Home Free

by Sonnjea Blackwell

  “Here, these old people are killing me. Play around and see what you come up with. Use the tutorials if you don’t know what else to try. If I use your ideas, I’ll pay you.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ll be outside. Take a break and join us whenever you feel like it.”

  Angela glanced at her watch. “I probably won’t have time. I’m going to a movie with Kyle after football practice.”

  “Football practice? On a Sunday? In this heat?”

  “They practice twice a day in the summer. Last year, this kid in Fresno keeled over from the heat. Died right on the field. People were up in arms, so now the coaches have to let the players have a five-minute water break every half hour.”

  “Oh yeah, I’m sure that’ll take care of it,” I mumbled, walking away. After all, I can be endearing, too.

  I stopped by the kitchen to make a pitcher of iced tea on my way outside. A magnetic business card for Main Street Pizza pinned a note to the refrigerator. The magnet was mine. The note said DID YOU MISS ME? in the same sparkly rainbow letters as the welcome home note from the other night, and I’d never seen it before. I made the tea, then sorted through the trashcan for the first message and took the pitcher and both notes outside with me.

  “So, who’s leaving me love notes?” I asked, pouring tea for all of us.

  “Where’d you get those?” Kevin asked.

  “Duh, isn’t that what I just asked?”

  Lucifer had taken my seat, so I gave him a shove. He jumped off the lounge and stalked away, tail straight up in the air, twitching at the tip, clearly indignant.

  I looked at Pauline. She shook her head no. “Yeah, I have time for that. Besides, it’s kind of weird and creepy.”

  I hadn’t thought that till she said it, but now I was creeped out too. I looked at Jack hopefully. He held up his thick-fingered hands.

  “Right. I could use a chainsaw to carve a sign that said that, but if I tried to work with those little stick-on letters, they’d be all over me.” That was a funny visual, Jack naked except for sparkly letters, and the creepy feeling went away. I decided someone was playing a joke on me, and I put the notes away in the junk drawer on my next trip to the kitchen, when I went to make a pitcher of margaritas.

  The four of us spent the day sprawled by the pool, talking about everything and nothing. The weatherman had been right about it cooling off, and it was a beautiful day, sunny and toasty, but not scorching. The sky was blue and there were soft fluffy clouds and it was hard to think of bad things happening anywhere, let alone in my own family. Sometime around noon, Pauline suggested margaritas to celebrate Kevin’s ownership of the bike shop, and they drank them by the blenderful. I passed, thinking that one hangover per weekend ought to be my limit.

  I checked out the computer screen after Angela left for her date. She’d cut the heads off the geezers, attaching some of them to other geezers and floating some of them in the pool. Funny, but I didn’t think I’d have to part with any of my own money on this particular project.

  “Where’s your child labor?” Kevin asked as I flopped onto my stomach on the lounge, my face buried in the crook of my arm. I was bothered by the vague notion that hanging around in the sun may have had something to do with turning the senior citizens into raisins. I figured it wouldn’t be as noticeable if only my back was wrinkled.

  “I think minion is the politically correct term,” Pauline threw in.

  “Angela, my assistant, had a date. Kyle somebody. You know they have football practice on Sundays? When it’s four thousand degrees outside? What’s up with that?”

  “Boy, you have been gone a long time,” Jack offered. “It’s football, muffin. Serious business. Minter High lost in the semifinals of the state tournament last year. I’m surprised the coach doesn’t have the team locked down in bunkers where he can force-feed them psych-out strategies and playbook variations.”

  “Don’t forget the ‘protein shakes,’ Kevin snickered, using air-quotes around protein shakes. Jack and Pauline guffawed, and I scowled, confused. I hate when I’m not in on the joke.

  “Protein shakes?” I wondered.

  “There’s been some speculation that the team uses steroids. Purely conjecture,” Jack explained, using his PC tone. “So what if a bunch of the guys have really short fuses? It’s stressful being a teenager, you know. And I for one think it’s rude to imply that a kid who suddenly adds sixty pounds of lean muscle in one semester needs anything other than determination and a couple hours a week in the gym.”

