Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“I am your friend, Dorothy. You have to believe that.”

“You told on Ted.”

“No. I didn’t. Jennifer Goodall told on Ted.”

Dong.

The clock had been cranking up for several minutes, but still the clang of the bell so close to my head surprised me. It surprised Dorothy, too, because she startled, seemed to recall where she was, and lunged.

Dong.

Her arm came down, and I managed to parry the blow, forgetting until her arm made contact with mine that that was the one she’d slashed.

“Eeeeeeeah!” I screamed as pain blazed up my arm, exploding in colored lights inside my head.

Dong.

With my right hand, I grabbed Dorothy’s wrist and pushed back. With my left, I found her thumb where it grasped the weapon. I worked my fingers around her thumb and bent it backward as far as it would go.

Dorothy screamed and dropped the box cutter. It hit the balustrade, bounced, and tumbled over the edge. I heard glass breaking as it struck one of the skylights below.

Dong.

Dorothy kept coming. Both arms shot forward like pistons, hitting my chest like a battering ram, knocking the air out of me. I staggered and tried to regain my footing, but slipped on a patch of ice and went sprawling.

Dong.

Dorothy was on me in an instant, both hands around my throat. As I struggled to breathe, I forced my fists between us, brought them together and thrust my arms straight up and over my head, breaking her grip. I brought my fists down again, hard, on the top of her head. She screamed and rolled away, palms pressed flat against her temples.

Dong!

By the time I had struggled to my feet, Dorothy had, too. She slumped against the balustrade, panting. While her attention was diverted, I launched myself at her like a linebacker, sweeping her feet out from under her. She landed on the snow-covered terrazzo, her skull making a sickening crack as it hit the stone.

On my hands and knees, I crawled toward her, appalled at what I had done. Dorothy’s eyes were closed. She wasn’t moving.

“Dorothy!” I cried as I straddled her legs. “Oh, Dorothy, I’m so sorry!” I felt for a pulse in her neck and was relieved when I found it, beating strong and steady.

By some miracle, Dorothy’s cell phone was still clipped to her belt. I slipped it out of its case and with the bell still bonging away behind me, pressed 911, reported our location, and characterized the situation as a stabbing and a head injury. I’d knocked her out, that was for sure, but other than that, I really didn’t know what was wrong with Dorothy. I figured we could sort that out when the paramedics got there.

Then I telephoned Paul.

It rang once, twice. Paul didn’t pick up. I’d left him at home reading the paper. Where the hell had he gone?

Three rings, four, and the answering machine kicked in. “Damn it to hell!” I said, and mashed my finger down on the star button to skip the message and get straight to the beep. “Paul! Don’t ask any questions. Just get your butt over to Mahan. I’m up in the clock tower with Dorothy. Please hurry!”

Beneath my legs, Dorothy stirred. Her eyelids fluttered, then flew open. She began to pitch and turn, struggling to get up.

I set the phone aside, leaned forward and pinned Dorothy’s shoulders gently to the terrazzo. “Tell me about Jennifer Goodall,” I urged her softly.

Dorothy dissolved into tears. “It was Jennifer this and Jennifer that and Jennifer said and Jennifer thinks,” she sobbed. “Ted didn’t see it coming, but I did, oh yes, I saw it coming from a mile away. Oooooh,” she wailed. “How can a man be so blind?”

“Surely you’re-” I began, but Dorothy cut me off.

“Imagining things? That’s what Ted used to say, but then I caught him red-handed.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

A sly look crept over her face. “I read his e-mail. He thought his AOL was password protected, but I figured it out.” She laughed. “Men! It’s always all about them, isn’t it? Think they’re so clever.” She raised her head a couple of inches from the terrazzo, grimaced, moaned, then lay back. “The password was his license plate number! Is that stupid, or what?”

“What was in his e-mail?” I asked, trying to steer Dorothy back on track.

“She wrote him love notes. They were graphic, totally disgusting. I confronted Ted about it. I begged and I pleaded. His career, his brilliant career, was going down in flames, and all because he couldn’t keep his fly zipped!

“He tried to break it off several times, you know,” she continued, “but Jennifer kept threatening him. She knew all about what was going on in his office. He was paying her money to keep quiet about it.”

Dorothy’s eyes were fixed on mine. “It was going to go on and on and on. Somebody had to put a stop to it, and Ted didn’t have the balls.”

“So who stopped her, Dorothy? You?”

Dorothy squeezed her eyes shut, turned her head to one side. “I sent her an e-mail, asking her to meet me here to talk about it.” She turned her face to me again and grinned mischievously. “I used Ted’s e-mail account, of course. She thought it was him. And when she got to Mahan, I was waiting by the barber’s chair.

“I didn’t mean to kill her,” Dorothy whimpered, “but she made me so mad! She didn’t even bother to deny the relationship with my husband, she even boasted about it!”

“I know about that,” I said quietly. “She tried that little trick with me.”

“Yes! That’s why I knew she was evil, and that she’d never go away and leave us alone.

“I don’t know what happened, really,” Dorothy continued dreamily. “One minute I’m standing there holding the hammer, listening to her go on and on about how sexy my husband is, and the next minute I’m standing over her. I’m still holding the hammer. She was dead,” she said matter-of-factly. “So I put her in the trunk.

“At least I still have Kevin.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Kevin won’t let me down, not like his father did.”

Dorothy shivered, and covered her bare head with both hands. I took my cap off and slipped it over her head, making sure the tips of her ears were well-protected.

“So, you hit Jennifer with the hammer and put her in the trunk. Then what?” I prodded.

“I guess I panicked. The cast and crew would be showing up pretty soon, so I ran off the stage and wrapped the hammer in the first thing that came to hand and threw it in the Dumpster.”

“That was my sweatshirt.”

“I know,” she sniffed. “I’m sorry.”

“How can you tell me you’re sorry when you deliberately told the police that you saw me throw the hammer in the Dumpster? I thought we were friends, Dorothy.”

“I don’t know why I told them that!” she wailed, fresh tears cascading sideways down her cheeks. “I get so confused!” She covered her eyes with her hands, her freshly manicured and painted nails a stark contrast to her ravaged face.

I was trying to work out how it was that my fingerprints, and not hers, were found on the hammer, and then I remembered the gloves she always wore to protect her nails.

“Were you wearing your gloves when you hit her?”

She nodded miserably.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up!” Somebody was chanting in a tinny, faraway voice.

After a confusing second or two, I realized Dorothy’s cell phone was talking to me. I must have set it down on the terrazzo after leaving the message for Paul.

I raised the phone to my ear. “Paul?”

“What the hell is going on? I was out sprinkling salt on the sidewalk, and when I came in I heard voices coming in over the answering machine. Hannah, are you okay?”