From Herring to Eternity (18 page)

I helped here and there with the late afternoon stragglers, then gave Newt, Luke, and Dani a hand with the closing. I cleaned the slicer. There was something relaxing about that task. Sharp and shiny metal things got unscrewed, put in a sink full of hot water, scrubbed, then reassembled all gleaming and fresh. If only we could do that to ourselves.

There was, at least, a kind of spring-renewal type of vibe to be gleaned from Luke and Dani, who were dating. When the twenty-two-year-old Lady Gaga wanna-be came in for the afternoon shift, Luke brightened. When they left together, they were off to see the infamous CreepLeeches, whose van we’d borrowed for our first catering event, the one that had been spoiled a little by the death of a partygoer. The cynic in me couldn’t help but wonder how long the relationship would last. But the twenty-two-year-old buried in my brain remembered that time of life and was buoyed by their innocence.

I kicked Newt out—he could finish swabbing the walk-in freezer in the morning—and Thom and I walked down the street to the garage.

“Thanks for today,” she said as we started out.

“C’mon, there’s no need for that,” I said. “We do for each other.”

“I know. But I forget sometimes how much you’ve taken on, what the learning curve was, how strange it all is for you—not just having to run a business and support a very needy staff, but also just being down here.” She reached into her shoulder bag and took out a small gift-wrapped box. “Anyway, this is for your one-year anniversary. May there be many, many more. And I say that selfishly.”

I took the box but I looked at her. I wasn’t expecting this. I’m sure it showed and I literally didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, with Thom, it wasn’t always necessary to say anything. I just cradled the box and we walked arm in arm to our cars and we said good-bye with a long, tight hug.

“Don’t stress too much about the legal stuff,” Thom said. “God is the final judge.”

“True, and I have to confess I’m happier not to be facing him tomorrow.”

“Whenever you do, the gates of heaven will open wide,” Thom said confidently.

I wasn’t sure I’d get through the Pearly Gates, what with the Commandments I’d busted over the years, but I did open the box when I got in the car. It was a tall white coffee mug that said “I ♥ New York” on one side and “I ♥ Nashville” on the other. There was a little handwritten card inside that said,
Whatever you feel on any given day, you can drink from that side. All my love and God bless you, T.

I sat in the car and cried for a long couple of minutes.

Chapter 18

The noise from the den pulled me from a restless sleep.

I got home about seven-thirty. I’d had a salt and goo craving and stopped at a local pizza place off the highway to pick up a small pie with extra white cheese, onion, mushrooms, and anchovies. I only ate a slice and a half when I got home; seeing Sally’s bike at the curb and her small tent in the backyard made me a little queasy. That wasn’t typically my reaction to things—loss of appetite—but then I’d never felt so adrift. In a leaky boat. With piranha. And storms always on the horizon. I also had never been the self-pitying type. But you don’t realize how much you hold on to “home” and the familiar things around you until they aren’t there. And now the place where I lived, which was nominally my home, was being threatened. I say “nominally” because I’d never gotten around to personalizing it. The place still had Uncle Murray in almost every decorating choice: functional and mostly secondhand. I’d gotten rid of almost everything when I left New York. Only the bed was new and that still had Grant’s ghost all over it.

And speaking of ghosts— I’d fallen asleep on the sofa during the evening news and then had dragged my rag-doll body into the bedroom. I’d conked out solidly until about midnight, when I awoke with a yelp. I hadn’t seen the cats since I got home and fed them, and now they were slinking upwards, across my torso, like doughboys under barbed wire.

I flung them off with a wave of the covers, and they compromised by settling on the unoccupied side of the bed. I did the nightly lavatory chores which I hadn’t bothered with earlier, then went back to bed—for about a half-hour. My brain was working on the court appearance I hadn’t even prepared for. I awoke feeling tense, managed to go back to sleep by disassembling and reassembling the slicer in my head, then woke with a start at two a.m. when I heard a noise. The cats must have heard it, too; they were gone.

