She looked familiar, but when he had known her before, her chest had been no bigger than his then-skinny pecs. Now, she could float a platoon of capsized Marines.
“Mary!” he exclaimed raising his eyes from her…nametag. “So good to see you again.” Thank goodness she had not accidentally pinned herself, the explosion would have blown out the windows. She was still as ugly as sin. No implant could fix that.
“Jack,” Mary said as she handed him his nametag, her face glowing red from yesterday’s tanning bed. “I’d know you anywhere. Can you believe it’s been almost thirty years?” She laughed.
He remembered how he had hated that laugh. He remembered how he had hated all of them.
“I’m so sorry about Marjorie,” she said.
Already, it had begun.
• • •
From the four corners of the Monteagle Moonshine Lounge, the Bee Gees sang about staying alive. Appropriate for the night. There were only four other people there so far—possibly classmates—though they didn’t look familiar. Everyone had gotten old and fat. Including him. Or dead.
Jack gave a deep sigh. No matter how much locally-made sauce they used to spike the punch, he could not forget Marjorie. Cheerleader. Homecoming Queen to his King. Out of forty-six graduates, the girl of his dreams. Miss John D. Landry High. Bride. Adoring wife. And of course—the image that he could not obliterate from his mind—the woman who had…
He thought about Heather. Heather Ralston. Marjorie’s former best friend. It disappointed him that Heather wasn’t coming. She was driving down alone from Murfreesboro to meet him later in Shad. Harold, her husband, had died when a tree had fallen on him. Straight-line winds. He had been standing in his driveway. Fifty was not an old man.
It’s different for a man, he thought. And then he corrected himself. At high school reunions there weren’t males or females; there were sharks and guppies. Those who had succeeded would line one wall and mingle amongst their regal selves; those who had failed would line the opposite wall and gawk at those who had triumphed. Outwardly, the losers would criticize from their lowly and pitiful stations, drinking free punch ever more, but inwardly he knew, just as they knew, as he would watch them from the noble sect amongst which he moved every quinquennial, that those poor losers across the room only envied him. Heather’s deceased auto executive husband, Harold, had made a fortune in the dot-com market by creating a program that helped mechanics balance wheels. Jack had likewise been a man of his own making, though not to Harold’s success. That was expected of Type-A men. Heather and Marjorie had accomplished nothing on their own; neither had even produced a child. He could see why Heather had not wanted to come. Before, she had served as arm decoration for Howard. She would only be doing the same for him.
• • •
Sean Adams had come to Monteagle to have something other than a table shower and a flip. If that was her, then the woman who stood near the back of the trailer was certainly the girl to do it. He took out his phone and dialed. There was enough neon flashing from the sign on Highway 41 to see that the woman was clothed in the outfit she had told him she would be wearing and carrying the red purse. The woman fumbled and then reached into her coat pocket. A good sign. She took out a phone.
“April?” Sean asked.
The snow fell heavily. The woman trembled from the cold. He could see that. She wore a coat, gloves, and boots, but they weren’t enough to curb the cutting mountain gusts.
“Sean?”
He drove cautiously up beside her and looked around, glancing at the light in the window of the massage parlor.
“Can I get in?” She asked into the phone.
“Sure.” Sean unlocked the door and hung up, feeling like a halfwit. He let the knife drop into the space between the seat and the driver’s door. She was prettier than her self-description. He pulled from the Healthy Hands Massage parking lot and headed west.
• • •
Jack thought about the details of Marjorie’s death. He had rehearsed answers all the way from Winchester so as not to break down or flush. Tonight, even those who had not read the paper would question him when they saw him alone. But now, all those rehearsed answers seemed as plastic and stretched as some of the women’s faces he was beginning to see around him. The room had grown to sixteen. Still, not one had come over to say, “hi.”
He took a deep breath.
He had to begin his new life and it should appropriately begin with this group, the same ones who had helped him start before. He slinked along the wall-of-tacky-balloons with smiley faces for which Mary the Greeter had taken credit until he got to the bathroom. The man he saw in the mirror was not the man who had swept Marjorie off her feet. Prematurely grey hair—where he still had hair—now replaced shoulder-length brown hair that Marjorie had once loved to pull in fits of teenage passion. His body had inverted since then. His former-athletic V-shape had turned upside down and had produced a butt requiring two seats on an airplane and no ample seatbelt in his car. Looks aside, Heather saw him for what he was: a locally powerful man.
As he nervously drew circles in the urinal, he thought of the last few months. They had been a nightmare. He could envision Marjorie taking her last breaths at the bottom of the cliff. The unanswered questions awoke him in the middle of the night. His mind distracted and not washing his hands, he zipped and shuffled back out.
Across the room, just having been greeted by buxom Mary, came Stencil Berchman.
