Wow! Brains and beauty! You know . . . I always wanted to go to law school . . .”
He was off. Hailey let him talk. It was easier than having a real conversation about why tears had spilled . . . because the autopsy report had stirred up too many memories of another autopsy report.
Will’s autopsy. Her fiancé . . . Will. Now, suddenly, here he was again in her mind. His blue eyes sparkling, the straight white teeth behind a beautiful smile, laughing, talking, so alive.
Will was in college studying geology. His world ended and Hailey’s exploded in one single moment—he was mugged for his wallet and shot five times in his face, neck, and head. It was just before their wedding, and from that moment she existed as a shell of herself . . . pining for a life . . . and a love . . . she could never get back.
Then there was the trial . . . a hazy, awful blur, but Hailey went every day. Ditching her lifelong plan to open a counseling center in the inner city, instead, she went to law school. To put away the bad guys. And one by one, killers, rapist, drug lords, child molesters, the jailhouse population grew to hate her almost as much as she hated them. But after ten years of crusading on behalf of crime victims, she was saturated with it all: the autopsies, the crime scenes, the packed courtrooms . . . and she took off. To Manhattan, to start over fresh, hanging her counseling shingle at a little brownstone in the Village near NYU. The clients started pouring in, and ever since, she’d tried to put Will’s murder and all the years in the trenches fighting violent crime behind her.
“. . . and that’s when I said, ‘Good-bye Omaha and hello New York City!’ What about you . . . what did you tell me your name was, pretty lady?”
“Hailey. Now let’s see, Nebraska. That’s the Cornhusker State, right?” She answered as brightly as she could without revealing she had no idea what he’d been saying. That would be rude.
That was all it took. Off he went again, this guy could go on forever. Staring out at the clouds just outside coach seat 11A, she wondered if Will was out there watching her flight, maybe protecting it as it shot across the top of the sky.
Now sitting on the tarmac, the heat was boring through the metal shell of the plane. Finally, a little bell rang twice, like a doorbell, and everyone stood simultaneously to squeeze into the aisle and out the front door of the jet.
Hailey stood, too. Taking the bag Cloud handed down to her with his big, white smile, she merely said, “Thank you.” She knew he wanted to stop for a drink after they deplaned, but the memory of Will was too fresh, so she simply merged into the long line of passengers crowding the tiny aisle.
As much as she’d tried to escape a lifetime of homicide, murder weapons, state’s exhibits, and courtroom maneuvering, walking up the jetport . . . here she was. Again.
Looking through the glassed walls of the terminal out at the blue sky and waving palm trees, Hailey felt a familiar feeling . . . a spring in her step. Yep . . . here she was again. And all in all . . . it felt pretty good.
It was nearly 2 PM. Not at all her normal time to exercise, but Kacynthia Sikes was not about missing a workout.
Kacynthia speed-walked. Fists pumping, booty grinding, legs and back at unnatural, upright positions and she’d done it every single day for the last 814 days and was not about to stop now. At sixty-seven years of age, a very private number only her banker knew, Kacynthia was one of the very first Penthouse Pets back when Bob Guccione launched the magazine in the U.S. in 1969.
Her spread had been such a hit that six years later, he invited her back. The “1975 Kacynthia Sikes Pictorial,” as she chose to call it, was the first time ever that Penthouse had beaten Playboy on U.S. newsstands. She took sole credit for that.
Kacynthia was extremely proud of that particular piece of porn trivia. She often mentioned it whenever it fit appropriately (even remotely) into conversations, say, on the elevator at her East Gordon condo—shoehorned in just behind the house where the famed lyricist Johnny Mercer once lived—or in line at Kroger, or when getting her hair care products at Sally Beauty Supply. Basically . . . anywhere.
There would be no way Kacynthia Sikes (she often referred to herself in the third person) was going to let her body go to pot. Nor did she plan on spending time alone in her little condo. There was only one answer.
Speed walking. So every morning when she believed the most single “gentlemen” were up and about, possibly heading to the grocery store, the park, to work, out to breakfast, Kacynthia was ready. She arose early in the morning, well before seven, and carefully applied full makeup including eyeliner and individual false eyelashes, top and bottom.
Last in her regime, she combed out her long bottle-red hair, added a firm coat of Chanel Polo Red lipstick (some people thought redheads shouldn’t wear red, but Kacynthia disagreed vehemently), slipped on her golden-nude colored support leotard with matching leggings, and off she went.
She walked, perfectly poised, backbone straight as a flagpole, long red hair dangling down her back, all throughout Savannah’s business and historical districts. Yes, she was pushing seventy, but it only took one. One man. Life with a rich boyfriend would be a lot easier than life alone in her studio condo.
Kacynthia took the rules of speed walking to heart. The correct posture for power walking was very important as this helped Kacynthia with the task at hand, i.e., finding a man and keeping a tight butt at the same time. She worked hard to follow all the required steps she’d read about in her favorite magazine, Longevity.
Above all, Kacynthia had to stand straight up on her right foot, neither bending her back nor leaning forward in the least. She must always look directly ahead while walking and avoid looking downward. She kept her chin absolutely parallel to the ground, neither high nor low.
When walking, generally the hips rock from side to side, but in power walking, such swinging of the hips—no matter how provocative Kacynthia believed her hips to be—would ultimately slow her down. With elbows bent to ninety degrees and kept close to her body, she swung her arms forward, making sure they never crossed her chest. Never, never overstriding, Kacynthia concentrated on every step, dramatically rolling each foot forward, pushing off with her toes. Keeping all her moves synchronized was actually extremely complicated.
Today, however, Kacynthia was trying a revised tactic in her manhunt. The suburbs.
So having parked her baby-blue BMW along a curb in the Williamsburg subdivision, she set out walking, hoping against hope to meet a fellow exercise enthusiast of the opposite sex interested in a relationship with a former Penthouse Pet. He’d also need to have a big, fat bank account, or at least a low mortgage and full insurance coverage.
Several male drivers had in fact slowed down upon spotting Kacynthia strutting along the sidewalk bordering a long procession of three-bedroom, two-bath ranch houses. But they were mostly just puzzled at the shiny spandex legs and the long red hair combined with obvious breast implants. You didn’t get much of that in the Savannah suburbs.
The problem was that today was trash day, so she was winding her way through large green Herby Curby trash carts on wheels. All the ins and outs made for an incredible show, which was Kacynthia’s original intent, anyway.
Yet two hours into it, no one had even honked the horn or whistled at her. Plus, Kacynthia’s mascara was running. She didn’t have to see it; she could feel it. Her pink and green Maybelline Great Lash was the best, hands down.
