by L. T. Vargus
“What about the groceries?”
Fingers grasping the door handle, Charlie stopped and glanced back at Nancy.
“The what?”
“You said you’d bring groceries. Bread and creamer. I told you this morning.”
Charlie felt her blood pressure surge. Before she could say something she’d regret, she pushed through the door and let it slam shut behind her.
THIRTY-TWO
“She always does this. Anytime she’s upset about something, she gets everyone else within reach stirred up, too. Because God help you, if Mother is unhappy, everyone better rush around trying to fix it. And then just like that—” Charlie snapped her fingers “—she decides she’s fine. Crisis over. Then she turns it around on the rest of us and acts like we’re the ones making a big fuss.”
“I still think you should have used the Judge Judy line,” Allie said.
Charlie rolled her eyes. Allie wasn’t helping, but then that was typical.
After a few minutes, though, it occurred to Charlie that things could have been worse. She should have been glad there weren’t reporters hanging around trying to pick at old wounds. That really would upset her mother, and that would be bad news for everyone. All things considered, it was a good thing it had been a simple misunderstanding.
And another good thing: Charlie had finally figured out a way to get to Vivien Marley. By the time she made it back to the gate outside of Bridgefork Heights, it was only a few minutes to four. The shift change would happen any minute now. She waited across the street again, watching from a discreet distance.
Right on cue, the new security guard sauntered up to the gate, a little older and heftier than the youngster he was taking over for. At first, Charlie worried the older man may be more savvy, more discerning, harder to fool. Something about his doughy face told her otherwise, however. The soft chin spoke to the rent-a-cop dream: this guy was here to sit for eight hours, collect a paycheck, and generally do as little as possible.
That made a kind of sense, Charlie thought. This was a gated community that didn’t really need a lot of guarding, after all, tucked away in a small town like Salem Island. Anyone driven and ambitious wouldn’t be suited to work such a cushy job. They’d grow bored. Restless. So bring out your couch potatoes, your slugs, your narcoleptics, your dudes who want to get paid to sit in a booth playing Candy Crush.
When Brad climbed into his F-150 and sped off, Charlie made her move. She counted to ten and wheeled toward the gate. Some faint twinge of nerves squelched in her gut, but the little burst of adrenaline washed that away. It was time to perform. Nerves were not an option. Total confidence was the only way.
The guy in the booth smeared a finger across his phone a couple times before he looked up. He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to state her business.
Charlie beamed a smile at him nevertheless. Held up the bouquet she’d bought on the way over. A steal at $4.99 for the bundle.
“I’ve got a delivery for—” she pretended to consult the phony paper receipt she’d had Paige print up “—108 Strickland.”
His gaze went to the magnet affixed to the driver’s side door, the bouquet of pink tulips in Charlie’s hand.
The guard bobbed his head once, and his hand moved to something Charlie couldn’t see, some lever or button off to his right.
“A real chatterbox, this guy,” Allie muttered, and Charlie realized he hadn’t uttered a single word thus far.
A faint buzz emitted, and then the gates swung aside in what felt like slow motion. Charlie drove through the opening and into the sacred inner sanctum of Bridgefork Heights.
THIRTY-THREE
Pride swelled in Charlie’s chest as the car thumped over the barrier and moved beyond the gates. Icy tendrils of exhilaration quivered in her torso. Her cheeks hurt from smiling.
“Yeah, nice job and all, but don’t go counting your chickens just yet,” Allie said.
Charlie couldn’t help it. She always felt giddy like this when one of her schemes went to plan.
She felt like she was driving into some secret lair—the fortress where the rich people all hid, secured behind thick metal fencing.
Mansions squatted everywhere in Bridgefork Heights, spaced out on fields of sprawling grass, hulking structures sprouting from the ground. Monstrous brick facades shone out from the sides of the street, arches and spires and turrets. Tangles of ivy clung to some of the walls, bringing a touch of the English countryside to these New World palaces. Other homes sported Greek columns, looking a bit like mini-versions of the White House. They were all gleaming and spotless. Giant toys that had never been removed from the packaging.
