Twisted: The Collected Stories (16 page)

Sensuous curves . . .

The car gently rocking back and forth.

It was Thursday, another overcast spring evening, and Carolyn was wearing a long-sleeved navy blouse and a pleated skirt that ended halfway between knee and ankle. A couple of the assistants in the hospital office had looked at her with surprise. No cleavage today, no thigh, no straining buttons. The AquaNet had remained capped and her hair was pulled back in a plain ponytail. She’d decided that after she made the anonymous call to the police reporting one man shooting another in a green Cadillac, she’d have to speed back home and prepare to be the demure, innocent widow. A costume change might be hard to manage in time.

She found herself in an odd state: nearly aroused. The sashaying of the car, the cool air on her skin. And, she had to admit, the thought of Stan dying turned her on.

So did getting her hands on his money. He was such a miser. He wouldn’t even
buy
her the damn Lexus. It had to be a lease.

Thinking about Lawrence too.

Such a great lover.

But a better fall guy.

Too bad, Larry.

It wouldn’t be easy, though. She couldn’t call the cops from the car phone, of course; there’d be a record of the call. So she decided to pick the place for the hit herself. This would make sense to Larry—she was the native; he wouldn’t know the area. She’d suggest that he drive Stan to Cardiff Falls. There, the county road stretched through a steep valley. A mile up the road was a convenience store with two telephones outside.

She’d follow them and after Larry’d killed Stan and gone to meet her she’d slip out of her car and flatten the rear tire of Stan’s Cadillac with the kitchen knife she had in her purse (she’d let the air out of the spare tire that morning). Then she’d leave Lawrence there and speed to the store, make the call to the cops and race home. Lawrence’d be trapped in the valley. It would take him forty minutes to get out on foot; the cops would be there in minutes.

Perfect.

Her thoughts segued again to the Heritage Hotel, where her husband was right at the moment.

She pictured them in bed together.

Pictured his girlfriend: Loretta Samples . . . Lorrie . . . an unremarkable woman. Blonde, boringly pretty. When Carolyn had stalked them to the mall,
Lorrie was wearing a ludicrous black floppy hat and was walking close to Stan with his elbow seated hard against her chest. They’d braked to a fast stop in front of the banshee wife. Oh, had Carolyn enjoyed
that
little scene.

Lor-rie . . .

What were they doing at this minute? Carolyn wondered, gripping the Lexus’s steering wheel so hard her fingers cramped. Drinking wine? Was he kissing her feet? Lying on top of her and hooking his longish brown hair behind his ears?

Then Lawrence’s motel loomed and she braked hard. She pulled past it, like they’d agreed, and he stepped out from behind a row of bushes and climbed into the car before it stopped moving.

“Go,” he said.

She sped back onto the road.

She’d expected that he’d be dressed in, well, killer clothes. Like a commando, maybe. At least a black sweater and jeans, or something. But he was just wearing one of his business suits under the elaborate trench coat. His tie was printed with tiny yellow fish. Ugly, tasteless. For some reason this made her feel better about turning him in.

“You’re sure he’s at the hotel?”

“He called and said he was going to be late for dinner. He had a meeting with Bill Mathiesson.”

“And he doesn’t?”

“Not unless it’s in London, which is where Bill is this week. According to his office.”

Lawrence gave a bitter laugh. “You gonna lie, lie smart.” He looked at his watch. “What do you know about his girlfriend?”

Another heat flash of jealousy coursed through her. “She’s got small boobs and needs a nose job.”

“She married too?”

“Yeah. She’s just like Stan. Rich bitch. Inherited daddy’s money and thinks she can get away with anything. They deserve each other.”

“Well, let’s hope she leaves the room first. Witnesses’re no good.” He pulled on tight-fitting cotton work gloves.

“Don’t you wear rubber gloves?”

“No,” he said. “Cloth is better. No fingerprints inside. To trace you to the gloves.”

“Oh.” She supposed that Lawrence Anderson Smith, aka the Lincoln Man, aka the Lovemaker, had been very good at collecting debts.

He opened the glove compartment and took out the pistol. Carolyn glanced at it. They all looked alike to her. Black, dangerous.

He clicked it open. She saw there were six bullets in the six chambers. Lawrence asked, “Did you wipe it?”

“No,” she said. “I don’t know how.”

