“Why would you mess up? Are you afraid you’re suddenly going to forget how to drive a nail?”
“It’s not that, honey, it’s juggling all the subs, making sure they show up on time.” She was moving with him toward Lily’s room and the stairwell. Joe felt his anxiety lessen a notch. “You know, it’s like dominoes. You can’t do it out of order. We can’t get the drywall guys in before the electrical and plumbing are done, and the painters can’t do their work until the drywall is completed.”
“Someone dragging their feet?”
Joe rounded the banister, started down the stairs. “No one specifically.”
“You think she knew you were watching her?”
Joe froze. He glanced up at Michelle in the meager light of the hallway. Standing there as she was, on a level five feet above him, it was like his mom had come back to life and was chiding him for some juvenile transgression. Eating too much candy or maybe peeing the bed.
Michelle’s hands were on her hips. “I’m not blind, you know.”
“Honey, I—”
“You got a good look, felt guilty, then you decided you better stop peeping.”
“I wasn’t—”
“It’s fine, Joe. Reason I came up, I saw Bridget from our bedroom window. Good thing I decided to let in some fresh air, huh?”
Joe swallowed, licked his lips. “Honey, I really wasn’t watching her. I mean, I saw her, but I wasn’t staring at her. I—what the hell are you laughing about?”
“It’s fun watching you squirm.”
“You’re not mad?”
“That depends. Were you doing something about it?”
“You mean was I…”
Michelle’s eyebrows rose.
“No way. I did look for a few seconds—I’ll admit that.”
“Don’t give me that ‘I’m a man and I can’t help it’ crap.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you looked.”
“I stopped looking, that’s the point.”
“Is it?”
“You saw her out the window, then you came upstairs, right?”
She shrugged, obviously unwilling to concede the point.
Joe gestured in the direction of the Baxter house. “And when you got up here, I was coming through the door. I felt guilty for what little looking I did do and decided to get out of there.”
“You act like you were fleeing a forest fire.”
“I sort of was.”
“Her breasts that nice?”
“Better than I expected.”
“That was the wrong answer.”
Joe winced.
“Get downstairs,” Michelle said. “Let’s see if you can still perform after your brush with that wildfire next door.”
Chapter Fourteen
Harold Hawkins came out as Joe approached the farmhouse. “Cubs are getting ready to start. Want a beer?”
Joe smiled. Harold had turned eighty only a few months ago, but he was still ornery. His sparse salt-and-pepper hair was plastered to his shiny scalp, and as he stood there he kept rucking up the front of his brown sweatpants. To Joe he looked like a man very comfortable in his element.
“No thanks, Harold. I’ve got to get back to Michelle and Lily in a little while.”
“That’s a wise decision,” Harold said. “The Cubs are gonna get walloped again.” When Joe only nodded, Harold explained, “It’s an interleague game with the Yankees.”
“What do you think?” Sadie asked as she ambled down the front porch.
Apparently seeing an opportunity to return to his game, Harold turned and trundled past his wife and disappeared into the house.
Coming up the narrow strip of sidewalk, Joe nodded at the new landscaping, the boxwood bushes, the rhododendrons, and the hydrangeas, their green all made more striking by the dark umber mulch beds from which they poked. “Looks fantastic. You have it done professionally?”
Sadie planted her hands on her hips and gave him a disappointed look. “Now, just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m incapable of gardening, Joe Crawford.”
Joe made a sheepish little bow. “I should’ve known, Sadie. The place looks great.”
“Darn right it does. I even got Harold to weed whip around the north side of the house so it won’t look like an eyesore.”
He glanced in that direction. “Anyone ever go over there?”
“I do,” she said, “and I don’t want it to look overgrown.”
Joe took a deep breath of the warm May air, which was redolent with the fragrance of flowers and the subtler smell of the evergreens in the forest ringing the yard. He shook his head, taking it all in. “I come out here, it makes me wanna sell the house and move to the country.”
“Living in the country can be very inconvenient.”
“Sure it can,” he conceded. “It’s longer to get places. Groceries can be a pain.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Sadie said, and her tone made him look at her. Though in her seventies, she was still an attractive woman. But the careworn expression on her face now made her appear ten years older.
“Something happen?”
She pursed her lips, some of the stubbornness bleeding back into her features. “Oh, you’ll probably be like Harold and claim it’s nothing. It’s ironic, don’t you think, that men are always dismissing things and chalking them up to female hysteria, when it’s the men who are actually in denial?”
“Um…”
“You use it as a coping mechanism. But it’s actually more hysterical than a woman’s fretfulness. You men won’t even admit when there’s a problem.”
Joe grunted softly. “You sound like my wife.”
“And don’t forget, your daughter will grow up and have friends soon. You won’t feel like being her taxi service back and forth from town five times a day.”
“What is it that has you distraught, Sadie?”
