“Darlene, have you been drinking?”
She did a little dance step at the bottom of the driveway, twirling in her peasant skirt and pulling me with her. “No, girl,” she said, “I am high on life.”
“More like you are high on lust,” I muttered.
The darkened street was empty. The police were all happily ensconced in my home, dusting and photographing themselves silly. Darlene and I crept down the sidewalk to her dilapidated Chevy, giggling like teenagers sneaking out past curfew.
“Would you like to swing on a star,” she sang softly.
“No, actually I would like to keep my feet on the ground,” I answered. “Enough of this head-in-the-clouds business.”
She fit the key into her ignition and cranked the engine. The car sputtered to life as she patted the dash and said, “Good girl!”
“Wait!” I cried. “Who’s going to lock up the house when they’re done?”
Darlene rolled her eyes. “Locking your house doesn’t seem to be doing you much good,” she said. “Maybe leaving it unlocked will change your luck.”
I looked back up at the house and the figures moving around inside. “Relax, will ya?” Darlene said. “We’ll be back long before they’re done.”
“What if we’re not?”
Darlene sighed. “I’ll call Wendell on his cell and tell him where we are, okay?” She looked over at me, smiled and patted my knee. “Now take a deep, cleansing breath and release those toxins. You are such a bundle of nerves lately!”
“You think, Darlene? You think I’m under just a little bit of stress here?”
We were driving down the darkened street, turning toward the Waffle House. It seemed that every other person in New Bern had long ago gone to bed, and yet it wasn’t even midnight. Darlene hummed as if this was just an ordinary outing. Nothing seemed to bother her. Darlene was in love.
“Scattered, smothered and covered,” she said after a few moments.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s how I want my hash browns—scattered on the grill, smothered in onions and covered with cheese.”
She looked at me, saw the expression on my face and reached with one hand into the depths of her mammoth straw bag. “All right, I’ll call him right now and tell him where we are.”
She acted like this was a big ordeal, but I knew her better than that. She was dying to call Wendell. As I watched, she punched one number on her phone and waited.
“You have him on speed dial?”
Darlene rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, like I could memorize his number, then dial it in the dark while keeping my eyes on the road? I think not. This is the only practical way to do it.”
“Oh yeah, what number is he on your speed dial?”
There was a slight hesitation. “One.” She made an exasperated face at me. “Well, it’s not like anybody else had that number. I was waiting. Arrow starts with A, the first letter of the alphabet, and one is the first—”
“Oh, can it, Darlene!” I said.
“Hey, honey,” she said suddenly, her voice changing into sweetness overdrive as Wendell answered his cell. “Listen, I’m taking Sophie up to the Waffle House. She needs a little cheering up. You know, in light of what’s happened and all.”
Darlene listened for a long moment, then said, “Yes, well, Gray didn’t make it any better by practically accusing her—” Wendell must have interrupted because Darlene broke off and appeared to be listening. “I know, but there are ways of asking questions without—” She listened again, her expression changing from one of pure joy to a concerned frown.
“You know, honey,” she said, stressing the word honey until it sounded more like an insult than an endearment, “if I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were on his side.”
Great, I thought, now I was rocking Darlene’s boat. I reached over and touched her arm, but she was talking again.
“Fine!” she said, her tone sounding curt and irritated. “Be that way! But just you remember this, Detective Arrow, karma will win out and goodness prevail! You just wait and see. What goes around comes around, buddy!”
She shoved the phone back into her bag and took a curve so fast the tires squealed. We came to a halt right in front of the Waffle House entrance.
“What did he say?” I asked.
Darlene smiled, but it was forced. “He said he doesn’t much care for waffles, and to tell you they’ll wait until you get back to lock up.”
“Darlene, what did he really say?”
Darlene gripped the wheel with both hands, unshed tears glistening in her eyes, reflecting the lights in the restaurant windows.
“Not a damn thing worth mentioning,” she said, and burst into tears.
