Defiled Page 16

  I had to hunt for Jamie’s address, written on a scrap of paper two years ago, because I had never been to her apartment and hadn’t updated her contact information in my phone. Luckily, I found the note, plugged her address into Google Maps, and headed for Tampa. The GPS took me north on Dale Mabry, toward Raymond James Stadium, and then east to a spot between Himes and MacDill Avenues, not far from Macfarlane Park. It was a quiet neighborhood with trees and shrubs and kids on bikes and skateboards. The apartment complex was a bit long in the tooth but seemed well kept. Jamie’s home was on the second floor, overlooking the parking lot.

  When she answered the door, we kissed cheeks and I handed her a bottle of Jordan Chardonnay.

  “Thanks,” she said. “We’re having meatloaf, but I’ll save this for next time.”

  She told me I should help myself to a glass of Kendall Jackson Cabernet or a beer from the refrigerator. I opted for the beer and followed her out the other side of her apartment to a small balcony facing a greenbelt. On the way, I passed through rooms that were neat and furnished in a style that could be called “I’m all grown up now.” Gone were the posters and makeshift furnishings of the college apartments I had last visited.

  When we were seated on plastic outdoor furniture, she said, “I’m glad you came.”

  “Me too. I hope we can do this often now.”

  Jamie and Carrie didn’t like each other. After one year of marriage, Jamie had stopped attending Tomkins family events, always courteously declining invitations with work or illness excuses. “It might ruin the occasion if I ripped her face off in front of her family,” Jamie had told me. As a result, the frequency of our meetings had diminished to an occasional lunch. I was never more than twenty miles north in Cortes County or twenty miles to the south in Pinellas County, but I may as well have been on another continent.

  “How’s the divorce going?” she said.

  An icebreaker if I’d ever heard one. “It’s become nasty. Last spring she installed snooping software on my laptop so she can read my email. But I discovered it, and the day I moved out of the country house I installed a snooper on her machine so I can see everything she does.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “I guess, but it’s very helpful. I send fake emails to my lawyer and watch her reaction. She’s quite sensitive to charges of infidelity, but I don’t have any proof. The courts won’t let me subpoena her phone records.”

  “Sounds like you’re both making it nasty. It’s just about money, isn’t it?”

  It strikes me that people who have no money—like Jamie—can be very casual about it, can pretend money is unimportant.

  “For her, yes. For me it’s more about fairness.”

  Jamie looked at me the way most rational people look at people who believe in astrology. “Blah, blah, blah. Just pay her off and move on.”

  “I’m not going to let her rip me off. They broke into my house and stole my financial records, records that prove Carrie’s spending habits.”

  Jamie rose to refill her wineglass. “Can I bring you another beer?”

  “Sure.” Talking to her back as she walked into the kitchen, I said, “Last Friday they broke in and stole my pistol so I’d be unarmed.”

  That stopped her. She whirled around. “Did you report it to the police?”

  “Of course.” That made her feel better, too much better, so I said, “Connie says the whole family is conspiring to murder me if the divorce doesn’t go their way.”

  Jamie handed me my beer and sat back down.

  “Bunch of crazy crackers,” she said dismissively. “Have you reported the threats to the police?”

  “What good would it do?”

  Jamie gave me the half-smile mothers give their children instead of saying “Duh!” “There would be a report on file. For the detectives, if anything did happen.”

  “So the cops can solve my murder? That doesn’t do me much good. I need help defending myself, thought maybe I could count on you.”

  “You didn’t want me to be a cop, now you want me to help you unofficially? Go to the authorities, Dad.” Anger rode just below the waves.

  “It scares me that you’re a cop, but that has nothing to do with my situation. The murder plot is just hearsay, nothing useful to the police.”

  “You shouldn’t be talking to Connie.”

  “She’s my only source of information, to keep me safe. Reminds me to tell you I’m selling the beach house. It’s too dangerous to stay there.”