Her face clouded again. She sighed. “Oh. That.” She looked like she was about to speak, then glanced up at him, visoring her eyes from the sun. “You said you needed a favor from me on the phone?”
“I did,” Joe agreed. And he told her. Told her all about how he and Michelle had begun to consider adopting Little Stevie, about how they figured they’d need character witnesses, letters, that sort of thing.
To his surprise, Sadie reacted warmly to the idea. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he saw latent tears forming in her blue eyes.
“So you don’t think it’s a bad idea?” he asked her.
“It’s the first good idea I’ve heard in a long time.”
He smiled, put a hand on Sadie’s shoulder, which was so bony he felt a moment’s apprehension. Thrusting it from his mind, he said, “No hurry or anything. I’m sure it’ll be a long process. And that’s if we decide to do it.”
“I’ll drop the letters by your house tomorrow.”
He smiled. “I know better than to argue with you.”
“Men are slow, but on occasion they can be taught.”
He studied her haggard face, her imperfectly pinned hair. “Tell me what’s on your mind. I can tell something’s got you riled.”
Sadie didn’t answer straightaway, so Joe waited. Under the soft susurrus of the breeze, which worried the leaves of the cherry trees and the Cleveland pears, he could just detect the sounds of a baseball game on the radio. He pictured Harold in there, their dog Louie at his feet, and a beer bleeding on the end table beside his faded brown recliner. The image restored some of Joe’s good spirits.
Then Sadie began to speak, and his good spirits were bulldozed into rubble.
“I’ve been sleeping poorly, Joe. At first I thought it was moving back up from Florida…the chaos of the renovation…getting used to the new rooms.” She paused, chewing her bottom lip. “I’ve been having ter
rible nightmares. It’s gotten so I don’t want to sleep anymore. Because when I do…”
Joe listened, a chill whispering over his bare forearms.
Sadie exhaled loudly. “I wake up sweating. Sometimes gasping. And when I rise, Louie is curled up in a ball at the foot of our bed, trembling so badly it’s like we’re having a thunderstorm. Only most nights there isn’t a cloud in the sky. And I fancy I can hear—” She broke off, her expression troubled.
“You need to sit down, Sadie?”
“Oh, don’t treat me like I’m decrepit old woman. I’m fine, Joe. It’s just these damned nightmares.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Sorry about the profanity.”
“I’ve heard worse.”
“I’m sure you have. But it’s these dreams. These dreams are the most vivid, the most disconcerting things.”
Joe waited, suspecting it was difficult enough for a proud woman like Sadie Hawkins to admit to weakness of any kind. The only problem was that Joe sort of hoped she wouldn’t verbalize her dreams. Something deeper than intuition told him it would end up affecting his own sleep, which had been spotty enough since the Angie Waltz business.
Sadie looked up at him. “It’s fire, Joe. Fire everywhere.”
Of course it is, he thought.
“But you and your family are in it. You’re…oh, I don’t know how else to say it. You’re burning.”
His voice a dry croak, Joe said, “All three of us?”
“I don’t like saying it, but yes. You, Michelle…even the baby.”
“She’s two now,” he said and paused. “Where does the dream take place?”
“The Baxter house,” she said.
Joe drew back, frowning. It was too much like his own dreams, his own unformed fears. “You know something about it, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. You don’t live in a place your whole life and not know something about its history.”
“What happened there?”
Sadie uttered a mirthless little laugh, shrugged one shoulder. “Oh, nothing much, just a mad woman burning her family alive.”
Joe felt as though he’d been slugged in the gut.
“You want to hear something even better?” she said.
Not really, Joe thought, but hadn’t the strength to say it.
Sadie went on. “The woman—her name was Antonia Baxter, but she was originally Anna Blake—was first-generation Irish. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Had this blazing red hair, striking green eyes. I was a little girl when she was alive, but I still remember her.”
Joe thought of another redhead he knew.
“Antonia, Anna, whatever you want to call her, she was a fierce woman, very eccentric. Most men thought of her as free and easy, but they were afraid of her. There were all sorts of rumors about what went on in that big house of hers.”
“What sort of rumors?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Murder. Pagan rituals. Orgies that ended in torture.”
“Good wholesome fun.”
“Her husband was a local lawyer, but he made his money traveling to various places taking on cases no one else wanted. He had an interest in the occult, which you’d have never guessed by looking at him. Poor Edwin was as bloodless as a turnip. Anyway, word had it he’d defended Antonia down in Indianapolis when she was accused of some unsavory crime. He fell for her, but Edwin Baxter wasn’t exactly known for his passion and virility. He took her in, tried to make her respectable, but she had little interest in that.”
“Skip to the part where she kills her family.”
She glared at him. “Don’t rush an old woman. It’s not only impolite, it’s not very smart. There might be something in the story that’ll help you.”
Joe listened, his dread growing by degrees.
