Kelsey blinked. Mandy grinned. “Star Wars.”
“And Lord of the Rings.” She should have caught on right away. The boys were mega-sci-fi fans.
“Yeah,” Mike said. “It was bigger than a Princess and really good at hiding in shadows.”
“It acted like is could see in the dark,” Mattie added.
“And I thought you said that side door in your garage was busted,” Mark said. Kelsey nodded. She hadn’t been able to open it since a key had broken in the lock ages ago. “Well, it went in that door.”
“Stayed until after Miss Zoë got home. She was in there with it for a while,” Mattie said.
“We don’t know that,” Mark said. “We couldn’t see if she stayed in the garage with it or not.”
“Yeah, that is right,” Mattie conceded. “Did ya fight off that bounty hunter okay?” Mattie asked, his expression deadly serious.
“I’ve had so many,” Kelsey said, playing along. “Which one are you referring to?”
“You know. The one we was just telling you about, the one dressed up like the Star War’s bounty hunter with the mask-thingy on his face.”
“Oh, that one.” Kelsey nodded, as if she knew what the boy’s over-active imagination had concocted. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“We sorta thought he was really after Miss Zoë,” Mark said. “After all, he met her in the garage.”
“Really?” Kelsey said. “Did they do anything interesting?” She knew she shouldn’t have asked that question the moment it slipped out.
“Only if you call parking the car int’restin’,” Mark shrugged. “He shore did scare us.”
“I can imagine,” Kelsey said.
“It went back the way it’d come, so I think its spaceship was in the forest across the road.” Mark’s eyes were round as marbles. “Ma won’t let us go over there and look for it.” He gave Mandy an excellent imitation of ‘the look’.
“Well, that is truly interesting,” Kelsey said. “Perhaps when I feel better, we can all go over there and look for evidence.” The boys all nodded eagerly. Mandy grinned. “We could make a picnic of it.”
“What if it’s still there and dangerous?” Mattie asked. His brothers both shoved him. “Well?” the four-year-old huffed. “It could be.”
“Miss Zoë is okay. I saw her this morning. If it didn’t hurt her, I don’t think it’d hurt us.” Kelsey wondered if she, Ramsey and Zoë had ever been as imaginative as the adorable M & M kids.
ooo
The hot afternoon sun glared against the hood of Zoë’s candy apple red Porsche and blazed through the windshield as Zoë parked next to the brick sidewalk, which led to Kelsey’s front door. Ruby-red lips pressed into a flat line, Zoë glared straight ahead. “Sorry about letting you out here. I can’t seem to find my garage door opener.”
Her opener? More like the spare one, which she’d confiscated, after finding red paint a small dent marring her Mustang’s dark green passenger door. “Mine is still in my car, but I'm not exactly sure where it is.” Envisioning her last glimpses of her poor car, the banged door seemed insignificant, but that did not mean she was ready to discuss the remote she’d reclaimed. Let Zoë think she'd lost it. Though every muscle wailed in protest as she eased out of the low-slung passenger seat, she said, “This is fine.”
The afternoon sun blinded her; she staggered, grabbing the Porsche’s hot roof for support. A wave of nausea surged through her, she closed her eyes against the hot, punishing light. The metal's heat tingled all the way from her fingertips to the railroad track of stitches paralleling her hairline. “I will not faint," Kelsey whispered, "I will not faint, I will not faint.” Though the mantra soothed her stomach and strengthened her resolve, her head still throbbed like the drum of doom.
Worse, she smelled death.
“I will not faint.” Not now, not when there was so much to do. Ramsey could feel sorry for himself and bleat about self-preservation, but someone had to save the constituents from their self-serving step-uncle. Now she had Party approval and freedom from the I.V. that had held her captive, all she needed to do was make it inside her home and close the door to get sanctuary from the sun and anyone who wanted to harass her. Kelsey promised herself that as soon as she was inside, she would lock the door, unplug the phone and reclaim control of her life. She could start making calls, scheduling speeches, and form a strategy to win the seat for herself. Once elected, she would start giving their constituents the kind of representation they deserved.
She took a deep breath, stood upright and let go of the hot metal. Her doctor had wanted her to stay in the hospital at least one more day for observation, but in her opinion, doctors were usually after more money for less work and lower premiums on their liability insurance. Kelsey snorted. “I hate being watched.”
