She went back forward, rolled the sail, and secured the ties with square knots. She knew it wouldn’t be neat enough for Kyle. She glanced down at his body, staring wide-eyed from the settee, silent for once. She hooked the GPS to the autopilot-no need for more steering practice-and went below. She pulled out the sail cover and tied it down one last time, over Kyle’s dead body.
Stepping back on deck she saw that the Dilantin bottle had caught at the port gunwale and was rolling along the deck.
She opened the bottle and took one pill to Kyle. “Here, I found them. They weren’t in their place.” She peeled the sail cover from his face, opened his teeth, and put a tablet on his bloody tongue. She closed his jaw. A tear dropped from her eye to Kyle’s cheek, but she felt no regret.
She took a beer from the fridge and went back to the cockpit and stretched out across a cushion. The engine soothed her with its loud rhythm. Regina relaxed, confident in her ability to safely make the two-day run to West End.
Joan Hess
It is not uncommon to encounter Joan Hess and immediately think she’s mad at somebody about something. This is a formidable-looking woman who isn’t about to take any nonsense, you bet. Of course, after a couple of seconds, it is entirely likely that she’ll have a great smile on her face, and she’s guaranteed to put one on anybody within earshot. She is, and there can be no argument about this, one of the funniest people on the planet.
The story that follows is not comic, but many of her novels are, and she has developed a large and appreciative readership. With more than twenty books to her credit in a relatively brief time, she has still managed to find the energy to join and be active in a large number of mystery organisations, including Sisters in Crime, Mystery Writers of America, American Crime Writers’ League, and the Arkansas Mystery Writers Alliance; perhaps coincidentally, she lives in Arkansas.
Hess doesn’t only write a lot of books, she writes good ones, as evidenced by her many awards, which include the American Mystery Award, an Agatha, and a McCavity.
Caveat Emptor
The first time she came walking across the street, I pegged her for a whiner. Her shoulders drooped like she thought she was carrying a goodly portion of the world’s woes in a backpack, and from her expression, I could tell right off that she didn’t think it was fair. I had news for her: nobody ever promised it would be. If it were, I’d have been playing pinochle beside a pool instead of watching soap operas while I ironed as the world turned.
She came onto the porch. “May I please use your phone?”
“Long distance?” I said cautiously.
“I need to call Mr. Wafford. He was supposed to have the utilities turned on by today, but nothing’s on.”
I took a closer look. She was at most in her late twenties, with short brown hair and a jaw about as square as I’d ever seen. Her eyes were sizzling with frustration, but her smile was friendly. Smiling back, I said, “You bought the house over there?”
“I’m Sarah Benston. I signed the papers last week, and Mr. Wafford promised to arrange for the utilities to be on when we got here. It’s after nine o’clock. My son and I have been on the road for fourteen hours, and there’s no way we get by without water and electricity. I was hoping that he could still do something.”
“You bring your son inside and let me give him a glass of juice,” I said. “You can call Wafford if you want, but you’re welcome to camp out over here. How old’s your boy?”
“Cody’s ten. I guess it’s too late to call Mr. Wafford. He won’t be able to do anything at this time of night.”
I still wasn’t sure what to make of her as she brought in a listless child, rolled out a sleeping bag for him in a corner, and kissed him good-night.
“So you bought the Sticklemann house?” I asked her as we sat down at the kitchen table.
She took a sip of coffee and nodded. “It seemed smart, even though my ex can’t remember to send his child-support payments. I never finished my degree, so I decided to move back here and take classes. I was going to rent an apartment, but then Mr. Wafford explained how I could buy a house and build up equity. After the three or four years it’ll take to graduate, I can sell the house and make a small profit. Cody’s used to having a yard.”
“How long since the divorce?” I asked.
“A year.” Sarah put down her cup. “I know this is an imposition, Mrs…?”
“James, honey, but you call me Deanna. I know what you’re going through. My daughter got divorced four years ago, and she had a real tough time before she threw up her hands and moved back in with me. Now she has a job, a good one, at an insurance office in town. She’s dating a real polite boy she knew back in high school. Her daughter Amy’s eight, so she’s in bed. It’s not a good idea having three generations of women in the same house, but we do what we got to do. You have a job, Sarah?”
“As a teacher’s aide,” she said with a shrug. “It’s minimum wage, but the house payment’s not much more than what I’d be paying in rent. Mr. Wafford is financing the sale privately, since I probably couldn’t have qualified for a loan. Even if I had, I’d have been charged closing costs of more than three thousand dollars. This way, I only had to put down five percent, which left me enough to pay for the rental truck and the utility deposits.”
“It’ll work out,” I said soothingly, although I had my doubts. My daughter had needed food stamps and welfare and everything else she could get until she’d found a job. I would have helped her out, but all I had were my monthly disability checks.
I made her a bed on the sofa, then sat and gazed out my bedroom window at the Sticklemann place, wondering just how much Jeremiah (“Call me ‘Jem’”) Wafford had told this nice young woman.
Not nearly enough, I suspected.
I watched her from the porch the next day. I would have liked to help her haul in suitcases and furniture, but my back wasn’t up to it. Her boy did what he could, trying to be the man of the family; finally, Perniski from up the road took pity on her and carried boxes, mattresses, bed frames, and mismatched chairs inside the house. All the same, she did most of the work, and I could see she had spirit.
Cody proved to be a mannersome child, and he ended up most weekday afternoons with Amy, watching movies on the television. Sarah tried to pay me for looking after him. I refused, saying that he was no trouble. He wasn’t.
A month after she moved in, she came knocking on my front door. I could tell right off that she was upset, but I pretended not to notice and said, “You have time for coffee?”
“What’s the deal with the water lines?” she said, close to sputtering with outrage. “The toilet backed up and flooded the bathroom. The plumber says that all the houses out here have substandard pipes from the nineteen fifties, and there’s nothing he can do short of replacing everything from the house to the main sewer line. Where am I going to find a thousand dollars?”
I sat her down on the porch swing. “There are some things Wafford didn’t tell you, honey. After he bought the house, he slapped fresh paint on it and put down new linoleum-but it’s still an old house. Don’t be surprised if the roof leaks when it rains. Mrs. Sticklemann had to put pots and pans in every room.”
Sarah stared at me. “What can I do? I called Mr. Wafford, but he reminded me that he recommended I pay for an inspection. It would have cost three hundred dollars. All I could hear him talking about were the possibilities for flower beds and a vegetable garden, and how Cody could play in the creek.”