Stencil was the one man Jack hated. Jack had never acquired Stencil’s wealth. Stencil came from money. His grandfather’s money. It was no accident that I-24 crossed over the mountain where it did. His grandfather had bought the land before anyone else knew. He was a Jew like Dinah Shore’s family in Winchester. Jack was dressed in a white button-down shirt with gold cufflinks and khakis, but Stencil had gone all out: tux, white shirt, prissy bowtie, creased Italian slacks. He lived alone in the biggest house in Gruetli-Laager. Could live anywhere, but he didn’t. Wanted to flaunt it to the locals, Jack always thought.
When Stencil’s date appeared, Jack nearly dropped his glass. Now he knew who had left his wife’s bed, leaving her for him to discover, moaning, sweaty, and smiling.
• • •
Mountain people were different than those in the city. Much more dangerous. Sean had seen Deliverance. That was why he carried his knife.
(Here, Piggy, Piggy, Piggy!)
Sean had saved himself with that knife many-a-time in dark places throughout the cities of good ol’ U-S-greenback-of-get-some-A.
Sean’s business partner was at a high school reunion. Sean planned to meet Jack at the motel after the reunion.
“Pull in there,” April said.
It was an old weed-infested parking lot off Dixie Lee Highway. A building might have been there once, but maybe burned down.
“What’s your real name?”
“This is cash only, yes?” she asked.
“That’s what you said.”
“Tell me what you’re wanting,” the woman said. “Really. Sometimes rates change.”
“What’s your name?”
“April. Drive to the back and around those trees.”
“Is that your real name?”
“What do you think?”
“April showers bring May flowers,” Sean joked nervously. “We’re still going to the motel?”
She touched him with her hand.
Sean pulled the car to a stop and threw the gear into “Park”.
“Let’s do it,” he said. Sean pushed back the seat to give himself more room. He started unzipping his pants before he had an accident and ruined it all.
“Don’t do anything,” she said.
Sean leaned back in the seat, grinned like a ’possum, and wiggled in.
• • •
Jack took a drink, tasted mostly liquid ice, and hid the half-filled glass against the base of the dusty fake ficus tree. Even if his business did go under and he and Sean declared Chapter 7, he would still have the death benefits from Marjorie. Death benefits were personal, not business. If he never worked another day in his life, he would still have all the money he could possibly ever want. He wouldn’t lose his house. He would take time off work. Ironic, wasn’t it? Instead of spending his spare time with Marjorie, he was going to share his free life with Heather using the money that came from Marjorie’s death. If only he had been able to do that with Marjorie. If only he had felt that way towards her.
He saw her. She wasn’t supposed to be there.
Leaving the table from where she had gotten her nametag from busty Mary, Heather looked frazzled. Her blonde, highlighted hair was tied willy-nilly on top of her head revealing a neck he had long-remembered from high school, a neck he still longed to kiss again, though now she had gotten religion and wouldn’t let him.
Jack hurried to her, ecstatic that she had changed her mind.
“Let’s go outside,” she quietly spoke first.
“Sure.” He wanted to tell her about seeing Stencil and his date, both of which appeared to have disappeared from the room. “Let me get my coat.”
“No. Now.”
• • •
The view outside the Moonshine Lodge did not provide the best panorama of Monteagle. Jack and Heather watched the traffic go down David Crockett Highway. The wind was up and bits of spitting snow swirled with each gust. The parking lot was already white, but the street was still black with nighttime wet. Jack’s breath condensed with each exhalation. He put his arms around himself to ward off the cold. He began to shiver.
“I read today’s paper,” Heather said. “From a Cracker Barrel machine of all things. How could you mention me?”
He knew what she had seen. Tennessean morning Business News page 3S. “Bad news.”
“You think? Strange men calling me this morning. My name in the paper. I didn’t know what they were talking about.” She wiped her nose and eyes with her gloved hands. “How are you?”
“I’m scared.”
“That’s manly.” She took out a cigarette.
“Well, I don’t mean scared.”
“Whatever.” She turned and hurried down the catawampus, buckled sidewalk.
At first, he only watched her go, standing with his feet planted and feeling the snow salt his neck like dandruff. When she disappeared into the dumpster alley beside the lodge, he frowned and followed.
He felt guilt, but also thankfulness for a second chance at love. Marjorie and Heather had been best friends. Both had had a teenage crush on him. He’d been a big football player then. The Heather of Old did not care about commitment. Marjorie was the girl he could take home to Momma. However, once he and Marjorie had married—right before he had joined and left for the military—Heather had no longer wanted to meet with him in secrecy. After Heather had smiled and had thrown rice as he and Marjorie had walked from the church towards their new, much-anticipated, and much-uneventful life, he and Marjorie had never seen Heather again. Until after Marjorie had gone. Then, small world as it was, Heather had walked right back into his life. Harold was gone. Two people alone. United again.
“Are you going to lose your business?” she asked him when he had finally caught up to her.
“Probably.”
