A Moonlit Task

by Tom Hansen

  The pit in her stomach was almost too much to bear. Nancy had to say something. “Peter.” She glanced first to Edna then to Anca, and finally back to the boy. “When I was in the alley with Linda, she, well, she spoke to me.”

  “She did?” All three said in unison.

  Nancy nodded and continued. “When I found her, she was still alive, but just barely. She mentioned you, Peter. She wanted me to find you. That’s why I tried calling her herb shop and eventually spoke to you, Anca. I was actually trying to find someone named Peter and I didn’t know where to go. I thought you might know.”

  Anca gave Nancy a look that made her second guess what she was about to say. She also became aware that she didn’t have the figurine with her right now. She almost thought about asking everyone to wait so she could go down and get it from the car, but just thinking about it reminded her of the voice telling her it was not time, that she should leave it.

  Edna spoke up. “You didn’t tell me she spoke to you.”

  Nancy cringed. “I’m sorry, you and I didn’t have much time to discuss things, and, well, I was still trying to process the whole thing.”

  “Did you tell the police?” Anca asked.

  “I only told them that she said your name, Anca, which she did, and something for someone named Peter.” She looked the boy up and down. He was holding hands with Anca, which seemed odd. Perhaps he was related to Linda? But why would Anca …? She pushed the thought out of her head. She was here to deliver a message.

  “She said she forgives you, Peter. That’s what she told me to tell you.” And give you a cat statue, but that’s in my car.

  Peter looked to Anca, who stared back at him. They both had a stricken look on their face. Peter began to cry. Tears streamed down his cheek and he quickly wiped them and stood. “I have to go.”

  Another glance at Anca and he ran out of the apartment, leaving everyone in a stunned silence.

  Nancy finally broke it. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset him. Were he and Linda close?”

  Anca gave her a curious look, like she was scrutinizing her for the first time, trying to find out if she was a threat or not. Her face softened. “They were. Her death has hit him very hard. His mother died when he was very young. He latched on to Linda as a mother figure.”

  “And now you?” Edna piped in. She had a manner to her voice that made Anca’s words seem sexual.

  Nancy nearly burst out laughing. Anca and him did seem to be a little touchy-feely. Him being nineteen and Anca being, how old was she? Certainly older than Nancy. Maybe eighty or ninety? It was kind of hard to tell with Anca. Nancy wouldn’t have been surprised to hear this woman was over one hundred. She certainly had the wrinkled skin for it.

  Anca pursed her lips. “He’s very sensitive. Linda cared for him. I care for him.”

  The mood in the room was uncomfortable. Besides, who was Edna to say anything about hanging out with younger men?

  Nancy stood. “Thank you, Anca. I think it’s time we left. This was what I came to say. Will Peter be okay?”

  Anca stood as well, followed by Edna. Both women’s knees cracked. Anca had a melancholy look to her. “He will be fine. He’s just going through a lot right now. Thank you for giving the message. He just needs time to process it is all.”

  Nancy understood the need to process information slowly. Four years later and she still struggled facing the fact that her husband wasn’t coming back. Entire rooms in her large home hadn’t been touched since he left. Nancy still had hope he would one day come back and pick up right where they left off.

  “Did she say anything else? Give you anything?”

  The statement caught Nancy completely off guard. She shook her head but the look on her face might have given her away. Linda had said other things and had given her something. Why would Anca know that, though?

  Edna thanked Anca for her time, taking the lead to extricate them from what was becoming an uncomfortable conversation. Anca waddled ahead of them, leading the way out of the apartment.

  As they passed the steel door set in the back wall, Nancy couldn’t help but stop and look at it. Intricate geometric scrollwork adorned its surface, carved into the metal. The design was hypnotic. She reached out to touch it and pulled back as she felt a large spark in her fingertip.

  “Please, no touch my door.”

  With that, she hurried along to catch up with Edna who was just leaving the small apartment.

