Lloyd Corricelli - Ronan Marino 01 - Two Redheads & a Dead Blonde (8 page)

She never had any idea how much money I was worth, only that I was well off. Few outside of my family knew, other than those who had seen the news after I’d won. I knew from the start that when word got out, all kinds of people from my past would resurface to see their old buddy Ronan. I would have eventually told her if the relationship had moved on to that next level, the one where you have toothbrushes at each other’s place.

I stopped my musings and started looking around in her bathroom. I opened every bottle and jar in the medicine cabinet looking for concealed drugs. There was nothing but an old prescription for allergies, birth control, some aspirin and various over the counter drugs.

Next, I went into the bedroom. It had never really struck me before that she had some pretty nice furniture for a college student. Her pieces even matched, which I never managed to do in my four years of school and many years after. I had the standard collection of hand-me-downs, yard sale specials and stolen Hood milk crates.

She had a large armoire, bureau, queen sized four-post bed with a canopy, a nightstand and desk–all made of light oak. Her curtains matched her bedspread, some kind of frilly pink thing that I didn’t care much for. The bed was still made from the previous day.

I opened the armoire and looked through it, finding nothing out of the ordinary. I made sure to take all the drawers out and check behind them and underneath. I felt guilty going through her place like this, but I was sure she’d understand the situation. Of all the women I’d known in my life, she had a pretty strong grasp of my mindset.

Finding nothing in the armoire, I moved on to the dresser and found more of the same. It did hold one secret that I had previously suspected; Karen had the greatest collection of lingerie I had ever seen. She must have kept the local Victoria’s Secret in business. There were all kinds of teddies, garters and panties of every color and fabric.

On the nightstand was her answering machine. There were two new messages, one from her mother and another from a bank offering some sort of credit card protection plan. I opened the drawer and found zilch I hadn’t seen before. A vibrator wasn’t much of a shock in this day and age. There was nothing under her bed but shoes and an old pair of silk panties. I also found some dust bunnies, but they weren’t talking.

Her desk was covered with schoolbooks and her laptop computer. I flipped through every schoolbook, finding nothing of interest. Rifling through her desk drawers, I found her most recent bank statement. She had a checking and savings account from the Lowell Five Cents Savings Bank. Her checking balance was close to a thousand dollars, more than I ever had as a student but not unusual. Savings was another story. She had thirty-two grand and change.

Where the hell had she gotten that kind of money? Though she never complained about finances, I had assumed she was your average cash-poor college student. Well, maybe a little better off than average because she did have a nice car and her own apartment, but I always figured those were from money she’d saved while in the Navy. This was definitely suspicious. Was she dealing? I didn’t want to believe that any more than using. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this.

I looked deeper into the desk drawer and under a bunch of old notebooks there was a black portfolio book like models use. I’d seen many of them when I lived in LA. Every woman I met out there seemed to have a modeling portfolio, headshot or screenplay. I opened the book to a fully nude eight by ten photo of Karen on the beach. She looked as beautiful as any model I’d ever seen in any men’s magazine. I turned the page and found a second nude; again on the beach, this time highlighting her abundant breasts.

The entire book was full of similar photos, pages and pages of her in various poses leaving nothing to the imagination. There were some really nice black and white ones that showed off her muscle tone, especially her stomach. She had been extremely proud of her belly and had done a couple of hundred sit-ups a day to maintain it. If there was any part of a woman that I found especially attractive, it was a strong, flat stomach. Some men go for breasts, some legs. I was an abs man.

Karen had mentioned once in passing that she was interested in maybe posing for Playboy one day. These photos clearly showed that it wasn’t out of the question. They were professionally done, and I was thankful that they were tasteful, nothing there that could be used for a gynecology textbook. Was this how she made all that money? I don’t know how much nude modeling pays, but I highly doubted it was that much unless you were a Playboy Playmate.

As I turned the pages, a business card slipped out on to the floor. I picked it up and looked it over. The card was printed on pink linen and contained only a 1-800 number in black letters. My first guess was the modeling agency she had done the photos for. I didn’t get a second guess as I felt a sudden sharp pain across the back of my skull followed by complete darkness.

* * * *

When I regained consciousness, my arms were handcuffed behind my back. I was in a forest in a small clearing, lying face down in a bed of pine needles. It was still light out, but the sun was starting to set. My head was throbbing and my vision slightly blurry, but I managed to make it to my knees.

Two men entered the clearing, neither of whom I recognized. Both were roughly six feet tall, early thirties and looked like pretty tough customers. One had red hair cut very short and lots of freckles, and the other had medium black hair with a goatee. They wore leather jackets and work boots, and I could tell both were carrying by the bulges on their hips.

“How’s the head, buddy?” Red asked in a thick Boston accent.

I struggled up to my feet and as he came into range, I launched a sidekick into his ribs. He staggered backwards, crashing into a tree. Goatee came at me, fists ready.

“You little son of a bitch!” he yelled.

He threw a roundhouse punch that narrowly missed my head, and I kicked out his knee, dropping him to the forest floor. Meanwhile, Red had recovered and tackled me. I’ve told people I could kick their ass with both hands tied behind my back, but I never actually hoped to try it, especially against two guys bigger than me.

Red grabbed me by my jacket and pulled me back to my feet. Goatee slammed a fist into my ribs and gave me a backhander across the face. He caught me with a ring and I felt a gash open over my eye. The blood began to drip down over my eye to my cheek.

“What were you doing in that apartment?” Red asked.

“She was my girlfriend,” I said.

Red threw his own punch into my gut, and I fell back to my knees. I struggled to catch my breath.

