Garden of Evil (18 page)

“They're beatin' the bushes back in Miami!” she cried. “Hee-hee-hee-hee.”

I watched with a mouth full of chicken as the anchor mentioned me.

“Prospects appear grim for a Miami reporter who had apparently attempted to interview the killer and has not been seen since the fatal traffic argument on the expressway off-ramp. The reporter's identity has not been released pending notification of next of kin, but our sources tell us it was a police reporter from the
Miami News.
”

Oh, swell, I thought. Next of kin: my mother. “I should call my mom.”

“Shush!” Keppie warned. “It ain't over.”

We watched aerials of the monumental rush-hour traffic jam at the shooting site, the prerequisite footage of the covered body being removed, and shots of my car surrounded by police and dogs in the school parking lot. I thought I glimpsed McDonald, huddled with the homicide commander and the chief and what looked like the back of Simmons's head, but it was all too brief. I couldn't be sure.

“I have to call my mother.” I put the chicken down, appetite gone.

Keppie glanced up from flicking channels. “Well now, missy, maybe you shoulda thought about that 'fore you started playin' policewoman.” She stood, one hand on her hip, the other operating the remote. “Man, it's hot in here. You feel that AC at all?” She glared grimly at the lone air-conditioning vent in the ceiling. “It's like a hundret damn degrees in here.”

She peeled off her tank top. A pendant, a large and ornate silver cross, hung from a long black silk cord around her neck. Something another date no longer needed, I assumed. Probably the preacher.

Keppie padded barefoot to the duffel bag to unpack. The initials on it, A.J., were those of the college boy slain at his father's service station. She unplugged the telephone, wrapped the cord neatly around it, stashed it under
her bed, and began meticulously arranging small items around the tequila bottle on the tiny nightstand.

“I thought you were going to let me call my mother.”

“Did I say that?” she snapped.

“I just want to let her know I'm all right. She's a widow. I'm all she's got.”

“You're lucky, you still have your mama.” She slipped gracefully out of her shorts, exposing lacy thong panties and a tiny butterfly in flight tattooed just below and to the right of her navel.

She caught my glance. “Like it?” She assumed an exaggerated model's pose. “Had it done in Daytona, at the big biker rally last spring.” She wet her lips. “Wanna see it up close?”

“No, thanks,” I said evenly, still seated in my chair, my left wrist chained to the armrest.

She shrugged, returned to the duffel bag, and bent over its contents. She had one of those rare firm-fleshed bodies that look great in a thong. “Bad news, Britt.” She straightened up.

“What do you mean?” My mouth went dry.

“Only one toothbrush.” She waggled it at me. “We'll have to share.” She smiled.

“That's okay,” I said. “I can wait till I go home tomorrow.”

She shrugged, padded into the bathroom, flushed, brushed, and gargled, then emerged, brushing her long hair. Seated on the bed, tequila bottle beside her, she opened a fiery red bottle of Max Factor nail polish and began to paint her toenails, occasionally pausing to glance up at the late-night TV show.

Thoughts of my mother, combined with the odors of chicken, mildew, and nail polish, made me queasy. I picked up the notebook.

“You didn't seem afraid out there today, on the ramp,” I said. “What does scare you, Keppie?”

“Truthful?” She regarded her glistening toenails for a
moment. “I don't want you to put it in the story, but truthful? Death Row. I ain't a big believer in capital punishment.”

Well, duh, I thought, wonder why.

“It ain't fair, keepin' people for years, torturin' 'em. Bein' a prisoner is my biggest fear. Yeah. But I do believe it ain't gonna happen.” She retouched a smudged nail. “Cuz I won't let it. Kinda weird. I don't think about it a whole lot, but like today, you just do what you have to do so you don't go to jail. In jail you're somebody else's property. You can't even think or write your own thoughts. You lose touch with real life and become antisocial.”

God forbid you should become antisocial, I thought, scribbling notes.

“Nobody knows how hard I try to be a good person,” she lamented, her young face earnest, the tiny brush poised in her hand. “But that don't matter now. They're sayin' terrible things 'bout me on TV and in the newspapers. And they don't even know me. But they make me look bad to everybody who hears 'em, and it makes bad people glad to greet me on their level.”

