Black Widow

by Breton, Laurie

  Her bark of laughter was brittle. “Crime running rampant down there in Mayberry, is it, Nicky?”

  “Knock it off, Lenore. Tell Mom I’ll call her.” He hesitated. “Is Janine there?”

  “Yeah. I’ll put her on. It’s been great talking to you, Nicky.”

  A moment later, his thirteen-year-old daughter picked up the extension. “Daddy!” she exclaimed.

  His heart squeezed in his chest. “Hi, baby,” he said.

  “Jenny Giulio’s having a Fourth of July bash at her Gram’s place in Syosset, with a live band and everything. Robbie Morrison invited me, and Mom said I could go!”

  Since when had Janine been old enough to go out with boys? “Who the hell is Robbie Morrison?” he said.

  “He’s this totally awesome boy in my class, Daddy.”

  He didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t expected this so soon. Gruffly, he said, “You be careful, you hear?”

  “Oh, Dad, don’t be a dork.” Janine paused. “I miss you,” she said.

  “I miss you, too, lambchop.”

  “How come you don’t ever call?”

  Guilt twisted inside him. “I’m sorry, baby. I’ve just been so damn busy. I’ll try to call more often, okay?”

  Janine sighed. “Okay,” she said.

  “Hey, kiddo, maybe you could fly down and visit me sometime.”

  “Right. Mom would probably have a bird.”

  The steak was burning. He could smell it. “We’ll work around Mom,” he said. “Listen, sweetheart, I have to go, I’m in the middle of cooking supper.”

  “Okay. I love you, Daddy.”

  “I love you, too, baby.”

  He managed to salvage the steak, but his mood, and his appetite, had taken a nosedive. He ate his supper halfheartedly, left the dirty dishes in the sink, then showered and changed and drove out to Dewey Webb’s.

  Dewey’s was a roadhouse just outside of town, with a reputation for loud music, free-flowing liquor, and fast women. It was the kind of place the pastors of Elba’s two dozen churches vilified from their respective pulpits on Sunday mornings. Folks went to Dewey’s to sin, and tonight, Police Chief Nick DiSalvo was in a sinning mood.

  He ordered a beer and wandered out to the back room. A few of the locals eyed him warily. Most people still weren’t quite sure how to take him, so they greeted him with uneasy formality. “Evening, Chief,” one of the men said, and the others, not to be outdone, chimed in with lukewarm greetings.

  He played a couple rounds of pool, and the atmosphere relaxed a little. Afterward, he drank a few beers with Linc Stempel and Gus Hoyt, two old-timers who spent most of their days sitting outside Carlyle’s Barber Shop, chewing tobacco and talking about the old days. But tonight, there was just one topic of conversation. He couldn’t escape the woman, no matter where he went.

  “I hear that McAllister woman’s back in town,” Gus said. He raised his bottle to his mouth and glugged down half of it, then let out a loud belch. “She’s gonna be a thorn in your side, boy.”

  “We’ll see,” Nick said.

  “Folks around here,” Linc said, “don’t cotton to the idea of some murderess running around loose.”

  “Her conviction was overturned,” Nick said amiably.

  Gus snorted. “On a technicality’s what I hear. Don’t mean diddly ‘cept them lawyers screwed up somehow, and now she’s walking free.”

  “It was new evidence,” Nick said. “A new witness came forward.”

  “And she’s come back to rub our faces in it.”

  Nick tore at the label on his bottle of Bud. “You guys think she did it?”

  “Don’t matter what we think,” Linc said laconically. “The jury said she did it. That’s what matters.”

  “Somebody trashed her house this afternoon,” Nick said.

  Gus leaned forward, always eager to hear a new sliver of gossip. “Do tell?”

  “Stove up the furniture, broke dishes, upended plants, emptied the kitchen cupboards all over the floor.”

  Linc shook his head. “People hereabouts ain’t gonna make it easy on her. She’d be better off going back where she come from. ‘Round here, we take care of our own. And Michael McAllister was one of our own.”

