Шарлин Харрис - Small Kingdoms and Other Stories

“Yes,” Sherman said, relieved. “The Wilsons are all…well, they’re, ah, interesting people. Very nice!”

That hadn’t been the first comment that had popped into Mr. Sherman’s mind. Anne would bet good money that Sherman had been about to say, “The Wilsons are all high-strung,” or “The Wilsons have had their share of nuts on the family tree.”

Of course, Wilson was a common name, and there was a small chance that Melayna Tate had no connection with Tom Wilson, the mentally ill man who had claimed to be Anne’s first husband. But Anne did not believe in small chances.

Anne worked out her course of action. She was smiling. That night, in the dark, Anne left her house.

The Travis Panthers had a home game the next afternoon. Anne was in the stands, as usual. Melayna was there too, perhaps because she could sit and watch Holt Halsey for a long time without anyone noticing.

Anne watched Melayna, perfecting her plan as she did so.

That night, around one a.m., Anne again crept into Melayna’s yard. She’d parked a mile away. She was wearing dark clothes, but not all black, just in case she was stopped. She didn’t want to look like a secret creeping ninja. She had prepared a backup story involving a broken down car, a lost cell phone, and her need to find the nearest person she knew for help. She could sell it, but she didn’t want to be obliged to do that.

Much better to be unseen.

Anne was uniquely qualified to do that. She enjoyed employing the craft she’d once taught others. She hadn’t realized how confined she’d felt, being in the public sight all the time, being Anne. She paused beneath a large magnolia, safe from observation. She allowed herself to relax and revel in being Twyla again. But then she thought of how Melayna had made a fool of Anne. And she had coveted Holt.

I’ll kill her, Anne thought. To hell with the plan. The reckless joy she felt was as pure an emotion as she possessed.

Anne had told Holt that she was not jealous, and she had thought she meant it.

She’d been lying.

It wasn’t that Holt had had sex with Melayna Tate. That was immaterial. It was that Melayna presumed to think she had a prior claim on Anne’s man.

Anne closed her eyes and breathed deep. This was no time to go off track. She recognized her conflict, dealt with it, controlled it. She would stick to the plan. When Anne was sure she’d regained her control, she proceeded.

Melayna had no security system. She lived in a home built around 1950. Though the windows were stiff and noisy, the back door was easy to finagle, for someone with Anne’s skills. Anne swept through the small house like a dark wind. She knew the floor plan well. She’d scouted the house the previous night. She moved silently into Melayna’s bedroom.

After checking to make sure Melayna was soundly asleep, Anne propped something up against the alarm clock on the night table.

The next day, Melayna Tate was late for her first class. When she arrived at the school, she was not only disheveled, but distracted. She jumped at any sudden noise, and she couldn’t seem to concentrate on her players at practice. Melayna asked Coach Jennifer Lee if she could spend the night at Lee’s house.

After a couple of days, the basketball coach was a little better. She resumed sleeping at home, but she got new locks and a security system.

After a month, rumors circulated that Miss Tate had applied for two jobs elsewhere in the state, one at Travis’s chief rival, Powell High.

A week later, when Melayna caught Holt alone in his small office, she said, “You haven’t even congratulated me on my move for next year.”

“You took a job somewhere else?”

“Yeah, at Powell. This is my last semester here.”

“Best of luck,” Holt said, with a polite smile, and went back to his computer.

Melayna made a noise like a sob when she walked away. But Holt did not look up.

“She felt pretty bad,” Holt concluded, when he was telling the story to Anne. They were eating dinner at Holt’s townhouse condo. He’d volunteered to grill.

“She should have,” Anne said. “She thought it out and hit me where it hurt.”

“You haven’t told me what you did to scare her so badly.” Holt turned to Anne, with a platter of barbecued chicken and grilled corn.

“I left a picture of her sleeping in her bed that I’d taken the night before,” Anne said. “And a pre-need contract from First Memorial Funeral Home.” Anne smiled, the smile of a shark. “I filled it out with her name, and included her date of death. Which was this coming May on the last day of school.”

Holt shook his head and laughed. “Good call.”

“I figured there was no chance she wouldn’t understand that,” Anne said serenely. “Not even a small one.”

A remark by the producer for the Midnight, Texas television series sparked this story. David Janollari is a big fan of the Anne DeWitt stories, and he told me he really wanted to find out more about David Angola. I was taken aback. After giving Holt’s former boss a cool name, I had completely forgotten about him.

Why would Angola show up in Colleton County? He wouldn’t be there for work-related matters as Holt and Anne are no longer his employees. He’d have to have some time on his hands. Perhaps he was on sabbatical for reasons that would provide the foundation for an intriguing story. And suddenly I saw a way to tie everything together and reveal a new dimension in the relationship between Anne and Holt.

David Angola was leaning against Anne DeWitt’s car in the Travis High School parking lot. The bright early-fall sun shone on his newly shaved dark head. It was four-thirty on a Friday afternoon, and the lot was almost empty.

Anne did not get the surprise David had (perhaps) intended. She always looked out the window of her office after she’d collected her take-home paperwork.

Anne hadn’t stayed alive as long as she had by being careless.

After a few moments of inner debate, she decided to go home as usual. She might as well find out what David wanted. Anne was utterly alert as she walked toward him, her hand on the knife in her jacket pocket. She was very good with sharp instruments.

“I come in peace,” he called, holding out his hands to show they were empty. His white teeth flashed in a broad smile.

The last time Anne had seen David they’d been friends, or at least as close to friends as they could be. But that had been years ago. She stopped ten feet away. “Who’s minding Camp West while you’re gone?” she said.

“Chloe,” he said.

“Don’t remember her.”

“Chloe Montgomery,” he said. “Short blond hair? Six feet tall?”

“The one who went to Japan to study martial arts?”

David nodded.

“I didn’t like her, but you obviously have a different opinion.” Anne was only marking time with the conversation until she got a feel for the situation. She had no idea why David was here. Ignorance did not sit well with her.

“Not up to me,” David said.

Anne absorbed that. “How could she not be your choice? Last I knew, you were still calling the shots.”

For the past eight years, David Angola had been the head of Camp West, a very clandestine California training facility specializing in survival under harsh conditions… and harsh interrogation.

Anne had been his opposite number at Camp East, located in the Allegheny Mountains. Since the training was so rigorous, at least every other year a student didn’t survive. This was the cost of doing business. However, a senator’s daughter had died at Camp East. Anne had been fired.

“I was calling the shots until there were some discrepancies in the accounts.” David looked away as he said that.