The Color of Wounds Read online

  “Absolutely. Don’t you? And I think you should pick her up.”

  Kent knew his brother, he knew his various tones of voice and mind sets, and throughout the whole conversation, Kent was suspicious that Merrill was holding something back.

  “We’ve been trying,” Merrill said.

  “Trying what?”

  “To bring in Dee Mitt.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “We can’t find her,” Merrill said. “After you left our meeting at the station, MacKinnon and I decided we ought to talk to her again. She’s not at her apartment. She’s not around town.” He shook his head, searching for another way to put it, but couldn’t think of one. “She’s gone.”

  “Well, you’ve got to find her. She’s the key.”

  “Like I said. We’re trying.”

  There was a short silence, then Kent asked, “What about Tice?”

  “What about him?”

  “I think you ought to bring him in again, too. We know the two of them are connected. Right? That’s obvious from Tice’s scrapbook. I’d say we should talk to him about it.”

  Merrill nodded. “We can do that easy enough.”

  “All right then. As soon as you are finished with him, call me. I’m dying to hear what he’s got to say.”

  Kent was startled back to VinChaRo’s auction by Aubrey’s voice.

  “Talk to anybody while I was gone?”

  He chewed an ice cube. “No. I was just watching the show.”

  “Oh-oh,” Aubrey said.

  “What?”

  “Look who just stepped up to the bar.”

  Kent looked over to see Eddy Mathews and Loren arm-in-arm chatting merrily as they pushed their way toward the liquor.

  “Look like a couple of love birds,” Aubrey said.

  “More like a nuclear bomb reaching critical mass.”

  “I like that better.”

  “More explosive.”

  “Exactly.”

  Kent and Aubrey watched Loren hanging on Eddy’s every word. Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her, whispering something in his ear. That was when Kent noticed she was staring over Eddy’s shoulder at him. Aubrey saw it, too.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Kent saw Aubrey straighten.

  “Loren’s looking right at you, Kent,” she said. “I don’t believe it. That bitch is putting on a show for you.”

  He was pretty sure Aubrey was right. “Not a chance,” he said.

  Just then Loren gave a wink, subtle, so fleeting only the one for whom it was intended would notice. Except Aubrey saw it, too.

  “Goddamn her,” she said. “Apparently the woman doesn’t understand English.”

  “What?”

  Aubrey threw the last third of her wine to the back of her throat, set her glass down hard. “Never mind. That’s between her and me.” She stood abruptly, sending her chair skidding away from her knees. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before I make a scene.”

  By the time they reached their seats by the ring, Aubrey had regained her composure. Kent forced Loren and Eddy into the same recess of his mind where he was storing Marvin Tice, Dee Mitt, and the rest of the bomber mess. It was getting crowded.

  CHAPTER 34

  It was after midnight when Kent and Aubrey exited the pavilion and crossed the parking lot headed to their car.

  “I’d call it a successful evening,” Kent said.

  There were only a handful of cars in the lot as they strolled across it, enjoying the darkness and solitude and the satisfaction of a job well done.

  They heard the noise at the same time and froze—a commotion emanating from a car way across the lot. Screened by darkness and another car, it was impossible to see what was happening. But the night air carried the sound as if they were right there. Voices, loud and angry. A man and a woman arguing, shouting, cursing.

  “That sounds like Loren,” Kent said.

  “And Eddy,” Aubrey said. “I was going to wait till tomorrow after I cooled down a little before I beat the shit out of her, but maybe I’ll go ahead and take care of it now.” She started in the direction of the car.

  Kent hooked her arm. “Don’t do that. They are having a little lovers’ spat. Serves them right. Let’s ignore them. I’ve got plans for us.” He gave her a come on, you know what I mean look.

  They heard another angry exchange. It was followed by the muffled snap of a fist against flesh, then a guttural sound between a grunt and a moan.

  Kent’s devious look collapsed into concern.

  “Nope,” Aubrey said. “I want to check it out. See if Eddy is stealing my fun.”

