Marriage and Mayhem Page 7

  As I neared the location Lariat had written on a post-it note, my hands trembled and my breathing quickened. I wondered what I’d do if the GPS led me to a large cardboard box under a rarely traversed railroad bridge on the outskirts of town, and announced, “You have reached your destination.”

  Don’t get me wrong. My heart went out to individuals in situations like that. My parents instilled in me a sense of compassion, and I routinely donated to homeless shelters, food pantries, and other underprivileged causes. In fact, the previous Christmas I sponsored a young family whose breadwinner had been deployed to Afghanistan. It’s just that I knew myself well enough to know I could never fire a guy who obviously needed every dime I paid him.

  My only other option would be to keep on driving. I could hightail it back to the safety of my home and “break up” with Lariat by text, the way many young people ended relationships in this day and age. I’d mail Lariat a very generous check for services already rendered and finish planning the wedding on my own using whatever assistance Wendy could give me.

  Imagine my surprise when I pulled my car to the curb in front of 1022 Nassau Drive, a posh-looking, newly constructed mansion. Even as I walked to the stately entrance and rang the bell, I considered the possibility that I’d been given the wrong address. A gentleman in a three-piece suit opened the door of the impressive home. By his attire, I assumed he was a butler. The very idea Lariat could afford hired help threw me for a loop.

  “Can I help you?” His piercing blue eyes were unwavering and he instantly reminded me of Rutger Hauer in his role as a psychopathic killer in the movie The Hitcher.

  “Um, yes. I’m looking for Lariat. Lariat Jones? He gave me this address.” The man silently stared at me for several long moments.

  “Sorry, ma’am. You have the wrong address. Wait, isn’t he that fellow who butchers cattle and deer?” I noticed the well-built man had yet to blink since opening the door.

  “Uh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. The man I’m looking for is a wedding planner.”

  “Yes, I think he does that, too. I believe you’ll find him at 2210 Nassau Drive, but I could be mistaken.”

  “Hmm. Why would he give me the wrong address?” It was meant to be a rhetorical question, but the man, who was apparently the homeowner, answered it anyway.

  “Perhaps Mr. Jones suffers from dyslexia.”

  Or an alcohol addiction. “Perhaps.”

  “Why don’t you come inside? We’ll look up his address on my computer.”

  I followed him into the home’s foyer as if he were the Pied Piper, rather than an intense-looking stranger whose demeanor gave me the willies. It hadn’t occurred to me I could look up the address on my cell phone. Why, I’ll never know.

  I scrutinized the framed paintings lining the walls as I followed him down a long, very wide, and dimly lit hallway. To my dismay, the paintings were horrifying. One depicted a naked woman lashed to the trunk of a large tree with far-reaching roots that ran across the surface of the ground. Surrounding the terrified woman was a pack of salivating creatures I can only describe as centaurs, except that their lower halves looked more canine than equine. Draped around the woman’s neck was a serpent with its fangs bared, ready to strike. And if that hadn’t been chilling enough, the lady’s heart was exposed, dripping blood down her abdomen. Egad!

  When the man looked over his shoulder and caught me staring at a watercolor portraying bestiality between a man and a mythological-looking unicorn, he stopped, “Oh, I see you’re admiring my art work. Every painting is an original created by yours truly. That one happens to be my personal favorite.”

  Holy crap! Because I couldn’t bring myself to say I wasn’t “admiring” his paintings by any stretch of the imagination, nor could I force myself to call it “art” work, I merely responded, “Your style is quite unusual.”

  “Yes?” By the inquiring tone in his voice, I could tell he was waiting for me to expound on my reaction to his work. So I obliged him.

  “Bizarre, actually, and a bit unsettling.”

  “Good. That’s my goal.” The look he shot me made my blood run colder than glacier runoff. It was a self-satisfied smirk. “I strive to be inimitable and entice people to reflect.”

  Reflect? Reflect on what? The darkest imaginable side of humanity? I wanted to ask, but I was already uncomfortable enough. Instead I replied, “Your paintings are definitely one of a kind.”

