“Somehow, I don’t see you as smotherable.”
“Oh?”
“You fought for your stripes a long time ago, Linda. No one’s going to take them away from you.”
“Think I’m pretty tough, do you?”
“In a good way. I think you can handle yourself.”
She put her hand on the back of my neck.
“Ooh, even tighter. Sorry for making you talk about it. What a Nosy Nancy I am.”
“Nosy Nancy?”
“It’s a regionalism.”
“From what region?”
“My apartment. There- I got you to smile. But this
She said, “How’s that?”
“Fantastic. I’d trade dinner for about an hour of it.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “First we pig out on Mexican food, then we return to either your place or mine, I give you a real Texas massage, and then you can smother me. You just forget about all the ugliness and the complications and you smother me to your little heart’s content.”
It ended up being my place. We were in bed when the phone rang. Lying naked in the darkness, listening to Gershwin’s own rendition of
I said, “Jesus, what time is it?”
“Twenty after eleven.”
I picked up the receiver.
Milo said, “Hi.”
“What’s up?”
“From the nuance of irritation in your voice, might I infer that this is a bad time?”
I said, “You just keep getting better and better at the old detecting game.”
“Someone with you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Blondie, I hope?”
“None of your-”
“Good, it’s her I want to talk to. Put her on.”
Puzzled, I handed the receiver to Linda. “It’s Milo. For you.”
She said, “For me?” and took it. “Hello, Detective Sturgis, what is it?… Oh. You’re sure?… That’s great. How did you… Oh. That was lucky… You think so? Okay. Sounds interesting… I guess. If you really think so… Okay, I’ll be there. Thanks.”
She reached across me and hung up the phone. Her breasts grazed my lips. Reflexively, I nibbled. She pulled away and said, “Want to go for a ride?”
A street named Fiesta Drive. No fog tonight. In the moonlight, the magnolias looked like paper cutout trees.
The house was tidy-looking, no different from any of the others on the block. An Oldsmobile Cutlass was parked in the driveway; behind it, the low, black cigar of a Firebird Trans Am. On the Firebird’s rear bumper was a sticker with the call letters of a heavy-metal radio station and another that said LIFE IS A BEACH.
The front door smelled of fresh paint. The bell chimed out the first seven notes of “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” A worried looking, heavyset woman in her fifties opened the door on the fifth note. She had on moss- green slacks and a white blouse and was barefoot. Her round face was pale under a crown of baby-blue hair rollers. Her jawline had lost the battle with gravity.
Linda said, “I’m Dr. Overstreet.”
The woman trembled and said, “I’m… They’re… Won’t you come in. Please.”
We stepped into a living room identical in size and trim and layout to the one in the Burden house. This one was painted buttercup-yellow with contrasting white moldings and furnished with a skirted floral chintz sofa and matching chairs, a brown corduroy recliner, golden-maple end tables, and shiny white ceramic lamps. Prints of plein-air landscapes and still lifes favoring fruit and fish hung on the walls, along with a bronze Zodiac wheel and an old Christmas wreath. The fireplace had been bricked up and painted white. A model schooner fashioned of rough- edged copper sheeting and brass wire sat on the hearth.
A dark-complected man with sharp features sat on the recliner, but he wasn’t relaxed. He had thinning black hair, whitening at the temples, a drawn lantern-jawed face that sagged- orienting downward as surely as a dowsing rod. He wore a T-shirt and gray slacks under a plaid Pendleton robe, terry-cloth slippers on white, blue-veined feet. His arms rested on the sides of the recliner, the hands clenching and unclenching.
Milo stood across from him, to the left of the sofa. A boy of around sixteen or seventeen sat right below him. The boy was big, in a soft, bulky way, with thick, formless white arms extending from the rolled sleeves of a pea- green patch-pocketed T-shirt. Around his pudgy wrists were nailhead-studded leather bands. His black jeans were tucked into chain-heeled Wellington boots. A massive stainless-steel death’s-head ring dominated his left hand. His right hand shielded his face. What little I could see of his countenance was puffy, not yet fully formed, under dark hair cut close to the scalp. Fuzzy approximations of sideburns ran down cheeks speckled with pimples, and dipped an inch below his earlobes. He didn’t look up at our entrance, just continued to do what he’d obviously been doing for a while: crying.
Milo said, “Evening, Dr. Overstreet and Dr. Delaware. These are the Buchanans, Mr. and Mrs.”
The man and woman gave miserable nods.
“And this is Matthew. He did the artwork on your car.”
The boy cried louder.
His father said, “Cut that the hell out. At least face up to it and don’t be a coward, goddammit.”
The boy continued to cry.
Buchanan shot up and walked to the couch, a big, soft man. He took hold of the boy’s wrists and yanked them away. The boy bent low, tried to bury his face between his knees. His father reached under and forced his head upward, gripping him by the jaw.
“You look at them, goddammit! Face up to it, or it’ll be even worse for you, I promise.”
The boy’s face was pasty and snot-smeared, his mouth lopsided and grotesque in his father’s grasp. He clenched his eyes shut. Buchanan swore.
Mrs. Buchanan took a step toward her son. Her husband’s eyes warned her off. His hand tightened. The boy yelped in pain.
“Easy,” said Milo. He touched Buchanan’s arm. The man stared at him furiously, then backed off.
“Sit down, sir,” said Milo gently.
Buchanan returned to the recliner, drawing his robe around him and looking away from the rest of us.
Milo said, “Matt, this is Dr. Overstreet. Principal of the Hale school, but you probably know that, don’t you?”
The boy stared at Linda, terrified, then clamped his eyes shut.
Linda said, “Hello, Matthew.”
The boy buried his face again.
His father whipped around and said, “Say it!”
The boy mumbled something.
Buchanan was up in a flash. His right arm shot out and the boy’s head snapped back.
Mrs. Buchanan cried out.
