Wreck the Halls (26 page)

She nodded thoughtfully as we passed houses set on quarter-acre lots, the car barely crawling until Ellie spotted a
brighter set of yard lights than the rest, and the sign for Joy's beauty parlor: THE BEAUTY PART.

Much brighter. Joy's place was a double-wide mobile home with a slant-roofed, sheet-metal side addition, a long, plowed driveway, and utility sheds, all looking well maintained. There was a little shed for trash bins, a larger one that probably held yard equipment, and some foundation plantings. Each had a neat, securely tied winter jacket of burlap.

Two vehicles stood in the drive: a new Dodge van with the dealer sticker still in the window, and a little white Toyota. “Huh,” Ellie said, blinking in surprise from the glare as we pulled our own car in.

Because it wasn't just porch lights. Yard lamps, walkway illumination, a floodlight over the cars, and a pair of security lamps were all connected, apparently, to motion detectors. They snapped on one after another as we approached the deck made of pressure-treated lumber, swept clean of snow.

A face appeared at the window. Another trio of bulbs blazed on, at either side of the door and above it.

“Good thing George fixed that generator,” Ellie murmured as we climbed the wooden steps.

“Yeah.” I knocked. Inside, women's voices: Joy and Willetta.

“Are they trying to attract someone? Or keep someone away?”

A series of locks clicked open. As I listened to them, my errand for Victor got steadily more interesting. Not that I thought it had anything to do with Merle Carmody's murder.

Still, I couldn't shake the impression that the whole place was lit up like the tarmac around an airport terminal.

Or like a prison yard.

Chapter 9

R
eally, it was too bad; up until this moment I’d
harbored a secret hope for Joy Abrams and Victor. But stepping into the mobile home Joy shared with Willetta, I realized the futility of trying to convince Joy that her relationship with my ex-husband had a future.

Outdoors, her place was a pristine winter paradise; I got the sense that if even a single snowflake were misaligned, Joy would be out there carefully replacing it atop a snowdrift.

And the inside was the same. Joy glanced past us toward the yard lights. “He sent you here? Victor, to talk to me?”

“Well, yes,” I admitted, knowing now that it was hopeless.

Smells of soapsuds and scouring powder hung in the air, and Joy herself was perfectly dressed and made-up as if prepared for a camera. She didn't seem to be expecting company and the shop looked closed, yet she even had her eyelashes on, LAir du Temps wafting sweetly from her. And whether or not she'd articulated it clearly to herself or only felt it, a woman in so much control of her person and her home wouldn't put up with being controlled by Victor. Or with his efforts to do so. Back when I was married to him,
Mr. Don't-Move-A-Muscle-Without-My-Say-So used to choose my shoes for me, always buying them a size too small.

She led us in, sat us down at a small table in the tiny eating area. A countertop with double sink and cooking surface, both gleaming, divided it from a plushly carpeted living room, plenty big enough for two people.

But not for three. And still I spotted not a single thing out of place; in fact, there weren't really any things to speak of other than the neat, unremarkable furniture: no magazines, no old newspapers, not even a potted plant, and of course no messy woodstove.

“Look,” Joy said, spreading her hands. Her apricot nails precisely matched the color of her elaborately done hair. “It's not so much that I don't want to go on seeing Victor.”

Honestly, you'd have thought Joy and Willetta just sat here in the evenings, motionless with their hands in their laps; it was almost eerie. I glanced out at the snow spreading blue-white under the yard lights, shadows deepening as dusk thickened into early evening. The windowsill smelled of ammonia glass-cleaner.

“Go on, Joy, tell her,” a peevish voice broke in. “Your kid sister has moved in on you, and she's ruining your life.”

Willetta appeared. Wan and aggrieved looking, with lank hair and a spotty complexion, she was the before to Joy's carefully tended after.

“Now, honey, that's not it at all,” Joy began placatingly.

Willetta sat down uninvited at the tiny table. Four was a crowd but she didn't seem to care. “He's such a jerk. Which my big sister would ignore if I weren't around. But,” she finished smugly, “I am.”

Yeah, and aren't you a little ray of sunshine in everyone's life? I thought, eyeing her bitten nails and chapped lips.

