Baby, It's Dead Outside

by E M Kaplan

  But how much of what I just witnessed was my imagination? she wondered.

  She shook her head. “I know what I saw.”

  But she knew she was trying to convince herself at this point.

  Aloysius had been peeking into the yard for a couple minutes with no visible Aha moment when he suddenly whipped his head around to look at her. His hand came up to cover his mouth in what looked like horrified shock and surprise.

  “I knew it!” she shouted and pumped her fist, almost knocking her lunch off her lap.

  Chapter 23

  Waiting for Aloysius to come back to the house and tell her what he’d found was the longest three minutes of Josie’s life. She nervously crammed sandwich into her mouth while she waited, almost unable to savor the flavors…almost. The man could make a fantastic sandwich.

  “Oh my lord,” he said, stamping the ice from his boots in the foyer. “That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced in all my days. I can’t believe you made me do that.”

  Josie twisted around on the couch, ignoring the throb in her ankle as she jostled it. “Tell me what you found. Did you see blood on the ground? Was it bad?”

  Do we need to call the police?

  “It was more than bad,” he said, blowing into his cupped hands to warm them. Her mind went to horrible dark places as she imagined what he might have seen—was there a lot of blood?—but then he said, “My virgin ears will never be the same again.”

  Wait. What?

  “I mean, there was nothing on the ground where you said she fell, but then I started to hear these noises while I was looking into the yard.”

  “Noises? What kind of noises?”

  “Sex noises, girl. A heterosexual sexy-time soundtrack. Oohs and ahhhs, and a little yipping noise like a Pomeranian with its tail caught in a door. It was a full-on porno reel. Those two are going at it like animals. I didn’t think people sounded like that in real life.” He gave a disgusted shiver. “I really wish I hadn’t heard that. I’m going to need me some ear bleach.”

  “But…”

  Josie was completely confused. She was sure she’d seen something foul happen. Or at least, the top three inches of someone’s head while the horrible event had taken place just out of sight. The only thing she could think of was maybe Harris had turned on a movie or soundtrack to cover up what he’d just done. Or maybe he’d gotten a thrill from murdering his wife…which was a little too weird to fathom. She rubbed her forehead in consternation and got Italian herbs and spices in her frown wrinkle.

  While she wiped the food off her face, Aloysius headed for the door. “No offense,” he said, “but I’m going back to my safe place now. You call me if you need anything, but you’ve had a full morning. Maybe you’re going to need a nice rest or something. Stream a movie. One of those Nicholas Sparks things all the girls like.”

  “You’re probably right.” She was full of doubt now. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing.

  I mean, what more proof of life do I need than Harris and his wife having make-up sex? Maybe their combative relationship is just foreplay to them. Ick.

  She kept that speculation to herself. Aloysius had already been traumatized enough.

  “Thank you a million times,” she told him with a sigh, slowly giving up her crazy thoughts of a murderous neighbor. She felt a little like she was losing her mind. Was this what Lynetta felt like? “I owe you for this.”

  His expression turned soft. “No worries, baby,” he told her just before leaving. “According to my mama, I gotta lot of brownie points to make up if I want to get to heaven.”

  Josie finished half the sandwich before an overwhelming urge to nap came over her. She’d had an eventful morning, that was for sure. She’d been hoping to regroup and hobble over to Pleasant Valley to check on Lynetta later that day. The rental SUV didn’t take much effort to drive, and anyway Josie’s gas pedal foot was uninjured.

  The pain pill they’d given her at the hospital, however, was another story. She slumped back onto the couch. Her ankle throbbed, but her head felt numb and floaty. The sense of urgency she’d felt about getting Lynetta into her own private wing of Pleasant Valley didn’t seem like such a huge deal anymore. After all, the woman had sounded fine when Josie had last spoken with her.

  “Good lord. I only took half of a pill,” she told Bert as she leaned back on the couch cushions. “A whole one would have been crazy. But man, I feel good. Wish I had more cookies though. Gotta find some…right after this nap.”

