Return to Appleton

by Sylvia Bambola

  “Sorry, Miss, you can’t come any farther.”

  “You don’t understand.” Gloria tried to focus on the patrolman’s face. He was young and crisp and clean in spite of the fallout of smoke and particleboard and glass shards and fragments of wood and brick. His appearance made him look strangely out of place in what resembled a war zone. “Those are my friends up there. I was just with them … visiting … and went for a walk. I have to see if they’re all right. I need to make sure—”

  “You need to stay right here, out of harm’s way.” The look on Gloria’s face must have been pitiful, because the young officer did a double take, then pulled her through the imaginary line that separated the curious from the essential. He guided her to one of the squad cars and opened the back door. “Why don’t you wait inside where it’s warm? As soon as we know the status of your friends, we’ll let you know.”

  Gloria wanted to tell him she wasn’t cold. Instead, she slipped obediently into the car, grateful she was able to get this close. With a sharp metallic snap, the door closed, leaving her alone, shivering. She hadn’t realized she was shivering. How could that be? She wasn’t cold. She rocked back and forth and clamped one hand around her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. She felt like throwing up. The heavy, stale air in the car didn’t help. It was mingled with smoke and made her want to gag. There had to be someplace she could go to breathe. She reached out, but before she could touch the handle, the door flew open and Cutter slid in beside her. His eyes were red and watery, and Gloria detected a slight wheeze.

  “How did you get through?” It was a silly question. Obviously, he had forced his way, like she had.

  His head dropped against the seat back, his lips parted as though he had to breathe through both nose and mouth to obtain sufficient oxygen.

  “Are you all right?”

  He nodded, and gradually his breathing slowed to an easy inhale-exhale rhythm, and then, as though by osmosis, so did hers, though she still felt nauseated. She slipped her hand beneath his, then stared out at the chaos and began praying.

  When an ambulance pulled up behind the hook and ladder minutes later, Gloria’s teeth began to chatter all over again. Cutter folded his arms around her, holding her close, and eventually his warmth, his even breathing, and his broad shoulder against her cheek calmed her down.

  She bit her lip as paramedics pulled gurneys out of the back and disappeared with them into the house. Later, they returned with a body on each stretcher. When Gloria saw that one of the bodies was covered with a sheet, she barely got the door open and her head out before she lost all of Harry’s gourmet dinner.

  They followed the ambulance in a squad car—Gloria in back with Cutter, clutching his arm for dear life, the young officer in front, driving stone-faced. Ever since the officer had given them the news, a suffocating silence had fallen, as if someone had pulled stockings over their faces and no one could talk. Gloria pressed against Cutter, sinking deep into his side. From time to time, she’d change her position with a jerk as though trying to rouse herself from a nightmare.

  Dorie was dead.

  Harry and Perth were injured.

  What happened, and why?

  One minute Dorie was showing off her chocolate cake with funny vanilla writing, and the next minute …

  Gloria glanced out her window as they turned from Pratt Parkway onto Sixth Avenue. Pratt Towers was only a few blocks more, and two miles from that, Eckerd City Hospital. At the corner of Pratt and Sixth stood a newsstand, the kind with a slanty wooden roof, and large enough for a person to sit inside. The proprietor was busy stacking bundles of magazines. Off to the side, a man and woman walked a little black terrier, and in front of them two men in suits entered the Blue Dolphin for a late lunch or impromptu business meeting.

  How normal it all seemed here, life in the humdrum. It made what had happened at E-Z Printing seem so surreal, so absurd, like Alice’s looking glass where nothing made sense. And yet … in a place deep inside Gloria, a thought began to form, to take on an ugly shape and torment her. She closed her eyes. Maybe it did make sense. But this was not the time to sort things out. Harry and Perth needed prayer. She had to focus on them. She began mouthing silent prayers and minutes later was surprised to hear Cutter whispering his own.

