We were still awake at sunrise, naked in my bed at the Beach Chalet. She had asked for forgiveness, and I had really given it to her. But the hours had passed, and now I was as close as I can ever come to confession.
I told her, "I think about wretched places, about empty, dreary towns. About a job that at best is trash. A way of life without a wife, a family, close friends. I'm tired of always being alone."
Ivy was loving me. "I'll go anywhere with you." She kissed me. "I'll go where you go."
I wasn't surprised, but I knew not to show it.
I took a last toke, burned my fingertips, then flicked away the joint. The joint sailed through the dimly lit room, smacked against the window. Sparks ricocheted off, then disappeared. Outside the window was a full moon bathing in the sunrise.
Then we made love again.
On our way to breakfast we drove past the Paradise Bowling Alley.
I said, "Are you any relation to Debra Lawson?"
Ivy was deliberate. "She's my stepmother. She murdered my father."
"No wonder you no longer live at home," I joked.
Ivy sloughed it off. "Do you want to see the house I was born in, where I spent my life in, until the day he married her? It's her home now. That's what the lawyers tell me."
"When did your father die?"
"Two years ago. They say it was a car accident."
"And you say it was murder."
"She murdered him. His neck was slashed in the accident. He died from loss of blood. He bled to death."
"Your wicked stepmother. Got any stepsisters, Cinderella?"
Ivy was hurt by my teasing. "You're laughing at me."
I sobered. "Tell me about his death."
"His car was in a ditch along the side of the road. They said he had been drinking, that he fell asleep at the wheel and went off the road. But his throat was cut. You can check the death certificate."
"You must have been very close to him."
"We should have been. But when he came back from the sea, I was already four years old." She sounded wistful. "We never clicked." She frowned. "He died too soon. Before we had a chance to click."
"How did he meet her?"
"She was playing the dollar slots next to him in Las Vegas. Dad married her there. The same weekend. One of those twenty-four-hour wedding cottages. Eight months later she killed him."
"Married only eight months?"
"She only lived with him for three months of that. That last five months he wasn't even in the same house with her. They had an argument about money, he got mad and stomped out and wouldn't move back in." She hesitated. "The Tuesday before he died, he told me he wanted a divorce.
"Did he say why?"
"Because she only married him for his money."
I perked up. "Did your father have a lot?"
"Well, no. But he was in the Merchant Marines, and he made good enough money to buy her that bowling alley and let her live in the house I was born in."
I slumped. "Merchant Marines."
"Can you help me pin it on her? Look, I'll give you half of whatever I recover from his estate, and all you gotta do is help me prove she murdered my father."
"What about the cops? What do they say?"
Ivy gave up on getting any help from me.
Corky and I walked along the beach.
"When are you going to kill my wife?
"You fascinate me. You're willing to pay a stranger good money to whack somebody you've lived with for twenty-five years. Somebody who still trusts you after all those years." I furrowed my forehead at the conceit. "The betrayal ... "
"What of it? Haven't you ever betrayed anybody?"
I was taken aback. "Never been that close to anybody."
"Yeah, you gotta know them long enough so they can trust you well enough for you to betray them," Corky said.
But I didn't like thinking about myself.
"Why don't you just divorce her? All you gotta do is give up half of everything you got, and she walks with her life."
Corky looked away. He looked like he had bit down on the icy truth inside his heart for the first time. "I know that."
"Half of everything you got still leaves you with half of everything you got. Instead you take a chance on getting busted. You get busted, you don't get a dime."
"If I give her half, there wouldn't be enough for me. I want it all." He looked at me as if daring me to challenge him.
But I was grinning. "You are a nasty man."
Debra met up with us. She looked me up and down and didn't like what she saw. "You're the hitman," she said. The disgust dripped from every word.
"So you know about it," I said. I found that very interesting. "Are you against it?"
Debra was sassy and bold. "No." Again, a challenge.
"Just what do you get out of this? Him? Is that all? How are you going to react if, halfway through this scheme, he falls apart on you and turns you in?"