Mixed Messages (A Malone Mystery) (3 page)

She decided to check the mail
. As she walked through the living room, she heard
the loud clanking sound of Olivia Berger’s electric wheelchair lift. Please don’t let that wake David, she
silently prayed. She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, expecting to see her elderly
landlady sitting in her wheelchair, but the hallway was empty.

Oh well, Liv must have gone back upstairs already, she thought. She picked up her stack of mail from the table that stood directly under the mail slot in the wall and leafed through the usual bills and advertisements. “Not more of these,” she muttered, glancing at the two oversized postcards with colored photos of smiling candidates attempting to sway voters their way in the upcoming election.

She smiled when she saw the postcard showing a collage of some of the historic homes in Beaufort, South Carolina. She flipped it over to read the message from her sister.
“Ann, I won’t stop trying to tempt you until, one of these days, you and the kids come down to visit me. Love, Marnie.”

Then she saw it: a white envelope with her name and address typed on it. As usual, it had no stamp and no return address. She opened the flap of the envelope and pulled out the sheet of white paper. She sighed. Another love poem from Lawrence, she thought. She quickly unfolded the paper and read the short poem.

“I see in your face

such beauty, such grace.

My heart wants you so.

I need you to know.”

She’d known for some time that Olivia’s son, Lawrence, who lived in the upstairs apartment with his mother, was infatuated with her and, a few months after they’d moved into the house, she’d started getting the poems. The envelopes were never sealed and both the envelopes and the poems inside were typed on plain white paper.

She went back into her apartment and set the mail, with the exception of Lawrence’s poem, on the kitchen counter. She heard the humming sound of David’s electric shaver coming from the bathroom. She hurried into the bedroom, opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and stashed the poem, with the other poems and notes she’d saved, under a pile of nightgowns she never wore. She knew that she should probably throw the notes away but somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. David would have a fit if he ever saw these, she thought.

The whirring stopped and she heard the shower running, which meant that David would be out soon. She went into the kitchen and began to dry and put away the dishes. A few minutes later, David stomped into the kitchen.

“Do me a favor. Tell the old lady upstairs to have that damn lift fixed. I’m sick and tired of listening to it!” He grabbed his keys off the table and stormed out the door.

Ann rushed to the kitchen door and locked the deadbolt, remembering the scare she’d had. She sat down at the kitchen table. David
was
so insistent that she get a job. Yes, they definitely had money problems but he wasted so much money.

There was the drinking and the gambling. He didn’t think she knew about the gambling but she’d found several tickets to the gambling boat in Indiana in the pocket of one of his sports coats and, just the other day, when she was putting away his laundry, she’d discovered a stack of instant lottery tickets buried in his dresser under his socks. He really doesn’t attempt to hide it, she thought. If he didn’t want me to know, he would’ve gotten rid of them. She felt her anger fade. Maybe it’s a cry for help. If I did get a job, it might take some of the pressure off of him and he wouldn’t need to drink so much or gamble. Maybe I should try to get the job at the church.

She went over to the counter and picked up the postcard from her sister that she’d left there earlier and stuck it under a magnet on the refrigerator with the others she’d accumulated.

Oh, I wish I could talk to Marnie, she thought, suddenly missing her sister. She’s always been there for me. I’ve got a few minutes and I really need to hear the sound of her voice, she thought, dialing her sister’s number. I’ll tell her about the job opening at the church but I don’t expect her to make the decision for me.
S
he’s always been there for me whenever I’ve had a problem but I’m thirty-two years old; it’s about time I started figuring things out for myself instead of depending on my big sister to give me the answers. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to apply for the job and, if Father Andrew offers it to me, I’m going to take it.

The phone rang four times and Marnie’s voice came on the line, “Sorry I’m not available
to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number and I’ll return your call as soon
as possible.”

“Marn, it’s me. I
really
need to talk to you. Please call me as soon as you can.”

Ann sighed as she hung up the phone.

All of a sudden, she remembered her appointment with Ms. Williams. Well, that’s it then, she decided. I’ll call Father Andrew when I get home this afternoon. I can’t wait to tell David. With any luck, I’ll get the job and things will start to change for the better around here.

She washed her face, combed her hair and ran through the apartment and out the front door, realizing as she rushed out that she’d forgotten to tell David about her appointment with Davey’s teacher. Oh well, she decided, I’ll just have to tell him later. She didn’t know, as she left the apartment, that someone was watching her.

Chapter
5

FROM HIS ATTIC ROOM IN THE OLD HOUSE
,
Lawrence Berger
pee
p
ed through a gap in the curtains
but h
e had to turn
his head
; t
he sunlight was too bright for his sensitive eyes
.
He
moved
away from the window and sat down at the card table to work on his coin collection
.
He picked up a magnifying glass and began arranging his newest acquisitions
.

