Nature Girl Read online

  Richard Santana was a reporter in upstate New York. Among the many Internet databases available to his newspaper was a nifty reverse telephone directory. It had taken about six seconds to trace the 800 line for his sister.

  “All I want to do is file a complaint,” she lied.

  “With whom? The FTC?”

  “Right, the FTC. So, you got the name?”

  Richard Santana was aware that Honey sometimes reacted to ordinary situations in extreme ways. Having been burned before, he was now wary of all her inquiries. This time, however, he felt confident that the information he was providing could result in nothing worse than an angry letter, since the offending company was in Texas and his sister was far away in Florida.

  “I’ll E-mail you what I’ve got,” he told her.

  “You’re a champ, Richard.”

  Honey Santana didn’t inform her brother that she could no longer retrieve her E-mails without her son’s permission. Fry had locked her off the computer the day after she’d fired off ninety-seven messages to the White House complaining about the president’s support for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The E-mails had been sent within a four-hour span, and their increasingly hostile tone had attracted the notice of the U.S. Secret Service. Two young agents had driven over from Miami to interview Honey at the trailer park, and they’d departed believing, quite mistakenly, that she was too flighty to present a credible threat to anyone.

  She hurried into Fry’s bedroom, flipped on the light and began to shake him gently. “You asleep, sweetie?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “I need to get on the computer. Richard’s E-mailing the goods.”

  “Mom, look at the clock.”

  “It’s only eleven-fifteen—what’s the matter with you? When I was your age, I used to stay up until midnight writing love letters to Peter Frampton.” Honey felt Fry’s forehead. “Maybe you’re coming down with a bug.”

  “Yeah, it’s called the Psycho Mom flu.”

  Fry untangled himself from the sheets and stumbled over to his desk. He shielded the computer keyboard from his mother’s view as he tapped in the password. The screen illuminated with a beep, and Honey sat down intently. Fry aimed himself back toward the bed, but she snagged him by one ear and said, “Not so fast, buster.”

  “Lemme go, Mom.”

  “Just a minute. Lookie here.” Honey tapped the mouse to scroll down her brother’s message. “It’s RTR Limited, Fort Worth. That’s the name of this outfit.”

  “So?”

  “I need you to Google it for me.”

  “Google yourself,” Fry said.

  “No, kiddo, you got the touch.” Honey rose and motioned him into the chair. “I’m too wired to type, honest to God.”

  Fry sat down and searched for RTR Limited, which came up as Relentless Telemarketing Resources, Relentless Wireless Outreach and Relentless, Inc. He surfed through the entries until he found a self-promotional Web site that listed an office-park address and a direct toll number.

  “Bookmark that sucker!” Honey cried triumphantly.

  “Okay, but that’s it.” Fry signed off and darkened the screen. “We’re done, Mom.”

  “Come out and watch Letterman with me. Please?”

  Fry said he was beat, and dived into bed. When Honey sat beside him, he rolled over and faced the wall.

  “Talk to me,” she whispered.

  “’Bout what?”

  “School? Sports? Anything you want.”

  Fry grunted wearily.

  “Hey,” Honey said. “Did you see on the news about the wolves out West? They’re trying to take ’em off the endangered list so that we can wipe ’em out all over again. Does that make any sense?”

  Her son didn’t answer. Honey turned out the light.

  “Thanks,” Fry said.

  “I didn’t forget my medicine, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Which was true in a way—she’d thrown the pills in the trash weeks earlier. “Certain things still set me off, no matter what,” she said. “But I’m getting better, you’ve gotta admit.”

  “Yeah, you’re definitely gettin’ better.”

  “Fry?”

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  “Other things I just can’t let slide. You understand? Starting with matters of basic civility.” Honey closed her eyes and listened to her son’s breathing. Tomorrow she would go find another job, and then after she came home she’d get on the phone and track down Mr. Boyd Eisenhower.

  “He had such a nice voice, didn’t you think?”

  “Who?” Fry asked.

