Jex Malone

by C. L. Gaber

  “Beloved Wife Lillian,” the card reads.

  “That’s Lillian!” I gasp. “She’s Mr. Foster’s wife!”

  “Shhhh,” the other girls reply in unison. By now, they’ve also gathered in the bedroom, mostly because Deva and Cissy are too afraid to hang out by themselves in the kitchen, where they did a quick sweep and then ran to the back room.

  “Lillian is Old Man Foster’s wife. I never would have guessed. Now this is creepy,” I repeat.

  “We never knew her first name. She was always just Mrs. Foster,” Nat gasps.

  The funeral card shows the date of death, which I note is October 12, 2001.

  “Look, she died a few months after Patty disappeared,” I whisper. “Three months later to be exact.”

  “Does it say how?” Cissy pipes up.

  “It’s not an obituary,” Deva snaps. “It’s a funeral card. That’s what they hand out to people who come to the funeral; it’s not supposed to say how she died or tell her entire life story.”

  “Look, I don’t see anything else in here; we’re wasting our time,” I interrupt. “Let’s move on. There’s also a shed in the backyard that looks creepy enough to send at least two of us into cardiac arrest.”

  Nat sticks her head outside the back door to make sure the coast is clear. At that moment, I whisper something into her ear. “I’m staying … in the main house. There must be more,” I say. “I can find out how she died. A guy like Foster will keep the obit somewhere.”

  “It’s your funeral,” Nat replies. “We’re going to check out the shed. Holler if you need … wait, don’t holler. Just run. If there is any issue, meet back at my house.”

  A streak of lightning illuminates the sky and plays against the darkness of the nearby mountain range. This weather worries me a little bit. We’re going to have to move quickly.

  Quietly and almost holding my breath, I watch Cissy, Deva, and Nat dart across the backyard where they find a little metal structure the size of a really large bathroom. Even from where I’m standing and squinting, I can see that it has one small window and a blanket has been pinned up as a heavy makeshift curtain.

  Later, I would learn that it was Cissy who popped the shed door open with the help of Deva’s Visa card and then Nat helped her swing open the rusty door, which squeaked too loudly in the silent night air.

  Nat would tell me that inside the shed, old paint pallets had mummified in the dry air. An unfinished painting sat on an easel. Cissy even dared to sneeze in all of this dust, which provoked the typical reaction.

  “Shhhh,” Deva and Nat said in unison.

  “Now this is really creepy. It’s filthy in here,” Deva announced. “How weird that the house is perfectly clean, and this place is such a pit. It looks like it hasn’t been touched in years.”

  “Look at that,” Nat said, shining the light on a stack of manila envelopes. “Now that’s something. Look, over there.”

  During my debriefing, I would come to know that the envelopes were clean, as if someone had shielded them from the dust. Cissy picked one up and carefully slid open the flap as Nat shined a light on it.

  Out slipped a single piece of paper from the inside. It was a charcoal drawing showing a girl standing in front of an old Spanish arch and a wall. A large spray of bougainvillea poured over the sun-kissed cement. A big floppy hat obscured the girl’s face.

  Cissy slid the sketch back into the envelope and moved on to the next envelope. Another drawing featured an older girl standing on what looked like the top of a mountain looking up at the stars. The third picture was even more curious and showed a girl staring up at what looked like another mountain with the famous Hollywood sign on it.

  It was Cissy who dug a little deeper and felt the fringed sides of ripped-out notebook paper.

  Any one of us would have known that handwriting anywhere. It was the last five pages of Patty Matthews’ notebook.

  The Drew-Ids will tell it well in the future. So well that I will swear I was standing next to them in that shed, but I certainly was not.

  Right now, I’m somewhere much worse hearing the most horrifying sound in the world in the close distance: the rattling of keys near the back door.

  The girls must have seen his car because even in my ducked down position near the back patio window, I can see them crawling low out of the yard. Maybe I’m seeing things, but on second glance I see papers, lots of them falling out of Nat’s jacket and then being tucked securely back in place.

