Dial M for Mascara

by Bevill, C. L.

  A dining room had an aluminum table and matching aluminum chairs all accented in cherry red. Mary Grace shrugged slowly. Well, not all retro looks bad. That’s kind of cool, in a nerdly fashion. She shook her head violently. I’m becoming one of them. Desperately need an iPod and an injection of Youtube and MySpace before it’s too late.

  “Hey,” she said out loud. “It’s pretty neat in here and there isn’t a bomb in sight. There’s not even a shrine dedicating itself to destroying my existence. That sucks.” The sound of her voice seemed to echo around the place. Okay, time to look at…gulp…the bedrooms.

  Bedroom one was the master suite. It was mom’s room. All things considered, it was pretty normal. A fluffy, frilly comforter set decorated a double bed with pretty, perky, heart-shaped pillows piled on like a giant wedge of snow waiting for someone to make the first, little-itty-bitty noise to start a massive avalanche. Shag carpet in a putrid shade of orange covered the floor.

  There were framed photographs of ma and the kids on the dresser. Mary Grace peered closer. Yes, there was Trey, looking as though he was thirteen years old, in Buddy Holly glasses, with a short sleeved, striped dress shirt, and a filled pocket protector. Then there was a picture of Trey graduating from his high school. Wire rimmed glasses in that one. There was a picture of Trey graduating from his college; it looked like University of Texas. Obviously the glasses had turned into contacts there. And whoops, Mary Grace frowned. There’s another graduation picture.

  What does that mean? He graduated from college twice. Mary Grace grimaced. No. Trey only talked about the one degree. But there is the evidence. She frowned harder and went to bedroom two.

  The second bedroom was Trey’s. King size bed and not much else. Young man stuff. Stereo system. Books in a book shelf. Chargers for a cell phone and an iPod. The room was not as neat as the rest of the house, but it was nothing alarming. The closet had clothes in it and not a single shred of evidence to the contrary that it was anything but a twenty-something year old man’s room. There wasn’t even a dust bunny under the bed, much less a smoking gun.

  Mary Grace closed the closet door and grunted. This breaking and entering is a bunch of crap. It doesn’t do anything for the butterflies in my stomach and so far, I’m pitching zilch. My mother’s outside rubbing her hands together, figuring out how to shake me down with this, and I’m in here as nervous as a cat. If someone slammed a door I’d probably ruin my underwear and the carpet, too.

  The third bedroom was an office. Two computers and shelves of books. Mary Grace turned the computer that looked the most used on and waited for it to boot. She scanned the titles of the books and grimaced. ‘The Sociology of Urbanized Femininity,’ ‘Freudian Psychology and Today’s Gender-Associated Stereotypes,’ and ‘Pseudo-sexual Psychological Issues of the Modern Woman.’ Are those Trey’s books or his mother’s? Hopefully, his mother’s because otherwise, icky, and talk about Norman Bates prancing around the 21st century. Ah, the computer’s ready.

  The computer wasn’t password protected, so she logged on and looked first at the bookmarks. There wasn’t one noted as ‘Bomb-making 101,’ so she was about the check the email history, when she noticed that there was a bookmark for automobile schematics. It was listed just like that, ‘Automobile Schematics.’ Mary Grace double clicked on it and found a website that talked about all kinds of systems on cars, including brake line schematics.

  Big, bold flashing neon arrow here, folks. She sat forward in the chair and chewed intently on her lower lip. There could be a perfectly innocent reason for it. Could be that Trey or his mother was doing their own stuff on their cars. Could be they were looking it up for a neighbor. Could be that Trey was planning on cutting the brake lines in Mary Grace’s Explorer in order to make mincemeat out of her twitching body.

  With cold intent, Mary Grace looked over the bookmarks again and saw one that gave her a curious pause. It was one to the University of Texas at Dallas for the School for Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Trey had talked about his mother a little and said she worked for the City of Dallas doing some administrivia type of thing, not the U of T. Mary Grace double clicked.

  The screen popped up and said, ‘Welcome back, Doctoral Candidate Kennebrew. Please log in now. If you have forgotten your password contact student services.’

  I’m getting a headache, Mary Grace thought. Is Mrs. Kennebrew back in school for a Ph.D? That explains the weird book titles and isn’t behavioral and brain sciences another phrase for psychology?

