CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The hors d’oeuvre tray of neatly
arranged pita bread and raw vegetables sat on Lynette’s dining room
table. Molly had been in such a hurry to make the potluck on time,
she’d left some spilt hummus and a few stray baby carrots and
broccoli crowns on her kitchen floor. She’d quickly dusted off the
bread, and rinsed the vegetables, then dried them in the salad
spinner. She’d had a container of low-fat dill dip in her fridge
from one of her cravings a few days ago; and she’d substituted that
for Angela’s hummus.
A tiny smile on her face, she now
watched Lynette help herself to bread and dip for the umpteenth
time. “I’ll have to get this dill dip recipe from Angela,” she said
to Jill, who stood at the table with her. “It’s
fantastic!”
In a bowl beside Angela’s serving tray,
the pasta salad Molly had made went untouched.
“Oh, I shouldn’t do this again, but I’m
going to!” Lynette was saying, reaching for a raw vegetable now.
“Jeremy likes me skinny! In fact, he can’t keep his hands off me.
He’s insatiable!” She let out a little laugh. “Ha, maybe I should
eat up! Maybe he’ll leave me alone if I gained a few pounds. At
least, I’d get a little rest. Honestly, that man of mine . .
.”
Lynette’s “insatiable” husband was
supposed to have attended the Neighborhood Watch potluck, but
something had come up at his office at the last minute. Apparently,
Natalie had been invited, but Miss Congeniality pulled a no-show.
Lynette had told the Realtor for Kay’s house about the potluck, and
Molly had wondered if this Rachel Cross person who had bought the
place would attend, but no dice.
With Angela suddenly backing out, that
brought the Neighborhood Watch attendance down to three: Lynette,
Jill, and Molly. Lynette forced her daughter, Courtney, to attend,
just for another body in the room, when Chet Blazevich showed
up.
Molly felt sorry for the handsome cop,
making a special trip to talk to three women—and one teenager who
was text-messaging throughout his whole presentation. Jill asked
him if the police had any new leads from Thursday night’s triple
murder in Federal Way. He admitted they hadn’t made too much
progress. After that, no one seemed interested in his Neighborhood
Watch safety tips—Molly included.
She tried to pay attention but kept
replaying in her head what had happened with Angela less than an
hour before. She’d always suspected Jeff’s ex wasn’t really over
him. A part of her felt sorry for Angela, but she still didn’t
trust her. Before Angela had had her little meltdown, when they’d
been talking in the art studio, she’d looked Molly in the eye and
claimed she hadn’t hired anyone to investigate her family
background: “I have no idea what you’re talking
about.”
The hell she didn’t. Molly knew she’d
been lying.
She wondered just how much information
Angela’s sleazy investigator had uncovered. He’d probably figured
out by now that her brother, Charlie, was the person the news
stories from Chicago referred to as Roland Charles Wright. No had
ever called him that; he’d always been Charlie ever since he was a
baby—just as she’d always been Molly, though Mary Louise was the
name on her birth certificate. The only person who called her Mary
Louise was her mother when she was mad about something: “Mary
Louise, this room is a pigsty!”
Now, that was all her mother ever
called her. “I’m fine, Mary Louise, you don’t need to send me any
money, thank you,” she’d tell her during those painful, brief
conversations over the phone once a month.
Of course, Charlie was why their
relationship had deteriorated.
A few weeks after Charlie had cut her
with the pizza slicer, Molly’s parents stuck him in a special
boarding school called New Horizons. He still came home on
weekends. When not hanging out with Molly, he’d get into trouble
with his creepy friends. It really put a crimp in Molly’s social
life, but she felt responsible for him. It was why she didn’t go
away to college.
She day-hopped at Northwestern
University for four years, and it was with mixed feelings she went
off to the Art Students League of New York. Like it or not, for so
many years her main purpose in life had been looking after her
needy, troubled kid brother. Suddenly, she was looking after
herself, and it felt strange.
Charlie used to write her long,
rambling, sometimes incredibly sentimental letters, asking when
she’d come home. Occasionally, he even sent her one of his
elephants. She felt so guilty—as if she’d deserted
him.
