“That’s okay,” Sadie assured him. “It must be hard without any relatives nearby.”
“We moved in on our wedding night.” He nodded across the street. “Wanda and Jean were already living across the street.” He picked up his mug and downed the remaining fluid. “They used to exchange recipes with my wife, Marge. When she passed, they took over feeding me too. Of course that was mostly Wanda. Jean never liked to cook.” He got up and opened the freezer portion of his fridge to reveal stacks of neatly labeled casserole dishes. “I’ve prolly got twenty meals still in here from those gals.” His voice broke with emotion. Bill closed the freezer door and sat back down. “It’s not the food I’m worried about. I can open a can when I need to. It’s just that nobody else in the area is very neighborly at all. Mostly Chinese and who knows what else living in these houses now. Some of them don’t speak a word of English, and they keep tearing down small houses like mine and building monster-sized mansions. They have families of three and four people living in five thousand square feet!”
“I’m sure if you reached out to your neighbors, you’d find a lot of them are really friendly,” Sadie said.
“Screw ’em,” he replied angrily, then added, “Pardon my language.”
“I understand you really miss Jean and Wanda. It must’ve been great to have ladies your own age to talk to.”
Suddenly Bill looked kind of flustered. He made a big show of getting up to get another pen when his didn’t work. Then he signed Sadie’s contract and ushered her out the door after she promised she’d let him know when the place was cleaned and ready for him to list for sale, if that was his choice.
When Sadie crossed the street to her van, Zack and Jackie were just stripping out of their hazmat suits and Zack handed Sadie the camera.
“It’s ugly,” he said, but he smiled when he said it. “Is it wrong for me to be glad we’re mopping up decomp from two old ladies instead of cleaning a meth lab?”
Sadie didn’t respond.
“The sites are close together. One at the bottom of the stairs,” Jackie said, “and the other a few feet over. I guess from the one who went over the railing. Lots of glass embedded in the hardwood there. Something broke.”
“I was told there was a large antique console table with a glass top under the landing. They figure Jean was standing looking over the railing at her sister dead at the bottom of the stairs. She keeled over the railing and landed on the glass console when she had her heart attack,” Sadie said matter-of-factly.
“Wow, they lived together all these years and then died together,” Jackie said. “Makes you think that they were just always meant to be together. It’s kind of sweet really.”
“Yeah, well, when I go, I don’t want it to be in ninety-degree heat and then left to rot at the bottom of my stairs for two weeks,” Sadie replied as she glanced through the digital display of the photos Jackie had taken.
They all suited back up just inside the back door. Sadie wished she’d had a chance to go through the house on her own. She told herself that it really didn’t matter. That she was going to be fine. But the minute she stepped inside the old house, she knew she was not going to be fine at all. Things were going to be more than a little stressful on this scene.
“Oh, for damnation, Wanda, just shut the hell up!” came a shout from down the hall.
Sadie, Zack, and Jackie walked toward the scene. They were in full hazmat gear including face masks. The pungent stench of death would’ve curled their hair otherwise.
“You don’t tell me to shut up, Jean! You’re the one who should shut up. For fifty years you’ve been telling me to be quiet and I’m not going to do it anymore!” squeaked an elderly lady’s voice.
When they reached the spirits making the noise, Sadie saw the two ladies just as clearly as she could see Jackie and Zack standing in front of her.
One of the eighty-year-old women was in a floor-length nightie, her neck was bent at an odd angle, and the left side of her head was smashed in with blood caked to her wiry silver curls. The other ghost had on merely a pantie girdle of some kind. Her steel-colored hair was in rollers, her face was peppered with embedded glass fragments, and her left arm was dangling uselessly at her side.
“Great. Just great,” Sadie murmured behind her respirator.
Sadie usually saw the dead as they appeared when they passed. When we’re talking eighty-year-old twin ladies with pendulum breasts swinging to their navels and no bras on to hold ’em up, it wasn’t pretty.
