Sue (24 page)

“I see.”

A light went on in Sue’s mind. She
slowly turned the idea around before speaking. “She might not have meant what
she said. She could have been speaking out of jealousy. Jealous my mom had a
little girl and she didn’t.”

“It’s possible.”

“Or maybe she did mean it, but she
definitely has no history of being right.
About
anything
.”
Sue released a portion of the hurt, let float away. Just like that. “And to
think her words were so important to me. And now she’s just old. She has a
crappy job to look forward to, that and hanging around with ugly drunks in beer
joints.” Sue felt a small surge of pity for her aunt. “You know, I’m never
going to feel close to the woman again, but I think I can let go of the insult
now.”

“Good. That’s a big step.”

Chapter 35

Tonight was Sue’s big date with
Melvin. She chose her outfit carefully, deciding to wear a full, black skirt
that just touched her knees and a red satin blouse. Sue walked through a spray
of light fragrance and turned her attention to styling her hair. When finished,
it fell in soft waves around her face. Working meticulously, she brushed on a
light coating of green eye shadow, a small amount of blush on her cheeks, and
applied mascara. Finally, she smoothed on pale pink lipstick.

Overall, she thought she looked
pretty good.

Melvin showed up in a suit of
sorts: dark slacks and a white t-shirt under a black dress jacket. Sue
appraised him and felt a small rush. He looked handsome. She’d never noticed
before how attractive he really was. He presented her with a small bouquet of
assorted pink flowers.

“How pretty!
Thank you.” She took them to the kitchen and put them in a vase of water.
Centering the arrangement on the kitchen peninsula, she stood back to admire
it. If memory served her correctly, this was only the second time she’d ever
received flowers from a suitor. The first time was from Zeke, and he’d wanted
to take the rose back when the night was over so no one would question where
she got it. She shook loose of the memory.

When she turned, she couldn’t help
but notice the way Melvin watched her walk toward him. His eyes shone with appreciation.
It was then she realized why he looked different. “Where are your glasses?”

He pointed at his face.
“Contacts.”

“Did you just get them today?”

“No. I’ve had them but they bother
my eyes so I don’t wear them often. But tonight’s special.
Our
first real date.”

Sue flushed with pleasure. “You
don’t have to go through the night uncomfortable, Melvin. Go ahead and wear
your glasses. I think they look nice on you.”

“I’ll be okay. Shall we go?” He put
out his arm and she took it. He escorted her into the night.

They dined on steak and lobster and
then shared a huge slice of chocolate-caramel cake drizzled in molten fudge.
Melvin had also ordered champagne. Its golden bubbles tickled Sue’s nose and
slid exuberantly down her throat. By the time they reached Finney’s she was
suffused in pleasure, slightly tipsy, and strangely excited.

Sue was a decent dancer, not a
maniac in any sense of the word. They moved well together, and though neither
would win any contests, they did just fine. The floor was crowded with other
couples, all shaking or stomping to the beat. Then the music shifted, went slow
and dreamy with a thick, heavy beat that strongly suggested sexual longings and
romantic interludes.

Some couples left the floor. Most
stayed and melded together, swaying to the sensual rhythm. Sue and Melvin stood
gazing at each other.

“Want to give this a try?” Her eyes
teased him.

“Are you kidding? I’ve been looking
forward to it all week. Longer, if I’m completely honest.” He held out his arms
and she slipped into them.

As she pressed against the length
of his body, Sue felt her pulse quicken. He cradled her tenderly, moved in
perfect harmony with her. Halfway through the song, she laid her head against
his shoulder and he cupped her cheek briefly in his hand before returning it to
her shoulder. By the end of the song, he was nuzzling her neck. She raised her
head slightly to bring him closer. She could feel his heart beating against her
chest.

He leaned back a bit and caressed
her with his eyes. Her lips glistened and there was a glow to her face. “You’re
so beautiful, Sue,” he whispered before pulling her close again.

