by Ninie Hammon
Bailey was not surprised to see not one or even two but three Kavanaugh County Sheriff’s vehicles — one parked down the street, one in the driveway and one out front.
Fletch got out of the car in the driveway and went to talk to Brice. Bailey walked along beside Bethany, thumb in her mouth, dragging her minion blanket, resembling nothing so much as a condemned prisoner on the way to execution … until Dobbs reached back and pushed the screen door behind him open just enough for fluff and fur to appear.
Bundy bounded down the steps and raced to Bailey, who knelt in the grass to accept his greeting.
Bethany looked at the dancing, wiggling ball of black and white fur … and smiled!
“Puppy!”
“His name is Bundy. Feel how soft his fur is.”
As soon as she reached out, Bundy was all over her, jumping up and licking her and wiggling, his tail a blur.
Sparky was more circumspect. He ran to T.J., then to Bailey.
Then he approached Bethany, who was by then fending off Bundy’s attack of delight … and giggling.
“It’s cold out here,” Bailey wailed, took Bethany by the hand and led the child trailing two dogs into the house.
Dobbs had wisely ignored Bethany — he was a big guy and she was a very small little girl — just mentioned casually to Bailey that he’d “fixed up the parlor” while she was gone and she might want to “go take a look.”
The parlor was on the far side of the living room, opposite the door that lead into the hallway toward the “library” that Bailey had turned into an art studio. Like many other rooms in the huge house, the parlor had stood cold and empty the whole time Bailey had lived there, had only a few pieces of leftover furniture.
Yeah, Dobbs had fixed it up, alright. The room Bailey had left on Monday with a worn loveseat, a couple of random tables and a wingback chair with a broken foot had been transformed into a comfortable “den,” so warm and inviting she couldn’t imagine he’d managed to put it all together by himself.
“Oh … Dobbs,” was all she could say.
Matching recliner loveseats covered in soft, “scuffed leather,” sat opposite comfortable overstuffed chairs, one covered in a plaid fabric that featured the warm brown tones of the loveseats, another with a pattern that matched the forest green of the couch. There were end tables and coffee tables of glossy dark walnut, lamps with gold shades so the light from them was warm and soothing. Fluffy pillows and cuddly afghans were scattered randomly — all in subdued earth-tone colors that coordinated perfectly with the three multicolored rag rugs. Bailey was an artist; she understood color. The warm, relaxed feel of this room was intentional and deliberate, the product of dozens of decisions about furniture, fabric, color, texture and lighting.
Had Dobbs done all this on his own? Or had he hired a decorator? No sense asking him, he’d just brush it off, as he had her exclamation at the huge, flatscreen television mounted on the wall.
“Figured the little one would want to watch cartoons. I got cable.”
Bailey teared up, tiptoed to kiss him on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you!” He turned and made a big show of pulling his gold watch out of his pocket, studying it as if it actually kept time.
Bailey looked at her watch. A Timex. It was 8 a.m. — give or take a few minutes. Then she turned to gaze again in wonder at the room.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Sergei Mikhailov looked at his watch. A Rolex. It was 8 a.m. Exactly 8 a.m. Then he turned to gaze again in wonder at the room.
He was standing beneath the huge archway that was the main entrance to the circular restaurant on the bottom floor of the Nautilus Casino, a room that was, in its present state, an obscene parody of style and good taste, but it would do for his purposes.
Directly across from him on the other side of the room were the doors leading to the kitchens. The wall to the right of them contained the huge bar, thirty, maybe forty feet long and three feet wide made of a lustrous teakwood with a deep, swirling grain. Behind the bar was a thirty-foot mirrored wall with glass shelves, displaying hundreds of singular bottles of liquor — everything from the finest cognac to the simplest bourbon whiskey.
Besides the main entrance where he stood, there were two additional restaurant entrances — the south entrance to his right and the north entrance at the end of the bar to his left. Gigantic Christmas trees decorated with colorful balls and bright lights stood sentinel on both sides of all the entrances. There were pointy-leafed holly wreaths at spaced intervals along the walls, connected by draped pine garlands across the fronts of the aquariums.
