Chris Adrian - The Best American Mystery Stories 2007

“I’ll put it on my list,” Lucy said. She took the notepad out of her vest pocket, clicked the small ballpoint and added “Oranges” to her list for Tuesday.

Shamrock Real Estate was located on First Street in the town of Hudson, along the St. Croix River, in a flat cinder-block building that had been painted brown. Lucy parked in front and went in through the front door, the screen slapping behind her. The reception area smelled like nicotine, and held a desk, chair, computer and a beat-up faux-leather couch that might have been stolen from an airport lounge; there was nobody at the reception desk, and never was, because there’d never been a receptionist. Two small offices opened off the reception area. One was dark because nobody worked out of it. A light shone in the second, and Michael Crandon, who’d been reading a free paper with his feet up on his desk, leaned forward to see who’d come in.

“Me,” Lucy said, leaning in the office doorway.

“How you feeling?” Crandon asked. He dropped his feet to the floor. He was too old for it, but his brown hair was highlighted with peroxide and gelled up.

“You got it?” Lucy asked.

“You got the cash?”

She dug it out of her shorts pocket, a fold of bills: “Two hundred dollars.” She dropped it on the desk, as though she were buying chips in Vegas.

He handed her two amber pill bottles and a slip of paper. “Pills are numbered,” he said. “Take the big one the first day, the small one the second day. Read the instructions.”

“Better be good, for two hundred dollars,” Lucy said.

“They’re good.”

“Be back if they aren’t,” she said.

“Have I ever sold you any bad shit?”

Lucy shook her head: “You don’t want there to be a first time,” she said, her mouth shifting down to a grim line.

Crandon gave her his square-chinned grin; but he wasn’t laughing.

When she left the real estate office, she put the pill containers in the truck’s glove compartment and headed back up to Second Street and then out onto I-94, across the St. Croix Bridge into Minnesota, off at the first exit and south to the Lakeland library, which was in a strip shopping center a mile south of the exit. She parked in front of the post office, got a clipboard off the truck seat and carried it down to the library.

The library had a couple of small computers tucked away in the back. She brought one up, typed for a few minutes and printed out the paragraph. Then she took out a couple of rubber Finger Tips, the kind used by accountants and bank tellers, fitted them on her thumb and index finger, pulled the envelope out of the clipboard, printed that, wiped the screen and shut the computer down. Handling both the paper and the envelope with the Finger Tips, she slipped them back in the clipboard and carried them out to the car.

The town of River Falls was back across the St. Croix and another fifteen minutes south of Hudson. She drove on down, elbow out the window, the wind scrubbing the fine hair on her left forearm, past all the golf courses and cornfields and dairy farms and yuppie houses. She went straight to the post office, sealed the envelope using a corner of her shirt dampened with Chippewa spring water, stamped it with a self-sticking stamp and dropped it in the mailbox.

Looked in her book, at her list.

Good. Right on schedule.

Back home, Lucy put the oranges in the refrigerator; Mom yelled from the back of the trailer, “Lucy? That you?”

“Yeah.”

Mom came out of the back, her face wet, as though she’d been splashing water on it. “Why didn’t you tell me about Steve?”

“I figured you’d find out soon enough,” Lucy said. “Didn’t want to make you unhappy.”

“Jesus Christ, Lucy, I needed to know.” Her voice was coarse; she’d been crying.

“So you know,” Lucy said. “I got the oranges.”

“Jesus Christ, Luce...”

Lucy brushed past Mom and went into the bathroom, closed the door and looked at the two yellow pill bottles and the piece of paper. The paper carried handwritten instructions, which looked as though they’d been xeroxed about a hundred times. She read the instructions, then read them again, then opened one of the bottles, took out the pill, looked at it, bent over the sink, slurped some water from the faucet, then leaned back and popped the pill.

Everything would be better now. She flushed the toilet and went back out into the hall, could hear her mother in the bedroom; she might have been sobbing. “I’m taking my clubs,” Lucy called out.

Mom blubbered something, and Lucy picked up her clubs, then put them back down and went to the bedroom door and spoke at it.

“Can I come in?”

More blubbering, and she pushed the door open.

“I thought... I’m sorry, Mom, but I thought you were all done with that man.”

“Well, I was all done,” Mom said; her eyes had red circles around them. “Mostly. But I wouldn’t want that to come to him. Being killed like that.”

“Is there anything I can do about this? For you?”

“Naw, I’m just gonna sit around and cry for a couple of days. You go on.”

“I mean, you aren’t... pregnant or anything.”

Now a tiny smile: “I ain’t that stupid, honey. He never was a good bet.”

“All right.” Lucy nodded. “I’ll be back for dinner.”

The first fairway was empty, except for some yellow tape around the bunker. Lucy swerved away from the course and the practice green and crossed the driveway to the clubhouse. She dropped her bag in the office and looked out into the restaurant area. Jerry Wilhelm was sitting alone at the bar, smoking a cigarette and staring at a glass of beer; Perry, the bartender, was standing in the corner looking up at the TV, trying to tune it with a remote. Lucy drew herself a Diet Coke, then went around and slid up on a stool next to Wilhelm.

“You talk to the cops yet?” she asked.

“Waitin’ right now,” he said. “Mitch is downstairs with Carl Wallace.” He looked at the stairs that went down to the basement party room. “Jesus, Luce, you shoulda seen him when they took him out of that sand trap. Stevie. Like to blew my guts. He was all... gray.”

“Glad I didn’t see it,” she said, and tipped back the glass of Diet Coke.

“Rick Waite told me about your dick-pointing tip. You get that from Stevie?”

“Shoot no; the only way Stevie’s dick ever pointed was straight out.”

“How would you know about that?” Wilhelm asked.

“He used to tell me about it,” Lucy said. “Though I didn’t believe but half of what he said.”

“Shoulda believed about a quarter of it.”

“About old Satin Shorts? Guess you’d know about that.”

“Mary? Really? No, I didn’t hear that one.”

“Shoot, Jimmy, it was all over the club,” Lucy said. “Give me some of those peanuts, will ya?”

As Wilhelm pushed the bowl of complimentary peanuts at her, he said, “I thought him and your ma...”

“That was over two months ago.” Christ, they couldn’t think Mom did it? Of course they could, she thought — Mom and Stevie... “Two months ago... Where you been, boy?”

Wilhelm shrugged. “Working, I guess. Heard about your scholarship. You’re going to Florida?”

“Yup. I’ll give it two years anyway.”

“Well, good luck to ya. You’re the only person ever come out of this club might make it as a pro,” he said.

“I’m gonna try,” she said.

“It’s on your list?” Her lists were famous.

She finished the Diet Coke and touched her vest pocket: “Yup. It’s on my list,” she said. She pushed away and touched his shoulder. “Good luck with the cops; Mitch is a pretty good guy.”

“Thanks,” he said. She could feel his eyes on her ass as she walked away. Nothing to that, though. That was just normal. And the mission had been definitely accomplished.