She had somehow been able to light her cigarette while still wearing her gloves. “You sounded pitiful in the article.”
“I was misquoted.”
“Like a whiny baby.”
“We’ve got Marjorie’s money. We have Harold’s.” He pointed to what looked like a handle sticking out of Heather’s pocket. “What’s that?”
She pushed it back into her coat.
“Is that a gun? What are you going to do with a gun?”
“I’ve had four people call me, Jack, and threaten me for no reason. Threaten to kill me. Because they’re mad at you. They think you squandered their money, overpriced the houses, used inferior materials, colluded with loan officers. One guy has lake water standing in his basement. And they don’t believe you’re going to jail. They think you’re getting away with it and that I’m involved. Being with you…after the phone calls…after that article…it frightens me.” She was in tears. She pushed him and yelled, “And you mentioned my name! You had to know this was coming. Before we got together. And you didn’t tell me! Why did you mention me?”
“It was the reporter,” Jack told her. “I knew you were going to be mad. We were talking. I didn’t know she was going to…”
“Just be quiet.”
“She came tonight. With Stencil Berchman.”
“Oh, good god, Jack.”
“We are just going to push her over the cliff. Right? We’re not going to shoot her?”
• • •
“She still looks the same.”
“She’s fatter, I think,” Jack said, still not believing that Marjorie had had the audacity to show up on the night they were planning to kill her. The reunion and the night with Sean were an alibi for Jack. Heather was supposed to meet Jack in Shad. Marjorie had said she would not be at the reunion. Now both women were there.
“When are we going to do it?” Heather asked. “Now that nothing is going as planned.”
Jack thought about the events leading up to this. He and Heather falling in love again. Their relationship progressing. Her growing interest. And then her distance when she had learned that he and Marjorie were not yet divorced.
He had shared with Heather how Marjorie had treated him all those years, how his last image of Marjorie in their house was finding her taunting him in wet sheets from the bed, having just been left by her lover. How Marjorie had left him when he had most needed her when his business had been collapsing (a white lie, he had actually thrown Marjorie out after finding her). How she had moved back to Shad (near Gruetli-Laager) to be close to her parents. How she had humiliated him with her affair right when he had needed some anchor to hold his life together.
Heather had listened and grown angry on his behalf.
Over the weeks, the more Jack had talked about Marjorie—once he had started, it had been difficult to hold it in—the more angry Heather had become. She too had spoken about how Marjorie had deceived her, how she had been holding a grudge. She said that back in high school Marjorie had known about Heather and Jack and that the only reason Marjorie had wanted Jack was because she had not wanted Heather to have him.
As they had talked, somehow the idea of Marjorie’s insurance policy had come up. At first, it had been a joke. Somewhere, somehow, though, it had grown into something real, something sinister. And here they were, on the scheduled night with everything going wrong, about to commit the crime.
“I don’t know that we should do this.”
“I want you, Jack. Don’t you want me?”
“But can’t we…?”
“Do you want to be with me? Just say it. If not, I’ll leave now and you’ll never see me again. I promise you that.”
“I can try to ask her for a divorce again.”
“And I’m sure this time she’d give it to you.”
Jack winced. Heather didn’t know it, but the divorce had already been approved. Jack just didn’t like the terms and had refused to sign the papers. Jack had no proof of Marjorie’s affair, but he accused her in court anyway. Marjorie denied it. Marjorie’s lawyer then told the judge about Jack throwing Marjorie out of the house without cause. The judge ruled in terms of Marjorie’s affair that she was innocent until proof could be given. In a heated argument later that same day at a local Shoney’s, Jack admitted to Marjorie that he was seeing someone. He wasn’t sleeping with anyone. But he led Marjorie to believe there was more. He thought it might make Marjorie jealous. Two weeks later, he was back in court with Marjorie’s lawyer playing the secretly recorded tape of his false confession to the judge. The judge awarded Marjorie half of everything he had. Jack had refused to sign the papers.
Jack and Heather watched Marjorie across the room with Stencil Berchman. Marjorie knew they were watching her. She smiled and licked her lips as she said something into—or nibbled—for the love of Pete she was nibbling—on Stencil’s ear. Right there in front of everybody. She stopped, pulled out her cell phone, and then photographed Jack and Heather standing together beside the gaudy, dust-ridden fake ficus tree. Probably to use in court. Jack grew livid. Heather held him back.
“She’s baiting you,” Heather said.
Jack’s anger grew. Was Stencil the unidentified lover who had been in his bed? Was he the real reason she had moved back to Shad after he had thrown her out? Stencil Berchman certainly had all that Marjorie would ever need. Jack imagined Stencil sitting on the balcony of his 8,000+ square foot house, the biggest house in Gruetli-Laager, looking out over his manmade lake stocked in the summer with seasonal tilapia that died as soon as the air turned cold, and rubbing Marjorie’s thigh when she brought him a drink. Jack felt his face grow red with hatred. He wanted to take the gun out of Heather’s pocket and blast that smirk right off Stencil’s chiseled face. “Let’s think about this another night,” Jack whispered.
