“None of this adds up,” Slick said. “You’re being silly.”
“It’s a child a year, for three years,” Patricia said. “I know they’re not our children, but they’re children. Are we not supposed to care about them because they’re poor and black? That’s how we acted before and now he wants Blue. When will he stop? Maybe he’ll want Tiger next, or Merit, or one of Maryellen’s?”
“This is how witch hunts happen,” Slick said. “People get all worked up over nothing and before you know it someone gets hurt.”
“Are you a hypocrite?” Patricia asked. “You’re using your Reformation Party to protect your children from Halloween, but are you lifting a finger to protect them from this monster? Either you believe in the Devil or you don’t.”
She hated the bullying tone in her voice, but the more she talked the more she convinced herself that she needed to ask these questions. The more Slick denied what was right in front of her eyes, the more she reminded Patricia of how she’d acted all those years ago.
“Monster is a very strong word for someone who’s been so good to our families,” Slick said.
Patricia turned Miss Mary’s photograph over.
“How is he not aging, Slick?” she said. “Explain that to me and I’ll stop asking questions.”
Slick chewed her lip.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“The men are all out of town this weekend,” Patricia said. “The cleaning company Mrs. Greene works for cleans his house on Saturday and Mrs. Greene is going to be there and she’s going to let me in, and while she cleans, I’m going to see if I can find some answers.”
“You can’t break into someone’s house,” Slick said, horrified.
“If we don’t find anything,” Patricia said, “then I’ll stop and it’s all over. Help me finish this. We’ll either find something or we won’t, but either way it’ll be over.”
Slick pressed her fingertips to her mouth and studied her bookshelves for a long time, then picked up the photograph and considered it again. Finally, she put it back down.
“Let me pray on this,” she said. “I won’t tell Leland, but let me keep the photograph and the folder and pray on them.”
“Thank you,” Patricia said.
It never occurred to her not to trust Slick.
CHAPTER 29
Slick called on Thursday at 10:25 in the morning.
“I’ll come,” she said. “But I’ll only look. I won’t open anything that’s closed.”
“Thank you,” Patricia said.
“I don’t feel right about this,” Slick said.
“I don’t either,” Patricia said, and then she hung up and called Mrs. Greene to tell her the good news.
“This is a big mistake,” Mrs. Greene said.
“It’ll go faster with three of us,” Patricia said.
“Maybe,” Mrs. Greene said. “But all I’m telling you is that it’s a mistake.”
She kissed Carter good-bye on Friday morning at 7:30, and he left for Tampa on Delta flight 1237 from the Charleston airport, with a layover in Atlanta. On Saturday morning at 9:30 she drove Blue to Saturday school. She told Korey they could work on her list of colleges together, but by noon, when she had to go pick up Blue from Saturday school, Korey had barely glimpsed at the catalogs.
When she pulled up in front of Albemarle at 12:05, the only other car there was Slick’s white Saab. She got out and tapped on the driver’s-side window.
“Hi, Mrs. Campbell,” Greer said, rolling down the window.
“Is your mother all right?” Patricia asked.
“She had to take something over to the church,” Greer said. “She said she might be seeing you later?”
“I’m helping her plan her Reformation Party,” Patricia said.
“Sounds fun,” Greer said.
She and Blue got home at 12:40. Korey had left a note on the counter saying she was going downtown to step aerobics and then to a movie with Laurie Gibson. At 2:15, Patricia knocked on Blue’s bedroom door.
“I’m going out for a little while,” she called.
He didn’t answer. She assumed he’d heard.
She didn’t want anyone to see her car, and it was a warm afternoon anyway, so she walked up Middle Street. She saw Mrs. Greene’s car parked in James Harris’s driveway, next to a green-and-white Greener Cleaners truck. James Harris’s Corsica was gone.
