Never Smile at Strangers (10 page)

THE ANDERSON FAMILY sat in the living room: Kelsey in a chair, Rachel on the loveseat, Tom on the couch, and little Tommy stretched out on the floor.

“But I’ve seen that one already,” Kelsey complained. “Let’s watch the other one.”

“It’s not my problem you’ve seen everything!” Tommy shouted back, a DVD in his hands.

“Quit shouting,” Rachel said, trying to keep her voice even, not to snap. She was tense. Tiffany still hadn’t shown up and it had everyone at the college talking about her and Tom. About their marriage. Something others had no business discussing.

She began filing her nails, although she had filed them too short just the day before. The faint music of wind chimes sounded out back, the metal rods tapping against each other in the stifling darkness. She glanced out the window behind the television, at the night outside.

Tom had insisted that they not cover the window that extended from the floor to the twenty-foot ceiling, that there was no need to since it backed into the privacy of the woods. But being in the living room at night with the window uncovered made her feel uneasy, exposed, especially now with the girl missing and a potential murderer on the loose.

“She’s not going to get her way again, is she?” Tommy asked, twisting around to look at his mother.

“We’ll watch the one nobody has seen,” Tom Senior said. “Put it in, Tommy.”

With a huff, Tommy snatched the blue DVD case from the coffee table.

“Ha-ha,” Kelsey gloated under her breath.

“Kelsey, stop!” Rachel scolded, her tone harsher than she’d intended. “Your father made a decision. Now, live with it.”

“Who’s shouting now?” Kelsey said, sarcastically.

Tom glared at her. “Kelsey, don't talk to your mother that way.”

“Oh, please,” Kelsey replied.

Rachel bit her tongue. It was family night. She’d let this one go and choose her battles wisely. Besides, it felt nice to have Tom return early from San Francisco. Maybe that meant something?

They watched the previews in silence. Between the previews and the feature was a commercial of models selling makeup. One of the young models reminded her of Tiffany. She had reddish hair and bright, young eyes. She thought about her own eyes and how tired-looking they’d become. When had that happened?

The model had a thin, lithe body like Tiffany’s, and her skin boasted a youthful glow. Another model was a little older and wearing a bikini. Was it body makeup or did these women not have an ounce of cellulite? At the end of the commercial, three models smiled into the camera, their teeth like piranha. They looked so desirable, even to her.

She remembered when she was desired. In those early days, Tom had considered her quite the prize. Stopping by her dormitory in the mornings with steaming coffee and warm glazed donuts, then walking her to class, Tom was always eager to be by her side. He’d leave the sweetest love notes in her box at the post office and listen to her talk about her dreams for hours on end, always seeming curious for more. He’d loved her so deeply and honestly, he’d given her no reason to doubt that he’d always be there for her. But that was a long time ago. A lot had changed.

As they sat staring at the television, Kelsey suddenly got up. “I have homework to do.”

“On a Saturday night?” Rachel asked, tossing the fingernail file on the end table.

“Sure you do,” Tommy said, sarcastically.

“I do!” Kelsey snarled, glaring down at her little brother.

“Kelsey, sit down,” Rachel said. “We’re doing something as a family right now. If you have homework, you can do it tomorrow.”

“Why’d you argue about the damn movie if you were going to pull this, douche bag?” Tommy hissed.

“Shut the hell up!” Kelsey barked. She turned to Rachel. “I hate Saturdays! Family Night is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of! Daddy,” she whined. “I just want to go and do my homework. I don’t want to sit here for two hours worrying over it.”

Tom cradled his forehead with his left hand as though he had a terrible headache. When he spoke, he sounded resigned. “Go ahead. Go do your homework.”

Kelsey quickly left the room.

Rachel felt her cheeks flush. She’d been trying to keep it all together, make non-negotiable the fact that the family needed to spend a few quality hours together one night a week. And Tom had told Kelsey she could leave? “Tom!” she spat. “Why did—”

“She said she has homework,” Tom said firmly.

