Her eyes narrowed. “Oh. Him. The man who raped me. Of course I have, I told you that. Anyway, how else would I have known it was him. He was watching me that other day, spying on me from the back of the church. Taunting all true believers with the blasphemy of his presence in a house of worship. Him and his dirty movies. That’s what the devil does, he watches and waits until the time is right, then springs into action. That would explain his quick disappearing act, now wouldn’t it?”
Oh Lordy.
“Miss Marberry, why do you think of Griffin Solloway as a devil? A demon?”
The woman’s lightweight lawn chair scattered as Germaine Marberry bolted out of it, her eyes glittery with genuine interest in the topic for the first time. “Because Vincent told us, of course. The Reverend Applegate, he recognized the demon immediately and told my ma and me about how the devil and his naked-women sex movies were sent here to corrupt the morals of good churchgoers.”
It was becoming all too clear—the spinster and her wild-eyed minister. Inwardly, Melinda groaned at all of the valuable time she’d already wasted on the case.
“Thank you, Miss Marberry,” she said, rising quickly. She told the easy lie that the police would stay in touch and apprise her of further developments. Like there’d be any.
To her surprise, the woman shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Vincent is helping us deal with the situation. Justice will be served.”
Melinda made a mental note to drop in on the Reverend Applegate, see about his concept of justice.
But she couldn’t stay in the stifling house a minute longer. Call her a coward, if anyone wanted, but she had to escape. The challenge would be to write it up in a way that would keep Germaine Marberry out of trouble for filing a false police report. Or get her hauled in for a psych eval.
Back in the living room, the old lady had drifted off to sleep in her easy chair. The disabled sister was nowhere in sight, but Melinda could hear her rattling around in a room beyond a dining alcove—most likely the kitchen. The retarded woman was singsonging a single word, over and over. It sounded like hungry, stretched out eerily to several syllables—Hunnnngarrryy.
The front doorknob felt cool as heaven on Melinda’s palm. Her gateway to the soul-cleansing great outdoors. She sneezed one final time, a hard retching sound that seemed to tear the lining of her stomach.
Chapter Nine
“Hunnnngarrryyy,” Dolly sang softly from the kitchen.
“See here,” Vincent cried out cheerfully.
Germaine jumped, caught off-guard at the sound of a man’s voice. She shouldn’t have been. Vincent’s surprise visits had grown commonplace over the last several days. He hadn’t come in the front door, though, or she would have seen him. Must have entered the back way while she was tied up with that ineffective policewoman. She could have sworn they’d kept that door locked, like Vincent had advised, but here he was.
The tall minister strode through the dining alcove and into the living room. He held upright an open can of peaches, held it high like Liberty’s torch. Dolly followed, arms outstretched and hopping like a poodle through a hoop, but her reach kept falling woefully short. She was sobbing now, a wet sound overflowing with anguish and volume.
Vincent grinned warmly as he teased. “See what I found in the kitchen, Germaine? Naughty, naughty.”
He suddenly gained a following of wailing cats rubbing against his ankles, some swatting a khaki pant leg. Molly, the pregnant calico, briefly skirmished with Bandit for position, while Battle snarled for attention. Vincent let out a short laugh as he gently parted the cats with his foot, kicking up another round of caterwauling.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Germaine asked, hesitantly. The mere idea of angering a man as upright and spiritual as her minister repelled her.
“Mad? Of course not, my dear.” His eyes seemed to register shock that the question was even raised. “Not about the food or the policewoman. You couldn’t have very well refused to see her, could you?”
Vincent turned and glanced down at Dolly. She was curled up into a tight, fleshy ball in a corner of the dining room. Her loud sobs competed for attention with the wailing cats. “I couldn’t ever be angry at Dolly for stashing this can of peaches. She’s just a packratting chipmunk, she is.” He chuckled. “Now I see who I’ll have to keep my eyes on.” He turned once again to Germaine and gave her his easiest smile. “I’ll make it the responsibility of both of us to keep Dolly on the straight and narrow.”
