Gray Matter (32 page)

P
AULEY MAC DROVE HOME
from the diner, stopping once at a grocery store for some fresh green beans. He wondered where the poor limp things were grown. He wouldn’t have real fresh green beans from his garden until the end of July.

At home, he opened a piece of newspaper on his kitchen table and prepared the green beans, snapping off one end, pulling the string down the length of the bean like a little zipper, and then snapping off the other end with the string attached. He removed the strings from all the beans first, then methodically went back and broke them into one inch pieces. It had been one of the first chores he did for Ma, and he was good at it, patient and precise. When he finished, he gathered up the corners of the newspaper and carried it out to the compost can. There Pauley Mac, with his eye for detail, noticed something unusual.

There were some maggots outside the can, on the ground. Most of them were already dried up from exposure to the afternoon sun, but some were still wiggling. He wondered how that could be. Maggots didn’t leave their dark, wet, food-rich surroundings easily. They were not the type of creatures to make pilgrimages. Shrugging, he lifted the lid and inspected the maggots crawling on the under surface. Experimentally he shook the lid gently. The maggots clung on securely. He tapped the lid against the side of the can, and some fell onto the ground. Dog smeared them into the pavement with his shoe.

So someone had opened his compost can. Why? Today was trash day in the neighborhood. There were empty rolling trash cans at the curbs of most nearby houses. Maybe the trash collector had walked down his driveway and opened the can, had seen that it wasn’t regular trash, and had replaced the lid. Doubtful. He couldn’t imagine a trash collector going out of his way, actually walking down a driveway, to get at the cans. In the South, maybe, but not in the St. Louis area.

Puzzled, he dumped the contents of the newspaper into the can, put the lid on tightly this time, and started back inside. Abruptly he returned and yanked the lid from the other can. The inside looked ordinary to him, but something was off about it. The trash was sort of fluffy, not settled the way it should be. He distinctly remembered pressing down with the bottom of the wastebasket the last time he took out the kitchen trash. What could anyone be after in his trash? It’s not like there were any heads in there or anything.

Pauley Mac boiled his green beans and ate a huge bowl of them with about a half a stick of butter melted on top. He sat at his table, shoveling in the beans in large forkfuls and thinking about his trash cans. He let his thoughts drift, let other voices have their say, and nearly gagged when something occurred to him.

He had seen Millie and the bitch talking, leaning together like two stalks of corn in a shock, their voices too low to overhear. Then there was the way Millie looked at him after the bitch left. Something was up. He knew with certainty that the bitch had been here, to his house. She had looked in his trash cans, looked at his private things, even if they were cast-offs.

Play time, slay time, ditch the bitch, chop off her head, good and dead.

He had to get rid of her, and soon, no matter how risky it was. He took his bowl to the sink and scrubbed it over and over, listening to an internal chorus of suggestions of what to do with Doctor Penelope Fucking Gray. Underneath the babble, he felt a quiet presence, a strength, and he knew it was the Armor woman, damn her to hell and back.

P
J ADMIRED THE BACK
yard of the house. The flower bed looked cheerful, and in a few weeks the transplanted marigold, phlox, and vinca plants would be covered with blooms. There was still a section of the rear of the house that needed painting. Because of her trip to Hampton’s house, she hadn’t had time to finish the rear wall. The ladder and paint supplies were neatly stowed, waiting for her next effort. Now that the letters painted by the killer were gone, she could get Thomas to help her with the rest of the work. She hadn’t wanted to involve him in the cleanup.

She got in her car, checked the map for the third or fourth time, then pulled out of the driveway. There was a stop she needed to make before hopping on Highway 40 to West County. She went to a neighborhood drug store, the kind that was supposedly driven out of business years ago but still thrived in South St. Louis. Mrs. Bell was working the counter today; Mr. Bell waved at her from the stock room. Mrs. Bell greeted her by name and didn’t blink an eye when she checked out her purchase, a package of condoms. PJ wondered what other secrets the Bells kept and whether they went home at night and traded gossip about the neighborhood residents: who’s buying hemorrhoid cream, denture powder, men’s hair coloring, pads for incontinence. Now PJ’s sexual exploits were fair game, but only between the two of them. The Bells knew they would lose customers if they blabbed.