Still, Charlie seemed to do all right
at New Horizons. He finally got his high school diploma—or at least
its equivalency—but stayed on at the school, working as a janitor
for his room and board.
Molly planned to stay on in New York
after graduation, but then her dad died. The way Charlie dealt with
the loss was to get drunk, break several windows in the school, and
punch a sixty-two-year-old security guard in the face. New Horizons
fired him and sent him packing.
Molly’s mother announced she was too
frail to look after Charlie. She wanted to put him in a state-run
halfway-house facility. Molly got an unscheduled, unofficial tour
of the place. It was a run-down old boardinghouse, full of ex-cons
on probation and mentally ill tenants, packed in three to a room.
She noticed a pile of feces—which she suspected were human—in the
second-floor hallway. Charlie cried and cried, begging her not to
let their mother put him in there.
So Molly stayed in Chicago. She sold
the occasional painting, got temp work wherever she could find it,
and rented a two-bedroom apartment on Clark Street for Charlie and
herself.
For a while, it was actually kind of
comfortable. After all, Charlie knew her better than anyone else.
He was a good cook and handy to have around for chores. In fact,
the building manager paid him thirty dollars a week to vacuum the
common areas and change burnt-out lightbulbs. People in the
building liked him—despite his quirky personality. But sometimes
Molly felt like one half of the building’s token weirdo residents:
the artist and her handyman brother—with their collection of
elephant figurines in the living room. Did she still want this
arrangement when she was thirty?
Charlie got a job bagging groceries at
the Jewel. He was on medication, which made him pretty manageable.
But sometimes Molly felt like she had a kid living with her, a kid
who occasionally brought home some skanky woman he’d pick up in a
bar. It was easy for Charlie to score with an undiscerning female
who didn’t realize he was a little off. He was a handsome guy,
despite the fact that he gave himself some pretty terrible haircuts
at times.
Often Molly just wanted a break from
him. But there was no one to spell her, because their mother had
moved to a retirement village in Vero Beach, Florida. She had
friends down there.
At least one of them had friends. Molly
couldn’t really keep any, not after she brought them home. Each one
of her female friends became the object of Charlie’s affection. He
deluded himself into thinking they were hot for him. Molly tried,
but couldn’t stop him from pestering these women—to the point of
stalking them.
Molly didn’t have much of a love life
with Charlie around, either. He was boyfriend-repellent—maybe
because he’d taken to wearing this ratty, secondhand Hells Angels
jacket wherever he went. It was embarrassing. Molly waitressed
part-time at T.G.I. Friday’s, the lunch and early dinner shift. She
got asked out frequently. But Charlie tried to be best friends with
every guy she dated, and he scared them off. Doug Cutland from
Windy City Art Gallery valiantly tried to make a go at it. He even
took Charlie to two Bears games. But he just didn’t have the
patience to put up with a girlfriend who came with a needy, oddball
twenty-six-year-old kid brother.
Poor Charlie seemed almost as
devastated as she was when Doug had pulled away. On some level,
Charlie must have known he was the reason things didn’t work out
there. He started drinking more as a way of self-medicating. He
even showed up drunk and surly to the Jewel, insisting on wearing
his Hells Angels jacket in the store, because his checkout stand
was by the automatic doors, and it was cold out. Rather than fire
him, the ever-patient manager at the Jewel cut back Charlie’s
hours.
To keep him busy on his new days off,
Molly enrolled him in a creative writing class at Central Evanston
Township Community College. His instructor was an author Molly had
never heard of, Nick Sorenson, who published one novel,
The Eskimo Pie Breakfast. Molly found his
e-mail address in the college catalog’s course description. She
wrote to him about Charlie:
. . . He’s on medication for bipolar
disorder, and may seem a little odd, but he’s very sweet. He’s
really looking forward to your class & is hard at work on a
short story. If Charlie should disrupt the class or act
inappropriately in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me by
phone or e-mail. Thank you very much & I’ll have to buy
THE ESKIMO PIE BREAKFAST!
Sincerely,
Molly Wright
Nick Sorenson’s e-mail reply came the
next day:
Dear Molly,
Thanks very much for your heads-up about your brother. My favorite niece has special needs, like Charlie. So I’m pretty familiar with the struggles & challenges. I’m looking forward to having Charlie in my creative writing class.
