church, walked by her home-I realized I understood her less than any member of our little group. Waiting in the heat with her was not a happy prospect.
In the two weeks since our first meeting, the season had ripened to full-blown summer. It was hotter than the six shades of hell standing on the asphalt, maybe the temperature was down to ninety-four from the hundred and four it had been that afternoon. At eight o’clock, the parking lot wasn’t dark; there was still a glow from the nearly vanished sun. The bugs had started their intense nightly serenade. If I drove out of town right now and parked by the road in an isolated place and tried to talk to a companion, the volume of bug and frog noise would put a serious crimp in the conversation. Anyone expecting nature to be silent-especially in the South-was plain old nuts.
I got out of my car reluctantly. It had been a fruitless day on stakeout in Little Rock, and Jack was out of town on a missing-persons job, so I wasn’t having the mild glow of accomplishment I usually enjoyed after a long day. When I went home after the therapy hour, I promised myself, I would take a cool shower and I would read. After a day spent dealing with others, television was just one more batch of voices to listen to; I’d rather have a book in my hands than the remote control.
“Evening, Sandy,” I called. At that moment, the pole-mounted security lights came on. With the residual daylight creating long shadows from behind the trees, I was walking across a visual chessboard to reach the woman standing by the side door we always used. As I drew closer, I could see the preacher’s wife had sweat beaded on her forehead. She was wearing the current young matron uniform, a white T-shirt under a long sleeveless, shapeless khaki dress. Sandy’s streaked hair was still in its slightly teased-with-bangs Junior League coiffure, and her makeup was all in place, but there was definitely something happening in her head. Her brown eyes, dark and discreetly made up, darted from my face to the cars to the bushes and back.
“Tamsin didn’t leave the door open,” Sandy said furiously. She was carrying her straw shoulder bag in the usual way, but with an abrupt gesture she let the strap slide down her arm and she swung the bag, hard, against the side of her car. That made me jump, and I had to repress a snarl.
I wondered, for maybe the fifth or sixth time, why Sandy kept coming. She’d never talked in any more detail, or with any more feeling, about what had happened to her, but she kept showing up. She was making a real effort to keep herself separated from the common emotional ground. But every Tuesday night, there she was in her chair, listening.
I leaned against the wall to wait for Tamsin to unlock the door. I didn’t feel up to any more emotional outbursts from Sandy McCorkindale.
Melanie and Carla arrived together. I had decided they’d known each other before coming to the therapy group. In conversation, I’d heard them refer to common acquaintances.
“Good! I got time for a cigarette,” Carla said in her harsh voice. She had one lit and puffing in a flash. “My car done broke down today in front of Piggly Wiggly, and I had to call Melanie here to give me a ride.”
Normally I would have expected Sandy to pick up the conversational ball, but not tonight.
“What’s wrong with the car?” I asked, after a beat.
“My boyfriend says it might be the alternator,” Carla said. “I sure hope it’s something cheaper. Tamsin not here yet?”
“Her car is over there,” Sandy said resentfully, pointing to Tamsin’s modest Honda Civic. “But she won’t open the door!”
Melanie and Carla gave Sandy the same kind of careful sideways look I’d found myself delivering.
Firella came walking from the darkness at the other end of the small parking lot, pepper spray in one hand and keys in the other.
“Hey, y’all!” she called. “We meeting out here in the parking lot tonight?” Carla laughed, and Melanie smiled. As Firella drew closer, she counted us and observed, “One of us hasn’t made it here yet.”
“Oh, Janet’s car’s here, too,” Sandy snapped. “See?”
We all looked over to note that Janet’s dark Camaro was half concealed by Tamsin’s Honda.
“So where’s Janet, and why won’t the back door open? You think Tamsin and Janet are in there doin‘ it?” asked Carla. She didn’t sound angry about the possibility-only ready for them to finish and unlock the back door, so she could get in the air conditioning.