The aquariums were the room’s finest feature. Inset so they were flush with the blue marble walls, they appeared to be windows out into the sea where colorful tropical fish in every shape and size glided gracefully through the sparkling water. Artfully placed lighting shone down through them, casting rippling reflections to dance on every surface in the room.
Now, they were covered up with ugly swags of tacky greenery.
The restaurant had no ceiling. A chrome grid supported white globe lights the size of pumpkins, pearls with clamshell shades, that hung down to light the room. Above the restaurant was a 360-degree observation deck where gamblers and party guests on the second floor could look down on the diners. As could the guests in the hotel rooms that faced the open atrium where the restaurant was located on the ground floor.
The railing that lined the deck was shiny chrome with an inset design — a pod of chrome dolphins cavorting in an endless circle. Attached to the railing around the whole circle of observation deck was a single strand of Christmas lights with bulbs as big as cantaloupes. Dangling from the railing directly above the main entrance where Mikhailov stood were half a dozen oversized Christmas stockings ten feet long with names stenciled on them, designed for feet that had twelve toes.
Mikhailov had lived among Americans for most of his adult life but he would never understand them. Oh, he understood that at this time of year, Christmas decorations were a cultural imperative. Themed decorations could be charming. Done tastefully they could convey a particular take on the Christmas traditions. Nothing wrong with that. But Crenshaw had gone a bridge too far when he’d decorated his beautiful casino/hotel complex using How the Grinch Stole Christmas as the theme.
Mikhailov loathed W. Maxwell Crenshaw but had once believed the man possessed at least a modicum of style and good taste. It appeared Mikhailov had been grievously mistaken.
On the archway beneath the words “Where your every desire is fulfilled,” a sign had been added, “… in Who-ville style.” A gigantic sleigh, piled high with Christmas presents, pulled along by Max with his tree-limb antler was outlined in neon on the top of the building — probably visible for miles.
But the co de grâs was the Grinch himself.
The green beast stood at the far end of the restaurant outside the kitchen entrances beneath the east side of the observation deck with its back toward the main entrance. All dressed up in a red Christmas jacket with white fur encircling the wrists and neck, and a Santa hat resting at a rakish angle on its head, the creature was looking back over his left shoulder toward the entrance. An evil grin twisted his already loathsome features. His left foot rested on a gigantic Christmas present wrapped in shiny green paper with a big red bow on it. The other Grinch foot, clad in a red felt slipper with white fur around the top, was on the floor.
Reaching with both hands above his head to the single strand of Christmas lights attached to the railings of the observation deck — it was clear the Grinch was taking the lights down. Stealing them. The portion he had already removed dangled to the floor by his foot.
A more disturbingly ugly creature Mikhailov had never seen: Pear-shaped body with a huge round belly, a big head and skinny arms, supported by ridiculously spindly legs wearing red elf slippers. The creature had yellow eyes with red centers, and the predatory look on his face ought to give any normal child nightmares, and this was a children’s story, was it
not?
What kind of idiot puts a fifty-foot-tall furry green … thing in the middle of a stylish restaurant? It defied any logic Mikhailov could summon to apply to it. And that was only the most egregious of the decoration faux pas that littered the otherwise classically styled facility, so garish they reminded Sergei of those awful beads drunks on Bourbon Street in New Orleans wore around their necks during Mardi Gras.
“Do you have any idea what I had to pay to get that thing made?” Crenshaw had said of the creature when he’d escorted Mikhailov into the restaurant earlier that morning.
More than a nickel and the man had been pitilessly overcharged.
“Cost an extra ten grand just to make the fur flame-retardant. Fire codes, you know.” It had been clear he was proud as punch of all the decorations. “The trees and greenery are real, makes the room smell like Christmas.”
Crenshaw had pontificated about the nature of the clientele who patronized his establishment during the holiday season. High rollers could afford to jet off to a warmer climate with their families so he had to make do with the chaff, attract the locals, appeal to their more simple likes and basic appetites.
