by Sarah Graves
That I’d depended upon. And I still didn’t have a clue what to do about it. “You’d better go, Victor,” I said finally, all the fury abruptly drained from me.
Because in spite of everything, Victor didn’t do things to be mean. He was what he was, broken in ways that were hard to get a handle on; he had his secret struggles just like anyone else.
“Yeah.” He stared down at his shoes, jingling his car keys unhappily, as a memory popped into my head.
Soon after Victor and I met in New York, he took me to the Broadway production of Dracula, with its stark black-and-white costumes and Edward Gorey sets enlivened by small, throbbingly vivid shocks of red: a rose, a drop of bright blood.
Afterward Victor bought a red rose from a street vendor and gave it to me without a word. I remember it pricked my finger.
“Sorry,” he said softly now.
“Okay,” I said, tears stinging my eyes. Just like always . . . Some things never changed. “Me, too.”
Then he left, brushing past Bella who was just returning, her eyes wide and her face stonily pale with some fresh shock as she strode through the tangled grass I hadn’t had time to mow.
“What is it, Bella?” I asked tiredly.
In answer she thrust a handful of yellow notebook sheets at me, holding one back as if it alone were too terrible to reveal. “Here they are,” she said, “just like you asked, only . . .”
“Only what?” Dully, I examined the notes. All were like the first one she’d showed me, lists of unpleasant words.
Bludgeon, gash, hack, lacerate.
Maybe they weren’t direct predictions of violence, but you didn’t think up lists like these if you were feeling cheerful. Or halfhearted, either. This kind of thing took work.
Ellie came back out and joined us. “Only what, Bella?” I prompted again, reaching out to take the final note from her and seeing at once that it was different.
Very different. Instead of a list of big-word terms that were threatening only by their definitions, this new one was a few sentences long, featuring complete sentences, capitalized letters, and actual punctuation.
Dear Bella, it read. Very soon now you must depart. Gather your courage in both hands, confront your misdeeds, and prepare to be annihilated.
It ended somewhat incongruously but I thought chillingly: Yours sincerely, A Freind.
Not “friend.” And that was very odd. It was a simple word, yet quite often misspelled. But the note-writer was consistently spelling more complicated terms correctly.
Ellie and I looked at each other over Bella’s head. She’d buried her face in her hands and was sobbing quietly.
“It was there when I got home,” she whimpered when we’d taken her inside, made some coffee, dosed it heavily with sugar and brandy, and forced her to drink it.
“Because it’s Friday,” she added. “They always come on . . .” A hiccup escaped her. “Oh, pardon me,” she said wretchedly.
Just then my father came in; I hadn’t heard his truck pull into the driveway. Wearing a red flannel shirt, faded jeans, and ancient sneakers, he nodded a greeting and went down to the basement hastily, without pausing for conversation.
Seeing his stringy gray ponytail disappear through the cellar door reminded me that he’d already been at the sharp end of Bella’s stick once. Evidently he didn’t wish to repeat the experience.
I didn’t want it repeated, either. But it was starting to look as if there might be only one way to prevent it, other of course than simply firing the housekeeper right this minute.
And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. There in my kitchen with a wad of tear-soaked tissues in her hands, she was too, too forlorn.
“Bella, I’ve spoken to Bob Arnold,” I said.
She looked up. “I asked him who might threaten you, and he told me about your ex-husband,” I added.
She sniffled. “And now I s’pose you’ll want to know why I didn’t say anything about him,” she uttered in despair.
“Well, I did wonder about that,” I said. “Don’t you think he might be someone you should’ve mentioned?”
“No, I don’t,” she replied, with surprising vigor. “He ain’t ever written a letter in his life, much less know any of those words. That’s what the cops said, anyway,” she added resentfully, “when they decided he wasn’t doing it.”
But Bob Arnold had only said it wasn’t very likely that Jim was the culprit, not that he couldn’t be. And despite her strong words, Bella didn’t sound truly convinced, either, only resigned to the official conclusion.
