One
The phone rang.
A girl somewhere between the ages of fifteen and
eighteen, Jennifer Renee Wessner, sat curled in a recliner running an
emery board across her fingernails. Cathy Weibler lay on the couch amidst
her halo of shiny blonde curls and glanced hopefully at Jennifer.
Jennifer gave the older woman and her bright blue eyes a stubborn smile,
forcing Cathy to snatch the offending instrument from its cradle with a
glare of mock anger. “Evelyn Haxx residence. Cathy Weibler speaking.”
Cathy sat up quickly. “Oh, hi, Evelyn. No, we
haven’t gotten any calls.” She listened attentively. “Just me and
Jennifer. Nothing much going on.”
Cathy drew erect with rapt attention. “Dimitri
Carvelli.” She reached for a pencil alongside the phone, jotted a number
on a scratch pad and repeated it. “Give Dimitri a call. Be sweet as a
rotting corpse and tell the rich young dude that you’re porking someone
else tonight and to call Miss Piggy for another date.”
Cathy winced at the repercussions of her spiteful
sarcasm and sighed with exasperation. “I can too be civil. I won’t screw
around, and I’ll send Jennifer home at a decent hour just as you say.
Good-bye, Evelyn.”
Cathy put the phone down a bit heavily. “Prissy
bitch.”
Jennifer looked up from her blunted fingernails.
“Why doesn’t she call that Carvelli dude herself?”
“Caller ID,” Cathy said. “Business from business
phones only. Stalking protection. Rule
number four hundred and eighty-seven million.”
It made sense, and Jennifer committed another of
Francis’ many rules of the trade to memory, although the four hundred and
eighty seven million part was just a bit of facetiousness. She already
knew that Francis screened new customers, assigned them to one of her
stable of courtesans, and expected business to be conducted in a very
business-like manner.
Courtesan was Francis Peugeot’s choice of words, and
she always said it with a smile.
“Dimitri Carvelli isn’t an approved customer?”
Jennifer said.
Cathy frowned, momentarily distracted.
“Blacklisted. Evelyn says he’s a sicko. Francis will refer him
elsewhere.”
Jennifer wrinkled her nose. “Elsewhere?”
Cathy laughed at her puzzled innocence. “Scags
stupid enough to take the risk, or tough enough to handle it. Francis
doesn’t do that kind of business.”
Jennifer smiled and returned to her nails. “How
nice.”
Cathy lay back down on the couch and hugged a
pillow. “Evelyn gets all the high-class business.”
“Elegant Evelyn,” Jennifer said, still smiling.
“You know who Dimitri Carvelli is, don’t you?” Cathy
said in a conspiratorial tone of voice.
“I wouldn’t have the slightest idea. It’s probably
not something for my virgin ears to hear.”
“His dad’s a big shot in city government,
commissioner of streets and highways, I think. He’s old as dirt, and his kid’s a
spoiled brat, but they’re both top rates. I bet I
could keep the little turd in line.”
Jennifer glanced at woman with a jolt of concern.
The old stereotype of the dumb blonde applied with a vengeance to Cathy.
Her beauty and abject lack of good judgment were a bad combination that
constantly got her into trouble with Francis and the other girls.
Jennifer could all but hear the cogs turning in her mischievous brain.
“Evelyn didn’t say how I was supposed to deliver the
message,” Cathy rationalized aloud.
Jennifer felt a little chill of apprehension.
“You’ll get fired, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Like Wanda getting fired? We’re both the same age,
you know. I’m next in line.”
“Wanda won’t lay off the drugs.”
Cathy sat up and sighed heavily. “Yeah, but she’s
getting too old, we’re both tired of working by all the rules anyway, and
I’m still next in line.”
She stared off into space with a haunted look, then
flashed a self-conscious smile. “Why don’t you hold down the fort for
me. I’ve got to go to the drug store for some personal stuff. We don’t
want to let the bed bugs bite, now do we?”
