“What’s up, Candace?” Eldon said. “You seem funny.”
She came out a few minutes later. “You’ve knocked me up,” she said.
“Huh?” he said.
“I’m gonna have a kid,” Miranda said. She had no idea what he would do. Storm out, maybe? Start screaming? Accuse her of fucking up her birth control? She thought maybe he’d hit her. That’s the sort of thing her dad did when she said something that upset him. Just whacked her upside the head. Eldon had never hit her, but there was always a first time. There always had to be a first time when a guy you thought loved you took a swing at you.
He said, “You think it’s a girl?”
She said, “What?”
“A girl. You think it’s a girl? Because, you’re so beautiful, if it’s a girl, she’ll be beautiful too.”
The guy was full of surprises.
Gary had already been letting her split her time between the stage and the office upstairs. He’d turned over the books to her, but once in a while, a girl would take off sick, Gary’d tell her, “Go downstairs and do some bump and grind. If we didn’t have the ol’ bump and grind goin’ on, there’d be no books to balance.” Like Miranda should be grateful he was giving her a chance to take her clothes off because it gave her money to count upstairs later.
But once she started showing, well, that was it. Nobody wanted to drink their beer watching some chick who was knocked up.
So in a way, it all worked out okay. Sort of.
But in the back of her mind, Miranda was thinking about the kind of world she was going to bring this baby into. She hadn’t known, for several years now, a particularly respectable life. Not like her sister, Claire. She and Don had gotten married, they had a decent apartment now, not some place over a pizza joint. She had her secretary job, he had his job at Ford. Not that they’d have to worry that much about bringing any kid into the world. Claire couldn’t have kids, it turned out.
How crazy. Claire’s home was the perfect one in which to raise a child, but she couldn’t have one.
And I’m the one who’s pregnant, thought Miranda. Working in a bar with strippers and hookers and dope dealers.
I need my head read.
But she did have a man in her life. Eldon seemed excited about the idea of becoming a father. She would talk to him-she still had not told him that her real name was not Candace-about getting some sort of new life. Of leaving the Kickstart. Of getting respectable jobs. Of making a proper home for their baby.
“Yeah,” he would say. “That sounds like a good idea. Maybe I should start looking for something else,” he said. “Maybe I should take some courses too. You know what I’ve always been interested in? Electrical work. Wiring.”
“Electricians make a fortune,” Miranda said.
So she worked all the time in the upstairs office, doing the finances, turning dirty money into clean. It was a gift, no doubt about it.
And then one day, sitting upstairs at the computer, she knew this was it. She phoned down to the bar, asked for Eldon. “This is it,” she said.
It was a girl.
Her name was Katie.
12
I hadn’t heard Trixie make any phone calls from upstairs, but I had to hope, certainly if I couldn’t get free on my own, that she’d keep her word and send someone to rescue me. The handcuff keys were on a table only ten feet away, but they might as well have been in the next town for all the good they did me now.
I glanced in the direction of Martin Benson, not wanting to look at him, yet not able to take my eyes off him. The slice across his neck was a macabre grin. Look what happens when you mess with me, it seemed to be saying. I tried not to think about what might happen if the person or persons who did that decided to return before I could get myself out of these handcuffs and the hell out of this house.
Rather than yank on the railing with the cuffs again and make my wrists even more sore, I put my hands directly on the railing and pulled. If I could pry it off the wall and drag it just ten feet, I could reach the keys and get out of here. I pulled once, and nothing. Clearly, the screws that held the hardware to the wall had been sunk into studs and not just drywall. I tried again, really putting my back into it this time, still without success. I cursed under my breath.
Even if I could free myself, it wasn’t necessarily my plan to run. I’d feel a lot safer than I did now as long as I had the freedom to move around. If Trixie wanted to make a break for it, well, that was her decision. Evidently she had her reasons, one of which had just been revealed to me.
“I’m not going to let them get my little girl.”
Just when I thought there was so little I knew about Trixie, I found myself realizing there was even more I did not know. Not long after I’d first met her, I’d asked her whether she had children, and she had said no.
While Trixie might have had her reasons to flee before the police arrived, I couldn’t see myself following suit. I had to stay and explain this as best I could. Chances were I wouldn’t even need to call the police. They were probably on the way now, or at least would be soon. Once Trixie felt she had enough of a head start, I was reasonably confident that she’d let them know about me, and Benson.
So I would explain this to the police as best I could. That was the Zack Walker way. You bring in the authorities. You extricate yourself from the situation and let the professionals take over.
Not that that had always been my approach. There was that one time, when I found myself in a situation where I figured I was the most likely suspect in a homicide, that I did not pick up the phone and immediately call police. There were extenuating circumstances.
But surely that wasn’t the case this time. I would not be the prime suspect this time. What possible reason would I have to want Martin Benson-
Hold on.
I started to work it out in my head.
What would Martin Benson’s editor have to say when the police interviewed him? He was investigating this dominatrix, the editor would say. Must have been ruffling some feathers too, because some writer from the Metropolitan tried to talk him out of it. The M.E. there’s an old friend of mine. Told him all about it.
And then the police would talk to Magnuson. And then they’d want to have another interview with me.
So you tried to warn Benson off a story, the police would say, and when he didn’t go along with it, he ratted you out, and you got demoted.
I couldn’t be sure the cops would use the word “ratted,” but I figured that would be about the gist of it.
Maybe it made more sense to stop fighting with the railing. Maybe it made more sense to stay handcuffed until the police arrived. How likely a suspect was I when I was left handcuffed at a murder scene? I was a victim too, although I had to admit I’d gotten off a little bit better than Martin Benson.
Of course, the only problem was, we hadn’t both been victimized by the same person. Being handcuffed by Trixie would no doubt lead police to suspect that she was also responsible for Martin Benson’s murder.
Trixie did, after all, have some familiarity with the apparatus to which Benson was secured.
What a fucking mess.
I twisted my right hand around to look at my watch. Coming up on 2:30 p.m. Trixie had been gone at least half an hour, maybe more. Just how far away was she planning to get before she called someone to rescue me?