  “That man who tried to sell us a place on the Suwannee River,” Honey said. “I thought he had an exceptionally agreeable voice.”

  “I thought he sounded like a total dick.”

  “What are you saying, kiddo? That I’ve lost my marbles?”

  “No, Mom, I’m saying good night.”

  The private investigator’s name was Dealey, and his office was downtown near Sundance Square. Lily Shreave was fifteen minutes early, but Dealey’s assistant waved her in.

  Dealey, who was on the phone, signaled that he’d be finished in a minute. Pinned under his left elbow was a large brown envelope on which “Subject Shreave” had been printed with a black Sharpie.

  After the private investigator hung up, he asked Lily Shreave if she wanted coffee or a soda. She said, “No, I want to see the pictures.”

  “It’s not necessary, you know. Take my word, we got him cold.”

  “Is she in them?” Lily Shreave pointed at the envelope.

  “The pictures? Yes, ma’am.”

  “She pretty?”

  Dealey eased back in his chair.

  “You’re right, it shouldn’t matter,” Lily Shreave said. “What’s her name?”

  “The one she’s using now is Eugenie Fonda. She works at Relentless with your husband,” Dealey said, “and she has an interesting back-story. You remember the ‘Hurricane Homicide’ case a few years ago? The guy who whacked his wife and tried to make it look like she drowned in a storm?”

  “Down in Florida,” Lily Shreave said. “Sure, I remember.”

  “She was the husband’s girlfriend,” Dealey said, “the one who wrote that book.”

  “Really? I read the first chapter in Cosmo.” Lily Shreave was puzzled. The woman had made the tree cutter out to be a stallion in the bedroom. So why on earth would she want Boyd?

  “Let me see those pictures,” she said.

  Dealey shrugged and handed her the envelope. “It’s the typical routine. Drinks after work, then back to her place. Or sometimes a late lunch before they punch in. Did I mention she was single?”

  Lily Shreave held up the first photo. “Where was this one taken?” she asked.

  “At a T.G.I. Friday’s off the 820. He ordered ribs and she got a salad.”

  “And this one?”

  “The doorway of Miss Fonda’s apartment,” Dealey said.

  “She’s a real amazon, huh?”

  “Six feet even, according to her driver’s license.”

  “Age?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Same as me,” Lily Shreave remarked. “Weight?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Are those flowers in his hand?” Lily Shreave studied the grainy color print.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dealey said. “Daisies and baby’s breath.”

  “God, he’s so lame.” Lily Shreave couldn’t remember the last time her husband had brought her a bouquet. They had been married five years and hadn’t slept together in five months.

  “This is the first time he’s cheated on me,” she volunteered.

  Dealey nodded. “You got your proof. My advice is take him to the cleaners.”

  Lily Shreave laughed caustically. “What cleaners? The man can’t hardly pay for his own laundry. I want a speedy divorce, that’s all, and no trouble from him.”

  “Then just show him the pictures,”
Dealey said. “And save number six for last.”

  Boyd Shreave’s wife thumbed through the stack until she found it. “Good grief,” she said, and felt her face redden.

  “Deli over on Summit. Broad daylight,” said Dealey, who’d taken the photograph from a parked car. The camera was a digital Nikon with motor drive and a 400-mm telephoto.

  “Is she actually blowing him?” Lily Shreave asked.

  “That would be my expert opinion.”

  “And what in the hell is he eating?”

  “Turkey and salami on a French roll with pickles, shredded onions, no lettuce,” Dealey said.

  “You can remember all that, but not her weight?” Lily Shreave smiled and fitted the stack of pictures back into the envelope. “I know what you’re up to, Mr. Dealey. You’re trying to spare my feelings. When I get stressed, I tend to put on a few pounds, sure, and lately I’ve been stressed. But don’t worry, I’ll get down to a size six again once I dump this jerk. So tell me—how much does she weigh?”

  “A buck forty,” Dealey said.

  “Oh, get real.”

  “Exactly. People always lie on their driver’s license.”

  “I mean, she’s six feet tall, so come on.”