“Tampa Jack, you leaver her alone,” Mama cried. She feebly tossed a crocheted pillow at the tall yellow cat that had climbed up her slumped-over daughter to lick the last traces of Dolly’s contraband peaches from her sticky lips.
Tampa Jack spit and Dolly screamed, pulling into an even tighter ball.
“Those darn cats,” Vincent said with a merry shake of his head.
“They’re hungry,” Germaine replied as she watched her mother nod off again.
“Of course, my dear.” Vincent’s voice was a soothing bass, the comforting stir of deep water. He stood so close to where Germaine sat in her incliner that she was nearly overpowered by the heavenly scent of thick and obscenely sweet syrup. It came from the open can of peaches he still held high. Her stomach growled.
The cats could smell it too. Bandit let out a guttural rumble near the foot of Germaine’s incliner.
Vincent drew back his foot and kicked two of the animals without even shifting the focus of his benevolent gaze from Germaine.
“They’re just hungry,” she repeated, weakly.
Dolly’s sobs had dissolved to occasional whimpers.
Vincent crouched before Germaine’s recliner so he had to look up, into her face. He braced himself with one smooth palm on her bony knee. His aftershave filled the still air, a scent that bespoke his masculinity like the cool pressure of his large hand.
“Remember, Germaine,” he told her, “they must do penance too. Bandit and Battle and Molly and all the rest. Every member of this household must work together to help reverse what’s happening in the world today—the illicit sex, the godless Muslims, the random violence that you know so well. We are all part of the problem, Germaine, so we must become the cure. If not us, then who?”
Germaine knew she should be concentrating harder. She knew Vincent had asked a question that must be answered. But those peaches…she’d never smelled anything so sweet in her life. She wondered where Dolly had found them.
“Germaine, my dear…are you listening?”
She snapped back to Vincent’s warm, brown eyes. She felt her face flush with shame, with guilt and with shy, coy feelings that didn’t easily fall into any category of emotion.
The man was married, for Pete’s sake! To say nothing of being the most holy man she’d ever met. Anyway, her mama had told her where those kinds of feelings could lead. She had only to look at her own babbling half-sister to tamp down the fire.
Reminded of Dolly, she turned her attention to the muffled cries from the dining alcove.
“So hungry,” her sister was saying, repeating it over and over like a mantra. For reasons that might be known only to her, Dolly had gone to elbows and knees on the hardwood floor.
Vincent chuckled. He pointed to Dolly’s rather large posterior sticking into the air and stretching her shorts fabric to new limits. “It looks to me like a fast wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to some here.”
Germaine wordlessly looked away from Dolly’s exposed view.
Vincent touched her arm and, my, that felt good. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you or insulted your sister. I have very deep feelings for both—” He stopped and swept the room with his arm, now taking in Mama dozing in her recliner. “For all three of the Marberry women. I promise you that everything will work out fine. Just…be strong.”
Germaine caught movement from the corner of an eye, Tampa Jack leaping to the headrest of Mama’s chair. She watched the cat run its pink tongue along her mother’s earlobe like an affectionate dog.
Then, a flash of white teeth, a sharp cry and a splash of red blood. Germaine jumped to her feet, her vision clouding with the effort. She sputtered a curse that was never meant to be heard by the holy man next to her, but it sent the tall cat off the headrest and up the stairs in a blur of yellow motion.
“It’s all right, Jenny,” the minister soothed as he embraced the groggy elderly woman.
She whimpered in his arms. “He bit me,” she said, clutching her ear. Twin drops of blood spilled from between her fingers. “He’s never done that before,” she wept.
Germaine went for a rag and disinfectant while Dolly, who had actually managed to fall asleep in her awkward pose on the floor, broke into dreamy sobs.
“Vincent, how much longer?” Germaine asked as she swabbed out the meat of her mother’s ear. “It’s not so bad for me, but Mama’s old, Dolly doesn’t understand, and those cats…they don’t take hunger well.”