But Rachel knew better. She knew Kelsey had things on her mind, but that homework wasn’t one of them. “But we agreed that Saturdays—”

“
You
agreed,” he retorted. “I wish you’d just relax, Rachel. Let the kid do her homework. Let us all breathe a little.”

Rachel suddenly felt exhausted. Feeling her son’s eyes on her and her husband’s blaring indifference, she rose and walked out of the room.

HE MOVED THROUGH the dank woods listening carefully to any sounds that weren’t his own. Restless, he pushed a branch out of his way. He released it a second too soon and it recoiled. Cool rainwater splattered in his face. He stopped and dried his eyes with an elbow.

He needed to clear his mind, to wade through the gloom inside his head. Allie was gone for now. She’d left in another one of her huffs. But not before hurling the usual insults.

He reached up and snapped the branch, sending it flying until it hit more brush and fell against wet leaves. He thought about Allie pressing her body against his the night before. Lying where the girl had lain. If she’d only known.

Her visit had been obscene and, for a vile millisecond, disturbingly inviting. Her warm softness, her skin like satin. It had been pitch black and he couldn’t see a thing, but he could tell she was wearing the black nightie. . . the trashy one. He was sure of it.

His body had been rigid as he lay on his side, his eyes open, staring ahead, unseeing. Her steamy breath, laced with cinnamon, tickled his neck before he pushed her away, sending her crashing to the floor.

A moment later loud curses, spiked with tears, rang from the darkness. Her fists stung his shoulders as she struck him. Then she left the room, the door banging shut behind her. Afterward, all became silent except for the crickets outside his window and Ian’s faint whimpers.

Now, he stepped out from the woods and peered at the Anderson’s home. As always, he had a clear view of the family’s living room at the back of the house. Two people were in the room. The father sitting on the recliner, and the young son on the floor, his body stretched in front of the blue haze of the television set, his face upturned and pale in the jumping lights of whatever television show they were watching.

He crab-walked past the swing set whose two swings he had spent hundreds of hours in. Tonight he needed to be closer to the home.

Ten feet away from the big windows, he lowered himself onto his stomach and watched. The father was laughing. So was the boy. Then their faces went blank and they continued to watch.

Rachel was nowhere in sight. Rachel, the one who comforted him with her warm smile and silent laughter. He could tell that she loved her family. She, the mother bird of the nest. The nurturer.

But she seemed stressed lately. So distant from the others. Such a beautiful woman to be so stressed. It tore at his insides. Once, he’d seen her daughter yelling at her. She’d been leaning forward on her tiptoes, shouting into the woman’s face. When his angel turned away, her face was so tight. So upset. It took everything he had not to force his fist through the window, grab the girl by the throat and tell her that what she had was a rare gift. That her mother was an angel.

If only,
his
angel.

He daydreamed of being inside the house. Not while she was home. . . not yet. . . but when it was empty. What would he see? How did they live up close? He longed to touch the things she touched. She was a special, special woman. One of very few.

A light shone from the bedroom he knew to be the daughter’s. He rose and approached it. Though the blinds were down, he knew she was in there. He could hear her haughty voice and snippets of a one-sided conversation. She was on the phone. And she sounded angry.

He slowly circled the home. At the west end of the house, light shone through a small rectangular window. The master bath. He could see the shadow of a potted plant on the windowsill. Sunflowers. Once, he’d seen her in the small greenhouse tending to the plants, her hands moving slowly, deliberately, with more care than he’d seen in his life. Her hands were nothing like his mother's calloused hands. Demanding, greedy hands. He shook her from his head.

Slinking forward, he peered into the window. Through the blinds, he could see someone was moving inside. Water was running. A bath being drawn.

Smiling, he turned away. He pressed his back against the house and stood still. He listened as she walked back and forth. Through sheer process of elimination, he knew it was her. He stood there, close to the woman. Mere feet away.

