Chapter Eight - Part Two


The next morning, the phone rang in the Benson household at one o’clock AM.  Rosita picked it up.  It was Tiffany’s mother.  Did Rosita know where Tiffany was?  She hadn’t made it home.  She told the people who brought her to the party that she had a different ride home.  Did Rosita know who she’d left with?  Would Rosita please check with Matthew to see if he knew anything about her whereabouts?

Rosita rushed into Matthew’s bedroom and woke him.  She explained that Tiffany’s parents were trying to find her.  “Mattie, do you have any idea where she might be?” asked Rosita.

Matthew was still half asleep, but he did his best to reconstruct what he knew – or didn’t know.  “I was going to take her into Nick’s studio to show her the cabinet I’d made, but then Joe interrupted me with that lame question about the pool.  I don’t think I saw Tiffany after that.  We kind of shut down the party after the argument, and then everyone left.  In fact, I know I didn’t see her because I looked for her.  I still wanted to show her the cabinet before she left, but I couldn’t find her.  I figured she’d gotten a ride home with the same people she came with.

Next, Rosita went into Nick’s bedroom to check with him.  Nick wasn’t in his bed.  Rosita figured he probably fell asleep out in his recording studio, so she put on her robe and slippers and went outside to see if she could find him.  When Rosita tried to open the door to the studio, it was locked.  Rosita knocked.  And knocked.  It must have been five minutes before Nick finally answered the door.

He looked disheveled, as though he’d fallen asleep in his clothes.

“What?” Nick demanded rudely.

“Do you know what happened to Tiffany last night?  She never made it home,” said Rosita.

“Who the hell is Tiffany?” asked Nick.

“She was the cute one.  Long dark hair with a gold streak.  Yellow sundress.”

“Mom.  They were all wearing sundresses.  They were just a bunch of kids who all looked alike.  How should I know which one was Tiffany?” asked Nick incredulously.

“Alright,” said Rosita.  “Sorry to have bothered you.  It’s getting cold out here.  Make sure you use a blanket when you go back to sleep.”

Always the mother, thought Nick, as he shut the door and relocked it.  Now, back to little Tiffany.  She’d wanted to see the cabinet that Matthew made for him, so Nick was showing it to her – from the inside out.

He pulled open one of the doors, and yanked the terrified teenager from the cabinet.  She had electrical tape over her mouth.  Her arms were tied behind her back.  And she was naked and bloody. 

Nick had already raped her twice.  Now he was going to kill her.  It was what she wanted.  It was what she deserved. The poor girl struggled as hard as she could, but Nick beat her head against the wall and choked her until she stopped struggling.  Every time he thought she was dead, she’d regain consciousness and start breathing again.  “Bitch!” he yelled.  Finally, he hit her over the head with a wooden lamp, breaking the lamp and finishing the job.  It was too bad she hadn’t had time to really look at the lamp.  Matthew had made it out of the same wood he’d used to build the cabinet.  “She would’ve been impressed,” Nick chuckled.

“Now, what to do with the body?”  Nick wrapped it in plastic garbage bags and then tied an old blanket around it.  He stuffed it into the hidden, back compartment of his cabinet.  It didn’t fit well, but with enough twisting and shoving, he was able to make it fit.  He’d keep the room as cool as possible until tomorrow night, when he could dispose of the thing.
 
“I wonder what happened to Tiffany,” he said to himself as he laid down to go to sleep in his room that night.  “I’ll have to help look for her in the morning, but first I’ll need to go to the nursery to get a new cherry tree.  We need one of those out in the field.”

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