The serenity of Rochelle's coming days knew no disturbances as she slowly eased into a comfortable routine revolving around familiarizing herself with her new residence and making new friends. Ruth and her husband stopped by to visit a few minutes with her, Mabel came by two or three times per week, and Rochelle had made a special point of inviting Sally, the waitress from the restaurant who befriended her. New faces of people whom Rochelle had not met previously stopped by to introduce themselves. They brought cakes, jams, and other offerings of welcome. In no time, she made a number of new friends.
Tillie Somers, Michael's housekeeper, whom he was willing to share only if Tillie would still keep her two days a week job with him, moved in with Rochelle. Although she proved an indispensable helper, both in the kitchen and as a housekeeper, Rochelle still cooked dinner for Michael on the nights when he worked to complete his kitchen project. As promised, Rochelle shared Tillie with Michael and the friendly woman worked at both houses.
Being a gentle soul of meager finances, Tillie could not have been happier at the opportunity to live in the Matheson home. It was an honor for her, since many of the locals considered the house the initial foundation for the outgrowth of their small town. For many who lived in the little bedroom community, the Matheson house served similarly to a memorial depicting the prestige and affluence accorded a small growing community through James Matheson's generosity in financing the entrepreneurs of small businesses needed in the area. Additionally, while he was the financial force behind the town's growth, his wife was its grand lady of distinction.
The first Mrs. Matheson was a kind and caring woman whose doors were open to people of the community. She knew nearly everyone in her small town and befriended most of them at one time or another. She catered to the needy, contributed her time to charities, and was a strong example of what a true humanitarian was supposed to be. With such honorable people in a fine old house, it stood like a monument of prophetic significance and meaning to those who forged a town from an empty cow pasture.
Now the house had taken on an additional character. Not only was it a memorial to commemorate a town's birth and growth, it was also a memorial for two people murdered within its walls. The community of interested spectators looked expectantly toward the new resident for any mark she would leave on the overall atmosphere surrounding the aura of the Matheson home.
Rochelle had no knowledge of the interest and speculation surrounding her, which proved a blessing since she chose to avoid notoriety of any kind. She grew so contented with her new life, she could almost forget the dark scars implanted in her soul by Tobias.
Only occasionally did she have renewed flashes of fear that kept her on guard against the inevitable possibility of Tobias finding and killing her. Nonetheless, following the first month of her newfound freedom, she could almost believe Tobias had given up looking for her. She had been thinking he might find someone else to replace her and would forget she existed.
She could not have been more wrong.
TOBIAS AWOKE MID-MORNING, the bright light filtering through and around the edges of the drapes, hurting his bloodshot eyes. He squinted until his vision adjusted, and then glanced at the clock on the nightstand. As he did nearly every morning since Rochelle left, with his eyes still partly closed, he subconsciously reached across the bed to enfold her in his arms. The emptiness of the bed beside him caused his eyes to snap open wider and he stared at the fluffed pillow where her head, framed with flaming gold hair, once lay.
With a pained jerk, he pushed himself up and swung his feet to the floor, cupping his aching head in his hands. Rotating his head in half circles on his shoulders to release the tension, he stared at the empty space beside him, as if by sheer will he could bring her back to his bed and into his life. Taking her for granted as he had done when she was with him, he never considered he might actually miss her if she left him. Nevertheless, he did. He missed her so damn bad it actually hurt. The smelly, perfumed broads he kept falling in the sack with held not a candle to Rochelle's naiveté, innocence, and refinement.
Hammers were beating inside his skull and any movement increased the intensity, causing him to groan in pain. He shook his aching head, trying to clear out the cobwebs, unable to recall what business he was supposed to handle that day. Searching his mind like a blind man rifling through a filing cabinet, he glanced across the room where a bureau sat. Like every other morning, he saw her picture there, an eleven by fourteen enlargement she gave him in the early part of their relationship before they were married. A sickening loss clutched at his chest, it quickly turning to anger as he remembered how she ran away from him, her act upsetting the equilibrium of his control over his business and personal obligations.
Rushing across the room, he jerked the framed photograph off the bureau, pulled back his arm and almost flung it at the wall.
However, he stopped himself just in time, as he did on the other occasions when he had wanted to batter her within an inch of her life. It took all his reserve to keep from destroying the picture at moments of intense rage. He really did not want to destroy it. He needed it, wanted it to remember her by, to remind him of how much he both missed and wanted to kill her.