Good luck tracking down a copy of The Eskimo Pie Breakfast. It’s out of print. I think there are some cheap, used copies on Amazon.com. Literally, dozens of people have read it!
Sincerely,
Nick Sorenson
Molly looked up Nick Sorenson, Author
on Google.com, and came
across a good review of his book, and a photo of him. The
three-quarter-profile author portrait showed a trim,
thirtysomething man with dark, wavy hair and a relaxed smile. His
tie was loosened, and he stood in front of Buckingham Fountain. She
knew it was silly, but she didn’t have a crush on anyone, and he
seemed like a good candidate—even if it was just a fantasy crush.
It would be a nice change of pace if she found a boyfriend because of Charlie instead of losing
one because of him.
Molly ordered a used copy of
The Eskimo Pie Breakfast on Amazon.com.
She took it as a good sign when Nick
Sorenson sent her a friendly, unsolicited e-mail after Charlie had
had his first class with him:
Dear Molly,
I know you were concerned about how your brother would get along in my creative writing class. Today, he read his short story, which was rather violent, but entertaining. He seemed to have some difficulty taking criticism of his work during the critique session. But I was impressed by the way Charlie praised a story by one young woman when it didn’t go over well with the others. It was very chivalrous of him. I think he’ll do all right in the class.
Sincerely,
Nick Sorenson
PS: Charlie proudly mentioned to me that you’re an artist & have sold your paintings in a few local galleries. I never miss a First Thursday art walk. Keep me posted on any upcoming exhibits of your work, Molly. I like to support local writers & artists!
She couldn’t help thinking that perhaps
Nick was a bit interested in her, too. She asked Charlie about the
piece he wrote. He bragged that everyone loved his story, but he
didn’t want to show it to her yet, because it was part of a novel
he planned on publishing. “It’ll probably be a bestseller,” he
said.
When she asked about Mr. Sorenson, all
Charlie said was, “He’s pretty cool.”
Charlie says you’re “pretty cool,” she
wrote in her e-mail to Nick that night. Molly mentioned she’d shown
a few paintings in participating First Thursday art walk galleries,
and she’d ordered The Eskimo Pie Breakfast
on Amazon.
I could only find a used copy, which
means you won’t get a dime out of it. So I hope you’ll let me treat
you to coffee sometime. I like supporting local writers &
artists, too!
Molly thought she was being pretty damn
clever with the oh-so-casual way she’d asked him out. But two days
went by without a response. In the meantime, Charlie had had his
second class with Nick Sorenson. The reply finally came on that
third day:
Dear Molly,
Thanks so much for buying my book. It doesn’t matter if it’s used. I just like the idea that my work is still out there being read.
J. Simmons Gallery & Stafford-Lombard Gallery are 2 of my favorites. Your work must be quite extraordinary if it’s displayed in those galleries.
Would it be possible to get together for lunch or coffee on Monday? The cafeteria here at the school isn’t bad, and as you must know, Charlie seems to like it. Are you available around lunchtime on Monday?
Sincerely,
Nick
Molly wondered what he meant about
Charlie liking the cafeteria. She casually asked her brother where
he had lunch on the days he had writing class. “The school
cafeteria, of course,” he said, looking at her as if it was the
dumbest question he’d ever heard. “They’ve got excellent
food.”
Molly found someone to fill in for her
at T.G.I. Friday’s and e-mailed Nick that she could meet him in the
school cafeteria at one. She wondered if this would be purely
social or if Nick wanted to talk about Charlie. Maybe he expected
Charlie there, too. It wasn’t quite clear. No, it’s
a date or at least a semi-date, she told herself. Charlie
worked at the Jewel on Mondays. Even if it was just a cafeteria in
a community college, she was considering this a date.
Molly received her copy of The Eskimo Pie Breakfast from UPS late Monday morning.
She brought it along when she caught the El to Evanston. The
overcast skies looked ominous, as if it might snow at any minute.
While waiting for a cab at the Evanston station, Molly decided to
call Charlie at the Jewel, just to double-check that he wasn’t part
of this lunch with Nick.
“You want to talk to Charlie Wright?”
asked the woman who picked up the phone at the store.