  Going out was worse than going in. Something about being in that apartment inhibited her emotions, like heavy blanket, suddenly removed. Her dulled senses suddenly came alive, as she was flooded with a whirlwind of emotion and senses.

  She looked up. Feeling something in front of her. It was Edna’s car … no, it was something inside Edna’s car. The statue.

  A longing for Richard filled her chest, melding with her conflicted projected emotions from the kid, Peter.

  She started tearing up as she walked down the metal stairs. It was everything she could do to put one foot in front of the other. She couldn’t explain what was wrong with her.

  Was it that the reality of a woman dying in her arms had finally caught up to her? No, that didn’t feel right.

  Reaching the bottom, Edna turned, and her big, dopey grin melted when she saw Nancy’s face.

  “Oh my God, Nancy, what’s wrong?”

  Nancy found she couldn’t speak. What the hell had just happened? One second she was walking out of the apartment and the next this wave of emotions had hit her.

  She remembered the feeling of walking into Anca’s apartment, that sensation of walking into a supermarket past a curtain of air. While she was in that place, her senses had been dampened somehow, but now that she was back out, she could feel things again.

  She wiped the moisture from her eyes and looked at her friend. “I’m okay, just sad about everything going on.”

  Edna frowned and drew her lips into a line before grabbing Nancy’s arm. “You are probably just overwhelmed. The incense in there was a bit much, even for me. Come on.”

  Nancy followed Edna back down the alley as she thought through the various conversations she’d had in the last two days. Linda’s dying wish was for her to meet someone named Peter, tell him she forgave him, and give him a blood-covered jade cat statue. Nancy had done half of that.

  As they neared the car, she thought about the statue. Anca had said that Peter lived across from her. Nancy turned back around and looked again at the staircase leading up between the two buildings. Anca’s apartment was to the left, above the restaurant. Peter’s would be to the right, above the theater. She could go give the figurine to him right now, and she would be done.

  As Nancy opened the door and reached for her purse, however, the voice came back.

  He is not ready yet. Be patient.

  It gave her the creeps. The voice, something that had haunted her dreams for the last four years, had never spoken to her while she was awake until two days ago. Nancy didn’t like it. Only, this wasn’t exactly the same voice. It was different, more mature. It almost sounded like—no, that was ridiculous.

  She glanced at Edna, who was getting into the driver’s seat. Edna knew about the voice, and thought it was a ghost trying to communicate with her. According to her, ghosts didn’t leave the world until their unfinished business was taken care of.

  Nancy thought it was ridiculous, but she still shared it with Edna. The two shared everything.

  Nancy squeezed her purse. Well, nearly everything.

  Alright fine, she thought, half to herself, half to the voice. Then when?

  No reply came.

  Edna shut her car door, jolting Nancy out of her reverie. She looked up to the window that would have been Anca’s apartment. The mustard curtains had been closed when they were in there just a few moments before, but they were parted now, and Nancy thought she saw something, a head with piercing eyes staring down at her.

  “Nan?” Edna called out.

 
Nancy looked away for a split second to glance at Edna then back to the window. The face was gone. The curtain swayed side to side.

  Nancy got into the car and held her purse tight as she glanced back up at the apartment over the restaurant. As she looked at the window, something inside of her seemed to light. A small flame, a burning question that needed to be answered. She had the urge to get out of the car and rush back up the stairs to talk to Peter. Maybe if she got to know him better, she would feel better about giving over the statue. She wanted answers to questions she couldn’t quite formulate.

  Edna broke the silence. “I have a confession.”

  The statement nearly startled Nancy, who was intently looking at the window. She turned, unable to keep from blurting out, “What is the confession?”

  Edna gave her a strange look and Nancy returned a sheepish grin. “Sorry, I was just lost in thought and you startled me.”

  “Well, that slip of paper that she showed us, the one with the address and time on it? I took it.”

  “You didn’t!”

