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to pace
again, waiting.
    “Jesus god!” Natasha’s hand covered her mouth,
her eyes wide. “What the fuck?”
    “I know, I know,” Kimberly said, and she wanted
nothing more than to put her arms around Natasha and comfort her,
which in itself would be comforting. But that was not to be. No
arms around Natasha, not after all these years, and not for all the
years to come. “Can you help me? I don’t know what to do.”
    Natasha surveyed the scene, then went directly
for the bottle on the coffee table. She took a swig, passed the
bottle back to Kimberly, then sat down on the sofa. “Jesus,” she
said. “You’ve got to call Sheriff Withens.”
    “I’ll go to prison.”
    “Self defense. You got bruises?”
    Kimberly shrugged. “Isn’t there another
way?”
    “Like what? Bury him in the garden? Make
fertilizer for your bamboo plants? Listen, Kim, nobody is going to
have a hard time believing this was self-defense. Nobody liked
Cousins, especially not Sheriff Withens.”
    “You’re the only one who knew he was coming
home.”
    Natasha raised an eyebrow and took another sip
of Jack.
    Kimberly took that as a good sign, and
enthusiasm lit a fire in her. “We can do this, Nat. We’ll haul him
out to the boat and row him out to that bog on the island. You know
the one? We can push him down under. The turtles will eat him in a
week, and nobody will ever know.”
    “I’ve got to admit it has a touch of poetic
justice.”
    “Me rotting in prison does not.”
    “I will not be an accomplice, Kimberly. If we do
this, you have done it by yourself. You must respect me enough to
never bring my name into this.”
    “Okay.”
    “We will never discuss it again. I’ll tell Mort
we played cards.”
    “Okay.”
    “All right.” Natasha took a deep breath and
another swig. “Jesus, I can’t believe we’re going to do this. Go
get a sturdy bamboo pole and something to bind his wrists and
heels.”
    Kimberly ran out the kitchen door, and into the
greenhouse, its moist, earthy smell like a perfume. She grew bamboo
in this greenhouse; was up to two hundred and four varieties of the
fascinating stuff. Alongside one edge was a drying rack, and she
picked out a piece of timber bamboo that was about three inches in
diameter and eight feet long. It should work perfectly.
    She brought the pole into the living room, and
saw that Natasha had pulled all the draperies and turned out the
porch light. She’d salvaged the shears and was in the process of
cutting Cousins’ pants off. Kimberly got a length of bulky-spun
yarn from her basket and worked at tying his wrists together, and
then his ankles. They threaded the pole between and hoisted him
onto their shoulders like a hunted-down pig. Which he was. He was a
pathetic figure, hanging naked between them, skinny ass and
all.
    They marched him through the kitchen door and
down the path to the pier and swung him into the little boat
Kimberly kept tied up there. She ran back up to the house, grabbed
jackets for the two of them, then pulled the blanket out of the
dog’s house and threw it over Cousins’ gleaming whiteness.
    Kimberly started the little outboard, Natasha
cast off the bowline and they headed across the lake.
    Now that action was being taken, Kimberly felt
calmer, although she was shivering inside her down coat. It was
cool on the lake in the night, but not cold enough to make her
shiver. Delayed nerves, she told herself, but it didn’t help. The
trusty little outboard putted its way across the dark and silent
lake and just as they reached the island, a big moon came up over
the trees, and the world went black and silver.
    The island was marshy, with no beach. Kimberly
nosed the boat into the weeds, and Natasha jumped out with the
bowline into water up to her knees. She tied the line to a tree
stump. The boat wasn’t going anywhere. They ended up dumping
Cousins out into the water and dragging him across the marsh,
because the weight of him on their shoulders made them