Devil's Oven (11 page)

“Dwight, buddy!” he said. “How’s it hangin’ today?”

“Three overheads burned out,” Dwight said. “Everything working out at the truck office?”

“I got the best people in the world working for me,” Bud said, meaning it.

He followed Dwight through the doorway and laid the briefcase on his desk casually, as though it contained nothing more significant than his lunch.

“Anything in the mail?”

“Crap,” Dwight said. “Some wholesale dildo catalog, like we’re one of those G.D. bookstore places. Models and everything. Who buys that shit?”

Bud grinned. How did someone like Dwight stay so naïve? Dwight always cracked him up, even when Bud felt like six kinds of hell.

“I hear they sell them at parties,” Bud said. “Like Tupperware.”

“Screw me,” Dwight said. “Ignoramuses. You won’t see
my
grandma passing one of those things around a martini party.” He set up the ladder and arranged the bulb boxes on its protruding shelf.

Bud sat down behind his desk, watching the smaller man work. Dwight had just shown up one day, like an answer to an unspoken prayer. Where would Dwight go if Bud had to close the club? He knew he probably should have turned over the club’s financials to Dwight two years ago—he had certainly proved himself trustworthy enough early on. Since Dwight came on board, the cash drawer had never been short more than might be expected for an operation like The Twilight Club, and the cops had to break up fights less often. Despite his brusqueness, he took good care of the girls. They needed someone like Dwight.

But it was that kind of thinking, Bud had been told, that made him a poor businessman.
A piss-poor businessman
was the exact phrase. Still, he didn’t know how to do it any other way.

“What do you say I get us some coffee?” Bud said. “You got any made?”

Dwight looked down at him from the ladder, the light of the first bulb he’d changed bouncing off his glasses.

 “You don’t drink coffee,” he said.

Bud fiddled with an envelope on his desk.

“I need you to take care of a thing for me,” he said. “I’ve got some cash—not all of it yet—and I need you to get it to your friends.”

Bud couldn’t see Dwight’s eyes from where he sat, but the look that swept across his face hinted there might be some kind of problem.

“What is it?” Bud said. He knew he could handle whatever Dwight told him. He’d had enough bad news lately that more wouldn’t be any kind of surprise.

“Have they been on you already? You need to keep me in the loop, Dwight. This is my problem, not yours.”

“It’s fine,” Dwight told him. “Is that it?” He pointed to the briefcase.

“They’ve been calling my house,” Bud said. “I want to get this to them before something happens. You know, to Lila, God forbid. Or around here.” He massaged his temples, trying to fight the headache coming on. “I can’t believe I ever let it get this far, man. And I hate that you’ve put yourself in the middle of it.”

Dwight guffawed. “Just call me the tasty crème filling.” But when he saw the misery on Bud’s face, he stopped.

“Seriously, boss,” he said. “It’s handled. I already told you it’s not a problem.” He climbed down the ladder, careful not to catch the pointed toes of his boots in the steps. He leaned over the desk and stuck his hand out for Bud to shake.

Bud didn’t trust himself to speak. He took Dwight’s thin, soft hand and shook it firmly, like men do.

•  •  •

It took Dwight the better part of an hour, but by the time Bud left, he’d seemed more relaxed and less like he was going to freak out right there in the office. On top of his financial problems, the troopers were still harassing Bud with questions about the murder of that poor bastard Claude Dixon. Nearly all local murders were of the domestic abuse or pay-up-for-the-shitload-of-meth-I-fronted-you-asshole varieties. The troopers were probably enjoying the novelty. Dwight was a fan of monster-of-the-week television himself, and this death had all the titillating marks of one.

In another life, he had specialized in setting up similar puzzles for the cops. He had been too good at it, and it had gotten boring. Alta was a place he thought he could get away from all that, but it had followed him here like dog shit stuck to his shoe.

As juicy as it sounded, he wondered just how reliable the Dixon woman’s story was. Exaggeration was her specialty. Half the people who stopped at the Git ’n’ Go to buy a tank of gas or a frozen pizza or cigarettes had to hear about her hemorrhoids, her Peekapoo, or which male member of the county supervisor’s board took his wife’s lingerie and high heels with him when he traveled alone out of town.

