by Jane Heller
“This is important. Not life and death stuff. Just important. Why did you cancel out that night?”
God, he wasn’t going to let up. “Two reasons, I guess.”
“What’s the first?”
“I knew that Ben made you ask me to the prom, because he felt sorry for me. Back in high school I was pretty pitiful, remember?”
Jeremy didn’t say anything. I took that to mean that he remembered all too well.
“What’s the second reason?” he asked.
I felt myself blush at this one.
“Come on, BS. Tell me.”
“All right. The second reason is that I was afraid of you.”
He laughed. “That’s pretty funny, considerin’ that now I’m the one who’s afraid of you, sweetheart.” He laughed again. “Why were you afraid of me?”
“You were a wild man, that’s why. You hung around with all the degenerates. Just the other day, your father told me you were madly in love with Bobbi Delafield, that slut.”
“My father doesn’t have a clue who I was in love with in high school.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So there was someone? Who was it? Or don’t you want to tell?”
“I don’t want to tell. It’s personal. Between me and her.”
“Aw, you’re not ashamed of the girl, are you?”
“Ashamed? No.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m still in love with her.”
“Oh.”
I felt a twinge of something—disappointment?—that Jeremy was emotionally involved with someone. God knows why. I suppose it was because I’d never pictured him as the sort of man who would carry a torch for twenty minutes, let alone twenty years. And if he was still in love with someone from high school, why didn’t they live together? Settle down? Get married?
“She and I have had our ups and downs,” he said by way of explanation. “And to tell you the truth, I don’t know how things are gonna play out between us. Waitin’ for a woman to make up her mind is kinda like catchin’ a fish—you never know how long it’s gonna take.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and life is like a box of chocolates—you never know whatcha gonna get. Please, no more Gumpisms,” I groaned.
He smiled. “No Gumpisms. Just Cookisms. What I was tryin’ to say was that love and fishing are not that different. Both of ’em take patience and persistence, and timing is everything. Sometimes, you gotta just sit there and let things be for a while. You can’t hurry feelings and you can’t hurry fish. They’ll come when they come. You know what I’m talkin’ about, BS?”
I had always thought of love in more immediate terms—i.e., that it would strike quickly, like the proverbial Cupid’s arrow to the heart, and the trick was to grab it while you could. But maybe Jeremy’s concept was more realistic, more mature. After all, what did I know about love or patience? I had married the first man who had shown the slightest interest in me.
“Okay. Enough of the philosophical bullshit. What do you say we get to work on this devil stuff,” Jeremy suggested when I didn’t respond to his little speech.
“I really think we should,” I said. “Can I get you a drink first? Or do you just want to order some pizza and talk over dinner?”
“No booze for me,” he said. “I think I’m gonna need a clear head tonight. But the pizza sounds good. Are you gonna call Domino’s or just beam the pie over here with that darksider power of yours?”
“Very funny. I’m going to use the telephone,” I said, and ordered us a large sausage and mushroom pizza.
When it arrived twenty minutes later, we sat at my dining-room table and ate it. Or, to be more accurate, I ate the pizza. Jeremy inhaled it. I swear, the man was a human vacuum cleaner. He shoved each slice into his mouth and swallowed it whole. Pete had better table manners.
And speaking of Pete, he was being remarkably well behaved while Jeremy and I ate dinner. Never once did he jump up on the table or stick his head between our legs or bark obnoxiously. He sat in front of the television set, which I had turned on to CNN news as I always did at seven o’clock, and stayed quiet.
“So, you want me to help you find out where the devil’s hidin’, right?” asked Jeremy.
“Right,” I said.
“What if we do find the person he’s hidin’ in? Then what?”
“Then we find a way to get him out of the person’s body and out of Banyan Beach. Otherwise, I’m stuck with being a darksider forever.”
The second the words left my mouth, I produced one of those attractive growls that the devil had endowed me with. I thought Jeremy was going to have a heart attack.
He jumped up off his chair and moved several feet away from me, a look of terror on his face.
