Death By The Riverside Part 3

I started to put my sweater back on.

"Ah, don't do that," said Danny. "You've still got nice t.i.ts. I deserve some compensation for my time and effort. You can also leave your jeans unzipped. Particularly if you're wearing your crocodile underwear."

"No, tasteful pale lavender." But I did own a pair of underpants with a gaping gator's snout you know where. I do have an incurable soph.o.m.oric streak in me. I zipped up my jeans. "Can I wash my face?"

"Yes, you may, although I think it rather rude that you didn't give Ms. Holloway a chance."

"She didn't need to," I called from the bathroom as I splashed very cold water on my face. Not that I like cold water. It just takes an ice age or two for the water to get warm.

"You turned down oral s.e.x? I don't believe it."

"Believe it," I said as I took the cameras out of their hiding places.

"Karen gets pictures of Harry and you get pictures of Karen."

"Fair is fair."

* 23 *

"Stupid is stupid," Danny replied. "Those black curls of yours are going to end up floating in the mighty Mississippi yet."

"Good thing I know how to swim. I'm going to drop these off for Grandpa Holloway and then get out of this mess. Maybe I'll be celibate for a while."

"Right. I'll give it ten minutes. Anyway I can talk you out of this?"

"Celibacy? I don't know. Make me an offer," I said, ignoring her real question.

"No, you can be celibate. You'd better be if you plan to go sticking your unprotected nose into an organized drug-running hive. Karen and/ or Harry are more than willing to sell to them. They'd be fools not to.

And you're a fool for getting into this."

"A very brief appearance, believe me. The film to Grandpa Holloway and I'm gone."

"When?"

"No time like the present. I'll drop it off this evening."

"Call me in the morning," Danny answered, "if you can. No, call me tonight when you get back. Oh, and put your s.h.i.+rt back on. I'm going home now. Elly's waiting for me."

"Not a quick one for old times' sake?"

"No, I'm a married woman."

"Even if, as you seem to think, this is my last night on this earth?"

My body still had a few things undone that it wanted done to it.

"Then you had better set your affairs in order, not have flings with old flames."

"Thanks, Dan, for your sage advice."

"Not that you're not tempting," she sighed, deliberately staring at my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She leaned over and kissed the left one, her favorite (don't ask me why), and then left. Left me high and...certainly not dry. I put my s.h.i.+rt back on and figured it was time to go meet Grandpa Holloway.

For no good reason, I decided to change clothes. Basic black seemed appropriate. Black turtleneck, black jeans, and a black jean jacket, but red earrings. I had to look like the kind of person who would take those kinds of pictures.

I walked to my car, my dismal Datsun. I keep telling myself to put a sign on it saying, "Do Not Tow. This car is not a derelict." I consulted * 24 *

my road maps. Going at my usual speed, I should get there around eight. I had to get gas. d.a.m.n, that meant visibly spending money on this thing. Intellectually, I knew I'd use the same amount of gas in any case, but I didn't like pulling the money out of my wallet and watching it disappear.

* 25 *

CHAPTER 5.

One Hundred Oaks Plantation wasn't hard to find. It had a big wrought-iron sign and the kind of bombastic brick gate that said, "Hi, we're rich. Are you sure you should be entering here?"

Drop the film off and get out of here, I told myself as I drove up to the house.

A servant answered the door and didn't look too thrilled to see the likes of me. Bravely I forged ahead.

"I need to see Mr. Holloway."

"Is Mr. Holloway expecting you?"

"I doubt it," I said. "But I have some film to give him." The servant didn't look convinced. "It's a companion piece to the pictures he got two days ago." I was guessing Karen had hightailed it over here with Harry's pictures.

"Follow me," the servant said and led me to a sitting room, then told me to wait there.

I didn't wait long, fortunately, because money does not guarantee taste, as this sitting room proved.

The person who entered the room was not Ignatious Holloway.

"What do you want?" she said, even less thrilled than the servant to see me. I just held up the film.

"Harry? We already know," she said, turning to leave.

"No. Karen."

She turned back and looked at me. She was about my age and perhaps even taller than me (or perhaps it was just the light). Dark auburn, almost black hair, blue eyes. Not bad, even if she was a Holloway. I a.s.sumed that this was the Cordelia Danny had mentioned.

"Doing?" she asked. She didn't waste words.

* 26 *

"Illicit s.e.xual acts with a woman."

"You? Never mind. What do you want?"

Karen entered the scene. She looked the least thrilled of anyone to see me. "What are you doing here?" she demanded I held the film where she could see it.

"I didn't think you'd be real happy out here all by yourself, eaten up with guilt over how you cheated your only brother out of his inheritance."

She caught on. I saw it in her eyes and the way she hissed, "You b.i.t.c.h," at me. "Give me that," Karen continued. "You're lying." She started for me with her hand out for the film. She was used to people following her orders.

I'm used to disobeying orders. I moved away, putting a fake rococo table between us.