  A loud beep caused Mary Grace to squeal like a piggy at the bacon factory. She cast her eyes back at the door and saw nothing. It wasn’t the car horn. It wasn’t something in the house. She looked back at the computer. No, it’s an IM. The little window popped up and the words scrolled out, ‘Trey, I saw you’re on, so I just wanted to remind you, although it’s still summer break, you need to get me an abstract on your latest in your experiment for your dissertation. Very interesting about Subject M’s obsessive fascination with the consumer world. Keep me up to date, kiddo.’ It was signed Dr. John Ojai, professor and administrative advisor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas.

  Trey’s a doc candidate for psychology? Not his mother? What the bleep? Mary Grace stopped and sat back in the office chair. He’s not an art student. He’s a psychology graduate student. He’s in summer break, but he’s doing experimental work for his doctoral dissertation. He’s got a test subject named ‘M.’ He works for Pictographs, Inc. and has since March or April. He does work but he’s also working on his dissertation. That’s why there’s three grad pics. One for high school. One for the bachelor’s degree. One for a master’s degree. And undoubtedly Mama Kennebrew would be standing ringside to snap another Kodak moment when Trey gets the Ph.D. conferred.

  Mary Grace leaned forward. It isn’t such a stretch. Trey might not want people at work to know that he’s working on a Ph.D, because that’s about as cool as dirt-embedded gum on asphalt. But he’s got a test subject named ‘M.’ Like maybe ‘M’ for Mary? Like maybe ‘M’ for Mary Grace? She didn’t want to answer the IM, but she wasn’t concerned that the professor would care because his message sounded one sided. She thumped the keys absently. If Trey had a test subject, and an experiment, then he was probably taking notes, right? Where would he keep the notes? She put the pointer on the start menu at the bottom of the screen, watched the menu scroll open, and hit Trey’s ‘my recent documents.’

  The top document and most recent was titled SubjectMJunenotes. All one word. It was a Word document and Mary Grace knew about that one. She opened it up. Phrases jumped out at her. ‘Subject M particularly self-absorbed. Her interest in consumerism belies her nature with others. While ‘M’ is polite to others, and giving of irreclaimable offers of assistance, she is very nearly obsessive with sales advertisements, actual sales processes, and purchasing of materials under certain venues. (Wal-Mart goods are not acceptable under ‘M’’s mental processing facilities.) Note: mental testing with emphasis on OC disorders in particular. MMPI, TAT, and other psychometric testing could be useful. However, ‘M’ needs to have subjective reasoning for testing as she is ignorant of her participation in the study.’

  It sounds like ‘M’ is a compulsive shopper, Mary Grace thought. And everything at Wal-Mart is made in China. She sniffed loftily. Besides I shop at Wal-Mart. Once in a blue moon. Once in ten blue moons? Well, when I’m desperate.

  She read on: ‘June 3rd – Subject M will face adversity in the form of losing access to one of her typical super consumerism purchases when she discovers her vehicle has been disabled and is not available for transport to her usual shopping extravaganzas. Her coping skills should be well observed and reported upon.’

  June 3rd? June 3rd? June 3rd was the day my brake lines were cut. Mary Grace snorted. So what did Trey do to his test subject so she could be thwarted from…hey. She skipped ahead to the 9th. ‘Subject ‘M’ suffers another setback in the form of a vehicle explosion. Her
coping skills are undergoing the five phases as dictated by Doctors Turnblue and Addams in their social-cognitive works on psycho-cognitive stressors in everyday world.’ Then she went to the 17th of June. ‘Subject ‘M’ underwent an attempt at mugging. ‘M’ believes herself to be the victim of a plot and certainly is displaying paranoid-schizoid-affective qualities that I would have previously not expected from this type of obsessive personality.’

  “Well, shit,” Mary Grace said, a little nuclear bomb going off in her head. “The little fucker’s talking about me.” Then she slammed her hand over her mouth because she remembered her mother was sitting outside in the car. Although six walls and a car door sat between them, she was certain Ghita would have clearly heard both profanities and would be making a note of it in her little book. Or Ghita was planning on throwing one of her white sling back shoes in a boomerang fashion that would find the nearest open window, wind its way efficiently through the house, bean Mary Grace in the back of the head, and then automatically return to its owner, who would slip it back on her foot.