The noise had come from downstairs through what was clearly an open door—and the door had not been opened by me. I kept it shut as a matter of course because the oil burner rumbled like a wounded hippo whenever it came on . . . or what I imagined a wounded hippo would sound like. This noise was not the oil burner, it was more like a thump, like a sack of potatoes hitting the floor. That was a sound I
had
heard, at least.

My first thought was that Sally had come into the house and gone into the “temple” to pray. But she didn’t have a key and I imagine I would have heard her kicking open the door or even jimmying the lock. I went in to the bathroom, which had a window that looked out on the backyard. It was too dark to see anything, but everything looked calm around the small portable camping tent—the kind all those Occupy loons used. The flap was shut, something it didn’t seem she’d have done if she’d planned to go back soon.

I heard the sound again. Then I heard smaller sounds that seemed closer but of the same kind: thumping or drumming. I considered calling 911 but I didn’t just in case it was Sally’s cat having found a way in. The den connected to the basement-level garage and had a window. My cats were indoor cats, so who knew what way in her little witchly “familiar” might have found.

I pulled my bathrobe from the plastic hook behind the door and picked up a crowbar I kept behind the door for such moments. It was a practice I’d started in New York, where I never actually needed to use it. I tiptoed out—though why I did that I don’t know, since it would have been a good thing to make noise and scare an intruder off.

When you try to walk quietly at night—something I hadn’t had to do since I was in high school—floors make noises they never make during the day.

The stairs to the basement were at the opposite side of the house, in the kitchen. I felt a chill as I moved along the hallway that opened into the living room, as though the temperature of the house had been lowered here. I knew it was just me being anxious. The front door came into view and I was relieved to see that it was closed. Which, again, meant nothing. There was still a back door and a garage door.

I jumped when the oil burner came on. I also swore, since now I wouldn’t be able to hear any noise coming from the den except that. I shuffled quickly in my bare feet to the kitchen, determined to prevent whoever might be down there from using that noise to cover their escape. I knew my way in the dark and did not turn the light on. There was no reason to make myself visible yet.

The door was indeed open wide. My heart was pumping hard enough to fill my chest front to back as well as up and down. The den light switch and the oil burner switch were on the wall to my left. I threw the light on. I had a limited view of the den from there and I stood, frozen, waiting for something to appear.

It didn’t. I went down a step, holding the crowbar like a baseball bat. I could swear the wooden steps were made of rubber, considering how much I felt them give. At about this point, I was thinking maybe I should have “Jewish lightning” strike the house, like my mother’s cousin Norm did. He torched his paper goods factory after a misprint caused 100,000 Passover Haggadahs to be marked with the year 5762 instead of 5752. Ironically, that was the year Norm ended up getting out of prison.

But burning down my house—which I had no intention of doing—would be a surrender to the many forces battling over the place. I’d lose, too. It would be a relief, but scorched earth was how my father handled things, not me.

I ventured down another step and then I saw it.

It was squatting in the open door to the oil burner room. A figure, in shadows, in what looked like a dark suit. It was standing behind several large bags of salt that I used in the old water softener—hence, the thumps. They had been stacked in a small pile, like sandbags at a rising river.

I turned and ran back up the stairs, slammed the door, and went to the wall phone. It went dead before the 911 operator could pick up—along with the rest of the electricity in my house.

The circuit breakers were located in the oil burner room. Time to get the hell out.

I tucked the crowbar under my arm and ran. My cell phone was recharging on the coffee table. I got to it easily in the dark, grabbed my bag next to it, and with the charger cord dangling behind me, I bolted from the house.

And ran right into someone who blew something up into my face that caused me to back up, gag, and pass out.

I woke with the smell of burned milk in my nose. I’ve smelled it often enough in neglected pots on the deli burners. I blinked away the dopiness in my brain as I looked out on dim, dim blueness. At first I thought it was the twilight sky, but then I heard crickets. They were right there, under the ringing in my ears.

I tried to get up but my elbows were like dough. I looked to the right and saw Sally in candlelight. She was gazing down at me like my mother used to when I was sick. Sally was on her knees with her hands across her white Nashville Kangaroos sweatshirt. The Roos were a sports team that played some kind of football or soccer—I never bothered to find out which.

