by Nevada Barr
“Sounds convenient.”
“People used to lose weeks to ‘brain fever’ in old books,” Marion suggests.
“Amnesia, repressed memories, the vapors, being beamed up by aliens,” Rose adds. “Maybe ways to describe phenomena science can’t explain.”
“Nervous breakdown, psychotic break—the same thing,” Marion adds.
“They sound scarier,” Rose says.
“Things will look better in the morning,” Marion replies in the voice Rose knows means she needs to get off the phone. With Marion, a headache isn’t a two-aspirin event. It is a screaming red crawl-in-the closet event.
Feeling more needy than considerate, Rose asks, “Why will things look better in the morning?”
“Because I’m going to FedEx you a credit card and an ATM card tomorrow.”
“I have—”
“I canceled them.”
“Oh.”
“So tomorrow, you get a pedicure, a haircut, a massage, whatever. When you feel up to it, you go to Longwood and turn yourself in. Call Flynn first. I’ll call to check on you a couple times a day. They will get you back on the antidepressants, get your record cleared up—”
“I don’t have a record.”
“The nurse. There will be legal issues with that. Better to get them settled while you are officially ‘under a doctor’s care’ than get picked up by a local rednecked cop and stuck in the police station’s holding cell bleating, ‘I’m sane, I’m sane,’ while the hookers and drunks roll their eyes. Think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Marion was right. Tomorrow, Rose will deal with things like a rational person. I can’t think about that right now. If I do I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Rose smiles at Scarlett.
“I love you,” she blurts out.
“Well . . . you should,” Marion says and hangs up.
Chapter 10
A knock at the front door startles Rose out of sleep. She lifts her head from the kitchen floor. Drool has stuck her cheek to the tile, and it comes free with a faint kissing sound. The cell phone has slipped from her hand. Touching the button, she checks the time. She’s been asleep for a couple of hours. Listening to the castanet pops of knees and ankles, she climbs stiffly to her feet. Rest has been good for her. Marion has been good for her.
She has her hand on the doorknob before it occurs to her that it might not be Melanie. Rose wants to return to Longwood on her own terms, in snappy clothes, her hair expensively cut and her eyes clear. Being snatched and dragged back by the Tweedles—or the Charlotte police—kicking and screaming, with drool on her face and her hair standing on end, is not part of her plan.
She is contemplating hiding behind the boxes in the living room, when a small voice says, “Gigi?”
Mel is carrying three grocery bags. Rose looks both ways to see if the neighbors have noticed. No one is on the street or the sidewalks. If this were New Orleans, Rose would think she’d missed an evacuation order.
“I don’t have a key,” Mel says. “I couldn’t find Dad’s. How did you get in?”
“Where are Honey Cat and Laura Lei?” Rose demands.
“Grandma Nancy took them,” Mel says, walking past Rose toward the kitchen.
“To the pound?” Rose is too loud, too strident.
“No. Grandma likes cats. She adopted them. They seemed really happy last time I was over there.” Mel says this like it is the most normal thing in the world.
This hurts. It is, of course, better than them being put to death in a concrete room. Still, it hurts. Nancy should get her own damn cats. Rose is grateful and relieved. Relieved is good. Grateful is not as much fun as usual. “That’s nice,” Rose makes herself say, but she’s thinking of the email, and wondering if Nancy somehow put this whole thing in motion so she could steal Rose’s cats. Rose doesn’t believe this—she isn’t crazy—but she thinks it.
“Wow!” Mel says as Rose empties the sacks into the cupboards and the refrigerator. “You look way better than you did this morning. Way better.”
“Don’t flatter me,” Rose says. “I don’t want to get attached to my physical beauty. It’s impermanent.”
“Gigi, you are attached to your physical beauty. Don’t you remember? You got a facelift when you turned sixty.”
Rose nods. “Like I said, it’s impermanent.”
“Do we just plug this back in?” Mel asks. Rose feels behind the refrigerator and plugs it in; then the two of them shove it back into its niche.
