nonetheless.”
“Sounds as though you’ve been judged harshly.”
“I’ve family money and some congressional perks I’m entitled to, so I never need to leave the house again. It will be safer that way. No one can spit on me. Perhaps I’ll let my nails grow like Howard Hughes. Did you know you could get home delivery of groceries on the Internet? I have everything I need...except respect.”
“You aren’t blameless. You could have done things differently that night.”
“Should never have left. My political survival instinct told me not to hang around a dead naked female.”
“Correction. She wasn’t naked when you left her with Toby. She had the bikini bottom on. Right?”
“Right. Leaving seemed a reasonable decision at the time. What a tragic mistake. Now that I’m calm I can reason like that, but at the time....”
“Since you did leave, you should never have paid Toby any blackmail. Why did you?”
“I thought I was in the clear. Then he showed up at my house. I felt guilty. I panicked. I couldn’t risk having any connection to the incident. He guessed I wouldn’t risk exposure even if innocent. I don’t know. I just paid him, that’s all.”
“There’s something else unresolved in my mind, Freddy. When I was at your place trying to get you to come forward, you mentioned you had followed the story in the paper and they played up the fact that her pubic hair was waxed, or shaved. The titillating fact, I think you called it.”
“Yes, I remember our conversation.”
“That interesting bit of information was never released by the police. They held it back on purpose. I checked and it was never in the papers. Not even in the police report. You told me her bikini bottom was never removed while you were there. How did you know she was shaved, Freddy?”
Silence on the phone.
“Freddy...how did you know?”
“She showed me once during the trip.”
“She what!”
“That evening when we were sitting there drinking and laughing in the Marriott lounge. We’d had a few. She was getting high. She glanced around first to be certain no one could see what she was up to. With a devilish smile on her face, she told me to drop my napkin and look under the table...she did it to please me. Isn’t that amazing? I was delighted. Didn’t I mention Candy did that?”
“You mean Betty Jo.”
“Just when she realized she loved me and wanted me, our affair was cut short by that tragic accident.”
“What affair?”
His voice sounded different, “Don’t you understand the heartbreak I suffered. We’d be together right now in this house. We would have had it all if not for that tragedy. I’ll always have Candy.”
“You’ll what?”
“She was naturally reticent at first, but gradually came around as the trip progressed. As she grew to know me, she became more warm and loving.”
“Warm and loving?”
“We had grown close by the time we got to Florida. She had me fooled at the start with her little hard-to-get game. She was clever. But then it became obvious to me. She pretended to reject me as a ploy to heighten the excitement we’d share at the end of our trip.”
“You said you knew you’d never get her. She was unattainable. She was calling the shots. Freddy, you’re babbling somewhere between fantasy and reality.”
“No, no. It was me she wanted. We both were thrilled because we were close to the torrid adventure waiting for us when we got to Ft. Lauderdale. She wanted us to be together all along. She longed for me, but needed to be assured that I would accept her. She agreed to become my mistress after all. She wanted to dance for me. We would have been lovers for years. I’d leave my wife for her. She was so perfect, so gorgeous.”
“You once told me she was plain looking.”
“No, Candy was beautiful. She was a present from the gods.”
“Freddy, you’ve sacrificed everything for a foolish passion.”
“When a beautiful woman opens up to you, and gives you her love. You experience something so marvelous that you can never adequately remember it, yet it can never be taken away.”
Oh, my God! She had it now. She knew what had happened. “You’ve told me all I need to know, Freddy. Goodbye, I never want to talk to you again.”
“I close my eyes and I see her young face and the longing look in her eyes. The soft, sad look of a beautiful woman offering her love and destined to die so young. I’ll never love again. It’s enough to know I’m a rare and fortunate man who once shared love with the perfect woman. Don’t you see? That’s why I had to go back. Candy was right where I left her, still untouched.”
“Freddy, I’m hanging up.”
“She took me, not the other way around. She enveloped me, enclosed me. It was her last desire. She wanted it that way. Candy will always be happy about that. It was the perfect ending to our marvelous adventure together.”
“Yes,” she said, almost in a whisper, the strength had gone out of her voice. “Sex would be a marvelous adventure if it didn’t make some people go crazy.”
Sandy closed her phone and let it fall from her hand. She broke down and fell sobbing across her arms.
The End
About the author:
Rod Hoisington has a background in business and education and lives in Vero Beach, Florida.
The Price of Candy is the second novel in the Sandy Reid Mystery series and is available in paperback from Amazon.
Read and enjoy the first Sandy Reid mystery
One Deadly Sister
*****
Five Star Mystery Novel Rating
Irrepressible protagonist Sandy Reid is living and working in Philadelphia when she gets a life or death call from her estranged brother in Florida—she tells him to go to hell. She doesn't need this. She's holding an old grudge and resents having her life in Philadelphia interrupted. Her brother Raymond isn't looking for trouble, he simply wants to get past his Philadelphia divorce and start a new life in a small Florida ocean side town.
Unfortunately, woman-trouble comes looking for him. He arrives just as someone decides to murder the local gubernatorial candidate. Raymond doesn't have a clue about women and gets seduced and framed. He hasn't bothered with his sister up north for years, but now as a stranger in a hostile town, Sandy is his only hope. After briefly enjoying his misfortune, Sandy reluctantly decides to at least check out her brother's predicament.
This small step leads to an ever-increasing entanglement of deceit, double-cross, and danger, as she can't leave well-enough alone and goes after the real killer in this fast-paced mystery.
This book is available in print at most online retailers
eBook versions available at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/rodhoisington
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