“I don’t drink coffee,” I say and turn to go.
“Please, Ace, please just have a seat. Please!”
“Oh, okay,” I say and step back toward the chair and she looks so relieved I almost laugh out loud. I turn on my heel and say, “Did you think I was going to sit back down? Because I wasn’t going to.”
“Graciela, please, I beg you. Let’s talk about this woman to woman. I’m sure we can work out some kind of a deal.”
“The only deal you could interest me in is your lips on my ass,” I say as I walk out the door.
“What do you plan to do with those, Ace Jones?” she yells, flipping back to bitch mode. “I will call the law and have you arrested for stalking.”
“Do it,” I say and keep walking, “and they can mark these pictures Exhibit A.”
I hustle out of there because I know I’ve only got few minutes before the bell rings. I run into Coach Hatters’ room and tell him what happened and he follows me into my classroom and helps me pack up a few things.
“What about your classes?” he asks.
“They’re all working on independent projects for the art fair,” I reply, “and Mrs. Jennings, you know her? She’s a retired art teacher and that’s who they’ll get to replace me until the end of the year, so they’re in good hands.” I look around my classroom and feel a pang of sadness. “Man, I’m gonna miss my kids, Hatt.”
“You have to come back for the art fair.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I say, “and if any of these guys need me, they know where to find me.”
“They’re going to be really upset when they find out you’re gone,” Hatter says, looking at his feet. “I’m gonna miss you too, Ace,” he starts kicking a pencil around in the floor, “and with you and Lilly and Chloe all gone, I’m gonna get lonely here.”
“Aw, Hatt, you’re so sweet,” I say and look around my classroom, wondering if this is the last time I’ll ever be in here. It sucks a little bit, but then so does feeling like my career is a plastic bag wrapped around my face.
“I better run,” I say, giving him a quick hug. “Don’t worry. Chloe and Lilly will be back. It’s only a matter of time.”
“But not you?”
“Not if I can help it, Hatter.”
He nods and I walk out the door to find Catherine Hilliard waiting for me in the hallway.
“Miss Jones, there has been a mistake on your paperwork, could you please come back to my office.”
“Mrs. Hilliard,” I say, “Go to hell!”
And I walk down the hallway and out the door.
37
I go home, put on some comfortable clothes, and call Lilly to see what she’s doing. Turns out it’s not Deputy Dax. Maybe he wasn’t all that impressed with us going to jail after getting into a tussle in the parking lot of a strip club. At any rate, we agree that today is the day to deal with our turncoat friend, so I go to her house and pick her up and we head to the Stacks’ residence.
I park at the community playground and we scamper across the street to 309 Parker Drive. I peek in the garage and see Chloe’s shiny white Lexus SUV parked in one bay. The other two are empty. I give Lilly a thumbs up and we walk up the steps to the front door.
After seventeen rings and a full nine minutes, I finally hear the lock move. When Chloe opens the door, Lilly steps back and nearly falls off the porch and I gasp and cover my mouth.
Chloe’s hair looks like she cut it herself with meat shears in a dimly lit room. There is no trace of make-up on her face and her skin is pallid and pale as a ghost. She looks like she’s lost about 25 pounds which would put her weighing in at around 85 and she’s wearing some kind of gray silk wrap that looks like a cross between a kimono and a sarong.
“What are you doing here?” she demands and looks at us like we’re trying to sell her a set of encyclopedias and that pisses me off because we have been through hell and high water for her.
“Why did you change your phone number again?” I fire back. “And why haven’t you called either of us?”
“Because you are both a bad influence on my marriage.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snap and Lilly steps forward to take control of the conversation.
“Chloe, we need to talk to you. It’s very important.”
“No, you need to leave right now.”
“Chloe, we’re your friends,” Lilly pleads.
“Not anymore,” she says like a zombie and tries to close the door.
Lilly steps back but I wedge my foot into the doorway.
“Hold on just a minute, Chloe!” I yell. “I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re on right now, but you are going to let us in and you are going to listen to us.”
