She has a sudden insight into the delivery of all this food.
The reason their neighbors bring casseroles and gifts when her parents are not home is not that they dread speaking to her parents. The neighbors are sparing her parents. Giving the food to Miranda says We’re here for you but does not force her parents to come face to face with pity.
Miranda loves her whole neighborhood all over again. She is free of suspicion. It is light and airy to feel this good.
She runs back up the cliff stairs. Everyone should have a skill and one of Miranda’s skills is that she never grabs the handrail rope.
In the kitchen, she fills the empty casserole with soap and hot water and scrubs the pot and lid with a wire sponge. She heads out the front door to return them to Mrs. Crowder. She won’t exactly lie about the fate of the food, but she won’t tell the truth either. She’ll say, It was so kind! My parents are so glad you thought of us. How was your last trip? Was it Australia? Where are you going next?
And then the dish will be off her hands, along with the guilt of feeding its contents to the fish.
She walks up the driveway to the little country road. To her right is the doctors’ house, and farther down, she can see Geoffrey’s house, and then Jack’s.
She hasn’t checked their Facebook pages either, but she doesn’t care anymore. Parents who make cinnamon cookies, send fruit baskets and bake casseroles are not dealers. Boys who save you from TV crews, help you with online searches or put away the clean dishes for you are not enemies.
She crosses the street.
From their tree house, Henry and Hayden shriek, “Where are you going? Wait up! We want to come!”
Really, there are times when Miranda can’t stand it. In West Hartford, she could circle the block ten times and nobody would notice. At the cottage she can’t burp without witnesses.
But it is reassuring. Nobody here is doing anything clandestine or illegal. Henry and Hayden would know.
The boys race headlong, stumbling in their desperation to catch up. It doesn’t seem to Miranda there has been enough time for the Warrens to trek down nature trails and already be home. Perhaps that is just Mr. Warren’s excuse to get the murderer’s sister away from his sons. Perhaps Mr. Warren is actually designing websites to transport illicit drugs all over the country.
Or perhaps I should get some sleep, Miranda thinks. At least have a sandwich.
The heat presses down again.
The light, airy relief of loving her neighbors is extinguished.
While she is amusing herself with fantasies, Lander is in jail. The arraignment is tomorrow. And what has Miranda accomplished? Zip.
She is too tired to deliver the silly casserole. Maybe she will just slip up to the side door, set it down and leave. But that is rude. That works only if she has a thank-you note to tuck into the dish.
The boys dance on their side of the street, begging her to come back and get them. They are not allowed to cross by themselves.
“No!” she yells. “Stay home!”
The Crowder driveway doubles in an S to diminish the steepness of the site. She drags herself up. The heat from the black asphalt is crazy. Her shoes may melt. The three-car carport is full, which is good. Everybody is here. It’s been ages since she’s seen Mrs. Crowder, proof that cars can come and go and, even here, nobody sees a thing.
The front door is many sweaty paces away. Miranda cuts through the carport to the side door. It is a glass storm door, with a panel that can be raised or lowered, so there’s a screen if you want a breeze, or glass if you want air conditioning. It is currently open for a breeze, which is insane. The Crowders have central air. Anybody with air conditioning should be using it.
The doorbell is a small round button set in a small silver rectangle. Miranda balances the casserole against her left hip and raises her right hand to press the doorbell with her index finger.
What lies on the other side of the door is unlike anything she has ever seen. She cannot at first decide what it is. Indecision lasts a millisecond, and then she is throwing the casserole aside and racing down the drive. The heavy dish crashes against one of the parked cars.
She doesn’t care about noise or damage. She has to get away from it. She has to get home.
The driveway tips down like a ski jump. She is afraid of tripping; afraid of falling. She tries to keep her balance and still run faster than she has ever run in her life. She gets her cell phone out. Do her fingers really know everything by memory? Can she hit 911 without looking, without slowing down?
Behind her a door bangs. The bang is too loud to be the flimsy side door. But no one could get out that door now anyway. Somebody is coming out the front door. Feet whack the pavement behind her.
Miranda screams.
The scream is unplanned. Unwanted. And she can’t stop. Screams rip out of her chest, so violently they seem to tear her throat.
This is panic, she thinks. Did Lander panic? Did she shoot Derry Romaine by accident and then she panicked?
Miranda nears the street. She glances left and right. Traffic would be good; she’d love traffic; but there isn’t any. What comes between her and the safety of home is a pair of happy yelling little boys.
“What are we doing? What’s the game?” yells Henry, jumping up and down. “Why are you screaming?”
“Go home!” She brushes at them as if they are fallen leaves and she can rake them away. “Run home! Get out of here!”
They don’t move. Home is boring. Miranda is exciting. They want to scream and run down hills, too.
The pounding feet behind her catch up.
She whirls in terror.
But it is only Stu.
“Oh, Stu!” she gasps. “Oh, Stu, did you see it? Oh, thank goodness you’re here. And you’re safe! Thank goodness you’re safe!”
Her trembling fingers fail to find 911. Stu takes the phone out of her hand. “I’ll do it,” he says. He turns to Henry and Hayden. “You boys run on home now. It’s suppertime.”
