myself, appearing on Candace’s lawn, fresh from a night of unblessed debauchery. Miss Twyla was basically harmless and sweet, but she’d been one of my science teachers in high school and I felt a little self-conscious with her watching me on my girlfriend’s lawn. I bent to get the paper, wondering if I should turn and wiggle my butt at Miss Twyla. It was just then that the first mailbox exploded. Across the street and two houses down, a half-oval white mailbox burst open like a flower of dynamite. I jumped up, stunned, staring at the wooden stump where the mailbox had been. The percussive noise rang in my ears. I’ll never admit to having catlike reflexes, and I was so surprised I didn’t move. I just gaped at the chunks of hot metal that were now in the street. I hadn’t had the requisite five seconds to find my voice when the neighboring mailbox, this one in Miss Twyla’s yard and right across the street from me, detonated. Miss Twyla was fond of country decor and she’d mounted her olive-green mailbox on an antique metal milk tank. The cylindrical urn blew apart like a rocket running into the ground. I’d halfway turned when I felt a hot pain in my arm and I fell to the ground. I heard but didn’t see the next two explode. Pain shot through my arm and I felt Candace’s hands on me, her voice screaming in my ear. She pulled me inside right before her own mailbox erupted and peppered her front door with shrapnel. I’d suffered enough. Not from the pain in my shoulder or arm, although I’d been hit by flying pieces of Miss Twyla’s milk urn. My suffering was Candace smothering me with the pillow of overworry. I’d been rushed to the Mirabeau hospital, where I was pronounced damned lucky. The shrapnel that hit my arm tore no muscle and severed no artery. The wound was explored and cleaned. Candace had wrenched my arm pulling me into the house, so I was awfully sore from my wrist to my shoulder.
When I woke up, my arm was bandaged and slinged and Candace was holding my hand. It didn’t take long for the police and the reporters to show up. I had been the only person outside at the time and consequently was the only casualty and witness, making me the hub of inquiry. The attending physician made me stay an extra day to be sure I wasn’t in shock. When I got out of the hospital, I wanted to see the mess that was in Blossom Street. Candace walked with me, holding my hand as we surveyed the shattered stumps. Six mailboxes had exploded in their weird dance, one right after another. Candace’s fingers trembled against mine. “God, sweetheart, I think of what could have happened to you…” she said, and I squeezed her fingers. I didn’t want to contemplate that myself. I felt luckier than the guy who falls into the outhouse and finds a gold mine. I poked a sneakered foot at the remains of Candace’s mailbox. “Hell, now I don’t know where I’m going to have my dirty magazines sent.” I pretended to pout. She laughed, nervously, and caught herself in time from giving my arm a playful punch. “Jordy, dear, I’m so relieved you’re all right.” Miss Twyla’s booming alto nearly made me jump. Miss Twyla herself had toddled up behind Candace. She was still a large woman at seventy, tall and full-figured, with her heavy plait of gray hair pulled back into a long ponytail. No other elderly lady in Mirabeau wore her hair like that and I always thought it looked great on Miss Twyla. Miss Twyla hugged me hard and I embraced her back as best I could. Stepping back, she turned her chocolate-brown eyes on me and set her big hands on her broad hips. In her trademark khaki skirt and white button-down shirt she looked as formidable as she’d been when you screwed up your lab assignments. “Jordy, I cannot tell you how upset I am that my mailbox injured you. I just feel terrible.” “Good God, Miss Twyla, that’s not your fault. We obviously have some lunatic running around town.” I tend to gesture when I talk, and when I forgot, motioning with my hurt arm, I winced. Miss Twyla frowned in sympathy. Maybe I’d get some of her famous pecan-spice cookies out of this. “First a toolshed, then a doghouse, now mailboxes.” Candace shook her head. “I don’t get this at all. What’s the point?” “Maybe we just have an unambitious terrorist in our midst,” Miss Twyla conjectured. “Or he’s working up to something bigger.” The implication of that comment hung in the air.
