The Deadly Neighbors (The Zoe Hayes Mysteries) (2 page)

So, holding hands, we set out on the slate path that circled the house, overgrown foliage tickling our legs. We passed the neglected vegetable garden, thigh-high with weeds. I tried to open the mudroom door, the hidden door off the driveway, the elongated windows along the porch. All were locked and rusty. No sign of my father. Finally, dreading the descent, I led Molly to the always damp and moldy rear stairwell and started down, hoping she wouldn’t have time to notice how slippery the walls were.

“Eww,” Molly declared. “My sneakers.” Her favorites, the yellow pair, had already squished into mud coating the steps.

“Careful. Don’t slip.”

“Mom, this is gross.”

“I know. Try not to think about it.” We descended another step.

“Yuck.”

Clutching her hand, trying not to slip, I led her downward, remembering the squirming clump of worms I’d once encountered at the bottom of the stairwell near the drain. A single ray of light bounced off the wet concrete wall; the rest was shadow and slime, smells of mildew, damp earth, decay, something rotting. What the hell were we doing here? Why didn’t I just take Molly and go home? An image flashed in my head: my father lying unconscious on hard linoleum; and I knew we had to go on. Stop whining, I scolded myself. Just keep moving. I took another step down. One foot, the other. Molly followed slowly, reluctantly. Four, five, six steps down.

At step seven, Molly simply stopped. “I’m not going, Mom.” Her voice was firm. Even in the shadows, I could see the finality in her eyes.

I squeezed her hand and gave it a tug. “Molls, we can get in the house this way. Come on. It’s just a few more steps.”

“No way.” She stamped her foot as an exclamation point, splashing my legs with slime. Perfect, I thought. So far, it was a fabulous homecoming.

“Molly, please.” I was begging, sounding pathetic. “There’s a way to get in down there.”

Her jaw was set. Immovable. “I don’t want to get in. I want to go home.” She stamped her foot again, splattering more muck.

“Molly, we have no choice. We have to look in on Grandpa. Then we’ll go home. I promise.”

She stood her ground, refusing. Molly was strong-willed and persistent; arguing with her would get me nowhere. So, as I had when she was a toddler, I reached out, scooped her up and carried her down the steps, praying that my feet wouldn’t slide out from under me, wondering if the worms were still there and if we’d land in a soggy, writhing mass. Carefully testing each step, I held on to Molly, ignoring the chorus of her whines and the repeated thunk of her wet sneakers against my khaki capris.

Finally, we reached the bottom. The air around us clung clammy and dank; the sunlight had disappeared. Something thick and moist was sucking my shoes, and I didn’t dare look down. Shadowy webs and encrusted cocoons coated the basement door. I took a breath, balanced Molly on my hip and, praying that my father hadn’t removed it, remembering briefly Whopper, our long-deceased golden retriever, I kicked the spot where the doggie door used to be. It swung open easily, soundlessly, not even rusted. I knelt, tentatively balancing Molly’s weight on my thighs, and pushed the panel open again. Molly clutched my neck, gaping in disbelief.

“Molls, it’s not as bad as it looks. I used to go in this way all the time.” I didn’t mention the dread evoked by that memory.

She tightened her grip. “I’m not going in there.”

I looked at the doggie entrance, the muck surrounding it and the darkness beyond. Frankly, I didn’t blame her. I didn’t want to go in either. Still, we had to get into the house, and, without breaking a window, this was the only way I knew of. But I didn’t want to force her to go in. I couldn’t. Instead, I gave her a choice. “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ve got to go find Grandpa to make sure he’s all right. But you don’t have to. If you want, you can wait outside.”

“What—out here?” Molly glanced back up the dark, mucky staircase, then down at the door. “By myself?”

I was about to say that I’d take her back upstairs and that she could wait on the porch, but before I could say another word, she dived forward and flew through the opening. All I could see of her were the muddy soles of her bright yellow sneakers.

A
ND SO, MUDDIED, DISHEVELED
and more than a little disconcerted, I’d come home. Molly had been unable to unbolt the lock from inside, so I’d had to crawl through the muck and slither through the doggie door after her. Finally inside, I got up off my knees, brushed crud off my legs and hands, gave Molly a quick hug and flicked the light switch. One dim bulb came on at the far end of the basement.

Molly scowled. Apparently, her visit was not going as planned.

