by Mark Lukens
Had their house caught on fire? Why hadn’t Diana called her?
There were other signs of damage: torn-out shrubs, stains on the driveway, stones missing from the front columns, a few boarded-up windows. To the left, in the side yard, Paula saw a big dead spot in the St. Augustine grass where it looked like a large vehicle may have been parked—like an RV. She took a step back and studied the iron bars of the gate; they had the same pitted and bleached spots that their gates and fence did at home.
It was Lou and Edna . . . they had done all of this.
Diana and Ronnie were gone. They had moved from their damaged home and put it up for sale sometime in the last three weeks without telling her. Diana hadn’t even asked her if she wanted to be the real estate agent for the sale.
“You a friend of theirs?”
Paula jumped at the voice and turned around. An old lady walking a dog stood at the end of the driveway by the street. Both the woman and the dog looked tired in the muggy heat.
“Yes,” Paula answered and smiled. “I’m a friend of Diana and Ronnie Crager.”
The old lady just nodded.
“Did . . . did something happen here?” Paula asked.
The old lady stared at Paula strangely, like the woman was trying to decide how much to say. “They had some problems.”
“With the house?” Paula asked as she glanced back at it. “It looks like it was half destroyed.”
“There was a fire,” the old lady said. “The husband, he got burned real bad.”
Paula felt her heart skip a beat. “Ronnie . . . you mean Ronnie Crager got burned in the fire?”
She nodded. “Almost died, I guess.”
“But . . . but . . .” Paula’s mind was spinning, and all of this didn’t feel real. “Did they say how the fire started?”
The old woman shrugged. She looked ready to move on down the road. Even her dog seemed impatient to get going. “I don’t know.”
“I can’t believe this. They were friends of mine. I can’t believe they didn’t even call me.”
The old lady just nodded, the conversation apparently not interesting her anymore. She turned and left Paula standing there.
“Wait,” Paula said as the woman started walking down the sidewalk. “Do you know when the fire happened?”
The old woman stopped and turned around, frowning as she tried to remember. She shrugged. “About three weeks ago, I think.”
Three weeks ago?
“You’re sure about that?” Paula asked.
The old woman nodded and seemed a little perturbed at Paula questioning her memory.
“Thanks,” Paula said.
The old woman was already on her way again, and she gave a half-hearted wave without even turning back around.
Paula got back into her Denali, but she had to wait a moment before she could drive, until she got her trembling under control. If the fire had happened three weeks ago, then that meant that Diana had called her and recommended Lou and Edna after all of the damage they had caused, after Ronnie had gotten burned. Why would she do that?
*
Scott sipped his drink and paced the floor again. For once Paula had her husband’s full attention after telling him about her visit to Diana and Ronnie’s house.
Scott had called someone he knew at the fire department, and the man had told him that the fire had occurred three weeks ago. He’d also told Scott that the cause of the fire was faulty wiring and that no charges had been filed.
“They were there,” Paula said. “Diana was the one who recommended Lou and Edna to me. She recommended them even though they had damaged her house that badly. Even after Ronnie had gotten hurt. Why would she do that?”
Scott gave a slight shake of his head, dismissing it like it didn’t matter. “They need to go. Today. Right now. Write a check for them.”
It was almost dark. Lou and Edna were done for the day, tucked away in their battered and stained RV. They had worked on the pool area today, and now the pool was green. Lou promised that he would fix it tomorrow, but Paula knew she was going to have to call the pool company. She didn’t want those two touching anything else on their property. They were dangerous.
Paula wrote out a check for the amount they owed the old couple, plus another five hundred dollars. Hopefully it would be enough money to get them to leave.
Get them to leave? she asked herself. This was their property—they shouldn’t have to bribe someone to leave, especially not some seemingly harmless elderly couple.
Harmless. They were definitely not harmless. Paula thought of all of the “accidents.” But what if they weren’t accidents? What if that fire at Diana’s house had been set deliberately? What if Sadie hadn’t run away? What if they had done something to Sadie? A chill crawled across her skin, and she thought of Lou standing in the darkness just beyond their bedroom door last night.
Paula handed the check to Scott. He was a little liquored up and bolder now. His face was set, his eyes narrowed—his idea of a “tough guy” expression.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Paula asked him.
“No,” he said, practically spitting the word out at her. “I’ll handle this now.” She could pick up the real meaning underneath his words: She had screwed all of this up, and now it was up to him to fix it.
*
Paula heard her husband’s screams in the twilight. When he left to confront Lou and Edna, she waited on the front porch, tucked out of sight from the side yard and their view. She wanted to be out here, but she didn’t want to walk to their RV in the dark—she was willing to let Scott handle it even if she had to listen to him gloat for a few days.
But now he had cried out in the darkness.
Paula bolted off of their front porch and ran down their concrete driveway. Scott had left the gates open, and she raced past them. She sprinted down the dirt road that ran in front of their property. The lights from Lou and Edna’s RV bobbed in the darkness in front of her as she ran.
