Big Guns Out of Uniform

  "Oh, no, I don't do it," said Brian, his voice leaping an octave. "I was, like, you know, just wondering if my uncle was lying. That's all."

  "I see." Delia's patience slipped a notch. "Brian, has your uncle gone blind?"

  "Um...nope."

  "Then he's lying."

  "Oh."

  Through the glass wall, she watched Frank grin and jerk a finger across his throat. Time to wrap. Delia pushed her chair back and signaled her sound engineer to disconnect Brian. "And that's all the time we have today for Let's Talk About Sex," she purred into her microphone. "This is Dr. Delia Sydney inviting you to join us on Friday, when my special guest will be sex therapist Dr. Jeffrey Bozner, discussing his newest book, Healthy Sex, Healthy Marriage. Thanks for tuning in."

  Through the glass Delia watched her engineer punch a button and toss his headphones. The theme song for All Things Considered trumpeted in her ear. Delia yanked off her headset and shook the kinks out of her hair just as Frank came around the glass partition, making an obscene jerk-off gesture. "Jeez, what a bunch of losers!" His cultivated announcer's voice had vanished. "Where're those sexually frustrated housewives when I need a little thrill, Doc?"

  "Frank, you're pathetic." Delia stood and shoved her chair under the desk. "Where's Becky Jo?"

  Just then, Delia's assistant came streaking into the sound booth, her wild red hair flying out behind her. "Jeff Bozner's secretary just canceled," said Becky Jo breathlessly. "He's on his way to the hospital. Looks like those triplets are going to put in an early appearance."

  "Dang," said Delia.

  "And Dr. Despiza called this morning. The department chair says one of you has to take on another Deviance and Development class for spring semester." Becky Jo paused to laugh. "He says he tossed a coin, and you lost."

  Delia resorted to cussing. "Well, shit."

  "Yeah, well, keep shitting, honey, 'cause it gets worse."

  Delia groaned. "Like how?"

  Becky Jo snapped her gum. "Perkins just arrived from New York to see you. It's about your contract, and Delia darlin', he's got that tight, poker-assed look on his face again."

  Frank shoved his face between them. "Aw, my heart bleeds for you, Doc," he said, far too cheerfully. "Well, gotta jet, girls. I'm late for a scorching hot lunch date."

  "Where?" shot Becky Jo. "Down at the Fuzzy Beaver Club?"

  "Yeah, you're a laugh a minute, Becky Jo," said Frank, slipping out the door.

  "But what about my syndication?" wailed Delia, oblivious. "We're in eight of the top markets now. My God, today we had a caller from Kalamazoo!"

  Becky Jo pursed her lips. "Perkins doesn't give a rat's ass, Delia, I'm telling you. You won't get another nickel out of that cheapskate until your listener numbers firm up--and then only if you pitch a fit."

  "But how much longer will that take?"

  "You'll have to ask Perkins." Becky Jo laid a cool hand on her shoulder. "Sorry, hon."

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Delia closed her eyes and watched her new S80 sedan disappear into the dreamland whence it had come. Black. It was going to have been black. With a turbocharged engine, dynamic stability control, and seventeen-inch aluminum alloy wheels. A symbol of her thrilling new non-station-

  wagon lifestyle.

  Oh, hell, who was she kidding? Her new lifestyle was a fantasy. She barely had time for what was left of her old one. But she needed a new car badly. In the last three months she'd been stranded on the I-40 median about a dozen times, and her old station wagon was belching smoke like a Blackhawk with its tail shot off.

  Somehow the image of war steeled her. For once in her life, Delia wasn't giving up without a fight. Today she would fire her first salvo in what was doubtless destined to be a long and tiresome battle. But Perkins was up against a desperate woman.

  "Becky Jo," she said, jerking up her briefcase and heading for the door. "I am woman, hear me roar. And this woman has got to have a new car."

  Fleetingly, Becky Jo hesitated. "Well, alrighty, then!" she finally said. "You go, girl."

  OF COURSE, her meeting with the weasely Perkins was less than satisfactory. The show was too new, he'd whined. They were still building listeners and assessing programming options. More money was out of the question just now. Perhaps they'd talk further in a couple of months?

