Dead End (34 page)

“Sure did,” Reb said. Evasiveness fueled any fire. “Busy morning. It felt good to cool off.”

The two girls who were May Lynn’s employees sat one on either side of a nail cart. Each examined the other’s hands and nails and talked loudly about having to keep up with the payments on their breast implants.

“Is the water too hot? No? Good.” May Lynn used a liberal amount of shampoo that smelled like oregano and pineapple.

At first Reb kept her eyes closed, but she soon opened them and looked up at blue veins showing subtly through white skin on May Lynn’s neck. A too-small, down-turned mouth made an otherwise pleasant face suggest peevishness. May Lynn caught her staring.

“When’s the big day?” Reb asked quickly.

A wide smile transformed petulance. “December. I always wanted a Christmas wedding.”

“You haven’t had your blood work done lately. Let’s do that.”

May Lynn mumbled, “Yes,” but without conviction. “I’m having feathers around the neck of my dress, and around the bottom of the sleeves and hem. It’ll look so cute.”

“You bet it will. How are you feeling about everything these days?”

“Fine,” May Lynn said, too quickly. “My, you’ve got so much hair.”

Reb had developed a sketchy idea about trying to poke a hole in May Lynn’s story about Pepper Leach. “It must have been terrifying when Pepper sneaked up on you like that. I bet you don’t cross the park at night now—not on your own.”

“I wasn’t crossing it. He pulled me in there from the sidewalk outside.”

And that was exactly the way she’d told it in court. “You’ve done so well, considering,” Reb said. “A lot of women wouldn’t have your strength. They’d go to pieces afterward. Many rape—and attempted rape—victims don’t want men near them for a long time. Which is more than understandable.”

“When someone loves you as much as my Jim, why, they heal all wounds. There we go. Let’s put you at my station, and we’ll get you a nice glass of tea.”

Reb’s protests that she didn’t want any tea were swept aside, and May Lynn hurried into a small kitchen with swinging doors.

“We could go into Lafayette tonight, Rita,” the darker haired of the two girls said. She finished removing Rita’s nail polish and tossed the cotton in the trash. “We could get dressed up. Maybe we could take in a movie.”

“How dressed up?” Rita asked.

“Oh—” Hands with nails almost as long as the fingers made sketchy patterns in the air. “So-so, y’know? Casual dressy. Jeans, but sequins on top.”

“Yeah,” Rita said. “Hey, Anne, here comes that cute delivery guy—Craig?”

“Yum yum, he’s good coming and going.” Anne hopped up to peek through the window and rushed to sit again. “Check out his pecs.”

The screen swung open, and a well-built man came in with a pile of boxes. He set them on the floor and checked them against his shipping documents. “I need a signature, please,” he said, glancing around, apparently looking for May Lynn.

“Hi, Craig,” Rita and Anne said in nasal voices, twinkling their partially painted fingernails at the man.

“Hi,” he said, and May Lynn appeared to write her signature.

Craig left without a backward glance, and the screen slammed shut. May Lynn said, “The tea wasn’t cold enough. I’m adding ice,” and returned to the kitchen.

Reb closed her eyes and tried to put her thoughts in order. How could the world be so upside down on a beautiful day like today.

“Did you see that?” Rita said. “He didn’t even look impressed we noticed him.”

“Yeah. Scum. He doesn’t even know we just made his day.”

Reb grinned and wondered if she’d ever been
that
young.

“Get on the phone and make reminder calls, Anne,” May Lynn said, arriving with the tea. “Rita, get those boxes unpacked, please, before the rush starts.”

It struck Reb that May Lynn was businesslike and efficient. If she had personality anomalies, they didn’t show.

“This is great. Cools the throat.” The tea was too sweet.

May Lynn smiled and started combing Reb’s hair through. “You have so much of this, and it’s
so
curly. I think you should give a quarter of it to me. You’d still have more than enough.”

This wasn’t going to be easy, Reb thought. “It needs a trim but not too much off the length—you know the drill.”

“I surely do. Something going on between you and Marc Girard?”

Reb couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Maybe.”

“I know what that means,” May Lynn said, raising a fine, almost white eyebrow.

