Sylvie's Cowboy Read online

  Sylvie melted against him.

  The seaplane taxied down Biscayne Bay and lifted off, headed for the Bahamas.

  The seaplane flew over the condominium building as Walt’s pink Mustang turned from the street onto the entrance driveway of the parking garage. The Mustang cruised up and down the rows of parked cars until its headlights passed over the red and yellow pickup truck. Walt parked the Mustang nearby, got out, and approached the truck.

  He went first to the driver’s side door and tried the handle. Locked. In the semi-dark of the garage, he almost didn’t see anything inside the cab. Then Walt did a double take.

  “Harry? ... Harry!” Walt raced around to the passenger side of the truck and pounded on the window with his fist. “Harry! Oh, God, please let him be asleep! Harry!”

  Walt palmed the pistol from his ankle holster and used the butt of it to smash the truck window. He reached in and opened the door. Harry’s Stetson rolled out the door and across the garage floor, revealing the ice pick in Harry’s brain.

  “Ah, no! No!” Walt cradled Harry’s head against his chest. Tears streaked Walt’s cheeks, but he made no other sound—until he had a gruesome afterthought. “Sylvie. Oh, Jesus help me. Sylvie!”

  Leaving Harry’s body, Walt slammed the truck door and ran full tilt toward the elevator. He stopped, raced back to the truck, opened the door again and searched Harry’s pockets. “The keys, Harry. Where are the keys?”

  He jerked a set of keys from Harry’s jeans and ran again to the elevator.

  The cell phone rested in its holster in the truck, forgotten.

  ...

  At midnight in the penthouse the only light was the dim city glow coming through the endless glass wall of the living room. Somewhere in the apartment, an expensive clock chimed twelve times.

  The front door rattled, the knob turned, and the door was kicked gently open. A wedge of light spilled onto the floor of the foyer. A briefcase slid across the foyer as if kicked from the hallway. In the doorway, Dan lifted Sylvie to carry her across the threshold. Sylvie was still wearing her white beautician’s uniform and nurse shoes. She giggled, brandishing her shiny new key.

  “You made it!” crowed Dan. “You’re back! Revel in it while you can, because tomorrow we leave for Rio!”

  Inside the door he set her down and kissed her. He slammed the door with his foot, shutting out the hallway light and throwing the room again into darkness.

  Out of the dark Walt’s voice called, “Y’all come on in. Champagne’s getting warm.”

  The startled couple jerked apart. Sylvie handed her key to Dan, stepped further into the apartment, and flicked the switch lighting the lamps at either end of the sofa. She placed her purse on one end of the couch.

  Walt was sitting deep in a living room chair, invisible until she reached the center of the room and looked back at him. He held an iced tea tumbler half full of orange juice. His hunting knife protruded from half of an apple atop the large fruit bowl on the end table.

  Sylvie looked at him, amazed.

  Dan took the time to lock the dead bolt on the front door with Sylvie’s key. Then he pocketed the key, retrieved his briefcase, and joined Sylvie in the living room.

  A bottle of champagne leaned inside a silver ice bucket that held water with only a few chunks of ice floating in it.

  “Found the O.J. with the eggs and bacon in the ice box. Figured you planned to come back here for breakfast, so I waited.” Walt remained seated. He lifted his tumbler of orange juice as if in a toast, then took a drink.

  “What are you doing here, and how did you get in?” asked Sylvie.

  “You’re supposed to be dead,” said Dan.

  Sylvie’s gaze zipped from Walt to Dan. “What?”

  “Harry’s dead,” Walt told Dan.

  “Thank you, Walter Cronkite,” Sylvie said. “And what’s the latest on Elvis?”

  Walt stiffened. “Dang it, Sylvie! I ain’t joking around here now!”

  Dan remained unperturbed. “What do you mean, ‘Harry’s dead’?”

  Sylvie thought the two men were playing some unfathomable, macabre joke. “Danny, be serious.”

  Abandoning all pretense, Dan turned cold and hard. “That wasn’t you in the red truck today?” The question was rhetorical. Whoever had been in the red truck was a dead man now, and Walt was obviously no corpse.