They left before the club closed,
clung to each other with breathless abandon, kissed all the way to the car.
When they arrived at Sue’s apartment, they resumed their embrace, pulling off
clothes as soon as the door closed behind them.

Melvin swept Sue into his arms and
carried her into the bedroom, where he finished disrobing her, and then
himself. Sue felt his eyes consuming her before he joined her on the bed. She
stared at him, too, trying to familiarize herself with his body.

They made love passionately the
first time, slowly the second. Sue curled up next to him afterward and they
talked quietly. He kept looking down at her as if he’d just found a treasure.
She forced thoughts of Zeke from intruding on this tender moment, avoided
making comparisons, concentrated on the present. Warm and satisfied, they
eventually fell asleep. When she woke in the morning, he was already gone and
she wondered briefly if it had all been a dream.

The note on her kitchen table said
otherwise. She stared at Melvin’s handwriting and the small sketch he’d drawn
at the top, of the sun peeking over a copse of trees. It was tiny but perfect.

Dear Sue,

I have to work for Will today.
I’ll call you later. I wish I could say something about last night, but it was
all too special for words. I’ve never felt so wonderful in my life. Thank you.

-Melvin

A soft smile lifted the corners of
her mouth but quickly fell as the inevitable comparisons finally prodded their
way into her head. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Melvin’s body. It
was lanky, surprisingly muscular, clean, well proportioned. But it wasn’t
Zeke’s. Zeke was lithe, toned, agile, a body that oozed sexual appeal.

Each had a different touch.
Melvin’s was sweet, tender, and unexpectedly skilled for someone Sue assumed
had had little experience. Zeke had a dirty, hot way about him that Melvin
lacked. Sue had responded to Melvin’s lovemaking, but it was different from
Zeke’s intense urgency. Zeke had done it
to
her more than
with
her, claimed her with his sheer magnetism,
plundered
her with her willing consent.

Disappointment fell over her like a
stifling, heavy blanket; not in Melvin, but in herself. She fought the downward
tug of disillusionment, reread Melvin’s note, and took pleasure in it.

At the sink, she washed the few
dirty glasses that had accumulated along with her favorite coffee mug. She
rinsed and dried it, added a few teaspoons of chocolate mix, and filled it with
milk. After heating it in the microwave, she went to the bedroom, dressed, and
sat at her computer for her daily victims-of-Zeke search.

Still no word on
Connie Lucas, the
Tennessee
farmer’s wife who had disappeared.
Sue watched a news clip
of her worried husband, Doyle Lucas, pleading in a choked voice for someone to
come forward with information, and further, that if someone had taken her, to
please release her without harm. Eyes reddened and Adam’s apple bobbing up and
down, he grappled to control his emotions. Sue clutched her abdomen as she
listened to the agony in his voice. This vanished woman was not Zeke’s type, at
least not as Sue understood it to be. But then, he’d slept with Mrs. Harrington
and she certainly didn’t fit Sue’s idea of his kind of woman. If Zeke was
involved, Connie Lucas was most likely dead. It was the younger ones, like
herself, he liked to keep around and use for a while. She murmured a quick
prayer for the missing woman and continued scrolling.

There were two new reports of
missing persons, one a man, which she immediately dismissed, and an older woman
in Pennsylvania who was purported
to be suffering from Alzheimer’s and presumed to have wandered off. Sue didn’t
bother to print that one either. Around
noon
,
she stood and stretched, digging her knuckles into the small of her back to
soothe the tension.

She stepped out onto her porch to
check her mail. The first day of June had dawned unseasonably warm and Sue took
a moment to breathe in the gentle air before opening her mailbox. Among the
bills, coupons, and miscellaneous mail was something from a church.
What’s
this?

Sue reentered her apartment, tossed
all but the envelope from the church onto the coffee table, and scanned the
outside with mild curiosity. It was postmarked in Dulcet, West
Virginia four days earlier. Her name and address had
been typed, but a lump of ice slid down her back as she noticed it was made out
to Susie Q Cox. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth and looked
around, as if someone might be hiding in the corner.
I should call the
detective.
She wavered for a few seconds.
No, not this
time
.