  She bounced to her feet. “Here it comes. You’re running away again.”

  “No, it’s a safety issue.” Jamie wore a skeptical frown. “And a money issue. I’m moving onto the boat until my company goes public. If the IPO goes well and the divorce doesn’t destroy me, I’ll buy something better. If things go wrong, I can’t afford two houses and alimony and all the other debts.”

  “I’d like to believe you, Dad, but you’ve established a pattern of behavior, as they say.”

  She led me into the kitchen, where we made our plates of meatloaf, garlic mashed potatoes, and mixed peas and carrots. Then we sat at her round glass-topped dining table. The meatloaf was excellent, and I told her so.

  “Mom’s recipe. You always liked it.”

  “She taught you to make it?”

  “Yes. I learned a lot of things when you weren’t around.” She didn’t say it in a mean or provocative way. It was just a fact.

  “Okay,” I said, and stopped eating. “Let’s admit that there’s a big pink elephant in the room, and we can’t ignore it any longer. I looked forward to coming over tonight because it gives me a chance to apologize for not being around enough as you were growing up. I’m sorry, Jamie.”

  After judging my sincerity, she said, “Apology accepted. I know you had to travel, Dad, but it was extreme. We weren’t a family. We were just people you mailed checks to until you divorced Mom.”

  “I did what I had to do to support you guys.”

  “We always had enough money, but we never had enough ‘Dad.’ I know it’s selfish, but I wanted two parents who lived together and cared about me.”

  “We waited until you were old enough to deal with it.” I tried not to sound argumentative.

  “A child is never old enough to deal with it. You made matters worse by toying with Mom’s affections. She kept her life on hold waiting for you.”

  “I see that now.” She had me on the run.

  “As soon as you divorced Mom, you shipped me off to college and you left for Texas.”

  “Only for a while. I was back by the time you graduated.”

  “Back to Atlanta. By then Mom had moved to Florida, and I didn’t know where I belonged. As soon as I moved to Atlanta, you moved down here. Then you met Carrie, and I never saw you again.”

  Now I was in full-retreat mode. “I hope I can make it up to you now.”

  “There’s always hope. We’re all in the same state, and you’ll be rid of Carrie soon. So if you hang around, maybe we can get to know each other.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “I won’t move again, Dad.”

  “I know that.”

  “And Mom is strictly off-limits.”

  “We have to talk about that.”

  “No we don’t!” she screamed.

  That stopped me. If we were going to be honest with each other, it had to start now. “She’s left Wesley, and she’s staying with your grandmother. Did you know that?”

  “No, no, no. You guys are killing me, Dad!”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it. Apparently there’s been trouble in that paradise too.”

  She gave me a hard look, shaking her head and causing her auburn hair to sway from one side to the other like a grass skirt on a Hawaiian dancer. “I know she wants you, but do you want her?”

  “I shouldn’t have divorced her. That’s what started this ugly sequence of events.”

  “That’s not the same as wanting a permanent relationshi
p. Permanent, Dad.”

  “We’re not that far along. I just wanted to be honest with you.”

  “So you’re fooling around again but haven’t talked about the future?”

  Anger enveloped me, and I couldn’t completely shake it off. Everyone seemed to feel that my personal life was fair game for criticism. “Whether we’re fooling around or not is none of your business. We are talking and we’ll reach a mature decision and it will be our decision.”

  Now her face twisted into a wry smile. “Sure. I guess I should be happy you bothered to tell me.”

  It was awkward for a while as we cleared the dishes and started the dishwasher.

  Then Jamie said, “Why did you dump Susanne? She was strange, but she was nice and smart. If you had stayed with her, you’d have avoided these problems with Carrie.”

  I shrugged. “Susanne was like medicine I took to get well after your mom and I divorced. When I was well, I didn’t need the medicine.”

  “That’s a pretty crappy way to look at relationships, Dad.”

