Sophie's Last Stand

Ma looked scandalized, turned to me and said, “Tonight you bring your detective home for supper, eh?” She didn’t wait for an answer. In Ma’s world, she commanded and we obeyed.

“Well, Ma, maybe he’s got plans.”

“No, I don’t have any plans,” Gray answered. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to impose….”

“Good. It’s settled then,” Ma said, smug in her superiority over my paltry attempt to head off what had to be certain disaster.

Tonight I would be taking Gray Evans to my parents’ house for dinner, alone with him in a car, forced to sit next to him, to feel the energy between us, doomed, as Darlene would say, by destiny and my mother.

I shook off the thought of sitting inches away from Gray Evans. “Like a fish needs a bicycle,” I muttered under my breath. Hearing him chuckle, I realized I’d spoken too loudly.

Pa got everybody moving. Joe personally escorted Darlene to her car, while Gray hung back, carrying mugs and plates to the sink.

“Don’t,” I said. “I’ll get them later.”

Gray kept on working. “I don’t mind.”

But I do, I thought. I mind.

Order was restored in the kitchen in only a few minutes. Gray poured himself another cup of coffee, easy and relaxed in my home, and then sat down across from me.

“Joe gave me the note. There probably won’t be any prints on it. It’s been handled, anyway, so that’s not going to give us too much.”

“I guess I touched it before I realized what it was,” I said.

“Who looks in their mailbox expecting threats?” he answered. But he peered at me like this was more of a question, as if he were wondering if there’d been others before this one.

“Nick blames going to prison on me. I know,” I said. I spread my hands, as if warding off Gray’s protest. “It was his own fault, he broke the law, but because I testified, he blames me.”

“That’s crazy,” Gray said.

“No, that’s just Nick. He has his own little reality where he never accepts the blame for his actions. In Nick’s world, he was right and I was wrong.” I looked at Gray and thought, what the hell, give him the whole picture. What did I have left to lose? Any chance of a relationship was long gone in my mind. Besides, I reminded myself, this man was taken, even if he didn’t act like it.

“Nick had a secret life. I thought he was an accountant. He left for work every morning and didn’t come home again until dinnertime. He ate supper and he went back to the office—at least, that’s what he always told me, and I had no reason to doubt him. He had no other life, no friends, no hobbies, no other interests really, other than work. The only socializing we did was with my friends or my family. So it was a total shock to me when the federal agents came to our home with a search warrant.”

I glanced down into my coffee cup and tried to pretend I was someone else, the woman telling the story and not the story itself.

“I’m sure the local FBI office already told you this yesterday.”

Gray nodded, his expression so kind I had to look away. “I’ve heard what they have to say—now I want to hear how you saw it.”

“The agents in Philly showed me what he was doing. They showed me the Web site and the pictures. They showed me the things they found in our home, the cameras, the microphones hidden in the walls.” I could hear my voice starting to crack, to shake with the same uncontrollable tremors that happened every time I tried to talk about it.

Gray’s warm hand covered mine, but I pulled back. I didn’t want to look up and see pity on his face or hear the words that everyone always said but couldn’t ever really mean.

“I’m all right,” I said, and made myself go on. “There were pictures of me on the site—video clips, too. I was asleep, naked, and he snuck in and took pictures of me. He had hidden cameras in our bedroom, in our bathroom—” I broke off, choking on the words because I knew Gray could see in his mind’s eye what those pictures had shown, my most intimate, private moments, my life detailed for the world to watch, my ignorance earning Nick money and ultimately destroying my false sense of security.

“That bastard,” Gray swore.

“Whatever,” I said, shrugging. “It doesn’t change the fact that he blames me. I lose my world and he blames me.” I gestured to the note. “And now this.” I tried to laugh, but it rang hollow. “Guess it just goes to show, ‘No matter where you go, there you are.’”

Gray reached out, touching the tip of my chin with his fingers, forcing me to look up at him.