“I’ll do no such thing,” she squeals like a child and starts banging the door against my foot and that turns into a pretty painful experience because I’m wearing flip flops. I drop a shoulder against the door and push it open. Chloe falls back onto the parquet floor of her foyer, screaming and waving her arms like a mad woman. I grab Lilly by the arm, jerk her in the house, and slam the door shut behind us.
“Uh, Ace,” Lilly mumbles as I rub my throbbing foot, “I don’t think this is what Gloria Peacock had in mind when she said to handle this gently.”
“Shut up, Lilly,” I say, standing on one leg like a chubby sea gull. “Just shut up!”
Chloe jumps up like cat and runs for the phone screaming how she’s going to call the police and have us arrested.
“Oh, hell no! I’m not going back to jail,” I yell at her, then grab her by the arms and shake her for a second. “Snap out of it, Chloe! What the hell is wrong with you? Who the hell are you?”
“Who the hell are you,” she screams, “to break into my house and assault me? I have started over. I have started a new life and you are not a part of my new life.”
“She has lost her damned mind,” Lilly whispers.
“I heard that!” she screams, even louder. “Get out of my house and never come back again! Ever!”
“That’s it,” I say. “This is seriously more than I can stand. I’m done.”
“No, wait,” Lilly says. “Chloe, could we please sit down in the living room?”
“No!” she screams. “Get out! Get out now! I know you’ve been following my husband and I hate you both for it.”
“You fucking told us to, you nut case!” I yell at her. “You fucking told us to follow that piece of shit!”
“Ace, stop!” Lilly says. “Stop it right now.” Lilly reaches into my bag and pulls out the envelope.
“You told us to follow him and we did, Chloe,” Lilly says quietly as she slips the photos from the envelope. “We did just what you asked us to do,” she flips one of the pictures up so Chloe can see it, “and this is what we found.” She flips another one and another one and keeps saying, “This is what we found.”
“No, no, no!” She screams. “It’s not true! You lie!”
“Jesus, Chloe, listen to yourself!” I say sternly. “You do not have to live like this. We are here to help you. We are here to save you. We are here to get you out of here.”
“You are here to ruin my new life! And you have done it! You have ruined my new life and I will hate you forever for it!” she screams and falls out on the floor and starts banging her head on the wall and screaming and crying and it scares the holy hell out of me because I’ve never seen anyone act like that. Especially not my beautiful, perfect friend Chloe.
Lilly looks at me and I look at her and we get in the floor and I put my arms around Chloe and Lilly puts her arms around us and I whisper, “It’s gonna be okay, Chloe. Everything is going to be just fine. We love you and we are here to take care of you.”
“What took you so long?” she whispers and I look at Lilly, who, of course, starts sobbing her eyes out.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry we didn’t come sooner,” I whisper and stroke her hacked up hair.
“I remember you coming
into my room and hugging me and telling me I was going to be okay, but then you never came back. You never came back, Ace. And I started to think I’d dreamed it. But then when I heard you just now, I remembered. I remembered that you were there.”
“I will always be here and so will Lilly,” I whisper. “We will always be here because we love you.”
“What am I going to do?” she wails. “What am I going to do? I don’t know what to do and I haven’t had y’all to help me and I don’t know what to do,” she looks down at the pictures scattered on the floor. “Are those real? When did you take those? Where did they come from?”
“Most of them Saturday night,” I say quietly, “in Memphis.”
“This past Saturday night?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why?”
“He said he had an important meeting with a client in Memphis on Saturday night,” she says slowly. “Let me see those.”
Lilly gathers up the photos with shaky hands and when she turns to give them to Chloe, she freezes up. She lays the pictures to the side and grabs Chloe and hugs her and squalls all over her and tells her she’s so sorry and that she loves her so much, but Chloe isn’t crying anymore.
“Let me see the pictures,” Chloe says, pulling back from Lilly’s sappy embrace.
“Chloe,” Lilly says, “I don’t want to hurt you worse than you’ve already been hurt.”
“Oh, Lilly,” she says like a zombie, “that would be impossible.”