  Gears began whirring in Nancy’s head. She’d wanted answers, hadn’t she? Drug dealers, middle of the night meetings? It was all very intriguing and scary. The sane part of her wanted to turn that over to the police, but another part of her, that cold hard flame yearning to flourish, wanted to find out more about what was going on.

  Edna had been telling her to get out more, hadn’t she?

  Something else about this whole situation bothered her. If Linda really was that mixed up with drug dealers, wouldn't the police have taken every shred of evidence to try to track down the killers?

  She thought back to the night Linda placed that small figurine in her hand and told her to find Peter and forgive him. She could have said something about who killed her, but instead, that woman with her dying breath was trying to tell someone that they were forgiven. No, Linda didn’t seem the type to be mixed up with drug dealers.

  Given the six-hundred-pound tiger that had come barreling out of the alleyway with blood on its muzzle, Nancy suspected there was far more to this story than what was being reported in the newspapers. Something was going on and she wanted to know what it was.

  “What are you smiling about?” Edna asked, her hands folded in front of her.

  “I’m so proud of you, Edna.”

  “Proud?”

  “Oh yeah, for stealing that paper.”

  Edna cocked her head slightly and squinted. “You’re not saying that just to placate me, right? I have a feeling you are saying one thing but really meaning another.”

  “No, I promise, pinky swear, and cross my eye to die or whatever that is. I want to follow up on that slip of paper. Besides, I knew you were going to ask anyway, and I did promise I would agree next time you wanted to drag me on another crazy Ednaventure. So here is me agreeing.”

  "Really? Ooh that's scary." Edna studied the paper again.

  “So when is the meeting?”

  "Tomorrow night."

  "You feeling like living life on the edge, Edna?"

  Edna nodded furiously, her smile made her look like a kid in a candy store.

  Nancy smiled reassuringly. “Let’s do it.”

  Chapter Six

  “Nancy Moon.” The thin man in the yellow trench coat and Coke-bottle glasses looked over a clipboard as he elongated her last name. He sounded like a talking cow with a cold.

  “Hello, Josh.” Nancy tried to keep the bile out of her voice. She grabbed a bundle of papers off the mail cubby by her front door and held them out at arm's reach. It wasn't that she was disgusted by him; it was that he didn't like getting too close to people. She supposed he was a pleasant enough fellow, if the ring on his finger was any indication, but Nancy still wondered if a real woman actually found him attractive or if he made so much money that that was what was attractive.

  “So nice to see you again, Mrs. Moon. Fancy us talking again so soon.”

  Nancy's insurance claim adjuster had taken a vested interest with Nancy's account nearly two years ago, oddly soon after she had first met Edna.

  "So you claim that a tiger jumped on your car three nights ago.”

  She watched the traffic meander by while she waited for him to look up from his clipboard and grab the papers.

  She noticed an old blue Ford pickup sitting in the driveway of the house across Humboldt Lane.

  Looking closer, she saw that the For Sale sign in the front yard was missing. Hadn’t it just barely sold two days before? People didn’t usually move in that fast, did they?

  Sick of waiting for Josh to see what was right in front of his face, Nancy cleared her throat and waved the papers. "Ahem."

  "Oh, well, I see." He grabbed the papers gingerly, like they were used tissues.

  "It's all in the copy of the police report. Tiger fur in my windshield wipers and everything."

  "You don't say. Well, we shall have to go take a look, shall we?"

  You walked right past it to get to my front door; you couldn't have looked then?

  "Sounds good, let's go."

  Nancy tried to wait patiently while Josh meticulously scanned her car, judiciously snapping pictures with his digital camera. Nancy made sure to point out the two massive dips in the hood.

  She looked at the blue truck again when she noticed someone familiar.

  A young man in a WSU hoodie, head bobbing to unheard music, walked up the street to the bus stop. She never understood why college kids trekked so far from their university just to catch the bus stop close to her house. Maybe there was a marijuana supplier close by on her street. "Do you know how much longer this is going to take, Josh?"

  "Oh I'm nearly halfway done here, Nancy Moon; you can't rush a thorough job, can you?

