Goody One Shoe (13 page)

AGATHA FRIESEN DIPPED HER
toe
into the shallow end of the pool. She licked one finger and ran it around the
edge of her crystal martini glass until the vibrations sent music into the late
afternoon heat.

“You should slow down. Shit, you’ve barely been acquitted
and you’ve spent most of the insurance money already.”

She did a slow turn and laid a laser glare on Jeremy. Poor,
sweet, Jeremy. So young. So stupid. But hot damn, could he fill out those swim
trunks. She eyed his tanned form, the bulge of muscles at his shoulder, his
biceps. The bulge of her favourite muscle in his pants. He lounged by the pool,
drank the booze, and ate the caviar while bitching at her about buying it all.

“You have no idea how much money there is to spend, you
gorgeous simpleton. And I’m innocent, remember? I can spend as I please. They
can’t touch me.” But a jury of his peers hadn’t tried him. He’d better watch
his hypocritical forked tongue.

“All’s I’m saying is, people are talking.” He popped a giant
shrimp in his mouth.

“Let them talk.” She raised her arms and looked around her
property. “I’m innocent,” she yelled at the cotoneaster that bordered her yard.

“Keep your damn voice down,” Jeremy hissed. “The neighbours
might hear you.”

“Fuck the neighbours.” She set down her appletini and leered
at him, reached back and tugged the strap of her bikini bra free. “Or better
yet. Fuck me.” She stripped off her top and dived into the pool.

Jeremy jumped in after her. They surfaced simultaneously. He
ran his hands over his wet hair, long, wavy, and sun-kissed, and pushed it from
his face. He grabbed her by the waist and yanked her against his hard body.
“Come here, you old broad.”

She smacked his arm. “I am not old.”

He buried his mouth in her neck. “Older than me,” he said
into her skin.

His hot breath sent shockwaves through her body. She
swallowed and closed her eyes. “But not as old as my poor, dead husband.”

Jeremy laughed. “Nobody is as old as that coot. You’re way
better off with me. I can fill your every insatiable desire.”

“As long as I have money.”

He shrugged. “Good thing you have a shitload of it.” He
grinned and grabbed her ass in both hands. His hard prick pressed against her
crotch.

She slid her hands into his swim trunks. “Just shut up and
do me. As long as you can keep it up, you can stick around.”

The tinkle of shattering crystal startled her. “What the
hell?” She crossed her arms in front of her naked breasts. “Who’s there?” She
spun around.

Jeremy climbed from the pool and kneeled beside the broken
martini glass. “Chill out, Ag. The wind knocked your drink over.” He stood and
turned to face her. “I don’t know how you can drink this green crap. It’s like
apple-flavoured anti-freeze.”

The sun glistened off his wet skin, his dick still hard and
poking at his trunks like a boy scout’s tent pole. She licked her lips. “It
cuts through the aftertaste of your spunk. Now hurry up and get back in here
before that thing goes to waste.”

He shed his trunks and dove headfirst into the pool. He swam
between her legs, stripped her bottoms off, and surfaced in front of her. He
kissed her, lifted her up, and brought her down on top of him.

She loved fucking in the pool. The threat of being seen.
Well, maybe not a threat, she’d love it if that prissy bitch next door got an
eyeful of Jeremy’s prime, grade-A meat slamming Agatha until she screamed.

The sun beat down on them, sparkled off the water and
flashed light in her eyes. Damn she was glad she’d had her tubes tied all those
years ago. Anything to prevent getting pregnant by her codger of a husband. She
only wanted his millions, not his pitiful offspring. Not that he could keep it
up long enough to fill that void in his life. And nothing beat Jeremy riding
her bareback. Not that twenty years with that old fart hadn’t put her past
prime childbearing years. Nature was taking too damn long to kill him. Agatha
had needed to give her an assist.

Jeremy groaned and shuddered.

“Damn it, Jeremy, I wasn’t done yet.” Agatha’s bikini top
hovered on the water. She slipped it back on and fished the bottoms out of the
pool. She swam to the edge and grabbed his trunks, turned, and tossed them at
his face. “Float me a raft and get me another drink.”

He put his trunks on under the water, sent an inflatable
chaise lounge her way, and crawled out of the pool.

She climbed onto the raft and lay on her back, one knee in
the air. She closed her eyes. Something cool tapped against her shoulder. She
squinted into the sun and looked up into Jeremy’s handsome young face. Hard to
stay mad at him for rushing his own orgasm. He’d be ready for more in ten
minutes if she wanted another go. She took the offered appletini. “Thanks,
love. I’m a little sleepy.”

He smirked. “So take a nap. Build up your energy. We can go
again before dinner.” He grabbed his limp dick over his trunks and bobbed it up
and down. It was hard in seconds.

