Drop Dead, Gorgeous Part 9

Jordan had been quiet during dinner. Claire showered, and stood in front of her bathroom mirror, staring at her reflection, rubbing moisturizer into her face.

"He was leaving you for me.... If all you've ever wanted was to live happily ever after with your man ... you should've left me there."

In that moment when she saw that woman lying there on that floor, Claire knew. She knew that it was Lonnie lying there and she knew, instinctively, that Jordan had done that to her. Claire had seen, firsthand, how cruel Jordan could be. He'd never hit Claire, but he'd said things ... done things, uncaring things that left her wondering if he really understood the damage he could cause in another person.

Claire's heart began to race, and she started to turn and leave. If Jordan knew that she'd been here, if he knew that she'd seen what he'd done to this woman-he could just as easily have killed Claire, too.

"Help."

It was a weak and fragile cry for help, but it was strong enough to stop Claire in her tracks.

"P-please."

Claire wouldn't have left a dog to die. Jordan wouldn't just leave her there, dead, in his house. He was coming back. Claire knew it as sure as she knew she'd take her next breath. Jordan wasn't finished with that woman.

"H-h-help ... me," Lonnie whimpered.

Every instinct warned Claire to leave and to get as far away from that house-from Jordan-as possible. This woman, Lonnie, had mocked Claire. She'd practically ruined Claire's life, taking from her the only thing that ever mattered-her husband. But even with all of that, something inside of Claire wouldn't let her leave Lonnie in that house. Claire should've left her there.

Jordan had beaten that woman to within an inch of her life, but Claire loved him. She loved him to toxic levels, and hated herself for it. But she'd trained herself to see what she loved in Jordan, and to block out those parts of him that scared her.

"What's that?" he asked, standing in the doorway to her bathroom as Claire washed down her pill. She had been taking antidepressants even before her attempted suicide.

The muscles in her back and neck immediately tensed whenever he caught her by surprise. Jordan wore only the bottoms of his pajamas and she had thought that he was in bed already.

She nervously started to put the pill bottle back in her medicine cabinet, but Jordan came over and took it from her hand before she could.

He looked at the label. "Prozac?" he asked, concerned.

Jordan never came into her bathroom, and she'd never told him that she was taking anything.

"How long have you been taking these?"

She shrugged, and took the bottle from him. "Awhile," she said, nervously.

She tried to walk past him, but Jordan blocked her way. "Claire, do you really think you need these?"

Claire needed them to cope, to try and heal, to think rationally, to believe that her marriage wasn't the farce she knew deep down that it had always been.

The expression on her face must've spoken volumes. Jordan tenderly pulled her close to his chest, and wrapped big strong arms around her. Claire melted against him.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. "Sorry that I've left you feeling so vulnerable." Jordan kissed her head, and Claire marveled at the fact that he would actually apologize to her and admit something like that to her.

She pulled back and looked up at him.

"You're my wife, Claire," he said, staring into her eyes. "And my wife should not have reason to be unhappy."

Jordan had no idea what depression really was. It was deeper than just being unhappy. It was not knowing how to give herself permission to be anything else. Unexpected sincerity filled his eyes and his voice, and Claire couldn't help but to feel touched by his sentiments.

"It's alright, Jordan," she said sweetly. "The pills help. I'm okay, really."

He seemed to examine her, searching for clues that she really was fine. His expression softened.

"I want you to stop taking them," he said gently.

The thought terrified her, but so did disappointing him. Conflict inside her began to swell, and he noticed.

"If we're going to have a baby, Claire," he continued calmly, "then I don't think you can take antidepressants."

A baby? Since when had Jordan wanted to have a baby with her? He had a daughter, grown and living in California, that he barely saw or mentioned, but he'd made it clear a long time ago that he wasn't interested in having more children.

Claire, on the other hand, had dreamed of having his children since before he proposed.

"Jordan, I-"

"It's what you want. Isn't it?"

Claire was overwhelmed. "Yes. Yes, but you never wanted it."

He sighed. "My wife wants a family," he said a.s.suredly. "And I want her to be happy. That's what I want."

Jordan kissed her, then took her by the hand and led her into the bedroom. He wanted a child. Jordan wanted her to have his child. If this was a dream, Claire never wanted to wake from it, and the nightmare of Lonnie or of the transgressions of her husband would not ruin it.

How Did I Get So Far Gone?

"Reggie's dead."

Those two words, coming from Colette over the phone, abruptly snapped Frank out of the fog he was in. He pushed himself up in bed, and focused on the numbers on the clock by the nightstand until they came into focus. It was just after one in the morning.

"What did you just say to me?" he asked gruffly.

He hadn't spoken to Colette in days, and she calls him up out of the blue to tell him this?

"He's dead, Frank," she repeated.

Frank rubbed sleep from his eyes. "What the f.u.c.k happened, Colette?"

The grinding in his stomach warned him that he didn't want to know the answer to that question. But Frank absolutely needed to know the answer to that question.

"Shot," she said simply.

"How? Who the f.u.c.k shot him?"

He knew who? Jesus! He knew!

Colette didn't answer him.

"Where are you?"

"He was nervous, Frank." She spoke as if she were under some kind of spell. "How the f.u.c.k can you be a meth dealer and be that d.a.m.n nervous?" she muttered, more to herself than to him.

"Colette." He nearly shouted her name. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

"In my car," she said quietly. "I'm driving, Frank. Just driving. They kept pulling him in for questioning, and I knew ... He's going to break, they said. This one here's got something and it won't be long before he gives it up," she told him, repeating what she'd overheard investigators say around the precinct. "He was a f.u.c.kin' p.u.s.s.y!"

