Sophie’s Last Stand

by Nancy Bartholomew

  He pulled himself up straight and glared at me. “It’s all relative, Sophie.”

  “Relative?”

  “Yeah, you’re my kid and Ma’s my wife and ain’t no asshole going to mess with my family. It’s relative. I operate a weapon relative to the level of distress I feel over this schmuck you married causing us such angst.”

  I stared up at him and tried to figure out when my father had learned the word angst and started thinking of himself as a vigilante.

  “What are you trying to say here, Pa?” I asked.

  Mort took over. “What we’re telling you, honey, is that you should not worry about your family, or yourself, for that matter. We know the police are trying their best to catch this…pervert, but we’re not going to leave it all up to them. They’re understaffed. Their response time is slow, especially out in the country.”

  Pa broke in. “We’re just going to institute a little neighborhood watch, that’s all. We’re going to watch our neighborhood and your house. You know, Sophie, there’s lots of us ex-military types in the Neuse Harbor subdivision. We take care of our own.”

  “Yeah,” Mort added, “and our own’s own, too.”

  I jumped to my feet. “No, no, no,” I said. “One of you will end up getting hurt. Worse, some innocent civilian could get hurt. That guy might not even be Nick. Let the cops handle it.”

  Mort and Pa looked wounded. “Sophie, we’re not senile. We’re not dead. When we say we’re going to up the ante on old Nick, that’s just what we mean. If he comes skulking around the neighborhood, we’re going to set him straight about a few things and hold him until the police can come pick him up, that’s all.”

  Joey hadn’t stopped frowning since he’d arrived. He wandered into the living room now and stood there like a younger version of Pa, dressed in the same standard issue khaki shorts and T-shirt that Pa and his crew wore.

  “All right,” I said, hopping up off the sofa. “I’ll let you two get on with the shower then.”

  I looked at Pa and saw him nodding his approval. Joey wasn’t to know about the old guy militia.

  “We’re going, we’re going,” Pa said. He and Mort stood up and headed for the upstairs. “Little girl,” Pa called to Emily, “come with me. I gotta read something on this paint can and I forgot my glasses.”

  Emily followed them, humming some unrecognizable tune to herself, filled with a twelve year old’s self-importance at being able to help her grandfather.

  That left me with scowling Joey. He waited almost two seconds before launching in on me. “So what went on here last night?” he demanded.

  “Gray got hit on the head by—”

  “Not that, Soph, I know about that. Gray called, and after him, Darlene called. I managed to piece that part together. What I want to know is, did this have anything to do with whatever it was that happened yesterday—you know, when you tried to pass off that bogus story about a flat tire?”

  Joey might have said more, but Frank came puffing into the living room, struggling to carry a huge floor sander.

  “Hey, hey, hey!” Joey called. “Wait! I got that.” In three steps he crossed the room, grabbed the machine and hefted it into his arms. Then, with Frank behind him, my brother vanished upstairs.

  I stood still for a minute, listening to the sounds of people working on my house and trying to adjust my thinking. “You should be so grateful,” I whispered. “You have friends and family who want to help you.”

  Yeah, the other side of my head answered, and an ex-husband who wants to kill you.

  “But I’ve got protection,” I reminded myself. “A detective is working on my case. And I can take care of myself. I know Krav Maga. I am not a fainting flower.”

  I stepped into my temporary bedroom and began ripping the sheets and blankets off the bed. I couldn’t wait to get a new one. How could I start a new relationship with an old bed? Maybe Darlene had something with her karma idea. Maybe it was for the best that Gray hadn’t lingered this morning.

  If we’d pursued my fantasy in this bed, who knew what could’ve happened? Oh no, this would never do. I would never be able to reinvent myself in Nick’s tainted bed. A feeling of revulsion and shame washed over me, old baggage returning to haunt my new life. Something drastic had to happen to change my karma. I didn’t just need to rid my life of Nick Komassi, I needed to rid my life of everything that reminded me of him and the pain he’d caused.

