I opened the book up and saw dates and names and amounts. As I've mentioned, I can't balance a checkbook, so I wasn't sure what all this meant, but I had a pretty good idea. And I had an even better idea who'd be able to interpret what it all meant. I needed Trixie.
At that moment, I caught something out of the corner of my eye. A car slowing as it drove by on the street in front of Mindy's. A small foreign sedan. Just like Rick's.
The car's brake lights came on. The car stopped, backed up, idled in front of the McDonald's. Then moved forward, swung into the lot, parked alongside my car.
I slunk down into the seat of the Beetle, but not so low that I couldn't see what was happening across the street. Rick got out of the sedan, walked slowly around the Civic, confirming that it was in fact my car. He must have been cruising the neighborhood, hoping to find me, and when he spotted a car similar to mine, wanted to investigate. Chances are he wouldn't have taken notice of the plate number the other times he'd seen the car at my home.
He peered through the windows, looking first in the back, then the front, and his eyes landed on the purse in the front seat. If he was anything like me, he couldn't tell one purse from another—this skill shortage had led me to hide in this Volkswagen in the middle of the night—but this purse looked close enough to Stefanie's that he figured he had the right car. He tried all four doors, found them all locked, and walked calmly back to his own vehicle, reaching for something from the back seat.
A baseball bat.
He swung it hard and took out the driver's-door window. Shards of glass flew across the interior. Inside the Beetle, with the windows up, I could barely hear it. He pulled up the door lock, opened the door, and took the purse, which he tossed into his own car. But he'd looked through this purse once before and knew it hadn't contained a ledger. Maybe, he thought, it was in my car somewhere.
So he began a search of it, not unlike mine moments earlier of the Beetle. He rooted through the trunk, looked under the seats, ripped up the back seat. Frustrated, he glared at the car, paced back and forth angrily, looking like Basil Fawlty getting ready to beat it to death with a tree branch. The bat, I suspected, would be more effective.
He took out the front window first. It took about ten swings of the bat to break out all the glass. Then the three remaining passenger windows, and finally, the back. But that wasn't enough to satisfy him. He smashed off the mirrors, then swung the bat into the middle of the hood. The fenders were next, followed by the headlights, taillights, and trunk lid.
Jeez, I thought, why don't you just set fire to it?
Rick went back to his car to hunt for something. He had a rag, possibly part of an old shirt. Then he opened the driver's door on my car, pulled the lever next to the seat that popped the tiny door on the back fender that covers the gas cap, unscrewed it, and stuffed the rag partway down the tube.
Then, with a lighter, he set it ablaze.
Now he had to move fast. He jumped back into his car, backed so far up the drive-through lane of the McDonald's that he was almost behind it but still able to watch his handiwork, and waited for the explosion.
It was a good one.
The back of my car was facing the front of the McDonald's, and when the car blew up, erupting into a huge ball of flame, the front windows of the restaurant shattered and fell, setting off alarms. Rick got out of his car, and even from where I was sitting, I could see the big grin on his face.
It must not have occurred to him until then to wonder why my car was parked there in the first place. He scanned around, looking to see where I might be, figuring that the noise of the explosion would draw me out. Finally, he looked across the street to the grocery store parking lot and saw the Beetle. I tried to slide even lower into the seat but still keep him in view. He knew Stefanie, and it was a pretty safe assumption that he knew the kind of car she drove.
He started coming across the street.
I slipped my hand down into the front pocket of my jeans and took the Beetle key out, then slid it into the ignition. Before I turned the engine over, I pressed the button to lock the two doors.
I had to slide up now to be able to see over the wheel, and when I did, Rick saw me and started to run. Perfect, I thought. I want you as far away from your car as possible before I pull out of this lot.
The engine caught as I turned the key. I threw my left foot down on the clutch, jammed the stick shift into first, and heard the rear tires squeal as Rick came up alongside, screaming obscenities, shaking his fist. He'd left his baseball bat in his car, and managed nothing more than a swat at the car as I peeled out of the parking lot.
Looking at him in the rear-view mirror, I gave him a friendly wave goodbye.
it was late to be calling on Trixie, but these were, as they say, desperate times. I drove quickly through the streets of our neighborhood. I sped down Chancery Park, approaching the corner of Greenway, and slowed only a little as I went past our house. No cars in the driveway, no unfamiliar lights in the house. I checked out all the nearby streets, including the block behind, to make sure Rick's car was nowhere nearby. It wasn't safe to go back to the house—Greenway and Rick would be looking for me there—but I was curious about whether they were already waiting for me. It appeared not.
I couldn't leave the Beetle in our driveway, or Trixie's. I left it on Rustling Pine Lane, which was two streets over from Chancery, and hoofed it back, the ledger tucked under my arm. Even though our house appeared to be empty, I knew it was possible someone might be waiting inside, looking out the window, waiting for my return, so I got to Trixie's place by working my way through backyards, then coming up the side of her house that was the furthest away from ours. It was, as it turned out, a good thing Sarah had been called in to The Metropolitan to work an overtime shift. She wasn't going to be home until daybreak, and by then, I'd decided, I was going to go to the police with everything I knew. But before I did that, I wanted to be sure I had the deck well stacked against the friendly folks at Valley Forest Estates. And Roger Carpington, even though I was less than certain he'd killed Stefanie Knight. Not that the police wouldn't be able to find plenty of other things to charge him with.
