by April Hill
Since the only thing to do during the day was read, I read. Hank was still nagging me to write, but I just read. Having already achieved my lifelong goal of plowing through Jane Austen and all the boring Brontes, I began wading through the complete works of Charles Dickens. If I’d known that being a potential murder victim could be so educationally enriching, I might have tried it earlier, I joked to Hank, who didn’t think it was funny, and swatted my ass really hard with the TV remote.
Outside, somewhere— but always nearby—lurked a plainclothes police vehicle. A gray two door, occupied by two shadow figures. Two different men, doing twelve-hour shifts, every day, and all through the night. The two guys were probably as bored as I was.
The detail watching the White Rancho had finally been pulled off. It had been weeks, now, but no one had come near the house. I could have saved them all that time, and the wasted tax dollars, if they'd simply asked. Except for an occasional mail delivery and periodic visits from Mom and Mona, visitors had never been a problem at my desolate little Rancho. Even the meter readers never seemed to show up regularly. I certainly never paid them regularly, yet only the cable ever threatened to disconnect. I had always just assumed that Mom had begun paying the bills after the utility companies gave up on collecting from me.
"Get your coat and hat," Hank said one evening, coming through the front door whistling cheerfully. "It’s the perfect night to get a Christmas tree."
I looked up from my book. No, not the book I was supposed to be writing. I had gone through all the Dickens I could stand, and was now working my way through all twenty volumes of the sea-going novels of Patrick O’Brian, in the hope that by the time Captain Jack Aubrey got to be an admiral, the villain of my own on-going horror story would be apprehended, and I could walk the Earth again, a free woman. I had two books to go, thus far, and it wasn't looking good. The good news is that my life was fairly quiet. No more deliveries of excised body parts, and not even a recent spanking. But it was also very, very boring.
"What’s so special about tonight?" I looked out the back window at the surly sky. "It’s raining."
Hank was grabbing coats out of the closet. "Right. And it’s going to drop to around 40 degrees by midnight, or so the guy on the six o’clock news tells me. It’s the only way to buy a tree in Southern California. If we go now, we can pretend it’s winter."
"That’s dumb," I complained. "It’s too late. And besides, tomorrow’s going to be in the high seventies, again, just like today. All those Christmas trees on the lots are probably fried to a crisp already."
"Could be, but at least our fried tree will be wet. Bundle up. It looks like snow out there." It came to me again, when he made this stupid joke, why I was in love with Hank Everett.
Once we were in the car, Hank bundled me into a red plaid blanket and drove with the all the windows wide open to add to the wintery mood he was looking for. He finally agreed to close the damned windows and turn on the heat after I began shivering, and promised solemnly to never again whine about missing an east coast winter.
"Where are we going to buy this fabulous wet Christmas tree, of yours?" I asked finally, after we’d driven for over an hour. I yawned and stretched, and looked around. Huddled in my blanket, I’d missed most of the passing scenery, and I was totally lost. All I could tell was that we were climbing into the mountains now, on a dark and gently winding road.
"I know this great place," he said mysteriously. "Just a little further up the road."
"What time is it?" I wondered. "Won’t everything’s be closed by this time?"
He didn't answer, just tucked the blanket closer around me and kissed the top of my head. I leaned my kissed and contented head back against the seat, watched the stars through the glass moon roof, and fell asleep.
Some time later, Hank nudged me awake and got out to open the trunk of the car. When I sat up and looked out the window, I saw that we were parked in front of a small wooden cabin surrounded by tall pine trees and a lot of... SNOW! Beyond the cabin, through the trees, was what appeared to be an enormous lake, shining in the cold moonlight.
"Lake Arrowhead," Hank said before I could open my mouth to ask. "I figured you could use a weekend away from everything. I packed a few things for you. If they’re not right, I guess you’ll just have to spend all your time in bed, which was sort of the plan, anyway."
He opened the trunk and pulled out a short, squat Christmas tree, fully decorated.
