In the calm morning light of a suburban Connecticut morning, the answer was ridiculously simple: an anonymous call to the police. The fact that a professional novelist with ten years’ experience hadn’t thought of it right away almost deserved a yellow penalty card. She would give them the location—the deserted YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU store on Stagg Road—and she would describe the giant. How hard could it be to locate a man like that? Or a blue Ford F-150 pickup with Bondo around the headlights?
Easy-as-can-beezy.
But while she was drying her hair, her eyes fell on her Lemon Squeezer .38 and she thought, Too easy-as-can-beezy. Because…
“What’s in it for me?” she asked Fritzy, who was sitting in the doorway and looking at her with his luminous green eyes. “Just what’s in that for me?”
– 20 –
Standing in the kitchen an hour and a half later. Her cereal bowl soaking in the sink. Her second cup of coffee growing cold on the counter. Talking on the phone.
“Oh my God!” Patsy exclaimed. “I’m coming right over!”
“No, no, I’m fine, Pats. And you’ll be late for work.”
“Saturday mornings are strictly optional, and you should go to the doctor! What if you’re concussed, or something?”
“I’m not concussed, just colorful. And I’d be ashamed to go to the doctor, because I was three drinks over the limit. At least three. The only sensible thing I did all night was call a limo to bring me home.”
“You’re sure your nose isn’t broken?”
“Positive.” Well… almost positive.
“Is Fritzy all right?”
Tess burst into perfectly genuine laughter. “I go downstairs half-shot in the middle of the night because the smoke detector’s beeping, trip over the cat and almost kill myself, and your sympathies are with the cat. Nice.”
“Honey, no—”
“I’m just teasing,” Tess said. “Go on to work and stop worrying. I just didn’t want you to scream when you saw me. I’ve got a couple of absolutely beautiful shiners. If I had an ex-husband, you’d probably think he’d paid me a visit.”
“Nobody would dare to put a hand on you,” Patsy said. “You’re feisty, girl.”
“That’s right,” Tess said. “I take no shit.”
“You sound hoarse.”
“On top of everything else, I’m getting a cold.”
“Well… if you need something tonight… chicken soup… a couple of old Percocets… a Johnny Depp DVD…”
“I’ll call if I do. Now go on. Fashion-conscious women seeking the elusive size six Ann Taylor are depending on you.”
“Piss off, woman,” Patsy said, and hung up, laughing.
Tess took her coffee to the kitchen table. The gun was sitting on it, next to the sugar bowl: not quite a Dal? image, but damn close. Then the image doubled as she burst into tears. It was the memory of her own cheery voice that did it. The sound of the lie she would now live until it felt like the truth. “You bastard!” she shouted. “You fuck—bastard! I hate you!”
She had showered twice in less than seven hours and still felt dirty. She had douched, but she thought she could still feel him in there, his…
“His cockslime.”
She bolted to her feet, from the corner of her eye glimpsed her alarmed cat racing down the front hall, and arrived at the sink just in time to avoid making a mess on the floor. Her coffee and Cheerios came up in a single hard contraction. When she was sure she was done, she collected her pistol and went upstairs to take another shower.
– 21 –
When she was done and wrapped in a comforting terry-cloth robe, she lay down on her bed to think about where she should go to make her anonymous call. Someplace big and busy would be best. Someplace with a parking lot so she could hang up and then scat. Stoke Village Mall sounded right. There was also the question of which authorities to call. Colewich, or would that be too Deputy Dawg? Maybe the State Police would be better. And she should write down what she meant to say… the call would go quicker… she’d be less likely to forget anyth…
Tess drifted off, lying on her bed in a bar of sunlight.
– 22 –
The telephone was ringing far away, in some adjacent universe. Then it stopped and Tess heard her own voice, the pleasantly impersonal recording that started You have reached… This was followed by someone leaving a message. A woman. By the time Tess struggled back to wakefulness, the caller had clicked off.
She looked at the clock on the night table and saw it was quarter to ten. She’d slept another two hours. For a moment she was alarmed: maybe she’d suffered a concussion or a fracture after all. Then she relaxed. She’d had a lot of exercise the previous night. Much of it had been extremely unpleasant, but exercise was exercise. Falling asleep again was natural. She might even take another nap this afternoon (another shower for sure), but she had an errand to run first. A responsibility to fulfill.
She put on a long tweed skirt and a turtleneck that was actually too big for her; it lapped the underside of her chin. That was fine with Tess. She had applied concealer to the bruise on her cheek. It didn’t cover it completely, nor would even her biggest pair of sunglasses completely obscure her black eyes (the swollen lips were a lost cause), but the makeup helped, just the same. The very act of applying it made her feel more anchored in her life. More in charge.
Downstairs, she pushed the Play button on her answering machine, thinking the call had probably been from Ramona Norville, doing the obligatory day-after follow-up: we had fun, hope you had fun, the feedback was great, please come again (not bloody likely), blah-blah-blah. But it wasn’t Ramona. The message was from a woman who identified herself as Betsy Neal. She said she was calling from The Stagger Inn.
“As part of our effort to discourage drinking and driving, our policy is to courtesy—call people who leave their cars in our lot after closing,” Betsy Neal said. “Your Ford Expedition, Connecticut license plate 775 NSD, will be available for pickup until five PM this evening. After five it will be towed to Excellent Auto Repair, 1500 John Higgins Road, North Colewich, at your expense. Please note that we don’t have your keys, ma’am. You must have taken them with you.” Betsy Neal paused. “We have other property of yours, so please come to the office. Remember that I’ll need to see some ID. Thank you and have a nice day.”
Tess sat down on her sofa and laughed. Before listening to the Neal woman’s canned speech, she had been planning to drive her Expedition to the mall. She didn’t have her purse, she didn’t have her key-ring, she didn’t have her damn car, but she had still planned to just walk out to the driveway, climb in, and She sat back against the cushion, whooping and pounding a fist on her thigh. Fritzy was under the easy chair on the other side of the room, looking at her as if she were mad. We’re all mad here, so have another cup of tea, she thought, and laughed harder than ever.
When she finally stopped (only it felt more like running down), she played the message again. This time what she focused on was the Neal woman saying they had other property of hers. Her purse? Perhaps even her diamond earrings? But that would be too good to be true. Wouldn’t it?
Arriving at The Stagger Inn in a black car from Royal Limo might be a little too memorable, so she called Stoke Village Taxi. The dispatcher said they’d be glad to run her out to what he called “The Stagger” for a flat fifty-dollar fee. “Sorry to charge you so much,” he said, “but the driver’s got to come back empty.”
“How do you know that?” Tess asked, bemused.
“Left your car, right? Happens all the time, specially on weekends. Although we also get calls after karaoke nights. Your cab’ll be there in fifteen minutes or less.”
Tess ate a Pop-Tart (swallowing hurt, but she had lost her first try at breakfast and was hungry), then stood at the living-room window, watching for the taxi and bouncing her spare Expedition key on her palm. She decided on a change of plan. Never mind Stoke Village Mall; once she’d collected her car (and whatever other property Betsy Neal was holding), she would drive the half a mile or so to the Gas & Dash and call the police from there.
It seemed only fitting.
– 23 –
When her cab turned onto Stagg Road, Tess’s pulse began to rise. By the time they reached The Stagger Inn, it was flying along at what felt like a hundred and thirty beats a minute. The cabbie must have seen something in his rearview mirror… or maybe it was just the visible signs of the beating that prompted his question.