Sex in a Sidecar (27 page)

He sat at the bar and pushed the remains of rice and shrimp around on his plate.

I took the plate away from him and scraped it into the trash. “What have you found out about the cousin?”

He sighed heavily and set the fork he was still holding down on the black granite. “Eric Schievner hasn't come near the station. As far as I know he hasn't claimed the body. He's wanted in Chicago for security fraud,” Styles said. “He's under investigation and was about to be arrested when he disappeared. He told you the truth about flying to North Carolina three days before Gina Ross died. A speeding ticket was issued for Samantha Ross's car in Georgia the day before Gina died. He may well have been here when Gina Ross was murdered.”

“The police were already stopping people at the bridge and keeping them off the island.”

“You only had to say you had family out there and were going to help them and they'd let you on to the island. No way to prove one way or another if he was here unless someone saw him.”

“I don't think Eric was here that morning or Gina wouldn't have needed me for whatever she was up to. Weren't the police writing down names of people who came across to the island?”

“Only in the last few hours before the storm so they could identify bodies if Myrna made a direct hit.”

“So he could have done it?”

“Maybe.”

I re membered how sad Eric looked when he was telling me about how close the three cousins were. “If he killed her he would never have let anyone know he was here. And why would he kill her?”

“Money. Remember he was in trouble. He may have told you he was coming here to keep Gina from making a big mistake but maybe he was coming here to solve his own problem.”

“Gina wasn't interested in money and she had more than she needed. She would have helped him. And what about Deanna? Why kill her or Bunny Lehre? Was he in Chicago when she died?” Styles wasn't listening. He'd gone off into his own dark thoughts.

“There's something you should know about Tanya,” I told him.

He stared at me without enough energy left to be curious. “If anyone helped Ethan's mom off the planet it was Tanya.”

He sat up a little straighter when I repeated what Tanya had said about taking care of Ethan's mother and solving a problem for him. “Another thing, I bet when they check this out you'll see that Ethan was sedated. There's no way he could ever get his act together and off himself. I told Tanya he was going to prison for stealing that jewelry and this was her way of protecting him. She always looked after him and solved his problems. I bet the whole dying thing was her idea and not Ethan's.”

I brushed away my tears. “Who was in the driver's seat? I bet it was Tanya.”

Styles's hair stuck out at odd spiky angles but some animation had come back into his eyes. He nodded at me, a firm final nod. “There's no need for either of us to feel guilty. They made their own choices. Anyway, you were right about his going to jail, one way or another that was true.”

Maybe so or maybe Styles was just trying to make me feel better. Either way it was going to take me a long time to forgive myself for this one. “There's someone else I think you should check out.”

He didn't even bother telling me to mind my own business.

“Who?”

I told him about Lester. “Something tells me that this guy has a kink in his hose.”

“All right, I'll do that, but then will you do me a favor and just please stay out of this.”

“I'm out of there. I'll go pick up my stuff tomorrow and never think of the Butt and Tits Club again.”

I didn't sleep much. Guilt doesn't make a good bed partner. By seven I'd left for the club to pack up my stuff. Styles called me as I pulled the zipper up on the last bag. It was a short conversation. “Nothing on your groundskeeper, he wasn't on the list of suspects in North Carolina and he has no priors.”

Lester wasn't there to help me so I dragged my bags into the elevator and then out the front door. I stood on the top step and took a huge breath. I was suddenly free, no drink orders, no being nice, no pieces of paper to fill in, just freedom. I was going home.

I was weighing my options as I checked for traffic on the Beach Road, determined to fill up my day with activity that didn't involve death.

Telling myself I'd just drive by the turquoise beach house and say goodbye to Gina, I turned south. I can't explain what there was about that house on the beach — the place called to me. Maybe I was hoping to exorcise demons. Whatever it was, I needed to go back there.

I didn't even intend to pull in the driveway but I just couldn't seem to drive by it. The excuse I gave myself was maybe Eric Schievner would be there, but if that were true, Styles would already have him in custody. Gina's beach house was the first place Styles would look for Eric.