“Thanks for the food. You didn’t have to do it,” Rose says. “I could have run out and done some grocery shopping. But I’m glad you did. My ability to leap over tall buildings at a single bound has been compromised. By the flu—I guess.”
“You’re not going to like this,” Mel says. “Dad sold your car.” Before Rose can say anything, Mel adds, “Dad’s super efficient. He said cars lose value when they sit around and nobody drives them.” Mel leans her elbows on the counter.
“Careful of broken glass,” Rose says. She points to the window. “That’s how I got in without a key.”
Mel’s smooth lips crimp slightly. “There wasn’t another way?”
Rose can tell the girl is worried that Gigi is making bad choices again.
“I talked to Marion,” Rose says.
“Your sister with eight computers and a zillion cats?”
“She talked me into going back to Longwood and working this out.”
“Hooray for Great-Aunt Marion!” Mel crows. “I’ll call Dad. You’ll want backup.”
“Let’s wait until tomorrow. I want to sleep without diapers and shower by myself a few times before I take the plunge. Lots of loin girding on my part. You can’t imagine how surreal this has been. I feel like I fell into a rabbit hole that turned into Hitchcock movie that’s being played backward.”
“I’m sorry, Gigi.” Mel looks so sad for her, Rose is caught up on a wave of love. She hugs her granddaughter.
“Think of the stories I’ll have to tell when it’s over,” she says, letting Mel go.
After sunset, the house becomes aggressively dark. To push back the shadows without giving herself away, Rose lights a candle. She is sitting on the couch, one of the moving boxes serving as a table, eating the turkey-and-provolone sandwich Mel brought from Harris Teeter’s, when her cell vibrates. On the cardboard it sounds like a dying locust.
Mel.
“Hey, what’s up?” Rose says, phone to her ear.
“Turn on the TV,” Melanie says.
The remote is sitting on the base of the TV. “Which channel?” Rose asks.
“Nine. Local news.”
Rose pushes the power button. The television screen lights up. A nice-looking blonde in a lavender blouse is anchoring. Beside her is a photograph of Rose.
“ . . . escaped from Longwood after assaulting a nurse. Rose Dennis is considered to be a danger to herself and others. The police say do not approach this individual, but do report if you see her. The nurse remains in ICU.”
The photograph of Rose was taken at an art gala in New York. Rose is in a black cocktail dress, laughing, a cigarette in one hand, a glass of champagne in the other.
“Cruella de Vil with a butch haircut,” Rose mutters.
“What did you do to the nurse?” Mel wants to know.
“I gave her a dose of the medication they were feeding me every day. It shouldn’t have hurt her. She was a big person.”
“Maybe she had an allergy,” Mel echoes Marion.
“They’re making it sound like I knifed her, or bashed her over the head,” Rose complains.
“Maybe she inhaled her own vomit,” Melanie says. “That happened to a kid on the football team. He suffocated.”
“At least she’s not dead,” Rose says to reassure them both.
“Not yet, anyway,” Mel says. “Cops came to the house. Regular uniformed cops, then detectives in suits. I’m glad Uncle Daniel wasn’t home. He’d have totally flipped
out.”
Rose can believe that. Daniel is a great guy, a man not cursed with ambition. From what Rose has seen, he is happy with friends, football, and a job that pays enough for beer. He is so laid-back, it is considered a family miracle that he finally managed to ask Stella for a divorce.
“Who talked to the police?” Rose asks.
“Me. I was a confused little girl who didn’t know anything. Don’t worry, they bought it, and,” she adds with a note of pride in her voice, “I did not perjure myself once.”
“It’s only perjury if you’re under oath,” Rose says. “But I’m glad you didn’t lie for me.”
“I didn’t. They wanted to come in and look for you. I said Daddy said not to let strangers in the house. Then I asked for their badge numbers, their names, their supervisor’s name and contact numbers, and how I could call and verify they were them. When they gave me the numbers, I asked how I could know the numbers were really real and they hadn’t just given me the number of a fellow conspirator who would vouch for them even though they weren’t real cops. They were pretty quick to decide to look for you somewhere else.”
“When does your dad get back?” Rose asks.
