Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 25

He arrived only two minutes late, and the doorbell worked fine this time. As soon as his thumb hit the button, Roxanna answered. A pair of gold combs drew the auburn hair off her neck. She wore a knee-length, full-skirted silky white dress, strappy gold sandals, and a smile that charged him up inside. She looked terrific.

Seeing that she’d gone to so much trouble made him feel better about the evening ahead. Maybe she looked forward to their date as much as he did.

“Booker,” she said, her perfect eyebrows dipping in a frown, “I made a mistake about this dating thing. It can’t work. It can’t. I’m sorry.”

Now that was a greeting he hadn’t expected. Feeling that way, why had she bothered saying yes? He stood with his mouth open while the heat of anger crept up his neck. Then he closed his mouth, took her hand and dropped a kiss on the back of her fingers.

“Evening, Ms. Larkspur.” The effort to keep the bite out of his voice taxed all his mediation skills. “For a person who’s decided to slam the door in my face, you look incredibly lovely tonight.” He watched the corners of her mouth twitch upward.

“I don’t see any gain in sugar-coating a bitter pill,” she said. “Best to know what you’re swallowing.”

Booker would’ve preferred a little sugar-coating, but she had a point. Yet, there she stood, looking good enough to spread on a bagel.

“Since we’re both dressed up, and the play starts in fifty-nine minutes, and the community theater would undoubtedly appreciate our honoring the reservations, do you think we might discuss this bitter-pill business on the way?”

“As long as we’re straight about the way things are.”

“Well, if we’re being straight, I have to tell you my son decided not to join us.”

“He was invited, though?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then it’s his loss.” She flashed her bright smile, scooped up a white clutch bag from a table beside the door, stepped outside, and turned to lock up.

Booker felt off-balanced by the conversation. The woman had a disorienting manner about her. She sure was full of surprises, like that remarkable dress she wore. Sleeveless, cut low in the back and nipped in tight at the waist with a gold belt, it framed the graceful curve of her back. Not at all old-fashioned. The white silk accentuated her summer tan and a light spray of freckles. From a purely artistic viewpoint, she had the most beautiful skin he’d ever seen. Skin that invited touching.

Booker opened the door of the new Tahoe. Realizing it was a tall step for her size, he gently took her arm to help her up. The skin felt as good as it looked. A flash of shapely thighs made him wonder if she had time to keep up her dancing skills.

“I heard a review of this play on the way over,” he said, grimacing as he squeezed behind the wheel in his too-tight pants. “Seems it previewed last week to a record crowd. The reviewer said the acting was rough in spots, but O. Henry’s wit shines throughout.”

“I like a show that makes me laugh,” she said.

Then silence settled on them like a wool blanket. Booker turned on the radio. Ten minutes down the road, he found his tongue and the part of his brain that made it work.

“How’s the restoration coming upstairs? Looked like wall paint you were wearing on your cheek yesterday afternoon.”

She hesitated. “To tell you the truth, I may have ruined one of my guestrooms.” She picked at a loose thread. “Sometimes I have these wild, penny-pinching ideas, and they seem perfectly reasonable, but after the craziness wears off, I can see the mess I’ve made.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“What’s done is done. The guests arrive tomorrow.” She shook her head. “I swear, sometimes I’m just like chewing gum—”

Booker would’ve laughed if she hadn’t looked so serious. Chewing gum? He tried to make sense of it. Bouncy and sweet?

“—all motion and no progress.” She angled a look at Booker that made him want to straighten his tie. “Maybe you could help. Emaline said you’re a photographer.”

“Aspiring, as they say. Two paying jobs, only one with enough profit to buy more than a good breakfast. I suppose I’m not in it as much for the money, though, as the challenge.”

“I wish I could say that.” She blew out a deep sigh. “Anyway, an aspiring artistic eye is exactly what I need. If you’d take a look at my guestroom, I’d sure feel better, even if thenews is bad. I can take bad news.”

She nodded emphatically. “I can, really. I can. I’ll just say the bathroom flooded. Send the couple to a Holiday Inn in Bryan.”

The way she nodded and frowned at the same time gave Booker an odd feeling. He’d seen someone do that before, though he couldn’t recall who, and the memory bothered him. He cleared his throat.

“I’ll be glad to lend you my eye. But judging by your crowd the other night, the inn should be doing fine in no time.” That is, if she worked smart and didn’t carry too much overhead. A high mortgage, for instance. “You’re smart to watch the budget. In my business-examiner years, I saw almost as many companies go broke from overspending as from underselling.”

Her hands stopped fidgeting. “You worked with businesses before you retired?”

