Authors: Steve Jackson
Love Me To Death (8 page)
More disturbing than the appearance of the van was a small writing pad discovered next to one of the seats. Inside the pad were scrawled notes all pertaining to death. Betty asked the police to check out who may have owned the pad and, perhaps, brought the van back. “What’s it going to take?” Betty asked the police when they didn’t seem to be very interested. “Someone getting killed?”
In the meantime, Cody Neal seemed to be quite wealthy and showered Angela with presents. There were flowers and limousines and expensive dinners—he even paid the baby-sitters lavishly, $100 for the evening. He also gave Angela Fite a pager, which he’d paid in advance for a year, so that he could reach her whenever he needed. When her mother asked what she saw in him, Angela replied, “He’s not as good-looking as Rankin, but he treats me so good.”
He was also mysterious. He wouldn’t say where he lived in Denver, but said he had a ranch in Montana and a mansion in Las Vegas. Apparently Cody wasn’t his real name. Angela said she’d learned that when he took her to a lawyer friend of his to talk about making sure she had full legal custody of her children. While there, the receptionist had said something about him changing his name to Cody.
“What’s his real name?” her mother asked.
“Bill Neal,” Angela replied, but made her mother promise not to tell anybody.
Angela’s family had to admit that the mystery man had a sensitive side. He’d told her that he had a daughter and was fighting a battle to win custody from the child’s “evil” mother.
Kyle and Kayla had come down with the chicken pox in March and Cody Neal volunteered to baby-sit the kids while Angela went to work. He bought Kyle an expensive video game and Kayla a set of dolls with a dollhouse. He also liked to play “bear” with Kyle, letting the boy ride him around the house on his hands and knees as he growled and carried on.
When Betty and Tara had asked to meet him, however, Angela had told them that he wasn’t ready. Her mother almost got to see him once, though, entirely by accident. In April, she’d driven Angela to a convenience store to get milk for her children. When they pulled up next to the passenger side of a black pickup, Angie tensed. “Mom, there’s Cody,” she said, indicating the man at the pay phone. “Don’t look at him. Don’t look.” Betty couldn’t see him because the truck was in the way. He got in and left while Angie was in the store.
There seemed to be a lot of strange occurrences around her daughter involving Neal or his friends. One Sunday, Rankin brought the children to Betty’s house when his visitation was over. Betty took the kids over to her daughter’s apartment and was in the parking lot when Jimmy Gerloff suddenly popped up out of nowhere. Hiding her surprise, Betty smiled and asked, “What are you doing here?”
Gerloff shrugged. He just happened to be passing by.
Whatever concerns Angela’s family had about Neal and his friends, the majority of their attention was taken up by Tara’s impending marriage. She and Jeb had decided in January to tie the knot; a date had been set for July 25.
On Mother’s Day in May, the two sisters were visiting their mother when Angela’s pager went off. It was Neal and she rushed to a telephone to call him back. She returned and said that he wanted her to meet him at the Fiddlesticks bar.
Tara was driving the both of them and told Angela that she would drop her off only on the condition that she got to meet Neal. Angela hesitated, but Tara cajoled. “Come on, let’s go have a drink.” Angela at last relented, but she told her sister that she would have to wait five minutes before following her into the bar.
“Bullshit!” Tara said.
“Then I guess you don’t want to meet him,” Angela retorted as they pulled into the bar’s parking lot. “There’s his car.”
Tara fumed. “Get in there,” she said, forgetting in her pique her resolve to take down the license plate number of the vehicle Neal was driving. She stewed for five minutes and then went into the bar.
Neal and Angela Fite were sitting in the farthest, darkest corner of the bar. Another woman was with them. Tara walked up to the table as Angela introduced her. The man, obviously, was Neal. The woman was introduced as Beth Weeks, a new friend Angela had met at Fugglies who sometimes gave her rides when she needed to go to the store for groceries.