He laughed. “You just . . . wipe it.” He pulled a Kleenex from the box on her dashboard and carefully wiped the metal.

“There,” she said. “There it is.”

Ahead of them was the hotel. The red
Vacancy
light pulsed unappealingly. It was a seedy place. (Carolyn insisted that
her
lovers take her to bed-and-breakfasts. Or at least the Hyatt.)

She parked on the street, with a view of the parking lot. There was Stan’s Cadillac. She wondered which car was Lorrie’s.

“Oh, there’s a good place I know to do it,” she said, as if she’d just thought of the idea. “Cardiff Falls, Route Fifty-eight. It’s about five miles from here. It’s real deserted. Just keep going on Maple Branch about a mile to the Mobil station then turn left. That’ll be Route Fifty-eight.”

“Good.” He nodded then said, “You stay right here. I’m going to hide in the bushes. I’ll get him in the Caddie and drive there, find a place by the side of the road. You follow us.”

Carolyn took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Afterwards, you drop me at my hotel and go home. When he doesn’t show up tonight, call the cops. Remember, don’t overact when you find out what happened. It’s better to look stunned than hysterical. Sort of zoned out.”

“Stunned not hysterical.” Carolyn nodded.

Then he leaned forward and gripped her neck hard, pulled her lips to his. She kissed back, just as hard. She enjoyed a kinky little shiver, feeling the gloves on her neck. Maybe she’d have to play dress-up sometime with Don. Or some other lover. Maybe leather would be fun. . . .

He released her and she looked into his eyes. “Good luck,” she said.

He climbed out, crouched beside the car, looked around. The street was deserted. Still hunched over, he ran through a wedge of shadow beside the hotel and disappeared behind a row of boxwood.

Carolyn laid her head against the leather rest and clicked on Lite FM.

Now, finally, the nervousness descended like a spray of cold rain. The horror of the evening unfurled
within her and her hands began to quiver.

What’m I doing? she wondered.

The answer came to her: what I should’ve done a long time ago. Suddenly her uneasiness turned to rage. I hate these damn clothes, I want to be dressed up, I want to be going out for nice wine and martinis, I want that idiot Stan out of my life, I want to get the whole thing over. I want—

Two sharp cracks from the hotel.

Sitting forward, staring into the parking lot at Stan’s Cadillac.

Two more bangs. They sounded like gunshots.

Lights went on in some of the hotel windows.

Carolyn felt the fear inside her like a cold stone.

No, no. They were just backfires. That’s all. She scanned the parking lot. More lights came on. Doors opened. Several people stepped onto balconies, looking around.

Then there was motion to her right. She glanced toward it.

Lawrence stood in the shadows. His eyes were wide; on his face, a look of terror. Was he holding his stomach? Had he been shot? She couldn’t tell.

“What?” Carolyn screamed.

He looked around, in panic, then gestured her frantically to leave. Mouthing, “Go . . . go. Get home fast.” He disappeared back into the bushes.

Had a guard or off-duty cop seen him with the gun? Did
Stan
have a gun with him?

Two people stepped from the hotel manager’s office, a fat woman in a turquoise jumpsuit and a skinny man wearing a short-sleeved white shirt. They looked around the U-shaped building, said
something to each other, then listened to some of the people on the balconies and the sidewalk in front of the ground-floor rooms. Carolyn couldn’t tell what they were saying.

She looked back toward where Lawrence had whispered his warning. No sign of him.

Time to go, she thought. This is trouble.

She floored the accelerator.

But as the car sped forward she heard a soft pop and the
whup whup whup
of a tire going flat.

No! Not now! Please . . .

She kept going. The hotel guests and the couple from the manager’s office were staring at the Lexus as it swerved down the street. Then the rubber fell off the rim of the flat rear tire and the car jolted to a stop against the curb.

“Damn! Damn, damn!” she screamed, slamming her fist on the steering wheel.

In the rearview mirror, flashing lights—a police car was speeding toward the hotel.

No, no . . .

The young officers glanced at her car but passed it by and parked up the street. They trotted to the crowd of guests by the manager’s office. Several of them pointed to a room on the first floor and the cops hurried to it.

Two other squad cars showed up and then a boxy ambulance.

Run or stay?

Hell, they can trace my car. It’d seem more suspicious if she ran.

