“What’s wrong with Patricia?” she asked.
They filled her in on what had happened. As they talked, her face got firm, her shoulders squared, she stood straighter. When they finished, she said, “I see. And what’s the plan to dispose of him?”
“Stuhr’s has a contract with Roper and East Cooper Hospital,” Maryellen said. “To burn their medical waste in the crematorium early in the morning and late at night. I put a big box of biohazard burn bags in my car, but…they’re moving. We can’t take them in like this.”
They all watched as Grace tapped her fingers against her lips.
“We can still use Stuhr’s,” she said, then checked the inside of her wrist. “There’s less than half an hour left in the game.”
“Grace,” Maryellen said, the dried blood crackling on her face. “We can’t take moving bags of body parts to Stuhr’s. They’ll see them. They’ll open them up and I can’t explain what they are.”
“Bennett and I have two columbarium niches for our ashes,” Grace said. They’re in the back of the cemetery, on the eastern side, facing the sunrise. We’ll simply put his head in one and the rest of his remains in the other.”
“But there’s a record,” Maryellen said. “On the computer. And what happens when the two of you pass?”
“Surely you can alter the records,” Grace said. “As for Bennett and myself, hopefully it will be years before we have to cross that bridge. Now, let’s see if he has some boxes somewhere. Maryellen, you and Mrs. Greene shower in the guest room. Use dark towels and leave them in the tub. Tell me you at least brought changes of clothes?”
“In the car,” Maryellen said.
“Kitty,” Grace said, “bring her car here. I’ll look for boxes. You two clean yourselves up. We can only count on forty or so minutes before that street is full of people, so let’s be purposeful.”
Kitty brought the car around and helped Grace pack the squirming, plastic-wrapped body parts into boxes, and lugged them down to the front door. Mrs. Greene and Maryellen didn’t clean themselves perfectly, but at least they didn’t look like they worked in a slaughterhouse anymore.
“How much longer is left in the game?” Grace asked as they dropped the final cardboard box onto the stack by the front door.
Kitty turned on the TV.
“…and Clemson has called a time-out hoping to run out the clock…” an announcer brayed.
“Less than five minutes,” Kitty said.
“Then let’s load the car while the streets are still clear,” Grace said.
They almost ran, shambling up and down the dark front stairs, tossing the boxes into Maryellen’s minivan. They could feel James Harris moving inside, like they were carrying boxes full of rats.
When they were finished, they stood in the front hall and realized that they had failed. The plan had been to wipe James Harris off the face of the earth, leaving his house pristine, as if he’d simply disappeared into thin air, or packed his things and walked out the door. But blood had pooled by the front door where they’d stacked the boxes, the white carpeted stairs were a mess of streaked gore, there were blood smears up and down the walls, bloody fingerprints were drying on the banister, and even from downstairs they could see that the mess covered the upstairs hall. And then there was the master bath.
A huge roar rose up from the surrounding houses. Someone activated an airhorn. The game was over.
“We can’t do this,” Maryellen said. “Someone will come looking for him and they’ll know he was killed the second they open that door.”
“Stop whining,” Grace snapped. “You’re looking for columbariums C-24 and C-25, Maryellen. I’m sure you can find those. You and Kitty are the least messy, so you’re driving to Stuhr’s.”
“What are you going to do?” Maryellen asked. “Burn this place down?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Grace said. “Mrs. Greene and I will stay behind. We’ve been cleaning up after men our entire lives. This is no different.”
Headlights snapped on up and down the street as drunk football fans stumbled to their cars, hollering and calling to one another in the dark. A ground mist lay low on the road.
“But—” Maryellen began.
“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts it would be Christmas every day,” Grace said. “Now scoot.”
Kitty and Maryellen limped for the minivan. Grace closed the door behind them and turned to Mrs. Greene.
“It’s a lot of work,” Mrs. Greene said.
“Between us we’ve been cleaning houses for eighty years,” Grace said. “I believe we’re up to the challenge. Now, we’ll need baking soda, ammonia, white vinegar, and dishwashing detergent. We’ll need to get the sheets and towels in the washer, and spray the carpets first so they can soak while we work.”
“We should wash the towels and that duvet in the shower,” Mrs. Greene said. “Get it real hot and take a hard bristle brush to them with some salt paste. Then put it in the dryer with plenty of fabric softener.”
“Let’s see if we can find some hydrogen peroxide for these bloodstains in the carpet,” Grace said.
“I prefer ammonia,” Mrs. Greene said.
“Hot water?” Grace asked.
“No, cold.”
“Interesting,” Grace said.
* * *
—
Around midnight, Maryellen called them from a gas station pay phone.
“We’re done,” Maryellen said. “C-24 and C-25. They’re sealed tight and I’ll clean up the database in the morning.”
“Mrs. Cavanaugh is just ironing the sheets,” Mrs. Greene said. “Then we have to shampoo the carpets, put things away, and we’re done.”
“How does it look?” Maryellen asked.
“Like no one ever lived here,” Mrs. Greene said.
“How’s Patricia?”
