A Kiss Before I Die Read Free Page A

the words in a cookbook.
    She ate slowly, mindful of public manners and etiquette, not wanting to appear impolite, eager, or, worse, hungry. She engaged the server in chitchat, who explained the cook was her husband.
    “Esteban is the son of Ramon and a master Mexican cuisine chef in his own right.”
    She was also taking her time so she could get a better impression of the white man in the pork pie hat.
    He was driving an ‘80’s model Ford Taurus, a model SHO: Super High Output. He’d been following her since she left Deerfield, making a U-turn at the top of Quarry to follow her down that steep hill. He’d kept a safe distance at first, but her seeming aimlessness had vexed him and he ended up intercepting her at an intersection. He’d waved her on although he had arrived first.
    She considered the possibility he was more chaff, another fool thinking he was going to “bump” into her; that she would instantly fall in love, get married, let him beat her, and have babies because she stood by her man. Small-town he-man fantasy.
    After he disappeared, she put the car in reverse and headed in the direction he’d come from.
    She pulled into a parking lot and waited for him to drive by; she smoked as she waited. It was a bad habit, she knew, and she tended to smoke for effect or when she felt a certain loneliness, a separateness that might be depression.
    So she had leaned against the Camaro and smoked, letting the engine idle. She didn’t think he was connected to the moron in the red Ford, but word travels quickly in a small town, and whether the word was accurate or not was immaterial. For all she knew she had jacked up the local bad guy.
    When he did drive by, he shifted his eyes off the road and to her but kept his chin and nose forward. 
    She squashed the butt and tossed it into the gutter.
    That was when she found Ramon’s .
    Then she ate, leisurely.
    He walked by twice.
    He was what she expected:  thin, the word lanky seemed right, with tattoos from his wrists to his elbows and probably beyond, another tattooed love-boy with far away eyes. 37° and no coat. The hat was cocked back, and she thought he looked foolish, not fashionable. She guessed he was older than she was by a decade, maybe two.
    Hot flash. Crawling skin. Methadone , she thought. Got the shakes . Anything but harmless .
    Sometimes the harmless-looking were the deadliest, and not because they were more competent, smarter, or stronger, but for all the opposite reasons: dumbasses that took emotional or ill-timed risks. Meth addicts were the worst. They killed 7-11 clerks for seven bucks, a corndog, and a Big Gulp.
    He couldn’t see her:  Ramon’s windows, facing west, were tinted. He stood on the corner, looking puzzled. He was smart enough to not come in. He made a cell call on what looked like a Samsung – it definitely wasn’t an iPhone.
    She waited longer than she would’ve liked, idly talked to the server, and when she paid her bill she wrote a short play for her. Her name was Patti.
    “Patti, do you know a man named Wilcox? He’s a lawyer.”
    “Oh, yes, he comes in here all the time, sometimes twice a week.”
    “I was supposed to meet him – and I got turned around and can’t find his office address…”
    Patti gave general directions and by the time she was done, the regulars were shuffling in for Happy Hour.
    “He is such a nice man, too,” Patti said. “And handsome !”
    “I’m looking forward to meeting him…”
    “And if I know him, he’s going to love meeting you!”
    The Camaro was parked around the corner, on the opposite side of the street, facing her. The green Ford Taurus was not there.
    When she approached the car, she walked to the passenger side, examined the tires, and saw the rear wheel had miraculously positioned itself against an upright roofing nail, itself another miracle.
    She took the nail, positioned it in her left hand between her two middle fingers and without fanfare approached a telephone that