She drove slowly, reading the numbers on the houses and mailboxes, trying to take in the whole of the scene. It was tranquil here, so quiet she could hear the hum of her tires rolling over the asphalt, could hear the breath swishing in and out of her nostrils. The faintest trickle of sweat slithered over the back of her neck.
Vivien’s house took shape ahead. Another of those strangely curving brick palaces that stood three stories high, squatting at a crooked angle on the back of its grass lot. Gargantuan. None of her internet searches suggested that Vivien Marley had children, and it seemed obscene that one woman lived here by herself.
She kept slowing as she got closer, some instinct increasing her caution little by little until she pulled over to the curb across the street, concealed somewhat by a clump of rhododendron. Hands on the steering wheel, she felt the moisture clinging to her palms.
Something moved up near the house. She flinched.
A side door opened. A dark rectangle of wood swinging outward, tiny among all that brick, and Charlie gasped. The paranoid part of her sensed danger, feared discovery. Someone was onto her already.
A woman appeared in the doorway.
“Looks like a maid,” Allie said. “That frumpy shirtdress? Dead giveaway.”
Charlie nodded, but she didn’t speak.
The woman waddled on stocky legs. It looked like she was straining with something. Shining black plastic: a garbage bag. Heavy from the looks of it.
She dragged it over to the royal blue bin next to the garage, swung the lid wide, and tossed the bag in. It thudded on top of the heap, the weight of it rocking the bin. She then closed the lid and rolled the bin down to the curb. The fat plastic wheels grated over the asphalt of the driveway, each warbling out their own tone, two gritty voices that couldn’t quite harmonize.
Charlie looked down at her phone, watching out of the corner of her eye as the maid got close. But the maid deposited the bin and turned back for the house without even glancing Charlie’s way.
Charlie closed her eyes. Exhaled. Relief flooded her, tingled in her fingers, flushed her face.
OK. It was time to do this. For real.
She shifted into drive and crawled down the serpentine driveway.
Before getting out of the car, she checked herself in the rearview mirror, made eye contact with the girl in the florist uniform, and gave her a wink for good measure.
The giddy feeling swelled again as she exited the car and lugged the bouquet up to the front door, legs tingly and light beneath her.
She stepped up onto the stoop, which was sheltered by a copper awning. The immense structure looming overhead made her feel small.
Her finger jabbed at the doorbell. Half a beat later, she heard its muffled ring chime through the house, and then the maid appeared.
The woman’s eyes moved from Charlie’s face to the flowers in her hand and then back again. She smiled.
“Can I help you?”
Charlie put on her best customer service face and pitched her voice an octave higher than normal.
“I hope so. I have these flowers and a singing telegram for Vivien Marley.”
The maid’s smile died.
“I’ll just take the flowers,” she said.
Charlie gawked at her for a second.
“Yes, but the
client who purchased these… they also ordered—and paid for—a singing telegram. So if you could just get Ms. Marley…”
Charlie thought she could read disdain in the way the maid squinted at her.
“Wait here,” the woman said, her voice disappearing with her around the huge oak door.
Charlie leaned forward and tried to peer through the crack. She could only make out a sliver of a table with what she thought was a bowl of magnolias on it. Nothing useful.
She stepped back, once more turned to a speck before the hulking stack of bricks. Tiny. Insignificant.
“What song are you going to sing?” Allie whispered.
“No song.”
“What?”
“It’s not real. Just, you know… a ruse.”
“Well, don’t you think you should have a song locked and loaded? Just in case?”
“In case of what?”
“An emergency, Charlie. In case something goes wrong.”
“What kind of song is in any way helpful during an emergency?”
“‘Sexual Healing’ by Marvin Gaye would be my pick. I mean, it really depends on what kind of emergency. We don’t know what’s going to happen here. Lot of variables. Jesus, use your noodle once in a while.”