  Gloria felt like she had entered the Twilight Zone instead of the emergency waiting room. Time stood still, or at least it slowed to such a crawl that Gloria was sure she had passed through a time warp into another dimension. She sat upright, back pressed against the curve of the white plastic captain’s chair, and watched the hands of the large round wall clock move in agonizing millimeters. She’d done this for hours … minutes … seconds? She wasn’t sure which.

  Cutter never left her side. Twice he brought her coffee, but Gloria didn’t remember drinking either cup. Finally, a doctor wearing a lab coat and a goatee and looking strangely like Pee-Wee Herman emerged from the corridor. He smiled a lot and didn’t wring his hands, so Gloria felt certain the news was good. He told them Harry had sustained minor cuts and bruises and was being released. Perth had a broken right arm and a concussion, and she would have to stay for further observation. Gloria’s only reaction was a vigorous nod of the head, like one of those Apple Festival tourists from Japan or India or the Netherlands who didn’t understand English very well and just nodded at everything everyone said.

  Then the fog lifted, and Gloria found herself back in real time. Harry and Perth were going to be all right.

  “Glad to hear your two friends got off easy.”

  Gloria looked up and found the young, clean-cut police officer—the same one who had driven them to the hospital—standing over her with a pad in his hand.

  “Now that you’ve got them off your mind, I need to ask a few questions. Some details need clarifying.” He pulled out the ballpoint pen that was clipped to the spiral binder, then flipped open his notebook. Gloria noticed he wore a wedding ring and wondered what it must be like to be married to someone who was far too accustomed to seeing people wheeled from their homes with sheets over their heads. “E-Z Printing belonged to Harry Grizwald? And the building too? And his apartment was on the third floor?”

  “Yes”

  “Who lived on the second?”

  “Perth.” Gloria’s voice sounded strange in her ears. More like the voice of a little girl than a woman.

  “That’s Perth McGregor?”

  “Right.”

  “Any relation to Harry Grizwald?” Gloria noticed two large freckles, each the size of a black-eyed pea, on his left cheek.

  “They were friends.”

  “And who was the older woman … ?” Pages rustled as the officer flipped through his notes, then stopped when he apparently found what he was after. “Dorie Dobson.”

  “She is … was … engaged to Harry.”

  The officer squinted, and Gloria noticed a skin tag on his eyelid and thought it odd she should notice these trivial details. She wondered if it was to keep her mind off that other shape, the one that had taken over much of her brain.

  “What’s your relationship with the deceased?”

  “She was my friend. So are Harry and Perth.”

  “And you?” The officer turned to Cutter. “How do you figure in all this?”

  “I’m just along for the ride.” Cutter drew Gloria closer as though circling the wagons. “This is only the second time I’ve met Harry. The first time for the others.”

  The officer tapped the pen against his notebook. “It was sure lucky for both of you that you were out when the bomb went off.”

  “Bomb?” Gloria and Cutter said at the same time. Gloria felt her mind detonate and that ugly shape explode and splatter into a million accusations.

  “Yeah, that’s what it looks like. The bomb squad’s there now confirming it. Anyway, back to this lucky stroke of yours. What made you leave?”

  “Dorie insisted. Perth said she had a surprise for me … It was really supposed to be an engagement pa
rty for Harry and Dorie, but I just bought a print shop in Appleton, and Dorie had gotten me something or made something for the occasion. I don’t know which, but Perth said—”

  “Okay, so you left the house. Then what did you do?”

  The shape was out now, no place to hide. Fragments flitted through her mind like mimes, vying for attention, then joined to break the silence with a string of words. A bomb … it was deliberate … it was hateful … it was murder … it was the stalker.

  “So what did you do?” the officer repeated.

  “I don’t know … we walked … talked …”

  “Just where are you going with this?” Cutter sounded irritated.

  “We’re trying to find a motive. Someone didn’t like your friend Harry. Somewhere along the line, he must have made enemies.”

  “Impossible.” Even now, Gloria didn’t want to accept it. Acceptance meant she’d have to share the blame. “Harry didn’t have enemies. He’s a sweet, gentle—”

  “Last year we got a complaint. Seems he threatened someone at Social Services.”

