“Small platinum cross, nine-diamond inlay, eighteen-inch chain. Very tasteful.”
I felt myself relax, the surge of electric panic dissipating. “I’m sure it’s lovely He hasn’t given it to me yet.” I winked at him. “I won’t tell him you mentioned it.”
“Dylan Foster, I hope you solve your mystery,” he said.
“Thank you. I do too.”
6
I DIDN’T MIND THE HEAT and the smog that hit me when I left that refrigerator of a building. I felt my goose bumps go away as I started the truck and drove home. The drive settled me down. Something about the warm air and the dailiness of sitting in Dallas traffic.
When I got to my house, I threw my stuff down and immediately locked the ring back in the buffet with the necklace. I went back outside and sat on the porch swing with my cordless phone, a phone book, and a pad of paper.
I’m always tempted to page my dad and claim to be in the throes of a myocardial infarction, just to get a little immediate attention out of him. But if I did, I know the answering service would just tell me to call 911. I left a message for him and decided to call Guthrie instead.
I looked up my brother’s phone number and dialed, hoping his wife wouldn’t answer the phone.
She did, of course.
“Hello Cleo,” I said.
“Dylan,” she said, faking delight. “How nice to hear from you.”
“Great to talk to you too,” I lied. “It’s been too long. How’s the packing coming?”
“You know your brother,” she said.
I didn’t, really.
“… leaving everything to me. Only a man has time to play golf two days before a cross-country move.”
“So he’s not around?”
“He’s settling in at the nineteenth hole, I would guess. Why don’t you try him on his mobile?”
I reached for the pad. “Do you have the number?”
“You don’t know your brother’s phone number?” The fake affection had lasted all of twenty seconds.
“Could you just give it to me, please?”
She reeled it off, told me again how delighted she was that I’d called, and asked me if I’d send my brother home when I talked to him.
I assured her I would. As if he’d obey me and race right to her side.
I dialed the number and waited until the fourth ring. I was about to hang up when I heard his voice in front of a crowd.
“Guthrie Foster,” he said.
“Hey, big brother.”
“Dylan!” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, baby sister.”
“How was golf?”
“If I improve every day for the rest of my life, I ought to be a scratch golfer about thirty years after I’m dead. That’s how bad I played today All eighteen holes. It was a thing of beauty, really.” I heard him ask the bartender for another gin and tonic. “What’s up?”
“Strange request,” I said. “You don’t happen to remember the name of the funeral home that did mom’s funeral, do you?”
“Sutter,” he said without hesitating.
“How do you remember that?” I asked in wonder. If I asked him what color my fifth-grade bicycle seat was, he could probably tell me. It was remarkable. He was like a savant or something.
“Sutter Home,” he said. “We drank it that night because we thought it was so stupid to name a funeral home after a lousy bottle of wine. A good bottle of wine, maybe. Beringer. Now that’s a good bottle of wine. A nice Beringer chardonnay. But Sutter Home?” There was a roar in the bar. Guthrie swore. “Hang onto the ball. What are they paying this moron?”
I guess some guy on TV had dropped a pass.
“Why?” he asked.
“I’m just piecing together some things for a book I’m working on. It’s about grieving.” That was my third or fourth lie today No, fifth. In the last fifteen minutes. Not a good ratio. “You don’t happen to remember the funeral director’s name?”
I heard him rattle the ice in his glass. “Shykovsky D.A. Shykovsky. Never did find out what the initials stood for. ‘Dead Already’ maybe. The man was a ghoul.”
“That I do remember. His suit and that awful purple tie. Right out of The Addams Family. We started calling him Lurch.”
“Lurch Shykovsky. That’s the dude. He’s probably still there. His dad started the place.”
“Shykovsky Funeral Home isn’t too catchy,” I conceded. “No wonder they went with Sutter.”
“Shoulda gone with Beringer,” he said. “Big mistake. Anything else going on?”
“Not much. Classes just started. The little darlings are back on campus. Eager young minds, ready to learn. You?”
“I’m about three months away from cutting my own throat. If this transfer doesn’t work out, I’m changing careers. I have no passion for assuring the world of unfettered access to digital cell phone technology.”
“Maybe you could open the Beringer Chardonnay Funeral Home.”
He laughed. My brother has a great sense of humor. I’m always honored when I make him laugh.
“Oh, and Cleo said to hurry right on home. I think she misses you.”
He laughed again. “I’m missing her too, right about now. And all those boxes and that packing paper and that sweet, adoring look on her face.”
“How are the cats?” I asked. The cat question was the standard wrap-up cue for both of us.
“They have sweet adoring looks on their faces too. Still haven’t found the litter box, the little monsters. We’ve lived in that house three years.”
“Maybe they’ll improve in Seattle. Cats are so adaptable, you know.”
“Just like Cleo. Adaptable. That’s the word.”
“Good luck on the move,” I said. “Let me know how it goes.”
“Will do.” He clicked off.
I liked my brother. One of these days I’d have to get to know him a little better.
