by Leslie Meier
Hayley checked her watch. “It’s almost nine o’clock. I think it’s time we wrap this up.”
“We still haven’t hit School Street yet,” Danny cried.
“You guys don’t have room for any more candy in your pumpkins,” Hayley said, laughing.
“I figured this might happen given how awesome we all look, so I bought extra pumpkins for us earlier today! We can drop the full ones off at the house and pick up the empty ones and do another round!”
“That just sounds greedy, Danny,” Hayley said.
“Halloween comes around just once a year. Why not take full advantage of it?”
“Mommy, my feet are tired,” Dustin whined, tugging on the bottom half of her white dress.
Hayley turned to her husband. “We’re done, Danny. Let’s just go home.”
Danny shuffled his feet, and bowed his head, moping, but did what he was told. The family turned onto Glen-mary Road and walked en masse down the sidewalk toward their house.
“Can I have a Jolly Rancher when we get home?” Gemma asked.
“Just one. I don’t need you on a sugar high before bedtime,” Hayley said.
As they approached the Powell family home, Hayley noticed two people standing in the driveway of the house next door to them. It was dark, but Hayley could make out a man and a woman, and they appeared to be in the middle of an argument. The porch light from the Powell house was bright enough to illuminate the man’s face so she could identify him. It was Damien Salinger. He was clutching a sharp ax in one hand, moving it around menacingly, as if he was coiled and ready to strike at any moment. The woman’s back was to them, but Hayley instantly knew it wasn’t Mrs. Salinger because this woman was about a foot shorter and rather stout and had auburn hair.
“Look, it’s Gomez Addams,” Danny sneered.
“Shhhh, he’ll hear you,” Hayley scolded.
“Mommy, is Mr. Salinger going to hit that lady with his ax?” Dustin practically yelled.
“Let’s hope not, dear,” Hayley whispered.
They were finally close enough to hear what Damien and the woman were saying.
“If you think this is over, you’re wrong,” Damien seethed. “Not by a long shot. You’re tangling with the wrong man, I promise you that,” Damien retorted.
“You don’t scare me with your threatening tone. I’ve dealt with a lot worse than you,” the woman spit out, not the least bit intimidated by the weird man brandishing an ax.
“Get off my property,” Damien warned.
“Listen, Salinger, I’m not some submissive housewife you can boss around, like your own wife!”
At the mention of his wife, Rosemary, Damien gripped the ax tighter and then, without warning, raised it in the air. The woman, startled, stumbled back a few steps, almost tripping over her own two feet.
Hayley opened her mouth to scream, but Danny beat her to it by shouting, “Good evening!”
Damien suddenly noticed the entire Powell family, Gladiator Dad, Marilyn Mom, and the two kids, Pink Power Ranger and Jack Sparrow, all frozen on the sidewalk, gaping at him with an ax raised over his head.
This had discombobulated the woman enough that she had her hands up in front of her face to protect herself. “You’re crazy! Do you hear me, crazy!”
When she spun around, Hayley instantly recognized her. It was Wendi Jo Willis, a local Realtor, and if she was being honest, a big pain in the butt. Wendi Jo was abrasive, conniving, and willing to do just about anything to sell a house. Whenever her name came up in conversation, either at work or at their favorite watering hole in town, Drinks Like a Fish, people would easily refer to her as that “loudmouth” or “annoying harpy” or “she-devil,” just to name a few choice descriptors.
As Wendi Jo hustled past the Powells, she screamed so loud she scared the kids, “You’re living next to a crazy person!”
And then she was gone.
Danny stood protectively in front of his family as Damien, as if almost in a trance, still had the ax raised over his head. “Dude, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Damien stood there, gazing after Wendi Jo as she got into her car parked across the street and sped off. “She was trespassing.”
“So what? You were going to settle the matter with that?” he hollered, pointing to the ax.
Damien finally seemed to snap out of it. He looked at the ax he was holding above his head and slowly lowered it. “No . . .” He then gestured to the side of the house where a stack of chopped wood was piled up. “I was chopping wood. We’ve got a fire going inside.”
Hayley didn’t believe him for a moment. She had seen the wild look in his eye, as if he was unable to control his rage. In her gut, she knew he was fully capable of using that ax as a weapon.
Without another word, Damien tossed the ax over by the pile of wood and stalked back inside his house.
Dustin called after him, raising his plastic pumpkin, “Trick or treat!”
Danny covered Dustin’s mouth with his hand. “I don’t think you want any tricks or treats from that guy, champ.”
Hayley had been disappointed that the new family next door wasn’t friendly, but now she was worried that it might be more than that after what they had just witnessed. Damien Salinger struck her as unhinged and possibly dangerous.
Chapter Four
Hayley reached over and pinched Danny’s nose in an attempt to stop his incessant snoring. He had been particularly amorous when they went to bed just a few minutes earlier, but after whispering some sweet nothings in her ear as he wrapped her in his arms, he drifted off to sleep. He had taken the night off from the store but was still exhausted from escorting the kids around the entire neighborhood trick-or-treating. Five minutes later, as if on cue, Danny’s mouth opened like a drawbridge and he was off to the races, snoring as loud as a jackhammer.
