LIFERS Chapter Thirteen

Larry and Brenda had set off along highway 60 before turning onto the 45 for Farmville, after that the 460 would take them across to Lynchburg and the Brontrose place. The roads were pretty much empty during the pre-dawn hours so Brenda had coaxed Larry into cruising along a little faster than he normally would.

The blower released cool air into the car and a CD played at low volume. “Tequila Sunrise” had just given way to “Hotel California” when Brenda looked over to see the soft amber light from the dashboard giving Larry’s chiselled features a warm glow. She opened the thermos of coffee and poured some for him.

‘You know what I think?’ she said, pouring herself one. ‘I think we’ll get to Lynchburg and find Gregg shacked up with this Celia Brontrose woman. And I’ll bet ten dollars he’ll claim he left his cell phone in the car.’

‘Well that was the easiest ten bucks I’ll ever get my hands on,’ Larry said.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning Gregg’s text message said Celia Brontrose was in her late eighties.’

‘You only said she was some old bird, you never once mentioned her age, Larry. I want my ten dollars back.’

Larry smiled, shook his head. ‘Indian giver.’

For the next couple of minutes neither of them spoke as Larry concentrated on the road and Brenda contemplated the current situation regarding Gregg. Anything could have befallen him, but the likelihood of it being trouble wasn’t that far from her thoughts. And the fact that Larry was so obviously keeping something from her, could mean it was serious.

She took his cup and fastened both back onto the thermos. ‘So what do you think’s really happened to him?’ she said.

‘I wish I knew. It’s not like Gregg to be this unreachable for this long. Mind you, he was on the missing list once before for a couple of days, and for a very embarrassing reason.’

‘Really? Do tell.’

‘I can’t, Bren, I promised him I’d never tell a soul, and he certainly wouldn’t thank me for telling you about it.’

‘You can’t dangle a carrot that big in front of my face and then snatch it away, Larry. That makes you the Indian giver.’

‘Something happened to Gregg a while back and he was pretty distressed by the whole thing, and there’s only one other guy who knows about it and that’s Marty Fennel, and he also promised Gregg he’d never tell anyone.’

‘Doesn’t Marty’s wife work the deli on the corner of Rycliff and Senate?’

‘Uh huh, Susan, why?’

‘Well if it’s as big a secret as you say it is, then he’s bound to have told her, so if Gregg ever finds out I know…’

‘That’s gonna make Marty and his wife seriously unpopular in Gregg’s book.’

‘Not if he doesn’t find out.’

He paused, fingers drumming the steering wheel. ‘Okay, but only if you solemnly swear that you’ll never bring it up.’

‘Cross my heart,’ which she did, ‘and hope to die.’

Larry stared through the windshield as he recalled Gregg’s tale of torment. ‘Okay … about a month before you joined us, Gregg and I were sitting in the office when in walks this thirty-something leggy blonde who looked like she’d just stepped off the catwalk. Her name was Georgia Harris, tall, long slender legs, and she wore a tight-fitting short red dress that made even the wrong curves look right. But before I say anymore there’s one thing you need to remember about this woman, she wore a red chiffon scarf around her neck. It’s important, okay?’

Brenda nodded. ‘Red chiffon scarf round neck, got it.’

‘Anyway, she told us how she thought her boyfriend was playing away from home and asked if we could follow him for a few days. Well you know Gregg; he took one look at the woman and volunteered himself for the job before she’d even sat down.’

‘No change there, then.’

‘None,’ Larry said, his eyes still fixed on the road. ‘So the following night, armed with a picture of the guy, Gregg parks his car outside her apartment block and waits for around fifteen minutes before he sees him get into his car, then tails him. After a while the boyfriend drives into a red light area where he picks up this young black girl wearing a short yellow skirt, and that’s when Gregg started to take snapshots. After the guy drives off again, Gregg follows for a couple more miles until the he turns into this side road. The two of them get out and walk hand in hand into a park and Gregg follows them.

