She gave her a minute.
“The top drawer of my dresser. The high chest is his, the wide low one is mine, and the top left-hand drawer—”
“Three hundred dollars,” Missy said. “I already found it, I wanted to see if you’d tell me about it. Now the second half of the test. Pass this part and you won’t have the icepick to worry about, and that’s a promise. There’s more money here somewhere, money your husband would want to keep handy. Now where do you suppose that might be?”
There was a locked drawer in the kneehole desk downstairs in the living room. He’d never let Angelica see what was inside it, but if he had money stashed anywhere, that was where she thought it might be.
Angelica didn’t know where he kept the key, and she didn’t waste time looking for it. She figured a desk drawer wasn’t exactly Fort Knox, and a hammer and a screwdriver got her into it in hardly any time at all.
The drawer held a revolver and a box of shells, along with various legal documents; she left all of that untouched and went straight for the cash. There was a stack of it, all hundreds, and she took her time and counted it. It came to $3,800, a huge score, enough to keep her going for a long time.
Back upstairs she said, “Can you believe he kept his gun in a locked drawer? Real handy if somebody breaks in. But you were right, that’s where he kept his cash.”
Angelica was saying something about jewelry, but she didn’t want to hear it. She had the money and that was all she wanted. And she didn’t want to hear anything else the woman might say, didn’t want her begging to be let loose. She’d prepared a square patch of duct tape earlier, when she’d bonded the woman to her husband, wrist to wrist and ankle to ankle, and now she slapped the gag over Angelica’s mouth, cutting her off in mid- sentence.
“Sorry,” she said, “but I want to talk now, and I don’t want you interrupting. I lied to you before. Well, lots of times, but when I told you and Brady about being an orphan. Which I am, but I lied about how I got that way. See, that’s what the cops thought happened, and how they explained it to me, but what they didn’t know is I shot my mother, and then I called my father at the office and told him to come home, and when he did I shot him, too. And
She went to the nightstand, took out a silk scarf.
“And I’ll keep my promise,” she said, “and not do you with the icepick, but how could I let you live? Not because we had sex, but because, duh, you know what I am and what I do.”
Angelica was struggling, trying to free herself. No way that was going to happen. Missy slipped the scarf around her neck.
“This is Hermes, isn’t it? Very nice. It’s what you were going to use to tie me up, right?” She took a breath, tried to focus on what she wanted to say. “You’re really beautiful,” she told Angelica, “and I had a wonderful time with you, both before and after Brady joined the party. And I wish I could get the name of your waxing person, but I’ll be leaving town as soon as I’m done here, so I wouldn’t have time anyway. But I’ll find somebody else, somewhere, and get it done, so I guess I’ll have plenty of occasions to remember you.”
She told herself,
“This ought to work,” she said. “It’s supposed to be pretty easy to strangle somebody this way. But you’ll have to bear with me. I’ve never done this before.”
THIRTY
“Kimmie, a threesome!”
“I was just looking to go home with a girl,” she said, “but she was there with her husband, and he was kind of cute.”
“You’ve got to tell me everything.”
Well, not exactly everything. She gave Rita the
“It added something,” she said of the husband’s presence. “But at the same time it took something away.”
“ ’Cause it wasn’t just the two of you.”
“Right.”
“Kimmie, I really wish you were here.”
“Me too.”
“I won’t even ask where you are.”
“Actually, I’m out west again. Not as far west as you are, though.”
“Oh?”
“A place I’ve never been before. Provo, Utah?”
“I’ve never been there either. When I was a kid we took a family trip to a national park, and I think it may have been in Utah. Arches?”
“I never heard of it.”
“It was pretty neat. There were these great natural rock formations, sandstone eroded by the wind, and there was this one huge freestanding stone arch and you could stand under it and get your picture taken. And it fell down.”
“While you were standing under it?”
“No, silly! I was there fifteen or twenty years ago, and just last year it fell down. It was on the TV news.”
“Oh.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s in Utah. Hang on. Thank you, Google. It’s in Utah, and the nearest town is Moab, and I remember now because that’s where we stayed. In a motel with fake wood paneling on the walls. Now why do I remember that?”
“Maybe the wood grain looked like a cunt.”
“Kimmie, you are just
“I know.”
“Where did you say? Provo? Hang on. Okay, you’re a hundred and ninety-one miles away if you take Route Six. Oh, you know what? That’s where he’s from.”
“That’s where who’s from?”
“That crazy Mormon. What was his name? Not Kelly. Damn, why can’t I — Kellen!”
“The one who wouldn’t go down on you?”
“Yeah, the pig. Saving his tongue for his fiancee. Asshole.”
“Probably saving his asshole for Brigham Young.”
“Ha! You know what? You should look him up.”
“You think?”
“Sure, why not? He was pretty hot, except for what he wouldn’t do.”
“Well—”
“And wouldn’t you want the experience of screwing a hundred and fifty guys at once?”
A hundred fifty-two, she thought. And said, “What are you— oh, right, you told me. Proxy baptism?”
“That’s it.”
“But you wouldn’t mind, Rita?”
“Me? Why should I mind? I’m not the one who’s engaged to him.”
“Well, still. I mean, you saw him first.”
“And when am I gonna see him again, and why would I even want to? I don’t have to go all the way to Utah to find a guy who won’t go down on me. As a matter of fact…”