  Walt rose from his chair and approached Sylvie, who still stood in the center of the room. “Harry was driving the truck today,” he said, making eye contact with her and holding it. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Sylvie. Harry faked the whole thing. I never wanted to lie to you, but I owed him. So, when he insisted on doing it his way—”

  “Harry? ... Today?” Sylvie was stunned.

  “Stop blathering,” said Dan.

  Sylvie peered into Walt’s eyes, looking for answers. “You’re not kidding! Harry ... alive? But the money ...”

  “Stolen,” said Walt. “There were no margin calls or bad loans or creditors’ liens or whatever Leslye told you. Harry never lost his money. It was stolen from him—legally stolen by some very clever people. Harry had a scheme. He thought he could get it back for you. And it nearly worked.”

  Dan had no patience for explanations. “Yes, yes, get on with it! Where’s the money now?”

  Walt glared at Dan, barely restraining himself from assaulting the man barehanded.

  “No!” Sylvie said, barely audible.

  Walt caught her when it seemed she would collapse.

  Dan was unaffected by anyone else’s distress. “Did he make the transfers like I told him?!”

  Sylvie swiveled to stare at Dan in horror. “How can you-- ?”

  “He never got your message,” said Walt.

  Sylvie looked at Walt. “What mess—?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Dan. “I knew I couldn’t trust him to do it, so I took care of it another way. Sylvie and I were married this evening in Freeport.”

  Sylvie seemed dazed. “I don’t understand any of the—,” she murmured.

  “That true, City Mouse?” Walt interrupted. He grabbed her shoulders and made sure she was looking him full in the face.

  “He said he wanted to take care of me,” she said.

  “Dang, Sylvie!” He nearly shook her. “Maude don’t even like him! Hell, if you just had to have a rich husband, why couldn’t you play up to me a little longer? I’d ‘a’ come around!”

  Sylvie’s eyes filled with tears and she slapped his face. Using her hands to push against his chest, she stepped away from his grasp.

  Walt shook his head as if in disbelief. “Well, I swear. If it wasn’t so tragic, it’d be comic. Did you think he had money and you didn’t, is that what you thought? Did he act like he was doing you some big favor?”

  “He wanted to take care of me!” Sylvie was more insistent this time, as if Walt didn’t get the message before.

  But Walt understood better than she knew. “You can take care of yourself!” he replied with equal insistence. “You’ve proved that. Don’t you see? You don’t need him. He needs you.”

  “That’s enough,” said Dan.

  Walt pleaded with Sylvie. “Don’t you see? Harry stole the money back. It was in your name only. And Harry would never have transferred it back to the slime who stole it to begin with.”

  “I said, that’s enough!” Dan cried.

  Walt continued, “So, Dan Stern got Harry’s money the only way he could. He married it.”

  “I said shut up!” roared Dan.

  Walt and Sylvie maintained eye contact. Slowly, she walked closer to him. She placed one hand in the center of his chest, and she felt the steady beating of his heart. Without looking away from Walt’s eyes, she spoke softly to the other man. “Danny?”

  Walt looked away from her and directly at Dan. “It won’t work, Stern. I’ll have this thing annulled before you can say ‘fraudulent inducement.’ And I’ll make sure your marriage partner lives longer than yo
ur business partners did.”

  Sylvie looked at Dan as if in shock. “Partners?” She looked at Walt. “Not Leslye!”

  Walt’s eyes softened with sympathy as he shook his head indicating there was no more Leslye.

  “Oh, Walt, no,” she moaned. She did not see Dan kneel beside his briefcase, snap it open, and pull out a pistol.

  “I don’t think you’ll be getting anything annulled, Dogpatch,” Dan said.

  Walt thrust Sylvie behind him as Dan fired. The impact of the bullet spun Walt, but he did not fall.

  Sylvie screamed. Walt faltered, pawed his belt, but his knife was not in it. He took a step toward Dan. Dan fired again. Walt fell hard and didn’t move.

  Sylvie dropped to the floor and crawled swiftly to his side. Blood welled from his abdomen and upper chest. She shrieked, “What have you done! Are you out of your mind, Danny? Call an ambulance!”

  Dan’s voice was eerily calm. “I can’t do that, Sil. I seem to have left my cell in the car, and the landline isn’t connected yet. It’ll be connected tomorrow, but of course, that will be too late.” He moved to stand over Sylvie, preparing to shoot her, too.