  Under her breath Delia said screw it, and left early. So it was not quite five in the afternoon when she coaxed her antique Volvo station wagon down Westwind Drive, the street that skirted the edge of exclusive Hidden Lakes Estates. Through the canopy of trees blazing red and gold, the Carolina sun dappled and shifted across her dashboard. In Durham the weather was still glorious, though the calendar said October. At the security gate she turned right, waved to the uniformed guard, and eased forward to let the scanner read the bar code on her back window. The gate buzzed up, the guard saluted, and Delia rolled through.

  The first half-mile of Greenway Circle snaked between a row of five-bedroom architectural monstrosities and the subdivision's golf course. Delia shoved the wagon into second and chugged along at the mandatory fifteen miles per hour. Here in exclusive Hidden Lakes, it was considered a gross act of ill breeding to speed near the greens, thereby endangering the lives of the club's well-heeled, well-insured members. A humiliating letter from the Hidden Lakes Homeowners' Association was reportedly the penalty, but Delia had always harbored the sneaking suspicion that the association probably just burnt a cross made of old three-woods on your lawn.

  Near the twelfth hole a trio of thin blondes lingered around a sand trap, their cute, clubby clothes simply screaming Talbot's. At the sound of Delia's old car rumbling past, the trio turned and gave her one of those long, old-Carolina-money looks, as if doubting she belonged. Or was she just imagining it? The women had already turned back to their sand trap.

  But she didn't belong, did she? Fate, in the maddening form of her ex-husband Neville, had dropped her into the middle of Hidden Lakes, then abandoned her, leaving her to feel like an alien whose spaceship had crashed into some foreign landscape. Delia lifted her chin and drove on, swearing for about the twelfth time that next month she would put the damned house up for sale. She would get the carpets cleaned, the windows washed, the closets emptied; all those chores she hadn't been able to find time for this past year were now essential to make the house look pristine and virginal for its next happy mortgage holder. And oh, what a mortgage it was. Neville might have been a brilliant plastic surgeon, but he'd apparently flunked Math 101.

  At the foot of her steep driveway, Delia noticed a Southern Power and Light truck parked a few yards up the street. Ignoring it, she jerked open the mailbox, fished out another pile of bills, and tried not to cry. Then she shoved the gearshift into first, tapped the gas, and prayed the station wagon wouldn't stall out. It didn't. She nosed gently over the hill, hit the garage remote, and...nothing. Delia cranked down her window, leaned out to listen, and punched it again. Nothing. Well, just an awful, impotent grinding noise. Damn. First the car, now the garage?

  Delia jerked the remote off her visor and started to hurl it into the rhododendron. Just then, deep in the backyard, something caught her eye. A big, bright orange Husqvarna chain saw. Her elderly neighbor, Bud Basham, stood on the rock outcropping above her flower beds, brandishing the thing like a lunatic. Two SP&L utility workers, one male, one female, stood in Delia's backyard, their hands on their hips, shouting up at Bud.

  The first worker held a ten-foot pole pruner, the second a clipboard. Behind them stood a broad-shouldered man in a blue blazer, his feet spread wide, his expression of exasperation plain even fifty yards away. He was waving his hands and telling them to calm down and shut the hell up. Bud, who'd never been the passive type, responded by raising his arms high above his head and revving the chain saw for all she was worth. The Husqvarna roared and popped like a nest of angry hornets.

  Curious, Delia cut the ignition. Unfortunately, the old Volvo chose that moment to backfire. The explosion ricocheted off the ga
rage door like a shotgun blast, and all hell erupted. The woman from SP&L screamed and hit the deck. As if acting on instinct, Mr. Blue Blazer hurled his body protectively over hers. Bud dropped the chain saw, sending it clattering and sputtering down the rocks. The second utility worker chucked his pruner and bolted for cover. Then realization hit, and everyone froze, as if some sitcom director had just yelled "Cut!"

  Wincing, Delia shoved open her car door with a rusty creak and crawled halfway out. By the time she opened her eyes, Mr. Blue Blazer was already up and helping the utility worker to her feet. "Sorry!" shouted Delia into the backyard. "Bad timing."

  The running utility worker stopped short, his face flushed with embarrassment. Delia slammed the car door and strode past him. Then she saw it. Her lush row of pine trees was now little more than a line of stumps. Heaps of green foliage lay along the back edge of her property, and the tang of evergreen was sharp in her nostrils. Horrified, Delia just kept walking, right past the indignant Mr. Blue Blazer, all the way to the property line.

  Delia pressed her hand to her chest. "My trees!" she cried. "Good Lord, what happened to my trees?"

