Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (23 page)

The two stood at the window of Mrs. Cappelli's slightly disarrayed and comfortably lived-in bedroom and looked from the second-story window at the youth in the backyard of the house next door.

“A strange one,” Isadora agreed.

He was lounging on a plastic-webbing chaise, indolent, loose, relaxed, calmly pumping a pellet rifle. In scruffy jeans and T-shirt, he was long, tanned, and lean, slightly bony. Even in repose he was a suggestion of quick, whip-like agility and power. His face was cleanly cut, even attractive; his forehead, ears, and neck feathered with very dark hair. Idly, his gaze was roving the bushes and trees, the pines at the corners of the yard, the avocado tree, the two tall, unkempt palmettos.

He lifted the gun with a casual motion and squeezed the trigger. A bird toppled from the topmost reaches of the taller pine tree, the small body bouncing from limb to limb, showering a few needles, hanging briefly on a lower limb before it struck and was swallowed by the uncut grass along the rear of the yard.

The youth showed no sign of interest, once again pumping the gun and stirring only his eyes in a renewed search of the trees.

Mrs. Cappelli's thin figure flinched, and her eyes were held by the spot where the bird had fallen.

Isadora touched her arm. “At least it wasn't a cardinal, Maria.”

“Thank you, Isadora. From this distance the details weren't clear. My eyes just aren't what they used to be.”

Isadora glanced at the face that had once been the distillation of all beauty in Old Sicily. “I think we could use some tea, Maria.”

Mrs. Cappelli seemed unaware when Isadora faded from her side. She remained at the window, as hushed as the hot Florida stillness outside, looking carefully at the young man on the chaise.

Mrs. Cappelli had been delighted when the house next door was rented at last. It had stood vacant for months, a casualty of Florida overbuild. Dated by its Spanish styling, it was nevertheless a sound and comfortable house in a substantial and quiet older neighborhood where urban decay had never gained the slightest foothold.

Mrs. Cappelli had expected a family. Instead there were only the mother and son arriving in a noisy old car in the wake of a van that had disgorged flimsy, worn, time-payment furniture. Mrs. Ruth Morrow and Greg. A lot of house for two people, but Mrs. Cappelli supposed, correctly, that the age of the house and its long vacancy had finally caused the desperate owner to offer it as a cut-rate bargain on the sagging rental market.

After a settling-in day or two, Mrs. Cappelli saw Mrs. Morrow pruning the dying poinsettia near the front corner of the house and went over to say hello.

It was a sultry afternoon and Mrs. Morrow looked wan and tired, with hardly enough remaining strength to snap the shears. Mrs. Cappelli wondered why Greg wasn't handling the pruning tool. He was at home. Who could doubt it? He was in there torturing a high-amplification guitar with amateurish violence. His discordant efforts were audible a block away.

“I'm Maria Cappelli,” Mrs. Cappelli said pleasantly, “It's very nice to have new neighbors.”

Mrs. Morrow accepted the greeting with hesitant and standoffish self-consciousness. Her glance slipped toward the house, a silent wish that her son would turn down his guitar. She was a thin, almost frail woman. She needs, Mrs. Cappelli thought, mounds of pasta and huge bowls of steaming, mouth-watering
stufato
.

Mrs. Morrow remembered her manners with a tired smile. “Ruth Morrow,” she said. She glanced about the yard. “So much to do here. Inside, the place was all dust and cobwebs.” Her gaze moved to Mrs. Cappelli's comfortable abode of stucco and red tile. “You have a lovely place.”

“My husband built it years before his death. We used to come here for winter vacations. To me, it was home, rather than New York. I love Florida, even the heat of the summers. My son was born in the house, right up there in that corner bedroom.” Mrs. Cappelli laughed. “Shortest labor on record. Such a bambino! When he decided to make his entrance, he wouldn't even take time for a ride to the hospital.”

Mrs. Cappelli's unconscious delight in her son brought Ruth Morrow's fatigued and hollow eyes to Mrs. Cappelli's face. Mrs. Cappelli was caught, held, and slightly embarrassed. Such aching eyes! So many regrets, frustrations, and bewilderments harbored in their depths … They were too large and dark for the thin, heavily made-up face that at one time must have been quite pretty.

“My son is named Greg,” Mrs. Morrow murmured.

