by Jean Andrews
Judith stood on the steps with flowers she’d obviously picked from the wildflower bed. She feigned surprise at seeing me. “There you are!” Like you didn’t know, I thought. She probably watched my cabin all night to see if the lights ever came on, or if I came home. She most likely showed up this morning to entrap me.
She introduced herself to Levade and handed the flowers around the screen door to her. “For interrupting your morning. And don’t you both look…rested.” She turned her attention to me. “There’s a guy who said he was asked to stop by and fix the screen on your lake pipe, Taylor. He’s down by the dock. I told him I would fetch the famous author, which I’m sure would have impressed him if I thought he could read.”
“I don’t feel good about this. Don’t go!” Levade warned me, but I was feeling pretty invincible after all those lovemaking sessions.
“The woman at the water department sent him. I’ll point out the pipe and be right back. I promise.” I gave her a searing look that said I expected to pick up where we’d left off.
I heard Judith echo reassuringly that I would be right back. “I’ll keep Levade company until you return,” she bubbled, and I thought, I bet you will.
I bounced down the hillside to the lake, feeling bonded to someone for the first time in my life. And I trusted Levade would not ever want anyone else. The arrogance of that assumption made me smile and actually skip for a couple of steps. I didn’t know I knew how to skip. I laughed at myself.
Seeing no one on the dock, I walked west, down the shoreline, to my cabin, spotting a silver boat pulled up on the sand. He’s in front of the wrong cabin, I thought. No wonder he can’t find the lake pipe. The man waved to me as I walked toward him, and he had his tools with him. A few more strides and I stopped short, recognizing Tony.
Instantly, Tony stepped back into the underbrush as Frank grabbed me from behind, and I realized Tony was Frank’s decoy. Frank clamped his iron hand over my mouth and forced me down into the boat. He tied my hands with the speed of someone roping a calf and blindfolded me, pushing me onto the seat opposite him.
“Sorry to interrupt your little liaison, but I didn’t want you to get away without me showing you the deepest part of the lake,” Frank said.
I screamed until I was nearly hoarse. Even my being blindfolded and seated in his boat in plain sight would appear normal to anyone watching from a distance. It would just appear to be Frank taking someone out for a tour to his secret fishing spots. I looked in what I thought was the direction of Levade’s cabin, panicky and still screaming. How long would she wait before she looked for me? Frank revved the motor. I couldn’t know if Levade was running in my direction, Judith behind her.
It dawned on me that Frank wanted her to see what he was doing. He wanted credit for it; he wanted her to be reminded that he could kill her, or anyone she loved. He wanted to control her.
Frank was so confident that he yelled his plans loudly over the sound of the motor. “I can tie you to the anchor and throw you overboard while I enjoy my lunch.” He laughed and patted something on the boat bottom. “Then I’ll hoist you up, cut the anchor rope, take off the blindfold, and people will find tragically that you couldn’t swim very well.”
Isn’t anyone on the cove paying attention to this? Sound traveled, but was anyone listening? Frank threw the motor into full throttle, and the boat surged, throwing me violently forward onto the aluminum floor. My mind was racing so fast I thought I’d faint. Was he really intending to kill me or just terrorize me? He’s a killer, my inner voice said. He kills.
“Frank, don’t do this,” I pleaded, shouting over the roar of the motor.
“What did you say? Can’t hear you.” He laughed.
It had only been a few minutes, but I was pretty sure we were far off the shoreline. Frank cut the motor and let the boat drift, beginning a psychotic dialogue into the wind.
“It’s a shame about you. You’re not the one who should die. I should kill Levade for fucking my wife, but if I killed her, I wouldn’t have her to torture, so I’m going to kill what she loves, and too bad. Tag, you’re it. You’re her current happiness. She checks to see if I’m parked at your place, she checks to make sure you’re home safe, she checks on you because she wants you—check, check, check—and I just can’t let her have happiness, you know, after she took mine, after she made me kill my wife.”