I called the Sutter Funeral Home and had a brief conversation with Lurch. He said I could come by tomorrow and take a look at the records. Apparently funeral homes are open even on Saturdays.
What a treat that would be for us both, I thought.
I went back into the house to start supper. I poured myself a glass of chardonnay and raised my glass to my brother.
The wine had a nice round flavor. Not quite a Beringer, but it was no Sutter Home either.
7
MAYBE IT WAS THE WINE. I don’t know I’m not much of a drinker, to be sure, but one glass with supper isn’t enough to send me around the bend. But around the bend I went that night. And I did not like what I saw on the other side.
It started with the flies.
I keep a meticulous house. I am rigorously tidy—actually downright obsessive-compulsive. It’s practically a disorder with me.
I don’t leave dishes in the sink. I don’t let spills dry on the countertop. I don’t leave laundry in the hamper for more than a day or two. I wash my towels every day.
Tree-hugger that I am, I love chemicals. Bleach and biodegradable surfactants are my dear and intimate companions.
And I never, ever have bugs. Even in bug-infested Dallas in the hot middle of the summer.
My exacting habits make my home a completely inhospitable environment for any living creature other than me. Maybe that’s one reason why I’ve never married, come to think of it. No one else could survive the Pine-Sol fumes.
Imagine my disgust, then, when I saw the first fly alight on the edge of my plate during supper.
And this was no ordinary fly. It was huge. The size of a small Volkswagen. I could have painted daisies on it and sold rides to small children.
Instead, I waved it off my plate and went for the flyswatter. I chased it around the kitchen for a few minutes until it landed on the countertop within my reach. I smashed the sucker, scrubbed the counter with a paper towel and a large dose of Clorox Cleanup, and emptied my pla
te into the garbage disposal.
When I switched off the disposal, I heard a buzz. A loud buzz. I turned around to see another Volkswagen buzzing around my kitchen.
Two flies in one evening. Two flies in one year was my usual quota.
Same drill. Chase, kill, clean, though this one was harder to kill. The chase took several minutes.
By now, I’d completely lost my appetite. I threw out the rest of my casserole—on the chance that either fly had landed on it while I wasn’t looking—hosed the whole place down, and turned off the kitchen light.
It was time to shake off this day for good, so I began my getting-ready-for-bed ritual. I started myself a bubble bath and flipped on the bedroom’s window unit air conditioner (I love a warm bed and a cold room at night). I turned down the bedspread and recoiled.
A big black fly was sitting on my nice, clean white pillowcase. Just sitting there. Staring at me. Like it had been waiting for me.
I waved my hand at it. It didn’t move.
I picked up the pillow by a corner and shook it.
I heard the buzz as the fly took off, but lost sight of it immediately. I rushed to the kitchen for the flyswatter and returned, armed for battle.
This was one aggressive bug. It dive-bombed me. It chased me. It landed on me for a split-second and then took off, as if to taunt me. This fly was not going down without a fight.
I won, eventually, but not without a maniacal battle. I must have looked crazed by the end of it. I was crazed by the end of it.
By the end of the night, I’d chased and killed a succession of one dozen flies. And by the time I put my Clorox away for the final time that night, I was shaken.
It seems strange to say, but there was something otherworldly about these bugs. Flies don’t travel in packs. They buzz inside one at a time.
You spot it, you chase it, you kill it. No more fly.
Yet someone seemed to be sending out a lone soldier to replace each one that went down.
And how did they manage to appear, one by one, just as their predecessors died?
The last one I spotted eluded me. I had to go to bed that night knowing there was a big black fly waiting somewhere in the house. Waiting for what, I didn’t know.
Since fly number three had spent time on my pillow, I changed my sheets and threw the dirty ones in the washing machine. Hot water, lots of Tide and Clorox.
I took my bath, tucked myself in, and pulled the sheet over my head. No way was I sleeping with my face exposed.
Sleeping might not be the right word for what took place that night. Tossing and turning doesn’t quite do it justice either. More like standing on the edge of some bizarre dream state and not quite walking in.
I’ve never dreamed a smell before, for instance. But sometime in the center of the night, I caught the distinct, sulfury scent of hard-boiled eggs.
Some people, I’m sure, especially people who like eggs, wouldn’t find this smell offensive. I do. I hate eggs. I have them in my refrigerator, but only for baking. Eggs cooked any way—fried, scrambled, or hard-boiled—had never touched any of my plates.
I curled my nose and writhed under the sheets, trying to get away from the smell. Of course it was impossible. A smell is one thing that cannot be gotten away from. Eventually the smell slipped away—or I slipped away from the smell—depending on which world the smell was in. And was replaced with the comforting smell of Downy as I breathed in my clean cotton sheets.
A succession of visitors populated my dreams that night. Gavin, my student, showed up with his leather Bible. He just stood there, in the middle of a creek, looking at me before he turned and splashed away. My brother came, only to be shooed away by Tibor Silverstein. And I was in the middle of a conversation with my mother when the screech of my cell phone jarred me awake.
I whipped the sheet off my face and looked at the clock. 5:15 a.m. It was still dark outside.
