Bill Pronzini - With an Extreme Burning

“Don't you have to work tomorrow?”

“Nope. Job site's shut down until Tuesday.”

“I wish Hallam's was shut down, too, but it's not.”

“Call in sick. Tell old man Hallam you've got the flu or something.”

Mom was right: Same old Chet Bracco, no sense of responsibility. When he wanted something—or somebody—he told lies and made excuses so he could get it, and he thought everybody else should do the same. “I don't know,” she said. “I don't think so. Besides, Mom wouldn't like it.”

“Lot of things your mom doesn't like. Me included.” He laughed. “We'd really like you to come, princess. I know how much you love the Dunes.”

She did love the Dunes. The cottage was on a remote part of the Mendocino coast, near Manchester State Beach. Nothing much around it but sand dunes and ocean for miles and miles. Supposed to be part of a big development twenty years ago, like Sea Ranch; streets had been laid out, all paved, with names and signposts, but most of them didn't lead anywhere because the developer had gone broke after putting up just a few cottages. The Dunes was set off by itself, on high ground so you had a view of the ocean, with the nearest neighbor several hundred yards away. Funky and kind of eerie, especially in foggy or rainy weather. Not a place you wanted to live in year round—you'd be bored out of your skull after a while—but for a few days or even a week it was super fine. Walk on the beach, read, or just sit and think, and nobody around to hassle you.

She'd been six when Mom and Dad bought the cottage. They'd stayed up there four or five times a year back then, before Dad started messing with other women. Or anyway, before he quit trying to hide the fact that he was messing. Then they stopped going so often, and in the year or so before he moved out they hadn't gone at all. Sometimes she wished Mom hadn't let him keep the Dunes as part of the divorce settlement, even if it had helped buy them this house. Not only wasn't it theirs anymore, it wasn't hers either. Three times she'd gone with Dad since the divorce and it was as if she were a visitor, a person in a rented place. Megan was part of the problem, too. She didn't like Megan. Big phony blonde with tits out to there and the dirtiest laugh … it didn't take a genius to figure what Dad saw in her. But God, she was such an airhead. All she talked about was clothes and food and what she liked on the tube, and all she'd done the one time the three of them went to the Dunes together was stare at a battery-operated TV she'd brought along so she wouldn't miss any of her soap operas or Oprah or silly sitcoms. Then there was Tony, her son by some guy in the navy. He was such an asshole. Five minutes after they met he'd started coming on to her. Another five minutes, if she hadn't blown him off cold, he'd have had his hand down her blouse. Four days at the Dunes would be good if it were just her and Dad. But with Megan and Tony and Tony's new bimbo … a weekend from hell. The walls at the cottage weren't all that thick. She could just imagine the sounds at night. A regular symphony of moans and groans and grunts and squeaks …

“Amy? You still there?”

“Yes, Dad. Just thinking.”

“So how about it? You coming?”

No, she thought, and I'll be the only one who isn't. She stifled a giggle. “I'd better not. Mr. Hallam's counting on me, and with school starting on Tuesday … Another time, okay?”

“Okay. But if you change your mind …”

“Maybe you and I could go sometime,” she said impulsively, “just the two of us.”

“Sure we can.”

But she could hear the faint hesitancy in his voice, and that was what made her say, “Like we used to when we were a family, before you left home.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “I've got a new home now. Another family, too, maybe. Megan and me, we may get married one of these days. How about that?”

“Great.” Shitty.

“Well … you take care, huh? Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Amy put the receiver down. He doesn't want to be alone with me, she thought, at the Dunes or anywhere else. He doesn't know what to say to me when we're alone. He doesn't know me and I don't know him, not anymore.

What if I never did?

The thought depressed her. Better think about something else, something pleasant… him ? No, not him. Whatever happened would happen, and fantasy-tripping wasn't going to make it happen any faster. All fantasy-tripping did was get you horny. The package. Maybe there was something in the package to cheer her up.

She picked up the scissors, cut the tape at both ends, and stripped off the brown wrapping paper. Inside was a gift box wrapped in fancy gold paper. No bow, and no card either. Probably a card inside, she thought. She pried one end of the gold paper loose, being careful not to rip it. It was expensive-looking and it could be used again.

Mom was home. She always came zooming into the driveway, gunning the wagon's engine like Richard Petty or somebody.

Amy thought: Oh, no, I've done all the work opening it, I get to look first. Quickly, she slit the Scotch tape on the other end with her fingernail and peeled off the gold paper. Then she lifted the lid on the box. Tissue paper, wads of it. Smiling, eager, she pulled it apart, spread it so she could see what was hidden inside—

She was staring into the box, not smiling anymore, when Mom came in. The sound of the back screen door banging made her jump. But it didn't make her stop staring.

“Amy? What's the matter?”

“Look.”

Mom came over and looked. Amy heard her suck in her breath, make a noise like a dog growling.

“For God's sake! Where did you get this?”

“It was on the porch when I got home a few minutes ago. It was addressed to both of us, so I—”

“Your name, too? Where's the wrapping?”

“Right there on the chair …”

Mom found it, uncrumpled it so she could look at the block printing. Amy kept staring into the box; she couldn't seem to take her eyes off the three things in the nest of tissue paper. There were goose pimples all over her.

A white bra with embroidered rosettes, one cup almost completely burned away, the rest of it scorched and smoke-streaked.

A pair of blue monogrammed panties, torn, burned like the bra.

A photo of her and Mom in bikinis with their arms around each other, the edges curled and blackened, char marks reaching like ugly fingers over their bodies and faces.

“I don't recognize the printing,” Mom said.

Amy shook her head. “Me neither.”

“There was no card inside, no message?”

“No. Mom … why ?”

“I don't know, baby.”

“The weirdo?”

No answer.

“It must be,” Amy said. “Who else would send us stuff like this? But then that means …”

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to; Mom had to be thinking the same thing. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she was scared.

That bra with the embroidered rosettes … it was one of Mom's best. And the blue monogrammed panties … hers, her initials, AB, part of a set Dad and Megan had given her for Christmas last year. And the photo … taken two summers ago, at Eileen and Ted's cabin at Blue Lake, no other one like it, and she remembered putting it into the album herself—the family album that was upstairs on the shelf in Mom's closet.

Whoever he was, he'd been in the house.

He'd been in their bedrooms .…

TWELVE

Jerry's Saturday cookout was already under way when Dix arrived. Voices, a burst of laughter, rose from the backyard; he could smell charcoal smoke on the late-afternoon breeze. A fresh reluctance, almost an aversion, built in him as he opened the Buick's rear door and lifted out the bag with the three six-packs of beer—his contribution to the potluck affair. People, eight or ten of them. Friends, old friends, but still people to have to talk to, an entire evening of socializing to get through. He was not sure he was ready for this yet.