Fatal Error

43

San Diego, California

When Brenda awakened again she was wet. Or at least slightly damp. And she had befouled herself as well. She could smell it, but there was nothing she could do. That was the thing about being in the dark. Sometimes she was awake, but mostly she slept or maybe it just seemed like she slept. It was hard to tell the difference.

She tried not to think about her kidneys shutting down, but they would. Eventually she would lapse into unconsciousness. At this point, that seemed like a welcome idea. At least she wouldn’t feel the torture of hunger and thirst.

The temperature in the room hadn’t changed, but she was hot now. Burning. So she was probably running a fever. Whenever she thought about it, she tried to flex her ankles. Wasn’t that what people did on long plane trips so they didn’t develop blood clots in their legs that could go to their hearts and lungs and kill them? But again, dying didn’t seem like such a bad idea. At least it would be over.

Sometime long ago she had talked to. . no, she had interviewed-there had been lights and cameras-a man who had spent days lost in the snowy Sierras. He had talked movingly about how hard it had been to resist the temptation to simply lie down in the snow and let the cold have its way with him.

This was the same thing even though it was just the opposite. She had loved Uncle Joe with all her heart, but she could never live up to the standard of courage he had set. She was no longer willing to choose to live that one more day. She was done. All she wanted was one thing-for it to be over.

Salton City, California

Once Flossie Haywood started talking, there was no stopping her.

“We’ve been coming here for years, and we’ve known Mark Blaylock all along since before his first wife died. His missus is Miss Johnny-come-lately around here. She couldn’t be bothered slumming it, and we never saw hide nor hair of her until about three months ago, when she showed up with a U-Haul truck full of furniture from their other house.”

“From the one they lost in La Jolla?” Ali asked.

It was important to put in bits and pieces of the story herself from time to time, so Flossie would feel like this was a conversation rather than a question-and-answer session.

Flossie nodded. “All kinds of fancy-schmancy stuff. And what did she do with the old stuff Mark had used for years? Tossed it out on the side of the street. Some Mexicans came by in pickup trucks and gathered it all up. Probably took it down to El Centro or Brawley and sold it at the swap meet. It was good enough to use, of course. Jimmy was going to go over and rescue some of the plastic chairs and the like. I told him if he did that, I wouldn’t speak to him for a week. I wouldn’t give a woman like that any more reason to look down her nose at us than she already had. I’ll be damned if I’d be seen picking up her leavings. More coffee?”

Ali nodded and pushed her cup in Flossie’s direction. “Please,” she said. “Great coffee.”

Flossie nodded. “Folgers,” she said. “I can’t stand all that Starbucks rigamarole. Five bucks for a cup of coffee? No way! So where was I?”

“She was moving her furniture into the house.”

“Oh, yes. Her furniture. And that’s it. Furniture, but no appliances. No washer or dryer. I’m good friends with Selma Thurgood, who runs the laundromat. It’s one of those wash-it-and-fold-it kinds of places. I like to go there to save on water. That way we don’t have to go into town to empty our tanks as often. And it’s fun sitting around the laundromat jawing with people from all over the country while you wait for your clothes to finish up.

“Selma has a dry-cleaning service that comes over from Indio twice a week, to pick up and drop off. She told me she never did a lick of business with Mina Blaylock. She must take hers somewhere else. She sure as hell doesn’t do her own washing and ironing at home.”

“You call her Mina?” Ali asked.

“That’s what Mark calls her. Short for Ermina. I mostly don’t talk to her one way or the other. For one thing, she treats that poor husband of hers like he’s so much crap. Jimmy Haywood may not be the brightest match in the box, but he married me and stuck by me, and he gets my respect, every day of the year. You don’t see me taking off for days at a time a couple of times a month and leaving him out here batching it. That just ain’t right.

“And if you ask me, Mark Blaylock is just a regular sort of guy. His first wife died, you know, and he married Mina on the rebound. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’s lived to regret it. He used to invite us over for a beer now and then, or a barbecue, but not since she rode in on her broom.”

“What’s the deal with the shutters?” Ali asked.

“There was a big fish die-off a few years back. This whole place stunk to the high heaven. People just had to walk away and leave their places for a while ’cause they couldn’t stand to live in ’em. Of course, it wasn’t enough to keep the damned looters out. They came through and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. After that a lot of people just gave up and didn’t bother comin’ back. Not Mark. He said he’d be damned if he was going to let the bad guys chase him away. That’s when he installed the shutters. You ever seen things like that?”

“On shops in some places,” Ali said. “Never on houses.”

“It’s the neatest thing. It works on something like a TV clicker, but it’s even smaller. All you have to do is push the up and down buttons and them shutters just slide up and down as smooth as you please. I tried it once too,” Flossie confided. “But don’t tell Jimmy. He’d be mad enough to chew nails.”

“You tried it?” Ali asked.

“Sure. Mark drinks some. He came home one night and had misplaced his clicker-not his television clicker, his shutter clicker. And there he was, stuck. Had to sleep the rest of the night in his car. He was pissed as hell about it. So he went out the next day and got himself a replacement-two replacements, actually. One to keep in his car and one to keep in a fake light fixture out in his carport. He told Jimmy about the extra, in case something went wrong with his house-like an electrical fire or something-so Jimmy and I could let the firemen inside to put it out.

“So one day, when Mark wasn’t here and when Jimmy wasn’t here either, I went over and tried it for myself. Works like a charm. They go up and down as smooth as glass with just the touch of a button. If I ever have another house that isn’t a motor home, I’m going to get me a set of shutters just like ’em.”

“My company is worried that Mina is trying to pull a fast one,” Ali said.

“You mean like take the car and make a run for it?”

Ali nodded.

Flossie shook her head. “I saw her leave. She didn’t have no luggage with her. Just her purse and a briefcase and what she was wearing. That was it.”

Ali let her breath out. “That’s good news then,” she said. “And you haven’t noticed anything unusual the past few days?”

“Well, let’s see,” Flossie said. “Mark was gone overnight this week. Friday night, I think it was. That’s unusual for him. He’s pretty much a stay-at-home. And then, there was the fire.”

“Fire?”

“Middle of the night, Sunday morning, a little after three, I wake up smelling smoke. Believe me, you can’t buy smoke detectors better than I am. Anyway, I look out the window, and there Little Miss Hissy Fit is tossing stuff into Mark’s barbecue grill and it’s burning like crazy.”

“You could see all this from here?” Ali asked.

“Since I got my cataracts fixed, my eyesight is downright amazing. So I look out there, and she’s got this roaring fire going in the grill. Like a bonfire. Only it stank to the high heavens. Mark only burns mesquite in his grill. He’s like a purist or something. But she must have put some kind of plastic crap in there. That’s what it smelled like. Burning plastic. I wanted to turn her in to somebody for burning garbage like that. We have waste management here. There’s no excuse, but Jimmy told me to be a good neighbor and keep quiet, so I did.

“But then yesterday afternoon, what do I see? Poor Mark is out there in the yard wrestling with that Weber grill of his. He loaded all the ashes in a wheelbarrow. Took ’em over to the beach, dug a hole, and buried ’em. We could go take a look if you want.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was curious. So after Jimmy went off to the casino, I went over there with his metal detector. Screamed like a banshee, so there must be metal of some kind down there. I was going to wait for Jimmy to come home to check it out, but I know how to work the business end of a shovel. Want to go take a look?”

“Absolutely,” Ali said. “Sounds like a great idea.”