She hated his house. Two years ago, he’d torn down Mrs. Savage’s cottage, split the lot in half, and sold the piece of it closest to the Hendersons to a dentist from up north someplace, then built himself a McMansion that stretched from property line to property line. A massive Southern lump with concrete pineapples at the end of the drive, it stood on stilts with an enclosed ground floor for parking. It was a white monstrosity painted white with all its various tin roofs painted rust red, encircled by a huge porch.
She’d been inside once for his housewarming party last summer, and it was all sisal runners and enormous, heavy, machine-milled furniture, nothing with any personality, everything anonymous and done in beige, and cream, and off-white, and slate. It felt like the embalmed and swollen corpse of a ramshackle Southern beach house, tarted up with cosmetics and central air.
Patricia turned onto McCants then turned again and looped back until she stood on Pitt Street directly behind James Harris’s house. She could see its red roofs looming over the trees at the end of a little drainage ditch that ran between two property lines from this side of the block to the other. When it rained, the ditch carried the overflow water off Pitt down to the harbor. But it hadn’t rained in weeks and now it was a swampy trickle, with a worn path the children used as a shortcut between blocks running alongside it.
She stepped off the root-cracked sidewalk and walked to his house along the path, as fast as possible, feeling like eyes were watching her the entire way. James Harris’s backyard lay in the heavy shadow of his house, and it was as chilly as the water at the bottom of a lake. His grass didn’t get enough light and the yellowed blades crunched beneath her feet.
She walked up the stairs to his back porch and paused, looking back to see if she could spot Slick, but she hadn’t gotten there yet. She kept moving, wanting to get out of sight as soon as possible. She knocked on the back door.
Inside, she heard a vacuum cleaner whirl down and a minute later the weather seal cracked and the door opened to reveal Mrs. Greene in a green polo shirt.
“Hello, Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said, loudly. “I came to see if I could find my keys. That I left here.”
“Mr. Harris isn’t home,” Mrs. Greene responded loudly, which let Patricia know that the other woman working with her was nearby. “Maybe you should come back later.”
“I really need my keys,” Patricia said.
“I’m sure he won’t mind if you look for them,” Mrs. Greene said.
She stepped out of the way, and Patricia came inside. The kitchen had a large island in the middle, half of it covered by some kind of stainless-steel grill. Dark brown cabinets lined the walls, and the refrigerator, dishwasher, and sink were all stainless steel. The room felt cold. Patricia wished she’d brought a sweater.
“Is Slick here yet?” Patricia asked quietly.
“Not yet,” Mrs. Greene said. “But we can’t wait.”
A woman in the same green polo shirt as Mrs. Greene came in from the hall. She wore yellow rubber dishwashing gloves and a shiny leather fanny pack.
“Lora,” Mrs. Greene said. “This is Mrs. Campbell from down the street. She thinks she left her keys here and is going to look for them.”
Patricia gave what she hoped looked like a friendly smile.
“Hi, Lora,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. Don’t let me get in your way.”
Lora turned her large brown eyes from Patricia to Mrs. Greene, then ba
ck to Patricia. She reached down to her belt and unclipped a mobile phone.
“There’s no need,” Mrs. Greene said. “I know Mrs. Campbell. I used to clean for her.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” Patricia said, pretending to scan the granite countertops. “I know those keys are somewhere.”
Her huge brown eyes still on Mrs. Greene, Lora flipped the phone open and pressed a button.
“Lora, no!” Patricia said, too loudly.
Lora turned and looked at Patricia. She blinked once, holding the open phone in her yellow rubber hand.
“Lora,” Patricia said. “I really do need to find my keys. They could be anywhere and it might take me a while. But you won’t get in any trouble for what I’m doing. I promise. And I’ll pay you for the inconvenience.”
She had left her purse at home, but Mrs. Greene had told her to bring money, just in case. She reached into her pocket and pulled out four of the five ten-dollar bills she’d brought and placed them on the kitchen island closest to Lora, then stepped away.
“Mr. Harris won’t be coming back until tomorrow,” Mrs. Greene said.
Lora stepped forward, took the bills, and made them disappear into her fanny pack.
“Thank you so much, Lora,” Patricia said.