‘He said he could hear movement and whispers, but the lack of light stopped him from seeing what they were up to. So he goes back to his car and returns with one of those million-candle flashlights which he places on the ground and switches on. And with half the park illuminated he starts snapping away. He counted at least six couples diving for cover with the blonde’s cheating boyfriend smack bang in the centre.

‘The first few snaps Gregg managed to take before they too shot for the bushes were of the boyfriend bent over a park bench while his date, who was actually a teenage boy, was banging the ass off the guy. So when Gregg shows the pictures to this Georgia, she goes ape and chucks the boyfriend out.’

‘And so she should,’ Brenda said, feeling a shudder. ‘Seeing those photographs had to be the embarrassment of the century, not to mention the shock of it.’

‘No, Bren. That’s not the end of the story. About a week later, Georgia calls Gregg up asking if he’d like to go out for dinner with her, as a kind of thank you. So the following Friday night, I dropped him off at the designated place and time and left him to it.

‘That was the last I saw of him for the next two days. Come Monday morning I expected him to turn up at the office, but by lunchtime there was still no sign of him. I called his cell, it was switched off. I called his home number and got no answer. I even called everyone we knew at the time but no one had seen or heard from Gregg since that Friday afternoon. I pulled the file we had on the woman and gave her a ring, no answer there either. So I drove out to her address.

‘Her apartment was in Bellwood, about forty minutes away, and as that’s Marty Fennel’s home turf I asked if he’d tag along in uniform. We got into the block through the underground car park and made our way to her apartment. I knocked a couple of times but got no answer. Then I pressed my ear against the door and heard funny faint noises, so I knocked again and had another listen. It sounded like someone shouting from far away, muffled-like. Marty had a listen and he agreed that someone inside the apartment sounded distressed, so we had no choice but to force our way in. And once we gained access the noises became a lot clearer. I pulled my gun and Marty did the same before he kicked open the bedroom door.’ Larry paused, looked over at Brenda. ‘Now this is the bit that Gregg really wants no one else to know about.’

Brenda crossed her heart once more and made a zipping motion across her lips to emphasize the promise.

‘So, like I said, Marty kicked open the door and the two of us rushed in with our guns out. And there was Gregg, face down, buck naked, and handcuffed to a bed. He had one of those black leather hood things on with a ball-gag in his mouth and his gun in his hand.’ Larry began to laugh.

‘Don’t stop there,’ Brenda insisted. ‘What was the deal?’

‘Well … according to Gregg, Georgia asked if he wouldn’t mind trying a bit of bondage, apparently she was into that kinda stuff, so Gregg said he reluctantly agreed. Anyway, after stripping him off and gagging him, and then handcuffing him to the bed, she goes into the bathroom to freshen up, but when she comes out, Georgia is now George, and, according to Gregg, this George had quite an impressive piece of equipment. So when he tries to climb on the bed with Gregg, Gregg naturally goes ballistic. Luckily he’d hung his jacket on the bed-post, and as you know, he never goes anywhere without his gun. He managed to retrieve it and that scared the shit out of George, so he panicked and ran off screaming. A couple of minutes later, Gregg said he heard the front door slam, and two days after that, Marty and I are the first people he sees.’

‘So why didn’t he just fire his gun into the wall in the hope someone would call the cops?’

‘I asked a very similar question, and do you know what he told me? “No way was I being found by the Richmond P.D. I know ‘em all and they ain’t seeing me like this.” He even went berserk because I’d brought Marty along, made him swear on his mother’s grave that he wouldn’t tell a soul. Oh, and remember that red chiffon scarf? Well that was hiding George’s larynx,’ he said, then laughed.

Brenda also laughed, and at the same time sensed an air of informality that surrounded them, an air of informality she liked very much. She also couldn’t remember any other time when Larry Kessler looked so relaxed in her company. It was a welcome and much overdue change.