CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

 

"I asked for the Pacer, but Honest Aaron offered me this for fifteen bucks," Maizy said when I got in.

I could see why. It was little more than four bald tires and a steering wheel. The bucket seats were covered with floral sheets to hide God knew what and stacked with yellowed newspapers to provide an actual place to sit. There was no backseat. I tipped my head questioningly toward the empty space.

"He couldn't get the bloodstains out," Maizy said while we creaked and rattled along. "So he took the whole thing. But the car's in such good shape, he didn't want to junk it either. So it's on perpetual sale." She looked at me. "How are you doing?"

I shrugged. I wasn't doing too well. I missed Curt, I was afraid to leave the house for fear of being recognized, I was afraid to stay home for fear of marauding journalists, and I had no job.

"Something's gonna break soon," she said. "I can feel it."

"It might be me," I said. "I don't know if I can take this for much longer."

"Are you kidding? You're the strongest woman I know." Maizy's cheeks tinged pink. "I mean, you can handle this. I'll help you."

I smiled at her. "You're a big help, Maize." Then I noticed it. "Your hair's still blue!"

"Yeah." She wrapped some around her finger. "I decided you were right. I've worked hard for this hair. I'm not giving it up for Brody Amherst."

"Good for you." I was floored that she'd actually listened to my advice. "I'm proud of you," I told her.

"Yeah. Me too." Her dimple flashed. "Now let's go find a killer."

Roger Marrin's neighborhood turned out to be pretty nice. His house was not. It sat angled away from the other houses, as if shunned by them. The paint was peeling, the shutters were askew, shingles were missing, and an aircraft carrier appeared to be moored in the driveway under a dingy black cover. A skinny calico cat stared at us from the front window. I knew there'd be cats.

Roger's SUV was nowhere in sight. Hopefully that meant he was at the Shop 'n Save for the next eight hours. Probably we should have checked there first to make sure, but he struck me as a man who couldn't afford to risk his job.

"Park down the street," I suggested. "I don't want anyone noticing the car."

"Who'd notice it?" Maizy asked. We looked out at the flaming red hood. "I'll park down the street," she said.

There was virtually nowhere to hide a 1968 Valiant, so we left it on the side of the road and walked back, keeping our heads down, our hands in our pockets, and hope in our hearts that we'd finally stumble across a definitive clue. I still had trouble imagining mousy Roger Marrin clocking Dorcas with her own crystal ball, but if I'd learned anything from Wally and his earlobe, it was that you couldn't judge a book by its cover. Without his house, Roger Marrin looked neat as a pin in his Shop 'n Save vest and nerdy checkered pants. With it, he looked like an axe murderer on steroids.

"How do you want to do this?" Maizy asked.

I glanced up and down the street. No curtains fluttered. No doors opened. No birds sang. Just the wind pushing relentless cold our way. "We're just looking in the windows," I said. "Why don't we go around to the back?"

"Right. Looking in the windows." Maizy scuttled around the corner of the house, her scarf trailing behind her like a banner in the wind.

I hurried to keep up with her. "We are just looking in the windows, Maizy. We can't go around breaking into buildings all the time."

"Yeah, B&E was a lot easier before people started locking their doors." She gave a little start, as if she hadn't meant to say that out loud. "That's what my dad tells me, anyway. Ugh." She stopped short at the edge of the backyard, holding her hand over her nose. "What is that?"

That was a combination of putrid pool water and mold and animal waste with maybe a little garbage thrown in for good measure. No wonder the other houses on the block shunned this one. This one was a pig.

"This place is gross," Maizy said, picking her way across the grass. "He didn't look like this much of a slob at the Shop 'n Save. Why can't we ever break into a nice center hall Colonial?"

"We're not breaking into anything," I repeated. "We're just looking in the windows."

"Yeah," she said. "That's what I meant."

I gave the pool a sidelong glance, shuddering to think what might be hidden under the surface. The Addams Family had nothing on this place.

Maizy dragged a trash can over to the house, upended it on a scrubby little mud patch under a window, and climbed on top to press her nose to the glass.

I held my arms out to spot her, although from everything I'd seen, she was as sure-footed as a squirrel. "What do you see?" I asked.

"Same thing we already saw, except on the inside," she said. "No surprises here." She pulled back to look at the window to her right. "Think we can reach that one?"

She climbed down, carried the trashcan a few feet more and scrambled back up to look into that window. I heard her suck in a sharp breath. "Well, here's our surprise."