Almost gently, he put the photograph back in its place, and with his back stooping like that of a beaten old man, he slid his feet laggardly across the floor to the bathroom. He looked in the mirror, gagging at the smeared lipstick on his face, the smell nauseating him. He grabbed a toothbrush and squeezed a gob of toothpaste onto the bristles. His tongue felt thick, like hairs growing out of it, and his breath sickened and made him gag. God, he must have been drunk and out of his mind to fuck that bitch with him last night.
“Shit, the broad might have given me something!”
That would be just his luck, contacting some disease with all his screwing around, and the hell of it all, he was usually so damn drunk he couldn't remember if he enjoyed it or not. Half the time he couldn't even get it up anymore.
Rochelle was the reason. She was the cause of all his problems.
She was in his mind like a cancer. Even drinking himself into oblivion couldn't erase her image. All the angry contempt he had felt for her before she ran away had dissolved as he recalled the good things they shared in the beginning of their relationship and marriage. Those were the things he missed and wanted back again.
Nothing had gone right since she left.
Before she ran away, it had never occurred to him he could miss her so much. Taking her for granted when she had been with him, he could not have known the suffering he would experience over losing her, or realize how severely her absence would affect his life.
Trying to replace her with other women proved more a chore than a comfort. The women he once found so amusing in the past suddenly became sickening broads he could no longer stand. Their makeup on his shirts, their cheap perfumes clinging to his nostrils, the musky smell of their sex left on his body, all the things previously used to torment Rochelle with now repulsed him. Not only that, last night his sexual attempts had failed to excite him, and the bitch had actually laughed at his limp manhood. His flaccid penis scared the shit out of him, and he blamed it on Rochelle's absence. He missed her. God, how much he missed her! Why had he treated her so contemptible? Why had he abused her so badly, his cruelty driving her away from him?
In all the five years they were married, Rochelle showed quiet tolerance for all his bad habits. Maybe she had been scared shitless of him, considering the way he treated her, and was afraid to be assertive. Regardless of the reason for her docile attitude, he recalled explicitly how uplifting her presence was, how homey she somehow made the huge, cold mansion seem; and the sad joke was that he had not even realized it then.
Since she left him, he drank himself into a stupor nightly; was brought home bodily by his so-called friends, and then put to bed by his guards. Night after night he hoped the booze would help him forget her, help him get just one decent night's sleep without her face invading his brain to leave him wakeful, exhausted, and irritable.
The detectives he hired to find Rochelle, despite him paying them a fortune, failed to come up with a single trace of her. It was as though she had simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Even after all this time, he still sent his men out on the streets with her picture trying to find someone who might have seen her. Inquiries at the bus station, with taxi companies and taxi drivers, as well as airport personnel, rendered not a single trace.
Rochelle had taken several cabs during the time she had transferred her savings to the safe deposit box. It was a miracle that Tobias's men or the detectives hadn't encountered at least one of the drivers.
Tobias purposely avoided filing a missing person's report with the police. He could not afford drawing attention to himself, so he excluded the police from the search. His wife was gone, and he was going out of his fucking mind with longing for her body, for her guileless personality that intrigued him and fired his loins with yearning, and for her warm presence in his cold, cold mansion.
He showered and called down to request a pot of coffee. Ten minutes later, he gulped the first cup, took several aspirin and poured a second cup. With the coffee clearing his head a little, he remembered with another groan what was on the agenda for the day.
He dressed in a suit, not looking forward to the scheduled trip down to Columbia. Bile rose up in his throat and he ran to the bathroom and puked the toilet full of foul smelling vomit, all the while carrying on an internal dialogue, telling himself he had to pull himself together. He was going down the tubes unless he got a grip on himself and on his life.
He had been so out of sorts the past few weeks, his contacts with the drug cartel was finding reason to criticize his efforts, to threaten him with expulsion from their organization, or use even worse methods of retaliation. He knew he had to get his head together, and he would not be able to do that until he backed off the alcohol. It had become such an addiction he wasn't sure he could leave it off.
A look in the mirror, however, told him he must take control of his life again. He looked like hell—turning gray and faded like an old man, and taking on wrinkles much sooner than he should. His paunch had grown another three inches so his pants no longer fit properly, and his belt would not accommodate another hole to make it looser.
He went through every piece of Rochelle's clothing hanging in the closet. Hell, he went through it daily, touching and sniffing at her scent like a lovesick fool. Her jewelry was still in the chest, all pieces untouched except her watch and the diamond wedding rings.
