—
Or not.
“This is it? These are supposed to be the answer to my problem? How exactly is this going to do anything, you stupid bitch?”
Elizabeth wasn’t quite as lovely or the embodiment of grace when her face was splotched red with rage, her mouth twisted with derision, and her hand slapping the table hard enough to kill a spider—the bird-eating, plate-sized South American kind.
“Bethy”—that’s what they’d called her before she’d married money, when she lived down in the trailer park where her mother worked two jobs and her father was in the wind—“if you call me a bitch again, I’ll solve your problem in an entirely different way. One that will involve prison and police, because I know all about you. Why, I had to know all there is to know to get you what you wanted, didn’t I? But while I said I made no judgments, sweetie, I never once said I tolerated disrespect.”
Her mouth snapped shut, but the anger still boiled under her skin. I could almost see it, looking for a way, any way, out. Her eyes flickered to the full champagne bottle on the table, and for a second I could see her picturing how nicely it would splatter my brains on my favorite silk shirt. I wasn’t surprised by that. That’s who Bethy was. Who she’d always been. She’d told me what she wanted—a rich man to marry who would conveniently die with or without her help, made no difference on that score to her. I said happy to deliver and named my price. Her price. Semantics.
What she hadn’t told me was her path to that want and desire. It was paved with the very same: four rich, older men who died not long after marrying Bethy Rose, the girl who’d polished up her accent, sanded away the trailer park from her skin, made herself into something a shallow person would want to own and pay to own it. Shallow or not, every one of those four men had been kind to her, as kind as they had it in them to be. They’d done their best to make her happy. Not everyone’s best is equal in all ways, but if you give your all, even if you have less to give than the more saintly, you still tried. It still counts. That made Bethy the murderer of four innocent, if not particularly bright, men.
I sold information all the time. I know how to do my research.
I’d found Bethy’s pattern and I found out the root of her problem. It was never enough. First a rich man and then a millionaire and then a multimillionaire, but, oh, times were hard and millions weren’t what they used to be when you’ve grown accustomed to maids and pool boys and drivers and country clubs and Learjets. Bethy spent it all and had to find herself a new husband. Trouble was, best effort expended or not, the men she wanted were as shallow as I’d said and Bethy wasn’t twenty-two anymore. Or thirty-two. Or forty-two. Billionaires are a special breed, and an old horny billionaire is going to want a young thing with tits done by Dr. Double D and the only lines on her skin the ones shown by her Brazilian wax. Bethy couldn’t compete with that, not anymore.
She asked me for a man who would see her as beautiful (which she was), to not be so shallow about the age yet stupid enough to be obsessed with her within a week and marry her within a month. It would be nice if he had a heart condition and died promptly on his own. One honeymoon had taken care of that for her before, but if that was too much to ask, she’d handle it. She’d handled it three other times and no one had ever caught her out.
Save for me.
“So, little Bethy Rose from the trailer park on Pike’s Hill,” I poured her a glass of the champagne, “keep your trash talk to yourself and let’s celebrate. I found you the perfect man, who matches all your qualifications save a minor one. He would love you instantly in all your ways and”—I laid the newly fashioned boots across her lap—“he has a highly documented fetish for women in boots. You are his ideal woman, Bethy, but every good con still needs a hook, and these boots are yours.”
Her anger dissipated, leaving her as pink and flushed and dewy as her middle name. “Oh.” Now she ran a hand over them and basked in the sight. After all, this was a woman who loved her thousand-dollar black-and-white snakeskin shoes and these boots—they made those shoes look like Kmart ninety-nine-cent flip-flops. The scales lay so flat you could barely see them as anything that had ever been separate from one another except for the color. Every color that existed was there. It wasn’t the bright explosion I’d dug up in another country. No, now it was a subtle watercolor wash that shimmered in a milky opal cascade. The first mermaid rising on the waves of the sea to drown a sailor would’ve been made of this. It was mystery and magic and impossibility with the mists of an Eden morning keeping it safe.
I filled my own glass and touched it to hers. A bell rang and somewhere an angel ripped off his wings in despair. “Satisfied, Elizabeth?”
She kept her hands on the boots, grasping pincers, and gave me that first smile from a week ago—that love-me-because-I-make-it-so smile. “If he’s all you say, I’m more than satisfied. I do get to keep the boots, yes?”
I smiled back, happy and bright, warm with the feeling of a job well done. “Bethy, I knew I was never getting those back from you again.”
