A Dangerous Affair (40 page)

She gave the beer another swirl and prepared for phase two of her plan.

"Find what you need?" Blanchart asked from the back of the kitchen.

Jamie spilled on her robe. "I thought you were in bed." She set the wine glass down and ran a dishtowel in cold water to blot the stain.

"You were gone a long time," said Blanchart.

Jamie handed Alan the tainted beer. "I couldn't twist the cap."

"I'm off duty for a couple days," said Blanchart. "I thought we could do something special." He put the bottle to his lips as if to drink, then lowered it and said, "Unless you already have plans."

"Of course not." Jamie dabbed the red stain with the wet dishtowel. "What did you have in mind?"

"I thought we could take a drive to the beach and enjoy the change of scenery. It's a short ride."

"That would be nice," Jamie lied to his face. She downed her last sip of wine.

Blanchart touched her hair. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm just tired."

Blanchart picked at the beer bottle with his thumb nail, scraping pieces of wet label on the floor. His jaw muscles twitched. His scathing glance burned a hole at Jamie.

"You're staring at me," said Jamie, compelled to break the awkward silence.

Blanchart raised the beer to his mouth. He brushed his lips across the top of his favorite beverage but didn't drink. "When was the last time you went to the beach?"

"I can't remember."

"Were you by yourself?"

"I never go there alone."

"Maybe you went with someone else?"

"I took Samantha when she came to visit."

Blanchart put the bottle to his lips and chugged the contents. He finished with a muffled burp.

Jamie looked down at the floor.

Blanchart rinsed the empty bottle in the sink. "You should have seen the look on her face. The same look I just saw on yours."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't think I'd find out, did you?"

Jamie felt lightheaded. The wine glass in her hand grew heavy. The room swayed like a boat on rolling seas. "Find out what?" Her words came harder. Her thoughts more difficult to formulate.

Blanchart took the glass away. "You didn't think I would notice you playing in my study?"

"I never go in your study."

"Your hands were all over my equipment the way my hands were all over Samantha's. She looks good on video. With a little coaching, she could land a career on her back."

Jamie balanced herself against the table in a dizzy, twilight state. "I feel, sick..."

Blanchart left the room and came back with an empty prescription bottle and a tube of Super Glue. "I found these taped to the back of your dresser drawer. You should be more careful."

Jamie shook her head. Her body felt weightless.

Blanchart's tone grew ominous. "You poured talcum powder in my beer. I laced your glass with something stronger." He opened the tube of Super Glue and dabbed a drop on each of Jamie's fingers before he pressed them against her naked thighs, leaving her arms locked in a criss-cross fashion above her groin. "That will teach you to keep your legs together."

"Please..."

"Save it for somehow who cares. I trusted you and you betrayed that trust. You're human. You're programmed from birth to make mistakes. The problem is we fail to realize the consequences of those mistakes until it's too late. In this case we're not talking about a failure to yield or excessive speeding. We're talking about a breach of trust between a husband and wife. And I always say a marriage without trust ends in mayhem."

He hoisted her on his shoulder and carried her outside beyond the screened pool to the open storage shed. "At some point, you're going to tell me all about the new man in your life. But first, we need to get you settled and give you time to think about your indiscretion. This wasn't an easy decision for me. The tough ones never are. In some countries, death is the punishment of choice. But fortunately we live in a civilized society. And I'm not a bad man."

He stuffed a scarf in her mouth and tied it behind her head inside the dank, musty shed. "This will feel a little tight at first."

He set her down and shoved a work bench toward the corner to reveal the outline of an opening cut into the floor. He poked his fingers through the air holes in the hinged plywood flap and lifted one end to expose the stapled pine box beneath the shed. A trail of copper brown fire ants crawled single file along the bottom edge.

Jamie pulled her fingers back, stretching the skin on her thighs until it hurt. Heavily sedated but still lucid, she found herself at the mercy of her own misfortune.

Alan shoved her inside the box and lowered the lid. Then he dragged the heavy workbench on top to secure his property in place.

Chapter 60

Lloyd stood with Marvin in Varden's office, his ears pricking for the sound of a house call that never came. His thoughts ran the gamut of possibilities.
Did Jamie follow the plan? Did she find the rental car? Did she make it to the airport? Or has something gone terribly wrong?

"What's up with this?" Marvin whispered to his roommate. He rubbed his eyes. Lloyd could see they were red and bleary from Varden's late-night rousing.