I didn’t blame her. The basement air was chilly and mildly rank. Rotting garbage? Dead rats?

I squatted beside her in the shadows, wiping smudges off her face with soiled fingers, making them worse. “Molls, I’m sorry. This visit is all messed up. Hang in there a little longer, okay? We’ll go— I’ll take you for ice cream as soon as we find Grandpa.”

“I don’t want to find him. I don’t like him.”

“Well, we still have to find him and see how he is.”

“I don’t care how he is. I hate him.”

Oh dear. I wondered if I’d traumatized her, if she’d forever associate the word “Grandpa” with dank slimy stairs and chilly dark basements. Actually, to me, the description didn’t seem far off.

“Mollybear, Grandpa’s an old man, and he might not be feeling well. We have to make sure he’s okay.”

She glared, defiant. But she let me take her hand, and together we started across the expanse of darkness under my father’s house. The basement was an open underground space, unbroken by walls. We stepped around support columns, piles of newspapers, stacks of cartons, mountains of luggage, mounds of old clothes. We passed hunkering silhouettes—the water heater, a tangled mass of pipes, the furnace. The guts and bowels of a big old house. I told myself that I was imagining the crawling sensations on my arms. No spider webs were clinging to my face, no whispers tickling my neck, taunting me with secrets I couldn’t quite remember. No shadows flickered in the dark corner near the cedar closet. I hurried Molly through the clutter, around discarded furniture and broken appliances, barely escaping the grip of a familiar uneasiness I’d thought long forgotten. By the time we reached the stairs we were almost running, and near the bottom of the staircase, afraid to look back, I felt certain we were merely two steps ahead of some deathly embrace.

My mouth went dry. I clutched Molly’s hand and sped up the steps. Panicking about something nameless and unseen, telling myself I was being childish, I literally dragged Molly up the steps. We flew, but, as in a nightmare, the staircase seemed to elongate before us, each step seeming steeper and farther away, harder to climb than the last. With each step, Molly got slower, her breath faster. She was upset and tired; I was being insensitive, expecting too much of a six-year-old. I forced myself to slow down, grasping her hand until, finally, we made it to the top of the narrow, creaking steps, and, relieved to escape the basement, I pushed open the kitchen door.

Even before we’d stepped onto the fading linoleum, though, I’d stopped breathing, stunned first by the sight of my father, then by the knife and the widening pool of blood.

I
NSTINCTIVELY,
I
STEPPED IN
front of Molly, trying to protect her, to block her view. But that was futile. We stood at the basement door, gaping.

I took it in quickly, but in a jigsaw of pieces. A giant bottle of orange soda. A bowl of potato salad. White paper napkins. A jar of mayonnaise. I saw each item separately, in close-up. Cabinet doors, hanging open on loose hinges. A parched philodendron beside the window. A broken platter in shards near the trash can. Dishes of dog food and water. Slices of white bread peppering the floor. A woman in a floral housecoat, spread-eagled on the floor near the refrigerator. My father, unshaven, thin, his white hair long and unkempt, crouching over her, his hands dripping red, gripping a carving knife, slicing her neck.

Suddenly, events blurred. I was in the air, flying, plunging across the room, over chairs and countertops, landing on my father, knocking him over and sending the knife soaring from his grasp, clattering to the floor. Somebody yelped; someone howled. Angry and spry, my father shoved me away, pounced to retrieve his weapon and grabbed it by the blade, cutting deeply into his palm. Righting it swiftly, he began brandishing it over my head, mindless of the bleeding gash. My father’s face was gaunt and he looked frail, but, even wounded, his body was wiry and his movements surprisingly swift. We circled each other warily, and, suddenly he gazed over my shoulder, behind me, to the left. I turned to look; his bloody fist struck the side of my head. Light flashed white and green, and I sank to the floor, dazed. He crouched beside me. Both of him. Raising two right arms, each with its own scarlet-stained knife. Great, I was half-conscious and seeing double, apparently about to be carved by my maddened father.

“Dad—don’t!” My voice was raw, a whisper. I grabbed at his wrists, yanking them. The knives glittered. He fought with all his strength, his mouths coated white with thick saliva. Insane.

