The First Cut (32 page)

When Vining opened her car door, laughter, country and western music, and the aroma of cooking meat filtered in. The smell made Vining realize she was starving. She drew stares as she climbed the broad, wooden steps. The cops and civilians alike probably made her as law enforcement.

It was a big building, with a bar on the left and a stage and dance floor to the right where a line dancing class was under way.

She spotted Moore seated at the far side of the bar facing the door, hunched over a glass of pale beer. Only his eyes moved as he watched her approach.

The barstool beside him was empty. She didn’t wait for an invitation to sit.

“Buy you a drink, Detective?” he asked.

She told the bartender, “Root beer and a menu, please.”

The bartender set a red plastic basket of popcorn in front of them and from beneath the bar produced a menu that had a luster of grease. She opened it and closed it after a glance, ordering a cheeseburger with fries. The root beer was cold and had a slight bitter taste that Vining liked. She took another sip before setting it down and grabbing a handful of popcorn. It was a little stale, but she was hungry and ate it anyway.

When she looked at Moore, he bared his teeth at her and opened his mouth wide.

She got the point of his display. She despised him more than ever.

“Got all thirty-two of them. Not a single cavity, although my front teeth are capped from when I broke them playing high school football. Inherited my father’s baldness and bad heart, but I got his good teeth.”

“Shame. Because of that rotten heart, you’ll die before you’ll get a full lifetime out of your good teeth.”

“Did he leave a tooth in Frankie or something?”

Vining ignored his question and ate more popcorn. “Your wife must have called you right after she slammed the door on me.”

His snide laugh degenerated into a racking smoker’s cough.

“Rhonda said she figured you and Frankie were together a couple of years.”

“Who’s counting?”

“Long time to be somebody’s back-door woman.”

“She wasn’t a prisoner.”

Wasn’t she?
Vining thought.

“Maybe the pregnancy was an accident,” she said. “I’m sure Frankie thought that after a couple of years together, you’d be more sympathetic. Did she break it to you slowly? Ken, my period’s late. Ken, I bought a home pregnancy test. Ken, the test says I’m pregnant. Ken, I did three tests and they all say I’m pregnant. Ken, you promised you’d leave your wife and we’d be together. Ken—”

He whipped his head to face her. “What’s your point?”

“She got pregnant and you dumped her.”

“Right.
She
got pregnant.”

The pregnancy had been speculation until then.

He exhaled a sort of laugh. “Frankie knew the rules. I never told her I would leave my wife.”

“Uh-huh. How about those nights when you and Frankie were relaxing after really good sex? There’s a little pillow talk. Those dreamy, blue-sky words that just seem to spill out at those times. She’s talking about the future…You know that master plan women always have for their lives. The Prince Charming, the house with the white picket fence, the perfect assortment of adorable kids. Even women as tough as Frankie want that pretty picture. And not wanting to break the spell, you said, ‘Yes, pumpkin, wouldn’t that be nice?’ Why the hell else do you think she stayed with you? She loved you and you loved her. You loved her, Lieutenant.”

The muscles in his cheek pulsed as he clenched his jaw.

“If you didn’t love her, you wouldn’t have come to our station to try to find out information about her murder. You wouldn’t have stood by that hillside after an all-night bender. It took her slaughter to make you realize how much you loved her. She had the abortion because you told her to. Then you decided it was time to end things with her. She had become unpredictable. Emotional. She has to hear through the grapevine that you’re seeing someone else. You didn’t even have the balls to make a clean break with her, did you? You just stopped returning her calls.”

Her voice was low but urgent. She leaned toward his ear. She wanted him to feel her warm breath on his skin. She wanted it to slip beneath the surface and live there, like a fungus.

“Then a sweet seduction falls into her lap, a sexy rich guy who’s up front about what she is to him, and she goes for it. No mixed messages there. It’s all about sex and money. Problem is, the guy has big issues. He likes to rape and torture women.”

Still staring ahead, he blinked rapidly.

“Do you want to hear what he did to her, Lieutenant? He regularly beat her up. She was covered with scratches and bruises, old and new. He’d raped her in every orifice where he could stick his cock. Her vagina and anus had third-degree tears.”

