Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) (3 page)

Poisonous snakes and alligators were not
JD’s idea of bosom buddies. He paged through the website’s section on the
district’s flora and fauna. It didn’t make much sense. There were just as many
deadly hazards in the Gulf—maybe more—but for some reason he had never been
afraid of sharks or rays or even the jellyfish that swarmed in schools and more
than once had left him with painful stings.

Leaving the obligatory section praising the
district’s natural resources, JD went on to read tidied-up biographical
information that included a glossy set of photos arranged with undeniable
skill. No amateurish snapshots here. There was Winstead, smiling with some
constituents, shaking hands with the governor, posing next to his campaign bus
with Lanie at his side.

Fuck, the man looked pleasant enough,
slender with gray at the temples of his thinning light-brown hair. But standing
there by Lanie, her husband looked old enough to be her father. Winstead’s bio
text revealed his age—forty-nine—which meant that, mathematically at least, he
could have a son or daughter her age.

Reading further, JD found that Winstead was
an attorney whose office was in Plant City, and that he no longer practiced law
but worked full-time for his constituents.

Sure. More likely the senator worked
full-time for himself and for his constituents only when there was a
press-worthy issue likely to serve him well come election time. JD skimmed the
particulars of Winstead’s background—a Plant City native, born and bred, who
loved helping children and old ladies—righting wrongs done to the “little
people” in his district.

The senator gave credit to Bert Davies, a
behind-the-scenes political kingmaker, for helping him to win his first
elective office. JD hadn’t thought much of Winstead before, but seeing the
senator’s name linked with Davies made him see red. His blood practically
sizzled when he read that the senator credited ol’ Bert, whose grasping paws
were rumored to be in almost every dirty deal in the county, with introducing
him to “his precious wife.”

According to the bio, Bert had brought the
then-candidate’s attention to a poor but academically promising girl—Lanie—who
was about to complete an associate’s degree at the local community college. It
had been love at first sight, and Wayne had married Lanie within days, becoming
her mentor and financing the rest of her education.

JD could tell an ad agency snow job when he
saw one, and that described the senator’s website to a T. Leaving the site, he
decided to confine his research to media archives, where he figured he’d be
more likely to learn truth instead of propaganda. Finding nothing online to
cast new light on what about Lanie’s situation might be causing her distress,
he shut down the computer after a couple of hours and headed home.

* * * * *

On Saturday morning, Lanie wound her way
through the Gulf hammock on State Road 24, her only tangible connection to JD
the wrinkled napkin she’d laid on the passenger seat beside her. For the last
hour she’d mentally rehearsed what she had to tell him before they could
proceed with the relationship they’d begun the week before in very different
surroundings.

Today the wind blew in cold gusts, making
her car shake on the narrow roadway whenever a passing vehicle rumbled by. On
either side of the blacktop road, sea grass rippled, a golden sheaf over
marshland different yet similar in many ways to the Everglades between Naples
and the Key West highway.

Houses built on stilts reminded her that on
occasion this road was covered by encroaching water, but she reassured herself
that now, in late November, hurricane season had passed. This was a part of
Florida she’d never seen before, nothing like the luxurious beachfronts farther
south or the urban sprawl that was even now impinging on the rural inland
farmland where she’d grown up.

JD had seemed fully at home at the Key West
resort—even more so in Bennie’s Place, surrounded by the constant activity
attendant on the home of Florida’s Thirteenth Circuit. Unlike her, he seemed to
feel at home wherever he was.

The man reeked of class, whether in the
dark, hand-tailored suit he’d worn on Thursday, a pair of beachcomber shorts
and a ragged T-shirt—or nothing at all.

She didn’t, and she realized it. Wayne had
taught her something about fashion so she wouldn’t shame him. She knew how to
dress, which fork to use at a meal, even when to speak and when to stand
demurely silent. But that didn’t mean she had class, the kind that a body could
only get by being born to it.