  Sylvie, though teary eyed, kept trying to stanch the blood of Walt’s wounds with the bandanna she had taken from around his neck. She didn’t look at Dan.

  “How sad to have one’s bride killed by a jealous former lover,” Dan mused. “And on one’s wedding night. And how fortunate to be able to dispatch the killer myself, in self-defense.”

  Sylvie swung Dan’s briefcase up from the floor, smashing it into his crotch. He went down.

  She ran to the front door, but Dan had locked it. The deadbolt required a key, even from the inside, and Sylvie’s key was in Dan Stern’s pocket.

  Dan rolled in agony on the living room floor. Sylvie pulled, twisted, and pounded on the locked door. It was no use. She turned her back to the door. Dan was in the living room. She made a decision and, avoiding the living room, hurried through the galley kitchen.

  Exiting the kitchen, Sylvie ran toward the back door, between the laundry room and the butler’s pantry. A sharp sliver of light speared down the hall from the living room lamps. It was enough. She would feel her way if need be. There was no time to stop and turn on lights as she went.

  She reached the back door. It, too, was locked. She wanted to scream in frustration. There was no key in the lock. No key in the rack on the wall. No key under the mat on the floor. She was trapped.

  The shadows on the distant living room wall indicated that Dan was recovering, standing up, moving about.

  Sylvie started toward the kitchen again. Perhaps something there—but wait! Dan’s shadow was moving toward the hallway. He would be between her and the kitchen in a second.

  She retreated into the laundry room, where it was even darker. Almost no light from the living room lamps reached as far as the laundry room doorway.

  She heard Dan coming closer, walking slowly, looking into the other rooms off the hallway as he stalked her. His shoes creaked softly.

  Dan’s eyes flicked back and forth, and his ears strained to catch a sound, some sign of Sylvie. “Yes, I think I’ll be content as a rich widower living abroad. And frankly, Sil, you seem to have grown too fond of the ‘grassroots’ lifestyle, anyway. I’d have gotten bored with you very soon, I’m afraid.”

  Inside the laundry room, Sylvie’s eyes adjusted to the darkness. She made out a shape in the far corner. The circuit breaker box. She moved toward it, careful not to rattle the bag of clothespins hanging on the lingerie rack mounted across that corner.

  Dan’s shadow fell across the doorway of the laundry room just as Sylvie’s hand reached out and flipped a circuit breaker switch. Snap. Utter darkness from the living room. Snap, snap, snap, snap, the other rooms, just for good measure.

  Dan stumbled and cursed somewhere nearby. Sylvie pressed herself to the wall, barely breathing, only listening. Listening.

  She heard Dan’s footsteps in the hallway. Light switches went click-click, then click-click again, as he tried to find one that worked. She knew none of them would. She heard his breathing rasp angrily, like a bull about to charge.

  If Sylvie had peered around the doorway of the laundry room and down the hallway, she would have seen Dan’s shape, visible against the city lights coming through the living room’s wall of windows. He held his gun in one hand, and with the other he worked at his shoelaces while balancing against the wall. One shoe hit the floor with an ominous thud.

  Sylvie gasped at the noise and quickly covered her mouth. The second thud told her the other shoe had fallen. She wouldn’t be able to hear him coming any more.

  She lowered herself silently to the laundry room floor and crawled behind the washer and dryer, flinching at the dust and filth and gooey detergent residue she must wriggle through.

  Sylvie did not know that Dan was creeping systematically around the walls of the small butler’s pantry across the hall from the laundry room. He found a flashlight and tried it. The batteries were old, the light dim, but it was something. He used it to finish searching the butler’s pantry, then he moved across the hall into the laundry room.

  Sylvie was scrunched behind the washer, inching carefully toward the door, when she was stopped by a flashlight beam passing over the washer and dryer on its way to the far wall. Holding her breath and trembling in terror, she watched the light play over each corner and cranny as Dan moved into the room.

