Bad To The Bone (13 page)

"I was glad she was getting those things,"
Cathy explained, "because she stopped stealing money from my
momma's pocketbook and Momma stopped crying all the time."

The world wasn't much help in reining Tawny
in. Life was made easy for the girl with the perfect face and
astonishing body. She won every crown, led every parade, sat atop
each float that made its way down Main Street. When a new regional
high school opened its doors to thousands of students, Tawny was
queen of their world. High school boys stood in line to have their
hearts broken, their wallets stripped and their dreams ground out
underneath her high heels.

Even then, Tawny was after bigger game. When
Tawny was no more than sixteen, Cathy and a friend followed her
after school one day, pedaling furiously on their bikes to keep
pace with the white car that had picked Tawny up a few blocks from
the high school. They watched, wide-eyed in their junior high
school innocence, as Tawny and an older man parked behind a motel
on the outskirts of town—the kind of place that always made their
parents avert their eyes when they passed it—then disappeared into
a room together. They recognized the man as the father of a girl
they knew from Bible school.

The two girls listened in at the door and
grew frightened by the sounds they heard, sounds not made by Tawny
(who apparently even then was silently efficient in her methods)
but sounds made by the older man. He moaned and begged, as if
something hurtful was being done to him.

"What power did her older sister have over
men?" Cathy had wondered that day, then grown afraid that her
sister might use that same magic against her.

Cathy would witness Tawny's hold over the
opposite sex again and again in the years to come, but, from her
voice in the bar that night, I could tell that she still did not
quite understand the depth of Tawny's talent.

Tawny had no such trouble understanding her
advantage. Though she was never seen doing homework, she always
passed her classes; though she repeatedly flaunted the teachings of
their preacher, she was clearly his favorite and was never held up
to public shame as others were; and though Tawny never lifted a
finger at home to help with the farm or the housework, her parents
seemed helpless to do anything about it. She left the house at
dawn, returned close to midnight, if at all, and no one dared ask
where she went on weekends.

On her seventeenth birthday, Tawny came home
from school in a bright blue Mustang. No one ever found out who had
purchased it for her. Her father demanded she return it; Tawny
laughed in his face.

As she grew older, Tawny's clothes and
tastes grew more expensive. She was smart enough to protect her
assets. When her blond hair faded during her teen years, no one but
Cathy ever knew that her older sister discovered the joys of
peroxide early on. She had perfected this trick. The fact that she
had almost fooled me—the Queen of Clairol—meant that Tawny Bledsoe
was dropping a couple hundred a pop on her visits to the
hairdresser these days.

As witness to the different way the world
chooses to treat its beautiful and less beautiful inhabitants,
Cathy Worth felt something of relief when her sister left home for
good the day after high school graduation. Tawny's first husband
was a truck driver who took her to Phoenix. She hitchhiked back on
her own, married and divorced a Chatham County worm farmer, then
moved on to Joe Scurlock. I rounded her marriage total up to five
and waited for more.

"The worst thing was the way she always
treated us," Cathy told me, staring at her nearly destroyed hands.
"When I started high school, I still remember the look on
everyone's face when they learned I was Tawny's sister. 'She had a
sister?' they would all say, in this tone of voice I hated.

"The guys used to call me Cathy Worthless
because I didn't look anything like Tawny. Then, one day, my
science teacher made me stay after school. She said I was in real
trouble. I waited all day, afraid of what I could have done. I was
really scared because I couldn't think of what it might be."

Her voice filled with shame at the memory.
"Finally, the bell rang and I went to see her. The teacher held up
a test she'd made me take home to be signed. Daddy had been real
mad, it wasn't a very good grade, but he had signed it and sent it
back with me. The teacher pointed to his signature and accused me
of lying. She said she knew my parents were dead and that I lived
with an uncle and who was I to try and lie to her like that?" Cathy
paused.