I came around Trixie's garage, noticed her car and one other in the drive, and rang the front doorbell. I figured one simple ring wouldn't be enough to wake her, so I leaned on the button, let it go for a full ten seconds before taking my finger off it.
The tiny speaker next to the door crackled almost right away. “Hello?” Trixie didn't sound as tired as I thought she would.
“Trixie, it's Zack. Let me in.”
“Zack? It's one in the morning. What are you doing here?”
Down at the end of Chancery, a small car's headlights appeared.
“Trixie, listen, I don't have time to explain. Please let me in.”
“I'll be over in a couple of minutes, I'm—”
“Trixie! I can't go home! You have to let me in! It's an emergency!”
“Hang on.”
The headlights were getting closer, slowing as they approached the corner of Greenway. I pressed myself up against the wall, sliding down and behind a bush.
From inside, I heard a bolt being turned, and then the door opened a crack. I was grateful that Trixie did not turn on the front light and expose me to whoever was coming up the street.
I forced the door open and burst in, closing the door behind me and throwing the bolt even before Trixie had a chance to do it.
“Oh God, thank you,” I said, turning to face her, holding the ledger out in front of me. “You've got no idea the mess I've gotten—”
And then I stopped.
Trixie had not come to the door in her pajamas. Clearly, I had not roused her from a deep sleep.
She was decked out in a leather corset, wide garters that supported thigh-high black stockings, shiny high-heeled boots that came over the top of her knees, and in her right hand she held what appeared to be a whip.
“You picked kind of a bad time,” sh
e said, somewhat sternly.
From someplace else in the house—it sounded like the basement—came a very strange sound. Muffled sounds, of a man, it seemed to me. Groaning.
“Why don't you pour yourself a coffee,” Trixie said, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen. “I'm gonna have to go untie this guy and send him on his way. You've done me out of a thou, you know, and that's not counting the tip.”
24
“so you're not an accountant,” I said when Trixie sat down across from me at the kitchen table. She had slipped on a robe, but every time she shifted in her chair, or leaned forward to get some cream for her coffee, or got up to put something in the fridge, I could hear the erotic creak of leather, the swish of nylon rubbing up against nylon.
“Yes, I'm an accountant,” Trixie, slightly indignant, said. “I've got my degree and everything, worked for one of the big firms downtown. I was very good at it, still am. I can still do your taxes if you want. But I'm making a lot more now than then, and ever since Enron and Andersen and all that, I think I moved into a profession with more respect and dignity.” She blew on her coffee and took a sip, leaving lipstick marks on the edge of the cup.
“I'm really sorry,” I said. “About barging in.”
“Whatever. It's just as well you showed up when you did.”
As it turned out, she'd done up the chest strap on her client a little too tightly, and had asked me to come down to the basement to help her undo it.
It was not your typical rec room. The walls were painted black, and the red bulbs screwed into the sockets cast a sensuous, eerie glow. One wall was covered in pegboard, with hooks, the kind of thing you see in a well-organized workshop for hanging tools of every description. But these hooks were draped with ropes and straps and handcuffs and bungee-cord-type thingies with bright chrome buckles that looked like they would do a terrific job of strapping your luggage to a roof rack if you were taking a long vacation with the kids. But that, clearly, was not their intended use, as evidenced by George, the man strapped to a huge X made of timbers that was leaned up against the back wall. George, pasty, overweight, and extraordinarily white, was wearing nothing more than a black leather jockstrap arrangement, and a red ball in his mouth held in place with straps that went around the back of his head.
A broad leather strap around his chest helped secure him to the crossed timbers, and when Trixie had tried to release him, she couldn't pull far enough back on the buckle. That was when she called me down.
“Zack, this is George,” Trixie said. “George, Zack.” George, still gagged, nodded. “George, I did this thing a bit too tight, but let's not forget who asked for it that way. Now, I don't quite have the strength to pull this back, and I could cut it, but I hate to do that, so I'm going to get Zack here to help me out.”
I obliged, pulling the belt back far enough that it was cutting pretty deeply into his flabby bosoms. “There,” I said.
Trixie went about untying his wrists and ankles, and removed the ball. “I'm really sorry about this, George. I know it's very unprofessional, sending you on your way early, but something's come up.”
“That's okay,” George said meekly. “Nice to meet you,” he said, extending his hand to me. We shook.
George slipped into a downstairs bathroom, where he changed back into his regular clothes. Through the door, Trixie said to him, “No charge tonight, George.”
“Are you sure?” he said from behind the door. “I still got half a session, so I'm not complaining.”
“No, it wouldn't be right. I tell you what, we can just let this one go, or you can pay me, and next time it's on the house. I'll even do the thing with the cream cheese, no extra charge.”
That sounded fair to George, who, once he'd emerged from the bathroom in a pair of dress pants, a crisp white shirt without a tie, and a sports jacket, discreetly slipped Trixie a wad of bills.
