The Best Revenge Page 3

  Martha hit the button on the speakerphone but no one answered. She hit it one more time, but again, no reply. She wondered, of course, if maybe she was operating the thing incorrectly, so she went ahead and knocked, using the heavy brass knocker that said “The Greens” in raised letters that looked a little Gothic. After waiting a few minutes for a reply, she decided to check out behind the house. The Greens had a spa—“We call them hot tubs around here. But Nancy calls theirs a ‘spa.’ Who can figure, right?”—on the big deck behind their house, and Martha wondered if the house sitter might be using it, though lolling around in a swirling pool of hot water was about the last thing that Martha could have imagined doing right then. Martha had met the house sitter, a nice enough girl named Ivy, a couple of times but didn’t know whether she was a hot-tub-on-a-blistering-summer-evening type of person.

  Martha followed the path on the south side of the house—“I’ve been here before and that’s the best way to get to the back”—and climbed the cedar stairs to the big deck. She paused at the top of the stairs and admired the view to the east—“It’s a much nicer view than ours. You wouldn’t think a couple of hundred yards would make such a difference, but it does. We see mostly treetops from our cabin, but the Greens have a view with a capitalV .”

  The spa wasn’t being used, though. Without a breeze to mask the sound, Martha could tell that the water wasn’t even gurgling beneath the fancy gazebo-type thing on the far corner of the deck. She peered through the wall of windows that led outside from the back of the house.

  “I knew right away something was wrong. Why? Simple. The water was running in the kitchen sink. I could see it from the window. It was just running right down the drain. Nobody was standing there using it; it was just running. The sliding glass door was open, so . . .”

  Martha kicked her favorite Merrell clogs off her feet—“Nancy has a thing about shoes in her house, like she is part Japanese or something. Not that I have anything against the Japanese, believe me, I don’t”—and hustled over to the sink to shut off the water.

  “I didn’t see Ivy at first; my eyes were on the sink. Yours would have been, too. They would have. The water was just running and running. It gets your attention, something like that does.”

  What happened on the way from the back door to the sink was that Martha stepped in Ivy’s blood.

  “It was still just the slightest bit warm and it just squished right up through my toes. I didn’t know it was blood, of course. If I’d known that . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. “I thought something warm was spilled on the floor, like hot chocolate or soup or something like that. I did think soup for some reason, I don’t know why, but I kept going for the sink. I really wanted to turn off that running water. None of us have enough faith in our wells that we’ll waste water like that, especially when it’s been so dry out like it has been this spring. Every time one of us has to drill a new well, we have to drill deeper than the last one did. The well we dug summer before last had to be drilled 262 feet deep. I don’t have to tell you how much that cost us, do I? I didn’t think so.”

  The Greens’ sink was on the other side of their kitchen island—“We don’t have an island in our house. Just a sink built into the counter below the kitchen window. The regular way, you know.” Martha shut off the water and grabbed a big handful of paper towels to wipe up the hot chocolate or soup or whatever it was that Ivy had spilled on the floor. She was guessing that Ivy must have been taking a shower or something. “That’s when I saw the footprints—turned out they were my own footprints—across the kitchen tile. I realized right then and there that I’d stepped in blood. I don’t know of one single kind of soup that would leave footprints that color. Maybe beet soup. But beets and I don’t get along, if you know what I mean. Who makes beet soup, anyway? Russians do, right?”

  Martha reported that when she recognized exactly what it was that she had stepped in, she tried to scream but couldn’t get the sound to escape her throat. She thought about going for the phone to call 911. She thought about running back out the door. Then she looked up and saw Ivy and she fell backward against the island. “That’s when I knocked that big bowl on the floor. It’s where Nancy kept her fresh fruit. In that bowl. That’s why there are plums all over the floor. I did that. The plums, I mean. I’m so sorry.”

