Haunted Honeymoon (13 page)

The sun rose, staining the horizon the same vermilion as my chaise, when Wil phoned. “It’s night here and I’m missing you. Do you still want to see me?”

“Absolutely!” I said in a voice more cheerful than I felt.

“Good, I’ve booked a flight and I’ll arrive midmorning tomorrow,” he said.

“That’s wonderful, Wil! Bring a wet suit.”

“Ooh, kinky.”

“I meant for surfing. It’s cold and gray, so you should be okay with waterproof sunblock.”

“Awesome. I’ll buy gear there. One of my bros has a surf shop, and I’ll be hanging with him.”

“I thought you were staying with me.”

“For a few nights, but I don’t want to impose the whole time. You’ll get tired of me.”

Which is what Ian had predicted. “How could I?” I asked. “Wil, I told Ian about us.”

“How did he react?”

“Very well, considering,” I said, my voice catching a little. “I’m sure he’s got hundreds of replacements lined up.”

“I can’t believe I nicked the Dark Lord’s girl!”

“Um, Wil, please don’t laugh about it. It wasn’t easy for me.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I love you, Milagro.”

It was so easy for some people to say, but I knew he didn’t mean it. “You’re fantastic, Wilcox Spiggott. Oh, I think my house key fell out of my purse at your place. Could you look for it?”

“Ah, I found a key on the table. Thought you had left it for me.”

“We’re not at that stage yet. Would you like me to pick you up at the airport?”

“I’ll hire an Avis car so I can hit the beach straightaway. How about dinner tomorrow night?”

“Perfect. I know just the place.” I gave him the name and address of a groovy restaurant-lounge before we said good-bye.

I had a lot to do before seeing Wil again. I got a mani-pedi with polish the color of crushed blackberries. I went to a fancy butcher shop and bought meat dripping with blood, as well as fresh blood. I picked up deep red California cabernets, baskets of raspberries, strawberries, and loganberries, and bottles of blood orange juice.

I visited the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective to buy “relationship accessories” for Wil’s visit. While I waited for a sales clerk, I read over a poster titled “Does It Itch?” for the local free clinic.

A gray-haired sales counselor with a cozy round tummy and little gold-rimmed glasses was happy to give me advice for buying restraints. “For you?”

“No, for my friend. I’m the one in control.”

She smiled and said, “Sweetie, the bottom is always the one who controls.” She suggested a beginner’s kit of soft, black velvet-covered ropes and said, “If you want to stock up, we’re having a two-for-one sale on lubricants and all our eco-friendly fetish toys are ten percent off.”

“Uh, well, um …” I was about to giggle like a schoolgirl when I saw the fuzzy pink handcuffs I’d bought when I was engaged to Oswald. I’d thought the cuffs would prevent me from hurting Oswald when he tried to taste my blood. Oswald and I never got to use them, though.

The sales counselor saw me staring at the handcuffs. “Those are one of our bestsellers in bondage play.”

“People never handcuff me for fun. The last time I got cuffed, someone was trying to kill me,” I said, finally managing to shock her.

“Oh, dear! I can show you an easy trick to open handcuffs. All you need is a bobby pin or paper clip.”

“I don’t plan on being cuffed anytime soon.”

She laid a hand on my arm. “Not to preach, sweetie, but in my experience, which is extensive, you should learn to be prepared for anything. Why don’t you sign up for our BDSM workshop? Everyone raves about it. If you join our Toy Club for fifty dollars, you can attend free and you’ll also get fifteen percent off every purchase.”

“I’ll just take the restraints and the club membership, thanks.”

I didn’t know how late I’d be out with Wil, so I dropped Rosemary off with Mercedes and told her I’d call her in the morning. When I saw my brown dog run through her apartment, heading for the cat door to go to the backyard, I said, “He loves being with you. I wish my loft had access to a yard.”

“He’s a good house dog and everyone at the club loves him.”

She took off her glasses and rubbed her nose, so I said, “What is it,
mujer
?”

She shook her head, sending her dreads bouncing around. “I’m not getting involved.”

“You think I’m going too fast with Wilcox, but you don’t know the half of it with Ian.”
His mouth sucking on Cricket, her blond hair against him.
“He told me I’d kill someone eventually. That’s what he thinks of me. I’m not going to see him again.”

