Twenty-Seven Bones

Chapter Nine
1

The news traveled fast. The police had all but dismantled Ruford Shea’s cabin looking for evidence when Holly returned with the kids after school, so everybody at the Core knew. With the storm still pissing buckets at suppertime, the communal kitchen, its tarps rolled down to cover the open sides, became the gossip nexus. Rain drummed steadily on the tin roof, the good old sixties’ smell of brown rice and veggies cooking in toasted sesame oil filled the kitchen, and the following conversation, or a variation thereof, was repeated a dozen or more times:

“I can’t believe it.”

“I know. He seemed like such a nice guy.”

“But you know, that’s what the neighbors always say, whenever it turns out there’s a serial killer living next door.”

“Yeah. And remember the time when Ruford thought somebody had been going through his cabin-how mad he got? Started waving that machete of his around, I thought he was going to kill somebody then and there.”

“Yeah, I always had my doubts about him after that. These down-islanders can be so volatile.”

Unless of course a down-islander was taking part in the conversation, in which case these down-islanders became dose St. Vincent men.

But the talk was harmless enough. Collectively and individually, they felt themselves betrayed; collectively and individually, they healed themselves as bio-organisms do, by forming scar tissue around the injured places. The real danger came when they let down their guard. Collectively and individually, literally and figuratively. Ding-dong, the witch was dead. No more convoys to the Crapaud, no more standing watch, no more tiki torches on the hill or lights in the tamarind trees.

As for Dawson, whipsawed by two conflicting needs, for security and for love, she didn’t know what to think, how to feel. The night before had been wonderful, and this morning, at the Crapaud, she’d seen what she had hoped to see in Pender’s eyes, heard what she had hoped to hear in his voice. It was like that old Shirelles song, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” And although the L-word hadn’t made its first appearance yet, clearly the answer had been yes.

So happy as Dawson was to learn that the danger to herself and her neighbors had passed, her emotions were decidedly mixed. Because everybody knows that after the trouble in town is cleared up, the Lone Ranger always rides off into the sunset.

Holly had no such contradictory emotions. She had no reason to doubt what Detective Hamilton had said, and she couldn’t wait for things to get back to normal. Tomorrow morning, she’d work at the rest home. Tomorrow afternoon she’d work at Blue Valley. And tomorrow night, she promised herself, she would do something for herself: she would drop by the Beda Club and buy the new barmaid a drink.

Because if Holly had learned one lesson from this whole Machete Man episode, it was that old one about gathering rosebuds while ye may. And if Holly was any judge of women, that new barmaid, whom she’d met at the clothing optional beach at Smuggler’s Cove yesterday-the one with the butch haircut and the killer bod, who claimed to own all of Tracy Chapman’s CDs, and to have seen every movie Jodi Foster had ever made-was a rosebud ripe for the picking.