Could she hold on to her secrets? Save
herself from the shame of revealing where she’d come from and what she’d done
to get where she was now?

No. She could lie with ease to strangers,
fool them into thinking she was someone she was not. She couldn’t do that with
JD, though. Not if she wanted more than an occasional fuck, more than just the
physical release she’d held in check for so long.

She did want more. She wanted to be not
only JD’s lover but his friend. To be less would mean she was no better now
than she’d been before she had made her unholy pact with Wayne and Bert.

As she crossed the narrow bridge onto the
cluster of islands that made up Cedar Key, Lanie felt as though she were about
to take an irrevocable step back into her distant past in the hope of finding a
brighter future.

I’m going to tell him the whole sordid
story of Lanie Trudell and pray he will still want me. I can’t lie and live in
constant fear that Bert will decide to carry through with his threats.

From the porch of his cabin, JD spotted
Lanie’s Honda as it crossed the bridge and slowed as though she was checking
her map before proceeding. She’d be here in a few minutes but it couldn’t be
soon enough to suit him.

He stood and walked out to the curb to meet
her, directing her to park in the detached single-car garage that was really no
more than a shed where he used to keep a small open fishing boat. He figured
that having her car out of sight would make her feel more secure. It galled him
still, her insistence on keeping him a deep dark secret.

Today he’d make her talk, tell him about
the life she’d apparently been living only on a figurative screen—a pretty
scene that had little substance in truth. In fact.

He met her at the base of the short stairs.
“Come on inside. I picked up some local specialties down at the restaurant by
the bridge.”

More than anything he wanted to take her in
his arms and wipe the troubled look from her eyes, but he satisfied himself
with giving her a quick hug and a peck on the cheek before settling her at the
rough-hewn kitchen table where he’d set out cartons of piping-hot oyster stew
and packets of little round crackers.

“You’ve hardly eaten a bite,” JD observed
as he took up the remnants of their lunch and set a mug of coffee in front of
her.

It was almost impossible but Lanie made
herself look him in the eye. “I don’t have much appetite now. How could I, when
I’m dreading what you’ll think of me after I tell you what’s going on and why?
Maybe afterward…”

JD reached across the table and took her
hand. “Nothing you can say will make a difference in how I feel. Nothing will
make me not want to be your lover.”

If only that were true.
“I wasn’t always a lawyer.”

He laughed at that. “I wasn’t either.
Neither were any of our colleagues, as far as I know. We all had to start
somewhere, Lanie.”

She wrapped her fingers around her mug as
though drawing strength from the heat. “That’s true but not everybody grew up
in a rotting shack next to a strawberry field. Or got raised, if you can call
it that, by a daddy who pickled himself in too many bottles of rotgut vodka
after her mother dumped her on him.”

JD nodded. “You don’t have to go through
the basics about your childhood, sweetheart. It’s on the senator’s website for
all to see. You grew up poor, married Winstead when you were just twenty years
old, and the senator helped you to finish college and law school. You can try
to scare me off all you want but it’s not going to work. I care about who you
are now, how you make me feel alive again.”

“Most everything on that website is a pack
of lies and half-truths. To my shame, I went along with the charade for eight
years, figuring it was a reasonable price for me to pay for my schooling and a
quick escape from squalor and poverty.” Lanie paused, considering what else she
had to say. “If that were all of it, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, dreading
the way I’m sure you’ll feel when you know the whole, unvarnished story about
Lanie Trudell Winstead.”

“Don’t make assumptions about how I’ll
feel. For God’s sake, Lanie, give me a little credit. I’m not going to condemn
you for doing things you had to because of circumstances you couldn’t help.”

“Where do you want me to start, then? Don’t
you dare try to say you won’t think less of me because of the choices I’ve
made. I can’t believe that.”

“How about starting at the beginning?” If
it weren’t for his supportive smile and the serious look in his eyes, she’d
have thought he was mocking her.

