"That ain't our number," she said coldly.
"Well, is there another boarding house in the area?" I asked.
"Not for a hundred miles or so.”
I tapped my fingers on the counter, trying to think of my next move. If I couldn't find Mrs. Klaus, then that threw another wrench into the mess. "May I borrow your phone for a minute?" I asked at length. I would just call her and find out where she was staying. Somehow, a mix-up had occurred.
I let the phone ring ten times before giving up. There was no answer.
"Thanks anyway," I said. "See you in about a week." I headed for the exit, then stopped and turned around. "One more thing," I said, "Would you happen to know what became of her husband?"
"Luther Klaus?" she replied. "He moved on to Black Falls after Rhonda took him to the cleaners in their divorce. Set up his own law practice there."
"Thanks again." Black Falls was a good hour drive from Dodsville. Since it was almost noon, and no telling how long lawyers spent at lunch, I decided to try later in the day to talk to him.
I noticed the gate open to the mansion as I turned down Millwork Boulevard. I was beginning to believe that Sly must have been careless when he returned after dropping me off at Julie's. We were supposed to keep the gate shut at all times, Mrs. Klaus had instructed. To keep out the peddlers and vagrants. My heart sank a bit in my chest, however, when I saw the real reason why the gate was left open. Randy Beliwitz's red truck was parked in the driveway in front of the entrance. The door on the driver's side was left open, as though Randy had been in a big hurry.
"Trouble," I said to myself, parking my Camaro well out of the path of Randy's truck, in case he was in a foul and revengeful mood when he left.
I hoped demurely that Sly and Tabitha weren't sitting together in the hot tub half naked.
Still vividly recalling my last meeting with Randy, I decided to stay clear of the house and another confrontation. The pool sounded like a harmless enough place to wait out Beliwitz's stay. Besides, my leg was feeling better all the time. I still limped noticeably, but, at times, I wasn't even conscious of the pain. I didn't want any more damage to my body, and, consequently, that probably meant not crossing Randy's path.
Kicking off my shoes and socks, I sat on the edge of the pool and dangled my legs, good and bad, in the water. I closed my eyes and relaxed.
"Where is she?"
I jerked out of the reverie I was slipping into, and turned to see Randy standing halfway between the pool house and me. He must have been in there looking for Tabby.
"I just got back myself," I replied, standing. No way I would face him sitting. "And I haven't seen any sign of them."
"Who's 'them'?"
So, he doesn't know about Sly staying here, I thought.
"Randy!" Tabitha yelled from the house. She leaned out of her second story bedroom window, wearing nothing but a towel. "You leave him alone!"
A sudden shot of pain from my leg caused me to wince. I reached down and rubbed my thigh, reminded again of what Randy had done to me.
Randy ignored Tabitha's warning and held his attention on me. A smile that almost frightened me formed on his face. "How's the leg?" he asked.
"Never felt better," I replied. "As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of going out jogging this afternoon."
The smile disappeared. "A smart ass?" he asked, as though he had never seen one in person. He walked up to me.
"Randy!" Tabitha yelled again from her window.
He stopped for a second and looked up to her. The smile formed again on his face, and he turned his attention back to me. Three feet away now.
Not too late to run, I thought, but my legs remained planted. He would catch me easily, anyway.
Two feet.
"What say we talk this out like--"
He shot out his arms, palms open and faced forward, and pushed me, rather easily, backwards into the pool. When I surfaced, he was down on one knee right above me. I flinched.
"That's just to make sure you leave Tabitha and me alone while I take care of business," he said. "I don't want you around while I straighten her out."
I didn't like the tone of his voice when he said, "straighten her out." There could be no way that I would stay out of it and mind my own business. I would, on the other hand, sneak unnoticed up behind him. No sense in being too foolish.
