Eagle Road is a dead end. Turning into my driveway, I thought, Not many secrets here-single woman, thirties, no kids, no cats. Obsessive devotion to mini pine bark nuggets. The mailbox reads HOLLIDAY AND MAZ-ZARA, although that second name should have been razored off months ago.
My house was built about thirty- five years ago. The perky real estate agent I rented-then ultimately bought-it through said it had once been owned by a basketball player. Must have been a college player, because it was small, not the humongous estates even the benchwarmers have nowadays. It might have been true, though. When my ex and I first started spending summers up here, we saw a few of my beloved New York Knicks having breakfast at the Paradise. Perky real estate agent aside, that may have closed the sale.
Anyway, the player got cut by the team and the bank foreclosed, so I was able to pick the house up for a song-just about all I had.
I pulled into the garage and hopped out for a quick stroll around my garden before it got too dark. My own little controllable environment. That’s a laugh. All you can do is deal with the weather, the soil, the sun, the bugs, the bacteria, the fungi, and then resign yourself to the fact that the deer will eat most of it anyway. I didn’t kid myself that I controlled the garden. But at least there were no dead bodies here-or none that I knew of.
Outside the garden, control was no easier. Chris Mazzara had moved out months ago. The body had stuck around, but, to paraphrase B. B. King, the thrill had gone. Now the only thing left was the name on the mailbox, which I hadn’t had the heart to remove, since that made the departure more final.
I ended my short garden inspection, picking off a few dead leaves in the pro cess, then went inside.
“Anna?” I yelled. No answer.
Anna Peсa is my cleaning lady. The cushy days of double income no kids were gone and I couldn’t afford her anymore, but Anna didn’t seem to want to leave. And it was anyone’s guess when she’d show up. I suspected she came to watch English lessons on cable, which she didn’t get at home, but she never said. There was only the inconclusive evidence of the laundry being done and the TV being on channel 106. Far be it from me to discourage her.
Anna was a hardworking single mom and she’d decided that polishing her English and being my “assistant” would land her a job at the country’s biggest tequila distributor, based in neighboring Greenwich. So sometimes she came by to answer the phone and do a little filing to practice. “I don’t want to clean houses forever. I have ambition,” she’d told me.
To that same end, she’d recently embarked on a cutrate make over including the permanent tattooing of her eyebrows, eyelids, and lips; so it was also possible she was just lying low until all the swelling went down.
My voice echoed through the empty house. I dropped my backpack in the entrance and hauled myself up the open staircase. To night the climb felt longer than usual, but it was worth it. Upstairs was the living room, kitchen, bedroom, and a small deck. Downstairs was the entrance, office, and-for want of a better name-the TV room. It also housed all my workout equipment: rowing machine, free weights, Fat Boy punching bag, and any new gizmo guaranteed to flatten my stomach.
Eight hours before, I thought I’d be celebrating with a bit of bubbly, but I was going to need something stronger now. I made myself a very large, very dirty martini: lots of vodka, lots of olive juice, three olives, and “just say the word vermouth,” as an old friend once instructed. I opened the slider out to the deck, took my glass, and headed out to the old teak chaise I’d found at a yard sale.
I kicked off my shoes, put my feet up on the railing, and took a long pull on the drink. If the martini was a vacation in a glass, as that same friend once told me, my deck was a freaking sabbatical. No noise (usually), lots of sky, and a chance to contemplate my latest gardening project.
The land adjacent to mine was a bird sanctuary, but subscribing to the Japanese concept of borrowed scenery, I enjoyed pretending I was mistress of all I surveyed. And usually I was, except for the occasional birder who strayed off the trail. What more could a woman want? I drained the martini and went back inside for another. Second drink in one hand, door handle in the other-the phone rang. I prayed it wasn’t Richard Stapley or, worse, my mother. With no lunch, and having left my breakfast in the bushes, the large economy-sized drink I’d just polished off had gone straight to my head. I wasn’t sure I could compose an intelligent sentence.
“Hello?” I said, working hard to sound sober.
“Ms. Holliday?”
“Speaking.” Just barely, I thought.
“It’s Mike O’Malley. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Great, once I get all the cadavers out of that place.” I hadn’t meant to sound that flip; it was the vodka talking.
“I’m glad you got your sense of humor back. It’s understandable, of course, but you seemed a bit stunned this afternoon. I almost suggested you go to Springfield Hospital.”
I had been surprisingly calm that afternoon; O’Mal-ley probably thought I was in shock.
I’d seen plenty of dead people before. My large Italian- Irish family generated boisterous wakes, watered by beer, wine, and anisette for the ladies in black dresses. Ancient relatives, the deceased generally looked better dead than they did when they were alive thanks to the talented folks at Torregrossa’s Funeral Home in Brooklyn. (“That’s the dress she wore to Donna’s wedding, periwinkle blue. It was always a good color for her.”)
The vodka kept me babbling. “I’d also like to thank whoever took such good care to keep the blowflies and the earthworms at bay.” That last graphic description rang in my ears. “God, that must have sounded terrible. I don’t know where that came from. Black humor- just my way of dealing with things.”
“I find it useful myself sometimes.” He finally sensed this wasn’t a good time to talk. “I just called to let you know we’ll be at the house for the next couple of days. Someone will give you a heads- up when you can go back. Glad to hear you’re okay.”
I replaced the phone in the cradle, missing the contacts the first two times. That’s when I noticed the red light and the flashing number 17. The first three messages were all from the same person, Jonathan Chap-pell, a reporter from the Springfield Bulletin. I didn’t bother playing the rest.
The sun was about to go down and I knew that would mean a drop in the temperature, so I pulled on an old black cardigan, big as a blanket and at least ten years old. I popped a Van Morrison CD in the player, cranked it up a bit, and padded back to the deck just in time to see the sun setting through the trees.
Most homes up here have a lot of house on a small piece of land-McMansions; mine is just the opposite. Tiny house, more land than most. Only the one noisy neighbor and a family I’ve never even seen on the other side. The far end of the property bordered wetlands and the bird sanctuary. A seasonal stream there, heavy from all the spring rains, was lined with rows and rows of swamp cabbage, ferns, and jack- in- the- pulpits. The birds were having a field day drinking and hunkering down for the night. Just like me.