by Fiona Quinn
“You feel sorry for him.”
“I feel sorry for everyone who has to look at his disaster. And I think everyone would win if you took this project on.”
I snorted. “Saying ‘this project’ sounds very respectable and nothing like digging through ancient mouse shit. Look, I’ll think about it.” I glanced over at the poems on my wall. “Actually, dealing with someone else’s crappola seems much more appealing than dealing with my own.”
“Speaking of your crappola, did you finish reviewing the Walmart tape I e-mailed you?”
“Yup. Male figure, just over six feet tall, dressed in oversized jeans, baseball cap, and hoodie, placed the envelope on my truck. He walked into the frame and right back out. A five-second blip.”
“Forensics wasn’t able to do much with enhancement.” He changed from Uncle Dave to Detective Murphy in a nanosecond—his eyes sharp and intelligent, his jaw muscles tensed. “No facial features, not even race. At least we can tell the stalker is a man.”
“Not a lot to go on.” I pulled my hair into a ponytail so I could think. “I spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the cars near Angel’s truck. Watched each one park. It’s crazy that Walmart happened four days ago and now Stalker is comfortable enough to walk up to my frigging door. Shithead.”
I glanced toward my front door to make sure I had thrown the bolt. Checking, checking, rechecking. I was developing OCD. The little green light from my new alarm system and the dogs’ state of sleepy calm helped me keep my blood pressure down. And Dave was here with his Glock in his shoulder holster. My Ruger was strapped to my ankle under my yoga pants.
“Did you pick up anything from reviewing cars?” Dave asked.
“Mothers opened car doors for their kids. An older couple with their canes. A teenager dressed in skintight pants—none of those people had the right clothes or build. I only saw one car drive onto the lot, at the same time I did, which didn’t park or let someone out—a blue Honda Civic. I’d bet good money that’s his.”
“Show me,” Dave said, and I went to get my laptop.
Eight
At six in the morning, the rattle and bang of a construction truck jerked me out of bed. I ran to my window, ordering Beetle and Bella to calm down. Two men in work uniforms unloaded another debris container onto Manny’s side yard. Ah, the never-ending parade of debris containers. Heaving a sigh, I slogged my way into the bathroom for a shower. As I stood under the stream of hot water, I realized how crazy I was to clean myself up before going over to Hoarder Hell—but just the thought of the place made me feel like lice and bed bugs crawled over my scalp and bored into my skin.
Today, for the first time, I had to go in. Two weeks. I’d spent two whole weeks getting the trash out of his yard and power washing. The neighborhood looked a thousand percent better, though. My house became instantly more valuable with that eyesore gone.
I pulled on sweats, laced up my tennis shoes, and stood at the mirror to braid my hair back. Now for the inside. I’d be safer. Less exposed. So far my security cameras seemed to be working, Stalker hadn’t shown up at my house in two weeks—didn’t even leave a letter on my car up until last night. The shithead. I strapped on my belly holster and checked to make sure a bullet was chambered in my Ruger.
Dave said if Stalker tried to attack me in all that mess, he’d probably get crushed by an avalanche of boxes. I didn’t doubt it. Maybe I should be little worried I would end up buried in the crap. Note to self—carry phone at all times; I’d stick it my bra with my knife.
I jogged down the stairs to see who had banged on my front door. Squinting through the peephole, I found Manny leaning against the jam, chewing the end of a pen like a cigar. “Roofers coming this morning.” He grinned.
I glanced past him over to his house. “Are you going to supervise my projects as well as you’re supervising your place?” I gestured to the men climbing back in their truck.
“Absolutely. You getting started inside?” Manny asked.
“Yup. I do this my way, right?” I turned away from him—I needed coffee.
“You’re the chief.” He slammed the door shut and followed me into the kitchen.
I held out a steaming mug to Manny, heavy on the sugar and milk, thinking this all seemed … bizarre. It was as if this whole escapade with the poker-financed house construction, ancient garbage mounds, and crazy-ass death threats were part of some hallucinatory acid trip.