Jackie and Zack had brought in the medical waste bins. Zack was in the foyer using emulsifiers to soften dried tissue and decomp fluid by the front door, and Jackie was taking a utility knife to the carpet at the base of the stairs.
“Shit,” Sadie mumbled behind her respirator.
She tried to ignore the two ladies, but they were bickering loudly. Sadie grabbed a bin and began picking up glass, while Jean, the old lady with glass in her face and rollers in her hair, shouted at her sister.
Sadie concentrated as best she could. She carefully picked up shards of blood-covered glass with her gloved hands. Maggots protested and crawled after the pieces as she removed them. Maggots were determined little buggers. They were already annoyed that the main source of food, the bodies, was gone, but they would’ve happily gone on to swim in the decomp fluid and multiply as long as possible.
“Just look what you did to that console table,” the old woman referred to as Wanda complained. “I looked all over for one that fit that spot perfectly, and your big ass blew it to smithereens!”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Jean exclaimed. “I fell from the second floor. If you hadn’t hidden my heart medication, ya crazy ol’ bitch, my heart wouldn’t have given out just after you fell down the stairs!”
“I didn’t fall down the stairs, you stupid ninny. You pushed me!” Wanda screeched. Her broken neck had her head tilted in an odd angle like she was looking up at the ceiling.
“I wouldn’t have pushed you if you hadn’t said you were going to go and move in with Bill!” Jean shrieked. “How could you do that to me after all these years together?”
“For God’s sake, I just wanted to live! Is that so wrong? We’ve been together for all these years. . . . I just wanted a chance to be with a man. You robbed me of that!”
The two women wailed and screamed at each other like toddlers having a temper tantrum. Sadie pointed a gloved finger at first one and then the other.
“Knock it off!” Sadie hissed. “Stop it right now or so help me, I’ll leave your beautiful home a disaster.”
They stopped cold and looked at Sadie.
“Is she talking to us, Wanda?”
“Why, I believe she is, Jean.”
Both women inched toward Sadie, who looked over her shoulder at Zack and Jackie. They too had stopped what they were doing and were staring at her. Sadie cleared her throat and got back down on her knees to begin tossing out glass. The old ladies crouched down to Sadie’s level.
“How can you see us?” asked Jean.
“Maybe we’re not dead,” suggested Wanda hopefully.
“Have you looked in the mirror, honey?” Jean said, exasperated. “Trust me. You’re dead.”
“You don’t have to get so snippy,” Wanda sniffed. “I tried looking in a mirror, but there isn’t nothing looking back. Guess that says it all, then. Oh, Lord, I don’t wanna be dead!” She covered her face with her hands and began sobbing.
Jean went over and began patting Wanda’s back.
Sadie ignored them, or did her best to. When they’d been at the cleanup job for close to three hours, Zack suggested they all take a break.
They doffed their gear quickly. Sadie’s T-shirt was nearly soaked through with perspiration. Jackie looked like she had a fine mist on her.
“Want to grab a bite to eat and come back?” Zack asked.
“It’s too hot,” Sadie said. “Let’s finish tomorrow. They aren’t going anywhere.”
“Who?” J
ackie asked.
“I mean this job. It’s not going anywhere,” she added quickly. “Why don’t we pick up where we left off in the morning bright and early before the heat hits? I’ve got lots of paperwork to do on the next meth lab and I want to try and talk to Egan again.”
“What’s up with Egan?” Zack asked. “Is he ever coming back?”
“Soon,” Sadie said.
She took her time putting her gear away. Jackie and Zack were gone and she considered leaving herself, but there was only one way she’d be able to come back tomorrow and that was if she dealt with the women today.
She suited back up and went into the house to deal with Jean and Wanda. The problem was, it was difficult to speak to them through the respirator. The dead liked to hang where they passed. They didn’t travel well unless they’d been left for some time. Then they sometimes got more limber. Using some elaborate hand gestures, she was able to convince Wanda and Jean to step out the back door and onto the deck. Sadie knew she was taking a chance the neighbors would see, but the yard had the protection of a lot of mature trees.