  “Yeah, wait until Ma sees this,” Mary Grace said wrathfully. “She’s not going to stop with a sling back shoe. She’s going for my baseball bat. Then she’s going to follow up with the 2x4 with the embedded nails in it that she has hidden in the front closet. God knows what she’s going to end with. Butcher knife with rat poison on it? A jar full of soldier ants from the Amazon and a bucket of molasses? Who fricking knows?” She clicked the print button and watched as the laser jet printed started spitting pages out. When the last page stopped it dawned on her that the Miata’s horn had been honking for some time.

  But it was a little late for that. Trey Kennebrew was standing in the door behind Mary Grace and he didn’t look happy.

  Chapter Fourteen – Wednesday, June 22nd

  For pearly white nails, remove polish, clean thoroughly, and soak your hands in a bowl of warm water with one tablet of denture cleaner. Dentures MAY NOT be cleaned at the same time.

  -Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

  “Doctoral Candidate Kennebrew?” Mary Grace said slowly and carefully, as if she tasted the words on her lips. Trey stood very quietly in the doorway, wearing a blue polo shirt and business casual cords. Brown nondescript loafers completed the outfit and she thought contemptuously, I bet he bought it all from Wal-Mart. On sale. Or maybe the dollar store. Hell, maybe he got it at the thrift store.

  Trey swept a blonde lock from his forehead. He was cute, however, in a pretty boy, candy box, almost too good to be true way. He was about her height with a wiry frame that emphasized his leanness and his eyes were a shade of blue that could only be found in the waters off the whitest beaches in the Caribbean. Considering the blueness of his eyes and the transmutation of thick, ugly glasses to contacts in the photographs, she couldn’t help wonder if they were colored contacts.

  Blue eyes, she thought. Not brown. Beware the brown eyed one. Okay, file that away for when you’re not in mortal peril. I don’t suppose my mother called the police yet. No, she’s probably sipping her grande, skinny hazelnut latte, wondering if we’re getting to know each other better, and if Trey isn’t too young for me after all. And oh, yes, maybe he’s Catholic?

  “You cut my brake lines, you dickhead,” she said accusingly. Dickhead? I couldn’t come up with a better insult?

  Trey’s face muscles twitched. His eyes darted away from her and went to the laser jet printer, settling on the pile of pages printed there. Mary Grace reached out and grabbed the pile, clutching it to her chest as if it were a precious commodity. His hands went up and she flinched. When Trey saw that he let them fall to his sides again. “I left the front door open, you know,” he said at last. “That’s why I came back. If my mother finds it open again, well, she threatened to start charging me rent. Someone stole a TV and her record collection last year. And you wouldn’t believe how fond she was of some of those Cream albums. She had some Nancy Sinatra, and Beatles, Beach Boys, Deep Purple…”

  Mary Grace opened her mouth and then closed it again. Maybe he’d killed Ma outside first. Then he came inside to finish her off. It’s going to be ugg. I’m going to scream like a little girl who just had her candy stolen by her older sibling. Then I’m going to knee him in his jungleberries. See if that doesn’t put a kink in his nefarious plans. If only I had my Prada purse to bean him with. But hey, that laser jet printer looks like it would do the trick.

  “And yeah, I’m a doc-can,” Trey admitted. “But I do have a minor in business and another minor in art. It’s just that I have a master’s in psychology, and well, the Ph.D. is in psychology, too. Behavioral sciences. You know what that is?”

  “I took psychology 101 in college,” Mary Grace said coldly. “Not shopping technology. That was something my mother showed me how to do. You didn’t slit her throat did you?”

  “That’s your mother outside?” Trey said. “She looks really good for someone who has a daughter who’s in her thirties.”

  “OH-KAY!” Mary Grace yelled and leapt up, brandishing the stack of papers like a weapon. “I’m only twenty-eight and you SUCK!”

  Trey took a step backwards, his eyes wide in alarm. “I might suck. I might be a doc-can. I might be doing stuff that you don’t know about. But I didn’t slit your mother’s throat, and I’m not the one who’s making a habit of breaking and entering into her coworker’s houses.”