In the daylight the beach house couldn't have looked more calm and benign but this idyllic place was the setting of my nightmares: dreams of evil, clutching at me, grabbing me, pulling me down 'til I woke in a tangle of sheets, sweat pouring off my body, to pace the dark room until fear was beaten back down. It takes more than bright sunshine and chirping birds to wipe out the kind of fear that haunted me.

One day soon the German owners would sell the beach house for a million dollars or more and huge machines would move in to knock it down. In less than a day the twelve-hundred-square-foot dwelling would disappear, as if it had never been. Then the lot would be mounded to protect the new dwelling from onshore waves and tidal surges and a new monster house, stretching from lot line to lot line, would grow out of the sand, towering over its surroundings. When this house disappeared, for once I wouldn't swear and curse at my changing world. I'd be glad when it was gone.

I got out of the Miata, leaving the door open so I could leave fast. This time I left the key in the ignition, the soft pinging sounded reassuring.

I slowly climbed the stairs to the front door, looking warily around. There was no sign of anyone. There never had been. I knocked on the door. Silence. I walked around the house. Someone had taken down the storm shutters. I could see inside. It looked the same as when I'd been in there with Styles, except more tired and dusty.

On the north side of the house the hole in the underbrush between the lots looked like a mouth with a tooth missing. I walked to the opening and crossed over into the Haverty property where I'd met Bodillia.

A man with a red bandana covering the lower half of his face was spraying the underbrush. He looked up and saw me.

“Excuse me,” I started to say but stopped. There was something familiar about the man. I started backing up, instinct kicking in faster than intelligence. I started running.

I slammed the car door even as I shoved the transmission into drive. Gravel flew. I spun out of driveway and onto the road, looking in the rearview. No one ran out after me but as I hit the road a beat-up sedan shot out of the driveway in front of me. I jerked the wheel hard to the left. Screeching metal: branches screaming and scraping along the sides…violent rocking, then I slid away from him.

Really, there wasn't a chance that he could catch me now; the little red bomb was a dream of a car on the narrow twisting roads. It could take the corners smoothly miles faster than the wreck behind me, but blind curves with trees growing not six inches off the shoulder made it impossible to push it too hard and I fought against the panic urging me towards stupidity. “You're safe,” I told myself. “You don't want to end up wrapped around one of those palms. Just stay in front of him. Stay cool.”

I was looking in the rearview when the crash happened behind me. He took a corner wide, overcorrected and put the sedan right into a palm tree on the right side. Sweet.

I slammed on the brakes, watching in the rearview. Steam rose from the rad, but nothing else moved. I got the cell phone out of my purse and dialed 911 and ordered an ambulance. Then I called Styles.

I told Styles' voice mail. “T here was someone living over the old garage of the Haverty house — the guy that killed Gina.”

A giant fist slammed down on the roof of the car and a face pushed up against the window. Blood from a gash in his forehead streamed down Lester Cathers' face, pooling around his eye.

I screamed and lunged for the lock button as Lester opened the door. He grabbed the cell phone from my hand and threw it deep into the mangroves. Then Lester pushed me across to the passenger side, his hand locked onto the nape of my neck, his fingers biting deep into my spinal cord, paralyzing me. One little twist, one violent shake, and he could snap my neck. “Please,” I begged, “please, don't hurt me.” He didn't respond but then Lester never did. His brutal fingers forced my face forward to my knees. I stared at my red high-tops, whimpering in terror as he climbed into the driver's seat.

Driving one-handed, Lester made a U-turn and started back south down the beach. The little car swept right and left, traveling too fast for the road. I waited for the impact of the next tree Lester was going to hit but instead the car slowed and turned right and then hard left. It bumped over uneven ground and came to a stop. His hand released my head. I sat up, rubbing the back of my neck and trying to decide where we were.

The car was parked tight behind the old garage on the Haverty property. Off to the left of the drive, the little red car was well screened by shrubbery. No one would know we were there. Hell, you couldn't even see the house from here. No one was going to find us.

Lester turned off the car. “Why did you have to come here?” He stared straight ahead. “I was going away soon.” He turned to face me. “Stayed too long.” Blood cut a river down his cheek and ran in the corner of his mouth. “Your fault.” His lips peeled away from his blood etched teeth. “Stupid bitch.”

His fingers dug deep into my neck again. My hands went up to cover his, to try and relax his hold. “Sorry, sorry,” I panted. “Please, please don't hurt me.”

