He put the pillow back, then took the microphone from his pocket and looked for a place to mount it. It was not much larger than his flash drive, and the underside of the bed would have been a logical spot for it, but the bed’s platform sat flush on the floor.
He opened drawers until he found one that held blankets. Barring a cold snap, there’d be no reason to open the drawer—and there wouldn’t be any cold weather for a while, not in a Florida summer.
He set up the mike all the way in the back of the drawer, on top of a blanket; the battery-operated receiver went in the crawl space, which he reached by pushing up a panel in the hall. A quick look showed she had nothing stored up there, and thus no reason to come upon the receiver.
It would work, he thought, but did it have to? If he hadn’t already owned the equipment he wouldn’t have bothered.
He opened her closet, rummaged through her clothes. Once again he found himself breathing in her scent, and he let himself imagine her body, all firm toned flesh, with a puff of blonde curls at the juncture of her thighs.
He stood there, let himself feel what he was feeling . . .
And then there was the sound of a car outside, braking to a stop.
His mind raced. If it was her, she’d be in the house before he could let himself out of it. He would have to lurk in one room and wait for a chance to slip past her, but how could he realistically expect to get out without being seen?
And, Jesus, his flash drive was still plugged into her Mac, where she couldn’t miss seeing it.
So he didn’t have much choice, did he? He’d plant himself behind the bedroom door, waiting for her to come upstairs, hoping she’d walk right past the computer, either not noticing it was turned on or thinking she must have left it like that. She’d come into the bedroom and he’d take her from behind.
And what? Hit her in the head, hard enough to knock her out? No, safer and more certain to clap one hand over her mouth and wrap his other arm around her neck, putting her gently to sleep with a choke hold.
He let himself visualize it all, her body struggling in his grasp, then relaxing as she lost consciousness. And pushed the image aside to listen for her key in the lock, for the door opening.
When he didn’t hear it he went to the window. The car at the curb was not Ashley Hannon’s Hyundai but a Dodge minivan, from which a black woman was lifting a sack of groceries while two of her children made a run for the swing set.
Jesus.
He left the bedroom as he’d found it, went downstairs, retrieved his flash drive and shut down her computer, then let himself out of the house. The neighbor woman was putting away her groceries, he could hear her through the screen door. Her son was pushing his sister on the swing, and they were too involved in what they were doing to pay attention to a middle-aged white man carrying a clipboard.
He got in his car and drove around the corner, stopped in front of a house not all that different from the one he’d just left. He breathed deeply, in and out, and thought how relieved he’d felt at the sight of the minivan.
Relief touched with disappointment.
Because, the fear and tension notwithstanding, he’d wanted her to come up the stairs and into the bedroom, wanted to clap a hand over her little mouth before she knew what was happening, wanted to choke her until she blacked out and went limp in his arms.
“Choke me, will you? Come on, how tricky is that? Use both hands, put ’em around my throat, and choke me a little. Not too hard. Oh, that’s nice. A little harder, just a little bit. Oh, yeah.” And then what? Lower her to the floor, slip a hand under that skimpy white skirt, touch her through her panties. Maybe reach inside her panties, give her a little finger wave.
He was hard thinking about it.
Well, he could do something about that. He didn’t even have to go home for the clipboard.
Twenty-six
* * *
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Ellison. I thought I had all the information my client required, but it turns out I have some more questions.”
No makeup, and this time he noticed that her ears were pierced for earrings, but that she wasn’t wearing any. Her housedress was almost identical to the one she’d worn before, and stretched at least as tight over the full breasts and round belly.
“But this can’t be a good time for you,” he went on. “What time does your boy go for his nap?”
“Oh,” she said. “It depends, but usually around noon or a little after. But you don’t have to—”
“It’s eleven-thirty,” he said. “Suppose I come back, oh, forty-five minutes from now? That would be at twelve-fifteen. Would that be all right?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, just flashed her a smile and turned to walk to his car. He didn’t look back, didn’t see her again until he was back behind the wheel of the Monte Carlo. Then he caught sight of her, still standing in the doorway, looking at him.
He was right on time, and when she opened the door to his knock he explained that he hadn’t wanted to ring the bell for fear of waking her son.
“Not much chance of that,” she said. “Once he’s asleep, you could shoot off a cannon next to him and he wouldn’t hear it.”
In the living room, he took the same seat he’d had on his earlier visit. “Ah, this is nice,” he said. “It’s warm out there.”
“I’ve been inside all day,” she said.
“Well, don’t be in a rush to go out. A person can raise a thirst out there.”
“Would you care for some iced tea?”
“Oh, you don’t have to do go to the trouble.”
“It’s no trouble. There’s a pitcher in the refrigerator.”
“Well, if you’re having some yourself, Mrs. Ellison.”
She came back with two glasses of iced tea. He took a sip and exclaimed over it, and she said it was just from a mix, she hadn’t really done anything but stir it up.