“Antonia bore Edwin three children. She also got pregnant one summer when Edwin was back East defending an accused murderer. When he returned and saw how swollen her belly was, he took it pretty manfully. Told her she could stay as long as she gave the baby up, which she did. Gladly. Antonia liked to screw, but she wasn’t sentimental about her children, as was to be proven.” Sadie paused, glanced up at him. “Does it surprise you, my talking like that?”
“I’m not offended, if that’s what you mean. Though I do have to admit it’s a change from our normal vein of conversation.”
“We can only talk plumbing and insulation so much, Joe. A relationship has to evolve.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“The child was given to the state, and life went on. Antonia got pregnant again, and that brought their family up to seven.”
“Wouldn’t it be six?”
“Edwin already had a son. I forgot to mention it. Young Byron was from a prior marriage.”
“Did Edwin’s first wife die under mysterious circumstances?”
“Only if you consider a ruptured appendix mysterious.”
“Oh.”
“So the seven of them lived in that big house on Hillcrest for another year or so, and if Antonia’s reputation wasn’t the greatest—she was known to cat around the bars for some supplemental physical entertainment—”
“That’s nicely put.”
“Thank you. But other than the fact that everyone knew Antonia was a nymphomaniac, the Baxter clan lived a semi-normal existence. Until her friends started coming around.”
Disquiet moved over him like a winter shadow.
“They’d rent from the local landlords or live in shacks or trailer courts in the poorer parts of town. But they’d show up at the Baxter house and be treated like royalty.”
“And of them have tattoos?”
“Now what kind of question is that?”
“Never mind. Go on.”
“You’re an odd one, Joe. Need to read something other than horror novels.”
Joe gave her a bemused smile.
“Oh, I always see those old paperbacks sitting on the passenger seat of your truck. At least you had the good sense not to bring them into my house during work.”
“Why? That kind of stuff offend you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t make me out as some prude, Joe. I just wouldn’t want you to sit there staring at a book when you’re on the clock.”
“Ah.”
“Let’s go to the backyard,” she said. “There’s something I want to show you.”
They started around that way, keeping to the south side of the house. The landscaping here was as impressive as it was in the front.
Sadie paused to snap off a dead rhododendron branch, which gave way with a brittle crunch. “Word began to spread that the newcomers were part of a cult, that Edwin had actually been a part of it all along, and that Antonia was their leader.”
“Was she?”
Sadie cast the rhododendron branch into the forest. “She fancied herself that, I suppose, though most of the townsfolk just thought of her as addled. And morally compromised, of course.”
They’d come to the corner of the house, and as they did Joe allowed himself a long look at the addition he and his men had put on. Other than the Pella stickers still adhered to the inside of the new windows, the back rooms looked like they’d been built at the same time as the main structure. It was a point of pride for Joe to blend the old and the new as seamlessly as possible. He’d even found a place that sold aluminum siding that would match the façade put on back in the 1940s.
“We couldn’t be happier,” Sadie said, following his gaze.
Joe permitted himself a small grin.
Sadie nodded. “What I want to show you is back here in the woods.”
Joe followed Sadie through the backyard, and though he would have much rather basked in the glow of a job well done, he knew whatever Sadie was about to show him was important.
“Where was I?” Sadie as
ked.
“You were saying how Antonia was worshipping the devil and banging half the town.”
“You shouldn’t joke about it. Antonia Baxter was a frightening woman. She did what she wanted and dared people to speak against her.”
“Did anyone?”
“A few,” Sadie said. “My father was one of them. The other two who did, they died.”
“Do I even need to guess how?”
“House fires,” she said. “Them and their families.”
“I figured. How’d you guys escape her wrath?”
“I don’t think she knew my dad was one of them.”
“You said he spoke against—”
“My dad was on the town council and was one of three who decided to approach the sheriff about putting a stop to what they considered morally reprehensible conduct. The sheriff…well, after it all happened it was rumored he was part of Antonia’s cabal, but no one knew for sure. But when the letter was delivered to the sheriff outlining the litany of Antonia’s offenses, my dad happened to be taken ill. It was pneumonia. He was never the same after that.
“So the other two selectmen, the ones who delivered the letter, they and their families are incinerated, and word goes out that Antonia and her people were behind it. But even though she was a pariah in the town, no one dared cross her publicly after that.”
“I can’t blame them.”
Sadie gave him a queer look, one that made him feel as if he’d committed some blunder. But before he could muse on it further, she said, “The Summer Solstice was approaching, and that made everyone nervous. It was well-known that Antonia’s debauchery was always worst around that time, but after the death of the selectmen and their families, people feared the Solstice would be worse than ever.”
They’d reached the pump. “Have some water,” Sadie said. “You’ll need it.”
Joe looked at her.
She fluttered an impatient hand at him. “Oh, don’t question it, just drink.”
Joe drank.
When he stood and wiped his mouth with the back of a wrist, she said, “The whole throng came to the Baxter house the night of June twenty-third.”
“The Summer Solstice is on the twenty-first.”
The Nightmare Girl Page 16
