Mother (63 page)

He and Stan laughed and shot the breeze about the Warriors’ current line-up, then Roddy said, “Hey, I want to ask you folks a question.”

“Shoot,” Stan said.

“The department’s had several residents of Snapdragon, including one or two living here on the sac turn in anonymous letters.”

“Letters?” asked Aida.

Roddy nodded. “Typed, unsigned, no return address. Each one says the author knows what the recipient did, but usually lack specifics. Generally, they stop just short of blackmail. But not always.”

Stan looked at Aida. Her face had gone white. Before Roddy noticed, he spoke. “Aida honey, would you run in the house and get some more napkins? I’m about out.”

She nodded and hurried up the walk. Stan looked at Roddy. “And you want to know if we’ve received any?”

Roddy nodded.

Stan considered telling the truth, but knew Aida would be humiliated if anyone ever found out about their two years in the hippie commune up north, about the flowers she wore in her hair and the henna tattoos on her titties. “Can’t say we have,” Stan said.
 

“Mrs. Martin?” The cop took a step back from Priscilla, no doubt to put some distance between his super-sensitive sniffer and the woman’s cloud of extra-strength perfume.
 

“Me? Oh, no! That’s horrible. Our poor neighbors! May I ask who was threatened?”

“You can ask, but I can’t answer.” Roddy looked her up and down, probably blinding himself on those neon yellow stretch pants. They were so bright, tight, and ugly they belonged on a three-hundred pounder in a Wal-Mart somewhere. The Dean Twins walked by and Stan smiled at the peculiar little creatures, happy they didn’t stop.

“Well, that’s just terrible!” She looked from Roddy to Stan. “I’d better go check on my potato salad.”

“Is your son-in-law watching the table for you?”

“No, I wish he were, but he’s out of town. My table is on the honor system. I just have so many projects going on that I can’t spend all my time there.” She sighed.

“Hopefully there aren’t any potato salad thieves on the sac today,” Stan said.

“Don’t call Morning Glory Circle ‘the sac,’ Stanley. That’s vulgar.”

Stan watched her walk away, then said to Roddy, “Those pants, now those are vulgar.”

Roddy grinned. “No shit.”

“Do you need a fresh diaper, Frederick?” Priscilla’s voice worked a cold finger down his spine.

Fred stared over the edge of the balcony at what he could see of the festivities below. Hank Lowell looked up, shielded his eyes from the sun, and waved. Fred could have returned the wave, but he didn’t want to risk being drugged by Priscilla, so he only gave a slight nod.

“Frederick, are you listening to me?”

Fred groaned and turned his head to the side.

Priscilla placed a clammy hand on his shoulder. “I asked if you need a diaper change.” She bent down, sniffed, and satisfied, said, “I’m going to be busy, busy, busy with the potluck for hours, so if you need to relieve yourself, tell me now.” She crossed her arms and, after a long moment, said, “Suit yourself, Frederick. But I won’t be back for a while, and if you end up with a rash, you’ll only have yourself to blame.” She sighed. “Why don’t you come inside?”

“Noooo.”

“You want to stay out here? All by yourself on the balcony?”

He nodded.

“Well, all right, but I don’t see what good it does you to sit there and look at all the people enjoying themselves. It can only make you feel worse. Be grateful for what you have, I always say, and pay no attention to the things you never will.” She turned and clicked out of the room on sharp, noisy heels.

Frederick listened and when the lock clicked into place it was just another nail in a long-sealed coffin. When the coast was clear, he wheeled himself to the railing, reached inside his pajamas and yanked the adult diaper down, then urinated off the balcony. It felt great.
There you go, Prissy. I watered your plants.
 

Roddy Crocker inhaled, enjoying the festival of tantalizing aromas drifting across the sac. He was sure the Stines had received one of the letters - neither could lie their way out of a parking ticket, but they claimed no knowledge. He’d moved on, pausing briefly to eat a perfectly spiced, incredibly fragrant pork tamale and shoot the breeze with Hank Lowell; then he moved on, passing Priscilla Martin’s godforsaken bowl of potato salad just as the Dean twins approached it. He came even with Candy Sachs, and asked her, but she denied all knowledge. Her husband, Milton, looked troubled. Roddy decided to come back and have a chat when Candy wasn’t around. He passed Duane’s place - no one was home - and then the empty Collins house. He walked by the Vandercooths’; their grilled hot dogs were the hit of the potluck, and there was no point trying to talk to them - too crowded. They even had a couple of Catholic priests munching down.
 