She breathed deeply, trying to ignore her
surroundings, the throbbing pulse in her neck, even the tempting man now
touching her hand, lending her the necessary strength to make the troubling
journey into her past.

“I was a nobody as a kid—a ragged little
girl who didn’t belong, not to the other white kids who had decent parents and
nice homes and not even to the migrant workers’ children, most of whom at least
had their parents’ love. Damn it, though, I was determined I wouldn’t always be
the object of pity and derision.

“I studied hard, worked picking berries and
tomatoes and sometimes lima beans in the fields close to home. While other kids
went off to college in Gainesville and places even farther out of reach for me,
like Boston College and Princeton, I got a scholarship to Hillsborough
Community College. When I was about to finish my associate’s degree, I realized
that the only way I saw I could make enough money to go on to college and law
school was by working at this club near my house—a place called Pussycat
Paradise. It was a strip club on I-4 where truckers used to go for beer and to
watch the shows.”

JD frowned. “I’m sorry you had to do that,
sweetheart, but there’s no reason to be ashamed. You did what you had to do.
What does this have to do with the senator, though?”

“I’ll have to start from the beginning.
This won’t be a neat summation like I’d try to prepare for a jury, so please
forgive me for rambling.” Lanie got up from the table and looked out the
kitchen window at the wintry sand dunes and freeze-burned sea grape bushes.

“I couldn’t wait to escape my childhood.
Somehow, some way I was determined to get away from it all—the tumbledown
shack, my drunken old man and his no-account pals. I’d come so damn far, just
days now from getting that associate of science diploma and escaping the cruel
teasing I’d been enduring from classmates for as long as I could remember. I’d
never have to listen to them laugh at my thrift store clothes or make fun of
the rusty old bicycle that I was so careful to lock up as though anybody might
want to steal it.

“Everybody thought I was nothing but white
trash and that I was crazy to think I could escape my destiny of following in my
parents’ footsteps. I’d show them, though. I was different. I got a bad start
in life but by God I wasn’t trash. I was going to get ahead and I didn’t much
care what I had to do to make that happen.

“One afternoon after class I was sitting
out on the rotten porch steps looking at the empty bottles Pop kept tossing into
the yard. The scrawny black mama cat I used to feed came up for some attention,
so I scratched under her chin. I liked it when that cat rewarded me with a
loud, contented-sounding purr.

“It doesn’t take much to make a cat happy
but I wanted way, way more. As the sun set and it got dark, I heard the sounds
of speeding traffic on I-4. I’d seen the garish, flashing lights before but
hadn’t really noticed them much until that night, those lights that promised
paradise to passing truckers.

“‘Hot Pussies,’ the sign promised as
human-shaped neon cats danced in the background on the billboard, animated
temptations to lure lonely men far from home. I watched that sign for a long
time.

“I studied it hard, seeing it with a sense
of inevitability. Had I been missing the opportunity that had flashed in those
glittering lights every night for as long as I could remember?

“As I sat there petting that mama cat, I
asked myself if that club could be the opportunity for me. Could I could earn myself
a future by using my body—the same one that elicited catcalls and lewd
propositions from my classmates and passersby on the Plant City streets?

“Why not? I asked myself. Sure, I can come
up with plenty of reasons now that I shouldn’t have done it, but back then I
was desperate. So desperate that I started out on a path that I‘ve been
following for eight long years. Until last week when Wayne and I agreed to put
an end to the joke that is our marriage.

“JD, the charade began one night a couple
of months after that, the night that Pussycat Paradise burned to the ground.”
Lanie shuddered, not certain she could or should go on. Surely by now she’d
disgusted him to the point that he’d want nothing to do with her.

JD, who had been sitting at the table, passively
listening, rose and came to her, lifting her chin and cupping it in one big
hand. “You did what you felt you had to do, sweetheart. You have nothing to be
ashamed of.”

