Wonder Guy

by Stone, Naomi

  In the shade of the huge maple dominating the yard, she stood with the slight spring breeze blowing around her, carrying the scent of freshly mown grass. Had she come to the wrong door of the wrong house? No, her own house stood right next door, like always. She registered the note taped to the window in Aggie’s kitchen door.

  Out for coffee, back before dinner. Don’t worry. - Aggie.

  What a day for disruptions of the sacred order of the universe. Once, long ago, she’d liked surprises. Today’s events reminded her exactly why that had changed. Gloria sat down on the top step of the cement stoop, heedless of her nice linen skirt. She wanted to talk to Aggie, but Aggie had gone. She’d counted on talking to Aggie, needed to talk to someone. Gloria gulped in a deep breath. She would not cry. Despite the evident lush life of familiar lawns and houses and trees, the world had become an empty desert.

  A couple more deep breaths steadied her. She dug in her bag, found her cell phone and punched Pete’s work number. He didn’t like her calling him there, but under the circumstances, there ought to be an exception. Right?

  “Hello? This is Pete in accounts receivable.”

  “Pete. It’s me, Gloria.” Her voice sounded shaky to her own ears.

  “What is it?” He spoke in a hushed tone. “You know I’m not supposed to take personal calls here.”

  “I know. Just. I need you. My friend at work, Jo? She’s gone. Dead. She was killed last night. Oh, Pete.” She gulped, struggling past the constriction of her throat, dragging in the air like hauling up an anchor.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, sweetheart. That’s terrible. I want to be there for you, but I can’t talk right now. What say we get together as soon as I’m off work?”

  Gloria spoke past the rushing in her ears, the sinking of her heart. “Sure. I guess.”

  “That’s my girl. We’ll talk then. I’ll take you out. Later.” He cut the connection.

  Gloria lowered her head to her knees. The rushing in her ears resolved into the whoosh of the breeze through the leaves above her. Birds chirped and called, a car door slammed somewhere down the block. More distantly, a lawnmower growled. It all seemed part of some other world. Here she trembled alone in the darkness behind her eyes, where the flood came sweeping past all restraints.

  “Hey, Glo-worm, what’s wrong?”

  Gloria started upright, wiping at her eyes.

  “Greg. What are you doing home in the middle of the day?” She managed to speak, but her voice sounded wrong: weak, false.

  “I thought I’d make myself a sandwich for lunch–what about you? Don’t you have work today?”

  * * * *

  Greg stood with a hand on the rail of Aggie’s ramp beside the back steps. Something had to be very wrong. Gloria hadn’t snapped at him when he called her ‘Glo-worm,’ the nickname he’d come up with when he was ten, for the sole purpose of getting her goat. Over the years, it had produced reactions from shrieks when she was ten, to growls, to a roll of her eyes in her teens, to her current dismissive snort. But always something.

  He’d used it now unthinkingly, from fond habit. With her head bowed across her knees, she might have been only resting, but when she looked up the bleakness in her eyes struck him like a fist to his chest. No sign of the usual gamut from sunshine to storms that made her face a continual fascination to him, but signs of her tears wrenched his gut.

  “Aggie’s gone,” she said, tilting her head toward the door behind her.

  He read the note taped to the glass. She wouldn’t cry over that, would she?

  “You get off work early?” He took a seat beside her on the stoop. “Is it some kind of holiday?” He could never remember the holidays. He’d gone to campus more than once to find buildings locked and closed. “Did you want to get into the house to work on your project?”

  “No. No,” she repeated with more force. “I wanted Aggie. I wanted to talk to her. And, no it’s not a holiday.” She looked at him with some exasperation breaking through the dullness of her expression. “You’d know that if you paid any attention to the rest of the world.” She broke off. “I’m sorry. I’m just so upset.”

  “What is it?”

  She folded over again, resting her face in her hands. His high IQ didn’t help him here. Was she crying again? Should he give her a hug? Aggie would give her a hug. He moved an inch or two closer, enough so she’d be able to feel someone beside her, know she wasn’t alone.