“Look,” I said, “what do you say I take a ride down there to Lubec and have a word with him.”
She brightened. “Oh, Missus—I mean Jake, I’d be grateful. And he might tell you, too. Because, I mean, you aren’t a cop. He wouldn’t be scared that you’d get him in trouble.”
Don’t be so sure, I thought darkly, already planning what I might say to Jim Diamond as Ellie spoke up.
“You don’t want that?” she asked Bella.
Bella shook her head. “Trouble makes more trouble. I only want it to stop. I want him,” she finished bleakly, “to go away.”
So, I realized, she did still believe her ex was behind the notes. Meanwhile all I wanted was a cleaning woman who didn’t clean us right out of the house, while antagonizing my father out of it with equal efficiency. Or worse, one who ended up jobless and destitute with me feeling that maybe I could have prevented it.
“All right,” I said. “You go on home, Bella. I think you’ve had enough exertion for one day.”
She nodded obediently. “But you’ll let me know?”
She meant if it wasn’t Jim sending the threats. As she said this her face fell gloomily again at the notion that perhaps her ordeal wasn’t over, after all. And as is so often the case, one unhappy thought led to another.
“Why,” she asked with abrupt suspicion, “are you doing this for me?”
Her narrowed gaze went from me to Ellie and back. “You don’t know me, not really. Why would you bother helping me?”
Surprised, I opened my mouth to assure her I had no ulterior motives, just my own selfish ones, mostly. But then I saw Ellie’s face and stopped.
“Um, Jake?” Ellie said.
She was wearing her uh-oh look, an expression I usually only saw when I was (a) at the top rung of a ladder, and (b) about to be suddenly at the bottom rung.
“What?” I said quietly. Ellie’s uh-oh look is infallible.
“Well,” she said. “There is something you both should know.”
Just then from her perch on the top of the refrigerator Cat Dancing pricked up her ears, uncrossing her eyes to the degree she was able to and looking expectant. At the same time both the dogs bounded in, wagging and grinning, and I heard my father’s boot dragging hard across the cellar floor.
He was stubbing out a cigarette. It all meant someone was coming home; Wade, maybe, or Sam. “What?” I demanded of Ellie.
Footsteps came up the back porch steps. Two sets of them; one heavy and one lighter pair.
“Sam’s new girlfriend,” Ellie began. “I just found out about it on my way over here a little while ago,” she added with an apologetic look at me. “I saw them together.”
The girl’s identity, I realized; Ellie knew it.
“Who—?” I began, but she just rushed on.
“But Victor was here then, so I decided to tell you later. And when she finds out about it, I’m afraid Bella might think . . .”
Oh, hell. Suddenly I got it. The back door opened as Ellie took a deep breath and was about to continue.
But she didn’t have to. Because at that moment, all became clear.
Too clear. “Hi,” my son Sam said in surprise, coming in with a girl who looked to be eighteen or so except around the eyes.
There, in her too-wise expression, she was twenty-five going on forty. “Hi,” she said in tones mingling shyness and defiance.
Mostly defian
ce.
Wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, Sam had curly dark hair, thick-lashed hazel eyes, and the agile look young men tend to get when they are comfortable around boats.
The young woman with him was neither pretty nor graceful-appearing in shorts, run-down-at-the-heels sandals, and a tank top so tight it seemed painted onto her slim torso. But under an expertly applied layer of makeup she did have a hard-bitten look of joie de vivre I thought boded ill for my peace of mind.
She also had a high, rounded forehead, slightly protuberant blue eyes, straight hair pulled back and fastened with an overly glittery big barrette, and a short, stubby chin, which if it was not exactly receding was not exactly prominent, either.
In other words, if Bella Diamond was the after picture, this girl was the before.
“You see, Jake, what I was trying to tell you was . . .” Ellie began.
“Mom, I want you to meet . . .” Sam started to say.
“Kris,” Bella hissed furiously. “What on earth are you . . .”