“I’m not having a relationship with a married man,” Heather said. The irony that she would help him kill his wife so he could be single and avoid adultery did not escape Jack’s notice. Marjorie smirked at them both and kept on nibbling.
“You’re right,” Jack said. “This is the only way.”
• • •
Jack watched from a distance as Marjorie and Stencil said their extended goodbyes. The couple had been in Marjorie’s house for almost two hours. When Stencil pulled from the neighborhood, Jack moved his car from the shadows to the front of Marjorie’s rented house. The lights in the house methodically started going out beginning with the front porch. Heather pulled behind Jack in her car.
Heather jumped out of her car and hopped into the rented Lincoln with Jack.
“Should we wait?” When Heather didn’t answer, Jack chattered, “I figured they would go to Stencil’s, not here.” Though steeped in poverty, Shad did look pretty with snow and moonlight. They would be shutting the Interstate over Monteagle, for sure. To get to Chattanooga in the morning, he and Sean would have to take Highway 41 off the mountain. To get back to Murfreesboro as planned, Heather would need to get on the road soon.
The digital car clock said the time to be 3:04.
“Did he actually kiss her at the door?” Heather asked. “Talk about a gentleman. Women like that sort of thing.”
Jack did not answer, thinking about what the gentleman did to his wife before he got to the door.
“Do you want to get her, or do you want me to?”
Jack looked at her. “You’d do that?”
“The result’s the same either way, isn’t it? It might bring the point home if it’s me who breaks the news, rather than you.”
Jack swallowed hard. “Would you?”
Heather kept her eyes locked on Jack’s as she put her hand on the door handle, then impulsively she reached across, grabbed his head, and pulled his lips to hers. Jack felt himself tingle in his lower back as they kissed for the first time in several decades. His head spun as he felt her tongue run across his lips and then plunge powerfully into his mouth. He reached for her, but as he did, she pulled away.
“I’ll be back in a minute.”
• • •
The porch light came on, though the rest of the house was dark. The door opened. Marjorie appeared in the doorway.
She had slipped into a pair of casual slacks and a sweatshirt. She looked surprised.
Jack could not hear the conversation, but he could make out the body language. Heather asked to go inside. Marjorie was hesitant. She looked towards Jack’s Lincoln. Her eyes squinted and her face appeared confused. Then things seemed to go wrong. Marjorie retreated; Heather forcibly followed inside. The door closed.
Jack sat dumbfounded, watching the snow settle on the windshield. Should he help? Should he leave? What if Heather shot Marjorie inside the house? Then the whole plan would fall apart. What if Marjorie took the gun away from Heather and shot her instead? He had guns. He knew the gun was a bad idea. Why hadn’t he told Heather? The gun was a bad idea!
The door opened.
Marjorie slowly appeared. Her hands were behind her back. Her mouth was gagged. Behind her came Heather, her torso against Marjorie’s back. Jack thought, thank god for the gun. He looked up and down the street. No sign of any witnesses. In fact, many of the houses were abandoned.
As the two descended the front porch steps, Jack felt his heart race, knowing it would finally be over. As he thought about the plunging kiss he had received before Heather had gone to retrieve Marjorie, he remembered Sean, his business partner, waiting for him twenty miles away at the motel in Monteagle. Jack pulled his cell phone from his pocket, but then decided he would call Sean later. If things worked out, if he finally got to spend the night with Heather, then Sean would understand. He would not know about Marjorie being dead and all and he had never met Heather, but it would make sense. Jack and some old friends had hooked up at the reunion. Jack had been delayed. Sean would cover for him. It’s what they did.
As Marjorie passed the Lincoln and saw Jack, she jerked from Heather and made a dash towards a neighbor’s house.
Jack’s heart flew into his throat as he watched Marjorie cross in front of the Lincoln, but he did not move. The heat blew from the car vent into his face. Marjorie didn’t make it far. Heather quickly subdued her.
Jack felt his legs shaking. He thought he was going to pee on himself. Jack twisted his head as far around as he could, following them, as they walked around the SUV, a confused expression on his face, before he decided he needed to get out and help.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked holding onto the SUV to keep from slipping on the ice. “We’re supposed to take her in her car!”
“Her car isn’t here,” she said. “It’s at her father’s. He’s working on it. That’s why Stencil picked her up tonight. I’ll put her in my car.” Heather had already opened the trunk.
“In your car? That’s not the plan! We’re supposed to take her car! She’s supposed to have driven there alone. Then killed herself. Why are you putting her in the trunk?”
“Do you think she should drive? Help me.”
