Authors: Annelise Ryan

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

Scared Stiff (20 page)

BOOK: Scared Stiff

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“I guess I better get to it then,” I say, hoping my words sound both noncommittal and vaguely promising.

Aaron and I exchange a long, innuendo-laden look while Hurley watches us and steams. The moment stretches out between the three of us until Bjorn, who has finished his pie, drops his fork onto his plate with a clatter, making everyone jump.

“That was good,” he says, leaning back in his chair with a self-satisfied expression. He looks at me and adds, “I’m ready to go now but I’m afraid my peter needs some attention first.”

Chapter 29

T
hough Aaron looks amused and raises his eyebrows at Bjorn’s comment, I offer no explanation. Instead, I say my good-byes and escort Bjorn to the nearest bathroom.

Within minutes I have switched the old urine bag over to the new one that Syph gave me, and after a brief demonstration on how to empty it, Bjorn does it himself without difficulty. He is delighted and I seize the moment by trying again to convince him to let me drop him at the cab office so I can go meet Sally Hvam on my own. But Bjorn is having none of it, particularly after I make the mistake of mentioning that it’s a luncheon meeting.

“Lunch?” he says, rubbing a hand over his stomach. “Sounds good. I
am
kind of hungry.”

I simply stare at him, speechless. I’m not sure if I’m worried or envious of his ability to eat everything in sight without gaining an ounce. Most likely it’s a little of both. The worry stems from the thought that he might have something physically wrong, like cancer, diabetes, or a tapeworm. The envy is because I would kill to be able to eat like he does without getting fat.

Resigned to feeding Bjorn yet again, I drive the two of us to the Home on the Range café where Sally Hvam is supposed to meet me. Though I’ve never met the woman, I easily pick her out of the crowd as soon as we enter the place. For one thing, she is the only woman sitting alone. But the primary clue is the license plate thing, though I’m thinking these tatas look more like 50DDs.

I steer Bjorn over and introduce myself. Sally stares at Bjorn with a suspicious expression. “Who’s this?” she asks.

“My chauffeur, sort of. It’s a long story. Mainly, he just wants to eat.”

Right on cue, Bjorn settles into a chair and says, “Where the hell is the menu?”

Sally hands him hers, which is nothing more than a computer-generated flyer folded in half. As Bjorn takes hold of it, his eyes settle on Sally’s primary attribute and a whole new hunger starts to show on his face. “Good Lord, woman,” he says. “If those ain’t made for nuzzling, I don’t know what is.”

“Bjorn!”

“It’s okay,” Sally says with a chuckle. “I’m used to it.”

A waitress comes by and delivers two more menus. As soon as she’s gone I open mine, zero in on a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, close it, and go to work on Sally. “So how do you know Luke Nelson?”

“I was your victim’s predecessor,” she says, “along with several other women.”

“Really?” For a second I think she means other women were murdered. Then it hits me that she’s talking about dating, not about Luke Nelson being a serial killer.

“Yeah, the bastard suckered me big time. I thought I was his one and only but I found out later he was stringing me along with a couple of other women. He was smart, I’ll give him that. He never dated two women in the same town. Made it less likely his sneaking around would get discovered.”

Ah, a serial heartbreaker then. “So how did you find out?”

She lets forth with a throaty chuckle. “Actually, it was a fluke that brought him down. We’d been dating for several months and he was talking about making things permanent and planning for the future, that kind of stuff, you know?”

“You thought he was talking about marriage.”

“Exactly! And I was pretty darned excited by the proposition, no pun intended.” Again she laughs at her own joke. “I’m in my late thirties and the fruit ain’t as ripe as it used to be, if you get my drift. I want to have kids someday and that window is closing pretty damned fast.”

Her comment makes me wince since I’m in the same boat. When my marriage to David was getting stale it didn’t seem right to think about having a child until we got things sorted out. Then he got someone else pregnant instead and the marriage ended. Now, like Sally, the big hand on my biological clock is hanging just before midnight.

“So I’m all worked up and giddy like a damned fool schoolgirl,” Sally goes on, making me smile. “I’d heard about this place at the Dells that does weddings and it sounded nice, so I decided to take a little road trip and go check it out. But my car broke down on the highway and I ended up having it towed into some little Podunk town. That’s when I got hit with the good news and the bad news.”

With perfect timing, the waitress chooses this moment to come and take our orders, leaving me in suspense. Sally and I both order sandwiches, but Bjorn goes for the pot roast plate with mashed potatoes, veggies, and carrot cake for dessert.

As soon as the waitress leaves, Sally picks up her tale where she left off. “So the good news was that there was a mechanic in Podunk who could fix my car. The bad news was it was going to take him a couple of days because he had to order a special part. Then there was more good news because the guy had a loaner he was willing to rent me for only twenty bucks a day. So I did the necessary paperwork and was getting ready to leave when I got hit with the next dose of bad news.”

Sally falls silent as the waitress returns with our drinks but resumes as soon as she’s gone. “It turns out that mechanic’s shop is right across the street from a little coffee shop. Want to guess who I saw walk in and sit down at a table just inside the front window, acting all lovey-dovey, kissy-kissy with some other woman?”

“Luke Nelson?” I answer unnecessarily.

“Damn straight. So I’m sitting there, shocked, wondering what the hell is going on and then I think maybe she’s a relative and I’m jumping to conclusions. But then he plants a kiss on her that no one outside of West Virginia would use on a relation. The kind that makes you want to tell them to get a room, you know?”

I nod.

“So I just sat there watching for a while, trying to sort it all out, feeling stunned and wounded. My first impulse was to hurry home, lock myself in, and lick my wounds, you know?”

I did. I’d done just that for two months after catching David with Karen Owenby.

