“Is he carrying it now?”
“No. He’s—”
“Tell him to load it and carry it until Paige and I can get there to pick up the girls.”
“Marty, I don’t like this. I don’t—”
“Ten minutes, Kathy. I’ll pick up the girls in ten minutes or less, fast as I can.”
He hung up before she was able to respond.
He hurried upstairs to the guest room that doubled as Paige’s home office. She did the family bookkeeping, balanced the checkbook, and looked after the rest of their financial affairs.
In the right-hand bottom drawer of the pine desk were files of receipts, invoices, and canceled checks. The drawer also contained their checkbook and savings-account passbook, which Marty retrieved fixed together with a rubberband. He stuffed them into one pocket of his chinos.
His mind wasn’t blank any more. He’d thought of some precautions he ought to take, though they were too feeble to be considered a plan of action.
In his office he went to the walk-in storage closet and hastily selected four cardboard cartons from stacks of thirty to forty boxes of the same size and shape. Each held twenty hardcover books. He could only carry two at a time to the garage. He put them in the trunk of the BMW, wincing from the pain in his neck, which the effort exacerbated.
Entering the master bedroom after his second hasty trip to the car, he was brought up short just past the threshold by the sight of Paige snatching up the shotgun and whipping around to confront him.
“Sorry,” she said, when she saw who it was.
“You did it right,” he said. “Have you gotten the girls’ things together?”
“No, I’m just finishing here.”
“I’ll get started on theirs,” he said.
Following the blood trail to Charlotte and Emily’s room, passing the broken-out section of gallery railing, Marty glanced at the foyer floor below. He still expected to see a dead man sprawled on the cracked tiles.
Charlotte and Emily were slumped on the Delorios’ family -room sofa, heads close together. They were pretending to be deeply involved in a stupid television comedy show about a stupid family with stupid kids and stupid parents doing stupid things to resolve a stupid problem. As long as they appeared to be caught up in the program, Mrs. Delorio stayed in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Mr. Delorio either paced through the house or stood at the front windows watching the cops outside. Ignored, the girls had a chance to whisper to each other and try to figure out what was happening at home.
“Maybe Daddy’s been shot,” Charlotte worried.
“I told you already a million times he wasn’t.”
“What do you know? You’re only seven.”
Emily sighed. “He told us he was okay, in the kitchen, when Mommy thought he was hurt.”
“He was covered with blood,” Charlotte fretted.
“He said it wasn’t his.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do,” Emily said emphatically.
“If Daddy wasn’t shot, then who was?”
“Maybe a burglar,” Emily said.
“We’re not rich, Em. What would a burglar want in our place? Hey, maybe Daddy had to shoot Mrs. Sanchez.”
“Why shoot Mrs. Sanchez? She’s just the cleaning lady.”
“Maybe she went berserk,” Charlotte said, and the possibility appealed enormously to her thirst for drama.
Emily shook her head. “Not Mrs. Sanchez. She’s nice.” “Nice people go berserk.”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
Emily folded her arms on her chest. “Name one.” “Mrs. Sanchez,” Charlotte said.
“Jack Nicholson.”
“Who’s he?”
“You know, the actor. In
“So maybe he’s always totally massively berserk.”
“No, sometimes he’s nice, like in that movie with Shirley MacLaine, he was an astronaut, and Shirley’s daughter got real sick and they found out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice.”
“Besides, this isn’t Mrs. Sanchez’s day,” Emily said.
“What?”
“She only comes on Thursdays.”
“Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn’t know what
“You’re weird,” Emily said.
“No, listen,” Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, “like Hannibal Lecter.”
“Hannibal the Cannibal!” Emily gasped.
Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie—which Emily insisted on calling
Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs. Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a
Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had not been carrying a gun before.
Letting the drapes fall back into place, turning away from the glass doors, he smiled at Charlotte and Emily. “You kids okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Charlotte said. “This is a great show.”
“You need anything?”
“No thanks, sir,” Emily said. “We just want to watch the show.”
“It’s a great show,” Charlotte repeated.
As Mr. Delorio left the room, both Charlotte and Emily turned to watch him until he was out of sight.
“Why’s he have a gun?” Emily wondered.
“Protecting us. And you know what that means? Mrs. Sanchez must still be alive and on the loose, looking for someone to eat.”
“But what if Mr. Delorio goes berserk next? He’s got a gun, we could never get away from him.”
“Be serious,” Charlotte said, but then she realized a physical-education teacher was just as likely to go berserk as any cleaning lady. “Listen, Em, you know what to do if he goes berserk?”
“Call nine-one-one.”
“You won’t have time for that, silly. So what you’ll have to do is, you’ll have to kick him in the nuts.”
Emily frowned. “Huh?”
“Don’t you remember the movie Saturday?” Charlotte asked.
Mom had been upset enough about the movie to complain to the theater manager. She’d wanted to know how the picture could have received a PG rating with the language and violence in it, and the manager had said it
