SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (66 page)

Shadow was so lost in thought she hadn't seen the other woman near the table. She gestured for her to take a seat. She noticed her dress. It was a breakaway red-spangled number held together in appropriate places by Velcro strips. When she reached beneath the sleeveless arm she could rip the dress straight down to the hem and pull it forward to reveal the body beneath. The straps were also held together with Velcro so she could detach it from her pale white shoulders and drop the entire garment to the floor of the stage.

“You're not dancing tonight?”

Shadow was trying to remember the woman's name. What did she call herself? “No,” she said, “not tonight.”

“I've been watching you, you know. I think you move like an angel up there when you're dancing. You don't even work at making the men get hard-ons. It comes as naturally to you as snapping my fingers to a good beat comes to me. You wouldn't happen to be bi, would you? I sure think you and me would make a good couple. We'd light up the night sky, you better believe it.”

Shadow felt herself harden inside. As much as she had learned about the club scene and the women in it, she was always startled when one of them came onto her.

“No, I'm not bisexual.”

“Hetero, I guess, huh?” She sighed and glanced up at the stage to the dancer there. “What a fucking shame. I heard them saying you didn't go with the guys so I just thought maybe .

“Sorry, no.” Shadow was ready to leave the table and the conversation, but the other woman spoke again.

“Know where I pick up the best-looking guys?”

“Wouldn't have a clue.”

“The gay bars. Bi-guys cruise there and they're all dolls, some of them the most handsome men you've ever laid eyes on. God in his heaven would fuck one of those beauties. You ever want a date . . .”

“No thanks.”

“Well, Jesus, hey, I was just trying to give a little friendly advice. I guess you don't do drugs or even smoke cigarettes, either. I guess maybe you're slumming here with the rest of us just for the kicks or something.”

“Listen, don't start getting hostile,” Shadow said. “I don't care what you or anyone else in here does in private. It's not my business. But it's not your business what I do or what I think or what I had for dinner last night. Okay? Now if you'll excuse me. . .”

“You're excused. Bitch,” she added.

Shadow made a hasty exit for the dressing room. Most of the girls were tolerant about lifestyles given they had unusual ones of their own. But once in a while a girl came along who was a militant lesbian, or had a chip on her shoulder, or was just plain jealous and those women were the ones who could spell trouble big-time. The manager had just fired a lesbian who had mocked the girls who prostituted with men and showed no interest in her.

It seemed to Shadow that the more she learned about how women handled themselves in the world, the less respect she had for them. They went to such extremes! They were puritans living and working in the suburbs, raising families and looking down on their sisters who happened to have to work as strip dancers for their living. There were those women who hated men and loved women exclusively. There were women so confused about their sexuality they had turned to sex toys for gratification over any relationship with another human being. Women who were punching bags for their violent husbands; women who let themselves turn into breeding factories for babies; women who wanted to be men, by God, and rule the world for a change.

Mom came out of a toilet stall. “Shadow Girl! How's it shakin' tonight out there on the floor?”

“Oh, about the same as usual, Mom. I think I'm going to call it a night, though.”

“Make your money already?”

Shadow considered the bills stuffed in the cup of her bra. “Not as much as I'd like, but it doesn't matter.”

“I hears how you and that cop got a thing going.”

Shadow turned to her. “Who told you that?”

“This ain't no secret, girl. People's seen you with him at the table. I even know something's happening when that man sits at a girl's table.”

“Why is that?”

“He got a rep. He never before come on a girl in the clubs. He's been hanging in these places for lotsa years and not once before any of us seen him get hisself attached. He got to be in love, child. Maybe I ought to be congratulatin' you. I ‘spect he soon want to take you outta all this.” She laughed at the idea of it.

Shadow turned away to find her street clothes in the gym bag. “Hold off on congratulations for a while. I don't know what to think about him yet.”

“He a fine-looking man. Yes, ma'am, fine-looking. Most law men got a real hard face, but his ain't so hard. No more'n yours is.”

“And he's never hurt a woman or a child.”

“Say huh?”