“Have you been coming to Trixie long?” George asked me as we went up the stairs together.
“Uh, no,” I said.
“Well, you won't be disappointed. She's the best. I can't recommend her too highly.”
“Really.”
Trixie saw him off at the door. “Say hi to Mildred for me,” she said, giving George a peck on the cheek and sending him on his way. I watched through the glass as he got in his car and backed out of the driveway.
“Mildred?” I asked.
“His wife. She's not really into this. It's been a real load-off for her ever since she started sending George to me.”
“She sends him?”
“She saw my ad. First time she sent him, it was for his birthday. Now it's a semi-regular thing, every month or so. Some people are very open-minded.” She grabbed a silk robe hanging on a hook just inside the door to the basement, slipped it on, and went into the kitchen. “Did you get yourself some coffee?”
“I was about to, and you called me downstairs to help free George.”
“That was so embarrassing. I could have cut him out of it, but that strap alone was three hundred bucks.” She shook her head. “Now, what's got you so wound up you're busting in here in the middle of the night?” She smiled. “Did you see my ad, too?”
“No, I didn't,” I said. “I'm in a bit of a mess, Trixie.”
“Grab a chair.”
It was after that that I asked whether she was really an accountant, and offered my apologies about busting in.
“What is it?” Trixie asked. “Another backpack incident?”
“Worse, although it started out in a similar way. But things have sort of spiraled out of control. There are men, at least one, trying to find me and, I think it's fair to say, kill me.”
Trixie's eyebrows shot up a notch. “Why would there be men trying to kill you?”
“Well, for one thing, this.” I slid the ledger book across the table at her.
“What's this?” she asked.
“Well, you're the accountant. Maybe you can tell me.”
She opened the book. Her nails were long and bloodred, and I found that I felt just a bit feverish. Where her robe opened I could see the swell of her breasts, pushed up and out, courtesy of the spectacularly engineered corset.
“Let's have a look. List of payments, money coming in, some names here. Wow, I think I recognize this guy. He's a building inspector, comes here sometimes, likes to play doctor.”
“Okay.”
“So he's getting paid five hundred every, it looks like, every week or so. And here's another name I recognize. Carpington?”
“Roger. He's a client, too?”
“No, I just recognize the name. From the paper.”
“He's a town councilman. How much is he getting?”
“Well, right here he's getting five thou.” She thumbed the pages. “His name pops up a lot, but it's just one of dozens. Zack, where did you get this?”
“It's a long story.”
“I've got time,” she said, leaning back in her chair and crossing her booted legs.
“Sarah and I were shopping,” I said, and went through the whole thing. Taking the wrong purse, trying to return it, finding Stefanie Knight's body, getting tracked down by Rick, the meeting with Carpington, the episode at the construction site. Trixie said barely a word, taking it all in, nodding slowly.
I finished with finding the ledger in Stefanie's car, and Rick's destruction of mine out front of McDonald's.
“You're in some kind of deep shit,” Trixie said, running her tongue across her top teeth.
“Yes,” I said. “That's a fairly good assessment of the situation. Thank you.”
“Listen, don't get snippy with me. Did I tell you to take Sarah's purse to teach her a lesson?”
“No. Did I mention that, in addition to everything else that's happened tonight, she thinks I'm impotent?”
“No, I think you left that part out. Are you? I could check.”
“She wanted to, you know, spend some time with me tonight, before she went to work, but it's a b
it hard to concentrate when you think the police might be looking for you and charging you with murder. I think maybe it's time to go to the police.”
Trixie thought about that. “How did you get here, if your car's blown up?”
“Stefanie's car. Her Beetle. I parked it one block over.”
“So you not only stole her purse, but now you have her car? That'll look good to the police. You're not wearing her underwear, too, are you?”
I hadn't thought about the incriminating aspect of driving Stefanie's car all around town. I did not, it occurred to me, have the makings of a master criminal.
“But if I don't go to the police,” I said, “how'm I going to protect myself from this Rick guy? He's a total nutjob. He killed that Spender guy down in the creek, probably killed Stefanie, and he's wandering around town with a python in his trunk.”
Trixie blinked. “Does Sarah know anything about any of this?”
I shook my head. “She's noticed me acting kind of weird, but no. And she won't be coming home from work until morning, she's doing the night shift, and I farmed the kids out to friends' houses.”
“You need some kind of backup,” she said. “You have a gun or anything?”
“Are you kidding? Do I look like someone who owns a gun? I don't even know anyone who owns a—” I stopped.
“What?” Trixie said.
“I do know one person. Who owns a gun. Someone who owes me a favor. Someone who might let me borrow it.”
“do you know what time it is?” Earl said when he opened his front door to me and Trixie. She'd changed out of her work clothes and into some jeans and a T-shirt, and had gone out of her house first, making sure there was no sign of Rick or anyone else at my house two doors down, then waved for me to join her. I ran across the street in a flash, ducked into some bushes as Trixie rang Earl's bell.
“Let us in,” Trixie said. “Zack needs your help.”
“Where's Zack?”
“He's the one here, in the bushes. Turn off your front light.”