  Nick clapped him on the shoulder. “Right you are, my man. Listen, if either one of you hears anything, I’d appreciate a call.”

  He bought both of the boys a round of beer before he went out into the muggy night. The air was thick and heavy and hard to breathe. He drove through the streets of Elba slowly, with meticulous care. It wouldn’t do for the new police chief to be arrested for driving while intoxicated.

  He’d already pulled up in front of Kathryn McAllister’s house before he realized it was where he’d been headed all along. Her living room light was on, and soft music drifted out the open windows to mingle with the night air. Classical. It all sounded alike to him, but it was nice. Pretty. Soothing.

  He rang the bell and tucked his hands in his pockets like some high school kid on a first date. Footsteps approached the door, and then her voice, cautious, asked, “Who is it?”

  “Nick,” he said. “Nick DiSalvo.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and then she unlocked the door and opened it. Her hair was damp, and she was wearing a white terry cloth wraparound robe that tied around the middle. The front of it plunged in a shadowy vee, and as far as he could tell, she wasn’t wearing anything under it. “What do you want?” she said.

  He wasn’t really sure what he was doing here. Christ, he must be drunker than he thought. He struggled to bring her into focus. “Coffee,” he said.

  She eyed him long and hard. And then she stepped back to let him in. “I think that’s probably a good idea,” she said.

  There was virtually no evidence of this afternoon’s devastation. She’d covered the torn furniture with blankets, repotted the houseplants that were salvageable, swept up the glass and the potting soil and the corn flakes. He followed her to the kitchen, watched as she stretched up on bare toes to reach the cupboard. “It’ll have to be instant,” she said. “It’s all I have.”

  He cleared his throat. “Fine. Whatever you got.”

  She filled the teakettle, turned on the burner beneath. “Been to Dewey’s, have you, DiSalvo?”

  “Great detective work, McAllister.”

  “It isn’t hard,” she said, turning and leaning against the stove with her arms crossed, “in a town that has twenty-three churches and one bar. I doubt that the First Methodist has taken to serving boilermakers at its Wednesday-night prayer service.”

  He wondered what her hair would feel like if he ran his hands through it. Soft, like a burnished cloud, tangled and damp from the shower she’d just come from. He already knew what it smelled like, sweet and tangy, like the scent of a fresh-peeled orange, and he wondered if her skin would taste that same way if he touched the tip of his tongue to the soft hollow at the base of her throat.

  The kettle wailed, and she busied herself making coffee for both of them. It must be Lenore that had him so edgy tonight. Until his ex-wife called, he’d forgotten how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.

  Kathryn turned to look at him. “Cream and sugar?” she said.

  In the background, soft piano music played. “I think I better go,” he said.

  She just stood there, saying nothing, her face expressionless. And then she nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I think you probably should.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t belong here. Not tonight.”

  He wove his way to the front door and fumbled with the lock. “Nick?” she said softly, behind him.

  He looked over his shoulder. Swaying slightly, he said, “Yeah?”

  “Let me get dressed and drive you home.”

  He swung the door back and forth a couple of times. “Nah. I’ll be all right. I don’t live far.”

  The corners of her mouth settled into a frown. “You won’t be all right if you wrap your truck around a tree.�
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  “I won’t wrap it around a tree.” He stepped through the door, paused on the porch to look back at her. “Remember what I said about keeping your doors locked. Don’t let anybody in.”

  One slender hand went to her hair and tucked it behind her ear. “I let you in,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly your garden-variety rapist.”

  “Good night, DiSalvo,” she said. “Drive carefully.”

  And she shut the door in his face.

  The clerk at the Rowley County Courthouse was helpful and efficient, pulling out all the property map books for Elba and stacking them on the table next to Kathryn’s chair. The books were musty from disuse, and some of the pages had yellowed with age. She paged through them slowly until she found the map that showed Wanita Crumley’s property. It was bordered on the north by the pig farm of Ellis Jenkins, whose two children had both been in Kathryn’s fifth-grade class a few years back. To the south and east, Wanita’s property butted up against that of Neely and Kevin McAllister.