“Nothing, I was talking to myself, Mom.”

Mom, whose hips were so large she had to turn sideways to move through a normal doorway, brushed past Shadow to the cosmetics counter. Shadow smelled her scent and liked it. It was a mixture of a cheap flowery perfume and sweat that, combined, smelled rich and opulent. She had known this scent from somewhere before, maybe from childhood, or just in passing on a street, or in an elevator, or in a crowded mall. Few people managed to have a strong personal scent that did not confront and confound the nostrils. Mom was one of them and it made Shadow like her better than she might have just from their brief and shallow conversations.

She must hurry now. She stripped off the tight black dress and withdrew the folded bills from her bra to stash in her purse. Soon Mitchell would meet her in the parking lot and she would go to his house.

She would, wouldn't she? Or would she back out of it? It came to her that she was afraid of having to walk through the rooms of a real home, feel the presence of a man stamped on his choice of furniture, his offerings of drinks to her, his expectations when he came to take her into his arms . . .

Oh, to hell with it, goddamnit, son of a bitch! She was going, that's all there was to it. She needed to have his heat near her, feel his hands on her body, make love to him. She didn't care what demons she had to wrestle from the past, demons that came carrying remembrances of a home lived in, a home where people lived decent, prudent, innocent and secure lives.

She paused in dressing, deep in thought. Might this affair cure her from the madness of murder? Might it really? Could he take away her compulsion to poison the low-lifes? She hadn't felt the need to look for a victim in some time . . .

She did not know that Mom paused in her tidying and turned from the mirror to watch her curiously. She also did not hear her say, softly, as if to the walls of the room, “He gonna be a fine man for you, I predict. Lord knows, he better.”

Thirty

“She's not here.” Mitchell looked through into the kitchen, stepped into the hall, and checked out the spare bedroom. “She must be on the street.”

Shadow stood in the center of the living room rubbing Pavlov's big square head. Mitchell looked like a man who would own a dog like this. “Should she be out this time of night? That's a little dangerous, isn't it?”

“No, she shouldn't, but at least I've got her staying here part of the time. I can't chain her to a chair. She's about the most obstinate person I've ever known. Her old habits are going to die hard, if they die at all. You might call this an experiment that just might turn into my worst nightmare.”

“Why do you call her Big Mac?”

“She practically lives at McDonald's. She'd rather eat a Big Mac than T-bone steak.” He pulled Pavlov away by the collar and locked him in the spare room. When he returned, he said, “You want a drink?”

Shadow shook her head. Pouring drinks made her think of the decanter on her dressing table in the Shoreville mansion. Sometimes at the Blue Boa when she lifted a glass to her mouth, she imagined she could smell the poisoned whiskey, and she couldn't drink a drop. “I don't want anything, thanks.”

He didn't seem to know what to do next. He brushed his hands together, looked around the room as if inspecting it with her opinion of it in mind. “Well . . . I guess I'll get a glass of water. I'm a little thirsty.”

Shadow sat on the sofa. She patted the cushions. She wished she hadn't come.

As she turned her head, feeling someone nearby, she found Mitchell down on his knees next to her, his face inches from her own. She flinched. “I thought . . .” She thought he was getting water, but he had changed his mind, he had come to her, and in his eyes she saw the longing. She lifted her hands to his face and looked into his eyes. “What are we doing, Mitchell? What's happening to us?”

“Hell if I know.”

He put his arms under her legs and behind her back, lifted her from the sofa, and stood there in the living room, holding her weight, breathing slow and easy.

She almost asked him to kiss her but, before she could, he was kissing her. She locked her hands around his neck. He moved his lips over her cheek to her ear, and down to her throat. She lay her head back and sighed. She wanted this, needed this. She loved it. Loved how he made her feel, loved the heat he created.

In the bedroom he put her gently onto the unmade bed and sat down beside her. She reached out to unbutton his shirt. In minutes they had their clothes discarded on the floor, and Mitchell lay beside her, clutching her tightly to him. She ran her nails down his back and felt his muscles tighten and his pelvis push closer to her.

