Sure enough. There it is, jutting from the back right tire. A shiny pair of scissors.
Marti puts her arm around Marlene and ushers her back into the store. Gretchen and Carly stare daggers at Stax and myself and follow to comfort their friend. Stax promises to call me later and pedals back to the bookstore. I find myself alone in the parking lot with a scissor-wielding who-knows-what.
“Quite the afternoon we’re having, wouldn’t you say, Miss Purdy?”
The older lady in the outdated running garb steps out from under the overhang and walks toward me. She must have held back when the rest of us ran out.
“I wouldn’t call it uneventful,” I say, extending my hand as she draws close. The firmness of her grip surprises me. “I’m sorry, but if we’ve been introduced before my mind must be failing me.”
She smiles warmly and holds eye contact. I find myself trying not to blink.
“No, we’ve not been introduced. I suppose I’ve seen you around so much, though, I feel we’ve met. I must have picked your name up in harmless eavesdropping and it remained locked in the old cerebrum. So much nonsense in there fighting for space, one can know something and not know how one knows it. Do you find this is so?”
I have no idea what the woman is going on about, so I play along and try to be witty. “I suspect I still have plenty of elbow room in my brain, so an overabundance of information has never been a problem for me.”
“Oh, so you’re saying you’re an airhead?”
I confess I didn’t know how to answer her, though the answer is clearly ‘no’. I look at her for a sign she is being whimsical, but she stands with her head cocked and her brow turned inquisitively inward.
“Erm…no, not exactly.”
“Oh, ha! My apologies. I’m wasn’t supposed to take you literally, was I? I’m such a curious creature, you must forgive me. But it’s been a genuine pleasure finally making your acquaintance, Miss Purdy.”
“Please, call me Lacy. I haven’t been called Miss Purdy since… well, ever. And you are?”
“Me? Oh, fuddy duddy. With all this fuss, I’ve forgotten my manners. My name is Ruby. Ruby Maplethorpe.”
“Well, it’s certainly a pleasure to meet you, Miss Maplethorpe.”
“I see no harm in familiarity, what with us both making spectacles of ourselves today. Please, Lacy, call me Ruby.”
Did she just say I made a spectacle of myself?
“Thank you, Ruby. I see you around the store from time to time. We’ll have to chat again. But right now, I really must be off.”
Ruby waves a hand in front of her face as though to signal she is not offended by my abrupt termination of our strange conversation. Although she gives no indication that she, herself, considers it either strange or awkward.
The thick lenses of her glasses are wrapped in designer frames that couldn’t have cost less than $700. So much for my theory of a fixed income. It is only the first time Ruby Maplethorpe will prove to me that people are often much more than they first appear.
“You go on about your day, young lady. But I would very much like it if you would come by my house this evening. Would eight-o’clock be all right with you?”
“I’m sorry, did you say you want me to come to your house tonight?”
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Might I ask what for?”
“I believe I have the solution to your problem.”
“My problem?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Well, maybe some other time. Tonight, I plan to rest.”
“Oh, for the trail run tomorrow? I’ll be there as well. That’s why it must be tonight. Oh, look at the time. I must be off. I’ll see you at eight, Lacy. Ta Ta!”
Off she goes. I watch her get into a little Taurus about fifteen years old with paint as clean and shiny as the day it rolled off the assembly line.
In hopes of putting this strange day in the rearview mirror, I plan to spend the evening enjoying a pick-me-up cocktail of House Hunters reruns, a heaping bowl of Fettuccine Alfredo (with mushrooms. Yum!), and a nightcap of Lorna Barrett. All the murders in her fictional Book Town notwithstanding, I like to imagine I live in a place where I’m surrounded on all sides by books. Stax doesn’t know how lucky she’s got it.
My evening promises more weirdness than my already weird day as I am obliged to spend part of it in the home of a woman I don’t know who thinks I’m an airhead and promises to solve a problem I’m not sure I have.
As I head to my car it occurs to me I have no idea where Ruby Maplethorpe lives.