“Sophie, I’m not going to let him hurt you anymore,” he said. “You are strong and kind and good. You’re a survivor, not a victim. This is your new life, whatever you choose to make of it. No one has a right to take that away from you. I won’t stand by and let a scumbag like Nick Komassi destroy that.”

I looked at him and felt my eyes welling up with tears. Deep inside I felt a flicker of hope ignite and catch, but the rest of me was thinking, It’s too late already.

“Nick’s already ruined my life,” I said. “He started using drugs. He embezzled money from his clients at his accounting firm. It wasn’t enough that people kept coming up to me on the street and yelling at me, thinking I was in on it with him. It wasn’t enough that his partners in the firm think Nick stashed money away somewhere and that I know where it is. No, he’s somehow followed me down here and will make my life a living hell before it’s all over.”

Gray had said this was my new life, whatever I chose to make of it, but he never put himself in the picture with me, and I couldn’t see how he would, even if we knew each other better. He would always know my life was other people’s pornography. What if we became a couple and one day ran into a friend of his who suddenly realized I looked just like the woman in the dirty movie he had stashed away at home?

“Now,” Gray said, getting to his feet, “I’m going to take this note to the lab, file the report and start looking for Nick. In the meantime, lock the doors. If you go outside, make sure it’s where you can be seen. I’ll have the patrols increased around here, but keep your cell phone in your pocket, program my numbers into it and call me if you even feel funny. Don’t wait for trouble, don’t wait to be certain, call me if the breeze in your backyard so much as shifts direction. Okay?”

I nodded and sighed. It all felt so hopeless.

“Sophie, this is going to go away. I’m going to take care of it,” he said.

“What makes you think you’ll have any success when the feds and the Philadelphia police haven’t been able to keep Nick contained?”

Gray smiled. “Ah, but I have a motivation they didn’t have.”

“And what would that be?”

“I’m a gonna eat a real Italian food, made by a little Italian mama. I can’t let her little girl be troubled by goombahs, eh?”

The Italian accent was terrible but it made me smile, and that’s what he seemed to want. “That’s better. You light up the room when you smile, Sophie Mazaratti.”

“Yeah, and I light up the driveway when my ex blows up my car, and where does that get me?” I smiled, trying to deliver the wisecrack like I didn’t care, but hearing it fall flat as I spoke.

“Hey,” he said, the Italian accent even worse, “count your blessings. That fire burned off half of the bushes along the driveway. That’s bushes you don’t have to pull now, right?”

“Go!” I said, and felt my heart lift like a hot air balloon.

Chapter 5

I will be the first to admit that I know basically nothing about renovating a house. It didn’t look that hard, not when the real estate agent showed me the “before” pictures, and then contrasted those with the house as it appeared today. It looked like a walk in the park, like all I had to do was pick out paint and wallpaper. Well, almost…

This honeymoon lasted exactly one week, and then I sought professional help. I opened the phone book and let my blistered fingers do the walking. I knew enough to get several bids for each project. I knew to ask for references and proof of insurance. My downfall was that while I knew to ask for these things, I sometimes hired people just because I thought they were interesting. Not necessarily “nice” interesting, sometimes it was just that I felt sorry for them. However, “nice” did enter into it now and again.

I hired my carpenter because he looked like Santa Claus. He twinkled and laughed. He even drove a red truck. But I hired him without so much as asking if he could drive a nail. I was lucky with him.

I was not so lucky with my house painter. I hired him because he looked like James Dean, only shrunken, wizened with age and cigarettes. He could paint, all right, but not without complaining and whining every step of the way. Every morning I found myself meeting him at the door with a hot cup of coffee and a smile, just so I could entice him into working a full day. It never helped. He started after 10:00 a.m. and knocked off at 2:00 p.m., every single day.

I found my newest employee while I was standing in the driveway inspecting the burned-out frame of my former car. A tall blonde with stringy hair and a tight sleeveless T-shirt was making her way slowly down the street, stopping at every house to stuff a flyer into each mailbox. I tried not to watch her, but it was impossible. She couldn’t walk in a straight line, and not because she was impaired, but because of her side-kick, a gray-black-and-white furball of a dog.

