Stalker (9780307823557)

Careful, careful, little girl. I’m keeping track of you.

Jennifer glanced down at the open drawer of the desk, at the jumble of letters and papers it contained. There were grocery receipts, old shopping lists, one of Bobbie’s report cards, but a paper sticking out of the pile near the front of the drawer drew her attention. The scrawly handwriting looked vaguely familiar. It wasn’t Bobbie’s or Stella’s. Why did she feel as though she ought to be able to identify it? The few words she could read made no sense. They came at the end of what seemed to be a short mailer about a sale at Dillard’s Department Store. It wasn’t signed. She picked up the paper and folded it in half, shoving it in the back hip pocket of her jeans. She wasn’t supposed to touch anything, but there was something about this paper she had to remember. She’d bring it back later, and in the meantime it couldn’t be important to anyone.

Jennifer jumped guiltily as Lucas suddenly appeared beside her, his mouth close to her ear. “Keep looking in the drawer,” he said.

“What—?”

“Don’t look up. Look—in—the—drawer. We’ve got a visitor outside. Someone’s watching us from the yard beyond the back window.”

With appreciation for the assistance of
Sergeant Larry Olivarez, Corpus Christi
Police Department Community Services Division.

Through the late afternoon she sat alone on the steps of the seawall, listening to the gulls’ cries and watching the boats bob and rock at their moorings; so she didn’t know about the murder.

The breeze from the Gulf, pungent with salt and shellfish, had fingered her hair as she tried to decide what to do about Mark and knowing she should be reading her class assignment in the English Lit book that lay open in her lap.

Jennifer Lee Wilcox was a sunbrowned seventeen—almost eighteen—in the senior class of Corpus Christi High School, and the future was as mysterious and blank as the cloudy bay water that rose and ruffled against the steps below her feet. She loved Mark—she was fairly sure that she did—but she didn’t want to go from a cap and gown to a wedding gown. Grannie kept saying she was lucky to find a nice boy like Mark; but Jennifer knew there ought to be something else in her life. There had to be more.

She was late getting home, and in her hurry she let the
wind tug the screen door from her fingers, clapping it against the weathered wood siding.

“That you, Jennifer Lee?” Grannie shouted over the blaring voices in the television set.

“Sorry I’m late, Grannie,” Jennifer said. She pulled the door into place and latched it, hurrying through the small hallway into the living room, where Grannie stood before a rickety wooden ironing board. “I’ll get supper started right away,” she added.

Grannie pressed the remote control to flip off the set, then turned to stare at her, squinting over the cigarette that hung from her lower lip. Wisps of gray hair stuck out from the badly wrapped bun on top of her head, and she reminded Jennifer of a faded round pillow that was losing some of its stuffing. “Where ya been?” Grannie asked, adding before Jennifer could answer, “You haven’t heard, have you?”

“Heard what?” Jennifer put her books on the nearest table and picked up a stack of her father’s blue cotton work shirts. She was prepared to listen patiently to whatever new gossip Grannie had come up with, before she stacked the shirts on the shelf in her father’s closet.

“That girl you spend so much time with,” Grannie said. “That Bobbie Krambo.”

“You always say that. Her brothers’ name is Krambo. Bobbie and her mother’s last name is Trax.”

“Makes no never mind. The poor thing got herself murdered.”

Jennifer could see Grannie, yet at the same time couldn’t see her. There was a blue fog between them, and she could feel the shirts plopping against her feet.

“What did you do that for, girl! I spent an hour ironing those things.”

Grannie bent to pick up the shirts, fussing at them as
she smoothed and folded again. Jennifer grabbed for the back of a nearby chair, anchoring herself, sliding into it, rubbing her eyes until the fog lifted.

“Bobbie was murdered?” she whispered.

“You look awful,” Grannie said. “You want a glass of water or something?”

“No,” Jennifer tried to say. She cleared her throat and began again. “No, Grannie. Just tell me about Bobbie. What happened?”

Grannie gave a last pat to the pile of shirts. “First of all, you got it all mixed up,” she said. “That girl, Bobbie, didn’t get murdered. It was her mother.”

“But you said—”

“You didn’t give me a chance to finish. What I was going to tell you was that Bobbie’s the one who murdered her mother.”

“She couldn’t!” Jennifer jumped to her feet. “I don’t believe it.”

Grannie shrugged. “It’s what the TV said.”

“
Who
said it? What did they say?”

“Some bigwig in the police. They interviewed him, and he said she was a suspect.”

“Being a suspect is different from having done it,” Jennifer said. “I know Bobbie didn’t murder anyone. What about those awful stepbrothers?”

“What about them?”

“You know, Grannie. One of them was even in prison.”

“Don’t ask me,” she said. “I didn’t even know they still lived in these parts.”

“They don’t. But they come here often enough.”

Jennifer shuddered, picturing Bobbie’s round, freckled face with its wide, ready smile. “Easier to laugh than
cry,” Bobbie had once told her. And “Fiddledeedee. Tomorrow is another day.”

“Scarlett O’Hara said that,” Jennifer had reminded.

“I know, and that’s the only thing she said or did that made sense. She was a big fool not to fall in love with Clark Gable.”

“Don’t scowl like that,” Grannie was saying. She knocked a long ash from her cigarette into a saucer filled with twisted butts. “I’m only telling you what the TV said.”

Jennifer took a long breath. “It’s just taking me time to figure this out, Grannie. I don’t know what to think except that Bobbie didn’t—she couldn’t do it.”

“Long as you’re up, take these and put them away.” Grannie put the stack of shirts back into Jennifer’s arms.

“Where is Bobbie? Did they say?”

“Good question. Police don’t know where she is. Looks like she up and run away. Nobody on God’s earth knows where that girl’s gone off to.”

Jennifer clutched the shirts to her chest, ducking into the smell of starch and scorch so that Grannie couldn’t see her face. “I’ll start supper,” she mumbled, and hurried from the room.

Where was Bobbie? Suddenly, surely, Jennifer knew.

A few moments later Jennifer was leaning against the closet door, head pillowed on her arms, trying to sort out what Grannie had told her, when she heard Grannie yell, “Doorbell don’t work, y’all.” There was the sound of a muffled, deep answering voice, and Grannie’s loud “Hold it. I’m coming.”

In a matter of seconds Grannie shouted, “Jennifer! Come on in here!
Po
-lice want to talk to you.”

Jennifer looked into the mirror over her father’s dresser at the pasty-faced, big-eyed stranger who stared back at her. She moved to the mirror, leaning into it, rubbing her cheeks until the color came back, smoothing down the flyaway ends of her long brown hair, breathing deep and hard until she felt she could face whomever she’d meet in the living room.

“Jennifer Lee Wilcox! Where are you?”

She hurried into the room, rubbing damp palms down the sides of her jeans, and came to a halt, standing tall and steady before the two men who were waiting for her.

They wore ties with their sports coats and slacks, and little beads of sweat glistened on their foreheads. They looked like detective characters looked in the movies, with broad shoulders and flat stomachs. The tallest one pulled out a handkerchief, mopped his forehead, and introduced himself and his partner, but the names slid through Jennifer’s mind like hot cooking grease through a sieve. She stood without moving, her eyes steadily meeting those of the man who had spoken.