Mr. Murder (28 page)

“Why shoot Mrs. Sanchez? She’s just the cleaning lady.”

“Maybe she went berserk,” Charlotte said, and the possibility appealed enormously to her thirst for drama.

Emily shook her head. “Not Mrs. Sanchez. She’s nice.” “Nice people go berserk.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

Emily folded her arms on her chest. “Name one.” “Mrs. Sanchez,” Charlotte said.

“Besides
Mrs. Sanchez.”

“Jack Nicholson.”

“Who’s he?”

“You know, the actor. In
Batman
he was the Joker, and he was totally massively berserk.”

“So maybe he’s always totally massively berserk.”

“No, sometimes he’s nice, like in that movie with Shirley MacLaine, he was an astronaut, and Shirley’s daughter got real sick and they found out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice.”

“Besides, this isn’t Mrs. Sanchez’s day,” Emily said.

“What?”

“She only comes on Thursdays.”

“Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn’t know what
day
it was,” Charlotte countered, pleased with her response, which made such perfect sense. “Maybe she’s loose from a looney-tune asylum, goes around getting housekeeping jobs, then sometimes when she’s berserk she kills the family, roasts them, and eats them for dinner. ”

“You’re weird,” Emily said.

“No, listen,” Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, “like Hannibal Lecter.”

“Hannibal the Cannibal!” Emily gasped.

Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie—which Emily insisted on calling
The Sirens of the Lambs—
because Mom and Daddy didn’t think they were old enough, but they’d heard about it from other kids in school who’d seen it on video a billion times.

Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs. Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a
doctor
who went humongously berserk and bit off people’s noses and stuff, so the idea of a berserk cannibal cleaning lady suddenly made a lot of sense.

Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had not been carrying a gun before.

Letting the drapes fall back into place, turning away from the glass doors, he smiled at Charlotte and Emily. “You kids okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Charlotte said. “This is a great show.”

“You need anything?”

“No thanks, sir,” Emily said. “We just want to watch the show.”

“It’s a great show,” Charlotte repeated.

As Mr. Delorio left the room, both Charlotte and Emily turned to watch him until he was out of sight.

“Why’s he have a gun?” Emily wondered.

“Protecting us. And you know what that means? Mrs. Sanchez must still be alive and on the loose, looking for someone to eat.”

“But what if Mr. Delorio goes berserk next? He’s got a gun, we could never get away from him.”

“Be serious,” Charlotte said, but then she realized a physical-education teacher was just as likely to go berserk as any cleaning lady. “Listen, Em, you know what to do if he goes berserk?”

“Call nine-one-one.”

“You won’t have time for that, silly. So what you’ll have to do is, you’ll have to kick him in the nuts.”

Emily frowned. “Huh?”

“Don’t you remember the movie Saturday?” Charlotte asked.

Mom had been upset enough about the movie to complain to the theater manager. She’d wanted to know how the picture could have received a PG rating with the language and violence in it, and the manager had said it was PG-13, which was very different.

One of the things that bothered Mom was a scene where the good guy got away from the bad guy by kicking him hard between the legs. Later, when someone asked the good guy what the bad guy wanted, the good guy said, “I don’t know what he wanted, but what he
needed
was a good kick in the nuts.”

Charlotte had sensed, at once, that the line annoyed her mother. Later, she could have asked for an explanation, and her mother would have given her one. Mom and Daddy believed in answering all of a child’s questions honestly. But sometimes, it was more exciting to try to learn the answer on her own, because then it was something she knew that they didn’t
know
she knew.

At home, she’d checked the dictionary to see if there was any definition of “nuts” that would explain what the good guy had done to the bad guy and also explain why her mother was so unhappy about it. When she saw that one meaning of the word was obscene slang for “testicles,” she checked that mysterious word in the same dictionary, learned what she could, then sneaked into Daddy’s office and used his medical encyclopedia to discover more. It was pretty bizarre stuff. But she understood it. Sort of. Maybe more than she wanted to understand. She had explained it as best she could to Em. But Em didn’t believe a word of it and, evidently, promptly forgot about it.