“I’m sure you think you do. I’ve been having all kinds of thoughts about Bonnie Blue’s death lately.”

After too many seconds, May Lynn said, “Like what?”

“The whole thing about Pepper being the Rubber Killer—even though they couldn’t prove he was.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“You were blessed—you weren’t killed, or raped. You got away. But you saw Pepper’s face and that’s how you identified him.”

“Yes.” May Lynn’s small mouth pinched and turned way down at the corners.

“Does talking about this upset you too much?”

May Lynn shrugged. “It isn’t my favorite subject, but it doesn’t bother me that much. I’m strong.”

“You surely are.” Apparently uncannily strong physically for a woman who was underweight, anemic, and who in the past had broken bones in both feet—on different occasions—while stepping off a curb. “How did you see his face—did you say?”

“I did say. I struggled with him and pulled off the mask.”

“And he ran away?”

“Yes.” May Lynn took an absentminded swallow from Reb’s glass. “My lawyer said he knew his crimes would come out, and that’s why he tried to get away.”

“But he was found at his home later that night. I admit I’ve been struggling with that. You know, from an academic point of view. Why would a man who had killed two women and attacked you—”

“He intended to rape and kill me.”

“Or kill and rape you,” Reb said, “the order isn’t always the same.”

May Lynn shuddered, and her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I understand, I really do, but I’ve been thinking of starting a study, and Pepper might be a perfect subject for a control group.”

“What kind of study.”

Reb shook her head. “You don’t want to know. What kind of mask was he wearing?”

“A rubber one.”

“Yes, but—” Reb took a calming breath. “What kind of mask? I guess I can’t visualize it. Was it a gas-mask type of thing? That would be real scary with all that wheezy breathing.”

“It was kind of like that,” May Lynn said. “He breathed real loud. Everything happened so fast I didn’t take notice of much but his face.”

“I bet you didn’t. Who would expect a thing like that to happen—and with someone you trusted…So he wore a gas mask with a diving suit. Yuck. I didn’t hear that. I know this is a stretch, but would there be any way Pepper could have got out and killed Bonnie?”

May Lynn gave a little shriek and sat down hard on a stool. “Doctor Reb,” she said with a hand slapped over her heart, “what would make you come up with a dreadful idea like that? Bonnie wasn’t murdered, she had an accident.”

“I wonder if she did,” Reb said. “I wonder if there were two rubber killers. But we’ll never know now.”

“Have they found Bonnie’s body?” May Lynn said weakly.

Reb took visual inventory of the flights-of-ducks decor. She counted twelve sets tacked to pale blue walls. Each set was made of a different medium, from decoupage to painted plywood cutouts.

“Could be they won’t find it. Don’t you think?” May Lynn went on.

“Maybe. There’s no news at all yet. Terrible thing.” Reb barely stopped herself from saying it was a terrible thing for a man not to know where his sister’s body was, even though she was sure it was Bonnie, not Amy who was out there, somewhere.

“We’d better move faster,” May Lynn said. “That hunk of yours is still waiting out front. That’s dedication for you.”

With each pull on the oars, Precious’s heart cranked up a notch. It beat in her throat and temples. She didn’t have a soul she could ask for advice, so she just had to go it alone.

If she set Amy free, she couldn’t trust her not to go straight to the law. Her only hope of staying out of jail—and hanging on to some respect in Toussaint—was to kill Amy and get rid of her.

Precious stopped rowing. She used a single oar to bring the rowboat about and give her a view of the house. Forlorn, that was the word for it. Left behind while the world, even in the slow bayou lands, moved on.

Amy hadn’t had any luck—not once Chauncey got his hands on her. She wasn’t strong like Precious, couldn’t be.

She picked up the second oar and continued rowing. It was breathless again today—at least down here among trees that clawed the water and the clouds of bugs that swarmed on the surface. Even the water hyacinth needed more light than the canopy of vegetation allowed. Their flowers remained shut tight.

The stern bumped against rubber tires, cut in half and nailed to the bottom of the ladder. Precious tied up and climbed the stairs. This time she didn’t bother to take the oars and lock them away. Instead she made sure the gun was loaded, and that the latex gloves were in her purse. She had a lightweight plastic coverall to make sure she wasn’t splattered with blood.