“Oh, but you haven’t heard it all.” Oh no,
the best—or worst—was yet to come. For eight years Lanie had tried to forget
that fateful night. Now she had to recall it in all its shameful detail and
find a way to admit it to this man she could so easily love. “After I’ve told
you the rest, I won’t blame you if you hate me.”

* * * * *

She remembered that night as though it were
yesterday. The August heat had been killer, even hotter and more humid than
usual. Storm clouds gathered in the western sky, hanging over Tampa’s skyline
like a promise of coming retribution.

Retribution for the decision she was about
to make.

She was going to do it. Yes, it was wrong,
but she wouldn’t give up her dream. Not for the eight hundred measly dollars
that stood between her and a year’s college expenses at University of South
Florida in Tampa.

Eight hundred dollars. Less than what I
paid for the Christian Louboutin pumps I bought last week at Neiman Marcus.
Then, though, eight hundred dollars had seemed like a fortune…

The most she’d calculated that she could
earn dancing in one night, even one when business was brisk, was five hundred
dollars—and that was a very optimistic estimate. More likely she’d make less
than half that after paying the bouncer, the DJ and the waiters. There was just
one way to get what she needed.

She’d hesitated. But then she’d made herself
buy in to the idea that hooking was just a skip and jump away from stripping,
as one of her coworkers liked to say.

A blast of cold air hit her as she opened
the door to the strip club where the manager kept the air-conditioning cranked
up so high that the place felt like a refrigerator. From the number of cars and
trucks she’d seen in the parking lot, it looked as though the place would be
busy tonight. That was good. The more customers came to the club, the better
shot she had at making that money.

Trying not to think too much about what
she’d have to do to earn it, she sat in front of a cracked mirror in the
dressing room and put on the makeup that transformed what she thought of as an
ordinary female face into the brunette Barbie doll look that most of the
customers seemed to go for—thin, arched brows, kohl-lined eyes, flushed cheeks
and full, pouty lips. With her hair up in a simple ponytail, the makeup looked
out of place, but when she took her hair down and it fell in a riotous cloud of
dark curls, she had to admit she looked the part she was about to play.

She opened her locker, pulled out a
rhinestone-studded drawstring bag and checked its contents. A clean towel, some
antibacterial wipes, a handful of condoms, packaged cock rings for customers who
needed help keeping it up, all there. Reaching back inside the locker, she
found another bag that held a brand-new dildo, padded handcuffs, a cock-shaped
gag and a butt plug that she’d picked out at the club’s toy store.

According to Brandi, one of her coworkers,
the customers who wanted to use toys upstairs were usually willing to pay well
for the added convenience of having them handy. Every last dollar of profit on
the toys would help her to reach the necessary eight hundred.

Lanie stripped off her bottoms and applied
sparkly lotion to her freshly shaved crotch before stepping into a thong that
she was certain would have gotten her arrested if she’d worn it on the beach.
She pulled off her T-shirt and rouged her nipples, inspecting the silver-plated
rings that hung from them and tugging on them to make the flesh elongate and
pucker. The customers liked doing that every time they thought the bouncers
weren’t looking, almost as much as they seemed to get off fondling her big
boobs, which she also slathered with the glitter lotion.

Glancing up at the clock, she shrugged into
the see-through black negligee she wore to start her act. After wearing
stilettos every night for the past couple of months, her feet no longer
protested when she shoved them into her black patent hooker heels and sashayed
out on stage to take her place at the pole.

Tonight she’d make that eight hundred
dollars. She’d make it even if she had to go upstairs and suck and fuck
customers from now until dawn.

* * * * *

Maybe she could stop there, admit to JD
that she’d intended to sell her body for cold hard cash. After all, in the end
she hadn’t actually played out the hooker part the way she’d intended.

In her heart she knew that wouldn’t work,
because if Bert decided to ruin her for backing out of the agreement she and
Wayne had made, he wouldn’t leave out the most damning parts.