“Where the hell did that come from?” he shouted.
I smiled weakly and patted my chest. “It’s a darksider thing,” I said. “Apparently, the devil makes me growl. Supposedly, it pisses Satan off when I start talking about getting him out of town.”
Jeremy was only moderately pacified.
“Please. Sit down,” I urged. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I promise. But now you can see why I’m so desperate to stop being a darksider. It’s downright embarrassing at times.”
Jeremy nodded and sat back down at the table. “You have any idea who this person could be? The one that’s hidin’ the devil?”
“All I know is that, according to David, the person is someone I know. Someone I know well. Since I don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends, I’ve sort of narrowed it down to the women I work with at Home Sweet Home. Of course, it could also be Mitchell. Or Chrissy. Or even Ben.”
“Ben? Give me a break. He’s your brother, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know he’s my brother. But that doesn’t mean he’s not possessed by the devil. He raises emus for a living. He must be possessed by something.”
“Ben isn’t the one we’re lookin’ for. I’d know it if the devil had taken over his body, believe me.”
“You didn’t know that the devil had taken over my body, did you?”
Jeremy appraised my body for what seemed like an hour but was probably only a minute. He started at my face and let his eyes work their way down, slowly, languorously, without the slightest awareness that he was making me uncomfortable.
I cleared my throat. “As I said, the people I know best—or spend the most time with, anyway—are the women I work with at Home Sweet Home.”
“Tell me about ’em, BS.” His gaze was still drifting, still moving across my body. I wished he would cut it out. Well, sort of.
“There’s Charlotte Reed, the owner of Home Sweet Home,” I began, but was interrupted by Pete, who had picked that very moment to go on a barking jag.
“Woof! Woof! Woof!”
“Pete, shut up!” I yelled at him. “Watch the news while Jeremy and I talk!”
Pete shut up.
“That’s pretty impressive the way the dog listens to you,” said Jeremy. “You said he’s got this mind-blowin’ intelligence. I guess he understands English too, huh?”
I shrugged. “It’s hard to say what he understands. All I know is that he made me take an umbrella to the River Princess party. All the weather forecasters—including Chrissy Hemplewhite—said there was absolutely no chance of rain that night. So how did Pete know the devil was going to make it pour—unless, of course, Pete is one of the devil’s operatives the way David was? Maybe there’s such a thing as a darksider dog and Pete is one.”
“Or maybe Pete’s the one who’s hidin’ the devil,” Jeremy suggested.
That comment provoked more barking. Loud, insistent barking.
“No. He’s much too loving,” I said. “He protects me, Jeremy. He’s my companion, my best friend. Besides, David spoke of a person who was hiding the devil. He never said anything about a dog.”
Pete continued to bark. He was standing in front of the television set but was clearly not interested in CNN’s report on the O. J. Simp
son trial.
I got up from the table and went over to see what was the matter. I bent down and scratched the ever-growing white patch on his chest. “It’s okay, Pete,” I said in a low, soothing voice. “We know you’re not in cahoots with the devil.”
He quieted down immediately and began to rub up against me. I patted his head, then cradled it in my arms and kissed it.
When I returned to the table, I said, “He does understand English, I swear he does.”
Jeremy shook his head in disbelief. “So I’m sittin’ here with a woman who growls and a dog that understands English,” he said. “The next thing I know, you’re gonna tell me he speaks English too.”
“I think Pete has his own way of communicating,” I said. “Like when he started flipping through my MLS book that day and left it open to the page with the listing of the Nowak house.”
“And the time he went into your bathroom to weigh himself,” Jeremy offered.
“Yes, but what do these things mean? What’s he trying to tell me?”
Jeremy shrugged. “Let’s leave Pete for a while and get back to your friends at Home Sweet Home. You were tellin’ me about Charlotte.”
“Charlotte Reed,” I said.
I gave Jeremy a thumbnail sketch of each of the women I worked with: Charlotte, Althea, Deirdre, Frances, June, and Suzanne.