Not a Rubber Killer this time, but the Plastic Killer. She didn’t find her own little joke funny. She sat on the bench outside the house, thinking how she would do it and what she would do afterward. Not that she hadn’t been over her plan a dozen times.

Papa would never believe she could do this. He’d taught her to respect the living and the dead. Along the way he’d taught a lot of inside stuff, some by just talking and some by working over a corpse with her handing him whatever he needed. Papa was a kind man, not that they spoke often with the way things were. He shouldn’t have left Mama. She was a hardheaded woman, but she’d put him, and whatever he wanted, first.

People said her mother was tough, that she was too filled with anger against her ex-husband to have cared for him. She would have shown unhappiness if he’d meant anything to her, they said.

They saw Mama’s dedication to health and fitness, and to her work for Cyrus, her absorption with helping run St. Cecil’s, as a sign she might be glad her Harold was gone.

Precious looked at the gun in her hand. She could use it, oh my yes. Chauncey had taught her how for self-defense. There was plenty of room to drop the gun into the purse, too.

She unlocked the door and went inside. The windows were open. That surprised her because she’d kept them locked. But that was before she’d unshackled Amy and given her the run of the house. The place had been cleaned up, the groceries put away, and a glass jug held twigs and branches Amy must have torn from overhanging branches. The door to the bedroom was slightly open. Precious walked quietly to look through the crack. Amy was in bed, curled on her side and facing the wall.

“Let her sleep,” Precious murmured and made a soft-footed tour of the small place. Even the bathroom had been thoroughly cleaned and smelled of bleach.

Amy had believed her. She had worked away here and waited for Precious to come and set her free.

When she’d had her tabby cat—“Tickles,” for his long whiskers that tickled—Precious had protected him from any danger. She’d treated Tickles as if he had been a person and when he died, at nineteen and in his sleep, she’d mourned his loss. Why, she’d cried until she couldn’t open her eyes because she couldn’t bear to see that little body not moving.

She locked herself into the bathroom and took what she needed from her purse. Should she take off her clothes, just for extra insurance? Not that Amy was going to be found.

There was no way to hide blood from anything but the naked eye, and even making sure it couldn’t be seen without police methods would take too long. She had to expect this place to be found, and it mustn’t be connected to her. The sale had been cash in hand, but even though they’d never known her name and no legal papers had been filed, if luck went against her, the couple could pick her out. Finding them might not be easy, but she’d have to do it.

No.
No, she couldn’t do it. She was a God-fearing woman who believed a person could be saved, even if they’d done some bad things—but not the kind of bad things she was thinking about.

She turned cold, but sweat ran down her back. Her arms and legs ached, and her head. Crying wouldn’t be useful, but she’d surely like to bawl.

Quickly, she packed the gun inside the plastic coverall and stowed it in the bottom of her bag with the gloves. The problem of the tape recorder still bugged her. She hadn’t known why she was told to tape it in Reb’s office, but she’d made an appointment and done it while she was getting dressed. Now she was supposed to retrieve it. What was that all about? She had too much on her mind.

When she went to Amy, control would be everything. She would make helping the other woman a way to atone. Father Cyrus would like that when she told him, even though he’d be so shocked behind his handsome, impassive Reconciliation face. How many Hail Marys would she get for this one? She was lucky it wasn’t Christmas. He’d probably tell her to decorate the church.

It was time. She was ready, and warmth seeped back into her limbs. Tears sprang into her eyes, but they were relieved tears, maybe even happy ones, because she had broken free of her own hatefulness.

Carrying her purse because she wanted to make sure Amy never knew what might have happened, she went to the bedroom and pushed the door slowly open. “Amy?” The covers were pulled up so only her hair showed. “Amy, wake up. We’ve got to go.”

No response. Precious felt a new charge of wariness. It took all the courage she had to go closer. Amy wasn’t breathing.

“Oh my god.” Precious put a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pulled.

Her own scream shook Precious’s brains and sent her falling into a chair. “No, no, no.” She buried her face in her hands and shook her head over and over again.

When she could stand, she rushed from the room and out onto the gallery with tears streaming now.