The Best of Sisters in Crime (27 page)

Alone with the
patient. Mr. Morbeck quelled a shiver and clasped the leaden hand. “Mary
Willoughby, are you in there?” His voice hung in the air like a bell pull,
ready to start jangling again if anyone breathed on it. And Mary Willoughby was
breathing—with relish. Had Mr. Morbeck been a man of imagination he would have
thought the pale lips smiled—mischievously. Eager to be gone, he turned and saw
that the woman in the photo by the bed seemed to be laughing back. Mary’s twin
sister, Martha. Or was
it. . . ?
Mr. Morbeck had always had trouble telling the two of them apart.

Back to table of
contents

Sarah Shankman,
introduced readers to investigative reporter Samantha Adams in
First Kill All the Lawyers.
An affectionate yet independent
Atlanta expatriate who returns to her roots, Sam continues to examine the
social foibles of the New South in seven more books, including
She Walks In Beauty, The King is Dead,
and the forthcoming
Digging Up Momma.
Other Shankman novels include
Impersonal Attractions, Keeping Secrets,
and, most recently,
I Still Miss My Man But My Aim Keeps Getting Better.

In “Say You’re Sorry,”
nominated for an Anthony, a long-simmering resentment flares up during a Fourth
of July heat wave.

Down in Baton Rouge
darkness had fallen, and
the official State of
Louisiana fireworks display could finally begin. An expectant, sunburned crowd
filled the Capitol lawn. Children sat on their fathers’ shoulders dribbling
half-eaten ice-cream cones down their backs. Teenaged couples held hands,
willing their palms not to sweat. Then, for the fifth time that day, the
Capital City High School Marching Band struck up the opening notes of “The
Star-Spangled Banner” and everyone rose, some more proud than others to be
Americans in this summer whose television stars included Senator Sam Ervin and
the whole panoply of Watergate crooks.

As the crowd
sang the words
bombs bursting in air,
red, white, and blue rockets shrieked across the clear evening sky,
exploding into mushrooms of light that reflected in the clear eyes of children
and then floated, trailing off into vapor. The fireworks would continue for
half an hour, each barrage of sound and light more spectacular than the one
before, punctuations of
oohs
and
ahs
joining the growing roar until the grand
finale that smothered all reverberations except its thunderous self, reminding
more than one Vietnam veteran, who leaned against a crutch or sat in a
wheelchair, of sounds he’d just as soon forget, but couldn’t.

Across town from
the Capitol lawn on a narrow street that intersected Front, Loubella Simms sat
alone on her porch steps and watched the lights above the treetops. She lighted
one long cigarette off another and sipped iced tea from a sweating glass.

Inside the
darkened living room, her battered hi-fi repeated the same record over and
over, Sweet Emma and her band from the New Orleans Preservation Hall playing
Dixieland. Slideman, a trombone player and one of Loubella’s friends and
admirers, had brought her the record, which was now worn scratchy, but she didn’t
mind. It didn’t have all that much further to go.

With that
thought, she ran a hand inside her faded pink seersucker housecoat and trailed
her fingers across her pendulous left breast.

The sweet man
named Isaac was the one who had found the spot first.

Now who was
Isaac? He was the one who bought the River City Hotel (read “whorehouse”) from
the sheriff who had bought it from Blanche, the former mistress of River City
and the woman who, out of misplaced jealousy, had had Loubella locked up.

“Honey,” Isaac’d
said to her one night when they were lying in bed together, nothing serious,
just sipping bourbon and messing around. “Honey, I . . .” And then he’d
hesitated as he’d realized he was about to drop a stone into waters whose
circles might never stop.

“What?”

“I think I feel
something here.”

“’Course you do,
sugar. You feel what you always feel when you get the mood on you.”

“No I don’t.”
His voice had become serious so that Loubella had sat up in bed and switched on
the light.

She’d put her
hand atop his, and together their hands moved in a slow circle.

Then she’d
slipped her fingers beneath, and she, too, felt what he was talking about. The
lump was about the size of her smallest fingernail, but round like an egg yolk.

She took a deep
breath, and when she let it out the lie came with it: “Oh, that’s been there
for a long time. I get them all the time, little old lumps like chicken fat.”

“That’s not
true, Loubella. You know it’s not.”

She’d waved off
his words and pulled him to her, smothering his worrying with her mouth.

But after he’d
gone, after he’d looked her straight in the eye and ordered her to see a doctor
the very next day, and after she’d nodded that she would, she’d lain awake for
a long time tracing her fingertips over and over the spot.

It wasn’t gone
the next morning or the one after that. In fact, it grew larger all the time,
as if it were a child inside her doubling and redoubling until it could draw
its own breath.

“The doctor said
nothing, it’s nothing, just as I told you,” she answered her lover when he
asked her about it.

Actually the
doctor had said nothing because she had never gone to see him. A couple of
times she had picked up the phone to call for an appointment, but then had
dropped it back into its black cradle as if it were a snake.

There was no way
that she was going to let anyone cut off her breast.

Why, she said to
herself this Fourth of July night as she watched the fireworks explode into the
air, she’d be so lopsided she’d fall off the sidewalk into the street. And she
managed a crooked smile at the thought of that.

When she’d been
a young girl and these ridiculous things had sprouted themselves like ever
larger fruit—oranges, cantaloupes, then finally watermelons—on her chest, she’d
been ashamed. The boys had opened their legs as she’d passed, touched
themselves, and sniffed after her as if she were a dog permanently in heat. But
then when she’d seen that her breasts were to be her meal ticket, as no other
opportunity had presented itself, she’d said “So be it.” She’d never loved her
bosoms even though she’d named them Lou and Bella and had pretended that she
appreciated the men who looked at her chest. But in time she’d grown used to
her bounty, and parting with half of it was something that she simply couldn’t
bring herself to do.