She didn’t say anything, but the furrow in her brow was still there.

“Mercedes, you’re always doing things for me. What can I do for you?”

“Keep me out of this business with Wilcox,” she said. “You did something anyway. Those demos you brought back are great. I’m going to contact the bands and see if we can work anything out.”

“Anything as in a gig or a recording?”

“I’m hoping. Oh, my mom sent a present for you.” She went
to her bedroom and returned with a garment bag. “It was my grandmother’s, and Mami thought you’d like it.”

I took the garment bag and unzipped it. Inside was a scarlet satin cocktail dress with a lovely low sweetheart neckline and a tight waist. The fabric had a soft luster like old pearls. “Oh, Mercedes, it’s beautiful! You can’t give this away.”

“Can you see me wearing it?” she said, and laughed. “Even if my sisters had the
tetas
for it, they prefer new clothes. You like vintage.”

I gave her a
besito
and said, “Thank you! I’ll save it for a special night at your club.”

When I returned to my loft, I admired the beautiful dress for a few minutes before getting ready for Wil’s visit.

I set out beeswax candles, rinsed and polished my best wineglasses, and changed my bed linen. My duvet had smudges from Rosemary’s muddy feet and I didn’t have time to wash it. On my craft table, I saw the woven cloth that
Don
Pedro had given me.

It was large enough to cover the bed. The yarn was soft and had a delicate floral fragrance, like the powdery scent of plum blossoms. It felt almost as if it had been dusted with talcum. I rubbed my fingertip against the cloth and then touched my tongue. It tasted faintly of dried grass, but not
druggy
dried grass.

I spread the cloth over the bed and then I took the velvet-covered restraints from the plain brown Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective bag and looped them around the bedposts. The sales counselor had given me a brochure about attaching the restraints, but the illustrations looked hopelessly convoluted.

If my mother Regina had let me join the Girl Scouts, I would be better prepared to tie up my hunky new boyfriend.

I went to the closet and pushed my dresses on the rack, looking for something pretty to wear. One of Ian’s shirts was there. I took it from the hanger and brought it close to my face, inhaling his scent, immediately missing and wanting him. I put the shirt in the back of the closet, where I wouldn’t see it.

I decided to wear a cute lemon yellow dress that I bought at a shop owned by a Stitching & Bitching
amiga
. It had a corset-inspired bodice and a narrow skirt. I wore it with a narrow black patent leather belt, black peep-toe patent leather sling-backs, and black rubber bracelets and earrings.

I slicked on red lipstick and liquid black eyeliner for a dominatrix/bumblebee look, but I resisted the urge to cut straight bangs because Nancy claimed that cutting one’s own bangs was the first step to madness.

I went to the garage downstairs, got in my truck, and drove to the restaurant, telling myself how much fun it would be to have Wil here and show him my town.

He wasn’t at the restaurant yet, so I waited on the sofa by the entrance. After ten minutes, I took the hostess’s suggestion and had a drink at the bar.

I chatted with the couple next to me, but kept looking at the mirror above the bar for Wil to arrive.

After thirty minutes passed, I called his cell phone. He didn’t answer, and I left a message saying that I would wait another fifteen minutes. The couple next to me went to their table for dinner, and more people came and left the restaurant. Even if Wil was delayed, lost, or having a difficult time finding parking, he could have called.

I nursed my second drink slowly. He was an hour late and I felt stupid staying any longer. I left a large tip and drove home cursing him.

As I walked upstairs to my loft, I thought,
He is so inconsiderate.
I went to unlock my front door thinking,
He’s flaky and irresponsible
, but the door was already unlocked.

Had I left it unlocked, or had Ian returned?

When I stepped in, I smelled the beeswax candles and froze. I walked inside slowly and called, “Hello?”

The candles were flickering and there was red wine in the glasses on the cocktail table.

Wil was on my bed, motionless on the woven cloth, his wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts with the black velvet restraints. He wore a gray my dive T-shirt I’d given him, and in the center of his chest was a dark wound with scarlet blood blooming all around it like a prom corsage from the devil.

eight
Love Lies Bleeding

There was such a stillness to Wilcox that I didn’t need to touch him to know he was dead. But I did. I stroked his fine bleached hair, feeling the grit of sand from a day of surfing. I kissed his cool, smooth forehead, and ran my finger over the well-shaped, narrow lips that had always been quick to smile and laugh and kiss.

