All or Nothing (27 page)

She had no time for margarita mixes anymore. She wasn’t into that sophisticated cocktail drink stuff. She liked the smooth burn of the hard liquor down her throat, the tingle in her chest as it slid down to her stomach, the warmth of it inside her. And unlike other people, she never got drunk. None of that falling down in a stupor shit for her. Jimmy had always said she had a cast–iron stomach.

Jimmy! That bastard! He was the cause of all her problems.

She took another slug of the tequila, thinking of what she would do to Jimmy Victor if he were here, now, something that had a close connection to what Hannibal Lecter was supposed to have done to his victims in the movie she was watching. Then she remembered, she had already taken care of Jimmy. But now they had found his body and the bastard might come back to haunt her again. Or at least to haunt Laurie Martin.

There was no way the cops could trace Bonnie Hoyt/Victor after all these years, she was certain of that. And once she had become Bonnie Harmon she had left her past behind in another state, another world. And as far as anybody knew, Laurie Martin’s disappearance had nothing to do with Jimmy Victor being killed. No, she,
Maria Joseph,
was safe.

Of course too, none of this would have happened if it had not been for Beau Harmon. She would have had Boss’s money and there would have been no need for her to go to work as an estate agent. No way Jimmy would have found her. No need for all
this.
She could just have continued having the good life, a nice condo, expensive clothes, diamond rings, cruises . . . and no need to stroke any old man’s ego along with his private parts in order to get what she wanted.

Beau Harmon was the cause of her downfall. Beau Harmon and that bitch Loretta had brought her to this.
Beau Harmon had murdered Clyde.

Pain shot through her heart as she remembered Clyde’s mangled little body lying on the gravel driveway in the Texas heat with the flies already buzzing around him. It made her howl again and the new Clyde jumped to his feet, barking and pawing anxiously at her.

A bullet in the heart would not have hurt as much as this. And this new Clyde only made her long for her old Clyde more. This dog looked pretty much the same, but he was a bit sappy. Too unaggressive, too goddamn friendly, he ran up to strangers on the street, sniffed them, licked their hands. The second Clyde would never have done that. He belonged to her, she to him, that was the unspoken pact between them.

Jimmy Victor had paid the price for threatening her. Now she vowed it was Beau Harmon’s turn to fuckin’ suffer, just the way she had done ever since she lost Clyde.

She contemplated driving down to Texas, confronting him with a shotgun, taking him “out”––
and
that embalmed wife of his. The haughty Loretta wouldn’t look too immaculate anymore with a nice big red stain spreading across the bosom of her lavender silk dress and probably spilling onto the white sofas and the velvety white carpet in that all–white room that was like some goddamn shrine to virginity. Maybe Loretta was still a virgin? Didn’t look like any man had ever placed a hand on one of those plastic tits, never mind stuck it in her.

Laurie laughed at the thought as she opened the second bottle of tequila. No Jose Cuervo Gold for her, the cheap stuff was just as potent, just as satisfying, and she liked what it did to her head.

She watched, fascinated, as the murderer circled the pit where the terrified victim was imprisoned. Was her skin going to be removed while she was still alive? Was it going to be cured and tanned and made into a skin jacket? Jeez, this guy was really nuts. . . .

Clyde settled down again. He rested his head on her knees, gazing soulfully at her. She fondled his head absently, thinking of the other Clyde. And of Beau and Loretta. She had promised herself revenge on them one day. Now their time had come.

There were two other people who needed to be taken care of as well. They were already on her list. But Beau came first.

How, though? That was the riddle she set herself that night. How to kill Beau and Loretta?

A rattler in Loretta’s bed? She laughed out loud at the thought of Loretta finding a snake in her bed––of Loretta finding anything in her bed other than herself. That would send the old bitch screaming and fainting. Loretta moved slow as an oil slick on water, the snake would be sure to strike her before she had even moved her ass.

There was only one problem with that, though. No, two problems. The first was to obtain a rattler. The second was to gain entry to the Harmon mansion and put it in Loretta’s bed.

Frowning, she downed more tequila, watching the end of
The Silence of the Lambs.
She liked it that he got away, the clever ones like him and her always did.

