Charlaine Harris - Real Murders

I let this nag at me until I got home and saw my father’s car waiting at my apartment. As I greeted my father and hugged my half-brother, I made a resolution not to think about these killings for a couple of days. I wanted to enjoy Phillip’s company.

Phillip is in the first grade and he can be very funny and very exasperating. He will eat about five things with any enthusiasm- five nutritious things, that is. (Anything with no nutritional value whatsoever is always acceptable to Phillip.) Luckily for me, one of those things is spaghetti sauce and another is pecan pie, not that either is exactly a health food.

“Roe! Are we having spaghetti tonight?” he asked eagerly.

“Sure,” I said, and smiled at him. I bent and kissed him before he could say, “Yuck! No kisses!” He gave me a quick kiss back, then scrambled to get his suitcase and (much more important) a plastic garbage bag full of essential toys. “I’m going to put these in my room,” he told Father, who was beaming at him with unadulterated pride.

“Son, I’ve got to go now,” Father told him. “Your mom is anxious to get where we’re going. You be good for your big sister, now, and do what she says to do without giving her any trouble.”

Phillip half-listened, mumbled “Sure, Dad,” and lugged his paraphernalia into my place.

“Well, Doll, this sure is nice of you,” my father said to me when Phillip had vanished.

“I like Phillip,” I said honestly. “I like having him stay here.”

“Here are the phone numbers where we’ll be staying,” Father said and fumbled a sheet of notepaper out of his pocket. “If anything goes wrong, anything at all, call us straight away.”

“Okay, okay,” I reassured him. “Don’t worry. Have a good time. I’ll see you Sunday night?”

“Yes, we should be here about five or six. If we’re going to be any later than that, we’ll call you. Don’t forget to remind him about his prayers. Oh-if he runs a fever or anything, here’s a box of chewable children’s aspirin. He gets three. And he needs to have a glass of water by the bed at night.”

“I’ll remember.” We hugged, and he got in his car with a lopsided smile and half-wave that I could see a woman would have a hard time forgetting. I watched Father drive out of the parking lot, and then heard Phillip shouting from the kitchen, “Roe! You got any cookies?”

I supplied Phillip with two awful sandwich cookies that he’d told me were his favorites. Very pleased, he bounced outside with his garbage bag of toys, having dumped the “inside” ones in the middle of my den. “I bet you have to cook, so I’m going to be out here playing,” he said seriously.

I could take a hint. I got busy with the spaghetti sauce.

The next time I glanced out the window to check, I saw through my open patio gate that Phillip had already commandeered Bankston into playing baseball in the parking lot. Phillip had great scorn for my baseball playing ability, but Bankston had his approval. Bankston had taken off his suit coat and his tie immediately, and seemed not nearly so stuffy as he pitched the baseball to Phillip’s waiting bat.

They’d played before when Phillip had visited, and Bankston didn’t seem to consider it an imposition.

Then Robin was drawn into the game when he got home, and he was acting as Phillip’s catcher when I called from the patio gate that supper was ready.

“Yahoo!” Phillip shrieked, and propped his bat against the patio wall. I smiled and shrugged at his abandoned playmates and whispered to Phillip, “Thank Bankston and Robin for a good game.”

“Thank you,” Phillip said obediently and dashed in to scramble into his chair at my small dining table. I glimpsed the top of Melanie’s head in Bankston’s open door as he went in, and Robin said, “See you later, for pecan pie. I like your little brother,” as he strolled through the gate to his patio. I felt warm and flushed with pride at having such a cute brother-and a little warm too at Robin’s smile, which had definitely been of the personal variety.

For the next twenty minutes I was occupied in seeing that Phillip used his napkin and said his prayer and ate at least a little serving of vegetables. I looked fondly at his perpetually tousled light brown hair and his startlingly blue eyes, so different from mine. Between bites of spaghetti and garlic bread, Phillip was telling me a long involved story about a fight on the school playground, involving a boy whose brother really knew karate and another boy who really had all the G.I. Joe attack vehicles. I listened with half an ear, the other part of my mind being increasingly occupied by the niggling feeling that I was supposed to know something. Or remember something. Or had I seen something? Whatever this “something” was, I needed to call it to mind.

“My baseball!” shrieked Phillip suddenly.

He had my full attention. The shriek, which had sprung with no warning from his throat while he was telling me what the principal had done to the playground combatants, had scared the whosis out of me.

“But Phillip, it’s dark,” I protested, as he catapulted out of his chair and dashed to the back door. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him walk, and decided that I had, once, when he was about twelve-months-old. “Here, at least take my flashlight!”

I managed to stuff it in his hand only because he was so partial to flashlights that he slowed down long enough for me to pull it from the kitchen cabinet.

“And try to remember where you last saw the ball!” I bellowed after him.

I’d finished my meal while Phillip was relating his long story, so I scraped my plate and put it in the dishwasher (Robin was due in a few minutes, and I wanted the place to look neat). The dessert plates were out, everything else was ready, so while I waited for a triumphant Phillip to return with his baseball, I idly looked at my shelves, putting a few books back in place that were out of order. I stared at the titles of all those books about bad or crazy or crazed people, men and women whose lives had crossed the faint line that demarks those who could but haven’t from those who can and have.

Phillip had been gone a long time; I couldn’t hear him out in the parking lot.

The phone rang.

“Yes?” I said abruptly into the receiver.

“Roe, it’s Sally Allison.”

“What…”

“Have you seen Perry?”

“What? No!”

“Has he been… following you anymore?”

“No… at least, I haven’t noticed if he has.”

“He…” Sally trailed off.

“Come on, Sally! What’s the matter?” I asked roughly. I stared out through the kitchen window, hoping to see the beam of the flashlight bobbing around through the slats in the patio fence. I remembered the night Perry’d been across the street in the dark waiting for Robin to bring me home. I was terrified.

“He didn’t take his medicine today. He didn’t go to work. I don’t know where he is. Maybe he took some more pills.”

“Call the police, then. Get them looking for him, Sally! What if he’s here? My little brother’s out alone in the dark!” I hung up the phone with a hysterical bang. I grabbed up my huge key ring, with some idea of taking my car around the block for a search, and I pulled out the second flashlight I kept ready.

It was my fault. The thing in the dark had gotten my little brother, a six-year-old child, and it was my fault . Oh Lord God, heavenly King, protect the child.

I left the back door wide open, the welcome light spilling into the deep dusk. The patio gate was already open, Phillip never remembered to close it. His bat was propped beside it as he’d left it coming in to supper.

“Phillip!” I screamed. Then I thought, Maybe I should be quiet and creep. In a frenzy of indecision, I swung the flashlight to and fro. A few yards away, a car started up and pulled out of its space. As it went by, I saw it was Melanie in Bankston’s car. She smiled and waved. I gaped after her. How could she not have heard me yell?