Trouble in Paradise

Fifty

Abby Taylor lived in a weathered shingle home in the oldest part of Paradise. When she was married, she had bought it with her husband, and when they had divorced it remained with her. When her doorbell rang, she looked through the peephole in the front door and saw a well-dressed, good-looking, upper-class woman in her forties, who looked vaguely familiar. Abby opened the door.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” the good-looking woman said and hit Abby flush on the jaw with her clenched right fist. It was a good punch, and it staggered Abby backward several steps. The woman stepped through the front door and closed it behind her. By the time Abby got her balance, the woman was aiming a .38 Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special at her.

“What... the... Christ are you... doing?” Abby said.

Her lip was already starting to puff.

“The punch was to get your attention,” Faye said. She felt perfectly cold and steady inside. “If you don’t do exactly what I say, I’ll kill you. Do you believe that?”

Abby stared at her. It was hard to process anything. The woman slapped her hard across the face with her left hand.

“Do you believe that?” the woman said.

Abby nodded.

“Okay. We’re going to go to your bedroom, and you’re going to lie on the bed facedown. You got that? You so much as clear your throat, and I’ll fill your head full of bullets.”

“What are you going to do?” Abby said. Her voice sounded thin to her and puny.

“Anything I have to,” the woman said. “You do what you’re told, you’ll get out of this alive. You don’t, and you won’t.”

“Why?” Abby said. “Why are you doing this?”

The woman smiled without any hint of laughter.

“Love,” she said.

“Love?”

The woman jerked her head toward the front stairs.

“Your bedroom up there?”

“Yes.”

“Then move,” the woman said.

As they went up the stairs, Abby could hear a dog bark somewhere and then someone whistling for it and then quiet. The quiet was oppressive. The house was thunderously empty except for her and this violent woman. They reached her bedroom.

“Lie on the bed,” the woman said.

Abby did as she was told. The woman took a pair of handcuffs from her purse, and holding the gun in her right hand, she snapped one cuff on Abby’s left wrist and the other to the headboard of the bed. Then she stepped back and put the gun in her purse and looked around the room. There was a phone on the bedside table. The woman unplugged it and put it in the hall. She looked out the window at Abby’s backyard. The next house was fifty feet away. The window was closed. The woman lowered the window shade.

“Nobody can hear you,” she said to Abby.

“What are you going to do to?”

“You’ll be all right,” the woman said. “It’ll only be a while.”

Then she shut the door and went downstairs, leaving Abby alone in the darkened bedroom.