“More or less. Started out a hundred years ago in accounting, drifted into financial audit, and eventually into corporate investigation.”

“And now you’re a photographer.” She smiled brilliantly. “Changing professions takes common sense, determination, integrity, intelligence, optimism, stamina, and in your case, talent. It’s unlikely to find artistry and common sense in one person, but not impossible. Not impossible at all. Once I have all five rooms finished, the money won’t have to spread so far. I won’t have to be so resourceful.”

All in one breath, Booker noted, as she turned on the seat to face him, cheeks flushed, hands fluttering with excitement, tears shining in her eyes. Her mood shifts were damned sudden.

Abruptly, Booker recalled where he’d seen such sudden mood changes. The executive vice president at Investors National Savings had behaved similarly during the investigation.

His disposition had alternated between exhilaration and depression until the morning he shot Booker, then turned the gun on himself. That last morning, the man was deadly calm.

Booker tugged at the knot of his tie, which suddenly felt tight. Borderline personality? Schizophrenic? He didn’t know the medical term, but the executive VP had been scary nuts.

Roxanna was keyed up and worried about her business, but she wasn’t nuts. He hoped she wasn’t. Slowing the Tahoe as they entered College Station, he searched for the address while his mind-chatter continued to distract him. If Roxanna was emotionally disturbed, that threw an entirely new light on her association with Fowler. And since they’d already danced at the edges of the subject, Booker decided to step right in the middle of it.

“I understand Chuck Fowler carried your mortgage and was pressing for payment.”

“No secrets in a small town, are there?” Her voice held a hard edge. “Our agreement was half the down payment up front, the other half in a year. But I’d scarcely had the keys a month when Chuck asked me for more money. I could barely make the regular note. I’d budgeted for the note. But the balance of the down payment is ten thousand dollars. I don’t have it, and I told him so. He said I had friends in Houston who could come up with it.”

“Do you?”

“Possibly. But it’s not up to my friends to pay my bills.”

“I suppose you didn’t get this down-payment agreement in writing.”

“No. The original contract called for the down payment to be paid all at once. But we agreed verbally, then Chuck wrote it, and I signed it. Chuck said he would sign in front of a notary and send me a copy.”

“But the copy never came.” Booker missed the street and slowed to make a U-turn.

“Chuck denied agreeing to the changes. I have only the original signed contract with no alterations.”

“Have you heard from the estate attorney?”

“No.”

And she might not. At worst, she had several weeks, maybe months, before the attorneys sorted out Fowler’s properties and realized she owed half the down payment. If Fowler’s bookkeeping had been at all sloppy, and if Roxanna kept up her monthly installments, that ten-thousand-dollar balance might never come to light.

Booker wished the information wasn’t so incriminating. He knew he should press on and ask what had brought her to Lakeside Estates on Friday morning, but the show would start in sixteen minutes, and they still had to park. Anyway, from what he’d learned, the number of people with reason to kill Chuck Fowler was growing like wild onions, with nobody shedding tears. Just talking about the man had taken all the cheer out of the evening. Booker hoped the play would turn that around.

A sign promoting the theater directed them down a dark alley. They picked their steps carefully along an uneven sidewalk, dodging bricks that had crumbled from the building’s façade. The door, sporting a shiny new dead-bolt lock, showed signs of vandalism. Booker saw the evening spiraling downward fast. But when they finally wound their way through a shabby entrance and heavy black curtains, they found a lobby packed with theatergoers and filled with noisy good humor. He collected their programs then asked Roxanna if she’d like something from the bar.

“A glass of white wine sounds good.”

Ordering the wine, he watched Roxanna move outside to the terrace, and his heart quickened with appreciation. He liked the woman thoroughly, including her ample nose and quirky disposition. She was reading the program when he joined her cradling two over-filled plastic wine glasses.

“Dad! You made it!” Bradley’s shout came from behind Booker.

Startled, Booker spilled the wine, miraculously missing Roxanna’s white dress but splashing her gold sandals.

“Sorry,” Bradley said.

Roxanna inspected her dress. “No harm done.”

“We thought you wouldn’t be here, son.” Despite the rude entrance, Booker couldn’t help beaming as he squatted to wipe off Roxanna’s shoes with paper napkins he’d tucked in his jacket pocket. His two favorite people in the same room: the night was already improving.

“I’m working here,” Bradley said. “Lighting assistant and general techie. I came to tell you there’s a cast party after the show. The manager invited you both.”

“Sounds like fun,” Roxanna said. “Booker, don’t fuss with that. I’ll go into the ladies room and clean them.”

Actually, he was rather enjoying the task. Roxanna had perfect feet with painted toenails. Nice legs, too.