The fact that she was wearing a dress, and a dressy black one at that, surely had not escaped the Bells’ notice. PJ had three evening dresses, but two of them wouldn’t accommodate the extra twenty pounds she carried around since the divorce. She thought back over her coffee cake breakfast, the bacon and milkshake she had eaten for lunch, and shook her head in resignation. She was eating to fill an emotional need, and she knew that sometime she would have to stop it and get back to exercising. It wasn’t her appearance which worried her but her health. She knew Merlin would say that she should live with it. But she did want to make a change, just not right this minute. She wasn’t ready to give up the comfort that food provided and let it go back to being just nourishment.

The dress had thin straps and a silk sheath with a loose layer of chiffon over it. The sheath draped loosely from the bust line, just slamming her hips. Her chestnut hair fell in large waves to her shoulders and felt like an herbal-scented cloud around her face. When she had checked the mirror before leaving, she thought that the gray mixed into her hair was not very noticeable—not tonight. Her day’s work outdoors had left her face with pleasant rosy accents. Underneath the dress she was wearing black panties and no bra or slip. Her breasts had not yet given in to gravity, and were the best feature of an otherwise unremarkable body. She took one hand off the wheel and rewarded each of her nipples with a few slow circles of her fingertips.

It might turn out to be an interesting evening.

When Mike opened the door, she could see the surprise on his face as he took in the way she was dressed.

They worked side-by-side in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She washed and tossed the salad, he layered the lasagna, stacking noodles, sauce, spinach, and ricotta and parmesan cheeses. As she tore the lettuce with her hands, she studied him surreptitiously. His strikingly bald head shone under the track lights over the kitchen counter. He was dressed more casually then she, wearing gray cotton slacks, the easy-fitting kind with pleats in the front, and a white cotton short sleeve shirt. There was that softness around his middle that she had noticed before, but who was she to complain?

When the lasagna was in the oven, they relaxed with a glass of red wine. Mike sat at one end of the couch and she took the other. Kicking off her shoes, she sat sideways, stretching her legs out on the couch toward him. They talked lightly of things from their past, drawing upon their common experiences with computers to draw them together in other ways.

Mike had prepared a beautiful table, with a white linen tablecloth, candles, and flowers in a small crystal vase at each place setting. The meal came off perfectly, with the scents of freshly-baked rolls and garlic and basil serving as an appetizer.

PJ guiltily realized she hadn’t thought about the murders in hours. She wondered what the results of the blood test would show. Thinking about it now, surrounded by good food and wine and excellent company, it seemed unreal to her that she had actually gone to Hampton’s house, had seen the maggots, and stood exposed in his driveway going through his trash. She had been in a different level of awareness then, with danger whispering in her ears and throbbing in her blood—not something she ordinarily experienced in front of her computer. She thought of Schultz, and wondered how he could contain all those moments in his own life. He was actually a far larger person than he seemed, like a kitten whose long, frightening shadow at sunset revealed the true nature of the wild feline inside.

They piled the dishes in the sink and Mike said he would clean up just a bit and leave the rest for later. He suggested she go into the living room and relax, he would join her shortly.

That sounded good to her. She liked a man who knew his way around the kitchen.

On the couch, she leaned back and closed her eyes, fantasizing, letting a fantasy play out as though it were projected on the insides of her closed eyelids:

They sat side by side, thighs touching. He reached up to stroke her cheek. His gentle fingers felt as though they were leaving glowing tracks on her skin.

>
“Penny…” Mike said. His voice seemed to come from that place deep inside where both love and desire dwelled in a man’s body. She turned her face up to him, and he pressed his lips against hers gently, then covered her eyes, her cheeks, her chin with soft kisses. “Penny, I…”

>
“Sshhh,” she said, placing her finger across his lips. “It’s all right, I want you too.” She kissed him fiercely, and felt his passion igniting under her questing hands and tongue. He tentatively reached for her breasts, moving his hand lightly over the black chiffon. His touch released the cravings that had been building in her all day, and her body was flooded with longing, her skin felt as though it were radiating sparks. Murmuring his name, she pulled away from his embrace and rose to her feet in front of him. She grasped the hem of her dress and lifted it up and over her head, and stood before him in her black panties.