Hayley always wondered why, when it came to married couples, the one who snores always falls asleep first. She tried her usual tactics first, nudging him and gently telling him to stop, as if that had any chance of working. Then she rolled him over on his side, and he stopped for a bit, but as soon as she turned over he started up again. And now she was cutting off air to his nose, and got ready to duck when he would inevitably start thrashing around and waving his arms. She let go just as he stirred awake and she quickly closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. He looked around and then settled back down again, mumbling something to himself that she couldn’t make out.
Two minutes later he was at it again. Hayley reached over to the bedside table and picked up her iPod and earplugs and began listening to some Enya songs hoping they would lull her to sleep. It seemed to be working. Her eyes got heavy and were slowly closing when suddenly she felt something wet on her face. She tried to brush it away, but it was relentless, like a sloppy tongue lapping up salt on her skin. When she realized this wasn’t some kind of strange dream and there was something on her face, she jolted up in bed and yanked the buds out of her ears.
She squinted at a little fur ball sitting in her lap and relaxed as she could make out in the dark the happy, panting face of the new family puppy, Leroy. She reached down and patted him gently on the head and then glanced up to see two figures standing at the foot of the bed. Hayley let out a scream and pulled the covers up to her neck as if that would help. Leroy bounced off her lap and almost flew off the side of the bed. Hayley quickly reached over and snapped on the light to see the large blinking eyes of Gemma and Dustin in their pajamas, looking terrified.
“What? What is it?” Hayley gasped.
“Mommy, we’re scared!”
Danny was still snoring and Hayley decided she wasn’t going to deal with this matter alone since he was the one responsible, so she shook him, harder this time, and when that still didn’t work, she slapped his face until he groggily opened his eyes.
“What’s happening? What time is it?” he sputtered.
“It’s time for you to deal with what you’ve done!”
“What are talking about?” He moaned as he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and yawned.
Hayley pointed at the two children, who were now climbing up on the bed with them.
“What are you guys still doing up?” Danny asked as Gemma scurried over and hugged her father while Dustin did the same with his mother.
“I’ll tell you what they’re still doing up,” Hayley said, exasperated. “You frightened them with all your scary movies and ghost stories and now they can’t sleep!”
“Aw, come on. You guys know none of that is real, don’t you?”
“They’re nine and twelve, Danny. They’re very impressionable,” Hayley scolded.
Danny looked at them curiously. “So which one kept you both up?”
Gemma shook her head. “It wasn’t a movie or one of your stories, Dad . . .”
Hayley looked at Gemma, confused. “Then what?”
Gemma exchanged a look with Dustin, as if they were afraid to speak because they might get into trouble.
“Tell me . . .” Hayley warned.
Dustin was the first one to break. “We snuck downstairs to eat some of our Halloween candy! It was Gemma’s idea!”
“Tattletale!” Gemma screamed.
“Okay, so you ate too much and you had a bad dream!”
“It wasn’t a dream! It was real!” Dustin declared.
“We saw him . . .” Gemma said quietly.
“Who?” Danny asked.
Gemma shivered slightly. “That mean man who just moved in next door . . .”
“Mr. Salinger?” Hayley asked.
Gemma nodded, fear in her eyes.
Danny was now captivated by where this was going. “Where did you see him?”
Gemma spoke slowly, making sure to remember all the details. “We were in the dining room picking out candy and we saw him out the window in his yard and he was dragging something across the lawn. It was rolled up in one of those thingies . . .”
“A rug?” Hayley asked.
“No . . . That thing Aunt Mona uses to cover the back of her pickup truck sometimes,” Gemma said.
“A tarp!” Hayley guessed.
“Did you see what was in the tarp?” Danny asked.
Gemma nodded again. She looked to her brother, who had his whole face buried in the crook of Hayley’s arm, like he didn’t want to relive it.
Danny held Gemma tighter and looked down at her cute but anxious face. “Well, what was it, sweetheart?”
“It was dark, but then as he passed by the garage, the light outside came on, like it does whenever a deer comes out of the woods and gets too close, and we could see one end of it and it looked like . . .” Gemma stopped and scrunched up her nose at the memory.
“A lady’s head!” Dustin interjected.
“What?” Hayley yelled.
“A body?” Danny bellowed.
“Yes! We could see her hair and part of her face and she wasn’t moving!” Gemma shouted.
Hayley might have suspected the kids were playing a trick on their father, trying to get back at him for scaring them with his spooky stories, but neither of her kids was that good of an actor, and so she took them at their word. They had seen something.
Danny shot out of bed. “Show me!”
The kids dutifully hopped down off the bed and followed him as he bolted down the stairs.
Hayley sighed and crawled out of bed. She threw on a robe and trudged downstairs, where she found Danny and the kids staring out the dining room window. Leroy was with them, tail wagging.
“He was right there!” Dustin said, pushing his index finger against the glass and smudging it.
“He’s gone now,” Danny said, sounding disappointed. “You think he might have followed that real estate lady Wendi Jo Willis after we went inside and whacked her in the head with his ax and was getting rid of the body?”
