“Mommy, I hate lima beans!” Davey whined.
“Just eat a few,” Ann told him, “they’re good for you.”
Davey puckered up his face, held his nose and, with obvious distaste, picked up his fork and speared one small lima bean, popping it into his mouth. “Yuk!”
“Mom, did you tell Daddy about my field trip?” Danielle asked.
“No. Not yet. Why don’t you tell him?”
Davey started kicking one of the table legs. The constant, repetitive thunks shook the whole table, rattling the dishes and glasses.
“Cut that out!” David ordered.
“Daddy, our class is going to Mt. Airy Forest next Monday and we’re gonna see all the trees with their leaves changing,” Danielle said.
“Well, that should be fun,” David said, scooping up a forkful of rice mixed with baby limas.
Ann cleared her throat. “That reminds me,” she said. “Do … do you have five dollars? She needs money for the field trip and I’m flat broke.”
David shot her a look. Then he turned to Danielle and smiled. “Not a problem.” He pulled his wallet out and placed a five dollar bill on the table in front of Danielle. “Have a good time, Honey.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
* * * *
After dinner, Ann cleared the table while Danielle began washing dishes. David went into the bedroom to get ready to go back out to work. Ann sat down on the sofa in the living room, with Davey snuggled up against her, and began reading to him from one of his Halloween storybooks.
“Where’s my blue tie with the stripes?” David asked, peering around the corner from the hallway.
Ann looked up from the book. “The last time I saw it, it was on the chair by the bed.”
David marched down the hallway, mumbling to himself, “Can’t find anything around here. In my mother’s house … . ”
Ann sighed and went back to reading aloud the story about a little pumpkin that was lonely in a patch of other pumpkins. A few minutes later, she heard the back door slam.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy going?” Davey asked.
“To work,” she said. “He’ll be back later.”
“Why does Daddy have to work at night? Nobody else’s Daddy does.”
“Davey, I’m sure lots of other dads work in the evening. Daddy sells insurance and he has to meet with people when they’re home from work. You know that, you silly boy,” she said, tousling his blonde hair.
Davey giggled and turned the page and, for the next hour, Ann read to him. Danielle finished the dishes and brought out her newest Nancy Drew mystery to read. Davey sat perfectly still the whole time Ann read, listening intently. It amazed her that he could be so calm sometimes while most of the time he was the exact opposite. If I asked him to read to me right now, she thought, he’d squirm and fidget in his seat.
At eight-thirty, Ann told the kids it was time to get ready for bed. After she’d tucked them in and kissed them goodnight, she put on her comfortable flannel pajamas and got into bed.
She picked up Charley’s Web by Joy Fielding, one of her favorite authors, from the middle shelf of her night table. Now I get to read my book, she thought, as she settled back against her pillows. She was about halfway through the book. Usually, once she started to read, she became so engrossed in the story that all worries and concerns disappeared but, tonight, she couldn’t concentrate. She read a few sentences and then had to read them again because her mind had wandered. Annoyed, she stuck her bookmarker in the book and closed her eyes.
What time will David be home tonight? she wondered. Lately, it wasn’t unusual for him to come home in the wee hours of the morning. She always pretended to be asleep but, as she lay there, eyes closed tightly, trying to breathe normally, she could hear him, bumping into the furniture, knocking things over and muttering profanities. She knew that he was drinking a lot and she’d begun to worry that he was having an affair. They hadn’t had sex in a long time. The only times he acted as if he wanted her were when he was drunk or when he knew they couldn’t. Like tonight before dinner, she thought.
I wish things could go back to the way they used to be. We used to talk for hours and he always made me laugh. Now, those times are few and far between. What happened to the David I used to know? she wondered. She set the book on her nightstand and reached up to turn out the lamp.
She heard a noise in the hallway. Is one of the kids up? she wondered. She sat still, cocking her head toward the door. A few seconds passed. She grabbed her bathrobe from the bottom of the bed. The voice of the newscaster on the radio popped into her head. “Another woman was found strangled … .”
She shivered as she quickly donned her robe. As she headed for the hallway, a terrible thought occurred to her. Oh, my God! Did I remember to lock the back door?
Chapter 4
Tuesday, October 28th
ANN HADN’T SLEPT WELL. The noise that frightened her the night before turned out to be nothing, but it got her adrenalin pumping; she’d tossed and turned for hours. Today, she was especially glad that she’d arranged to have Nancy, a sixth-grader who lived two houses away, walk the kids to and from school every day.
She began her morning routine. She went through the apartment, straightening up. She picked up the toys that Davey had left scattered all around, carried them into his bedroom and tossed them in the toy box. Then, she made the kids’ beds and washed the breakfast dishes. She wanted to vacuum but knew that would have to wait. As he often did, David had gone back to bed as soon as the kids were out the door. There was no way she wanted to be blamed for waking him before he was ready to get up. That would give him another reason to start an argument and they had more than their share of those already.
She decided to check the mail. As she walked through the living room, she heard the loud clanking sound of Olivia Berger’s electric wheelchair lift. Please don’t let that wake David, she silently prayed. She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, expecting to see her elderly landlady sitting in her wheelchair, but the hallway was empty.