No. I’m not an airhead. Not at all.
FOUR
It’s the noon hour as I watch Ruby Maplethorpe putter away in her car. My Saturday morning run proved physically underwhelming and emotionally exhausting, but the day is beautiful and I have it all to myself, so I decide to take in some of the quirkier shops on Main Street.
There is Past Presents, an indoor collective of garage sales absolutely brimming with toys and pop culture mementos from earlier generations. Whatever might have been under your Christmas tree when you were five or ten or seventeen would likely be found among the tables and shelves and piles lining the mall’s busy aisles.
Farther down the lane is Denim If You Got’em, an all-denim store with a surprisingly full range of products for men and women alike (I confess I picked up a halter top here once and am still awaiting the proper occasion to wear it).
1912, named for the year of the town’s founding, is one of my regular stops, not only for the variety of ‘you can’t find it anywhere else’ items, but also to visit the joyful proprietor, Veronica, who is quickly becoming someone I consider a friend.
For a cool snack on a warm afternoon you can’t do better than Brrrr-ito, a Mexican-themed dessert shop tucked into the back of an out of the way cul-de-sac.
But there’ll be no enjoying a choco-taco today. Marlene’s insults this morning, followed by her breakdown and the presumed threat of the scissor blades in the car tire, have blocked the sun on a cloudless day. I know it is all in my head, but melancholy is like a spoiled child—sometimes the only way to get it to go away is to humor it a while.
I settle my thoughts on a quiet evening at home. I picture myself on the couch atop a cool pillow and under a warm cat (Meatball, my Russian Blue, is an avid chest-napper), solving a TV mystery with Angela Lansbury; or maybe, if I find the energy, I’ll turn up the tunes and do some cleaning. Given my present mood, I suspect I’ll end up spinning Sarah McLachlan and mopping up my own tears.
Nope. It’s a true crime night. Whenever you think you’ve got it bad, flip it over to ID Discovery and you’ll learn some people have it a whole lot worse than you do. I don’t like to read true crime but a TV binge of murder would go down smooth with a heaping plate of Italian comfort—pasta. Since I’m a runner, I’m not binging on comfort food, I’m ‘carbing up’. See, things are already going my way.
Oh crud. While planning my homey little evening it totally skipped my mind that I have plans at eight o’clock with a woman I don’t know at a house goodness-knows-where to do goodness-knows-what. Exit Angela Lansbury, enter Ruby Maplethorpe.
My two-bedroom rental rests smack dab in the midst of a neighborhood constructed in the post-World War II housing boom. It’s safe to say about any two-bedroom house still standing in this area went up around the same time, when rapid housing construction was needed to facilitate the many young families at the start of what would eventually be called the ‘baby boom’.
I’ve not done much with the outside, other than mow the grass and trim the small bushes. But inside this little house is my sanctuary. Nothing fancy, but some throw pillows here, throw blankets there, and pieces from local artists put up in just the right places, and I’m in my zone. I selected my furniture for comfort, not style, and for some reason I find strength in that. They are the first significant items I purchased following my divorce and I knew Curtis would hate them because they didn’t catch the light
and shine like china. My couch and not-quite-matching love seat are bland, light blue, billowy, fluffy, heavenly clouds. I’m more than okay with this.
No extravagant pasta for me tonight. I want to be on my butt as much as possible, so just marinara and noodles, with four strips of bacon chopped for protein. I refuse to allow myself to be bothered for standing Ruby up. How am I supposed to know where to find her? I get clever for a moment and try looking on Facebook, but no dice. I’m not broken up about it and am just settling in next to a grooming Meatball when I hear my screen door squeak open and the rap of knuckles on my sturdy old door.
Gretchen Herring’s cute, freckled face smiles at me through the screen. Gretchen is one-third of what Stax likes to call the ‘sneering squad’, with Marlene anointed head sneerleader.
“Hi Lacy, I hope I’m not interrupting something,” Gretchen says. Her eyes are pleading and her skin pale, even for a natural redhead.
