Bad Reputation: The Complete Collection

by Matt Hader

  Jane said, “You forgot the chaise lounge chair.”

  “I’ll get it tomorrow. Sorry,” said Rita, who knew at that moment that she’d be in for another fitful night of sleep. But then smiled regardless because after tomorrow she would be emotionally free from her troubling thoughts and on her way to normalcy.

  ***

  Her hunch about the old MLS number had paid off. The place hadn’t been used in some time and was basically abandoned.

  It wasn’t a huge space inside the darkened, and empty, former diner on the rural road between Hanover and Fairlee, but it would do just fine.

  Rita used a baseball-sized rock to knock out one of the six square glass panels on the back door nearest the knob. The only security the building had was the cheap doorknob lock.

  She unrolled the plastic sheeting in the center of the empty space and duck-taped black garbage bags to the windows. The upper right corner of one of the black garbage bags fell away from the window frame – revealing a view of the ‘for sale’ sign near the road as a car drove past, illuminating the sign. On the sign was a photo of a pretty blonde woman sporting a big, toothy smile. A placard under the sign read: Zoned Commercial/Studio Space.

  ***

  “We divorced after I just couldn’t put up with his shit anymore. He was the type who constantly tells you how wrong you are,” said Jane as she carefully drove Rita in her Mercedes E-class to the town of Hanover.

  “Sure,” Rita said. She was raised in a family exactly like that and could tell all sorts of stories about it, too, but she had to keep on task.

  “There was a ton of psychological and physical abuse when he was a kid. I needed tranquility in my life. He refused to get the mental health help he really needed. Such a handsome man, but so messed up. It just wasn’t worth the turmoil that he brought along into our relationship. I tried, I really did. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. Been at the house on Lake Morey ever since,” said Jane. “Listen to me. I’m sorry to be carrying on about my ex. What do you do, Becky?”

  Her guard lowered by Jane’s story, Rita hesitated for just a moment, before saying, “I’m a housewife. We have two sons. One’s at Boston College and the other is still in elementary-” She stopped herself before she said even more.

  “You must be so proud,” said Jane. “We never had children. Probably for the best.”

  A long silence hung between them as Rita’s mind wandered. Her thoughts burdened with the image of herself grabbing Christopher’s wrists so tightly that they bled.

  ***

  “You picked a wonderful piece,” said Jane as they stepped out from the scarf boutique on Main Street in Hanover.

  Hanover was a charming town. The businesses were small but upscale and enticing. Rita loved shopping in the towns around the Chicago area, places like Long Grove and Lake Forest, for instance, instead of the mega-malls. She always enjoyed the personalized one-on-one relationships that she had with the retailers there.

  “Thanks,” said Rita, catching herself smiling. Was she acting or was it authentic? It was unclear even to her. Her mind was, again, all over the place.

  “Do you like seared tuna? There’s an excellent place with the freshest fish right around the corner,” said Jane.

  “Um, sure,” said Rita.

  There was a major thought howling inside of Rita’s mind, too. And it was troubling her to no end: she was enjoying Jane’s company.

  Rita knew that Jane had done the unimaginable to Deb’s six-year old son, killing him with the very same car she had rode in today. But she couldn’t help but fall for Jane’s casual and cool style. Rita simply loved the way Jane handled herself.

  She thought that if anyone would have ever barged into her house like she had done to Jane the night before, she may have attacked them, not carry on a pleasant conversation.

  The everyday person wouldn’t invite an intruder on a pleasant sightseeing tour of Hanover. They’d probably scream and call the cops instead. But Jane didn’t overreact, and Rita very much admired that.

  If she had met her under different circumstances, Rita would have actively sought out a friendship with someone like Jane.

  ***

  A waitress placed two identical plates of seared tuna in front of Rita and Jane.

  “I hate to pry, but,” said Jane.

  “...you’re going to anyway,” said Rita.

  They shared a laugh. “How well do you know Deb?”

  Rita froze for a moment, then proceeded cautiously, “Not well. I just rented the cabin from her.”

  Jane nodded. It was a long moment before either spoke, then Rita broke the silence, “She spoke very highly of you.”

  Jane gave Rita a friendly smile - she wasn’t buying it.

  “We had our share of issues in the past. She blames me. Not to say I wasn’t partially responsible,” said Jane, falling silent and waving over the waitress for a drink refill.

  ***

  “I hope you don’t mind coming along. It’s on the way home,” said Jane as the Mercedes E-Class zipped down Highway 5, headed back to Fairlee.

  “No problem at all,” said Rita.

  “I’ve been looking at places to set up my own creative space and retail shop for so long now. I hate to admit it, I don’t even remember ever meeting with the realtor that called this morning.” She chuckled.

  Terror suddenly washed over Jane’s face. She slammed on the brakes and swerved hard. Rita caught the brown/gray flash as a large deer’s hindquarters disappeared into the forest on the right side of the road.

  “Are you okay?” Jane asked Rita.

  “Yeah,” said Rita, trying to catch her breath, and gathering the items that spilled out of her purse and onto the floor of the car – the garrote included. She made sure that Jane didn’t notice the contents.