“Yeah, I know.” Zoë slammed the driver’s door. “Your goal is to be a first class wallflower.”
Through the heat waves rising from the Porsche's crimson roof, Zoë appeared to waver. Kelsey tipped to her left and grabbed back onto the car. Perhaps she should have stayed in the hospital and let Attila the Nurse continue her sadistic games. Kelsey blinked. Zoë’s face stabilized. “Not since I began campaigning for Rams."
Zoë sniffed. “Politics is for nerds.”
"It’s better than modeling underwear.” Kelsey forced the fingers of one hand to release the scorching metal. Zoë tossed her phony-looking bleach-blond mane. When she kept her balance, Kelsey cautiously leaned forward and tugged her briefcase from the backseat.
Ignoring the heat, Zoë draped herself across the hood in a provocative pose. “I love lingerie.” She twisted into an even more lewd pose and simpered at Kelsey. “Don’t you?”
Kelsey glanced at the street, grateful that the houses were far away. Hopefully, none of her neighbors could see Zoë’s latest performance. She didn't have the energy to figure out what was actually bothering her childhood friend, so she turned her back on the car, squared her aching shoulders, and then limped toward the shady relief of her front porch. With ever step, her ankle protested and the rancid scent grew worse. “Maybe something crawled under the porch and died.”
“Jeez, it does stink.”
Kelsey climbed the front steps and hobble-marched into the porch’s shade. Something dark and ominous seemed to be emerging from the door's pale blue surface, where the knocker should be. She stopped and squinted at the apparition.
Blood and words.
She gasped and dropped her briefcase.
Feathers.
Zoë bumped into her, knocking her toward the revolting carcass. Kelsey grabbed the siding next to the door, barely avoided falling into the oozing mess. Hundreds of flies rose in a buzzing cloud, but the fetid, decapitated chicken hanging upside down from her brass doorknocker didn’t budge. Rivulets of blood oozed down the door's pale blue paint.
Kelsey’s teeth clinched so hard her entire head throbbed.
Zoë shrieked and leaped backward, staggering on her four-inch heels. “Who did that to my door?”
“My door, not yours.” A wave of nausea passed over Kelsey and her world started to spin. She stood very still and hung onto the wall until she could study the message.
Drop out or dye.
Hadn’t Ramsey received a chicken advising something similar before one caused his accident? There were already too many parallels between their situations for Kelsey to believe that the chickens were a coincidence. The stitches across her forehead pulled. She quickly relaxed her brow and reminded herself not to frown. Her stomach knotted with the putrid proof that Marvin Frederickson must have heard about the switch and was either trying to frighten her out of running against him or kill her.
Sick as she felt, the fly buzzing around her head could finish her. A drop of perspiration rolled down her spine. Kelsey took a step backward and focused on the sloppy red threat.
Drop out or dye
“All that blood.” Zoë's squawk conveyed horror mixed with melodrama. “T
hey’ve ruined my beautiful door.”
Her door, indeed. Blistering resentment surged through Kelsey. She relived coming home three weeks earlier and discovering that Zoë had taken the liberty of painting the elegantly understated hunter green surface that putrid shade of blue. She tilted her head and squinted. Now that she really looked at it, the dead bird looked almost as good as the sickly hue Zoë had chosen.
“It’s not all blood,” Kelsey muttered. “Mostly it’s red paint.”
"Blue doors are supposed to bring good luck,” Zoë wailed.
“Maybe you should have painted your apartment door blue.”
“Must you always bring up Bryan?”
“Oh? Did I mention him?” Zoë was fortunate Kelsey hadn’t joined the rest of the family and ostracized her after the incident with Bryan. “You should never have done that without asking.”
“You expected me to ask you if I could fuck your finance?”
“I wasn't talking about Bryan.” Kelsey clenched her teeth against the torrent of anger and her nails dug into the cedar siding. “You were lucky I didn’t paint you blue.” Or better yet, harlot red.
Zoë looked away, as if embarrassed, then her attention centered on the door. “Are you going to drop out of the election, now?"
“Not for a chicken. Even if it’s the third one.”