Marjorie jerked as Jack came over. He grabbed her feet; she kicked. “Be still!” Jack ordered. As usual, Marjorie didn’t listen. “This isn’t right.” Marjorie moaned, the gag kept her from yelling out. He couldn’t get hold of her legs. Marjorie kicked. Jack’s feet flew out from under him on the ice. He hit the ground and rolled like a ball, all 379 pounds of him.
“Hurry up.” Heather held Marjorie by her shoulders and tied arms. Jack jerked every which way, finally got to his feet, and stumbled snow-covered and wet over to Heather, where he tried to hold Marjorie’s flailing legs and lift her off the ground. He had not picked up anything this heavy in years. They tossed Marjorie into the trunk of the Camry.
“Why did you tie her hands?”
“What did you expect me to do?” Heather asked. “We should have tied her feet, too, but then we’d have had to carry her.”
“Won’t…that…leave marks? It’s supposed to look like she killed herself, that she drove her car there alone, and jumped off the cliff. If there’s no car, how did she get there? If they see her hands have been tied…if they see bruises or anything…”
Marjorie kicked from inside the opened trunk. Occasionally, a leg would fly into the air meant for either Jack or Heather.
“I tied her with pantyhose, stupid. Pantyhose don’t leave marks. Obviously, you’ve never been tied to a bedpost.”
Jack blinked.
Marjorie kicked wildly.
“Is that my gun?” Jack asked.
“Of course, it’s yours,” Heather said. “It’s not mine. I don’t have one. I got it over at your house. You have several. You can spare one. Your toupee fell off.”
Jack jerked around. His coiffure lay crumpled like a dead cat in the middle of the road.
Heather closed the lid, leaving Marjorie in darkness.
• • •
Plans had changed.
Heather was supposed to have clandestinely met Jack after the reunion and together they were to have driven to Shad in Jack’s rental car. They were to get Marjorie, who wasn’t supposed to have attended the reunion, drive Marjorie’s car and Jack’s rental car to the lake, push Marjorie off the cliff into the water (if water was there this time of year), and then drive back in the rental so Heather could get her car and return to Murfreesboro unseen. Jack would have the alibi of the reunion and Sean, Heather wouldn’t be in the picture at all, and Marjorie’s death would look like suicide. Instead, in anger Heather had come to the reunion to confront Jack about her name in the newspaper, Heather was driving her car with Marjorie in the trunk, Marjorie’s car was in the shop, Jack was following along behind, and it was snowing on top of ice, none of which was supposed to have happened.
• • •
As they drove out of Shad heading up Highway 56 towards the junction, Jack’s past flooded over him. Nashville had a statue of naked dancing nymphs. Chattanooga had soldiers large and small. And Shad had a thirty-foot-high colossal statue of a titanic-gray fish sculpture representing a one-pound-or-less fish. With snow on its head—aside from I-65’s plastic Nathan Bedford Forrest—it was the gaudiest thing Jack had ever seen. The early morning mood lighting of the lamps shining up from the bottom of the recycled car tires made it even worse.
Jack passed his parents’ house. A light was on in the kitchen. His father was probably up. Maybe his mother. He had not spoken to either of them in years. His father had thought his only son should have become a coal miner just like him and Jack’s grandfather. Jack’s father was out of touch. He didn’t approve of Jack’s business dealings, saying Jack had cheated many family friends out of their retirement investments. Not true. Investments bring risk. Towns like Shad, towns founded upon digging fuel out of the earth and building railroads to ship it out, were slowly turning into ghost towns no less deserted than those tumbleweed-infested places in the West. That’s why people had lost their investments. In 1871, when Jack’s great-grandparents had emigrated from Switzerland, Shad had been a prosperous town. Now, it was row after row of deteriorating houses, some filled, some abandoned, some falling down, in one of the most beautiful parts of the entire state.
Jack thought about his childhood, Marjorie’s childhood, Heather’s childhood, even Heather’s deceased husband Howard’s childhood. It was natural. They had all grown up together.
• • •
When they opened the trunk, Marjorie’s face was swollen from tears. She shook. From fear? From cold? Heather had not let her get a coat.
“Gruetli-Laager is only several miles from here,” Heather postulated. “How’s this? Stencil took her to the reunion. Everyone saw them. They saw her nibbling on his ear. He took Marjorie to her house, then maybe to his house. Could be a neighbor saw him and her go into her house. Somewhere along the way, he killed her and dumped her here. Maybe things got rough. Pantyhose? Bedposts? That could happen.”
Wouldn’t that be something if Stencil Berchman became a suspect in the death of Marjorie? Jack hadn’t thought of that. Marjorie kicked, ramming Jack’s fingers against the inside of the trunk as he tried to do his part to lift her out. “You should have tied her feet.”
As they pulled Marjorie from the trunk, both lost their hold on her and she fell, first hitting the bumper of the Camry, and then falling the rest of the way facedown onto the snow-covered pavement. She lay there sobbing into the mixture of asphalt, gravel, undissolved road-crew salt, and frozen mud, her face caked white as though covered with fungus.
