But the proverbial cat was out of the bag.
Victoria gave me an amused look from across the table. "Nothing's come over me," she said sweetly. Then she seemed to think again, as if even she knew that could not stand up to scrutiny.
I waited for an explanation.
"All right," she said. "So maybe I'm tired of treating you like crap." A sigh. "No, that's not it either." She chuckled, then almost immediately put a more serious almost tearful look on her face. "I guess I'm just afraid of losing you, Jack—"
I didn't know I had given her reason to believe such. We had been together for ten years now, nine as man and wife and five living in Hawaii. While we'd had more than our fair share of fights and disagreements over the course of time, neither of us had ever threatened divorce. Or even a separation.
Why start now?
Did she know something I didn't?
Or was she genuinely concerned at this stage in our lives that we might be drifting apart to the point where a split was inevitable?
I sought to allay her concerns and extinguish my own strange feelings that things would somehow never be the same again.
With my gray eyes narrowed the way they get when I want to express my sincerity, I told her: "You are never going to lose me, except to death when are both too old to even realize one of us is gone. Don't you know that I worship the ground you stand on and have ever since we first met?"
She flashed that drop dead, thousand-watt smile that sold me back then, and still sent a chill up my spine. "I don't know what I was thinking," Victoria said. "I guess it's a woman's prerogative to get a little insecure at times, usually for no reason at all other than just for the sake of it."
Since I felt that I had the upper hand on this one, I wasn't about to let my leverage slip away.
"Now that you mention it, things have gotten a bit sour between us," I said. "I think maybe we should use this morning's little adventure to start over."
"Is that so?" she asked playfully.
I sipped my coffee and regarded her, wearing only one of my shirts and looking sexy as hell. I suddenly felt turned on again.
"Yeah," I hummed. "How about picking up where we left off back in the bedroom."
Victoria moistened her lips with syrup and said teasingly: "Now you're being greedy."
I blushed salaciously. "Guilty as charged."
She laughed. "Well we'll just have to see about that, won't we?"
I didn't respond, though I couldn't help but feel there was a double meaning to her words. For the moment, I was more than ready to push any skepticism from my mind and use the renewed vigor and enthusiasm for a second round of intimacy.
Victoria suddenly sprang to her feet like she had just spotted a snake within striking distance. "I've got a great idea," she said. "Why don't we go into Lihue today?"
I scratched my graying black hair. Lihue was the county seat as well as commercial center of Kauai County. It was also usually a place Victoria avoided at all costs, making me wonder what she was up to.
"I go there to work five days a week," I pointed out. "Why would I want to on my day off?"
We lived on the south shore of Kauai in the resort area of Poipu Beach. The two-story, custom-built oceanfront home with spectacular views of Kukui'ula Harbor and Spouting Horn—the amazing phenomenon renowned for crashing waves fifty feet into the air—had damned near everything we could ask for, and more. It was our own little slice of heaven and the one thing we both seemed to agree on ever since purchasing it three years ago.
Apart from giving us the opportunity to enjoy the good life in style, it was also supposed to provide Victoria the inspirational setting to get her creative juices flowing as a would-be writer. That hadn't often been the case, not counting this morning. Her writing still came and left with her mood, which had been lousy lately.
Again, this morning had seen a different and improved Victoria Burke emerge from the shadows. Knock on wood. Maybe the writing had hope yet, I considered optimistically.
Maybe we did as well.
In my reverie, I hadn't realized that Victoria had gotten up and was now on my lap, where she planted a coffee laced kiss on my mouth.
"Oh, pretty please," she said in a whiny my-way-or-no-way voice. "It'll be fun, you'll see. We'll go to some of those cute little shops in the Kukui Grove Shopping Center and drink lattes or red wine. And when we get back, the fun can really begin—"
"I thought the fun was about to begin again now," I groaned.
"It will," she promised. "Before you know it we'll be back, and I'm all yours for the taking and you're mine for the giving."
I had the distinct feeling this was a bribe. I was damned if I didn't and rewarded if I did.
Not much of a choice, all things considered. But after this morning she could have told me to jump off Wailua Falls and I probably would have.
"You win," I said.
Victoria put her warm cheek to mine and whispered in my ear: "No, silly, we both win."
I took her at her word on that one.
I hadn't considered at the time that winning was entirely subjective.
CHAPTER TWO
I drove my Mercedes down Highway 50, wondering why we were headed to Lihue instead of making love. I was still trying to figure out if my wife was up to something. Or were my suspicions totally unwarranted?
"So why did you really want to go out?" I had to ask.
"Does there have to be a reason?"
"Isn't there usually one?" I countered.
"Not in this case, if you're looking for some ulterior motives," she said. "I just felt like being impetuous."