  “I’m not my mother,” he said. “But I’m here. You can talk to me.”

  “Thanks,” she mumbled into her hands. She lifted her head, shifting to face him. Her knees brushed his legs. “It’s so awful. I still can’t believe it.” She shook her head. “My friend, you know, Jo, she’s dead.” She reached out, clutched his hand.

  He held her hand between both of his. Her slender fingers looked so fragile. He had to find a way to comfort to her, to steady her. He couldn’t stand seeing her this shaken.

  “Dead? How?” he asked. “Was she ill?”

  “No.” Her tone turned angry, then softened as she said, “No. That might have been better, not such a shock, not so scary.” She paused as she drew in a long ragged breath. “Someone killed her.”

  Her hand clenched in his and her shoulders shook. The tremors ran through her like waves through water. He didn’t hesitate to put an arm around her shoulders. If nothing else, he’d be steady for her. A rock. In their whole lifetime as friends and neighbors, he’d never once thought Gloria frail or weak. She seemed so small now, trembling, leaning against him into the shelter of his arm. Sitting this close to her, he breathed in the roses and musk of her perfume and caught the hint of citrus in her hair.

  “Hey.” He had to say something. “Hey, are you crying?” Her face stayed hidden against his chest. She made a snuffling sound.

  “Just,” she hiccupped, “a little.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve heard you cry before. Remember when Tommy Lindahl beheaded your Barbie doll?

  Was that next sound a sob or a chuckle? She snuffled, and he released her as she straightened, pulling away, wiping her eyes. “I’ll be okay. It’s such a shock, so awful. Jo. Someone killed Jo. Who’d do something like that?”

  “Killed? Murder?” Really? Hard to get his mind around that. Murders happened on TV all the time. Not in real life, not around here.

  “Yes. It must have been yesterday evening after Patty and Anne left for the day. It might even have happened in our building.” Her voice choked on the words. “The police wouldn’t tell me where. It’s worse not knowing. I imagine all sorts of things.” Gloria huddled against him again, not bothering to hide her tears. She sobbed into his shirt.

  He sat stunned, too concerned for Gloria to fully appreciate the miracle of holding her close. Where had he been? Where had Wonder Guy been when this happened? Why hadn’t Serafina alerted him? He’d spent yesterday evening back at the computer lab. Not only working on his thesis project, but investigating ways Professor Stevens might have gained access to student work. Maybe Serafina would only contact him when he was in superhero mode, in costume. He had a life. He couldn’t play superhero every hour of every day. Yet, he might have been able to save Gloria’s friend. Gloria hadn’t been this hurt or lost since the day her mother died.

  * * * *

  Gloria’s tears subsided soon enough, leaving her drained and hollow. She still couldn’t grasp the finality of losing her friend. A gash ripped the fabric of her life, leaving her to feel small and vulnerable before a looming darkness. She’d been here before. Back when her mother died, more than ten years ago now. She shivered despite the warmth of Greg’s arm around her.

  “Why don’t we wait inside?” Greg suggested. “Aggie probably won’t be out long.”

  Gloria took a deep breath, looking up and around at the quiet, shaded yard, the sunlit neighborhood, all too aware now of the shadows in the familiar scene. Greg’s presence steadied her, a long-familiar part of everything right and normal, a rock in the turmoi
l shaking her now.

  “Sure. Aggie won’t mind if we go in and grab something to drink.” She rose to her feet, calmer now for having let the flood of tears escape. “Have you got a key?”

  “Yeah.” He stood, keys jangling as he dug in the pocket of his slacks. “Don’t you know where she keeps the spare?”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess I do. I’ve never needed it. She’s always here.” Gloria frowned at the plaintive tone of her own voice and eyed the note on the door. “Since when does Aggie go out for coffee in the middle of the day?”

  “It’s a mystery to me.” Greg fit his key to the lock and led the way into the kitchen.

  She went straight to the table and dropped onto a chair.

  He leaned into the fridge and pulled out a couple of sodas. “Don’t tell me...” He put his hand to his temple like a mind reader. “Anything diet for you, ‘who needs the extra sugar’ right?”