  They moved toward the sound, keeping the second car between them and the source. When they were close enough, they both went up on their toes, surveying the scene across the hood of the car in front.

  In the moonlight they saw Eddy Mathews crouched over Loren. She was on her back on the macadam, her head angled against the front tire of Eddy’s Lexus. His hands clutched her throat, her legs flailed as she struggled.

  Kent was surprised how fast Aubrey got around the car. But he was flat-out amazed when he saw her rise in the air and deliver some sort of karate kick that sank a four-inch heel into Eddy’s back. Eddy never saw it coming. He rolled onto the blacktop gasping. Kent pulled Aubrey away as she lifted her foot, preparing to drive her heel into Eddy again.

  “He’s had enough,” he said. “Help me with Loren.”

  For a moment Aubrey held, glaring at Eddy, deciding. Then she rubbed her forearm across her face, and nodded slowly. “I can’t stand to see a guy wail on a girl.”

  “Obviously. Help me with Loren,” he said.

  She was still on her back, head against the tire. Her eyes were fixed on Eddy in a terrified stare. Her legs alternately flexed and extended in a slow writhing motion. Her evening dress had worked almost up to her hips, displaying white thighs against macadam and moonlight. Aubrey tugged it back into place. Kent could make out a dark bruise on her cheek that was swelling as they watched. Dark fluid trickled from a crack in her lip.

  Kent looked her over quickly as if examining a dog that had lost a fight. “Nothing’s broken. Let’s get her out of here.” He fumbled in his pocket, pulled out the keys to the Cherokee, and handed them to Aubrey. “Bring the car around and we’ll get her out of here.”

  Loren was limp, draped in his arms as he waited for Aubrey to pull the Cherokee alongside. Seconds later they had her stretched across the back seat, mumbling angry gibberish.

  “To the hospital?” Aubrey asked, still in the driver’s seat.

  “No. She’s not hurt badly,” Kent said. He pushed Loren’s feet in and carefully closed the back door. “She’s mostly drunk. She smells like a distillery. Let’s take her to my place. Save her the embarrassment of the hospital.”

  “You’re the doctor. She’s definitely catty enough to qualify as one of your patients.” Kent did not laugh. Aubrey glanced over the seat behind her. “I wonder what they were fighting about.”

  “Who knows.”

  As he reached to close his door, he heard a grunting, bubbly voice to his right. “About you, Stephenson! It’s all about you!”

  Kent snapped around and saw Eddy clutching his lower back, swaying on spraddled legs. Tears were running down his cheeks and a string of saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth. He was crying like a schoolboy—hurting physically, crushed emotionally.

  Kent was out of his vehicle and facing Eddy in an instant. But Eddy drew his arms over his head in a pitiful attempt to protect himself and Kent knew there was no fight in him.

  “What do you mean, ‘about me?’” Kent asked.

  Eddy pointed into the car at Loren. “The bitch played you like a harp. Figured you were her ticket away from her asshole husband. But you shut he
r down and she’s all pissed off. She was just using me.”

  Kent held his ground, braced, saying nothing.

  Eddy took a wobbly step toward Kent. He tried to steel himself, cleared his throat. “Okay. This afternoon she calls me up. Says Aubrey told her I have a horse in the sale tonight that she might be interested in. We get talking and she agrees to come along with me. A date, kind of. You know. After she buys my horse, she really starts coming on to me. Fine, no big. That’s kinda nice. We have a few drinks, one thing leads to another and ...” He motioned at his Lexus. “Before long we’re in my car. She tells me she doesn’t really have the money to cover the check she just made a big show of writing to me. So, I’m pissed. But I say to myself, ‘why ruin a good night, I’ll take part of the money in trade, worry about the rest tomorrow.’ Right?” He gave a quick laugh that wasn’t funny. “So I tell her that’s my plan. I give her …” He held out his hand and waggled it, “...a little kiss. She seems okay with that. I slide my hand up her leg and she goes nuts. Slaps the shit out of me. Then starts into this whole damn story about her bastard husband, and her coming to the CVC to check it out for a school or something, and making a play for you. So now I’m really pissed because I got a bad check for my horse and I’m not getting laid. Then she tops it off by saying the only reason she came on to me was to make you jealous.”

