Devil's Food Read online

  The path came out near the main building, where there was a lot of hustle and bustle, people checking in and out, staff members rushing here and there, groundskeepers tending to the plants. She slowed down to a fast walk. The front gates were just beyond the circular driveway. She worked on catching her breath, breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She was going to walk right out those gates and keep on going, she told herself. She’d hitch a ride if she had to. Anything to get out of here.

  She kept walking, afraid to look back, afraid that bigmouth Lance was back there or worse, Torpedo Joe. She heard crunching footsteps coming off the path, but she kept her eyes straight ahead and kept on going. If Joe was back there, he wouldn’t dare try anything with all these people around.

  When she made it through the black iron gates, she kept on going for a few more steps, still not wanting to look back. She felt as if she were crossing a border, sneaking out of hostile territory. Finally, when she got to the edge of the road, she peered through the high wrought-iron arch. Joe was in the visitor parking section, looking all around for her, trying to be inconspicuous. She backstepped until she was out of his line of view, hidden behind the bushy hedges that lined the driveway.

  She laid her hand over her heart and felt it thumping as she finally let out a long breath.

  “Nice dress,” someone said behind her.

  Startled by the unexpected voice, Loretta started to turn around, but a sharp jab in the back stopped her.

  “Don’t turn around, and don’t make a peep.”

  Loretta turned her head slowly. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Martha Lee in a sleeveless black cotton shift. She was holding a gun to Loretta’s back. A lipstick red Chrysler Le Baron convertible was parked ten yards away down toward the end of the driveway.

  Martha Lee prodded Loretta with the pistol, aiming her toward the car. “Get in, tubby,” she said. “You drive.”

  23

  Loretta was behind the wheel of the convertible, driving down a deserted two-lane road, heading for the highway, the big muumuu fluttering all around her in the breeze. Martha Lee was holding the little chrome automatic in her lap pointed at Loretta. Loretta kept looking to see if Martha Lee’s hand was shaking; she seemed nervous. When Martha Lee saw what she was doing, she snarled, “Just drive. Keep your eye on the road.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Loretta asked. “Kill me?”

  “Shut up and drive.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Loretta insisted. “Just tell me.”

  “If I have to, I will.”

  Loretta’s throat was dry. “I’m a parole officer,” she said. “Now that you know that, it’ll go harder on you if you do decide to kill me.”

  Martha Lee shot her a withering look. “As if I care.”

  “What do you care about?”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “Why should I?” Loretta wasn’t going to just sit there and take orders the way she had with Brenda Hemingway.

  Martha Lee lifted the gun and jabbed the air with it. “I told you to shut up.” Her hand was shaking.

  Loretta pumped the brake as she approached the highway intersection. “Which way?” she asked as she pulled to a stop at the stop sign.

  “Turn right.” Martha Lee was looking all over the place. She was a nervous wreck.

  Loretta flipped the directional and waited for a break in the traffic before she turned onto the four-lane highway. She quickly picked up speed but stayed in the slow lane. No use rushing to my own execution, she thought, her long hair blowing in the wind.

  As they drove, the swampland gradually gave way to dry scrub followed by a series of strip malls. Loretta couldn’t help but notice the proliferation of fast-food restaurants on this stretch of road—Burger King, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, KFC, IHOP, Popeye’s, Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, Bob’s Big Boy, Hojo’s—and her stomach started to growl.

  “What do you say we stop for drive-through?” Loretta shouted over the rushing wind, hoping to buy time.

  “What?” Martha Lee shouted back.

  “Chicken nuggets and fries. Pizza. Pancakes. A grilled cheese. Anything. I’m hungry.”

  “Shut up.”

  “There’s a Stuckie’s up ahead. How about a pecan roll?”

  “Forget it.”

  “Come on. Doesn’t a dying woman get a last wish?”

  “Shut up!”

  Loretta glanced down at Martha Lee’s shaking gun hand, wondering if she really had the guts to kill her. The woman was hard-core, but she was no Brenda Hemingway. Of course, Martha Lee seemed pretty unstable with that gun. She might kill Loretta by accident. Most shootings did happen that way. Loretta glanced at the gun, wondering if she could grab it fast without getting shot and keep control of the car. What if the stupid muumuu got in the way?