  Of course you can't.

  The bus at the corner of Humboldt and Vasher stopped at its station and a handful of college kids grouped together at the door.

  "I understand thorough, Josh, but can't a couple of pictures be enough? You were just out here a couple months ago."

  Josh straightened up and peered at Nancy over the rim of his thick, distorting glasses. "And that is precisely why I'm being so carful. You see, we aren't in the habit of losing money, but in your case"—he snickered—“well, you have quite the case. Besides, I love seeing your home. It’s so unique."

  Josh pushed the glasses to the top of his nose and continued to ramble on, but Nancy wasn't listening. She was too busy watching the commotion down at the street corner.

  The bus driver was arguing with the kid in the hoodie. The kid pulled up his hands indicating he didn’t have enough money for the fare. The bus driver pointed out the door and the figure, head hanging low, stepped off the bus and walked back down the street toward Nancy’s house.

  He had a familiar look to him, like she'd seen …

  She recognized the swinging white headphones and the backpack.

  "Um, Josh, do you need me? Can you finish up here on your own?"

  Josh may have had a response, but Nancy was already walking down her driveway, watching the young man as his earbud cords bobbed to the beat of his walk.

  Like most teenagers, he had a slump to him and was so oblivious to the world around him that he nearly stumbled into a dog being walked the other way.

  She stopped at the end of her driveway before stepping onto the road in front of her house. Did she really want to get involved? Curiosity killed the cat and Nancy was out of her element here. She should leave well enough alone, but the words of a dead woman continued to haunt her.

  Find Peter.

  Linda's words lingered in her mind, even using the same voice. Nancy crossed the street, getting closer.

  "Hey," Nancy yelled, nearly jogging to meet him before he got too far away. "I couldn't help but see you not able to get on the bus. Do you need a ride somewhere?"

  He looked up at her, his countenance different from the distraught kid she had seen yesterday at Anca’s apartment. He had been crying and emotional then,
but today Peter looked happy and unfettered, despite the recent argument he’d just had with the bus driver. Peter looked at her, yanking out his earbuds. He looked around for a second, as if making sure that Nancy was indeed talking to him as if this was some sort of prank. "Uh, I don't have any money." He thumbed back over his shoulder toward the bus stop.

  Nancy remembered their meeting just the day before. It had been a pretty rough day for him. She had almost gone back in to talk to him. Now she would get her chance.

  "That's okay. If you can wait a few more bits for Mr. Speedy back there to finish with my car, I can give you a ride."

  He looked at Nancy's car, then her house, then back to her. His shoulder-length black hair sticking out of his hoodie bounced from the motion. "Uh, sure, I guess."

  Josh was just wrapping up with Nancy’s car when she and Peter got back to the driveway.

  The dents in her hood stood out as a stark reminder about the crazy last couple of days. She wondered if Peter would ask about them.

  “Wait here a moment and I’ll just head inside to get my purse.”

  He adjusted his bangs as Nancy looked into his eyes, which were dark like most Asian eyes but had a sparkle, a glint of something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. They almost seemed to have small flecks of something else in them.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “Whoa?”

  “Yeah, your house is really cool.”

  Nancy smiled.

  “Yeah, like, I’ve walked past here a lot and I don’t think I’ve ever noticed your house before. It’s very different. Very unique.”

  Nancy’s house was unique, that was for sure. Her husband’s family had immigrated to this area over a hundred and fifty years ago and at the time owned most of the Madison area. But over the years of money management issues, divorce, remarriage, and deaths, they were forced to sell off more and more of the land until the family house, an aged gothic home was left with only a few acres surrounding it.

  The ten acres across the drive to the north, the last vestige of the wooded area that had once been this town’s milieu, was sold off by her husband in order to pay the debts that his uncle had left him when he inherited the house. Most of the homes in the immediate area were all built in the late sixties or early seventies. Nancy was there to watch the entire neighborhood spring up around her as a woman in her early twenties.