Blanche Passes Go

by Barbara Neely

  When her heart was no longer trying to escape from her chest, she rose and closed the curtains. She lifted the side of the curtain at the front window. Cracks radiated from the hole in the glass. A faint breeze blew through it. She gulped air like a person fresh from near drowning. The street was empty and quiet, except for the night creatures that were supposed to be outside her door. She would put bars on the window tomorrow. She would…She turned on the light and stared at the bundle on her floor. She walked slowly toward it, braced herself, picked it up. Heavy. A rock, of course. She got a knife and cut the string. The paper was yellow and lined. The bottom edge was torn and crooked. The letters were printed. Big fat red capital letters:

  I’LL HURT YOU IF I HAVE TO.

  Blanche fought hard not to drag her suitcase out from under the bed and start packing. She knew that he could hurt her, had hurt her, could put his hands on her again. The rock and the note slid to the floor. Her stomach roiled. She flew to the bathroom and vomited up all that she’d eaten since lunch, then rose on wobbly legs to wash her face and hands. Turning her face from the things on her floor, she went directly to her Ancestor altar and lit candles and a stick of incense with fingers cold as snow.

  “You see it,” she told her Ancestors. “I don’t have to tell y’all about rocks through the window at night. You know, you know. So please give me…” In her mind she once again heard glass breaking, the thud that could have been a beer bottle filled with gasoline, and a flaming rag landing at her feet instead of a rock. She’d been about to ask her Ancestors for the strength and courage to get through this battle with Palmer. But she realized she didn’t want to have the grit to go on; she didn’t want to have to go on at all. She wanted to believe this rock and note were meant for someone else in some other house. She wanted to believe the rock was thrown by a girlfriend of Thelvin’s trying to run the competition out of town. She wanted to believe that Palmer had nothing to do with this note and if she couldn’t convince herself of that, she at least wanted the sense to stop, to quit mucking around in Palmer’s business while she was ahead. While she was still alive. But she moaned at the realization that she couldn’t stop. It was too late. If she had not seen Palmer, if Archibald hadn’t given her the idea of pawing through Palmer’s life, if she’d acted like she knew he was dangerous when Palmer warned her off with that phone message—any one of those things might have stopped her. But now…He wouldn’t be threatening her if there weren’t something he wanted to stay hidden, something he was afraid she would find out or had already found out. Why else try to scare her off? What was it? What was it? She turned and looked at the note lying on the floor. Rotten fucker!

  She picked up the rock, opened the front door and looked around: no one in sight. She spit on the rock and threw it as hard as she could. She closed and locked the door, then found a small plastic bag, stuffed the note in it, sealed the bag, and put it in the freezer of her small refrigerator, believing the cold would contain its evil. She peed in the scrub bucket, added five times as much water and some Jean Naté—ready to try any- and everything. She wiped the window and door frames with the mixture, then mopped the floors, hoping this provided the protection Madame Rosa had told her it would.

  She emptied and washed the bucket, rag, and mop and hung her rubber gloves on the shower rod. She looked at the phone, longing to talk to Ardell, to not be alone, to have had someone there with her when the rock came through her window so she wouldn’t even have to describe it. Of course, she didn’t have to describe it, did she?

  She wanted to tell Ardell about the note and the rock, and maybe Archibald, too. But what would they do? Ardell would go off! She’d do everything she could to stop Blanche from nosing around about Palmer. She didn’t know how Archibald would react. She realized she’d have to tell him everything—about the rape and how she was using his money. Forget that.

  She put the kettle on for tea and downed two shots of gin while she waited for the water to boil. He hasn’t changed a thing, not a thing, she told herself. It wasn’t true, of course. Everything, from the way she left her house, to the way she crossed the street, to the way she breathed, had changed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  MISTRESS OF DISGUISE, PART TWO

  Blanche was at the hardware store when it opened in the morning. She bought a canister of pepper spray, a pane of glass for her broken window, and, spending more than she could afford, a set of inside shutters for three windows and a piece of plywood to be held in place by a couple of bricks for the small bathroom window. Though she was sweaty and hungry by the time she was done, her spirits were lifted by her efforts to protect herself, and she was ready to get back into Palmer’s business by the time she left for Ardell’s.