Grabbing me by the hair, he opened the car door and pulled me out of the car after him. My knee knocked against the gearshift and I screamed in pain.

“Shut up,” he growled, shaking me like rag doll.

We staggered towards the garage. Lester pushed me ahead of him, making me stumble to my knees. I wrapped my arms around a step and clung to it sobbing, certain if I went into that building I'd never come out alive. I didn't want to die.

“No,” Lester said and pried me loose.

I screamed. He slapped me hard across the face and covered my mouth with his hand. Then, clutching the waistband of my jeans, he propelled me forward up the stairs. The weathered stairs going up the outside of the building had no railing but that didn't slow Lester down.

Up on the landing, he slammed me against the splintered wall and held me there with one hand while he fought to get the warped door open, kicking the base and sending it crashing inside. He threw me into the dim interior, my face scraping and burning along the floor. I scrambled to my knees, scuttling sideways, looking for a place to hide as he slammed the door and came after me.

Blood streamed into his left eye. Only now did he seem aware of his injuries. He put a hand up to explore the gash and then looked at his bloody fingers in wonderment. He went to an old paint-stained laundry tub in the far corner of the room and turned on the taps, which sputtered and expelled a few rusty drops before settling into a modest trickle. I was on my feet. When he bent to rinse his face, I bolted for the door.

Stuck tight in the warped frame, it wouldn't open. I tugged with both hands.

Lester was on me in a heartbeat, grabbing me from behind and dragging me by the hair back to the center of the room. He dumped me on the floor and pressed his work boot into my chest to hold me down while he took off his belt.

With a handful of my tee-shirt, he jerked me upright. Then he pulled my hands behind me and wrapped the belt around them. I felt him feed it through the buckle and when he yanked on the strap, the edges of the belt bit into my wrists. “Please.” The belt bit into my flesh. “It's too tight,” I told him, big tears rolling down and dripping off my chin. “It'll cut off my circulation.”

His only answer was to jerk me by the forearm towards a folding chair and ram me down violently.

He leaned over me again. The acrid bite of sweat and chemicals filled my nose as he fastened the belt to the chair and pulled it tighter. He came around to face me, his nose only inches from mine. White fat peeled back from the edges of the three-inch gash in his forehead. Blood oozing from it ran down through the stubble on his face. He stared at me. He seemed curious, interested in me, examining me like a fascinating bug. He reached out to touch my breast, just held his hand without any pressure, fingers still, not really feeling it or even touching it with pleasure but more to show he could. We stared a teach other. Blood dropped onto the hand that held my breast. He watched it drop. Then he squeezed my breast hard. I screamed in pain. Pleasure swamped his face now.

There was more blood. He looked down at his hand, looked at the blood, something new and interesting but not alarming. He lifted his hand and licked at the blood. Smiling at me, he turned away and went to where the shower curtain hung on a circular frame from the ceiling. He pulled down a gray towel, once white, and pressed it to his wound, watching me while he wiped away the blood.

The roof sloped to about four feet at the sides and you could only stand up in the middle of the room. A rusted iron cot had been pushed under the bare wood eaves on the left. On the right, across from the bed, was a small chest of drawers, incongruously painted white and stenciled with pink and yellow flowers. A card table, with a large hole in the brown padded top, was beside me in the middle of the room. A small microwave oven, trailing a jumble of extension cords, took up half the table. A toilet, the laundry tub and a metal shower stall were at the other end of the room. There was a small, uncurtained window over the laundry tub. This disgusting makeshift room wasn't meant for a human to live in, but then Lester wasn't quite human.

It was hot. Sweat seeped from my hair, stinging my eyes. The stale air stank of old cooking, garbage, Lester's unwashed body and the pile of soiled clothes dumped on the floor beside me.

Lester went to the chest of drawers. Out of the top drawer he took a gun. He looked back at me and smiled happily. The first real smile I'd ever seen on his face, a smile of genuine pleasure.

I was going to die. Small little meowing sounds escaped my clenched jaw. I wanted to be brave but I just wasn't. Wanted to be clever but I wasn't. I was just going to die. He was going to kill me and I couldn't think of one damn thing to do to stop him.