I’ll come up with a story. My husband called me and asked for a ride.

My husband wanted me to meet him here. . . .

I happened to see my husband’s car . . .

The cops knocked on the door to room 103 and, when there was no answer, the skinny man in the white shirt unlocked the door. He stood back as the cops, their guns drawn, pushed inside.

One stepped back outside and spoke to the ambulance attendants. They walked inside slowly. If it was Stan’s room, and if Stan was inside, Carolyn guessed he was dead.

But what had happened? What—

A rapping on her car window. She screamed and turned around. A large cop was standing beside her. She stared at him, her mouth open.

“Miss, could you move your car?” asked the beefy crew-cut cop politely.

“I—The tire. It’s flat.”

“Is something wrong, ma’am?”

“No. Nothing’s wrong. I just . . . It’s just that I had a flat tire.”

“Could I see your license and registration, please?”

“Why?”

“Please? Your license and registration.”

“Well, sure,” she said, staring at him, his badge, his walkie-talkie. She didn’t move.

A moment passed. “Now.”

“I—”

“Ma’am, you’re acting kind of strange. I’d like to ask you to step out of your vehicle.”

“Well, now, Officer . . .” She smiled and leaned toward him, easing her arms together. Only after a glance at his perplexed face did she realize that the
attention-getting valley between her breasts was hidden by her conservative blue blouse.

She climbed out of the car, handed him the documents.

“You been drinking?”

“No, Officer. Well, I had one beer a couple of hours ago. Well, two.”

“I see.”

Then she glanced at the rear wheel, frowning. It looked as if somebody had put a trap under the tire—a piece of wood with a couple of nails hammered through it.

The cop noticed her gaze. “Damn kids. They do that sometimes for pranks. Throw ’em in the road. Think it’s funny. This your current address?” Nodding at her license.

“Yes,” she said absently. Eyes on the hotel room. More police cars had arrived; there were a dozen now, their lights flashing in alarming red and blue. Two men in suits and badges around their necks—one with bushy hair, one balding—arrived and stepped into room 103.

The cop walked to the rear of the Lexus to check the license plate. He seemed calm and reasonable. Carolyn was relaxing. He’d let her go. Sure he would. It’ll be okay. Just stay calm and they’ll never put anything together.

Then the crew-cut cop’s walkie-talkie crackled. “We have a multiple homicide at the Heritage Hotel. Victims are a Loretta Samples, female cauc, thirty-two and a Stanley Ciarelli, male cauc, thirty-nine.”

“What?” blurted the cop, looking up from the driver’s license he held.

“Oh, Jesus,” said Carolyn Ciarelli.

“Detective!” the traffic cop shouted to the bald man with the badge around his neck. “Think you better come over here.”

Five minutes later she was sitting in the back of the patrol car—no handcuffs, at least—where she’d been asked to remain until everything got sorted out.

A young patrolman came running up to the detectives. He held a large plastic bag containing the pistol Lawrence had apparently dropped as he fled.

“What’ve we got here?” one detective asked.

“Probable murder weapon,” the young officer said a little too eagerly. He drew snickers from the seasoned detectives, Mutt and Jeff.

“Let’s see it,” the balding detective said. “Hey, Charlie, any latents?”

An officer wearing latex gloves walked over to them. He was carrying a box with a wand attached, like a small neon tube. He shone a greenish light on the gun, examining it carefully.

“Nup, not a whorl or ridge.”

Thank God, Lawrence had wiped the prints off.

“But,” Charlie added, pulling on an eye loupe, “we got something here. Looks like a bit of blue tissue caught in the cylinder release catch.” He examined it closely. “Yep, pretty sure it’s Kleenex.”

Oh, my God, no . . .

She glanced behind her to see the crew-cut cop walk to the Lexus, retrieve something and return. “Look what I found here, sir.”

He pointed to the wad of blue Kleenex that Lawrence had dropped on the floor after he’d wiped the gun.

Well, so what? There were hundreds of thousands of boxes of Kleenex around the country. How could they prove—

Charlie unwadded the Kleenex carefully. There was a triangular tear in the center. Where the scrap on the gun would fit like the last piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

Another officer came up to the detectives holding the cloth gloves Lawrence had worn. The bushy-haired detective, now wearing latex gloves himself, lifted them. Smelled the palm. “Women’s perfume.”