* * *

Varden hung up the phone on his desk and launched the Web browser on his PC. He typed the URL address for the Florida Department of Corrections website and entered his user ID and password. He clicked the mouse to bring up the GPS locator with names appended to a local map on the monitor. He dragged the cursor over Lloyd's location history and scrolled to the street address for the Seaside Cemetery.

Varden swiveled the screen for Lloyd to read. "You care to tell me what the hell you were doing in the middle of Salem's Lot ninety minutes before curfew?"

Lloyd squinted at the blip in the center that showed his initials in parentheses. "My father's buried there."

"I see... And you were just paying your respects while Mr. Tate rode your motorcycle all over creation, pretending to be you."

"I don't follow," said Lloyd.

"Don't bullshit me, Sullivan. The cemetery closed three hours before you showed up on this screen. That's trespassing."

"I was standing outside the gate."

Varden redirected his wrath at Marvin. "What's your involvement in all this? And if I were you, I'd think very carefully about your answer."

Marvin shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders. "He borrowed my truck. I needed a book from the library, so I borrowed his bike."

"And his jacket and helmet?"

"Just the jacket," Marvin corrected him. "The helmet's mine."

Varden clenched his teeth. Veins throbbed in his temple. "You wore that gear to hide your identity."

"There are only two kinds of riders," said Marvin. "Those who
have
crashed and those who will. I prefer to err on the side of caution."

"And your two-hour detour all over town?"

"I got lost."

Varden sneered at both men, uncertain about which one he wanted to kick the shit out of first. "That's convenient."

"It's not illegal," Marvin retorted in a condescending tone.

Varden pushed in the keyboard tray and stood up. "That's debatable. I've got one strike on you already Mr. Tate. If you're mixed up in something you shouldn't be, the time to come clean is now. Before I violate your parole for operating a motorcycle without a license."

"You can't do that," Lloyd chimed in, glancing at the clock on the wall.

"You have somewhere else to be, Mr. Sullivan? You've been acting squirrelly all night. Are you going to man up and take responsibility or drag Mr. Tate down with you?"

The house phone rang in the hall outside Varden's office.

Varden noted the pained expression on Lloyd's face. "Am I interrupting something, Mr. Sullivan?"

"What do you want from me?"

"Let's start with the truth about what you were doing in that cemetery last night. I have a warrant to search the truck, your bike, and your person, which I will tear apart piece by piece until I find the drugs you're hiding."

"Go for it," said Lloyd. He started to unbuckle his belt. "Don't tickle my balls when you're down there."

Varden grabbed the handcuffs from his desk drawer. "That's it, Sullivan. Your time is up."

"Ronald Varden?" a sheriff's deputy called out from the front of the house.

"Right here," said Varden. He turned to face Lloyd for the final time. "Your ride's waiting."

The deputy approached the men and unsnapped his handcuff pouch to withdraw the silver bracelets. "Ronald Varden?"

"He's all yours."

"I have a warrant for your arrest."

"What the hell are you doing?" said Varden.

"Please turn around and put your hands behind your back. You have the right to remain silent—"

"What
is
this?"

"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney. If you cannot afford one—"

"I know my rights!" said Varden. "What the hell are you charging
me
with?"

The deputy secured the cuffs. "Possession and distribution of child pornography."

"That's absurd. I'm a parole officer. This is my house. I've never seen child pornography in my life!" Varden stared at his computer, and saw it had reverted to a screensaver of naked boys. "What the... This isn't mine! I didn't do this!"

The deputy escorted Varden outside the house while other ex-cons spilled out to witness the commotion.

"I'll tell Montgomery to expect you," said Marvin.

"I'll have your ass for this," threatened Varden. "Both of you."

Marvin followed Lloyd to their room. "Never thought I'd be so happy to see another cop."

"What just happened here?"

"Varden has internet access through his cable provider. When he asked me to fix the TV box, I added a special feature."

"Varden's not a pervert," said Lloyd.

"He's no saint, either."

"That doesn't make it right."

"Tell that to Montgomery. Varden cooked up his third strike just like he tried to do to you. Montgomery never had a chance."

"So this is payback?"

"This is Karma. I haven't done anything to Varden that he hasn't already done to himself."

"It's still wrong," said Lloyd.

"What do you care? Varden's been riding you since you got here. You act like you'd rather get jacked for a third violation than see Varden get what's coming to him."

"You should have told me," said Lloyd. "That's all."

"Like you told me what you were doing with my truck?"

Lloyd gathered his Triumph jacket and slipped his backpack on his shoulder. He dug a crumpled Benjamin from his pocket and slapped it in Marvin's hand. "Are we square?"

"Yeah," said Marvin with a note of contempt. "We're square."

Chapter 61