She sensed more than saw him begin to writhe. His muscles tensed throughout his body. His back bowed slightly as if his belly had absorbed a blow.

“This asshole was smart, Lieutenant. He used a condom. No semen evidence. After keeping her as his sex slave for two weeks, for some reason known only to him, he decided Frankie’s time was up. He made her shave her pubic hair, cut and scrub her fingernails, and wash her hair. Her hair was still wet when we found her. He fed her a steak dinner with salad and wine. He must have tied her up for the next part. He held her neck from behind like this…”

She pulled back her head with her fingers. “There were fingertip bruises beneath her chin.”

With an imaginary knife in her right hand, she mimed stabbing her neck and pulling the knife across.

He bolted from the stool.

She watched him leave the bar and disappear down the porch steps.

“Cheeseburger and fries, hon?”

A waitress was at her shoulder, carrying a platter of food.

“Yes. Thank you.”

The waitress set it in front of her, took bottles of ketchup and mustard from pockets on her apron and set them on the bar.

Vining smacked the ketchup bottle, slathering her fries and meat. She piled on lettuce, tomato, pickles, and a thick slice of onion, pressed down the other half of the bun, and took a big bite. It was the best meal she’d had all week.

T W E N T Y - E I G H T

L
OLLY HAD WORKED ENOUGH YEARS IN OTHER PEOPLE’S HOMES TO
know the rules. Rule number one, the rule that went without saying, was “Do your job.” The practical interpretation was “Do your job just well enough to keep it.” When she’d first started cleaning houses, she used to knock herself out. She soon wised up. The pay and bonuses were not any bigger and the people would still point out things to demonstrate how she wasn’t working hard enough. The books on the bookshelves are dusty. The grout behind the sink is icky. She’d learned to say “Yes, Missus,” and “Yes, Mister,” and fix the problem without argument. She’d then wait for them to bring it up again.

The next unstated rule, as important as the first, was “Never steal.” Not even a few cents of spare change. Just dust beneath it, put it in a pile, and leave it.

Rule number three was “If you break something, tell them right away and offer to pay.” They would usually be mad, but nine times out of ten would say “Forget it” and not accept her money.

The fourth and fifth rules were “Don’t be nosy” and “Don’t gossip.” Lolly had learned that the richer the people she worked for, the more secrets they had and the less they wanted anyone to know about them. Find butts of marijuana cigarettes in an ashtray—throw them away. Find sex toys in the bedroom—put them in the nightstand drawer. Find bottles of booze hidden—leave them be. Find lingerie that’s not the wife’s, whatever you do, don’t put it with the wife’s. You can earn the husband’s good graces by giving it to him and acting stupid.

She had worked for John Lesley for nearly ten years and two wives. He was the richest of all her previous employers and had the most secrets. She’d see his picture sometimes in the gossip magazines, especially when he was with the other wife, the famous model. They used to have big parties that Lolly suspected were orgies based upon the women and men in various states of undress she’d find asleep all over the house when she came to work. There would be used condoms everywhere, especially in the great room. She wouldn’t touch them even with Playtex gloves and would snatch them up with a pair of steel kitchen tongs she’d later wash in bleach. He would give her big tips when she had to clean up after one of those nights, peeling off $500 from a fat roll of bills. That made it not so bad.

Things grew quieter when Pussycat entered the picture, but in some ways more strange. He finished constructing the recording studio and gym in the basement. He’d have friends down there to play music and party. It was loud when they cranked up the amps. The door to the basement was in an alcove off the kitchen and she’d feel the bass line thumping beneath her feet. The next day, she’d descend the narrow stairs to clean up the usual mess: leftover food, plates, glasses, bottles, and of course condoms. She’d long ago given up trying not to disturb any people she found asleep. Half of them remained out cold while she ran the vacuum around them. She was glad when he’d soundproofed the basement.

She’d helped him test it, standing in different parts of the house while he played music. Once he told her to go down there, scream and yell as loud as she could and he’d see if he could hear upstairs. She did what he asked and didn’t think anything about it. She found it curious when the hospital bed arrived, but little surprised her anymore. “Don’t be nosy.” “Don’t gossip.”