  She gave up the fight and let her eyelids slide down.

  

  When Josie woke up, it was so dark she had to blink a few times before she was sure her eyes were actually open. She wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth and rubbed her head, which pounded with a wicked and relentless drumbeat.

  Why did I sleep so long? A half of a pill shouldn’t have knocked me out like that! And what woke me up?

  Left alone, she might have slept until dawn. Come to think of it, why hadn’t she? She was so disoriented.

  She tried to stretch her leg—oh, right. Ouch. Her ankle complained…for which she was both resentful and grateful. A sprained ankle wasn’t any kind of excuse to sleep that long when she had a job to do.

  “What the heck is going on here?” she said, her words slurring. She pulled herself up into a seated position and felt around for the lamp cord on the table next to her. When she couldn’t locate it in the dark, she patted the sofa cushions around her, searching for her phone.

  What time is it?

  She accidentally stuck her hand in a smear of olive oil—her empty sandwich wrapper and plate had been on her lap when she’d fallen asleep.

  Uh oh. Where’s the other half of the sandwich?

  Her patting on the couch became more tentative as she expected to encounter a messy lump of deli meat and condiments. Her fingers found the edge of her phone and she woke up the home screen. Alarm cleared some of the fog from her brain.

  “It’s ten o’clock at night! What the heck? Why didn’t you wake me up, you goofy dog? Aren’t you hungry?”

  A lazy tail thump on the floorboards came from across the room as Josie used the torchlight from her phone to find the lamp switch. A warm yellow glow filled the sitting room as she blinked at her lap, expecting to find the rest of the sandwich in an oily heap.

  Instead, she found nothing but the plate and paper wrapper that had been licked clean. This discovery cleared the rest of the confusion from her mind. Her exclamation of shock and outrage barely got a response from Bert. She swiveled her wounded foot around to the floor and carefully stood up on her good leg. A couple of hops on the hardwood brought her to him and she used a nearby bookshelf to steady herself as she did a one-legged squat so she could examine him.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, as if he could tell her.

  A lackluster tail wag did nothing to allay her concern. At a slow motion pace that she could actually keep up with limping after him, half-gimpy and all, he heaved himself up to his legs and wove his way to the back door, which she opened without a word, not even bothering to find his leash. Neither of them was up for a chase—not squirrels or a sudden bid for freedom.

  Gripping the door jamb for balance and not caring about the frigid air she was letting into the house, she watched him waddle out to the yard where he promptly got sick and disposed of his half of the sandwich. This trip had not been kind to him, and it was her fault. He wasn’t normally a dog to lose his food and now it had happened twice.

  “This is not normal.” She cursed a blue streak and banged the doorframe with her fist. “Dammit, Bert. I think we were drugged.”

  Chapter 24

  “Why would Aloysius do that to us?!” she exclaimed in outrage, feeling violated. She’d trusted him. He’d helped her with her ankle all morning. He’d driven her to the ER and sat with her for hours. Okay, a few minutes until the germs had skeezed him out.

  That two-faced, cookie-bearing turncoat.…This is not ho
w you get to heaven, mister.

  In the kitchen, she filled a small plastic pitcher with water and scooted it across the counter toward Bert’s water dish, rather than try to hop and carry it. After she sloshed in into his bowl, he drank like he’d just finished crossing the Sahara.

  Come to think of it, I feel the same way.

  While she chugged a full twelve ounces herself, she considered her options. A quick check of her surroundings reassured her that nothing had been stolen. Neither of them had been harmed—other than her current headache. They could go to the vet, the human ER again, the police, or back to the couch, which was definitely the most appealing choice.

  “What did he give us? Was it even legal? I was already on painkillers. What if I’d had a reaction? What if we’d had allergies? Was it a roofie?”

  Bert barely gave her a glance with his red-rimmed eyes as he plodded back to his place by the now burned out fire and sat down heavily with an old man’s groan.

  “I feel you, buddy,” she said, making her way back to the couch. She really didn’t want to go to the hospital at the moment, and if neither of them got worse in the next couple hours, she was just going to wait it out instead of paying another visit to Dr. Patel.

