The Jezebel Remedy (42 page)

“We send our private detective to watch the Western Union, just in case. At least Hamblin should be able to handle that, though he's been a hundred-and-fifty-bucks-an-hour waste so far. Next, we see if Trooper Harold will swing by the hardware store and take Lettie to Manassas for the test. I'll meet with him and explain the situation. There's nobody I trust more than Harold—he's steady and cagey and Dale Earnhardt in a police cruiser.”

“I hope you're right, Joe. I hope you're not reading too much into her call.”

“It was her, and she was trying to send us a message.” He adjusted the towel. Water droplets speckled the floor, none of them quite the same shape. “I wish I didn't have to sit here like a knot on a log with my
lawyers and could go with you to Manassas. Or with Harold. Those fuckers will have a wall around the lab, even with the distractions and misdirection.”

“I'll walk over and share the good news with Robert. I'll make sure he and Phil realize how quiet we need to keep this. I may just drive to Roanoke and tell Phil in person rather than risking a call or e-mail.”

“Lord, do I feel better. Yes. Now we're cooking with gas. Great googly moogly. We might actually pull this shit off.”

On September 27, Lisa and Joe said goodbye to each other, and they hugged at the front door to their office of almost two decades, both of them apprehensive, and he insisted she take his .22 revolver along with her, stuck it in her purse beside the Mace, and she left their building with MapQuest directions for Manassas, a few minutes before noon. “Twenty-four hours, and we'll know,” she told him over her shoulder. “Feast or famine.”

“Be careful,” he said. “Don't take any wooden nickels,” he added, and she thought it was perfect Joe, corny and sincere and heartfelt…and damn smart advice.

She was positive that Garrison continued to track her, so she was careful about her appointment with Dr. Beasley, took precautions. After leaving Joe, she drove to Wild Magnolia restaurant, which was part of the same half-empty strip mall as the dentist's office. She went into the restaurant, found a booth and asked for a glass of sweet tea. She informed the server her husband would be there shortly, so she'd wait to order.

She wandered into the kitchen and while she was chatting with the owner—a garrulous, goateed fellow named Big Mike—and discussing the spices and seasoning in his voodoo shrimp, she abruptly apologized, grabbed her BlackBerry from her jeans pocket, pretended to study the caller's number and then staged a conversation with Joe. She listened and scowled and said, “I was worried about an injunction,” and pointed at the red Exit sign, and Big Mike nodded it was okay, she could use that door. Walking off, she briefly smothered the cell with
her empty hand and told Mike he didn't need to hold her table, and she was quick through the door and in the parking lot behind the building. She hustled past a large, humming heat pump and darted into the rear entrance at the dentist's office, locking the door behind her.

Dr. Blaine Beasley was round all over—round head, round glasses, round eyes, round hands, round frame, round ears. In college, his friends had nicknamed him the Planet. Following his 2007 divorce, he'd endured a stomach stapling and taken up with a horse trainer from Emporia, but neither lasted very long, so he was round and single again within a matter of months and now, at the age of forty-nine, he tended to his patients, played doubles tennis despite his gimpy knees and kept company with a bashful Georgia widow he'd met at the Martinsville Catholic church. When Lisa arrived, he was already in the treatment room, anxious and fidgety.

“Hey, Doc,” she said cheerfully. “Ready to BeDazzle my smile?”

“I suppose. If you are.” He fussed with the earpiece on his glasses, blinked. “You're sure about this?” He removed the glasses and began wiping the lenses with a handkerchief, the cleaning hurried and slapdash.

“The most important thing,” she said solemnly, “is absolute confidentiality. No records, no reports, not a syllable to anyone, ever. Basically, as we discussed, your incredible favor might just help us correct some huge unfairness. We're really in a bind.”