“Yes, this is his sister,” Molly said
into her cell. She covered her other ear as the El started up with
a roar.
“Charlie quit,” the woman told her. “He
hasn’t been here in—like—two weeks. In fact, we have his last
paycheck here. Do you want us to mail it to him?”
Baffled, Molly asked to talk to
Charlie’s boss. He got on the line and confirmed that Charlie had
given his notice: “He just waltzed in here late two Fridays ago and
said he was finished,” the man told her. “He said he’s going to
publish a book—or something like that.”
Molly wondered what the hell Charlie
was thinking. Where had he been every workday for the last two
weeks?
No cabs were stopping, and while she
stood there stranded, it started to snow. By the time a taxi pulled
over, and she ducked into the backseat, Molly was frazzled. She
remembered what Nick had said in his e-mail: The
cafeteria here at the school isn’t bad, and as you must know,
Charlie seems to like it. She figured her brother must have
been hanging out at the community college’s cafeteria all this
time, maybe writing his stories or chatting up the other students
and the cafeteria workers. He had a way of starting conversations
with total strangers wherever he went. About one time in twelve
he’d hit the jackpot and find someone who actually didn’t mind
talking with him.
She was furious at Charlie for quitting
his job and not telling her. Plus the people at the Jewel had been
so good to him. Not many places would hire someone like Charlie.
What was she going to do with him now?
About six blocks from the college, the
snow became thicker, and Molly realized that this date with Nick
would almost certainly include her now-unemployed brother. That was
one more reason to be furious at Charlie.
And now that she thought about it, she
was pretty mad at her mother, too. Why did she have to look after
Charlie while her mother played shuffleboard with friends down in
Vero Beach? Wasn’t she allowed to have a life? She remembered how
her mother had planned to stick Charlie in that horrible halfway
house. “Well, it’s either that or you’ll have to be
responsible for him, dear,” she remembered her mother
saying. “I simply can’t do it
anymore.”
Molly glanced at her wristwatch: ten
after one. She was already late for this stupid lunch
meeting.
Two blocks from the college, the taxi’s
windshield wipers had fanned a clearing on the snow-covered glass.
Molly noticed something that looked like an accident on the road
ahead, right in front of the community college. Ambulances and
about a dozen police cars—their red strobes swirling—had arrived on
the scene. At least a hundred people stood huddled in the snow just
outside the school.
“This is Chicago,” the taxi driver
muttered. “You’d think some of these idiots on the road would learn
how to drive in the snow. Looks like a pile-up ahead. We’ll get
caught in this gridlock if we keep going.”
“It’s okay,” Molly said, reaching for
her purse. “I can get out and walk from here.” She paid the man,
thanked him, and climbed out of the taxi. With Nick’s book tucked
inside her coat, Molly treaded through the snow toward the school.
The sidewalk was already starting to get slippery. She didn’t see a
car wreck ahead—just the emergency vehicles, and all the
bystanders. What were they gaping at?
As she got closer to the school, Molly
passed several people who weren’t wearing jackets. They huddled
together on the sidewalk and the snow-covered grass. Molly spotted
a policeman escorting a young woman to an ambulance, and she was
crying hysterically. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, either. There was
blood on her white blouse.
“What’s going on?” Molly asked a thin,
young Asian man who stood shivering in his shirt and jeans. He
clutched some schoolbooks to his chest.
“They evacuated the school,” he said.
“There was a shooting in the cafeteria.”
“What?” Molly murmured. Nick Sorenson
was waiting for her there—probably with Charlie. She could just see
her brother trying to be a hero in a situation like this and
getting himself shot. “Do you know if anyone’s hurt?” Molly asked
him, panic-stricken. “I think my brother’s in the cafeteria. Do you
know what happened?”
“I was there!” gasped a short young
woman with stringy blond hair. Tears streaming down her face, she
stood beside Molly. She was in a short-sleeved blouse, and she
frantically rubbed her bare arms. “I saw it all,” she cried. “This
guy walked in the cafeteria and just started shooting people! I
don’t know who he was—some creepy guy in a Hells Angels jacket. He
pulled out a gun and just started shooting. . . .”