Not quite sure what she meant, or if she knew herself, I dutifully wrote it down.

“I like eatin' good,” she was explaining. “In jail, they feed you pure crap. Boiled potatoes, powdered eggs, mystery meat in watery gravy.” She wrinkled her nose and began work on the other foot. “I'd go crazy. Now, what scares you?”

I would not admit it was her. “People don't read anymore,” I said finally. “They get the news online or from TV. Good papers keep folding all over the country. We've got big cutbacks at ours. Sometimes I'm afraid my profession is in its twilight years. If newspapers die before I do, how will I make a living?”

“That's it?” She looked skeptical. “That's what keeps you awake nights? Hell, you kin go on TV. You're better
lookin' than some on there. How 'bout your love life? That cop who was out of town.”

“I'm afraid I'll lose him. Maybe I already have. He didn't want me to do this.”

“Now there's a damn cop might have some sense. Maybe there's hope for one yet,” she said.

“He's back in town. This was supposed to be our first night together in a long time.”

She capped the polish, poured a healthy shot of tequila into a glass from the bathroom, sipped, and made a sympathetic sound.

“Some plans just don't turn out.” Her voice husky, she rolled onto one side to watch me, her body a long sensuous curve. “One door closes, another opens. It kin still be a good night. You don't have to sleep alone.”

I stared at her.

“Hell, we can push these beds together.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “I'm straight. I never—”

“Okay, have it your way—for now,” she said lightly. “But don't knock it till you've tried it.” She opened a pack of Benson and Hedges and lit a cigarette. “You like that outfit?” Exhaling smoke, she focused back on the TV screen and a skin-tight ensemble worn by an actress being interviewed. “And lookit her eyebrows. I could do mine like that.”

She painted her fingernails.

“Want me to do yours?” she offered. She shrugged, when I declined, then sat and smoked. Finally she switched off the TV and turned to me, still chained to the chair next to the food.

“Guess it's time to get you undressed for bed. Now, Britt, I'm gonna be real nice and let you be comfortable. I'm only gonna cuff one wrist to the headboard. But you have to understand, I don't sleep much, and when I do, it's real light and fitful. You make any kinda move or start screaming, the best thing that will happen to you is you'll sleep out in the hot car trunk, both hands cuffed real tight,
with your ankles tied and duct tape across your mouth.” She reached into the duffel bag and dangled a roll of duct tape. “And that's the
best
that can happen to you. Got it?”

“I understand, but you can take the cuffs off altogether. I'm exhausted; all I want to do is sleep. You can trust me.”

She feigned surprise. “‘You can count on me, like a rock.' Ain't that exactly what you tol' me when we agreed to meet? You're damn lucky to be still livin' and sleepin' in here, in this air-conditionin', such as it is.”

She released me from the chair and watched me undress.

“Where'd you get that?” She scrutinized my bra.

“Department store,” I said, self-consciously rubbing my wrist.

She stripped me of my clothes and cuffed my right hand to the leg of my bed below the mattress. I wanted to sleep in my T-shirt, but she took it. She slept naked too, kicking off the thong panties before she put out the light. I watched her cigarette glow in the dark long after she said good night.

“Hey,” she murmured, her voice drowsy, as I thrashed around trying to get comfortable. “With all the shit going on, women's lib, men's lib, gay power, and all that crap, what do you think is the basic difference between men and us?”

“I don't know,” I said fitfully, my shackled arm extended awkwardly over the side of the bed. “I guess we have dreams and men have desires.”

“Yeah.” The glow of her cigarette punctuated the dark. “You got it,” she said. “We want Prince Charmin' to ride up on a white horse to rescue us. And all they want is sex.”

“I really wish you wouldn't smoke in bed,” I muttered. “If your mattress catches fire, how the hell do I get out of here cuffed to this bed? This place would go up like a tinderbox.”

“Bitch,” she said. “That's the least of your worries if you don't shut up and go to sleep.”

