Uma mouthed a silentoh, exchanging a frantic look with Jessie before saying, “I’m sorry, Ms. Lloyd, but—”
“It’s Cookie.”
“Cookie?”
“My name. Cookie Lloyd. You can call me Cookie. Lloyd washisname.”
“Cookie? Your name isCookie?” A hysterical titter welled up inside Uma. Cookie? All this time, her evil nemesis’s name wasCookie?
But she didn’t have time for this—for hysteria or panic or… She stood. “Jesus Christ. I’ve got to get out of here, got to do something.”
She’d made it halfway up the stairs, Jessie right behind her, when Cookie said, “He died right here, you know.”
“Oh shit,” Jessie whispered. They stopped and turned despite themselves.
“Bastard already put me in the hospital twice. Last time, his buddy, thesheriff, dropped by to see him, told him he’d have to rein it in or people’d start asking questions. Cracked ribs he could hide, a black eye, but the broken ankle, now that raised eyebrows at the emergency room.” She smiled and pointed at her leg, the one she limped on.
“Cooked, cleaned, sucked him off. Son of a bitch never was happy, no matter what I did. Hehadto hurt me. Said it was my fault. And my mama brought me up a lady. Taught me to grin and bear it. Wasn’t till the miscarriage that things changed.”
Uma gasped in a breath at that, shocked at the image of a young Cookie Lloyd in a family way.
“He killed my baby.Killed her.”
“I didn’t know there was a baby,” Jessie said, still quiet.
“A girl. Knew it in my bones.” She nodded, eyes glazed over with a film of memories. “Bastard murdered my baby girl and put me in the hospital. Everything changed after that. I wouldn’t take it again.Never again.”
Uma suddenly realized her breaths were coming in fast and sharp with more than just worry over Ivan. Cookie Lloyd’s pain floated up the stairs, jagged little bits intermingled with the dust particles and the scent of thirty-year-old bourbon sludge.
They were wasting time down here. Uma was frantic, but she couldn’t seem to stop the litany emerging as inevitably as a train wreck from the older woman’s lips.
“Blackwood Sheriff arrested me the night I killed him. Leon, that son of a bitch. Three weeks after the miscarriage, and he tried to make medo it. Doc said to wait two months, but I didn’t refuse ’cause of that. I told him no because I’d nevereverlet him get me pregnant again. No way I was bringing a sweet little baby into this foul, disgusting place.” She slugged back her drink, slammed her glass on the bar, and meandered over toward the deer heads on the wall. Her veiny, wrinkled hand reached out to touch a shiny, black nose.
On the stairs, Uma stood, transfixed.
“See that space between the two heads?”
Cookie Lloyd couldn’t see the other women nod, but that didn’t seem to matter. She continued. “Always wished they’d let me keep his body after they embalmed him. I’d have dug him up myself, if they hadn’t put me in prison for so long. Too rotten after eight years. I wanted to get a taxidermist to stuff Leon’s head. I’d have stuck the stupid fool up there, right where he belonged.”
Holy shit. That knocked the air out of Uma, the image of the man from the wedding photo, his glassy eyes staring blindly out from the wall.
“Men. Filthy, disgusting animals.” Cookie turned to them with a sweet smile. “Lucky for me, I got my house back. Your uncle, Jessie, never touched a thing here. Let me move back in after I got out and left it to me when he died. Killing Leon could have ruined my life, but I was lucky. Not all of us are that lucky, though.”
Her face sobered, and she moved quickly to the bottom of the stairs. “Old Gus and Ive are the best men I’ve ever met in my life. The best. You need to know that. That boy is one in a million, and what he’s willing to do for you… Don’t you stop him, Uma. Lethimdo it.”
“Don’t you regret what you did?” Uma asked, knowing the answer. Too shocked to deal with the rest.
“Not once. Not for one single second do I regret killing that man and putting us both out of our misery.”
She didn’t think she could do that, and she knew she couldn’t let Ivan do it for her. “I’ve got to go, Ms. Lloyd. I can’t stand here and—”
“Yeah? Well, if you don’t let him take care of this problem, the problem’ll still be out there, won’t it? You might want to think long and hard about what you want for the rest of your life. You tired of running now? How you think you’ll feel when you’re my age?”
* * *
Justice.The word beat its rhythm in Ive’s mind, his dead muscles, his aching heart.Justice, the letters screamed out from the statue right there, in front of the Fairfax County Courthouse.
What a joke.
