Snake Dreams (11 page)

“Oh, everything’ll work out fine.” Nancy clapped her hands and laughed. “You’ll see.”

“I certainly hope so.” Miss Muntz tried vainly to remember what it was like to be young and full of hope—and utterly silly.
I suppose I have always been a rather sensible sort—even as a girl.
“After I make a brief stop at Sunburst Pizza, I shall take you directly to the dance.”

Nancy fumbled in her purse until she found a compact. As she pretended to examine her hair, she used the mirror to view the rear window. There was a vehicle about a block behind them.
I hope that’s Jake.

“I shall be there to pick you up at nine forty-five
P.M
. If you should wish to return home earlier, you may call me on your cellular telephone.”

Nancy smiled. “Right.”

“And another thing.”

The teenager rolled her big, brown eyes. With old fussbud-gets there was always
another thing.

“While you are at the festivities, I imagine you will encounter your young man.” She wagged a finger at the girl. “I expect you to conduct yourself like a proper young lady. You must solemnly promise to be on your
very best
behavior.”

“I promise.” And she would be. But Nancy’s notions of acceptable behavior would have shocked the prim elderly lady, who had been kissed only once, in November 1943 by a slim wisp of a farm boy about to board a troop-transport ship for Britain. Some seven months later, on D-Day plus nine, her paratrooper sweetheart died beside a Normandy hedgerow when a Wehrmacht sergeant tossed a “potato masher” grenade into the muddy ditch where he was sleeping. For all these years since, Miss Muntz had kept his photograph on her bedside table. Every night before drifting off to sleep, she talked to her absent lover as if he had departed only yesterday.

As she parked at the Sunburst Pizza Restaurant, Miss Muntz assured her passenger that she would be back in a jiffy. Upon entering the busy eatery, she made a beeline to the takeout-orders counter, where a pale, thirtyish fellow whose plastic name tag identified him as Al Burkowitz was attempting to remove a small obstacle from his left nostril.

“Hello, Alvin.”

The Sunburst employee regarded her with a blank, glassy-eyed expression.

She forced herself to smile at the unpleasant face. “Are you making deliveries this evening?”

“Who else?” His grin exposed yellow teeth that resembled kernels of corn. “I’m the onliest delivery guy the joint’s got.” A strained frown. “I remember you—you’re the calzone lady. You always get a carry-out and take it home yourself.”

She nodded. “That is correct. But, as I have some other matters to attend to this evening, I prefer to have the order delivered.”

“Not a problem.” He pulled a Bic ballpoint from behind his ear. “D’you want the usual?”

She did. Carefully enunciating each syllable, Miss Muntz placed her order for a medium calzone with Italian sausage. No bell peppers, please.

“Where d’you want me to bring it?”

Miss Muntz recited the address, watched him pencil the information on a delivery pad. “It is rather unlikely that I will be there when you make the delivery, but I have left the front door unlocked. Go directly through the parlor, down the hallway, and into the kitchen, and put the calzone into the electric range oven.”

“Not a problem,” Pizza Man said.

Alerted by a flash of light, Miss Muntz turned her face to a filthy plate-glass window.
Someone has pulled up beside my Buick.
Very close beside it.
I hope they don’t scratch my lovely car.
Her concentration on the arriving motorist was interrupted by Al’s nasal voice: “With tax, that’ll be nine dollars and fifty-six cents.”

She wrote him a check. “You may pick up your gratuity when you make the delivery.”

“My
what
?”

“Your tip, which it is my custom to pay in cash.” Miss M watched his expression brighten with a glint of avarice. “But I do not leave money lying about the house in plain view.” She told him where to find it.

AS THE
muddy Jeep pulled alongside Miss Muntz’s immaculate sedan, Nancy Yazzi lowered the window. “Jakey—I thought that was you back there.”

“You thought right, Peachy Pie.” Jake Harper grinned. “Everything set?”

“Sure.”

“What about your daddy?”

Nancy spat the words at him: “Hermann Wetzel is my
stepfather.
”

“Whatever.” The heavyset, bearded man unrolled a pack of Volcano Mexican cigarettes from the arm of his black T-shirt. “He buy your story about doing some chores for the landlady?”

“Of course.” With a dismissive toss of the head, she added, “He’s a moron.”

He eyed her purse. “You got Hermann’s bankroll in there?”

“No way—he’s been watching me like a hawk.” The girl unconsciously glanced over her shoulder, as if her stepfather might be in the backseat.

Harper tapped an unfiltered cigarette on the back of his hand, popped it between his thick lips. “Does he still have it stashed in his office?”

Nancy nodded. “It’s in a black leather pouch, down in that little thingy where the hot air comes out—the heat duck.”
I wonder why they call it that
.

“That
little thingy
is a heat register.” He grinned. “It lets warm air outta the furnace ductwork.”

“Whatever.”
Big know-it-all smart aleck.

The big know-it-all smart aleck jerked a kitchen match across his jeans, touched the sulfurous flame to the tip of the cancer stick, inhaled. “How much d’you figure the old miser’s got squirreled away in that leather bag?”

“Enough to choke a horse.” Nancy felt her heart pound. “There were five or six stacks of bills in rubber bands. Big
thick
stacks.”

He clamped his teeth on the cigarette. “We could sure use that cash.”

She held her breath before posing the critical question. “You want to go get it while I’m at the dance?”

“Damn right.” He tapped his toe to rev the Jeep’s engine. “You got your house keys with you?”

She did. But Nancy had also brought a spare set, which she fished out of her purse. “The big brass one works on the front or back door; the silvery key’s for the garage.”