Removing her headgear, she got down to business. “You two are dead,” Sadie said matter-of-factly. “I can see and talk to the dead and I can help you move on.”
The spirit known as Jean crossed her arms, thankfully blocking the view of her droopy breasts, and shook her head full of curlers.
“I’m not going anywhere. If I go, Wanda will just haunt Bill and I’ll be all alone.”
“Isn’t that a fine how-do-ya-do?” Wanda snorted. She turned so that she could glare angrily at Jean, but with her head twisted at her broken-neck angle, she only looked like a pretzel. “Even after you kill me, you still don’t let me have my way!”
“I didn’t kill you on purpose!” Jean shouted. “You’ve always worn your nightdresses too long. Look!” She pointed at Wanda’s feet. “You’re stepping on it right now. It should come to your ankles so you won’t step on it. I told you I’d hem it, but no-o-o.”
“I wouldn’t’ve stepped on the damn thing and tripped down the stairs if you hadn’t pushed me!” Wanda shrieked.
“Okay, enough!” Sadie shouted, then cleared her throat and tried to regain some calm. “Neither of you can stay in this house forever.”
“Well, I’m not leaving,” Jean insisted.
“Me either,” stated Wanda.
Sadie groaned.
“Okay, let’s start from the beginning. From what I’ve heard, you were in love with Bill.” Sadie pointed at Wanda.
“He made me all tingly,” Wanda replied, pointing low in her nightie. “Down there.”
Sadie thought of Bill, the old guy who looked like a Shar-Pei dog, and tried to shake the visual of the two old fogies together.
“She was making a total ass of herself,” Jean hissed. “Always going over there with food morning and night. Suggesting they go off together for a weekend.” She clucked her tongue. “It was disgusting!”
“Why?” Sadie asked, holding up a hand in a stopping gesture.
“Why what?” asked Jean.
“Why was it disgusting?” Besides the obvious that they were as old as dirt and shouldn’t be thinking romantic thoughts. “Why would it bother you if your sister got some happiness in her golden years?”
“Because she’s not my sister. She’s my wife!” Jean spit, and her anger dissolved into tears.
Sadie just stood there with her jaw hanging open.
“It’s true,” Wanda said quietly. “We lived together for over fifty years in that way. We had no living relatives, so, well, to the world we were sisters. The twin spinsters who never married.” She turned her body so that her tilted head could look Sadie in the eye. “We don’t even look alike but nobody ever questioned it. We weren’t like you young people nowadays all living free with gay pride, you know. Things were different then. If you were a woman who liked other women, it wasn’t like you’d tell the world. You’d become a spinster. We would’ve been run out of this neighborhood back in our day.”
“Oka-a-ay,” Sadie said, unsure of what else she could say.
“We were happy. Then after fifty-three years you decided to throw yourself at another right in front of me as if I meant nothing. And, of all things, you went after a man!” Jean wailed.
“There. There.” Wanda put a hand on Jean’s back and patted it gently. “I just didn’t want to go to my grave never having experienced a man. Can’t you understand that?”
“No,” Jean replied stubbornly. “I can’t. You were my everything. I never wanted anybody else.”
They clung to each other then, a mess of silver hair, bloodstains, and undulating breasts. Ugh.
Sadie cleared her throat to get their attention.
“Look, since we can’t change what happened,” Sadie said, “how about we just change the future. You two won’t be happy here.” She looked at Wanda. “Bill can’t see you and he certainly can’t”—she waved at Wanda’s broken body—“satisfy you in any way.”
Wanda nodded reluctantly.
Sadie turned to Jean. “Can you accept the fact that Wanda loves you but wanted to try, um, a different flavor before she died? That doesn’t make what you had for all those years any less, um, special.”
“I guess,” Jean replied.
“I’m sorry,” Wanda said, reaching her hand out to her mate.
“Me too,” Jean replied, pulling her into another hug.
“Good. This is good. If I’m lucky, I might get home in time to wash this entire day away with a martini.” She blew out a breath. “You two are ready to move on. Close your eyes and think of the happy times you’ve had.” Both ladies smiled dreamily and closed their eyes, their hands still locked together. “Now think of living those special times together with all those who’ve gone before you. You’ll be accepted on the other side. No more lies.”
