Pink Neon Dreams (34 page)

His temper spiked and his voice sharpened. “Damn it, Cecily,
talk to me! I know you’re not telling me something. What is it? Are you sick?”

“My tummy’s calmed down, almost,” she said. “I can’t hear you
very well.
 
Hugs and kisses till I see
you again and be careful.”

With that, she hung up.
 
Silence replaced her voice and he missed it.
 
And somewhere within he suspected things just
went awry, but he couldn’t pinpoint it.
 
I’d like to know what in the hell is going
down.
 
‘Bout the last thing I need is to
worry what’s shaking back at home, but something’s up.
I’ll call her again in Dallas and she’d better have answers or I’ll be
tempted to head back to El Paso with speed.
 
But even as he thought it, Daniel knew he couldn’t, not when Nia’s life
hung in the balance, Cecily’s too.
 
He
had no choice but to take care of business—at any cost.

****

Lies weren’t something she did well and she knew it.
 
Telling Daniel anything but the truth stung,
but she didn’t have a choice.
 
If he had any idea I was on a plane, destination
Branson, he’d hunt me down and tie me to a chair.
 
Then he’d send me home.
 
Guilt rippled across her midsection coupled
with some lingering nausea.
 
If she ate
anything, she’d puke so she didn’t.
 
Instead, Cecily sipped a Sprite and sighed.
 
All she wanted was to get it over with and go
home, back to El Paso or to her house, anywhere with Daniel.
 
She sought closure and to keep her lover
safe.
 
If she had both, she might be able
to breathe again.
 
And live and love.

Unable to relax with her nerves jazzed up, the flight stretched
out long and tedious.
 
Daniel phoned
again and they talked in a brief, but garbled conversation because this time
the interference was genuine.
 
By the
time her plane circled above Chicago, above the familiar sights of her hometown,
Cecily couldn’t decide if her body revved up for fight or flight.
 
Fear gnawed at her, but she also experienced
a restless desire to kick ass.
 
Below,
her hometown stretched out, still the brawling giant Carl Sandburg wrote about
but grown even larger.
 
Although she’d
been a lifelong resident until she headed for Branson to start over, Chicago
seemed strange and unfamiliar.
 
Feeling
more like a tourist than a homie, Cecily stared down with an odd sense of
finality.
 
This is the past, the future’s straight ahead
.

She lacked any desire to leave O’Hare, not to see the old
neighborhood or cruise by the Canal Street house or any other sites and lacked
time if she had.
 
Cecily raced through
the airport to catch the connecting flight to Branson and made it.
 
Unlike Daniel down in Texas, she didn’t have a
long layover.
 
Before she had time to
acclimate to earth, Cecily found herself hurtling through the sky once again,
this time toward her destination.
 
En
route she didn’t gaze out into the clouds or nap or read.
 
She focused on what she would do when she
reached Branson.
 
Cecily mapped out each
step, each action right up until she showed up at Pink Neon.
 
Right now, she had no
clue
what to do or what would happen, but she would wing it. She rehearsed what she’d
do in her mind until she had it down.
 
Then she indulged in a memory, one to help her draw on her inner
strength and remember what she possessed, strength, courage, and sass.

When she was ten, she got
her first watch, a character Timex designed for kids.
 
Cecily adored it and wore it everywhere.
 
She checked the time every five minutes and
managed to show it off to anyone who glanced her way.
 
It wasn’t like she didn’t know some of the other
kids at the elementary school envied it—she knew but she didn’t care.
 
Truth was
,
she’d
gone out of her way to rub their noses in her pretty timepiece.

After morning recess, the
teachers herded all the girls in the fifth grade into the restroom to use the
facility and wash their hands before coming back to class.
 
The operation always took a while and
everyone had to wait in line.
 
Cecily
happened to be one of the last stragglers and when she came out of the stall,
Tawni Davis got in her way.
 

“Move,” Cecily said.

“Not until you give me
your watch,” Tawni returned. “I want it.”

“No.” Cecily wasn’t
handing it over to anyone, especially not Tawni.
 
She and the other girl didn’t get along and
they’d fussed before. “Get out of my way.”

Cecily started toward the
sinks to wash her hands, but Tawni blocked her. “Give me the fuckin’ watch.”

“No,
bitch.”

Tawni tried to snatch it
from Cecily’s wrist, so she slapped the little bitch.
 
Tawni responded by grabbing Cecily’s hair and
yanking hard enough to hurt.
 
They
wrestled and tussled, but Cecily didn’t yield.
 
They ended up the last two in the restroom and headed off to class,
panting, clothes awry, cheeks marked with pink slap marks.
 

“Don’t be tardy, girls,”
the teacher said as they entered.
 
Cecily
stared.
 
Didn’t she notice they’d been
fighting?

In the afternoon, after
last recess, Tawni tried again.
 
This
time she brought six other girls and they all made a circle around Cecily.
 
They chanted and jeered at her.
 
“Now give me the watch, little bitch,” Tawni
said.
 

Cornered, another kid
would’ve surrendered and handed it over, but not Cecily.
 
She slapped Tawni hard enough to make her
screech.
 
When Suzy Perry mouthed off, Cecily
delighted in whirling around to smack her fat cheek with force.
 
She never liked the snotty thing anyway.
 
Gasping for breath, Cecily glared at them all.
“Anyone else
want
a piece of me?” she said. “I’ll
fight anyone who thinks they can take my watch—or me.”

No one spoke up.
 
Heads down, they went away one at a time,
quiet and almost sad.
 
And from then on,
none of the young bullies or smart mouths messed with Cecily Brown.