Second day in three, I thought as I pulled myself out of the pool, that I was soaking wet in my clothes. I waited until Randy had entered the mansion before I began my bold pursuit. I ran, as best as I could anyway, up to the front door before Randy could get to a window and see my approach. I peered around the corner as he made his ascent up the stairs. When he disappeared down the hallway of the second floor, I continued after him. My leg throbbed disquietingly beneath me. I hoped he would even try something on Tabby. I had a move or two of my own I wanted to show him.
"Tabby!" Randy shouted from upstairs. "Where the fuck are you?" A pause, then: "Get the hell out of my way, Sly."
All right, Sly, I thought. I should have known he'd get involved.
Sly replied something that I couldn't make out to Randy, but his tone was appeasing. Then I heard a brief scuffle and something heavy hitting the floor.
I hurried up the stairs as fast as my leg would allow me. Sly was the first person I saw. He was smoothing the wrinkle out of his clothes and looking down the hallway after Randy. Tabitha stood at the end of the hallway in front of her bedroom door, buttoning her shirt. At least, I thought, she managed to get dressed in time. Randy approached her, clinching his fists as he walked.
"Let's go," Randy ordered as he reached Tabby. He grabbed her wrist. "You're going with me." His tone left no room for debate. Nevertheless, Tabitha shook him off.
"No," she replied. "I'm not going with you." There was a dangerous pause. "I'm sick of you, Randy. Just leave. Get out of here." This last was a tone of challenge.
I limped up to Sly and both of us looked on in shock. "I think this is it," Sly whispered. "She's had enough of him--finally."
"Tell him off, Tabby," I cheered, also in a whisper.
Randy stood his ground in silence.
"This is private property," Tabitha said at length. "You are trespassing."
Randy's body jerked slightly, as though he had just come out of a trance. At the same time, he grabbed Tabitha's wrist, solidly this time. "I said you are coming with me." He spoke almost tentatively. "No way you are staying out here for the week." He tried pulling Tabitha down the hall, but she resisted.
Tabitha looked down at Sly and me, frowning; then turned back to Randy and said, "Let's go in here." She motioned with her head to her open bedroom door. "We need to talk."
Randy hesitated a moment, then his entire body seemed to relax. Almost like a person who just found out a loved one had died, I thought. "All right," he replied, quite colorlessly, the anger of before now missing. He followed Tabitha into her room and they shut the door behind them.
"Well," Sly said. "I'm going to soak in the hot tub for an hour or so. I'm still covered with dried sweat from tennis." He still had on his tennis clothes. "I think Tabitha has the situation under a semblance of control."
"Yea," I replied, still staring vacantly at the closed bedroom door. "She does at that, doesn't she?" Little Tabs had grown up after all. From a little girl in pigtails screaming for her mommy every time Reed or I picked on her, to a young woman who could handle her man. The world did go on in your absence, didn't it?
Five minutes later, as I stood silently staring into the refrigerator deciding on what to eat, the front door opened and Melissa strolled in. She held a suitcase in her hand.
"Is there trouble?" she asked in almost a whisper.
"What do you mean--" I started to reply, but remembered that Randy's truck was still in the driveway. "Oh, you mean with Beliwitz? I think Tabby is upstairs right now dumping all over him."
Her eyes lit up in shock. "You're kidding?"
"Well, I don't know
for sure. But it did sound like it a few minutes ago. She gave him the old 'we got to talk' line, then pulled him into her room."
"Sounds like maybe you received a few of those talks in life." She set down her suitcase and relaxed in a kitchen chair.
"Probably more than my share," I replied. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had to work until five."
Her eyes perked up. "Good news," she said. "I asked for the week off, and they told me I leave at noon." Then her facial feature saddened and she stared down at her shoelaces.
They gave her the time off, I realized, because of Reed's death. A silence endured in the kitchen, as I didn't know what to say to her. I closed the refrigerator door and sat across from her. I strained my mind for just the right thing to say that would lighten her mood with one single stroke.
Melissa sighed and ran her hand through her hair. "Want to go for a walk?" she asked, at length. "Look over the neighborhood?" She hit herself on the side of her head before I had a chance to reply. "I'm sorry. I forgot all about your leg."