  I went to the bottom of the steps and called up to Emily. She came bounding down moments later, all energy and exuberance, just the shot in the arm I needed.

  “Hey,” I said, “We didn’t get a chance to do our shopping yesterday. Let’s go now. I want to get some paint and build a bed.”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “Cool. What kind of bed?”

  I took her into the kitchen and showed her a picture in a magazine. Bright panels of gauze hung down from a pole that ran the length of a sofa.

  “I want to take that and make it into a frame that surrounds all four sides of my bed.”

  “Like a queen’s bed,” she breathed. “Aunt Sophie, you are way too cool!” She grabbed her backpack purse off of the counter and turned, ready to go. “What are we waiting for?”

  I snatched the car keys off their hook and followed my niece out the door. Emily seemed to come alive when it was just the two of us. She giggled, talked about boys and teased me considerably about Gray Evans. She absolutely loved the rental car, and who wouldn’t? I’d upgraded to a metallic red Shadow Eclipse convertible.

  The car flew down the road into town, barely able to contain its horsepower to a smart ten miles over the speed limit. The radio throbbed with the mating-ritual, rock-and-roll station that Emily picked and just had to listen to at top volume. We sang along, with her knowing every syllable and me making up new words, cruising into my new town without a care in the world.

  I didn’t notice the black sedan following us until we turned into the Lowe’s parking lot. Even then, I wanted to dismiss it as coincidence, but I didn’t. We parked near the exit doors. The sedan parked a discreet distance away. When we got out of the convertible and headed inside, the sedan’s occupants stayed put.

  Emily and I stepped into the cavernous warehouse and instantly became lost in the possibilities. At one point, as we consulted a cute, teenage boy about building a canopy frame, I thought I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

  I turned, glancing over my shoulder between the shelving into the next aisle. A shape wearing dark clothing moved slowly down the row, casually inspecting pieces of PVC. I could only see him from the shoulders to about midhip. He was wearing dark clothes.

  “Aunt Sophie!” Emily said, her tone letting me know that my attention was needed by her new pal, the teen idol who was attempting to assist us.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, turning back to them. “I just remembered something I need. Em, honey, are you following what he’s saying? Do you think you could stay right here and get the rest of the instructions?”

  My niece looked at me like I’d grown two heads. But I could tell she was pleased I’d given her a shot at the Holy Grail. She nodded and the boy began patiently explaining how to screw the wooden dowels together.

  I took off after the man in black, cutting over two aisles and doubling back to come up behind him as he pretended to study brass elbow joints in the plumbing department. I studied him for a brief moment, realizing that he was exactly the same size as the man who’d accosted me at Duncan Elementary School. His hair was now shorter, but after the hair-pulling he’d received from me, I couldn’t blame him for shearing it short. Today he wore black jeans and a black T-shirt, hardly an adequate disguise considering I’d promised to kill him if he returned.

  He was doing a very good job of appearing fascinated by the plumbing fixtures, bending down to study the boxes that just happened to be placed directly in front of the aisle where Emily stood talking to the young clerk.

  I could’ve sworn the man didn’t even kn
ow I was coming up behind him, but I doubted that to be true. After all, he was hired help. He stalked and bullied people for a living.

  I eased into position and with a quick move that worked just as well as it had in training, I grabbed his right thumb and twisted until the man dropped to the ground, screeching like a banshee.

  “Shut up!” I said. “What are you trying to do, draw a crowd?”

  I flipped him over to face me and realized he bore no resemblance to my former adversary.

  “Lady, what the hell are you doing?”

  The black T-shirt had writing on it: Hoyt’s Plumbing. The pocket on his left side had his name embroidered in neat white letters: Hoyt.

  I dropped his hand like a hot rock, the shocked expression on my face mirroring his own.

  “Oh God, I am so sorry! I thought you were stalking us!” I pointed through the shelving to the spot where my niece had been standing. “Someone has been following us and we were right there and you looked like…”

  Hoyt stood up and backed away, obviously terrified. “Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Aunt Sophie!” Emily ran up to stand by my side. “What’s wrong?”