“Oh, that’ll be nice,” Wanda said.
The edges of the couple began to shimmer. Before long they were a luminous and transpicuous shape. Then they were gone in a flash, but the flash was real. Sadie whirled her head just in time to see the glint of the hot sun as it sparked off a camera lens.
“That’s all we need,” Scott Reed said to his cameraman. To Sadie he shouted across the yard, “Good to see ya, Sweets!”
Sadie felt nothing but a white-hot rage.
19
Sadie screamed and ran after Scott, but he was gone. It was out of her hands. If he wanted to advertise her craziness on Emerald Nine News, there was nothing she could do.
Feeling sad and depressed, she went home to her mother.
“Nice that you could come,” her mother said when she answered the door. “I’ve got a roast in the oven and we’re just working on making decorations for the shower.”
Sadie followed her mom through the living room, where her dad sat. He waved hello.
“Your sister, she had to go home ’cause some big guy was coming over. She said he works for you,” Sadie’s dad said.
“He does.” She leaned over and gave him a hug.
“Why is he with your sister? Shouldn’t he be at work with you?”
It is work. I’m paying him, Sadie thought.
“Yeah, Thuggy’s just doing something for me with Dawn,” Sadie said vaguely.
“What kind of a name is ‘Thuggy’?” Dad asked.
“It’s short for ‘Thugwold.’ ”
“Shit. That’s even worse. What kind of a name is ‘Thugwold’?”
But her aunt rushed into the living room and saved her from answering.
“Sadie, I’m so glad you were able to make it!”
Aunt Lynn snagged Sadie by the hand and pulled her into the dining room, where her mother sat at a table covered in disposable diapers.
“What’s going on?” Sadie asked.
“Peggy has a bee in her bonnet about decorating the house for the shower,” Auntie Lynn announced, rolling her eyes.
“It’s a great idea,” Sadie’s mom replied. “We’re g
oing to use pink and blue streamers as a clothesline across the dining room, and then we’re going to use pink and blue clothespins to hang the diapers.” She handed Sadie pink and blue Sharpie markers. “You are going to take ten of the diapers and write one big letter on each one so that it says B-A-B-Y-S-H-O-W-E-R.”
Sadie thought it was the stupidest idea for a decoration she’d ever heard of and she really hadn’t planned on spending her evening coloring diapers.
“I’ve got a ton of paperwork to get caught up on at home,” Sadie began. “I don’t know how long I can stay.”
She hated the disappointment on her mom’s face and immediately regretted the words.
“Sadie, when was the last time you checked your tire pressure?” Sadie’s dad griped from the living room a few feet away. “Come outside for a minute. Your tires are looking low.”
Sadie closed her mouth against telling her father she was a grown woman who could take care of her own tires, thank you very much. She slipped her feet back in her shoes and followed him out.
“The tires look fine, Dad,” Sadie said.
“You can never be too sure.” He pulled a tire gauge from his pocket as they approached her Honda, and knelt at the front tire.
Sadie knelt beside him and watched as he spun the stem cap off. There was a small hiss of air as he pressed the gauge quickly and firmly to the valve and then quickly read the number.
“You know, this shower is real important to your mom,” he said, getting up and walking over to the rear tire. “I know you’ve got your own busy life going on, but, well, family is all she’s got.” He looked her in the eye then and Sadie saw wrinkles on his face she’d never noticed before. God, when had her parents gotten old?
“I know. You’re right,” Sadie said. “I should be more involved in the shower.”
She followed him around the other side of the vehicle and joined him to kneel beside the third tire. It wasn’t the first time he’d used car maintenance to cover a serious conversation. That first time would’ve been when she was sixteen and had just started dating. He showed her how to check the car’s oil and then told her just because a boy had hands didn’t mean she needed to let him use them. She should’ve remembered that little nugget of advice with Zack.
Devil May Ride Page 21