When Roddy arrived at Ace Etheridge’s, he accepted a soda from Iris and shook hands with Ace. He and Ace had been neighbors for almost a decade. “Can we talk a minute?”

“Sure. Let’s sit down.” Ace led him to the porch and Roddy asked if he’d received any letters.

Ace looked at him for a long time. “Sounds like somebody’s sniffing for secrets around here.”

“It does,” Roddy agreed. While Ace was the editor of the newspaper, he was also good at keeping quiet. He’d proven himself many times over and had been instrumental in helping catch several criminals.
 

“I have received such letters, yes. At least once or twice a year for - I don’t know how long. Since before you moved in.”

“You never reported them?”

“No. I figured bringing them to light might actually cause me to be outed on the Internet. Whoever writes those things doesn’t make threats, they just want me to know they know
all
about me.” He stroked his goatee. “Which is bullshit. If they knew my pen name is Kathryn McLeod, I’d already have been outed.”

Roddy laughed. “Exactly. Do you have any of the letters?”

“Are you kidding? I’ve got them all. You never know when you might need to show something like that to your lawyer. You want them?”
 

“Please.”
 

“You know Iris signs in my stead.” He laughed. “She looks a hell of a lot more like a romance writer than I do.”

Roddy nodded. “That she does.”

“The only thing that truly bothers me is that if it got out, it might be really hard on her. Humiliation is a bitch she doesn’t deserve.”

“I bet your publisher would be pissed if it got out that Kathryn McLeod’s a man.”

“What can they do? It happens. Doesn’t matter to me, except I don’t want the fame. I just want the royalty checks. And I like writing those damned books.” He laughed. “But let’s keep that between ourselves.”
 

“Hey, I like reading them. Got anything new coming out?”

“This summer. A brand new series -
Moonflower
. First book is called
Evening Primrose.
I’ll get you an advanced copy as soon as they’re available.”

“Thanks.”

Ace stood up. “I’ll get those letters. Be right back”

Dean Martin sang about love and pizza as Roddy sat on the porch and watched the neighbors and their friends milling around, talking, laughing, having a good time. And he wondered which one was the anonymous letter-writer.

Ace came back out with a manila file folder and an envelope. “Here are the old ones.” He gave him the folder. “And here’s the one that came yesterday.” He handed over the envelope.
 

Roddy took it by the corner and slipped the folded paper out. It had the same wide margins … and something the others didn’t possess. His sinuses tickled unpleasantly and he held the paper under his nose.
Opium
perfume.

“Gotcha,” he said.

Ace’s eyes lit up. “You know who wrote it?”

“Smell it.”

Ace did. “I can’t smell anything.”

“I can.” He stood up. “You’ll be the first to know, Ace. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to drop by the station.”

Sunday Morning Recon

Priscilla Martin rounded the corner of the house in time to see Daphene and Delphine Dean, in matching plaid skirts, white button-downs, and ribboned pigtails, digging spoons into her potato salad. She watched in horror as the little twits slapped sloppy globs of it on the table, both expressionless, as if sent on some mundane mission just to irritate her.

Prissy’s temper came untethered. “You little
shits!
”

The twins turned, their pale faces blank, their mouths agape.

“Get!
Scat!
” Prissy waved her arms and broke into a trot. “What the hell do you think you’re
doing!
”

The neighbors’ heads turned and someone killed the volume on one of the radios.
Thank heaven!

The Dean twins’ eyes went wide. They wrapped their arms around each other and stood there, slack-jawed, as Prissy approached, then broke out in an arm-flailing dash, pigtails and skirts flying behind them.

“I’m telling your mother!” shrieked Prissy as the brain-dead duo darted down the sidewalk. She looked around and saw several neighbors snickering. “What the hell are you staring at?” she yelled at Candy Sachs, who’d buried her face behind a pink handkerchief. “Scarlet harlot!”

The insult only made Candy fall apart with laughter. She hugged her son close and pointed at Prissy - not at those dreadful twins - and both laughed.
 