I stiffened. "What is it?"

"You'd better look for yourself." She climbed down, and I climbed up to find myself staring into Roger Marrin's bedroom. Instantly my heart rate zoomed into the danger zone. I saw those little black spots in front of my eyes and heard that weird roaring sound in my ears. Roger Marrin's bedroom was decorated in Traditional Psychopath, with photographs of Weaver Beeber papering the far wall. Weaver picking up his morning paper from the walk. Weaver walking Chandler. Weaver emerging from the 7-Eleven with a Slurpee. Thankfully, there were no photos of Weaver in the shower, or I might have been seriously freaked out.

"Pretty mediocre photos," Maizy said from below me. She was scraping mud off the soles of her Doc Martens. "Bet you he tried to manually focus. He should've relied on auto focus. He must not have very good eyes."

Good enough that you could identify Weaver Beeber in every one. I felt slightly dizzy and realized it was because I hadn't taken a recent breath. I climbed down and sat on the trashcan until the black spots and the roaring went away, leaving only the bewilderment. "Why would he have all those pictures of Weaver Beeber?"

Maizy shrugged. "Isn't it obvious? Roger has been learning Weaver's daily patterns so he can strike when the moment is right."

I stared at her.

"Or he has a little thing for Weaver," she said.

"That," I said, "is not a little thing. That's a full on obsession. How could Weaver not notice him lurking around like that?" I'd like to think I would notice if someone was photographing my every waking move. Not that my every waking move was worth photographing. Neither was Weaver's, if those mundane photos were any judge.

"Thanks to telephoto lenses, he didn't have to lurk," Maizy said. "He just had to be in the vicinity. We saw that much." She shivered. "It's really creepy. I bet you he plans to cut Weaver up into little pieces and throw him in the pool."

We both turned and looked at the pool. It wasn't inconceivable. Roger was furious about losing his life savings to Dorcas. It was possible that despite what he said, he blamed Weaver just as much as he blamed Dorcas and had a similar fate in mind for him, minus the crystal ball.

We put the trashcan back where it belonged near the back door. Maizy reached out and casually turned the doorknob.

The door opened a crack.

"Oops," she said and went in.

"Get out here!" I hissed. "What are you doing?"

She didn't even turn around.

Crap.

I glanced over my shoulder, and said a quick prayer to the supermarket gods that they would keep Roger Marrin busy for the foreseeable future, long enough for Maizy to make her rounds and come back. Because there was no way I was stepping foot inside this rat's nest.

I glared through the door, curious despite my revulsion. The kitchen was pretty much what I expected: linoleum floor, avocado green appliances, paneled walls. Beyond the kitchen lay the living room. The room was small, the furniture was big, and the wall color shrank the space even more.

"Maizy!" I called softly.

No response. At least I hadn't heard gunshots or anything. I was fairly sure she wasn't in any immediate danger. Except from me. I was going to wring her neck.

I heard clomping footsteps, and all of a sudden Maizy barreled past me, an expression of urgency on her face. "He's home!"

I grabbed for her arm and missed, since she was already halfway across the yard, moving fast. "What do you mean, home? He should be at work!" I pulled in a breath. "You're going the wrong way. The car's over there." I pointed in the direction of the Valiant, which just happened to be in the direction of Roger Marrin's driveway, in full view of his front window

We were cut off from our car.

"Come on!" Maizy hissed. "He might've heard me."

That did it. I practically trampled her in my urgency to get to a hiding spot. I heard a strangled sort of "Gak!" sound and realized I may or may not have stepped on her scarf in my haste. In my defense, it wasn't my fault it was dragging on the ground. That scarf would have been three feet too long for Shaquille O'Neal.

Maizy hunkered down beside me at the far end of the pool, rubbing her throat. "You almost killed me back there! God!"

"I did?" I gave her a couple of golly gee blinks. I could tell she wasn't buying it, but we both had a bigger problem, and it might be showing up at the back door any minute. Her breathing was ragged. Or maybe that was mine. I was pretty sure I was hyperventilating. I'd read that you should breathe into a paper bag when you were hyperventilating. I nudged her. "Have you got a paper bag?"

She glared at me over her shoulder. "What? No!"

"Plastic would probably work," I told her. "Have you got a plastic bag?"