The Unabomber! The thought flashed into her mind, sharp as an arrow.
A letter bomb,
that was the answer. It was easy, it was anonymous––and since everybody opened his mail without even thinking about it, it was almost always successful. All she had to do now was to find out how to make the bomb.

She was smiling as she switched off the TV, shunted Clyde off her lap and walked––slowly and carefully but without staggering, which considering she had downed a bottle and a half of tequila was quite a feat––into the bedroom. Once again the glaring white of the new bedcovers made her realize the shoddiness of the rest of her surroundings and tears sprang to her eyes.

She would get even with those bastards, if it was the last thing she did.

There was no problem making a letter bomb, Laurie found. In fact it was easier than first–year science class. The problem was to conceal her identity when she purchased the necessary items: the Jiffy bags of a specific size, the mechanical assembly and the detonator and plastic explosive, even the sheets of cardboard that would be packed around it. The envelope had to fit tightly because its pressure kept the bomb from detonating, but once the envelope was opened and the pressure removed––you were looking death in the face.

And death was almost too good an option for Beau Harmon.

She was confident there was no way anyone could link the letter bomb to Maria Joseph, or to Bonnie Harmon, but nevertheless she took all possible precautions, purchasing the necessary components in places miles away from Oakland and buying each piece in a different place.

She was sweating as she put them all together, though, wearing surgical gloves in case of fingerprints and handling the plastic explosive like a newborn. Christ, this was tough, you surely needed nerves of steel, but then she had always prided herself on just that. Except she had never been threatened before and it would be too ironic if she blew herself up at this point.

She was laughing as she sat at the scratched yellow–oak table in her apartment, with Clyde on the opposite chair interestedly sniffing the pungent almondlike odor of the plastic explosive as she packed it around the mechanical device, then inserted the detonator and placed the whole between the two sheets of thick cardboard.

Next, she printed Beau’s name and address on the thick brown envelope and affixed a Neiman Marcus sticker to allay any suspicions he might have about the package. Not that she expected him to have any, after all he wasn’t in the habit of receiving letter bombs, but just in case.

Finally, she slid the device into the envelope, made sure it did not move and felt rigid under her probing fingers, then she sealed it and stuck a layer of Sellotape over the seal.

She drove to a post office in San Francisco, far from her home, to have it weighed. The postal clerk commented that it was quite heavy for its size as she franked the big brown envelope.

Laurie was smiling as she hurried out of the post office. Death was that easy.

The Texas sun broiled down but inside the Harmon mansion the temperature was glacial. That was the way Loretta liked it and as Beau knew from long experience, whatever Loretta wanted she got. Well, if she thought she was going to freeze him out she was mistaken.

He climbed the shallow lavender–carpeted stairs passing Loretta’s suite, a poem in lavender, peach and apple–green Colefax & Fowler English chintz.

“Don’t y’ever stop to think we live in Texas for Christ’s sake,” Beau had said when he had seen it for the first time.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to share it. Your room is down the hall,” Loretta had retorted briskly.

And it was, immediately on the left of the spacious upper hallway with, naturally, a private sitting room and bath.

The decor here was more masculine, more in keeping with the way Beau saw himself than the way Loretta wanted him to be. Deep red walls glazed with many coats to a high shine; a heavy and genuine Jacobean carved–oak four–poster with red damask curtains; black–lacquered furnishings and a cocktail bar hidden in a chinoiserie armoire. A big–screen TV popped electronically from a faux cabinet at the foot of the bed and Beau would have had mirrors on the ceiling if Loretta had permitted it, but she considered it vulgar. Besides, Loretta didn’t like to fuck. And that was at the root of his problems with her.

Loretta was as frigid as her house. He figured she had some internal kind of air–conditioning system that left her in a perma–frost. Untouched and untouchable. Oh, he had “touched” her, of course, but there wasn’t much joy in it, nor much relief, and he had been forced to find that elsewhere, with women like Bonnie.