  Hoyt, angry now, answered for me. “Your auntie’s seeing little green men,” he said.

  Sweet, shy little Emily transformed into a volcanic eruption right before my eyes. “You leave my aunt alone!” she said. “Stop bothering her!”

  We were drawing a small crowd, including the teenage boy who’d been helping us.

  “Is he bothering you, Emily?” the boy said. “Security!” he yelled. “Aisle five!”

  “She’s crazy!” Hoyt insisted. “That lady threw me to the ground and was about to kill me! She attacked me!”

  “Oh, please,” a female clerk said. “Look at her. That bitty thing? She couldn’t hurt you! Ain’t that just like a man to blame it on the victim!”

  The crowd was about to turn ugly. Hoyt, seeing the handwriting on the wall, turned and quickly started walking toward the exit, finally breaking into a full run as Emily’s knight in shining armor took off after him.

  “Come on, Auntie,” Em cried, “I want to go home! I’m scared!” And as I watched, a lone tear escaped and ran down her cheek.

  “You poor baby!” the clerk gushed.

  The manager arrived then, accompanied by an overweight, out of shape security guard. In the ensuing frenzy of explanations, all of them wrong, I turned to reassure poor Emily. To my surprise, she winked.

  “And then the man had the nerve to say this little, bitty woman attacked him!” I heard.

  “Well, I’m sure I could’ve taken him in a fair fight,” I said.

  Not one soul believed me. By the time the story had been told over and over again, there was a mass agreement that I had narrowly escaped death. The manager, sensing a possible lawsuit, insisted on giving us the bedding for my new bed. He promised to have the mattress and box spring delivered to my home within the hour and escorted us to the convertible, apologizing the whole way.

  The sedan that I’d felt sure had been following us was now gone, leaving me to feel six kinds of stupid. Emily, however, was absolutely thrilled and couldn’t wait to tell her father about our great adventure.

  “Em, let’s not tell your daddy about this, all right?”

  It took a stop at Dairy Queen, two CDs and the promise of a new outfit to buy Emily’s silence, but all in all, I considered it well worth the price. I cringed every time I imagined the joy my brother would take in telling his friend, Gray, how his ferocious sister had attacked an innocent plumber in the local hardware store.

  Chapter 10

  Emily and I took our time driving across town, enjoying the feel of the warm summer sun on our skin and relishing the rented convertible. The radio played the Dixie Chicks singing “You Can’t Hurry Love,” and Emily and I sang along. As my house loomed into view, I saw the bedroom set delivery van leaving. Then I saw that an ambulance blocked the driveway. A police car sat behind it, lights flashing. Any sense of peace I’d found at the arrival of my bed vanished as I pulled up to the curb and saw a stretcher being wheeled down the driveway.

  Gray and I arrived at the same time, coming from opposite directions and reaching the ambulance just as the doors were closing.

  “What happened?” Gray asked a uniformed officer.

  The cop, a middle-aged man with thinning hair, looked up from his clipboard. “We’re not real sure,” he said. “It’s a gun-shot wound. The guy got hit in the leg. There was a lot of blood, but he’ll be all right.”

  I strained to see past the two men into the back of the ambulance, my heart racing.

  “Sophie!” Pa stepped off the porch, with Joey and Mort right behind him. Della walked down the driveway, talking earnestly to another uniformed police officer. Her shirt and overalls were covered in blood.

  I stepped past Gray and looked into the back of the ambulance. Pa’s friend Pete, the landscaper, lay on the stretcher, his eyes closed and his lips drawn in a painful grimace. His face was white and still. As I watched, an EMT began hooking him up to an IV.

  Joey reached my side and grabbed my arm. “He wasn’t doing anything, Soph. He and that girl were in the backyard, pulling up a tree stump or something. She said the shot came from behind the fence, maybe near the Projects.”

  Joey’s face was grim and he looked very angry. “Son of a bitch, Nick,” he swore. “I hope they find that little bastard before I do.”

  “Joey, they’ll find him. They have to find him.”

