Coven

Tom gave that one some thought. It didn’t add up.

“You’re one to talk, Dudley, about being careful.” Winnifred Saltenstall sat back in a chair. She looked bored. Her hand moved idly beneath her dress. Is that all she ever does? Tom wondered.

Besser’s hog jowls tensed. “What do you mean by that?”

Winnie laughed. “Look at the mess you left at the agro site. Talk about sloppy. You left footprints, bloodstains. You didn’t even pick up the empty bullets. I heard my husband talking to White about it. He’s got that new police officer working on it. She used to be an evidence technician.”

“White’s just pacifying the dean,” Besser argued. “He’s a brownnose; the police have nothing, and even if they did, White would bury it. He knows a campus murder would jeopardize his job.”

“You better hope so, Dudley—”

Tom smiled at their silly bickering.

“—and would you please send that thing away,” she was saying.

It took Tom a moment to catch on. She means me, doesn’t she? Send that thing away. Me.

“Don’t be unkind, Winnie. Tom’s part of the family now.”

“I’m sorry, but it’s unnerving,” she fussed. “Tell it to go.”

Tom didn’t like being called an it or a thing. He looked at her very blankly. He wondered. He just wondered.

Besser was pretending not to be on the spot, the fat, no balls wimp. Tom knew who wore the real pants in that relationship. Besser just said: “Winnie and I, and the sisters, of course, have to get Penelope ready. Things didn’t work out, the poor girl. It couldn’t be helped, so there’s no reason to feel bad about it.”

I could care less, Tom thought.

“Meet us back here in an hour,” Besser instructed.

“Yes, sir, an hour. No problem.”

“Oh, and Tom?”

“Yes, sir?”

Besser’s bald spot gleamed. “Bring a shovel.”

—

CHAPTER 14

She’s not going to show, Wade felt convinced. The Mitchell’s Brewery clock over the mantel showed 9:15. He should’ve known.

He sat sipping an Adams at the upstairs rail. Several girls sauntered in. They looked at him and immediately burst into laughter. “Hey, Wade!” one called out. “How’s the new job—”

“—cleaning toilets!” added a second.

“—for minimum wage!” finished a third.

“Laugh it up,” he muttered. He didn’t even care anymore; there was no more face left to save. His depression rose to new peaks.

When Lydia Prentiss walked in, Wade didn’t even notice her—that is, he noticed the full tilt blonde who stood scanning the bar, he just didn’t realize it was her. She stood skintight in stone washed black jeans and scarlet high heels, and a bright yellow tube top which her breasts filled to its physical limit. Then she spotted him and walked up.

“Hello, Mr. St. John.”

“Woe ah!” Wade said.

“Sorry I’m late. I don’t have a car so I took a cab.”

“Hemmina, hemmina, uh,” Wade said. “Let’s get a booth. It’s more private.”

“Okay.”

On the way to the rear booths, Wade stepped on his shoelace, tripped, and fell. Heads turned, some chuckles rose up. Suddenly Wade was the town fool.

“Are you drunk?” she asked.

“No, I swear. I draven’t hunk—I mean I haven’t drunk a thing all day.”

She just shook her head, faintly smiling. He felt much better in the booth. Stationary now, he thought. Back in control. Go get her, King of Charisma. “What would you like?”

She relaxed in the padded booth. “I think I’ll have a beer.”

But all Wade could see was her—her beautiful body, her beautiful face. She was radiant. “Kut bind of weer?” he asked.

“Huh?”

Idiot! “I mean, what kind of beer?”

She scanned the beer list with interest. As a rule, women always ordered either Michelob Light or Corona. Wade saw no point in the existence of light beers, and as for Corona, he refused to drink anything with the same name as the end of a penis.

“Surprise me,” she said.

He ordered an Adams for himself and an Old Nick for her, neglecting to mention that Old Nick had more alcohol than any beer in the house.

He was grinning at her, enraptured. He felt charged with nervous current. Her beauty was too much to perceive at once. Say something! a voice like an alarm ordered. Make conversation!

Brilliantly he inquired, “So, tell me about yourself.”

“I think I’d be more interested in hearing about you first.”

“Ask anything you want. My life’s an open book.”

“An open comic book, by the looks of you now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, you’re grinning like Alfred E. Newman. You’ve asked me kut bind of weer I want, and sworn you draven’t hunk a thing all day. And to top it off, you tripped over your own two feet. Are you this smooth with all the girls?”

At that moment, the beers came. When Wade went to pour, he knocked his over. Half the bottle emptied into his lap.

Lydia Prentiss could suspend her laughter no more. The waitress was laughing too, and so were several patrons. Wade bounced to his feet, a sweating, grinning idiot. “Excuse me,” he said, and marched stiffly to the men’s room. Before the mirror, he shouted: “What the hell is wrong with you! You’re making a jackass out of yourself in front of quite possibly the most beautiful woman on earth!”

The mirror was warped; his head looked slanted. Two guys at the urinals were laughing it up real good.

It was the foreignness of the situation that was causing this debacle. Something —perhaps everything—about Lydia Prentiss had pulled the rug out from under his social feet. Wade had commanded virtually every encounter in his life that involved women. But now…now…

Now it was all gone. This female cop had reduced him to a gibbering nudnik in the space of five minutes.

Control, he thought. I must regain control.

He stared himself down. Then, as hard as he could, he slapped himself in the face.

There. Now. Ready.

He went back to the booth, mindful of his shoelaces. He sat down carefully. In his absence, she’d put a good dent in her Old Nick. “This stuff’s pretty good,” she admitted.

“I may not know trigonometry but I do know beer.” He ordered another round, and pointed to the cigarette she’d set up on end before her. “Aren’t you going to smoke that?”

“Not yet.” She seemed dreamy, relaxed. “I’m going to look at it awhile first. I allow myself only one per day.”

“Oh, yeah? My friend Jervis allows himself four per day. Four packs.” He sipped his