“Tawny had told everyone my parents were
dead, to explain why they never came to any of the high school
events. Only they never came because she never told them. She was
ashamed of them. The kids from our area knew the truth, but they
were afraid to say anything. I had to bring my father with me to
school the next day to convince that science teacher I was telling
the truth."

Cathy looked up at me. "I know it don't
sound like much, she wasn't breaking any laws, but it's the way she
thinks that scares me. And she'll never change. She'll only get
worse. You don't know what she's like."

"I do know," I told her. "She's like a shiny
red apple with a big worm hole in the middle that no one else can
see. She has an empty black spot instead of a soul, and she tries
to fill it with jewelry and clothes and other people's sorrow."

Cathy Worth stared at me. "I guess that's
about right," she admitted.

I explained to her that I, too, thought
Robert Price was innocent and asked if she knew where her sister
might have gone.

She shook her head. "No, but I can guarantee
you that some man is with her. Tawny can't be alone. Not ever. She
needs a..." She groped for the right word.

"An audience?" I suggested.

She nodded. "I better go home," she said,
suddenly sounding very tired. "Dad needs a break. And I have to get
up real early for work."

"No problem. I'm sorry I kept you out so
late."

"It don't matter." She shrugged her massive
shoulders. "When you're as tired as I am, being more tired don't
make much difference."

As I drove home, the moon burned above me in
the thin winter sky as brightly as a spotlight, its light
illuminating the deserted highway clear up the next hill, making
the yellow center line seem as if it just went on and on to the
ends of the earth. For a second, I wanted to keep on driving and
never look back. I could put Jeff, Burly, even Tawny, far behind.
Start over somewhere else. Be someone new.

Here I was chasing someone, yet I felt
instead as if I were running away as fast as my legs could carry
me. God, but I hated Tawny for what she had gotten away with in
life. If there's one thing that people can't help, it's being born
poor. Who was she to turn her back on where she had come from? Who
was she to discard the people who loved her like so many pieces of
used Kleenex?

It went beyond that, of course. I could not
shake the memory of Robert Price being dragged from my office. I
could see the fear in his eyes, smell the sweat on his body, hear
the panic in his voice—and sense the shame overwhelming him.

She had used me to put an innocent man in
jail and the only way I could atone was by helping to set him free.
I would not be a party to her selfishness.

When I reached Raleigh, the thirty-mile
drive home to Durham loomed in front of me like a cross-country
trek. I decided to stop off at the Krispy Kreme on Peace Street for
sustenance, unable to resist the cheerful glow of the neon sign
that promised "HOT." I needed a break from the emotions churning in
my gut, and few things in life are as peaceful as watching Krispy
Kreme doughnuts being made. Some nights, there's standing room only
as dozens of stoners satisfy their munchies in mesmerized silence,
their eyes every bit as glazed as the doughnuts being ingeniously
created before them.

I sat at one of the tiny tables nestled
along the interior glass wall, thinking over my strategy as I
munched doughnuts and watched the emerging puffs of hot dough being
showered in a waterfall of molten sugar. If I wanted to catch a
sociopathic slut like Tawny Bledsoe, I decided, I'd just have to
think like a sociopathic slut. Granted, there are a few people in
this world who would consider that not much of a stretch for me,
but the truth was that I wanted to catch her precisely to prove
that we were different animals entirely.

My hatred kept me awake. When my blood sugar
reached the stratosphere, I offered the last of my warm dozen to a
bum who was lingering wistfully outside Krispy Kreme's doors. I
gave him a buck to buy coffee, then fed my spare change into the
pay phone so I could call the office and see if Bobby had any news
for me. He was long gone, but had left an update on my answering
machine.

First, he informed me that Jeff had called,
saying it was urgent, but leaving no return phone number. "The guy
sounded hysterical," Bobby said. "He was yelling shit like you were
going to ruin his life and he was in trouble because of you." That
was my ex in spades. Cool-headed and self-aware. Blaming me for his
drug troubles.

