Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (30 page)

I’ve always been alone, he thought,
remembering
the hot summer days of his youth
.
If I close my eyes and listen, I can almost hear the squeals of delight and the laughter of the
other
neighborhood kids, swimming in the Wagner’s pool in the backyard of their house next door
.

“Marco!”

“Polo!”

Giggles, followed by splashing water and more giggles
.
They were having so much fun
!
He
remembered pee
p
ing out of the small basement window that faced their house and watching all the tanned, happy children, diving into the pool and tossing a beach ball
.
I felt like the words in that old song, “I’m on the outside, looking in
.
I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna be stuck on the outside,” he thought
.
But I was stuck on the inside, looking out
.
I wanted to be a part of that so badly but I couldn’t
.

A brief smile crossed his face as he
recalled
how he used to sneak
out of one of the basement windows
and go
to the pool, after his mother went to bed at night and all the lights in the Wagner house were turned off
.
He remembered how cool and soft the water felt on his skin
, like satin,
as he swam all alone
in the dark
.

Until the night he got caught.
He
cringed.
The memory was still too painful.
In his mind, h
e could hear
the
dog in a neighboring yard barking and he could see the
Wagner’s
backyard
suddenly go from pitch
blackness to bright light.
Mr. Wagner
was coming
toward him with a baseball bat in his hand
, evidently suspecting a prowler
.

“Lawrence
!
W
hat are you doing out here all alone?” the man asked.

Lawrence quickly got out of the pool. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wagner.
I shouldn’t be here.
It won’t happen again.” And, it never had. That
night
had put an end to his
solitary
nocturnal swims, one of the few, secret pleasures
he’d had.

So much had changed since then. The Wagners moved away years ago and the people who bought their house didn’t want the pool so they had it filled in with topsoil and planted grass seed. When
he
looked out at their backyard now, it was as if the pool had never existed. The only thing that hasn’t changed, he thought, is me; I’m still sitting in the basement, all alone.

Alone, he thought
.
I don’t want to be alone anymore
.
I want to be with Annie
.
He closed his eyes, picturing the two of them as
, just a few minutes ago,
they’d stood only inches apart. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to her, except in my dreams, he thought
.
I wanted to kiss her so
badly
.
Maybe I should have
.
What would she have done if I had
?
Then he remembered the look in her eyes, when, for a few seconds, he’d stood, blocking her way
, deciding whether or not to kiss her
.
She was afraid of me, he realized
.
My Annie was afraid of me.

He shifted restlessly on the crate
.
What am I going to do
?
How can I make her trust me and love me
?
I don’t want her to be afraid of me
.
I want her to want me but how could that ever be possible
?
I know what I look like
.
Why would she ever find me attractive
?
Why would she ever want to be with
me
?
How can I make her see that she should be
?
And, what if she never
does
?
What if I have to spend the rest of my life without ever being with her
?

Even if I could somehow,
by some miracle
, get Annie to love me, what about
my m
other
?
He sighed, recalling his mother’s words
.
“
Lawrence, you need to remember that Ann is
a married woman
.”
I understand how
she
feels about me loving a married woman, he thought, but Annie is so unhappy in her marriage
.
Her husband treats her so badly
.
My m
other likes Annie a lot, I can tell
.
I know she wants to see her happy
.
But how can I convince
her
that I could make Annie happy
?

It must be the curse of the
Bergers
to love someone they can’t have, he thought
.
My m
other is still in love with a man my Grandfather didn’t approve of and forbade her to see
.
She defied him and saw my father anyway but it ended badly
.
She’s spent her whole life missing my father and wanting to be with him
.
If anyone can understand about love, she can
.
Surely, I can make her understand that I feel the same way about Annie as she does about my father
.
I’ll just have to figure it all out
.
I have
to think
.

He
rubbed his temples, aware suddenly that he was getting another one of his headaches
.
White, jagged lines zigzagged in front of his eyes
.
He knew that he should hurry upstairs and take one of his pills before the migraine got so bad that it blurred his vision
and made him sick to his stomach
but he hesitated, feeling on the verge of a solution to his problems.

