Not that he was going to be hopping around her porch anymore. By rights he should have made a full recovery, but not George. He flaked out on his wound care, went septic, and ended up back in the hospital.
The gangrenous foot couldn’t be saved.
“So, Skin, you gonna go get your gun now?”
It’s been my experience if you have a gun you’ll find a reason to use it, whether you need to or not. The last thing I wanted to do was throw water on a grease fire.
“Actually, I thought I would just go talk to George.”
But when I knocked on Long’s door—his doorbell was two loose wires held in place with chewing gum—there was no answer. I walked around the side and even stuck my nose into his backyard, but the house was buttoned up tight. The lone sign of a life was an air conditioner wheezing and dripping condensation from an upstairs window. Likely as not, Long was holding down a stool at Sewickley’s, oblivious to the drama unfolding across his cracked driveway.
Back at Daisy’s, I pulled out my phone. Marcy stopped me. “Just wait and see. You’ll catch him in the act, I guarantee it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Skin—”
“Fine, fine.” I knew when I was licked. “But if things go sideways, I’m calling the cops. I’ll try to keep the crawlspace out of it, but I’m not taking any chances with your grandmother’s safety. Or yours, for that matter.”
For a second I thought she’d argue with me, but instead she let out a long breath and nodded. “It’s settled then.”
The heat held on into evening. Back in my cop days, July and August were when I got most of my calls to that side street off Hawthorne, the Daisy Days of Summer. Most of the year, the little shotgun house was front room/bedroom/eat-in kitchen. Come the Daisy Days, it was sauna/sweat lodge/smokehouse, and where-the-hell’s-the-damn-door.
“Daisy, you ever consider opening a window once in a while?”
“I could do that, sure. Or maybe I could just put out a neon sign. Desperadoes Welcome.”
“Grandma,” Marcy said, “how about I turn the fan on and open the front door?”
“Just make sure those burglar bars are locked.” With that Daisy trundled off to the back of the house with the speed of a mouse escaping a house cat. It struck me she might be afraid. I’d always seen her as irascible, short with fools, and fiercely independent—a woman going her own way. But now I wasn’t sure that was the whole story.
Marcy misinterpreted my look. “She’s been here a long time. Raised my dad and my aunt in this house.” She looked around the cramped room at the lumpy sofa, the two wing chairs, piles and piles of books. “This was the kid’s bedroom. Grandma Daisy and Grandpa Moon—when he was around—slept in the next room. Dad said they actually used a chamber pot if they had to go to the bathroom in the middle the night. In the morning they’d have to haul it to the outhouse. When Moon died, Grandma bought a bargain cremation and used the rest of the life insurance to add on the bathroom and back porch.”
“She and your grandpa didn’t get along, I take it.”
“By comparison, George Long is her soul mate.” She dropped back into one of the chairs. “Skin, I know what we’re supposed to do. It’s just...”
“The cops wouldn’t do anything, not to a woman her age. At worst, they’d pretend she thought she was growing house plants and seize the stash, then have a good laugh once she was out of earshot.”
“She’s not kidding when she talks about how hard it is to get by on Social Security. The wine and the weed are all that keeps her from losing this place.” Marcy pondered her hands for a long moment. “She won’t take money from me.”
I didn’t know what to say. After a while, Marcy went to check on her grandmother and I settled in for what I hoped would be an uneventful night.
Yeah. Sure.
As in the old days, Daisy slept in the middle room. Marcy set up a cot beside her. Before bedding down, she offered me a headlamp with a red light setting. “For surveillance, or whatever. Save your night vision.” Then she pressed the key to the burglar bars into my hand, patted the top of my head like I was a good dog, and left me with the front room to myself.
I kept the door open—burglar bars locked—and listened for lurking ne’er-do-wells. All I heard was the distant chatter of an outdoor party. The night air in the close little room was still and stifling. Every so often I’d doze, but the couch was lumpy and some noise—a dog barking or a car passing—would startle me awake. As evening melted into night, my nerves stretched wire-snap tight. I flipped on the headlamp and grabbed a book at random, anything to distract myself. The cover featured a shirtless man with intimidating abs wielding a hockey stick. Turned out he wasn’t beating people to death with it, but playing actual hockey—when he wasn’t romancing an up-and-coming fashion designer. I was a dozen chapters in when a sound from the front porch jerked me back to reality.
In the red glow of the headlamp, the room—with its ceiling-high stacks of books—looked like a scene out of a Poe tale. The scrape of a shoe on concrete squirreled through the burglar bars. Hardly breathing, I set the book on the floor and sidled up to the door. Outside, I could hear a heavy breath.
Just as I turned the key in the lock on the security gate, Daisy howled from the next room. “Loooong!” There was a crash—Marcy falling off her cot from the sound of it. An instant later, she materialized at my side.
“Get him!”
I gestured for her to pipe down. Whatever was on the front porch—George Long, rabid raccoon—suddenly went quiet. Through the burglar bars, I had a better view of the street than the porch itself, which helped me not one iota. Another scrape sounded right outside the door.
Marcy put a hand on my back and gave me shove. There was nothing for it but to confront the intruder, footless drunk or rabid bandit beast. I threw open the gate and leaped out onto the porch.
