So… that’s why they’re white? ‘Cause they’re not sins?”
“That’s right,” Anna said, nodding. “So, I’m going to call my boss and tell him I hurt my foot and can’t come in tonight. That’s gonna be a white lie. I’m gonna do that so I can stay home and you and I can go to the store and get some hamburger and some hot dogs and buns and come home and have a barbecue.”
“Oh, goody!” Kendra said, clapping her hands.
“I’m gonna call Aunt Rose and see if she wants to bring the kids over. We’ll make a family feast of it. Maybe we can even coax our neighbor, Mr. Reznick, to come join us, wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Yeah, that would be nice,” Kendra said, her voice lowering with each word until she was whispering.
Anna saw her daughter blush again.
“You’re blushing,” Anna said.
“Am not.” Kendra turned away, then bent down and put Dexter on the floor.
“Uh-oh,” Anna said, smoke billowing from her smiling mouth and nostrils. “Does my little girl have a crush?”
“Do not.”
Anna laughed. She sipped her beer. “It’s all right, you know. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I do not have a crush.” She went to the couch, sat down, and leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and watched television.
It was clear to Anna that she did – a crush on their neighbor, Marcus Reznick. She could see it. He was ruggedly handsome and had a rather craggy face with intense, deep-set eyes, and he was very interesting – a private investigator with probably a million fascinating stories to tell.
Sure, she would always have the intellect of an eleven- or twelve-year-old girl, but she had the body of a sixteen-year-old, and a crush on a handsome, much-older man was perfectly natural.
Her only concern was Mr. Reznick – how would he handle it? He would be exposed to it sooner or later. Would he try to take advantage of it? If he did, Anna decided she would kill him. She wasn’t sure how, but she would. And no jury in the world would convict her. No woman would, anyway. No mother.
Anna stamped her cigarette out in the ashtray that had a picture of Reno on the bottom – she’d gotten it on a trip to Reno with her sister before Kendra was born – and finished her beer. Then she stood and said, “I’m going to change my clothes, then let’s go to the store and do some grocery shopping, okay?”
“Okay.”
“If you want to wear that bikini bra, that’s fine, but there’s no way you’re wearing that shirt unbuttoned, do you hear me? Button that shirt up right now. Have you been walking around this trailer park with that shirt unbuttoned?”
Kendra bowed her head and watched her hands as she buttoned up her shirt. She did not reply.
“Did you? Because if you did, it’s going to be the last time. I’ll ask around. I will. And if I find out you’re wandering around this park half-naked, you’ll never be allowed to stay here by yourself, do you understand?” Anna was very firm, and even sounded a little angry. She wanted Kendra to take her seriously. She was being very serious. With Kendra’s body, she couldn’t afford to be going around scantily-clad like that. She was too innocent, too trusting of people. It was a good way to get herself raped. The very thought of Kendra walking down to the mailbox with that shirt unbuttoned and that bikini top on underneath – it made Anna’s stomach twist into knots.
She went to her bedroom and changed into jeans, a red tank top, and red sneakers.
“Ready to go?” she said,
back in the living room. She got her purse from the table.
“Yeah.”
They got in the car and Anna drove them out of the trailer park.
Sixteen
He found the Carey residence. It was off Happy Valley Road, on the opposite side of the road from him, at the end of a long driveway, like so many houses on that road. They appeared to live in a pleasant-looking, medium-size, ranch-style house with a green yard and lots of trees shading the house. He found a turnout a couple hundred yards up the road and made a U-turn into it, parked, and waited.
It was six-twenty. He would not have the cover of night for another three hours, so he had to hope she didn’t notice him parked down here when she left.
Carey had said she drove a white Hyundai. Reznick saw it parked in the open two-car garage at the end of the driveway. Parked in the other side was a dark pickup truck.
He waited and watched. He turned on the radio and listened to talk radio for a few minutes before it started to give him a headache. There were no jazz stations in the Redding area, but there was a “smooth jazz” station – the elevator music of jazz. He found that on FM. Couldn’t take that for very long, either. Instead of putting in a CD, he chose to wait in silence. Hot, miserable silence.
He’d changed into a blue T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs, sneakers on his sockless feet.
He rolled down all the windows and even the hot breeze felt cool against his sweaty neck. The driveway that led to the Carey house was flanked by a field full of green shrubbery. Farther out, the shrubbery leveled out, and he saw some cows lazily grazing on the weeds and grass.
At twelve minutes before seven he heard voices. No words, just a female voice, then a male voice. Then a car door slammed and an engine started up.
Reznick wondered if that was his mark. Sure enough, several seconds later, a white Hyundai – it was a white car, he assumed it was a Hyundai because he knew that was the kind of car she drove, but he wouldn’t have known a Hyundai from a Roman chariot – bounced and bobbed over the rough driveway on its way out.
Reznick started his car. The white car turned right and headed for Anderson. It was a long straight stretch for a while, and she had a perfect view of him behind her. He waited, hoping to be less conspicuous.
Finally, he pulled out of the turnout and headed after Alicia Carey.
* * * *
Steven Regent pulled his SUV into the driveway of his partner’s house in the Enterprise district of Redding at six past eight that evening. Shadows were stretched out into long, nightmarish caricatures, but the temperature did not drop. It was a muggy heat that seemed to get muggier as the evening drew on.
Regent got out of the SUV, walked into the open garage, past Josh Garner’s cherry-red classic Corvette. He went to the side door of the house and went through it into the laundry room, through there into the kitchen. It felt good to step out of that miserable heat and into Regent’s place – he always kept the air conditioner on high and the temperature low.