“You have my promise,” he said. “There's nobody here but us. Office is locked. The staff's at lunch. For your fitting visit, your impression, we had you listed as a routine cleaning.” He kept wiping his glasses, the white handkerchief practically flapping. “As far as I'm concerned, you saved my life. I truly believe that. My marriage was literally frickin' killing me.” He put the glasses back on. “I know I was a wreck—and I'm still kinda embarrassed about how I acted during the divorce—but you treated me like, well, like family, and then got me an extremely fair result. If this will improve your circumstances, it's the least I can do. I can't imagine why it would, but I'm not a lawyer. I read that Joe has lost his license, and I'm guessing there's a connection somehow.”

“Thank you,” Lisa said.

“Have a seat. You'll be finished before you even realize it.”

She slid onto an elongated vinyl chair, swinging her legs in last,
crossing them at the ankles. The chair was orange, the room smelled antiseptic, the retractable light above the chair was harsh and clinical, already switched on. Beasley clipped a disposable towel around her neck and adjusted the chair until her head was tilted and slightly higher than her feet. She heard a motor whir while she was being positioned and a forceful, mechanical, pressurized pop when it cut off.

“Okay, I'm going to numb you,” Beasley said. “Open for me.” He was seated on a roller stool, and he planted a heel and jockeyed between her and a tray full of instruments, agile with the extra three legs despite his size, the movements second nature, ingrained. He came closer to her face, wearing a green mask. “Relax. Turn a bit my way. This is a dose of topical.” He was confident and steady, all the senseless energy gone, his instruction to her calm, practiced, direct. He dabbed at her gum with a Q-tip, all around the tooth he'd be coloring, and she tasted a faint, bitter patch at the tip of her tongue. The very first cotton touch caused her to tense.

“There we go,” he said. “Nothing to it.”

“Yeah,” she murmured.

“It works fairly quick,” he noted. “In case you were wondering, your teeth look great,” he added, killing time, waiting for the topical to dull her. “You're lucky.”

Lisa didn't say anything.

“Little baby stick,” he warned after returning from another swerve and slide to reach the tray.

She felt the needle pierce her skin and the lidocaine surge into her gum and trace along her tooth and its roots and fill the socket space, the painkiller cool, strong, rapid, and the dentist jiggled her lip and pressed and massaged and reset the needle and shot in more numbing, and it immediately pushed a path across her cheek and toward her ear, and she caught herself trying to bite down, and she squirmed and she sucked the best breath she could and shut her eyes, moved her hands from her lap to the chair's arms. Beasley tapped her gum with his sheathed finger, finished with the needle and dropped it on the silver tray, a
clank
interrupting the silent room when it landed.

“We okay?” he asked, though he was already reaching for the next tool.

“Umm-hmmmm,” Lisa replied.

“Let's give the lidocaine a little time.”

He waited a couple minutes, the room still awkwardly quiet, neither of them speaking, and then the analgesic took hold and spread, a creeping, tingling insulation that divided off a portion of her mouth and gum. He tested the effects, probing and pushing. She felt the pressure but nothing else, no sensation.

“You should be numb. Can you feel that?”

“Nuh.”

He instructed her to make sure she kept her mouth open as wide as possible, and she watched as a gold veneer came toward her, disappearing into the light and her watery focus, her eyes stymied by the glare, her vision off-track, myopic, aimed at the ceiling.

She heard a tool scrape against enamel, and she noticed Beasley's concentration, his tightly pinched forehead above the mask. He inched closer, and she saw thick eyebrows connected by a scant black isthmus spreading across the top of his nose, the hairs magnified as if she were looking at him in an illuminated makeup mirror.

“I think we're good,” he said. “Swallow, please.” He suctioned her mouth with his free hand and wiped her chin with a gauze pad. “I'm going to have to shave the veneer a teeny-tiny bit.” He used a small grinder that sounded like an electric bee when it touched the gold covering, then suctioned all around her mouth again.

She shifted her eyes to avoid the light.