“Just like in the movie Saturday,” Charlotte reminded her. “If things get real bad and he goes berserk, kick him between the legs.”

“Oh, yeah,” Em said dubiously, “kick him in his tickles. ”

“Testicles.”

“It was tickles.”

“It was testicles,” Charlotte insisted firmly.

Emily shrugged. “Whatever.”

Mrs. Delorio walked into the family room, drying her hands on a yellow kitchen towel. She was wearing an apron over her skirt and blouse. She smelled of onions, which she had been chopping; she’d been starting to prepare dinner when they’d arrived. “Are you girls ready for more Pepsi?”

“No, ma’am,” Charlotte said, “we’re fine, thank you.

Enjoying the show.”

“It’s a great show,” Emily said.

“One of our favorites,” Charlotte said.

Emily said, “It’s about a boy with tickles and everyone keeps kicking them.”

Charlotte almost thumped the little twerp on the head.

Frowning with confusion, Mrs. Delorio glanced back and forth from the television screen to Emily. “Tickles?”

“Pickles,” Charlotte said, making a lame effort at covering.

The doorbell rang before Em could do more damage.

Mrs. Delorio said, “I’ll bet that’s your folks,” and hurried out of the family room.

“Peabrain,” Charlotte said to her sister.

Emily looked smug. “You’re just mad because I showed it was all a lie. She never heard of boys having tickles.”

“Sheesh!”

“So there,” Emily said.

“Twerp.”

“Snerp.”

“That’s not even a word.”

“It is if I want it to be.”

The doorbell rang and rang as if someone was leaning on it.

Vic peered through the fish-eye lens at the man on the front stoop. It was Marty Stillwater.

He opened the door, stepping back so his neighbor could enter. “My God, Marty, it looked like a police convention over there. What was that all about?”

Marty stared at him intensely for a moment, especially at the gun in his right hand, then seemed to make some decision and blinked. Wet from the rain, his skin looked glazed and as unnaturally white as the face of a porcelain figurine. He seemed shrunken, shriveled, like a man recovering from a serious illness.

“Are you all right, is Paige all right?” Kathy asked, entering the hall behind Vic.

Hesitantly, Marty stepped across the threshold and stopped just inside the foyer, not entering quite far enough to allow Vic to close the door.

“What,” Vic asked, “you’re worried about dripping on the floor? You
know
Kathy thinks I’m a hopeless mess, she’s had everything in the house Scotchgarded! Come in, come in.”

Without entering farther, Marty looked past Vic into the living room, then up toward the head of the stairs. He was wearing a black raincoat buttoned to the neck, and it was too large for him, which was part of the reason he seemed shrunken.

Just when Vic thought the man was stricken mute, Marty said, “Where’re the kids?”

“They’re okay,” Vic assured him, “they’re safe.”

“I need them,” Marty said. His voice was no longer raspy, as it had been earlier, but wooden. “I need them.”

“Well, for God’s sake, old buddy, can’t you at least come in long enough to tell us what—”

“I need them now,” Marty said, “they’re mine.”

Not a wooden voice, after all, Vic Delorio realized, but tightly controlled, as if Marty was biting back anger or terror or some other strong emotion, afraid of losing his grip on himself. He trembled a little. Some of that rain on his face might have been sweat.

Coming forward along the hall, Kathy said, “Marty, what’s wrong?”

Vic had been about to ask the same question. Marty Stillwater was usually such an easy-going guy, relaxed, quick to smile, but now he was stiff, awkward. Whatever he’d been through tonight, it had left deep marks on him.

Before Marty could respond, Charlotte and Emily appeared at the end of the hall, where it opened on the family room. They must have slipped into their raincoats the minute they heard their father’s voice. They were buttoning up as they came.

Charlotte’s voice wavered as she said, “Daddy?”

At the sight of his daughters, Marty’s eyes flooded with tears. When Charlotte spoke to him, he took another step inside, so Vic could close the door.