You can’t force the answer, he reminded himself
.
When you have a problem to solve, you need to “put it on the back burner” as his mother said
.
Let your subconscious do the work
.
Distract yourself with other things
.
Think about something else.
But what?

My trip
!
That’s it
.
I’ll think about my trip
.
I leave tomorrow for the convention in
Chicago
.
I have a lot to do before then
.
I have to pack and decide what coins I’m going to take to sell
or trade
.
Which reminds me, he thought, maybe this trip I’ll get lucky and find one of the 1863 Double Eagle twenty
dollar Coronet type gold pieces that I want to give
my m
other for Christmas to commemorate the year our house was built. I know that would mean a lot to her.

Then, l
et’s see, my suitcase is in storage in the attic
.
It’ll probably be coated with a layer of dust because it’s been months since I used it
.
I’ll have to clean it
.
I’ll be gone for two days so I’ll need clothes, shaving gear and a good book to read in the evenings in my hotel room
.
A
lso
, I’ve got to remember to bring a souvenir back for
my m
other
.
Maybe I’ll look in the gift shops at the airport for a pretty knick-knack
.
I wouldn’t dream of going away without bringing
something back for her.

Wait a minute, he thought, that’s it
!
My mother! She
believes that she and my father will be reunited in death
.
That’s what’s kept her going all these years
.
He
remember
ed
the day when
he
was six or seven years old and came home from school
crying.

“Why
don’t
I have a daddy like all the other kids?” he asked his mother.
“It’s not fair!”

“I know how hard this must be for you, Lawrence,” she’d said, gently patting his arm
.
“I’m so sorry
.
It’s just
…
your father can’t be with us in this life but we’ll all be together in the hereafter
.
Close your eyes and picture this
:
the three of us, walking side by side in a beautiful green meadow
.
The sun is shining and the sky is blue
.
In Heaven, all of our illnesses, imperfections and deformities will be gone and we’ll be a family forever
.”

He
smiled
.
That’s it
!
That’s the answer
.
In the afterlife, I won’t be an albino freak
.
I’ll be strong, healthy and handsome
.
Most
importantly, in death, I’ll finally have my Annie
.
She’ll look up to
me, love me
and want me
.
He pictured the two of them, walking hand in hand
.
No longer was his hair white, his eyes pinkish and his skin pale
.
He had hair the same color as hers, a rich dark brown, and eyes as deep blue as the ocean. Annie looked up at him and he could see that she wanted him
.

However,
his elation faded quickly
.
Annie’s young, he thought, and I’ll probably be around for a long time too
.
According to
my m
other, longevity runs in our family
.
She’s waited to be with my father since before I was born,
sixty-two years ago
.
There’s no way I can wait that long to be with Annie
.
I want to be happy
now
!
His head started to pound
.
Feeling hopeless
again
, he stood up
slowly
, massaging his temples, and
stumbled
toward the stairs, the
last line of one of his favorite poems
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
echoing in his mind
,
“I shall but love thee better after death.
”

Chapter
30

SUSAN THATCHER WAS HAVING A HARD TIME
falling asleep
.
It was past two a.m. and she’d tossed and turned since ten-thirty when she’d turned off the television and climbed into her four-poster queen-sized bed
.
“Shouldn’t have watched the damn news,” she mumbled, as she punched her pillow and fell back against it
.

No wonder you can’t sleep, she thought
.
All that talk about the Westwood Strangler is enough to make anyone uneasy
.
And the nerve of that so
-
called psychologist
!
Promoting his own book on the air, helping himself, when he was supposed to be helping the women of Westwood!
What a pompous ass
!
Between his book
tours
and television appearances, I doubt he even has time to see any patients
.
All he did tonight was contribute to the media hype that has local women terrified.

It was a serious problem though, she knew
.
The past few weeks, nearly every female client she’d seen in her Westwood office had brought up the subject
.
Everyone was on edge
.
Women were afraid to go out alone at night and afraid to stay home alone too
.

This would make an interesting case study,
she
thought
.
Westwood Strangler Syndrome
:
the psychological effects on women
.
In WWSS, the threat of an attack produced the same symptoms as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder where the terrifying event had already taken place
:
constant anxiety, nervousness
… .