Kiss Of Evil

64

It was the hardest phone call she had ever made. She had not spoken to her father in more than ten months and was terrified he might answer the phone. But she had no choice. Luckily, her cousin Anita was visiting for the holidays and had answered and told her, with a rather subdued voice, that Isabella was fine, was trying her best to stay awake until midnight.

She also said that someone had recently stolen Astrid, Isabella’s big doll, from the back porch. Anita said Bella’s tantrum-eased somewhat by back-to-back viewings of The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, and a small bag of Famous Amos-wasn’t fully over yet.

Mary had hung up the phone and found that her difficulty breathing had begun to ebb. Slightly.

She knew the police couldn’t help her this night, not if Jean Luc could so easily get to her. How could she take the chance? If she could just speak to Celeste. To Jesse Ray. If she could just have someone to talk to.

She had texted Jesse Ray a dozen times in the past twenty minutes.

At ten-thirty the phone rings. She whips the phone from the cradle.

“Celeste?”

A lot of static. Through it, she hears: “No. This is Jesse Ray.”

It is the first time she has ever spoken to him. His voice seems deep, a baritone. But it is too scratchy to tell anything else. A cell call from the fringe of its range.

She begins to talk. She tells him everything, the words tumbling out-how she helped set up Paris, how Jean Luc had threatened her this night, how Jean Luc had threatened Isabella. When she finishes her tale, Jesse is silent for a few moments. If not for the static, she might think he had hung up.

Then, as casually as someone might agree to help you move furniture, Jesse Ray saves her life. “I’ll take care of this for you,” he says. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”

Her heart soars. Maybe there is a way out of all this.

She wears black jeans, hikers, a thick sweatshirt. Her parka is on the couch, as is her shoulder bag. For the hundredth time in the past ten minutes, beginning the moment she’d hung up the phone, she steps over to the front window, looks out.

And, suddenly, in the carbon blue light of the Dairy Barn sign, he is there. Jesse Ray’s dark sedan is parked across the street, its exhaust pipe spewing big, gray reassuring fumes, his left arm sticking out of the window, gold watch gleaming, his hand holding the ever-present cigarette, just like always.

Then, the passenger door opens and Celeste, wearing a broad-brimmed hat and huge fur coat, exits the car, crosses the street, toward the apartment building.

The phone rings.

“Hello?”

Static. Interference from the neon across the street. “Celeste is in the lobby. Buzz her in.”

She vaults across the room, hits the button, hoping the new locks work with her old buzzer. “Okay?”

“Yeah. She’s in,” Jesse Ray says. “Listen, she’s got a gun with her. Let her in, lock the door behind her, and wait for me.”

She moves back over to the window. “All right.”

“And keep the damn lights down. I can see you up there.”

“Okay. I’ll turn them off.”

“Do you know how to use an automatic?” Jesse Ray asks.

“No.”

“Have you ever fired a gun before?”

“No.”

Pause. “Well, Celeste has.”

Before she can respond there comes a knock at the door.

Mary puts down the phone, runs across the living room, her heart hammering in her chest, hardly believing that Celeste will be on the other side, hardly believing that her friends, her only friends, have come to help her, hardly believing that this nightmare is about to come to an end.

She opens the door. It is not Celeste.

It is Jean Luc. In his right hand is Celeste’s hat, along with a bloody silver earring, shaped like an icicle. In his left hand, a gun.

Jean Luc points the gun at Mary’s forehead, eases back the hammer, and says: “You shouldn’t have called them.”