 

My mind raced back to Miami. What had gone wrong? No one knows better than I that the world is a land mine ready to explode beneath your feet. What had happened to the little watchdog in my brain that triggers fear, protecting me from threats and danger? It had never failed me before. How could I have been so stupid? So stubborn? I prayed that the cop who took the news to my mother was McDonald. She never liked me being involved with a cop, until they met. He had totally won her over. Now they fit together like springtime and rain. He would be the only one who could comfort her. She was never close to my father's warm and close-knit Cuban family. I was all they had in common. The only way for me to get through this was to make the best of a bad situation and do a helluva job on the story later. If there was a later. It was nearly dawn when I finally dozed.

 

Something startled me awake, totally disoriented, my right arm and hand both numb.

“Time to rise and shine!” Keppie stood at the foot of my bed, wearing shorts and a midriff top, the room key in her hand. She grinned. I groaned.

This was real. No nightmare, I tried to cover myself with the sheet as my feet found the floor and I tried to sit up.

She laughed. “You look like crap, Britt. I've seen people ready for body bags who looked better.”

“I need to use the bathroom.”

“Just sit there a minute. I'm gonna run out to the office, git us a newspaper and some coffee. Be right back.”

I sat there, a terrible taste in my mouth and a dull pain in my stomach, as brilliant daylight spilled between the outdated blinds. Keppie bounced back minutes later, oddly
buoyant and energized for somebody who had consumed so much tequila the night before.

“Got the paper,” she announced, all perky, “but the coffee machine is busted.” The story was at the bottom of the front page of the local Press Journal. She leaned against the doorjamb, reading it aloud while I used the bathroom. Not much that was new. The police had released very little, protecting me and themselves, not yet admitting their role or mine in the ill-fated events. The dogs must have followed our scent to an empty parking space, I thought. They had to know we drove away. The search had to be expanding; the
BOLO
must be statewide.

“Wanna shower?” Keppie invited. “We kin take one together.”

“No, thanks. I'll wait until I get home.”

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged and took a long slow sudsy shower while I sat on the toilet seat, handcuffed to a pipe.

Expertly wielding little pencils and brushes, she applied makeup, eye shadow, and blusher, curled her lashes, and stroked on mascara. With her hair long and loose, wearing shorts, platform sandals, and a midriff top, she was a stunner, far from her fresh-scrubbed look the day before.

I desperately needed a hit of one of the world's most potent and lethal forms of fuel, Cuban coffee. I was not likely to find it here.

Keppie bagged the leftover food for the garbage, emptied the ashtrays, tidied the room, and made her bed. A neatness freak, a trait you'd never guess from the crime scenes she left behind.

I had thought about tucking a note between my sheets, tipping the cops that we'd been there and describing the car we were in. I was glad I didn't when I saw how thoroughly she checked everything.

She insisted I apply lipstick and comb my hair before we went into a Denny's for breakfast. “I'm trustin' you,” she said. “If you wanna go home in one piece, don't get
any smart ideas.” She insisted again that I slide across the car seat and exit her side.

We sat at a table by the back window, overlooking the parking lot. She devoured eggs over easy, sausage, toast, and grits, eyes alert and watching every time someone passed our table. I drank black coffee and ate an English muffin with marmalade.

I sipped a second coffee as she downed a glass of milk, like the ail-American girl she resembled, and pored over the newspaper's entertainment section.

“Lookit here,” she said enthusiastically. “They got the annual Bushwhacker and Music Festival up in Pensacola this weekend. I wouldn't mind going to that. And the Possum Festival and Fun Day over at Wausau. We could make 'em both. Butcha know where I really wanna go again? Over to that Tragedy Museum in St. Augustine. Wanna see if they got any new displays. I been there twice. You ever go?”

I shook my head. The morning sun glinted off the cars in the parking lot, hurting my eyes. I missed my sunglasses. I wanted to go home. What was she talking about?

“Man, you oughta see it,” she said. “It's amazin', they got this big ol' Buick Electra that Jayne Mansfield was ridin' in the night she got decapitated by a tractor trailer over in New Orleans. Took 'er head right off. Got it right there, on display, with a copy of the police report.”