  “You know me too well.” Gloria grimaced as an unwilling smile collided with her inner gloom. She took the can of Diet Coke he proffered and popped the top. “And I don’t need to hear about the evils of aspartame yet again.”

  “I think you do,” Greg teased. A pop and fizz announced the opening of his Mountain Dew. “You’re still drinking the stuff.”

  “Like sugar is any better.” Gloria rolled her eyes. This was good. Normal old Greg took her mind off things she didn’t want to consider. She clenched her fist against further tears. She needed to understand this, and clearly. Something dangerous loomed. “I’m afraid I’ve got worse trouble than sugar or aspartame right now.”

  “The police don’t have Jo’s killer?”

  “They don’t even know who the killer is–not last I heard.” She took a swig from her can. The bubbles and caffeine seemed to help clear her head. Now she almost regretted coming home. She might have learned more if she’d stuck around the office, but not while Algerson stayed locked behind Ms. Dexter’s door. She’d had no excuse for accompanying the detective downstairs to talk with people in the security office. Tears had overwhelmed her not five minutes ago. She’d never have held out against them if she’d stayed. She sighed, tapping the side of her can with a fingernail. With tears past, anger set in.

  “You know the worst part?” she asked.

  He sat across from her sipping from his soda, relaxed, aside from the hint of worry when he looked at her. “What’s that?”

  “Ordinarily I’d talk to Jo about something that upset me this much. I’d go to my desk and dial her extension. I caught myself starting to do it a couple times before I left the office today. I needed her and she wasn’t there. Someone took her away from me. It’s not right. It’s not fair. I want to hurt whoever did this.”

  “Hey.” Greg set his can down. “You’re right. It’s not fair.”

  “‘Life isn’t fair.’ People always say that, but I want it fair. If life isn’t fair, people should be. This wasn’t life being unfair. Somebody, some person did this. Some creepy a-hole took Jo’s life and should pay for it.” She set her jaw. Someone would pay before Gloria finished with them.

  “Go, Gloria.” Greg gave her a round of applause.

  His encouragement warmed her.

  “You’re not the only one who wants things fair. The whole justice system exists because people, most people, anyway, want things fair. Most of us want good people protected and bad guys punished.” The look he gave her turned grim. He looked like a stranger for a moment. Someone with more depths and shadows than she’d ever imagined Greg to have. “I hate that someone did this to you.”

  “They did it to Jo, not to me.” Sweet of him to think first how it affected her, but Jo was the one who had lost her life.

  “They took away your friend. They’ve got you scared.”

  No denying that.

  He glowered, a dark, implacable look, almost frightening in its intensity–though comforting how it arose on her behalf.

  “Did anyone have something against Jo?” He’d returned to his usual practical, logical self.

  “No. We all loved her. She listened. She kept the coffee pot full in her section. She always remembered everyone’s birthday. She brought donuts to the office. She made me laugh.” Gloria strained to get the words out as her throat tightened again. “On my last birthday she got me this miniature stone bear. It symbolized strength.”

  “There must have been something, some reason. Was she seeing anyone?” He had the determined look he got whenever he sank his teeth into a particularly challenging puzzle.

  “No.” She took a deep breath. Greg always helped keep her focused. “Jo wasn’t seeing anyone. She broke up with a guy, Kevin, last month because he moved to Pittsburgh. He had a good job offer and Jo didn’t want to leave her life here and spend the rest of her life with him, especially not in Pittsburgh.”

  “What’s wrong with Pittsburgh? It ranks high on livability.”

  “Jo’s from Denver. She’s–she was–a big Broncos fan. She hated the Steelers.”

  “Oh. That lets Kevin off the hook.” He frowned, and his mouth tightened reminding her of the thousand times she’d seen him bent over some puzzle or homework problem. “What makes one person kill another? It seems so stupid to destroy something you can’t replace.”

  “We’ve both seen plenty of detective shows and cop shows in our lives.” Watching movies while doing crafts or playing computer games had been a favorite activity in Aggie’s house all through their school years. “It always seems to come down to some sort of passion like love, hate, jealousy–or money. Love triangles weren’t Jo’s style and I can’t imagine her making anyone hate her enough to kill her. She wasn’t rich so nobody stands to inherit anything from her.” Nothing but paperbacks and knick-knacks.

