Hesitantly, I said, “Sure.”
And then the door swung open wide, the woman grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me inside, then closed the door forcefully. I was going to have to be fitted with a whiplash collar.
“I don’t want Quincy to get out,” she said. I glanced around the floor, looking for a little dog or cat, but saw nothing.
This woman might have been fifty, but it had been a hard fifty. Her hair was gray and pinned back, and she wore a white short-sleeved blouse with enough grease stains to qualify it as a Jackson Pollock. Her short sleeves revealed meaty shoulders and upper arms.
“So you want Stef?” The woman cocked her head just a little, looked me up and down, and her eyes danced darkly.
From upstairs: “Is it for me, Mom?”
“No!” Not taking her eyes off me. “Just keep looking!” She sighed. “She don’t live here,” she said coolly, glancing down at the plastic bag that hung from my wrist.
“Oh. Okay. See, I had this address for her, but if I’ve got the wrong house…”
“You got the right house. But she don’t live here no more. She hant lived here for a couple years at least. What’s your business with her?”
I wasn’t sure whether to say. So instead I asked, “Would you happen to be Stefanie’s mother?”
“Yeah.”
“I had something I had to return to her, and was going to drop it off here, but if she doesn’t live here, maybe you could tell me where I might find her.”
“Is it whatever you got in the bag there?”
“Maybe if you had an address?”
The woman jerked her head to motion me further inside. I followed her into a narrow kitchen where the sink was stacked with dishes and a cigarette sat burning in an ashtray on a table that was part of an aging aluminum and formica set that couldn’t have been original to this house. The table surface, what you could see of it, given the number of empty beer and wine bottles, was pockmarked with cigarette burns. “Just follow me,” she said.
There were more burns on the cracked linoleum floor and several places where it had been gouged, revealing plywood underneath. The counter next to the overloaded sink was littered with more dishes and more empty beer bottles and crumpled Big Mac cartons flecked with shreds of lettuce and smears of Special Sauce.
“Like I said, she hasn’t lived here for, I don’t know, a couple years now.”
She’d never notified the DMV of a change of address, I figured. It occurred to me that maybe she didn’t come from a home where a high priority was placed on attending to such details.
“Whaddya say your name was?”
“Walker,” I said. “Zack Walker.”
“You look a bit old for Stef.”
Well, I thought, not necessarily. Just how old did she think I looked? I mean, surely it was not unheard-of for some men in their early forties to attract a woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late twenties. Maybe I didn’t work out a lot, and perhaps I could stand to lose a few pounds, but-
Shut up, I told myself.
“We’re not, you know, going out or anything,” I said. “I just needed to give her something. Maybe I could leave it with you.”
“I dunno. Like I said, she don’t live here, and she does drop by occasionally but I don’t know when. She’s so busy, you know, buying her fancy clothes and working for her fancy boss. Hasn’t got time to come by here, unless she needs some money, of course. And I’m betting she’s making enough that she could pay me back some, because I’ve got my own expenses, raising her little brother here on my own after Victor left us high and dry, don’t you know.”
That’s when I decided I couldn’t leave the purse here. I didn’t know the history between this woman and her daughter, but it was a safe bet that as soon as I handed that purse over, this woman was going to take whatever cash was in it, and I didn’t want that to be my fault.
I said, “You know, I’ll probably be running into her again soon, so I won’t bother you with this.”
“You work with Stef? You one of those realtor people?”
“Realtor? No. Where does Stef work?”
“Over at one of them new developments. In the office. Forest Estates it’s called.”
“Valley Forest Estates?”
“I think.”
And then I remembered. The receptionist who didn’t want me to see Greenway. Small frickin’ world.
“Well then, I’ll just pop into the sales office,” I said. “It’s not far from where I live. You see, we were in the checkout line at Mindy’s, and she was going through her wallet and I didn’t notice until she was gone that she had dropped her driver’s license, so I grabbed it, and this was the address that was on it, which was why I just dropped by here, you know, to give it back to her.”
