Vampire Blood (9 page)

He leveled blue eyes almost the exact shade as his wife’s at Jenny and winked. “Jenny, you sure are looking pretty these days. Even with that sunburn. Don’t look any older than you did when you were a teenager. What’s the secret? How about letting me in on it?”

“Lots of chocolate and fresh air.” Jenny laughed, and gently motioned with her full hands around her. “George, you never change, either—always the flatterer.”

“I wouldn’t want him to.” Maude hugged her husband, and he took her hand.

“How’s Ernest doing?” George inquired.

“Still kicking, you know him. Sore from that fall, so he’s sleeping in today. Be back tomorrow.”

“Glad to hear he’s okay.” George seemed relieved. He turned to study the house.

He started pointing out some things to Maude patiently as she asked questions. Would one coat be enough? Did they really want it white again? Was that hole caused by termites? Weren’t Jenny and her dad doing a fine job?

Jenny watched them with a half-smile as they talked about their home.

“Maude?” George unfolded the newspaper and handed it to his wife, as if he’d just remembered it. “Did you read where they’ve found more slaughtered animals right outside Summer Haven? It’s getting worse.”

“Uh, huh. I read it while you were still snoozing, dear.” Maude’s face was somber. “Though I suspect there’s much more to it than that. Look on the back page. Twenty C. There’s a short story on a bag lady they found dead inside a trash dumpster outside a Denny’s. She died in the same way as the animals you’re talking about, and they’re blaming all of it on some mysterious malicious cult.” Maude was looking at Jenny now, her eyes frightened.

“You still don’t think it is a cult, do you?” Jenny asked, intrigued.

Maude shook her head. “Nope. Something terrible is plaguing us. Call it a premonition, but I don’t think it’s over. There’s something horrific going on.” She seemed to grow thoughtful. “I’d love to talk to those farmers and to the person who found that dead woman.”

The older woman swallowed nervously and shivered as a cloud passed over the blazing sun and shadowed their faces.

George’s eyes held a mute appeal.

“I know. It’s none of my business. I’m retired. Well, no matter. I won’t get involved.” She patted George’s hand indulgently with a wan smile. She seemed to know he hated such talk. He was selfish with their time together since his last heart attack.

“Honey,” George dropped a kiss on her white head, “I’m glad to hear that.

“Are you about ready then to go into town? You said something about needing some groceries earlier. Came out in the first place to corral you and get us on the road before we got sidetracked with that spooky talk about dead bag ladies and cults.” He wiggled his eyebrows, and they all laughed.

“Thought maybe, after shopping, we might eat supper out in town somewhere, too,” George suggested.

“It’s a shame that movie house isn’t open yet,” he said. “A movie afterwards might have been nice.”

Maude shot a dark look at Jenny, but said nothing.

The older couple ambled towards the house, but Jenny couldn’t stop thinking about the butchered animals and the dead woman.

What was
going on in Summer Haven?

The day turned out to be long and sweltering, and Jenny pushed herself more than usual, only stopping for the cheese sandwich that she’d brought along and no supper at all.

Yet she experienced a sense of accomplishment as twilight fell, and she appraised what she’d done. She’d been so busy that the time had slipped away and only the fading of the light had forced her to stop.

Maude and George hadn’t returned the rest of the day. Maybe they’d decided to eat supper out after all. Good for them.

Jenny’s stomach growled.

She put everything neatly away and drove into town. The dark was settling in like an old friend, and she was hungry, but she first had to get a couple of necessities, milk, Hersey bars and Hostess cupcakes, from the supermarket.

Afterwards she’d treat herself to a healthy meal at Joey’s: a big fat cheeseburger, malt and onion rings. She deserved it. Besides, she didn’t want to be alone.

Jenny was in the third aisle, mentally scanning the shelves, trying to fill her basket, when she spotted her. She was half-turned towards Jenny.

A stumbling gray-haired woman in a dirty looking sweater with missing buttons and hatred narrowing her red-rimmed eyes clasped a bottle of whiskey to her breast. She hissed at another woman and was making a scene in the middle of the supermarket. The store employee had her by the arm, as if she were a truant child.

The old woman was behaving like someone homeless off the street, an animal, or a person not quite right in the head, as she snarled at the younger woman in a checker’s uniform. Then, totally unprovoked, she stomped maliciously on the younger woman’s foot.

The store’s employee shrieked and released her.

Jenny had unconsciously moved closer. Drawn. She could hear them arguing now.

“I told you to get your
damn hands off me!”
the old woman spat, gloating. “You got no right, no damn right to talk to me like that, missy! Told you, I’m not
stealing
it. I got money to
pay
for it. I do,”
the old woman protested vehemently as she started sidling away, trying to escape. “Get away from me, or I’ll poke your eyes out next.”

The crazy woman spun around like a whirling dervish, and Jenny’s worse fear was realized.

She knew her.

Mom.

As her demented mother sprinted from the store, still clutching the bottle, she passed Jenny, nearly knocking her down. With her mouth open and her eyes wide in shock, Jenny fell against the shelves of cold cereal, knocking a mess of them to the floor, and gaped at the fleeing woman.

Their eyes had met for a split second, and her mother’s had filled instantly with guilty hatred. She hadn’t spoken to her daughter, but had escaped out the electric doors. The checker dogged her trail, railing at her to stop until she lost her outside in the dark beyond the market’s lighted doorway.

Shocked, Jenny froze in the middle of the aisle. The words:
Mom, wait for me! Mom! Come back!
echoed in her numb mind, but her tongue had swollen in her mouth, and they’d never gotten any further.

She couldn’t have been more devastated if her mother had physically slammed her to the ground and spat on her. Her heart was battered by the fresh memory of her mother’s spite. Her mother’s crime. Stealing from the store like a common criminal.