  She had to make herself look at Ivy again. “She was sitting in the corner behind the kitchen table on one of those big chrome chairs that Nancy has in her breakfast nook. Her head was hanging off to the side because somebody had cut right through her neck all the way to the bone. I could see the bone.”

  Martha was surprised that she didn’t faint. “I should have fainted, don’t you think? Seeing something like that? I’ll probably have nightmares for the rest of my life. The whole rest of my life.”

  The young deputy who had been first to arrive at the Greens’ house in response to Martha’s frantic call to 911 just let her talk and talk. He didn’t know when the detectives would arrive to take over, but he wasn’t at all eager to go back inside the house anyway. He’d already seen all he wanted to see. He held his hat in his hand and he nodded almost the whole time that the woman spoke.

  Martha sipped from the water she held in her hands and asked, “Is it all right if I clean between my toes, Officer? Or is that considered evidence?”

  CHAPTER 3

  June 1989

  A girlfriend of Ivy Campbell’s who was in nursing school at the medical center had told her about the deal: twenty dollars to sit through an interview with a medical student who was practicing basic interviewing skills during his senior psychiatry rotation. She’d spend sixty to ninety minutes answering questions about her life—that was it. Math wasn’t her strong suit, but Ivy figured she would be making at least thirteen or fourteen dollars an hour, way more than the seven-thirty she was making at the new mall in Cherry Creek. The medical school interview would be videotaped, but the tape would be destroyed at the end of the semester. Her confidentiality, she was promised, was assured.

  For Ivy, twenty bucks meant a night out drinking with her girlfriends or a concert ticket at Red Rocks or, if she went early enough in the season, a lift ticket at Copper or Winter Park. She could spare a couple of hours for that.

  She arrived at the Health Sciences Center at Ninth and Colorado in Denver a few minutes early for her two o’clock appointment and found her way to a sterile classroom on the third floor of a brick building that didn’t seem anywhere near as close to the library as she’d been told.

  A woman greeted her in the classroom, checked her in, and explained that her interviewer hadn’t arrived quite yet.

  Ivy smiled, pointed to the clock on the wall above the blackboard, and said, “In two minutes the meter starts running, right?”

  The woman who had checked her in was a skinny black woman in a horizontally striped dress and black-framed glasses. She shook her head disdainfully. “These med students, let me tell you, I think one of the first things they learn in medical school is how to keep people waiting for them. They go through life like everybody’s sitting reading an oldPeople magazine with nothing better to do than wait for them to show up.”

  Ivy liked the woman immediately. She smiled again. “I don’t mind the waiting as long as I’m being paid. You’re on the clock, too, I bet. Hi, I’m Ivy,” she said.

  “Bertha.” She bowed about thirty degrees from the waist. “I’m a department secretary. Trust me, this isn’t my normal gig. I’m filling in for a friend who talked an ob-gyn resident into a free ultrasound of her baby.”

  “Cool. What department do you work in?”

  “Psychiatry.”

  Ivy lifted her eyebrows.

  Bertha said, “Yeah. Exactly. Oooh, I hear footsteps. It may be our young doctor, only a few minutes late.”

  The young “doctor”—white lab coat and all—walked right past the open door of the classroom before he doubled back, poked his head inside the door, and said, “Is this where I’m
supposed to be?”

  Bertha sighed.

  Ivy replied. “Cosmically speaking, the answer to that question, I think, is always yes.”

  Bertha almost choked as she swallowed her laughter. She covered herself by looking down at her list. She asked, “You Clone?”

  One hand went to the stethoscope that was hanging around his neck. He didn’t seem to know how to respond. Ivy feared for a moment that he was going to need to check his white plastic nametag before he answered Bertha’s question. Instead, he nodded.

  Bertha said, “Good. This is Ivy Campbell. She’s your interview. Ivy Campbell, this is Thomas Clone. He’s your senior medical student.” Ivy noted that Bertha emphasized the word “senior.”