  “Like you said, Mrs. Shreave, it doesn’t really matter. Adultery is adultery.”

  Boyd Shreave’s wife took out her checkbook. “Let me ask you something else about Miss Fonda. Do you think she put him up to it? I’m talking about the tree trimmer who murdered his wife. Is it possible this slut had something to do with it?”

  Dealey said, “The cops tell me no. I already called down to Florida because I was wondering the same thing. They said she passed the polygraph with flying colors.”

  Lily Shreave was somewhat relieved. Still, she made up her mind to move swiftly with the divorce, in case her husband got any nutball ideas.

  “Copies of the pictures are locked in my safe box. They’re yours if you want ’em,” Dealey said. He’d already made a dozen prints of the sub shop blow job, which he considered to be a classic.

  “I’m sorry things turned out this way,” he added.

  “No, you’re not,” Lily Shreave said, “and, frankly, neither am I.”

  She wrote out a check for fifteen hundred dollars. The private investigator put it in the top drawer and said, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Mrs. Shreave.”

  “Whoa, you’re not done yet.”

  Dealey was surprised. “You want me to keep tailing your husband? What for?”

  “The oral stuff is okay, but I’d prefer to see documentation of actual intercourse.”

  “They usually don’t give out receipts, Mrs. Shreave.”

  She said, “You know what I mean. Pictures or video will do.”

  Dealey tapped two fingers on the desk. “I don’t get it. You’ve got more than enough to bury him already.”

  “The deeper the better,” said Lily Shreave, snapping shut her purse.

  Three

  Fry’s father was the only man that Honey Santana had ever married, and they astonished themselves by staying together seventeen years. The sea change took place after Fry was born. He spent two weeks in the hospital, fighting to breathe, and it was during that wrenching time that Honey began hearing musical static in her head; battling uncontrollable spells of apprehension and dread; overreacting, sometimes radically, to the bad behavior of total strangers.

  From the day she brought Fry home, Honey was gripped with a fear of losing him to a random act of nature, an incurable illness, or the criminal recklessness of some genetically deficient numskull. The fright sometimes manifested itself in unacceptable ways. Once, when Honey had seen a car speeding down her street, she’d dashed out and hurled a forty-gallon garbage can in its path. Brandishing the demolished receptacle, she’d then accosted the stunned driver. “This could’ve been my kid you flattened!” she’d screamed. “You could’ve killed my little boy!” Another time, when Fry was in the fourth grade, she’d watched a motorcycle blow through the school zone and nearly strike one of his classmates. Honey had hopped into her husband’s truck and trailed the biker to a tourist bar on Chokoloskee. When the man emerged two hours later, his motorcycle was missing. The next day, a purple plume of smoke led park rangers to a high-end Kawasaki crotch rocket, burned to scrap on a gravel road near the Shark River Slough.

  Honey understood that every dickhead she encountered was not necessarily a menace to her son, yet still she struggled with a rabid intolerance of callousness and folly, both of which abounded in South Florida. It exasperated Fry and his father, who couldn’t understand how she’d turned out that way.

  Honey had tried many doctors and many prescriptions, with imperceptible results. Eventually she came to believe that her condition was one that couldn’t be treated medically; she was doomed to demand more decency and consideration from her fellow humans than they demanded of themselves. What her husband wrote off as loony obsessiveness, Honey Santana defended as spells of intense and controlled focus. While denying she was mentally unsteady, she never claimed to be normal, either. She was alert to the uncommon impulses that took hold of her like a bewitchment.

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m trying to reach a Mr. Boyd Eisenhower.” Honey held the receiver in her left hand. In her right was a ballpoint pen, poised over a paper napkin.

  “What was the last name?”

  “Eisenhower,” Honey said, “spelled just like the president.”

  “I’m sorry, there’s no employee here with that name.”

  “This is RTR, correct? In Fort Worth, Texas?”

  “That’s right. I show an Elizabeth Eisenberg in Accounting, but no Boyd Eisenhower.”

  “He’s in the telephone solicitations department,” Honey said.