“Mine is named John. He's much older than your son. He has a wife and five children—such scamps!—and he comes to see me now and then when he can take the time. He is a contractor up north, always on the go.”

“He must be a fine man.”

Mrs. Cappelli was urged to say something comforting to the wearied mother before her. “Oh, John sowed an oat. I guess they all do before they settle down. Nowadays John is always after me to sell the old antique, as he calls the house. Come and live with him, he nags. I tell him to peddle his own papers. This is not the old country where three or four generations must brawl under one small roof.”

Mrs. Morrow nodded. “It's been real nice of you to say hello, Mrs. Cappelli. I do have to run now. I work, you see. At the Serena Lounge on the beach, from six in the evening until two o'clock each morning. I always have a good bit to do to get ready for work.”

“The Serena is an excellent place. John took Isadora and me there the last time he was down.”

Ruth Morrow punched the tip of the pruning shears at a small brown twig. “Being a cocktail waitress isn't the height of my ambition, but without professional training, it pays more money than I'd ever hoped to make. And God knows there is never quite enough money.”

It might ease the situation, Mrs. Cappelli mused, if her boy dirtied his hands with some honest toil. She said, “The honor of a job is in its execution, and I'm certain you're the best of cocktail waitresses.”

The sincerity of Mrs. Cappelli's tone brought the first touch of animation to the tired face with its layered icing of makeup and framing of short, dark brown hair. Before Mrs. Morrow could respond, the front door of the house slammed, and Greg was standing in the shadow of the small portico. Both women looked toward him.

“Greg,” Mrs. Morrow called, “this is Mrs. Cappelli, our nextdoor neighbor.”

“Hi,” he said, bored. He gave Mrs. Cappelli a single glance of dismissal, dropped to the walk with a single smooth stride and headed around the house.

“Greg,” Ruth Morrow called, “where are you going?”

“Out,” he said, without looking back.

“When will you be home?”

“When I'm damned good and ready!” He rounded the corner of the house and was out of sight.

Mrs. Morrow's face came creeping in Mrs. Cappelli's direction, but her eyes sidled away. “It's just his way of talking, Mrs. Cappelli.”

Mrs. Cappelli nodded, but she didn't understand. How could Mrs. Morrow accept it? Parental respect was normal in a child, be he six or sixty.

A car engine was stabbed to roaring life and Greg raced down the driveway. He cornered the car into the street with tires screaming.

“I really have to go now, Mrs. Cappelli.”

“It was a privilege to meet you,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

“Well?” Isadora asked as soon as Mrs. Cappelli stepped into the house.

“She is a poor woman in the worst of all states,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “a mother with a cruel and unloving son.”

Isadora crossed herself.

“He is killing his mother,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

Greg was an immediate neighborhood blight, a disease, an invasion. The Ransoms' playful puppy bounded into the Morrow yard, and Greg broke its leg with a kick, claiming that the flop-eared trusting mutt was charging him. He hunted chords on the thunderous guitar at one o'clock in the morning, if the mood suited him. Many evenings he was out, usually returning about three
A.M.
with screaming tires and unmuffled engine. Frequently he filled the Morrow house with hordes of hippies for beer and rock parties.

Neighbors grumbled and swapped irate opinions of Greg among themselves over backyard fences and coffee klatches. Lack of leadership was a stultifying, inertial force, and nothing was done about Greg until about two, one morning, when the biggest blast yet hit the peak of its frenzy in the Morrow house.

Mr. Sigmon (the white colonial across the street) decided he just couldn't stand it any longer. He threw back the cover, sat up in bed, turned on the bedside lamp, and dialed Information on his extension phone. Yes, Information informed, a phone had been installed at the Morrow address. Mr. Sigmon got the number, hesitated for a single minute, then dialed it.

The Morrow phone rang six or seven times before anyone noticed. Then a girl answered, giggling drunkenly. “If this isn't an obscene call, forget it.”

“Let me speak to Greg,” Mr. Sigmon said, the phone feeling sweaty in his hand.

The girl screeched for Greg, and he was on.

“Have a heart,” Mr. Sigmon pleaded. “Can't you tone things down just a little?”

“Who's this?” Greg asked.

“I … uh … Mr. Sigmon, across the street.”

“How'd you like a fat lip, Mr. Sigmon-across-the-street?”

“Now look, Greg …” Mr. Sigmon gathered his courage. “All I'm asking is that you be reasonable.”

