Read Online Creole Belle by James Lee Burke - Free Book Online

said.
    “A guy who’s gonna turn you into an opera star. I’ll put you on the phone so you can yodel to a friend of yours. I heated up your teapot for you.”
    “I know who you are. Shame on you.”
    “That’s a dumb thing to say. Why do you think I’m wearing this mask?”
    “Because you’re a coward.”
    “It means you got a chance to live. But the odds of that happening aren’t as good as they were a few seconds ago. Your cat is hiding under the bed.”
    She tried to read the expression in his eyes inside his mask, to no avail.
    “Has the kitty got your tongue?” he said.
    “Leave him alone.”
    He looked over his shoulder at the microwave. “I think he might make a nice fit.”
    “Friends are coming over anytime. You’ll be punished for whatever you do here. You’re a nasty little man. I should have let Mr. Purcel have his way with you.”
    He leaned over her, looking straight down into her face. “You don’t have friends, lady. Nothing is gonna help you. Accept that. You’re totally in my power, and you’re gonna do everything I say. I think I’m gonna alter my plan a little bit. What do they call that place in Kentucky where people take vows of silence?” He snapped his fingers, his glove making a whispering sound. “Gethsemane? Isaid I was gonna make an opera singer out of you, but that’s not a good idea. You’d wake up the whole neighborhood. I’m gonna give you my own vow of silence. Open wide.”
    When she refused, he clenched the bottom of her chin and stuffed a dishrag in her mouth and pressed a strip of tape across her cheeks and lips. “There,” he said, standing erect. “You look like a balloon that’s about to pop. That’s not far from wrong.”
    He turned off the flame on the stove and picked up a hot pad from the drainboard and lifted the teakettle off the burner. “Where do you want it first?” he asked.
    She felt sweat popping on her brow, her throat gagging on the dishrag and her own saliva, her shoes coming off her feet as she thrashed against the linoleum. He tipped the spout of the teakettle down and slowly scalded one of her legs and then the other. “How’s that feel? That’s just for openers,” he said.
    It became obvious that he was not prepared for what came next. Alice Werenhaus flexed both of her upper arms and her massive shoulders and tore the handle out of the oven door, rising to her feet like a behemoth emerging from an ancient bog. She ripped the tape from her face and pulled the dishrag from her mouth and drove her fist into a spot right between her assailant’s eyes.
    The blow sent him crashing into the wall. She picked up a bread box and smashed it over his head, then opened the door to the pantry and pulled a Stillson pipe wrench loose from a washtub full of tools. The Stillson felt as heavy as a shot put, its serrated grips mounted on a long shaft. Her assailant was getting to his feet when she caught him across the buttocks. He screamed and arched his back in an inverted bow, as though it had been broken, one hand fluttering behind to protect himself from a second blow. Alice swung again, this time across his shoulders, and a third time high up on his arm, and a fourth time on the elbow, each blow thudding into bone.
    He stumbled through her living room and jerked open the front door, his nose bleeding through his mask. She hit him again, this time across the spine, knocking him through the screen onto the gallery. She followed him outside, catching him in the rib cage, knocking him onto the sidewalk, beating him across the thighs and knees ashe picked himself up and began running down the street, careening off balance, like a bagful of broken sticks trying to reassemble itself.
    Her ears were roaring with sound, her lungs screaming for air, her heart swollen with adrenaline. The black kid with the box of chocolate candy was staring at her in disbelief.
    “What are you looking at?” she said.
    “I done what you tole me. I quit my job. I