EXCERPT

Note 1:
Small liberties were taken during the writing of this book; please return them.

Note 2:
The geography of the Black Hills has been re-arranged to suit the purposes of the story (there’s not much point in being a writer if you can’t change the world).

Chapter 1
Pick and Shovel

Ev opened his eyes to the return of his perfect girlfriend for the 90's, the Not-So-Virgin Mary Fae Without Mercy. She stood in the dark next to the waterbed with the shovel raised high over her head. He'd seen in combat how such a tool gets the job done effectively but not neatly and efficiently, which is why he was surprised to find Mary Fae had taken it from the garage to kill him. Subtle weapons like piano wire (she loved music) or a Wusthof blade or her favorite, slow-acting poison--corporate gossip--those were more her style. The spade, therefore, was not good news. It could only mean one thing.

She was really pissed this time.

Lightning streaked the ceiling and struck close. A gusty wind shoved a burning insulation smell through the open window, and Ev knew that either the bolt had struck a telephone pole or heaven's wiring was as faulty as his own. Outside, thunder rolled continuously in a Wagnerian chorus of foreboding at the coming permanent diminution of his mental faculties which had already been considerably slowed by a long and lingering conversation with Johnny Walker--red or black--he couldn't remember which color.

Mary Fae has always been a woman of great taste and great timing, Ev thought with sluggish, alcoholic admiration. Just the opposite of Juliet, whose name he was sure was bound to come up sooner or later.

As far as he was concerned, his girlfriend couldn't have picked a better night or looked better in the part. In the stroboscopic effect of the storm's electrical energy, she was a vengeful blonde goddess, wearing a sports bra and baggy, loose nylon workout pants--the right clothes for the job.

Maximum freedom of movement, always important when crushing your lover's melon, he thought.

Ev was sure that she'd sat down at a table or on an airplane--she was always on a flight to or from a client's training session somewhere--and done a task analysis of his murder, analyzing step by step what needed to be done to carry out the deed, weighing the pros and cons (not of his death--he was positive that had been decided in a split second) before finally deciding upon the perfect course of action. Then, she'd closed her leather appointment book as he'd seen her do a hundred times before, put the whole thing out of her mind, and sat back to enjoy one Dubonnet--no more, no less. As she'd told him repeatedly, unlike him when it came to alcohol, she knew her limits.

Death by task analysis--Everett wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. It was efficient--one of Mary Fae's favorite words--but it lacked a certain romance and ceremony as far as he was concerned. What was murder about, if not passion? But he knew that was just wishful thinking, maybe a perverse last wish. Women do not kill over-50, forcefully retired schoolteachers out of passion--at least Mary Fae wouldn't. Somehow, she'd found out he was going back to Juliet, and she was furious at him because he wasn't being sensible. As far as Mary Fae was concerned, Juliet and sense were not only not on speaking terms, they weren't even within hailing distance. He had upset her sense of order and that order was not to be violated.

Ev watched the spade start its downward arc. Bent on turning his head into a tiddly-wink of flesh and crushed bone and brain, Mary Fae was determined to use all the strength she'd gained through years of weight training, boxing, and aerobics. He knew he should get out of the way, but he couldn't really think of anywhere else he wanted to be.

His body betrayed him.

It rolled off the bed and took his head along with it as Mary Fae grunted and slammed the sharp edge of the spade down onto the vinyl mattress. Ev gasped as his elbow contacted the hard glass of one of the bottles littering the carpet. As water gushed from the mattress onto his head and down his body, he gasped again. His underwear--the only thing he was wearing--now smelled of rank preservative, powdered plastic and mildew, furious at being long-contained under the unwashed mattress pad.

"You bastard!" Mary Fae said in a deadly low tone that was more ominous than the thunder rumbling outside the window. She jerked at the spade, trying to free it from the tangle of ripped vinyl. "Is it true?"

"Yes," he said, beginning to wheeze as the mildew entered his lungs.

"How can you go back to that woman?"

"I'm not going back to Juliet," Ev said. "I'm going back to a job she has for me. I don't have one here, remember?"

"You could have stayed and fought!"

"This is a small town, Mary Fae, and I'm a big target. They'll never forget or forgive. Isn't that obvious?"

His girlfriend tugged at the handle of the spade again. "The obvious is that I left 25 GM participants without a clue in the middle of my sales training seminar and flew through a goddamned thunderstorm to get here!"

"I planned to tell you when you got back. How'd you find out?"

"How do you think I found out, you idiot?

"Oh."

"Yes, oh! The bitch called me to gloat!"

In spite of himself, Everett admired the sleek, Nautilus-sculpted muscles of Mary Fae's arms as she struggled with the spade. He kept talking, hoping to cool her rage.

"She wasn't gloating over me, and you know it."

"Then what was she gloating over?"

"Over beating you," Ev said.

Mary Fae continued pulling on the handle, panting at her exertions. Lightning flared, and Ev could see her face in harsh profile. In the dark, she was a woman of angles and edges like a Picasso painting. Anger had pressed her lips into a line so thin it looked as if her mouth had disappeared. It was an unnerving image that she dispelled quickly by saying, "You flatter yourself, Ev. Knowing Juliet, it's more likely she wants money from you."

"She hasn't asked for any," he said.

"So far," Mary Fae retorted. "I suppose you didn't have a damned thing to do with this whole mess?"

"I don't think I did," he answered, trying to remember the location of his pants in case he needed to make it out the door. He had no idea where they were, but a sudden flash of lightning showed his car keys on the dining room table.

"That's such predictable crap from you," Mary Fae said. "Nothing's ever your fault."

Everett decided to go on the offensive. "You're the one who decided to live with me after Juliet and I divorced. I didn't ask you in."

"No, you didn't," she said. "But you didn't refuse me either. It was just like you, I can see that now. You didn't say anything and let me read what I wanted into it. You're like a damned cipher, aren't you? You let me write whatever I wanted on the page and, like a fool, I believed it was you talking! You're a low-life bastard."

The words stung Everett hard because he suspected they might be true, but he said, "If I'm all that, Mary Fae, then I don't understand one thing."

"There's not much you do understand," she said acidly.

"Why do you still want me?"

"Because, " Mary Fae said, "I'm under the delusion I can make something of you, that's why."

"This is the Nineties, for Christ's sake," Ev said. "Women don't make anything of men."

"No wonder. It's a delusion that a man can be made into anything, especially you! Do you know why I can't make you into anything, Everett Pick?"

Ev opened his mouth, but Mary Fae supplied the answer in a crisp tone he suspected she used when articulating one of the indisputable points of her seminars. "Because you won't take a stand on anything. You're a pleaser, that's what you are, doing whatever it takes to float along with the tide. You're spineless, that's why I can't do anything with you."