"As a matter of fact," I replied. "My leg is feeling much better and a walk would only help to loosen it up. I would love to join you on a stroll around the mansions."
She laughed. "Then let's go. I can unpack later." She lowered her voice. "I don't want to interrupt the party going on upstairs, anyway."
"Good thought," I said, and we proceeded outdoors.
The day was hot but not nearly as humid as it was yesterday. The higher the humidity, I was sure, the higher the pain would be in my leg. I glanced quickly up to Tabitha's bedroom window, cursing Beliwitz in my mind. Even if Tabitha did get rid of him, I had the distinct feeling he and I would still not be through.
We reached the end of the driveway and walked along the sidewalk. "Do you have any more good stories about Reed?" Melissa asked, not looking at me, but staring at her shoelaces again. "I always wondered what he was like as a kid. What did he think? What were his dreams?" These last two sentences were not questions, only reflections.
Two children played in a tree in the front yard of the mansion next to Mrs. Klaus's. They noticed us and stopped their giggling, waiting for us adults to pass on by.
Reed loved to sit in a tree late at night, staring reflectively up at the stars. I told Melissa that. "And he was always amazed," I added, "that he never saw any adults in trees--unless, of course, they were just pruning it. He would tell me time and again that he would never give up tree sitting. He said there was no better way of letting go of your body and flying away on the horizon."
Melissa laughed. "I did catch him sitting in the willow tree in his back yard once." She paused. "He got kind of angry with me when I teased him about it."
"He was right, though."
"About what?"
"You never do see adults sitting in trees," I replied. "I wonder why that is."
"It must be one of those special attitudes we lose with our childhood."
"We lose too much of--" The sound of squealing tires behind us cut me off.
Randy's red pickup truck came flying out of Mrs. Klaus's driveway and turned down the boulevard in our direction.
"Thank God the gate was open," I said to Melissa. "Or he probably would have smashed his way right through it."
"That's one person who'll never grow up," Melissa added. "And he's the type that gives immaturity a bad rap."
Randy saw us as he passed, and he slammed on his brakes. For a moment there I thought he would just keep on going, on out our lives forever. But no such luck.
Melissa grabbed me by the arm. "Ignore him," she said.
Somehow, however, I knew that Randy wouldn't let me.
He rolled down his window and spit on the pavement. "Hey, O'Neal," he said with a wry smile. "I'm going to get you for this, O'Neal." He drove along side of us, at our walking speed. He waited for my response.
"Ignore him," Melissa repeated, almost commanded, as if she had plenty of experiences dealing with Randy in the past.
"Stay out of this, Melissa," Randy said laconically. "This is between me and the asshole."
"What did I do now?" I said, ignoring Melissa’s admonition. I stopped walking, and she tried to pull me along--unsuccessfully.
"You've been hot after Tabs," he replied. "Poisoning her mind against me. Don't look at me like you don't what I'm talking about. You want her and you know it." A smile broke through his anger. "And I'm going to get you, O'Neal. I'm going to get you when you least expect it and where it'll hurt you most." He spit again. "Count on it."
"Randy, you are a first class jerk," Melissa said with sudden anger. "Just touch Stephen and I won't hesitate going to the police and seeing to it that you're thrown in jail. You belong behind bars, anyway.”
"Shut your mouth, Melissa," Randy blurted, sticking his left arm out his window and pointing it emphatically at her. "I mean it. You don't want to--"
"What are you going to do, Beliwitz?" I retorted. "You going to beat her up, too? I bet that would make you feel like a real man, wouldn't it?"
He pulled his arm back inside the truck and simply stared at us. I could see a combination of anger and confusion behind his eyes, as though he wanted to strike back but couldn't find the words. "I'll be seeing you, O'Neal," he said at length. Then he revved his engine, popped the clutch, and squealed the tires down the block--an exclamation point to his last statement. I would be seeing Beliwitz again, and it wasn't going to be a tea party.