I hurled myself out of bed and snatched the phone off its charger, squinting at the little screen through exhausted eyes to see if I could identify the number. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it exactly. Reluctantly, I pushed the button and said hello.
“Dylan?” a voice said.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“It’s Helene.”
“Helene? What’s going on? Is something wrong?”
“Did I wake you?” she asked.
“Of course you woke me.” She knew I didn’t get up this early. No one in academia gets up this early. We’re not ambitious enough. And it was Saturday, for crying out loud.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I just got an emergency call from one of the students at the counseling clinic.”
“One of mine?” I asked.
“He says he’s yours.”
“What’s his name?”
“Erik Zocci,” she said.
I didn’t recognize the name. I would remember a name like that. Maybe this was a patient from a previous school year or something. A one-timer, perhaps. We got lots of those.
“What did he say?” I asked. “And why did he call you instead of me?”
“He called to complain about you,” she said. “He said you’d made advances during therapy sessions.”
I felt a surge of alarm. “Made advances? Like, sexual advances? He’s alleging I’m coming on to him?”
This was every therapist’s worst nightmare. Unfounded accusations of impropriety from an unstable client. Once the suggestion is out there, careers can be tainted forever.
“Yes. He was very explicit. Do you want me to tell you what he said?”
I shook my head. “No. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even recognize the guy’s name.”
“He said he saw you three or four times this summer. And then quit after you began trying to seduce him.”
“Did he sound coherent? Was he lucid?”
“Quite,” she said.
I couldn’t think of what to say. I sat there and let it sink in.
She paused. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask you this. Is it true?”
“Helene.”
“I need to hear it from you. I need to know.”
“You do know,” I said. “It’s not true. Of course it’s not true.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
“You doubted me?”
“It’s just that you’ve been acting strangely.”
“Strange how?”
“John Mulvaney told me about your date.”
“Date? We didn’t have a date. The man was delusional. I would never go out with him. You know me better than that.”
“He said you asked him. out. And that you’d changed your mind at the last minute and tried to humiliate him. And then insisted he go out with you anyway. He was very upset.”
“Helene.”
“I know. We’re talking about John Mulvaney. That’s why I didn’t give it any credence. I didn’t even mention it to you. But now, with this … I don’t know, Dylan. It doesn’t look good.”
“No, it doesn’t. What should I do?”
“I have to investigate,” she said. “You can’t work in the clinic until it’s cleared up.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Depends on how credible this guy is. I’ll go down to the clinic this morning and pull his files. I’ll give you a call after I’ve had a look at them. With any luck, we’ve got some testing on him already that will confirm some sort of psychosis or something.”
“And if we do?”
“That would be enough for me. I won’t call the licensing board. We’ll try to clear it up internally, and you can go back to the clinic as soon as we’ve put it to rest. Probably within a week or so.”
“And if we don’t? What, if Erik Whatever-His-Name-Is is a perfectly sane, model student? Or worse yet, an antisocial personality disorder who knows how to lie and beat standardized psych exams?”
“Then you might want to consider a new career.”
I felt a sudden urge to roll i
nto a ball and suck my thumb.
“Should I keep teaching?” I asked.
She thought for a minute. “I think so. Just suspend your clinical work and leave your door open for student conferences. I’ll keep a lid on this. Hopefully we can clear it up quietly and no one else will have to know.”
Helene promised again to call me as soon as she saw the file, warned me to stay away from the clinic and not to go hunting for it myself, and hung up the phone.
Sleep was out of the question at this point. I put on a bathrobe and went to.the kitchen to start the tea kettle.
8
I SAT THERE AT MY KITCHEN TABLE for a good long while, listening to large chunks of my carefully constructed life slam to the ground around me.
I’d spent nine long and fairly unpleasant years in graduate school. Four in seminary, and then another five to get my PhD. A year doing a clinical internship on a locked inpatient unit at a public hospital, dealing with indigent schizophrenia patients who couldn’t tell the difference between Big Bird and Larry Bird, but who believed that both Birds were communicating with them through the mercury fillings in their teeth.
And for my trouble, I had landed my dream job right out of school. Assistant professor at a major university—not known for its psych department, I admit, but still a good school. A good school in a nice city that I didn’t mind living in. A good school with a health plan and a 401(k) and convenient faculty parking.
But the best part was that my job afforded me plenty of opportunities for clinical work. I got to teach, which I love, and see cases, which meant that I got to sit around and talk to students and help them with their problems. This is rare in the world of academic psychology, believe it or not, since most academia centers around research. In fact, most of the psychology professors I know spend their entire careers trying to avoid dealing with people and their problems. Ironic, I know.
So here I was, with my dream job, thirty-three years old, single, no prospects for marriage. Not that I was looking to get married. But still. I hadn’t had a date in a year. And I consider myself to be eminently datable. I’m a smart, reasonably interesting, non-lumpy fairly athletic woman with my mother’s eyes and thick auburn hair that isn’t showing any gray yet.
When the Day of Evil Comes Page 5
