“I’m afraid he’s not here right now. You’d have to come back another time.”
From somewhere down the highway, the sound of an approaching truck.
“Mrs. Bennet, please, I’m sorry, I haven’t even told you my name. I’m Zack—”
“I don’t care who you are. You’ll have to leave and come back another time. I can’t help you. There’s no one else here, there’s no woman by that name, and I don’t know who would have told you such a thing.”
The truck noise was growing louder, and I turned away from Mrs. Bennet long enough to see what it was. A school bus. A big, yellow, black-striped school bus. It slowed as it approached the end of the Bennets’ driveway.
But it was only just after lunch. Too early for children to be coming home from school. No, wait, not for a kindergarten student. A child who went to school just in the morning, half a day, would be coming home right about now.
“You have to leave,” Mrs. Bennet said. She had grown increasingly anxious, like she wanted me gone before I had a chance to see who was going to get off the bus.
But the bus was already stopped, its flashing red lights on. The door opened. A small girl, about five years old, dressed in blue jumper and red tights, her head a mess of tiny blonde curls, a pink backpack dragging at her side, hopped down from the bottom step and landed on the gravel. She turned and waved goodbye to the driver, who waited until he was sure the girl was walking toward her home, and not making some impulsive dash across the highway, before he levered the door shut, threw the bus into first, and drove away.
The girl didn’t head straight to the house, but dawdled. Something had caught her eye in the tall grass beyond the drive, and she was stepping into it, reaching down for something, missing it, reaching again.
Mrs. Bennet, who’d been about to close the door on me a moment earlier, now opened it, pushed open the screen, and stepped out onto the porch. “Katie!” she called. “You get here now!”
Katie looked up momentarily, then whatever she’d been trying to catch was trying to make a break for it, and she pounced again. “Gas hopper!” she shouted.
Mrs. Bennet was off the porch now, running up the drive. Katie, alarmed to see Mrs. Bennet moving toward her so urgently, must have figured she’d done something wrong, because she stopped going after the grasshopper and stood stock still, awaiting whatever it was Mrs. Bennet had in store for her.
But it was protection, not punishment, that was on the woman’s mind. She scooped Katie up into her arms, turned and ran back toward the house. As she mounted the porch steps, I opened the screen door so she could run straight inside with the child. Although I only had a glimpse of Katie, there was something about her too that was familiar. She certainly looked as though she could be Mrs. Bennet’s daughter. But then, Mrs. Bennet looked a lot like Trixie Snelling.
From inside, I heard Mrs. Bennet say, “There’s soup and a sandwich all ready for you in the kitchen. You go in there and you stay there till I come in.”
“What kind of soup is it?” asked Katie.
“Tomato.”
“What kind of samich?”
“Tuna.”
“Is there cut-up celery in it?”
“No, no celery. I made it just the way you like it.”
“Is Mommy here for lunch?”
Now my eyes went wide for a thousandth of a second.
“You just go in there and eat, okay? I’ll be in in a minute.”
This time, rather than talking to me through the screen, Mrs. Bennet stepped out onto the porch. “You’re going to have to go, mister,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong house.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “That girl, Katie.” I weighed my words carefully. “Is she Trixie’s daughter?”
Mrs. Bennet sighed, shook her head in tiny jerks of exasperation. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, mister.”
“I need to talk to Trixie,” I said. “Even if I have her name wrong, I’m sure you know who I mean.”
“I don’t. I have no idea.”
“It’s urgent. Look, I was there when they found the body in her basement. The police are looking for her. I’ve been suspended from work, my wife’s ready to leave me, and I think Trixie at least owes me some sort of explanation about what she’s dragged me into. What if you just gave her a message?”
“A message.”
“Look, I could write something down, you give it to her.” I reached into my pocket for a small notebook and pen.
That’s when I took my eyes off Mrs. Bennet.
When I glanced back up, she had the small shovel in her hand, and she was swinging it, like a baseball bat, for the side of my head.
“Hey, wh—” I shouted, putting an arm up to keep the blade from crashing into my skull.
The wooden handle connected with the bone in my forearm, and the pain shot through me like lightning.