Molly shook her head. She told herself
she hadn’t heard it right. She glanced around at the police cars
and ambulances. In the distance, someone gave instructions over a
static-laced police radio. TV-news vans were just arriving on the
scene. Molly gazed at the crying, shivering, scared people. She
could hear their sobbing. Her brother couldn’t have been
responsible for all this.
“How many people did he kill?” Molly
heard someone ask.
“At least seven are down, maybe more,”
answered an older man standing nearby.
Molly turned toward him. “Do you know
what happened to the man doing the shooting? Do the police have
him?”
Frowning, the older man shook his head.
“A security guard shot the son of a bitch. He’s dead, thank
God.”
The man turned away.
Molly numbly stared at his back as he
threaded through the crowd. Then she glanced up at the snow. She
felt the cold, wet flakes on her face.
Nick Sorenson’s book slipped from under
her coat and landed in a puddle on the ground. Molly’s legs
buckled.
She had no memory of collapsing and
hitting her forehead on the sidewalk. She barely remembered them
sewing up the gash at the hospital. Four stitches—the doctor did an
exceptional job. Within a few months, the scar disappeared
completely.
It was the only thing that ever really
healed from that day.
Rubbing her forehead, Molly shifted in
the cushioned chair in Lynette Hahn’s living room. She glanced up
at Lieutenant Chet Blazevich, standing by Lynette’s fireplace,
giving his talk. His pale green eyes seemed to stare right through
her, and Molly realized she hadn’t heard a word he’d said.
Blinking, she straightened in the chair.
She felt clammy and light-headed, and
hoped to God her morning sickness wasn’t coming back. She didn’t
want anyone here putting two and two together and guessing she was
pregnant. She would have hated for Lynette, Angela, and company to
know about the baby before Jeff.
She took a few deep breaths and tried
to focus on what the handsome cop was saying. But all the while she
wondered how much Angela’s investigator had uncovered about Roland
Charles Wright, who shot seven people in a cafeteria at Central
Evanston Township Community College—before a security guard put a
bullet in his throat. Of the seven people shot on that winter day,
two died, one of them his teacher, Nick Sorenson. The other was a
twenty-year-old student from the Philippines named Tina Gargullo,
who worked part-time in the cafeteria. According to some news
reports, Roland Charles Wright had been pestering her for a date,
but Tina had refused his advances. He’d also alienated some of his
classmates in the creative writing class in which he was enrolled.
Five other people were wounded in the shooting spree: a cashier in
the cafeteria and four students. All of them were treated and
released within a day or two—except for one. Janette Wilder, a
divorced thirty-two-year-old mother of two, had been taking a
Spanish class at the community college. She was shot twice in her
right leg, and then confined to a wheelchair for the next three
months. Even after she endured extensive physical therapy sessions,
the doctors said Janette would probably walk with a limp for the
rest of her life.
Molly sent letters of apology to every
one of the wounded—and to Tina Gargullo’s parents in the
Philippines. After some research, she found the address of Nick
Sorenson’s widowed mother—on Gunnison Street in Chicago—so she
could visit her in person. Mrs. Sorenson was the woman who spit in
Molly’s face.
Molly had wanted to tell her that she’d
read Nick’s book, a coming-of-age story that was sweet and funny
and sad. She wanted to impress upon Mrs. Sorenson how sorry she
was. But it was a futile gesture. She didn’t blame Nick’s mother
for hating her.
But Molly had expected some support
from her own mother, who refused to come to Chicago for Charlie’s
meager, furtive funeral. “I’m so disappointed in you,” she’d told
Molly over the phone. “How could you let this happen? He was your
responsibility. How did he get his hands on a gun? For God’s sake,
you should have been watching him more closely. . . .”
Her mother claimed that if Molly had
let her put Charlie in the state-run halfway house, they could have
avoided this tragedy.
After that conversation, Molly didn’t
talk to her mother for four months.
But she talked to several doctors and
psychologists, who assured her there was no way she could have
anticipated what Charlie was about to do. They tried to counsel her
in grief and guilt, but nothing they said really
helped.
Her mother broke the silence when she
phoned Molly, needing money. They were polite to each other and
kept it brief. From then on, Molly phoned her once a month to ask
if she needed funds. Molly always sent the check inside an artsy
greeting card, scribbling Hope you’re
well—Molly on the inside.