At that moment, he made his decision. He
would
go inside. And soon.

For now, though, he closed his eyes and relaxed.

THE AFTERNOON SKY was gloomy with the threat of a storm. Erica sat in a red plastic booth, scribbling in her notebook, which was now half filled with notes. Everything was finally coming together. Her epiphany had made a world of difference with her writing and left her so elated, she almost felt like smiling. But she didn’t.

The diner was fairly empty. One customer lingering at a table, and her, Chris, Kim, and Austin. The three workers hovered at the counter, talking. Off and on, she picked up fragments of their conversation, but only when it was something interesting. For the most part, it wasn’t.

Lightning shot across the sky, followed by ripples of deafening thunder. She peered out the window, watching the sugarcane next to the diner bend against the screaming wind. Fliers of Tiffany trembled against the windows where they’d been posted, struggling to win the battle against the hostile and equally tenacious wind.

Erica flipped to the back of her notebook to a clipping from the
New York Times
Bestsellers list. She ran her finger over a name of a female mystery novelist. One who could possibly be her mother—using an alias. She’d scoured the Internet for a photo of the woman but couldn’t find one. The woman’s name had just popped up one day out of the blue and Erica had rushed out to get a copy of her book.

There was something about the way the author wrote. The words she chose. They just seemed too familiar to her. They screamed of her mother. Erica had found articles written about the woman and had found out she was single and from the South, but none of the articles said exactly where. Having the clipping so close quieted a fear that she refused to acknowledge.

She closed her notebook and sighed. Her thoughts went to Haley, the only person her age she’d ever liked. Many times over the years she’d imagined Haley with a halo suspended above her head. She was just so pure. So kind hearted. And not to just a few people. To
everyone
. It was as though her mission in life was to make others feel good.

She remembered the girl’s touch and how easily she had invited her into her house. It was almost as though the girl considered her a
friend
.

But why her? They were so different. Where Haley was always polite and sweet and, at least before her father’s accident, seemed to glow with enthusiasm, Erica imagined herself as being surrounded by a black cloud of desperation.

Besides, friendship was something Erica had never shared with anyone besides her mother. She wasn’t sure she knew
how
to be a friend to anyone besides her.

In the months since Haley’s father had died, Erica watched Haley change. The once bright halo seemed to have dimmed, lost some of its shape. The girl’s eyes had slowly deadened and lost all of its enthusiasm. She’d become almost mute. At least in public.

Erica would study her as she sat in the cemetery, mumbling to her father. Sometimes Haley would stand in ant piles on the perimeter of the cemetery until little black specks covered her legs. Sometimes she’d cry. It’s what had drawn Erica to the girl. She identified with her loss. Her need to mask the pain. Her secret quirks.

But the two were still so, so different.

Business was slow, too slow. Erica was itching to leave early with the measly ten dollars in tips she’d earned in the four hours she’d been there.

“This investigation of theirs is goin’ pretty shitty if you ask me,” Chris was saying, dipping a biscuit into a bowl of
etouffe
. “The detective’s still pokin’ around, but I say if they haven’t found anything by now, they’re not goin’ to find nothin’. Seems he was a better jock than a detective.”

“I still say the girl just ran off,” Kim piped in, crossing her beefy arms. “But havin’ said that, I spoke with Myrna Adams from the college the other day and she has some interestin’ suspicions about Tom Anderson. Said that some of the staff up at the college has been more than happy to give that detective an ear load.”

Erica turned her attention back to the window. Finally successful in its endeavor, the wind ripped one of the fliers from the window and sent it soaring across Main Street.

Kim waddled to the window, although she really wasn’t fat enough to waddle. Erica figured she was just practicing because it would only be a matter of time. Kim was a bulky girl with a square torso and sausage-like appendages. Astoundingly unrefined, even by Grand Trespass standards, both her clothes and her person were always stained with something. Usually it was ketchup or some type of dark sauce.