“Get her up,” Heather ordered. Jack lifted her to a standing position. “Now, get in your car and follow us.”
“Up the access road?”
“Are you going to walk with us? Up the hill?” Heather surely knew the answer to that. Jack had meant to drive Marjorie’s car, then walk down. “I’m not doing this alone. If you don’t think my car will get stuck, then drive mine instead of your SUV. We can stuff Marjorie back into the trunk.”
Marjorie moaned.
Jack looked at his rented Lincoln SUV (huge, V8, new tires) and then at Heather’s Camry (lightweight, 4-cylinder, tires needing replacing since Harold had died) and then at the falling snow.
“If we’re gonna do that, then let’s all ride up in my car,” Jack said.
“And risk her being tied to you? Don’t you think the cops’re going to go over your car? Your rented car? If the suicide is questioned? If Stencil’s involvement is questioned? She could lose a hair. Something that traces her back to you. That’s suspicious. You don’t want her in your car.”
Jack looked at Heather stupidly.
“Your estranged wife whom everyone knows you no longer have anything to do with? Don’t you watch CSI? Think it through, Jack. You rent an SUV, her hair appears in it? Do you want to go to jail? That’s why I put her in the trunk of my car and not yours. No one is going to suspect me. Marjorie and I haven’t seen each other in years.”
“Other than tonight.”
“I left early. People saw me leave.”
Jack just stood there.
“It’s cold Jack. We’re walking. Good grief! Walk with us. Or drive. Just do something. It’s freezing.” She pushed Marjorie and the two of them began the short ascent towards the cliffside.
Jack pulled his coat around him. The snow was falling heavily. Heather had a point. Ideally, maybe he should walk, but he didn’t want to. He watched Marjorie, pitifully climbing the hill, shaking from the cold, Heather pushing her along. He felt nothing. No love, no nostalgia, not even empathy. Marjorie deserved what she was getting. He deserved to be happy for once. With Heather.
“Come on, Jack,” Heather called. Her voice echoed through the trees posing in the increasing white.
Jack cringed at the sound of her voice and looked around. No sign of others.
“Walk or drive,” Heather shouted.
• • •
As Heather and Marjorie trudged along the frozen mud tire ruts cut by numerous hikers, campers, lovers, and illegal hunters, Jack followed behind in his rental Lincoln, warm, illuminating the way, and obliterating Marjorie’s last walk. Jack could see Heather’s mouth moving when she turned her head to the side, but with the windows up and the heater fan on full blast he could not make out what she was saying. Occasionally, Marjorie would appear to sob as she stumbled slowly like a death row inmate plodding down that last corridor and, every now and then, Heather would give her a shove to speed her up. If Marjorie had had sex with Stencil the police would discover that. It would further tie Stencil to the crime. The night was getting better and better.
“Shove her again,” Jack mumbled.
Jack looked at his odometer. It was less than a tenth of a mile. He wanted to finish this and get out of there before the snow and ice got too thick. The grade was nearly straight up. He should have asked for a set of snow tires.
• • •
Jack scanned the limestone cliffs, white with snow and glowing in the moonlight as though it were day. Before them was a hundred foot drop.
Marjorie was on her knees, begging, at the edge of the drop-off. The outcropping beneath her was pure rock. The cold cut into her legs. Her face was almost blue. The wind knifed them all.
“Oh, I got this for us,” Jack said to Heather, holding out an envelope.
Heather, holding the gun on Marjorie with one hand, took the packet from Jack with the other. She couldn’t open the envelope one-handed and with gloves.
“It’s two plane tickets,” Jack said proudly, louder than necessary. He said it with the same glee of his innuendoed confession at Shoney’s, but this time Marjorie would not be recording it to play for the judge in court. “To St. Croix.” He pointed to the tickets. “Where it’s warm. The beach.”
Marjorie bawled.
Heather handed the packet back. “I don’t believe in suffering, Jack. Even for Marjorie. You’re being cruel.”
“Of course, I put them in Sean’s name.” He smiled, slightly hurt at her reaction. He looked at Marjorie, her face white in the SUV’s high beams. “And paid for them with cash. It would look funny to see them in my name just before Marjorie’s suicide.” He wanted to kiss Heather so badly he could not stand it. He wished she would impulsively grab him like she had in front of Marjorie’s house. Maybe they would do it. Right here. Right now. In the freezing cold. Warmed by their passion. Right in front of Marjorie, before she took the big hop-skip-and-jump.
Marjorie called out again as though she knew what he was thinking.
“Hush,” Heather said as she thumped Marjorie’s head with the end of the gun. “Jack, are you sure we want to do this?”
“We’re this far now.”
“I was all for it,” Heather said. “But now, it seems so…real. Maybe…”
“You don’t think that Marjorie will go to the police first thing?” Jack asked, pulling his coat around himself to keep out the wind.