Quickly grabbing her gloves from
her coat in the closet and a plastic bag and knife from the kitchen, she slit
the top of the envelope and pulled out a single, folded sheet of glossy paper.
It was nothing but an advertisement torn from a dollar store circular. She
looked closer at the page and her nerve endings went haywire. On one side were
ads for laundry soap and dryer sheets, but on the other were coupons for hair
products, dyes to be specific. Sue shivered as she recalled when Zeke had
insisted she steal a package of black hair dye for him from a dollar store. She
had no doubt he had sent this to her. It couldn’t be any clearer. He was
sending her wordless reminders of their time together. Not even a prankster
could have randomly chosen this flyer; it had to be Zeke.

Was Zeke really in Dulcet?
She
conceded that he could have sent the letter off with a trucker, vacationer, or
other traveler to put into the mail for him. He could have done that. But she
didn’t think so; it wouldn’t explain the envelope. How Zeke would have gotten
one of them was beyond her, but given that their association had ended in a vacant
Catholic church, she took it as a clear message. She figured he’d mailed it
himself. And if so, he was getting ever closer.

Hands trembling, she carried the
bagged envelope with her. She settled before her computer and pulled up a map
of West Virginia. Dulcet was a
small town about thirty miles from Abbeville, a hard sixteen hour drive from
Sue’s house. Two days on road would bring him to her and the letter was sent
four days ago. Zeke could have potentially been here for two days or more.
Waiting.
Watching.

Apprehension rippled down her spine
as she placed the bag into the drawer next to her expanding file of reports
she’d accumulated. Fright sent her to her purse to check her weapon. It was
loaded and ready. But was she? She placed the gun on the kitchen peninsula and
paced the room several times, eyes darting repeatedly to the weapon. It had
made her sick when Zeke killed Brenda, and she’d been heavily drugged at the
time. Could she really take a life?
Even from someone as
wicked as Zeke?
She sank onto the couch, heart pounding, as she
considered the question. Yes, she decided, she could.
If she
were in immediate danger.
But what if he were unarmed, vulnerable,
sorry
for what he’d done?
His startling
blue eyes begging her for mercy?
That was a different situation
entirely; that would be murder, pure and simple.

Half of her cried out for
vengeance, for the completion of the distasteful but necessary task of removing
him from the world. The weaker half, though, longed for him to tell her a story
of childhood woe or mental illness that would explain his cruelty.
Something that would allow her to forgive him and thereby redeem
herself.
Crazy logic, but it made sense to her. Standing, she put the
gun back in her bag and left it on the counter within easy reach.

Her brow creased. How would he do
it? Would she come home from work one day soon to find him in her apartment? Or
would he call her, cajole
her,
persuade her to meet
him somewhere? Would he jump her in a dark parking lot or on the street in front
of her parents’ house? Even if she had her gun with her, would she be able to
get to it in time? Would she want to, or would her heart convince her to give
him a chance? These questions tormented her.

When Melvin called later, she
didn’t tell him about the newest letter despite prodding from her conscience.
He sounded so happy, still wrapped in bliss from the previous night. She
hesitated only a second or two before asking, “Now that school’s over, can we
start checking out some of these old buildings?”

“I still don’t see what good it
will do, but sure.” There was a dubious tone to his words.

“You don’t sound like you really
want to go.”

“I’ll go anywhere with you, Sue.
Ends of the earth, if need be. I certainly don’t want you going alone. Promise
me you’d never do that.”

“I promise.”

“And mean it.”

“I do mean it, Melvin. Why don’t
you come over and we’ll make plans? I think we can hit several sites in one
trip.”

He sighed. “We probably can. When I
get there, we’ll print out a map.”

“Awesome,” she said enthusiastically.
This obviously wasn’t the evening he’d had in mind and she felt a pang of
remorse. They’d just crossed a wonderful marker in their relationship and he
would naturally want to stay on that course. And here she was inserting Zeke
into the mix.
Again.