“Ah-hah!”
A man roughly the height and girth of a mature Sitka spruce confronted me. I raised my head, but all I could make out in the headlamp’s rufous glow was a bushy beard and all but visible halitosis.
“Wait. You’re not Long.”
Not-Long responded with a roar. He lunged, and his barrel belly struck me chest-high with the force of a falling boulder. I stumbled backward as he raised arms like gnarled tree branches. Just fall down, I thought stupidly. But before either one of us could make another move a thwock split the sultry night.
For a second, nothing happened. Then, the giant yowled and started hopping on one foot. As he pawed fecklessly at his rear end, he lurched side to side. For a second I thought he would fall on me, so I gave him a hard shove. Eyes bulging, he struck the porch rail and tumbled ass over kettle into Daisy’s strawberries.
The porch light came on. The sudden glare fell on the shaft of an arrow protruding from the giant’s ass. When he tried to get up, I stepped off the porch and onto his back. “Stay down.”
“Who is it, Skin?”
Daisy joined Marcy at the door. “I know who it is.”
I studied him with increasing irritation as he wriggled under foot. Then it hit me. He was one of many neighborhood witnesses to the George and Daisy show over the years, the biker dude.
“I don’t remember his name.” If I ever knew it. It had been a long time since I tried to question the neighbors. “I’m guessing he heard what your grandma was up to—”
“I’m not copping to anything!”
“—and came sniffing for what he thought was easy pickings.” He continued to squirm, so I pressed some weight onto him. “You’re gonna have to call the cops, I’m afraid.”
“I already did.”
Daisy’s tone was resigned. My face must have registered my surprise.
“She was worried you might get hurt,” Marcy said.
Out on the street, the usual cadre of gawkers had started to gather. “Howdy, Officer,” Diane, or maybe Janet, from across the street called. I waved, didn’t bother to correc
t her. The Vietnamese woman came to stare at the thrashing giant. “I told you not to mess with these people. Buy a lottery ticket next time. The odds are better!” He only groaned as she stormed off.
“Go on inside,” I said to Marcy and Daisy. “I’ll stay here till the cavalry arrives.”
“They’ll just shine a light and drive past.”
The burglar bars closed with a clang. I chuckled, then movement caught my eye from across the cracked driveway. Next door, George Long stood on his front porch, compound bow in his hand. His good bow, no doubt. Down at my feet, the writhing giant wreaked havoc on Daisy’s strawberries. “Settle down,” I said, “unless you want one in your other cheek.”
I turned my gaze back to George, who raised the bow in a kind of salute. I nodded in acknowledgment, and he turned and hobbled back into his house just ahead of the patrol unit which screeched to a stop in front of Daisy’s shotgun house.
The next morning, Long chose not to pretend he wasn’t home when I banged on his front door. He yelled for me to come in, and I made my way through a short foyer hallway to a living room last seen by outsiders during a Hoarders marathon.
“Officer!” he greeted me from a swollen, puke-colored recliner.
“I’m retired, Mr. Long.”
“Mister, then. Uh...what the hell’s your name anyway?”
Already, I could feel the headache developing behind my left eye.
“So, Crazy Daisy gonna give me my foot back?”
“The one you threw into her yard?” I noted with mild surprise he was wearing a prosthetic. I half-expected a peg leg.
“I was aiming for the giant.”
I scanned the room. Like Daisy, he had his share of books, but mixed in with the reading material was an eclectic collection of detritus. Empty wine bottles, Daisy’s Sharpie scrawl in place of labels. A silver Elvis letter opener sticking out of a wig form. A suit of armor hung with scarves and bandanas. Less surprising were the dozens of mismatched bowling shoes in various states of wear, left to gather dust in the intervening years since his foot came off.
“You couldn’t throw a shoe instead?”
“I’d tried that the last time I saw him poking around her back door.”
“I know.”
“The foot was a calculated escalation.” He reached out with a hand which might have been once attached to a Nazgûl and picked up the compound bow from beside his chair. “I didn’t wanna go all Henry the Fifth on him unless I absolutely had to.”
“You wrote the note, too, didn’t you?”
“It’s not like that guy can write.”
“But can he spell?”
Long stared at me. “Huh?”
“Never mind.” I wondered why he didn’t just tell Daisy what was going on, but just as quickly recognized the folly of that notion. Daisy would never believe him, but the note was a different matter. “You knew she would call me.”
“Or her granddaughter would.”
“And you could have retrieved the foot when you left the note, but—”
“Emphasis.”
As I stood there chuckling, an object on the mantle amidst a collection of bowling trophies an item caught my eye. I studied it for a long moment.
“George, how long as this been going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You, Daisy...all the acting up?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
He was quiet. Somewhere under the collected debris, a radio offered the weather report. Portland’s usual forecast, more of the same until suddenly it wasn’t.
“I appreciate that you’ve been looking out for her. But you can’t keep acting like lovesick grade schooler pulling some girl’s hair to get attention. It’s creepy.”
“It’s not like that,” he grumbled. But there was no conviction in his protest.