Sandy was almost shocked out of her odd mood. “Oh, my gosh,” she said, rattled to the core. “I just never believed I could know anyone that… oh, my Lord.”
Though I was pretty sure Carla had just been blabbing- for the pleasure of hearing her own voice, and to shock Sandy-I didn’t comment. I got a phone book from the front seat of my car, pulled my cell phone from the pocket of the drawstring sheeting pants I was wearing because they were cool, and dialed the health center number.
Inside the building, we could hear the phone ring, very faintly. That would be the one at the main reception desk, inside the front door.
A voice came on the line. “You have reached the Hartsfield County Health Unit. Our office hours are nine to five, Monday through Friday. If you know the extension of the person you’re calling, please press it now.” I did.
From inside the building, we heard another phone begin to ring, this time closer. We counted the rings. After four, the female voice came back on the line, to tell me that the party I wanted to contact was away from her desk and to ask me to call back during office hours. She also told me what to do in case of emergency.
“This seem like an emergency?” I asked, not sure I’d said it out loud until Firella said, “It’s getting to be.”
I stood back and looked at the door. Made of a heavy metal and painted brown, it was intended for staff use, so therapists wouldn’t have to enter and exit through the reception area. It was kept locked every evening but Tuesday, as far as I knew, though there might be other kinds of therapy groups that met using the same arrangement. Tamsin always locked the door when the six of us were assembled inside, and something she’d said once had made me think she only unlocked it about ten minutes before group time.
The light wisn’t crystal clear in the area around the door, but I could tell when I aimed my tiny key-ring flashlight at the crack that the deadbolt was not actually engaged.
So the door wasn’t locked, after all. I tugged on it again, baffled. It didn’t budge.
While the other women watched, I again punched the “on” button of my tiny flashlight. My insurance agent would be glad to hear I’d found his giveaway so useful. This time, I shone the light all the way around the edges of the door, trying to spy something that would give me a clue as to why the door was being so stubborn. I was rewarded maybe the second or third time around, when I realized a chip of wood was protruding from the bottom.
“There,” I said, and squatted. I heard Melanie explaining to the others and many exclamations, but I ignored them. I tried to grip the sliver of wood in a pincer formed by my thumb and middle finger, but I didn’t have much success. Tonight was the first time I’d ever wished I had long fingernails. I checked out the hands around me. “Firella,” I said, “your nails are the longest. See if you can grip this little piece of wood, here. That’s what’s got the door wedged shut.”
Sandy was suggesting in an increasingly nervous voice that we call the police right now, or at least her husband, but Carla put a hand on Sandy’s arm and said, “Hush, woman.” I noticed, while Firella crouched and tried to wriggle the strip of wood from its lodging, that Carla had put out her cigarette before it was smoked down to the filter. She was worried, too.
After a lot of shaking of her head and several little whispers of “No, not quite… almost… damn thing!” Firella said, “Got it!” and held up the thin strip of wood. About four inches long and two wide, it could have been no more than two millimeters thick, if that. It was just the right size to slip in the crack in the door, just thick enough to get wedged there when the first person tried to open the door to go to Tamsin’s office.
I reached out to turn the knob, hesitated.
“What you waiting for?” Carla asked, her voice raspier than ever. “Now we’re late.”
I was waiting because I’d thought of fingerprints, but then shrugged. By her own account, Sandy had already touched the door. “Remember, she didn’t answer the phone,” I said, my voice as quiet and calm as I could make it. I opened the door. The other women clustered around me.
The hall light was on, and Tamsin’s office door was open, but not the door to the therapy room.
“Tamsin!” called Carla. “You and Janet in there? You two stop messing around, you hear! The rest of us’ll get jealous!”
Carla was trying to sound jaunty, but the atmosphere in the hall was too thick with anxiety for that.
Melanie said, “I’m scared.” It was an admission, but it didn’t signal that she was going to run away. She’d planted her feet and had that bulldog look on her face that meant she wouldn’t back down.