My mind raced back to Ben. He wasn’t sick like Frank, but he had that same sense of everything in life being someone else’s fault, and how he’d been done wrong, and therefore he had to make someone suffer for how unfair it all was. My fear of dying didn’t diminish. I was terror-stricken, but on top of that fear was a layer of anger—anger at men who found women always at fault, anger at men who simply killed women when they disliked them, and anger over being about to die and not wanting to go down with a fucking whimper—and my anger was like kindling beginning to smolder and burst into flames.
“She had nothing to do with your wife’s death. You killed your wife.”
“She made me do it. If she hadn’t been around—”
“You would have stopped beating her, bruising her, breaking her bones?”
“She made me do that!”
“No. You killed Dolores slowly for years by taking away her joy, controlling everything she said and everything she did. Even stuffing the little dogs she loved, so she had to look at them and mourn them every day. All Levade did was try to comfort her, because your wife was so fucking afraid of you, you sorry, sadistic sack of shit!”
“Keep talking, dead woman!” He slugged me, and I tasted my own blood, and I thought if I lived, I didn’t want to be disfigured.
“But killing me won’t keep you from experiencing what it feels like to be a disgusting, cowardly man—” He slugged me again, and my face hurt, and I wondered if he’d dislodged my teeth. “You can only hit women who are smaller, or weaker, or tied up and blindfolded.” Is this how it ends? I find the person who thrills me on the same day I find the one who kills me? The universe isn’t even giving me twenty-four hours in between.
He ripped the ties from my wrists and yanked the blindfold down to my neck, and while I was trying to get my bearings in the light, he swung the oar like a baseball bat, the flat side smashing my cheek. “There! Now we’re on a level playing field.”
The pain was excruciating. I thought about jumping overboard to escape him, now that I was untied, but I knew he would circle me with the boat, creating a vortex of water, and then run over me with the motor, cutting me to pieces. Staying in the boat seemed the only answer. I have to put up a fight here. I lunged at him. Unsteady and injured, I managed to grab him by the shirt front and hold onto him, wrestling with him as I pleaded, “You’re her stepbrother. How could you do this to your sister?”
“She did it to me. She turned my father against me. She destroyed our family! She’s a fucking lesbian cunt!” He shoved me backward and smashed his fist into me, and I remembered the dream of the woman who’d said “the wait is over” and I’d thought her words were warning me to stay out of the lake. Now I knew that I was right. It was simply over.
I couldn’t tell if he was rocking the boat or if suddenly a breeze had picked up. Then I heard howling, the wind like an animal moving at warp speed, and dark clouds sweeping in out of nowhere. Whitecaps came up suddenly and threatened to wash over the side of the boat, and the winds felt cyclonic. Frank stumbled and lost his grip, and he obviously realized he had to get rid of me sooner than he’d planned.
“Little change in the itinerary,” he said, and he swung the oar overhead, bringing it down like a hatchet. I threw my arms up to try to ward off the blow, but this time it felt like the edge had cut my skull in half.
In the fog of my injuries, I thought I saw a green metal boat trailing us, and then I was back at the cabin where the wind swooped the postcard off the desk and into the air, out the window, and up into the sky. I heard a woman’s voice say, “Delivered,” and I didn’t know if she
was talking about the postcard or my soul.
Then there was nothing, only blackness, and the pain was gone.
Chapter Twenty-two
The pain was back, unimaginable pain, so much pain I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. I struggled to open my eyes and squinted at the light above me. Everything was white, and I thought I must have died, and I wondered if I would see Angelique and Aunt Alice.
Then Levade leaned over me and kissed me gently on my forehead and face, and she had tears in her eyes. I heard her say, “She needs more pain medicine.” And in the haze, rubber hands shot liquid into lines leading to IVs, and monitors tethered me like a large fish caught on a hook, and people bustled around me.
Judith and Levade were both standing at my bedside. I must have been in and out of consciousness, because I thought I heard Judith say, “It’s us, all the women you’ve ever slept with.”