“Not for nine days. He’s running this massive home improvement trade show in Atlanta. Should I call him now? Or you can.”
“I don’t know,” Rose says.
“I could call Dad, say you needed him to come back. I’m sure he’d find a way to come,” Mel prods.
Rose thinks about that. “Not yet,” she says. “Tomorrow, first thing, I promise.” Her hand is trembling so much the little red arrow from the remote darts frenziedly around the screen. Rose manages to turn the television off. Dropping the remote onto the sofa, she says, “I’m sorry I dragged you into this.”
“Are you kidding? This is more fun than I’ve had in ages.”
Chapter 11
Curled up on a bed that, sans one man and two cats, feels as vast as the Smoke Creek Desert, Rose blows out the candle and lies back. After rest and food, shower and family, she is far less shaky than she was when she broke into 87 Applegarth that morning. Nevertheless she remains exhausted, underweight, with gaps in her memory, and wanted by the police.
Smiling in the dark, Rose realizes she’s living in the fast lane now.
Smoke from the candle has scarcely cleared before she is asleep.
Then awake.
The clock on the bed stand reads two forty-seven. Since it is dark, Rose assumes it is A.M. Six hours of undrugged rest have banished the last—or so she hopes—cobwebs from her mind. Still, six hours is only six hours. Tired as she is, she wouldn’t have been surprised had she slept the clock around. Except she hasn’t. Something awakened her.
Rose lies quietly listening. Strange house, strange noises. One of the many wonderful things about having cats is that one can blame unsettling night noises on their nocturnal habits. Too bad Nancy stole them.
There is the faint clack of the overhead fan. Far away a jet flies, that or it is distant thunder. None of this wakened her. The human mind is a marvel. Even sleeping it can sort the familiar and unthreatening from the alien and threatening. Most of the time.
Swish.
Whisper.
Creak.
Cloth sliding along cardboard, Rose guesses; rubber-soled shoes on carpet, then weight on aging hardwood. Alien and threatening. A jolt of adrenaline brings her out of bed and to the bedroom door. Before she came upstairs, she’d checked all the locks, and laid a perilous trap of heaped pots and pans in the kitchen sink so any intruder larger than a mosquito would knock them down with a racket sufficient to wake the not-yet-dead.
Whoever or whatever this is did not come in via the broken kitchen window or the front or back door. Rose did not hear shattering glass or breaking deadbolts. Hoping the hinges will keep silent, she opens the bedroom door half an inch, and puts her ear to the crack.
Downstairs, the intruder is weaving through the maze of moving boxes. Not a small, light-footed individual—Rose has no trouble negotiating the boxes in the dark without brushing against them—but a careful, practiced individual, who breathes through a stuffed-up nose and, despite the probable bulk, does not bump into anything.
She could dial 911. Then the intruder will run away, and the police will arrive and arrest her. Call Mel? The courageous little creature would probably Uber over with a baseball bat. Not calling Mel. Not if her hair was on fire.
With luck, the burglar will take the television and go. That was what burglars used to do. This is a fifty-five-inch flat-screen, a lot to grab and dash with. Money? Guns? Drugs? It would be a stupid criminal who sought that unholy trinity in a small upscale suburban residence. But then small-time criminals were not noted for high IQs and long-range planning skills.
Rose eases the door closed. With the shades drawn, the room is dim, but the skylight over the bed seldom loses its urban incandescence. For a moment she stares blankly around, her mind flitting from one half-baked plan to another. Attack the intruder? Little more deadly than a coat hanger presents itself as a weapon. The bed stand would serve as a hefty cudgel. Rose could lift it up, then wait against the wall by the door. When the intruder came through, wham! Crack his skull with it.
Rose has never bludgeoned anyone with a piece of furniture. She has a feeling it is not as easy as they make it look in the movies. Hiding might work. There is the closet, and beneath the bed. Neither infuses her with a sense of security.
Decision unmade, she takes her trousers and tunic from the chair where she’d dumped them and pulls them on over her short pj’s. Her feet she slides into a pair of well-worn Toms. She is damned if she is going to face another trauma without proper clothing.
