The Accident

Once I’d tucked Kelly into bed and done my best to assure her I was not angry, at least not with her, and that she had nothing to worry about regarding her encounter with Ann Slocum, I went down to the kitchen, poured myself a scotch. I took it with me to my basement office.

I sat there and thought about what to do.

The Slocums’ number was probably already in the speed dial of the upstairs phones, the ones Sheila used, but it wasn’t programmed into my office phone. I didn’t feel like trudging back upstairs now that I had my drink and a place to sit, so I hauled the phone book over and looked up their number. I picked up the phone, prepared to start punching in digits. But my index finger failed to move.

I replaced the receiver.

I had tried, before putting her to bed, to get Kelly to recall as much as she could of what Ann had said on the phone, after first persuading her that I’d do everything I could to make sure Emily remained her friend.

Kelly had sat curled up against a nest of pillows, hugging Hoppy, and using the same technique she employed when spelling words, or reciting memorized verses of poetry. She closed her eyes.

“Okay,” she had said, eyes squeezed shut. “Mrs. Slocum phoned this person to ask if their wrists were okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“She said, ‘I hope your wrists are all better and you should wear long sleeves in case there are marks.’ ”

“She was talking to someone who broke their wrists?”

“I guess so.”

“What did she say to them?”

“I don’t know. Something about seeing them next Wednesday.”

“Like another appointment? Like someone’s wrists were in a cast and the cast comes off next week?”

She nodded. “I think so. But that was when the other call happened. It might have been one of those calls you hate so much.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, when they call at dinner and ask you to give them money or buy the newspaper?”

“A telemarketer?”

“Yeah.”

“Why do you think it was a telemarketer?”

“Well, the first thing Mrs. Slocum said was, ‘Why are you calling?’ And something about her cell phone being off.”

This wasn’t making any sense. Why would Ann Slocum care if Kelly overheard her on the phone with a telemarketer?

“What else did she say?”

“She said something about paying for something, and getting something back, or something like that. She was trying to get a good deal.”

“I’m not getting this,” I said. “She was trying to make a deal with a telemarketer?”

“And then she said don’t be stupid because you’ll get bullets in your brain.”

I massaged my forehead, baffled, although I could imagine myself telling a telemarketer I’d like to shoot him in the head.

“Did she say anything about Mr. Slocum?” I asked. After all, Ann had made Kelly promise not to mention the call to her husband. Maybe that meant something. Although none of this made sense. Kelly shook her head no.

“Anything else?”

“Not really. Am I in trouble?”

I stooped and kissed her. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Mrs. Slocum isn’t going to come here and get mad at me again, is she?”

“Not a chance. I’ll leave your door open, so if you have a bad dream or something, I’ll hear you, or you can come and see me. But I’m going downstairs right now. Okay?”

She said okay, tucked Hoppy in, and turned off her light.

Slumped wearily at my desk, I tried to reason it out.

The first part of the conversation, which sounded like Ann checking up on someone who’d been injured, seemed innocuous enough. But the second call was more puzzling. If it was just a nuisance call, maybe Ann was pissed that she’d had to cut off the first caller to deal with it. I could understand that. Maybe that was why she made some kind of threat about shooting the person.

People threatened things all the time they didn’t really mean. How often had I done it? In my line of work, pretty much every day. I wanted to kill our suppliers who didn’t deliver on time. I wanted to kill the guys at the lumberyard who sent us warped boards. The other day I’d told Ken Wang he was a dead man after he’d driven a nail through a water line that was just behind the drywall.

Just because Ann Slocum said she wanted to put a bullet in someone’s brain didn’t mean she had any intention of doing it. But she might not have been happy to find out a small child was listening to her lose her cool. And she wouldn’t want her daughter to know she’d spoken to someone that way on the phone.

But had she really said anything that she’d care if her husband found out about?

All that aside, my one concern was Kelly. She didn’t deserve to have been frightened that way. I could accept that Ann would be upset finding Kelly hiding in her closet, but getting that angry with her, threatening her with the loss of Emily as a friend, then ordering her to stay in the room and taking the cordless phone with her so Kelly couldn’t make a call-what the fuck was that?

I picked up the phone again, started to dial.

Hung up.