  What proof do I have anyway? An empty sandwich wrapper and a groggy dog.

  If she had two good ankles and a thicker coat, she’d march next door and confront the lanky liarhead…that six-foot swindler. She’d trusted him—and this was how he’d repaid that faith?

  Why?

  “It was those stupid snickerdoodles. We never should have let him inside in the first place. Never trust strangers with cookies—” She gasped aloud. “Those were probably drugged, too. Good job barfing them up in the bushes, buddy. You saved us. That was a near miss.”

  Speaking of misses, the couch cushions vibrated under her rear end, and she dug out her phone from where she’d just sat down. It buzzed to let her know she had voicemail.

  She hoped the message might be from Susan with a lead on Lynetta’s next of kin—the woman’s real next of kin, that was, and not Josie. If Susan could help her locate more relatives, Josie would be on the tollway out of Lake Park Villa first thing in the morning. But instead, the voicemail was from the hospital. She almost didn’t listen to it, figuring it would be a follow-up check on her morning’s ankle treatment, but the message began playing before she could figure out how to skip it.

  “Miss Tucker, it’s Ashley calling from LPV Hospital. You need to know your Aunt Lynetta is back with us. She’s been admitted. If you could come over here, we’d appreciate it.”

  Not again. Go over there? Josie groaned and checked the time. The call had come in about an hour ago and it was now just past 10:00 p.m. Can’t this wait until morning?

  She slumped back on the couch with her ankle propped up on the coffee table and called the hospital switchboard. Then she was routed through a maze of electronic options for several minutes before she was connected with an emergency department nurse who knew what was going on.

  Josie tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. She’d just been drugged, for Pete’s sake. She didn’t want to have to go out into the frigid night, no matter how cozy the butt warmers in the rental car’s seat were.

  “Miss Tucker, thank you for getting back to us.” The nurse’s voice was quiet and calm, and where Josie had thought she’d be judged for not having called sooner, she instead detected a weird note of understanding that didn’t make sense. “If you could come to the hospital immediately, it would be appreciated. Your aunt’s situation is quite dire.”

  

  “What do you mean by ‘dire?’” Josie asked. “I don’t mean to sound rude, but she was just there yesterday and it wasn’t very urgent.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak directly with your aunt’s doctor,” the nurse on the line said. “I’m just reading the messages they left for you and they’re asking you to come in right now.”

  The first tick of misgiving snaked up Josie’s spine.

  “I sprained my ankle really badly today. In fact, I was just there in the ER this morning.”

  “I understand,” the woman’s voice said, still maintaining that preternatural calm that was beginning to unnerve Josie. “Do you have someone who can drive you here? Or maybe call for a ride?”

  “I—” The dread that was reaching its cold fingers up Josie’s back intensified. “I’ll be right there.”

  Somehow, with the blood pounding in her ears from fear and adrenaline—yet strangely numb in her foot—she managed to get both boots on and her crutches propped under her arms in her coat. Bert thumped his tail a couple times when she stooped to check on him again, so she crossed her fingers that he would just sleep the unexpected bender off.

  One emergency at a time—and Lynetta has just taken top priority.

  Josie managed to hop-scuttle-slip with her crutches out the kitchen door and down the two steps into the backyard, which was closest to where her rental car was parked. “Almost drives itself, right?” she asked, giving herself a little pep talk before she stowed her crutches in the back seat and climbed behind the wheel.

  At least the brain fog was totally gone and she wasn’t under the influence of whatever Aloysius had slipped them any longer—and she was almost a hundred percent sure he had, because one little pain pill wouldn’t have conked her out like that.

  Adrenaline and dread had cleared the rest of the haze from her mind. She could bake a soufflé right now, cater an intimate seven-course meal for fifteen, write an article on transcendentalism, calculate times tables up to twenty…okay, maybe that last one was an exaggeration. She sucked at math even on her best day.

