“ Sherry, what are you doing?” he moaned.
“ If I don’t make it hard he’s going to kill us.”
“ Stop it, Sherry. He’s going to kill us anyway.”
She stopped, “But he said.”
“ He lied.”
The woman turned to look at Sam. “You said.”
“ Your boyfriend is right, I’m going to kill you anyway,” he said. Then he grabbed the kneeling woman by the hair and slit her throat with his razor sharp Bowie knife. She twitched, gagged, then slumped to the floor, drowning in her own blood.
“ Why?” Evan asked.
“ Because Rick Gordon ruined my life.” Then he swung the knife in a great arc and removed Evan Hatch’s head.
Chapter Six
Rick was the last off the plane. He wasn’t in a hurry. He said his good-byes to the flight crew with a smile he didn’t feel, hoisted his shoulders and walked off like a man with nowhere to go.
“ Uncle Rick, over here!”
He looked up, smiled a real smile at the two visions of teenage loveliness that came rushing toward him.
“ Oh no, the Tees,” he, d been calling the twins that since they were toddlers. T for Torry, the oldest by three minutes, and S for Swell. T amp; S, the Tees. Because the girls were identical, Christina gave them unique names.
He dropped his carry-bag, took a girl under each arm.
“ Are you going to stay awhile this time?” Torry asked, “or are you going to pass through without taking us anywhere?” For the last twelve years, every time he came to Los Angeles, he took the twins somewhere big, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, the zoo, or Mexico. The challenge was always to have a better time than the last time.
“ I thought I might take your mother to dinner and leave you two home to wait up.”
“ We have to go someplace good,” Torry pouted.
“ No, we don’t. You take Mom someplace good,” Swell said, shooting her sister a look that said, “Shut up!”
“ Where is your mother?”
“ She’s out front, parked in the red,” Torry said, smiling.
“ That figures.” Rick remembered that Christina had told him once that the reason curbs were painted red was so she could always have a place to park. She paid about five hundred dollars a year in parking fines.
“ How come she didn’t come in with you guys?”
“ A cop was hassling her about parking there, so she sent us in,” Torry said.
“ Did she move the car?”
“ Don’t bet on it. If I know Mom, she started an argument with the poor cop that won’t end till she sees us walking out the door,” Swell said.
“ Your mother is one of a kind.” Rick laughed. The last time he’d arrived in L.A. the twins were gangling girls who went careening through the concourse, causing travelers to take cover to avoid being run down by their rambunctious cascade. Now they were young women.
Squinting as they left the terminal, he curved his lips into a smile. Swell knew her mother, she was indeed arguing with a pair of police officers.
Seeing Rick and her daughters approaching, she smiled, said to the officers, “Okay you win, I’ll move it.”
The policemen, knowing they’d been had, shook their heads as Rick and the girls climbed into the red Toyota convertible.
“ Pretty blondes always get their way,” one of the officers said with a smile on his face.
“ But they shouldn’t.” Rick laughed.
“ But they do,” the other officer said as Christina started the car.
Sitting in the shotgun position with the twins in back, Rick thought about Christina. When they first met she was pregnant and married to one of his best customers, and when her husband died two years later, he was pleased to let her continue buying his product. She paid on time and he had grown to love the twins as if they were his own.
“ Time truly does heal all wounds,” she said, as if reading his mind.
“ That’s what I hear.”
“ You know,” she added, “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Evan all night and kept getting his machine.”
“ When I left he was on his way to have lunch with you know who. Maybe he finally got lucky.”
“ Maybe.” She put a CD into the player. Christina was a devoted Beatle fan and collector, so, for the remainder of the ride to her house in Long Beach, he was treated to forty-five minutes of alternate versions of famous Beatle songs. Like most collectors, she preferred the bootleg versions to the originals.
Three hours later, after they had deposited his things and the twins at her house, they were sitting in a quiet restaurant.
“ How long have you been a vegetarian?” he asked her after the waiter had taken their order.
“ I didn’t say I was.”
“ You ordered the stir fry. I seem to remember you as a hamburger with lots of onions kind of person.”
“ When you get older you begin to confront your own mortality. If giving up meat can give me a few more healthy years, plus help me keep the pounds off, well, it’s a small sacrifice.”
He took in her figure. “You’ve lost quite a bit, haven’t you?”
“ Fifteen pounds.”
“ You look great and may I say you’ve lost it in all the right places,” he said.
“ Why, Rick, I believe you’re flattering me.”
“ I guess I am.”
“ They say that flattery will get you anywhere.”
“ Will it?”
“ Not with the twins at home.”
“ Yeah, the twins,” he said and they both laughed.
For the next three hours they talked about everything from rock and roll to the state of the economy, staying well away from any more talk of a sexual or flirtatious nature, but as they were leaving the restaurant, he wrapped his arm around her waist and she answered back by wrapping her arm around his.
They made small talk on the short ride back to her place, each noticing a new kind of tension building a gap between them, and each wondering if it could ever be closed. Their years of friendship-instead of making their new-found awareness of each other’s sexual identity an easy, natural thing-made them kind of awkward with each other.
Rick pulled her into his arms as they were mounting the porch steps, his lips on hers before she had time to react. She responded by opening her mouth and receiving his tongue. The kiss was passionate and long.
“ Whoa,” she said, stepping back, “I need air.”
“ I don’t know what came over me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“ Don’t be, I’m not complaining. I’m just trying to get used to the idea.”
“ Well, what do you think?”
“ I think I like it, but I need a little time.”
“ I understand.” He also needed time and was thankful for her level head. “The girls left the lights off,” he said.
“ I think they wanted us to have a little time alone in the dark.”
“ Really?”
“ Yeah and seeing that they’re out, I think we should take advantage of it.” She wrapped her arms around him, pulled him to her. This time she initiated the kiss.
When they broke away after the long kiss he said, “I think it’s time to go in, the girls are probably waiting up.”
“ Sitting on the other side of the door laughing, if I know them,” she said.
She turned, inserted her key and opened the door.
The living room was lit by a soft bulb, casting soft shadows from an amber shaded Tiffany lamp.
“ I read by that lamp, those imps changed the bulb.”
“ There’s a note.” Rick laughed, pointing to a sheet of lined paper taped to the glass lamp shade. He crossed the room and removed the message. “Listen to this,” he chuckled. “Mom, we’re spending the night at Donna’s. You guys have fun.”
“ Those brats.” She tried to hide her laughter.
“ What do we do now?” he asked.
“ How about we go out to the kitchen and have a drink, like two friends?”
“ Okay.” He followed her through the swinging door into the kitchen.
“ What’ll it be?” she asked, “more cabernet or Bailey’s and coffee?”