“So you say.” My eyes remained on the mantle where, in the place of honor, stood a cowboy boot mounted on a polished wooden stand. The bullet hole was plainly visible in the heel. “Next time, George, call the police when you see someone lurking around her house.”
“I’d rather throw shoes.”
I remembered Daisy telling me he’d taught her about gardening. “If you’ve got your own grow operation to worry about, pick up a burner phone to make the call.”
“I can’t begin to imagine what you mean.”
“Not copping to anything?” He stared me down. I got to my feet and headed for the door. “Gotta supplement the Social Security somehow, I guess.”
Not much more than a year later, Marcy found Daisy lying on the couch in the center room of her little shotgun house, thumb tucked into a racy paperback on her chest. Half a glass of homemade wine on the bedside table, the television tuned to Cinemax. She’d passed away in her sleep.
At the wake, George Long rolled in on a cherry red scooter and pulled to a stop in front of the open casket. For a moment, I watched the old desperado, his gaze remote and fathomless, then joined him.
“That’s a nice ride, George. Must’ve set you back a few bucks.”
“Medicare paid for it,” he snapped. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“What do you want, copper?”
“Just wondering how you’re doing is all. It’s been a while.”
I thought he was going to tell me “Not long enough.” Or hit the throttle and torch his way out of there. Instead he let out a long, heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair. I saw he was clutching the cowboy boot against his chest.
“I dunno.” He reached down with his free hand as if to scratch his missing foot. “I guess I figured she’d outlive us all.”
Back to TOC
Life’s a Beach
Judith Cutler
Two senior employees—head of Information Technology and head of Human Resources—in a relationship: that’s rarely good news for any organisation. But since it’s usually the head of HR that casts an imprimatur on such goings on, it was hard for anyone to veto my romance with Taylor, head of Human Resources. In fact, once Taylor set her mind on anything, it was as hard for anyone to change Taylor’s course as it was to turn a great ship. Not that she looked like a container vessel: she was once described, as she took pleasure in telling me, as a pocket Venus. I suspect, however, she preferred her last CEO’s description of her—an Exocet missile.
In any case, Taylor solved the problem of us being in a mere relationship. Whisked away to Mauritius for our first extended romantic and alcohol-fuelled tryst, I found myself taking part in a beach wedding. Ours. Total heaven. Neither of us had any family to offend by such a spontaneous and private ceremony. I’d lost both my parents while I was still at university; Taylor simply never mentioned hers. Or any other family, for that matter. It was as if she’d emerged, fully formed with feet in Jimmy Choo heels, from a prestigious office block.
If I hadn’t expected to be married, even less did I expect to be given my redundancy papers, personally signed by my new wife, when we came back to England. The very day we returned, actually. I was inclined to be upset and resentful. She pointed out that life was like that in business: hadn’t one famous football manager once sold her husband to another club? Hardly appeased, I told her the timing was odd to say the least. Astonished at my stupidity, she assured me it made absolute sense. My redundancy package, when it had been fully negotiated, would mean that if we both sold our apartments we would be able to buy the house of our dreams.
I didn’t argue about selling my bachelor pad. It was roomy enough for one, with nice views over Kingston on Thames, but I had an intractable neighbour who insisted on letting a stray cat into the lobby but never deemed it necessary to deal with what the cat left behind. Fur-balls. And worse.
I never understood how Taylor could even dream of abandoning her London apartment. It was big enough to absorb me and my possessions without blinking; it had views over Lord’s Cricket Ground. Pe
rfection. But Taylor decreed we must sell it. Someone desperate to watch some vital test matches had made an offer to any potential seller in the block so outrageous she told me sentiment simply could not get in the way. In any case, who had time to sit and watch anything?
Not Taylor, that was for sure. She was too busy overseeing the other redundancy deals. It was my job to locate the dream home—her dream, it soon transpired, rather than mine, which was less grandiose than hers. I favoured an environmentally-built new home, and used my spare time touring round commutable areas hunting for one: I found a perfect example in Kent, built deep into a hillside with the windows and solar panels angled to get the best of the sun. She didn’t like the idea of my having to mow the grass on the roof and rejected out of hand the notion of buying some sheep to do the job. Next on my wish list was an understated Georgian rectory near Tunbridge, though its price tag was the opposite of understated, as she scathingly pointed out. We needed an investment property, she said: if it needed some TLC, I’d be at hand to do minor jobs or be a site manager for any major ones. I was wasting time: we’d lose our buyer if we weren’t careful.
At last I did what I should have done in the first place. To save time and energy, I took to my computer and merely printed off details of likely properties for her cursory inspection. They were rejected out of hand: too far from London, too close to London, too old, too modern.
The cricket season began. I watched the games from her balcony; her potential buyer waxed furious.
When rain stopped play, it was back to the computer. And I found a place I fell in love with. Knottsall House. A Regency gentleman’s country residence. It was too far from London and too expensive, as I explained to Taylor when she picked up the torn pieces of printout from my waste bin.
‘No problem,’ she declared. ‘I’ve accepted a redundancy package for myself.’
That was news to me, but probably shouldn’t have been.
Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon 2014 Anthology Page 4