Harper stuffed them into his pocket.

The girl reached across the open space to rub his hairy fore-arm.
“Be careful, honey—just grab the money and get outta there.”

“You worry too much, Peachy Pie.” He jutted the lower lip, puffed a cloud of gray smoke up to his nostrils—apparently for recycling. “I expect ol’ Hermann will be in the basement, swigging beers and reading his fishing magazines.”

“That’s where he spends all of his time.”

Jake Harper sucked in a lungful of carcinogenic smoke.
After I get my hands on Hermann’s cash, maybe I ought to stop his clock.

AS MISS
Muntz exited Sunburst Pizza, various terms of endearment were being exchanged between the Buick and the Jeep.

Nancy squeaked, “Oh, here she comes.”

“I’m outta here.” Jake Harper released the girl’s hand, departed with a squeal of tires.

Miss Muntz slipped into the Buick, smiled at the young woman. “One of your young friends?”

Nancy exercised the bored-teenager shrug. “Oh, just some guy I know.”

I’d bet a greenback dollar to a Georgia peanut, that was your mysterious sweetheart.
The elderly romantic inserted the ignition key, started the engine, consulted the dashboard clock. “We’ll make the dance in approximately seven minutes.”

“Great.” The anxious teenager glanced at her wristwatch.

Six minutes and ten seconds later, Nancy sat up straight as a poker. “Let me off here—by the drugstore.”

“But, dear, it’s still another three blocks to—”

“That’s okay. I need to pick up a few things.”

Frowning at a little red motor scooter that was using up an entire parking space, Miss M double-parked. “Have a nice time, dear.”

“I will.”
You can count on it.

The inevitable reminder: “I’ll return at nine forty-five sharp to pick you up.”

Nancy Yazzi slammed the car door, jammed her hands into the tight pockets of her Miss Texas jeans, and sauntered off toward the Corner Drugstore.

Mrs. Muntz sighed.
Young people nowadays, they all seem so unhappy. Like they were riddled through with angst.

During the entire course of her long life, Miss M had never experienced the least bit of angst. Not the most minuscule molecule. And this was no happy accident that could be credited to top-flight DNA or fortuitous circumstance; it was a direct result of Millicent’s Domestic Policy. The lady of the house was always telling her cat that what a body had to do to keep from worrying herself to death about problems was to spend her time
solving
them. E
VERY
D
AY
, M
AKE
S
OMETHING
R
IGHT
. This slogan, which was crocheted on white cotton and mounted in a frame, hung over her 1933 Singer treadle sewing machine. Such prudent proverbs could be seen on virtually every wall in her cozy dwelling, including the pantry and bathrooms. One of her favorites hung over the parlor couch:

CURSE NOT THE DARKNESS
LIGHT A SMALL CANDLE

In this evening’s gathering darkness, had Millicent Muntz touched the flame to a candle wick . . . or a fuse?

What Is It About Men and Their Pickup Trucks?

As has been revealed, Mr. Jerome Kydmann originally hails from Wyoming, Rhode Island, which is no teeming metropolis. And the Wyoming Kyd, despite his shy little-boy smile and gentle way of beguiling the ladies, was—like every mother’s son of a gun on Mr. Moon’s ranch—
macho to the core.
Why, give any of those roughneck cowboys a set of socket wrenches, a big ball-peen hammer, and a pair of rusty old
war plars
and he will roll up his shirtsleeves and fix any ailing machine on the Columbine, be it a GMC flatbed, John Deere tractor, or Allis-Chalmers combine. Which is what Charlie Moon did. Provided the Kyd with the necessary tool kit, that is—and turned him loose on a beat-up 1992 F-150 pickup. According to the cowboy mechanic, the worn-out engine soaked up thirty-weight oil like a sponge and would not go anywhere in reverse, and the brakes was so worthless that the driver tossed out a ninety-pound boat anchor to stop the contraption. A bit of an exaggeration, but there are no flies on the Kyd—he’d gotten his orders to turn this heap of nuts and bolts into a dandy truck barely two weeks ago, and just look at it now—all the rust is wire-brushed off, every single ding hammered out and smoothed over with Acme’s Finest Auto-Body Putty, and there’s a thick layer of rust-proof undercoat plus two coats of red paint so shiny that old geezers can see their nose hairs on any fender they want to gaze at.

All the way from the Southern Ute reservation to the southern outskirts of Granite Creek, Jerome Kydmann did not stop talking about how he’d fixed up this pickup so it was
better
than new. New pickups did not come with genuine chrome hood ornaments, and the one he’d bolted on was a fine facsimile of a cougar—about to pounce.

Sarah, who was sitting between the poster-boy cowboy and Aunt Daisy, did little more than murmur and nod. Not that she didn’t appreciate fine pickups and good-looking young men who took a bath twice a week, shaved every other day, and slapped on lots of Old Spice (the Kyd smelled right nice), but she was saddled with a big load of the blues. Sarah didn’t want to talk to
nobody
about
nothing.

The Kyd was not thin-skinned. Far from it. But the girl’s obvious lack of interest in the admirable results of his mechanical labors tended to be a drag on the one-sided conversation. Which is probably why, from time to time, Daisy Perika would say something nice about the truck, like, “Except for the bird doo-doo that just fell on it, that new paint on the hood sure is shiny.” Or, “That motor sounds good.”

Even with this encouragement from the Indian woman who rarely had a kindly word to say, the Kyd finally gave up. Just as they crossed over the dashed line on the map and entered the Granite Creek city limits, he shut his mouth.