Murder in a Nice Neighborhood (21 page)

“Damn it, every one of you is making light of this,” Drake exploded. “People have died, and may still. I’ll have to go check up on this kid. Which way did she go?”

Claudia told him. Drake wrapped the dishtowel around the chocolate box and put the whole thing in a plastic bag. “I want both of you to stay the hell out of it. Close the door, turn out the porch light, let Halloween pass you by. I'll come back with a pizza for dinner, and I’ll be checking in regularly before then. I want to speak with each of you when I do. Do you understand?

“Really, Detective—”

“No excuses.” He turned at the front door. “Once again, lock everything."

After he was gone, Claudia and I looked at each other, and I locked the front door. “Masterful,” was all she said.

Chapter 31

Claudia spent the rest of the afternoon in her study, transcribing old diaries. I went over some of my notes for the
Smithsonian
article, but I couldn’t settle. A deep-seated restlessness set me to cleaning out the cupboards in Claudia’s kitchen. Since I wouldn’t be around forever, I wanted to leave the place in good condition. I found ancient tubes of cake-decorating frosting, a box of baking soda hardened into a ghostly brick, an epoxy-like stain where a bottle of molasses and a box of oregano had evidently collided, and an assortment of dusty jars filled with someone’s abandoned health-food grains. One of the drawers was crammed with junk mail dated as long ago as 1968. Shoved way in the back of a corner cupboard was a huge box of balloons of various sizes, sprinkled with stars and musical notes. I blew one up; it didn’t explode. Behind the balloons was a cheerleader’s megaphone, its vinyl trim peeling.

When Claudia came out for some tea, I showed her my finds. She stared fixedly at them for a moment.

“Carlie’s megaphone,” she said softly. “Her senior year in high school. And the balloons—they were for Jack’s twenty-first birthday.” She batted at the star-covered one I’d blown up. “He’s pushing thirty now. I remember I was going to put up balloons and confetti everywhere, but his friends had different ideas about decorating.” She picked up a couple of the balloons, turning them to let the silvery stars catch the light.

“We could put the box on the front step for the trick-or-treaters to help themselves.” I had never met Claudia’s kids, of course. Bridget had mentioned that the daughter was a TV producer who lived in New York; she came home for major holidays. The son lived in the Midwest and visited rarely. Claudia went back to see him once in a while, but he’d turned into a Republican and his wife was opposed to offering hospitality to anyone, especially relatives.

Claudia shook herself out of her mood. “Good idea.” She stuffed the balloons she held absently into the pocket of her sweater. “Why on earth are you wasting your time cleaning? Get back to your writing.” She glared at me and stumped away to her study, carrying an enormous mug of tea.

She was right, but I knew I couldn’t write with such an unsettled churning going on inside me. At least the cabinets were clean. I took three bags of trash out to the garbage cans, and went to potter around in the greenhouse. If we were going to plant seeds from the rose hips the next day, we would need to soak them overnight. I found some plastic cups and used a marker to write on them, according to the labels on the hips, before I filled them with water.

The flesh of the hips was gooshy around the knobby seeds; I broke them open one at a time, gently, and emptied the seeds of each into its cup. If the seeds floated, they were no good.

A person could spend a good deal of time in garden work and never get tired of it. I thought about my vegetable plot, how I needed to go and harvest the rest of the beets, check the brussels sprouts and broccoli seedlings, clean up and mulch for the coming winter rains. Such thoughts were soothing; they implied that I would be free to garden, that the planet would continue without blowing up, that global warming would not impact the climates, and that Gaia would prevail over the dark forces lined up against her. I pictured the world goddess overthrowing industrialism as I worked though the rose hips. The greenhouse smelled of leaf mold and potting soil. It was cold, with occasional scurries of wind blowing through the broken pane in the roof, riffling the old paper seed packets that littered the workbench. Faintly from the tall trees at the back of Claudia’s property came the tapping of branches against each other, or a woodpecker decimating the bug population.

The sun went behind a cloud. It was getting late; soon Drake would show up with his pizza. Stretching, I walked out of the greenhouse, shutting the door so the wind wouldn’t turn over my plastic cups and mix all the seeds up.