“Suzanne’s the one I met, right?” he asked. “At the Hellhole that night?”
“Yes, you did meet Suzanne. I had forgotten about that.”
“I doubt the devil’s inside her. Judgin’ by the way she was lustin’ after every guy in the place, I’d say nobody’s been inside her in years.”
“God, must you talk like an animal?”
“At least I don’t growl like one. Maybe we should forget your friends and move on to Mitchell. If anyone is possessed by the devil, it’s that guy.”
“You and he never did have much chemistry, did you?”
“No, and neither did you two. Why did you marry him, BS? You coulda done so much better.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Jeremy.”
“I’m serious. Even Freddie Reese would have been a better deal than Mitchell Chessner.”
Freddie Reese was the president of the audiovisual club in high school and was also its only member. Out of all the kids in our class, he was the most universally disliked. But, hey, maybe he grew up to be a real charmer. You never know how the people you went to high school with are going to turn out. Look at Jeremy and Mitchell. Back then, I had figured Jeremy for the flake and Mitchell for the solid citizen. But Jeremy turned out to be the solid citizen and Mitchell turned out to be the flake. As for how I turned out, well, the verdict wasn’t in yet.
“I married Mitchell because I thought I loved him,” I said. “Obviously, I acted precipitously.”
“That’s because nobody ever explained to you that bein’ in love is kinda like fishing,” Jeremy smiled.
I returned his smile. “No, nobody ever did.”
Jeremy’s eyes held mine for a moment, only for a moment, but it was long enough to make my stomach do a cartwheel. Why, I couldn’t fathom.
“Getting back to Mitchell,” he said, “has he been actin’ stranger than usual? Not that you could tell with that guy.”
“Well, he gave up accounting for the restaurant business. He had an affair with a TV weatherperson. And he left me so he could marry her. But that doesn’t smack of the devil. It smacks of a mid-life crisis.”
Jeremy nodded. “How about this Chrissy he’s hung up on? Could she be the one we’re lookin’ for?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know her, other than what I see of her on TV.”
“Well then, tell me something: how are we supposed to find the devil if we don’t know where to look?”
I heaved a sigh of frustration. “I’ve been asking myself that for weeks. I’m starting to think that we’ll never find him. Not without divine intervention. Unless we’re given some sort of clue or direction, I’ll be under the devil’s influence forever and so will Banyan Beach.”
I felt the tears welling, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jeremy’s hand move across the table and reach for mine, presumably to comfort me. But then I saw him change his mind and surreptitiously pull it back.
We sat there in silence for a few minutes, discouraged, defeated, depressed. Suddenly, the mood was broken by the sound emanating from the television set, which had been broadcasting the news on CNN but was now blaring with the theme music from “Jeopardy.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s seven-thirty,” I said.
“So? Do darksiders turn into pumpkins at seven-thirty?”
“No, but CNN has ‘Moneyline’ at seven-thirty, not ‘Jeopardy.’”
I got up and walked toward the television, in search of the remote control so I could flip it back to CNN, but I didn’t see it in its usual place on top of the TV.
I looked down at Pete, who was sprawled out in front of the set. The remote control was resting between his front paws.
“Oh, there it is,” I said, taking the remote away from him. “He must have been playing with it and changed the channel by accident.”
“I don’t think so,” Jeremy called out to me. “Nothing that dog does is an accident.”
Jeremy had a point. Was the changing of the channels another of Pete’s “communications”? And if so, what was he trying to say?
I put CNN back on and returned the remote to Pete’s paws. And then I watched. And waited. Seconds after I’d handed the remote back to him, Pete placed his right front paw on the button for Channel Eight—the channel that broadcast “Jeopardy” at seven-thirty every night! Yes, there was Alex Trebek, the host of the show, welcoming the three contestants and explaining the rules of the game!
“Did you see that, Jeremy?” I said, motioning for him to join me. “Did you see what Pete just did?”
Jeremy hurried over. “See if he’ll do it again,” he suggested.
