“Sir, I’m to give you this.”
Harry pressed a key into Bill’s palm.
“There is a dinner party tonight, sir. I believe the persons in attendance are interested in acquiring the house and surrounding properties.”
“Ellie is selling the house?”
“No, sir. But there now exist documents which say Miss Miriam is given power of attorney over the sale of the house, due to her sister’s ill health. And indeed, her sister is ill.”
Bill looked down at the key.
“She said you could win the game, sir. Do you know what she means?”
“The game? The Hitchcock game. It must be Notorious.”
“The game is notorious, sir?”
“No, Harry. Notorious is a Hitchcock film. Claude Rains plays one of the leaders of a group of Nazi scientists living in Brazil. They’re trying to build an atom bomb. Ingrid Bergman has married him, but as he discovers, she’s an American spy working with Cary Grant.”
“Does the key give you some clue about her health, sir?”
“No,” Bill said absently, “but in a Hitchcock film, the story is always larger than the objects which become the focus of the suspense.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
Bill continued to stare at the key, but answered easily. “The key is to a wine cellar, where an important secret is kept. But the film isn’t really about spies and secrets. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman are in love, but misunderstandings and mistrust stand between them. It isn’t until the end of the film, when he realizes that…” Bill suddenly looked up at Harry. “Harry, when you said she was ill…oh, no. Get me to the house at once! Drive like a bat out of hell!”
Harry complied. As they drove, Bill asked him questions that made Harry wonder if the young man had somehow spoken to Miss Eleanor, even though Miss Miriam had taken the phone out of Eleanor’s room long ago. Bill asked about Miss Eleanor’s symptoms, and every time Harry said, “Yes, sir. She’s had terrible stomach cramps,” or “Yes, sir, very dizzy,” Bill seemed to grow more frantic.
“Keep the motor running,” he said as they pulled into the drive. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Bill burst through the front door, nearly knocking a startled maid off her feet. He could hear voices in the dining room, but he didn’t bother with the dinner party in progress. He ran up the stairs.
“Sir!” The maid called. “You can’t go up there!”
He ignored her.
His only moment of hesitation came as he stepped inside Ellie’s bedroom and saw her for the first time in months. He had expected to find Ellie’s bedroom door locked, but quickly realized why it wasn’t.
She was too ill to run away.
He forced himself to move again, came quickly to her side. Her skin was jaundiced and she was so thin, almost skeletal, he thought, then pushed the thought away. Her hair, her beautiful hair, was dull in color and missing in patches. Her breathing was steady but rasping. He put his hands beneath her and lifted her frail body from the bed, keeping the blanket wrapped around her. He told himself that self-recrimination must wait.
Her big brown eyes were open now, watching him.
“Good to see you,” she whispered.
“My God, Ellie.” He tried to gather his wits. “How long has she been poisoning you?”
“Little at a time,” she said, wincing as she spoke.
“Don’t talk now, not if it hurts. Has it just been since I left?”
She nodded, the effort seeming to wear her out.
A month. A month of arsenic. “I’m not leaving again, Ellie. Except to take you with me.”
She continued to watch him, but now the barest smile came to her lips.
He had started down the stairs when Miriam, dinner party in tow, entered the foyer.
“What are you doing?” Miriam screeched.
“I’m taking her to a hospital. To see a real doctor. You had better pray to God that I’m not too late.”
Miriam tried to block his way. “She’s too ill to move! You have no business…”
“Careful, Miriam,” he said in a low voice. “She’s awake and lucid. Shall we discuss this in front of your guests, or do you want to wait until after Harry describes your so-called doctor to the gents at the sheriff’s office? Ellie’s bloodwork will probably give them all they need to go after both of you.”
Miriam paled, then stepped out of the way.
“What’s going on here?” one of the guests demanded.
“My sister’s…”
“Fiancé,” Bill supplied, as he reached the front door. “Her fiancé is taking her to a hospital.”
The group followed him toward the car. He wasn’t watching them. He was watching Ellie. She moved her hand, covered his with it. Her skin was cool and paper dry. “You’re safe now, Ellie,” he told her.
“I’m coming with you!” Miriam said, hearing the guests murmuring behind her.
“No you aren’t, miss,” Harry said, helping Bill into the backseat.
“She’s her sister!” one of guests protested.
“Her sister will remain here with you,” Bill said. “She wants to tell you about a Hitchcock film.”
“What are you talking about?” another man asked.
“Notorious,” Bill said, closing the car door.
“You’ve won, sir, haven’t you?” Harry said as they drove off.
“I’ve had help,” Bill replied. “All along, I’ve had help.”
Ellie squeezed his hand.
White Trash
The woman dressed in black ninja garb moved stealthily across the street, armed with a spray bottle of a popular herbicide purchased at her local hardware store. In the dim light of the streetlamp, she set the spray mechanism to “stream” and went to work. Quickly she moved the bottle in a graceful, sweeping motion. She left as furtively as she had arrived.
Three weeks later, much to the horror of the jerks who lived across the street, a rather obscene directive appeared on their lawn, spelled out in dead grass letters. Alas for these evil neighbors, the Suburban Avenger had succeeded once again…
I looked up from my bowl of cornflakes and glanced across the street, wondering-just wondering, mind you-if I could get away with it.
In every nearly perfect suburban neighborhood, there is the family that makes it “nearly” instead of “perfect.” In ours, it was the Nabbits. You could find the Nabbit house without a street number. I would sometimes use its distinctive features to guide other people to my own home. “We live across the street from the house with the pick-up truck parked on the lawn,” I’d say. Or, “Look for the old mattress propped up against the side of the garage, then pull into the driveway directly opposite the box springs.”
Sarah Cummings, who owned the pristine property to the right of the Nabbits, had warned us about these troublemakers from the day we moved into the neighborhood. “I call them the ‘Dag Nabbits,’” she said. “Nola Nabbit is a tramp. You watch. If Napolean’s army had been as big as the one that has marched through Nola’s bedroom doors, they’d be speaking French in Moscow today. Daisy, the little girl, is okay. But the kid! He’s a mess.”
The kid was Ricky. Ricky Nabbit, I soon learned, was a frequent guest of the California Youth Authority. He had a seasonal habit of breaking into houses, shoplifting, and other purely selfish acts.
“As long as it’s baseball season,” Sarah told me, “We won’t have any trouble. He’s a baseball nut. But every winter”-here, Sarah shivered-“he robs somebody.”
When Sarah heard that I would be working out of my home, she was elated. “Maybe you can help keep an eye on things,” she said. Specifically, she meant Ricky Nabbit.
We had moved into our home in the spring of the year when Ricky turned fourteen. I would watch him walk home from baseball practice at the nearby park. Skinny, clean cut, and looking smartly athletic in his uniform, he wore a glove so often, I had visions of him eating with the mitt on his left hand.