“You needn’t worry, Germaine, dear. I’ll be sure to tell you when penance is done.”
He touched her again, very gently on the back of her hand. Germaine Marberry had never known such warmth from any man as she felt from Vincent Applegate when he turned his most radiant smile on her.
Chapter Ten
On Thursday night, Bob Seger was headed to Katmandu and the Beer Belly Saloon was going ballistic.
It was nights like these, the beer flowing, the women moist with sweat and expectation, and the music as hot as the stale air, that assured Tim he’d dedicated his life to the right cause. Nights like this kept him going when the money was slow and Patty was unsparing with her critique of his career direction. Hell, could he even call it a career? He was having too damn much fun to call it a job.
Charlotte Taft sneaked up behind him, trapped him in her formidable pillow-tit embrace and planted a wet one on the base of his neck. “Goddamn, you’re right on the money tonight, kid. Keep it up and we’ll both retire young.”
Tim turned and grinned. Charlotte had gotten it right. Every selection was the right one tonight, each segue perfect, the dance floor thudding under the weight of too many writhing bodies.
He leaned in closer to Charlotte’s wide and sweaty face, trying to get a word in edgewise against Seger. He dodged a falling ash from the bar owner’s dangling cigarette and moved in again. “I got this vision of purgatory and it’s a lot like tonight,” he screamed.
She scrunched up her face. “Purgatory. That’s short-term hell, right?”
He shook his head. “Not in my mind. It’s part heaven, part hell. Kind of a way station where you get to hang out with dangerous characters who’re a lot more fun than the school librarians you hope to end up with long-term.”
“Uh huh,” said Charlotte. “Dancing makes ’em sweat, and sweat makes ’em drink beer. So in my mind, it’s all heaven tonight, son. Now haul your tail back there.”
Tim yelped as the hefty woman pinched his ass before moving on.
Seger finally made it to Katmandu, then Carly told the hot, swaying crowd about some guy who walked into parties like he was walking onto a yacht, and somehow it all sounded like one song, one endless seventies beer blast for the benefit of men and women dancing and drinking off their first or second foolhardy marriages.
Back behind his console, he jived between songs, switching effortlessly from sly innuendo to flat-out trash, to match each song’s tempo. He twisted volume and treble knobs and balanced speaker output to shape every song to the precise dimensions of the room.
Damn, he was good.
Patty could never understand this part of him. She saw him as some guy lugging around big speakers and turntables and electronic shit and crates of CDs and vinyl albums and a laptop with thousands of MP3 files. Her way of looking at things—he shlumped his stuff a few nights a week, in a van her day job had bought him, and played records like a schoolgirl from the fifties.
She rarely saw him like this, when he was the music. When he was an architect crafting melodious building blocks into walls of sound. A mathematician inventing a new geometry that reduced creation to rhythm, heavy on the bass.
Of course, he’d also had a fair amount of free beer.
Now Paul, John, George and Ringo were headed “back to the US, back to the US, back to the USSR,” their jet screaming at near-speed-of-sound decibels that brought raw, bleeding, ecstatic pain to the eardrums and hearts of the swaying masses.
Here’s to that next impending divorce, guys and gals.
He was grinning stupidly when the woman tapped his shoulder. He didn’t recognize her immediately. She wore an apologetic smile that said she’d been trying to get his attention and wouldn’t have touched him if she could have made contact in a less personal manner. It was the smile that fooled him.
“Hi,” he eventually shouted. “You’re…”
She pointed to one of his ears and then a 30-watt speaker, and grimaced.
“Just a second,” he said, hoping she could read lips. He cued up the long-playing “Run Through the Jungle” from CCR’s Cosmos Factory, then motioned her to follow him out the door to the back
When the steel door crashed shut, it was just them and the Dumpster.
“What a difference a door can make,” she said, smiling.
The sudden silence lent a flat tone to the timbre of her voice and the crunch of their feet on the gravel and cigarette butts.