  Ardell was hunched over a small calculator when Blanche arrived to borrow her car.

  “Don’t stop,” Blanche told her.

  “Humm.” Ardell punched in some more numbers. “You okay?” she asked without looking up.

  “Had a restless night,” Blanche told her.

  Ardell shook her head and went on working. Blanche was relieved not to have Ardell’s full attention. The more time she could put between the rock through her window and having a sit-down with Ardell the better—unless she wanted Ardell to see through her like cellophane.

  “I’ll only be a couple hours.” Blanche took Ardell’s car keys from the hook in the kitchen and kissed her on top of her head. She strapped Ardell’s aluminum ladder to the car roof and took off for Durham.

  Blanche parked in front of the cottage to which David Palmer sent weekly flowers. The place still had that nobody-home feeling. She climbed out of the car and pulled the seat of her coveralls away from her sweaty back. The coveralls belonged to Mr. Billy, who worked at the gas station; Blanche had paid Mr. Billy’s wife ten dollars for their use.

  She cranked an old-fashioned doorbell and heard its grating ring from inside, but no one came to the door. She rang again, waited, then went to a front window and looked inside: sofa and chair covered in a blowsy rose print, a multicolored braided rug, a potbellied lamp on a flimsy-looking end table in a small room painted white with dark woodwork. Blanche spun around.

  The woman approaching her was tall, with a beaky face and watery eyes behind pink-framed glasses. Shoulder-length dark-blond-and-gray hair swung around her face in a way that said, “Wash me!”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Mornin’, ma’am. I’m lookin’ for the owner. Said he gonna meet me here. I got two other jobs.”

  “Jobs?”

  “Yeah, windows. I do windows.”

  “I ain’t never seed no woman window-washer before.” She looked Blanche up and down.

  Blanche put her hand on her hip. “Neither did I, before I needed me a second job.” She looked back at the house. “I guess I can start on the outside. Maybe he’ll show up by then.” She walked around the woman toward the back of the place.

  “Water spigot around here?” There were two windows in the back. Blanche went to the curb and pulled the ladder from the top of the car. Go on, girl! she told herself as she easily carried the ladder to the back of the house. She returned to the car and got her bucket, squeegee, cloth, and cleaner, then put some water in the bucket. By the time she was ready to climb up the ladder, the neighbor had grown bored and left. Blanche stepped up onto the second rung of the ladder and tried to open the closest rear window. It didn’t budge. She dragged the ladder to the other rear window and tried it. Stuck. But it lifted a bit. She hammered the wooden frame and loosened it enough to push the window up. First, a quick look around the corner of the house to check on the neighbor across the street, then she put on her rubber gloves and climbed in the window.

  The old-fashioned kitchen, with its skirted sink and 1950s stove, looked as though it wasn’t used for much. There were no dirty dishes, or even glasses, in the sink. She opened the fridge: two bottles of Moët & Chandon White Star Champ
agne, a jar of black olives, some Brie, and a dried-up chunk of pâté. There was a box of water crackers in a kitchen cabinet with four water glasses and two champagne flutes.

  The only other downstairs room was the living room she’d seen from the front window. She went up the enclosed stairs. They opened into a bedroom that was clearly the center of activity. The brass bed was queen-sized, high, and covered with a paisley velvet duvet in red, purple, and green. The sheets were red satin. Purple and green pillows of various sizes and shapes were bunched at the head of the bed. A white porcelain vase of yellow roses, their dead heads hanging like rejected lovers, stood in the middle of the dresser. A full-length mirror in a chrome frame was angled to reflect the bed.