She flips through the pictures two times, then lays them on the floor and gets up.
“Let’s go in the kitchen and get some water,” she looks at us through puffy red eyes. “I’m so, so very sorry.”
“Hey, you don’t worry about a thing, girl,” I say and breathe a sigh of relief that she appears to be somewhat back to normal.
Just as we get on our feet, the front door flies opens and Richard Stacks charges into the foyer like a bull on steroids.
“What are you whores doing here?” he booms and nobody moves.
“You!” he says, pointing at me. “You stupid bitch! I have had enough of you!”
I take a few steps back into the living room and he comes at me hard and fast and I mentally prepare myself to get knocked out. Lilly makes a run for it and I glance over at Chloe and see that she has pulled a wrought iron cross off the wall. Just as Richard Stacks draws back a meaty arm to punch me in the face, Chloe swings that cross at his head like she’s trying to knock a baseball out of the park.
“Enough!” she screams and, as I squeeze my eyes shut, I hear metal crunching against flesh.
Lilly is back from wherever she ran off to and is ransacking my purse screaming, “Ace, why didn’t you bring your goddamned gun? Where is the Pink Lady?”
Richard staggers but doesn’t fall. He turns toward Chloe and roars like a bear. When he pauses to finger the bloody wound on his head, Chloe swings again. He takes the hit, stays on his feet, and stumbles toward her swearing on his mother’s life that he is going to kill her this time once and for all. She lets the tip of the cross rest on the floor while he totters toward her then she pulls it up and hits him with a nut shot that puts him on the ground.
Lilly and I watch in horror as she slams the cross into his back, his legs, and his head. He starts crying and begging for her to stop and I look at Lilly and she looks at me and we both look at the carpet where a puddle of blood is fanning out from under Richard Stacks the Fourth.
“Chloe,” I say. “Chloe, I think you need to stop.”
“He never stopped! He never stopped for eleven years!” she screams and I take a step toward her and she looks me dead in the eye and says, “Don’t. Don’t you dare try to take this from me.”
I don’t know if she’s talking about the cross or the moment, but either way, I take a step back. Richard is moaning so at least he’s not dead. Yet.
“Chloe,” he says, barely audible, “Chloe, baby, please I’m hurt Chloe.”
“You expect me to care?” she yells. “Do you really expect me to care?” She hauls that cross over her shoulder, brings it down hard on his skull, and Richard Stacks doesn’t move.
“Oh my God,” Lilly says and I can see that she is shaking all over. “Oh my God!”
Chloe looks at him, drops the cross onto the floor, and leaves the room.
“Where are you going, Chloe?” I ask and try to sound like I’m not scared shitless but Dammit! I am.
“To take a shower,” she says calmly.
“What are we going to do?” Lilly asks. “What the fuck are we going to do?”
I get down on my knees and pick up his hand.
“He still has a pulse,” I say and swallow hard to keep from vomiting, “so I think he’s just unconscious.”
“Should I call 911?”
“No. Call Sheriff Jackson and ask him what do to.”
Sheriff Jackson instructs her to call 911.
38
A crowd of nosy onlookers gather on the Stacks’ front lawn, no doubt quizzing the Sheriff and Deputy Dax Dorsett about what happened. One particular nosy neighbor comes into the house without so much as knocking. She looks down at the blood on the floor, then up at us like we’re a pack of child molesters.
“What happened here?” she demands. “Who did that to Mr. Stacks?”
I was about to launch an explanation when Chloe steps around the corner and says, “Mrs. Franks, why don’t you mind your own business for once?”
Lilly and I look at each other in mutual shock.
“Why, Mrs. Stacks, I understand that you must be upset, but there is no reason to be rude.”
“There is no reason for you to be in my house, Mrs. Franks, so would you please leave?”
“I was just wondering if it was a home invasion. Do we need to be on alert? Did they catch the person who did that?” she eyes me suspiciously as Chloe takes her arm and escorts her to the door.