  Quickly, she kills her flashlight.

  Even in the darkness of this stormy night, I catch a glimpse of Old Man Foster, who clomps into his blackened kitchen, but doesn’t step beyond a back mat. When he pulls the Velcro tabs from his shoes, it sounds like an electric current ripping through the air. With fingers that seem to creak, he flicks on the kitchen light and looks out the back window of his house to make sure that everything is as it should be on a fine Wednesday night where everything has been as usual except his favorite movie theater lost power.

  “Damn storms,” he says to absolutely no one.

  Then I hear him slam something metal down hard on the spotless kitchen counter.

  He. Is. Home.

  Chapter 21

  Famous Girl Detective Quote:

  “Would you take it the wrong way if I told you I was actually glad you got shot?”

  —Jordan Cavanaugh, Crossing Jordan

  My knees actually shake when I hear the rattling of keys in the door. For a minute, I can’t even breathe.

  He can’t be home.

  But who else has actual keys! Just the monster of the house.

  My mind downloads what I need to know: If Old Man Foster catches me in his house, there is no telling what he will do, but it won’t be pretty. In fact, I know enough to realize he could shoot me for breaking and entering and not even go to jail for it. I’m the intruder here and when you intrude, you get what you get.

  I have to get out of here—faster than fast. Before he even unlocked that back door, I stayed low and raced down the hallway, but changed my mind at the last minute. It was late and I didn’t see him as a snacker.

  That’s why I crept back to the kitchen to hide in walk-in pantry before he could get his bearings. Closing the door of the closet behind me, I don’t wait for it to click. In agonizing slow motion, I watch the door betray me and creek back open about two inches. In just this little sliver of space, I can see wiry but strong legs and his sockless feet moving around the warped kitchen floor.

  Kneeling down inside the narrow food closet, I gaze across the kitchen as another bolt of lightning streaks across the sky. It’s enough to illuminate the weathered, thin face of Mr. Foster, who has gone back outside, and I pray that he’s going far from home. But he only takes a few steps onto his back porch to fix a flickering light bulb. Before he enters again, I take two fingers and gently close the pantry door all the way until it clicks.

  I hear his slippers plod across the old-fashioned blue and white linoleum floor again. The porch light outside must be burning brightly.

  He is in the house.

  For the night.

  Click! It’s the metal dead-bolting of the back door and I see him lock it with a key, which means I’m officially trapped, a prisoner of my own warped curiosity.

  Gazing past his boxes of instant oatmeal, Lipton soups, and a lifetime supply of prunes, I dart a glance through a crack in the door. I see his bony frame standing at the sink and hear him turn on the water, which spurts out with an initial protesting chug. He rinses what sounds like a coffee mug and a plate.

  Old Man Foster then grabs a white towel and dries his hands for what seems like several long minutes before he turns directly towards the pantry and stops in his tracks to stare at the door, which is slightly ajar again. That damn lock won’t catch. Inner alarms must be going off in his cobwebbed mind. Something isn’t A-plus perfect in his house.

  It’s the same stare he used on me in the movie theater parking lot. He’s lik
e a wolf putting his prey on lock.

  Holding my breath, I start to say every prayer I ever learned at Sunday school as Mr. Foster takes a step closer and then closer. His hand is on the pantry doorknob, and he pulls hard until the door crashes into the wall. Suddenly, the closet is filled with bright light.

  Somehow, Mr. Foster doesn’t look down at where I’m hiding in the corner by his crock-pot and extra coffeemaker. He looks way up, takes two steps inside, and grabs a Lipton tea bag and the half-eaten bag of oatmeal cookies.

  The world goes black when he shuts the closet door with a resounding thud. The click of the door is like someone cocking a gun.

  From the outside, I hear that spurting water again followed by a metal pot slammed onto the stove burners. Nothing happens for a few moments until I hear a loud lady’s scream, and I stifle my own by putting half my arm across my mouth.

  It’s just the old teapot announcing it’s ready. Mr. Foster putters around the kitchen for a few more minutes making his late-night snack.