“Danny! Not in front of the kids!” Hayley screamed.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve gotten nothing but creepy vibes from Salinger ever since he moved in a few days ago!” Danny said.
“I don’t believe any of this nonsense!” Hayley said. “Now one of you give Leroy a treat and then we’ll all go to bed.”
“Can we sleep with you tonight?” Dustin asked, shaken.
Danny patted him on the head. “Of course you can, champ.”
Hayley was halfway up the stairs at this point, resigned to the fact that she would be overtired tomorrow at work because she was about to be kept up by a snoring husband and two squirming kids who would be bumping into her all night.
Chapter Five
Hayley was exhausted at work the following morning, having gotten very little sleep after her impromptu slumber party with the kids. She had downed two extra cups of coffee to try and stay awake at her desk. It was unseasonably warm outside and so the office was stuffy and hot and empty since all the reporters were out covering stories. The peaceful quiet threatened to lull her into falling asleep. Her eyes were drooping and a heavy yawn relaxed her to the point where her shoulders sagged as she tapped the keys on her computer. Suddenly the door to the front office blew open and Hattie Jenkins hustled inside at a remarkable speed for a nearly ninety-year-old.
“Good morning, Hattie,” Hayley said, shaking her head to wake herself up while suppressing another yawn.
“I don’t have time for small talk, Hayley,” Hattie barked. “We have an emergency.”
“We do?” Hayley asked, looking around at the empty office.
“Yes, I just got a call from Dottie Willis on my car phone as I was driving here.”
Car phone? What was this, the 1970s?
Hattie didn’t even pretend to be caught up in all the latest technology nonsense like cell phones. She said she didn’t have time. She had a life to live.
“Did something happen to Dottie?” Hayley asked, concerned.
“No, why?” Hattie said, puzzled.
“You said there was an emergency.”
“Dottie’s fine. Where is everybody?”
“There’s a meeting at the Town Hall about seasonal worker housing, and a volleyball game at the high school, and a barrel of bait fell out of the back of a fisherman’s truck on Main Street, so it is pretty slippery and stinky. The reporters have a lot to cover . . .”
“Where’s Sal?”
“Good-bye breakfast for Razor Rick. He’s closing his barber shop after fifty-some years.”
“Why wasn’t I invited to that? I am a good friend of Razor Rick. We even dated for a bit when we were younger. I bet it’s because of his wife, Cecile, why I was left off the guest list. She never liked me, probably because Razor Rick still carries a torch for me even after all these years. I was never in the habit of dating much younger men back in the day, but I just couldn’t say no when he first asked me out in 1967. How could I possibly resist that beautiful smile of his? It still warms the cockles—”
“Hattie, I don’t mean to interrupt, but when you walked in here you mentioned something about an emergency,” Hayley said gently.
“I did?” Hattie asked, confused. Suddenly it came back to her. “That’s right! I did! Dottie Willis called me!”
“And you said she’s fine,” Hayley said, trying to be helpful.
“She is, but her daughter’s missing! The crazy one that nobody likes!”
“Wendi Jo?”
“Yes! Wendi Jo! She was supposed to have dinner with Dottie last night but she never showed up.”
“She didn’t call?”
“No, and Dottie says they talk on the phone at least three times a day, although I don’t know how Dottie can stand it. Have you heard that grating, annoying voice of hers?”
“Well, I guess she puts up with it because Wendi Jo is her daughter, after all.”
“I couldn’t do it. Anyway, Dottie is extremely worried. She must have left a dozen messages on Wendi Jo’s voice mail, but she still hasn’t heard from her.”
“That is rather odd,” Hayley remarked, her mind racing.
>
“Dottie called that new chief of police, you know the one I’m talking about,” Hattie said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “The one who is light in the loafers, if you know what I mean.”
“You mean gay,” Hayley sighed. “I do know because he’s dating my brother.”
Hattie scrunched up her nose. “Oh, that’s right. I forgot. Well, Chief what’s-his-name . . .”
“Chief Alvares,” Hayley said tightly. “Sergio Alvares.”
“Yes, Chief Aloe Vera. He said he can’t file a missing person report until Wendi Jo is gone at least twenty-four hours.”
“When did Dottie last speak to Wendi Jo?”
“Yesterday around two o’clock, she said.”
“So he can officially open a case in about three hours.”
“I just hope Dottie doesn’t have a heart attack before then. She’s worried sick. I’m going to go over and check on her during my lunch hour.”
“Do you mind if I tag along?”
“I didn’t know you two were friends.”
“We’re not really, more acquaintances. But I feel sorry for what she’s going through, and would like to offer my help, if there is anything I can do.”
“Not sure what you think you can do, but suit yourself.”
Hattie ambled into the back bullpen toward her office.
Hayley watched her go, a wave of concern washing over her.
All she could think about was the fierce argument that she, Danny and the kids had witnessed between Wendi Jo Willis and Damien Salinger on Halloween night. Couple that with Gemma and Dustin swearing they saw Salinger dragging a tarp with what looked like the top of a woman’s head sticking out if it, and Hayley felt there was now strong cause to be concerned. Her deepest fear was that Wendi Jo Willis wasn’t just missing, she very well might be dead.