The little dog pranced, leaping from the sidewalk into the street, darting past the blonde, crossing back across the bricks and into someone’s yard. The leash would become tangled around the blonde’s legs, drawing the entire procession to a halt as the girl slowly disengaged herself and tried to continue.

“Durrell,” I heard her say, her voice impatient, “walk right, will ya? This ain’t no parade.”

On they came, closer and closer, until finally they were even with the burned out car.

“Dang,” the blonde said. “I thought I had it rough, but this sure beats my luck all to hell.”

“Guess that’s why there’s insurance,” I said.

The girl’s gaze shifted from the car to me and then up to the house and yard. “Here,” she said, “you might need this.”

I took the flyer she offered and began reading. “Durrell’s Handy Work,” it read, hand done in barely legible block printing. “No job too big. Housework, repairs, yard work. Try us, you’ll like us.”

I looked from the flyer to where she stood waiting. “Who’s ‘us’?” I asked.

The girl smiled. “Me and Durrell, here. Honest. We’ve got lots and lots of experience. I can even get you references. Durrell’s my helper. He goes wherever I go. He’s no trouble and he’s right good at fetching stuff for me.”

She looked down at the little dog. He turned his head and stared up at me. He had huge brown eyes, but that wasn’t what I noticed most about him. The odd thing about Durrell was he appeared to be grinning. His pink tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, and his lips stretched back from his teeth into what can only be described as a huge doggy smile.

“Durrell, fetch!” The girl balled up one of the fliers and threw it across the driveway.

The dog watched the paper arc in the air and land with a soft bounce on the other side of the car. He looked back at his mistress, yawned and lay down at my feet, his furry head resting on my sneaker.

“Durrell!” She looked up at me. “I don’t know what’s eatin’ him,” she said, clearly disgusted.

“Performance anxiety, maybe,” I said. “It happens.” Durrell looked anything but anxious. Bored maybe, but not anxious.

She threw her hands up in exasperation and turned instead to inspect my property again. “Looks like you got somebody doin’ the paintin’,” she said, nodding to the ladder that stood against the side of the house. Her tone was wistful, as if work had been hard to come by and my house was yet another missed opportunity.

Durrell sighed, as if echoing her sentiments, and that was all it took.

“Can you pull vines and clear out brush?” I asked.

Her face lit with a slow smile, as if she couldn’t quite trust that her luck was turning. “Why, it is one of my specialties. Like we say, ‘No Job Too Large.’”

“Can you start today?” I asked.

She looked a little surprised, but said, “Now is good.” She looked down at the dog. “Is now good for you, varmint?”

Durrell moaned.

“That means yes,” she said. “Now is very good. My name is Della. We charge ten dollars an hour, cash only. So, what you need done?”

I looked at the backyard, trying to choose between it and the front. “I guess we could start out back and work our way forward,” I said.

Della’s eyes narrowed. “I’d start there, too, if I was you,” she said. “Way it’s overgrown, you could hide an army of outlaws back there and no one’d be the wiser.”

“Exactly.”

“All right,” she said. “Are the tools in your garage?” I nodded. “Then me and Durrell will get started. Don’t worry about showing us what to do, we know. ’Sides, you got company.” I followed her gaze and found Darlene sailing up the sidewalk, pink chiffon billowing behind her.

“Looks like it’s the Happy Neighbor lady or the Avon girl, one,” Della said.

Durrell jumped to his feet, his stumpy tail wagging hard enough to knock him sideways, and ran to greet Darlene like a long lost relative.

“Get off me, you mangy hound!” Darlene cried.

“Darlene, don’t talk to Durrell like that! He has issues,” I said. Darlene hates dogs, always has, ever since we were kids and Mr. Frangini’s cocker spaniel used to chase her home from school. I was going to enjoy this.

I looked down at Durrell, who hid behind my legs, grinning out at Darlene. “Good boy!” I murmured. “Terrorize the nice lady.”

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