  Then there is nothing. Silence.

  Praying as I crack the door open a tiny bit, I glance at the floor, but don’t see his white slippers. Instead, I hear them plod along the hallway and then I jump as the blaring sound of the old man’s TV assaults my ears.

  Is the guy deaf? If he doesn’t kill me, I’ll be deaf. That much is certain.

  I hear the loud opening music from a Barney Miller rerun. It figures that he watches only the worst of vintage TV. But I can’t dwell on his viewing habits.

  It’s option time.

  If I’m lucky I can reach the back door and slide outside. The only problem is Mr. Foster has used a key to lock the deadbolt.

  Why did I ever leave New Jersey to vacation here? Why didn’t I just defy the court order and go to juvie for the summer? It would have been a lot easier on my nervous system! At this rate, I’m going to turn into Cissy!

  Scanning the kitchen counter, I don’t see a key, which means I’m locked in Fosterland. My only choice is to make it past him, past the living room, and into the foyer where the front door might still be open … just the way we found it when we broke in. I’m guessing he doesn’t lock that one until he’s ready to go to sleep.

  The only problem—and it’s a big one—is that I have to walk or crawl right past the man who probably killed the girl next door.

  There. Is. No. Choice.

  Crouching, I slide along the hallway wall and stop when I see the back of Mr. Foster’s head. He’s sitting in his brown La-Z-Boy chair and I can see the leather is so old it’s peeling down the sides. Slowly, I move a few inches … then a few more. At one point, the laugh track on Barney Miller stops. The house goes silent and I hold my breath. One, one hundred, two, one hundred, I count silently.

  Comic genius Abe Vigoda cracks another joke and even Old Man Foster laughs loudly, which gives me the time to take three giant slides toward the door. Again, I have to stop. The TV goes silent before a blaring commercial for a local car dealer nearly blows out my now permanently damaged eardrums.

  Mr. Foster stands up with his teacup. His eyes never leave a late-night commercial for puppy food. Maybe he raises them in the basement and eats them for snacks.

  If he turns around now, he will see me crouching down by his dining room table. There is absolutely no way he won’t notice!

  He stands there for one beat, two beats, three beats … and then he pivots towards me only to stop, reconsider, and go back to where he started. He folds back down and even leans back far enough for the footrest to pop up. Barney Miller is back on.

  “I love you, Abe Vigoda,” I whisper to myself.

  Sliding on my hands and knees, I make it across the tile foyer floor until I reach the front door. Still crouching low, my fingers are on the doorknob. It turns in silence and the door opens a quarter of an inch. No deadbolt!

  Slithering like a snake, I give myself just enough room to belly flop onto the outside front step. When I hear the laugh track roar again, I stand halfway up, close the door, and then I run for my life.

  By the time I stop running my fastest Olympian sprint, I’m way down the street and finally notice the lightning constantly racing across the onyx night sky. Loud thunder booms overhead. The first house within running distance is Nat’s, and I see the three of them sprinting towards her front yard. In just a few moments, all of us duck into her garage.

  “There is just tons and tons to tell you,” I say in a breathless voice.

  “Did that old creep try to go after you?” Deva says in an equally winded tone. “Did he catch you? Do you think he will call the cops? I’m really, really scared now!”

  “No, no, we got out clean. He never even saw me, but listen to me,” I start to explain. “Ricki was never the mom. Not the mom to Patty. She was the stepmom. Cooper is her half-brother. None of this makes any sense.”

  For the next five minutes, I explain what Sandy told me about Patty’s family tree.

  “Oh, you want something else that makes no sense?” Cissy says, grabbing the envelope that Nat produces from under her second sweatshirt.

  “We grabbed these from inside that creepy shed and it makes no sense. It’s real weird though. They’re not drawings of stuff here in Nevada. They’re from somewhere else. They’re also not that old.”

  “So what do you think … ” Deva asks.