My tears fell on the pretty face that had been so full of life and happiness.

I wanted to cut myself, to pour my blood into the deep knife wound in his flesh, to make him heal, whole, well—my laughing, lusty Wil again, but I knew I was too late. The dead couldn’t be brought back.

I closed Wil’s empty hazel eyes, smudging the kohl, and untied the velvet restraints from his wrists and ankles.

My survival instincts cut through the fog of grief. Someone was setting me up and I had to move fast.

I blew out the candles but didn’t turn on the lights. I wrapped the soft woven cloth around Wil’s body, and then I swiftly
changed into jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt. I threw my laptop, wallet, the composition books, clothes, and other necessities into an enormous sports bag.

I tore up the receipt from the Womyn’s Sexual Health Collective and shoved the velvet restraints in the sports bag.

I didn’t know when I would be coming back so I packed
Jane Eyre
and a leather box that held my most valuable possessions, Ian’s gifts to me: ruby necklaces, Victorian garnet earrings, an enamel fountain pen, the mirror ball earrings, gold bracelets … The last thing I put in the bag was my knitting project, the blue-gray scarf for Oswald.

Placing the bulky bag over my left shoulder, I picked up Wil’s shrouded body and hefted him over my right shoulder. The cloth released a puff of the fine powder.

I balanced Wil’s body as I hurried to the stairwell and down to the garage. After placing him in the bed of my pickup, I positioned gardening tools on top to hide his bulk.

I drove out of the garage and into the dark street just as a black car with a long radio antenna pulled up in the red no-parking zone in front of my building.

It was my fault that Wil was dead. I’d used Wil to get back at Ian, even though I knew Ian had no boundaries. I didn’t know what I would say or do when I saw Ian, but I needed to see him now, to make him pay for what he’d done.

I tried to drive like everyone else, about ten miles over the speed limit, and I gripped the steering wheel tight to stop my hands from shaking from my sorrow and fury. It was all I could do to function and watch out for cops.

I slowed when I reached Ian’s neighborhood and switched off my headlights as I drove up the winding roads, swerving once to avoid a raccoon that turned its masked face with eerily reflected red eyes toward me.

I remembered how Ian had casually said “when you dispose of him” in reference to Wil. I wouldn’t give Ian the opportunity to hide any evidence of his crime, so I turned into the service parking lot down the hill.

An extra-long Dumpster had been deposited at the far side of the lot for debris from a renovation project. I drove around it and parked at the farthest edge of the dirt before it sloped down the hillside, so that my truck was hidden from view.

I left the truck without taking anything and kept to the edges of the road to Ian’s house. Banging on the ugly tangerine-colored carved front door, I shouted, “Let me in!”

Mr. K opened the door. I shoved him aside and went in the house, screaming, “Ian!”

“Miss Milagro, please.” Mr. K followed me as I ran through the rooms, looking for the man who had murdered Wil.

“Miss Milagro, if you would calm down …”

I grabbed Mr. K by the lapel of his jacket and Mrs. K came into the room, looking alarmed.

I said, “Where is goddamn Ian Ducharme?”

“Lord Ducharme not here,” Mr. K said.

His wife said, “Miss, let’s be reasonable.”

I gave Mrs. K a look that should have fried her in her sensible heels. “Where is that evil bastard?”

“We are not at liberty—” Mr. K began, and I slammed him against the wall.

Mrs. K cried, “He’s across the country at a meeting with the Council! He’ll be there for another week.”

She had given up too easily. I put one hand around Mr. K’s throat and said, “Tell me the truth
now
…”

Mr. K. tried to shake his head, but my grip was too tight. His face was turning puce. Mrs. K said in panic, “He’s with Ilena at her home in Oslo.”

Ilena, Ian’s former lover. “When did he go?”

“He went straight to the airport after dinner at Gigi Barton’s the night before last,” she said. “I booked the flight myself.”

I released my grip on Mr. K’s neck, and he bent over, gasping.

“I’m sorry. I apologize for hurting you, Mr. K,” I said. “It’s inexcusable, and I’ll make it up to you another time.”
Think, think.
“Could Ian have changed his flight?”