  Kent saw movement out of the corner of his eye as Aubrey stepped to his side. “So you hit her.” She spit the words at Eddy in a vicious, degrading tone.

  Eddy’s face became a collage of anger, humiliation, and self-recrimination, all stirred by too much liquor.

  “Yeah. I hit her. She deserved it.”

  Aubrey drew back a balled fist. “You motherfucker!”

  Kent held her back for the second time as Eddy covered his head and ducked to a safer distance from Aubrey.

  “You have your car keys?” Kent said to the beaten man.

  Eddy reached in his pocket, retrieved a set of keys, and dangled them for Kent to see.

  “Get in your car and get the hell out of here.”

  There was a flicker of defiance in Eddy’s eyes until they met Aubrey’s. He turned and looked at Loren lying in the Cherokee. He let out a sigh. “All right. All right. But we’ll take this up later.” He started walking toward his car.

  As Aubrey steered the Cherokee across the parking lot, Kent turned to inspect Loren. She had dropped into the slow cadence respiration of one in alcohol-induced sleep.

  “She’s crocked,” he said. “She needs sleep, not a doctor.”

  Still facing backward, he took one final look toward Eddy Mathews and confirmed his car was crossing the lot. That’s when he was jolted by a blinding explosion that sent glass flying and flames leaping out of all windows of the Lexus. A shock waveshook the Cherokee enough to make it veer.

  “Jesus, Aubrey!” Kent said. “Eddy’s car just blew up!”

  Aubrey hit the brakes, rolling Loren forward. Kent pushed her back onto the seat.

  “No. No. Don’t stop. Keep going!” Kent pointed toward the open road ahead. “There’s nothing we can do here. We don’t need to be around when the cops arrive.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Sunday morning, Kent sat at the kitchen table at Pine Holt, nursing his second mug of coffee. Across from him, Aubrey sat brooding. With her elbows on the table bracing her chin, she stared down the hall toward where Loren was sleeping.

  Last night, after they had gotten Loren situated in the guest room, he and Aubrey had speculated on who and why someone would kill Eddy Mathews. They’d been associated with him long enough to know he had his share of enemies. He’d made plenty of questionable deals over the years. Angered some powerful people. There were a lot of possibilities.

  By nine o’clock, Aubrey’s combative juices were boiling.

  “I’m getting her up,” she said.

  Kent gave a neutral shrug. “It’s up to you.”

  “But she does need the sleep.”

  “After getting beaten up, I’d say so.”

  “She’ll probably sleep all day if we let her.”

  “Probably.”

  “May as well let her.”

  “You are one conflicted lady.”

  “You mean because I helped Loren last night, and I still want to beat the shit out of her this morning?”

  “Exactly.”

  Aubrey sipped coffee and didn’t answer.

  “And where the hell did that karate move come from? That was some kick.”

  “There are still a few things you don’t know about me.”

  “I’m glad I know about that now.”

  “Just don’t ever let me see you hit a woman and it won’t be a problem.”

  Kent held up both hands. “No problem there, Babe.”

  She leaned over the table, took his hands, and kissed them.

  “I love you,” she said.

  They let a moment of silence pass between then. Eventually, Aubrey said, “I’m going to get her up.”

  “Conflicted.”

  Aubrey wrinkled her nose at him, then marched down the hall and disappeared into the guest room.

  He heard Aubrey’s voice. Then a deep moan and a plea to be left alone from Loren.

  Aubrey returned to the kitchen, stopped at the coffee pot, then sat. “I gave her five minutes to be out here.”

  “A whole five minutes?”

  “Half a day wouldn’t be enough to get that wreck straightened around.” Kent smiled inwardly. He had the best seat in the house for what promised to be a great show. “She look really bad?”

  “Like ten miles of bad road. Prepare yourself.”