So, naturally, I began to cry.
We spent three days at the cabin, including Christmas Day— sleeping, eating, and whatever else crossed our minds. We made some extremely lame Christmas ornaments for our first tree out of toilet paper, pinecones, and dried pasta. No phone, no TV, and, as far as I could tell, no neighbors. Hank had called Mom and his family, and we’d all agreed to "do" Christmas with them on New Years. Hank gave me a beautiful white cashmere sweater set that didn’t quite fit and a gigantic jar of Oreos. My gift for him was back at Snow White's, of course, but none of that seemed to matter. We were together, safe, and cozy. It snowed the first two days, and we didn’t leave the house at all. Out the big front window, we saw a lot of raccoons, a thousand or so squirrels, and what I swore was a wolf. Coyote, said Hank, the naturalist. But no people, at all. The cabin had a big stone fireplace, a wide four-poster bed with a fat featherbed on it, and a view of the lake that took your breath away. Hank kept the fire going, and I cooked. Mainly eggs and bacon, and canned beans and hot dogs, but I cooked, nonetheless, and neither one of us got sick and died. It was, hands down, the best three days of my life.
I was having such a lovely time that I almost forgot about the special delivery of Dooley Fred Potter, but on Christmas Eve, for some reason, my curiosity about the case arose again.
"Why do you think Potter was killed?" I asked as we cuddled in the couch in front of a roaring fire. "Assuming that he’s dead, of course. I suppose it’s possible he’s still walking around somewhere, like, just horribly maimed or something."
Hank groaned. "I didn’t pack the damned hairbrush, but if you keep this up, I’m going to start improvising."
"Are you going to be a grouch?" I cried. "On Christmas Eve?"
Hank grinned. "If you want to see how grouchy I can be, just keep talking about this stuff. I’m going to feed all your Oreos to the squirrels, and then ruin my snow shoveling arm paddling your butt."
I dropped the subject,, but when we returned to town, and when Hank returned to work, my mind returned to the problem of Dooley Fred. And to the garage at the White Rancho, of course.
Let’s face it. Most of the really disagreeable things that have happened to me (or around me) have been my fault. Not all of them, mind you. I take no personal responsibility for periodic slumps in the stock market, one of which wiped out my tiny mutual fund account, or the outrageous cost of the humblest three-bedroom house in California. I had nothing at all to do with the fact that most of our high school seniors have never heard of Thomas Jefferson or the Magna Carta, and will probably never buy one of my books even if I ever write another one, because they can’t actually read. These things, as unpleasant as they are, were not my fault.
Going back to the White Rancho when I’d been warned not to, however, was unquestionably my fault.
I planned this forbidden excursion slightly better, though, by asking Hank to drop me at Mom's for the day. Being paranoid, he took a long, circuitous route to her house, with the gray two-door following behind us at a short distance to make sure we weren’t followed. When we got to Mom’s, he checked out her house from top to bottom, left the gray car stationed out front, and went off to work, finally content that I was safely stashed away and being entertained for the day.
And the minute he drove away, I went to work on Mom. She knew, of course, that I wasn't supposed to go anywhere without my pair of police babysitters, but she’s always been easy to lie to, so I did. Besides, I think she regarded the whole thing as a bit silly, since we hadn’t shared with he
r the more gruesome details, and nothing at all about the attack on me. Mom had it in her head that the attacker was a peeping Tom, and that her house had been unfairly implicated. Her confusion about what was going on worked very nicely into my plan.
"You’re so right, Mom," I agreed, gulping down the breakfast she insisted I eat. "Hank says there’s really nothing else to worry about, so I’m going up there this morning to air out the house before I move back...this weekend."
"I’ll go with you, darling, after I get a few things done at the office. Leo will be home early, so he could go along and help."
"No, no, Mom!" I cried, seeing my cleverly laid plans about to go down in flames. "There's no need for you to miss work. I’ll just drop you off at your office and come back to pick you up later. The three of us I can go to dinner. How’s that?"