Next, Bobby let me know that he had run a
credit check on Tawny and discovered that she had bounced more than
her share of checks and was no longer welcome at most of the banks
in town. She had credit cards, but they were at or over their
limits. Perhaps she had used her own car to leave town, he
suggested, with maddening obviousness. Maybe I should check?

He reminded me of her address and, as long
as my day had been, I was tempted. Her house was a few miles down
Capital Boulevard from Krispy Kreme. And there I was, in the midst
of an all-time sugar high, with nothing to do but head home and
reflect on my depressed boyfriend or sleazy ex-husband.

Come to think of it, it wasn't a very hard
choice. And I'd do more than check for her car once I got
there.

Tawny's house was better than I could
afford. Probably better than Robert Price could afford, too. The
redwood-shingled ranch blended into the trees behind it and thick
bushes guarded the yard. A side door led from an attached garage
into what looked like the kitchen. I could break and enter in
perfect solitude.

I parked my car down the block, behind an
elementary school, then retrieved my burglary tools from the trunk.
As I crept back to the house on foot, using shrubs for cover, my
eye caught the flash of something odd going on inside the darkened
interior. A faint light was strobing inside one of the rooms. I
crouched behind some bushes, unsure if I was imagining it or
not.

I inched closer, peered in the living room
window and saw it: a dim crescent of white flickering against the
far wall. The reflection from a flashlight. Someone was already
inside Tawny's house. Tawny herself—or a cohort?

Some people might have called the cops. Some
people might have gotten the hell out of there. I pulled my Python
out of my knapsack and tucked it into my waistband. I slipped into
the garage and rested to bring my breathing under control. Slipping
my knapsack to the floor, I found my shimmy blade and began to
gently work at the side door. Within a minute, it slid open with a
snicker. People really ought to be more security conscious.

My feet made scuffing whispers on the
linoleum floor as I passed through the kitchen, but I soon reached
a carpeted hallway that cushioned all sound. I was tiptoeing toward
the living room when something furry brushed against a patch of
exposed skin between my socks and pants leg. I jumped and spun
around, banging my knapsack against a door jamb. The metal tools
inside clanked. What happened next unfolded in a blur.

Sounds of cursing came from an interior
room, then a body pushed past, shoving me to the floor. I smelled
tobacco and stale beer in its wake. As I sat back up, a purring cat
rubbed against my legs. I shoved it away and listened hard. The
intruder was running out the back door with as much grace as a
drunken buffalo. A door slammed shut, footsteps thudded across the
backyard, then someone crashed through the bushes and knocked over
a trashcan.

Dogs began barking on both sides of the
house. I had three minutes tops before all hell broke loose. I had
to get the hell out of there.

I crawled into the living room and turned on
my penlight. It was immaculate. Whatever the other intruder had
been looking for, it wasn't in there.

I moved on to a side room. Here I had more
luck. An antique wooden desk stood against a wall, its drawers
pulled open. Papers fluttered across the rug. The windows faced a
side yard, so I stood up slowly, confident I could not be seen from
the street. I almost tripped over a table, moved away, and still
bumped into it. What the hell? I studied it in the glow of my
penlight. It was one of those lamely disguised home safes, a steel
box nestled inside a wooden side table, accessible if you knew to
lift up the table top and had a key to unlock the inner
compartment. Someone had the key. The safe door was hanging open
and it was half full of papers. As I reached inside, I heard a
sound that made my heart stop.

Sirens. Several of them. Approaching fast.
They sounded as close as Capital Boulevard. Abruptly, the sirens
stopped and I started to panic as I realized why—the cops had
turned into Tawny's subdivision.

I stuffed the contents of the safe into my
knapsack, zipping it up even as my feet headed toward the side
door. I hit the garage running, took three big steps, then leaped
over a row of bushes like a steeplechase winner heading for the
home stretch. As I sprinted for the street-—judging it to be the
fastest route out—lights began blinking on in neighboring houses.
More dogs took up the alarm. It sounded like the hounds of hell
were on my heels. I ran faster.