Rita Lakin_Gladdy Gold_01 (14 page)

23

Lust in the Heat

D
on't you just love the name
Fuddruckers?" I say.

"Works for me," says my mystery man.

We have just been seated in this overly bright popular
hamburger hangout and the stranger has promised he'll tell all once we
get our coffee. We drove around in his spiffy 1985 Cadillac 'til we
found this place, and all the while he remained stoically quiet. I can
hardly wait.

He smiles benignly at me as I study him while pretending
to read the menu.

Dignified comes to mind. Built like a teddy bear, the way
I like them. What
am
I thinking? Who
is
he and why am
I
blathering on like this? I feel rattled, and skittish.

The coffee is served by someone who looks young enough to
be my great-granddaughter. Good, I think, now we can get started.

"Do I know you?" I decide to get the old ball rolling.
And he does look familiar.

He takes a sip of his coffee. "We met briefly fourteen
years ago. At a New Year's Eve party at Lanai Gardens. We were all
standing around the pool in Phase Five drinking the obligatory
inexpensive champagne in paper cups."

"Fourteen years ago and not since?"

"Unfortunately, no. But under the circumstances . . ."

Unfortunately? Interesting, that. Now I'm beginning to
realize I am unconsciously mimicking his British accent. "Should I
apologize for not remembering you?"

"Nonsense. I was just one in a dreadfully large group of
people, but you--you were unique. You wore this lovely pink flowery
dress and a matching hat with ribbons. Roses, I believe. I remember
thinking you looked simply fetching."

"Did your wife mind that you thought me fetching?" I
might have been fetching then, but I am fishing now.

He smiles. "I belong to the Jimmy Carter school of
adultery. I lust only in my heart. And rarely. You were one of those
rare occasions. You were sitting alone on a bench, sipping your bubbly
and looking rather pensive. There was an aura about you. . . ."

With a sharp pain, I remember now. It wasn't me being
pensive it was me responding to bone-chilling sadness. It was the
anniversary of my husband, Jack's, death. No matter how many years had
gone by, that date would always remain devastating for me. I would
never get over it. How could I? Now here I was, uprooted, trying to get
through my first New Year's Eve in a place far from home. I felt
totally lost and adrift.

I had been at loose ends when Evvie had called me from
Florida, begging me to fly down from New York and stay with her. Joe
had left her and she was threatening suicide. I forced myself to stop
thinking about myself and focus on her. Came down for a visit and never
left. But that night was hell.

"Jack," I murmur aloud. Moaning in memory of my beloved.
It's been so long since I've allowed myself to think of him.

"So, you do remember," he says, delighted.

"What?" I am having trouble pulling myself back into the
present. "What did you say?"

"I never thought you'd remember my name. It was long ago
and our meeting so brief. I'm awfully flattered. Funny we should meet
like this. Just the other day, my son Morrie happened to mention your
name. You know, the police officer?"

I quickly put it together. "Your name is Jack," I say,
looking closer at this tall, tall man. "Of course. Jack Langford." The
recently widowed Jack Langford, or so I'd heard. But where? And from
whom? The final click. Bella. Who knew his wife in Hadassah.

He almost blushes. He's that pleased.

He reaches his hand out across the table and we shake
formally.

"It's hard to believe, isn't it," Jack Langford says,
"that we've lived in the same place fourteen or so years and have never
occasioned upon each other."

"Well . . . Phase Two and Phase Six . . . We
are
separated by Three, Four, and Five." I sound positively idiotic.

"And speaking of Phase Two, that which you implied in the
bookstore--your friends were murdered?"

We were on safer ground than talking about early lust. If
safer is the right word when dealing with murder. "I'm afraid so."

"And Morrie doesn't believe you?"

I quickly come to his son's defense. "I have no way to
prove my suspicions. It sounded far-fetched to him."

"He always was stubborn. Takes after his father."

"Well, you gave me good advice. I'm going to look at
everybody and see who's behaving differently."

Jack senses that he is upsetting me and changes the
subject. He begins to ask me all sorts of lovely questions about
myself, and I have a lot to ask him, too.

We have all these years of catching up to do and we talk
and talk until I finally realize just how long I've been away. The
girls must be worried.

Even my car feels better after a day away from-- dare I
admit it?--the girls. The new tire makes me feel like I'm driving on
air. C'mon, who's kidding whom?

And just because Jack Langford said hello. No, he didn't
just
say hello; he said he lusted after me. Had been attracted to me.
Intimating that if he hadn't had a wife, he would have made a pass.
Never mind it was fourteen years ago. Very flattering. Alas, wasted,
since I never even knew it. And I was a mere sixty-one then. Truth?
When's the last time
any
man looked at me? As a woman. At what
age did I become invisible? I think this is one of the hardest things
to deal with when getting old. Men no longer look. Not in that same
way. That sly I-can't-wait-to-get-into-your-pants look. Gone forever.
I'll never again feel that extraordinary wild passion of reckless
youth. That's the true unfairness of age. No matter how old, you still
remember it, but you can't have it anymore. Youth belongs to the young.
And what a waste. They don't appreciate how tenuous is this gift, and
how carelessly they abuse it.

So, I'm attracted to someone! I thought I packed that
emotion away in mothballs with my winter coats.

I think about what Jack said to me when he dropped me off
at the garage. "After all, I might have been sprightly back then, but
now I'm just an elderly gentleman. Surely you couldn't be interested?"