Marjorie sat up. She shook her head, no. She moaned. Her eyes pleaded.
“Of course, you would.” Jack squatted down next to Marjorie. From the snow’s reflection of the moonlight and the SUV beams, they had no trouble seeing each other. Marjorie could see Jack’s loathing as he saw her desperation. “If we let her go, she’ll run straight down the road to Stencil, won’t you? And Stencil has money.” He looked at Heather. “Both of us would rot in prison. There’s no way we can turn back now. Let’s push her off.” He grabbed Marjorie by the arm.
“Jack…” Heather cautioned. “Don’t throw her yet. We have to make it look as though she did this to herself. The pantyhose. The gag. Take those off.”
“If we leave everything on, they’ll think Stencil did it.”
“Let’s don’t play games. Let’s keep it simple.”
Marjorie began to grunt again, knowing the end was near, pleading for them to change their minds before they did something they couldn’t take back.
“This is what it comes down to, Marjorie,” Jack whispered. “You messed up. You didn’t listen. I told you I’d kill you. And now, I have somebody to help me. That’s even worse, isn’t it? Especially since it’s Heather. She and I are going to have a wonderful life without you. With your insurance money, of course. No matter what happens to my business, I have that. It’s mine. I can’t help but thank you for that.” Jack stood. “Take off her gag,” Jack ordered Heather as though he were the one holding the gun. “Untie her wrists. Let’s push her over. I want to hear her plead for her miserable life as she takes the final step.”
“You take them off,” Heather answered. “I’m holding the gun in case she runs.”
Jack didn’t move. Heather wondered what he was waiting for.
“Good god, Jack, do I have to do everything? Let’s get this over with. I’m cold. Take her straps off.”
Jack still didn’t move.
Disgusted, Heather held the gun and untied Marjorie’s gag with her free hand. “Hold still.” Marjorie tried to move her head to get away from Heather’s fingers, but Heather skillfully unknotted the gag. The pantyhose fell from her mouth to the ground.
Heather lifted Marjorie to her feet.
“You’re such a fool, Jack,” Marjorie said taking off her own loosely tied hand restraints.
Heather lifted the gun and pointed it towards Jack’s head.
Jack’s gut told him that something was all wrong. “Heather, what are you doing?”
Heather laughed.
“What is this?” Jack said. “Heather, I’m meeting my partner after this. Sean. If I don’t show up, Sean is going to wonder. He’ll come looking for me. He’ll call the police. Things are going to look suspicious. Heather, let’s push her off and get on with this.”
“No one’s pushing anyone,” Marjorie said.
“Is this another one of your tricks?” Jack yelled at Marjorie. To Heather, “Are you in on it?”
“You don’t get it, do you? Jack?” Heather asked. With her free hand, Heather pulled Marjorie’s face to hers and kissed her firmly on the lips. Marjorie kissed back.
Jack stood, watching them in shock, the snow settling on his broad immobile shoulders. “What are you doing?” They finally came up for air. Jack noticed a slice of white under Marjorie’s sweatshirt. Not a bra strap white slice. She was wearing long underwear.
He didn’t get it. “Look. I’ll go. We’ll just forget all this ever happened.”
“And I’m sure you won’t run straight to the police,” Marjorie mocked.
“I think Sean will understand,” Heather said. “Considering you killed him tonight.”
“What?”
“Your business went bad.” Heather said. “It was in the paper this morning. Your world fell apart. You were afraid you were going to jail, remember? You couldn’t stand the embarrassment. You couldn’t stand losing everything. You and Sean had arranged a trip to Monteagle. It made sense to Sean; you were going to your high school reunion. You saw your wife—whom you kicked out of the house, yet wouldn’t sign the divorce papers—with the man you’ve hated most all these years. People saw me go antagonistic with you at the reunion tonight. I’ll say I broke up with you. Everything added on top of everything. Afterwards, I left the reunion—I didn’t come or leave with you—and drove back to Murfreesboro. Alibi for me. Stencil and Marjorie went to her house. Alibi for them. You left alone. Your graduating class saw you arrive alone and leave alone after I had long gone. You looked defeated, maybe hiding what you were feeling. Maybe you were depressed? Angry? You killed your business partner with your gun, this gun, in a parking lot off Dixie Lee Highway. You blamed him for destroying your livelihood, your reputation. You drove to Shad to say your goodbyes and do a little remembering. And then you drove out here. Up this access road in your rented SUV. Alone. To end it. With your gun. The one you used to shoot Sean. Marjorie collects the insurance money. All those questions you wanted answers for over the last several months? There you go.”
“Sean and I are meeting people tonight,” Jack said, as if he had not heard that Sean was supposed to be dead and that he was supposed to have murdered him. “People are going to miss me.”