She knew the
consequences. She didn’t need a doctor to tell her that. And before long she
could feel the sickness growing, reaching out beneath her armpits, putting
feelers into her groin. Now there was no call to remove her breast; it was
already too late.

Loubella leaned
her back against the step and lit another cigarette, watching the smoke curl
into the night air. In a moment she’d get up and flip the record to the other
side and put on a pot of water. It was too hot a night for coffee, but she
wanted it anyway—sweet and black, the perfect end to a perfect day.

And she couldn’t
imagine one more perfect. Isaac had come over about noon and they’d had a long,
gentle time in bed. Then they’d taken a cool shower together and she’d spread
out their holiday dinner: fried chicken, potato salad with sour cream (her
secret ingredient), baked beans, and pineapple upside-down cake.

“Honey,” Isaac
had said, “you should have been a cook.”

“I should have
been lots of things. But I’m stuck with what I’ve been. It’s a little too late.”

“It’s never too
late, Loubella.”

But she’d seen
the look in his eyes, and she knew he could see what looked back at her from
her mirror these days. She could smell it too. They both knew she was already holding
hands with a bad-breathed lover, Mr. Death.

Then they’d sat
for a while on the porch playing gin rummy, right out in the open, not caring
who came by. Not that Isaac had ever been big on sneaking and hiding, but in
some ways he was circumspect. Not this day. Not this Fourth of July, which was
also Loubella’s birthday. She was forty-six.

“Lordy, lordy,
who’d of thought I’d be getting so old?”

“And so
beautiful.” He’d kissed her and placed among the cards before them a little
jeweler’s box.

Inside was a
diamond solitaire, a big sparkling beauty of an engagement ring.

They smiled at
each other, Loubella’s gold tooth shining like a ray of sunlight. They smiled,
for they both understood the symbolism and yet knew that in that sense the ring
didn’t mean a goddamned thing.

For her lover
was married, a Baton Rouge businessman who carried considerable weight, and he
wasn’t about to toss over everything to marry a retired whore. Not that they
would have had time to do that anyway, even though divorces could be had now in
only six months. Both of them knew that Loubella didn’t have that much time
left.

She held her
hand out before her now that he was gone, watching the diamond catch the
fireworks’ light, admiring the token of his love like a sixteen-year-old girl.
She savored both it and the favor she’d asked of him, which he’d granted—making
the phone call without missing a beat.

Loubella
,
she said to herself now,
all in all you’ve had a good life.

The whoring hadn’t
gotten her, nor the drugs, nor the time in jail. She’d risen above them all
like cream coming to the top. And these last few years with Isaac, tending her
little house and the bar in his now respectable River City, they’d been all she’d
ever hoped for, more than she’d ever dreamed.

And in just a
little while it would be over. For Loubella was not waiting for Mr. Death to
name the time. She would do that herself. Not for her the long hoping and the
slow snipping, a breast here, a womb there, all her hair falling out, what was
left of her fading beauty gone, till there was nothing left but the tubes and
high hospital bed and the drugs dripping into her veins, the drugs that didn’t
quite smother the smells or the pain.

She heard the
big car coming even before she saw its headlights. She sat up straight and a
tingle ran right down the back of her neck.

Oh, it had been
such a while since she’d seen her enemy’s face. This time was going to be so
sweet.

Now the heavy
door of the Cadillac slammed, just once, which meant Blanche hadn’t brought her
husband Aces with her. Well, it would have been nice to have them both, but
Aces didn’t really matter. Blanche had been the hand behind the hand that
turned the key that locked the door that kept her imprisoned eleven and a half
years, almost one quarter of her life.

“Evening,
Blanche,” Loubella called from the steps. She had been sitting there for a
while growing cats’ eyes and could see into the night.

“Loubella?”
Blanche stopped dead still as she recognized the voice.

“Sure ’nuff.
Come on in.”

Blanche came
closer now. Good Lord have mercy, how she’d aged! The golden girl was gone. And
here in her place stood a middle-aged pouty pigeon in a blue dress that was too
tight, stretched across the bulging stomach and the spreading butt. Ah,
beautiful Blanche, Loubella thought, has all that barbecue caught up with you
at last?

“Isaac called
and gave me this address. Said he wanted to talk some business.” Blanche’s
voice was wary.

“He does.”

“Well, where is
he?” Blanche stood uneasily, shifting her considerable weight.

“Inside.” Loubella
gestured up toward the porch, pointing at a wicker chair. “But why don’t you
sit out here with me for a minute first ’fore you go in? Give yourself a rest.”

Loubella watched
Blanche’s mouth open and close. No, not a pouty pigeon. Now she reminded Loubella
of a chicken, an old rusty hen, ready for the pot.

“Would you like
some coffee?” Loubella kept her voice ever so light.

“Why, yes,” said
Blanche, smoothing her dress across her stomach with nervous little hands. She
hadn’t seen Loubella since before she’d been sent away. “I guess I would. Yes,
that would be awfully nice.”

Loubella smiled
her still-pretty smile, full lips pulled back from teeth that were perfect and
white except for that one spot of gold, which was nothing but vanity. Then she
disappeared into the house.

Blanche fidgeted
in the wicker chair. She smoothed and re-smoothed her lap, adjusted her rings,
tried to find a place to plant her twisting feet. Though age had slowed her
down, now she felt fourteen again, flighty as a bird just this moment locked in
a cage. She hadn’t expected Loubella gliding toward her now, carrying a tray
with two pretty china cups, so delicate that, between the pattern of violets,
they were translucent.