Stefanie Knight’s mother looked at me, then at the shoe bag I was carrying. Was it big enough to carry an entire driver’s license?
“Or, you know, if you could let me know where I could find her, I could drop this off even before I run into her next time, because, you know, if she gets pulled over or something and has to show her license to the cops, well, I’d hate to see that happen.”
“You think the cops want to talk to her again?”
“Oh no, heck, I wasn’t suggesting that. Just for a ticket, they set up these radar traps all over the neighborhood, you know, getting their quota, whatever.”
“That’s what you got in that big bag there? Stef’s driver’s license?”
“No, no.” I paused. “I just bought some new shoes.”
“And you brung them with you to the door?” She cracked a smile, called out, “Hey, Jimmy, man’s got a new pair of shoes he wants to show ya.”
“Listen, how about if you tell me where I can find her, and just in case she calls here before I find her, I’ll leave you my name and-”
I would have said more, but I felt something large and heavy drag across the back of my legs, exerting a kind of pressure, and then, while the pressure was being maintained on the back of my legs, felt something press against the front of them down by my ankles. And I looked down, and it appeared, at a glance, that a tree trunk was wrapping itself around my legs. And I said:
“God! What the-shit!”
I didn’t just stand in one place while I said this. I started jumping up and down, threw myself up against the refrigerator, knocked a box of Froot Loops off the top and to the floor, where the contents scattered across the cracked linoleum, crunching under my feet as I continued dancing about, trying to disentangle myself from what was clearly the biggest fucking snake that ever found its way to North America.
“Jimmy!” the woman screamed. “We found Quincy!”
The snake moved away from my legs and slithered its way silently through the table and chair legs, heading for the dining room.
“That’s Quincy,” Stefanie’s mother said. “I think you scared him.”
“Jesus!” I said. My heart was pounding so hard I felt it would explode through my jacket like that little critter in the Alien movie. “What is that?”
“Quincy’s a python,” she said. “We were going to name him Monty but that seemed so obvious. He was a gift from one of Stef’s old boyfriends, but I gotta tell you, there are days I’m not so sure we wouldn’t have been better off with a dog.”
Jimmy was barreling down the stairs, running through the kitchen and into the dining room. “Come here, you son of a bitch!”
“He’s harmless,” she said.
“You’re allowed to keep a python?” I said.
The woman frowned. “You’re just like everyone else. It’s a kind of prejudice, you know? There’s a lot of misconceptions about pythons, but the fact is, they can make very nice house pets. I mean, what do you really know about pythons?”
“I’ve seen enough jungle movies and documentaries on the Discovery Channel to know they like to wrap themselves around you until you can’t breathe anymore. And later your friends can’t find you but your snak
e has gained two hundred fucking pounds and looks like he swallowed a Pinto.”
“Well, I wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with him, if that’s what you mean. But Quincy’s not really like that. He’s a nice python, and he loves us.” To her son: “But you know, Jimmy”-wherever he was in the house now-“I think maybe we could use a break from Quincy for a while. Maybe he’d like a little vacation. Give Richard a call, see if he’d like to take him off our hands for a day or so, I can go visit my sister.”
I tried to get my breath, my eyes darting about the room. “Maybe you could give me that address.”
She shrugged, grabbed a pen and a piece of scratch paper, and scribbled something down. “I don’t know the number, but it’s on Rambling Rose Circle. She’s got a little blue Volkswagen, one of those Beetles, the new kind?”
“Yes,” I said. But I wasn’t expecting to see a car in the driveway. The VW keys were still in Stefanie Knight’s purse, and odds were that the Beetle was still in Mindy’s parking lot.
“I think it’s the third or fourth house in, on the right,” she said.
