Painting With Fire (15 page)

Chapter 33: For Every Season, There is a Body

Claudia had no idea where to go.

The worry was interrupted by a comforting smell. He was cooking pancakes, eggs and hash browns out of a carton. For a second, she forgot all about his criminal record and crazy ideas about breaking into buildings and thought he was the perfect man. He was in his boxers and an apron. But then again, who needs perfection? There was nothing sexier than a man holding a spatula, she thought. She blushed slightly as she sat down at the kitchen table.

“Ahh, there’s a reason I keep you around,” she said, smiling, as he slid the eggs onto her plate. “Many, actually.”

“We need a good meal before we hit the road,” he said.

“Well, where are we going, exactly?” she said. “I don’t want you to lose your job, too. Maybe we could just stay somewhere else in the city?”

“Finally move out? Take too long,” Tom said. “And I don’t have a ton of cash. I was thinking we could go camping, buy a cheap tent
, make a vacation out of it, while we figure it out. I can get a discount from my work. It will be nice, just the two of us in the woods under the stars.”

“Knowing our luck we’ll be attacked by a bear or an axe murderer,” she said, dropping a bit of egg yolk onto her shirt.

“Or an axe-wielding bear,” Tom said dryly and handed her a napkin.

“Not funny.” She wiped her shirt. “You have the weirdest sense of humor.
I don’t know that I’d feel safe in a tent after all this, even with you around.”

“To be honest, I don’t really care where we go, as long as I’m with you,” he said in an overly syrupy
voice.

“There’s a problem though.” He sat back in his chair. “What exactly are we going to hit the road in?
Our car is pretty conspicuous with the rusted, flapping hood and we aren’t that far away from that church. What if the same guys spot us on our way out?”

He leaned
his elbows on the table and stared at her with those deep, dark eyes. She felt herself floating a bit, like she was on a slow-moving ship. So much had changed.

“
At least they didn’t get a good look at my face,” she said. “All they got a good look at was my ass.”

“It is a memorable ass,
though,” Tom said, laughing. “They might recognize it. But it was pretty dark last night. What else are we going to do?”

“I’ll feel so much better when we’re outta here,” she said.

She furrowed her eyebrows and paced back and forth as she started to pack little odds and ends.

“Were you painting this morning?” she asked him, as she grabbed her pills out of a kitchen cabinet.

“I had to,” he said. “I
only managed to sleep for a few hours. I had one of those dreams. How did you know?”

“White shirt,” she said. “I don’t understand how you manage not to spill a drop of paint on it, and you spend most of your time around here shirtless, so why put on a shirt when you are painting?”

“I don’t know,” he laughed. “Did you want me to take it off? Are you complaining?”

He leaned over the kitchen table, resting his weight on his palms. She expected him to kiss her but he didn’t.

She felt her face flush red. Here she was a grown woman and this man made her feel like a 12-year-old with a crush.

She started to pack a duffel bag on her bed. Seven pairs of panties, seven pairs of socks, three bras, one pair of jeans, one
pair of shorts, no pajamas. Claudia always forgot the pajamas, but this time she left them on purpose.

She swung the bag over her shoulder.

Tom had all his stuff in a backpack.

“We’re coming back. We won’t be gone that long,” he said, his eyes glancing toward his easel. He looked uneasy about leaving it.

“Tom, it’s beautiful.” she dropped the bag for a moment to take a closer look.

It was a woman in the clouds, surrounded by cherubs, wearing a golden halo and white folded wings. She stared at them intently with her blue eyes and a serene classical expression. Her long, blond hair flowed in loose waves.

“An angel,” she said.

“It’s weird,” Tom said. “All this talk about Angel must have set it off. I get the feeling it’s from the old church, but I didn’t see anything like this on the ceiling.”

“Maybe there used to be something like it at one point in time,” she said, squeezing his hand.

“Oh, so you believe me now,” he said, taking the duffel bag out off her shoulder and carrying it down the stairs in one hand.

“But you’re wrong. That angel…” Claudia murmured softly as they wound down the steps. “I’ve seen her before.

“Christ, it’s you.” Claudia froze on the landing and gazed down at Alice. Her blue eyes sparkled. Her long blond hair cascaded down her shoulders in waves. Her skin was porcelain. Her mouth was upturned in a small, sweet, closed-mouthed smile.

Claudia slowly exhaled out the breath caught in her lungs. She wanted to be wrong, but she wasn’t.

Alice raised the barrel of a gun level with Claudia’s eyes. “Why don’t we go back upstairs to your apartment?

A man stepped up behind her, the big, wiry one with no front teeth. He had the dog back on a chain again, slinking behind him. In the daylight, the dog looked like a sad stack of burnt ribs with liquid brown eyes. Claudia eyed the stocky skeletal frame and giant head coated with mud.

They
backed up on the stairs. Claudia stumbled a little since she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the dog to look down at the steps.

Tom unlocked the front door and they walked back into the apartment, surrounded by paintings. Claudia winced and silently prayed Alice wouldn’t look at the picture on the easel. She couldn’t help but
glance at it and then Tom. The Adam’s apple in his throat convulsed in a swallow.

With the Johnsons gone next door
and deaf Doris down below, there was no one there to hear them yell.

“You want anything to drink?” Claudia asked Alice. “A glass of water, beer, wine? I’ve also got milk and apple juice, if that’s more your speed.”

Tom laughed nervously.

“No thanks,” Alice said. She sat down in the armchair and tapped her manicured, pink nails on the stained upholstery.

The pit bull sat on the carpet and waited with its mouth split open and tongue hanging out. Alice rubbed his filthy head and clipped ears with her left hand and held the gun in the other.

“He’s good at catching rats. I’ve always hated rats,” Alice said. She tilted her head toward the man with no front teeth. He grunted through an almost toothless smile.