  "I tried to tell 'em, Delia!" crowed Bud Basham, the wattle at his neck quivering with indignation as he clambered down after his saw. "Told 'em you'd be mad as hell! And I told 'em they weren't coming up here! I saw that young whippersnapper there take his pruner to my junipers--and by gum, I put a stop to it!"

  The female utility worker stepped forward. "Your trees were in the subdivision's greenspace, ma'am," she said, still dusting grass off her uniform. "SP&L has a right-of-way through there, and we're clearing trees back off the power lines. We have to, ma'am. It's a new company policy."

  Delia turned and looked at her incredulously. "Clearing back?" she cried. "But they...they've been murdered!"

  The woman shrugged, but her expression was not unsympathetic. "They've decided it's cheaper to cut them down, ma'am, than to trim them back every year," she said gently. "Folks threw such fits after losing power during the ice storm last year, SP&L has no choice. It's the new policy, just started this week."

  Delia had been lecturing on the West Coast during last winter's ice storm, but she still recalled hearing of the horror her neighbors had suffered. Heavy trees had torn down utility lines across the state, and in Durham, many had gone a week without electricity or heat. Candles, propane, and bottled water vanished from store shelves. SP&L had been overwhelmed. People had been outraged.

  "I see," murmured Delia, looking at Mr. Blue Blazer, whose expression had gone from exasperated to truly pissed. Boldly she thrust out her hand. "I don't think I've had the pleasure," she said sweetly. "Delia Sydney. Sorry about the car. I think it needs a tune-up."

  "Yeah, or euthanasia," he suggested in a slow, Deep South drawl. Lazily he lifted one hand to push a shock of dark hair off his face. It was then that Delia noticed the gun, a big chunk of lethal-looking black steel, poking out of a shoulder holster beneath his coat.

  "You planning to shoot it and put me out of my misery?" she asked, lifting one brow. "Or do you carry that just for looks?"

  His hard mouth softened, and he took her still-extended hand. "Nick Woodruff," he growled. "Sergeant Nick Woodruff. I live behind you." He jerked his head toward the butchered evergreens. "On Westwind."

  Westwind Drive was a pretty street that led past Hidden Lakes' grand entrance, but definitely wasn't part of it. For the first time, Delia actually looked at the property that backed onto hers. Nick Woodruff lived in a rambling, rustic house on a huge lot randomly dotted with oak, pine, and mounds of azaleas rather than the perfectly placed, artificially irrigated landscaping of Hidden Lakes.

  Now that the thick foliage was gone, Delia could make out the long, narrow lap pool that edged Woodruff's back porch, and the hot tub that sat adjacent. Closer to her property line stood some sort of workshop, part of it open on two sides, where Woodruff appeared to be in the process of gutting a small red sports car. A mountain of firewood sat nearby--the real stuff, too, not those prissy little plastic-wrapped packages from Kroger.

  "Look, Mr. Basham," drawled Woodruff, nudging Delia back into the present. "Eventually you're going to have to let these utility people do their job."

  Bud was now cradling the battered orange chain saw as if it were his favorite grandchild. "Not today, Nick," he said in an unrepentant tone.

  Woodruff shrugged, as if his big black gun were chafing him. "Well, it's almost quitting time," he said with authority. "You folks go on back to SP&L, and tell 'em somebody's gotta explain this policy. I'm real sorry for what happened today, but they can't just go sending you folks out with no word or warning."

  The utility workers shrugged, hefted up a couple of serious-looking power tools, and headed for their truck. The excitement over, Bud Basham trudged back up the hill with his chain saw. Delia shrugged, too. To hell with the dead pines. Like the house itself, the trees had been Neville's idea. He'd demanded the real estate developer install them, to shield them from the "riffraff" he'd been sure resided on Westwind Drive. Now the sight of Neville's evergreens hacked down to oozing little nubs was giving Delia a perverse sort of pleasure.

  Beside her, Nick Woodruff cleared his throat, and suddenly Delia realized she was alone with the riffraff in question, a big, surly-looking neighbor whom she'd never bothered to meet. "So, Dr. Delia," he drawled. "At last we meet."

  So he knew who she was. Delia felt a stab of irritation. People always seized on her radio persona, when in reality, she also worked as an assistant professor of psychology, collaborated on research projects at half the Ivy League, and had co-authored two textbooks. But then, Woodruff didn't look like the academic type.