Oh well, Liv must have gone back upstairs already, she thought. She picked up her stack of mail from the table that stood directly under the mail slot in the wall and leafed through the usual bills and advertisements. “Not more of these,” she muttered, glancing at the two oversized postcards with colored photos of smiling candidates attempting to sway voters their way in the upcoming election.
She smiled when she saw the postcard showing a collage of some of the historic homes in Beaufort, South Carolina. She flipped it over to read the message from her sister. “Ann, I won’t stop trying to tempt you until, one of these days, you and the kids come down to visit me. Love, Marnie.”
Then she saw it: a white envelope with her name and address typed on it. As usual, it had no stamp and no return address. She opened the flap of the envelope and pulled out the sheet of white paper. She sighed. Another love poem from Lawrence, she thought. She quickly unfolded the paper and read the short poem.
“I see in your face
such beauty, such grace.
My heart wants you so.
I need you to know.”
She’d known for some time that Olivia’s son, Lawrence, who lived in the upstairs apartment with his mother, was infatuated with her and, a few months after they’d moved into the house, she’d started getting the poems. The envelopes were never sealed and both the envelopes and the poems inside were typed on plain white paper.
She went back into her apartment and set the mail, with the exception of Lawrence’s poem, on the kitchen counter. She heard the humming sound of David’s electric shaver coming from the bathroom. She hurried into the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and stashed the poem, with the other poems and notes she’d saved, under a pile of nightgowns she never wore. She knew that she should probably throw the notes away but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. David would have a fit if he ever saw these, she thought.
The whirring st
opped and she heard the shower running, which meant that David would be out soon. She went into the kitchen and began to dry and put away the dishes. A few minutes later, David stomped into the kitchen.
“Do me a favor. Tell the old lady upstairs to have that damn lift fixed. I’m sick and tired of listening to it!” He grabbed his keys off the table and stormed out the door.
Ann rushed to the kitchen door and locked the deadbolt, remembering the scare she’d had. She sat down at the kitchen table. David was so insistent that she get a job. Yes, they definitely had money problems but he wasted so much money.
There was the drinking and the gambling. He didn’t think she knew about the gambling but she’d found several tickets to the gambling boat in Indiana in the pocket of one of his sports coats and, just the other day, when she was putting away his laundry, she’d discovered a stack of instant lottery tickets buried in his dresser under his socks. He really doesn’t attempt to hide it, she thought. If he didn’t want me to know, he would’ve gotten rid of them. She felt her anger fade. Maybe it’s a cry for help. If I did get a job, it might take some of the pressure off of him and he wouldn’t need to drink so much or gamble. Maybe I should try to get the job at the church.
She went over to the counter and picked up the postcard from her sister that she’d left there earlier and stuck it under a magnet on the refrigerator with the others she’d accumulated.
Oh, I wish I could talk to Marnie, she thought, suddenly missing her sister. She’s always been there for me. I’ve got a few minutes and I really need to hear the sound of her voice, she thought, dialing her sister’s number. I’ll tell her about the job opening at the church but I don’t expect her to make the decision for me. She’s always been there for me whenever I’ve had a problem but I’m thirty-two years old; it’s about time I started figuring things out for myself instead of depending on my big sister to give me the answers. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to apply for the job and, if Father Andrew offers it to me, I’m going to take it.
The phone rang four times and Marnie’s voice came on the line, “Sorry I’m not available to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
“Marn, it’s me. I really need to talk to you. Please call me as soon as you can.”
Ann sighed as she hung up the phone.
All of a sudden, she remembered her appointment with Ms. Williams. Well, that’s it then, she decided. I’ll call Father Andrew when I get home this afternoon. I can’t wait to tell David. With any luck, I’ll get the job and things will start to change for the better around here.
She washed her face, combed her hair and ran through the apartment and out the front door, realizing as she rushed out that she’d forgotten to tell David about her appointment with Davey’s teacher. Oh well, she decided, I’ll just have to tell him later. She didn’t know, as she left the apartment, that someone was watching her.
Chapter 5
FROM HIS ATTIC ROOM IN THE OLD HOUSE, Lawrence Berger peeped through a gap in the curtains but he had to turn his head; the sunlight was too bright for his sensitive eyes. He moved away from the window and sat down at the card table to work on his coin collection. He picked up a magnifying glass and began arranging his newest acquisitions.
Collecting coins was Lawrence’s passion. His grandfather had given him the first coin in his collection. It was a Columbian half dollar commemorating the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair. It was only worth about fifteen dollars now and, compared to some of his other coins, that was a “drop in the bucket” as his mother was fond of saying. But, to this day, it was his most treasured coin. Grandfather wasn’t one to show emotion, he remembered, but, when he gave that coin to me, I think it was his way of letting me know that he loved me.
He looked around him. He loved his room in the attic. He had used old room divider screens to section off his room from the rest of the attic, which was mostly used for storage.
Sometimes, when he was bored, he would venture into the nooks and crannies of that part of the attic and go through one of the trunks that was filled with old clothes, photo albums and other mementos of days long gone by. Through the years, he’d found a few items that he’d taken out and used. One of his better finds was an old manual typewriter, which, even though he now had a computer and printer, he preferred to use occasionally.