A bit reluctantly, Mom agreed. The truth is that my mother had rather stick needles in her eyes than miss a day's work. It's hard to believe we're related by blood. Thirty minutes later, I pulled the Mercedes out of the garage into the back alley, and took off. This time, though, I wasn't taking any chances. I had the damned cell phone in my pocket, and a variety of lies forming in my head.
I parked down the block and sat there for a while, looking up at the small white house, and wondering what it was that was bothering me. I couldn't figure it out right away, and didn't have the time to waste, so I drove on up the hill and made a turn in the cul-de-sac once, checking the area for cops. Not a one. But just to be sure, I didn't park in the driveway, in case someone came by and noticed a car where it shouldn’t be. But then, I changed my mind. It was Mom’s car, and she owned the house. Nothing suspicious about that.
It was weird, sneaking back into my own house, and inside, the house itself felt weird. Musty and close. It was also chilly and damp, and seemed larger than I remembered, after living at the Seven Dwarves’ place. Everything was surprisingly neat, and looked freshly dusted. Mom. She hadn’t mentioned being here, but the signs were unmistakable. Clean as a whistle, if only it didn’t smell bad. Which it did. It was more than dampness, I realized. The whole place smelled moldy. Sad, kind of.
I wandered from room to room, feeling creepier everywhere I went. Hank had been right. I couldn’t ever come back here to live, and why the hell would I want to? I'd almost forgotten how ugly and uncomfortable the place was. I went through the kitchen and tried the door to the garage. Locked, of course. Mom had definitely been here. I'd always referred to the cluttered garage as "The Twilight Zone," and never explored it at length, since spiders and lizards aren’t exactly my favorite things. I went back to the kitchen for a hammer and a big screw-driver, and banged at the lock. Mom would have a fit about the damage, but I'd risked too much to let a cheap lock stop me.
The smell hit me in the face the moment I cracked the door. Years of dust, mildew and damp. Mom, for all her fastidiousness about the house itself, had sealed off this part of her life like a tomb. A garage full of decaying memories. I thought suddenly of "Great Expectations" and the jilted Miss Havisham, living among her bitter memories. The garage had everything but a rotting wedding cake. I stood in the doorway and shivered, beginning to wish I'd stayed at the Cottage. Finally, though, I stepped down onto the stained concrete, determined to get it over with. I was on a mission, and I didn’t have much time. Somewhere in this tangled heap of boxes was my clue! The smoking gun! The answer to the mystery!
I tore into the first cardboard box. Christmas decorations, vaguely remembered. A rusted metal star from Tijuana. Anson’s old Santa Claus suit, folded and rotting, the yellowed beard crawling with silverfish. I dropped it and opened the next box. Dishes, glasses, silverware—not ours, probably a departed tenant. I was amazed again how these people had left their possessions behind so casually. Another box, made of wood this time, filled with a kid’s sports equipment—a catcher’s mitt, bat, a deflated basketball, something that looked like it had once been a box of baseball cards, disintegrating, now.
In the far corner, I noticed a large bare spot on the floor, just about the only clear area in the whole garage. Something pretty big had been moved. Recently, I wondered? I scuffed at the concrete with my toe, and it felt damper than the rest of the floor. A leak under the house, probably, or a buried body. Mom would be upset, whatever it was. She hated paying plumbers, and she probably wouldn't be any happier about a mortician. Ha-ha. It was a lame joke, and I felt a sudden chill of fear.