Collecting coins was Lawrence’s passion
.
His grandfather had given him the first coin in his collection
.
It was a Columbian half dollar commemorating the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair
.
It was only worth about fifteen dollars now and, compared to some of his other coins, that was a “drop in the bucket” as his mother was fond of saying
.
But, to this day, it was
his
most treasured coin
.
Grandfather wasn’t one to show emotion, he remembered, but, when he gave that coin to me, I think
it
was his way of letting me know that he loved me
.

He
looked around him
.
He loved his room in the attic
.
He had used old room
divider
screens to section off his room from the rest of the attic, which was mostly used for storage.

Sometimes, when he was bored, he would venture into the nooks and crannies of
that part
of the
attic and go through one of the trunks
that
was filled with old clothes, photo albums and other mementos of days long gone by
.
Through the years, he’d found a few items that he’d taken out and used
.
One of his better finds was an old manual typewriter, which, even though he now had a computer
and printer
, he
preferred to use occasionally.

However,
he spent most of his time in his room
in the attic
.
Though sparsely furnished with only h
is new computer desk and swivel chair, a card table, a folding chair and a dilapidated
antique
sofa or
“
fainting couch
,
”
as his mother called it
,
he had decorated his space with his own personal touches and belongings. He’d
lined the walls with brightly colored travel posters from all over the world and he had a
combination
AM/FM radio
and
CD player
, his travel and coin collecting magazines and, of course, his
girlie
magazines.
His mother didn’t know about those. He knew
that
she wouldn’t approve so, rather than
ordering them by mail and
hav
ing
them delivered to the house, he went out to buy them.

As a gift to him on his twenty-first birthday
all those years ago
, his mother had
brought in a carpenter to finish his attic room. Where once there were bare rafters, he now had walls
painted
a
vibrant
shade of blue
green, like the
waters of the Caribbean
, an insulated plasterboard ceiling and real hardwood floors. An electrician had extended
the heat and air conditioning to the third floor of the house and
installed
more electrical outlets
.

The remodeled room
was the best birthday present
h
e had
ever gotten because the attic was the one place where he could have complete privacy to work on his hobby or just to daydream
.
There was no one there to ask anything of him or to look over his shoulder and monitor everything he did
.
He didn’t have to answer to his mother when he was there although he always had his cell phone with him in case she needed him
.
And, in his room, he didn’t have to deal with other people
.
People could be so cruel.

He
closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Scenes from his childhood played
themselves out in his mind so often
.
Lately, he couldn’t seem to escape them.

The setting was always the same
:
the playground of his elementary school
.
It was recess and h
e sat in the same place every day,
at the edge of the woods
in the shade of a tall oak tree with roots so old and gnarled that they had pushed through the soil and spread out like bony fingers around the tree
.
Lawrence sat there watching the other kids play dodge ball and
foursquare
.

“Casper!” one of the ten-year-old boys called to him and immediately the others would
join in
the familiar chant
.
“Casper, the friendly ghost
.
Casper, the friendly ghost.”

He
cringed
.
He hated that name and all the other things they called him and said about him
.
“Scary Larry
!
Scary Larry!” they would taunt
.
He hated the way all the kids treated him
.
They made fun of him constantly and they wanted to know why he didn’t have a father
.
Mrs. Nelson, their teacher, had caught Evan, writing “Bastard” on the cover of one of Lawrence’s notebooks
.
Evan had gotten into a lot of trouble for that one
.

However
, mostly, their cruelty went unnoticed and unpunished
.
They laughed at his thick glasses and called him an old man because of his white hair
.
He wanted to be a part of the group so badly but he couldn’t
.
He couldn’t play out in the sun for long because of his sensitive skin and eyes
.
He was different
.
He was an albino
.
An albino bastard.

But then, in his daydream, he remembered Angie
.
She was such a frail, tiny little girl with hair so light blonde that it was almost white and pale, creamy skin
.
She was the most beautiful girl in the world to
him
and she was his only friend
.
Whenever the other kids began to taunt him, Angie always came to his rescue.

“Don’t pay any attention to them, Lawrence,” she would say. “They’re just mean, nasty,
stupid bullies.” Then she would sit beside him in the shade of the old tree and they would talk.
She had the sweetest smile and she always managed to take his mind off of the hurt and
humiliation he felt.

He
sat up in his chair
.
Thoughts of Angie always made him feel better
.
He looked
up at
his collection of travel posters and imagined he and Angie on a beach, smiling and holding hands
.
He liked to think of her that way
:
happy
.
Not how she’d looked the last time he’d seen her
:
tears streaming down her face, her lovely features contorted with pain, her eyes begging and pleading, saying what her lips couldn’t
.
I won’t think about that now, he promised himself
.
I’ll think about the good times.