Chapter 7
Darlene dropped me off in front of my house an hour later. She wouldn’t come in when she saw the unmarked car parked where Gray had left it. Instead she waited, motor idling, until she saw the front door open and Gray step out onto the porch. She drove off then, accelerating as she flew out of town, anxious, I figured, to put as many miles between herself and Wendell Arrow as possible.
Durrell shot past Gray, taking the steps at a dead run, barely able to control himself as he skidded to a stop at my feet. He flipped over onto his back and lay there wiggling and whining until I scratched his belly. At least someone was glad to see me, I thought.
“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I muttered.
“Did you say something?” Gray had moved from the front porch to the driveway, edging closer as I stooped to greet Durrell.
“No. I was talking to the dog.”
“Can’t say as I blame you,” Gray said. “Right now I’m guessing you feel like he’s the only one on your side. Well, him and your sister.”
I didn’t answer him. I straightened and looked him right in the eye, but I wasn’t about to speak one unnecessary word to the man.
“Listen, Sophie,” he said, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings but—”
I didn’t want to hear this. “You were just doing your job,” I said. “You were asking the questions that had to be asked. No big deal.” I pushed past him and started up the drive to my house.
“Sophie, I—” Gray began.
“Detective, it’s late,” I said. “If you have more questions we can cover them tomorrow.”
Durrell growled, keeping Gray from pursuing me.
“I don’t think you should stay here alone,” he said.
I turned around and faced him. He looked haggard and worn. For a moment I wanted to relent and be nice, but when I remembered that he wasn’t entirely certain that I wasn’t a murderer, I froze.
“Durrell’s here for the night,” I said.
Gray attempted to pass Durrell, but the dog growled louder, this time showing his teeth and placing himself between the two of us.
“He’s just a little mutt,” Gray said. “He won’t stop someone who’s serious.”
Durrell must’ve understood because in one quick lunge he sank his teeth into Gray’s pant leg and hung on for all he was worth.
Gray yelled and tried to pull the dog off, but Durrell stuck fast. A light went on in the house across the street and then in the house to the left of mine. Gray yelped again and I flew off the steps.
“Don’t shoot him!” I cried.
That brought the neighbors out of their houses. Gray was shaking his leg in an attempt to lose Durrell, and hopping around on one foot.
“You’re going to hurt him, Gray! He’s just a little dog!”
“Sophie, you need some help?” one neighbor called.
I reached Gray and Durrell just as the dog’s strength gave out and he surrendered his trophy. This coincided with a fierce shake of Gray’s leg that sent the little dog flying into the front yard.
“You hurt him!” I cried, bending to retrieve the yelping Durrell.
“Hurt him?” Gray said. “Look at my pants!”
The neighbors were slowly closing in, murmuring angrily among them
selves. The man next door stepped to the front of the little group, hands on his hips and an angry scowl on his face.
“Now look here, mister,” he said, “you got no call to go kicking a harmless little animal. You’d best git!”
Gray turned on them, his badge flashing as he pulled his suit coat aside. “I did not kick that dog,” he said. “I shook him loose, that’s all.”
“Police brutality,” a tiny gray-haired woman called from the back of the group. “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it!” she added.
“Well, I don’t care if you are the po-lice,” my neighbor said. “There’s no call for cruelty to animals.”
I looked down at Durrell, nestled in my arms, trembling. He looked up at me, his huge brown eyes shining, and I could’ve sworn he was smiling. He seemed to be enjoying every single moment of Gray’s predicament.
“Good night, Detective,” I said, my voice as firm as I could make it.
I whirled around and left him at the mercy of my angry neighbors. “Now that’s karma for you, Durrell,” I said. “What goes around just came around and bit Mr. Evans in the ass, huh? Tell me we can’t take care of ourselves!”
Durrell moaned, content to lie in my arms and be carried inside. Once we were safely behind the thick wooden door, I locked it and watched from the front window as my so-called destiny started his car and slowly drove away.