He wished he had a snapshot of them. Perhaps passing it around would revive someone's memory, since people's attentions often focused on diamonds and shiny baubles. However, he had nothing to promote his search. How she could have disappeared without a trace was beyond his imagination. He never would have believed she had the guile or cunning to plan such a perfect scheme.
He turned on the television and went to the bathroom to shave, the noise from the television serving as a distraction to offset the silence of the room, which was like a death pall without Rochelle there. More and more, he considered filing a missing persons' report.
All his other efforts failed to offer any clues, and nearly deciding he had exhausted all attempts to find her, missing persons was the only thing left. Without the police, he might never discover her whereabouts.
He pressed his palm against his forehead, both the inside and outside of his skull throbbing so painfully all he wanted to do was go back to bed. Regretfully though, the flight to Columbia was only a few hours away. He needed to get himself together and in gear, maybe eat a huge breakfast to ease his bloated stomach.
As he shaved, looking into the mirror, he kept seeing her face staring back at him. He was sure the alcohol had screwed up his brain, probably burning up brain cells so his mind didn't work so well. The damage reflected in the fact that Rochelle's image embedded itself in his mind and he was unable to exorcise it. It reminded him of the way he had awakened from nightmares as a kid, and the nightmare continued like a movie reel even after he was wide-awake.
Day and night, her face haunted him, disrupting sleep, subordinating his business obligations. Her absence made him a sick son of a bitch, and it was an area of his life he had no experience with which to resolve the problem. He was an intelligent man, but he knew he was losing it. His head was so fucked up the only way he was going to get it straight again was by finding Rochelle. The only way he was going to do that was by filing a missing person's report.
He went back to the bedroom lifted the phone, and pushed a button. “Dave, get your fucking ass up here,” he yelled into the receiver and plunked it back down. Dave was there in less than two minutes, zipping his pants, fastening his belt, and then buttoning up his shirt.
“What's up, boss?” Dave's eyes gazed at the bed that showed only one side slept on. Like his boss, he could not seem to get used to the idea that Mrs. Matheson was gone. Her absence had taken its toll on his boss, and he knew if things didn't get better soon, they were heading for disaster in the organization. Such laxness on Tobias's part could leave holes in the blueprint of his operation where some sharp state attorney might sneak in unexpectedly with an all-out investigation. Aware of an ensuing situation, the cartel had been making threats, and not idly. They usually followed through, too. It didn't help matters that Chandler was so engrossed over the loss of his wife that he failed to take their threats seriously.
He was courting disaster with some dangerous colleagues.
“I'm going to the police, Dave,” he said, watching Dave closely to measure his reaction.
Dave never knew what to expect with Tobias anymore. The man's moods could swing far right or far left in a tenth of a second, and he was careful as hell what he said to him. The least word or phrase that Tobias took offense to could send him off on an insane tangent of verbal violence. “I thought you didn't want to use the police,” Dave said, choosing the least antagonizing response.
“I've changed my mind.” He staggered and caught himself by grabbing onto the bedpost. A wave of dizziness nearly overcame him. When he got his bearings, he went to a table containing liquor and glasses, and poured a good measure of scotch in a glass. He drank it down at once, gagging in the aftermath.
“I'm going fucking crazy, Dave,” he exploded emotionally, and big tears rolled down his cheeks.
Fuck! Dave thought. The son of a bitch really is going crazy.
This whole operation is going down the tube and me with it, he thought, trying to consider the best way out of impending disaster.
He might have to disappear like Matheson's wife.
“What do you want me to do, boss?” he asked in a calm and businesslike voice with no hint of the sudden discontent over the present state of affairs.
“We're going to the police and file a missing person's report.
What do you think about that, Dave? You think it'll be okay?” He sounded like a kid trying to get his father's approval. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew loudly into it, and let out a fart that reverberated off the walls.
Dave backed away from the smell. “Sure, boss, if that's what you want to do. They send pictures over their computers and fax machines to other police stations. Maybe some sharp rookie might have seen her and can pair her with the picture.”
Glancing toward the king sized bed again, Dave waited for Chandler to challenge his remarks, dismiss him, or tell him what to do next.
“Well, what in the hell are we waiting for?” Chandler snapped, lifting the decanter to pour another generous drink.
“Boss, there's something here you ought to see,” Dave interjected, carrying the morning paper in his hand, and reluctantly holding it out to Tobias. “The police raided the warehouse last night.
The paper says it's the biggest drug bust ever made in Miami. The losses were the greatest ever, and they have four of our guys in the slammer. The other two were buyers.”
