Unknown Victim by Kay Hadashi (top 10 books of all time txt) 📗

Sunday. You can’t give it a rest? I mean, take a day off from working on the house?”

“You want walls or not?” he said through the gap in the door.

“Let me put something on.” Giving up on having a quiet morning to herself, Gina swapped her pajamas for a T-shirt and shorts before letting him in. “I have coffee, if you’d like some.”

In the kitchen, he pointed to his own face in the same spots as her injured cheek. “What happened?”

Gina had to think fast because she hadn’t thought of any explanations. As far as she knew, she’d taken a whack from behind, leaving her with the goose egg, and got the bruised face when she fell forward and hit the asphalt. “I had some trouble with the ladder yesterday.”

“Not boyfriend?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Looks like fight with boyfriend.”

“Fight with the ladder.”

“You want me to do something?”

“I can take myself to the doctor, but I think I’m okay.”

He shook his head. “No need for doctor. I can open it.”

“Open? What do you mean?”

“Bad shiner, like a boxer gets. I can open.”

Gina went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. That’s when she saw how big the bruise was, so big that her eyelid was sagging with the weight of extra blood in it. It really did look like something her boxer cousin would have after a bout. She’d even seen it get opened once. The way it looked on her, it would take a week, maybe two, before it ever went away.

“You know how?” she asked, tapping her fingertip on the lump of bruised eyelid.

“All of us in the family are boxers. Do this all the time. Maybe hurt a little, but better faster later.”

“Faster later?”

“You want it better or not?”

Kenzo looked the part of roofer, electrician, and plumber, but not that of a plastic surgeon. For as rough and tumble as her life had been growing up, Gina still didn’t have any scars on her face, and wanted to keep it that way. Having the roofer cut her eyelid the way a ringside doctor would with a boxer gave her a strong sense of alarm. But tapping a fingertip on her eyelid again, she didn’t want to spend the week looking like a boxer who got knocked out in the tenth round. “You go wait in the kitchen. I need to think about this.”

While she sat in the bathroom, Gina tapped her finger on her eyelid again. That wasn’t going to accomplish much at making her eyelid go down. After washing her face, she wiped alcohol on her eyelid and cheek, doing the same thing she’d seen her uncle do to her cousin the one time. That stung her eyes while it dried. Taking apart a safety razor, she took that into the kitchen with more rubbing alcohol. He already had paper towels out and a chair arranged for her.

“You have a lighter?” she asked.

She watched carefully as he waved the razor blade through the flame on his lighter.

“You really know what you’re doing?”

“It’s okay. I’ve done this lotsa times.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Gina settled into the kitchen chair. “Okay, look. Just a tiny pinprick, right? Just big enough to let the blood out. I don’t want a scar.”

“No more scar.” With that, he pushed her head back and pricked her eyelid. Gina dabbed the mini-flood of thick blood that came out. She pressed a fingertip on the lid, hoping to get as much out as she could. “Okay?”

“I guess. Never expected to do this on a Sunday morning.” She snorted a laugh through her nose. “Would’ve been more fun to go to church.”

He told her he was going to finish putting up paneling on the walls that day, and that she could do whatever she wanted, she wouldn’t be in his way.

“Hey, before you throw that razor away, I have something else.”

She pointed to the hard knot on the back of her head. He wiped some alcohol on her scalp, and even before it was dry, he pricked the goose egg in a couple of spots.

“Go take shower. Wash it out good.”

The cold water felt good that morning as she pressed as hard as she could on the goose egg, forcing the blood out of the bruise. She still wondered about the wisdom of letting a handyman cut her, but he’d done exactly as he promised, of making only a prick with the corner of the blade.

“Glad to know I have a good cut man in my corner,” she said while drying. She put some ointment on her scalp and a small Band-Aid on her eyelid. Both were already feeling better now that the blood had been let out, and the pressure was off. When she went out, he was already on a ladder hammering nails into a wall as if nothing had happened in the kitchen. “Thanks for doing that. It feels better already.”

When he gave her the usual wave, she knew he’d already moved on to his primary task of the day. Taking her garden sketchpads out to the front porch, she found a place where the morning sun could shine on her face. She began with drawing a new map of the estate, putting in a few of the landmarks there, the double-track driveway that circled through, the long row of fruit trees along one side, and the stream with its bridge on the other. With this map, she wanted to outline the basic entrance that she planned for the front. While she doodled a ground-level picture of what it could look like, a car came across the bridge.

“What does he want?”

Gina ignored Detective Kona as he parked his sedan in what was becoming his personal spot at the side of the house. She continued to sketch on her pad, even as he came up the steps.

“Miss Santoro, good morning. Who’s here?” he asked, nodding at the truck at the front of the house.

“The handyman. He’s hammering nails in the walls. What brings you to