Sandra Brown - Low Pressure

“I don’t need to tell you what she was like, do I? You know firsthand that Susan was sexually supercharged. Which must have been great for you. But for her younger stepbrother who was grappling with his sexual identity, she was a nightmare with a malicious streak.”

Bellamy swallowed with difficulty and said gruffly, “Are you telling us that you and Susan…”

“No,” he said with a firm shake of his head. “Never the grand finale. But not for her lack of trying. As it was, she got off by torturing me.”

“Doing what?”

“Are you sure you want to hear this, Bellamy? It’s ugly.”

“I think I have to hear it.”

“All right.” He took a breath. “Susan made a practice of sneaking into my room at night. Two, three times a week. Sometimes more often.”

“When did it start?”

“On Mother and Howard’s wedding day.”

Bellamy gasped in disbelief.

“She would lie down beside me, rub up against me, talk dirty, describe to me all the things we could be doing if only I wasn’t so afraid of getting caught. She would take off her clothes and dare me to touch her.”

He snorted a sound of self-deprecation. “God knows, sometimes I wanted to, because I was struggling with the realization that I was gay. At that point in my life, I was desperate to disprove it. But, in truth, the harder she tried to lure me, the more repulsed I became.”

“Did she know you were gay?”

“Maybe. Probably. Which would have made the torment even more delightful to her. It got to where I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of her and made no secret of it. She only became more aggressive and daring.

“Once, she got into the shower with me and told me that Mother was just across the hall. She said that if I made a sound, and Mother caught us, she would tell her and Howard that I was forcing her to go down on me every night. I knew that she could cry on demand and was capable of convincing them of anything.”

He looked hard at Bellamy. “I’m sorry to be the one to destroy your delusions of our perfect family, but perhaps it’s time you knew the truth about our dearly departed sister.”

“You should have told me.”

“So you could have put it in your book, made it more salacious?”

She flinched as though he’d slapped her. “I don’t deserve that, Steven.”

He seemed to agree, because he exhaled deeply. “I’m sorry. Uncalled for.”

“Why didn’t you tell me at the time? I would have stood by you during the fallout.”

“I didn’t want there to be any fallout. I didn’t want anyone to know, but especially not you. You were so different from her. Innocent. Sweet. The peacemaker. And you were my pal. I was afraid that would change if you knew about me and Susan.”

“It wouldn’t have.”

“Maybe,” he said, still doubtful. “But in any case, I was ashamed.”

“You weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“There were times when my body responded to her in spite of myself, when I couldn’t control getting an erection. I didn’t desire her in the least, but I was an adolescent boy with raging hormones and no other outlet for them. She’d touch me, and I would explode, and she would mock my humiliation. Actually,” he added thoughtfully, “I’m surprised that she never gloated to you about what was going on. She was jealous of you. Did you know that?”

“Impossible.”

“It’s true. She was jealous of the special relationship you and Howard had. He favored you, and she knew it. It also miffed her that when I came into the family, you and I forged a sibling bond that I never had with her, or even wanted. Not that she craved my friendship, but she didn’t want to be second on anyone’s list.”

He looked across at Dent again. “You weren’t her one and only. She told me about all the boys she ‘did’ behind your back. She was a slut who gave away free samples. It was befitting that she was strangled with her own underpants.”

“Steven, please,” Bellamy whispered.

“You wanted to hear this; you’re going to hear all of it,” he said testily. “One Sunday at family dinner, Susan passed a pair of her panties to me under the table. Here I was, seated between her and Howard, and she reaches for my hand and presses her underwear into it. I became so hot with fear and mortification I thought I’d pass out. And all through the meal, she was smiling that sly, triumphant smile that was uniquely hers.

“That was the kind of demeaning joke she liked to pull. There were many more times when she did something similar. I could go on and on, but it would serve no purpose. She can no longer make my life hell. She’s dead. And I’m glad.”

He fell silent for several moments, then roused himself as though coming awake after a bad dream. He looked out over the dining room and said, “I need to get back to work. Besides, I’ve said everything I plan to. Except this.” Before continuing, he made certain of their full attention.

“Moody questioned me extensively, but my story never changed. Not one word of it. He didn’t have any evidence to place me where her body was discovered. Nor could he cite an opportunity for me to have killed her. But what he never asked me, what he didn’t know, was that I sure as hell had a motive.”

The fist came out of nowhere and crashed into Rupe’s face like a wrecking ball.

He landed hard on his butt. Lightning bolts of pain pierced his skull and ricocheted off the inner walls of his cranium. His ears rang, and he was momentarily blinded.

Before he could even cry out, he was grabbed by his shirt collar and jerked to his feet with teeth-jarring, bone-shaking velocity. The planet teetered, then spun out of its orbit, making him sickeningly dizzy. He gagged on the nausea that filled his throat. His head wobbled on his neck uncontrollably. Blood streamed from his broken nose into his slack lips.

“Hey, Rupe, long time no see.”

Being shaken like a rag doll, Rupe blinked against the skyrockets of pain still exploding from within his skull. The earth righted itself and, finally, the multiple blurred images wavering inches from him coalesced into one of an older, heavier, uglier Dale Moody.

“How’re you doing, Rupe?”

Dale knew the extent of the other man’s pain, because Dale had had it described to him before. He’d landed a blow just like the one he’d delivered to Rupe on a fellow cop, who’d later waxed poetic about the various levels of excruciating pain to be found on the receiving end of Dale’s right fist.

In answer to Dale’s question, Rupe mumbled unintelligibly.

“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.”

Dale, still gripping a fistful of expensive, imported silk/cotton blend, hauled Rupe by his shirt collar over to his rattletrap Dodge and propped him against the rusty, dented rear quarter panel. “Would you take this heap for a trade-in?”

“Fgnuckyoo.” With his rubbery lips and swelling nose, that was the closest Rupe could come to correct pronunciation.

Dale grinned, but it was a nasty expression. “I’ll take that as a no.” Keeping his grip on Rupe with one hand, he used the other to open the back door of his car, knock the top off a white foam cooler, and take from it a bag of frozen peas he’d brought for the occasion.

“Maybe this will help.” He crammed the bag over Rupe’s brutalized nose.

Rupe cried out in fresh pain, but he reached up and snatched the bag of peas from Dale’s hand. He applied it more gently and glared at the former detective from behind the smiling Green Giant. “I’m filing charges of assault.”

“Will that be before or after your eyes swell shut? I hope you don’t have any TV commercials to do this week. You’re gonna look like shit for a while. Maybe you can buy shirts that’ll match your bruises.”