“It’s Aussie rules football,” Sally said.

“Huh?” I looked away; the whiteness of the shirt hurt my eyes.

“The shirt, the Roos,” she said. “You looked like you were trying to remember what they were.”

“Right. Yeah.” I finally crinkled my nose at the smell. “What’s going on?”

“I found you passed out on the front lawn,” she said. She noticed my gaze shift to a bowl on the left. “Burned milk,” she added. “It clears away evil humors.”

“I can see how that would clear a room,” I said.

Sally smiled benignly. That was where she broke from my mother. Mom always took good care of me, but under the attention was a critical mouth that said, without actually saying it,
Didn’t I tell you not to go out without your scarf ?
or
Didn’t I tell you not to play with Genie so soon after she had the measles?

“What were you doing outside?” Sally asked.

“Someone was inside,” I said. I remembered my bag, tried to see where it was.

“I have your bag and phone here,” she said. “Also, your crowbar.”

I thanked her. I was still muddled. She sounded sincere and her ministrations seemed earnest, but this was the same woman who somehow made a bat fly into my window and sent me a legal letter that very afternoon. And was camped on my property. And had the kind of knowledge to prepare dust or powder or whatever it was that got puffed into my
punim
that put me on my back. For all I knew, it had been Sally in my basement.

“How did you know I was out front?” I asked.

“I heard the screen door slam.”

“You didn’t see anyone?”

“Not a soul,” she said.

I didn’t know which definition applied. “Do you have any idea what was done to me?”

“Powdered belladonna, I suspect,” the woman said softly, as if she was describing a nice bath oil. “It causes extreme light sensitivity and unconsciousness. In anything larger than the dose you apparently received, it is typically fatal.”

“Nice.” My mind went right to Tippi’s murder, though that was rat poison.

“Who had access to your home?” she asked.

It didn’t take me long to answer. “Reynold Sterne has a key.”

“And a reason to want you dead and make it appear as though I did it,” Sally added.

Even my muddled brain grasped that. What it couldn’t accept was that the damn dig was important enough to kill for, especially since the court hadn’t even ruled on the matter.

“I should call the cops,” I said. “File a report. Have them check for evidence.”

“All right, Sister Gwen,” she said.

She handed me my cell phone. I’m not sure whether it was my haziness or Sally or both, but she seemed downright creepy. I switched the phone on, the light blazed into the backs of my eye sockets, and I looked away.

“Shall I call for you?” Sally asked.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Nearly three.”

By the time they arrived and left it would be nearly four. Still, there was a possibility that this could be useful. I was getting an idea, probably a bad one, but I was too exhausted to think it through.

“If you wouldn’t mind dialing, I’d appreciate it,” I said.

I heard the three beeps and she handed me the phone. I told the dispatcher my emergency and gave her my address. She asked me if I was presently still in danger, if the intruder was still in the house. I told her no and I didn’t think so. She said a car was already on the way.

Not, I hoped, with Grant Daniels in it.

Grant didn’t come, probably because he was off duty and sanely asleep. Two young cops did, both of them in their twenties, I’d say. I was on my feet by then, waiting at the curb. They asked if I needed medical assistance and since I fell back while assuring them I was fine, they called for an ambulance.

While Sally and I waited for the paramedics, the officers went inside. They returned just as the outsourced Nashville HealthBus was finishing up with me. The older medics—one a female nurse, the other a retired doctor, I guessed from the white hair and casual country GP manner—gave me oxygen, checked my vitals, looked into my eyes and nasal passages, and said I was fine unless I felt I needed watching. I told them I didn’t. At my request, the physician did take a swab from each nostril and sealed it in a little plastic bag for analysis.

The police found no sign of forcible entry, no trace of displaced salt bags, no footprints on the slated entryway, nothing wrong with the fuse box—only the cats in the bathtub as mute evidence of the home invasion. They looked at me, now, as though they suspected I’d been on some kind of acid trip. Or maybe mushrooms, since they regarded Sally with some skepticism as well.