He said, “You know what would really pep this up—” and then waved a dismissive hand, cutting off his own remark. She looked at him, puzzled, and he said, “I was just thinking a touch of vodka would make this something special. But that’s out of line.”
“I think there’s some vodka.”
“Oh, please, you don’t have to—”
“In fact I’m sure there is,” she said, and came back to hand him a half-full bottle of Absolut. He uncapped it, then stopped himself from pouring. “Only if you’ll join me,” he said.
“Oh, I wish,” she said, and patted her stomach.
“I didn’t even think.”
“But please, have some yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I hate to drink alone. All these months and you’ve never had a single sip?”
“Well,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Once or twice,” she admitted. “I’m not supposed to, but one drink doesn’t really hurt, especially in the third trimester.”
“Well, in that case—”
“Only a drop,” she said, and smiled.
And they talked—about what a hot summer it was likely to be, and what this year’s hurricane season might amount to, and how a touch of vodka really brightened up a glass of iced tea, especially when the tea was pre-sweetened.
And then she said, “But you had questions you wanted to ask me.”
“Oh, indeed I do. About your neighbor.”
“I don’t really know that much,” she said, “but just go ahead and ask me anything.”
“I’m particularly interested in his relationship,” he said. “With his wife.”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said. “Not so far as I can tell.”
“But what do you know about its more intimate aspects?”
She frowned. “Gee, next to nothing. What do you mean?”
“Well,” he said, “there are things I don’t suppose you can know, but I get the sense that you’re an intuitive person. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Women tend to be,” he said, “and I believe there’s scientific evidence that a woman’s intuition is enhanced by, well, by your current state.” And when she looked puzzled, he clarified what he meant by touching her gently on her stomach, leaving his hand there for only a fraction of a second longer than he had to.
“Oh,” she said.
“So what you sense about their relationship might be surprisingly valid.”
“Well—”
“So what do you figure the two of them do in bed?”
“Oh, God, I mean I have no idea! I couldn’t even guess.”
“Oh, sure you could. Do you suppose he eats her pussy?”
She stared at him.
He leaned forward, held her eyes with his, put a hand on her thigh, felt the warmth of her flesh through the thin cotton.
“I wonder if he does,” he said, his voice soft but insistent. “I wonder if he enjoys it as much as I’ll enjoy eating yours.”
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
“Oh, sure you can.”
“I think you’d better go. Now, right now. I want you to go.”
“That’s not what you want.”
“You have no idea what I want!”
“Oh, I have a pretty good idea,” he said, and his hand moved up and down on her thigh. “No makeup and no lipstick, and no earrings either, but you’re wearing perfume now and you weren’t wearing any an hour ago. You tucked him in for his nap and then quick as a bunny you dabbed on a little perfume. Where did you put it, Bobbie? Behind your pretty little ears? Between your big juicy tits?”
“Oh, please don’t . . .”
“Not between your legs, because you’ve got your own smell down there, don’t you? I can smell it from here. You’re all wet, aren’t you? If you don’t want it, why are you all wet?”
She just looked at him.
“You made your decision when you put on perfume,” he told her, “and you underlined it when you offered me iced tea. And you let me spike your drink. You’re pregnant but you were willing to have a drink because you knew it would make it easier for you to go upstairs with me. I could talk you into another drink, but I don’t want to get you drunk, I just want to take you upstairs and fuck you.”
He stood up, took her hand, drew her unresisting to her feet.
Afterward he lay on his back, spent. She sat beside him and took his genitals in her hands.
“You’ll excuse me for a minute,” she said. “I want to go to the garage for the pruning shears.”
“The women of America would never forgive you.”
“They’d give me a medal. Does the moron next door eat his wife’s pussy? I couldn’t believe you asked me that.”
“Well, I wanted to get your attention.”
“You already had it. What on earth made you think you could get me in bed? And don’t tell me the perfume, I know all about the perfume. You already decided before you showed up on my doorstep this morning.”
“I was playing a hunch.”
“What’s that, female intuition for guys? Something had to give you the idea.”
“Maybe the wish was father to the thought. I felt like hitting on you the first time I saw you.”
“But I had Eli there for protection. Which is why you asked about his nap time. You’re really a very bad man, Mr. Doak Miller.”
“I know.”
“The perfume wasn’t to get you to fuck me. It was so I could pretend something was going to happen, even though I knew it wasn’t. I just wanted to feel attractive, you know?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, right. Big as a house, with no lipstick and no makeup.”
“And holes in your ears.”
“And unoccupied holes in my ears.”
“You’re very hot,” he said. “You may not believe it, but you are.”
“But you didn’t just think I was hot, you bastard. You thought I was there for the taking. And then you came upstairs with me and played me like a violin.”
“More like a cello.”
“Nice. I really ought to cut it off, you know. I could keep it in the icebox as a souvenir and suck on it whenever the mood came over me. Of course I could do that now, couldn’t I?”
“Don’t expect miracles. I think you got it all the first time.”