“Third?” Zoë’s voice hit high C. “You mean you’ve had others?”
“Ramsey had two.” Zoë wailed. Kelsey put her palms over her ears until the nerve wracking sound ended. “The first was frozen solid and hurled through his kitchen window. Rams swears the second ran in front of his car and that's when he lost control.”
Zoë started crying.
“I hate chickens,” Kelsey growled. “I hate eating the darned things. I hate them on my door and I hate the ones who run for office and are so damned afraid of losing that they’d rather intimidate and kill their opponents then run a real race.”
“Quit.” The fake gems on Zoë's fingers flashed as her arms gesticulating wildly between the alternating shadows and streams of sunlight coming through the climbing roses, which shrouded the porch. “You need to quit.”
“Not now. Not later. I’m in this to the end."
“Do you have a death wish or something?”
“No.”
As Zoë stared at the carcass hanging on the brass doorknocker, a sheen of perspiration condensed on her upper lip. The droplets trembled as she inhaled through her mouth. "So whoever is trying to get you to quit only succeeded in convincing you to run harder."
Kelsey shrugged to dismiss the conversation. “Go find the garden hose."
Zoë's too high shoes wobbled dangerously as she dashed down the front steps.
Flies were swarming over her burgundy leather briefcase, so Kelsey moved it farther away from the mess then stagger-stepped to the railing. Head spinning, she grabbed a rounded white column and leaned her forehead against it for support. It took several restorative breaths of clean, rose scented air before she could cross the grass to the line of large magnolias, which defined the south border of her front yard. She pulled a fallen branch from the periwinkle, then resolutely returned to the porch. By the time she returned to the pulpy, reeking mess, she felt as if she'd run a hundred-mile-marathon.
Her first two attempts to dislodge the clenched talons from the twining metal vines of the brass knocker were futile. She paused for of moment until the dizziness passed. Gritting her teeth, she tried a third time.
“I found it," Zoë said. "But-” She held up a two-foot section of mangled hose, which had apparently been mowed.
“Great.”
Kelsey closed one eye, lined up the stick with the doorknocker and jabbed for the third time. The carcass slithered down the desecrated door and landed in the rank puddle of drying blood and gore. Flies swarmed upward in a buzzing cloud.
Zoë took a deep breath, her complexion turned olive green, and then her eyes widened; she dropped the piece of hose, slapped her hand over her mouth, kicked off her heels, leaped down the steps and sprinted around the corner of the two story colonial house.
Oh, to have had a camcorder! “What’s wrong, did you swallow a fly?” Kelsey called after her. There was no answer. Kelsey turned her attention back to her front door. Since she had lost the key to the garage’s man-door years ago, this and the garage's car door were the only ways into the house. She looked beyond the porch, to Zoë’s car. If Zoë hadn’t slammed her car door into the mustang and left a six-inch scratch, she wouldn’t have taken the spare remote away. And if someone hadn’t sabotaged her car’s brakes, she’d have her own remote.
Ifs had never gotten anyone anywhere. Kelsey eased the tension in her back, then fitted her key into the now accessible dead bolt. Bits of debris dropped onto the slate floor of her foyer as the door swung inward. "Darn," she muttered, "I was afraid that would happen." Kelsey slammed the door and stomped up the stairs to find her nastiest clothes.
Later, clad in a pair of tattered jeans and a faded moss colored T-shirt, which said 'Save the Rainforest', Kelsey downed two aspirins. Before she lost her resolve, she snatched a can of bug spray and a trash bag from under the kitchen sink. Outside, in the backyard, a secretive movement behind a butterfly bush caught her attention. Kelsey squared her aching shoulders, unlocked the kitchen's sliding door and stepped into the hot, humid air.
Could it be the person who'd left the mess? She gripped her bug spray tighter and headed toward the hidden watcher. Halfway there, she identified Zoë as the individual sitting on the ground and holding her stomach while she rocked back and forth. Should she comfort her unwanted guest or deal with the mess?
The longer the blood dried, the harder it would be to clean and any comfort she gave Zoë would only convince her to prolong her visit.