The woods were dark, the sky so dark blue . . . night was almost here. There were even a few stars twinkling in the night sky. The air was possibly only five degrees cooler than it had been in the day, and it was thick with humidity. Paula could already feel herself sweating as she ran. The mosquitoes were everywhere, buzzing around her face.
Scott cried out again, another long scream.
Oh God, Lou and Edna were doing something to him!
“Scott!” she called out.
She was close enough now to hear him moaning, cussing a string of words she couldn’t make out. She also heard Lou and Edna’s voices; they sounded like they were trying to soothe him with a sincerity that was surely false.
Scott was on the ground in the weedy grass near the side of the RV, curled up in a ball and holding his right ankle.
Paula dropped down beside him as he grimaced in pain and moaned, shaking his head back and forth, his face slick with tears and sweat.
“What is it?” she asked.
“My ankle. I think I broke my fucking ankle.”
“He stepped in a hole,” Lou explained.
“What hole?” Paula asked.
Edna pointed at a huge hole in the grass. It was nearly impossible to see in the darkness, but once it was pointed out to her she saw it. She saw more holes. There were a lot of holes in the ground that looked like they had been dug up with a shovel.
“You did this?” Paula asked before she even realized what she was going to say.
Lou and Edna looked shocked, like they had been insulted. It was overacting, Paula thought—something out of a bad movie. She wanted to scream at them to stop faking.
“Get out,” Paula told them. “I want you two off our property. Right now!”
“But . . .”
“Now!” Paula screamed.
Again, the old couple looked shocked and hurt, their faces drawn down into long frowns.
“Did you give them the check?” she asked Scott as she helped him up to his feet.
Paula practically slapped the check into Edna’s hand. “Here,” she told her. “This is what we owe you two, and more.” She hurried back to Scott and helped him walk. He stood on his good foot, hobbling.
“I can help you with him,” Lou offered, taking a few steps towards them.
“No!” Paula snapped. “Stay away from us.”
“This check is far too much,” Edna said.
“Keep it,” Paula said over her shoulder as she helped Scott hobble down the dirt road towards their gate. “Keep it and leave. We don’t need your services anymore.”
*
Paula had to take Scott to the hospital.
It was worse than she had suspected. The ankle bones had snapped, but there was also some nerve damage that was causing him a lot of pain. They set his ankle and then put a cast on it. They gave him some crutches and painkillers and sent him home.
When they got home six hours later, the RV was gone. Scott was already a little dopey from the pain meds, but they weren’t making his pain go away completely. Seeing that Lou and Edna were finally gone brightened his mood a little.
She got Scott up the steps to their second floor bedroom—a long, slow process. An hour later they fell asleep next to each other in their bed.
*
The next morning Paula woke up to the bleating sound of Lou’s ancient pressure washer. It was eight o’clock in the morning, and Scott had stayed home from work because of his ankle.
“What the hell?” Scott muttered as he rolled over, already wincing in pain.
Paula jumped out of bed and hurried to the window. “Oh my God.”
“What is it?” Scott asked as he struggled to sit up.
“It’s . . . it’s them. Lou and Edna are out there pressure washing the driveway.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Scott grabbed his crutches and hobbled over to the window. “The gates are open. Did you leave the gates open when we came home last night?”
“No.”
“You must’ve left them open.”
“No. I know I didn’t.”
“Then the only other explanation is—”
“—that they got the gate code somehow,” she finished for him.
*
After Paula helped Scott out of the house, they walked down the driveway together. Paula didn’t see Edna around, but Lou was hunched over the driveway, spraying it clean, focused on his work. His pressure washer was so loud—it sounded like an engine redlining and about to explode.
“Hey!” Scott yelled as they walked up to the old man.
Lou had a pair of safety glasses on, and he was wearing the same clothes he’d worn the last few days. His dark green workpants were tucked down into a tall pair of black rubber boots.
“Hey!” Scott yelled again.
Lou didn’t seem to hear them. But who could hear anything with that machine of his running full blast?
Scott tapped Lou on the shoulder.
Lou jumped and smiled at them. He took his hand off the trigger, and the water stopped blasting the concrete. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Evans. Good morning.”
“What the hell are you doing?!” Scott yelled.
“I know you told us to leave,” Lou yelled back, his hands out in a placating gesture. “And we will, but I promised to get this driveway done, and I don’t like to break my word.”
“I don’t care about that. I don’t want you here! You two are fired! Do you understand that?”
“Mr. Evans . . .”
“Turn that fucking machine off!” Scott yelled.
“But if I could just finish this section of the driveway. It’s going to look incomplete if I don’t.”
The motor on the pressure washer seemed to be getting louder, and now the machine was shaking back and forth like it was a bad boiler building up pressure.
“I’m going to call the police!” Scott told him. “I swear to God I am if—”
Something on the pressure washer blew. Paula didn’t know what it was . . . all she knew was that there was a loud pop, then the machine died. Scott screamed and collapsed down onto the driveway, writhing back and forth on the wet concrete, holding his hands over his eye. Blood was already oozing out between his fingers.
“Scott!! Oh my God, Scott!!”
