Six Cats a Slayin'

TEN

Over the weekend I thought about the argument I had witnessed. Billy Albritton had obviously lied to Melba about his knowing my neighbor. Surely he wouldn’t engage in a loud argument with a woman he didn’t know, particularly an argument that the neighbors could overhear. I thought about the cause for their quarrel. I could come up with any number of lurid reasons for it. One, for example, was that she was the first wife he had never gotten around to divorcing, and now she was threatening to expose him to his current wife and the town council.

I reckoned, however, that if Billy Albritton had been married before, Melba probably knew about it even though he was a good ten years older than either of us and had finished high school when we were still in elementary school. Melba collected information like some people collected stamps or coins. Luckily for the rest of us, she never used her knowledge in a malicious way; otherwise she probably would have been murdered for blackmail years ago.

I decided to wait until Monday, when I would see Melba at work, to tell her what I had observed across the street. For the rest of the weekend, I wanted to spend as little time as possible thinking about anything to do with my new neighbor. Her Christmas party loomed closer—this coming Tuesday, in fact. I dreaded it, but part of me was also curious to see what kind of party she threw. I had a feeling it would be memorable, one way or another.

On Monday morning, however, Melba did not come to work. At first puzzled by her absence, I finally remembered that she had planned to take the day off for her annual “well woman” checkup with her doctor. Diesel had come with me to work this morning, and I enjoyed having him with me again. I worked steadily until lunchtime, enjoying the end-of-semester quiet with no one else in the office. The graduate students would be back soon enough.

Diesel and I drove home for lunch, and as we approached our block, I saw that three large vans were parked in front of Gerry Albritton’s house. Each van sported the logo of a local landscaping company, and I could see several men and women working in Gerry’s front yard. This was an odd time of year to have landscaping work done, I thought. I realized, however, as I turned into my driveway, that the workers weren’t engaged in the usual type of gardening work. Instead, they were busily installing Christmas decorations.

Given the amount of people at work in the yard, I suspected that the result would turn out to be a lavish display. They were still hard at it when I returned to work, without Diesel, after lunch. By the time I came home, later than usual from having run a couple of errands after work, they were gone. After I parked the car in the garage, I walked back outside and down the driveway to get a closer look at the landscapers’ handiwork.

My first reaction was that I was glad I wouldn’t be paying Gerry’s electric bill. The second was that I wished I had blackout curtains on my bedroom windows since my bedroom faced the street. The glare from this display would be intolerable when I tried to go to sleep.

The walk to the front door bisected the yard evenly. The right section contained a mixture of inflatable elves, a couple of reindeer, and a toy shop strung about with lights. The left featured a stable with the Three Wise Men, the manger, a cradle, and figures kneeling beside it. I supposed they thought camels and a stray donkey or two would have made the scene too crowded. I wondered if the baby in the cradle was an inflatable, since the other figures all were. The landscapers had festooned the front of the house with enough lights to decorate half the houses on the block in a more tasteful fashion. If the effect Gerry was going for was gaudy and over-the-top, she had achieved it, and then some.

Shaking my head at the excess, I turned and walked back up the driveway and into the house. I awaited the coming of nightfall with a mixture of dread and curiosity, because only with the darkness would the true extent of the awfulness be apparent. Traffic would be terrible because the gawkers would come. I knew word of the display would spread rapidly, and half the town would drive down our street to see it. If Gerry had wanted to annoy her neighbors to distraction, she was going to succeed.

After greeting Azalea, I moved on to the living room to see how Diesel and the kittens were doing. I found them all napping, no doubt reserving their energy for play later on. Cats were crepuscular creatures, I knew, most active at dawn and dusk. They weren’t nocturnal, as many often thought they were. Diesel woke, sat up, and yawned. I reached down to rub his head, and he regarded me sleepily.

He followed me back into the kitchen, where we both sniffed appreciatively at the results of Azalea’s labors at the stove and the oven.

“Smells great,” I said. “What’s for dinner?”

“Baked chicken, mashed potatoes, English peas with carrots, and caramel cake for dessert,” Azalea replied. “I’ll leave everything on the stove. Chicken should be ready in twenty minutes.”

I thanked her, and she nodded.

“Have you seen what they’ve been putting up across the street at Gerry Albritton’s house?” I asked.

“Haven’t had the time,” she responded. “What have they done?”

I gave her a description, and when I had finished, she shook her head. “Lord have mercy. I’m thankful I don’t have to look at it. Why some people got to show off like that I just don’t understand.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “All this excess is beyond me. I’m not sure what point people are trying to make when they go so far overboard.”

“I guess they reckon it’s pretty,” Azalea said, though her expression revealed her doubts about this.

“The good thing is, she waited until only a few days before Christmas to have it all put up,” I said. “Hopefully it will all be coming down the day after.”

Azalea nodded and turned back to the stove. I headed upstairs, Diesel beside me, to change out of my work clothes. At home, unless I was entertaining company, I preferred much more casual attire, usually sweatpants and a loose T-shirt. I wouldn’t win any points for sartorial splendor, but I was comfortable.

After my delicious dinner I spent a quiet evening in the den. Diesel went back and forth between the den and the living room while I read. I had resisted the urge to look out the window at the horror across the street until I was ready to go to bed. I took one long look before I shut the blinds and pulled the curtains. They dimmed the glare considerably, but my bedroom was nowhere near as dark as I preferred when I slept.

The double-glazed windows helped with the noise from traffic on the street. During my nightly phone call with Helen Louise, we briefly discussed the party tomorrow night. I didn’t have to tell her about the installation across the street. She saw it for herself when she drove home from the bistro after work.

Overwhelming was her word. “I really like what Frank and Sean did for your house, but I have to say I don’t think most people will even notice it. They’ll be too awestruck by what’s across the street from you.”

“Gerry’s welcome to the attention, if that’s what she wants,” I said.

“I imagine that’s exactly what she does want.” Helen Louise chuckled. “Not everyone on your block has decorated outside, but those who have are more in line with your style. Her house will definitely stand out.”

We chatted a few minutes more before we ended the call. I settled down to sleep. I tried to keep my mind clear of anything to do with Gerry Albritton and her decorations and was eventually able to drift off.

The next morning, I awoke around seven, half an hour later than usual, feeling refreshed. I had slept soundly, and whatever my dreams, I didn’t recall them. The coffee was ready when I went downstairs. Diesel went straight to the living room. I prepared my cup and had a few sips before going to feed the kittens and clean their litter boxes.

With all that done, I went to fetch the newspaper. The sun was on its way up. I grabbed the paper and started to turn to go back into the house. Then I looked across the street at Gerry Albritton’s house, not quite sure that I was seeing clearly.

I blinked and took several steps down the walk to get a closer look. No, I wasn’t imagining things, I decided. During the night, vandals had wrecked Gerry’s decorations.