  She backed down the driveway slowly, not sure how well her rental handled on the icy street. Luckily at this time of night, her neighbors were tucked in their cozy homes, getting ready for bed, or watching TV by their toasty fireplaces. A pleasant woodsy undertone scented the still and quiet air. Thin curls of smoke rose from a chimney here and there, and the moonlight shined off the ice covering the front lawn of her house. And—

  “Holy Mother of God!”

  She simultaneously slammed on the breaks as the car began to beep its warning tone. A figure, overexposed in white light in her car’s rear camera feed on the dash loomed large, inches from her back bumper. Another shot of adrenaline coursed through her. Anymore and her hands would start shaking like she’d slammed a triple espresso.

  The person—it actually was a person and not a Sasquatch or a frozen Jack Nicholson-faced ice demon—came around to Josie’s side of the car and tapped on the driver’s side window. She could tell from the small area of exposed fair skin around the eyes and nose that it wasn’t Aloysius, but she had trouble placing the familiar yet strange, smiling eyes.

  “It’s just me,” he said, his voice muffled through the scarf wrapped around his neck and chin. “It’s Harris. Your neighbor. Harris Kane.” He pulled the scarf down so she could see his face, which looked completely different now that he was cheerful—which also in no way mitigated his suspicious quality. She should have recognized his silly checkered cap though.

  Oh, now he wants to be friendly? Why is he acting so cheerful? Did having sex dispel his crabbiness? Or is he happy because he took a shovel to his horrible wife’s head?

  Josie rolled down the window two inches. “Do you need something?”

  “Oh. No,” he said. His smiled faltered a fraction. “I just saw you out here and I was walking by. It’s such a clear night, I was enjoying the stars. I heard that you slipped on the steps this morning, so I thought I’d see if you were okay. I put some salt down, by the way. I hope you didn’t get hurt, but since you’re going out, you’re obviously all right.”

  She was so not okay. Her foot was throbbing inside its boot, she was worried about Lynetta, and her wacky neighbor—her other wacky neighbor—had possibly drugged her. She was so far from okay, she almost felt energized by it.

  “Yep, I’m good,” she to
ld him. But I’ll be better when I’m far away from you, mister. “I’m just on my way out. Right now. So I’ll be going. Bye.”

  She started to roll up the window, ready to mash the gas pedal as soon as he got his toes out of the way. In fact, if he didn’t step back soon, she was just going to roll over them.

  “Right. Well, let me know if you need anything. Feel free to drop by and say hi. Maybe tomorrow. I could make some burgers.”

  She blinked and forgot to breathe for a second or two. “With your wife?”

  “She’s out of town,” he said with an oily smile. “Left last night. So just let me know when you’re free.”

  Right. I’m out of here.

  Instead of answering, she simply waved and raised her window up the rest of the way. She put the car back in reverse and began a slow roll toward the street, forcing him to move out of its path.

  Burgers? Seriously?

  She needed to eat a burger with him like she needed blunt force trauma to the back of the head.

  Chapter 25

  “Is my aunt…is Lynetta all right?” Josie asked Ashley as soon as she saw the young nurse heading down the hall of the hospital in her squeaky athletic shoes.

  The rubber stopper tips of Josie’s crutches stuck on the shiny floor as she swung herself toward the nurse with the baby face. Josie’s underarms were starting to ache fiercely and she still felt like a stork ice skating on a pair of pogo sticks. Still, this floor was much better than trying to crutch it across the icy ground of the parking lot outside.

  “I just paged Dr. Charles. She wanted to see you as soon as you got here,” Ashley said, gesturing for Josie to follow her. They passed another tiny, private consultation room that had Josie’s heart rate spiking upward, but then veered down another hall into an area of patient rooms.

  Ashley pulled back a curtain and Josie stuttered to a halt. The last time she’d seen Lynetta, the woman had been sleeping peacefully in her hospital bed like a robust yet geriatric fairy tale princess, with rosy cheeks and long, flowing gray hair. Now the woman lay still and pale—nearly devoid of color as if drained clean of life.