  “You think that’s going to stop the police from arresting you? You cut my brake lines,” Mary Grace snarled. She flourished the papers at him. “You’ve got a bookmark to the website that tells you exactly how to do it. You admit it in your notes. I’m like some kind of weird, stalking-enabling science project for a supernerd and you think you can get away with it? You didn’t admit you blew up my car and took a couple of shots at me or ran over my friend, Callie, in the notes but it’s not a stretch, Trey.”

  “Oh, hey,” Trey looked surprised. “The cut brake lines were just supposed to incapacitate the car. I didn’t know you’d make it all the way to the hill and then drive down it without brakes. I mean, get real. And you can’t blame the exploding car on me. I didn’t plant a bomb in your car. How do we even know there was a bomb in the car? Sometimes cars explode you know. And I don’t even own a gun, much less know how to shoot one in your direction. As for your friend getting run over, I haven’t got a clue.” He took a deep breath and waved his hand in front of his face. “I mean, Jesus Christ on burnt toast. You can’t blame those on me. I was just doing an experiment.”

  Mary Grace glowered. “Oh, let’s talk about that, you little snot-nosed excuse for birth control. You malingering, sheep molesting, and chronically flatulent dreck and…and…and…” She struggled to find the worst, most abhorrent, dreadfully dire insult that would mortally wound the personage of Trey Kennebrew and finally came up with one. “Soft scientist.”

  Trey’s face warped. “Psychology is not a soft science,” he hissed.

  “It’s so soft, it could melt in your hands,” Mary Grace reiterated with inordinate glee. “And shall we discuss your scientific methods? Like for instance your standards on ethics and morals? I remember what they said about test subjects, you ninny.”

  “Like you would know something about scientific standards of ethics,” Trey retorted.

  “Let’s see, I remember that the American Psychological Association has a whole book written on ethical principles and a code of conduct for people like you. You can call it a scientific experiment,” Mary Grace started to say it in a reasonable tone of voice, but her anger was getting the best of her, and she finished loudly. “BUT YOU’RE STILL FUCKING WITH SOMEONE’S LIFE! Oh, yeah, mine.”

  Trey was nonplussed. Finally, he said, “It’s only objective if the test subject doesn’t know he, or she, is being tested.”

  “What the heck were you trying to prove? What’s your hypothesis?”

  Shifting uncomfortably, Trey said, “It has to do with Freudian issues of mother domination, self-confidence, and consumeristic
obsession. It fits well into today’s world. As modern American citizens, we’re pretty much fanatically possessed with consumerism. Hey, try going on a shopping diet for a month. Oh, heck, try a week without buying anything. Anything at all. God knows you couldn’t do it. You’d die if you didn’t have a line of credit open.”

  “So if I hate my mother, don’t have any self-confidence, then naturally I’m going to shop like a mad-woman?” Mary Grace wished she had all of her credit cards in her hand so she could kill Trey Kennebrew with their combined, immense weight. The irony would be terrific and bode well for her judicial defense.

  Trey nodded.

  Then Brogan came from behind and tackled Trey while Mary Grace cheered uproariously.

  •

  Ghita was talking furiously. “I saw Kennebrew drive up and when he noticed the Miata I tried to shrink down in the passenger seat, but I think he noticed me.”

  Mary Grace was shivering while sitting on the curb in front of Trey’s house. More police cars were present, whirling lights were in abandon. Trey was being introduced to the back of a police car while all of his neighbors watched with fervent snoopiness. She said, “What kind of car does he have?”

  Ghita paced anxiously behind Mary Grace. “I immediately called Brogan. Thank God he’s Catholic. I bet he listens to his mother. I can’t believe how quickly he made it here. I called him and I swear the next thing I knew he was pulling into the driveway, leaping out, and running inside. I don’t think the door would have stopped him, even if hadn’t been open. He really is a nice looking man. Too bad about the divorce. I wonder if the archbishop still thinks about when we were in high school. And this kid, this Trey Kennebrew, well, he’s the one, right?” She didn’t wait for Mary Grace to answer. “He admitted to cutting your brake lines for some stupid psychological experiment. I’m going to write a long letter to his alma mater about their choice of post graduate student and experimental criteria. That’s not an experiment, that’s stalking.”