Mikhailov had watched his performance. It’d been quite a show. Crenshaw was a fool — not the buffoon he wanted others to think he was, but a fool nonetheless. He had managed to build an empire on Good Ole Boy, aw-shucks self-deprecation. Beneath that facade was a shrewd, clever mind and a character totally devoid of any moral hindrances — a fool, though, because he had not the slightest idea that those smarter than he was saw through his act. Crenshaw had somehow latched onto the notion that furry green monstrosities and a herd of ridiculous-looking Cindy Lou Who servers would seem charming and carefree — which was, after all, the atmosphere one wanted to foster in a casino where you made your money only when other people lost theirs.
As he spoke, Crenshaw’s face had begun to melt.
Mikhailov had gawked at it in disbelieving horror.
The man’s features had elongated as if they were made of wax. His chin had slid down his neck, dragging his lower lip with it to reveal teeth Mikhailov had not noticed were rotted, looked like the blackened chunks of foundation after a fire.
As his nose had melted, it pulled down his eyelids. As they’d begun to liquify, the eyeballs behind them — rock hard marbles — had popped out and slid down the goo of his cheeks like skiers on a slope, tethered by slimy red tendons and tissue.
“To what do I owe the honor of your presence on such short… actually no notice at all,” he had asked, and Mikhailov had been amazed that he could speak at all given that he had no mouth or tongue …
His skull had been exposed next and something green, like a sprout — no, a worm — had wiggled up through great fissures in the bone.
No. No, no, nooooooo!
Mikhailov’s heart had started to hammer like a woodpecker trying to get out of his chest. All the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and Mikhailov had felt his lungs straining for air. He’d begun to gasp.
He could have demanded that Crenshaw stop. He’d stopped the girl — the sister whose fingers he’d mashed. She’d been growing boils dripping yellow pus on her face … he’d told her to stop and she had stopped. But if he looked at Crenshaw’s melted face, he would vomit, so he looked away, past Crenshaw to two Cindy Lou Who servers spreading a cloth across a nearby table. Both had their backs to him.
“Excuse me,” he’d said to them, and they turned. Their faces were not melting. They had no faces to melt, just blank spaces between their ears like the people in videos whose faces are blurred to obscure their identities.
“Mr. Mikhailov, are you …?”
He’d turned back to Crenshaw, whose face was perfectly normal now.
Mikhailov’d grabbed control and clutched it in an iron fist, showed no shadow on his face of his inner turmoil.
“I require nothing further from you.”
He’d needed Crenshaw to leave him alone so he could take a casual, solitary walk around the facility. When he was at the Nautilus in October, he had seen little but a lavishly appointed private game room. Now, he needed to see the whole facility, plan where and how he would spring his little surprise.
“We will talk at … say early afternoon, a late lunch. Your office. A salad for me — just greens, no dressing, a sliced tomato and a hard-boiled egg on the side.”
Crenshaw was not so dense that he couldn’t tell he had been dismissed. He reached out to shake Mikhailov’s hand but Mikhailov ignored the gesture. He shook hands only when not to do so would constitute a grievous breach of decorum in a situation that demanded it. This situation did not. The feel of someone’s fingers grasping his — even though he never took off his gloves — was so abhorrent he always had to concentrate not to yank his hand back.
He was certain others could not tell, could not feel it through the glove on his right hand — the ropes of scar tissue that decorated his tortured flesh. He knew that objectively, but even so, he sometimes watched blood drip out the cuff of his glove and spatter on his shoes when someone squeezed the raw sponge of tissue beneath too tightly.
That’s all his hand was sometimes — a raw sponge of tissue. Except when it wasn’t, when it was his real hand, what was left of it. Sometimes the black leather glove became transparent, revealing the wreckage, the damage the best surgeons in Moscow had required half a dozen separate surgeries to repair. They’d told him how fortunate he was that the “dog” he’d said attacked him had only ripped off skin and the tissue beneath, had severed no tendons or ligaments, had bitten off only the little finger.
