Undying (28 page)

M
acy carefully assessed her surroundings as she drove up the long, unlit driveway toward
home.
They were only an hour from the Philly airport, but in a rural area, near a ski resort whose name she recognized from billboards. She’d passed very close to this house at least once in the past couple of years. She had driven right by him and never known he was so close.

Macy saw lights in the distance, but the property was isolated. On foot, she guessed it was at least half a mile to the nearest porch light and the terrain was both hilly and rocky.

“I sold the orchard after you went to college, Marceline. Just too many good memories,” he said nostalgically.

Macy wondered if the
good memories
included killing and burying his mother in the orchard, but she knew better than to ask.

“You knew when, where I went to college?”

“Of course I did.” He sounded hurt.

A Cape Cod–style house loomed ahead; she could make out a front porch and shutters. It looked nice from what she could see of it in the dark.

“Teddy, can I ask you something?”

“Certainly, dearest.”

“When you…”—it took her a second to find her voice—“when you killed my family, did you already…like me?”

He looked at her. “Of course I liked you, Marceline. You were pretty, though distant, I must say. You never even said hello when I handed you a bag of apples. Pull up there in front of the garage.” He pointed. “But if you’re asking me if I spared you that night on purpose, I have to be honest with you, dear. I did not. It wasn’t until later that I realized that we were meant to be together.”

“You realized?” she asked. It was all she could do not to scream at him. She stopped the car in front of the door, as instructed, and put it into park.

“It was fate. It was meant to be, you and I. That’s why you were gone that night. At a sleepover on a school night. You weren’t meant to be there when I arrived.”

She wondered where he’d gotten the sleepover crap, but then remembered that that’s what had been printed in the papers. Someone’s idea of protecting her.

“When I got there to do what had to be done and saw you weren’t there, I knew that I had been set on a path. You and I had been set on a path together. Ending here, I suppose.” He opened his window, looking out. “I wish I could see the moon, but it’s too cloudy,” he worried. “It would be better if I could see the moon.”

“Wait a minute. Go back.” Macy tried to keep her voice even, but she had to understand. If she died tonight, she wanted to die knowing. “You said when you got there to do what had to be done, you meant killing them. Why did it
have to be done,
Teddy?”

“Mother.” He picked the gun up off the floorboards. He unscrewed the silencer from it.

“What does your mother have to do with killing my family?”

“I did it to shut her up. Sit tight.” He jumped out of the car, taking the pistol with him, and went to the side of the garage and punched keys on a key pad.

Macy just sat there, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the garage door as it went up. She supposed she should have considered making a run for it, but he had the pistol and they were so close. She’d never get away.

Teddy waved the pistol at her, signaling for her to pull in.

Macy eased her car into the spotless, empty garage. Lights overhead illuminated a row of shiny shovels, hung precisely. There had to be a dozen of them, all nearly identical.

Macy tried not to think about his shovel collection or what he did with it. What was interesting was that, to her knowledge, he always used tools available to him at the crime scene. Was he keeping some kind of score?

He walked around and opened the door for her. “Let’s go inside, Marceline; it’s been a long evening and we’re both weary. Now, no funny business.” He didn’t exactly point the pistol at her, but he made it clear what he meant.

At the steps to the house, he hit the button on the wall that closed the garage door and then used a key from his pocket to unlock the door. He pushed it open, allowing her to enter the dark laundry room first. Inside the laundry room, he closed the door, turned the dead bolt knob, and flipped on the light.

“Mother! We’re home!” He pushed open a door off the laundry room. “The powder room, if you need it.”

There had been a fatal accident on Route 1 and they’d had to sit nearly an hour while no traffic moved northbound. Macy had to pee badly. She’d asked Teddy to stop at a rest stop, but he’d refused, suggesting it wasn’t safe.

She stepped inside, turned on the light and closed the door.

“I’ll wait here for you,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t listen to you tinkle.”

His eerie, juvenile giggle made her want to vomit.

She pulled down her shorts and sat on the john.

“Mother, we’re home?” What the hell was that all about?
Didn’t he just get finished telling her he’d murdered his mother and planted her in the orchard back in Missouri?

Macy rested her forearms on her thighs, leaning forward. There was no window in the bathroom. No way to escape. Only a place to catch a breather. Figure out what she was going to do.

For a fleeting moment she thought of Arlan. It was after midnight. Surely he was concerned that she hadn’t shown up for dinner. Or was he lying in bed right now, watching the ceiling fan spin, waiting for the late night visit she often paid him?

That was a better guess. And it was her own fault he was at home in bed. Not out looking for her. Not calling Fia to tell her something was wrong. Not even worried. Arlan was only following Macy’s rules. She had wanted a relationship with no emotional strings attached and people with no emotional strings died alone, with no one looking for them.

There was a light tap on the bathroom door. “Marceline, are you all right?”

She reached for the toilet paper; its end had been folded in a point like maids sometimes did in hotel bathrooms. “Just a second,” she called. She finished and stepped out of the bathroom.

“Hot tea? A cold drink? What can I offer you?”

They entered the kitchen and he flipped on the light. It was a country kitchen with yellow walls and oak cabinets. An oak table with four chairs occupied one end of the room. No knickknacks on the counters. No mail tossed on the table. The room looked like a staged showroom in a furniture store.

“How about something to eat? I don’t know about you, but I’m famished.” His expression grew worrisome. “Unless, of course, you’re tired. I’ve prepared your room for you. I know you won’t like the bars on the windows or the locks on the door, but other than that, it’s a nice room. I painted it purple for you, just like your bedroom in Missouri.”