  “That was so close. I just got my car back from the shop from the last one,” said Jane, not paying any attention to what Rita was doing.

  Rita’s eyes quickly flicked in Jane’s direction, and she asked, “The last one?”

  “Have to be careful driving in these parts. The wildlife can kill you out here,” said Jane.

  ***

  Jane pulled the Mercedes into a cratered driveway and parked the car directly in front of a ramshackle old diner that sat alone on the desolate roadside.

  The pretty blond real-estate agent with the big, toothy smile peered at them from the “for sale” sign in front.

  Rita and Jane stepped out of the car.

  Rita’s hands shook. Her mind raced. Once Jane was dispatched, Rita would wrap the body in the plastic and transport it back to the house in the trunk. There she would turn the car off, wipe it clean of any prints, close the garage door, and head back to Boston to spend a day with her son, Tyler.

  Simple.

  Then why was Rita having second thoughts?

  “She said she’d be here at 4:30,” said Jane, looking up and down the desolate road.

  “I’m in no hurry,” said Rita.

  Jane walked closer to the deserted diner. Stared at it for a long moment, remembering.

  “Maybe we should wait inside,” said Rita.

  Jane didn’t respond, lost in thought.

  Rita, a little more insistent, said, “Jane?” which broke Jane out of her reverie.

  Jane nodded, made her way to the side entrance of the old diner. Rita followed close behind, reaching into her purse and grasping the garrote.

  “I was here once before. When the diner was still opened,” said Jane. “With Deb’s ex-husband,” said Jane, as the two women dissappeared around the side of the building.

  ***

  The skinny Vermont State Police detective with the horrible coffee breath sat opposite of Rita at the metal table. He flipp
ed through a file that lay open in front of him.

  “So why did you do it?” asked the detective. “No more bullshit. You were the last one seen with her,” he said.

  Rita remained still until a little smirk spiked the edge of her mouth.

  “Here’s what I think happened,” said the detective in a cocky tone. “You meet her husband in Chicago on one of his business trips. He buys you a drink. Maybe two. Tells you he’s divorcing his wife. Feeling sorry for himself. You go back to his hotel room. You see him when he comes to town - once or twice a month. He tells you about his awful wife who won’t sign the divorce papers. About how she was arrested for assaulting one of his ex-girlfriends. About the expensive lake-front property. About the children he wants but could never have with such an awful women. He tells you he wants a life with you. But that’s impossible while she’s alive. So you kill her.”

  Rita’s eyes never wavered as she stared at the detective. She remained calm and still, even seeming relieved, as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders.

  The detective slapped the table loudly just as the door popped open and another detective, this one younger in age, stuck his head in the room and said, “Hey, Lute. A moment.”

  The skinny detective got to his feet and followed the younger detective into the hallway of the utilitarian police building.

  “She’s got an alibi. A good one. She was in Hanover when the shit went down in Fairlee,” said the young detective. “Got a whole restaurant and a couple of shop-fulls of witnesses that ID’d her.”

  ***

  Five minutes later, Rita stepped from the ugly green prefabricated Vermont State Police building in Bradford and scanned the lot for her ride.

  Jane drove up in her Mercedes E-Class and stopped curbside.

  Rita hopped into the passenger seat and they slowly drove away. After a mile, Jane finally spoke.

  “Dating Deb’s ex-husband almost got me killed.”

  “Almost,” said Rita.

  They drove on in silence.

  ***

  The following Tuesday, Rita knelt in her backyard tending to her herb garden when she heard a commotion in front of her house.

  As she made her way around to the side yard, she caught sight of the three menacing 10-year old boys on bikes. They were back at it, bothering her son Christopher, once again.

  The bullies forcefully held the smaller boy to the ground and peeled off the official, and quite expensive, Chicago Bears #34 jersey he was wearing.

  The largest of the boys slipped it on over his own shirt, slapped Christopher hard in the face, and laughed, as he and his two cohorts got onto their bikes and took off.

  They left the beaten Christopher, half naked, and standing on the curb.

  Rita peeled off her work gloves and backed her way into the yard so that Christopher couldn’t see her spying on him.

  She stepped through the French doors of her expensive home and made her way to the front door. She peered through the peep-hole in the front door and could see Christopher plopping heavily on the steps leading up to the porch. The kid put his head in his hands and sighed deeply.

  Rita opened the door and Christopher turned, the look of terror on his face was one of not knowing what was coming next from his mother.

  Rita took a seat next to her son, tenderly wrapped her arm around him and said, “Let’s get you a shirt.”

  ###

  Murmurs

  Then. The incessant whine of the weed-whacker drowned out his surroundings, and that was just fine with him. He liked it that way, to be alone with his internal musings. No earbuds jammed into his head that cranked whatever inane music was deemed cool that week. No annoyance from a bunch of yappy friends as he worked away the late morning hours on the humid August weekday.

  He was alone in body and thought, only the freshly mowed lawn and the weed-whacker to keep him company.

  He used his oversized-for-his-height hands to sway the yard implement back and forth and allowed the machine to glide over the grass as he took a little off the top. He sidestepped, shuffled, sidestepped, and shuffled along the edge of the concrete driveway in the postage-stamp-sized backyard of the brown brick bungalow in the 1000 block of south Washington Street in Park Ridge.