  "Hey, I want to thank you for calming Bud down," she said, trying to sound gracious. "He has a bad temper but a good heart."

  Woodruff snorted. "He's a crazy old coot, is what he is," he answered. "But I keep an eye out for him."

  Delia tried to smile. "Did you begin as an innocent bystander?"

  Woodruff nodded. "Just coming home from the office. I could hear Basham bellowing from my mailbox."

  "So you're a cop, huh?"

  Woodruff seemed to scowl. "SBI. In Raleigh."

  State Bureau of Investigation. "Oh," said Delia. "I've done some work for them."

  Woodruff's brows went up at that. "Yeah?"

  Delia smiled tightly. "A serial rapist case down in Charlotte last year," she said. "They needed some of my research on the behavior of sexual predators in court. And I got my face plastered all over cable TV in the process. It was pretty awful."

  Woodruff grunted. "Not much of a topic for a radio talk show, either."

  Delia looked up at him. Way up, as it happened, since Woodruff probably stood six-two in his big, bare feet. "No, it certainly isn't."

  He looked over his shoulder at his house as if impatient to be gone. "Well, looks like my work here is done, Dr. Delia," he said, backing away. "Sorry I couldn't save your fancy landscaping. I know you folks in Hidden Lakes like your privacy."

  Delia caught the hint of sarcasm in his tone, and it inflamed her. "Not a problem," she said sweetly. "I'm moving. But I hope you like your new neighbors, Mr. Woodruff, because they'll have one hell of a view of your hot tub."

  She watched Woodruff's eyes flash and his jaw clench. Then Delia tossed him a cheerful wave and turned toward her house.

  FOR DELIA, Friday's edition of Let's Talk About Sex turned out to be a hellish nightmare. At least ten calls came in for the absent Dr. Bozner, whose book had just hit the New York Times best-seller list, and who would have been a hot property had he actually shown up. The remaining callers turned out to be cranks, creeps, and perverts. Delia liked her new radio show, she really did. And she thought she could make a difference in people's lives by bringing topics like sexually transmitted disease and healthy physical relationships out of the closet and onto the airwaves. But sometimes Frank did a piss-poor job of weeding out the weirdos before sending the calls through.
br />   After work Delia drove down to the bank to transfer money from her fast-dwindling savings account. She'd added up her growing pile of bills after waving goodbye to the cheerful Mr. Woodruff on Wednesday and realized that, as usual, there was just too much month left at the end of her money. Once parked, Delia shoved in the clutch and stared at the glistening plate-glass door. She hated having to visit the bank again. Hated being twenty-nine years old and still burdened with a staggering student loan, not to mention a big, ugly house she'd never really wanted. Just then, as if to lengthen her list of woes, the Volvo shuddered, belched, and died.

  Delia let her head fall forward onto the steering wheel. Well, it's your own fault! she could hear her mother carping. You were a fool to sign that prenuptial agreement. A man should support his wife, Delia, not impoverish her.

  Oh, her parents had been thrilled when she'd married a doctor. Now they thought she was proud, stubborn, and foolish. But Delia had wanted a marriage, not a meal ticket. She had wanted children, a real family, and she had wanted to build her own career. And although Neville had changed his mind about the children, she'd succeeded with her career. Her income was barely a third of her ex-husband's, but it was enough to live well on.

  Soon the house would be sold, and they would split the equity. Then Delia's dreams of a new car and a new condo would come true. On that somewhat consoling thought, Delia got out of her car, but at that very instant the bank's shiny glass door swung open, and Neville's new wife walked out, her long blond hair swinging.

  Alicia was tall, tan, and totally oblivious to Delia's presence. Lifting her face to the sun, Alicia slid on a pair of cat-eyed Oakley sunglasses which had probably cost more than Delia's car was worth, then beeped open the door to an olive-green Jaguar XK8 convertible. The car roared to life, then swung deftly into the traffic flow, leaving Delia behind, a little heartbroken.

  Yes, there was a lot about Alicia to envy. And this time it was more than just her hair and her car. Delia had been unable to miss the flowing, baby-blue tunic the new Mrs. Sydney had been wearing over her slim spandex slacks. No mistaking the slight swell of her tummy. And this time it wasn't the sort of plumpness old Neville could liposuction off. Well! So much for Neville's old complaint about pregnancy ruining a woman's figure. No wonder he'd rushed to the altar.