  Gloria remembered the trouble Harry had caused when Social Services tried to put Perth into a foster home. “Those charges were dropped,” she said, a little too loudly. Hadn’t she warned Harry about the stalker? Hadn’t she told him to be careful? But even she hadn’t believed the stalker would do something like this. It seemed like gross naiveté now. “The charges were dropped,” she repeated.

  “Aha. But it doesn’t sound like something a sweet, gentle man would do, now does it?”

  Cutter rose to his feet. “I know you’re only doing your job, but Gloria’s lost one of her friends, and you’re trying to make it seem like—”

  “Relax.” A strong arm gently pushed Cutter back into his seat. “This is routine. These questions have to be asked. Somewhere out there, Harry Grizwald has an enemy.”

  Gloria closed her eyes and thought of the last note she had gotten from the stalker. It seemed inconceivable that anyone would go this far to stop the printing of their little flyer. But the vision of Santa Claus lying in the briars with a bullet in the center of his forehead made her realize how stupid she had been. For anyone capable of doing that, killing someone else would hardly be a sticking point. They were all in danger.

  Her face must have betrayed her thoughts, because the young officer thumped his pad and asked her if something had just come to mind. Then for the next hour, she and Cutter told him about the problems at The Lakes and the flyers and the stalker and the Sam Bryce Detective Agency.

  When Gloria first saw Harry, she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. The whole left side of his face was swollen and already turning various shades of blue and purple. A Band-Aid intersected the peak of his right eyebrow, and at least two more patched his neck. He walked stiffly, testifying to other bruises hidden beneath his clothing. But the worst part was the look in his eyes—a haunted, angry, bewildered look like that of men on the battlefield who’ve seen their first bloodletting or their first comrade fall.

  She fell on his neck, holding him, but not too tightly, lest she jostle one of his injuries. She couldn’t stop her tears. For a while, neither of them spoke.

  “She was so excited,” Harry said when they separated. “You should have seen her, putting out all the gifts … She had insisted we not open any of them until the party this weekend.” He cleared his throat. “She was a little stubborn, you know. But in a nice way. Not obnoxious or …” He looked down at his shoes.

  “Do the police know what happened?”

  Harry nodded. “I told them all about it when they questioned me. I just hope they get the scum who did it.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hands. “They told me she never felt a thing. Did you know the blast was so strong it ruptured the gas line behind the stove?” Gloria remembered the second explosion. “The whole kitchen’s gone … gone.” Harry rubbed his chin as if it hurt. “Dorie went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors. She was just supposed to cut the tape. She had already removed the brown wrapping paper in the living room—we had watched—but she couldn’t get all that duct tape off the box—a shoe box. She thought a wrapped present was inside. She thought the shoe box was just the mailer. I’ve never seen anything like it—duct-taping a present. I guess I should have known something was wrong right then and there, but … it just didn’t register … you know?” He cleared his throat and looked away. “But Dorie was just supposed to cut the tape, then come right back and open it in front of us. Perth and I had been enjoying ourselves watching Dorie fuss with everything. You can’t believe how excited she was. She planned on serving her little cake first—then opening the presents. She wanted you to open yours first; then she and I were going to take turns opening the others. Anyway … when she took so long, Perth headed for the kitchen to see what was wrong. That’s when the bomb went off. Perth was closer to the kitchen, so she got it worse than me. But they tell us we’re both lucky to be alive.” He looked at Gloria with large, sad eyes. “I don’t feel very lucky right now. I don’t feel lucky at all.”

  Only ten people showed up for the funeral. The four of them: Gloria, Cutter, Harry, and Perth—who had just gotten out of the hospital that day. The other six were Dorie’s hairdresser, her pastor, and four ladies from her church—a testimony to Dorie’s quiet life. But it suited Harry, who really hadn’t wanted anyone but the four of them there. The violent nature of Dorie’s death had so shaken him that he had asked those friends inclined to attend, not to. In his mind, a death like Dorie’s couldn’t be commemorated—not with flowers, or eulogies, or graveside fanfare, or tea sandwiches, or the sound of ice cubes dropping into glasses.