“I got most of it.” He wondered if she was wore anything between the dress and her bare legs, then decided that wasn’t a sensible thing to be thinking right now. He creaked to his feet. “You might want to wipe the insoles. If they’re ruined, I’ll—”

“They’re not ruined. Wait right here.”

“I have to get back,” Bradley said, turning to leave.

Booker stopped him. “You could’ve saved me an afternoon of worry if you’d mentioned your mysterious job was at the theater.”

“I didn’t know if I’d get it.”

Booker nodded. “After the performance, Roxanna and I might stop for a bite. Be glad to have you join us.”

“There’ll be food at the party. And I can show you what I do back there.”

“All right.” Not very private, but a crowd might alleviate that inevitable first-date tension. Non-date tension, Roxanna might say, though she didn’t seem at all tense since arriving here. “We’ll mosey on back after the last curtain.”

Bradley darted away, and Booker flipped through the program. He spied Jeremy Fowler’s name in the credits. The boy appeared in two scenes, also under “assistant director” and “technical assistance.” That cleared up the mystery of where Bradley had met him.

The lights dimmed, signaling show time. Locating the ladies’ room, Booker waited for Roxanna, praying the spilled wine would be his last catastrophe for the night. Tinkling piano music drifted through overhead speakers. When she emerged cheerful and smiling, he breathed easier and they took their seats just as the curtain went up. As the play progressed, Booker compared it with Broadway productions he’d seen, deciding that, overall, it stacked up pretty well. Afterward, the cast lined up in the lobby to greet the audience. Jeremy stood among them, as pale as his mother after removing his stage makeup.

“Congratulations,” Booker said, shaking hands. “Fine acting. You convinced me you were eighty years old as the railway conductor.”

“Thanks!” The kid was too high on success to immediately recognize Booker from their encounter at the lodge. “My first time on a real stage. I mean, except for school. I usually work behind the scenes. Props, sets—”

A wariness crept into the boy’s eyes as he studied Booker’s face. His lips thinned out, and Booker figured he was about to apologize for his brother’s fist. Not wanting to spoil Jeremy’s evening, Booker flashed his warmest smile.

“I hear you met my son. Bradley.”

“The new kid? He’s your son?”

“Don’t hold it against him. He’ll do a good job.”

“He’s fine with lights.”

“It won’t be your last time out front,” Roxanna told him. “You have talent.”

Your father would be proud, Booker wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure it was true. People pushed from behind, so he and Roxanna moved on. When he glanced back, the kid was already shaking hands with the next in line and saying, “Wow, thanks!”

Must be the resilience of youth that enabled the boy to put on such a show when his father had just died. Or maybe stoicism was hereditary. Aaron had seemed collected enough. And Fowler himself had a reputation for being a hard man.

Booker couldn’t help wondering if his own death would have such a fleeting effect on Bradley. The thought saddened him. The Krane father-son relationships hadn’t much history for closeness.

When they’d shaken every actor’s hand and commented on the performance, Bradley urged them into a rollicking throng of tech crew and guests.

“Wait’ll you see the spread of food. Pizza, tacos, guacamole.”

Roxanna entwined her arm with Bradley’s. “I’m as empty as a winter ballpark, but you promised to show us your part in this fine performance.”

“This way, then!” Full of enthusiasm, he led them up a short flight of stairs, fluorescent dots marking the path for actors hurrying along in the dark, then up another flight to a second-floor room that looked down on the stage. “This is where we handle lighting, sound, backdrops, everything mechanical.”

He explained all the knobs and levers, demonstrating how he’d finessed a particularly haunting twilight effect, and Booker recalled a time when he’d tried to explain to his own father the benefit of compound interest. “If that’s what oils your piston, son,” Brad senior had commented, revving his Harley loud enough to break eardrums. Booker wanted to exhibit considerably more interest in Bradley’s work.

“I hope you won’t be upset if we eat and dash,” Roxanna said, when Bradley led them back down to the buffet. “Your father promised to help me with something at the inn, and I couldn’t let him do that without offering coffee and a nice dessert.”

Booker didn’t hear Bradley’s answer, because he was trying to sort out what Roxanna had said. Considering their non-date status, he had expected to end the evening as quickly as possible after the cast party. Once again, the woman surprised him. She sure had a knack for throwing a guy off balance. The intimacy of the inn sounded inviting—not that he planned to take advantage on a first night out.

Surely that wasn’t what she had in mind. Right?

He wished he had more recent experience at this dating business. Officially, of course, they weren’t dating. Roxanna had made that clear. So what were they doing?

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