I bent down and took the remote away from Pete, changed the channel to CNN and returned it to him. Once again, he placed his right front paw on it and punched in Channel Eight! On came “Jeopardy”!
“I’ll be damned,” Jeremy said. “The dog channel surfs.”
“But he’s not channel surfing,” I said. “He only wants one channel and one show.”
I knelt down beside Pete and took his face in my hands.
“What does it mean?” I asked the dog.
“Maybe he’s tryin’ to tell you that you’re in jeopardy from the devil,” Jeremy said.
“I already know that,” I snapped. “It’s gotta be something else.”
“Okay, smart-ass. Then what is it?”
I lowered my head and went nose to nose with Pete. “What is it, huh, boy?” I asked. “Tell me why you keep switching the television to that dopey game show.”
Suddenly, Pete bounded out of my arms, nearly breaking my nose in the process. He began to bark and jump and run around in circles. I’d seen him act hyper, but this was ridiculous.
“What did I do?” I shouted, trying to be heard over Pete’s barking. “I obviously provoked him in some way, Jeremy.”
“Repeat what you said,” he suggested. “Just before Pete went berserk.”
“I said, ‘Tell me why you keep switching the television to that dopey game show.’”
In response, Pete leapt into my arms, licking my face with such ferocity I had to ask Jeremy to pull him off me.
“Let’s see what happens if you say it,” I told him.
“Say what?”
“The thing that seems to provoke him.”
Jeremy grabbed Pete by the collar and said, “Tell me why you keep switchin’ the television to that dopey game show.”
Pete licked Jeremy’s face with equal gusto.
“I think we’ve established that he gets excited when he hears that sentence,” I said. “The question is: why?”
“Let’s rewind the tape,
so to speak,” said Jeremy. “What were we talkin’ about right before that sentence?”
“We weren’t talking. We were pouting. We were discouraged that we couldn’t figure out where the devil was hiding.”
“Right. And then you said something about needin’ a clue.”
“Yes, a clue.”
Jeremy and I looked at each other.
“If Pete understands English, then he heard what you said,” Jeremy theorized. “The ‘Jeopardy’ thing might be some kind of clue.”
“It’s possible, I guess. Maybe the clue has something to do with Alex Trebek,” I said. “But he doesn’t live in Banyan Beach, so the devil can’t be hiding in his body.”
“How do you know he doesn’t live in Banyan Beach? He might have a winter house here. A lot of celebrities do.”
“Trust me, June Bellsey would have told me.”
“Then maybe it’s something else about the show. Maybe it’s the fact that ‘Jeopardy’ starts with a ‘J.’ Maybe Pete’s tryin’ to tell us that June is the one we want.”
I shook my head. “If the initial ‘J’ were so important, why didn’t Pete press Channel Eleven on the remote control instead of Channel Eight? Channel Eleven shows reruns of ‘The Jeffersons’ at seven-thirty.”
“What do you do, sit home and watch TV every night? You’re a walkin’ TV Guide, BS.”
“We can’t all lead the thrill-a-minute life you do. Now help me figure this out, would you?”
“Hey, if you don’t like the job I’m doin’, get somebody else.”
“Sorry. This whole thing is driving me crazy. First, Pete pulls that stunt with the MLS book. Then he gets on my scale and weighs himself. Now he insists on watching a game show.”
“Do the three things have anything in common?”
“Not that I…Well, wait a minute. Let me think.”
I thought—and then the answer finally dawned on me.
“What?” Jeremy asked. “Tell me!”
“It’s Frances Lutz!” I cried, grabbing Jeremy by the shoulders and hugging him to me.
“How do you know?” he said.
“Because it all fits together now. Every time I tried to figure out who the person was, Pete would give me another clue, only I was too stupid to get it. First, he opened my MLS book to the Nowak house, and the Nowak house is Frances’s listing. Then he jumped on the scale to weigh himself, and Frances weighs 300 pounds. Tonight he switched the television to a game show, and Frances is a game show addict. Oh, Jeremy. I asked for divine intervention and instead I got canine intervention! This is incredible!”