>
He reached for her, putting his hands on her waist, and pulled her closer to him as he sat. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead lovingly and gratefully against her bare stomach.

The phone rang, yanking PJ rudely out of her sensuous cocoon. Mike answered it in the kitchen. She couldn’t make out what was said, but the conversation was short. He came into the living room wiping his hands on a dish towel. She could tell by the look on his face that something was up. She sat up straight.

“Anything wrong?” she asked. His face was serious.

“That was my daughter Carolyn on the phone. I need to go pick her up. We’ve got this contract.”

“Contract?”

“If she ever gets into something she doesn’t like, at a party or on a date or anywhere, I’ll come and get her immediately, no questions asked. And we won’t discuss it until the next day.”

“That sounds like a wonderful way to handle things. Gives her a safety net and keeps communication open, too.”

“She’s only called one other time, and that one was pretty bad…” He was already heading for the kitchen again, evidently to go out the door to the garage and leave in his car. Then he turned and came back to PJ, who was standing in the living room. “I’m sorry about this. You’re welcome to come along if you want.”

Finally galvanized into action, PJ collected her purse. “No, no, you go ahead. I’ve never even met Carolyn. I’m sure she wouldn’t want anyone but her father there. Thanks for a wonderful dinner, though.”

He hesitated again, and then patted her arm in a way that struck her as brotherly. “I’ve really enjoyed your company, Penny. I haven’t been much in the mood for socializing since the divorce, but you’re different.”

PJ took a deep breath. What was he going to say? What did she want him to say?

“People say that men and women can’t really be friends,” he said, “but I think that’s wrong. I think we’ll be great friends. After all, I grew up with four sisters. If any man can relate to a woman as a friend, it’s got to be me.”

So that was how it was going to be. A ripple of disappointment went through her, even though she wasn’t certain she wanted anything else at this time either. “You’d better be going. Your daughter’s waiting.”

As she pulled out of his driveway, she berated herself for the way she had approached the evening. She, a professional woman, a psychologist for heaven’s sake, had been fantasizing about sex with a man who simply wanted to have a friend over for dinner. Thank goodness she hadn’t done anything brazen, like jump him on the couch. She looked down at her dress. Why hadn’t she at least worn sensible clothing and a bra? And there were condoms in her purse.

As she drove, she mentally backed herself into a corner and forced the truth out of herself. Her confidence had been badly damaged when her ex-husband had rejected her and hopped into bed with another woman. Her new work with CHIP had begun the process of building up her professional confidence. In fact, it had pushed her to a new awareness of what she wanted to do with her life. But her sexual identity was still hurting. She had been trying to prove to herself that she was still a desirable woman.

Apparently the jury was still out on that one.

She tried to be cynical about it, even tried to see the humor in the situation, but it didn’t work.

The red light on her answering machine was blinking when she got home. She changed out of her dress and into her customary T-shirt and shorts before she played the message.

“This is Georgia, at the lab. That blood you brought in looks like a probable match with the samples from the cat’s claws and Armor’s fingernails. Where’d you get it, anyway? Illegal search, no doubt. The fingerprint guys said the outside of the tube was pretty smeared, they could only get some partials from it and most of them were yours. Next time you go after evidence, do it right, OK?”

The news about the styptic pencil both frightened and exhilarated her. Her hunch had been right. She had no idea what to do next. After all, it was Schultz’s job to handle things from here—he’s the one who had to break the door down, or whatever it is he actually did, and make the arrest, not her. Also, she was reasonably sure that the blood match wasn’t enough. A warrant was needed to search Hampton’s trash legally, and it should have been done by an actual police officer, not a civilian employee. A defense lawyer could argue that she had compromised the evidence by not handling it properly, or that she had planted it there in the first place, since the trash can was so accessible.