—
On the drive in my sporty little red car to Hoover Dam, I told her about her new beau—she laughed when I called him that, but I thought he’d like the old-fashioned label. His name was Dennison Phillip Jameson—the rich do love their three names—he’d been born with a trust fund and not a silver but a platinum spoon in his mouth, had inherited even more when his parents died, and had owned several construction companies, mainly to keep busy. That’s why he’d be waiting for us at Hoover Dam. The construction companies had been sold off for even more unnecessary cash, but the man had never given up his love of a thing well-built. Originally from San Diego, monthly trips to Hoover Dam had never been out of the ordinary for him.
He was old enough that death wouldn’t be a problem for Elizabeth and, best, she looked just like his mother had in her prime, and the man had loved his mother a little more than was necessarily proper. With her face and his rather vanilla fetish for snakeskin boots, Elizabeth could’ve been made for him.
Things tend to work out that way when I’m on the job. It’s the universe showing its love of balance. I only help it along.
We drove over the dam and parked in the small lot. I waited until Elizabeth pulled on the knee-high boots. Her dress was a subtle harvest gold today and the gold in the scales picked up on it. “You look like the sun, Bethy Rose. The rising sun. He won’t be able to take his eyes off you.”
“You’re positive he’ll be here.” She brushed her hair back and her inner light doubled. She was, sad to say, gifted beyond words.
Pity.
“I am absolutely certain he’s here and waiting. He’ll be where he can see the water. The man loves the water.”
He’d have to, now, wouldn’t he?
We took the elevator up from the visitors’ center and steered clear of the enclosed area to walk to the open space where it was all sky and rock and the bluest water I’d ever seen. The dam itself was the white of a bleached bone, and that was appropriate. The last dab of paint to a work I’d labored over for a week.
“Where is he?” Elizabeth glanced around, but there was no one there. There had been a few people wandering about, but they were gone now. Gone very quickly. Sometimes people know somehow . . . They sense a minefield before they step in it. They turn and they go. And sometimes if I don’t want to be seen, people don’t want to see me. They, too, turn and go. Elizabeth and I were alone . . . well, excepting her one true love she was already saving up the potassium chloride for.
I leaned against the concrete that served as the barrier between me and nothing but hot, dry air. “Elizabeth, this is the desert. You haven’t lived here forever, I know, but have you been curious enough to drive out once in a while? See some things? You see Kokopelli all the time in the tacky little gift shops too good for the likes of you, I know. Kokopelli.” I shake my head and raise my face to the sun. “Glory hog and a whole lot handsy when he’s drinking. But forget him. Have you ever heard of Crow?”
“Coyote?
“Iktomi?”
I slid my gaze from the sun to her sudden frown and narrow-eyed blink. “Iktomi, that’s your last name. Is this a trick? Are you trying to rip me off?” So vicious the words now. So changeable, my Bethy Rose.
I laughed. “I would never rip you off. I’m giving you exactly what you want, a dead rich husband. But I am tricking you. You’re the first one to say that to me in so long.” I laughed again, stood and spun in a circle with arms wide. The sky spun with me, blue blue blue. It was once a deeper blue, the sun larger in the sky, and you could walk for years and not see a living person. The days do pass.
I stopped spinning, bounced on my heels, and grinned. “I have lots of names, sugar, so many I’d waste a good year telling you them all.” I put a finger to my lips. “But I’ll tell you a secret. They all mean the same thing.”
Trickster.
I liked Elizabeth because she was a good liar. She was my reflection in a mirror—hazy, as I did have six thousand years of practice on her, but she’d have made a good baby trickster . . . if not for her blindness to the balance. If you can’t see it, you can’t live it, and you can’t enforce it. Tricksters were created to bring balance and wisdom. Elizabeth had come to me a little late and too far gone for wisdom. But she also wasn’t stupid, my Elizabeth. She was a survivor, and so she thought to turn and leave. Thinking and doing, though, they don’t always go skipping hand in hand. As much as Elizabeth wanted to flee, she was caught firmly in the wheels of justice.
It was the balance for her.
“I’ve been so many myths, so many shapes, so many things, Bethy, you can’t imagine.”
This week alone I’d been an oversexed dolphin to teach a Speedo-wearing idiot a lesson he’d never forget. Great, great fun, that one.
I sat on the concrete barrier and told her a tale. “In Australia there was once a trickster called Dhakhan.” There were hundreds, thousands of tricksters, and I’d been them all. “Dhakhan was gorgeous, and I say that with all due modesty. A serpent covered with rainbow scales like a thousand sultan’s jewels. Does that sound vain? I probably was vain then; forget the modesty, swimming in the mountain lakes showing off like you show off your snakeskin shoes.” I kicked my feet back and forth lightly and remembered. “I watched over the people there, but where there are people there are bad people. Sometimes I had to punish the wicked. The murderers. Murderers like you, Elizabeth.” I patted the concrete beside me, and her mouth moved soundlessly as she walked over stiffly, fighting every step with all she had in her, before sitting down, wholly against her will, beside me.