Stepping up to me, the girl thrust out her hand. “I’m Bella’s daughter, Kris,” she said. “Sam and I’ve been seeing each other a while. But I guess you’ve figured that out by now.”
Yeah, I thought, and probably the Romans figured out about the Visigoths pretty quick, too. Kris smelled of cigarette smoke and the kind of cheap hair-care products that are always heavily perfumed, and right away I didn’t like her cunning appearance, her sharp, sly glances around the room as if mentally summing up the value of its contents.
Meanwhile Sam stood there looking as if someone had hit him with a lead pipe. “Uh, we’re going to go upstairs and listen to some music,” he said, angling his head a little dazedly at his companion.
Obviously he hadn’t expected anyone to be here. Ellie and I went out often, and Bella was so new he’d forgotten about her possible presence.
“Nice to meet you,” Kris Diamond pronounced, taking Sam’s hand possessively while her eyes glittered with triumph.
By contrast Sam’s glance at her as the two of them left the room together was meltingly sweet. Good heavens, he was in love; poor Maggie, I thought.
“Bella,” I began urgently when their footsteps had gone on up the hall stairs, “I swear to you I had no idea . . .”
“So,” she said icily. “The rich lady’s son and the housekeeper’s daughter. Not the match you were hoping for, was it?”
“Bella, it’s not what you think. I didn’t even know . . .”
I put it together fast. Probably she thought I was trying to get her on my side so when I made my move against the new romance between my son and her daughter, she’d be with me.
And afterward I’d dump her. She chuckled without humor. “Sure, rich people are just thrilled when their kids marry the help.”
That word again: rich. Which I wasn’t, not in the grand scheme of things. But Bella didn’t live in the grand scheme, did she?
She lived on a paycheck week to week when she could get one; to her, I was right up there with the Rockefellers.
“You’re thinking what kind of daughter-in-law she’s going to make,” Bella continued, “and it ain’t a good thought.”
Well, no, Bella, it isn’t. And I guess I felt defensive about this and a little guilty, too, about the money angle. So once again I opened my big mouth.
“Listen, Kris has nothing to do with it. Even if she breaks up with Sam tomorrow I’ll still help you, I promise.”
As I spoke, music blared abruptly from Sam’s room upstairs, so possibly Bella didn’t hear me. But I still felt held to what I’d said and not sorry about it.
Or anyway not very sorry. After all, how hard could it be to sort this out for her? The notes were nasty—but they were only notes. The volume on the music went down.
“And you,” Bella added, “don’t even know what she is, yet.”
Which didn’t sound promising. But Bella was right, as in the end she turned out to be about so many things. Despite my unhappy first impression, I didn’t know what kind of a person Kris was.
Still, I had a feeling I was about to learn.
Half an hour later, after a trip to her house to talk to Wade and George, Ellie was on the phone to the list of contacts our husbands had supplied, to find out whether anyone was likely to have equipped our threat-note suspect with a weapon.
I might not have gotten anywhere with this line of inquiry. People around here are notoriously closemouthed about what they’ve got stashed in the glove boxes of their pickup trucks—or under the front seats of their cars, if they are really expecting trouble—and that was the kind of gun we were most concerned about.
But everyone liked Ellie and was glad to be able to tell her she was probably not about to have a bullet hole blown through her. Jim Diamond, they all reported, had no money, so he couldn’t have bought a gun even if they’d have sold one to him, and none of them had given him one, either.
This didn’t reassure me completely; it was the probably part I was still worried about.
Nevertheless, in a biggish nutshell that was how Ellie and I, the baby Leonora, my son’s ex-girlfriend Maggie, and my father all went to Lubec on the bright June afternoon the day after the moose showed up. Our mission was to find out whether Jim Diamond was threatening his ex-wife Bella, and if so to make him stop.
But instead we found him dead, or so close to it as to make no difference. Which should have ended the matter, but didn’t.
Not by a long shot.