  But the more restaurants and supermarkets Loretta passed, the hungrier she got, and the more desperate measures she considered. Maybe if she hammered Martha Lee in the nose with her hand hard enough to stun her, Loretta could get the gun away from her. Or maybe yank her hair and bang her head against the dashboard. Or rip her ear off. But each plan Loretta considered had the same drawback. No matter what Loretta did, Martha Lee would still have the gun.

  But she wasn’t going to sit back and just let it happen. Not this time.

  “You really gonna kill me?” she shouted to Martha Lee over the racket of the wind. “If that’s your plan, I want to know. You owe me at least that.”

  Martha Lee’s eyes bugged out of her head. “If you don’t shut up right now, tubby, I’ll do it right here. I swear to God.”

  Loretta’s heart leaped, but she was determined not to be intimidated. “So what’s the scam, Martha Lee? Why didn’t you hit the road when you found out we were here looking for you? You must have something going, or else you wouldn’t have stayed.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “Does it have something to do with the Alvarez Cocoa Company?” Loretta pressed.

  Martha Lee jammed the gun into Loretta’s stomach, and it growled back. “I said, keep quiet, tubby.”

  Loretta glanced down at the gun in her side. “I guess I hit a nerve. So let me guess. You were scamming your boss, paying for nonexistent chocolate with WeightAway money. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not shedding any tears for Roger Laplante. He can go to hell. Of course, bamboozling men is your specialty, right? You did it to Tom Junior and his biker pals.”

  “Shut up! You don’t know shit about shit.” Martha’s voice was as shaky as her hand.

  “Hey, you can cry on my shoulder. I don’t care. It must be something sad for you to be acting this way. What is it? Your mother’s in the hospital?”

  Martha Lee transferred the gun to Loretta’s neck, sinking the barrel into her flesh. “Look, I don’t need any more of your lip. I got my reasons for what I did, and I don’t need you or anyone else to judge me. I’m doing what I have to do, and it’s none of your business. It’s between me and God what I do.”

  “Well, don’t let me get between you two.” Loretta straightened her back, holding her head stiffly, wishing Martha Lee would put that gun somewhere else. She didn’t want to get shot in the neck. She could just see the headlines: “Parole Officer in Ugly Muumuu Gets Shot in Double Chin.”

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. Where the hell are the cops when you need them? Don’t they patrol this road? Doesn’t anyone see this? We’re in a convertible for chrissake.

  Martha Lee dropped her hand and stuck the gun in Loretta’s side again. Loretta looked in the side mirror, praying for a police cruiser. The traffic light at the next intersection turned red. As Loretta slowed down, she noticed a big billboard on the right-hand side of the road that showed a potbellied alligator smacking his lips and pointing toward a grocery store on the other side of a huge parking lot. It was called Gator Mart. Loretta pumped the brake and pulled to a stop behind a pickup.

  “Excuse me. Miss? Excuse me.” A man
’s voice came from Loretta’s left. When she looked, she saw that a deep blue Mustang had pulled alongside their car.

  “Excuse me? Do you know if there’s a Ramada Inn somewhere around here?” It was Marvelli. She could’ve killed him. Finally he shows up.

  “Don’t get cute,” Martha Lee said under her breath.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not from around here,” Loretta said to Marvelli, signaling him with her eyes.

  “Me neither,” Marvelli said. He gave her a meaningful look, but with that greaseball haircut of his, he looked like an otter who’d been caught in an oil spill.

  She knew she should be happy that he was here, but she wasn’t. With Brenda, she had to be rescued. This time she wanted to rescue herself.

  She glanced over at him and shrugged. “Sorry,” she said.

  Just follow me, she thought. I’ll do the rest.

  When the light turned green, Loretta hung back and let the pickup truck pull away.

  “What’re you waiting for?” Martha Lee snapped. “Go!”

  “You’re the boss.” Loretta stomped the accelerator, putting her bare foot to the floor. Martha Lee was thrown back in her seat. Loretta took a sharp right, tires squealing, and raced into the Gator Mart parking lot.

  “What’re you doing?” Martha Lee screamed.

  Loretta ignored her, determined to get herself out of this.