  “And the coach is involved? How come nobody does anything?”

  “Allegedly. We made it to Section Finals, Alex,” Kevin explained. “That hasn’t happened since the eighties.”

  “Yeah, but to be fair, the CCC inquiry didn’t turn up anything, with either the coach or the players,” Pauline threw in.

  “What’s Section Finals and CCC?”

  Jack clarified. “Central California Conference is the league Minter High plays in. We’re also a Division I school in the Sac-Joaquin Section. Last year, the team made it to the championship tournament of Sectionals. If they’d won that, they would’ve gone on to the State championships.”

  Just what every small town needs, I thought. A bunch of muscle-bound teenaged rednecks. Then I had a constructive thought, and I flipped over and sat up.

  “Hey. Where would a person go to buy steroids?”

  I showered and did my makeup, then flipped my head over and blow-dried my hair upside down to give it more body. I fluffed it and sprayed it, and I figured it would last an hour, two at the most. I sorted through the new thong underwear and found a pink and purple flower print. Not that there was a prospect of anybody seeing it, but hope springs eternal, I guess. I covered them with a pair of Levi’s 501s and a red t-shirt that said juicy on the front. I didn’t know what that meant, but I liked the gothic lettering and there was an excellent chance it might offend Brian. I put on the red Converse sneakers, then thought better of it and switched to the red flip-flops.

  Jack wasn’t in the kitchen, and I went to look out front for his truck. No truck. He’d been there, though, because his newspaper and coffee cup were in the kitchen. I skimmed the headlines and stopped at an article on page three of the Metro section headed Local Businessman Offers Reward. According to the article, insurance executive and political neophyte Brian Jordan had offered a fifty-thousand dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons involved in the body shop murder and arson.

  Well, there you go. Probably he went to Sherry’s hoping the prospect of fifty K would inspire her to remember something useful about Lonnie and his associates. I figured he’d decided to offer the reward as a way to look like he was tough on crime in order to win over on-the-fence voters. And possibly to impress upon the family-values people that he was the kind of guy who would do anything for his family. Anything, as long as it would swing a tight election in his favor, I thought cynically. Then I felt bad. Brian was trying to help Kevin in his own way. So what if it also helped himself? I tore the article out of the paper and stuffed it in my back pocket, absently thinking that insurance agents must make a lot more money than I thought.

  I went to make coffee and saw that Jack had already brewed a pot. I poured a cup and rummaged in the pantry closet for a pack of blueberry poptarts, then took it all into the office. I turned on the computer and logged on to the internet to check my email. I deleted three or four about bored housewives, thinking that when I was a kid, bored housewives had Tupperware parties rather than running internet porn sites. Ah, progress. The senior center people had emailed saying the brochure wasn’t exactly what they’d had in mind, and could I please make it a little more sporty? I imagined the raisins playing beach volleyball and surfing, and I gave an involuntary shudder. I wondered if headlessness counted as sporty. And Brian had emailed to confirm our noon appointment. I considered canceling, since the paper had answered the question of why he’d been at
Sherry’s, but I’d dressed special and everything, so I didn’t.

  I got to work, sportifying the brochure with bolder colors and graphics, and was still left scratching my head as to what to do with the photos. I lost track of time and only stopped what I was doing when I heard a knock at the door. I peeked out the window and saw Brian’s car parked in front. I couldn’t see the license plate. I minimized the screen and went to the door.

  “Brian, thanks for coming,” I said in my cheeriest voice.

  He nodded. His eyes strayed to my chest and he grimaced. Juicy. “Well, I’ve been meaning to have a talk with you about your coverage anyway, Alex, but it just slipped my mind with everything else that’s been happening.” No doubt. Worrying about my character was probably a full-time job.

  I gave him a tour of the house, and he asked questions along the way. How many square feet, how old was the furnace, did I ever look into that security system like he told me? I stifled a scream and answered like a dutiful sister. I took him outside and showed him the pool.