As Tara approached, Neal immediately stood up and got her a chair, holding it for her like a gentleman until she was seated. Tara had to admit that he was dressed nicely, in a western sort of way. He was wearing a black cowboy hat, a black silk shirt, and tight-fitting blue jeans. She was surprised by how smooth and young his complexion appeared.
Then again, everything about him seemed slick and rehearsed. He played the part of the gentleman, jumping up every time one of the women got up for something, or lighting their cigarettes about as quickly as they could put them in their mouths.
Yet he wasn’t always so animated. Except when acting the gallant, he sat with his arms folded on the table, his head bowed as Angela and the other woman did most of the talking. Occasionally, he peeked out from under the brim of his hat at Tara, as if judging her. She thought it was creepy.
Neal perked up some when the subject turned to Mother’s Day. With a tear in his eyes, he talked about how close he’d been to his mother and how devastated he was when she died. A moment later, though, he surprised Tara by asking what she thought of Rankin.
“He’s a jerk,” Tara answered.
Neal looked up from under his hat. “I’m gonna kill him.”
Nobody said anything and the conversation went on. But Tara was stunned. How stupid, she thought. She hoped that her sister wasn’t really contemplating having Rankin killed. But she thought Neal was a real idiot to make that announcement; he didn’t know her. She figured he was just a braggart.
After a little while, Weeks got up to leave. Neal stood and escorted her outside. He’d been gone for twenty minutes when Tara asked Angela if she didn’t think it had been a bit too long a good-bye.
“Oh, they’re just good friends,” Angela replied. She said that he was helping Weeks get custody of her kids, just like he was helping her.
“What if they’re kissing?” Tara teased. But her sister insisted again that Weeks and Neal were just friends. Tara dropped the subject.
After Neal returned, the two sisters stayed only a few minutes longer. Angela wanted to get back to her apartment; she was going to cook dinner for him that night and needed to start preparing the food. He stood up with them but remained at the table, saying he’d be at Angela’s in an hour.
Tara took her sister back to her apartment and waited with her, hoping to learn a little more about Neal. But when an hour passed, and then another without him showing, she left. She was unimpressed by Neal. She thought he had beady, sneaky eyes and a big mouth. She dismissed his claims to have been a bounty hunter or a hit man for the Mafia. Hell, her sister had broader shoulders than he did and could probably kick his ass.
“That guy is fuckin’ weird,” Tara later told Jeb.
“I wanted to get his license number, but I forgot. . . . What gets me is that Angela believes all this crap.”
The next time she saw Angie, she let her know what she thought of her boyfriend. “He’s not good enough for you,” she said. “He’s old. Find someone who can keep up with you.”
Angela always responded that Cody treated her well, which was more than she could say for Rankin, however much younger and better-looking he was than Cody.
Nobody wanted her to stay with Rankin. Her mother and sister had urged her to leave him before he really hurt her. She’d even had a falling-out with her father when she wouldn’t get him out of her life. However, dating Neal seemed to be trading one problem for another.
About a week after meeting him at the bar, Tara called her mother from the gym where she worked out. Neal had followed her to the gym, she said. “He’s out in the parking lot.”
Betty was confused. Angela had told her that Neal was going to be in Las Vegas that weekend. Why the lie? Why had he followed Tara?
Tara decided not to tell her sister about the incident. However, Betty told Angie, who was bewildered. He wasn’t supposed to be in town. But she didn’t say much; whatever she was thinking she kept to herself.
As more time passed, Betty began to notice that Neal’s stories—like the time he was supposed to be in Vegas but followed Tara instead—didn’t always jibe. He was supposedly single, but he would only see Angie on weekends. Betty asked her daughter if she’d considered whether he was married.
“You think so?” Angela replied in a way that made her mother think that her daughter had been thinking along the same lines. She was concerned enough that she asked him. She happily reported back to her mother that no, he was not married. What’s more, he had told her that he was going to buy her a home near where her mother lived. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone and again she swore her mother to secrecy.