  It just had to be endured.

  Gloria understood this about Harry and was sure his thoughts now, as he stood by the gravesite, were of his first wife, Lily, as well as Dorie. If Harry’s reaction to the loss of his first wife was any indication, Dorie’s death would set back his relationship with Jesus another five years.

  Oh, Jesus, why did this have to happen? Just when he was beginning to open up to You again?

  From a distance, Gloria watched Harry fuss with a bouquet of red and yellow roses—Dorie’s favorite flowers—picking at the Baby’s Breath and repositioning a fern. He placed the arrangement in a plastic vase staked to the ground by a small metal sling.

  She held Cutter’s hand and felt comforted by his presence. He had not left her side in three days, except to attend to the funeral arrangements. He had followed Harry’s every instruction, attended to the most minor detail, like the anchored plastic vase. He had been an anchor for them all.

  Gloria caught Perth’s eye and gestured for her to come over. Perth had been standing off to the side, a cast on her right arm, weeping into a hankie. Another funeral. Perth’s third in less than two years. Gloria worried that this fresh loss might affect the girl’s studies at the community college or alter her plans for applying to Bristol. Perth had been working so hard, had gotten off to such a good start. It would be tragic if she let Dorie’s death derail her now.

  When Perth reached Gloria and Cutter, the three of them huddled together—Cutter on one side, Perth on the other, and Gloria in the middle. That’s how they stayed until all the other mourners had gone.

  “It’s time we pry Harry away,” Cutter said, his voice heavy with resignation, as though this job too must fall on him.

  “I’ll get him.” Gloria put her hand on Cutter’s chest before he could take a step. Then she walked toward the gravesite, wondering what she could say to induce Harry to leave. Lost in thought, she almost didn’t notice the lone figure standing at a distance among a clump of maples. Her heart caught. She looked again, carefully this time, and saw a man in the familiar black leather, his hair pulled into a ponytail. He stood with one hand tucked, Napoleon-style, inside his jacket, as though implying a threat. And the way he was so brazenly out in the open made Gloria believe he wanted her to recognize him, had even gone out of his way for her to do so.

&nb
sp; Her mouth went dry. Was he toying with her? Had he come to see his handiwork? Perhaps boast even? She wanted to cry out but couldn’t. She sprinted toward Harry. “Let’s go,” she said, barely able to get the words out.

  “I’d like to stay a few more minutes.”

  “There’s no time.” Gloria grabbed his arm and pulled him back toward the spot where Cutter and Perth waited. “If we hurry,” Gloria said, breathless from towing the balking man, “we can catch him.”

  “Catch who?” Cutter said as Gloria and Harry reached him.

  “The stalker.” Gloria turned toward the trees where the stalker had stood only moments ago.

  He had disappeared.

  “You mean that was the creep that killed Dorie? And you let him get away!”

  Gloria looked helplessly at Harry. “He caught me by surprise. He carries a weapon, and my only thought was that if we all rushed him, we’d have a chance. I guess I didn’t think it through.”

  “You should have raised the alarm the second you saw him. Then maybe Cutter could have reached him in time.” Harry clomped toward Gloria’s car—she had driven them all to the cemetery—his heavy feet leaving divots in the grass. Tears welled in Gloria’s eyes.

  “He’s just upset,” Perth said, squeezing Gloria’s hand. “But I’ll talk to him. Try to calm him down.” She kissed Gloria’s cheek, then trotted after Harry.

  “You handled it the way you thought best.” Cutter put his arm around Gloria’s shoulder. “Don’t start beating yourself up. Harry’s all emotion right now. Besides, it’s a male thing. He’s envisioning how he would have made the guy pay. He’s probably been feeling helpless. Probably played the bomb scene over and over in his mind a thousand times, and thought maybe things would have turned out differently if only he’d done this or that.” He tightened his hold on Gloria. “Anyway, that’s how I’d feel.”