Fortunate, yes. Mikhailov had been fortunate, indeed, that the tsunami of clotted rage that had crashed ashore in his mind that day had receded before he’d chewed off his other fingers as well.
After Crenshaw left, Mikhailov stood for a time alone in the entrance archway of the restaurant, looking out over the sea of white tableclothed tables.
He turned to the potted Christmas tree to his right. Examined it. Then examined the one on the left. He circumnavigated the room, examining the garlands and wreaths and the other Christmas trees.
When he finally left the restaurant, he was wearing a look that approximated genuine delight.
Chapter Thirty-Five
T.J. knelt on one knee in front of Bethany and imparted to the little girl a significant piece of dog wisdom.
“If you run away, most times a dog’ll chase you.”
The next few hours were punctuated by the sounds of a squealing child bounding through the house with yapping dogs on her heels.
They quickly developed a racetrack that extended from the newly appointed parlor-turned-into-a-den across the living room, down the hallway, through the studio, back down the hallway, into the kitchen through the doorway off the hall and out of the kitchen through the doorway by the breakfast nook … and back into the den. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
The kitchen was the only room in the house with exclusively hardwood floors — no rugs or carpeting. It was a show to watch the little girl race across the hardwood floor, make a sharp turn around the big table in the middle of the room — with the dogs trying to keep up, leaning in like motorcycle riders in a tight curve, their claws scratching ineffectually on the floor as they slid sideways instead of turning.
Bailey stood in the living room, watching the parade fly through as she talked to Brice about the protection he was providing to her — two deputies stationed by the fence in the back yard, one on each side. Fletch sat in a squad car out front.
“We’ve worked out a schedule.” He glanced to include T.J. and Dobbs. “One of us — T.J., Dobbs or I — will be here every minute.” He paused for just a beat, painful memories washing across his face. “We’ll be taking Bundy out to pee.”
The race ended when Bundy came bounding into the room sans Bethany and Sparky. Bailey and T.J. found Bethany sitting on the kitchen floor leaning up against the cabinet, not crying but looking like she might or might not, hadn’t y
et made up her mind.
“Fall down,” the little girl said.
Bailey saw why. Bethany had taken her shoes off and when she tried to make the hardwood-floor turn, her sock feet couldn’t get any better traction than the dogs’ claws and they had slid out from under her.
The little girl rubbed the back of her head. “Hurted me.”
That seemed to make the decision for her and her face puckered up, her lip stuck out and she tuned up to let fly. T.J. headed her off.
“Sit,” he told Sparky, who was never more than an arm’s reach from Bethany.
The dog obediently plopped his backside down on the floor.
“Sparky sit down!” Bethany said, surprised.
“Down,” T.J. said.
Sparky plopped on his belly.
“Stand.” Sparky was immediately back on all fours.
Bethany got to her feet. “I do it! I do it! Sparky, sit!”
Sparky sat.
“He knows all kinda other tricks,” T.J. said, turned to Sparky and said, “Shake.” Sparky offered his right paw.
For the next half hour Bethany gleefully ordered the dog around, told him to roll over, to play dead, to speak. She shot him with the imaginary gun of her thumb and index finder and he collapsed “dead” in a heap. Her favorite command was “dance.” When Sparky got up on his hind legs and pranced around on them, Bethany danced with him.
Bundy was adorable, of course, in a fluffy-wiggling-delightful sort of way.
But Sparky was … amazing. It was almost like the dog knew that it was important to make the child happy, to give her reason to laugh, to help her relax and adjust.
At one point, Bailey caught T.J.’s eye and cocked her chin toward Sparky-and-Bethany, which quickly had become a hyphenated word. He nodded his head in mute understanding.
By midmorning, with some scrambled eggs, Captain Crunch cereal and orange juice with pulp snug in her belly, the little girl had dozed off on the couch in front of the television in the den. Both minion blankets were tucked snug around her. Sparky lay snoozing contentedly at her feet. He had not left her side since she got out of the car.