The tapping was louder, oddly rhythmical for a bird. Something about it caught my attention, and I realized that it wasn’t a woodpecker. It was a typewriter, being used by someone unaccustomed to
it. The sound could have come from another writer on the block behind Claudia’s, but it was too immediate for that, and too recognizable, somehow, but skewed, as your own face is in a photograph. After all, I’m probably the last writer in the Silicon Valley to use a typewriter. And that was mine I heard, clacking away, the sound familiar but the rhythm ragged. Coming from my bus, parked behind Claudia’s garage.

I thought about going for help, but if I did, the intruder might get away before I could return. The anger that had alternated with fright for the past few days rushed to the surface, a geyser ready to erupt. It was so unfair that I, who had little more than my vehicle and typewriter, should have those things be as threatened as was my freedom to use them.

And more than anything, I had to know who was doing this. I had to know if it was Tony. Somehow it was like him to invade my space, try
to take over the means of livelihood I’d found.

The fence behind the garage that marked the boundary of Claudia’s yard was missing a board here and there; it would have been no big task to get into the bus without coming up the driveway. If this was the same person who’d hid those mysterious seeds in my little fridge, he must have known how noisy it was to crunch along that gravel, right past the house windows.

I knew how noisy it was, too. I crept around the other side of the garage, dodging as best I could the blackberry brambles that shrouded it. They made good cover, though. I crouched behind them, snagging my old sweater badly, and looked around the corner.

I was too low to see through the windows. The side door was closed, but the cardboard that had blocked off the broken window now hung down from it, dangling remnants of duct tape. The clacking of typewriter keys sounded louder. It was definitely coming from inside the bus.

Straightening a little, I tried to see inside, but the slowly gathering darkness made the interior so shadowy and vague that I couldn’t tell if what I saw was a seat back or a person. Then the typing stopped, followed by the ratcheting sound of paper being pulled out of the platen, accompanied by a muffled curse.

So my phantom writer was having trouble. I would have been sympathetic under other circumstances.

The platen rolled again, and the typing started up again. It’s always harder to see into a car than to see out of it; inside the bus it was probably still pretty light, and black print on a white page has its own luminescence. I would have to get right up to the window to
see who it was in there, sweating over composition. Other people’s cars were broken into so their radios could be stolen; mine was broken into by someone who really needed to write. I tried to tell myself it was highly entertaining, but the hair had already lifted on the back of my neck.

I looked around for a handy weapon, but assault rifles don’t grow on blackberry bushes, although reading the newspaper sometimes you might think differently. All I had was the pocket knife I had just been using to split rose hips with.

Holding it opened to the biggest blade, I crept closer to the bus, debating whether to go around to the fence side, where the person couldn’t easily get at me if I were discovered, but where I would be trapped if guns were the order of the day, or just to peer in through the windshield and hope to be able to see enough.

In the end, that was the simplest thing to
do, so I did it. The interior of the bus looked so much darker than the overcast dusk that spread around me. At the center of that darkness, hovering over my typewriter on the pull-up table, was something even blacker, a huge shape that I couldn’t relate to anyone I knew, not even Tony. Then the typing stopped again, and a hand, a pale glimmer, came out of the blackness to rip the paper from the platen. It’s not the best thing for a typewriter, but I didn’t even wince.

“Damn it.” The words came out strangely muffled. Then the pale hands moved up and I thought, Whatever it is, it’s going to tear its hair in
frustration. There was upheaval, and suddenly a face emerged from the darkness as an oval whiteness. The eyes were looking straight at me.

I ducked, and spent a moment dithering about my escape route—around to the side and through the space in the fence where two boards were gone? That was the way the intruder had come, I was sure. I didn’t know if I wanted to risk that, and it left Claudia unprotected until I could race around the block and get to the phone.

On the other hand, I sure wasn’t going past the door of the bus. I could hear it opening, so I started back the way I’d come, through the blackberries to the garage, still clutching my open knife in my hand.

“Wait!”

The voice stopped me cold. It wasn’t Tony’s. It was a woman’s.

I turned, astounded, and nearly screamed. Pursuing me was a grotesque black creature with a human head. At least, that’s how it looked for the two seconds it took me to recognize what it was. Certainly it was the last person I would have expected to see dressed up in a gorilla suit.