"I don't believe guys like him exist," I said after Randy turned the corner down the block and disappeared. The roar of his truck could be heard for another minute. "And what I can't even fathom is why Tabitha has anything to do with him in the first place."
"Sounds to me like she just broke up with him," Melissa replied. "She told me it was only a matter of finding the right time." She giggled, covering her mouth. "I guess she found it."
We started walking again. "Sorry about not taking your advice and ignoring him from the beginning," I said, apologetically. "I might have gotten you into trouble with him with my big mouth." Although, I did feel more than a little flattered that she had stuck up for me.
We passed the last mansion and entered a small park. A group of children played on the swings, seeing who could get the highest. Melissa and I sat on a bench and watched them in silence.
"You did handle Randy a lot better than Reed ever did," Melissa said at length, without expression. "He probably would have provoked a fight right there on the street."
"He never could keep his mouth shut when dealing with bullies," I said, "At least when he was younger. One time, even, I thought he was going to get us killed."
She looked up from the children and into my eyes. "Tell me about it," she said with sudden energy. "It sounds just like Reed."
* * *
Reed and I walked silently down the alley behind Main Street, on our way to another ghost hunting adventure. We had heard from some friends that they saw something moving inside the old train depot late at night. They walked up and looked in the windows and claimed to have seen something floating in the air, but they couldn't make it out in the darkness. Most likely just a false report, but it only took a rumor to set the Ghost Hunters into action.
The night sky was cloudless and the moon had yet to make an appearance. Consequently, the stars were at their peak brightness--as bright as they could be in the middle of a small town, anyway. The big bright blur of the Milky Way was visible stretching across the universe. The tall two and three story businesses on Main Street blocked out the streetlights completely, leaving the alley in unblemished darkness.
Upon reaching the train depot, we dumped our supplies on the ground. We had walked this time as Reed claimed we could make a much more effective getaway if someone of authority discovered us.
"Give me the crowbar," Reed instructed as he scrutinized the window in front of him. The plan was to jimmy open a window, crawl inside, and wait for the “witching hour” to arrive.
I pulled the crowba
r out of my backpack and slapped it into his wrist, like a nurse handing an instrument to a doctor. We had twenty minutes before the designated time, and, since it was so late on a weeknight, I felt secure that we wouldn't run into anyone wandering around back here. What I didn't think of, and probably should have, was the fact that there were more than a handful of taverns on Main Street, and drunks often walked so they didn't have the worry of getting a DUI ticket driving home. A group of four drunks rounded the building at the source of the alley and headed down our way.
Reed froze with the crowbar sticking a half-inch into the sash. The drunks were still a good hundred yards away, but if we didn't move our asses out of there soon, they would be upon us. To make matters even worse, the way they were talking sounded as though they had just been tossed out of the bar. Their overall mood was not one of friendly intentions. I waited for Reed to take charge of the dilemma, as he was always so apt to do.
He pulled the crowbar out of the windowsill with one solid jerk. "Pick up the stuff," he whispered. "And be quiet about it. We'll hide in that little alleyway between Ben Franklin and Susie’s Clothing Store."
I hurriedly, and without too much care, stuffed my equipment back into my bag. Accordingly, because I didn't stick my flashlight in deep enough, it tumbled out when I jerked the bag up in hope of getting the hell out of there quickly. The plastic covering the light bulb shattered when it hit the cracked sidewalk beneath us. The tinkling sounds that followed only magnified in the night air.
"Hey, look over there," I heard one of the drunks say.
"Run!" Reed shouted, but I was already ahead of him.
The "little alleyway" that Reed had mentioned as the place for us to hide was an overstatement. If he had called it a "slit" he would have been more accurate. For some reason that neither Reed nor I knew, or actually ever thought about, the architects involved in the building of the previously mentioned businesses had left a space between them. The entrance to this space was less then a foot wide, but if one could squeeze through the opening, the alleyway widened to three feet about a yard farther down. Adolescents, who had yet to reach puberty, used the alleyway for smoking, making out, and any other trespass they couldn't get away within the public's eye.
The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Page 14
