Hurricane House (29 page)

“You’re right. I am nosy, but I have no idea what you mean. I’m not quick about certain things.”

He walked over to me, and I could smell his body odor, a combination of sweat and rotting death that made me gag. I stepped back while keeping my hand inside my waist pouch, holding onto the gun, ready to shoot if necessary.

“Oh, come on, Maeva, few women are as clever as you. I learned that the first day we worked together. You’re beautiful, intelligent and most of the time you speak your mind. In fact, I’ve wanted to get close to you. I’ve wanted to have a more, you know, intimate relationship.” He sighed. “It’s too late now, I’m afraid.” He laced his fingers under his chin and batted his eyes.
When he reached out to touch my hair, I held my hand up in a stop sign. “Victor Curry, listen to yourself, what do you mean too late?” My trembling voice grew hoarse. “It’s never too late. You’re not dead yet. I’m not dead.” Bad choice of words. “Now, stand over there as you were when you were giving me the lecture. You were saying how you used certain models to create this beautiful sculpture.”

He pursed his lips but didn’t move away. “Right, well, if you haven’t already guessed. I honored certain women, allowing them to be a part of my masterpiece.” He ran his hand over the extended toe of the ballerina. “Did you know Tara and Roxanne wore the same size shoe? Their feet were almost identical? Kismet, pure kismet. You agree?”

My hands trembled around the Magnum, and my stomach cramped and hardened like I’d swallowed concrete. “What about the rest of the statue, what...who are they?” I whispered, unable to draw a full breath.

Before he answered, he stroked my hair. “You don’t know the others, my dear.” He stopped stroking my hair to turn toward the ballerina. “Oh, but I forgot, you did know Sandra Eddelman, didn’t you?” He touched the ballerina’s eyes. “Those are hers.”

I pointed the magnum at him. “Stand back, Victor. I won’t hesitate to shoot you.” The gun shook in my hand as I said this, but I found some comfort in Onyx’s bark. It seemed to be getting louder.

Victor turned his head toward the barking, and I took that opportunity to knee him in the groin.

He buckled over and yelled, “Bitch.”

I then ran for the fire escape and threw my right leg inside the tunnel. Onyx was halfway up, barking frantically, as if aware of my distress.
I felt almost free until Victor grabbed my left leg and pulled me back toward him. Rather than shoot him, I swung the gun handle at his head, trying to make contact.

I missed.

He caught my wrist and banged it against the wall. The gun flew from my hand, and without the gun, I was forced to use jujitsu.

I crisscrossed my hands and grabbed Victor’s v-neck collar to choke him. He dropped hard but he wasn’t out. So I kicked him in the head with the heel of my shoe; then dove for the magnum, but when I reached the gun, he pounced on my back. The impact knocked the breath out of me.

“Fucking cunt,” he snarled.

Somehow I was able to flip around and face him. I pointed the gun at his heart and squeezed the trigger. The roar startled me.

The impact of the hollow-point bullet should have thrown him backwards, but it didn’t and I had no idea why. Victor took the hit in his chest.

His face twisted in surprise and agony. His blood spread like hot molasses over his white tee, so much blood, all over him, all over me. I vomited from the pungent smell of his blood and body odor. Yet, Victor wouldn’t die. He squeezed my arms and growled like an enraged lion.

“Die damn it,” I kept saying.

He slowly released his grip on my arms and closed his eyes. Looking at him, I truly believed he was dead.

I pushed on Victor to get him off of me. The nudge seemed to snap him awake and before I knew what had happened, he snatched the gun from my hand.

As I fought to get the gun back, it fired again. I heard the
explosion and felt the bullet, carrying me away on a searing wind to a foreign land.

Chapter Fifty-nine

Dolphin Medical Center

     “Navajos believe the holy wind brings life,” Sean Redmond said. “The wind is our first food and the messenger to the water, mountains, sun and moon and when someone dies, the Wind Spirit goes after the soul.”

I listened, propped up in a hospital bed with two pillows behind my back, my left arm in a heavy white cast, crooked out in front of me. I wondered if my arm would ever be the same after Victor Curry fired that hollow-point bullet into my shoulder from my own Magnum. The bullet shattered the bone and ripped through my rotator cuff. The morphine drip helped me deal with the excruciating pain, but the drug made me woozy. “What do hurricanes represent?”

Rather than reply, Sean smiled and glanced at the yellow roses he’d given me that day. The day before, he’d delivered a dozen red ones.

“Did you know I sneaked into your house, took your toothbrush, and a sample of blood from your kitchen?”

“Yes you mentioned that, and as I said before, I’m not sure where the blood came from, maybe slicing my finger while filleting fish.” He patted my right hand. “You’re tired, Maeva. I need to shut up and let you go to sleep.”

“First answer my question.”

“What question?”

“What do Navajos think hurricanes represent.”

He smiled, showing the dimples. “A hurricane is the Wind Spirit rushing to claim the soul of someone who has died and chosen the right path.”

I closed my eyes, trying to comprehend what Sean was saying, and saw Tara’s body, the way she looked in the gulf, July Fourth. Where is Tara’s soul? What about Roxanne and Sandra?

That morning I had received a card from Sandra’s mother, Frances Beckett. Frances enclosed a picture of Lexie, her beautiful, redheaded granddaughter, riding a rocking horse.