"Okay. How much do you want?"

To be honest, I was tempted. Visions of paid bills danced through my head. Stockpiles of cat food, perhaps a new bed...

"I'm not for sale." My dad always told me that you could live without almost anything but not without self-respect. Since I had very little else, I did need that. "I don't like you, Karen. I don't like the things you do, and I don't like what you stand for. You used me to get your brother. I'm paying you back." I turned to Cordelia. "I would like to give this to your grandfather. Will you take me to him?"

Karen let out a string of obscenities and came around the table after me. There's a move in karate that's like a kick, but all you're really doing is putting your foot out so that your opponent will run into it. It was easy to stop Karen that way. But it didn't do much for shutting her up.

"What is going on here?" a voice boomed. Two men entered, one leaning heavily on the arm of the other.

It took me only a moment to figure out which one was Holloway.

Partly from the way attention was turned on him when he entered, partly from the att.i.tude of the man whose arm he held for support.

But the eyes confirmed it. The same shade of blue confronted me from three sets of eyes. Holloway's, Cordelia's, and Karen's were all the same perfect aristocratic blue, though, I suspected, only by seeing them together would the resemblance be noticeable. Because other than that blue there was very little else alike in their eyes. Karen's were downcast and ringed with mascara, Holloway's faded in the surrounding sagging * 27 *

skin and wrinkles. Cordelia's were cool and direct, as if she didn't want to be here watching this, but couldn't help finding some interest in the spectacle.

I vaguely recognized the other man, with his distinguished face and perfectly cut silver hair, from the society pages, but since I never read the columns, I didn't know his name. Someone in the same league as Holloway. It was he who had spoken. Since Karen's blue streak could have awakened the dead, they had very little chance of ignoring it.

Holloway was a large man, but age and inactivity had made him flabby.

He walked with a cane, supported between it and his companion. His entrance didn't shut up Karen, but it did change her tune.

"This woman's trying to ruin me, Grandfather Holloway. She's lying. She's working for Harry and his perverted friends."

You can say this for Karen, she doesn't give up easily.

"What is going on here?" Holloway rasped, looking at Cordelia for an answer. She told him. Now he, too, looked not thrilled to see me.

His friend tried to politely ignore the family scene.

"Give me the film," he said. I did. He turned to Karen. "What am I going to find in these pictures?"

His voice was tired, the sound of an old man whose traps were all sprung and the only thing he had caught was himself. She didn't answer.

"You disappoint me. You disappoint me deeply. After all I've done for you..." He went into the standard litany, punctuated with the coughing of an old man. At the end he turned to me and said, "How much do you want?"

For a moment, I couldn't answer, because I remembered another voice in another time asking that same question. No, not another voice, the same voice, not yet worn and scratchy. I started to feel a hollowness inside me, I wasn't sure where. I wanted out of this nest of monsters.

"Nothing," I said and I walked out of the room, out of the house.

When I got outside, I stood for a moment just breathing, trying to fill that hollow s.p.a.ce with air. I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice saying, "Are you all right?" Cordelia.

I nodded yes, embarra.s.sed to be caught. I just wanted to get out of here.

"I gather you don't do this sort of thing very often. Don't go into blackmailing as a career."

* 28 *

"I'm not a blackmailer," I answered. I was beginning to feel better.

"Good thing. Here, take this." She put an envelope in my jacket pocket. I took the envelope out.

"No, I don't want anything...from you." I stumbled over the last few words.

She put the envelope back in my pocket. "Are you sure you're okay?"

I took it back out. "Allergies. I'm allergic to magnolias."

"There aren't any magnolia trees here."

"Also oaks." There had to be oak trees at One Hundred Oaks Plantation.

"Right. Why don't I believe you? Why do I keep wondering, what's in this for you?" Danny's precious Cordelia obviously thought I was one of Karen's unctuous friends.

"Never to see any of you again." I was tired of this and I resented her a.s.sumption that I had to have some ulterior motive for being here.

"No one asked you to get involved in the first place," she shot back.

"Wrong. Your sister Karen did. I just had to finish what I started. I wasn't going to let her f.u.c.k me in the front seat of her BMW and then cheat Harry out of his inheritance for being queer. Listen, I've got to go..."

"Cousins," she broke in. "Harry and Karen are my cousins."

"Whatever. Enjoy your mansion. I've handed it to you on a silver platter, haven't I?"

She stuffed the envelope back into my pocket. "Now you're wrong. I don't want the place. I never did. When Grandpa wrote his ridiculous will, one of the first things I did was tell him that I'm a lesbian. Of course, I'm not."

"Of course not," I broke in.

"To guarantee that I wouldn't get this old place and that I wouldn't be caught in any of the squabbles about it."

"How n.o.ble," I interjected.

"Aren't we both? You altruistically sleeping with Karen and taking pictures of it and me pa.s.sing up the chance to co-own a fake antebellum mansion with a pack of barracudas."