  “That would be our call center at Relentless, but there’s still no Eisenhower listed. Sorry.”

  Honey hung up. The guy who’d tried to sell her a ranchette on the Suwannee River had apparently given a fake name, or at least a fake surname. It occurred to Honey that Boyd wasn’t something that a man would make up for himself.

  So she waited ten minutes and tried again. As she’d hoped, a different switchboard operator answered. Honey identified herself as an investigator with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. There’d been a bad rollover in Denton, she said, involving a man who claimed to work for RTR.

  “Unfortunately, his driver’s license melted in the fire,” Honey said. “We’re just trying to confirm an ID.”

  “What name do you have?” the operator asked.

  “Well, that’s the problem. Right now the poor guy can’t remember anything except his first name—Boyd,” Honey said. “He was doin’ about eighty on the interstate when he swerved to miss a rabbit and flipped his car like seven times. Gonged his melon pretty bad, but he finally came out of the coma.”

  “Did you say ‘Boyd’?”

  “That’s correct.” Honey spelled it for the operator. “Is it possible to do an employee search by first name only? If not, we can send an officer over to look through your payroll records.”

  “Hold on, I’m scanning the directory,” the operator said.

  “I sure appreciate this.” Honey laid on a touch of what she imagined to be a mild Laura Bush accent. “I tell ya, the guy must have a real soft spot for bunnies—”

  “I found only one Boyd,” the operator said. “Last name is Shreave. S-h-r-e-a-v-e.”

  Honey Santana scribbled it on the napkin.

  “But the thing is, he doesn’t seem to work here anymore,” the operator added. “Says here on my screen that he left the company as of today.”

  “What a weird coincidence. Did he resign, or get fired?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any additional information. You say he’s gonna be all right?”

  “The doctors are hopeful.” Honey tried to sound encouraging.

  “Well, I’ll say a little prayer for him.”

  “That’s probably not a bad idea.”

 
Honey hung up and did a dance through the trailer.

  Boyd Shreave saw no reason to inform his wife that he’d been canned. His plan was to persuade Eugenie Fonda to quit the call center and find a day job. That way they could hook up after work and cavort at the apartment until midnight, Lily assuming that he was still pounding the phones at Relentless. He figured it would take weeks for her to notice that he was no longer depositing a paycheck, so paltry was his contribution to the family finances.

  At breakfast Lily surprised him by asking, “So, what’s on the schedule today?”

  Boyd Shreave had no schedule, as his wife well knew; no hobbies, interests or intellectual appetites. To ingratiate himself with certain bosses and large-account customers, he had over the years taken up (and soon abandoned) tennis, rollerblading, skeet shooting, dry-fly tying, backgammon, contract bridge and even bonsai cultivation. In truth, nothing filled his spare hours more pleasingly than daytime television, which never failed to make him feel superior. In particular he was enthralled by the many talk shows that featured dysfunctional cretins debating the paternity of unplanned offspring. To Shreave, their raucous misery was more than idle entertainment; it reaffirmed his own higher place in the natural order. Comfortably stationed with a snack tray in front of the plasma screen, he drew hope from the cavalcade of cursing, frothing idiots—these were the prey, and one day Boyd Shreave would find his niche among the predators. He was sure of it.

  “I haven’t got much planned,” he told his wife. “Just hang out and watch TV, I guess.”

  “You want to meet for lunch?”

  Shreave was rattled by the offer. “Um, I’m supposed to get the oil changed in the car. I just remembered.”

  “What time?”

  “Noon sharp,” he said.

  Lily smiled a smile that Boyd Shreave hadn’t seen in a long time. She said, “Excellent. That leaves us the whole morning.”

  “For what?” Shreave croaked.

  “Guess.” Lily reached under the table and squeezed him. “You know how long it’s been?”

  Shreave plucked her hand from his crotch and edged out of reach.

  Gravely his wife said, “One hundred and fifty-six days.”

  “Really?” Shreave was confused. In all that time Lily hadn’t once complained about his lack of attention, so he’d assumed that the disinterest was mutual.