She had almost a month accumulated leave coming. As she went up the stairs, she planned what to do next: first, call Marsh or Goose at home, tell them there was an emergency. She’d take her new suit she’d saved up for. Several pairs of slacks, the neat ones she wore to work, with clean shirts, underwear, the two new sleep tee’s that Angelica had sent for her birthday. Her hands worked almost by themselves, opening drawers, taking down hangers, stuff from the medicine cabinet: hair dryer, curling iron, toothbrush, vitamins, allergy medicine. She always stuffed up in places with high humidity.
High humidity? Where?
Not here, stupid, a voice told her. Washington, D.C. Where else would she find people in authority?
Everything went into one suitcase plus a small carry-on bag. She’d get her ticket at the airport, the airline or route didn’t matter. She’d learned to drive when she was sixteen and had never changed the name on her driver’s license, so she could buy the ticket under her maiden name. There were X-ray machines. How would the cube react to an X-ray machine? And what about the money? She didn’t dare carry that much money in her purse! Or her carry-on bag. What if she got mugged?
She got the sewing kit out of the linen closet along with a strip torn from the end of a worn bedsheet, spread the cloth neatly on the bed, arranged layers of money down the center of the strip, then folded it over twice and basted the cloth into a thick, flexible belt, finishing it off with two ribbon ties. The belt went around her waist to be double-tied in front, like a child’s shoelaces. She had kept ten of the five-hundred-dollar bills separate, two in the bill compartment of her wallet and eight of them in the secret compartment of her purse, where they wouldn’t show when she paid for anything.
She’d have to leave a note, though it didn’t matter what it said. Any attempt at communicating with Bert in writing always made him furious. He liked to disagree or hit out if something annoyed him, and hitting a letter wasn’t rewarding for him. In the end, she wrote, “Bert, I’ve decided to take some vacation time on my own. I’m taking the dog with me.” She thought a moment. If he was drunk, he would look for her at her father’s. Well, nothing she could say would keep him from doing that, but she’d better let her father know she’d left.
The note to her father was brief. “Have to get away, have to do some thinking, I’ll be in touch.”
Mami had died years ago. No way to tell her anything. Not that she would have needed telling. Benita made two calls, one to the kennel, one to Goose.
“Goose, sorry to bother you at work, but this is Benita, and I have to tell you an emergency has come up and . . . No, the kids are fine. This is something else. . . . No, it isn’t. Goose, just listen! I’ve got to take my accumulated vacation now. . . . No, I don’t need checks in advance, but would you mind depositing them to my personal account until I get back? That’s right, the one at First Bank. Thank you, Goose. Tell Marsh, okay?”
When the cab came, she was ready, everything counted six times and everything in the house locked up, put away, turned off. There was a house key on her car key ring, so if Bert came home, he could get in. Sasquatch was on the leash, eager to go anywhere.
As she went out the front door with her suitcase, a police car pulled to the curb. Officer Cain. She knew him all too well.
“Benita, sorry, but Bert’s monitor went off . . .”
“He took my car,” she said, without expression or apology. “He said he was going to Larry’s, but I’m not sure he did.”
“You try to stop him?” he asked, looking at her face.
“No. The bruise is a couple of days old.”
“Sorry, Benita, but we have to look for him.”
“I do hope you find him before he kills someone,” she said sweetly, smiling briefly as she got into the cab.