I looked Manny over. His jeans and sweatshirt were a size too small; he probably shrank them in the dryer. “Don’t you work?” I asked.
“I do this and that right now.” Manny winked. “I’m an entrepreneur.”
“Okay.” I was still more than a little nervous about our bargain. Would the workers slack because this was a poker debt? “But you’re keeping an eye on the outcome here?”
“Sure am. And, by the way, some guy’s gonna come over around lunchtime to talk to you about the new heating and air conditioning unit.”
“Holy cow. This seems too easy—a new roof going on, new air systems coming. You’ll be done with your share of the barter by the end of the week, and I’m just up to your front door.”
“Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. I happened on a few suckers and some pretty good cards. It’s usually feast or famine, yah know? Can’t depend on anything with Lady Luck. I’m gonna try hard to get your house done about the same time you finish up with mine.” He gulped his coffee. “I’m thinking six, seven, maybe eight months over here. I’ve got to find the dupes, then things need to be ordered in, permits need filing, inspectors need to show up.” He nodded at me. “You have a plan in your head about how long it’s gonna take you?”
I scrunched my face like I was eating a lemon. “I have a plan, but in my head everything is much easier and much cleaner.”
“I hear you.” He clunked his empty mug onto the counter.
I picked it up and went to rinse it in the sink. “At any rate, with the outside cleaned up, if the social workers drive by, they’ll see progress,” I said.
I grabbed my jacket and headed across the street. Beetle and Bella sprawled beside me on Manny’s porch on guard. I cast vigilant glances up and down the road. Boomer had focused one of the cameras on Manny’s house. Once inside, Stalker could only get to me in one direction, unless he teleported through garbage heaps.
For the first time, I pulled open the front door then promptly regurgitated. Oh, dear God. The stench brought my elbow protectively over my nose, and I reflexively coughed to rid my lungs of the foul air. I stood there incredulous, wondering how anyone even got in. The stacks made columns from floor to ceiling of boxes and plastic bags jammed one on top of the other. Everywhere. As Manny crossed back over the road from my house, sadness for his grandparents, and now for him, overwhelmed me.
“Manny.” I flung my arms up in exasperation. “How?”
He offered up an indifferent shrug. “This is the way Nana and Pops’s house has always been. I guess someone who’s never been in before would find this pretty awful.”
I stood, wide-eyed, not sure how to respond.
“Hey,” Manny said. “I’m gonna keep tabs on the crew over at your place today, while I build a new fence in my backyard. I’ve got a guy coming over to give me a hand. Have you met Justin?” Manny asked.
“Whom?”
“He lives next door. Your across-the-street neighbor.” Manny pointed at the guy with a tight-hipped gait sauntering up the sidewalk with a big grin on his face. He stood about five eleven, with a lean, muscled body, comfortably clad in ripped jeans.
“Hey, I’m Lexi.” I put my hand in his for a shake and registered callouses, abrasions across his knuckles, grease permanently stained at the cuticle. Mechanic, maybe?
Justin made a sweeping gesture to take in the block. “It’s amazing how much things have improved with the shit cleaned up out of Manny’s yard,” he said. “On behalf of the neighborhood, thank you.”
I was offering up a wan sm
ile, when I caught sight of Dave coming down his steps. Dave raised his hand in a salute.
“Hey,” he called over. “I got your message about the list you wanted to give me. Can I swing by this evening? I’m running late for a meeting.”
“Fine,” I yelled back. “But I have two things for you now.” I raised my hand showing two fingers to punctuate my sentence.
“Two?” Dave’s stance tightened.
“Last night at the nail salon. It can wait for later.”
Dave took a step toward me when his cell phone rang. He peered down at the screen, waved, then jumped in his car and roared off.
Justin glanced past me with a comically exaggerated grimace. “So you start inside today?”
I blew out a breath, gesturing toward the door. “If you don’t see my house lights on tonight, send in a search party, will you?”
Justin laughed. “Yeah. Good luck.”
