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“You had trouble looking at them, didn’t you?” Leslie asked. “You didn’t have to, you know.”
“It was okay. They didn’t really look like her. Her face especially, twisted so strangely. By the way, did you notice the knots on those bindings?” Robin added, suddenly having gathered her senses and returning to business.
“Sort of. Why?”
“Tied by an expert; they were all the same,” Robin said. “I don’t think Betsy could have done it. She’s not a top, never has been, that I know of.”
“Someone else could have done the ropes,” Leslie suggested.
“An accomplice, yes, but it doesn’t feel like that.” There was a faraway look in Robin’s eye, as if she’d gone some place else in her mind just to find the answers.
“Suppose we ought to go to Roman Hill tomorrow,” Leslie said.
Robin nodded. “Those women up there are holding back, if that’s all they told the police. Little enclave they have there. Probably all trying to protect each other. I mean they all might have wanted Felicia dead.”
Leslie smiled. “That could very well be. I think we need to look at the possible motives first. It would appear, except for Jane, that they all had opportunity.”
“No airtight alibis,” Robin agreed. “But then again, I’m afraid that every woman who has ever known Felicia would have some kind of motive for murder.”
“Oh? You too?”
“God yes, cantankerous hellion that she was. Until I decided that she was certifiably crazy, I wanted to ring her neck a dozen times.”
Leslie tried not to laugh. Though she was glad to see Robin lighten, even if it was just a little. She would love to have had her in bed that night, just to hold her again. Unfortunately, she couldn’t think of a way to get her there. The rule about their platonic business relationship was firm, from Leslie’s as well as Robin’s point of view. It had been that way for several years. Though this was one day that Leslie wished she could break it.
“Suppose we meet at the Hill, ten o’clock?” Leslie suggested.
“Sounds good. I need a long night’s sleep,” Robin replied.
“You get one, you do look awfully tired.”
After the soup, crackers, a little more stilted talk, and a tender goodbye, Robin watched Leslie walk toward her truck. Her brunette friend then stopped to look at her, until Robin was by her own car and getting in. That little protective gesture was rather sweet, Robin thought. But then that was Leslie’s way, even if Robin hated the idea that her partner thought she needed protection right now.
After watching Leslie drive away, Robin drove up town, to a seedier side of the city where there were dan
k apartments, empty office buildings and a smattering of light industrial factories on their last legs. Discarded paper fluttered in the streets, while upended trash cans cluttered the sidewalks. There was an eerie, lonesome feeling about this part of town; even drug dealers and hookers steered clear, simply because there was no one with money to buy what they offered. A few sad people wandered about on their way from one lonely moment of their lives to another, somewhere in one of the squalid flats above ground level.
The little flat that Robin sought was up three flights, although taking those stairs was like walking into another world, away from the menial one on the street, and far away from her normal fast-paced life. Robin saw from the street that the light was on; Britta was home. She breathed a sigh of relief and began the long trek.
Minutes later, Robin’s knock on the door produced a vague reply, which was enough encouragement to walk on in, even though she wasn’t quite sure what the woman had mumbled. It didn’t really matter, Robin would go in regardless.
Once inside, she looked around the expansive apartment searching for what she wanted. Didn’t take long to feel the sweet sexual warmth rush into her thighs; the moment she smelled the incense burning, her craving ignited—a conditioned response, she supposed, after so many sessions in Britta’s den.
“You look like shit,” the woman said from the fog of smoke around her.
Robin looked up to see the object of her search reclining on a daybed in one corner of the room. “You’ll take me tonight, please?” Robin asked with a hopeful half-smile on her lips.
The woman stared at her, as if she was reading a page from the book Robin wrote inside her heart.
“Of course, my little Robbie,” she answered, noting her guest’s thinly disguised distress. “You need it especially hard tonight, perhaps?
Robin nodded.
The incense was so thick it was beginning to burn her nostrils. She breathed it deeply, thinking there was a trace of cigarette smoke in the vapors, along with the scent of some mystical eastern herbal concoction. She breathed deeply again, letting the smoke soothe her into that other side of her life. The heat between her legs expanded, burning hot and demandingly.
“You should have called first, but I’ll take you,” Britta said curtly. “Sit on the stool.” She pointed to the space in front of her.
Robin spied the familiar piece resting innocently between her and Britta. It was a little round thing; its needlepoint cushion reasonably comfortable, but clearly humbling. The stool was so low that when she sat on it, her legs were above her bottom and naturally spread wide apart. Of course, this was part of Britta’s design; the position required was unabashedly submissive.
