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We had anothern.
This killing came a coupla months after the first one, only this time the victim was a man, killed with an ax. I dreaded Fiona finding out where it happened—only thirty mile west of here in Kona, N.C. She’d say it was a dark cloud of menace drifting dangerously close to our home.
And sure enough, she was beside herself after a long drive home from the hospital, no doubt fear riding shotgun the whole way. Not that Fiona was a flibbertigibbet. Far from it. But like I’d said, she was a mama bear about her family, and our well-being moved her deeper than most.
Fiona had one of those cell phones, though half the time she couldn’t get a signal. They said the mountains made it harder, and so did metal roofs. We had plenty of both. I got it why she needed one, but I didn’t want to go dragging the outside world into my life all hours of the day. Besides, I was usually at home or in my shop, so what was the point? If, for instance, there was an emergency with Conor while I’d gone into town, anyone trying to reach me knew to check with Della.
What really got me was when people walked in the woods and jabbered on those things. They’d often travelled long distances to get up here, away from it all, and yet they’d walk right by a stand of Jack-in-the-pulpits or a blooming thicket of laurel while talking to someone who, more than likely, they needed a break from, which was why they were up here in the first place. Or they walked round town talking on them, nearly getting run over by Elbert Totherow’s delivery truck. (That almost happened a week ago.) No, I planned to stick to the phone I had at home and live my life wherever I happened to be at that moment.
I heard Fiona carrying on about how the killer was now going after men, too, so it was long past time for me to have a cell phone. “Why, Shug?” I asked. “So I can shine the flashlight in the killer’s eyes? Or bash him in the nose with it?”
“Oh, Rabbit, don’t be such a pillock. So you can call for help. If not for your own sorry arse, at least for Conor’s sake.”
“But think about it. By the time the law got way out here, I’d be long dead.”
That set her off crying, and I could see how my comment wasn’t helpful. I told her I was sorry about a million times and slipped off to make her a cup of tea. As she sipped it, she said I’d made a crackin’ good one, so I knew she wasn’t too mad at me.
I’d hoped that would smooth over everything, and she’d forget all about that phone. But the next day, she was upset all over again when she got home from work. (I couldn’t help but picture patients getting jabbed harder with a needle or squeezed tighter with the blood pressure cuff when those nurses came back from a break where they’d talked nonstop about the murders.)
“Shug, something bad is happening somewhere all the time,” I said, thinking that would console her. “People get laid off work, their mama and daddy die, their dogs get sick. There isn’t a day that goes by without sorrow tagging along. We can’t go borrowing trouble that’s not on our doorstep.”
“But this is on our doorstep!” I heard her foot stamp under the dining table.
Not really, but I didn’t know what else to say, so I just listened. And to be honest, when she started repeating herself, my mind kept traveling out to the barn where orders were waiting.
“You’re not listening to me, but I’m serious. This is something that could come home to roost. I had a shiver.”
Now that caught my attention. Fiona had some Irish gypsy in her. Whether she felt shivers or geese walking over graves, she knew things before they happened. She was a good Catholic, but she’d held on to her pagan ancestry too.
We carried on like that for a while, and I kept trying to downplay the murders. That wasn’t to say they didn’t worry me. I felt uneasy too, not only about the sorrow they brought but as if something I needed to know had been laid out before me, yet just outta reach.