She’d been thirteen when she and her mother painted her bedroom purple. She wanted to ask him if he’d put up Metallica posters on the walls, but she kept that thought to herself. “Something to eat would be great. I’m hungry, too.” She wanted to stall being locked in the purple cage for as long as possible. At least here she might find the opportunity to escape or knock his block off. Something.

“Why not sit on a stool at the breakfast bar?” He waved the pistol, indicating she should move to the other side of the kitchen island, which was higher than the countertop. He set the pistol down, again out of her reach, but within his own. “Let’s see.” He opened the refrigerator. It may have had more stuff in it than the garage, but each item was arranged equally as neatly. Condiment jars lined up in straight rows, labels facing forward. Milk and juice cartons placed just so. “How about grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup?” He leaned on the door of the refrigerator to look over his shoulder at her. “I know that’s kind of a winter meal, but it’s quick and I make an excellent grilled cheese sandwich with just the right amount of butter and cheese to be ooey gooey without being greasy.”

The man was a total freak. She forced a smile. “Grilled cheese would be great.”

Macy glanced around the kitchen, noting the cordless phone on the wall near the archway that led into the living room. If she could get to the phone, she could dial 911. “So you live here with your mother?”

He set a pack of cheese slices and a covered butter dish on the counter in front of her. “Marceline, weren’t you listening, dearest? Mother’s dead. I smothered her with a blue bath towel and I buried her in the orchard under the Bartlett pear tree. She always liked Bartlett pears.”

“But when we arrived, you called into the house, ‘Mother, we’re home.’”

He exhaled, leaning over to take a loaf of white bread out of a cabinet. Macy hated squishy white bread.

“Do we have to talk about this?” he asked tersely.

“We don’t have to, Teddy.” She did the looking through her eyelashes thing again. “But I’d like to. If you and I…if we’re going to be together,” she said, “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

“That’s nice.” He took a small saucepan and a frying pan from the cupboard. Then a can of soup. She noted that the other cans of soup on the shelf were lined up perfectly, labels facing forward.

“So…does she live somewhere else or will I have to share you with her?”

He giggled as he removed a wooden spoon and spatula from a drawer.

Macy waited.

“It’s just you and me, Marceline, I swear to you.”

“So she’s not here?”

He hesitated. “Actually, I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

He placed both hands on the countertop, leaning toward her as if they were great confidantes. “You’re going to think this is crazy, but…”

Not any crazier than any of the rest,
she thought. “No, I’m not.”

“I think Mother’s a ghost,” he whispered.

She lifted her eyebrows. She couldn’t help herself. “A ghost? Really?”

“I hear her,” he whispered.

She thought she noticed him twitch but it was so quick, she couldn’t be sure.

“Can
I
hear her?” she said, speaking equally soft.

“I don’t think so. She haunts me because she hates me.” He removed four slices of bread from the bag and then took his time in twisting the plastic bag just right before putting the tie back on to secure it. “She hates me, you know.”

No surprise there, since you murdered her,
Macy thought. It was strange, but she couldn’t keep wild thoughts from popping up, even in this dire situation. It was just all so…surreal. As if it was a dream, but of course it wasn’t.

“Why do you say that?” Macy asked. “What makes you think she hates you?”

“She always hated me. Since I was born.
Rape bastard,
that’s what she called me.” Again, the twitch, this time more obvious. He put the frying pan on the stove, then the saucepan. “She was attacked while sleeping in her bed when she was twenty years old. She was somewhere in Europe on a trip through her college. Her parents never believed she was raped. They thought she had
ruined
herself with one of the boys she was traveling with.”

Against her will, Macy felt a pang of empathy for him. A child of rape, despised by his mother? No wonder he turned into a homicidal maniac. But that was unfair. Some children of rape became doctors, lawyers, truck drivers. It was no excuse.

“I’m so sorry, Teddy. It must have been hard for you, growing up.”

He smiled, shy again, not making eye contact as he opened the soup can. “Not always. Sometimes she was nice. Sometimes, she called me her Teddy Bear.” He looked up at her, grinning proudly.

“So Teddy’s not your real name?”

He shook his head. “Marvin. Marvin Clacker. She didn’t give me a middle name.”

“You were raised alone? No brothers or sisters?”

He shook his head. “Just me and Mother and the grandparents, when I was young. We kept to ourselves. Mother was…embarrassed by the situation. The orchard was her parents’ before they passed. She buried them in the orchard, too. Only not under the Bartlett pear.” He looked at her. “Water or milk?”

Macy was the one who twitched this time. She was having a hard time following Teddy’s bizarre story while choosing from the late night dinner menu. Had Teddy really just confessed that his mother had murdered his grandparents and buried them in the orchard? Was there an entire graveyard there?

“Marceline, do you like your tomato soup made with milk or water?”

“Water, please,” Macy managed. She stared at her hands on the countertop. In a sick way, everything he was telling her made sense. It made sense why he did what he did. He was burying family after family, trying to rebury his mother. Trying to get rid of her. But why the grotesque disposal of the bodies? Why bury them with their arms over their heads? She had to ask. “Teddy? Could I ask you something…about the families that…you did what had to be done. Why did you bury them with their hands in the air?”

He struck a macabre pose, arms over his head, fingers splayed. “An orchard,” he said sweetly. “I always bury them in an orchard like Mother and the grandparents, but orchards are hard to find, so I make my own.”