Kelsey limped back to the house, past the now open garage door. Back straight, she marched onto the porch and sprayed every fly in sight. While the flies dropped, she put on rubber gloves and bagged the reeking carcass, then started scrubbing the door. Finally, muscles protesting, she squatted down and began working on the floor. By the time most of the mess was cleaned, Zoë plunked a splattered quart size can among the dead flies on the porch floor. When she put an aluminum foil wrapped paintbrush on top of it, Kelsey glanced up at her deathly pale face. “You don’t look so good.”
Zoë shrugged, as if her looks didn’t matter to her. “We might not have enough left over paint.”
Darn, if she’d known there was more puke blue, she’d have taken the can to the dump or at least taken it to work and hidden it in one of her greenhouses.
Zoë stared at the door and shuddered, then abruptly pulled off her skimpy silk top to reveal a lacy black bra. “What are you doing?” Kelsey demanded.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Zoë tossed her shirt over the railing and shimmied out of her tight skirt. “I’m getting ready to repaint my damned door.”
“My house. My door," Kelsey snarled.
Zoë shrugged and jammed a screwdriver under the edge of the lid. An awful thought sent a chill through Kelsey. “Did you paint it dressed in your underwear before?”
“It saves my clothes.” Zoë smiled at her.
The chill turned icy. Kelsey looked up and down her quiet street. She couldn’t see her neighbors’ residences to the North and East, because of the woods surrounding their houses, but their children usually played in a fort they’d built in her largest magnolia, so any number of kids could be gaping at the spectacle Zoë was making. She squinted at the tree, trying to see through its thick foliage, but all she could hear was a singsong countdown, which seemed to be coming from a different direction.
“The outfit is a Versace.” Zoë waved her hand toward her discarded clothing. “With him dead, it’s irreplaceable. This,” Zoë snapped the elastic of her skimpy black thong, “is a Frederick’s. It’s expensive, too. Perhaps I should go down another layer.” She started to pull down the thong.
“No!” Kel
sey glanced toward the road, grateful for the lack of traffic. Knowing Zoë would do whatever she pleased, wherever she was at, Kelsey hoped the porch’s deep shade would hide any exhibition Zoë made and she prayed no irate mothers would blame her for Zoë’s immodesty.
Zoë laughed and plumbed her ridiculously enhances breasts so hard that they nearly leaped from the skimpy black lace. “You’re redder than your hair. What’s the matter? Still the virgin princess, afraid to enjoy life?”
Kelsey fingered her aching temple and wished she could scratch the cut above it. “I need to clean the foyer.”
“You are! I don’t believe it. You’re still a fucking virgin.” Zoë grabbed her arm. “Isn’t it about time you grew up?”
Kelsey shook free and took a step backward. “Maybe being grown up means something different to me than seeing how many guys I can screw.”
Zoë's expression hardened. “You should try it sometime.” Zoë thrust out a hip in a disgustingly provocative pose. “Or are the rumors that you like pussy true? Is that why you hate it when I’m naked? Hmm? Afraid you’ll blow your cool over me?”
“Hardly.” Kelsey gestured toward the road. “Your mother said she’d drop by with my dry cleaning, this afternoon. With all the problems you two have, I don’t think Martha needs to see you making a spectacle of yourself on my front porch.”
Zoë arched backward. “I get paid big bucks for this.”
“You aren’t modeling now. Why don't you be quiet for a minute and listen." Zoë glared at her. She glared back. "If you listen, you’ll hear kids playing hide and seek in the woods and others playing starship in the magnolia. Do you intend to give them a peep show?”
“I passed up a Caribbean shoot to be here for you, ‘cause Ma said you were grieving over Jenny and Abby and you needed me.” Kelsey rolled her eyes to heaven. To the best of her knowledge Zoë hadn’t spoken a word to her mother in years. Seeing her doubt, Zoë seized her hand in a crushing grip. “Don’t you dare try to suggest that I can’t get work.”
“My porch isn’t a studio and I certainly hope there isn’t a camera focused on you right now, because if there is, this will turn into some sort of crude smut for Marvin's mud slinging campaign." Zoë's eyes widened. Kelsey removed her hand. "Like I said, Martha is due soon.” Kelsey looked Zoë up and down. "Who are you trying to impress? Or are you after negative attention?"
Deadly Rumors Page 6