However, he spent most of his time in his room in the attic. Though sparsely furnished with only his new computer desk and swivel chair, a card table, a folding chair and a dilapidated antique sofa or “fainting couch,” as his mother called it, he had decorated his space with his own personal touches and belongings. He’d lined the walls with brightly colored travel posters from all over the world and he had a combination AM/FM radio and CD player, his travel and coin collecting magazines and, of course, his girlie magazines. His mother didn’t know about those. He knew that she wouldn’t approve so, rather than ordering them by mail and having them delivered to the house, he went out to buy them.
As a gift to him on his twenty-first birthday all those years ago, his mother had brought in a carpenter to finish his attic room. Where once there were bare rafters, he now had walls painted a vibrant shade of blue green, like the waters of the Caribbean, an insulated plasterboard ceiling and real hardwood floors. An electrician had extended the heat and air conditioning to the third floor of the house and installed more electrical outlets.
The remodeled room was the best birthday present he had ever gotten because the attic was the one place where he could have complete privacy to work on his hobby or just to daydream. There was no one there to ask anything of him or to look over his shoulder and monitor everything he did. He didn’t have to answer to his mother when he was there although he always had his cell phone with him in case she needed him. And, in his room, he didn’t have to deal with other people. People could be so cruel.
He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Scenes from his childhood played themselves out in his mind so often. Lately, he couldn’t seem to escape them.
The setting was always the same: the playground of his elementary school. It was recess and he sat in the same place every day, at the edge of the woods in the shade of a tall oak tree with roots so old and gnarled that they had pushed through the soil and spread out like bony fingers around the tree. Lawrence sat there watching the other kids play dodge ball and foursquare.
“Casper!” one of the ten-year-old boys called to him and immediately the others would join in the familiar chant. “Casper, the friendly ghost. Casper, the friendly ghost.”
He cringed. He hated that name and all the other things they called him and said about him. “Scary Larry! Scary Larry!” they would taunt. He hated the way all the kids treated him. They made fun of him constantly and they wanted to know why he didn’t have a father. Mrs. Nelson, their teacher, had caught Evan, writing “Bastard” on the cover of one of Lawrence’s notebooks. Evan had gotten into a lot of trouble for that one.
However, mostly, their cruelty went unnoticed and unpunished. They laughed at his thick glasses and called him an old man because of his white hair. He wanted to be a part of the group so badly but he couldn’t. He couldn’t play out in the sun for long because of his sensitive skin and eyes. He was different. He was an albino. An albino bastard.
But then, in his daydream, he remembered Angie. She was such a frail, tiny little girl with hair so light blonde that it was almost white and pale, creamy skin. She was the most beautiful girl in the world to him and she was his only friend. Whenever the other kids began to taunt him, Angie always came to his rescue.
“Don’t pay any attention to them, Lawrence,” she would say. “They’re just mean, nasty, stupid bullies.” Then she would sit beside him in the shade of the old tree and they would talk. She had the sweetest smile and she always managed to take his mind off of the hurt and humiliation he felt.
He sat up in his chair. Thoughts of Angie always made him feel
better. He looked up at his collection of travel posters and imagined he and Angie on a beach, smiling and holding hands. He liked to think of her that way: happy. Not how she’d looked the last time he’d seen her: tears streaming down her face, her lovely features contorted with pain, her eyes begging and pleading, saying what her lips couldn’t. I won’t think about that now, he promised himself. I’ll think about the good times.
He wished he could turn back the clock and be with Angie there, under the shade of the old tree. Or, better yet, he thought, if she could be with me now. We would travel to so many places. We’d see the world. He longed to travel and spent hours watching the Travel Channel on cable TV. There were so many beautiful, exotic places in the world for normal people to go. But he wasn’t normal. His eyes were so sensitive to light and he had to keep himself covered with sunscreen whenever he ventured outdoors. Then there was his mother and his responsibility to her. Travel was out of the question and Angie had been out of his life for many, many years.
He heard the front door of the house slam and went back over to the window. Looking out, he saw that the sky had clouded up, making it easier on his eyes. Ann Kern was scurrying down the walkway, heading toward the sidewalk. Everyone called her “Ann” and, in public, he did too. He’d slipped once and referred to her as “Annie.” He wouldn’t make that mistake again. He could still see the disapproving expression on his mother’s face and hear her voice. “Lawrence, you need to remember that Ann is a married woman.”
But, privately, in his head, he always thought of her as Annie. Annie, like Angie. She didn’t look at all like Angie but he knew better than anyone that looks didn’t measure a person’s worth. Annie had Angie’s soul. She was so nice and always so kind to him. Just like Angie.
He watched Ann until she was out of sight. Then he went over to the sofa, lay down and once again, closed his eyes. This time instead of Angie, he saw Annie. In his daydream, they were strolling along the beach at night, holding hands. The full moon and the sounds of the ocean’s waves lapping at the shore were so vivid to him. He felt as if he were really there with her.
Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) Page 2