Candace squirmed and Miss Twyla frowned again. One of Mirabeau’s police cruisers pulled up slowly in front of us, driven by Junebug Moncrief, our resident chief of police. Junebug and I grew up together in Mirabeau and had been close as children. We’d drifted apart as teenagers, and there had been an old competitive tension between us when I’d returned to town. After all the hoopla over that murder in the library a couple of months ago (where Junebug had thoughtfully not arrested me although I’d been the prime suspect), our friendship had started up again, albeit a little uneasily. “Hey, Jordy.” He nodded to me in his unhurried drawl. “How you feeling today?” He adjusted his eyeglasses to the light, looking every inch a small-town officer with his immaculately pressed uniform, his brown burr of hair, and his weathered Stetson. His face was a well-crafted one, strong with character, and one that people trusted. “Fine, thank you. So what was it? Dynamite? Tomahawk missile? Nuclear detonator?” Junebug cleared his throat, as unrushed as ever. “Well, the lady from the Austin Bomb Squad is gonna come back out and take a gander. Looks like blasting caps with an attached timer and battery. It left lots of fragments for the folks at the Austin Bomb Squad to analyze.” I swallowed. I’d heard that blasting caps-usually used to set off dynamite charges-had been found in the rubble from Fred’s toolshed and the chateau de Tepper, along with the remains of an eight-inch pipe bomb. My spine felt a cold tickle, like a ghost’s nip. Although I’d already given Junebug a statement, he asked me to retrace my steps of that morning-where I was on the lawn, what I saw. I told him, omitting only that I’d seen Miss Twyla spying on me in the yard. No need to embarrass my favorite teacher. Junebug jotted down more notes after I’d finished, then asked me if I’d seen anyone near the mailboxes. I said no. “Now, look here, Junebug,” Candace intoned, “this has gone far enough. Jordy could have been killed. Just what are you going to do about this?” Junebug began his monotonous answer, which was what I’d already read in our local paper, and I tuned out. I wanted a Tylenol and a cup of coffee. Then I’d go to the library. Surely that would make for a Safety First day.
Wrong.*** You don’t want former lovers to come calling. It’s as awkward and messy as trying to change your oil with two left thumbs.
And you especially don’t want an old lover showing up at work. Not when your current paramour is there to make the scene complete. I was in my office, planning the attack to weed rarely used books off our stacks. We have to go through this agony at least once each year, determining from our records which volumes have gathered the most dust and sparked the least interest. We sell them to dealers, hoping to make a little money back so we can buy more books. Lord knows our regular book-buying budget isn’t growing much. I heard giggles out on the floor from my two newest staffers, Itasca Huebler and Florence Pettus. I didn’t doubt that some interesting town gossip was being told; I believe Itasca has a satellite dish implanted in her beehive.
Itasca’s in her forties, a funny, big-boned lady with a kind, rosy face and a barbed tongue to rival my own. Florence is closer to my age, a mother of two, who somehow finds it hard to believe ill of anyone. She’d grown up poor and black in Mirabeau, odds that didn’t favor success. She ended up married to Joe Pettus, owner of a big carpet store over in Bavary. Florence worked at the library because she liked the people, the children, the smell of the books; Itasca was a tad more practical, having already outlived and outspent two husbands. I was grateful to them both; there’d been no full-time staff when I took over as chief librarian and both women had learned quickly and worked hard. I listened to the laughter crescendo then abruptly cut off. No doubt Itasca was flinging the latest mud and Florence, too embarrassed to tell her to stop, had just murmured her standard line about getting back to work. Florence appeared at my door, apparently barely able to keep the laughter in. “Oh, Jordy, you have a visitor.
Out at the checkout counter.” “Who?” I asked. “She didn’t say.”
Florence murmured. Great. Another book salesperson, no doubt, ready to pitch the latest best-seller that no small rural library could do without. I put on a smile and sauntered out-and saw Lorna Wiercinski perched on the checkout counter. The shock value of seeing Lorna was roughly akin to seeing Jesus sitting there with a HI, I’M BACK button.
I confess that my jaw moved up and down without any sound emerging.
I’m sure Lorna appreciated that up-close view of my molars. “I’ve got something that’s overdue, Tex,” Lorna rumbled in her thick Boston accent. And yes, rumbled is the right word. Lorna’s a big girl, nearly six foot, with long alabaster legs, a broad Slavic face, deep-set gray eyes, an admirable bosom (if size matters to you), and a stunning mane of jet-black hair. Dressed in a miniskirted business suit with black pumps that made her as tall as me, she would have gathered a crowd, not merely stuck out in one. She leaned back on the counter and fluttered her eyelashes. “I do declare,” she intoned in an awful pseudo-Southern accent. “That boy’s got the vapors.” After a long, arduous search, I found my voice. “Lorna? Oh, my God-” I was always one for witty banter. She smiled, a rich, luxurious smile I’d seen many times before. It was her patented cat-who-ate-the-canary-and-the-fish grin, full of self-satisfaction at her own cleverness. “It’s good to see you, too, Jordan.” She crossed her legs and leaned forward. “Still breathing, Tex? Keep those involuntary responses going, babe. And what the hell happened to your arm?” I told myself: Okay, she’s here. Just deal with it. I stepped up and hugged her awkwardly, keeping my slinged arm close by me. I don’t believe in just shaking hands with someone you’ve slept with (albeit in the past) for three years. She hugged back, a little too warmly for my taste. When I pulled my head back, she planted a kiss right on