“Then I considered walking across the street and giving Luke a piece of my mind. But I didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself and by now I was more curious than anything. So I waited. About half an hour later they got up to leave. I watched him plant another sloppy wet one on her lips and then they got into their respective cars and drove off. I memorized her license plate and then decided to follow Luke, thinking I would confront him back at his place. But he surprised me by heading north when he should have gone south. So I stayed behind him, realizing that the loaner car was yet another bit of good luck since he would have recognized my car.

“Half an hour later we arrived in Podunk’s twin. This time he parked in front of an apartment building so I pulled in several spaces away and waited. He went inside and came out ten minutes later with another floozy on his arm.

“They got in his car and drove to a nearby movie theater. I followed them inside, being careful not to be seen, and sat at the back of the theater. It was some stupid Sundance movie, one of those celluloid nightmares that’s supposed to have deep meaning but is really just some idiot’s ego masturbation, you know? It didn’t matter because I didn’t pay much attention to the movie. My eyes were glued on dickhead, and his lips were glued to the floozy. Even in the dark I could tell he had his tongue halfway down her throat most of the time.”

Sally is making no effort to lower her voice and several other diners cue in on her when they hear the words
dickhead
and
masturbation.
It makes me want to slink down lower in my seat but I resist the urge. Part of me wishes the waitress would come with our food, thinking that might derail Sally for a few minutes, long enough for people to quit eavesdropping and staring at us. But another part of me is fascinated with her tale and anxious to hear the rest. So I let her run on.

“I sat there the whole time watching them,” she says, shaking her head sadly. “Just before the movie ended I got up and went back out to the parking lot. They came out a few minutes later and I followed them back to her apartment. This time I got out and followed to see which apartment she lived in. I wrote down the name I found on the corresponding mailbox, then went back out and sat in my car until Luke left. And that wasn’t for another two hours. Based on the condition of his clothes when he came out, I’m guessing they weren’t watching TV together.”

“Ouch,” I say, feeling her pain.

“Yeah,” she says with a sigh.

The waitress returns finally, this time with our food. Bjorn digs into his like he hasn’t eaten in weeks. Sally and I both take a couple of bites from our sandwiches before she puts hers down and continues talking.

“Needless to say, I didn’t want to believe what I saw but the evidence was pretty overwhelming. I decided to try to get a few more facts before confronting Luke so I had a cop friend run the plates of the woman I saw in the coffee shop and got her name and address. Then I went to visit her.”

Oh, how I would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

“Her name is Julie Mathers and she lives in Cambria. As you might guess, our initial meeting was a bit intense. But eventually I convinced her that we were both being hoodwinked and that there was at least one other woman I knew about, and who knew how many I didn’t. She finally got as angry as I was and I convinced her to follow me in my car over to the town of Randolph and the apartment of the second woman. There wasn’t anyone home when we got there so we sat together in the parking lot in my car, comparing notes, and planning all kinds of evil paybacks that we’d never have the guts to carry out, but which made us feel better nonetheless.”

This I could relate to, having indulged in several revenge fantasies myself over the past few months, a fact that didn’t help my situation much when I became a suspect in Karen Owenby’s murder.

Sally pauses and takes another bite of her sandwich. I realize I’ve become so enthralled with her story that I’ve momentarily forgotten about my own food. A truly historic moment! Bjorn, on the other hand, hasn’t been the least deterred and has almost cleared his plate.

Once she has swallowed and taken a drink of her soda, Sally continues. “After an hour or so the second woman came home. Her name is Hannah Kvalheim, in case you’re interested.”

I can see a bit of lettuce stuck in Sally’s teeth and a handful of crumbs resting on that shelf of a bosom. Though I’m tempted to tell her, I stay mum, not wanting to interrupt her flow of thought.

“It was much easier to convince Hannah, given that there were two of us there. We stayed nearly two hours discussing that slime bag and the various promises he made to all of us. The other two were content to simply stop seeing him and write it all off to bad judgment on their parts, but I was determined to confront the bastard, you know?”

“And you did,” I say, remembering Jackie’s description of the incident. “What was his reaction after that night?”

Sally shrugs. “Nothing. The bastard couldn’t have cared less that he’d been caught. He never apologized, never attempted to call again, and never showed up at my door. I’ve talked to Julie and Hannah since then and they both say the same thing. They called him, delivered their Dear John speeches, and he simply accepted them and went on with his life.” She pauses, finishes off the last of her sandwich, and then adds, “Clearly we were all gullible as hell, but I have to say the guy was really good. Very convincing.”

“Did you ever talk to him again?”

She shakes her head. “After I confronted him in the parking lot that night, I wrote him off. I got my rant in and that seemed to do it for me.”

“How about the other girls?” I ask, digging a pen out of my purse and writing their names and towns down on a napkin before I forget them. “Do you know if either of them tried to contact him?”

“I don’t think so, but I can’t be sure. If they did, they didn’t tell me about it. Then again, I haven’t talked to either of them in a while so who knows?”

This gets me to wondering if either of the other scorned women might have tried to patch things up with Nelson, only to discover there was yet another woman in the picture: Shannon. Could one of them have felt angry enough about it to try to eliminate the competition? I voice this question to Sally.

“I don’t think either of those other two women would harm a fly,” she says, shaking her head. “I was mad enough to hurt someone, but it would have been that bastard Nelson, not a fellow victim.”

“Do you think he’s capable of killing someone?”

She leans back in her chair, folds her arms over her chest, and gives the question some thought. “I don’t know,” she says finally. “But he did have some rather odd impulses in the bedroom.”

“Can you be more specific?”

She leans forward and drops her voice several decibels. “Let’s just say he liked to play rough.”

BOOK: Scared Stiff

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