The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(84)

It never occurred to her not to trust Slick.





CHAPTER 29


Slick called on Thursday at 10:25 in the morning.

“I’ll come,” she said. “But I’ll only look. I won’t open anything that’s closed.”

“Thank you,” Patricia said.

“I don’t feel right about this,” Slick said.

“I don’t either,” Patricia said, and then she hung up and called Mrs. Greene to tell her the good news.

“This is a big mistake,” Mrs. Greene said.

“It’ll go faster with three of us,” Patricia said.

“Maybe,” Mrs. Greene said. “But all I’m telling you is that it’s a mistake.”

She kissed Carter good-bye on Friday morning at 7:30, and he left for Tampa on Delta flight 1237 from the Charleston airport, with a layover in Atlanta. On Saturday morning at 9:30 she drove Blue to Saturday school. She told Korey they could work on her list of colleges together, but by noon, when she had to go pick up Blue from Saturday school, Korey had barely glimpsed at the catalogs.

When she pulled up in front of Albemarle at 12:05, the only other car there was Slick’s white Saab. She got out and tapped on the driver’s-side window.

“Hi, Mrs. Campbell,” Greer said, rolling down the window.

“Is your mother all right?” Patricia asked.

“She had to take something over to the church,” Greer said. “She said she might be seeing you later?”

“I’m helping her plan her Reformation Party,” Patricia said.

“Sounds fun,” Greer said.

She and Blue got home at 12:40. Korey had left a note on the counter saying she was going downtown to step aerobics and then to a movie with Laurie Gibson. At 2:15, Patricia knocked on Blue’s bedroom door.

“I’m going out for a little while,” she called.

He didn’t answer. She assumed he’d heard.

She didn’t want anyone to see her car, and it was a warm afternoon anyway, so she walked up Middle Street. She saw Mrs. Greene’s car parked in James Harris’s driveway, next to a green-and-white Greener Cleaners truck. James Harris’s Corsica was gone.

She hated his house. Two years ago, he’d torn down Mrs. Savage’s cottage, split the lot in half, and sold the piece of it closest to the Hendersons to a dentist from up north someplace, then built himself a McMansion that stretched from property line to property line. A massive Southern lump with concrete pineapples at the end of the drive, it stood on stilts with an enclosed ground floor for parking. It was a white monstrosity painted white with all its various tin roofs painted rust red, encircled by a huge porch.

She’d been inside once for his housewarming party last summer, and it was all sisal runners and enormous, heavy, machine-milled furniture, nothing with any personality, everything anonymous and done in beige, and cream, and off-white, and slate. It felt like the embalmed and swollen corpse of a ramshackle Southern beach house, tarted up with cosmetics and central air.

Patricia turned onto McCants then turned again and looped back until she stood on Pitt Street directly behind James Harris’s house. She could see its red roofs looming over the trees at the end of a little drainage ditch that ran between two property lines from this side of the block to the other. When it rained, the ditch carried the overflow water off Pitt down to the harbor. But it hadn’t rained in weeks and now it was a swampy trickle, with a worn path the children used as a shortcut between blocks running alongside it.

She stepped off the root-cracked sidewalk and walked to his house along the path, as fast as possible, feeling like eyes were watching her the entire way. James Harris’s backyard lay in the heavy shadow of his house, and it was as chilly as the water at the bottom of a lake. His grass didn’t get enough light and the yellowed blades crunched beneath her feet.

She walked up the stairs to his back porch and paused, looking back to see if she could spot Slick, but she hadn’t gotten there yet. She kept moving, wanting to get out of sight as soon as possible. She knocked on the back door.

Inside, she heard a vacuum cleaner whirl down and a minute later the weather seal cracked and the door opened to reveal Mrs. Greene in a green polo shirt.

“Hello, Mrs. Greene,” Patricia said, loudly. “I came to see if I could find my keys. That I left here.”

“Mr. Harris isn’t home,” Mrs. Greene responded loudly, which let Patricia know that the other woman working with her was nearby. “Maybe you should come back later.”

“I really need my keys,” Patricia said.

“I’m sure he won’t mind if you look for them,” Mrs. Greene said.

She stepped out of the way, and Patricia came inside. The kitchen had a large island in the middle, half of it covered by some kind of stainless-steel grill. Dark brown cabinets lined the walls, and the refrigerator, dishwasher, and sink were all stainless steel. The room felt cold. Patricia wished she’d brought a sweater.

“Is Slick here yet?” Patricia asked quietly.

“Not yet,” Mrs. Greene said. “But we can’t wait.”

A woman in the same green polo shirt as Mrs. Greene came in from the hall. She wore yellow rubber dishwashing gloves and a shiny leather fanny pack.

“Lora,” Mrs. Greene said. “This is Mrs. Campbell from down the street. She thinks she left her keys here and is going to look for them.”