“Sleeping,” Mrs. Greene said. “She hasn’t made a sound.”
“Do you want me to come pick you up?”
“Go home,” Mrs. Greene said. “We don’t want people to think this is a public parking lot. I’ll get a ride.”
“Well,” Maryellen said. “Good luck.”
Mrs. Greene hung up the phone.
She and Grace finished ironing the sheets, put the duvet back on the bed, and inspected the house for any bloodstains they’d missed. Then Grace walked home and got her car while Mrs. Greene hauled Patricia downstairs, switched off the radio, turned off the lights, and used James Harris’s keys to lock the front door behind her.
Bennett had passed out on the downstairs sofa, so they put Patricia in Grace’s guest bedroom, and then Grace called Carter.
“She wound up watching the game over here after visiting Slick at the hospital,” she told him. “She fell asleep. I think it’s better not to wake her.”
“Probably for the best,” Carter said. He’d had a lot to drink so it came out prollyferthebersh. “I’m glad you girls are friends again.”
“Good night, Carter,” Grace said, and hung up.
She drove Mrs. Greene home and let her out in front of her dark house.
“Thank you for all your help,” Grace said.
“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Greene said, “I’m going to drive up to Irmo and bring my babies home.”
“Good,” Grace said.
“You were wrong three years ago,” Mrs. Greene said. “You were wrong, and you were a coward, and people died.”
They stood, considering each other in the glow of the car’s ceiling light, as the engine idled. Finally Grace said something she’d almost never said before in her life.
“I’m sorry.”
Mrs. Greene gave a small nod.
“Thank you for coming tonight,” she said. “We couldn’t have done it alone.”
“None of us could have done this alone,” Grace said.
* * *
—
Grace sat by Patricia’s bed, dozing in her chair. Patricia woke up around four in the morning with a gasp. Grace smoothed her sweaty hair back from her face.
“It’s over,” Grace said.
Patricia burst into tears, and Grace took off her shoes and crawled into bed next to her and rocked Patricia while she cried herself out. The pain hit next, and Grace helped her to the bathroom and stood outside the door while Patricia sat on the toilet, her bowels turned to water. She’d barely got the toilet flushed before she had to kneel in front of it and vomit.
Grace helped her back to bed and sat with her while she tossed and turned. Finally, she found her copy of In Cold Blood.
“‘The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas,’” she read to Patricia in her soft Southern accent. “‘A lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.” The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.’”
She read to her until the sun came up.
CHAPTER 41
Patricia saw Miss Mary one last time.
Her fever lasted for two days, so maybe it was only a dream. But when Patricia got older she forgot what she was wearing the day Carter proposed, she forgot whether Blue’s high school graduation was outdoors on a sunny day or in the gym because it rained, and she even forgot the date of her wedding anniversary, but she never forgot opening her eyes one bright November afternoon and feeling a dry, smooth hand stroke her cheek, and seeing a pair of black shoes standing beside her bed.
They were ugly shoes, practical, and low—schoolteacher’s shoes. The legs in them wore nude pantyhose, and they rose up to the hem of a plaid cotton dress, but she was too weak to lift her head and see the rest. Then the shoes turned, and walked out of her bedroom, and what Patricia would always remember about Miss Mary wasn’t those hard meals, or the shock of finding her that night after Grace’s party, or the roach falling into her water glass, but it was how much you had to love your son to come back from Hell to warn him.
And then she remembered that Miss Mary hadn’t come back to warn Carter. She’d came back to warn her.
Her fever broke that same afternoon. One minute she felt drugged and sweaty, in a sleep so deep she couldn’t crawl out. The next minute everything felt clear, and she blinked in the sunlight and sat up in bed, sweat drying on her skin, eyes sharp. She heard the toilet flush and Grace came out of the bathroom.
“Good, you’re awake,” Grace said. “Would you like a glass of water?”
“I’m hungry,” Patricia said.
Before Grace could get her something, Carter burst into the room.
“She’s awake,” Grace told him.
“It’s good to have you back,” he said. “You’ve been running a fever. I was getting ready to take you to the hospital if it didn’t break by tonight.”
“I feel all right,” Patricia said. “Just hungry. Where are Blue and Korey?”
“They’re fine,” he said. “Listen, we’re going to lose—” Then he remembered Grace. “I appreciate you being here, but I’d like some privacy with my wife.”
Patricia nodded to her, and Grace said, “I’ll check back with you this evening,” and left the room.
Carter sat in the chair Grace had been sitting in beside the bed.
“We’re going to lose Gracious Cay,” he said. “Leland can’t hold on to it with James Harris gone. He had a lot of money in escrow, and some of it’s just not there anymore. We’re already getting nervous investors after that fire, and if they hear Jim’s gone and Leland can’t find a lot of the cash, we’re going to lose what we put in. Do you have any idea where he’s gone? His house is totally empty.”
“Carter,” Patricia said, pushing herself up in bed. “I don’t want to talk about this right now. I want to talk about when we’re bringing Korey home.”