  Straight ahead a bag boy was gathering up shopping carts, pushing a train of at least twenty. Loretta leaned on the horn and steered toward the middle of the train, like a kamikazi honing in on a destroyer.

  “Stop!” Martha Lee screamed, bracing herself against the dashboard.

  Loretta narrowed her eyes and kept on going. The bag boy ran for his life as a woman in a big station wagon jammed on her brakes to avoid a collision, and other shoppers just pointed in stunned surprise.

  The red convertible plowed into the shopping carts, bending the train into a U, pushing them forward in a squealing, crunching mass of bent metal.

  On impact, Loretta banged her chin on the steering wheel, and Martha Lee was thrown forward. The gun flew out of her hand. It sailed over the windshield and hit the crumpled hood with a loud thunk.

  Loretta grabbed Martha Lee’s wrist. “You’re under arrest.”

  Martha Lee snatched it back. “The hell I am.” She leaped into the backseat and scrambled over the trunk, then started running toward the supermarket.

  “Come back here!” Loretta yelled, trying to open her door. But she couldn’t budge the tangle of shopping carts pinning the door closed, so she clambered into the backseat and went over the trunk the way Martha Lee had, high-stepping over the hot blacktop in her bare feet, the jungle-print muumuu flying all around her as she ran. “Get back here!” she yelled. “You’re under arrest, you skinny little shit! Get back here!”

  Jesus! Marvelli thought as he pulled his car up to the front of the store. Look at her go. He’d never thought Loretta could move that fast.

  He threw the transmission into park and shut off the engine, then jumped out of the car and ran into the supermarket to help Loretta with the arrest. He didn’t have a gun, which he never liked to carry anyway, and he didn’t have any cuffs, but he figured they could improvise something to keep Martha Lee on ice. It was a pretty big supermarket. They could get some clothesline or duct tape or something.

  He stepped on the black mat in front of the automatic double doors, but the mechanism was too slow, so he pushed his way in before it opened on its own. The temperature instantly dropped thirty degrees as he dashed into the air-conditioned store. An elderly couple in Bermuda shorts and oversize sunglasses stood right in his path, scowling at him. A disapproving cashier stared at him over her glasses, clearly annoyed.

  “How you doing?” he said to them with a smile and a wave, then tore off down the cereal aisle, looking for Loretta.

  “Loretta!” he shouted. “Loretta! Where are you!”

  Loretta’s voice came echoing back over the cornflakes. “Produce!”

  “I’m coming.” He turned around and went back the way he’d come, passing the Wheaties, the Lucky Charms, and the Count Chocula in a blur. “Hang on, Loretta, I’m com—”

  But as he rounded the aisle, a deafening mechanical roar burst through the automatic doors, shattering one and flattening the other. The scowling old couple abandoned their cart and fled to save themselves. Shoppers and clerks screamed and scattered into the aisles.

  A blood red motorcycle screamed to a halt in front of a ceiling-high Sprite display. A tattooed monster in black shorts and a white polo shirt with a stubbly bald head and a reddish-blond braid under his lip was glaring at Marvelli, revving his engine.

  “Marvelli!” the man roared.

  Marvelli squinted at him. “Joe? Is that you?”

  Joe clenched his fist and shook his blue-torpedo arm. “You are fucking dead, Marvelli! You are dead!”

  Marvelli smiled and opened his arms in welcome. “How you been, Joe?”

  Torpedo Joe glared at him. “I’m gonna kill you, Marvelli. I’m gonna squish you like a bug.” He popped the clutch, and the motorcycle jerked forward, turning around in a tight circle until it was aimed straight at Marvelli.

  Marvelli sprinted back down the cereal aisle, Joe right on his tail. He took a sharp left at the end of the aisle, but Joe stayed with him, even as he wove his way into the meat department. At the ground-beef cooler, Joe reached out to grab Marvelli by the collar, but Marvelli stopped running and ducked, and Joe whizzed by, going all the way down to the cheese and yogurt section before he could turn the big bike around and make another pass.

  This time Marvelli stood his ground as if he were just waiting for Joe to mow him down. Joe bared his teeth, picking up speed as he raced toward his target. He leaned over the handlebars, bracing for the sweet impact that would transform Marvelli into hamburger.