He put the ladder and box of bulbs away in the closet and returned to stand in the doorway of the office.

“Screw me,” he said. What was he going to do with Bud’s cash? He didn’t know for sure where Bud had gotten it, but had a reasonable guess. The guy must have had to dig his balls out of one of Lila Tucker’s thousand-dollar purses to get it done. Dwight didn’t want to blame Bud, but it sure would have helped things if his boss had found the money a little sooner. Dwight pushed his glasses up on his forehead and rubbed his eyes.    He had to think
.
There were messages on his phone asking him questions he wasn’t ready to answer. Throwing money at some of those questions might help, but there was no guarantee. The former associates he had helped Bud borrow the money from were businessmen, and handing them less than half of what Bud owed them wasn’t going to cut it. Already they were looking for more than just the money. Bud just didn’t know it yet.

What Dwight really wanted to do was go home, throw some clothes into his suitcase, and leave this godforsaken place, with its crazy-ass hillbillies and too-dark nights and mountains that slumped on the horizon like worn-out beasts. He wanted to sit on a concrete stoop where he could watch the traffic and shoot the shit with the mailman or a bag lady, and then wander down the block to a bar where he could enjoy a cold, non-alcoholic beverage even on a Sunday afternoon.

Instead, he went to Bud’s desk and opened the case. He counted the money, shuffling it back into neat piles with brisk efficiency. Bud had probably counted it himself. Bud was nothing if not honest. Too G.D. honest, as far as Dwight was concerned.

He closed the briefcase and tried to think of where he might keep it until morning. He couldn’t leave the club because he was waiting on a beer delivery, and the safe was too small to hold the case. Later he asked himself why he didn’t just take the money out of the case and put it in the safe. But that was much later. By then, money had ceased to be the big issue.

He took the case down the hall to the supply closet. It fit nicely into a fold of a rust-stained tarp in the corner, and he arranged the tarp’s edges to make sure the case was hidden. Taking out his keys, he locked up the closet and went back down the hall into The Twilight Club’s high-ceilinged barroom.

For the first time in a lot of years, he considered going behind the bar and pouring himself a couple fingers of scotch. Things hadn’t been this bad in a hell of a long time. But just before he reached the shining black and chrome bar with its mirrored rows of attractively labeled bottles, the back door buzzer rang.

Dwight stopped and looked at the big neon clock above the bar. The beer guy was early.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Saved by the G.D. bell.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“You’re going to have to put the phone down. Stand up as straight as you can,” Ivy said. “Please, be still.” She stretched a measuring tape across the freckled V of skin that began where the back zipper of the third bridesmaid’s dress had gotten stuck.

The girl—maybe sixteen years old—tried to look over her shoulder at what Ivy was doing, but Ivy pressed her fingers firmly on the girl’s back to get her to look forward. It was supposed to be a final fitting, but the girl had shown up with a belly that was three or four pounds heavier than it had been at the first fitting six weeks earlier.

“You won’t say anything?” the girl whispered.

“About what?” Ivy knew she was being too short with her, but she had far too much on her mind to worry about a stranger’s secret, a pregnancy that wouldn’t be a secret for much longer anyway. Far more important to her was that no one find out that Thora’s body lay rolled in a clear plastic tarp in the big freezer at the back of the house. Or that the periodic snores coming from the guest room down the hall belonged to a once-dead murderer.

So much to hide.
Soon, people would be asking where Thora was. Ivy already had to cancel a doctor’s appointment that morning. How natural she had made her voice sound! She’d even joked with the receptionist as though her heart weren’t broken with grief. And Anthony. She had tried to get him to go back up to the trailer, which she’d stocked with all kinds of food he might like, but he had just sat down in Thora’s chair and turned away from her to stare out the window.

“I’ll fix it so you’ll get through Sunday’s wedding,” Ivy said. “Tell Missy there was a problem with the zipper. Come back and get it Saturday morning.” She almost added that it would have helped if she had been told about the pregnancy at the first fitting, but the girl was so young. How could she know whom she could trust? Ivy was only just realizing there was no one else in the world
she
could trust.