  Blanche stood at the foot of the bed and slowed her breathing, relaxing into herself so that she could feel the room around her. She took a deep breath: dust and a light perfume that could come from soap. No people smell. No smell of skin on skin, fluids. She looked around her. The room told her nothing. Whatever went on here, the house didn’t think it was any of her business. It was wrong. She was going to find its secrets, with or without the house’s help.

  She opened the bureau drawers. All but one were empty. It was full of expensive-looking underwear of the see-through and crotchless variety in black, red, peach, and midnight blue. She held up a red thong and wondered how she’d look in one of those. Why should the skinny girls have all the fun? There was a sheer black negligee and matching mules in the closet, along with a man’s black-and-white-striped silk robe and black leather backless slippers.

  A mini stereo system and a smallish TV/VCR sat atop a large table at the foot of the bed, between the two front windows. In the small bathroom beyond the bedroom, Egyptian-cotton towels were stacked like banked clouds on an open bamboo étagère. A wicker basket overflowed: bars of fancy soap, a back brush, and loofahs. There were bottles of expensive-looking bath oil, bubble bath, and flavored massage oils—cherry, peach, raspberry. Thelvin would taste good in peach. The floor was covered in overlapping small sisal rugs. The shower stall was mirrored. A razor, some shaving lotion, toothpaste, and two toothbrushes in a small glass sat on the ledge of the sink. There was an old razor blade in the wastebasket. Blanche went back to the bedroom and opened the drawer in the night table: an emery board, six condoms in foil packets, and a slightly curved rectangular gold-colored bar that looked like a piece of some sort of jewelry, maybe a large brooch. She picked it up. It was painted to look like metal, but something like black plastic showed through a scratch at one end. The back of the bar had what looked like clear glue stuck to it. The front side was covered with a row of gold-painted rosebuds. Cheap, she thought.

  A door slammed nearby.

  Blanche looked out the front window. The blonde woman across the street had just closed her door behind her. She was carrying a tray and heading in Blanche’s direction. Blanche slipped the rose-covered bar in her pocket, closed the night-table drawer, and ran down the stairs. She hoisted herself up on the sink—truly grateful for all those push-ups she’d been doing lately—slid out the window, and made it to the side of the house just as the woman reached the front of it.

  “I thought you might like a glass of fresh lemonade.” The woman held out the tray with its two tall green glasses.

  Damn! Of all the times for Southern hospitality to kick in! “Why, thank you.” Blanche was panting a bit. “That’s mighty nice of you.” She took off her gloves and picked up the lemonade. The woman raised her own glass to her lips, all the while watching Blanche, obviously waiting for Blanche to taste hers.

  “This is really delicious!” Blanche said. And it was. “Something unusual in here, ain’t it?”

  The woman beamed. “My own special ingredient. Just a drop or two of grenadine.”

  Blanche nodded her approval. The woman sat on the front step of the cottage.

  “Don’t see nobody over here much,” the woman said. “I see lights some nights. And the car once in a while.”

  “That so?”

  “You can get to the back through the alley. They mostly use that. That’s why I don’t see them much.”

  How much is much? Blanche wondered. “They got kids?” she asked.

  “Oh no, no. They’re not regular…” The woman’s eyes glittered. “It’s a love nest,” she whispered loud enough to be heard across the street.

  Blanche mustered her considerable acting ability. “A what?!” She made sure to widen her eyes and leave her mouth slightly ajar. No sense doing a half-assed job.

  “Well, I ain’t positive. I mean, I never seen them doing nothing or…But they ain’t a regular couple. They ain’t here every day, for one thing.”

  “Well, maybe they travel for work.”

  “That’s another thing—I never see them around the times people usually come from work and go to work. It’s always off hours when they’re here.”

  “They spend the night, though.”

  “Not so’s you’d notice.”

  “Sounds like you’re right about the love nest.” Blanche mimicked the woman and whispered her last three words.

  “Well, live and let live,” the woman said.

  Blanche was surprised. She’d thought the woman wanted both to talk about her neighbors and to judge them.