“Nothing like that, Mrs. Franks, no need to worry,” she pushes the lady over the threshold. “Thank you for your concern. Now run and tell everyone everything you’ve seen here and try to blow it out of proportion as much as you can.”
Chloe closes the door and I just stare at her with my mouth hanging open.
“The ambulance is pulling out,” she says with no emotion. “What now?”
“Pack a bag and let’s get out of here,” I say.
“Alright,” she says and turns toward her bedroom, not even casting a glance at the fancy oriental rug stained with her husband’s blood.
“Pack a big bag Chloe,” Lilly calls. “We may not be back here for a while.”
“That would be great,” she says and disappears down the hallway.
“Let’s see what we can do about this.” I nod down at the rug.
“Ugh, okay,” Lilly mumbles and doesn’t move.
I ransack the kitchen, throwing junk everywhere and gather up all the cleaning stuff I can find. I run to the laundry room and grab the whole box of washing powders, a can of spot remover, and a long handled brush. I hustle back to the living room where Lilly is standing with a handful of towels, looking down at the stain.
I return to the kitchen and scrounge around until I find some hot dog tongs that I take back in there and use to peel the rug off the floor. Lilly throws a towel down on the pecan wood planks and I stifle a gag.
“Oh, this is disgusting,” Lilly says and I nod my head in agreement because I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’ll hurl. “I’m going to get a trash bag.” She runs to the kitchen and returns with trash bags, the vacuum cleaner, and two pairs of rubber gloves.
“Here,” she says, handing me a pair, “bastard probably has AIDS.”
We scrub down the rug, Lilly runs over it with the vacuum, then we repeat the entire process two more times. Luckily, the rug is mahogany and the stain was virtually unnoticeable after the second round of scrubbing and vacuuming.
“What about that?” I ask, n
odding to the cross. “What do we do with the murder weapon?”
Lilly picks it up, struggling with its weight, and holds it out for me to wipe down.
“Cleaning blood off of a cross,” I say. “Ironic.”
“Well, it is a symbol of redemption,” Lilly says. “Help me get it back on the wall.”
“Jeez,” I say as we struggle to get the cross back on its nail, “she was slinging this thing around like it was nothing.”
“A woman scorned,” Lilly says, straightening it on the wall.
We both just stand there for a second, looking at the cross.
“Wonder what God thinks about this mess?” Lilly asks.
“Probably glad to see a demon beat into submission,” I say, and Lilly looks at me like I’m stupid so I say, “How should I know? It’s hard sometimes to tell how and where all that forgiveness fits into a situation like this,” I pause “maybe He’s up there thinking, ‘Chloe Stacks in the foyer with the cross.’”
“Yeah,” Lilly says sarcastically, “just a game of Clue, right?”
We are washing our hands in the kitchen when Chloe comes in with her entire collection of luggage in tow.
“I’m ready,” she says, her eyes devoid of any emotion. “Let’s take my car so we can load this stuff while the garage door is still down.”
“Great idea,” I say, amazed at her transformation from certifiable nut case to murderess to a level-headed, clear thinking woman.
I call Gloria Peacock and tell her what had happened and she instructs us to come to The Waverly Estate immediately. Chloe drops me off at my car and Lilly rides with her and I follow them to the majestic iron gates.
39
We are taken to the indoor patio of The Waverly Estate and when we walk in, drinks are set up and it’s not sweet tea. Chloe doesn’t seem to notice the grandeur of the place. I guess always having money numbs you to things like that. Or maybe she was distracted because of that murder she damn nearly committed. I can’t really say.
“Boy, when I picked you girls to hang out with, I really picked some doozies, didn’t I?” Gloria Peacock says when we walk in. “Drinks?” She waves a hand toward the bar and I’m first in line. While I’m shaking my Whiskey Sour, she continues, “If you would allow me, I’d like to give you all a little update on something of interest.” She smiles, “Catherine Hilliard has been forced to resign her position as principal of Bugtussle High School and Ardie Griffith voluntarily resigned his position as superintendent and word is they plan to leave town,” she pauses, “together.”
Diary of a Mad Fat Girl Page 14
