Thirty-three
Jumer's residential district stretched four blocks
long and extended a single block to either side of the blacktop passing
through town. Huge, late nineteenth-century houses sat on quarter-acre
lots within the center of town, surrounded by simple, asbestos-clad
bungalows constructed a half century later. At the far end of town stood
a single gas station and convenience store, and a closed farm implement
dealership.
Lori had no trouble singling out the white house
nearest to the only blue Victorian mansion in town. She pulled slowly to
the curb wondering how Maggie and Trent managed to keep houses of that
size heated during the winter. Maggie's overhanging porch sheltered an
array of house plants trailing from suspended planters. On the front
lawn, late blooming flowers defying the approach of autumn added a patch
of color along the thoroughfare. When she left the car and slammed the
door behind her, an ancient sparrow of a woman rose from behind the white
picket fence and glared at her.
Lori approached feeling self-conscious and awkward.
"My name is Lori Malcolm. I'm from Sorrel just down the road. I was told
that you might be able to answer a few questions I have about Trent
Scarelli, your next door neighbor."
The woman dropped a hand spade and approached, wiping
her gnarled hands on a leather apron. "He's never been on much of a
schedule. Comes and goes at all hours of the day and night. You've got
business with him?"
"I'm a friend."
"And I'm Maggie," the old woman said, still without a
smile. "The man has women friends now and then. Most have keys, to tell
the truth. Not that I've seen many about lately. You one of those
friends?"
Lori bristled with shock and indignation. She tried
to hide both. "I've only known Trent for a short while."
Maggie shook her head. "He's not a reliable type for
a decent woman. Too much a womanizer. A bit odd to boot to be living
alone in that enormous house all these years."
Lori discovered her throat suddenly dry and her voice
raspy. "How long is that, may I ask?"
"Ten years, believe it or not. Ever since his wife
up and disappeared."
Bingo. Lori felt lightheaded with a grim sense of
accomplishment. "Disappeared?"
Maggie shrugged. "I wouldn't care to guess one way
or another what might have happened. Me and the lad seldom speak,
although I'll admit it's convenient having a cop living next door. He
certainly keeps the neighborhood quiet."
Lori's smile was strained. "I would imagine."
Maggie scanned her from head to foot. "I'm not
surprised that he finds you attractive. You're her size, and pretty. Odd
that the taller women seem to come and go without rhyme or reason and the
smaller ones dwell for a time. I'd apologize for being so blunt, but I'd
be doing you a disservice to be less than frank about the situation."
"I appreciate your concern."
"I may not approve of the man's personal habits, but
one can't help but feel sad for the tragedy he has endured and kept alive
for so long. If I was a writer, I'd have a good yarn for the soaps."
Lori wanted badly to leave. She smiled, blinking
back tears of despair. "Thank you. Nice to have met you, Maggie."
"Nice to have met you, Lori Malcolm." And for the
first time, she flashed a brief smile. "Come back again and we'll have a
cup of tea and talk some more."
Lori returned to her car. She made a U-turn, drove
to the edge of town, and pulled to the side of the road. She climbed out
of the claustrophobic Volkswagen and paced alongside the car, openly
weeping and pounding the car with a fist to vent her anger.
In exchanging Dave for the clean-cut deputy Trent
Scarelli, she had committed the equivalent of a jump from the frying pan
into the fire. Why hadn't Carol told her about the women in Trent's
life? In any case, of what use would a man like Trent have for a mousy
housewife with two kids?
He had been leading her on all along. Laura Scarelli
had been possibly murdered, and Trent had haunted Teller county for most
of his adult life for reasons she had yet to unearth. Ronnie’s drawings
came to mind, and she could feel the glass eye of her nightmare glaring
down upon her with a sick passion that took her breath away. Such horror
it hungered to witness, swallowing human souls and deaf to their screams
echoing against the barren walls of hell itself. To think that Trent may
have been involved…
"Oh, God!" she gasped breathlessly to the quiet
countryside. "Don't let it be true!"
She returned home and managed to hide her upset for
the balance of the afternoon. She stayed awake until two in the morning
to foil the recurring nightmare and pleaded illness when Wendy and Leslie
tried to get her up at dawn. They saw themselves off to school, but a
brisk pounding at the back door got her up an hour later.
She opened the door with her robe bunched closed at
her throat to be confronted by a two-hundred and fifty pound,
five-foot-eleven-inch woman wearing a sweat suit.
"You got out," Lori said awkwardly.
Karen Radcliff brushed sweat from her face. "If I
get fired from my job, then my hospital bills don't get paid. Doctors can
be so practical when it comes to money."
Lori was dumbfounded, still fuzzy with fatigue, and
startled that the weather could have turned so suddenly gray and cold. It
was as if she had awakened this morning in the wrong world.
"Let me in before I freeze my ass off," Karen
muttered.
Lori turned away. Karen entered into the house and
looked around the kitchen. "No coffee made yet?"
"You're jogging," Lori said absently.
"Better late than never. I've declared war on fat
and ugly."
"Karen, you're not..."
Karen glared at her. "Two hundred and forty-eight
pounds is fat and there's nothing pretty about it. Running is the only
way I can kill two birds with one stone, burn calories and avoid eating
more."
"I hope you're under a doctor's care," Lori said, too
stunned by the accuracy of Benjamin's forewarning to try to figure out
what it all meant. "You're going to hurt yourself."
"Nonsense. Why don't you run with me? I dare you.
Around the block. We'll see who's going to drop dead."
Lori rejected the idea out of hand. "You go run
around the block. I'll make coffee and try to wake myself up first."
"I'll stop by later for the coffee."
Karen left the way she had come. Lori watched her
vanish down the driveway from the kitchen window, driven to the edge of
panic for the second time in the course of the week by a stranger she had
thought familiar to her.