"You mean like having sex this morning?" I asked, hoping I wasn't stepping over the line and jeopardizing a very good thing for future reference.
"Something like that," Victoria said as she put her hand on my knee. "We used to hang out together all the time. Now you're always too busy—or I am. Maybe this is just my way of trying to get past that."
I couldn't argue her point. Between my job in advertising and her doing whatever, there seemed to be little time these days to enjoy each other's company outside the house. Perhaps this was a good opportunity to turn back the clock and work on our marriage in the process.
I touched her hand that was still on my knee and smiled. "I'm glad we're doing this."
She smiled back. "Me too."
Nevertheless, I was eager to get back home and resume our sexual activity.
After finding a spot to park, we visited a few stores in the open air shopping center, picking up some items along the way. Victoria seemed to be in her element, while I was exercising patience in wanting to appease her.
I opted to wait outside while she went into a fragrance store. Since I liked her natural scent more than any perfume, I left it up to her to buy whatever suited her fancy.
It was a nice day in Kauai, as was usually the case, with the temperature in the upper seventies and only a few puffy clouds in the sky. It was a far cry from my upbringing in the Midwest, where it was often either too hot or too cold for my liking.
My trip down memory lane was interrupted when I heard the throaty voice say almost inaudibly: "Can you spare a little something...?"
I looked slightly to my right and saw a tall Hawaiian woman standing there in tattered clothing that looked at least a size or two too big for her body. At first glance, I guessed her to be well into her thirties, if not forties. But upon closer inspection, something told me that beneath the street person façade she was more likely in her mid to late twenties.
Her thick, long hair was jet black and unkempt, suggesting it had not been washed for some time. The same could be said for her face. Her cheeks were smudged as if she had been rolling around in soot. She had heavy bags under her exotic brown eyes, which seemed to reveal everything she had been through. None of it good. She had a dainty nose and a half moon cleft in her chin. I could almost imagine her full mouth being covered with rich red lipstick in another lifetime.
/> But that was then and this was now.
My guess was that she was homeless—or damn near it. There was a homeless shelter not far from there and I wondered if she had drifted from it to the shopping center.
On almost any other day, I would have rejected the slightest temptation to help out this woman who was invading my space. Never mind the fact that I had donated plenty of money in the past few years to help keep the shelter afloat.
But there was something different about this woman that got to me. Maybe it was the pain in her sad eyes that told me she had had a rough turn in life above and beyond all others.
Or maybe it was because I had nothing better to do at the moment than take pity on someone of lesser means than myself.
Or maybe it was because she reminded me of someone I'd tried hard to remember and forget—my sister Caroline. She had taken to the streets when I was still in grade school. It was her way of liberating herself from a bad, abusive marriage, overbearing parents, and an addiction to cocaine.
The price she paid was heavy. At one point, Caroline was found living in a dumpster, strung out on drugs, and half frozen to death. The lifestyle caught up to her soon enough. She never even made it to see her twenty-third birthday, much less mine.
I blamed her for what she did to herself, simply because it was easier than blaming everyone else.
I met the homeless woman's unflinching eyes and removed my billfold from my back pocket. After leafing through some fifty dollar bills and several twenties, I backtracked and pulled out a fifty dollar bill and placed it on her hand, which had opened wide like a flower.
She flashed me a hint of a smile and said in a stronger voice: "Mahalo."
Almost simultaneously, I heard the bell from the fragrance shop, indicating someone had come out. I turned to look at Victoria's face. She was not smiling.
I glanced toward the woman who was already in full stride, as if to escape having to deal with my less than sympathetic wife. She was probably in search of her next handout. She turned her head in my direction as though for the last time, before disappearing into a shop.
Don't ask me why, but I had a sinking feeling that my generosity would come back to haunt me.
At least it seemed that way as I met the chilling gaze Victoria leveled at me.
CHAPTER THREE
The drive home was deathly silent. Victoria had seemingly come away from the shopping trip with more than enough to keep her going, but you would have thought we'd just come from her best friend's funeral. It was as if she had chosen to deny herself satisfaction in order to spite me. And I had a pretty good idea why. Behind her good looks, Victoria had a jealous streak a mile long. Make that ten miles. If I even so much as looked at another woman—no matter her lot in life—she became a bitch.
Then there was the thing Victoria had about handing out our hard-earned money to the needy. I tended to agree with her on that subject, but a onetime handout hardly seemed enough to put me in the doghouse and lose what ground we'd gained during the day.
Though she seemed to think so.
Finally, as if unable to hold it in any longer, Victoria said: "So do you want to tell me what that was all about back there?"
"What?" I didn't want to falsely assume her eerie silence or accusatory tone was for the wrong reason.