Levade had my hand, and I squeezed her fingers and tried to smile.
* * *
I lost track of time. Outside my hospital room in the corridor, reporters gathered to find out what had happened. They’d heard a New York author was vacationing on the lake and had an accident.
Judith stepped out to greet them, and I heard her say she was a friend and an attorney staying in a nearby cabin. She could report that she and Levade were witness to Frank Tinnerson forcing me into his boat and taking me out into the lake. They followed to see what was going on, and a storm blew up.
“He hit Ms. James in the head with an oar and knocked her unconscious. When we came alongside, her assailant was nowhere to be seen. No photos or interviews until Ms. James is feeling well enough to get back to the new blockbuster novel she’s writing.”
“What were they fighting over?” a reporter asked.”
Judith replied. “I don’t know, but if he’d taken me against my will, I’d be fighting over that, wouldn’t you?”
“Does she know Mr. Tinnerson?” another reporter asked.
“I think everyone in town will tell you they know Frank Tinnerson as the man who killed his wife.”
Levade stepped back into my room, having to admit Judith did a good job, adding, “Judith gave a cute reporter her business card, saying, ‘In case you need further information.’”
“Apparently lesbians move right along if we don’t feel the love,” I said, and Levade gave me a very sensual kiss.
“Do you feel the love?” she whispered.
“Could you do that again?” I whispered back.
Judith was witness to the kisses, and she peeked into the room, feigning irritation. “Could you two get a room…without monitors.”
* * *
Later, Ramona was on the phone with Levade. I don’t know what day she called, or what hour, or if she asked for me and was told my attention span was still pretty short.
“No. I’m taking her home with me. I’ll take care of her. Yes, give me your number,” Levade said.
“I need your phone number,” I parroted, and Levade smiled. “And I know what the L means…” I tried to draw a flourish in the air. “It means you love me,” I said, and then I fell asleep again.
* * *
Judith drove me home, while I sat cradled in Levade’s arms in the backseat. They must have communicated with one another via looks and nods in the rearview mirror, because they said very little to me other than, “Are you in pain? Do you need a pain pill?”
Every bounce of the road caused me to emit a groan, and Judith apologized. People do that, I thought, in my foggy state. They apologize for driving you home over a bumpy road as if the road’s condition is their fault. Like Levade apologizing for what her brother did to me. With any luck, he’s dead anyway. Do I need to apologize for that?
The two of them hoisted me upright and dragged me up the porch steps, carrying me like one of those injured football players who leaves the field with a guy under each armpit like human crutches.
Marney had left dinner for Levade and Judith inside on the porch and a note saying she’d been checking on Judge Robertson for Judith. Thor and Helen brought a basket of fruit and some fresh berries from their store. It was touching that they’d made the drive just to deliver a homecoming gift. Casey delivered some magazines and a note that said, “Love conquers hate,” but I wouldn’t know any of this right away. I was focused on my two heads and how quickly I could get them to feel like one again.
Levade’s bed was soft and reminiscent of the lovemaking we’d had there. She and Judith left me and talked in whispers out on the porch, while Sass curled up next to me and gently put his big head into my hand.
Finally Levade came back alone, Duke and Charlie trailing her. She’d been keeping them indoors with us, and I felt that until she knew for sure that Frank was dead, and not hiding somewhere in the woods waiting to finish me off, she wanted extra protection. Only Sass thought this wasn’t such a great idea and eyed the two dogs constantly, probably monitoring their intentions.
“Can I get you anything?”
“Just your phenomenal body next to mine,” I said, and she crawled into bed with me. Later she told me I slept ten hours without moving. I guess my body knew I was home.
The doctor phoned to check on me, which was so wonderfully small-town. He asked about headaches and dizziness and nausea and reminded Levade I would feel better in a week. I felt completely disconnected from the world other than hearing Levade talking to Ramona by phone. Levade tethered me to the earth. She was the one thing that made me happy.