How can he be so calm? A dead body lies on his kitchen floor. Blood has spattered every appliance.
Stu does not call 911. He drops her phone into his own jeans pocket. Miranda stares at the pocket; at the thick denim and the double row of stitching. Stu is not calling the police.
“We ate a long time ago,” says Henry, not leaving.
In Stu’s other hand, held close to his thigh, where the little boys cannot see it, is a knife. It is not a kitchen knife. Its peculiar blade is sharp on both sides. She is not sure what such a knife is meant for.
The blade is bloody.
She remembers the expert. Drug dealing is a young man’s game. And here stands the only young man in the neighborhood. A man the same age as Jason Draft and Derry Romaine. A man who came three times to Miranda’s house to ask how Lander is doing. A man excited by the possibility of Lander’s suffering.
Stu’s eyes are wide with shock. He is shaking.
Well, of course he is. There is a dead body in his house and Stu is probably holding the knife that sliced the body to pieces.
Is Stu the one who did it? Or is he terrified of the person who did?
Stu’s eyes flicker madly, and again she is reminded of squirrels that bite their way through screens.
Nothing is good about drug dealers. They are greedy. Quick to panic.
Miranda’s own panic drops away.
She could grab the boys’ hands, and race them across the grass, through the trees and into their house.
But what will Stu do if three people turn their backs and run?
If it were not for the blood and the knife, she would not be considering him as a murderer. She’s still not sure. But she cannot let him take the boys hostage. Or worse. She says firmly, “Henry. Hayden. Home. Now.”
The boys’ little shoulders sag. They walk away slowly, knowing that the good stuff is here and boring stuff awaits them at home. They’ll have to take a bath. And go to bed. But over at Miranda’s,
people are screaming and running down hills and chasing each other!
Henry taunts his brother. “Hay-den is a slowpoke.”
“Am not!” shrieks Hayden.
It is amazing how much racket two little boys running on grass can make. They pass through the backyards of the two neighbors who are rarely here. She cannot see them now but she knows they are pummeling each other, giggling, grabbing each other’s shirts, trying to win the race.
“Get in the cottage,” whispers Stu. His hand is shaking so badly that the knife could be a spoon, stirring cake batter.
Drug dealers, lectured the detective, are always armed. And here’s the other thing. They’re always high.
Miranda Allerdon is standing with a murderer who is panicked, armed and high.
He’s looking back and forth, up and down. She has the sense that he cannot believe what is happening. That he’s hoping to see some way out. But there’s only grass and trees and a dead body in the kitchen.
She forgets that Stu has another hand and it is not holding anything. Stu’s free hand flashes forward. He threads his fingers through a hank of her hair. Miranda’s hair is not elegant, swinging and shiny like Lander’s. Loose, Miranda’s hair is a pyramid of curly frizzy brown. Stu twists the hair.
A murderer now controls Miranda the way she controls Barrel on his leash.
The lights in the cell are relentless. She tries to sleep on her face. She tries to sleep with the pillow over her head and then with her elbow crooked across her cheek. The light still penetrates.
In real life, she would never be in bed this early. But there is absolutely nothing to do here. And because this is her real life—she really is here; there really are bars—sleep is the only escape.
“Can we turn off some of the lights?” she begs. “Or dim them?”
“No. Prisoners like you are under observation. You might try suicide.”
Suicide?
Her? Lander?
She has never thought of taking her life. In fact, novels assigned in middle school and high school often dwell on adolescent suicide. She is irked by these plots, and skips those chapters. Life is wonderful, the future will be better and who could possibly want to exit early?
But the word lingers.
“Suicide.”
If she peeks into the future outlined by the bars and the metal bed shelf, she can see why a person might consider it.
She slams her mind shut against the word. She will live in the minute.
This bright white glaring minute reveals nothing of how she came to be here and whether she is guilty. It reveals only the perfidy of Jason. She can think of no reason for him to ruin her. She is beginning to conclude that he did it for fun.
It’s in the news sometimes—where young men in gangs kill people for fun. Just wanted to see what it was like, they say, smirking.
Is Jason out there somewhere, smirking?
Lander buries her face in the thin pillow and sobs.
SUNDAY EVENING
Miranda imagines Stu carrying his kayak down from his house to her little dock. Inflating it. Paddling slowly and alone down the river to meet some other boat, and take some delivery. Not marijuana, which comes in bales and would be too large and smell too strong. But drugs that take little space. Heroin. Cocaine. Perhaps that’s what the cup holder is for.
She has thought all along that the water has something to do with it; that somehow delivery and sale and money all glide along the river.
But it doesn’t start in front of our house, she thinks. It starts in front of Stu’s house. I was going in the right direction. But I would never have gotten there. I would never really have thought that somebody I know would do this.
“Go inside,” Stu says very softly, as if the world is listening.
But the world is not listening and it is not looking. When they step through the thick band of shrubs and trees that wrap the Allerdon yard, they are alone.
Stu’s teeth are chattering. She has never heard anybody’s teeth click like that. The hand holding her hair has a tremor so intense that her scalp rattles. Stu is more terrified than she is.