  No surprises here. Both the Crumley and the Jenkins properties had been carved out of acreage that had belonged to the McAllister family since before the Civil War, when the antebellum plantation had supported several thousand acres of cotton and tobacco, worked by a small army of slaves. Subsequent to President Lincoln’s 1863 emancipation mandate and The Late Unpleasantness, as the war was known to many in these parts, the family had begun selling off chunks of the land that had once been an asset but had now become a liability. Without all those slaves to work the land, a number of families suddenly found themselves land-rich but money-poor, and had been forced to sell off pieces of their once-glorious plantations in order to put food on the dinner table.

  Kathryn closed the heavy book and set it aside. As an afterthought, she drew it back across the table, opened it back up, and began paging through it in search of the Chandler place, curious about the identity of the property owner who was letting the place disintegrate. She found it on page 83, and began scanning the fine print. Two-acre lot bordered on the south by Francis Trimble, on the east by Ridgewood Road, on the north and west by Harriet Slocum. Property owners Kevin and Neely McAllister.

  She stopped abruptly. Backed up to reread it, certain she was wrong about what she thought she’d read. But there it was, in black and white. Kevin and Neely McAllister owned the house where Michael had been murdered. They were the absentee owners who were allowing their son’s home to go to ruin.

  It made no sense at all. Why would the Judge have bought the Chandler place after his son had died there under violent circumstances? Why would they want the constant reminder? If Kathryn had been the one whose child was brutally murdered, she would have wanted to burn the place down. Instead, the Judge and Neely were letting the house die a slow and ugly death.

  She drove back into town and parked in front of the First National Bank of Elba. Wendy Sue Mortimer, John Chamberlain’s buxom young secretary, looked up from her typewriter and her eyes went wide with recognition. “I’d like to see Mr. Chamberlain,” Kathryn told her.

  “I’m afraid he’s busy right now.”

  “Fine. I’ll wait.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, she made herself comfortable in one of the padded oak captain’s chairs the bank supplied for its customers. Everything about the place, from the plush mauve carpeting to the rich mahogany wainscoting, shouted out that Serious Business took place here, beneath the watchful eyes of a gallery of former bank presidents going back more than a century. The South, Kathryn had quickly learned, took its history very seriously.

  She waited thirty-seven minutes for her audience with the bank president, countering the curious and angry stares of passing customers with a bland and impersonal smile. John Chamberlain finally emerged from his office, glanced quickly right and left, and ushered her inside. He sat in a plush leather chair behind a massive desk of polished walnut and folded his hands over his ample girth. With false joviality, he said, “And what may I do for you on this fine day, Miz McAllister?”

  “I just learned something that I find curious, Mr. Chamberlain. And I thought perhaps you could enlighten me.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “After Michael’s death,” she said, “while I was in prison, you foreclosed on our mortgage.”

  He straightened in his chair. “That’s correct. Since you were unable to make the payments, Miz McAllister, we were forced to take back the house and sell it.”

  “To my father-in-law.”

  The joviality disappeared. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I’m not followin’ you.”

  “Don’t you find it odd, Mr. Chamberlain, that a couple like the McAllisters would buy the house where their only son had been brutally murdered just a few months earlier?”

  “I don’t find it anything, Miz McAllister, except none of my business.” He smiled thinly. “Or yours.”

  “It just seems a rather gruesome reminder of their loss. I can’t imagine why they’d do such a thing. Can you?”

  “I really cannot continue this discussion any further. These are questions that should be directed to your former in-laws. Now, is there anything else I can do for you today, Miz McAllister?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Good. Then I suggest you leave, quietly and promptly.”

  Her hand was on the doorknob when he spoke again. “Oh, by the way—”

  “Yes?” She turned to look at him, sitting there behind his huge desk, looking for all the world like a walrus.

  “If you’re thinking of opening a bank account,” he said, “First Federal Savings is right down the street.”