She’d fought hard for a watch—she’d do much more to keep Daniel
from ending up in a puddle of blood.
 
Bring it on, Johnson, just bring it on.

Cecily called ahead and reserved a rental car at the Branson
Airport so when the plane landed, she had wheels.
 
She hurried through all the checkpoints and
claimed it.
 
Within minutes, she headed
through the evening traffic toward her place to retrieve the heirloom
knife.
 
At six forty-five half the
tourists in town were en route to dinner or a show, but she worked her way
through the congestion with more daring than usual.

With the window rolled down, a hundred different aromas floated
into the car, some aromatic and appetizing. Her stomach ached now, this time
with hunger not nausea.
 
Cecily couldn’t
recall eating anything since dinner the previous evening, but she wasn’t
stopping now. Food could wait.
 

By her reckoning, Daniel should’ve landed in Springfield around
four-thirty, then spent another hour or so driving to Branson.
 
Whatever he needed to do before he confronted
Johnson Hamilton would take some time so Cecily hoped to be right on schedule.
 
The sick bastard said twelve hours, but she
figured he’d wait a little.
 
Killing Nia
without an audience wouldn’t be any fun or provide any shock effect.
 
Besides,
he wants me and I’m going to give him what he asked for.

At her house, she dashed up, unlocked the door, and rushed
inside.
 
She located the knife Luz
described within moments and stuck it into her purse. Cecily checked for any
sign Daniel might’ve been there, but when she saw nothing to indicate he had
been by, she left.
 
Mental images of an
hourglass running out of sand haunted her as she approached Pink Neon along the
traffic-clogged Strip.
 
As the line of
vehicles inched ahead, she caught a clear view and saw the Ford Daniel drove
parked in front of her shop.
 
Although it
wasn’t dark or even dusk, the bright pink letters glowed neon and stood
out.
 
Other dark sedans were parked next
door in the ice cream parlor’s lot and in other discreet places.
 
Maybe
he’s called reinforcements.

As far as Cecily could tell, Pink Neon wasn’t open for business
and she strained to see if the lights were on but couldn’t tell.
 
Some cagey instinct suggested she park in a
lot two businesses north of her shop and advance on foot.
 

Cecily moved with a shadow’s stealth, handbag slung over her
shoulder, to the back of her shop.
 
The
rear door had been propped open with a cardboard box of unopened merchandise so
she crept close but kept to the side, out of sight.

Her heart pounded so hard she swore she could hear the uneven
beats.
 
With trepidation Cecily peered
into the room and saw Nia.
 
Duct tape
bound her cousin’s legs to the old straight leg chair she’d found in the
storeroom when she took possession.
 
Clothesline
rope tied Nia’s upper body to the chair to reinforce the idea she wasn’t leaving.
A knotted blue bandana had been tied in her mouth, but Nia emitted angry noises
despite the gag. Beside her, Johnson faced Daniel with a pistol gripped in his
right fist. “Where is she?” he demanded as Cecily listened.
 
“Where’s the bitch?”

“Cecily’s running late,” Daniel said in a voice so low and
gravelly she hardly recognized it.
 
His
grim expression could’ve been carved into stone. “I thought we could talk while
we wait.”

“She’d better show up.”

“She will,” Daniel said.
 
If she didn’t know better, she’d believe him, but as far as he knew, she
remained in El Paso.
 
He bluffed well,
but if Johnson figured it out, he’d be pissed. “So tell me why you took out
Bradford.”

Johnson’s bitter laugh rattled like dry bones. “Who says I did
what?”

“Don’t bullshit me.” Daniel’s voice cut through the noise with
the sharp finesse of a bull whip. “I heard you admit to it when you called Cecily.
We might as well talk about it.”

“Okay, so I killed Bradford.
 
You don’t know what an annoying asshole he was, mister FBI man.
 
Bitch, gripe, whine and moan, that’s all he
did, him with all his money, his business, his jewels, and bitch
eyes
. Yet he wanted to bitch.
 
He had everything I’d want, all of it, and he
didn’t fucking deserve anything.
 
So I
shot him, took the money and the jewels.
 
I’d have taken the bitch too, but she ran off to hillbilly land.
 
So I figured I’d just drop a hint or two in
the right ears, let her take the rap for it.
 
Bitch eyes never liked me anyway. She’s too damn good to throw me a kind
word or a kiss or a fuck once in a while.”

From her hiding spot, Cecily watched Daniel stiffen his spine,
ramrod straight.
 
“So did you use the
Glock 17 you’ve got there for the job?”

Johnson stared and shook his head.
 
Cecily guessed he must be stoned out of his
head, maybe on meth.
 
“You’re one dumb
mother fucker,” he said. “Yeah, I did and I’m going to use it to kill you,
too.
 
Can’t let you
live now that you know the truth, man, so you gotta die.
 
You should’ve let the bitch show up.
 
She ain’t worth it and you’d walk away from
this mess.
 
It ain’t happening now.
 
I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to fuck
this bitch here ‘
cause
I can’t get ahold of the real
deal. Then I’ll send her on to hell, too.
 
I’ll turn up evidence so bitch eyes goes to jail for murder.
 
Think maybe I’ll make it look like she shot
the two of you, maybe found out you were two-timing her with this cunt.
 
Three murder raps, she’ll go down.”

Daniel shifted position and something red flickered in his
hand.
 
Cecily gasped without noise, mouth
wide open, when she realized it was a digital recorder.
 
She’d thought he held a gun but it
wasn’t.
 
Oh, sweet baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning
,
he’s going to get himself killed.