  From the front sidewalk, or the back alley for that matter, the exterior of the house seemed well maintained. The white wood trim was freshly painted, the bushes regularly clipped, and the flowers updated each and every spring. The home, from the outside, was a good neighborhood fit, and complemented those around it like a tidy matched set. Park Ridge was historically a realtor’s dream. It was a fantastic, and solid, Chicago-area location-location-location to buy and sell a home.

  From the summers-worth of lawn maintenance he’d done so far, his formerly white Walmart athletic shoes were now the same greenish hue as the sweet and tangy pickle relish he enjoyed on his Chicago hotdogs. His left pinky toe had nearly wriggled its way to complete freedom out the side of the well-worn corresponding huge left shoe. He smirked at the little piggy every time it played peek-a-boo with him.

  The physical aspect of this weekly chore was performed by rote, but his mind rapidly sparked through one thought to the next -- and stopped suddenly when he considered his birth name.

  He often wondered how his father felt now about his choice, especially after he tagged his son with the moniker 16 years ago. He could ask his mom about the name choice, but she was long gone - a runaway mother - since the time he was a 4-year old. No one had heard anything from her since she left, and his father stopped looking for her a year after she was gone.

  And well, almost 16 years had passed since he’d been handed his first name. There were still two weeks to go before it became official.

  His name seemed so ridiculous to him, although he never had any inclinations to change it once he had the legal right to do so.

  He wanted his name to haunt his father, to mock him.

  He needed to have a ‘win’ of any sort because up to this point in his short life, there had not been any, except for the 3rd place finish ribbon he collected in a 5th grade foot race. “Where is that crappy little ribbon?” he said to himself, out loud with a crooked smile.

  He was absolutely nothing like his name had wished him to be. His label only taunted him now.

  He was a C-student at best.

  Not athletic, clumsy really, mostly due to his 5’6” height, and the oversized hands and feet that he hadn’t quite grown into.

  He was not a ladies man of any sort.

  And he had only one acquaintance worth talking to in the entire world. He was a frenemy to be more specific. A similarly socially positioned teenager who lived in a comparable brick bungalow on the next block south.

  But his god damned name. What was his parents’ thinking?

  Champ Granville.

  His legal name was Champ.

  What the hell?

  Champ…

  Ho-ly shit.

  He let out a short breath of contempt as he passed the irritating weed-whacker back and forth and conjured an image of his father’s near-permanent expression of disapproval. Every conversation he had with his dad over the past few years disintegrated into a battle of the wills. All dialogue would come down to Champ purposefully needling his father in any way he could just to score some teenage annoyance points. His father would threaten to throw him out of the house if he didn’t straighten up his act, get better grades, etc., etc. It was a brutal downward-spiral-headed game in which no one would ever win.

  “I’m doing the damned lawn, aren’t I?” he said out loud, again, as he referred to an earlier argument they had about household chores and responsibilities. But Champ’s words sprinkled down on the greenery of the backyard like worthless audible fertilizer. No human ears would ever h
ear them.

  Champ was used to this, too, though. Most folks in his neighborhood, especially the adults, basically ignored the skinny and clumsy kid with the brownish-red hair and the smattered freckles on his nose. He wasn’t a bad kid, per se. He was simply vanilla in an ultra vanilla suburban setting. Nothing special. At least he didn’t think he was special in any way.

  But he had no idea what was to become of his life in the next years’ time – and thereafter, for that matter.

  “Champ? Who the hell plops a turd name like Champ on their-”

  A scream stopped him cold.

  He thought the young male’s voice came from somewhere in the alley behind his home, possibly from the area in back of the detached, 1-car brick garage. It was an agonizing scream. Short but terrifying. A shriek with enough volume to drown out the high-buzz of the weed whacker.

  Champ clicked the machine off and let the hunk of plastic and aluminum fall into the grass. He took several steps toward what he believed to be the source of the scream but saw nothing. He heard only the chirp of birds and the hum of distant lawnmowers.

  He ran to the paved alley behind his garage, skid to a stop and looked north and then south, but again, saw nothing out of the ordinary. It was at that moment that Champ realized he’d been holding his breath. The boy’s screech shocked him into fight-or-flight mode, which, unfortunately for the often-bullied Champ was a natural state of being. He, of course, blamed his awful name for the bullying. Champ relaxed, took a couple of deep cleansing breaths, and stepped back to the weed-whacker.

  He picked up the yard implement and slid his finger towards the ‘on’ button, but froze. He then slowly turned his head toward the open overhead door of the brick, 1-car garage.

  Champ dropped the weed-whacker on the lawn once again and moved to the open door of the garage. He leaned into a sudden stop and teetered in place before he could fully enter the space. He cautiously eyed the interior walls and the cracked concrete garage floor from the doorway opening. Although he was in and out of the garage nearly every day without any problem - to retrieve his bike, or the lawn equipment - the open space seemed different to him now. Darker. The air was heavier. The strong smell of gasoline, old paint and yard clippings more pungent for some odd reason. It scared the shit out of him.