Mrs. Greene and Lora left the kitchen and the vacuum cleaner roared back to life, and Patricia looked out the back window to see if she could spot Slick coming up the path, but it was empty. She turned and walked through the wide front hall and looked out the window by the door. The glass was artfully rippled to make it seem as if it were antique. Slick’s Saab wasn’t in the driveway. It wasn’t like her to be late, although if she’d lost her nerve at the last minute maybe that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. She didn’t know how Lora would react to two of them searching the house.
Besides, there wasn’t much in it. The kitchen drawers were empty. The cabinets barely contained any food. No junk drawer. No magnetized advertisements from the exterminator or the pizza delivery people on the fridge door. No toaster on the countertops, no blenders, no waffle irons, no George Foreman grills. It was the same all over the house. She decided to go upstairs. If he had anything personal it was more likely to be hidden there.
She started up the carpeted stairs, the vacuum cleaner noise falling away below her. She stood in the upstairs hall lined with closed doors and suddenly felt like she was on the verge of making a terrible mistake. She shouldn’t be here. She should turn around and leave. What had she been thinking? She thought about Bluebeard where the bride was told not to look behind a certain door by her husband and of course she did and discovered the corpses of his previous brides. Her mother had told her the moral of the story was that you should trust your husband and never pry. But wasn’t it better to know the truth? She headed for the master bedroom.
The master bedroom smelled of hot vinyl and new carpet, even though the carpet must be two years old by now. The bed was made neatly and had four posts, each one crowned with a carved pineapple. An armchair and table sat by the window. On the table was a notebook. Every page was empty. Patricia looked in the walk-in closet. All the clothes hung in dry-cleaner bags, even his blue jeans, and they all smelled like cleaning chemicals.
She searched the bathroom. Combs, brushes, toothpaste, and floss, but no prescriptions. Band-Aids and gauze but nothing that told her anything about the occupant. It smelled like sealant and Sheetrock. The sink and the shower were dry. Patricia went back to the hall and tried again.
She went from room to room, opening empty closets, looking inside empty drawers. Everything smelled like fresh paint. Every room echoed emptily. Every bed was carefully made up with pristine pillow shams and decorative pillows. The house felt abandoned.
“Find anything?” a voice said, and Patricia leapt into the air.
“Ohmygoodness,” she gasped, pressing her hand to the middle of her chest. “You scared me half to death.”
Mrs. Greene stood in the doorway.
“Did you find anything?” she repeated.
“It’s all empty,” Patricia said. “Slick hasn’t come by, has she?”
“No,” Mrs. Greene said. “Lora is having lunch in the kitchen.”
“There’s nothing here,” Patricia said. “This is pointless.”
“There’s nothing in this entire house?” Mrs. Greene said. “Nowhere? Are you sure you looked?”
“I looked everywhere,” Patricia said. “I’m going to leave before Lora changes her mind.”
“I don’t believe that,” Mrs. Greene said.
Her stubbornness provoked a flash of irritation from Patricia. “If you can find something I missed, by all means, feel free,” she said.
The two of them stood, glaring at each other. The disappointment made Patricia irritable. She’d come this far, and now nothing. There was no path forward.
“We tried,” she finally said. “If Slick comes, tell her I came to my senses.”
She walked past Mrs. Greene, heading for the stairs.
“What about that?” Mrs. Greene said from behind her.
Wearily, Patricia turned and saw Mrs. Greene with her neck craned back, staring at the hall ceiling. More specifically, she was staring at a small black hook in the hall ceiling. Using it as a landmark, Patricia could just make out the rectangular line of a door around it, the hinges painted white. She got a broom from the kitchen and used the eyelet in its handle to snag the hook. They both pulled and, with a groan of springs and a cracking of paint, the rectangular edges got bigger, darker, and the attic door dropped down and the metal stairs attached to it unfolded.
A dry, abandoned smell rolled down into the hall.
“I’ll go up,” Patricia said.
