All or Nothing (22 page)

Bonnie followed every word of the news reports on that case on the twelve–inch black and white TV, and when he was found guilty she laughed out loud. The cops were all such fools, they never looked beyond their noses. Make it obvious and they went for it. It was a philosophy she still used today. Hence the expert disappearing act of Laurie Martin and the obvious implication that Steve Mallard had killed her.

She never thought of herself as evil. The knowledge that she had killed Jennifer gave her a feeling of strength, of confidence, of superiority. She was stronger than the others. And killing gave her a thrill that was almost sexual, a feeling of tremendous power. She was her own woman, as she had told her dumb parents when she left home, age seventeen, to join Jimmy Victor in Panama City, adding, “And there’s nothing you can do can keep me here.”

Jimmy was different from the teenage boys she knew. Older, sexy, he knew his way around. She found him irresistible. Unfortunately, as she found out later, so did plenty of other women.

Her father had tried to stop her leaving. She had known he would and laid her plans beforehand. She needed money, Lord knows Jimmy didn’t have any. And she needed to be rid of her family. She’d already figured out how to fix the brakes. The crash was a spectacular one, shown on all the news reports. The car hit the median and flipped over several times. It was totaled, crushed almost flat––as were her mother and father.

At her parents’ funeral, the church was packed with the congregation who had known them all their lives, their neighbors, their friends. Bonnie could feel their animosity, their sheathed anger like heat on the back of her neck as she stood at the graveside. She shrugged it off easily, inherited their modest legacy––the little tract house, which she promptly sold, plus a couple of thousand dollars in the bank.

She and Jimmy had gone to the Bahamas for a couple of weeks, bought new clothes, gambled in the casinos, had the time of their lives. She never went back to Gainesville.

Jimmy rented the trailer for them near the base, but he was rarely there. He always seemed to be on duty and she complained he worked too hard. They didn’t live in a regular trailer park, but off on their own in a little clearing in the woods just off the main road.

Bonnie didn’t like it. She was lonely, even with Clyde for company. And she was bored. She would show up at the local market driving the Buick with the little black mutt in its red bandanna, her constant companion. People stopped to say hello to the cute little dog, pass the time of day, but she had no friends except Jimmy, and Jimmy was not proving to be a good husband.

She found out the truth when she stopped by a bar and grill in Pensacola, and got chatting to the bar person––a young woman about her own age named Verena Noble.

“I know everybody in this area, how come I haven’t seen you before?” Verena asked, serving her a frosty–cold Miller.

“I’m new to the area.” Bonnie eyed the other woman warily: she was attractive with a good body, sexy in a low–cut black dress that fit her like a second skin.

“D’you know a guy called Jimmy Victor?” she asked after a few pleasantries had been exchanged.

Verena rolled her eyes heavenward. “I should say. He’s in here almost every night,
and
with a different woman every week. That’s one guy who surely likes the ladies.”

Bonnie’s eyes bugged and her breath came out in an explosive hiss.

“Hey, I didn’t speak out of turn, did I?” Verena said, shocked. “I mean, he’s not your fella, is he?”

But Bonnie had ignored her. She had gone right out of that bar, bought herself a black dress, cut low like Verena’s, and gone dancing. She spent the night with a guy she picked up, and found she liked it. As with everything, once you knew the ropes it grew easier, she told herself. And it had been easy finding lovers––men were all the same, only too eager, sniffing after her like dogs in heat.

Now, sitting in the train, heading north, back to San Francisco, Laurie laughed to herself at the apt synonym. Her lover had been like a dog in heat––and he had died like that.

After “Jimmy’s” funeral she drove the Buick as far west out of Florida as she could get before running out of gas. She ended up in a small town somewhere in South Carolina, drove to a drugstore and bought herself a packet of Coppernob Hair Color, then stopped off at a McDonald’s, where she ordered a Big Mac for herself and a plain one for Clyde. They ate them sitting in the front seat of the car, then checked into a motel. She emerged the next morning a coppery redhead and continued to drive aimlessly west, always heading vaguely for California.

