'You got some problem with me?' he said to a thin, crew-cut boy in a red windbreaker and T-shirt who was leaning against a customized van.
'Not me,' the boy replied, then grimaced at his girl.
'Sorry, man. I thought you were somebody else,' Jeff said, and walked away wondering why he had just lied.
Was he losing it?
He couldn't finish his sandwich. The breeze dropped and a sweet, rotting odor wafted off the Dumpster and invaded the inside of his head. He put the canvas top up on his convertible and rolled up the windows, then stared through the windshield at a black man in a security guard's uniform locking a grilled door behind the kitchen. The guard twisted a key in the lock mechanism, then rattled the door in the jamb to make sure it was secure.
Jeff swallowed and sweat broke on his forehead and a spasm constricted his stomach, as though someone had raked a nail across the lining.
I'm not going to jail. That's not going to happen. Don't have those kinds of thoughts, he told himself.
He took the roach out of the ashtray and the remaining joint from the cigarette case and rolled down the passenger window and flung them into the darkness.
When he looked back through the windshield he was staring at the side of Ronnie Cross's 1961 T-Bird. Ronnie made the turn at the end of the lot, then pulled into a slot that had just emptied. For no reason that he could explain, Jeff felt a sense of familiarity and friendship with Ronnie he'd never experienced before.
He got out of the convertible and walked to Ronnie's window and leaned his hands on the roof. Ronnie glanced up at him only a second, then rested his palms on the bottom of the steering wheel and looked straight ahead.
'Ronnie, I got no hard feelings. This guy Johnny Krause is full of shit. I wouldn't hurt Essie for the world,' Jeff said.
Ronnie picked up a toothpick off the dashboard and slipped it into his mouth.
'Yeah, uh, look, Jeff, me and Essie and Lucas are gonna meet for some dinner. Maybe you ought to rejoin your party,' Ronnie said.
'Y'all are tight, huh?'
'You know how it is.' Ronnie played with the toothpick and didn't look up at Jeff's face.
Jeff felt a moist click in his throat, then he heard a voice coming out of his mouth that didn't sound like his own, a voice veined with weakness and fear.
'What's it like inside? I mean, how bad does it get?' he said.
'Inside what?'
'Prison. You hear a lot of stories.'
'About guys getting their cherry busted in the shower?' Ronnie said.
'Yeah, I guess.'
'I don't know. I was in Juvie once. I never did time. I ain't a criminal.'
Ronnie lifted his eyes up into Jeffs face.
When Jeff walked back to his car, he felt belittled, his face tingling. But he couldn't say why.
An hour later he drove across the cattleguard and up the road to his house. The air was dry and cool and he could smell smoke from a fire in the woods somewhere beyond the house. Yes, he could even see a red glow in the sky and ashes rising against the moon, perhaps from the ravine that angled its way down to the river. But surely firefighters were on it and it offered no threat to his home.
He parked the car by the side of his house and decided to stay the night in Fletcher's empty cottage. His stepmother would be asleep by now, in her own bedroom, with the door locked, while Jeff's father walked aimlessly around the darkened first floor, his teeth unbrushed, trailing an odor like a gymnasium, or made long-distance calls to people who hung up on him.
Jeff picked up a half-filled bottle of Cold Duck off a table by the swimming pool and drank from it as he walked to the cottage. Tiny pieces of ash drifted onto the pool's surface and floated like scorched moths above the underwater lights.
From the edge of the woods far above the house, Jessie Stump watched him through a pair of binoculars.
Earl did push-ups in the dark on the floor of his library. One, two, one, two, one two, his arms pumping with blood and testosterone, the tendons in his neck and back and buttocks netting together with a power that he'd never thought he possessed. The moon was full, a marbled yellow above the tree line on the ridge, and it shone through the French doors and lighted the library walls and rows of books with a dull glow like the color of old elephant ivory.
He stripped naked in the bathroom and shaved in front of the full-length mirror, showered and washed his hair and brushed his teeth and gargled with mouthwash and changed into a pair of loafers and khaki slacks and a thin flannel shirt. While he combed his hair in the mirror he turned his chin from side to side and was intrigued by the way the light reflected on the freshly shaved surfaces of his skin.
She locked bedroom doors, did she? The king of the manor in medieval times would have just walled her up. But he was determined not to be vindictive. Why blame her for her feelings? No matter what they claimed, women were sexually aroused by rich men, and he was no longer rich. But he hadn't believed she would set him up to be killed by Jessie Stump.
Earlier this evening he had found the security system on the back doors shut down. It wasn't accidental. Someone had punched in the coded numbers with forethought and deliberation.
Actually, her level of iniquity intrigued him, caused a vague arousal in his loins in a way that he did not quite understand. No, it was not her wickedness itself, but instead his ability to perceive it, see through and transcend it, to match and overwhelm it in response and deed, that titillated him.
So a pathetic piece of human flotsam like Jessie Stump was the best assassin she could hire? What a joke. But in reality it made sense. She had no money. A fool like Stump could be micromanaged with the gift of an antique watch, then disposed of later.
Maybe he should give Peggy Jean a little more credit.
He walked out the front door and gazed at the constellations in the sky, the glow of a fire beyond the ridge, the long, green roll of the valley in front of his house. He could probably remain in default on his mortgages for another seven or eight months, then this would all belong to someone else. That thought made the veins tighten like a metal band along the side of his head.
He wagged a flashlight back and forth in the darkness and waited for the two deputies to walk from their posts out on the grounds onto the layers of black flagstone that formed the entrance to his house.
'Y'all come in and have some ice cream and strawberries with me. I won't be needing y'all anymore tonight,' he said.
'I shined a spotlight up in them trees, high up on the ridge. I swear I seen some field glasses glint up there,' one deputy said.
'It's probably a state forester. I think dry lightning started a fire in the ravine,' Earl said.
The two deputies looked at each other.
'We didn't hear nothing about a fire in the ravine,' one said.
'There's surely one burning. You don't smell it?' Earl said.
'A fire was burning six or seven miles up the river. A lot of ash was blowing around in the wind, but there ain't no fire in the ravine, sir,' the same deputy said.
'I'm sure someone's taking care of it,' Earl said. He took them inside and fed them at the kitchen table, looking at his watch, feigning interest in the banality of their conversation. After they left he watched through the glass until their cars crossed the cattleguard and disappeared over a rise down the long two-lane road. He went into the library and removed his Smith amp; Wesson. 38 revolver from his desk drawer, nipped the cylinder out of the frame, then snapped it into place again.
He walked into the kitchen, opened the circuit breaker box, and shut down all the floodlights on the grounds and the lights on the patio and terrace and in the swimming pool. The moon was veiled now and the hills that formed a cup around the back of his house rose up blackly into the stars. He threw open the French doors on the patio and smelled the gaslike odor of chrysanthemums and smoke on the wind.
He situated a heavy oak chair where the dining room hallway met the kitchen so he could look out onto the