  “Maybe someone saw her as a threat?” His long-boned fingers tapped a slow tattoo on the tabletop. “Maybe not physically, but might she have learned something damaging about someone?”

  “She did work on payroll.” Gloria considered the matter. “Maybe she caught someone falsifying time cards or something?” That seemed too much of a stretch. Supervisors had to approve time cards.

  “People who know too much, like blackmailers, always end up as murder victims on TV, killed by people trying to protect their money or their secrets.”

  “Jo wouldn’t blackmail anyone.” Gloria scowled at him. “She’d take a payroll issue straight to management. It’s hard to imagine anyone falsifying timecards on a large enough scale to be noticeable.”

  “Maybe not blackmail then. Maybe not even related to payroll. Maybe she stumbled onto something somebody wanted to keep secret?”

  “We’re not likely to figure this out. We don’t have access to the witnesses the way the police do. I feel so...jumpy, thinking someone might have killed her at work. Someone I know. Who should I suspect? Who can I trust?”

  “You can trust almost everybody, and the police will figure it out. At least you’ll know for sure what happened, all the people who aren’t murderers.”

  She did have a few people she trusted. Greg. Aggie. They’d never met Jo. Also Pete, of course. He’d only met Jo once when he’d picked Gloria up from work as Jo was leaving the building. Ages ago. It all seemed ages ago. Time lay broken into two distinct pieces. The Before and After of Jo, just as there’d been The Before and After of Mom.

  * * * *

  “Before we open the meeting, Serafina will present her progress report.” Philomena stood, regal with her erect posture and perfectly arranged silver hair, at the head of the age-darkened walnut table dominating the library conference room in the chapter’s headquarters. Today the room accommodated the members of other area chapters as well as those local to Minneapolis. Some twenty ladies-of-age sat around the table.

  “Good morning, ladies.” Serafina spoke in bright, bird-song tones, rising from her seat at Philomena’s left while the chapter president resumed her place. “I’d like to thank you again for authorizing the public display of magic and contributing energy to the cau
se. We’ve not yet flushed the opposition into overt action, but if you’ll look to the bar graph on screen.” She indicated the PowerPoint display projected on a screen lowered across the library windows.

  “You can see the fluctuations of various energies over the past few days as compared to the averages for the past ten years.

  “Note how Anger and Despair have dipped well below the current norms.” The display advanced with a soft click. “This next graph shows the steady rise in those same energies as seen over the past decade. You’ll recall, of course, this troubling trend is what prompted our present course of action.

  “Undoubtedly, those of our kin addicted to the dark energies are responsible for the spike of unhappiness. The ordinary unseelie sprites would be incapable of such an organized effort as our analysis suggests. There is some higher intelligence at play here. If our countermeasures continue, I have every faith this force will soon expose itself by attempting to interfere with our appointed hero.”

  The ladies gathered around the table murmured and nodded in agreement.

  Chapter 11

  “Thanks for staying here with me,” Gloria told Greg. “I’m sure you had other plans.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait.” Greg rose. “Except a sandwich. Aggie won’t mind if I fix us a couple. You still like peanut butter?” He moved around the counter dividing the worktable and crafts area from the stove, refrigerator and kitchen cupboards and withdrew a loaf of bread from the box.

  Food didn’t appeal to her, but it had been a long time since the bagel she’d grabbed on her way to the office this morning. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so light-headed if she ate something. Gloria glanced at the clock over the fridge. During their clock-making phase, she and Aggie had made it look like the cross-section of an orange. Past one o’clock already. If there was ever a time for comfort food, this was it. “Sure. Peanut butter with raisins and honey sounds good.”

  “Sure you wouldn’t like one of my ‘specials’?” He grinned.

  She grimaced. His peanut butter, pickle and cheese sandwiches actually tasted better than they sounded, but it wouldn’t do to tell him. “Not on your life.”