I pulled the first box out onto the porch, and I pawed through. It was crammed full of food labels. When Manny said his grandparents weren’t right in the head, he wasn’t kidding. “Hey Manny,” I said without looking up. “Could you get a poker game together with a kitchen person?” I walked to the rail, pitched the trash in the bin, then stood in front of him, swiping dirt off my hands and onto my jeans. “My fridge doesn’t cool, and my oven only works on broil.”
“I’ll see what can be arranged,” Manny called as he headed around back with Justin.
I missed not having my own kitchen since the fire. It had been sad, sad, sad to me that the one here in Angel’s and my house didn’t even come close to functioning. I loved to cook; it served as therapy for me. So much of my education had happened around the stove, under the watchful eyes of my Kitchen Grandmothers—I missed the warmth and goodness and connectedness.
Master Wang’s wife, Snow Bird, was the one who decided I needed the Kitchen Grandmothers. She worried my lack of “women’s skills” would make it hard for me to find an honorable husband. She knew my mother’s illness—that had left her bedridden since I was twelve—kept Mom from teaching me what Snow Bird thought of as a lady’s education.
Snow Bird grew up in a traditional Chinese home. In her mind, Oriental-wife skills were not culturally suited to the American man. And while she wanted to teach me some things—like sewing and cooking—she thought I would benefit from a broader spectrum of knowledge. So Snow Bird chose, amongst her friends at the apartment building, five grandmothers who were willing to take me under their wings. I’d help them with their day-to-day tasks, and in return I’d learn from them as I went along.
Each grandmother chose a day of the workweek; and on her day, she would teach me everything she thought I should know. Angel’s Great-Aunt Rosa was one of my Kitchen Grandmothers. That was how I met Angel the night of the apartment fire.
Abuela Rosa chose Friday nights as her night to teach me. From her I learned Spanish and how to dance. I remembered how naughty I felt when I first tried to move that way, tempting the boys with swaying hips and coquettish eyes.
On Thursdays, I spoke kitchen Italian with Nona Sophia. While her pots were bubbling and steaming, Nona would take out the art books. We’d sit at the table talking about paintings and artists. Nona cherished art from all over the world, but the pieces of her beloved Tuscany brought tears to her eyes.
My Kitchen Grandmothers gave me a cornucopia of culture and language—spice and ability. And while the whole concept of “wifely skills” was old-fashioned to the point of medieval, I enjoyed learning about all of the different cultures and ways of being and doing. And Mom was thrilled.
“This will give your life such wonderful flavor,” Mom had said.
She was right. I adored my Kitchen Grandmothers. I loved how they enfolded me into their family life—sharing their skills and knowledge. I had been cooking that way from the time I turned twelve until the fire. I wanted my traditions back.
Thoughts of Abuela Rosa and Angel bubbled up homesick, bereft feelings. Instead of walking down a sentimental path, what I needed to do was stay focused on my next move to capture Stalker and on the two things I meant to hand over to Dave this evening. One of these was last night’s poem. I paused with a box balanced in my hand, getting a better grip, then I threw it over the railing and into the bin. The poem was same old, same old. It actually made me a little worried that I would come to think of this pervasive dread as my natural state. Get another poem, hand it off to Dave. Get complacent. Become a statistic. I hadn’t come up with a strategy for the best way to balance my panic and anxiety with the need to get on with life.
I walked back to the next bag. This one held pinecones. DIY project? I slung it over the rail, pausing to scan the street. Black cat. Red Toyota turning left, woman driver. Windblown soda can.
The second thing I might hand over was the Iniquus list. But should I? Even thinking about it made me feel disloyal to Spyder. Almost traitorous. The list—all of the players I could recall from the Iniquus files I worked on with Spyder. Classified files. High security files. Three years of files.
Though I started training with Spyder when I turned thirteen, I didn’t actually puzzle a real case until I reached seventeen. A year later, when I worked in the field, my code name, Alex, showed up in the paperwork. I closed my last file in September. Then Spyder left, and I was done with files.
Should I hand it over? Dave wasn’t going to ask questions about the crimes. He wanted to run names through the system to see if he could get locations. Who was in jail? Who was West Coast? Could we narrow any of these down and find a suspect? I was worried. Too many computer pings might just flag us with an agency—though sure, the Iniquus clients came from all branches of government. I worked FBI, CIA, ATF, Treasury … lots of clients. Mostly government. A few private. Maybe because they spread over multiple agencies, no one would get curious.