Prissy ignored them, staring at her table. Frowning, she began scooping up the globs of salad. If the whole neighborhood hadn’t been watching, she would have returned it to the bowl - certainly there was nothing wrong with it since the little cretins had used spoons - but instead, she bundled the goop into napkins and, face hot with fury and humiliation, stalked toward the garbage can.

“Pris?” Barbara Vandercooth, in black pants and matching sweater, both lacking a single decorative flower, approached.

Prissy straightened her shoulders and willed her face to remain placid, hoping it wasn’t as red as it felt.

“What happened over here?”

Prissy sighed. “Those retarded little monsters thought they were being funny.” She wiped her hands on the last napkin. “I’m going to have to talk to their parents about this, though I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the parents didn’t send them here. Either way, their lack of respect for other people’s property must be addressed!”

“Would you like me to watch your table for you while you go do that?”

“Well, I wasn’t going to do it
now,
necessarily.”

“Oh, I think you should,” said Babs with a knowing smile. “While the crime is still fresh.”

Prissy thought about it. “You’re right.” She sighed. “I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be here.” Babs’ cheery smile annoyed Prissy, but right now, she had more urgent matters to attend to.

She felt the eyes of the neighborhood on her as she stalked toward the Dean house. From someone’s yard,
Chariots of Fire
began to play. Giggles broke out from all directions.
 

“Fudge you,” she muttered under her breath as she patted her hair into place. “All of you! And your brothers and sisters, too! And your dogs. Fudge your dogs, too!”

“She’s after those little girls,” Paul Schuyler said, before biting into another hot dog. “See her? Across the street?”

“I believe those are the Dean twins.” Carl handed Father Dave a chili dog.
 

Paul shielded his eyes from the sun and watched as the flailing, shrieking girls disappeared up their driveway. Priscilla didn’t follow them, but marched up the front walk, as stiff as a soldier, and knocked on the door, non-stop. Father Andy cringed. Steffie went to the curb and looked toward the Martin house, then came back. “Babs is on guard. Ready, Jason?”

He nodded. “Let’s go, Paul!”

“Coming.” He could barely tear his eyes off the scene unfolding across the street.

Earlene Dean had stepped onto the front porch and if Paul read her body language right, she was fixing to punch Priscilla in the tits.
 

“Paul, are you coming?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Father Andy?”

“I’ll stay here and interfere if it gets physical. Priscilla will respond well to me, I think.”

“She will,” Father Dave agreed.

Paul, Jason, and Steffie stayed on the sidewalk, slipping in and out of clusters of chatting people. There were just as many in front of the dark Collins house, looky-loos more interested in death than food. The trio passed them by and made it quickly to Priscilla Martin’s house. Babs smiled. “What took you so long?”

“Sorry,” Jason said, his eyes on Claire’s bedroom window.
 

Paul blushed. “My fault. It’s like a train wreck down there. I couldn’t look away.”

“It is?”

“It will be,” Jason said, “if Father Andy doesn’t get over there quick.”

“Okay,” Babs said, looking at Jason and Steffie. “Paul and I will keep watch down here while you two go up. Stay in touch. Use the kitchen door. I already checked - she didn’t lock it.”

“Great, thanks.” Jason and Steffie trotted up the driveway. The bearded next-door neighbor watched.

“He’s a good guy?” Paul asked Babs.

“He’s fine, don’t worry about him.”
 

Paul reached for a paper bowl and the serving spoon. Babs swatted it away. “Don’t eat that. Last time Priscilla made potato salad, half the street got sick.”

“Claire?” Jason sat down on the bed next to his wife and took her hand. If she noticed his presence, or Steffie’s, she gave no indication. She sat up, pillows behind her, staring into space. Her hair was a mess, her face pale, and her eyes were hollow. Haunted. “Claire, baby, talk to me.” Jason heard the quaver in his voice.

Claire made no response.

He looked to Steffie, who eyed his wife with clinical intensity. “Do you hear us, Claire?” she asked. “It’s me, Stephanie Banks. And Jason.” She sat down on the other side of Claire, and without looking away said, “She’s in some kind of stupor.”

“What does that mean?” Jason sounded more forceful than he meant to, but Stephanie didn’t seem to notice.