“A man is missing,” Carter said. “Jim meant a lot to this family, he meant a lot to the kids, and he meant a lot to that project. If you know anything at all about where he might be, I need you to tell me.”
“I don’t know anything about James Harris,” she said.
She must not have said it very convincingly because Carter took it as proof that she knew something.
“Is this about your obsession?” he asked, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “Did you go off the deep end again and say something to him? Patty, I swear, if you’ve messed this up for everyone…you don’t even know how many families you might have affected. There’s Leland, us, Horse and Kitty…”
He got up and began to walk circles in the room, still talking on and on about James Harris, escrow accounts, missing money, and principal investments, and Patricia realized she didn’t recognize this man anymore. The quiet boy from Kershaw she’d fallen in love with was dead. In his place stood this resentful stranger.
“Carter,” she said. “I want a divorce.”
* * *
—
Two days later, Patricia dragged herself out of bed and drove downtown to see Slick in the hospital. She was dozing when Patricia arrived, so Patricia sat and waited for her to wake up. Slick looked sallow, and her chest hitched occasionally as she breathed. They had her on a full oxygen mask now, trying to keep her levels up. Patricia remembered stumbling across James Harris asleep all those years ago and thinking he was dead. That was how Slick looked.
“Grace already…told me,” Slick said, opening her eyes, pulling her mask away from her face to speak. “I made her…give me all the details.”
“Me too,” Patricia said. “I was out from what he did to me.”
“How did…it feel?” Slick asked.
Patricia never would have said this to anyone but Slick. She leaned forward.
“It felt so good,” she breathed, then immediately remembered what he’d done to Slick and felt selfish and insensitive.
“Most sin does,” Slick said.
“I know why they hurt themselves,” Patricia said. “It’s this feeling of things being whole and stable and warm and safe, and you want it back so badly, but it’s just slipping away over the horizon and you feel like you’ll never get it back again and you don’t want to live without it. But then you just keep living and it hurts all the time. Everything feels like knives on my skin and my joints ache.”
“What…did he do to us?” Slick asked. “He made us…murderers…and we betrayed…everything…and now it’s all falling apart…”
Patricia took Slick’s hand that didn’t have an IV needle in it.
“The children are safe,” Patricia said. “That’s what matters.”
Slick’s throat worked for a minute, and then she said, “Not the…ones in…Six Mile…”
Patricia’s blood felt like lead in her veins.
“Not all of them,” she said. “But your children, and Maryellen’s children, and Kitty’s. Mrs. Greene’s boys. He’s been doing this for a long time, Slick. No one’s ever stopped him before. We did. We paid a price but we stopped him.”
“What about…me?” Slick asked. “Am I…going to get better?”
For a moment, Patricia thought about lying but they’d been through too much together to do that now.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think you are. I’m so sorry.”
Slick’s hand gripped hers so hard Patricia’s fingers felt like they were about to break.
“Why?” Slick asked behind her mask.
“Mrs. Greene told me he said something before he died,” Patricia said. “I think this is how he makes other ones like him. I think that’s what he did to you.”
Slick stared at Patricia, and Patricia saw her eyes turn red and bloodshot and then Slick nodded.
“I feel…something growing…in
side,” Slick said. “It’s waiting for me…to die…and then…it hatches.”
She put a hand to the base of her throat.
“Here,” she said. “Something…new…hard to swallow…”
They sat quietly for a while, holding hands.
“Patricia…” Slick said. “Bring…Buddy Barr tomorrow…I want to…change my will…I want to…be cremated…”
“Of course,” Patricia said.
“And make sure…I’m not alone…”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” Patricia said.
And she didn’t. Someone from book club was with her all the way to the end. On Thanksgiving day, when Slick started having trouble breathing, and her oxygen count began to fall, and she lost consciousness for the last time, Kitty was there, reading to her from In Cold Blood. Even after the crash team burst into the room and surrounded Slick and crowded Kitty into a corner, she kept reading silently, just moving her lips, whispering the words from the book like a prayer.
* * *
—
A few days after Slick’s funeral, Ragtag started walking in circles. Patricia noticed he’d follow rooms around their edges, always turning to the left, never to the right. He sometimes bumped into doors on his way through them. She took him to Dr. Grouse.
“I’ve got two pieces of bad news for you,” he said. “The first is that Ragtag has a brain tumor. It won’t kill him today or tomorrow, and he’s not in any pain, but it’s going to get worse. When it does, bring him here and we can put him to sleep.”
The second piece of bad news was that the tests to find the tumor cost five hundred and twenty dollars. Patricia wrote him a check.
When she returned home, she told Blue. The first thing he said was, “We need to get Korey.”
“You know we can’t do that,” she told him.
She didn’t think they could do that? They’d paid for Korey to stay at Southern Pines for eight weeks, and she had a whole program of therapists and counselors and doctors, and they all kept telling Patricia she had trouble sleeping, and seemed restless, anxious, and unfocused, and it would be unwise to pull her out prematurely. But when she’d visited the day before, Korey had seemed clear-eyed and calm, even though she didn’t say much.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Page 36