Sixteen months ago, Molly had written
inside the card bearing the check: Met a very nice
man a while back & was married last week. Please note the new
home phone number and address. Hope you’re
well—Molly.
Part of her felt horrible for being so
impersonal about it. Yet another part of her got a strange
satisfaction letting her mother know she wasn’t part of this
milestone in her life. Mostly, she was fishing, hoping her mom
would care enough to phone and ask about her new son-in-law. But
her mother didn’t phone. When Molly called her a month later to
inquire if she needed more money, she had to ask, “Did you get the
last check—and my note?”
“Yes, thank you, Mary Louise,” she
replied coolly. “Congratulations.”
Tears filled Molly’s eyes, and the hand
holding the cell phone began to shake. “His name is Jeff Dennehy,
and he was married before—and divorced. He has two children—Chris,
he just turned seventeen, and Erin, she’s six. They’re really nice
kids. And Jeff’s wonderful.” She paused, and then sighed. “Not that
you give a damn. Am I right?”
There was silence on the other end of
the line.
“I’ll call you next month, Mother,”
Molly murmured. Then she clicked off the phone.
Her mom hadn’t always been like that.
She used to have a wicked sense of humor. She’d start telling
stories at dinner, and soon the whole family would be laughing
hysterically—to the point at which whatever Charlie was drinking
started coming out of his nose. She was a good artist, too. Molly
remembered her designing their family Christmas cards every year.
And it was her mother who taught her how to paint and draw. She’d
made it so fun.
After her dad had died, when her mother
was moving to Florida, Molly had helped clean out her parents’ old
house. She’d found dozens of homemade cards her dad had saved that
her mother had drawn. They were cute, clever, and very endearing.
I’m Crazy About You! she’d written on one of
them, under a cartoon of a woman with birds and stars swirling
around her head—while she admired a muscle man on the beach. The
cartoon characters even had a passing resemblance to Molly’s
parents in their younger days.
Her mom’s sense of humor and fun seemed
to have died along with her dad. Whatever was left must have died
with Charlie.
That was something Angela’s hired snoop
couldn’t know about her family.
Molly tried to pay attention as Chet
Blazevich talked about what they should do to better protect their
homes against intruders. But she was still fighting the nausea and
light-headedness. She felt even sicker as she imagined Angela
sharing the detective’s findings with her gal pal, Lynette, and the
new girl on the block, Jill.
“Excuse me,” she whispered, unsteadily
getting to her feet.
Chet Blavevich stopped talking for a
moment. But Molly didn’t look up at him—or anyone for that matter.
Eyes downcast, she retreated toward Lynette’s powder room, through
a hallway off the kitchen. Her legs were wobbly, and once Molly
closed the bathroom door, she dropped down to the tiled floor and
sat by the toilet. She took a few deep breaths and managed to hold
back. She didn’t want to throw up in Lynette’s fancy powder room
with its gold fixtures, pedestal sink, and shell-shaped mini-soaps.
She rode it out, splashed some cold water on her face, and then
sucked on a peppermint Altoid from her purse. She started to feel
halfway human again.
By the time she emerged from the
bathroom, the detective had finished his talk. Lynette and Jill had
migrated to the kitchen, Courtney had disappeared completely, and
Chet Blazevich was standing by the buffet table.
“Are you feeling all right?” Lynette
asked, with a raised eyebrow.
“Just a headache,” Molly lied. “I hope
you don’t mind if I cut out early.”
Lynette frowned a bit. “Of course, if
you’re not feeling well.”
Molly brushed past her and worked up a
smile for Chet Blazevich in the dining room. She signed his
Neighborhood Watch attendance form. “I’m sorry I missed the end of
your talk,” she said.
“It’s okay, you didn’t miss much.” He
smiled at her. “I was hoping you’d baked cookies again. Those were
really good last time.” He turned toward the spread of food on the
table. “Which dish is yours? Is it the pasta salad?”
“How did you guess?” Molly
asked.
“It’s the one thing on the table that
appears untouched. I remember the last time, they didn’t eat your
chocolate chip cookies, either.”
“Good memory,” Molly told
him.
“So—still not part of the clique?” he
said in a quiet voice.
She just shrugged and shook her
head.
