Full Dark, No Stars(64)

“Also my diamond earrings,” she said. “Fucking pervert sonofabitch stole my earrings.”

Even if he steered clear of the store and the culvert for awhile, those women belonged to her now. They were her responsibility, and she couldn’t shirk it just because her picture might appear on the cover of Inside View.

In the calm morning light of a suburban Connecticut morning, the answer was ridiculously simple: an anonymous call to the police. The fact that a professional novelist with ten years’ experience hadn’t thought of it right away almost deserved a yellow penalty card. She would give them the location—the deserted YOU LIKE IT IT LIKES YOU store on Stagg Road—and she would describe the giant. How hard could it be to locate a man like that? Or a blue Ford F-150 pickup with Bondo around the headlights?

Easy-as-can-beezy.

But while she was drying her hair, her eyes fell on her Lemon Squeezer .38 and she thought, Too easy-as-can-beezy. Because…

“What’s in it for me?” she asked Fritzy, who was sitting in the doorway and looking at her with his luminous green eyes. “Just what’s in that for me?”

- 20 -

Standing in the kitchen an hour and a half later. Her cereal bowl soaking in the sink. Her second cup of coffee growing cold on the counter. Talking on the phone.

“Oh my God!” Patsy exclaimed. “I’m coming right over!”

“No, no, I’m fine, Pats. And you’ll be late for work.”

“Saturday mornings are strictly optional, and you should go to the doctor! What if you’re concussed, or something?”

“I’m not concussed, just colorful. And I’d be ashamed to go to the doctor, because I was three drinks over the limit. At least three. The only sensible thing I did all night was call a limo to bring me home.”

“You’re sure your nose isn’t broken?”

“Positive.” Well… almost positive.

“Is Fritzy all right?”

Tess burst into perfectly genuine laughter. “I go downstairs half-shot in the middle of the night because the smoke detector’s beeping, trip over the cat and almost kill myself, and your sympathies are with the cat. Nice.”

“Honey, no—”

“I’m just teasing,” Tess said. “Go on to work and stop worrying. I just didn’t want you to scream when you saw me. I’ve got a couple of absolutely beautiful shiners. If I had an ex-husband, you’d probably think he’d paid me a visit.”

“Nobody would dare to put a hand on you,” Patsy said. “You’re feisty, girl.”

“That’s right,” Tess said. “I take no shit.”

“You sound hoarse.”

“On top of everything else, I’m getting a cold.”

“Well… if you need something tonight… chicken soup… a couple of old Percocets… a Johnny Depp DVD…”

“I’ll call if I do. Now go on. Fashion-conscious women seeking the elusive size six Ann Taylor are depending on you.”

“Piss off, woman,” Patsy said, and hung up, laughing.

Tess took her coffee to the kitchen table. The gun was sitting on it, next to the sugar bowl: not quite a Dalí image, but damn close. Then the image doubled as she burst into tears. It was the memory of her own cheery voice that did it. The sound of the lie she would now live until it felt like the truth. “You bastard!” she shouted. “You f**k-bastard! I hate you!”

She had showered twice in less than seven hours and still felt dirty. She had douched, but she thought she could still feel him in there, his…

“His cockslime.”

She bolted to her feet, from the corner of her eye glimpsed her alarmed cat racing down the front hall, and arrived at the sink just in time to avoid making a mess on the floor. Her coffee and Cheerios came up in a single hard contraction. When she was sure she was done, she collected her pistol and went upstairs to take another shower.

- 21 -

When she was done and wrapped in a comforting terry-cloth robe, she lay down on her bed to think about where she should go to make her anonymous call. Someplace big and busy would be best. Someplace with a parking lot so she could hang up and then scat. Stoke Village Mall sounded right. There was also the question of which authorities to call. Colewich, or would that be too Deputy Dawg? Maybe the State Police would be better. And she should write down what she meant to say… the call would go quicker… she’d be less likely to forget anyth…

Tess drifted off, lying on her bed in a bar of sunlight.

- 22 -

The telephone was ringing far away, in some adjacent universe. Then it stopped and Tess heard her own voice, the pleasantly impersonal recording that started You have reached … This was followed by someone leaving a message. A woman. By the time Tess struggled back to wakefulness, the caller had clicked off.

She looked at the clock on the night table and saw it was quarter to ten. She’d slept another two hours. For a moment she was alarmed: maybe she’d suffered a concussion or a fracture after all. Then she relaxed. She’d had a lot of exercise the previous night. Much of it had been extremely unpleasant, but exercise was exercise. Falling asleep again was natural. She might even take another nap this afternoon (another shower for sure), but she had an errand to run first. A responsibility to fulfill.