“Let me borrow your pen,” I said. On another piece of paper I wrote down my name, and was about to put down my phone number, when I thought better of it. So far, I’d managed to shield Sarah from the knowledge that she was married to the biggest idiot on the planet. Clarification: It was possible Sarah already understood she was married to the biggest idiot on the planet, but she was still unaware of his most recent stunt. I’d confessed to stupid things in the past, but nothing approaching this. My attempt to teach Sarah a lesson had backfired on such a grand scale that I could see no good in letting her, or the kids, find out about it. The last thing I needed was Stefanie Knight phoning the house, getting Sarah, and asking for me so that she could get her driver’s license-if she accepted my story as I’d related it to her mother-or her entire purse back.
So instead of a phone number, I put down my e-mail address. “Just have her contact me there and tell her I have something of hers.” I left the piece of paper on the counter by the sink.
“Her driver’s license.”
“Sure. And a couple of other things. I think she’ll know.”
“Like I said, I don’t think I’ll be seeing her. She don’t choose to drop by here.”
“Maybe if you got a dog,” I offered.
She scowled. I turned and went for the front door, stepping gingerly, scanning the floor from side to side, occasionally glancing overhead. There was no sign of Quincy. As I squeezed out the front door, I heard Jimmy shout from the back of the house: “Mom, get the darts!” I ran back to the car as quickly as I could.
Once behind the wheel, I looked at the slip of paper Stefanie’s mother had given me. Rambling Rose Circle. When this was all over, and I’d pulled myself together, I was going to call that Carpington guy, our local councilman, and demand that a new bylaw be drafted requiring all future streets to be named “Main” or “South” or “Hill.”
I opted to try her house, rather than the Valley Forest Estates sales office. It was, I suspected, long past closing time, and I didn’t want this to be hanging over me until the next day. I looked in my map book again and found Rambling Rose, a cul-de-sac on the north side of Oakwood in another newly developed part of town that was even closer to the grocery store than our house. This, I was discovering, was what Oakwood was: one Valley Forest Estates after another. Thousands and thousands of acres stripped of trees and bulldozed flat so a seemingly infinite number of cookie-cutter homes could be built and moved into by families who had fled the city for the good life.
On the way, I stopped at a phone booth and looked for any Knights in the phone book on Rambling Rose, found an S. Knight at number 17, made a note of the phone number on the scrap of paper Stefanie’s mother had given me, and got back into the car.
It was getting to be dusk, around 7 P.M., when I pulled up out front. It was everything you’d expect a new home in a new subdivision to be. An all-brick house devoid of any distinctive architectural touches, dropped on a thirty-foot lot. Accommodating the two-car garage and driveway meant that from the street, the house was one huge rectangular door with a couple of windows above it on the second floor. Cement patio stones ran down the left of the garage, leading to a front door.
Slim panels of opaque glass flanked the door, and the one on the left was smashed in halfway down. Someone had kicked it in, presumably, to reach inside and unlock the door. This wasn’t, I told myself, as alarming as it might seem. Stefanie must have walked home, or gotten a lift, and without her keys couldn’t get into her own house.
I would pay for the glass, I told myself. And any other damages, or cab rides. Whatever. Any expenses Stefanie Knight incurred as a result of my stupidity, I would make them up to her. In addition to offering blanket apologies.
I rang the bell. With the glass broken, I could hear the inside chime clearly.
When no one showed up after about ten seconds, I rang it again. Waited another ten seconds, and knocked on the door. Hard.
I crouched down and put my head in front of the broken glass. “Hello?” I shouted. “Ms. Knight? Anyone home?”
Nothing.
If I had learned anything in the last few days, it was to not go into people’s homes unannounced. Even though the front door might be unlocked-even though I had a key that would open it if it wasn’t-I was not setting foot in this house without an invitation.
I pulled out my cell phone and the scrap of paper with Stefanie Knight’s phone number on it, and punched it in. I held it to my ear, and when I heard it ring, with my other ear I could hear a phone ringing within the house. It was like stereo.
After four rings, the machine kicked in. “Hi, this is Stef. I can’t get the phone right now, so please leave a message.” I opted not to.