Jennifer set her emery board aside and unraveled her
long legs. “You’re supposed to stay here and answer the phone.” Evelyn’s
answering machine had bit the dust late in the day and the two had agreed
to fill in for the evening.
“You won’t snitch on me, will you?” Cathy said, her
gaze cold as ice.
“No, but I won’t lie for you.”
Cathy got up and headed for the bedroom to dress.
“You won’t have to. It’s going to be a quiet one tonight. I can tell.”
Jennifer leaped to her feet, fearful of being
abandoned in a strange part of town by the older women. “You just going
to leave me here alone?”
“Francis doesn’t want you part of the business,”
Cathy called out from the bedroom, “but you’re old enough to answer the
phone!”
Jennifer dropped down in front of Evelyn’s forty-five
inch flat-screen plasma TV, suppressing nagging concern and petty frustration.
If nothing else, Evelyn had
rented a stack of DVDs, and they’d have to go back in the morning.
Cathy emerged from the bedroom dressed to kill in one
of Evelyn’s gowns, royal blue and edged in black lace, and a pair of
heels. She refitted her own gold choker around her neck and did a quick
whirl.
Jennifer shook her head in exasperation. Cathy was
an absolute knockout. “But you really shouldn’t,” she cautioned.
“Just don’t rat on me, okay?”
Jennifer nodded reluctantly. She turned back to the
TV and reached for the remote. Behind her, the door to the apartment
opened and closed and settled the issue with resolute finality.
Jennifer slipped one of the summer’s blockbusters
into the DVD. She was skipping through coming attractions when
the phone rang again. Wrought with tension, Jennifer paused the player
and picked up the handset. “Evelyn Haxx residence. How may I help you?”
“Jennifer,” Evelyn’s soft voice sounded. “Is that
you?”
Jennifer’s grew rigid with tension. Her heart picked
up its beat. It was Evelyn calling back for confirmation that Cathy had
made the call, and already Cathy was in trouble. They both should have
guessed that Evelyn would check back. “Yeah, it’s me, Evelyn.”
“Did Cathy make the call?”
Jennifer’s mind whirled with indecision. “She left
the apartment, Evelyn. She said she was going to the drugstore.”
“She left the apartment? She didn’t make the call?”
Evelyn grew agitated. “She knows Dimitri’s trouble. He’s drunk,
Jennifer. He’s really nasty when he’s drunk. Do you think you can stop
her?”
Jennifer rose to her feet and danced up and down
nervously. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Go after her!” Evelyn cried in alarm. “Tell her I’m
calling Francis this very minute! She knows better than to pull a stunt
like this! Now go!”
Seething with apprehension, Jennifer fought the need
to go running out into the night in shorts and halter. With a moan of
dismay, Evelyn’s decided her crisis took precedent over skimpy attire in a bad part of
town. She hung the phone up and ran for the door.
“Cathy, wait!”
She monitored the deserted hall for a response, then
raced down the three flights of stairs rather than wait for the elevator.
Pausing at the main entrance to peer out into the darkness, she thought
she saw Cathy’s old Dodge Monaco turning at the corner.
It wasn’t too late. The drug store was only a
couple blocks away, and her trusty bicycle awaited in the bushes, but she
paused again thinking that it would be one more nail in her coffin should
she let the apartment building door close and lock behind her and then
find herself accosted in the night by undesirable elements of the male
persuasion. Again, she had no recourse. She had change in her pocket.
She could phone Francis from a booth and arrange to be picked up.
She hurried outside and retrieved her bike from the
bushes and shadows alongside the building. Pedaling furiously, she cut
through a dark alley, zipped across a deserted thoroughfare, and wove
through the traffic in the parking lot of the strip mall.
She dropped the bike alongside the drug store and
went inside the brightly lit interior. It was late, and the store all but
deserted. Cathy stood in line behind two other customers at the express
register.
Cathy caught sight of her. “Go home, Jennifer!”
“Evelyn called back!” Jennifer whispered harshly.
“She said she was going to call Francis!”
“You snitched on me!”
“I did not!”
“Did so! Now scoot!”