“What people?” Heather asked. “The girl Sean was picking up? From Healthy Hands Massage? That’s the only ‘people’ I know Sean was expecting. I heard you talking to Sean on the phone, about him coming with you, though you didn’t tell him he was your alibi. We all know about Sean, what he likes to do on his business trips. I went straight to Walmart, bought a prepaid phone. I called him myself. I told him you said for me to call him. He called me back on the phone to verify. Even tonight. He was very cautious. He called me before he would let me get in the car. I talked to him several times. I’d call him. He’d call me. And I killed him. With your gun. As he had never met me before…”
“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Marjorie asked Jack. “You had to come out and see me finished.” It was as though Marjorie could not keep silent any longer.
Jack turned to run, but slipped and fell onto the icy rocks. At 379 pounds, he looked like some sort of walrus or puffer fish flopping around on the ice. As he struggled, bleeding, back to his feet, his hairpiece askew, he shouted, “They’ll find you, they’ll catch you, help, help, help!” He felt for his phone, saw it had fallen out of his coat pocket along with a glove. Heather kicked both off the side of the ledge.
“Jack, you know there’s no one around to hear. You and I made sure of that.”
“They’ll catch you.” He was crying now.
“How?” Marjorie asked. “By checking your SUV that we’ve never ridden in? That you rented to hide from your classmates that your car had been repossessed? Our footprints coming up? The one’s you ran over with your SUV tires? By checking around here on these rocks for footprints? How are they going to catch us, Jack?”
“If you hadn’t had an affair, Marjorie…”
“What? We’d live happily ever after? I’d stay home alone. You’d be out pushing your latest get-rich scheme? You thought I was stupid, Jack! I never left you. You left me. A long time ago. Your heart. You threw me out!” There were tears in Marjorie’s eyes. “I loved you. But right after we got married, you forgot that. And I’ve only had Heather.”
“What?” He was able to get to his feet, but with Heather holding the gun on him, he didn’t dare step forward.
“We couldn’t have any type of normal life,” Marjorie said, “but every few months, when you would go out of town with Sean, we would get together. She’d drive over from Murfreesboro. We would hang out at the lake, sleep in our bed. You nearly caught her that last time in bed with me.”
“That was you?” Jack asked. “A woman?”
“Assuming makes an ass-of-u-and-me,” Heather said.
“You were the only man for me, Jack,” Marjorie said. “And then you let yourself go. I tolerated your indiscretions when you would go away with Sean. Did you think I didn’t know? I tolerated your schemes. You didn’t want me anymore, but I stayed because I still loved you even though you no longer loved me. You married me because your Mother liked me, Jack. And then you threw me out. I can’t believe you wanted to kill me.”
“No,” Jack said. “It was Heather’s idea.” He took a step towards Marjorie, pleading with her. Heather stepped back from them.
“No, Jack,” Marjorie said. “She told me all about it. You planned to do it. She played me the recordings.”
“The recordings? You recorded me? No. Heather said…”
“No.”
Jack was so surprised at this turn of events that he did not notice Heather move to the side and then walk up behind him. Through his shock, he barely felt the cold barrel against his temple. He never heard the shot.
Jack fell onto the rocks.
“He killed himself,” Heather said. She put the gun into Jack’s hand, making sure his fingerprints were all over it. Then, holding his hand on the gun, she helped him fire another shot into the air to expose his hand to the powder residue. She took his two gold cufflinks off and put them in her pocket. From another pocket, she took out a single cufflink, one of the two she had stolen from Jack’s bedroom along with the gun. She put this single cufflink on the right arm of Jack’s shirtsleeve to match the one the police would find in Sean’s car. She thought about the plane tickets in Jack’s coat pocket, but left them. It was a nice touch that Jack had put them in Sean’s name.
“You got a spot of blood on you,” Marjorie said lovingly as Heather came over to her.
“It’ll wash off,” Heather said. “Don’t touch.” She pulled off the gloves she had worn all night, careful to turn them inside out as she did, and then put the gloves into her pocket along with the pieces of panty hose she picked up off the ground. “I’ll get rid of these somewhere between here and home.” She would stop at a burger dumpster in Manchester. The plan was for Heather to drive back to Murfreesboro after dropping Marjorie off at her house in Shad. There would be no contact made between them, not until they saw each other unexpectedly for the first time after many years at Jack’s unfortunate funeral. That, of course, would happen only after someone discovered his body here in Savage Gulf.
The two women walked over the rocks, away from the scene of the crime. The only thing Heather had left to do after dropping Marjorie off was to replace the license tag she had stolen from a car in Tracy City with her real one; she had put the stolen tag on her car in the unlikely event that anyone should have noted it parked in front of Heather’s house or parked down at the foot of the access road.
As Heather and Marjorie walked along, the snow picked up and fell steadily and heavily. The forest grew whiter and blindingly bright, almost magical, almost like day. Heather reached across the cold and took Marjorie’s hand. In Heather’s car, Marjorie’s coat was waiting.