When she hit Falcon City, Texas, she found the real Laurie Martin’s purse in the rest room of the diner. Looking through it, she saw her social security card. She had resisted the temptation to take the seventy dollars in cash––this was a small town and it was too risky. Besides the social security number would be more useful to her later, and she wrote it down carefully before handing in the bag.

She sold the Buick because she knew that Jimmy would be able to find her by tracing the car, then made the smart move of joining the local church, where she quickly singled out the members of the congregation who had a bit of money behind them.

She found it amusing that the church was the best place in town to find a catch. The Lord had provided her with easy pickings. But she thought Satan would have enjoyed the joke.

Boss Harmon was in a wheelchair, and he hadn’t been named “Boss” for nothing. In his time, he had founded a successful car dealership, the same one to which she had just sold the Buick and that was now run by his son. Sexy, in a tight black dress like Verena’s and heels, she had gotten a job as a waitress in the local steak house Boss patronized on a regular basis, and gradually, through church meetings and Sunday services, where she dressed more demurely, she had wormed her way into Boss Harmon’s life.

She made a fuss of him, talked to him, let him ramble on to her. She patted his withered hand lovingly, smoothed his sparse white hair, lit his cigarettes and never complained, as his son and his wife did, about his terrible cough. She even dabbed his lips with a napkin when he drooled disgustingly over supper.

Boss had said humbly that he couldn’t live without her, and she had laughed and said, well, they had better get married, then he wouldn’t have to. “Otherwise,” she added, “I might just have to set off on my travels again.”

They were married three weeks after that with her in a white silk dress and matching white stilettos bought on an expensive spending spree in San Antonio. She had always wanted a white wedding. Under the long veil her red hair looked even redder, tumbling around her naked shoulders, and she carried a bouquet of roses in an almost–matching shade of coppery red. It was
her
day, even though there were no guests and the groom showed up in an ancient tux that hung off his now–scrawny body, and had to be pushed down the aisle by a male nurse––Frankie Vargas––whom she dismissed soon after the honeymoon.

The honeymoon.
What a farce that was. Her and Boss and Frankie Vargas in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Boss didn’t want to do much except watch TV in their fabulous suite at the Windsor Court Hotel––she could have lived there permanently, she loved the luxury and pampering, and the “Good morning, madam” and “Can we be of assistance, madam?” stuff so much. So in the daytime she went out and spent Boss’s money on an entire new wardrobe. And nights, when she had fed the old boy his sloppy–style supper (his teeth were no longer up to steaks), and she had pleasured him orally or manually, which was as much as he could manage––and about as much as she could manage too, it almost made her lose her cookies right there but she figured at least he’d gotten something out of the bargain. She wasn’t all bad––and it was his fault he couldn’t climax, Lord knows she tried.

Anyhow, after that Frankie bathed him and put him to bed, then she and he hit the town. You might say they painted it red. Red as her hair, Frankie had said, laughing when he found out later in bed that she wasn’t a true redhead.

Of course, after that little episode he’d had to go. She didn’t want any gossip back in Falcon City. She had enough trouble with Loretta and Beau and she wasn’t about to give them any more ammunition. So she told everyone she intended to take care of her husband herself.

“That’s what the Lord would expect a good wife to do,” she explained solemnly to the pastor at the Sunday morning service.

She kept her waitressing job too. “So you can’t complain I married him for his money,” she told Beau and Loretta, but the truth was she already planned to use it as an alibi. Meanwhile, she had a new name and a new identity. She was safe from Jimmy. He would never find her now.

It had been easy to drop the lit cigarette onto the bedcovers while the old man slept. She had driven immediately to the restaurant in his old Cadillac with the gold radiator grill and its
BOSS 1
number plate.

She was nervous, pacing like a cat, hoping that her scheme would work, worried that she hadn’t been able to stay to take care of things. She poured herself a cup of coffee. It was so hot it burned her throat, but she was grateful for the heat. It seemed to melt the numbness in her chest, in her stomach, in her heart. The waiting was terrible. Her vital organs seemed to have calcified.