Charlie went quiet, eyes once again tracing up and down that crack in the door.
“Like, what if we bust into song,” Allie continued. “Sexual healing this. Sexual healing that. Right? And then, just as the song peaks, we bumrush this lady, right? Give ’er a forearm shiver. Chop her right in the throat. Muscle our way past her through the door. Boom. We just sang our way in.”
“And the song helps how in that scenario?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can elbow a lady in the throat without any musical accompaniment.”
“It’s a distraction, Charlie. The song lulls them. Reaches them emotionally. Gets ’em thinking about… well, sexual healing, I guess. And then, when they’re all buttered up, you know… like, that’s when you strike.”
The door jerked open then, jarring Charlie out of the conversation. It made her flinch.
The maid appeared in the opening again, smiling like an evil cat.
“Ms. Marley isn’t accepting visitors this afternoon. So I’ll just take the flowers.”
“But—”
The maid reached forward and ripped the bouquet out of Charlie’s hands with surprising ferocity.
Charlie’s fingers clawed at the empty air. A pointless little gripping motion.
The maid shoved a five-dollar bill into one of the twitching hands. Charlie gaped down at it like she’d never seen American currency before.
“For your time,” the maid said and slammed the door shut in Charlie’s face.
THIRTY-FOUR
Shock constricted in Charlie’s gut. She blinked a few times, still staring at the panes of diamond-shaped glass on the door.
“See?” Allie said. “A gripping song could have changed that outcome, but no one ever listens to me. Hey, why listen to the all-knowing voice in your head when you can go it alone and get shut down over and over? I’m a frickin’ specter, Charlie. I know things.”
Charlie could hear the smile in Allie’s voice. Her sister loved nothing more than rubbing it in.
“You’re not a specter.”
“Oh yeah? Then what am I?”
“A paranoid delusion, maybe. An auditory hallucination, probably.”
Allie gasped.
“How dare you!”
Charlie walked back down the sidewalk toward her car, thankful to have shut Allie up for the moment. That valve in her middle clenched tighter, however, erasing any joy she took from the victory.
She climbed into the car. Sat a moment in the driver’s seat, her wrists balanced on the steering wheel. She tried to push the anger down. Thought about the problem still facing her: how to talk to Vivien Marley. She needed a way in. Needed information. But how?
“What’s with this lady?” she muttered, half to Allie and half to herself. “It’s like she’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
Allie laughed a touch too hard at that, which made Charlie even angrier. The rage swelled, spread from that clenching in her gut into a heat that crawled up over her shoulders to flush her cheeks.
And now the fury propelled her actions.
She ripped the stupid florist hat from her head. Whipped it into the backseat.
Jammed the key into the ignition. Twisted. Yanked the car into reverse.
It zipped backward. Slalomed up the snaking driveway. Jolted over the little ramp into the street.
As the car jerked to a stop and she shifted into drive, Charlie’s eyes snapped to the royal blue bin before her. Her foot hesitated just shy of the accelerator.
The plastic garbage bin still sat at the edge of the driveway. Her eyes crawled over the white logo on the side, over the lid sticking up, the bulging bulk below pressing it open a crack like parted lips.
She smiled. Pictured what might be crammed inside those black plastic bags. Piles of discarded mail. Documents deemed unworthy of keeping.
She no longer saw a garbage bin swirling with flies. She saw eighty-five gallons of information sitting in front of her.
Time to go dumpster-diving.
THIRTY-FIVE
“Wait. What are you thinking?” Allie whispered. “Please tell me it’s not what I think it is.”
Charlie ignored her. Her hands fidgeted on the steering wheel, knuckles clenching and unclenching. The engine’s rumble vibrated into the meat of her palms.
“No,” Allie said. “No, I know what you’re thinking, and I say no. Let’s just talk about this, OK? We’re both reasonable adults.”