Why is she acting like this?
she thought tearfully.
Why does she loathe me so? What have I ever done to her that’s so unforgivable?
Jenny anguished.

She hates me.

She reviewed what her father had said a few days ago. No, Jenny furiously refused to buy it. She wouldn’t take all the blame.

It’s your mother who is the sick one, Jenny, so very, very sick,
a tiny voice whispered in her ear, trying to console her.
She’s using you, everything wrong in her life, as just an excuse.

Jenny refused to let the tears materialize. Not yet. Not until she took care of something first. She stepped up to the angry woman checker, who was limping.

“I know that woman.” Jenny, her face blushing in shame, laid a hand gently on the woman’s arm. “I’ll pay for what she stole, if you don’t call the police on her,” she pleaded.

The store clerk had hard eyes, but she snorted and replied snootily, “It’s all right by me, lady. I don’t want the trouble. Calling in the cops, answering loads of questions for their reports and everything. We’re short-handed today as it is, and I really haven’t the time to waste over an old crazy street lush like her.”

“How much?” Jenny gulped, refusing to let the woman’s cruel words affect her as she pulled some crumpled bills out of her purse. It was a good thing she’d gotten paid Friday, or she wouldn’t have been able to bail her mother out of this mess.

“With tax,” the woman figured silently, “it comes to eight dollars and sixty-three cents.”

Jenny counted out the money and slapped it into the woman’s grasping hands. Then she turned and raced out of the store in search of her mother. The clerk yelled behind her, “I don’t want to see that drunken slut in here again, ya hear? Or I
will
call the police!”

Jenny searched the murky dimness of the parking lot. Her delinquent, kleptomaniac mother was nowhere to be found. Like a jinni in a bottle.
Poof! She’s here. Poof! She’s gone.

Jenny could track her to her lair. She knew where it was. Close by. She’d driven past it many times, but her mother wouldn’t answer the door. She never did.

Instead, Jenny huddled in her hot car, sweating, with the dark all around her. Her hands were shaking. She couldn’t reconcile that vile old transient with the woman who’d once loved and taken care of her. The woman who had made delicious meals for her and her brothers and kept a clean house. Who’d loved them. They weren’t the same. They couldn’t possibly be.

That pitiful woman back there in the store wasn’t her mother.

With a sinking heart, Jenny knew she had to accept the truth.

That witch was her mother, and Jenny wasn’t a child any longer.

She pounded helplessly on the steering wheel, tears finally gushing.
Why, Mom. Why?

After a while, she pulled herself together and strode nonchalantly back into the store. She needed those groceries, and her cart was right where she’d left it. Half-empty. Damn if she was going to leave what she’d come for. She finished her shopping in a daze, purposely avoided the injured store clerk, paid for it and carted it out to her car.

With the warm darkness all around her, she drove unsteadily over to Joey’s restaurant. She pulled up before it, her hands shaking on the wheel, and the tears stinging.

Grow up, Jenny.

She wiped her face dry with the back of her hand and slid out of the car. The moon was beginning to climb to its lofty perch, a huge orb wreathed in pale fog. Jenny stared up at it, her thoughts heavy.

She trudged into the restaurant without looking left or right, eager to be with a normal, sane person who loved her and who hadn’t changed. Much.

Joey must have been able to tell by her face as she staggered in that she was in a foul mood. She threw herself on a stool and lowered her head onto her arms.

“Got a problem?” Joey gently brushed her slouched shoulder.

Jenny peered up at him with tired eyes. “Yeah. Two of them. Our mother and father.” Her words were acid, her expression hopeless.

“Okay, what happened now?” Joey tossed the towel he was carrying over his shoulder and slipped around the counter to sit on the empty stool next to her. It was late, and the supper crowd had thinned.

“You sure you really want to know?” she asked.

Joey nodded. He smelled like hamburgers.

She told him about their father’s failing health, his fall, no medical insurance and the humiliating episode in the grocery store with their mother.

As she spoke, her brother inspected the night world outside the dark window.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Some mother we have, huh?

“I wondered why Dad, neither one of you, hadn’t come in the last few days. You’re usually here for breakfast, but you weren’t this weekend. Now I know why.” He closed his eyes for a moment, sighing, and rubbed his eyelids.

“I don’t know what to do about Mom, but we’re going to have to talk to Dad about getting some insurance, Jenny.”

Jenny gazed sadly back at him. “And tell him what?”

For a moment Joey looked as baffled as she felt.

“He’s broke. You know mom and he never saved anything—never had anything to save. They don’t have anything. He’s got to work to pay the bills and feed himself and Mom day to day.

“Mom? She’s in another world. I can’t even catch
her, much less talk to her.”

Joey had nothing to say. He leaned his head in his hand and stared at her mournfully, like an unhappy puppy dog.

“She was acting like a crazy woman, Joey. I mean it. Afterwards she just disappeared. Poof! Like some whiskey jinni.”

Joey had the bad manners to laugh, and Jenny threw him a scathing look.

“If you think it’s so damn funny, then the next time I catch her making a fool of herself, I’ll come fetch you. You can bail her out.”

“Oh, Jenny,” he spoke sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I know it was hard on you. Ah, Sis, what are we gonna do?”

Underneath it all, she knew he was as upset as she was about it, yet Joey had always had a funny way of taking and showing things. Responsibility scared him. It was easier to laugh it off. She wished she could do that.

“What can we do? Like you told me the other day, we can’t live their lives for them.”

Joey grimaced, reminded of his earlier lecture. “I’m sorry, Jenny, for jumping on you about Dad. I had no idea how bad things really were. Now I know why you’re working with him. You need to keep an eye on him. What can I do to help?”