Her mother thought it was just too incredible. “No man just buys a woman a house,” she said. Angela had no real answer. Cody had told her that he had everything under control and not to worry.
Betty and Tara were too distracted by the upcoming wedding to give it much more thought. On June 13, her mother and sister and bridesmaids gathered for a bridal shower. Angela seemed to be in a particularly great mood. “Mom thinks I’m the prettiest one,” she teased her sister.
In the middle of the shower, Angela was paged by Neal. This time when she talked to him, she was a little miffed. She’d received a bill from the lawyer, and Neal had told her that he would take care of it. He assured her that she didn’t have to worry about the bill. He would make it up to her by taking her out to dinner that evening; he even sent a limousine to pick her up.
Strange things continued to happen to Angela Fite. She returned home one evening after work to find that someone had gotten into her apartment by climbing in a second-story window. Or maybe two someones. There was an empty soda pop can outside her front door and another inside. Stranger still, someone had neatly arranged her shoes in the closet by the front door.
Her first thought was that the intruder had been Rankin. The soda pop was an unusual brand his mother was known to buy. However, on second thought, he was not the sort to take the time to straighten her shoes. She wondered if there was a second intruder and if his name was Cody.
By the end of June, Angela seemed to have made a decision about Neal. The Fourth of July was going to be on a Saturday. Rankin was taking Kyle and Kayla to a lake for the weekend, so Angela brought them by her mother’s house on Wednesday, July 1, for an early celebration. As the kids and their grandmother shot fireworks off in the street, the two sisters talked in the bathroom.
Tara took in Angela’s thick dark hair, stunning blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and a smile that could make her day better just by seeing it. “Angie, you’re so pretty,” Tara said, “what are you doing with that guy?” She thought he was full of bullshit and said so. The hit man, the bounty hunter, the home he was going to buy Angela—just a bunch of stories to make him look like a big man.
Angela nodded. “I’m getting close,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Tara asked, delighted.
“I can’t say, but I’m almost there.” Angela wouldn’t go any further, but did say that she hadn’t spoken to him for nearly three weeks. Not since just after the bridal shower.
But getting away from Neal proved harder than just saying she would. On Thursday, July 2, Angela was supposed to go over to Tara’s house to help her clean in preparation for the arrival of her wedding guests. Her sister had offered $100 for the help and she’d readily agreed. However, that afternoon Angela called her sister and said that Rankin had not arrived yet to pick up the kids for the weekend. At 7:00 P.M., she called again. Rankin had finally picked up the kids, but now she was too upset to clean and was going out instead. “I’ll come over tomorrow,” she assured her sister.
Friday came and went without Angela showing up or calling until late that night. She said she was sorry, but something had come up again.
Angry, Tara said to forget it. “You know what,” she yelled into the receiver, “I can’t count on you. Every time I ask you for something, you let me down.”
Trying to mend fences, Angela asked Tara if she was going over to their mother’s for the Fourth of July. Tara replied cooly that she and Jeb had other plans. The conversation ended with Angela promising to drop by on Sunday morning, July 5, to help clean.
On the Fourth of July at her mother’s house, Angela Fite was all smiles despite her sister’s absence. She told her mother that on Monday, Cody was going to show her “a surprise” that he had for her. She was pretty sure that it was the house he’d promised; he’d even hinted that the remodeling was finished except for laying the carpet.
Betty had her misgivings. When something sounded too good to be true, it probably was. But Angela was happier than she had seen her in years, and she didn’t want to dampen her spirits. If Cody was going to disappoint her, then she would have to deal with that later. In the meantime, what harm was there in dreaming?
Still, Betty could not shake a feeling that something bad was going to happen. A week or two earlier, there had been a report on the radio about two bodies being found in the mountains west of Denver. For some reason, she had suddenly thought of Angela and called her at work. She had been relieved when her daughter picked up the telephone.
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