“He's a selfish son of a bitch, a liar, and a con artist,” she went on, sounding gratified. “I can tell.”

Well, I couldn't argue with any of that. But somehow hearing her say it made me want to, even though those shoes Victor used to choose always had four-inch heels and pinched unbearably.

“You know, Willetta,” I began, intending to point out that some people balanced their flaws with competence in other areas: for instance, the ability to eradicate sneaky brain tumors. As far as I could tell, her only balance was between a bad attitude and a lousy disposition.

But: “I’m not going to let what happened to me happen to my sister,” she declared before I could get the words out.

Joy's eyes apologized over the red formica of the little table. “Since our dad died, Willetta and I only have each other,” she said by way of explanation. “We do get protective of one another, sometimes.”

“But I do all the protection,” Willetta muttered resentfully.

“Your dad was from around here?” I asked. I gazed out at the yard lights again. Ellie nodded, listening.

“Uh-huh. Pembroke,” Willetta said flatly. “In the woods.”

Pembroke was the first town after you got off the causeway and onto the mainland.

“Our father was a Maine guide.” Joy seemed to remember this with pleasure. “Fishing and hunting. We used to spend all our time in the woods with him.”

Sullen nod from Willetta. Possibly she hadn't been such a big fan of the outdoor life.

“But when he died,” Joy went on, “we felt we had to go along with his last wish, not stay out there in the sticks.” She looked up at me. “Not because we were girls. Dad taught us everything after Mom died, just as if he'd had sons. We could've stayed. But the woods is a hard place to make a living.”

“And,” Willetta contributed sourly, “rich men who want Maine guides don't like hiring women to take them on hunting and fishing trips.”

I could imagine. My old clients would never admit it but half the attraction of such a trip, to them, was pretending to be just like the guy who was taking them on it: emphasis on guy.

“So first Willetta worked while I went to school,” Joy said, “and then I started…”

“Come and see the rest of the place,” Willetta interrupted abruptly. “You don't need our boring life history.”

Although to tell the truth the rest of the place was boring, too, once you got used to cleanliness so intense Victor could have done brain surgery in it. There were two tiny bedrooms, a surprisingly large bath with shelves holding every beauty product ever invented-Joy's hair color, I noted with interest, was called Sunrise Serenade—and another room which Joy apparently used as an office space for the beauty shop, located in the add-on building.

No holiday decorations anywhere. Too messy, I guessed. And Willetta's room was a surprise. I’d expected chaos, but in this regard she apparently took after her sister: bed neatly made, a wicker hamper, louver-door closet. Nothing unusual, except…

Ellie stared past me at walls covered with framed displays of paper matchbooks. Bowling alleys, steak houses, beer bars, and sandwich shops: hundreds of matchbooks, many quite old.

“I started collecting them when I was a kid,” Willetta said with the first indication of cheerfulness that I’d seen in her. “When I get interested in a thing, I just stick with it. And for me, this was it.”

“I guess so,” I replied bemusedly. So many of them. Then a particular one caught my eye: white, with red lettering.
DUDDY
’
S BAR, ROUTE
214,
MEDDYBEMPS.
“Kind of a rough joint, isn't it?”

“My friend,” Joy had said, “was out there…”

I guessed I knew which friend she'd been talking about, now: Willetta. Or both of them.

Willetta shrugged. “I’d go with my boyfriend, and afterwards I’d go alone. After our big breakup. I was a wreck, for a while.”

It didn't seem to me that any very extensive repair work had been done: a who-cares? attitude toward personal grooming, a sour mood, and a seemingly universal sense of suspicion for any man who came within ten miles were definitely Willetta's main traits. But then she surprised me again.

“It wasn't fair, what I said back in the kitchen,” she said. “When we were younger, Joy always took care of me and never once complained about it. I shouldn't have… hey.”

Her pale-lashed eyes flickered suspiciously as something outside her window caught her attention. Her shoulders tensed sharply and I heard her sudden intake of breath, as if she were about to cry out. I peered past her.

But it was only a cat. Another light went on, this one on a neighboring porch; the animal streaked toward it. The light went out again.

Willetta's shoulders relaxed. “Pretty elaborate illumination you've got,” I remarked casually.

