Southern Justice, Part 58

I’m Fixin’ To present part 58 of Southern Justice:

The following Tuesday morning after the operating committee meeting Chris and Patty were having breakfast at home before departing for work when Patty said, “I’m worried about driving my old car downtown to the university.”

“Drop me off at work and you can take my car,” Chris told her.

“But I’m probably going to be there until late this evening,” Patty protested.

“No problem,” Chris assured her, “I’ll catch a ride home with Jones, and this weekend we’ll get you a new car.”

Later on, as Patty was dropping Chris off at Pic-Ric Products, he asked how late she thought she would be.

“It’ll probably be eight or nine before I get home, but I’ll call you sometime today,” she told him.

Before she got on the expressway she pulled into a convenience store and purchased a phone card.

Jackie Payne-Haselton went shopping that day. She had received the good news from B. Wendell the night before when he had assured her she would have her money from everything except the condo and the company within a few days. She left Jackson Lake and was in Atlanta by 10 o’clock where she purchased a set of Louis Vuitton luggage and a completely new wardrobe. Afterward, she visited a travel agency where she made a hotel reservation and bought a one-way ticket to St. Croix.

It had been too late after B. Wendell’s phone call last night to celebrate, but she planned to tonight. Her last stop was at a package store where she purchased champagne and orange juice. Her favorite thing at the lake was to just float around on the water and watch the sun go down while sipping on a mimosa.

She arrived back at the lake house around four o’clock, transferred her purchases from the car into the house, putting the champagne on ice. She planned to be on the water by five.

It was a gloriously sunny afternoon when Jackie appeared on the deck in a new Brazilian bikini. The temperature was 85 degrees, perfect for floating on the lake, and since it was a weekday, the cove was deserted and the water was as smooth as glass.

With a small cooler containing her beverage of choice, and with a large inflated blue float, she made her way from the deck down to the dock.

After an hour Jackie knew she should get out of the water, but it just felt too delicious. When she got too hot she would dip her hands into the water and splash it on her body and when she got thirsty she would paddle alongside the dock and refill her cup from the cooler without getting out of the water.

By six o’clock the sun was a huge orange ball hanging over the treetops from across the far side of the lake. With the bottle of champagne spent and the warmth of the sun on her face, Jackie closed her eyes and just let the float drift.

Several hundred yards up the cove, a slim figure, face and hair covered with a scuba suit, complete with a cap and a mask, slipped into the water’s edge, disappeared beneath the surface, then reappeared almost two minutes later beneath an overhang of bushes on the far side of the cove—the side which was a thick forest because it was the Greenbelt, a part of the lake shore restricted from development and meant to remain in a natural state.

It was into this forest that the slim figure disappeared, only to reappear and slip back back below the surface at the water’s edge, on a direct line with the big blue float drifting in the center of the cove.

Jackie was in a near blissful state. Her eyes were still closed as the lake water gently rocked the float. For some reason she thought about Rick, and almost wished he was here. That was her last thought.

The last sounds she heard was a “pop” and then a “hiss” as the air escaped the float just before something pulled her beneath the surface. As she was pulled deeper and deeper, a silent scream filled her lungs with lake water.

Minutes later, the slim swimmer wearing the scuba mask and suit, was back in the forest of the Greenbelt waiting for darkness to fall and for the blue float to finally sink below the surface of the water.

After darkness had fallen the swimmer swam back across the cove, this time swimming silently on the surface of the water in the darkness.

Minutes later, dressed in a sweat suit complete with a hood, the swimmer walked out of the lake house, replaced the door key underneath the large green ceramic frog on the deck, and then quickly drove away into the night.

(tmdunagan@aol.com)