I greet her warmly and welcome her in. Truth be told, I like Gretchen. She works part-time for Marlene at her travel agency and I suspect she feels some sort of obligation to her employer to team with her at the running store. Gretchen mentioned to me when I had her over for tea one afternoon (before I suddenly found myself cast as Hatfield to Marlene’s McCoy) that Marlene introduced her to running. I suspect the much younger Gretchen (I put her in her early twenties) is a bit under the spell of her confident, successful, and (I’m not too catty to admit it) attractive boss. In return, and to my lasting chagrin, Gretchen confessed it was she who introduced Marlene to Carly. Oh well, nobody’s perfect.
Gretchen’s relationship with Marlene didn’t prevent her from sending me whispers here and there when Marlene inexplicably started to sour towards me. I didn’t like what I heard, but I appreciated Gretchen putting her neck out for me.
I don’t want to stand awkwardly in the middle of the room with this young woman, so I offer her the love seat and I take the edge of the couch.
“I am so sorry about Marlene and how she acted this morning, Lacy,” she effuses. “I could have died when she said what she did about your running.”
“Did you tell her that?” I ask, a little more viciously than I would prefer.
“It isn’t easy, telling her things.” She drops her head to watch her hand fiddle with the cover of the armrest. “I want to open my own business one day. I’m not going to learn the ins and outs of running a business working for my father’s construction company, and Marlene said she could help me. So, I took the job at her agency. The pay isn’t much, not good at all, but she’s been true to her word and is letting me learn from her. Besides, if I ever want to get a loan, I’ll need her and Anderson as references, so…”
She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. She’s between a rock and a hard place and I understand where she’s coming from. But what she says next surprises me.
“I just want to be happy and I don’t want to depend on a man to live. I’m not like Marlene at all. If I do get married one day, it’s going to be for love.”
I’m not sure if that is too much information about Marlene’s personal life or too little. But it makes for an uncomfortable silence. I decide to change the topic.
“So, what was all that about scissors this morning?”
Gretchen’s eyes widen and color rushes back to her face. “Oh, it’s so creepy. It’s not the first one, you know. There was a pair in her mailbox one morning and another waiting for her when she came out of the grocery store. She acts tough, but I can tell she’s terrified. She won’t leave the office and walk to her car by herself and she won’t let me leave by myself, either. She thinks someone’s trying to kill her.”
“Has she called the police?”
“I don’t think she wants them to know.”
I find that hard to fathom. “Why not? Some nut is stalking her and leaving scissors, of all things. Doesn’t she want to know who it is?”
“I think she knows. But she won’t say. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…”
“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to,” I say, but I’m crossing fingers she will.
Gretchen closes her eyes and sucks air in through her nose. I hold my breath.
“She hasn’t told me anything, but it’s a small office, and I hear her and Anderson talking. A long time ago, I guess when she was about my age, she owned a hair salon in Tulsa. This was before she married, but one night in her salon a girl who worked for her was murdered. Stabbed to death with a pair of barber’s scissors. I don’t think Anderson knew about any of this before the scissors started showing up.”
“That’s terrible. Did they catch the guy?”
Gretchen shakes her head. “Apparently not. I think Marlene herself was a suspect. Maybe that’s why she’s not too crazy about calling the cops about her stalker. She doesn’t want to dig all that up. She has a new career now, a new name, and is well known around here.”
That much is true. You can’t go anywhere in Cedar Mill without seeing Marlene’s face on a billboard or a bus stop bench advertising her travel agency. Whenever she’s in charge of selecting our run routes we somehow manage to run past one of her advertisements.
“You said Marlene thinks she knows who’s stalking her with the scissors. Does she think it’s the person who killed that girl?”
Gretchen’s mouth turns up and pushes to one side, her eyes doing a little circle dance. “That’s what she says. I wonder, though.”
I know I am being nosier than I have a right to be, but I am engrossed by what this girl is telling me. I get the impression she wants to unload and I excuse my curiosity by telling myself if it isn’t me, she’ll be telling this to someone who might not be so willing to keep her confidence.