  She had used the evening to give me a whipping behind the woodshed. “Wrong choice of words. Susanne was a nice part of my life, but I didn’t think she was the woman I should be with forever.”

  Jamie gave me a pass with a shrug. Neither of us was quite sure how to end the evening, and it was obvious we were both uneasy. To fill time, I went to the refrigerator for another beer.

  “Two’s the limit, Dad. You have to drive.”

  She was serious; cop on duty.

  “Good advice. Listen, I had a terrific evening and—”

  “Are you interested at all in what’s happening in my life?”

  “I wasn’t going to pry.”

  “It’s not prying, Dad. It’s showing an interest.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. “Yes, I’m interested. Do you need anything?”

  “You mean money? No, Dad, I can afford myself. You and Carrie can fight over the money.”

  I needed more practice at this. “So what else is happening?”

  “Nothing, but thanks for asking. I have friends, but none with benefits. Ha ha!” I chuckled along with her. “I recently broke up with a guy I was seeing. A cop. Cops—male cops—are all alike. Their badge and their gun are substitutes for masculinity and a healthy ego.”

  “Compensating.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s called compensating. Firearms, Corvettes, badges, and uniforms. They’re compensations for other shortcomings.”

  “And would collecting younger women be how you compensate, Dad?”

  I suppose. Glenda was eight years my junior, Carrie fourteen. Susanne was two full decades younger. Following that pattern, I’d soon be dating a teenager.

  We hugged and promised to see each other again soon. We were well intentioned. As I shuffled across the parking lot, I thought I now knew how Catholic penitents felt after confessing their sins to a priest—relief, mixed with the vain hope that the little ceremony actually worked. My soul didn’t feel cleansed after confessing my sins to Jamie; it felt soiled and pitted by its encounter with the unvarnished truth.

  Not wanting to be lulled into a false sense of security, however, that night I slept in the guest stateroom again, kept the Beretta loaded and cocked on the ledge beside me, and quaked when the boat rocked in its slip.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  At first light on Thursday, I rolled out of the sack, performed my bathroom ritual, and brewed a cup of coffee. Today I would meet Glenda to hide out for the weekend, à la Bonnie and Clyde style, so I had to pack a bag.

  Glenda had suggested we go to Asheville, North Carolina, in the mountains, for a romantic dalliance, and that had unleashed a waterfall of unpleasant memories. The Tomkins family had taken a group vacation to Asheville in the spring, and it had been a disaster. While the rest of the family stayed in one large house, Carrie and I had rented a cabin for ourselves so we could hide our marital problems. One night, after dinner with the family, we had returned to our cabin and changed into bedclothes. Carrie found True Blood on TV and settled in for a dose of mommy porn. I sat beside her and tried to get her interested in real-life sex. Although Carrie forbade me to surf for porn, she had watched the Twilight movies, the True Blood series, and read Fifty Shades of Grey and both sequels.

  It annoyed me that she’d rather indulge in fantasies than have a real sex life with me, so I tried to melt her icy exterior, but Carrie rebuffed me and became infuriated at my advances. Frustrated, I had stood up to leave the room and said, “If you ever get the urge to be a real wife, let me know.”

  “Alright! If it means that much to you, go ahead and do what you want!” She had pulled up her white cotton nightgown, pulled down her white cotton panties, and spread her legs. That’s how I discovered the Brazilian wax job. And for whom had she done that bit of landscaping?

  If I could avoid it, I would never go to Asheville again. Disappointed, Glenda invited me to spend the weekend with her at her mother’s house instead. As I packed, Tony called my cell phone. I put it on speaker and set it on the dresser so my hands were free.

  “I just got an update from de Castro,” Tony said.

  Carrying clothes from the dresser to the bed, I said, “More bad news?” I went to the closet and grabbed jeans and shorts.

  “She’s going to file a motion to dismiss your countersuit. De Castro also said we’d be sorry if the case goes to trial.”