  He was standing on the opposite side of the washer from Sylvie when a mouse crawled out from under the washer and skittered across Sylvie’s dust-covered hands. Sylvie stuffed her hand into her mouth, dust and all, and fought to keep from shrieking. Daring to breathe, she tried to slow her heart rate and respiration. She had to regain her composure if she was going to save herself and Walt.

  Dan began creeping toward the far wall of the laundry room. Sylvie edged around the washer toward the hallway door. She was watching Dan’s progress so intently, she didn’t see the substantial spider web and its pancake-size brown spider until she turned her head toward the doorway and—at the same instant Dan identified the circuit breaker box.

  Dan’s sudden “Ah-hah!” providentially covered up Sylvie’s gasp of terror as she slapped the spider away and ran out into the hallway. At the same time, Dan was reaching for the breaker box.

  Sylvie ran into the kitchen just as the living room lamps snapped back on.

  Back in the laundry room, Dan was snapping his way through the circuit breakers, reactivating all the light switches in the apartment.

  She looked desperately around the dark kitchen. Perhaps she could make the re-established electrical power work in her favor. She turned on every switch in sight, on the stove, on the radio, on the oven timer—knocking over a roll of paper towels in the process.

  She reached into the dark refrigerator and grabbed the carton of eggs, stuffed them into the microwave oven, and turned it on.

  Just then, the kitchen electricity snapped on.

  Sylvie ran for the living room.

  In the laundry room, Dan reacted to a sudden burst of noise and light from the kitchen. Country music blared from the kitchen radio at top volume.

  Dan ran from the laundry room to the kitchen, but he found no Sylvie there. He threw his flashlight at the radio, knocking it off the counter and silencing it with a crash.

  Dan backed out of the kitchen into the hallway and started toward the living room.

  At the other end of the kitchen, Sylvie’s hand snaked around the corner of the cabinets to grab a wall-mounted fire extinguisher and take it out of sight.

  Walt struggled toward consciousness on the living room floor. Barely able to focus, he made out Dan’s shape stalking the hallway, gun in hand. Walt attempted to roll close enough to the end table to retrieve his knife from the fruit bowl. He failed. In the attempt, he knocked over the water-filled ice bucket and its bottle of champagne.

  The resounding noise of the falling metal bucket caused Dan to
spin automatically in the direction of the sound. He stumbled over his own briefcase.

  Thinking this was the hardest thing he had ever done, Walt gritted his teeth against the vicious pain and made a desperate grab for the knife. His hand was on the hilt, but before he could pull the blade free of the apple that held it, his jaw exploded into lightning bolts of new pain. Dan had kicked Walt’s head as hard as he could. Blessed oblivion claimed Walt instantaneously. If Dan had been wearing shoes, Walt would be dead.

  As Walt’s mindless bulk crumpled to the floor, the weight of his falling arm drove the hunting knife all the way through the apple and knocked the fruit basket askew. The knife sat, firmly wedged, blade up, in the tilted fruit basked on the end table. Beneath the table, a lake of champagne, broken glass, and ice water formed around the overturned silver bucket.

  Dan might have made sure of Walt’s mortality right then, but he reacted to a sudden noise from the kitchen. He smiled. She must be in there. He started to step over Walt’s body, but looking at the locked door, a thought occurred to him. He stooped, rifled Walt’s pockets and took his keys.

  In the kitchen, Sylvie crept from her hiding place near the foyer and set the fire extinguisher down like a roadblock just inside the doorway at one end of the galley kitchen. She turned back toward the foyer and, edging around that end of the kitchen—while Dan left Walt’s body and skulked toward the opposite end of the kitchen—she managed to slip into the living room.

  She hunkered, hidden, behind the sofa, and eased a hand over the back of it to retrieve her purse. She hoped Dan was too far away to detect her small sounds as she clambered through the miscellany of her purse, all the while mouthing, “Keys, keys, keys!”

  She found nothing even resembling a key, and nothing that looked useful against a homicidal sociopath. Her eyes fell on Clarice’s broken curling iron, and she began to think.

  Unaware that Sylvie was slithering out the opposite end of the kitchen, Dan leapt from the hall into the kitchen doorway, gun leveled. He saw no one. Deciding to keeping looking down the hall, he backed out of the kitchen and slunk once more toward the laundry room. He spared a glance toward the living room and saw no one there but the prostrate Walt.