She gripped the edges hard, and the ladder rattled as she climbed. She felt too heavy, like her foot was going to break the steps. Then her head passed through the ceiling and she was in the dark.
Her eyes adjusted and she realized it wasn’t completely dark. The attic ran the length of the house and there were louvers on either end. Daylight filtered through. It felt hot and stuffy. The end of the attic facing the street was bare, just joists and pink insulation. The back was a jumble of dim shapes.
“Do you have a flashlight?” she called down.
“Here,” Mrs. Greene said.
She unclipped something from her keychain and Patricia came down a few steps and took it: a small, turquoise rubber rectangle the size of a cigarette lighter.
“You squeeze the sides,” Mrs. Greene said.
A tiny bulb on the end emitted a weak glow.
It was better than nothing.
Patricia went up into the attic.
The floor was gritty, covered in a layer of cockroach poison, mouse droppings, dried guano, pigeon feathers, dead cockroaches on their backs, and larger piles of excrement that looked like they came from raccoons. Patricia started walking toward the clutter. Cool air formed a cross breeze blowing from the vents at either end. The white powder ground against the plywood beneath her feet.
It smelled like dead insects up here, like rotten fabric, like wet cardboard that had dried and mildewed. Everything downstairs had been meticulously cleaned and polished, scoured of anything organic. Up here, the house lay exposed: splintery joists, filthy plywood flooring, construction measurements penciled onto the exposed plywood beneath the shingles. Patricia played the flashlight beam over the mound of items at the rear and realized that this was the graveyard of Mrs. Savage’s life.
Blankets and quilts and sheets were draped over all the boxes and trunks and suitcases she’d once seen in the old lady’s front room. Studded with cockroach eggs, sticky with spiderwebs stretched between every open space, the filthy sheets and blankets were stiff and rank.
Patricia lifted one tacky corner of a pink quilt and released a puff of rotten wood pulp. Beneath it, on the floor, lay a
cardboard box of water-damaged paperback romances. Mice had chewed one corner to shreds and brightly colored paperback guts spilled onto the floor. Why had he brought all this garbage into a new house? It felt wrong. In his entire, new, meticulously blank home, this stood out like a mistake.
Her skin seethed in revulsion wherever she touched the blankets. They were covered in grime, white cockroach poison, and mouse droppings. She walked around the boxes to where the blankets ended, where the brick chimney rose through the floor and then the ceiling. She recognized the row of old suitcases sitting next to it, surrounded by furniture she remembered from the old house: standing lamps completely obscured by spiderwebs that were thick with eggs, the rocking chair with its seat chewed into a mouse nest, the cross-stretcher table whose veneer top had warped and split.
Not knowing where to start, Patricia lifted each of the suitcases. They were empty except for the second-to-last one. It didn’t budge. She tried again. It felt rooted to the floor. She slid the brown, hard-sided Samsonite bag out, sweat dripping from her nose. She undid its first latch, stiff with disuse, then the second, and the weight of whatever was inside popped it open.
The chemical stench of mothballs exploded into her face, making her eyes water. She squeezed the light Mrs. Greene had given her and saw that it was crammed with black plastic sheeting speckled with white mothballs that rolled onto the floor. She pulled aside some of the plastic and a pair of milky eyes reflected the light back at her.
Her fingers went numb and the flashlight went dark as she dropped it into the plastic. She stepped back, missed the edge where the plywood flooring ended, and her foot came down on the empty space between two of the joists. She started to fall backward, arms pinwheeling, and only just managed to grab a rough beam on the ceiling and catch herself.
Reaching into the suitcase, barely controlling her panic, her fingers found the flashlight and squeezed. She saw the eyes again, and now she made out the face around them. It was wrapped in a clear, plastic dry-cleaning bag and Patricia saw white grains in it that had turned yellow and brown over time. She realized they were salt. The mothballs were there to kill the smell. The salt was to preserve the body. The skin on the face of the corpse was dark brown and stretched tight, pulling the lips away from the teeth in a terrible grin. But even then, Patricia recognized Francine.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 26