  Before I can even think or look inside the envelope, I see a broad-shouldered figure pacing up and down the street at a fast clip. It’s even worse than I think. Mr. Foster obviously called the cops, who are now canvassing the neighborhood. And I am using words like canvassing because of all the time I’ve been spending with Nat.

  Then it dawns on me. The canvasser looks familiar. Too familiar.

  “Uh-oh,” I remember. “I don’t think I was supposed to leave the house. I forgot and they must have come home from sushi.”

  “Listen, you guys stay here at Nat’s house. I’m gonna run down the street and go home. Maybe I could take the envelopes with me,” I suggest in a breathless tone.

  “We found something else,” Nat says in a dead serious voice. “The last five pages.”

  I experience my first chill in Nevada and in 96°F night air, it races up and down my spine.

  Nat hands the entire thing over and I shove the envelopes down the front of my jeans and pull my shirt over them. At that exact moment, Nat’s mother pokes her head into the garage.

  “Jex, honey,” she says. “Your father is at the front door. He’s very upset.”

  Chapter 22

  Famous Girl Detective Quote:

  “I don’t think this is gonna blow over. Everytime I see you, there’s a new reason not to trust you.”

  —Calleigh Duquesne, CSI: Miami

  I have never seen that look of quiet fury in my father’s eyes. It’s blazing anger and it’s all I have to go on because he isn’t speaking at all.

  Grunting a few words, he takes my arm and leads me out of the garage and back to our house about half a block down.

  I don’t say a word on the quick walk home illuminated by Mother Nature’s crack-boom-bombs. The rain is still waiting to come and by now the dust is kicking up and swirling through the air. It hurts when it slaps my dusty skin fresh from my latest breaking and entering job.

  When we blast through the kitchen door like a one-two punch, I look around and casually say, “So, where is Sandy? Zumba class?”

  “Jessica, we need to talk,” Dad says in a rough voice. It’s clear he isn’t in the mood to talk about his girlfriend—and he called me Jessica.

  Strictly speaking: Not good.

  “I’d advise you to let me talk first and don’t say a word,” Dad says.

  Gulping hard, I figure that whatever he’s about to say isn’t going to be even a bit good. My mom gets upset every once in a while, but it’s usually a quiet sort of mad followed by the “I’m seriously disappointed in you for not finishing your science project” type of speech. Forgiveness usually involves bringi
ng her tea and Entenmann’s crumb cake.

  This is something much bigger.

  “Didn’t I tell you that these storms were dangerous? Didn’t I tell you not to leave the house?” Dad shouts. “You know what? You’re not on vacation here. You’re not at camp. I’m not running a freaking hotel where you come and go as you please.

  “I’m your father!” he booms.

  He has got to be kidding!

  Glaring back at him, I want to shout that this whole father-daughter summer, let alone this “you’re in trouble” talk, is seriously deranged.

  He’s my father—what a freaking joke!

  He’s my father—in name only.

  As if daring me to say one word, Det. Malone, as he will be known as from now on for all eternity, explodes and says, “I am your father. If I tell you to do something, you do it! It’s just that simple! It’s not open to debate. You do it!”

  “Right … ” I begin, but somehow I can’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice as we each prowl around the kitchen like two trapped jungle cats.

  He gives me the deadly silencing look again. “If I tell you not to run around the neighborhood in a major storm then you don’t!” he rants like a lunatic. “You don’t! Bad things can happen. Even in this neighborhood.

  “Girls … disappear,” he yells.

  “Do you want me to have to call your mother and say something bad happened to you during your summer here?” He pushes the emotion away and screams at me as he stalks past the open closet door. With one meaty hand, he slams the thing so hard that it’s a miracle the hinges are still on it and the wood hasn’t turned to sawdust.

  “And by the way, you’re supposed to spend a little bit of time with me during this summer since I haven’t basically seen you in the last ten or eleven years,” he raves. “I’m glad you have friends. I’m glad you seem to like it here. I’m glad that we can spend this time together even if you don’t exactly treat me like your father. You don’t even call me Dad. Even that’s fine.