  Piling the last of my clothes onto the bed, I said, “Best thing I’ve heard all day. Means we’ve struck a nerve.”

  “The judge will dismiss your countersuit if you don’t come up with some evidence of Carrie’s infidelity.”

  Double-checking the clothes I had gathered, I decided against socks. I hated socks. “I’m working on it.”

  “Naked pictures and hotel receipts, Randle. Nothing less.”

  I stuffed the last clothes into my suitcase. “I get it. What about Puralto?”

  “Got Fred doing a background check.”

  It appeared I had everything I needed for the weekend. “When’s the Baker Act hearing?”

  “Tomorrow at nine a.m. Are you out of town?”

  “On my way. Call me with the results.”

  Tony promised he would call.

  After I zipped up my bag I called Officer Brittany Williams at the Dolphin Beach police department. She said the little department was overworked with serious crimes but that a detective should call within “a couple of days” if no higher priority cases were booked in the interim. Right.

  Before I could get out the door and on the way to Lakeland, Jane Whitehead called and said she had a buyer for me.

  “How much will it cost me?”

  “You’ll have to put forty-five thousand dollars into the deal.”

  “Does that include your commission?”

  “Yeah, that’s everything.”

  “When can we close?”

  “Friday the 9th of October work for you?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  To fund the deal, I would cash the CD I had managed to keep out of Carrie’s hands. The arithmetic worked nicely—the remaining five thousand dollars would go to Tony to cover my legal expenses.

  Before World War II, Ruth’s home, on the eastern edge of Lakeland, had been a rooming house for travelers making the then arduous trek from the Central Florida orange groves to the big city of Tampa. The white wood-frame structure stood two stories tall, with eight small bedrooms and one shared bathroom on the second floor and large communal rooms on the ground floor. Built long before fiberglass insulation and central heat and air were common, the house could be stifling in the summer and surprisingly cold in the winter. One year a cold wave had penetrated the South, and as we packed the car in Atlanta with Christmas presents, the thermometer hovered near zero. We—Glenda, Jamie, and I—were thrilled to be heading farther south to what we imagined would be a warm, if nontraditional, Florida holiday, but we did not outrun the cold wave. On Christmas Da
y, it was nineteen degrees in Lakeland. Shivering, we wrapped ourselves in blankets to open presents before we climbed into our car and dashed back to our properly heated Atlanta home.

  As I wound through the grove of pecan trees that guarded the driveway, I saw Glenda in the swing on the front porch—she’s hard to miss with all that red hair. As I parked, she came down the steps to meet me. She was smoking.

  “Are you nervous?” I said.

  “A little.”

  I gave her a bear hug. “It’ll be okay. I don’t leave my socks on the floor, and I put the toilet seat down.”

  “It’s three days together in the same room, Randle.”

  “I lived with you for eighteen years, so I know what I’m getting into.”

  “Don’t you ever get nervous?”

  “Not around you.”

  “And do you always say the right things?”

  “It helps to be with the right woman.”

  “See?” She heaved a sigh. “Alright, let’s go have lunch with Momma.”

  I followed her into the house and admired my roommate. Today her hair was pinned up, and she wore a sleeveless blouse and modest shorts that exposed her long, shapely limbs. Around her neck was a fragile necklace with a small pendant holding a semiprecious stone that might have been aquamarine or topaz. Sandals finished Glenda’s ensemble and revealed pretty feet with blue toenails. To me, blue said, I’m unique and have unusual tastes.

  Once again, Ruth extended a warm Southern hospitality I didn’t really deserve after dumping her daughter seven years ago. After a lunch of cold cucumber salad, cold macaroni salad, and cold potato salad, washed down by iced tea so sweet my teeth ached, we repaired to the massive sitting room and talked about the good ol’ days, carefully avoiding anything controversial or embarrassing. Soon Ruth nodded off in her recliner, and Glenda joined me on a fifty-year-old burgundy velour couch.