“Go cram it!”

A burst of anger burned the edges from Mr. Sigmon's timidity. “Now look here, you young pup, you quiet down over there or I'll call the police.”

For a moment there was only the noise of the party on the line, the wild laughter, the shouted talk, the overpowering background of hard-rock rhythm. Then Greg said, “Well, OK, pops. You don't have to get so sore about it. We're just having some fun.”

The party cooled and Mr. Sigmon stretched beside his wideawake wife with a feeling of being an inch taller for having put a tether on Greg.

Two days later Mrs. Sigmon got out of her station wagon with a bag of groceries, crossed to the front stoop, and dropped the groceries with a thud and clatter. She put her knuckles to her mouth and screamed. Against the front door lay her cat, stiff and lifeless, its head twisted so that its muzzle pointed upward away from the shoulders.

That night Greg hosted another party, the loudest one yet.

To Mrs. Cappelli it was as if a dark presence had come among them. It wasn't the same warmly quiet old street. It was like a sinister urban street where the aura urged the hapless pedestrian to hurry along after dark with ears keened for the slightest sound.

“Perhaps the Morrows will move on,” Mrs. Cappelli said at breakfast.

“Yes,” Isadora agreed. “They are gypsies. But when? That's the question. Next month? A year from now? Before the youth does something even more dreadful?”

“That poor mother.” Mrs. Cappelli flipped an egg in the pan. “If she moved around the world, she would not have room for her problem.”

Later in the day Mrs. Cappelli carried her afternoon tea up to her bedroom. She put the steaming cup on a small table and crossed to the side window. Outside, on a level with the sill, was a small wooden ledge. Two sparrows were hopping about on it, pecking bits of food from cracks.

“Hello there,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “you're early for dinner. You must be hungry, going for those leftovers.”

She turned to the bureau and picked up a canister. The sparrows fluttered away as she opened the canister and reached out to spread a feast of seeds and crumbs on the ledge feeder.

The sparrows had returned by the time Mrs. Cappelli fetched her tea and settled in the wooden rocking chair near the window. Other birds arrived, more sparrows, a robin, a thrush, a tiny wren. They were a delight of movement, color; they were so naturally happy, so easy to please.

The daily bird feeding and watching was silly, perhaps—the whim of an old woman—but the birds rewarded Mrs. Cappelli with a quiet pleasure in a sometimes endless day. Therefore, she inquired of herself, isn't it a most important thing?

She wondered if the Prince would come; and then he did. Gorgeous. Regal. The most beautiful cardinal since Audubon. He had been a daily visitor a long time now. He always came to rest on the edge of the feeder, proud head lifted and tilted as he looked in at Mrs. Cappelli.

She leaned forward slightly. “Hello there,” she said softly. “Is the food up to your kingly taste today?”

She couldn't quite delight in the words or in the sight of Prince and his friends. No, not anymore. She sat back, fingers curled on the arms of the chair. Today, more than yesterday or the day before, she was aware of depleted joy. She'd tried not to admit the awareness, but now, in the ritual of the birds, was a hint of anxiety, even fear in her heart. She couldn't entirely free her mind of the memory of the youth next door with his pellet gun. Pump, pump, pump … His strong hand working the lever while his eyes roamed the trees for an innocent, unsuspecting, and helpless target, and a feathered body twisting and turning as it plunged headlong to the ground.

Perhaps, Mrs. Cappelli thought, she should stop feeding the birds while the air gun is over there threatening them …

As the thought crossed her mind, she saw a sudden puff of red feathers on the cardinal's breast. The bird was gone. That quickly. That completely. The other birds scattered in sudden flight.

Mrs. Cappelli sat with a hot dryness blinding her eyes, then she snapped from the chair and hurried down through the house. With late sun searing through the cold film on her flesh, she searched along the driveway and through the shrubbery growing against the house. The cardinal's body was not to be seen, and she was sure that Greg had run over and picked up the evidence before she'd got out of the house.

She thought of him watching the ledge, seeing her birds, hearing the sound of her, perhaps, drifting from her open window as she'd chatted at the cardinal. A dark instinct had risen in him, a hunger, and his devious mind with its unknown depths had schemed. He'd waited, like a beast savoring the anticipation of the kill. Then he'd felt the thrill of pulling the trigger at last and seeing the cardinal fall.