  But at the last moment, Marvelli took one step to the side, and Joe whizzed on by again. He braked hard, but the bike skidded sideways and crashed into a seven-foot floor display of six different kinds of Keebler cookies.

  “Watch out for the elves, Joe,” Marvelli shouted to him.

  Joe revved his engine, struggling to right the bike, his tires slipping on smashed cookie packages, crunching chocolate chips and Grasshoppers, oatmeal raisins and S’mores. He was too angry to put his thoughts into words, but it was written all over his bulging, purple-red face: Kill!

  Marvelli cupped his hands over his mouth. “You haven’t been working on that rage thing we were talking about back in Jersey, have you, Joe? I bet you haven’t cut down on your sugar intake, either. I can tell.”

  Joe let out an animal roar—primal and mindless—as he finally maneuvered the bike out of the crumbled cookies and took off after Marvelli again.

  “You want to talk about it, Joe?” Marvelli shouted as he ran.

  “No!” Joe yelled as he was about to run Marvelli down.

  But at the last second Marvelli stepped out of the way again, and Joe thundered all the way down to the prepackaged cold cuts before he could screech to a halt.

  “Don’t you want to help yourself, Joe? Are you just giving up on yourself? Is that it? You’re not even gonna try?”

  “Frig you, Marvelli!” Joe circled around the gourmet cheese case to make another pass.

  “All right for you,” Marvelli said. “You’re forcing my hand.” He ducked into the nearest aisle, frozen foods, which was lined with tall glass-doored freezers from one end to the other. Marvelli opened as many as he could as he ran, but Joe barreled right through them, ripping them off their hinges. They smashed to the linoleum one right after the other—bam! crash! bam! crash! bam! crash!

  Marvelli turned back, and the sight of such senseless destruction disappointed him deeply. Joe had no respect for anything. This had to stop.

  Marvelli reached into the nearest freezer and pulled out a Mamma Russo’s Extra Large Frozen Pepperoni Pizza. He took aim and flung the box like a Frisbee, ai
ming for Joe’s front tire.

  “Yes!” Marvelli hissed as the pizza lodged between the floor and Joe’s front tire.

  The tire wobbled, and the motorcycle went into a skid, sliding sideways down the aisle, like a ballplayer sliding for home, Joe’s face frozen in shock and fury. The bike slid out of the aisle and crashed into a magazine rack between two checkout lanes. Joe groaned and cursed, hurling copies of Bride, People, and the National Enquirer off his chest as he struggled to get his leg out from under the fallen bike.

  “Last chance, Joe,” Marvelli said, running over to him. “I don’t have time to screw around with you right now. Are you gonna behave or what?”

  Joe sneered at him, climbing to his feet, his hands out like claws, ready to pounce. “What do you think, asshole?”

  “That’s pretty much what I thought, Joe.”

  A frozen Butterball Turkey Breast in a yellow plastic net came out of nowhere and clobbered Joe over the head. He went down like a palooka, crashing into a heap on top of the magazines.

  Marvelli held the frozen turkey by the net, swinging it by his side like an oversize sap as he stared down at the unconscious biker. “I hate it when guys like you make me do things like this.”

  He trotted back to the freezer case where he’d found the turkey and put it back, then cupped his hands over his mouth and called out, “Loretta! Where are you? Loretta, you still here? Loretta!”

  ALL BAKING DONE ON PREMISES, the sign over the bakery department said. Loretta had chased Martha Lee into the back room where the ovens were, but the aromas were making her weak-kneed. Metal racks on carts six feet tall were laden with all sorts of baked goods. Chrome worktables were groaning with sugary confections. She was surrounded by birthday cakes, carrot cakes, angel food cakes, devil’s food cakes, apple pie, peach pie, pecan pie, Boston cream pie, key lime pie, black-and-white cookies, sugar cookies, gingerbread men, hazelnut biscotti, iced coffee rings, babkas, pounds cakes, cupcakes, bear claws, elephant ears, cheese danish, prune danish, corn muffins, bran muffins, blueberry muffins, twelve different kinds of bagels, cannolis, rum-cake pastries, cream puffs, eclairs . . .