“Thank God for Lexie,” Frances had written. “If not for that precious angel on earth, I’d be bawling my eyes out all day long. Today Lexie asked, ‘Where’s Mommy?’ It breaks my heart to tell her, ‘Your mommy is in heaven with the angels.’”

Sean broke into my thoughts when he said, “Onyx has been moping around.”

“Thanks for looking after him,” I tried to smile. “I just heard from Paula that no one has seen Onyx’s owner, Arlene Brayer. Apparently, she hasn’t returned to Paradise Isle, and
Keith still doesn’t know what happened to her.” I paused, thinking. “And speaking of Paula, she was the one who called me while I was in the Dolphin mansion with Victor, but it was Onyx who saved my life. He alerted Jim, the handyman, waiting nearby to give me a ride.”

“Yes, I know,” Sean said. “And I shudder to think you could have bled to death.”

“It would have been a horrible place to die alongside Victor’s statue in that creepy old house. Luckily, Paula called, and when I turned on my cell for her to listen in, she did.”

“Forensic investigators have disassembled the statue,” Sean said. “They’re trying to identify the women Victor killed. One of the investigators said Victor created a special kind of clay to cover the body parts in order to preserve them.”

“Yes, I think Lilah Sanderford told me.” When Lilah came to visit, she refused the crystal necklace I tried to return.

“No. Pass it on to someone else in need,” Lilah had said.

“I’m still amazed at the crystal’s magical powers, even though I certainly believe in stone power. I own every type of rock imaginable.”

“Maybe the crystal holds the power we believe it does,” Lilah had said. “In other words, perhaps we manifest and create what we truly believe, and when I think about it, Geneva said something like that the last time I saw her. She said she’s creating her own life, divorcing her husband and moving to the Paradise Isle townhouse.”

Before Lilah left, I asked her, “Is Ellen Langley doing okay?”

“Yes, she is. She’s helping Geneva clean and redecorate the beach house and in Ellen’s spare time, she’s singing in
the choir at the Ecumenical Church and celebrating life. And I think it’s time we all celebrate a new beginning soon. What do you say?”

I told Geneva I wouldn’t feel like celebrating anything until I found an accountant to deal with Charles Puker, who had the nerve to call me in the hospital. He said we needed to meet next week to discuss my “tax problem.”

“My accountant’s house burned down with my records inside and the receipts I kept were destroyed during the storm,” I told Puker.

“Save your breath. I’ve heard those excuses before,” he
said.

Trying to forget about Puker’s mean-spirited remark, I asked Sean. “I’m bothered about something, and I want you to level with me.”

“Of course. What’s bothering you?”

“How did you know the details in your prologue without having first-hand knowledge. You wrote about a man dumping a woman’s maimed body near the jetties, near where I found Tara.”

“And from that you thought I might be a murderer?” I bowed my head as if ashamed and nodded.

“I’m not sure I understand how I write, Maeva. Maybe my stories come from the wind.” He laughed then kissed my forehead. “Who knows? I certainly don’t completely understand the creative process. I don’t think anyone does. The best way I know to describe my own writing is: my ideas come from several sources.”

“And what sources are those.”

“The conscious mind, the unconscious mind, the psychic realm, perhaps, and what I call my higher power, but I must
admit, I had a difficult time finishing my last book. I suffered serious writer’s block. I went through the motions of what I thought the murderer in my book would do, without actually committing a crime, of course.” He stroked my uninjured arm as if to reassure me.

“But the details in that prologue, they’re real, Sean.”

“That’s good to know, but I’m still amazed my story has similarities to what happened. However, I think if you actually find the time to read the entire book, you’ll see it’s quite different in many ways. You might agree Hurricane House is more than a murder mystery or thriller. It’s about how we cope with disaster, destruction and loss, and in the process, we hopefully learn not to fear the Wind God.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “Try telling that to people who’ve lost everything in a hurricane.”

“You’re right. Now I think everyone should evacuate from a hurricane stronger than a category two.” Sean smiled, showing his dimples.

“Some people, like Sandra Eddelman, don’t have a way to evacuate, Sean.”

He tossed back his head and laughed. “Even when I agree with you on something, you find a way to disagree with me. Have you noticed that?”

I scratched my face with my good right hand. “I guess I’m trying to push you away.”

Sean nodded. “Yes, I know. You fear me and commitment like you fear the wind.”

I sighed. “I may be afraid of getting involved again and getting hurt, but I don’t fear the wind. The wind carries seeds for our survival, treats global warming and prevents us from destroying our universe. Without the wind and the bands of air surrounding the earth, there would be no life.”

Sean kissed my lips lightly. “Is there any chance I could have a life with you?”

I smiled, while wondering how I could answer such an intimate question from a man I still didn’t know very well. “Possibly.”

~The End~

About the Author

Sandy Semerad earned a journalism degree from Georgia State University in Atlanta, where she lived for many years before moving to the Florida Panhandle. She has worked as a model, a newspaper reporter, broadcaster, editor, and acquisitions manager. Sandy grew up in Geneva, Alabama, near the Florida line, and now makes her home in Santa Rosa Beach with husband Larry and their spoiled Shih Tzu P-Nut. She has two daughters Rene and Andrea and a granddaughter Cody. Hurricane House is her second mystery novel. To find out more, visit her website: http://www.sandysemerad.com.

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