“Oh, yeah? Is that what you think, mister?”
“I guess I can claim to be reasonably good at that,” she said. “I ought to be. When I’m like this, that’s all he wants.”
“He doesn’t—”
“Do anything else? No, that’s it. From the first time I missed my period with Eli, and then we got a fresh start until I got pregnant with Portia.”
“That’s a nice name.”
“Thank you. I’m in charge of names in this house. The ones he comes up with are either common as dirt or from another planet altogether. But no, all he wants when I’m pregnant is my mouth. He says it’s because he’s phobic on the subject of injuring me or the baby, but I don’t think I believe him.”
“Maybe he just likes getting his cock sucked.”
“I hope that’s it, because the other possibility is he finds me unappealing. But you don’t.”
“You figured that out, did you?”
“Uh-huh. Can I ask you something? Why is it such a big deal to guys if the girl swallows?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because by the time she does or doesn’t swallow, the act’s over, right? Once you come in my mouth, what’s it matter whether it winds up in my stomach or a Kleenex?”
“I never gave it much thought,” he said. “But spitting it out, that’s sort of a form of rejection, isn’t it?”
“I guess. I mean, if I coughed and spat and made sickening noises and threw up, I can see where that would seem like rejection. I wonder if it has something to do with getting pregnant.”
“I don’t think you can actually—”
“Duh. But, you know, symbolically. Swallowing equals acceptance of the seed.”
“You swallowed,” he said. “Were you getting symbolically pregnant?”
“I’m just a greedy little pig who likes her protein. Okay, here’s another question. When you were inside me and you had hold of my belly, did you feel her kicking?”
“I did.”
“Was that nice?”
“It was interesting.”
“I like that you could feel it. And your cum tastes yummy, by the way. Cinnamon.”
“Really? I can’t think—oh, I had a latte, they sprinkled cinnamon on top.”
“I’m gonna have to remember that. I’ll have to feed him some cinnamon, and then I can make this remarkable discovery. ‘Honey, guess what?’ Oh, Jesus, it’s time for you to be on your way. Didn’t you hear that?”
“What?”
“Just now. There. Eli, talking to his animals. I could hear him because I’m his mommy. And in a minute he’ll get louder and they’ll be able to hear him next door. Get dressed, and can you find your own way out? Because I’d just as soon as he doesn’t see you.”
“Sure.”
“And this was fun, and nobody got hurt, and I don’t have to worry about getting pregnant. But all the same we’re not going to do it again. Okay? Can we agree on that?”
Twenty-seven
* * *
Back home he plugged the flash drive into a free port and had a look at what he’d dumped from Ashley Hannon’s computer. He worked directly from the flash drive, careful not to move anything onto his own hard drive. He could open all of her files, he could check the emails she’d sent and received, and all without leaving any enduring traces on his own computer.
What he found was mostly what you’d expect to find, given that this was a woman who chose her daily horoscope as a home page. That alone struck him as more than enough to disqualify her from passing her genetic heritage to an Otterbein scion, but he didn’t know that George would see it that way. After all, the man was slipping it to t
he little darling, and that tended to color a fellow’s judgment.
One email thread was interesting. He couldn’t tell the correspondent’s name, as the email address was no help: hodehoho at hotmail.com. A Cab Calloway fan?
Ashley had two eDresses, AHannon437 at Yahoo, which she used for most of her email, and KurlySadge at Hotmail, her address for hodehoho. And the two of them signed their emails only with initials, when they signed them at all. Ashley’s were signed with an A, hodehoho’s with a C, which probably didn’t stand for either Cab or Calloway.
He decided that C was a woman, and very likely a fellow masseuse. Most of the earlier messages were too brief and cryptic to tell him anything, but lately Ashley’s at least were longer.
He could guess why. She’d moved, she didn’t know anyone in this part of the state, and she needed a girlfriend to confide in. But the confidences were sketchy, with code words and abbreviations he couldn’t puzzle out. For a while he thought either or both of them might be considering a move to San Diego, because “SD” kept popping up in the thread, but gradually he managed to crack at least that much of their code.
SD wasn’t San Diego, or South Dakota, either. It stood for Sugar Daddy.
So Ashley, the Sagittarian with the head of blonde curls (hence KurlySadge), was under no illusions about the nature of her relationship with the Kitchenware King of Gallatin County. He paid her rent and she kept him happy.
Did she have a clue that Otterbein might have bigger plans for her?
If she did, she’d managed to keep it a secret from her computer. Nothing he found suggested she anticipated anything beyond a transient relationship of convenience with her SD. Relieved of the need to work for a living, she could concentrate on mellowing out and getting her head together, whatever exactly those phrases might mean to her. She could work out regularly at the gym in Perry (“tho lame compared to Gold’s in St. Pete, and sauna smells awful!!! Little kids pee on the hot rocks!!!”) and try to get back to eating right. (“Tough to be only wannabe-vegan for miles around!!!”)