One morning she’d come to work to find a heavy bolt lock on the door that led to the basement from the kitchen.

“Mister, where is the key so I can clean?”

“You don’t need to go down there anymore, Lolly. Okay?”

“Sure, Mister John.” Fine with her. Her workload just got lighter. She found it strange that he didn’t want her to clean, especially because he was spending more time down there than ever, but she didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.

Sometimes she wouldn’t see him for days, but knew he was home because his car was in the driveway, the big Hummer that Missus didn’t like to drive. She wondered if he was living in the basement. Once he was trying to balance a tray of food and had refused her help when she’d approached, but it gave her time to peek past the door. All she could see was a second door farther down that hadn’t been there before. It also had a big key lock. Why did he need two doors? She didn’t ask and he didn’t tell.

Soon after that, he surprised her with a fifty-dollar-a-week raise.

All the years she’d worked for him, she’d gotten used to his peculiar habits, but lately, things were making her uneasy. Missus’s behavior confirmed her suspicions that something strange was going on. Missus had always been cheerful and happy. She always asked about Lolly’s family and was concerned if one of her kids was sick. Recently, she had dark circles under her eyes and her face was often red and puffy like she’d been crying. She stayed in her rooms a lot and barely ate. She’d lost a lot of weight.

Then in the newspaper and on television, Lolly had seen the pictures of the woman they thought was involved in the policewoman’s disappearance. The woman in the drawing had on a cap and heart-shaped sunglasses. Missus had sunglasses like that. After the picture came out, Lolly went looking for them in the drawer where Missus kept dozens of sunglasses. They weren’t there. She couldn’t find them anywhere.

Lolly didn’t say anything to her about it. Shortly after the pictures came out, she heard Missus on the phone with her sister.

“Are you crazy?” Missus said. “You’re always trying to do a number on my head. Just because you’ve never liked John.”

Not long after that, Lolly was changing the sheets and Missus was lying on the chaise longue, like she did a lot lately, like she never wanted to get up again. But she got up, opened one of her jewelry cases, and took out a beautiful gold and diamond watch. She stood there holding it by one end, staring at it.

Lolly’s dusting brought her nearby and she commented, “Very beautiful.”

“Would you like this watch, Lolly? Take it. It’s yours.”

“Missus, it’s so beautiful, but I couldn’t take it.”

“Please take it. I don’t want it.” She’d grabbed Lolly’s palm and pressed the watch into it.

“Thank you, but—”

“No buts. Here. Take these, too.” She picked up a pair of large diamond stud earrings and jammed them into Lolly’s shirt pocket.

Lolly was speechless.

“Don’t tell my husband. Take them out of the house and never bring them back. Never, ever bring them back or mention this to him or me.
Ever.
”

“No, no. Of course.”

Missus had collapsed onto the tufted chaise. She looked so sad. “I can’t stand them around me. You’re doing me a favor.”

Lolly’s husband had a friend who worked for a jewelry wholesaler. The friend had the pieces appraised. The watch was a Patek Philippe and was worth $25,000. The earrings were not as grand, but the stones were good and worth about $1,500.

Lolly tried to close her eyes to the strange occurrences and carry on as she always had, but the coincidences were piling up. There was the work done to the basement, the murdered policewoman, the pictures that looked like Missus in the news, Missus’s depression, her giving up the jewelry, and Mister locking her in her rooms. She didn’t recall having seen the policewoman at the house, but a lot went on after she went home at five and on the weekends when she didn’t work. Mister and Missus were night owls, usually not rising until after noon or later.

Her conscience started to get the better of her and she thought about calling the police, but her husband talked her out of it.

“You’re crazy, Lolly. You call the police and they go over there and bother him for nothing, he’ll fire you. Then what are you going to do? Who’s going to hire you? Word will get out that you’re trouble. You know how they talk to each other.”

He was right.

Lolly resumed looking the other way until today.

Mister had left for the club around two p.m. like he did every day except Monday, when the club was closed. She knew he’d left the property because she’d heard the “blump blump” noise that happened whenever someone drove over the loose slab of cement in the driveway that tree roots had pushed up.