Actually, Bonnie had been quite a luscious little piece of ass when she had upped and married his pa. He had been thinking about putting the make on her himself, over a couple of bourbons at the steak house, especially when she flounced around in that short skirt that showed a lot of thigh and very good legs. He’d bet anything she knew he was watching her, checking her out––staking her out in the steak house. He grinned at his own joke. Then goddamn if the little bitch hadn’t pulled a fast one on him and snuggled up to the old man.

He walked into his closet that, had he known it, was three times as big as Bonnie’s current bedroom, pulled on a red cashmere sweater, then went back into the sitting room, pressed the button that opened up the cocktail cabinet and stared at the glinting mirrored array of crystal glasses inside. Ignoring them, he plucked a bottle of Famous Grouse from the back and drank deeply from it. He shuddered as it went down. God, that was better, this place was enough to freeze a fuckin’ brass monkey. Come to think of it, that was probably part of Loretta’s plan for him.

“Women with their own money are a problem,” Boss had said when Beau told him he was planning on marrying Loretta Larson. “You’ll never rule your own roost,” he had added. But then Beau had never ruled any roost, Boss had made sure of that. He had always been kept on a tight financial rein, always been made to feel inferior, always been beholden to Boss for every cent he got, even though he worked hard at the car dealerships. Why, he’d practically run the place those last few years.

But Boss had been right of course. Marriage to Loretta meant a marriage to Loretta’s oil money and she was as tight with him as she was indulgent with herself, spending a fortune building and furnishing this house, and on her clothes and jewelry, and on the butler and the stables with the expensive horses, though she never rode. Like everything else with Loretta, it was all for show.

It had been a good day though, when her attorneys had come to his aid and stopped little Mrs. Bonnie Harmon from getting away with all of Boss’s money. A couple of hundred grand was worth it to see her off. Now he had finally found some kind of independence––but not the kind that could ever give him courage enough to leave Loretta and go off with the nineteen–year–old blonde in Dallas whom he had met at the line–dance palace, and who claimed she loved him and who, whenever they were together, which was as often as he could slip away “on business,” certainly acted as though she did.

Beau stood at the window, slugging bourbon from the bottle, looking at Loretta’s sleek horses grazing in Loretta’s lush green paddocks. At Loretta’s lavish gardens and enormous koi ponds where the fish glinted gold and orange in the sun. At her gardeners toiling in the heat. At her English butler walking down the front steps to greet the mailman, taking the bundle from him to be placed on a silver salver in the front hall––that was the way the English aristocracy did it, Loretta had informed him. Beau guessed whatever was good enough for Brit aristocrats was good enough for Loretta, though back home in Falcon City he and his mom and Boss had usually sorted the mail on the kitchen table.

The mailman also handed Pearson, the butler, a parcel, which he tucked under his arm. Loretta had probably bought something from one of those QVC TV shows, Beau thought. You would never expect it of a woman like that, but she did all her Christmas shopping that way. Saved all the hassle––as well as a lot of money, she said. Loretta was mean as well as cold. Beau definitely did not like Loretta, and most folks roundabout here knew it.

But they still showed up for the Saturday dinner parties, the Sunday brunches, the late–summer Texas hayrides in the stables and meadows that Loretta organized in her role as doyenne of the local society, with Loretta in pink gingham and her hair in artful beribboned pigtails that had taken her hairdresser all morning to fix. Nobody was turning down Loretta Larson Harmon’s hospitality. They came in droves to the Christmas carol party around the giant tree––pretrimmed by party planners with giant gold–gauze bows and gilded silk roses, though there were no childish stockings hanging on their mantel, Loretta couldn’t abide kids, she said they would mess up her beautiful home. So after the Christmas carol party was over they each went to their separate rooms, Beau to drown his Christmas spirit in Famous Grouse, Loretta no doubt to embalm herself in night creams and Neiman’s most expensive silk shroud. Only she called it a peignoir.

Here she came now, speeding up the driveway in a spurt of gravel that cost a fortune to buy and even more to maintain––the gardeners knew to sweep it regularly every hour on the hour––in her custom lavender Range Rover that she thought gave her the proper sporty English–lady–of–the–manor appeal. Hah, as if any decent Englishwoman would ever drive a lavender Range Rover––except maybe Fergie.