Tobias froze, grabbing the paper and letting his eyes scan down the page. He flung the paper across the room where it hit a vase on a table and sent it shattering to the floor. His hands were shaking like a jackhammer vibrating. His heartbeat accelerated and his face turned bloody red.
“Buyers, like hell you say! They were probably goddamned feds. That damned son of a bitch who was handling the sale did not check them out. What in the hell is wrong with everybody? Can't any fucking body do anything right without me having to lead them by a leash?”
Tobias's gray eyes glittered like ice and his face settled in stern, grave lines. He marched over to the broken vase and snatched the paper from the floor, glancing with maddening little jerks as he scanned the lines again beneath the bold heading: Drug Bust Produces Largest Yield Yet.
Tobias grabbed the phone and dialed. The voice that answered sounded half-asleep. “Tanner, you drag your fat ass out of bed, and read this morning's paper. Then get the fuck downtown before some feisty detective turns their heads with promises of a deal. Bail them out if you can, and I'll handle it from there.”
“Chandler, why in the hell can't you call at normal times like everybody else?” Tanner demanded through a sleepy yawn, knocking something over on his bedside stand as he reached to turn the clock for a better view.
Tobias didn't bother to answer. He slammed down the phone.
He was considering canceling his trip to Colombia when his phone began ringing. “Yeah!” he snapped impatiently, suddenly softening his tone considerably when he heard the voice on the phone. “Good morning, Mr. Sanchez, what can I do for you?”
“Chandler, I just got a call from Gonzalez. How in the fuck could something like this have happened? I told you a month ago to find another location. What do I have there, a fucking bunch of old women handling my stuff? What in the hell are you doing about it?
You son of a bitch, either you get off your ass, or I'm going to personally cut your damn balls off, then chop you up in little pieces for fish bait.” He screamed out a long expletive in Spanish.
Tobias listened to his own voice, it sounding like a tired old man, quavering and hoarse. He cleared his throat. “I've been in touch with the attorney. He is on his way down there as we speak. If he can get them out on bail, I will see to everything else. Do you still want me to fly down there today? This might be a good time for me to stay here.”
“Take care of it, and then get the fuck down here. We have some things to discuss. Either you shape up you son of a bitch, or ship out, Chandler. You're leaving too many cracks in security, and you would be wise to either straighten out the problem with the bitch you married, or get rid of her. She's affecting your efficiency.”
With another burst of curses in Spanish, he severed the connection.
Tobias hung up the phone and stood staring at it. Gonzalez must have told Sanchez about Rochelle leaving, he suspected. The son of a bitch was after his job!
Dave was still standing there waiting for further instructions.
“You still want to go downtown and file that missing person's report, boss?” Dave sounded about as humble as any human being could be, lest he provoke Tobias at a very charged moment. He knew Chandler's temper, and he damn well didn't want to be the butt of it.
“Hell, yes, that's what I said, isn't it? Bring the car around. I'll meet you downstairs.”
Dave left the room, thinking things were only going to get worse if Tobias stayed on the booze. His boss knew how serious things had become, but he seemed unable to focus beyond thoughts of his wife. Dave was certain the alcohol had more to do with it than did Mrs. Chandler's leaving. Sanchez couldn't afford incompetence, and he never fired people; he killed them. Dave's biggest worry was that he would be in the crossfire when they took out Chandler. He was thinking seriously of pulling out. He just didn't know how to go about it and still avoid the fate three previous guards had met, along with numerous others tied to the organization.
Dave had no idea how Chandler managed it, but Johnson, Mrs.
Chandler's chauffeur, had been found a couple of weeks after her disappearance. Someone discovered him in a trash bin near the bus station with his brains blown out. That bit of insight made Dave think twice about trying to disappear. He wondered how in the hell Mrs. Chandler had done it so successfully, at least so far.
Tobias got on the phone, calling everyone together for that afternoon. Sanchez would have liked him to find a way to get his coke back, but if that wasn't possible, the next move was to protect the new shipment scheduled two weeks away.
If something should happen to it…
Tobias avoided thinking about that. He just wanted to think of Rochelle and the difference it would make in his life if he had her with him. Things had gone like clockwork with her close by to keep his head balanced. Now, everything was going to hell.
He would file his missing person's report, have his meeting that afternoon, wait until Tanner bailed the four bastards out, if he could, who had caused all his problems, and then when they were taken care of he would fly down to Colombia.
Maybe by the time he came back, there would be some word on Rochelle.