It was a nice house. Each bedroom in this house was a studio for a different website, decorated appropriately. Garner stayed here only occasionally. He had a much nicer house just north of town, out toward the lake. He and Regent both had other homes. Garner had an apartment in San Francisco, Regent had a house in Lake Tahoe, they shared a condo in Park City, Utah. The websites had been exceptionally good to them.
“Hey, anybody home?” he called.
“Be right there,” Garner replied from somewhere in the house.
There was an open bag of Laura Scudders Maui Sweet Onion Potato Chips on the counter, and Regent went to it, picked it up, plunged a hand in. He leaned his hips back on the edge of the tile counter, put one of the chips in his mouth, tasted it, and nodded with approval.
Garner walked in wearing a bathrobe, his hair wet.
“Where do you get all these weird potato chips?” Regent said. “I come over here and you’ve always got these weird, exotic potato chips. You shop someplace funny?”
“You just have to look for them, they’re everywhere,” Garner said.
“Have you seen the pictures of Kendra I sent you?”
Garner rolled his eyes and whistled. “I’ve seen them. She’s… fanfuckingtastic. There’s only one problem, and it’s a big one.”
Regent frowned. A problem? A big one?
“How are you gonna top that?” Garner said as he opened the refrigerator. He took a bottle of beer from it and twisted the cap off, took a swig. “She’s untoppable. After her, it’s all downhill. You’re gonna open the site with her, and then everything after her is anticlimactic.” He searched the shelves for something.
“You think she’s that good?”
Garner turned to him with wide eyes. “She’s incredible. I got wood before she even took her clothes off. But you need more of her, Steven, more, a lot more.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“You want one of these?” Garner said.
“Yeah.”
He handed a beer to Regent, then closed the refrigerator door.
“What were you looking for?” Regent said.
“I don’t know. Something to eat. I’m kinda hungry. Ish. But nothing sounds good.”
“Want me to order pizza?”
“Hm, pizza. Sure, go ahead.”
“What’s up tonight, anyway?” Regent said as he went to the phone.
“Change that. I don’t want pizza. I want Chinese food. Where’s the menu from Oriental Express?”
“You’re asking me? You live here.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Garner got up and went to the pockets of old mail and scribbled messages and jotted phone numbers that hung on the wall beside the phone, three of them in a vertical row. He rifled through them and found the pink menu folded up in the second pocket. He opened it up and looked it over. “What do you like, Steven?”
“Chow mein, sweet-and-sour prawns, broccoli beef, I’m easy to please,” Regent said.
Garner called the number at the top of the menu and ordered several different dishes, along with some rice and an order of crab puffs.
“That’s a big order,” Regent said. “I take it we’ve got company coming?”
“Yep. Alicia.”
Regent nearly spit up his beer. He gulped it down, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he laughed. “You’re kidding. She has got to like it, man. I mean, she must really want it, she keeps coming back so much.”
“You’re just figuring that out? She gets off on it – on doing it, and on people seeing it on the Internet. Especially on people seeing it. It gets her off. Which is why she keeps coming back for more. The money’s gravy, far as she’s concerned. She’d probably do it if there was no money involved.”
“What’d you need me for?” Regent said.
“She’s bringing a friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yep.”
“Have you seen this friend?”
“Not yet.” Garner took a few more gulps of beer, and the bottle was empty. He turned and put it on the counter behind him. “And there’s no guarantee with the friend.”
“What do you mean, there’s no guarantee? You mean she might be ugly as a jar of warts?”
“No, Alicia says she’s a real looker. But she’s curious.”
“Oh. Curious.”
“Yep.” He opened the refrigerator, took out another beer, twisted it open with a phut sound. “She doesn’t know if she’ll do anything, or if she does, how far she’ll go with it. So she may just end up watching.”
“I hope not. You got some good weed?”
“Good weed and good whisky. We’ll get them well-lubricated.”
“What time are they coming?”
“Should be here any time.”
Regent opened his second beer a few seconds before the doorbell rang.
“The ladies have arrived,” Garner said as he left the kitchen.
“Either that or some really fast Chinese food,” Regent
said as he followed him.
Alicia was a busty, blowsy dark-blonde with a lot of freckles all over her body, but oddly none on her face, who liked to laugh and drink. She wasn’t a great looker – in fact, she was quite plain with a chubby face to match her plump body – but she was an animal in front of the camera, and the members of MILFParade.com loved her. She had loyal fans who sent her money and gifts. She wasn’t much to look at, but there was little, if anything, she wouldn’t do in front of the cameras. Her friend Beverly was a short, slender brunette with a beautiful face and a body that filled her green tank top and blue shorts quite nicely. She had a great tan and shapely legs, a tight ass, and nice round breasts that weren’t too big and weren’t too small. She had a long slender neck and an exotic face, with almond-shaped eyes – she almost looked Asian. Unlike Alicia, Beverly was a looker.
Garner poured drinks and said the food was on the way, but in the meantime, “Drink up!”
* * * *
Reznick parked across the street and wished the sun would go down faster. After dark, he was just another car parked at the curb, but in daylight, he was plainly visible sitting there staring at the house to his left across the street.
First, he’d followed Alicia Carey to an apartment complex on Hilltop where she had picked up a woman. She’d stayed there for a while. Then he’d followed her and her friend here, to this house on Jupiter Street in a subdivision of streets named after planets.
He turned his head to the right. He was parked in front of a house not unlike the one he was watching. Ranch-style, a semicircular driveway with an entrance and an exit, double doors with beveled glass in the rectangular windows. A landscaped yard with an old-fashioned tire swing hanging from a branch of a big old oak in the front yard.
The yard across the street looked much the same, but without the swing. The double doors didn’t have any glass in them. The drapes were drawn on the large window in front. But Reznick had learned a great deal could be seen through the narrow slit between closed drapes.
Of course, he couldn’t walk over there and start peering into windows in the light of the late day. So he waited.