He grinned, shrugged and moved from foot to foot. The Dumpster and the head-high cedar fence demarcated the Beer Belly property line. The brick building itself formed two high walls to seal them into their own small, private courtyard with an underlying odor of stale beer, nicotine and refuse.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
He thought a moment. “For this.” He waved an arm. “For the loud music. For having forgotten your name.”
“Melinda Dillon.”
“Detective, wasn’t it?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did I really come across that formal yesterday morning?”
“I think the last time I was that intimidated by a woman, I was losing my virginity.”
“Good. I mean, that I affected you that way.” She looked around as if seeing their surroundings for the first time. Tim watched her shift, not minding at all the way the new pose accentuated one hip.
“Oh…someplace to sit.” He gestured to a picnic table partially encased in shadows where the single bulb over the steel door didn’t reach.
When they’d taken bench seats with the table between them, she said, “You know this place like a host. You work here regularly?”
Tim cocked his head in the rough equivalent of a shrug. “Couple nights a week for about the last five years, but with long stretches of nothing. Charlotte goes through these kicks where she’s gotta have a live band. Or it’s stand-up or even karaoke. But she always comes back to me. For one thing, there’s the economy. I’m cheaper than live.” He shrugged it off. “It’s been about a month steady this time. Thursdays and Fridays. She’s thinking seriously about adding country music on Wednesday nights. Not the white-hat, urban cowboy crap. The real thing. Which is why I’m trying to add to my music library. I’ve got almost nothing country.”
Tim paused for breath and found himself grinning self-consciously.
“What?” she asked him.
His roving fingers found the tabletop scars of countless cigarette stubbings. “I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that your visit has nothing to do with my Wednesday night plans.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He sprang to his feet and said, “Wait here.”
In one fluid motion, he jumped to the rim of the open Dumpster and propelled himself over the top of the fence, free-falling to the alley on the other side. Jogging to the front entrance of the loud bar, he squeezed in ahead of three moms in tight jeans and cued up a song.
“Who is she?” asked Charlotte as she watched him grab a couple cold ones from the cooler behind the bar. “She’s kinda cute, in a mature way. Cute like me, kid. Keep that in m
ind.”
Tim winked. He knew how Charlotte felt about Patty. The divorced bar owner was always pushing him at waitresses Frannie and Kim, or half-seriously trying to keep him for herself.
Back outside, Tim again apologized, this time for the sudden departure and left the bottles on the tabletop between them.
She shook her head. “Hate to sound like a total Girl Scout, but I can’t drink on the job.”
“So that’s not just a cliché, huh?”
“Nope.”
He wasn’t sure why he felt a little empty. What else would have brought her here tonight, except duty? He made a show of twisting off just one cap and raising the bottle in a salute. “That’s the great thing about having a position with no redeeming social value. You get to drink on the job.” He hurled the cap over his shoulder and heard it clink into the Dumpster.
Whatever the reason for her visit, he was glad she was here. It wasn’t sexual, exactly. Oh sure, he appreciated her tight little body, her slim nose and intelligent eyes. The set of her jaw. Even the subtle creases when she smiled and the few strands of gray at her temples to interrupt the sandy blondeness of her stylishly cut hair. And he certainly enjoyed the idea of being approached by an attractive woman in a sweaty bar while the music surged.
To fill what was on the verge of becoming an uncomfortable silence, Tim said, “Is there any news on that rape?” Thinking, It’s what we’re gonna talk about anyway.
Melinda Dillon seemed to study the unopened bottle condensing into a puddle between them. She touched a finger lightly to its smooth neck, then drew her hand back. It was a nice hand, narrow, the fingers slim, nails just long enough to lend length and grace.
“It’s why I’m here, of course.” Her eyes flashed up at him for an instant before again finding interest in the beer bottle. “Although I’ve enjoyed our conversation so far.”
A little patronizing, maybe, but he didn’t think she meant it that way. “No problem.” He listened to an insistent bassline under his feet and tried to guess when the song would run out, but he was having a hard time concentrating.
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