“He asked what you were doing there, not your life fucking story,” Goatee said.

“I was conducting a lingerie inspection.” That probably wasn’t the answer they were looking for.

“You’re a funny fucking guy, Ronan Marino,” Red said.

Goatee took a 9mm pistol out from under his jacket and put it to my head. If there was an afterlife, I was damn close to joining Karen there.                  

“This will be your one and only warning, buddy,” Red said. “Do yourself a favor and keep your nose out of things it doesn’t belong in.”

“You understand?” Goatee barked.

I mustered up the only retort I felt was appropriate. “Fuck you.”

They laughed, and Red landed another punch into my ribs.

“You just hope you don’t see us again,” Goatee said.

“Yeah, because we know where you live, motherfucker,” Red added.

He threw my wallet to the ground in front of me and nodded to his partner. Goatee pulled the gun away, turned it around and smacked me across the back of the head. As I faded back to unconsciousness, I could feel one of them taking off the handcuffs. He didn’t struggle with the key and slipped them off like a pro. The last thing I remembered before everything went dark was the sound of their car pulling away.

* * * *

I slowly came to and it was night. My head hurt so much I could barely open my eyes. Getting whacked twice in the melon had a way of doing that. It felt like they might have cracked a few ribs; every breath I took was an effort. I touched my face and found a layer of dried blood caked all down my face, below where I’d been cut. My eye was swollen and tender, too.

To my relief, I still had my cell phone. I sat up and fumbled in the darkness, managing to dial my brother’s house. It sounded like I’d woke him up from a nap.

“Where the hell are you?” he asked.

“I have no idea. Somewhere in a forest.”

“Can you walk out?”

“I can try.”

I stood up and the pain in my ribs intensified. I groaned out loud.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m alive, bro. That’s about all I know at this point.”

“Okay, stay on the line and try to find your way out to a road.”

I looked at the power indicator on my phone. I was down to one bar, not good.

“I need to hang up. My battery is low, and I don’t want to lose the phone.”

“Okay, call me right back when you find out where you’re at.”

“Got it.”

I hung up and started walking towards a light off in the distance. After twenty laborious minutes, I came upon a dirt road. Ten minutes later, I found a sign that said Warren Manning State Forest, which told me I was somewhere between Chelmsford and Billerica, two suburbs of Lowell. I dialed Marc, and he said he would send a Chelmsford cop to pick me up.

I sat on a big rock and looked up at the stars. It was hard to focus, but I managed to form at least one coherent thought; the two goons left no doubt in my mind that Karen’s death was not an accident. Why else would they have been in her apartment if they didn’t have some connection to her death? Things were about to get very complicated.

I waited roughly five minutes, when a young patrolman pulled up in a blue and white. Another young guy cut from the same mold as the two I’d met the night before.

“You Ronan Marino?”

I slowly nodded. My Jell-O-like brain wanted to answer that I was Batman, but a nod was all the answer I could muster. This was no time to be a smart-ass; the kid was here to help me. There would be plenty of time for comedy later.

“I’m Officer Hardy from Chelmsford PD. Do you need medical attention, sir?

“Not just yet.”

“Okay, I’m supposed to bring you to our station.”

I forced myself to stand. “You’ll have to excuse me, but I just had my ass kicked.”

He didn’t laugh. I must have looked really bad.

The Chelmsford Police Station was a brand new brick and granite building just around the corner from the old Drum Hill rotary, a few miles up Route 3 from Lowell. I’d once been to the old nondescript red brick station just down the road and in a word it was cramped. It had probably been acceptable for the small bedroom community that Chelmsford was back in the sixties, but as the town grew up, the new one was most definitely needed. There was also the idea that they had to keep up with the neighboring towns like Tewksbury and Billerica that had built new stations over the last decade. I’m sure even Lowell will eventually have to build a new facility in an effort to modernize too. 

Hardy helped me into the station, and I went to the bathroom to wash up. It was the cleanest bathroom I’d ever seen in a cop building. I didn’t like the image looking back at me in the mirror. I’d taken worst beatings in my day, but the older I got the worse it always felt. On the back of my head there was a tender egg-sized lump where I’d been whacked. I cleaned the blood off my face and took a drink from my hands. When I came out, Marc was waiting.

“Holy shit,” he blurted out.

“Nice to see you too.”

“So what happened?”

“A couple of guys got the drop on me at Karen’s apartment”

“You’re slipping. That would never have happened a year ago. That band shit is making you soft.”

He was right, well not about the band, but I’d been careless and almost got killed as a result. It wouldn’t happen again. Officer Hardy handed me an ice pack, and I put it on my swollen eye.

“Sir, I need to take a report,” he said.

I wasn’t in the mood to recap what had happened, especially the part about me breaking into Karen’s apartment.

“Can I come back another time?”

“You were assaulted, sir. I need to file a report.”

I looked at my brother and he nodded.

“He needs medical attention, Officer Hardy. I’ll make sure he comes back and files a report when he’s up to it.”

Hardy looked like he was going to say something but just nodded. The kid wanted to get some kind of report and search for the suspects just like they teach them at the police academy. Red and Goatee weren’t going to be found anywhere near Chelmsford tonight, so it was a waste of his time.

“Okay, when will you come back?” Hardy asked.

“Uh, I’ll get right back to you,” I said. That was the cop equivalent of telling a one-night stand that you’d call her in the morning.

Marc shook his hand. “Tell your chief that Chief Marc Marino from Westford said hi. I’ll give him a call in the morning and tell him about the good job you’re doing.”