A few minutes later, the house got spooky. Durrell and I decided not to sleep in my bed. The pillow and its grim warning had vanished, probably forever in the custody of the New Bern Police Department, but there was grimy graphite powder everywhere and the entire room was a mess.
“Durrell, this is a message from the Goddess,” I said. “It’s an omen telling me that the time has come to finish the master bedroom and quit sleeping in the dining room.”
Durrell yapped once and I took this for agreement. I studied the room and the furniture in it. Up until this point in my life, I’d never really given it much consideration. The dresser and the bed were over 150 years old, brought to this country by my maternal great-grandparents. Babies had been born in that bed. People had taken their last breaths in that bed. Nick had slept in that bed. That alone was reason enough in my book to never sleep there again.
“Durrell, I’m trying to start a new life,” I said. “This bed is part of the past. It has bad memories. Tomorrow we find a new one.” Durrell didn’t care about tomorrow; he was tired now. I pulled a quilt out of the closet, then grabbed a spare pillow and pillowcase. Tonight it was going to be the sofa.
We wandered through the house switching off lights—not all of them—and checking doors and locks. I peered out the kitchen window into the darkened backyard and imagined Nick hiding in the bushes, waiting for his opportunity to kill me.
“I think I could take the little shit if he ever showed himself,” I muttered to Durrell. Somehow talking to the dog made me feel less afraid.
“He’s puny, you know,” I added. “Couldn’t be over five foot six, and he hasn’t worked out or exercised in years. I figure one or two good kicks and he’d be a goner.”
I began to wonder if he’d spent much time in the prison yard, working out with weights. I pictured all the tattooed men they always show on TV, and tried to imagine mild-mannered Nick, thick glasses and all, sweating as he pumped iron. I tried to envision him with muscles, transformed at age forty-nine into an Adonis. It was simply impossible. I could take Nick on my worst day and still not break a sweat.
Durrell and I curled onto my ancient couch and pulled the quilt up to cover us. I hit a button on the TV remote and flipped idly through the channels, surfing for background noise to keep me from imagining that every creaking board I heard was a burglar breaking into the house, armed with knives and guns.
We settled for a M*A*S*H rerun. Durrell seemed to identify with Klinger, while I took more to Hawkeye. We drifted off into an uneasy sleep sometime after the third episode, right before Hot Lips kissed Radar and just after Klinger eloped with the colonel’s horse.
I awoke to the smell of coffee—fresh, right-under-my-nose coffee. Durrell was gone, but Della was back, sitting in an armchair across the living room from me. She was sipping from a chipped mug and watching me.
“Jesus!” I cried, sitting upright. “How did you get in here?”
Della looked faintly surprised. “Well, the back door was unlocked and standing wide open,” she said. “It wasn’t too hard after that. Durrell was there waiting for me to let him out, so I opened the screen door and out he went. I figured you might want coffee so I just came in and made a pot.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
Della shrugged. “A little after six-thirty, I’d reckon. Don’t want to wait till it gets too hot to work. Best to start early.”
“I locked that door last night,” I said. “I checked it twice, too.”
Della shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t locked when I got here a little while ago.” She frowned at me. “You know, you didn’t wake up when I made the coffee, and you snore. A truck could’ve run through here last night and you wouldn’t have known.”
No, I guess not, I thought. “You didn’t see anyone else around, did you?”
Della shook her head. “Nope, just Durrell.” She looked around the living room. “You got a lot of work to do in here, too,” she said. “And your carpenter won’t be back anytime soon.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, rubbing my face and reaching for the coffee mug she’d brought for me. I felt bad about forgetting the accident. “How is Clem? Was his leg broken? What happened?”