She should have trusted Thora more. Thora hadn’t told anyone about Anthony.
But she would have. Eventually.

The girl sighed, letting her shoulders relax, and Ivy saw that the dress was going to need yet another extra half-inch. Out in the living room, the two bridesmaids who had already been fitted burst into a fit of noisy laughter. When it subsided, Ivy heard the jingle of the tiny bells she had hung on the door of the guest bedroom down the hall.

“Go on and change,” Ivy said, tossing the measuring tape on the table. “We’re done.” Propelled by fear, she rushed out to the hallway to stop Anthony from coming out of the room—or someone else from going inside. She slammed the workroom door behind her.

•  •  •

Ivy pressed her hand against Anthony’s chest and urged him back into the room as firmly as she dared. He was naked and looked like a very tall, sleepy child. Late morning sunlight framed his body in gold. How was it that she could touch him so intimately? Before Anthony, she had only seen men naked in films.

“You can’t, Anthony,” she whispered. “There are people in the living room.”

He looked down at her. She had learned to recognize when he understood her.

“They’ll be gone soon,” she said. “I promise.”

The air in the guest room was close and unpleasant. She had washed his bloody clothes and laid them on Thora’s hope chest at the foot of the bed, but she hadn’t been able to coax him to take a shower. One of his hands cupped his penis and his forehead wore a deep crease. He obviously had to use the bathroom.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “You’ll have to wait.”

He seemed to understand and moved back from the door. But when the girls started laughing again, he turned his head toward the sound.

“Anthony,” she said, trying to keep his attention. She knew she had been foolish to let the girls come today, but there had been no other time. Sunday was the wedding. Even in crisis, she felt compelled to finish her work, to make sure her clients would always come back to her, especially now that Thora’s disability benefit would stop. Though she would have to tell someone Thora was dead for that to happen, wouldn’t she? Otherwise, the checks would continue. For a while. Until the questions started.

“Get dressed.” She tried to sound as though she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Taking the clothes from the top of the chest, she pushed them into his arms.

While he seemed distracted by the clothes, she stepped out of the room and shut the door. She felt surreal, like she was taking part in some kind of dark, comic farce that was fated to end badly. It had already ended badly for Thora. The right thing to do—the only thing—was to send the girls away, call the police, and tell them Anthony was here and that he had murdered Thora and threatened Ivy. No one would blame her for being terrified of him. His eyes said everything. And nothing.

But Ivy’s heart was pounding and she felt more alive than she had in many, many years. She didn’t know what would happen next. The only thing she knew was that she had to shelter him, to protect him. There was no one else who would.

“Miss Ivy?” the pregnant girl, now dressed, stood in the workroom doorway.

“What?” Ivy said, louder than she intended. “You’re finished. What do you want?”

“Should we take the other dresses with us?”

Ivy wanted to scream at her to just leave, but the girl already looked worried. She managed a tight smile. “I’ll get them and bring them out.”

•  •  •

When she heard the car start in the driveway, Ivy hurried back to the guest room. How could she convince Anthony to stay up at the trailer? It was too much, worrying about him running into the clients she had coming in and out of the house. They were used to Thora, who had mostly ignored them. But Anthony? They could never see him.

She opened the guest room door, expecting to find him lying on the bed or sitting in the room’s single chair. Instead, he was standing in the corner near the window, still naked, his back to her. About two feet up the wall, the paint was darker and looked wet.

“Oh, Anthony. No,” she said. “Stop!” She was too late.

He didn’t turn around until his bladder was empty. When he did, he seemed much less agitated than when she had left the room.

“This isn’t right,” she said, pointing to the urine-soaked corner. “You need to do that in the bathroom. You used it yesterday, remember?” She had even heard him get up around one o’clock when she was still scrubbing Thora’s blood from the kitchen floor. Afterward he hadn’t flushed or washed his hands, but she was keeping her expectations low. Who knew what he had been like before? Thora had always insisted that men were pigs.