Dressed, she sneaks back to the door, opens it a sliver, and listens. Faint as the hiss of a snake on sand, she can hear what sounds like a gloved hand sliding up the banister.
A landing, another eight steps, and the intruder will be upstairs. Three bedrooms, two baths. There are boxes in the other bedrooms. They might hide her for a minute or two, no more than that.
A needle of blue-white light slices across the dun-colored faux shutters over the small window on the stair landing.
Rose silently pushes the door shut. There is no lock. No matter; it’s a cheap hollow-core. A booted foot will punch right through it.
No hiding.
No attacking.
All that remains is running away.
She crosses the bedroom to the window facing the street. Making no noise, she slithers behind the curtain and blind. A streetlight glares at her from across the sidewalk, throwing the roof of the wraparound porch into high relief. On the window frame, nicely illuminated and right before her eyes, is the lock. Rose flips it open, puts her fingers into the pathetic grooves on the bottom of the frame, and lifts. The windows are new and cheap. The metal in the grooves makes only the slightest hiss. Hope surges. Eight or nine inches up, the window jams.
The intruder’s tread is heavy on the stair, a steady whump like Mothra stomping through Tokyo. Gathering the strength in her legs, Rose lifts again. The window does not budge. Not one quarter of an inch.
Rose hears the footsteps even out. Monster Man is upstairs.
Bending at the waist, she shoves her head through the nine-inch gap between window frame and sill. An ear is scraped raw, but she is breathing outside air. She’s heard that if a person’s head fits through, so will the rest of her body. This seems as good a time as any to test that theory.
The crash and snap of splintering wood help her decide to commit to the task. Monster Man did not bother with the knob; he kicked the bedroom door open. To scare her worse than he already has? If so, it is efficacious. In the instant between kick and grunt, when, Rose supposes, the door hit the wall and ricocheted back to smack the intruder, her body squeezes through the window like dried paint from an old tube.
The window delivers her feet. Rose gets them under her and pushes up. The porch roof is a couple of yards wide and slants gen
tly downward. On one side, it curves around the house in a gentle embrace, forming the long wing of the porch. Hiding there would be a short-term solution. If the intruder looks out the side window, there is no way he would miss seeing her.
The other end of the porch ends abruptly over the driveway. The house is raised, making it a twelve-or fifteen-foot drop either way.
A tremendous crash shakes the roof beneath Rose’s feet. Already pounding, her heart feels as if it stops, then lurches back to life at double speed. The intruder must have upended the king-sized bed and hurled it against the wall.
Ultraviolence.
Rose is glad her cats aren’t home. This would traumatize Laura Lei. She is also glad she isn’t under that bed, exposed like a grub under a rock.
Even if Monster Man is of below average intelligence, he might put the empty bed and the open window together. If he sees it. Blind and curtain are still closed. Rose hopes he will think she is out for the night.
A tinny rattle, then a muted crash, emanate from the window Rose oozed out of. Not a man for gently opening orifices. The intruder has ripped blind and curtain from the wall. Standing straight, Rose shimmies along, her back to the wall, until she runs out of roof.
No light streams through the denuded window. No fist or foot or piece of furniture smashes out the glass. The intruder must be as leery as Rose of attracting attention from neighbors.
A black-gloved hand, clutching a small flashlight, pokes out through the narrow opening. The beam probes the porch roof. Pushing her heels tight against the house, Rose makes herself as thin as she can.
The beam scrapes blue from the shingles, working closer to her toes. For Rose it holds the deadly fascination cobras are rumored to have for mongooses. Pressing her body so hard against the wall that the brick bites through the cotton of her tunic, she dares not blink or breathe.
The streak of light wavers, appears to lose interest, then is snatched away. Monster Man is not going to risk busting out the window. Rose lets her breath out in a silent sigh.
Heavy footfalls retreat. Muscles Rose didn’t even know she had, let alone could clench, loosen. No helpless elderly lady to rape and terrorize, surely the intruder will take what he can, depart, maybe stop for a six-pack of Coors Light, then go home, watch some porn, and call it a night.