I looked in the next box. Old newspapers. I dragged it down the porch.
Should I give him the list … ? We had nothing else.
Pause to scan—same black cat, different location. Blue minivan parking, one block down, elderly man exiting. Kid on a bike. Wind gust making the bare limbs dance.
No headway at the police station, Dave kept moving the circumference of his searches wider and wider. I knew it frustrated him—infuriated him—not to be able to stop this for me … I heaved another sigh. Seems as if I lived my life as one great big, weary exhale.
Evening came. After using up all of my hot water in the shower, I pulled on clean clothes and sat on my front porch under the protective watch of my security cameras and my dogs. I was eating a sandwich for dinner, waiting for Dave. Beetle and Bella hung out, watching the neighborhood activity—kids jumping rope, people coming home from work, a sporadic jogger. Sarah, who lived to the right of Manny’s house, paced along with her five-month-old daughter, Ruby, patiently patting her back and cooing to comfort her. Red-faced Ruby, with her baby fists balled tight, was arched backward and screaming at the top of her little lungs. By the third pass, I called Sarah over.
“Sarah, you look worn out. Here, let me hold Ruby for a few minutes while you sit down and rest.”
Frazzled, she handed me her baby and sank down on my stairs. “This darned colic. Her screaming’s driving my whole family up the wall. Everyone’s angry and yelling.”
I laid Ruby face up on my lap, and placed my palms on her stomach. Ruby blinked up at me, startled, but then her eyes softened. Her crying stopped. Ruby and I held eye contact while I spoke in soft, soothing tones to her. “Relax little one. Let my hands heal you. You’ll sleep so well tonight, give your poor mommy a break.” Soon, Ruby fell asleep.
I picked her up and cuddled her close, breathing in the honey smell of her copper hair. I loved the baby sweetness of her.
“What in the world happened?” Sarah’s eyes stretched wide.
“Reiki. It’s a healing energy thing. Just something I learned to help my mom when she was in hospice. I can’t really explain the mechanics, but …
”
Sarah put her hand up in a “stop” sign and shook her head. “I don’t care how it works. Look at Ruby. She’s not in pain. She’s asleep.” Fatigue slacked the muscles on Sarah’s face, pulling down the corners of her mouth. We sat quietly. Sarah breathed deeply, letting go of her stress; I cuddled sleeping Ruby.
“You know,” Sarah said after a long while. “When you bought this house, Mrs. Nelson was caught in a bad financial spot.” Sarah raked a hand through her strawberry-blond hair. “She was having some health problems, and the meds she needed took up all her money. My husband, Bob, and I weren’t sure she ate regularly.” Sarah shifted a foot under her hip. “She refused to talk it over with me.” After a few minutes of silence she added, “I didn’t push her, though. I feel guilty now. I told myself I was busy with my own family and all.” She curled her lips in and pulled them flat in a kind of wry smile. “That’s not really the truth. The truth is, we all sort of coexist in this neighborhood. I mean we wave at each other, and everything, but that’s about it.”
I didn’t say anything, just cozied Ruby closer to me. After a few minutes, Sarah leaned forward to catch my eye, “You seem to have a different way of doing things. You’ve reached out to everyone since you got here. Where are you from originally?”
“Not far. I’m from DC, too.” I leaned my head back against the post. “I grew up in a small apartment building. We were twenty families in all, and we definitely had the ‘it-takes-a-village’ mentality. We were always in each other’s lives and apartments—just a big extended family.” I smiled. “Well, mostly. A few apartments preferred to keep to themselves.”
“That sounds ideal.”
I laughed. “Until I did something naughty as a child, and then I had a dozen moms instead of just my one.”
The car driving by beeped then parked down the street. Sarah pointed at the woman climbing out. “Have you met Alice and Andy yet?”
I shook my head and jostled Ruby a little to ease her back to sleep after the horn had startled her.