It was unfair that our first weeks of living together, being together, were as patient and nurse. I knew it wasn’t romantic for her to see me in the condition I was in, and despite my attempts at humor, I was often grumpy, to say the least. And then I had very strange thoughts. How do I not stay with Levade, who has loved me and nursed me back to health? I can’t just say thank you and walk out the door. But if I stay in the way she wants me, would I be doing it because I feel obligated after what I put her through? And having seen me at my worst, why would she want me anyway? She’s probably telling Judith right now that she doesn’t want me. Maybe she feels obligated to stay with me because it was her stepbrother who tried to kill me. It must be the drugs.
* * *
It was already late September; the air was crisp and the leaves were turning. It was the first day I could sit up and halfway think. Levade said she could tell I was getting better because I was cranky, demanding, and disobedient, which made me laugh.
“Was I ever obedient?” I asked. “Had I known I was, I would have stopped it immediately.”
She’d put Sass on the bed with us, saying his vibes would calm me. Unfortunately, my vibes seemed to rub off on him instead, and he raked everything off the dresser and onto the floor and howled for hours.
“What does he want?” I pleaded over his howling.
“For you to get well. We all want that.” She sounded sweet but tired. “They found Frank’s body. He’d washed up alongside a beaver burrow in one of the coves across the lake. A knife was sticking in his heart.”
“Oh, my God. Who stabbed him?”
“No one knows. Sam’s outside, and he’s asked if he can come in and talk to us.”
I found it odd that Frank could kill his wife and no one investigated, but when Frank died trying to kill me, Sam wanted an investigation. But I said, “Sure. Bring him in.”
Levade stepped out on the porch, and soon Sam entered, took off his hat, pulled up a chair, and sat down across from Levade and me.
“I don’t want to take up too much of your time.” He seemed self-conscious. “Levade told you they found a knife in Frank. Were you fighting him off with a knife?”
“Of course not. I got called down to the lake to talk to a repair guy, who turned out to be Tony, about the water pipe, and Frank jumped me. I had nothing on me. What kind of knife was it?”
“It was one Gladys said was missing from the hardware store—carved handle, a wolf peeking out of the trees.”
�
�I remember it. I told her it looked like a work of art.”
“Well, she thought maybe she misplaced it. She was sure it wasn’t stolen because the case was locked. Knife had no prints of any kind on it.”
“So what do you think, Sam?” Levade asked.
“I think in all the chaos and the storm, and the boat rocking, he may have fallen on it. Or the wind blew it into him.”
I didn’t think for a nanosecond that Sam believed that. It was a completely crazy theory. How did Frank get the knife when Gladys never sold it to him? And how could a storm, short of a tornado, blow a knife into a man? And how would it just happen to land in his heart?
“Is it possible that he washed up on shore, and someone put the knife in him after he was dead and couldn’t fight back? Someone with enough anger to want to leave their mark in him? The list of people standing in line to do that would probably rival the number of suspects on the Orient Express,” I said, the mystery writer in me coming out of the closet. “Or maybe,” I said, “he lived through the storm.”
“Frank was a good swimmer and a survivalist.” Sam nodded. “Coroner says it’s possible he could have been alive when he was stabbed.”
“Then maybe as he tried to crawl out of the lake, someone else who had the knife, dove in, fought him, and killed him, and left him in the water, so there were no traces of blood on the shore. Of course that would take a pretty strong person with a pretty big grudge.”
I thought about Little Man, who was at the hardware store looking at the knife Gladys was showing him. And how Gladys’s daughter, Casey, had nearly been raped by Frank, and how Frank had killed Dolores, who might have had ties to Little Man. And then there was Kay, who had an affair with Dolores.” But I didn’t offer any more suspects or plot lines. I was pretty sure Sam already knew who did it, and so did Levade, and everyone involved felt justice had been served.
“Well, his death is officially a boating accident that occurred as a result of his attacking you, Taylor. That’s what’s in the report. You get well.” He tipped his hat and left.