“I don't know what I'm doing,” she whispered. “I shouldn't . . .”

“Shhh.”

He made love to her slowly, in total silence. The room was dark and smelled of damp towels and dog. Shadow thought she would not climax, that she would not be able to lose herself, that she would think of where she was and what she was doing, that her mind would be a million miles away. But his hands caressed her so, his body brought her into rhythm with him, his lips sought her breasts in the darkness, and soon all she could think of were the sensations of her body collapsing into his, buckling up to his. And she moved with him, beneath him, and there in the strange, odor-filled dark room she reached for release, with all her might, and came with a shudder that shook them both.

He lay beside her, kissing her face, murmuring love talk while her breathing slowed and her skin cooled from sweat evaporating.

“Now we know what we're doing,” he said.

“And we do it so well,” she said.

They lay a while side by side, luxuriating in the peace, holding hands. Then he led her to the bathroom saying, “Come with me.” They showered together, soaping one another, and again grew aroused so that they had to make love even more passionately than before. He had her against the shower wall with the water trumpeting on his shoulders and streaming down over her breasts to run between them in a soapy river.

He finally had her wishing she never had to leave. As she toweled dry he said from behind her, “Why don't you move in with me?”

Her hands froze.

“I didn't mean to leave you speechless. I know it's too soon, and a bathroom isn't the most romantic place in the world to propose a living arrangement, and I can't explain this, but I do know I'm in love with you.”

She covered her face with the towel to buy time.

“You don't have to answer now. Maybe you need to think about it . . .”

“Mitchell . . . I . . .”

“All right, I know it's nuts. I know I surprised you, but I wish you'd do it. Move in with me.”

“You don't know me.” She turned to him, lowering the towel so she could see his face. He could never really know her, not the person she had become.

“I know what I need to know.”

She was almost in tears. He meant it, she could see that in his eyes. He loved her, he wanted to live with her, one day he'd probably ask her to marry him. And it was the craziest thing she had ever heard of. Maybe crazier than her, a murderer, sleeping with a homicide cop. Doing what he asked would be the ultimate joke on the criminal justice system.

She couldn't do that. “I can't do that,” she said, voicing the thoughts that spilled willy-nilly through her brain.

“Can't or won't?”

“I . . . just can't.”

“You could bring Charlene, I don't care. This is a big house, there's enough room for everyone.” He moved to her and took her into his arms. He was so tall compared to her, that her head barely reached the top of his shoulder.

She lay her cheek against his damp soapy-smelling skin and fought back tears. It really wasn't fair, was it? Things never worked out as they should. She would have been better off never having met him.

“Think it over, will you? Just think about it.”

She thought about it. Could think of nothing else. When she was at the mansion again with Charlene tagging behind her as she nervously paced through the house, the thought dominated her mind.

“He asked me to live with him,” she said to Charlene.

“The cop?”

“Yeah, the cop.”

The silence lasted and began to gnaw at Shadow. She stopped pacing and faced her friend. “What do you think?”

“I think maybe it would be a good thing.”

“Oh, hell!” Shadow turned from the ballroom's floor-length windows and crossed the room for the hall. She heard Charlene behind her, pittypatting in her loose house slippers.

“Did he want me to move in too?” Charlene asked. “I don't want to go back to Austin.”

“Yes, he invited you too. He already has a bag lady living there. I feel like one more stray animal he's taking in.”

“Oh, don't say that.”

“You're right, I shouldn't say that. That's not the way it is. He feels sorry for the bag lady. He says he loves me. I suppose there's a difference.”

“I'd say.”

Shadow wrestled with the idea until she felt herself going in circles. Finally she said she had to dress for work.

“Aren't you off tonight?”

“I'm on because I choose to be on. Maybe it'll take my mind off this other business.”

Charlene was standing outside the bedroom door when Shadow appeared with her gear and the car keys in her hand.

“He's a nice man,” Charlene said, taking up the dropped conversation as if there had been no interruption of time. “This . . . this thing could stop if we move in with him. Maybe the voices would stop then.”