She shook her head. “You are such a little boy.”

“Yeah, and that’s why you want me.”

She couldn’t argue with that. She downed her drink in two
gulps and handed him the glass, settled into the chaise, the sun warming her
skin, the water cooling her back and ass, and drifted off to sleep.

A splash shook her from her slumber. Her raft bounced
against the side of the pool. She rubbed her eyes. “Jeremy?”

He was a few feet away, bobbing in the water.

“Shit, I was sleeping. Couldn’t you wait for a swim?” She
propped up on her elbows.

He was floating, face down, the water around him stained
pink, like someone had dumped Kool-Aid in the pool. “Jeremy, you jerk. Quit
with the infantile pranks.” She dipped a cupped hand into the pool and splashed
him. He didn’t move. Just lay in the water, arms out, face down, legs dangling
below him. A burp of air bubbled from beneath him. His body shifted and slid
below the surface, leaving a pink swirl in his wake.

Agatha tried to scream, but her open mouth produced nothing
but silence. A shadow crossed her body. She looked up to find a man in a black
hoodie and baggy black pants standing over her, his face shaded by the hood and
blocked by the sun behind him.

He covered her face with his black-leather-gloved paw and
pushed her under. She clawed at his arm, but her fingernails found nothing but
fleece. She slipped off the chaise and bicycled her legs for purchase on the
bottom of the deep end. Her hair tangled in his leather glove and pulled at her
scalp.

Agatha batted at the man’s arm, but her arms barely broke
the surface. Lights exploded in front of her open eyes. She opened her mouth
and gasped for breath. She swallowed water, metallic from Jeremy’s blood,
bleachy from chlorine. Her vision faded. She closed her eyes and took one final
gulp.

BILLIE JERKED AWAKE,
trembling
and bathed in sweat. The remnants of a crazy dream, justice revisited, edited
and corrected, had come alive in her head and gone horribly awry. She rubbed
her eyes and blinked. Sun streamed in through the vertical blinds.

She tossed the covers aside and eyed the alarm clock. Nine
forty-three. She put both hands over her eyes and moaned. The gym would be
packed by now, her usual treadmill probably four deep in line. And she’d slept
through her editing time. At this rate, she’d never get Annabelle’s novel
finished. Good start to freelancing, Billie. Lose your first client.

How on earth had she slept so long? She picked her phone up
from the nightstand and poked in her password.

Three text messages from Bruce.

She flopped back against her pillow, unable to keep her
smiles on the inside anymore.

Hey, movie’s starting. Did you miss the subway? I knew I
should have picked you up.

Movie? That was tonight. Man, he needed a break. He must be
stressed. She scrolled to the second message.

Knock, knock. Billie, where are you? Is everything ok?
I’m calling you.

The furrow of her brow deepened. She switched screens. Four
missed calls? How did she not hear her phone? She listened to the messages,
each from Bruce, the panic in his voice a bit edgier with each subsequent
recording. In the final message, he said he understood. They’d been seeing too
much of each other. He was moving too fast. He’d leave her alone for a while.

Leave her alone? Too fast? She bolted upright.

No, God damn it, no. She was screwing everything up. Total,
epic failure. As usual.

Her phone buzzed in her hand.

I know I said I’d leave you alone. Just can’t. Missed you
last night. Be a good girl at church. Call me later?

Church? She switched screens and checked the date. Sunday,
July Twelfth?

The cat lay at the end of her bed, his tail swatting side to
side like a furry whip. “Peg Leg, tell me what day it is. What the hell, did I
sleep through Saturday?” She tossed her phone on the bed and buried her eyes
behind the heels of both hands. She breathed long and steady, urged her heart
to calm down and beat slower.

She was supposed to go to the movies with Bruce tonight. Or,
last night. She searched her memory for yesterday and came up empty. A flash of
water, breaking glass. Damn it all to hell. Doc Kroft’s red glasses floated by.
Dissociative fog. Or whatever. Billie dismissed that notion, and the doc’s
spectacles, with a wave of her hand.

Sunday. Church. She should go to church. Meet God in His own
house and ask for His guidance. Or at the very least, shed a little holy light
on just what the hell was happening.

She sent Bruce an apology text. Vowed to call him and
explain later. If she could just figure out what the explanation was.

She hopped toward the bathroom. Her father’s clothes lay in
a heap in the middle of the floor. She stooped. The hoodie sleeve was damp. She
sniffed and recoiled. Bleach. Or chlorine. How the hell?

But she’d put them out of Peg Leg’s reach. No way could he
get up that high. And they weren’t there when she went to bed last night. What
time was that? She closed her eyes and searched for any other remnants of
Saturday.

Everything came up blank.

She tossed her father’s clothes into the laundry bag. She’d
have to wash them now, just to get the stink out. Eradicate the remnants of his
beautiful scent from her life. Forever.