  Bertha faced Thomas Clone. “A/V promises me the camera’s all ready to go. Just hit ‘record’ when you’re ready to start the interview. I’ll be back in about an hour to get the tape. Any questions?”

  Ivy said, “You promise you’ll send me a check?”

  Bertha shook the paperwork in her hand. “We will, Ivy, you have my word. You call me yourself if there are any problems. Anything else? Dr. Clone? No? Fine then. You two be good, now. You promise?”

  Ivy said, “Later, Bertha.”

  “You too, girl.”

  Clone’s hand flew to his hip. “That’s my pager. I have to get that.” His eyes flitted around the room. “There’s no phone in here.”

  Ivy walked over to the video camera, hit the “record” button, and held her watch up to the lens for about five seconds. She said, “Do whatever you would like, Dr. Clone. As of now, we’re on the clock.” She sat on the chair that she guessed was intended for her and pulled a copy ofEntertainment Weekly from her backpack. “I’ll be here whenever you’re ready for me.”

  Three or four minutes later Tom Clone rushed back into the classroom. He stopped just inside the door, composed himself, which included stuffing his stethoscope into a pocket of the lab coat, and walked over to Ivy. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Dr. Clone. How do you do?” He offered her his hand.

  “Hi, I’m Ivy Campbell.” She didn’t release his hand. After about ten seconds he realized that he was going to have to yank it away from her. He did and sat down on a chair five feet away.

  “We’re, uh, just going to talk a little bit about your life here, uh, today, Ms. Campbell.”

  Tom Clone was handsome enough, Ivy thought, in a my-God-he’s-too-young-to-be-a-doctor kind of way. Nice shoulders. Good hair. Really, really nice eyes. “You can call me Ivy.”

  “Thank you, Ivy.” He still hadn’t actually looked at her for more than a few seconds.

  “This is an unusual situation, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “Usually when I go to the doctor—when anyone goes to the doctor, probably—I’m kind of nervous, certainly more nervous than the doctor. But today, you’re more nervous. Way more nervous. That’s what’s unusual.”

  “Um, yes, well. That may, um, be true.” He flicked a glance her way. “Today, anyway. Now, would you like to tell me something about yourself?”

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” She knew she wasn’t giving him a chance. Nor did she intend to.

  The trouble was, Tom didn’t just think Ivy was pretty; Tom Clone thought she was gorgeous. Her fine hair was such a glistening mahogany color that it seemed to be radiating. Her eyes were so bright and deep, he felt as though he were looking into them the way he’d examine tropical fish in an aquarium. Her legs were so long—he didn’t finish the thought. “Yes, um, well—why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  “Do you like hamburgers and beer?” Ivy asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ever been to the Cherry Cricket? It’s in Cherry Creek, behind Sears? They have great burgers. Awesome, actually. Almost perfect burgers.”

  “Um. I, uh . . .”

  “Are you allowed to ask me out to dinner? Like on a date? Even though we’ve done this interview thing?”

  “I suppose. I’m—”

  “Good. I was hoping you could. How about the Cherry Cricket this weekend? Saturday? Is nine okay?”

  “Um, yes. Yes, nine’s okay. I’m not . . . I’m not really sure it’s something I should do but, yes, nine’s okay.”

  “And then maybe we’ll do a movie? But I pick, okay? I have a thing about movies. I get nervous.”

  “Sure. A movie. Yes.”

  “Great. My address is on the sheet that Bertha has. Pick me up. And don’t be late, Doctor.”

  He looked puzzled.

  “Bertha’s the secretary who was here. You know, the black woman?” Ivy stood up and walked over to the video camera. She rewound the tape. “We’re going to start all over, now, Dr. Clone. If you want to go back out the door and pretend you’re just walking in again to start the interview, that would probably look best to your teachers. Don’t you think?”

  “Okay.”

  After he’d gone out the door and walked back into the room and repeated his introduction for the camera, she replied, “Hello, Dr. Clone, it’s very nice to meet you.”