Gazing out at the bad weather outside, Kim clicked her tongue, then ran her chunky fingers through her feathered bangs and the rest of her shabby mullet.

“Just because a man cheats on his wife don’t mean he’s a killer,” Austin said from the counter, pouring a cup of coffee.

Kim grunted and walked back to the group. “Maybe not, but it does talk to his character. And that’s really all you have to judge a man on. Right, Chris?”

Chris nodded, looking out into the middle distance.

Character? What did Kim know about character? Erica wondered, doubting she knew much at all, if anything. What she
did
know about was spreading hurtful gossip and beating up girls younger than her. Erica had intimate knowledge as proof. Hell, Kim would probably have an affair, too. . . if anyone would have her.

“That reminds me,” Kim continued, plopping back down in her seat. “I was talking to my sister, Agnes, in Alabama last night. She asked if Tiffany was the smiling kind. Said there was someone hanging ‘round a supermarket years back.”

“I believe it was an Albertson’s or Winn Dixie. You know, there’s an Albertson’s in Truro. Anyhoo, Agnes told me he killed a bunch of girls in the ‘80s and they’ve never found the rat bastard.

“It was disturbing what he’d do. He’d wait right outside the doors in front and watch for women to walk out. When they did, he’d smile at them. And he’d wait for the first woman to smile back. That’s how he chose his victims. He did it for nearly a year, and Agnes said that he would even write letters to the local paper out there and tell them what he was doing. Even so, they never caught the monster. He just quit killin’. Still runnin’ loose somewhere. Wouldn’t it be somethin’ if he’s out here now?”

Erica re-opened her notebook and pretended to write, not wanting to seem interested in the conversation.
Smiling at strangers
, she mused, shifting in her plastic seat. She could see that happening.

She, herself, barely smiled. And she didn’t want to be noticed. Not yet. Not until she had something brilliant to be noticed for.

“Julia Perron, poor soul, I heard she’s been to see a
juju
woman,” Kim said, sighing. “She’s become desperate to find her daughter. If anything did happen to the girl, there ain’t nothin’ a witch doctor can do at this late hour, except maybe tell her where the body’s decomposing.” She glanced over at Erica. “Yore mama was a
juju
woman, ain’t that right, Erica?”

Erica’s face burned as she looked down at the blank page in front of her. The topic of her mother was off limits.

“Not like there’s anything wrong with that,” Kim said. “I just heard that yore mama used to practice witchcraft from time to time. Tell me, she ever heal anyone?”

Thunder rumbled in the distance. It was only two o’clock, but the sky was growing as hazy as late evening.

“Probably not,” Kim announced tersely, when Erica didn’t answer her. She refocused her attention on Chris and Austin. “Anyway, this morning I told both my little ones to never
ever
smile at strangers. You should only be friendly with folks you know because there are all sorts of kooks out there. New Orleans has more than its share, and it ain’t that far from here if you stop and think about it.”

Erica stuffed the notebook into her backpack and rose. “It’s awfully slow today, Chris. Mind if I leave early?”

“Sure, honey. I think we’re all set,” he said, one eye on her, the lazy one on the approaching storm. “Another one of them slow afternoons, I’m ‘fraid. Not that the weather’s helping none.”

The cowbells clanked and Detective Guitreaux walked in wearing a pair of chinos, a blue t-shirt, and a ball cap. He nodded at the crowd.

“Storm’s a’brewin’,” he announced, pulling off his cap and running his fingers through his thick hair.

Chris set a fresh cup of coffee in front of him and pointed to the darkish sky and the rain that was now bursting from it. “Reckon the storm’s already here.”

Chris pressed his own coffee cup to his lips and took a sip. Setting the cup down, he regarded Guitreaux who was silently re-positioning the cap on his head. “What can we do you for today, Detective?”

“Would like to have a few words, if you don’t mind. Let’s step out back.”

Chris blinked. “Absolutely. Anything you need.”

Erica, closely watching the entire exchange, could swear his face went pale.