woozy. My wooziness had been growing all week, since I’d made those arrangements to have Kingzette Moving deliver that awful patio set.
Eric dislodged the Mountain Dew bottle from his mouth long enough to speak. “I suppose that means you’re going home early.”
“You think I should?”
He rolled his Chinese-American eyes. “Maddy, you’ve been preparing to go home since you got here.”
So I drove home and camped in front of my picture window, getting woozier and woozier waiting for that truck to pull up.
It pulled up at three. There was a big gold crown painted on the side, along with these words:
KINGZETTE MOVING
Expect The Royal Treatment
I looked over my shoulder at James, who was sprawled on the floor in front of my sofa, gnawing on a log of rawhide. “I don’t expect you to turn into Lassie-dial 911 with your snoot or anything-but if things start going wrong I do hope you’ll reach down deep in that wolfen soul of yours and maybe growl a little.”
James gnawed away, promising nothing.
Two men slipped out of the truck. The driver was young and tall, and had way too many muscles for his tee shirt. The other man was a foot shorter, but just as burly. He had the thin gray hair of a man pushing sixty. He leaned against the fender and lit a cigarette while the younger man headed for my door. I opened it before he could knock. “You’re Mr. Kingzette, I gather?”
“One of them,” the young man said. His face was as sour as Howard Shay’s lemonade.
I nodded toward the older man. “And that’s your father?”
“Where you want the furniture?”
I ignored his impatience. “It must be nice to work together like that-I remember how I used to help my father milk the cows.”
“Patio in the back, ma’am?”
“Screened porch,” I said.
I followed him back to the truck. There were only six lousy pieces of furniture in there. If I was going to make an adequate appraisal of the older Kingzette, I’d have to get in their way as much as I could.
I greeted Leonard Kingzette with a wiggle of my fingers. He nodded at me. Took a long, painful drag on his cigarette and then flicked it into the street. I joined them at the back of the truck.
They unloaded the furniture onto my front lawn. It took about thirty seconds. The son picked up the two chairs and headed for my backyard. I helped his father with the coffee table. “I have a confession, Mr. Kingzette,” I said, as we waddled sideways with the table. “When I told my neighbor who I’d hired, he got a little nervous. Because you’d been in prison.”
The word prison hit Kingzette like one of those poison darts Indians in the Amazon use to shoot monkeys out of treetops. His chest caved in. His eyes sagged against the bridge of his nose. The coffee table between us quivered. I moved quickly to reassure him. “But I said, ‘Good gravy, James, if the man has done his time, then the man has done his time. He has the right to make a living.’”
He recovered. Gave me a quick, uneasy smile. “Not everybody’s so charitable.”
“James is a real worrywart. He’s probably peeking out the window right now. Anyway, you checked out just fine.”
A second dart struck him.
“With the Better Business Bureau,” I said quickly. “They didn’t have a single complaint.” That part of my lie was true. I had checked with the BBB.
Kingzette managed another smile. “Well, Mrs. Sprowls, I appreciate your going the extra mile.”
We reached the back of my house. Kingzette’s son trotted past us, heading back to the truck for more. “Your son’s all business, isn’t he?” I said.
Kingzette pushed the porch door open with his backend. “He sees to it I don’t get into any more trouble- that’s for sure.”
And that was pretty much it. By a quarter after three, the patio set was on my porch, the old wicker crap was on my tree lawn, the Kingzettes were on their merry way. And I was regretting the whole miserable affair.
Oh yes, I’d had a few minutes to take my measure of Kenneth Kingzette. But like the damned fool I am, I’d also given Kenneth Kingzette a few minutes to take his measure of me. So instead of enjoying my new patio set that evening-sliding back and forth in my glider with a mug of tea, sleeve of Fig Newtons and that new Dana Stabenow mystery I’d been dying to read-I was perched by my living room picture window, in that uncomfortable wingback chair I just hate, watching the street like a nervous parakeet. I had my phone on one armrest and my butcher’s knife on the other. I just knew that any minute I was going to spot Kenneth Kingzette sneaking through my hostas.
There were so many things about my encounter with Kingzette that bothered me. For one thing, he’d called me Mrs. Sprowls. “Well, Mrs. Sprowls,” he’d said, “I appreciate your going the extra mile.” Fair enough. It was my name. It was written on the bill. But he’d said it in such a familiar way. As if he were sending a subtle message that he knew who I was.
And why wouldn’t he recognize my name? I was no longer the anonymous newspaper librarian I used to be, was I? My name was all over the news during that Buddy Wing business. And just a few weeks ago that awful girl with the green hair told the whole world I was looking into Gordon’s murder.
And even if he hadn’t recognized my name at first-even if he’d arrived at my house thinking I was just some sweet old penny-pinching broad-I’d sure given him a lot to worry about. I told him I knew he’d been in prison. I told him I’d checked him out. What if I’d made him as nervous as I’d made myself? Nervous enough to check me out?
I sat by that picture window all evening. The darker it got outside the madder I got inside. Mad at myself for concocting such a damned-fool idea. Mad at myself for not realizing it was a damned-fool idea until it was too late.
What exactly had I expected Kingzette to do? Confess his sins to me? Somehow convince me with his body language, or some soulful Bambi-like look in his eyes, that while he’d once been callous enough to dump those drums of toluene, he wasn’t the kind of man who shot people in the back of the head?
The thing that was bothering me most, of course, was that little quip he’d made about his son. The one when he went rushing by us, and I commented about him being all business. And he said: “He sees to it I don’t get into any more trouble-that’s for sure.” Good gravy! What did he mean by that? Was I worried about the wrong Kingzette?
I kept my vigil by the window until midnight. Then I Kingzette-proofed my bungalow. I put spoons and forks in empty water glasses and put two glasses on every window ledge, so there’d be plenty of clanging and crashing if somebody tried to crawl in that way. I slid my dining room table against my front door and my kitchen table against the back. I turned on every light. I mined the hallway floor with James’ squeak toys. I tethered James to my dresser. I got into bed, fully dressed, with my phone and my butcher’s knife. I even put a paring knife under my pillow as a backup.
The one thing I didn’t do was call Detective Grant and confess my stupidity. Pride trumps fear every time.
Tuesday, May 22
After five sleepless nights in that booby-trapped bungalow of mine I called Detective Grant to confess. Even a proud woman needs her eight hours.
I caught him just as he was leaving for the day. We traded hellos and our thoughts about the rainy weather and then I got right to the heart of the matter. “I may have done something a little on the stupid side,” I