All of a sudden the room got hot. "You f.u.c.ked up, Colette." Frank said it before he could stop himself. Right now that woman was a loose cannon. Those d.a.m.n drugs she claimed she wasn't doing had fried her judgment. "If you thought you were in a s.h.i.+tty spot before, baby, you sure as h.e.l.l are in one now."

"We," she said simply. "We, Frank, because I'm not going down for any of this s.h.i.+t by myself."

"I didn't put the bullet in Reggie," he snapped.

"No, you just shot a cop!"

"We shot cops and you pulled the trigger first, baby girl," he argued.

Colette had turned into a lunatic. She'd shot Reggie Rodriguez. Maybe the cops had no concrete evidence leading the murders of those cops back to Frank and Colette, but he could hear sloppy in her voice. Colette had left evidence, and it was only a matter of time before it led to her, and she led them to him.

"I'm leaving town," she said.

Frank lost it. "You f.u.c.kin' leave and they'll know it was you, Colette," he grunted. "You leave and you might as well paint a bull's-eye on your back and mine too for that matter!"

"It's too late, Frank! I can't do this anymore! I can't stay here and take the heat while you bask in the afterglow of the murder you got away with. I won't do it!"

"What the h.e.l.l do you expect me to do?" he snapped.

"We need to leave. We need to go far and we need to go fast. Money, Frank. We need money and lots of it!"

He knew what she was saying, and unfortunately, he knew that in this case, she was right. If the cops got their hands on Colette, it was over-for both of them.

"We don't have time for you to keep bulls.h.i.+tting, Frank," she said gravely.

"We'd have had plenty of time if you hadn't shot Reggie."

"Reggie was going to talk. h.e.l.l, maybe he already did, and maybe they already know," she said dismally. "I bought us some time. Not much, but some. Now you need to do what you have to do. I, uh ... I can't say how much longer I'll be in town. I can't say how long it'll be before they find out what happened to Reggie, but I can say without a doubt that if they pull me in, I'm pulling you in with me, baby. I mean it." She hung up before he could say another word.

All of a sudden, the heat was turned up and Frank didn't have the luxury of time or rational thinking on his side anymore. He had five hundred in his savings account, and a credit card with about two hundred dollars left on it. Put it together and maybe he had enough to get him to Florida.

Frank had never put much thought into running. In the back of his mind, he'd always thought that this whole thing would magically blow over, and eventually, the deaths of those two men would be filed away in the back of a storage room somewhere. But the dead men were cops, and he knew that the police wouldn't stop until they found who did it.

"Lonnie," he said wearily, over the phone.

The sun was just starting to come up, and Frank had been up since getting off the phone with Colette.

"It's early, Frank," she said irritably. "This better be good."

Frank had been playing out every possible and plausible scenario in his head before finally calling her. A man like Gatewood wasn't going to make this easy. Frank would need to let him know what was up. He'd need to let him know who he was, and what he wanted, and then, duck and cover and stay out of sight.

The Gatewoods of the world didn't get their hands dirty on men like Frank. He'd either report Frank to the police for extortion or he'd dismiss him and dare Frank to say a word to the press. And then it would be the word of a Gatewood against the word of a n.o.body like Frank. In either of those cases, Frank could become interesting all of a sudden, even as far away as Cotton, and that would get the cops back home to looking at him again with fresh eyes. Some bright motha f.u.c.ka would begin to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and bam! He'd be in handcuffs.

There was one more path Jordan Gatewood could take. He could just nip this s.h.i.+t in the bud right away, and Frank could end up being a smudge on the wall, or cemented to the bottom of a lake someplace. None of those alternatives set right with him, but what choice did he have? Frank needed money, and he needed it fast. He had to take a chance that somehow, fate wouldn't hold his sins against him, and that he'd catch Gatewood on a good day.

"How do I get in touch with Gatewood?" he asked apprehensively.

Lonnie took a breath. "I'll text you his personal cell phone number."

He nodded, forgetting that she couldn't see him. "How come I get the feeling that I'm going to regret this?"

"Because you probably will."

"Then why do it?"

"In the last two years, he's deposited two hundred and forty thousand dollars in Joel Tunson's bank account, and he won't stop buying that old man's silence until he's dead. How far could you go on a quarter of a million or more, Frank?"

He thought about it before answering. "Pretty d.a.m.n far."

"It's a risk, yes. Maybe it'll pay off, maybe it won't. But what do you have to lose? And what could you possibly gain?"

He had everything to lose. Just thinking about it made Frank sick to his stomach.

"Send me that number. Let's get this ball rolling," he said, before hanging up.

We're All Cannibal "So let me get this straight," Lonnie said, standing in the open doorway of her loft wearing panties and a tank top and eating an apple. Phillip Durham had showed up out of the blue like he was a rabbit who'd just popped out of a hat. "You flew all the way from Greece and some hot babe just to take me to lunch?"

He smiled. "I know of no other woman in the world more deserving than you, love."

She couldn't argue with that. Lonnie stepped aside and motioned for him to come in. "Thought you had a key," she said to him.

"Of course I do," he responded. "But it would've been rude to use it."

Phillip kissed her forehead, came inside, and shut the door behind him. "I like what you've done with the place," he said, looking around.

"I didn't do anything," she said, taking another bite of apple. "I just moved in."

He turned to her and smiled. "That must be it. It looks lived in and smells like girl."

"When did you get back to the States?"

He took hold of her hand and led her toward the armoire in the bedroom. "Do you have a pretty dress?" he asked, flipping through hangers.

"Of course I have a pretty dress, lots of them. Why?"

He pulled out an orange number with a wide belt, and a plum-colored pair of suede pumps. "Huh?" He laid out the ensemble on the bed, looking for her approval.

"Um ... creative."