  Tom Clone continued, “We’re going to spend a little while talking about your life here today, Ms. Campbell. Why don’t you tell me about yourself?”

  So she did, figuring that it would save them both some time on their first date.

  CHAPTER 4

  You have to put on your seat belt. It’s the law now.”

  Tom Clone was flummoxed, totally flummoxed. The woman, the car, the perfume, the light. So much space everywhere. No guards, no shackles. No pale paint on concrete walls. He said, “What? Excuse me?”

  “Your seat belt? Everybody has to wear them now. It’s the law.”

  Now.

  The word floored him. He was livingnow .

  Notthen .Now.

  Tom looked down toward Kelda James’s waist, saw the nylon strap stretched low across her abdomen, and noted the location of the latch beside the seat. He reached down between his own seat and the door and fumbled for his belt. It wasn’t there. He felt like a fool. His last car had been a ’77 Rabbit. He couldn’t remember if it even had shoulder belts. He certainly couldn’t remember wearing them.

  “It’s behind you. It comes across your shoulder. Here, like this.” She removed her own belt and let it retract to its starting position before she reattached the buckle.

  He mimicked her actions. “Thanks. There’s so much I guess I don’t know about. . . .”

  “Yes,” she said, confirming the thought, and started the car.

  He stared back at the prison. “I wasn’t even sure what the place actually looked like from the outside. When they brought me here after it opened in 1990, they did it at night. I barely remember seeing the building.”

  She glanced over at the shadowy complex and said, “Take away the fences, if you didn’t know what it really was, it wouldn’t look like much. Some kind of industrial complex.”

  He felt a chill crawl up his spine. “I know what it really is.”

  Kelda flipped open a device that was no bigger than a jumbo pack of Juicy Fruit and hit a solitary button with her thumb. He guessed the thing she was holding was a phone. Damn, they’d gotten small.

  Seconds later she said, “Tony? Hope I didn’t wake you but I thought you’d want to know that Tom Clone and I are driving away from the penitentiary as we speak.” She paused and steered the car from the parking lot onto the street. “I think he’s okay. Maybe a little overwhelmed by the suddenness of it all. You want to say hi?” She handed Tom the phone. “It’s your lawyer. I think he’ll be happy to hear your voice.”

  She saw him hesitate. “Hold the top part up by your ear. Don’t worry about the other part. It won’t actually reach your lips.”

  “Hello, Mr. Loving,” Tom said. “I’m a free man, thanks to you.”

  The high prairie that fills the gap between the Front Range peaks of the Pike National Forest and those of the San Isabel National Forest is a desolate expans
e that hasn’t changed much since Native Americans were the only humans traversing the valleys. Late in June the landscape already reflected the aridity of summer, and the wind that gusted continually seemed designed by nature to suck whatever moisture it could from any living thing that had any water remaining in it. Despite the altitude, nobody of sound mind would mistake this land for mountain meadow. As a rule, meadows were green and lush. This long spread between Cañon City and Colorado Springs on the front porch of the Rocky Mountains wasn’t.

  With the exception of the tiny metropolis of Penrose—which isn’t much of an exception at all—for the thirty-plus miles of Highway 115 that connect the prison towns of Cañon City and Florence with Colorado Springs, people reading maps don’t have to check the key for any symbols at all. No towns, no cities, no tourist attractions. Nothing. The only highway signs by the side of the road are the ones that tell drivers how far it is to someplace else.

  ROYAL GORGE 15 MILES.

  The only things that seem to grow naturally on that high prairie are sagebrush and prisons. The years have proven that it’s a hospitable environment for both.

  Tom Clone finished his call with Anthony Loving as the Buick was approaching the edge of Florence. Kelda said, “Just fold it up. That shuts it off.” He did and handed it back to her.

  “I couldn’t help overhearing,” she said. “You don’t want me to take you back to Cripple Creek?”