  “It’s not fenced,” he said, as if he had just discovered penicillin.

  Like every other back yard in Minter, mine had a six-foot redwood fence running the perimeter, so I just raised an eyebrow and waited for the explanation.

  “The pool. It should have its own fence around it.”

  “I’ll mention it to Jack.” Not. I didn’t have kids, and I wasn’t concerned with the well-being of retarded cats. Lucifer seemed pool-safe to me.

  “Well, that’ll increase your premium until you get it taken care of.”

  “Okey-dokey.”

  We went inside and sat at the dining room table, and Brian took out some forms and started filling in little squares with numbers. Then he took out a calculator, began figuring, and entered other numbers in other little squares. While he wrote, I hummed The Star Spangled Banner. It was stuck in my head from when I’d watched the baseball game the other night.

  “So, I read about the reward you offered,” I said.

  “Uh-hunh.” He kept filling in squares.

  “It’s nice of you to help Kevin. I didn’t get any information from Sherry. Did you?” His expression never changed. But the pen faltered slightly on a number and he hesitated a split second before continuing.

  “Who?”

  What’d he mean, who? “Sherry Henderson. The dead guy’s girlfriend. You didn’t talk to her?”

  He kept writing. “I don’t know her. You do?”

  Now I was confused. Maybe Kevin had been wrong about the license plate after all. I’d walk Brian out when, or rather, if the insurance drudgery ever ended and double-check.

  “Yeah, from high school. I stopped by the other day to see if she knew anything about Lonnie getting killed.”

  He jerked his head up. “Did she?”

  I shrugged. “Hunh-uh. I’m going to talk to her again, though.” I’d been thinking I should go over and give it another shot. She had to know if Lonnie had any enemies, right?

  Brian had gone back to the squares and was nearly done with my estimate. I heard the phone ring, but didn’t check it.

  “Okay. Now, we also need to talk about life insurance.” I thought, if I could die right now, I wouldn’t have to have this conversation. There was no point in holding my breath because Mr. Perfect probably knew CPR anyway. I imagined Danny in his boxers, hoping for an aneurysm, but instead I started getting a tad overheated. Still, it took my mind off Brian and the grinding boredom of life insurance. I thought about Danny not in his boxers. I started breathing a little heavy, and Brian looked at me funny, so I went back to with boxers.

  When he was done, I thanked him and told him I’d look over the quote and let him know what I could afford. I walked him to the car and glanced at the plates as he got in, then for fun asked, “Muscle man?”

  “Music man, Alex.”

  Kevin was right. “Right. Melody. Clever.”

  He set his briefcase on the passenger seat, opened it and drew out a card. “I keep forgetting to give this to you. Hope you can make it.” He drove away, obeying the speed limit. Naturally.

  I glanced at the card as I walked to the house. An invitation to a campaign fundraiser. What fun. Back inside the office, I stuffed the card in my purse and wondered why Brian had said he didn’t know Sherry.

  I checked my phone and saw I had another missed call from a blocked caller. Just then it rang again, only this time it displayed a number I didn’t recognize.

  “Hello?”

  “Alex, it’s Brian. Listen, I didn’t think to mention it before I left, but it’s really not a good idea for you to be stopping by Sherry Henderson’s place.” I felt the blood drain from my head. “She’s involved with some criminal activity, drugs and the like, and it just wouldn’t look good for you to be associating with that kind of person.” I didn’t think asking questions about her dead boyfriend really qualified as associating.

  “I didn’t think you knew her.”

  “The name sounded vaguely familiar, so I checked it out when I got in the car. Anyway, give those numbers a look and let me know. Bye.” He clicked off and I sat there, thinking what the fuck?

  I needed to call Mikey, I figured. I dialed and waited and watched a stray dog pee on the tree in front. No gray Escort today. Lucifer stalked towards the dog, haughty and pissed off, and the dog gave a little yelp and ran away.

  “Salazar.”