  On the sidewalk, in front of the bank, she came face-to-face with her mother-in-law.

  Even on the hottest summer day, Neely McAllister wore silk and pearls. Today her dress was a soft coral shirtwaist, with tiny pearl buttons down the front. Thanks to the miracle of Lady Clairol, her hair was still a soft ash blonde, and it was drawn up in an elegant chignon that was the envy of all the younger members of the Ladies Aid Society.

  Her eyes were a glacial blue that somehow managed to cool by several degrees the instant she saw Kathryn. Her mouth narrowed and her face drew into a hard mask that emphasized every wrinkle accumulated in her fifty-seven years.

  “Good morning, Neely,” Kathryn said evenly.

  “How dare you come back here,” her mother-in-law said in a voice that managed to be harsh without losing the even modulation all finely-bred young Southern ladies learned in finishing school. “After all you put us through, how dare you show your face in this town?”

  “After all I put you though? You may have lost a son, but I lost a husband. I loved him, and you didn’t even stand by me. You threw me to the wolves and watched while they licked my bones clean. And you have the nerve to criticize me?”

  A muscle twitching in Neely’s cheek was the only indication of her emotional state. “You’re nothing but a tramp,” she said. “I told Michael that the day he brought you home. I begged him to reconsider the marriage. I offered to pay any price you asked to have it annulled. But he laughed at me. His own mother.” She stiffened her spine and raised her head. At that angle, in the bright light of midday, the wattles beneath her chin were plainly visible. “You had him bewitched. You, a nothing little tramp who got him to do your bidding by spreadin’ your legs whenever he asked.”

  Of their own accord, her fists clenched. “That’s enough,” she said.

  “He never loved you,” Neely went on, as though she hadn’t spoken. “He was just highly sexed, like his father. And he had a weakness for long-legged, trashy women.” She pursed her mouth in distaste. “Also like his father.”

  “What do you know about love? You’ve never loved anybody but yourself.”

  “I love this town. And I know that it breaks my heart to see white trash like you dirtying up our fair streets.” Her face hardened, and so did her voice. “I want you out of my town.”

  “The l
ast time I looked,” Kathryn said dryly, “I didn’t see your name written down the center of Main Street.”

  “Well, then, Kathryn, perhaps you should consider lookin’ a little more closely.” And with her shoulders back and her head raised, Neely walked away without looking back.

  For a single instant, Kathryn seriously considered picking up a large rock and bashing in the back of that perfectly coifed head. Rage could drive people to do things that were light years beyond their normal ethical boundaries. She’d seen it more than once during those four years she spent in prison. But this was the first time she’d experienced it firsthand.

  Her hands were shaking when she climbed into her car and slammed the door. She tore out of the parking space, shifted gears with a vengeance, and the little car shot forward, past the old men who were smoking and chawing outside Carlyle’s Barber Shop. Like trained dogs, they all looked up as she passed, watching her with keen interest, probably already laying odds on the outcome of the contest between the two McAllister women.

  She was still steaming an hour later when the telephone rang. She picked it up, balanced it against her shoulder. “Hello?” she said.

  Silence. Dead silence.

  “Hello?” she said, louder this time.

  “If you know what’s good for you,” the voice whispered, “you’ll get out of town now.”

  “What? Oh, for Christ’s sake. Who is this?”

  At the other end, the phone was quietly hung up. Kathryn looked at the receiver in disbelief, then slammed it back into place on the kitchen wall.

  A moment later, it rang again. She gritted her teeth and picked it up. “Hello?” she said.

  Again, silence.

  “Look,” she said, “don’t you think you’re being a tad melodramatic?”

  “Bitch,” the caller said, and hung up the phone.

  When it rang a third time, she snatched it up. “What the hell do you want?” she shouted.

  “Mother of mercy, McAllister,” Nick DiSalvo drawled, “remind me not to get you riled up any time soon.”

  She went limp. She hadn’t realized how hard she’d been trembling. “DiSalvo,” she said weakly. “I wasn’t expecting you.”