Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(74)

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Hodges hopes so, too. Of one thing he’s sure: when he gets back home, he’ll take the Glock .40 he carried on the job out of his bedroom safe and start carrying it again. The Happy Slapper is no longer enough.

The phone next to the double bed warbles. Janey answers, converses briefly, hangs up. “That was Aunt Charlotte. She suggests the Fun Crew meet for breakfast in twenty minutes. I think she’s anxious to get to Sugar Heights and start checking the silverware.”

“Okay.”

“She also shared that the bed was much too hard and she had to take an allergy pill because of the foam pillows.”

“Uh-huh. Janey, is Olivia’s computer still at the Sugar Heights house?”

“Sure. In the room she used for her study.”

“Can you lock that room so they can’t get in there?”

She pauses in the act of hooking her bra, for a moment frozen in that pose, elbows back, a female archetype. “Hell with that, I’ll just tell them to keep out. I am not going to be intimidated by that woman. And what about Holly? Can you understand anything she says?”

“I thought she ordered a sneezebagel for dinner,” Hodges admits.

Janey collapses into the chair he awoke to find her crying in last night, only now she’s laughing. “Sweetie, you’re one bad detective. Which in this sense means good.”

“Once the funeral stuff is over and they’re gone—”

“Thursday at the latest,” she says. “If they stay longer, I’ll have to kill them.”

“And no jury on earth would convict you. Once they’re gone, I want to bring my friend Jerome in to look at that computer. I’d bring him in sooner, but—”

“They’d be all over him. And me.”

Hodges, thinking of Aunt Charlotte’s bright and inquisitive eyes, agrees.

“Won’t the Blue Umbrella stuff be gone? I thought it disappeared every time you left the site.”

“It’s not Debbie’s Blue Umbrella I’m interested in. It’s the ghosts your sister heard in the night.”





26


As they walk down to the elevator, he asks Janey something that’s been troubling him ever since she called yesterday afternoon. “Do you think the questions about Olivia brought on your mother’s stroke?”

She shrugs, looking unhappy. “There’s no way to tell. She was very old—at least seven years older than Aunt Charlotte, I think—and the constant pain beat her up pretty badly.” Then, reluctantly: “It could have played a part.”

Hodges runs a hand through his hastily combed hair, mussing it again. “Ah, Jesus.”

The elevator dings. They step in. She turns to him and grabs both of his hands. Her voice is swift and urgent. “I’ll tell you something, though. If I had to do it over again, I still would. Mom had a long life. Ollie, on the other hand, deserved a few more years. She wasn’t terribly happy, but she was doing okay until that bastard got to her. That . . . that cuckoo bird. Stealing her car and using it to kill eight people and hurt I don’t know how many more wasn’t enough for him, was it? Oh, no. He had to steal her mind.”

“So we push forward.”

“Goddam right we do.” Her hands tighten on his. “This is ours, Bill. Do you get that? This is ours.”

He wouldn’t have stopped anyway, the bit is in his teeth, but the vehemence of her reply is good to hear.

The elevator doors open. Holly, Aunt Charlotte, and Uncle Henry are waiting in the lobby. Aunt Charlotte regards them with her inquisitive crow’s eyes, probably prospecting for what Hodges’s old partner used to call the freshly f*cked look. She asks what took them so long, then, without waiting for an answer, tells them that the breakfast buffet looks very thin. If they were hoping for an omelet to order, they’re out of luck.

Hodges thinks that Janey Patterson is in for several very long days.





27


Like the day before, Sunday is brilliant and summery. Like the day before, Brady sells out by four, at least two hours before dinnertime approaches and the parks begin emptying. He thinks about calling home and finding out what his mom wants for supper, then decides to grab takeout from Long John Silver’s and surprise her. She loves the Langostino Lobster Bites.

As it turns out, Brady is the one surprised.

He comes into the house from the garage, and his greeting—Hey, Mom, I’m home!—dies on his lips. This time she’s remembered to turn off the stove, but the smell of the meat she charred for her lunch hangs in the air. From the living room there comes a muffled drumming sound and a strange gurgling cry.

There’s a skillet on one of the front burners. He peers into it and sees crumbles of burnt hamburger rising like small volcanic islands from a film of congealed grease. On the counter is a half-empty bottle of Stoli and a jar of mayonnaise, which is all she ever uses to dress her hamburgers.

The grease-spotted takeout bags drop from his hands. Brady doesn’t even notice.

No, he thinks. It can’t be.

It is, though. He throws open the kitchen refrigerator and there, on the top shelf, is the Baggie of poisoned meat. Only now half of it is gone.

He stares at it stupidly, thinking, She never checks the mini-fridge in the garage. Never. That’s mine.