“You wonder?” I ask. “You mean you don’t believe her?”
The question exasperates her and I promptly regret it. “I don’t know, I really don’t. I work with her during the week and then I’m at my dad’s construction sites all weekend. What little time I have to myself I want to spend running. No stress, no drama. Now Marlene has made it her mission to beat my time. Swears she’s going to smoke me at Chicken Hill tomorrow. I don’t know, maybe I should just let her so she’ll shut up.”
She appears to be melting into the soft cushions of the chair. “Sometimes when I’m running I think about not stopping. Just keep going and get away from all this. It’s too much.”
I rise from the couch and give her a hug. I remember my twenties all too well and how every little drama was a world-ending disaster. But I never had to work in close quarters with Marlene Petrick while a scissor-wielding maniac lurked in the shadows. A hug is the least I can do.
I lighten the mood with some small talk and by the time Gretchen leaves her spirits are lifted somewhat. I promise to cheer her on during the run tomorrow morning and encourage her to give it her all, Marlene be damned.
I no sooner pluck Meatball up from his spot on the kitchen counter and settle back onto the couch when my phone rings.
“Hey skinny girl,” barks Stax’s familiar rasp. As usual, she has me on speaker phone. “How do you feel about putting some meat on those bones? I found a BOGO to Smokey Joe’s Barbecue, so it’s my treat this time.”
I look at the clock and see it is already half-past-six in the evening. Where’d the day go?
“Sorry, Stax, you’re a little late. I already filled up on pasta.”
“Rats. You’re going to make me waste my BOGO on Larry, aren’t you?”
A thought comes to me. “Hey, Stax, you know the older lady who walks with the Level 3 group? She was at the store this morning when we spoke to Marlene.”
“You mean when Marlene went all Joan Crawford in the parking lot? Yeah, I know who you’re talking about. Her name’s Ruby. She’s one of my best customers. She brings me more books than she buys, and she buys a ton. Why?”
“You wouldn’t happen to know her phone number, would you?”
“I said I sell the lady books. I’m not t
rying to date her. No, I haven’t asked for her phone number, you perv. What’s all this about?”
“She wants me to come by her house tonight but she didn’t tell me where she lives.”
Stax is silent for a moment and I swear I can hear gears turning.
“She’s like crazy old, right?” Stax asks.
“She’s an older woman, yes.”
“Well, you’re no spring chicken yourself,” she blurts, as though I’m the one calling names. “You’re plenty old enough to remember the world before the Internet. Don’t you remember telling someone your name and saying ‘call me’ and you knew they knew it meant you were in the phone book? Well, I bet Ruby thought you were smart enough to figure that out. Clearly, she doesn’t know you.”
“Of course! She’d be listed and her address would be there as well.”
“Hey, glad I could help. God gave you looks and He gave me a bust and brains. It’s a shame He didn’t see fit to put it all in in one person. But then, I ain’t met a man yet who’d deserve such a creature.”
I get off the phone with a promise to see Stax tomorrow morning at the run and dust off a copy of the Greater Tulsa phone book encompassing Cedar Mill. Flipping to the M’s I find her right away. Not more than three miles from my own house.
“Welp,” I say to myself, “you know what you’re doing this evening.”
But, really, I had no clue.
FIVE
I arrive at Ruby’s house five minutes early. Her yard is a sizeable corner lot blessed with the most lustrous collective of blossoms and blooms I have ever seen outside of the gardens in Cedar Mill’s park district. I don’t know enough about flowers or gardens to tell you the reasoning behind Ruby’s choice of flowers. or why she planted what where, but even this novice can see there is a hidden pattern to this beauty. I would come to learn that, through the eyes of Ruby Maplethorpe, there are patterns to everything.
Ruby’s house is larger than mine but not so big it doesn’t appear quaint. Instead of your normal everyday slat siding, her house is fortified with stonework, giving the impression of a centuries-old cottage in the English countryside. Albeit one with state-of-the-art storm windows.
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