Because he can picture the body in his kitchen?
Because he’s in shock that he actually used a knife on a man’s flesh?
Because his neighbor Miranda knows? And can tell?
What did happen at the top of that S-curved driveway? The chances are that Stu did not plan to murder anybody in his kitchen. The chances are that some rage swept over Stu, or perhaps over the victim. A kitchen is full of weapons, and Stu got there first.
With the knife that is now lightly poking her in the back.
How hard will he push that knife into her skin? How much damage will it do? Will he use that knife on her as many times as he used it on Jason?
Because that’s who it is.
Jason.
Drug dealers are always on the edge of betraying or being betrayed.
Did Jason betray Stu? Did Stu betray Jason?
But why don’t these people just yell at each other and then grill a hamburger? Why do they kill each other? How can it matter that much?
Far away, a door slams. Henry and Hayden are inside their house. They know how to call 911. They could save her. But they think Miranda and Stu are playing games.
Stu is panting. He pants like Barrel, mouth open, trying to cool himself off.
Stu is in a situation he cannot want. There are too many bodies now. He can’t add another one and get away with it. She has to convince him of that. But what can she offer? Silence? He knows perfectly well she’ll call the police the first chance she gets.
She drags her feet. The knife penetrates her shirt. Enters her flesh. She tries to get away but he is holding her hair. She can only arch her spine, as if an inch will help.
Perhaps for Stu and Jason, it is all a game. A crazy profitable fun game, sneaking around with kayaks and stolen boats, grinning at each other, having a beautiful girl on your arm. But it’s not a game now that Stu has killed Jason. It will not end like a game. Nobody will fold up the board, put away the cards or collect the dice.
In front of her, the sun is sinking. The western sky is magnificent. It is a photograph night, with colors so wild and impossible it could be the beginning or the end of the world.
Stu’s grip on her hair forces her head backward, exposing her throat. It occurs to Miranda that Lander lucked out. She’s safe behind bars.
“In!” says Stu again. His whole body is having tremors; probably his whole brain.
Once they are both inside, he lets go of her hair.
She turns. For a moment they just stare at each other. She cannot think how to escape and he cannot think what to do with her. Anger is overtaking Stu’s fear. Miranda is ruining everything.
He jabs the knife forward, not close enough to touch her, but she leaps out of range, and he is weirdly entertained. They cross the living room like this.
Jab!
Jump!
Jab!
If I had gone to Stu’s Facebook page instead of the Warrens’, I might have found Jason among his friends, she thinks. Or if I had gone to Jason’s page—Jason Draft’s, that is—I might have found Stu. I might have figured this out. The police are working on those friend lists. But do they even know who Stu is? Will they recognize his picture? Probably. But not in the next two minutes, which is when I need them.
“Get on the porch,” he orders.
She steps outside. The porch bakes like an oven. There is not a whisper of breeze.
Her only hope is reminding him that he likes her; he likes the whole family; he probably still has his crush on Lander. “Stu, what’s happening?” she whispers.
“What’s happening?” Stu shouts. Rage seems to come out of his pores as well as his mouth. “Jason was supposed to drown Derry. He was supposed to take Derry north to the marshes around the old nuclear power plant. Hundreds of acres. Nobody lives there, nobody goes there. But Jason saw that barge coming and decided to impro
vise. He loved the idea that all those witnesses would watch a murder and not even know. But it didn’t work. Derry survived!”
And now, horribly, Stu is crying. Tears run down his face. Mucus comes out his nose. Is he full of regret or full of his drug of choice?
Miranda doesn’t scream. There is no one to hear. The doctors Neville are never around Sunday evenings; they’ve already returned to Hartford. The two houses between her and the Warrens are not occupied this weekend. Henry and Hayden, the neighborhood spies, are safely inside and probably arguing about bedtime.
Last Saturday, when she and Stu were chatting next to Barrel’s run, Stu was shocked to hear that the water skier survived the barge. Was he shocked, she wonders now, because he planned that murder? “Why kill Derry?” she asks.
“I make a ton of money, Rimmie,” says Stu. He laughs a little, as if acknowledging that money will not offset the situation he is in now. “I do college campuses. I have a stable of guys like Derry. He was keeping money that wasn’t his.”
Miranda means to let him babble. Words will ease him. She will think of a compromise. But she forgets her plan. “Okay,” she says irritably, having earned the right to be irritable; the creep is jabbing a knife at her. “But what does my sister have to do with it?”
“Lanny wouldn’t go out with me again. She had better things to do with her time. She even said that, right to my face! ‘My time is precious,’ she said.” Stu mimics a high-pitched nasty little female voice. Miranda cannot imagine Lander speaking like that. Although she would certainly say it. For Lander, it is simply a fact; her time is precious.
“I say to Lander—‘What? Too precious to waste on me?’ ”
Stu has backed her halfway across the porch and now Miranda’s hand is close to the knob of the kitchen door. If she rips it open fast enough, and leaps inside and throws the bolt, she can race to the other inside door and bolt that, and then bolt the front, and then use the landline to call the police!