The closet door inside the entrance is open and trash bags filled with clothing have been torn into. Clean-looking clothes spill out, folded - unwashed rumpled clothes litter the area around it.
I shake my head. Violet carefully packed for him to go. The fucker got packed folded clothes, not his shit thrown out the window like he deserved.
This place was clean when I visited. It’s trashed after just a couple days of her not here.
Dishes. Beer cans. Mess. Things have been rifled through. Violet’s things.
I quickly plant my tiny cameras in the return air vent on the ceiling over the kitchen cupboard pointing at Violet’s red couch.
I do my own snooping.
Kitchen drawers. I grab the light-up chopsticks and tuck them into my coat’s inside pocket.
There are some photos in a junk drawer of her and Raymond looking happy, him with his arms around her. There are magnets on the backs of them. These used to be on the fridge, I’m guessing. If the fucker didn’t notice she stuffed them in a drawer at some stage, his bad – because that’s a sign he shouldn’t have ignored.
In the first picture, she’s looking at him and he’s looking at the camera. And the way she looks at him? Fuck. I wanna find him and gut him for having that. I fling the pictures back into the drawer and head to the living area where I find a photo album on the coffee table opened up to the middle. There’s also a basket under the coffee table with all sorts of shit spilling out, obviously having been rifled through. Pictures, ticket stubs for an amusement park, a loose stack of pictures of them together with snapshots from road trips, a ski trip. One of her in ski gear on a bunny hill with a goofy look on her face. I lean back on the couch as I eyeball another snapshot, this one of her in a bikini with her eyes crossed, being goofy again. I catch myself smiling. It’s appealing that she doesn’t take herself so seriously. I shift and hear a crinkle. I find I’m sitting on an envelope. I lift it and look inside. A set of boudoir photos. These though, not goofy. Serious as a heart attack. Serious as a crime scene, which I wanna create because of what I see.
8x10 pictures of her in black lace lingerie, wearing red heels and red lipstick, holding a red heart balloon that says, “Love, Your Valentine.”
Rage rises up in my gut. And I don’t fucking know why. These pictures aren’t new, not from this year anyway. But that she did that for him for Valentine’s Day a year or two ago manages to set my blood to boiling.
The fucker broke her. She did shit like this for him, and he treated her like shit.
The boudoir shoot includes snapshots of her on her elbows and knees, blowing a kiss at the camera. A black and white pic of her on the bed, fisting the sheets, hair spilling over the pillow like a goddamn halo around her gorgeous face. Like this morning when she was in bed beside me.
Right now, I wish I could go back to this morning, to when I opened my eyes and saw her. I wish I could go back to that moment, roll over onto her, and lose myself in her.
There’s weight to the envelope even though I’ve got the snapshots, so I flick the envelope open and look inside. A stack of Polaroids in the bottom. My gut churns as I pull them out.
Nudes of Violet. Explicit ones.
I growl.
He’s been sitting here reminiscing over pictures of her that he doesn’t deserve to even look at. She should’ve set his shit on fire before she tossed it out the window, not packed everything neatly and driven to the airport to pick him up knowing she was ending it. Or in her words, gonna try to end it.
There’s another album in the basket filled with pictures of a younger Violet, pre-Raymond, I’m guessing. Pictures of her and her friends. Her on another vacation. Snapshots of her with her family. With Susanna Gagne.
Smiles and light in her eyes that’s now missing.
I drop the album and look around.
He’s desperate.
He’s desperate not just because he knows he fucked me over. He’s desperate for her.
Is the fucker sorry for what he did? Does he think he’s still entitled to keep her despite how he’s treated her?
Is he desperate enough to use a gun to try to eliminate me as a problem in his life? He owes me money. I owe him retribution. And I have his woman.
Correction. I have Violet. She hasn’t been his woman in a long time judging by all I’ve seen, not to mention the words that’ve come from her mouth.
Maybe he’s planning on holding someone else up and bringing me the money tonight. Not sure, but eyes will be on him.