She pulled the hoodie out and buried her face in it, inhaled
as deep as she could. There was nothing but chlorine. She broke down and cried,
let her tears soak into the fleece.

After a long shower, she put on her church clothes. She
glanced at the clock on the stove. She’d be late for services, would miss some
of the Scripture uttered by the luscious lips of the beautiful Reverend Keene.
Not that she was particularly smitten with him any longer. He was too smooth.
Too pretty. Too perfect. Nary one bit of gravel in his voice, no scars or marks
or imperfections to his skin. Had he lived life at all? Or just hidden out in
the sanctuary of his church, ministering to those who’d seen it, done it,
survived it. Officiating at the funerals of those who’d died from it.

Billie stood outside the door and put her ear to the crack.
The service was well underway. She pushed the massive slab of antique mahogany
open. Billie winced at the creak of its elderly and rarely oiled hinges. She
slipped inside and moved with stealth behind the last pew. Before she sat, the
door slammed shut with the thundering sound that only heavy wood on heavy wood
can accomplish. It echoed in the huge, hollow space. Sunday-best clothes
rustled as the congregation turned to glare at the intrusion.

“Good morning, Billie.” Reverend Keene singled her out for
public humiliation. “Glad you could join us.”

She nodded and threw him a brief smile.

“Shall we all wait for Billie to find a seat?” He raised his
eyebrows and drew his lips into a thin line.

Her pen drew a red halo above his head, then ripped it out
and threw it to the ground. A match lit and the halo burst into flames.

Billie glanced at the ceiling and apologized to God. Burning
religious symbols wasn’t part of their deal.

She tried to pay attention to the Reverend’s sermon, but her
pen insisted on defacing him. His true colours shone through, as if the heavens
had opened up and focused a laser beam of self-righteous light on him. Just
another bully hiding behind the folds of his Christian cloth. How had she not
seen it before? She’d always been so goody-goody when he called out other
members of the church. Always on his side. Maybe God was allowing her these
edits because He knew she was right. Maybe He had a plan of his own for the
reverend. A way of outing him, as it were.

Billie squirmed in her seat, the pew like a sack of rocks
against her rump. She held her hands in her lap, checked her watch, eyeballed
the panes of stained glass. Her pen skittered across her thoughts, editing the
events of the past few days. But the chlorine-stinking mystery pile of her
father’s clothes cluttered her mind. The possibility of that fog thing the doc
kept yammering on about was becoming too real to ignore.

After service, the nave emptied in its usual fashion — front
rows first. In the past, Billie would have been heading toward home by now. She
used to love the front row, close to the Reverend, close to God. First out the
door and never stuck in the crowd of Sunday Christians and their gossip and the
stench of their Saturday hangovers. But this Sunday she didn’t feel as close to
God as usual. Not within the confines of the church. And not because she was in
the back row. She was closer to God on the subway. In the movie theatre. At her
laptop in the sunny slice of her breakfast nook. She was closest to God in Bruce’s
arms. In his lap. In his bed.

She waited for the last of the full congregation to file
past her. Before Reverend Keene, the pews were sparsely filled. Now it was hard
to find an empty spot. She’d never noticed the man/woman ratio before. It was
heavy on the woman. Were they here just for the reverend’s pretty face? He
brought in more souls looking for salvation. And they risked damnation for
their lusty thoughts.

Many of those women tossed her looks alternating between
pity for her sad past and deformed body and disdain for interrupting the
service with her rude lateness. Screw them. Screw them all. Each received an
edit on the way by — a devil’s tail, a forked tongue, a crown of thorns.

In the foyer, a crowd milled about, an evangelical mosh pit.
Billie jostled her way through it. Bits of their voices, slices of their
opinions, their observations, drifted into her ears. “… floating in the pool …”
“… half-naked …” “… served her right, the whore …”

Billie froze amidst the chatter and listened. Mrs. Hanabaker,
gossip of grotesque proportions, sweet on Sundays, evil bitch every other day
of the week, stood nearby. Billie touched the old biddy’s arm. “What’s
happened?”

Mrs. Hanabaker’s face lit up at the prospect of a new
audience. “It’s that awful black widow, Agatha Friesen.” She nodded, her eyes
wide and bright.

Billie remembered the name. The woman who was tried and
found not guilty of killing her husband. The one she and Bruce drowned in her
pool with their red pens of justice. A just end for a woman who drowned her
feeble husband in the bathtub, hastened his pending death so she could get at
the money sooner than later.

Billie’s pulse quickened. “What about her? What happened?”

“Her and that young man she was … well, you know. I don’t
want to repeat it.”