I could have left the purse in the house, tossed it through the broken window, but anyone could break into her place now, so that didn’t seem like a plan. Should I drive back to Mindy’s and see if she was there, trying to get into her car? Maybe she had a spare set of keys, came home and got them after breaking the window, and had gone back for her Beetle. Or maybe she’d gone to the Valley Forest Estates office to get some help from someone there.
I could drive around trying to find her, but all roads led back here. Maybe it made the most sense to camp out front in the car.
Or, I thought suddenly, instead of a phone message, I could leave a note in her mailbox.
There wasn’t enough space left on the scrap of paper, so I went back to the car, grabbed my checkbook from the glove compartment, and tore off the print-free cardboard strip at the back. I wrote, “Dear Ms. Knight: Found your purse, will drop it off at Valley Forest offices tomorrow morning. Zack Walker.” And added, again, my e-mail address.
And I walked back up the driveway, around the side of the garage, and slipped it into the metal mailbox, leaving a half-inch of the note exposed beyond the flap so she’d be sure to spot it.
Okay, my work here was done. Already, I felt a weight beginning to lift.
Coming back around the corner of the garage, I happened to look down and spotted something dark and shiny. I stopped, and saw that oil was leaking out from under the double-wide garage door. There was a puddle forming, about the size of a shoe print. Whatever kind of car was in there, it was leaking badly.
But something about it didn’t look quite right, so I kneeled down and touched the end of my pinkie into it, and held it in the direction of the streetlight, which had just come on.
It was red.
With my other hand, I reached into my pocket for a tissue and wiped, somewhat furiously, the blood off my finger. I must have done it five times, moving the tissue to a clean spot each time.
I paced back and forth for half a minute, wondering what to do. Down the other side of the garage was a regular door, with a window, and I held my hand up to the glass and looked in. It was dark in there, of course, with very little light getting in, but there was somethin
g on the garage floor, down by the big door, and it looked an awful lot like a person.
I ran around to the other side, to the front door, tried it. It was locked, so I reached in through the broken glass, found the deadbolt above the door and turned it, opened the door and charged in.
The route to the inside garage door, which was in the laundry room, took me through the kitchen, and I was there long enough to notice that the sliding glass door to the small backyard was smashed next to the lock. What sense did that make? Why did Stefanie need to break two different windows to get into her house?
Once I reached the laundry room, I opened the door to the garage and ran my hand up the inside wall, looking for a light switch, found it, and flicked it up.
A bare bulb over the center of the garage cast a cold and eerie glow across the room. It was cool. There wasn’t much in there. No cars, not even any oil stains on the floor, a few moving boxes stacked along the back wall. There was a weed trimmer, and a lawn mower to deal with that small backyard. Hanging on hooks screwed into the wall were a garden rake, a hoe, and one of those claw things you see advertised on TV that stir up topsoil while you’re still standing. Paul had made me buy him one. One hook was empty, but it was probably where Stefanie normally hung the shovel that had been used to smash in the side of her head.
She was stretched out pointing toward the driveway, the side of her face laying in the blood that was slowly finding its way under the garage door. There were gashes on the sides of her hands, perhaps where she’d deflected earlier blows from the blood-splattered shovel left on the floor next to her.
“Stefanie?” I said.
Then my cell phone started ringing from inside my jacket.
13
“I believe,” said Sarah, “That the barbecue is now ready for the steaks. I believe it’s possible that the barbecue has been ready for the steaks for the better part of an hour. I would hazard a guess that we have used enough propane since you left to keep a family of four in Iceland warm for the better part of a December. The salad leaves are washed and dried and sitting in a bowl. Your children have decided that they’ve waited long enough to eat, and left five minutes ago with Paul’s friends for McDonald’s. I, however, thought it would be rude to leave and find dinner elsewhere, or cook up a steak on my own, and leave you to eat all by yourself when you came home, if you were ever to decide to do such a thing.” She paused. “Are you there?”
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