  Just then the man, without taking his eyes off me, reached to his right and opened the door to a room more dimly lit than the hallway. In fact, the only source of light in the room could be traced to a single flickering candle. In a freakishly peculiar voice, he said, “Join me in my studio for a few minutes, and I’ll show you where I get my inspiration.”

  If a representative from the Guinness World Records company had timed me with a stopwatch at that moment, my name would be listed in the next edition of their publication for the fastest land-speed time ever recorded by a woman. I fled down the hall, out the front door—which he’d locked behind us—descended the porch stairs (touching only two of the seven steps), jumped in my car and drove six blocks down Nassau Drive in the time it’d take most folks to say, “No, thank you. I’d rather eat a dozen chocolate-covered tarantulas than spend another second in this ghastly place.”

  When I reached the sixteen-hundred block of Nassau Drive, I pulled over to catch my breath and regain at least some measure of composure. As one might expect, my vision had been glued to the rear-view mirror the entire six blocks. I feared the creepy dude would chase me down, determined to show me where his spine-chilling inspiration came from. Any squirrel with bad timing that chose to cross the street as I raced down Nassau Drive was road kill waiting to happen. Fortunately, no squirrel or any other living creature crossed my path during my wild ride.

  I knew I shouldn’t have let the man scare the crap out of me the way he did. After all, I didn’t carry my Pink Lady―a pink-handled .380 caliber pistol―in my fanny pack for no reason. I had qualified for a conceal-and-carry permit the previous year and routinely carried the Sig Sauer P238 for self-protection. God knows I’d never be able to shoot another human being, no matter how dangerous or despicable he was. Had the man threatened me in any way, I’d have had to hope he wouldn’t decide to roll the dice and do something to make me actually have to fire it, because I’m not sure I could have.

  Ten

  When my heart rate slowed to the point I didn’t feel as if I were on the verge of cardiac arrest, I pulled out into the driving lane and drove another half-dozen blocks west. I hoped the freaky artist had given me the right address for Lariat. Despite my shaken state, I noticed with each passing block, the neighborhoods became increasingly dismal looking.

  When I reached the 2200 block of Nassau Drive, which consisted predominantly of older mobile homes, I found the trailer located at 2210. It appeared to be one of the newer ones on the block, albeit still manufactured well before electric slide-outs were the norm. His eight-by-forty-foot park-model travel trailer had a wooden sign in front which had LBJ Wedding Planning, Shoe Repair, and Meat Processing, Inc. carved into it. Apparently, Lariat worked out of his home at times, or at least used his minuscule front yard to advertise his various businesses.

  His home wasn’t an oversized mansion like the one twelve blocks east of it, but it wasn’t a gigantic Frigidaire box, either. Rather, it was a cute, well-maintained home on wheels that sat in the middle of a small, equally well-manicured lot. The raised flower beds flanking the walkway to his front porch were immaculate and contained some of the most colorful plants I’d ever seen.

  I hesitantly knocked on the door, still a bit flustered from my earlier encounter. When no one responded, I knocked harder. “Hello? Mr. Jones? Is anybody home?” After a lengthy pause, I heard rustling inside.

  Finally, a scratchy voice shouted impatiently, “Give me a minute!”

  It was roughly five minute later before he opened the door of his trailer. He wo
re the same outfit he’d had on when he’d been stuffed like an overloaded suitcase into the Uber driver’s backseat the previous afternoon. “Oh, yeah. Hey! How ya doing?”

  “Um, fine, Mr. Jones. More importantly, how are you doing this morning? You look a little rough around the edges. Do you recall we arranged to meet the cake decorator and florist today before you blacked out?”

  “Um, yes. Of course.” Lariat looked confused. I wasn’t sure he even remembered who I was, much less what plans we’d made the previous day.

  “Did I wake you?”

  Lariat surprised me by leaning forward and placing a quick peck on my cheek. His breath reeked of alcohol. If the blue-eyed creep at the last house had done that, and I’d somehow been able to grow big enough cojones to utilize my Pink Lady, he might have ended up becoming Wendy’s next customer in the county morgue.

