Chapter 3
T ruth be told, I wasn’t sure I wanted this rich man, either. The way his blue eyes looked at me made me feel nervous, and that’s why the next day I brought Old Unreliable out of the closet. It was a handgun of ancient lineage, sometime before Elvis, and hadn’t been properly cleaned since the King’s death. That made it a very unreliable gun and possibly a dangerous gun. It was probably more likely to shoot the person behind the gun than in front of it. Still, it was all I had for protection against this odd rich man and his strange propositions.
The next thing I did was call my mom. She lived in the same city, but clear across town, much farther from my college than I wanted to commute, so I lived in my own dingy apartment. She answered the phone after two rings, probably because she recognized the number and knew she wouldn’t be harassed by a telemarketer, just her daughter. “Hey, Mom,” I greeted her.
“What do you want now?” she asked me.
“Advice. Is that free, or do I need to give you my debit card number?” I joked.
“Trixie Calhoun, don’t you dare say that number over the phone. Goodness knows who will hear it,” she scolded.
I rolled my eyes. “Probably just us and the rats in my apartment.”
She sounded exasperated. “And I wish you’d move back home. I know you wanted to be closer to the campus, but that filthy place is just disgusting.”
“It won’t be home for much longer if I can just finish these next two years of homework and dirty looks from the teachers,” I pointed out. “But I called to ask your advice about something. I met a guy last night-”
“Finally!” she exclaimed.
“-who for all I know is married,” I continued. I heard the steam escape her inflated hope. “And he said he might have a job for me, maybe a better one. I said I’d come by his home tonight and see what he’s offering.”
Mom didn’t sound happy about this at all. “Where does he live?”
“According to the address he gave me, somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, or about fifteen miles out of town,” I replied.
“And how long have you known this Mr.-?”
“We talked for about fifteen minutes,” I guessed.
My mom sighed. “Trixie, this sounds really bad. How old is this man? What does he do?”
My heart sank, but I wasn’t going to take the safe route out; fortune favored the bold, and I was hoping for a small fortune from this rich benefactor. “He’s about thirty, and Sheila told me he runs his own company. Some Benson Investors or something”
“That doesn’t bring me comfort,” Mom dryly commented.
“I know, that’s why I’m taking Old Unreliable. If anything goes wrong, I can make the situation worse.”
“For you or him?” she wondered.
“If I’m the one in back of the gun, it might be more me,” I admitted.
“But he was sickly looking, so if push comes to rape, I think I can take him.”
Mom groaned. “Trixie, I know I can’t convince you not to go, but please, please be careful, and don’t forget your cell phone.”
“I’m a college student, Mom, I have that with me twenty-four seven.” I often forgot it in my car. “And I’ll call as soon as I get back from the house.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I ended the call and sighed. I hated to admit it, but Mom was right; this was a dangerous undertaking. The big problem was that I was a little desperate for cash. I had a big rent payment coming in a month, along with a new semester of book-buying that was sure to drive me into poverty, and my pay at the diner couldn’t cut through soft cheese, much less these large expenses. If I went without food, I could make things work, but my body refused to die for my college tuition.
There was always the option of asking my mom for money, but my pride wouldn’t allow it. No matter how much I’d begged Pride, it always said no; damn stubborn thing. That meant my last hope was this unusual offer from an even stranger man to drive out to his place far in the country to see about the unknown job. What could go wrong?
That evening, I got into my car that smoked so bad it looked like it ran on coal, and drove out to Mr. Benson’s house. Thanks to Google Maps, I knew where I was going, otherwise, people would’ve seen my skeleton driving by, still searching for that damn road. I took so many lefts and rights that I was cross-eyed and upside down by the time I hit the final road up to the place. When the house came into view, I was pretty impressed and horrifically terrified. It was an old Victorian mansion complete with ghoulish gables, ominous eaves, and spooky steps. The lawn around the house was well-kept, and a circular driveway ran up to the front porch. There was a garage on the left side of the house with a heavy cloth that ran from the exterior door of the house to the garage side door. I parked at the steps, but made sure not to hit the parking brake just in case I needed to make a quick getaway.
I stepped out of the car and was surprised when lightning didn’t ominously flash across the sky behind the house. The stairs up to the porch squeaked like they needed oil, and an old Marley knocker sat in the center of the door. I gingerly grabbed the knocker and banged it against the entrance. The noise echoed through the hollow-sounding house, and in a minute, I heard a quick tapping noise. It grew louder and faster the closer it came to me, like a bomb about to go off, and I was just about to duck for cover when the door swung open. Rather than a bomb, there stood a bombshell in the form of a beautiful woman. She was of average height and a mathematical improbability of 36-24-36. A lot of women would have killed to have those measurements, making a lot of women murderers. Fortunately for this woman, I was not one of them, and I smiled at her. “Hi, um, is this where Mr. Benson lives?”
She looked me over with the only displeasing part of her: narrow, suspicious eyes set behind a pair of small, square glasses. I knew we were going to be good friends when she sneered at me, and her voice sounded like she’d rather let the dogs loose on me than talk to me. “You must be Miss Angel,” she spat out.
I wiped the spittle off my face, and my smile got a little thinner. “Miss Angel is too formal. Please call me Miss Calhoun.”
My joke fell flatter than a buttered piece of toast dropped onto the floor.
“Follow me, and remember to close the door.”
She probably thought I was born in a barn, which showed how little she knew about me; I was born in a tool shed. I stepped inside and saw that the decor was done up in late eighteenth-century Dracula, complete with no mirrors. On my left and right were the dining and living rooms. In front was a long hallway that stretched to the back of the deep house, and beside the hallway rose a narrow staircase with a landing to reach the second floor.
Miss Measurements led me upstairs, where the hall curved back to run in line with the long hallway on the bottom floor. We stopped in front of a door that looked like every other one, and she knocked. “Mr. Benson, your-” she glanced at me with venomous snake eyes, “-guest is here.” With this woman, I felt like a meal waiting to be eaten.
“Bring her in,” came the familiar voice of the pale stranger. I almost bowled the woman over to get at him; I preferred Dracula over this She-Beast any day. At least he’d make love to me before eating me. The room we stepped into was a bedroom done up in a Spartan style, complete with Greek vases on a shelf. The bed sat opposite the door beside a window, and Mr. Benson lay under the covers with a smile on his face. “Good evening.”