  They heard the guest room door creak open, there was a shuffling sound in the hall, and the toilet flushed. Then Loren stumbled into the kitchen. She was wearing a fuzzy robe that Aubrey had provided her. It hung on her like a faded blue buffalo hide. On her feet were giant slippers with goofy looking puppy heads on the toes. From Emily’s little girl days, he thought. Aubrey could be vicious.

  Aubrey’s face lit up like the Cheshire cat. “Good morning,” she said, much louder than necessary.

  Loren winced. “I need a cigarette.”

  On Loren’s cheek there was a bruise that looked like a charcoal smudge.

  “Oh, boy.” He had underestimated the degree of disrepair.

  “What you need is some water,” Aubrey said.

  “Where’s my purse?”, Loren asked.

  Kent guessed any noise above a whisper would do to her head what the car bomb did to Eddy’s Lexus.

  Aubrey pointed to the counter. “You sound terrible.”

  Loren took her purse, fumbled for a cigarette and lit up with unsteady hands.

  “How’d you sleep?” Aubrey almost shouted.

  Loren’s puffy eyes opened wide, then became slits again. She shrugged, made her next stop the coffee pot, then eased carefully into a chair at the table. “I feel like shit!”

  “You look like shit.”

  Loren drew in deeply on her cigarette, held the smoke in her lungs, then released its blue haze toward the ceiling. As an afterthought she said, “Is it okay if I smoke in here?”

  “Would it make any difference if I said, ‘No’?”

  “Aren’t we fired up this morning,” Loren said.

  “I’m well beyond fired up,” Aubrey said.

  “About what?”

  “Eddy told us all about the little show you put on for Kent’s benefit.”

  Loren lowered swollen lids down to cover her eyes as memory of last night crept through her fog. “Oh, that.” She took in more smoke and released it. “It didn’t work.”

  “No kidding? How can you tell? Maybe it’s the fact that Kent’s still with me. Maybe it’s that Eddy beat the shit out of you. Or ...,” Aubrey paused, nodding sligh
tly as if this was the most plausible explanation. “Maybe it’s that Eddy’s dead.”

  Loren’s eyes popped open. Her already gray face became corpse white. “Dead?”

  Her jaw slackened so when she mouthed the word, her cigarette dropped

  from her lips onto the table. She scrambled to recover it, then asked again, Dead?”

  Kent decided that Aubrey had punished Loren enough and stepped in as the good cop.

  “Just as we were driving out of the parking lot at VinChaRo, after we’d picked you up, Eddy’s car exploded. Apparently, someone rigged a car bomb in it.”

  “Oh, my God!” Loren set down her cigarette and leaned forward, covering her mouth with both hands. “I was with the man last night. Now he’s dead?”

  “Last night, did Eddy say anything that would indicate who may have done it?”

  “No,” Loren said through her hands.

  There was a long silence. It was broken by a deep growl from Aubrey. She slapped the table with her palm.

  “Why did you do all this in the first place?”

  Loren dropped her defenses, gave up trying to maintain any modicum of dignity. “To get even with Kent. Isn’t that what Eddy told you?”

  “Not quite,” Aubrey said, her tone accusatory. “He made it sound like you were making a play for Kent. Trying to make him jealous.”

  Loren shook her head. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “That was at first,” she said. “But he kept saying no.” Her voice became cynically sing-song and she tilted her head side to side as she mocked Kent’s words. “‘Aubrey and I are a pair now. You’ve got your own husband. What we had before is ancient history.’ He had a million reasons why I should go away.” She let out a humorless laugh and let her eyes meet Kent’s. “I honestly believe that if I wasn’t on the accreditation committee, he would have booted me right out of the CVC.” She raised her eyebrows, requesting a reply, but Kent continued his neutral stare.

  Loren cut her eyes around the kitchen. “You have any Scotch here?”

  Kent rolled his eyes at the thought.

  “Drink your coffee,” Aubrey said. “So that’s it? You were angry because of a rebuff.”