  Lariat apologized. “Sorry, my alarm clock must be broken. Do you mind stepping inside while I get some coffee? Gotta get rid of the cobwebs, you know. Probably need to put some clean clothes on, too.”

  And gargle a little mouthwash, I wanted to add.

  For several reasons, I wanted to tell him I’d wait on the porch, or better yet, recite my spiel about cutting ties with him and skedaddle out of the sketchy-looking neighborhood. Unfortunately, my need for a caffeine fix rose to the occasion. Though I’d made a mistake and put myself in danger by blindly entering the artist’s home, I didn’t think that would be the case with Lariat. I did have the gun as a last resort, I reminded myself. “Do you happen to have an extra cup of joe for me? I could use a boost of energy myself.”

  For a bachelor, Lariat seemed to be very particular about his surroundings, but his fastidiousness was clearly not driven by an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Someone with OCD would not have allowed a blood-stained apron to be haphazardly draped across the picnic table outside. The table, stained with several dried-up pools of blood, sat next to a shed that looked to be decades younger than the trailer.

  You’d think that observation would have factored into my questionable decision to come inside for a cup of coffee. But I pushed my uneasiness aside. I attributed the bloody apron to the fact Lariat apparently butchered farm and game animals in his spare time. According to the weird dude who lived a few blocks down Nassau Drive and the sign in Lariat’s front yard, Mr. Jones also resoled shoes when he wasn’t busy doing something else from the odd mixture of tricks in his bag.

  Lariat assured me he had plenty of coffee, and I followed him into a neat and tidy living room area. The kitchen looked spotless, as well. The trailer was simply furnished, but it was sanitary and well-kept, which I considered much more important.

  I sipped the tepid, but aromatic, brew while sitting on a booth-styled bench at his kitchen table. “Lariat, I’m a little confused by the sign out front.”

  “Confused? Why?”

  “Well,” I began nervously, “I don’t understand the name of your business.”

  “What’s to not understand?” he asked. “Oh, LBJ. The ‘B’ stands for Bernard, my middle name.”

  He had totally misread my befuddlement. “That’s nice, but it’s the part about the shoe repair and meat processing that baffles me.”

  Lariat’s complacent expression was part arrogance and part amusement. “Those are just a couple of the services I offer. I also prepare income taxes in the spring and I’ve been known to tat a doily or two on occasion, as well. You didn’t think I was a one-trick pony, did you?”

  The tatting shuttle I’d noticed on his kitchen counter convinced me the man wasn’t joking. I’d originally thought it was the pendant from a necklace. Unable to come up with a response, I merely shook my head. Lariat’s bag of tricks had just become even odder. It seemed like a strange combination, but it stood to reason that the more services he had to offer, the more money he was apt to bring in. At that point, nothing about this eccentric individual would surprise me. He could tell me he’d played the lead part in the local production of Annie Get Your Gun and I wouldn’t be totally taken aback.

  “By the way, you wrote down the wrong address, and the oddball who lives at 1022 Nassau Drive scared the living daylights out of me.” I held the post-it note up so he could see the incorrect address he’d given to me.

  “Oh. Sorry about that. I must have had a bigger buzz on than I realized.”

  “Buzz on? Seriously? Buzz on?” I repeated. “You were stinking blitzed! Remember? That’s why I had to drive here to begin with. Your bike is at my house because I took the keys from you. And it’s fortunate for you that I did, because a couple of minutes later, you passed out cold.”

  “Oh. Well, that must be why I don’t remember driving home or where I parked my bike.”

  “Like it or not, Mr. Jones, I have a problem with that. We discussed your drinking last night, but I’m sure you don’t remember the conversation.”

  Lariat’s blank stare convinced me I’d been correct. I tried not to make eye contact with him as I mentally prepared to explain why I’d decided to opt out of our agreement to have him plan my daughter’s wedding. It suddenly crossed my mind that firing him probably would have been a better topic to bring up before I entered the man’s home.

  I was a nervous wreck as I attempted to broach the subject, certain I wore my anxiety like a fur coat.

  After studying me for a few seconds, Lariat asked, “Are you aware that you drink entirely too much?”