The kids ran past Kathy, and Marty dropped to his knees on the foyer floor, and the kids just about flew into his arms hard enough to knock him over. As the three of them hugged one another, the girls talked at once: “Daddy, are you okay? We were so scared. Are you okay? I love you, Daddy. You were all yucky bloody. I told her it wasn’t
your
blood. Was it a burglar, was it Mrs. Sanchez, did she go berserk, did the mailman go berserk, who went berserk, are you all right, is Mommy all right, is it over now, why do nice people just suddenly go berserk anyway?” All three were chattering at once, in fact, because Marty kept talking through all of their questions: “My Charlotte, my Emily, my kids, I love you, I love you so much, I won’t let them steal you away again, never again.” He kissed their cheeks, their foreheads, hugged them fiercely, smoothed their hair with his shaky hands, and in general made over them as if he hadn’t seen them in years.

Kathy was smiling and at the same time crying quietly, daubing at her eyes with a yellow dish towel.

Vic supposed the reunion was touching, but he wasn’t as moved by it as his wife was, partly because Marty looked and sounded peculiar to him, not strange in the way he expected a man to be strange after fighting off an intruder in his house—if that was actually what had happened—but just . . . well, just strange. Odd. The things Marty was saying were slightly weird: “My Emily, Charlotte, mine, just as cute as in your picture, mine, we’ll be together, it’s my destiny.” His tone of voice was also unusual, too shaky and urgent if the ordeal was over, which the departure of the police surely indicated, but also too forced. Dramatic. Overly dramatic. He wasn’t speaking spontaneously but seemed to be playing a stage role, struggling to remember the right thing to say.

Everyone said creative people were strange, especially writers, and when Vic first met Martin Stillwater, he expected the novelist to be eccentric. But Marty had disappointed in that regard; he had been the most normal, levelheaded neighbor anyone could hope to have. Until now.

Getting to his feet, holding on to his daughters, Marty said, “We’ve got to go.” He turned toward the front door.

Vic said, “Wait a second, Marty, buddy, you can’t just blow out of here like that, with us so damned curious and all.”

Marty had let go of Charlotte only long enough to open the door. He grabbed her hand again as the wind whistled into the foyer and rattled the framed embroidery of bluebirds and spring flowers that hung on the wall.

When the writer stepped outside without responding to Vic in any way, Vic glanced at Kathy and saw her expression had changed. Tears still glistened on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry, and she looked puzzled.

So it isn’t just me, he thought.

He went outside and saw that the writer was already off the stoop, heading down the walk in the wind-tossed rain, holding the girls’ hands. The air was chilly. Frogs were singing, but their songs were unnatural, cold and tinny, like the grinding-racheting of stripped gears in frozen machinery. The sound of them made Vic want to go back inside, sit in front of the fire, and drink a lot of hot coffee with brandy in it.

“Damn it, Marty, wait a minute!”

The writer turned, looked back, with the girls cuddling close to his sides.

Vic said, “We’re your friends, we want to help. Whatever’s wrong, we want to help.”

“Nothing you can do, Victor.”

“Victor? Man, you know I hate ‘Victor,’ nobody calls me that, not even my dear old gray-haired mother if she knows what’s good for her.”

“Sorry . . . Vic. I’m just . . . I’ve got a lot on my mind.” With the girls in tow, he started down the walkway again.

A car was parked directly at the end of the walk. A new Buick. It looked bejeweled in the rain. Engine running. Lights on. Nobody inside.

Dashing off the stoop into the storm, which was no longer the cloudburst it had been but still drenching, Vic caught up with them. “This your car?”

“Yeah,” Marty said.

“Since when?”

“Bought it today.”

“Where’s Paige?”

“We’re going to meet her.” Marty’s face was as white as the skull hidden beneath it. He was trembling visibly, and his eyes looked strange in the glow of the street lamp. “Listen, Vic, the kids are going to be soaked to the skin.”

“I’m the one getting soaked,” Vic said. “They’ve got raincoats. Paige isn’t over at the house?”

“She left already.” Marty glanced worriedly at his house across the street, where lights still glowed at both the first- and second-floor windows. “We’re going to meet her.”