“Yeah,” she snapped. She hadn't liked my seeing her anxiety.

“Come on,” she added curtly, waving me out of the small, neat room where she slept.

If she slept. Pinched face, bony shoulder blades jutting beneath her sweater, sharp eyes… I had the sudden feeling that maybe she hung from the rail in her tiny closet like a little white bat.

“… I’ve had times when I needed help and didn't get it,” Ellie was saying to Joy, out in the little kitchen. Explaining, I gathered, why she was interested in helping Faye Anne. “And other times, I did. Someone helped me for no reason.

And I know which times I’m in favor of, is all,” she finished determinedly.

Just then the phone rang. Joy jumped a foot, and I felt Willetta's reflexive, startled movement behind me. The two of them were as nervous as caged animals.

“I don't go to Duddy's anymore, though,” Willetta said, trying to pick up our conversation where we'd left off, to sound halfway normal. But she was watching intently as Joy answered the phone, pulled a book from the shelf beneath it, and began writing down what I gathered was a beauty-shop appointment.

Suddenly I put it together with the notion I’d had when Victor mentioned Willetta breaking up with some local guy: the yard lit up like an airport, their jumpiness. “Willetta. The guy you broke up with. That you went to the bar with. It didn't happen to be Peter Christie?”

“Yeah,” she admitted. “He liked Duddy's. Liked feeling that he was slumming it, being around those tougher guys. You know,” she added, “the kind I mean.”

Sure I did. Never mind that despite the rough atmosphere in the place, most of Duddy's regulars were just plain fellows having a beer. Or that most of them worked harder in a day than Peter ever would in his life. His little heart would be thrilled, I felt sure, at the sight of the few with the too-bright eyes and the vials of illegal prescription painkillers in their pockets.

Her next remark seemed to confirm this. “Peter's the kind of guy who likes to drive through a poor neighborhood,” she said.

A whiff of permanent-wave lotion wafted through the half-open door that I guessed led out to Joy's shop. Glancing through it, I caught my breath at the sight of a bald, white head silhouetted in the backlit window. But when I looked again it was only a hairdresser's wig stand, for propping a hairpiece while it was combed and styled.

“Gives him a charge, thinking about how much better off he is,” Willetta was saying.

A wig stand. I didn't imagine Joy got much of that sort of work. But I supposed she had to be prepared for anything; over the years Wade had collected old tools for working on guns he never expected to see, either, not wanting to have to turn down paying jobs for lack of equipment.

Joy, I guessed, would be the same. “Even though,” Willetta added, “when you come right down to it, Peter's not that much better off, is he?”

The old car he drove, the tiny house on Prince Street: Peter wasn't going to be showing up in Forbes anytime soon, that was for sure. And his own relative poverty was yet another reason for him to relish any measly power he could have over other people: women, for instance.

“But I didn't tell anybody I’d been seeing him,” Willetta said abruptly. “Joy didn't, either.” Her eyes narrowed. “So how did you know?”

“Call it intuition.” A rush of anger against Peter Christie moved me down the mobile home's narrow hallway, toward Ellie and Joy.

“That little rat is doing it to her, too,” I told Ellie, angling my head back at Willetta. “She broke up with him, now he's stalking her.”

Ellie looked thoughtful, putting it together: their nervousness, all the lights. But neither sister wanted to talk about it. As we prepared to go I told them that if Peter gave either of them any more trouble they should call the cops. The women in California had quit complaining too soon, I thought; if faced with official opposition I felt sure Peter would back off.

Still, there was another possibility and I had to mention it. “Two people have died and one's been attacked,” I told them. “There is no real evidence against Peter.”

“But?” Joy asked, while Willetta's face went still.

“But under the circumstances I think you're wise. It's worth being extra careful,” I said smoothly, and they seemed to accept this. Finally, I tried raising the topic of Victor again.

At the mention of his name Willetta went back to her room and shut the door. Slammed it, actually, and cranked up the kind of loud music that would have sounded right at home in Duddy's.

“I’m sorry,” Joy replied when I asked what I should tell Victor. “Maybe when she calms down. Right now, though, she's just really upset. I don't like leaving her alone, and having Victor here isn't very…”