“My eye! My fucking eye!”
*
Paula took Scott back to the hospital. He had to stay overnight this time, and she stayed with him. She didn’t want to go back home and see that Lou and Edna were still there. Somehow she knew that they would still be there, their rusty and battered RV parked in the same spot beyond the fence.
They couldn’t save Scott’s eye. The doctor said it was most likely a piece of a bolt that had broken off of the pressure washer. They had dug out some pieces of metal from his eye socket during surgery. At least the metal shrapnel hadn’t gone past his eye into his brain. Now Scott had a patch over his right eye, and he was doped up on even more painkillers.
“We’ll sue them,” Scott said as he lay in the hospital bed, slurring his words.
Sue them for what? Paula wondered. Their crappy RV? It didn’t look like they owned much else in the world. But she didn’t say anything to him.
*
When they got home the next day, the RV was still parked in the same spot in the field by the trees.
“That’s it,” Scott said without much force to his words. He was slumped down in the passenger seat, already dialing 911 on his cell phone.
Lou and Edna were weeding the shrub beds in the front yard when Paula pulled the GMC Denali up near them.
“We called the police,” Paula told the elderly couple when she got out of the Denali and walked around to help Scott get out of the passenger side.
Lou and Edna stood up and faced them, brushing off the dirt from their hands and wiping it on their clothes.
“We’re so sorry about what happened,” Edna said. “We just wanted to help out a little more, that’s all.”
“You’ve done enough,” Paula said.
Edna swatted at Lou. “I told you that stupid pressure washer was going to blow soon.”
Lou hung his head sheepishly, but Paula swore to God that it looked like he was trying not to crack a smile.
“The police are on their way,” Scott said as he got to his feet, balanced on one crutch. “You can stay if you want and deal with them. I don’t really care.”
“We just want to help is all,” Lou said again with his hands in front of him almost like he would be holding hat-in-hand. “Could you call the police back and tell them not to come?”
“Fuck you,” Scott said without much force.
“Okay,” Lou sighed. “If that’s the way you want it, then we’ll have to make a few phone calls ourselves.”
Paula and Scott had started half-bobbling/half-walking towards the open garage door, but then Scott stopped in his tracks, wincing in pain; he whirled around to look at Lou and Edna. Paula stared at the old couple. There was something menacing in the tone of Lou’s voice—he wasn’t so humble now. And his eyes, they looked dark, hidden in the shadow of his brows as he leaned forward . . . he looked just like he had when he’d stood in their bedroom doorway in the middle of the night.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Scott asked Lou. His words were slightly slurred from the pain meds and his body was tense.
“The IRS,” Lou answered.
Scott didn’t answer, but he was still tense, his body frozen.
Paula looked at her husband and watched his skin turn white under the blazing sun as the blood seemed to drain from him. “Scott?”
Scott didn’t answer.
Lou looked to his wife for help. “There might have been some problems with income that wasn’t . . .”
“That wasn’t reported,” Edna said, jumping in qui
ckly to help her husband explain. “The Beckman job, I believe,” she said, nodding at her husband.
“How do you know about that?” Scott whispered. It sounded like all of the air had left his lungs.
“Isn’t that where he met Suzie?” Edna asked Lou.
Lou’s eyebrows shot up with mock surprise. “Yes, Suzie,” he said like he’d just remembered. But then he stared at Scott, and that dark malevolence was back in his smile again. “You remember Suzie, don’t you?”
Paula felt her stomach twist into a knot, her heart beating rapidly now. Just from the look on Scott’s face she knew he was having an affair with this woman named Suzie. Paula had suspected Scott of cheating on her for the last few months, but she’d never had any kind of proof.
“Who are you people?” Scott asked. His voice still sounded deflated, all traces of anger or aggression gone now, only defeat left.
“We’re just a couple of old farts who want to help you,” Lou said and laughed like all of those threats had just been a big joke. And Edna laughed right along with him. But the darkness was still in both of their expressions, just underneath their smiles.
They’re crazy, Paula thought. But it was more than that. They knew things about Scott, and he was scared now.
Paula turned towards the gates when she heard the cop car drive up. The gates were still open. Finally, the police were here.
The cop parked his car behind Paula’s Denali and got out slowly with a bored look, it was like he’d already made up his mind that this was a bullshit call that was wasting his time. “Evening,” the officer said. “We have a problem here?”
Paula was about to answer, but Scott practically pushed her out of the way and hobbled forward, leaning on his crutches. He spoke in a loud, fake voice. “I’m so sorry, officer. I . . . I made a mistake.”
The cop stood a few feet away from Paula and Scott, towering over them. He had his thumbs hitched on his belt in a casual redneck gesture. “A mistake?”
Scott smiled and looked at Paula, begging her with his one good eye to back him up.
“Yes, officer,” Paula said, clearing her throat. “It was just a mistake.”
The cop’s eyes shifted to Lou and Edna who managed to look like a pitiful old couple being bullied by two young wealthy socialites. Gone were their expressions of malice. God, they were so good at this, Paula thought.