“Well, it’s their loss.”
Molly smiled. “Can I interest you in
taking home some delicious pasta salad?”
He nodded. “You certainly
can.”
In the kitchen, she retrieved the
Tupperware container in which she’d brought over the pasta salad.
Lynette smirked at her. “Well, Molly, I see you weren’t so headachy
that you couldn’t stop and chat up our good-looking, green-eyed
guest,” she said under her breath.
“I’m just being polite,” Molly replied.
She held up the empty Tupperware container. “I’m giving him the
pasta salad to take home, since neither one of you touched it. And
by the way, Lynette, that recipe for Angela’s ‘fantastic’ dill dip?
It’s Nalley low-fat dill dip, which you can buy at any old
Safe-way. Angela had a meltdown and dropped the hors d’oeuvres tray
on my kitchen floor. I’ll be cleaning up spilt hummus when I get
home. I rinsed off the vegetables that had been on the floor and,
as for the bread—I blew on it, Lynette.”
“What?” Lynette said, scowling at her.
“Are you crazy?”
“That’s disgusting,” Jill muttered, a
hand on her hip.
“If you want details about Angela’s
meltdown, you’ll just have to ask Angela,” Molly said. “I’m sure
she’ll tell you. And she’ll probably tell you all about my family,
too—if she hasn’t already, Lynette.”
“What are you talking about?” Lynette
shot back. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Just my patience—with you, with all of
you,” Molly grumbled. She marched into the dining room, where Chet
Blazevich gaped at her.
“What’s she talking about?” she heard
Lynette saying.
Molly handed him the Tupperware bowl
and lid. “Here you go,” she said briskly. “Take as much as you want
and keep the container. Thank you for the talk.” She touched his
shoulder. “I think you’re very nice,” she whispered, and then she
headed for Lynette’s front door.
She hurried down the block toward the
house. Fallen leaves drifted across the road, and Molly kept her
arms folded to fight off the chilly breeze. She couldn’t believe
the crazy things she’d just said to Lynette and Jill. What the hell
was wrong with her? Raging hormones, she
told herself, just part of the pregnancy
package.
That handsome cop probably figured she
was crazy.
Heading up the walkway, Molly pulled
her keys out of her purse. She was still a bit shaky, and wasn’t
looking forward to cleaning up Angela’s mess on the kitchen floor.
She was almost at the front stoop when she stopped
dead.
Someone had bashed in the faces of
their pumpkins.
“Oh, shit,” she murmured. “Who would do
this?”
She thought about Angela, but as nasty
as she could be at times, Jeff’s ex wouldn’t have done that to her
own child’s jack-o-lantern. Erin would be devastated.
Molly wondered if Lynette’s brats might
have been the responsible parties. After all, they got their kicks
throwing dirt balls at passing cars from the vacant lot at the edge
of the cul-de-sac. Smashing pumpkins seemed like a perfect outlet
for the little shits. But Lynette’s brother had taken them to a
Seahawks game today—along with Jill’s son.
Bending down, Molly ran her fingers
over the bashed-in face of Erin’s smiling jack-o-lantern. It was
beyond repair. With a sigh, she straightened up and started to
unlock the door. But then she balked.
The door was already
unlocked.
Molly could have sworn she’d locked the
door after leaving the house two hours before. She hesitated and
then stepped into the front hall. The house was quiet. She glanced
around to make sure nothing was different, and no one was lurking.
She headed into the kitchen. As she moved around the island of
kitchen cabinets, she looked down at the floor, where Angela had
dropped the tray earlier.
The floor was clean—no globs of hummus
or shards of glass from the broken dipping bowl, no stray broccoli
crowns or baby carrots.
Molly frowned. All she could think was
that perhaps Angela had snuck in and cleaned everything up. Maybe
Angela still had an old key.
But Angela wouldn’t have smashed those
pumpkins.
So it must have been someone
else.
She turned toward the sink and saw
something that didn’t seem like Angela’s work at all.
On the clean granite counter, three
baby carrots were carefully arranged in the shape of a smile—below
two broccoli crowns that might have been eyes.
The raw vegetables had been scattered
over her kitchen floor earlier.
Now they formed a jack-o-lantern’s
grin.