  “I drink too much?” My mouth dropped open as if there was a dentist leaning over me trying to extract an abscessed molar. “Did you just accuse me of drinking too much?”

  “Yes. Although I’d prefer to think of it more as an observation than an accusation. That much caffeine can’t be good for you. I can tell by how uptight and cranky you are this morning that you’ve already had way too much coffee. I think you should forego the rest of that cup so we can knuckle down and get to work.”

  “Um. Okay.” I looked down into my half-empty coffee cup like a kid who’d had his hand slapped for reaching into a cookie jar half-an-hour before suppertime. I’d actually been about to ask if I could top off my cup, but now I felt obligated to pour what was left in it down the drain. I felt like a heroin addict who’d just had the syringe yanked out of his vein before the drug had been injected.

  Lariat excused himself and walked down the hallway to a bedroom at the rear of the mobile home. After he’d ambled off, I gulped down a couple more quaffs of coffee. And then a couple more. When I realized the cup was nearly empty, I got up and walked to the Mr. Coffee machine on the counter. I refilled the cup to about where it’d been when Lariat has exited the room. He returned to the kitchen looking quite spiffy just as I sat back down.

  “I told the cake decorator, Chena Steward, we’d be at her shop by ten,” he said. “That gives us less than twenty minutes to get there. I despise tardiness, so we’d best be getting on our way. It’s a fifteen-minute walk from here.”

  In the blink of an eye, Lariat had morphed from a hung-over bum into a proficient businessman. The same coffee that Lariat seemed to think had made me an uptight grumpster had cleared the cobwebs from his head and transformed his personality. His sudden and unexpected professional demeanor had me questioning the wisdom of firing him.

  So, rather than begin my well-practiced “I’m sorry, but I have to let you go” speech, I said, “Sorry if I’ve been a little crabby this morning. We can take my car to Ms. Steward’s shop if you’d rather not walk.”

  “If it’s all the same with you, I’d prefer to walk.” Lariat gave me the once-over as he spoke, which made me both uncomfortable and self-conscious. I was also disappointed I couldn’t guzzle the coffee I’d just poured into my cup without feeling humiliated by Lariat’s reproachful glare. Grouchy or not, I could have used a little more caffeine in my system. After the heart-stopping Fear Factor episode I’d just experienced a mile down Nassau Drive, I felt as if I was still a quart low. I set my half-full cup in the kitchen sink and stood up after Lariat ad
ded, “I think the exercise would be beneficial for both of us.”

  Not sure whether or not to be offended by his remark, I instinctively reached down and tugged on my shirt, trying to pull it down over my thighs as much as possible. I’d gained seven or eight pounds since my marriage to Stone, and I hadn’t exactly looked like Twiggy before our vows. Okay, to be perfectly honest, it was more like ten or eleven pounds. But who’s counting?

  Lariat’s remark brought to mind one of the things I loved most about my husband. He carried an extra twenty or so pounds on his frame. For adequate insulation, he maintained. And, as many women may agree, chunkiness absolutely loves company.

  “Not that you need the exercise, by any means,” Lariat added, having noticed my instinctive reaction to his comment. “I know a lot of ladies my age who’d kill to have your figure.”

  How could I have ever even considered canceling my contract with this man? Granted, he had a bad drinking habit. But who was I to throw stones? My consumption of coffee would likely kill me years before his consumption of alcohol did him in. Not only had he showed concern about my own dangerous drinking habit, which I’ll admit is a full-fledged caffeine addiction, but he possessed loads of charm and charisma.

  Okay, “loads of charm and charisma” might be pushing it. But the man seemed oblivious to the extra baggage on my frame—which had congregated primarily in my caboose region—and for that, he gets extra credit.

  “Walking would be my preference, too. Let’s get on our way, Mr. Jones. We have an appointment to keep, and we don’t want to keep Ms. Steward waiting.”

  “It’s Lariat. Remember? I’m a relatively young freelancer, not an accountant on the brink of retirement.”

  “As you wish. Let’s quit standing around blathering, Lariat, and hit the bricks.”