The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(45)

“I’m the one facing it,” Patricia said.

“No,” Grace said. “You stood right there on my front porch after book club two months ago and said you wished that a crime or something exciting would happen here because you couldn’t stand your routine. And now you’ve convinced yourself something dangerous is happening so you can act like a detective.”

Grace picked up a stack of saucers and began placing them in the soapy water.

“Can’t you stop cleaning china for a second and admit that maybe I’m right about this?” Patricia asked.

“No,” Grace said. “I can’t. Because I need to be finished by 5:30 so I can clear off the table and set it for supper. Bennett’s coming home at six.”

“There are more important things than cleaning,” Patricia said.

Grace stopped, holding the last two saucers in her hand, and turned on Patricia, eyes blazing.

“Why do you pretend what we do is nothing?” she asked. “Every day, all the chaos and messiness of life happens and every day we clean it all up. Without us, they would just wallow in filth and disorder and nothing of any consequence would ever get done. Who taught you to sneer at that? I’ll tell you who. Someone who took their mother for granted.”

Grace glared at Patricia, nostrils flaring.

“I’m sorry,” Patricia said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just worried about James Harris.”

Grace put the last two saucers in the soapy water bin.

“I’ll tell you everything you need to know about James Harris,” she said. “He lives in the Old Village. With us. There isn’t anything wrong with him because people who have something wrong with them don’t live here.”

Patricia hated that she couldn’t put into words this feeling gnawing at her guts. She felt foolish that she couldn’t shift Grace’s certainty even for a moment.

“Thank you for putting up with me,” she said. “I need to start supper.”

“Vacuum your curtains,” Grace said. “No one ever does it enough. I promise it’ll make you feel better.”

Patricia wanted that to be true very badly.



* * *



—

“Mom,” Blue said from the living room door. “What’s for supper?”

“Food,” Patricia said from the sofa.

“Is it chicken again?” he asked.

“Is chicken food?” Patricia replied, not looking up from her book.

“We had chicken last night,” Blue said. “And the night before. And the night before that.”

“Maybe tonight will be different,” Patricia said.

She heard Blue’s footsteps retreat to the hall, walk into the den, go into the kitchen. Ten seconds later he reappeared at the living room door.

“There’s chicken defrosting in the sink,” he said in an accusatory tone.

“What?” Patricia asked, looking up from her book.

“We’re having chicken again,” he said.

A pang of guilt twisted through Patricia. He was right—she’d made nothing but chicken all week. They’d order pizza. It was just the two of them and it was a Friday night.

“I promise,” she said. “We’re not having chicken.”

He gave her a sideways look, then went back upstairs and slammed his bedroom door. Patricia went back to her book: The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy. The more she read, the more uncertain she felt about everything in her life, but she couldn’t stop.

Not-quite-book-club loved Ann Rule, of course, and her Small Sacrifices had long been one of their favorites, but they’d never read the book that made her famous, and Kitty was shocked when she found out.

“Y’all,” Kitty had said. “She was just a housewife who wrote about murders for crummy detective magazines, and then she got a deal to write about these coed murders happening all over Seattle. Well, she winds up finding out that the main suspect is her best friend at a suicide hotline where she works—Ted Bundy.”

He wasn’t Ann Rule’s best friend, just a good friend, Patricia learned as she read, but otherwise everything Kitty said was true.

That just goes to show, Grace had pronounced, whenever you call one of those so-called hotlines, you have no clue who’s on the other end of that phone. It could be anyone.

But the further she got into the book, the more Patricia wondered not how Ann Rule could have missed the clues that her good friend was a serial killer, but how well she herself actually knew the men around her. Slick had called Patricia last week, breathless, because Kitty had sold her a set of her Grandmother Roberts’s silver but asked her not to mention it to anyone. It was William Hutton and Slick couldn’t help herself—she needed someone to know that she’d gotten it for a song. She’d chosen Patricia.

Kitty told me she needed extra money to send the children to summer camp, Slick had said over the phone. Do you think they’re in trouble? Seewee Farms is expensive, and it’s not like Horse works.

Horse seemed so solid and dependable, but apparently he was spending all his family’s money on treasure-hunting expeditions while Kitty snuck around selling off family heirlooms to pay camp fees. Blue would grow up to go to college and play sports and meet a nice girl one day who would never know he was once so obsessed with Nazis he couldn’t talk about anything else.