Unfriendly eyes from behind the service counter were
watching. Jennifer went outside and paced alongside the car thinking she
should at least follow Cathy and keep an eye on her, except that Cathy
wasn't likely to take her along, and pitting a
bicycle against a car would only get her left in the old Dodge’s smoky
exhaust.
Cathy came bounding through the automatic doors with
her usual air-headed exuberance. Jennifer dived impulsively through an
open window of the rusty Monaco and crawled over the front seat. She lay
face down on the back floor and put her hands over her head, as if the
gesture would render her invisible.
Muttering angrily to herself, Cathy tossed a white
paper sack into the front seat, climbed behind the wheel, and slammed the
door. She started the car, cranked the radio on a heavy rock station and
drove away squealing tires.
Jennifer had committed herself, and lost her bicycle
in the process. If she revealed her presence now, Cathy would get nasty.
She’d evict her from the car and abandon her on foot ten miles from home.
Jennifer had no choice but to remain silent for the violent twenty-minute
drive and the raucous music that accompanied it.
Cathy lurched to a stop at an iron gate. She turned
off the radio and pushed the button to an intercom. A muffled voice spoke
briefly. Cathy said her name was Evelyn Haxx and the gate opened. She
drove up a steep drive lined with trees and went around the back of a dark
mansion. She parked, shut off the lights and engine, and was gone in a
flash.
As the car door slammed shut, Jennifer pressed her
forehead to the musky smelling rug and squeezed her fists in a fit of
fearful indecision. She positively hated being left alone in the dark.
She raised her head above the seat and took notice
that a back door to the house stood slightly ajar. It creaked open even
as she watched, caught like a sail in a summer breeze. That was typical
of Cathy, always rushing about like a scatter-brain and not paying
attention to what she was doing.
It took fifteen minutes for Jennifer to gather enough
courage to venture outside the car and peek inside the house. Beyond, a
dim fluorescent light glowed in a kitchen of white enamel and stainless
steel. Jennifer crept forward step by step, listening for the reassuring
sound of Cathy’s voice.
She crept down a hall toward the dining room and
finally heard murmuring voices. A basement door stood open. Cathy’s
voice and the voice of a suave sounding man drifted up from downstairs.
Jennifer caught sight of the edge of a pool table and a bottom corner of a
rich wall of paneling. As tension sloughed away, she sat on the carpeted
top step. Cathy didn’t know it, but a guardian angel going to watch over
her for the rest of her visit.
Jennifer leaned against the wall and closed her eyes,
soothed by the subdued voices and sounds of casual laughter. Dimitri
Carvelli didn’t sound drunk. He didn’t sound at all dangerous. She
ignored the embarrassed giggles and the animal grunts and moans that
followed, but when she could hear the tinkling of glass between bouts of
love-making, and when Cathy’s laughter grew raucous over the course of the
next hour, Jennifer knew they were both getting drunk. That, too, was
against Francis’ rules.
Something went wrong. They began barking angered
retorts at one another and Jennifer leaped to her feet, prepared to flee
back to the car. Cathy would come storming up the stairs at any moment.
She heard the two scuffling and bumping into things. Cathy wasn’t one to
let her clients get rough with her.
Cathy cried out in sudden pain, an anguished wail cut
off in an instant. The hackles along the back of Jennifer’s neck
crawled. Dimitri snarled in anger. Glass crashed to the floor.
Jennifer was frozen in place when a figure backed staggering into view
below, a naked man holding a gleaming dueling foil.
Ice crept up Jennifer’s spine. The tip of the thin
rapier tipped to the ground.
Blood dripped from the end.
The horrible image held her entranced a moment too
long. She stood rooted to the spot, not knowing if she should scream,
rush down to help, or turn and escape without being seen.
Dimitri Carvelli settled her moment of indecision.
Maybe her shuddering breath gave her away. He glanced up at her, his eyes
widened in shock, and then he roared with panic and outrage.
He charged up the stairs after her, and it was in
that place and at that moment that Jennifer’s long nightmare began.