“You know, Alice,” Claudia swallowed. “Tom and I don’t have a problem with it, what you’re doing. In fact, I’m still dying for a job.”

“Really,” she said, smiling sweetly. “So you’re good at keeping secrets then?”

“We are,” Tom said quickly.

“Then, what the fuck is that?” Ali
ce said, pointing to the painting. “Some kind of fucking joke? A fucking picture of an angel that looks just like me.”

“I’ve alway
s admired you,” Tom said. “You’re a beautiful woman. I couldn’t help myself. I figured I’d give it to you as a gift. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah right, you didn’t know it goes with my nickname.” She glared at Tom. “It’s not fucking funny.”

But then Alice smiled and cocked her head to the side slightly.

“We don’t need to give the police any ideas,” she said in a cotton-candy voice. “The cops are so stupid. You know there was one drug bust I was at, they arrested everyone else but me. The racist fuckers think Angel is a Hispanic male. I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Blond, blue eyed and busty,” I can see how they’d get distracted,” Tom said. “You look so sweet and innocent.”

The man growled at Tom and Claudia took a good look at his scarred arms.

He kept scratching the pale, ashy skin of his face and shifting back and forth on his feet like a boxer. You could tell he used to be athletic, but the meat on him had been whittled down with each hit. The leftover muscles lined his arms and legs like white snakes stretched under too much skin.

“So what are we going to do with you two?” Alice said. “I know how chummy you are with the cops. I’ve seen you getting into their cars. What have you told them so far?”

“Not much,” Tom said. “When you break into a building, you keep your mouth shut when you get caught.”

“Is that what happened?” Alice said, with a sigh. She sat down on the couch, put her arms up on the cushions and put her black Jimmy Choo high heels up on the coffee table. “They caught you? It’s not like my guys called them.”

“An undercover unit saw us breaking out,” Tom said. “Your guys are lucky they didn’t spot them when we were running away.”

For a moment, Claudia thought Alice might buy it. The corners of her mouth twitched into a small smile. She let her hand with the gun rest on a couch cushion and she leaned back her head and closed her eyes for a second.

“You know what?” Alice said, opening her large blue eyes. “I think you’re full of shit.”

She stood up, walked over to Tom, pointed the gun at his chest and slapped him hard on the face with her left hand.

“Dave,” she said to the man in the corner. “You know what we do with people who talk.”

With a wide, almost toothless grin on his face, the man pulled a roll of duct tape out of Alice’s purse. He reminded Claudia of a child getting into his mother’s belongings.

“You want me to beat them to death?

“Not this time,” Alice said. “I’ve got other ideas.”

“Angel, just give me another hit and I’ll do anything you want.”

“After they’re dead,” she growled.

Tom leapt to his feet. “You aren’t taking me anywhere or touching me with that tape.”

“You just want
me to shoot her now?” Alice said with a sweet smile. “I guess it’s all the same in the end.” She turned to her pale, ashy friend.

“But let’s try to make it look like a suicide,” she said softly. “She’s been depressed for a while after that murder, terribly depressed and somehow convinced Tom to go with her into the great, glorious beyond.

“You know what they say, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem,” Alice added in a sugary sarcastic voice.

“You really think the cops will buy that?” Tom spat.

“Maybe or they’ll just think it was kinky sex gone wrong. I’m not going to wait around to find out.” Alice shrugged. “But I always find the trick to a good lie is to create one you can believe in.”

The man punched Tom in the front of his head three times and he slumped forward unconscious.

Alice put her gun in her purse, pulled out a box of matches and started lighting candles.

The boxer covered Tom’s bleeding mouth with duct tape. Then he punched Claudia. She let her eyes close and chin hit her chest.

He covered her mouth. The panic rose in her throat and ended with the taste of adhesive on her lips. She tried to take slow breaths through her nose and hang like a rag doll.

The boxer dragged Tom’s limp body to the bed and came back for Claudia. She let herself be carried. He tied their wrists together against the
bedpost, like some kind of kinky, medieval torture ritual.

As he passed through the doorway, Claudia felt a moment of relief. At least he wasn’t going to rape her, she thought.

But then she heard Alice’s voice through the doorway. “I don’t want anyone seeing that the piece-of-shit painting. Burn it.”

Claudia’s nostrils flared as she gasped in the faint smell of smoke. The room started to take on a haze. She guessed the living room carpet was burning, too.

She stared at Tom’s face for a moment. He looked so peaceful with his eyes closed into curved slits. There were only faint red outlines of the bruises and swelling that hadn’t had time to appear.

She blinked tears and smoke
, then nuzzled her face against his chest, closed her eyes and smelled him. It calmed her for a moment. There were worse places to die.

But what would her mother think when she found out she died in bed with him, she wondered and started to squirm. Did she ever believe he was just her roommate anyway? Her mother always said they were going to get married. But she didn’t really care what her mom thought anymore. To think she was creeped out by Tom keeping a hammer under the bed.

Now, she wished he had a knife under his pillow, a gun, a hatchet, anything she could use. Suddenly, she felt his muscles twitch and spasm as his upper body bolted up. He came to with a muffled gasp for air.

“The hammer,” she screamed, but it only came out in a mumble.

Tom pulled at the ropes until their wrists were red and raw. Claudia stared into his eyes trying to get him to read her mind.

Finally, she shook her head and twisted her body until her feet kicked against the headboard. Her body would have to be the hammer. One stomp, two stomps, three stomps, then the wood started to crack and creak. Tom had a harder time flexing his stiff body into position, but managed to angle his feet to the headboard as well, until they both pounded and kicked the headboard to pieces. Tom pulled the loop up over the top of the broken slat. They were still tied together, but free.