Billie drew a thought bubble above the old biddy’s head and
wrote, “She was fucking him, the lucky bitch.” Billie kept her satisfaction
internal and nodded. “No need, I get the gist.”

“Well they found them both dead in her pool. He had his
throat cut. She was drowned. Dead as her husband.” She nodded and pursed her
lips. “That’s justice if you ask me. The jury certainly didn’t do right by him.
Seems like maybe God set it straight.”

Billie clenched her fists. “God isn’t in the business of
revenge, Mrs. Hanabaker.” Billie turned and stormed out of the church. No, that
wasn’t God’s agenda. But Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, whose was it? How many
articles had she and Bruce edited? Five? Six? And two of them had come true.
Not word-for-word perfect, but so close that it made her stomach knot. Was
someone spying on them? Waiting to find out the appropriate end and exacting
that justice laid out in the scripts they wrote?

She raced to the corner. As she approached, the walk light
extinguished and the amber signal flashed at her. “Run, run, run,” her father
would always chant, as if that were the right thing to do when commanded to
“don’t walk.” If he were here with her, she’d take his hand and sprint to the
other side. Instead, she paced on the street corner and waited to be told when
to cross.

Two of the endings she and Bruce edited had come true. Or
maybe only one. The clown edits were hers and hers alone. But Bruce read them.
She balled up her fists and released them several times, as if she were
gripping the stress ball at work. The one she’d drawn a mouse face on in red
pen.

Bruce didn’t seem to have first-hand knowledge about the
demise of the clowns. Maybe he was a great actor. But no, she knew him now. He
wouldn’t harm anyone without a personal reason.

Would he?

She fished her cell phone from her purse and found his
number, tapped her thumbs over the keyboard.

Did you hear?

The walk light lit and Billie rushed across the street and
up the sidewalk toward her apartment. She checked her phone every few steps. Why
didn’t he answer?

She rushed up the stairs of her apartment building. Her
prosthetic foot caught under the lip of the riser and she tripped, grabbed the
railing for balance. Her blood coursed through her veins, her whole body
atremble. It wreaked havoc with her coordination. She slowed her breathing and
her pace, rested on the landing of the second floor for ten hippopotamuses
before continuing.

Inside her apartment, she threw the keys on the floor and
raced for the television. Channel after channel of sports and religion. Too
early for news on a Sunday. She clicked on her laptop, chewed at her thumbnail,
and bounced her good leg up and down while the computer booted up. She found a
local news website and scanned the headlines. There it was. Couple found dead
in pool.

She read the article. Except for the man, the drowning part
was just as she and Bruce had written it. She checked her phone. No reply from
him. Could he be involved? Would he exact revenge on behalf of someone he’d
never even met?

Glimpses of blood, of a swimming pool, the water shimmering
in the bright afternoon sun, and a broken martini glass flashed through her
mind. She closed her eyes. Stop imagining it, for Christ’s sake.

Her eyes flew open. Shattered glass? She re-read the
article. It didn’t mention anything about broken glass. She couldn’t recall
including that in their edits. Man, she needed a drink.

She looked around the apartment. Peg Leg perched in his
sunshine square, his eyes glued to her, nothing moving but the tips of his whiskers.
He mewed and blinked. He wouldn’t care if she drank. Hell, he didn’t even know
it was Sunday.

She opened a new bottle of Sauvignon blanc that Bruce had
brought, warm off the counter. She tossed ice cubes in a tumbler and filled it
with wine. Half of it was gone before her phone buzzed.

Are you home? Can I come over?

Her thumbs sailed across the keyboard.
Yes and yes. I’m
freaking out.

Chill, Billie Sunshine. Just another coincidence. I’ll
bring lunch.

As if she could eat anything.

Billie paced the small strip of carpet in front of the
window and sipped at her wine. “Coincidence, my butt,” she mumbled. “Once,
maybe. But twice?” She shook her head. “Right, Peg Leg? Twice is too much.” She
rubbed the cat’s ears. “You agree with me, right?”

The door handle jiggled. Billie jumped, sloshing wine onto
the carpet. She set the tumbler down on the table beside the sofa, didn’t
bother with a coaster.

“Billie?” Bruce called through the door and rapped his
knuckles on the wood.

She ran to the door, unclasped the chain, and unlocked the
deadbolt. She threw the door open and leaped into his arms.

He dropped a bag onto the floor and engulfed her in his
arms. She laid her head on his chest and took solace in the pounding of his
heart, still thumping from his race up the stairs. “Hey, you’re trembling. Come
on, let’s be bold and have a morning drink.”

“Already way ahead of you.” She pulled away, stooped to pick
up the bag, and peered inside. Her worries about being unable to eat were
drowned out by the grumbling in her stomach. “Tacos? I’m starved.” She took his
hand and led him to the kitchen. “So, you saw the news?”