Della sighed. She was wearing the same jeans and tight T-shirt she’d worn the day before, and her hair was even stringier, if that was possible. “I’m going to tell it just like it happened,” she said, her voice tired and thin. “Clem said it was my fault. He said I tripped over the ladder and that shook him off. But I swear I wasn’t anywhere near that ladder. I had my back to him and I was working on that patch of ivy behind the garage.”
She paused to take another sip of coffee, shaking her head as she did so. “It was probably Durrell what done it. He’s clumsy as all hell, the worthless shit.”
I stiffened. “Durrell was a big help to me last night,” I protested, thinking of the way the dog’s sharp little teeth had fastened on to Gray’s pant leg.
“Anyhow,” Della continued, “Clem took a god-awful fall. He was still knocked out when I got to him, but he wouldn’t let me call the ambulance or nothing like that. I finally convinced him to let me drive him to the hospital and they admitted him.”
“It was that bad?” I asked. Nowadays it took an act of Congress to get admitted to the hospital.
Della nodded. “Yep. He has a heart condition and they said his heart wasn’t beatin’ right. Then there was the concussion from the fall and his leg bein’ broke in two places. As soon as he’s stable enough, they’re going to do surgery.”
I felt awful. Santa Claus had been seriously injured working on my house. Maybe we were jinxed. Or worse—maybe Clem’s fall hadn’t been an accident.
Della brightened a little. “But don’t worry,” she said. “His wife is with him. And me and Durrell are going to finish clearing up the backyard today so we can start on the carpentry work tomorrow.”
I couldn’t quite organize my thoughts. It seemed to me that my new home was cursed. Dead bodies. Terrible omens and threats. Clem injured on the job. What in the world was going to happen next, and did I want to stick around to find out?
“Maybe we should hold off a day or two,” I said.
This got Della’s attention. “Oh, no,” she said, sitting upright and leaning toward me. “We can’t do that!”
“Listen, I know you could use the work, but—”
Della rushed on, interrupting me. “Lord, yes, me and Durrell could use the work, but that’s not the only reason. You’re just getting a little discouraged, that’s all,” she said. “It happens all the time in these kinds of projects. Things h
it a snag or they don’t go quite like you’d planned, so you think it’s all a big mistake, but listen, if you give me two days to really get goin’ here, I promise you, it’ll turn around.”
Della’s face twisted into a mute appeal. Durrell picked that moment to return, nosing his way through the screen door and running across the room to jump up onto the couch. Between the doggy kisses and Della’s soft “Please?” I gave in.
“Two days. If nothing bad happens then we’ll evaluate the situation, but if one more thing happens to jinx this project, it’s over.”
“Thank you!” Della cried, abandoning her coffee and jumping to her feet. “You won’t be sorry,” she added.
“Listen, before you start back, I need to ask you something.”
Della froze halfway out of her seat and slowly sank back down onto the couch. “What?”
“Is there any possible way that what happened to Clem wasn’t an accident?”
Della’s face furrowed into a belligerent frown. “Hey, now wait a minute! Durrell and me may need the work, but we are not—”
“Not you! I mean, did you see anyone hanging around? Walking by? You know, someone who could’ve—”
“Oh, I see! Man, I thought you thought… Well, never mind. No, I didn’t see anybody, but then, like I said, I was pulling vines and had my back to him.”
I nodded and stood up. “Good. That’s one less thing I have to worry about, I guess.”
Della got up, too, eager to be off. “Durrell!” she called. “You lazy idiot! Get out here! We got work to do!”
Durrell started to ignore her, but when she whirled around and glowered at him, he changed his mind. With a sudden leap he flew off the couch and followed her to the backyard. His limp made him lurch like a drunken sailor, but he didn’t seem to feel any pain.
I grabbed my mug and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The new central air-conditioning hummed efficiently, making the high-ceilinged rooms bearable in the midsummer heat. Today I was not going to be a victim. Today I was going to make a bedroom, come hell or high water.
I wandered to the end of the hall and stood there studying the huge master suite.
Sophie’s Last Stand Page 10