Chapter 6
A week after we’d found Jim Diamond breathing his last, I finally decided to finish the shutter-painting job that the moose had interrupted. After all, winter would return any minute now and it would be too late to put them up.
Besides, if you want to be alone with your thoughts just announce that you’re about to paint shutters and that you could use help. People will flee as if you’d declared you had plague germs and they were fun, really, so wouldn’t they like a few?
Thus in complete privacy I got out the paint sprayer, which was designed to put paint onto a dozen shutters in a jiffy. Or so the ads for it optimistically proclaimed; the truth was a bit different. Up in the third-floor room I used for fix-up projects, I poured paint from the big can into the sprayer’s receptacle.
Which was a challenge in itself; the paint ran down either one side of the can or both sides of the receptacle, but I got some in there eventually.
Next I screwed the paint-filled receptacle onto the sprayer body, noting that together the two parts of the apparatus weighed approximately a ton. Also, the job seemed to require at least one more hand than I possessed, a point not adequately covered in the instructions.
Smearing both hands heavily with paint didn’t seem to be in the instructions either, but I hadn’t needed them to tell me the job would take plenty of rags; for one thing I’d used this gadget before, and for another all my paint jobs take plenty of rags.
So after wiping off both hands, the sprayer receptacle, the front of my shirt, one leg of my jeans, and the side of my face, I picked the sprayer up again and turned to the final page of the instruction booklet.
By now, the only thing I didn’t have paint on was a shutter. Also no matter how many times I used the sprayer, I never seemed to be able to liberate myself from the booklet, which in addition to a half page of English directions was also printed in pages of Italian, German, French, Arabic, Chinese, and what I suspected was Somali.
I flipped through the pages, pausing at achtung! which was precisely how I felt. But the next instruction seemed fairly simple: Aim, and pull the trigger.
By then it was what I was inclined to do, too, only with a pistol aimed at my head. Still, I’d gotten this far so I thought I might as well go through with the rest of it.
Okay, then. I looked around uncertainly to see what step of the preparations I’d left out. But I had stapled plastic sheeting to the walls, leaned the shutters against them, and put on the equipment required for the job: latex
gloves (too late, but never mind), dust mask, safety glasses.
Last came hearing protection, heavy-duty plastic earmuffs to deaden the roar of the sprayer’s compresser. When I pulled them on a cone of silence seemed to descend around my head, and paint sprayed from the gadget as I activated it.
Too bad the sprayer was aimed at my shoe, and we will omit the colorful string of curse words I emitted upon discovering this. But when I did get the thing pointed at a shutter and the trigger pulled, the device operated beautifully.
In fact it performed so well, I rashly decided to paint the backs of the shutters, too, working steadily under the bare hanging lightbulb with shadows gathering in the corners of the room and the uncurtained windows darkening toward night.
And while I worked, I thought about what had been wrong with Jim Diamond’s apartment. The first problem, I realized as the paint sprayer roared distantly, boiled down to money.
He didn’t have any; no job, and the very minimum of public assistance. Yet his home wasn’t one room with a hot plate and the sort of shared bath that made cleanliness next to intolerable. It was a three-room flat with its own facilities, a phone—albeit not connected at the moment—and cable TV. Also that big boom box, equipped with CD player and speakers, was new, and the kind of thing that cost at least a couple of hundred dollars.
So where’d he been getting money?
There were a couple of other little details still bothering me, too. Such as no writing materials. No pens, no little pads of notepaper or even a pencil. How’d he been writing threats?
If he had been. And then there was the weapon. Jim’s death had officially been deemed a homicide by the DA’s office, and as predicted, the state cops had spoken to Ellie and me.
But not with any urgency. Like the Lubec cop, they’d seemed to think one of Jim’s low-life pals had done him in.
I still wasn’t so sure. According to Ellie, the thing on the stove had turned out to be a pork chop cooked to a lump. But he’d been cooking it in a cheap saucepan instead of the heavy skillet that someone had bonked him with.