  “I only spoke to him on the phone,” Blanche said. “I always wonder what a person looks like when I don’t get to meet them face to face. Know what I mean?”

  The woman shrugged. “They ain’t neighborly, that’s for sure.”

  “They been here long?”

  “About a year now, I reckon. Place used to belong to old man Johnson. He died not too long ’fore these folks came. Most of the old families around here is dead or moved out. His kids all moved away. I don’t know if they sold this place or they’re just renting it. I didn’t realize anybody was over here, but I kept seeing this big gray car. I waved to him once, but…”

  “Is he…?”

  The woman was as puzzled as Blanche expected her to be.

  “Good looking?” Blanche said. “The man? I thought he might be, ’cause he sounds like…”

  “Oh yes, very handsome, very nice-looking. Of course, he wears a hat or a cap so I couldn’t see…Blonde, though, I did see that. She’s very petite, from what I could see of her. Very refined, both of them.”

  Blanche drank the rest of her lemonade. “That sure hit the spot. I thank you kindly.” She handed the woman the glass and stood up. “Well, I’m ’bout done here. I ain’t doin no more till I get paid!” She stood up. “I’m just gonna git my things.”

  Much to her disappointment, the woman just sat there, sipping away. Blanche had hoped to get back into the house. Maybe there was something else besides this thing in her pocket, something that would move her closer to knowing who Palmer was shacking up with and why he didn’t seem to want it known, since nobody she’d talked to had mentioned this setup or even a current relationship with a woman. She hesitated, hoping the woman would leave. She didn’t.

  Blanche went around to the back of the bungalow, closed the window she’d left open—careful not to slam it—and carried the ladder out to the car. The woman smiled up at her from the stoop. Blanche gathered her bucket, mop, and squeegee and took them to the car.

  “Well, thanks again for the lemonade,” she said.

  “Why, you’re more than welcome,” the woman said, but still didn’t stand.

  Blanche suddenly understood. She wants to take a look around, too, she thought, and gave up.

  “All right, now, y’all take care.”

  The woman waved. Blanche jumped in the car and drove off. When she stopped at the light on Main Street, she slipped the metal bar from her pocket. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew it had belonged to a woman, and, according to that underwear in the bureau drawer in the cottage, she wasn’t Palmer’s sick and aging aunt. Blanch
e gunned the engine when the light changed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  A RIDE AND A RELEASE

  Ardell was standing by the kitchen table opening mail when Blanche arrived to return the car.

  “Look! I found it in Palmer’s place in Durham.” Blanche held out the rose-covered piece from the cottage.

  Ardell laid down the letter she was holding and took the gold-colored bar from Blanche. She turned it over a couple of times. “Humm. About as much help as a bucket with a hole in it.” She handed the bar back to Blanche. It suddenly looked dull and even cheaper, and was now littered with lint from Blanche’s pocket.

  “Well, at least I know something I didn’t know before.”

  Ardell picked up another envelope and slit it open with a table knife. “And just what might that be?”

  Blanche told her about the underwear she’d found in the bungalow bureau drawer. “So I know for sure he’s shacking with somebody over in Durham. He coulda been using the place for a poker stop or something.”

  “Humm. With that piece of information and a ham sandwich, you got lunch.” Ardell frowned at the letter she took from its envelope.

  It was all Blanche could do not to tell Ardell that maybe this was the thing Palmer wanted to hide enough to throw a rock through her window.

  “But I ain’t through yet,” she said. “There’s something out there on that pig, and I’m gonna find it. Palmer is in for one big surprise.”

  “And so is that damned florist over in Raleigh.” Ardell sat down at the kitchen table and waved the bill at Blanche. “Look what he’s charging me for the arrangements for tonight! I know he’s cheating me. I got a good mind to call around some places and check his prices.” Ardell threw the invoice down, picked up a pencil, and put big question marks beside certain numbers on the sheet of paper. Blanche patted Ardell’s shoulder and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll see you later,” she said, and headed for home.