Charlie eased back into the driveway, stopping as the car’s trunk pulled even with the trash bin, the brakes squealing loud enough to cut off Allie’s words.
Once again, Charlie made eye contact with herself in the rearview mirror. This was her best shot, maybe her only shot. She took a breath. Better to be quick about it.
She lurched out of the driver’s seat, a rush of adrenaline pushing her into fast motion. She circled toward the back of the car. Popped the trunk.
Allie was aghast.
“What? In the car?! Charlie, no.”
Charlie glanced both ways before flipping the lid of the bin open, yanked out two bags and waddled the three steps to round the rear fender.
“Not in the car, you lunatic! You’ll never get the smell out.”
Charlie lifted the first bag toward the vacancy in the back of her hatchback, her arm quivering from the strain.
“We’re talking permanent ramifications, Charlie. There are things you can’t take back!”
Charlie slopped the bag in. It tottered back and forth like a turtle trapped on its back before it settled into a heap. She flung the second bag next to the first, watching it squirm and hunker into place as well.
The two bags just about filled the empty storage space she had available, and the rest of the garbage can looked to be loaded with yard work waste—a matted mess of weeds and dead leaves and grass trimmings.
She slid her hands up onto the trunk hatch, brought it about halfway down before stopping. She blinked at the black plastic mounds protruding from the back of her vehicle. There was a minor problem.
“You’re going to pop the damn things like water balloons!” Allie screeched.
Charlie shifted the bags around, flattening them some so she’d be able to close the trunk without any additional squishing from the hatch. It was tight, but she got the trunk latched without popping anything, as far as she could tell.
Then she rushed back around the car, hopping into the driver’s seat.
Allie unloaded on her.
“Oh, God. You maniac! What a sickening display. Did you hear how fucking juicy that sounded? Garbage water seeping into the upholstery as we speak. Rotting vegetables. Cat vomit wadded into paper towels. Seafood. Yogurt. Warm beer foam. All of it saturat
ing the fibers back there. You’ll never get that stench out, Charlie. Every summer day, it’s going to smell like a landfill in here.”
Charlie made for the gates, eyes glancing up toward the house in her rearview mirror. She half expected the maid to come running out with a meat cleaver.
“My own sister,” Allie said. “A damn garbage picker. I’m telling Mom.”
Charlie snorted.
“I’m not joking,” Allie said. “I’m telling Mom.”
THIRTY-SIX
Back at the office, Charlie wasted no time preparing to pick through her new evidence. She needed floor space to work with, a clear flat area, and she knew the back room was her best hope for that. She briefly entertained working in the parking lot out back—the slab of blacktop was certainly flat and empty enough for the job—but today’s stiff breeze made her think better of it.
The clutter in the back room bordered on staggering—apart from the space just in front of the kitchenette, it was essentially a stuffed storage locker. Cardboard boxes. Plastic tubs. A dinette set. Filing cabinets. This would take time, but she could make it work.
Paige helped her tuck the dining room table as far into one corner as they could get it, nestling it up against the stove and counter of the little kitchenette. The chairs were stacked seat down on the tabletop. That was a good start.
Next they shifted some of the many cardboard boxes around. Frank had always been a bit of a pack rat, and the back office fell somewhere between time capsule, legitimate storage space, and something of a purgatory for miscellaneous trinkets and paper garbage simply waiting to be thrown away.
“That probably has some value,” he’d say of things like McDonald’s Happy Meal toys still wrapped in the plastic and old editions of Rolling Stone magazine, though Charlie doubted that even he fully believed it.
Dust billowed everywhere. Little gray clouds that seemed to spread ever wider, trying their best to fill the room. After about ten boxes, Charlie realized her shirt was covered in it—oblong smudges the shade of a pigeon smeared up and down her front. So far, she’d gotten dirtier moving Frank’s crap than she had literally picking garbage, which seemed funny after all of Allie’s melodrama.