She sighed heavily. "You actually gave that woman money..."
There seemed no sense in denying what she apparently saw.
I nodded. "Maybe she'll put it to good use," I offered lamely, even if I doubted this to be true.
Victoria twisted around in the passenger seat, as if ready to attack me. From the corner of my eye, I was able to see her contorted features.
"Have you lost your mind?" she snapped. "People like that never put money to good use. If they did, they wouldn't be begging strangers for it, would they?"
I was inclined to agree with her, but since she'd put me on the defensive I felt I had to justify my actions.
"So I felt sorry for her," I admitted. "What's the big deal?"
Victoria snorted indignantly. "She's not your sister, Jack," she said. "You can't just go around giving money to some needy woman who is probably high on drugs as some sort of penance to exorcise past demons!"
I cast her a resentful gaze. "It had absolutely nothing to do with Caroline," I insisted, but knew otherwise. "She just happened to come up to me, asked for money, and I gave her a little something for her trouble. It was a spur of the moment thing."
"Don't be so damn gullible," Victoria said unsympathetically. "All she had to do was look in your face to see you were an easy mark."
I couldn't believe we were even having this conversation. On the other hand, this bitching over silly things was more like the Victoria I had come to know and dislike. So why was I surprised?
"Dammit, Victoria, get the hell off my case." I shot my eyes at her for maximum effect. "Have you forgotten who wanted to go there in the first place?"
"Oh, so now it's my fault?" she spat.
"It's no one's fault—least of all the woman I tried to help," I told her. "You're making way too much out of this." I furrowed my brow and said, "I hope going out together was worth it for all the grief you've put me through."
Victoria knew she barely had a pretty leg to stand on. That didn't prevent her from still trying to make me the heavy.
"You can be such an asshole sometimes," she whined.
I could have left it alone, but I didn't. Maybe it was because she chose to bring Caroline into this, even though I had never shown any repressed feelings in our marriage with respect to my dead sister.
Or maybe I was getting damn tired of seemingly always being put on the defensive by the woman I loved, but too often didn't like very much these days.
"What the hell is going on here, Victoria?" I darted my eyes at her and back to the road. "Is it the fifty dollars I gave her? Or the fact that it was a woman I gave it to?"
She sighed loudly. "Oh, so now you think this is about jealousy?"
Was it? I couldn't say for sure. I had never given her reason to be jealous. But that hadn't stopped her from jumping to the wrong conclusions more often than not.
"You tell me," I put the onus back on her.
"No way!" Victoria's voice echoed throughout the car with sarcasm. "Why on earth would I be jealous over some street urchin like her?" she spat venomously. "If you want Ms. down and out, mister-can-you-spare-fifty-bucks, you can have her!"
I tried to read into this barrage of words. Or between the lines. Was she saying I could have her as in sleep with her?
Or have her as a replacement in all areas that I would normally expect from a wife and partner?
Would the same woman who just this morning said she didn't want to lose me be so easily willing now to send me into the arms of another?
I took a deep breath. "Look, I'm sorry about the act of generosity, okay? It was hardly enough to break the bank, or feed whatever habits she might have. I don't want her. I don't want anyone...except you. Can't you see that?"
It took a few moments before Victoria mellowed somewhat, and said: "I'm sorry, too. I just overreacted. I don't know why." She batted her lashes. "Forgive me?"
"Of course," I told her without preface, wanting only to keep the peace. And maybe get back to where we were before this issue came up.
As though she didn't hear me, Victoria said: "Look, can we just forget about this afternoon?"
"It's already forgotten," I said.
But deep down inside, I knew that a can of worms had been opened that would be damned near impossible to close.
Suddenly the passion that we had enjoyed just hours ago seemed like nothing more than a distant memory.
* * *
Read the entire SEDUCED TO KILL IN KAUAI, available in print, eBook, and audio.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
R. Barri Flowers is an award winning criminologist and bestselling author of more than sixty books, including thriller ficti
on, young adult mysteries, true crime, and criminology titles.
Bestselling mystery and thriller fiction, including Seduced to Kill in Kauai, Murder in Maui, Murder in Honolulu, Killer in The Woods, Dark Streets of Whitechapel, State's Evidence, and Justice Served. Other novels by the author include the bestselling romance, Forever Sweethearts, and the young adult novels, Count Dracula's Teenage Daughter, Ghost Girl in Shadow Bay, and Danger in Time.
Flowers has also written a number of bestselling true crime books, including The Sex Slave Murders, The Pickaxe Killers, Serial Killer Couples, and Mass Murder in the Sky. He was also editor of the bestselling anthology, Masters of True Crime.
The author has been interviewed on the Biography Channel and Investigation Discovery.
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