“What on earth are you doing?” I stood there, gaping at her, while she closed the distance between us with a couple of long strides. The running shoes she wore didn’t really go with the gorilla outfit.

“What are you doing with that knife?” She sounded accusing, as though I was the one acting weird. I glanced stupidly down at my hand, and she reached out and plucked the knife away from me, smiling sweetly. Then she gestured with it toward the door of the bus. “Come on.”

“Why? Where?” I backed away a little, and her smile vanished.

“Stop it,” Delores Mitchell said. “I don’t want to have to hit you on the head again.” She pointed with the knife once more, and I debated just running away, escaping this lunatic. “Don’t try to run,” she said, when I backed farther away. “I have a gun, too, and I don’t mind using it to kill you and that ugly old woman.”

The threat to Claudia stopped me, and Delores put her head to one side, the smile returning. “So you don’t want to be shot? I don’t blame you.” She shuddered. “It needn’t come to that. Get into that wretched vehicle, and we’ll talk."

I wasn’t really frightened of her—after all, though she was taller than me and probably as aerobically toned as possible, I was pretty scrappy myself. She tossed the knife into the air and caught it as it flashed down in the feeble light—by the blade. “I know how to throw knives,” she said in her light, somewhat prissy voice. “If you run, I’ll spit you like a chicken.”

I got into the bus. It seemed like the thing to do. And I was extremely curious, especially when I saw the head of the gorilla costume on the bench seat.

Delores stood at the side of the bus, blocking the open doorway. She should have looked ridiculous, her body smothered in the gorilla suit, her head and hands free
.
Her hands, I noticed, were encased in surgical gloves. She didn’t look that funny to me.

Chapter 32

I sat on the bench seat of the bus, feeling totally confused. The surgical gloves, the gorilla costume—"Just what’s going on, Delores?”

“I don’t understand why they haven’t arrested you yet.” She sounded angry. “You’re the obvious suspect in every case.”

“Just lucky, I guess.” I stared at her curiously. Even without the prim suits and the fancy shoes, Delores still looked incredibly clean-cut. “Are you going to a costume party somewhere, is that it? And you needed to dash off a sonnet or something on the way so you just broke into my bus to use the typewriter—”

“You don’t have a clue,” she said impatiently. “I should have stuck to my original plan, but—” She gazed into space for a moment. Her usually sleek hair was disheveled by the gorilla head; still wearing those surgical gloves, she began to pat and smooth it. "This is better,” she decided at last. “Since you’re here, you can type the note.”

“What note?" I used the soothing voice recommended when speaking to those who have lost touch with reality. The incongruity of her costume didn’t diminish Delores’ perkiness a jot. The effect should have been amusing, but it was exceedingly creepy instead. She closed my knife with a decisive click, but she didn’t give it back. Instead she pulled a gun from somewhere in her hairy gorilla flank and pointed it at me. An immediate adrenaline jolt reverberated though all my nerve endings.

“I’m a very good shot.” Her hand was certainly steady on the gun. “Daddy always believed it was important for a woman to be able to defend herself. He taught me to throw knives and hunt and target-shoot. I’ve never shot a person yet, but it might be kind of exciting—different from the paper target, you know.”

“I don’t imagine your dad had this sort of thing in mind,” I said, casting around for something that might improve the situation. My mind didn’t want to believe that this was happening, but my body was buying it; the words that came out of my mouth were shaky. “What will he think when you get arrested?”

“He died last year.” Delores’s lower lip quivered. “I really miss him, but it would be selfish to want him alive when he was in such bad shape.” She sniffed. “It was for his sake, really. That’s when I found out how easy it was.”

It took a moment before her words sank in. “You mean you—you killed your dad?”

“I didn’t kill him,” she protested. “He was very sick. He was dying anyway.” Her face changed, looked younger. “It was just him and me for so long, after Mummy died,” she murmured, almost crooning. “He used to call me DoDo—he used to like me to wear her dresses. A man has needs, you know.” She blinked, but the febrile glitter in her eyes didn’t dissipate. “After he got sick he didn’t want DoDo anymore. He was just a sick old man. He wanted to die. They all wanted to die.” Her grip on the gun tightened. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. But it’s safe, because you’re going to die, too.”