“Dammit, Dad,” I croaked. We were caught up in a breathless struggle. Father’s weight and will were pitted against mine. I tried to focus, squeezing double images into one. My hands clutched the slippery red wrist that held the knife; the gnarled fingers of his free hand worked at unfastening my grip, nails digging, scratching, clawing. His face was a portrait of wild desperation; mine of disbelief. Eyes locked, attention riveted, I wondered how many ways this man had damaged my life. How many times he’d snookered me. Well, not this time. This time, my father would not prevail. Twisting his thin wet arm, I withstood the pounding blows of his free one, endured the blood-drawing scrapes of his fingernails, absorbed the raging fury in his eyes. This time, for all the times I hadn’t, I stood up to him, and we battled silently, a wasted old man and a wobbly, pregnant fortyish woman, each refusing to cave in or concede to the other. We slid across the bloody floor, twisted our torsos, bent forward and back, grunted and panted and pushed and jerked until, finally, I became aware that the small voice I was hearing was not inside my head.

“Mom? Grandpa? Stop it!”

Molly. “Molly—” I grunted, wanting to tell her something calming, but my father jabbed me and we fought on, rolling through warm crimson clots, grappling and grabbing, clawing and slapping, kicking, twisting, punching and panting, until finally he slipped, his head thunking first the counter and then the floor, gouging an impressive hole in the side of his head. The knife slipped from his hand, and as soon as he hit the ground I straddled his belly, settled all my pregnant bloated weight onto his cadaverous frame, pinning him, nauseous from the smell of blood and something sweet, like rotting leaves. Molly watched from the doorway as he lay spent, heart racing, cursing.

“Goddammit, get off me—” He growled. He wriggled. He fought with every gasping breath. My father was maybe thirty pounds lighter now than he’d been when I’d last seen him, and his whiskers had gone completely white. But his jaw was still strong, and his dark eyes glowed like cold polished stones. No question, even distraught, skinny, bleeding and unkempt, he was still disarmingly handsome.

“Settle down, Dad.” I was still panting.

“Get me the knife—before it’s too late!” His fingers stretched toward the weapon.

I looked down at his feverish eyes. “It’s over, Dad. Settle down.”

“Let me up—dammit.” He craned his head frantically, blinking, straining to turn toward the woman. “At least check her pulse—is she dead?”

For the first time, I looked closely at the woman on the floor. She was solid, sixty-plus, her hair dyed pinkish blond, clipped in a short curly perm. Her features were strong, symmetrical, her lips full, her eye shadow iridescent blue. She lay motionless, gray eyes open wide, mouth stretched into a tortured grimace. Her neck glistened red, no longer spouting.

“Beatrice?” my father wheezed. “Bea?” He waited, repeated her name, got no response.

I stayed on top of him, alert, waiting for the fact of her death to settle in, afraid he’d start swinging again. But he didn’t. When he realized she was gone, he simply covered his eyes with bloody hands.

I climbed off him. “You okay, Molls?”

She nodded, wide-eyed. But I couldn’t go to her yet. First I had to check Beatrice. She wasn’t breathing. I felt her wrist, her slippery throat for a pulse. There was none. My father crawled to her slowly, on hands and knees. He knelt beside her, running his hands through his silver hair, leaving crimson streaks. “Damn,” he finally said. “Look what you’ve done.”

I blinked, baffled. “What I’ve done?”

“You killed her.”

“Dad. You slit that woman’s throat.”

“What choice did I have?”

I studied him, wondering how long ago he’d lost his mind. “Besides cutting her jugular?”

“That was her only hope.” He stared at her. “Her last and only hope.”

Obviously, he wasn’t rational. I was a therapist; somehow my professional side kicked in, and I spoke to him slowly, calmly, as if to a child. “It’s all right, Dad. Come sit down.”

“How is it all right? Beatrice is dead. Don’t be foolish, Louise.”

Louise? Louise had been my mother’s name. She’d died a few weeks before my sixth birthday. Did he think I was my mother?

Dad stood and began pacing. “Mother of God. Why did they have to kill her?”

They? Maybe he was delusional. Gently, I took him by the arm and led him to a chair. “Sit.”

But he wouldn’t sit. Bereft, close to tears, he paced and tore at his stringy white mane. “She ran over here. Choking. Her face was purple. The Heimlich didn’t work. Something was stuck in her throat—”

I closed my eyes, erasing the image of spurting blood, finally understanding. “So you cut it open?”

He blinked rapidly. “I tried to dig it out, but it was too far down. A tracheotomy was her only chance.”