Twice he forced the veneer into place and removed it and shaped it with the grinder. “All right,” he finally said after he inserted the covering for the third time and pressed and pushed and pried. “Consider yourself formally grilled.” He handed her a mirror. “How does it feel?”

“Fine. My mouth's numb, but that's about it.” She smiled so she could see the tooth. “Thanks, Blaine.”

“It's a temp and might feel a little strange. I didn't want to rough the enamel for the bonding any more than absolutely necessary, and I didn't want to damage your other teeth or gum trying to make it fit perfect. And it's not aligned like it should be, but you said that wasn't a big concern.” Beasley checked his watch. “We're under ten minutes,” he said. “Ahead of schedule.” He was already walking out while he spoke, in a hurry, and she could hear his rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the floor as he waddled away.

“Fucking Seth Garrison,” she mumbled, but not loud enough for Beasley to hear, and she trailed him down the hall, toward the door.

“That's it, I suppose,” Beasley told her when they reached the exit.

“Blaine, please let me pay you,” she said. “I brought cash. I can't let you go in the hole because you're doing me a favor. I realize gold's expensive, though you can have it back once I'm through.”

He smiled. “It's not real gold, Lisa. And I'll charge you the exact same you charged me for all the mother henning and mitten tying and hours of midnight counseling. Or better yet, perhaps this will bring us even.”

“More than even,” she said.

“Promise me this, please.” He leaned toward her. “You…take care of yourself, okay?”

“Definitely.”

“And I can't help saying it, and it'll never go past these walls, but Lord help us all, don't raise Lettie VanSandt from the dead any longer than absolutely necessary.” He twisted the dead bolt. “I'm sorry; I just couldn't resist.” He smiled, and somehow even that was round. “Let's have one more quick peek at how everything fits before you leave—open for me.” He clicked a penlight and aimed it at her mouth.

Wearing sunglasses, she stepped from Beasley's office onto the sidewalk and immediately spotted the truck, a white Ford F-150 with a trailer hitch and Harley decals displayed across the cab's rear window. She walked to the passenger side and climbed in. “Hey, Lloyd,” she said.

“Long time no see, Mrs. Stone,” Lloyd Burnette answered. His voice was deep, a salted, drawling baritone. “Can't say I'm unhappy 'bout that. No offense.” He cranked the engine, and they drove toward the highway.

“None taken.”

“Danville Holiday Inn? That still the plan?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Okeydokey.” Burnette was barely forty, but he looked considerably older, his face so lined and creased it appeared crosshatched in spots. “Fair to say I ain't never been to no motel with a woman looks as nice as you.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“The truth is the truth,” he said, keeping his eyes directly on the road. “Your car safe at the mall?”

“I parked near the gym. It's open twenty-four hours a day, so people are usually around and the car won't be too noticeable.”

“I shoulda knowed you were on top of that.”

“So can you do the tattoos?” she asked. “I mean, how closely can you imitate them?”

Burnette's hair was pulled into a graying ponytail. He was wearing a black T-shirt from a motorcycle rally in Sturgis. The shirt was full and tight at his belly. “Well, I done my stencils. Some of them designs you want me to copy is quality. Some is crap. A few pieces I'll just do freehand. My big problem is havin' it not look brand spankin' new, 'specially what with me airbrushin' it. From the pictures you sent me, there's a few parts and designs that I can't see how they finish; as I understand it, I can just leave 'em blank. The nose rings is clip-ons, but you can't tell unless you was to yank on 'em or come right up to a person's face.”

“On a one to ten, how similar will it be? Your best guess.”

He chuckled. “The designs and the art, I'll give you an eight, maybe nine. If you or someone who don't know the trade was to look at it, you probably ain't gonna notice no difference. A pro'd see it. The color's the bitch. But I got some tricks, okay? I worked on my paints, and we'll wash 'em good, and the dragon—the dragon is real old, best I can tell—him we'll scrub with a little mineral oil.”