She yanked her backpack around to her stomach. "You can be so weird. God." She rooted around inside. "Here, this is all I've got. Knock yourself out." And she handed me a small, empty M&M's bag. No fair. She got to eat M&M's, and I was eating Styrofoam? I held the bag to most of my mouth and breathed. The ghost scent of M&M's filled my nose, making my stomach rumble. The plastic crinkled with each inhale and exhale. Tiny little delicious chocolate-scented crinkles.

"Ssh!" Maizy hissed.

I stopped licking the bag. "Hey, I'm about to pass out here."

"At least you'll be quiet," she snapped.

I heard the back door open.

"Huh," Maizy said. "Checkered pants again."

"Mmf," I agreed. Hard to talk when I was busy hoovering up M&M's remnants.

Maizy reared back and kicked me in the shins.

I pulled in a sharp breath. "Ow!" I dropped the bag and the wind instantly carried it away in the direction of the house. "What'd you do that for?"

"You need to focus," Maizy told me.

I was focused. Not so much on the hyperventilating thing—that moment had passed. Now I was focused on going back to the store for some chocolate. Turned out it was a pretty good remedy for hyperventilation.

"Uh-oh," Maizy whispered.

I rubbed my shin. "That's going to bruise. I have very delicate skin."

She ignored me. "He sees something."

I clutched the back of her coat. "Us? Does he see us?"

She shook her head. "He's over by the window. Looking at the ground."

Panic coiled in my chest. There was nothing on the ground to see, except maybe the M&M's bag and footprints. Maizy or Jamie sized footprints. I looked at her Doc Martens. They were caked in grime.

Uh-oh.

"Footprints," I whispered. "We must have left footprints."

"Well, we didn't autograph them," Maizy whispered. "For all he knows, one of his neighbors was snooping around. It's a bad neighborhood."

I looked at the house next door. Perfectly groomed, professionally landscaped, immaculately decorated. It didn't look like a bad neighborhood. Roger Marrin's house was its own bad neighborhood.

Maizy laid a finger to her lips and mouthed, "I think he heard us."

Instinctively I shrank back against the wall of the pool, willing myself to magically be transported back to the Valiant or better still, back to my Roger-free apartment. With M&M's.

"He's coming this way," Maizy whispered.

My eyes squeezed shut. My hands squeezed shut. Other parts of me squeezed shut. So this was the way it ended, crouched by a filthy pool in the filthy yard of a filthy house, wishing with every fiber of my body that I had a weapon of some sort to defend us from this checker-panted mama's boy, maybe a sharp stick or a bazooka.

"Miss Pibs, no!"

I opened my eyes. "What?"

Maizy flapped her hand to shut me up while she peeked around the edge of the pool.

"Come back here, Miss Pibs!"

I tapped Maizy's shoulder. "Who's he talking to?"

"The cat," she said with wonder. "His cat got out the back door, and he's gone after her."

Sure enough, the next "Miss Pibs!" sounded as if it came from the front of the house. Evidently Miss Pibs was making a break for it. "Great!" I straightened up. "Let's get out of here."

We hustled across the yards standing between us and the Valiant. The "Miss Pibs!" were fading by the minute. Roger must be down at the far end of the block.

Maizy stuck the key in the ignition but didn't start the car. "She saved us, you know."

"Who did?" I had my hands already in front of the vent, waiting for the hot air to blow.

"Miss Pibs. If she hadn't run out of the house when she did, he would have found us."

"If he'd been at work where he belongs," I said, "he wouldn't have found us either. Start the car."

She didn't start the car. "Miss Pibs can't stay out here in the cold."

"She'll be fine," I said. "Start the car."

"We've got to help," she said.

I should have throttled her with her scarf when I had the chance. "We are not helping him corral his cat, Maizy."

"I have no intention of helping him," Maizy said. "But we could drive around the block once or twice. For her sake."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. If that'll get you to start the car, then we can drive around the block. But if he sees us—" I looked pointedly at the fluorescent hood. "And I don't know how he won't, then I can't be held responsible for what happens to you."

She patted my leg. "Nothing's happening to me. I'm gonna be fine." She started the car and turned on the heat. It practically spat ice droplets at us. "We can take better care of her, anyway," she muttered.

I jerked my head toward her, but she was already scanning the street for signs of Miss Pibs. If she thought I was stealing Roger Marrin's cat out from under his nose, she'd better think again. I was already suspected of murder. I wasn't going down for petnapping, too. "You are out of your mind," I told her. "There is no way I'm taking that cat home. She doesn't belong to me, and I don't steal other peoples' pets. I'll drop her off near her house, but I am not keeping her. Now let's go."

We went.