"And what am I--a spring chicken?" That was the pathetic
retort I was able to come up with to hide my absolute amazement. I
wanted to jump up and down and say you bet I'm interested, you cuddly
darling, you. But sanity prevailed. Good breeding prevailed.

"Call me!" I shouted after him as he drove away. I could
see him grinning as he
vroomed
off like a teenager in a hot
rod.

"You'd be proud of me and Harriet. We partnered and
together we came up with our first clue." Evvie is jabbering at me even
before I get out of my car.

"Really? Sounds like you girls were busy."

"We talked to Tessie and she remembered something she
found in Selma's apartment when she cleaned up."

"This could be important!"

"She said she found a little piece of wrapper stuck to
the bottom of the dining room chair. She recognized it as a piece of
bag the Meals on Wheels people use to deliver. She didn't think
anything of it at the time. But, now she wondered. She couldn't
remember Selma ever being a customer of Meals."

This was something real. At last. "Then we've got to call
them! They'd have a record of the food going out on that date and who
delivered it to her."

"Way ahead of you, sis. Harriet called. Nobody remembered
anything."

I'm disappointed. But it would explain why Selma would
open her door. The murderer must have knocked and offered her a
delicious meal. I was beginning to see a pattern. Someone offered Selma
food. Selma, who dearly loved to eat. Someone offered Francie chocolate
cake. Someone who knew she loved chocolate. This someone knows us very
well. I shiver as if he just walked over my grave.

And what did Greta's soaped message on my car mean, if
anything at all? Or were they just the ravings of a poor lost soul?

At dinner I tell the girls about the unusual party at the
bookstore. But I do not say one word about Jack Langford.

24

Death by Dumpster

T
he first blazing rays of
Florida sun were about to light up the sky. But in those few moments
while Dawn played coy, a hand scribbled erratically in a whitewash
paint: I SAW YOU KILL 2--YOU DEVIL YOU.

Anxiously, Greta Kronk skittered away from the door,
the small paint can wobbling from her bony wrist. Her heart was
pounding because she knew what a terrible chance she had taken. She
pushed her wild black hair back into the fiercely colored magenta scarf
that encircled her face, and pulled her voluminous lavender dancing
skirts and petticoats around her knees. Were it not for her deceptive
clothes, Greta would look like the emaciated wraith she was. She
glanced up at the sky and feared she had waited too long, that the
light would betray her.

Holding her breath, she moved as quickly as the
clumsy skirts allowed her, around the corner to the far end of Q
building. Again she looked around. It was all right. This was a wall
without windows. She could breathe. Quickly she hid the paint can deep
in the first Dumpster. Now she would attend to her regular early
morning business--searching all the Dumpsters for treasures. She opened
her gunny sack, eager to plunder the riches this morning's trash would
provide. The first thing she found was a twisted soup strainer. Good,
she thought, this I can use.

The killer opened the door of the apartment. With a
few quick strokes of a rag, the damning words were washed away. The
killer also looked around, not really concerned. It was still much too
early for anyone to be up.

Greta was so pleased with her take--a slightly bent
set of plastic dinnerware and a wonderful black wig--that she wasn't
aware she was no longer alone.

She gasped as the killer loomed over her.

"What you want?" she said, trying not to show her
fear. "This my stuff, get your own fluff." Talking was hard for her. It
had been so long since she had spoken to anyone.

"I don't want your
stuff,
you fool--"

"Then go 'way. Don't want play."

"It's not nice to paint on people's doors."

Greta stared, worried, because the killer's hands
were hidden.

"I ain't got paint. . . ." But her eyes betrayed her
as she instinctively looked toward the Dumpster where she had hidden
the can.

"Wanna see what's behind my back?" The hands came
out
with nothing in them. Greta looked confused. Her eyesight was not good.
She didn't notice the thin, colorless latex gloves.

"What did you see, Greta? Tell me!"

Greta moved backwards, but the killer kept pace. Her
eyes looked into eyes that showed no sympathy. She knew she was doomed.

"You know what you're gonna see now?" The killer
pulled her by her hair and dragged her back to the Dumpster. Greta
tried to run, but her feet were pedaling in air.

"I don't tell . . . I not told. I not be so bold. .
.
." she said, gasping.

"Bad news, Greta. No pot roast for you. No chocolate
cake. You love garbage, now eat your last meal!"

The killer pulled a rancid onion from the trash can
and forced it down her throat. "You like your salad? Sorry, no
dressing." Greta gagged, and the food was retched out, but the killer
pushed it in again and held her mouth shut until it went down. "Ready
for your main course?" Her eyes widened and teared as horrible remnants
of foul-smelling food were shoved into her mouth. In her terror, she
was not aware of the powdery substance that was forced in along with a
slimy strand of what had once been spinach.

For a few more minutes she coughed and dry-heaved.
Finally, she stopped struggling--paralysis began to set in. Her body
sank to the ground, as the voluminous skirts cushioned her.

The killer took a moment to retrieve the paint can
from where Greta had hidden it. At the corner of the building the
killer turned and smiled.

"Too bad, Greta, you're about to miss your greatest
literary masterpiece."

Greta's last thought before she lost consciousness
was of a doll she had had as a child in the old country. A gypsy dancer
she could gently fold up into its beautiful gown. Its eyes would close
and the doll would go to sleep. She, too, would now go to sleep at
last. She hoped Armand would be waiting for her and would forgive her
for taking so long.