After Boss’s funeral, where she wore a black veil and placed copper–red roses on his coffin, she said with a sorrowful smile to the attorney in charge of the estate, “It’s all over but the shouting.” Meaning the angry statements about murder being put around town by Boss’s son and his wife, who were contesting the will that left her fifty percent of Boss Harmon’s money plus the house to live in for the rest of her life if she so wished. If not, it went to his son. It was not as much as Bonnie had expected and she was angry. She had paid her dues with that dirty old man. He should have taken better care of her.

Then that bitch, the hoity–toity Loretta, brought in the heavyweights with their threats of investigating Boss’s death, and also her past. Remembering the trailer fire and the other dead “husband,” Bonnie knew she couldn’t allow that. And so they had won. She cut her losses, took the two hundred thousand and the Cadillac and split.

She was all packed, suitcases stashed in the caddy along with as many little valuables as she had been able to hide from the eagle–eyed Loretta, and she called for Clyde to come on and hurry up into it baby they were on their way.

There was no response, and none either to her piercing whistle that usually brought him bounding to her side. Puzzled, she searched the house. Then the garden, the pool.

Filled with foreboding, she ran down the long gravel driveway, saw him lying near the gate. He was so still she knew immediately he was dead.

She sank to her knees and stared at his bloody, mangled body for a long moment. Then she began to scream. Those screams ripped out of her like a hobgoblin in hell.

Sobbing, she picked Clyde up, wrapped him in her five–hundred–dollar cashmere sweater and placed him gently on the backseat of the car.

Heartbroken, she wept buckets for him. Cursing Beau, who she knew in her gut had done it to get back at her, she drove like a wild woman over to his place, ready to kill both him and his wife.

“An eye for an eye,” Beau said smugly, when screaming, she accused him of killing her dog. But her eyes burned with hate and he stepped quickly back.

Bonnie saw his fear and could have killed him right there and then. But then she would have lost everything and Beau would have won.

So, with the two hundred thou in her pocket, she turned up in California with a new blond hairdo, a new wardrobe and, thanks to the real Laurie Martin’s social security number, a new identity. She couldn’t risk being identified as Mrs. Boss Harmon when the time came for her next victim.

First thing, she bought a brand–new condo, everything pristine, clean, shiny. She furnished it in the tropical Florida colors she had always admired in magazines when she was a poor kid: white carpets, white sofas, pink drapes, turquoise and pink rugs. And a huge color TV set. It was her fantasy home and she loved it.

She sold the Cadillac and leased the Lexus. She was as happy as a clam. She was smart, attractive, tanned from sessions at the local tanning salon. Her nails were manicured, her hair glossy. She checked out the local churches, joined the one with the richest congregation.

She hated dressing the frump when she attended church but knew it was in her best interest. To combat the effect it had on her, she always wore sexy lingerie underneath to remind herself of who she really was and what she had to offer. This time, she was going for the big one, though. This time, she wanted to be a millionaire. And John MacIver was just the ticket.

Meanwhile, she went legit and got a real estate certificate and a job. She was Laurie Martin the businesswoman now, with her own home, her beautiful car, her nice clothes. And John MacIver was eating out of her hand.

She got the second biggest shock of her life when Jimmy showed up and ruined it all.

Jimmy Victor was living down the coast in Pacific Beach, an area of surfers and beach bums, which is what he had become. He drank too much, partied too much and worked as little as possible. He had found Laurie/Bonnie by accident. An accident that promised him some badly needed cash.

He told her he was browsing through the newspaper, when he saw her photograph in the Homes section, over a half–page of listings. His eyes traveled over it at first without registering. Then something about the blond woman’s smile triggered a memory. He studied the face, examined every feature. It was Bonnie, alright. He grinned, delighted. His ship had finally come in. And its name was Laurie Martin.

Laurie jumped when he called her on the phone and said, “Hello, Bonnie, remember me?” She knew he heard it in the indrawn gasp, the long outward sigh, the faint tremor in her voice as she said, “Who is this? You must have the wrong number.”

“Want me to come over there and check you out?” he had suggested, grinning.