  “Mikey, it’s Alex, do you have a minute?” People who work at home sometimes forget that other people have to work on a real schedule. I tried to be considerate, but I often didn’t think. Today I did.

  “For you, always.”

  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I plunged on. “The car definitely belongs to my brother, so I guess we’re back to square one.”

  “Shit. I really wanted expensive car guy to be the shooter.”

  “Me, too.” I told him about my conversation with Brian, and about him claiming not to know Sherry and then calling back to tell me I shouldn’t be associating with her.

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I think that whatever his business is with Sherry, he’s not eager for you to find out about it. Stay away from Sherry’s house, and don’t be alone with your brother. People can be dangerous when it comes to protecting their secrets.”

  I snorted. “My brother’s a wienie. He’s far too obsessed with his image to have business with Sherry.” I wondered if he was banging her and didn’t want me to find out he wasn’t the perfect family man the voters and my parents thought he was. I had to admit, it was difficult to imagine Brian with a hard-on for someone like Sherry. The only women he’d ever dated had been like Melody, perfectly coiffed, tailored, conservative and inescapably dull. Trying to picture Brian and Sherry together in a carnal way was disturbing in more ways than one, so I shook my head to get the image out. More likely, he was selling insurance door-to-door or trying to secure the drug community’s support in the upcoming election and was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know her. “Besides,” I went on, “he might bore me to death, but other than that, Brian isn’t dangerous. I’m just going to go to Sherry’s again in the morning and ask her what the deal is with my brother.”

  “Alex, you need to believe me and stay away from him. And Sherry. You have no idea what people, especially ones obsessed with their image, are capable of. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a dangerous thing.”

  I thought about Derek, and I guessed I had an okay idea of what people are capable of.

  “Trust me, you have no clue.”

  I hung up before he could read my next thought, which sounded a lot like fuck you, you cocky jackass. I looked out the window and noticed the gray Escort parked across the street. I hadn’t seen anyone arrive, and I was getting darn curious. I remembered Debbie’s near-drowned cat. Maybe I should cool it on the curiosity, I thought.

  I saw Angela riding up on her red ten-speed bicycle, so I went to let her in. I checked the mailbox next to the
front door while I waited for her to wheel the bike across the yard. Three envelopes addressed to occupant, and another unsealed plain white envelope. Instinct compelled me to look around furtively, but there was nothing to see except the cat, who was lying in a shallow divot he’d dug under the azalea. Everyone else in my neighborhood went somewhere to earn a living during the day, except for the would-be chemists who stayed locked inside their drug den, away from the prying eyes of law enforcement and nosy neighbors. I pulled the paper out of the envelope and read the sparkly single-word message. SOON. Soon what? I wondered.

  Angela was standing on the porch with her bike, giving me a funny look.

  “Someone’s been leaving me notes. Two of them have been in the mailbox, but yesterday there was one on the fridge. The only people who were over here swore it wasn’t them.” I didn’t come out and admit it, but I was beginning to get a little freaked out.

  She nodded. “Your front door wasn’t locked when I came over yesterday. When nobody answered the bell, I was going to use the key, but I checked the knob first and it opened. Anyone could have left you a note.” She gave me a serious look. “You should keep your doors locked, you know. There’s fucking loons out there.”

  If she was trying to make me less freaked out, she was doing a really poor job of it. I glared at her and let her in the house.

  I stayed home the rest of the day, not because I was taking any advice from the likes of Mikey Salazar, but because I had things to do anyway. The raisins were still stumping me, so I turned them over to Angela again, with instructions to keep their heads on and make them sporty. I worked on invoices, thinking maybe a little income wouldn’t hurt. I lost track of time until my stomach started growling. I remembered that I’d spent the lunch hour with Brian and had never gotten around to eating.

  “You want to stay for dinner?” I asked Angela.

  She looked at her watch and smacked her hand to her forehead. “I lost track of time! I’m supposed to be at the pizza place at five-thirty.” It was five-twenty now.