  I looked around. Pa was heading for his car, probably on his way to Pete’s wife and take her to the hospital. Emily stood on the sidewalk, tears streaming down her face, as Mort and Frank tried to comfort her. Gray looked past the responding officer, watching Della give her statement to the other uniform. His eyes met Joey’s and a look passed between them that frightened me with its intensity.

  “It was intentional, wasn’t it, Joey? It wasn’t just a random shot from the Projects. It’s Nick, isn’t it?”

  Joey turned to me. “Stunade! Of course it was Nick! Why’s he doing this, Soph? What does he want? I mean, if he wants to kill you, what’s he doing shooting defenseless old men? If he wants something you have, why doesn’t he come and get it like a man?”

  This was entirely my fault. Pete had stepped into my world, a world Nick wanted to destroy, and now he was a victim.

  Della, obviously shaken, walked away from the police officer and up to where I stood with Joey. Durrell, for once, was nowhere in sight.

  “I don’t know what happened,” she said, in a dull flat tone. “Pete and I were trying to get this stump out of the ground. He said maybe if I reached over and wrapped the chain around the root we could run the other end to his Jeep and pull it out that way.”

  She was staring sightlessly at a spot on my driveway, as if seeing the scene unfold as she spoke. Her thin bony arms were wrapped tight around her sides and she shivered as if she were cold. She was in shock.

  “Della,” I said, “why don’t you come inside and tell me about it.”

  She didn’t appear to hear me. “I reached down in front of him, you know? I had just hitched it tight when I heard a loud crack. Of course, I knew right away what it was. So I looked up and Pete was gone. There was blood everywhere. I tried to put pressure on the wound, but blood kept on coming up through my fingers….”

  Her voice trailed off as she stared down at her hands. Pete’s blood had dried, staining her skin and covering her clothes.

  “Come on, honey,” I said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  Like a child, Della let me lead her inside. I took her into my bathroom, turned on the tap and led her through the motions of washing the blood from her hands and arms. I grabbed one of my T-shirts and a pair of shorts from my room and offered them to her. Instead of taking them, she stood staring at me with a puzzled expression on her face.

  “Go on,” I said. “Put them on. I’ll be out in the kitchen.
Come out there when you’re dressed, and don’t worry about your dirty things, I’ll get them later.”

  I put the clean clothes on the counter behind her and touched her arm. Her skin was ice-cold.

  “Della? Have you had lunch?” I raised my voice slightly, commanding her attention.

  “I think so,” she answered at last.

  “Good, then I’ll get you something to drink.”

  The girl nodded slowly. “Do you have any Jack Daniels?” she asked.

  “Sure. Just get changed and come on out when you’re ready.”

  I left her there, fairly certain that she was capable now of dressing and following my directions. I walked out to the kitchen, my mind going in a thousand directions at once. I opened a cabinet and began pushing past canned goods, reaching for the liquor that stood on the shelf behind them.

  I pulled down two bottles, Jack Daniels and Wild Turkey, and was pouring two shots when Joey found me.

  “Who’s that for?” he asked.

  “Della.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Me.” I turned, pulling down a third shot glass. “You want one?”

  Joey raised an eyebrow, glanced at the two bottles and said, “Sure. What the hell? Make mine a Turkey.”

  “Joey,” I said, handing him his shot, “I’m done waiting on the police. I’m going to hunt that son of a bitch like prey. I was married to him for ten years. If anybody can find him, it ought to be me.”

  He held the glass out, waited for me to take mine, and when I did, lifted his to his lips and drained it with one quick swallow. I did the same, then reached for a bottle of water that sat on the counter.

  I drank, passing it to him when I’d finished. He looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Soph,” he said. “I’d say don’t do that, it’s a stupid idea, but you wouldn’t listen, and besides, I think you’re right. You do know him like nobody else. And he’s not going to go away, that’s clear. It’s like his stink follows you, even here.”

  Joey looked at the Wild Turkey bottle, but he wasn’t really seeing it. He was thinking. I tried to second-guess him.