I threw myself into my work now, tearing through each crumbling box with a fevered need to find something useful and get the hell out of here, but nothing intriguing turned up. There was a container of Mom’s old clothes, proving her taste hadn’t improved in thirty years, or changed, for that matter. Several trunks and boxes full of somebody else's clothes, which gave me the creeps. What was obvious, though, was that someone had obviously rummaged through all this crap before, very thoroughly. Mom, again? Or maybe the cops? I was still debating the question when I heard an odd, scratching noise coming from the back wall. Odd? Well, not really. I’d lived with these noises for the entire time I’d lived here. Mice. Hopefully not more rats. Suddenly, one of the countless lizards that called the garage home darted between my feet, startling me. I fell backward and grabbed at the nearest box to stop my fall. The box simply disintegrated, and I landed on the damp concrete on my rear end, yelping as I hit.
At that exact moment, the door to the kitchen flew open, crashing against the garage wall and bringing down a shelf of rusted paint cans. A man was standing in the shadows in the doorway, with a gun in his hand. I screamed.
No matter what anyone says, I didn't faint. Not really. It was more like I sort of crumpled.
Two seconds later, Hank was kneeling beside me, and two seconds after that, I went completely ape-shit. Pure, screaming, raving bedlam. I think I scared the hell out of him, or at least I hoped so. He deserved it. If I woke up tomorrow, and my hair had turned white, I wouldn’t be surprised.
I was trembling so badly I couldn’t walk straight, so Hank helped me into the house, got me a drink of water, and held me for maybe fifteen minutes until I came down off the ceiling and my teeth quit chattering. As I calmed down, I started to get mad.
"Are you out of your fucking mind?" I screamed. "You nearly gave me heart failure busting in there like that! And on top of that, you broke down the damned door. My mother’s going to have a fucking cow!”
I think Hank was too worried about me just then to immediately recognize the absolute gall in what I was yelling at him, but it didn’t take long for him to come back to Earth. That terrific police training, you know. Cool, calm, always professional, always in control. I started counting, calculating how long it would take him to yank me across his knee and start smacking.
One minute, thirteen seconds, by my aging Timex.
But his heart wasn’t in it. He gave me maybe seven or eight swats over my jeans, and seemed too weary to continue. He dragged me out of the house and stuffed me into yet another gray police car, identical to the one I’d evaded at Mom’s. After he slammed the car door, I didn’t see him again until that night. Not that I was in a hurry. I was in deep shit, and I knew it.
I went out on the cottage’s little patio, and sat there, thinking, and watching the sun go down, but I barely noticed when the light faded entirely. There was no moon, and by the time I rose to go in, it was completely dark, and very cold.
There was no reason to try calling Hank. He’d be here soon enough, and I was in enough trouble without annoying him with a pointless phone call. I knew at least one of his trusted spies was still on duty outside the cottage, so I wasn’t scared. I think I was just drained. It had been quite a day.
It was almost ten by the time Hank got home, and I heard him speaking quietly with the Officer of the Watch before sending him on his way. I curled up on the couch, grabbed a magazine, and pretended nonchalance. Hank walked in, removed his jacket, and reached across the coffee table to turn my magazine right side up.
; "You enjoy ‘Golf World’?"
I sighed and put the magazine down. "Not much, but I already finished all the tennis magazines.” When he walked into the kitchen and got a beer from the little fridge, I followed him.
"How mad are you?" I asked, deciding to get right to the point. "I assume this does mean I get spanked, again, right?"
"You’d better come up with another word," Hank said grimly. "The word spank isn't going to cover this one. Go in the bedroom and wait for me. You’re about to find out how mad I am."
I went into the bedroom feeling nervous, but sort of resigned, actually. Even I knew I had this one coming. I sat down on the edge of the bed, and a few minutes later, Hank came in and sat down next to me.
"When I opened that door to the garage, I thought I’d find you dead," he said quietly.
"I know," I murmured. "I’m sorry."
Hank shook his head. "I know you’re sorry. You’re always sorry, but that doesn’t change the fact that I spent the worst two hours of my life today. When your mother told me where you’d gone..." His voice trailed off, and he stood up and rolled up his sleeves, then removed his belt and folded it carefully in half. He nodded toward the bench in the corner. "Pull your pants down. Better yet, take them off.