Legacy, page 20
“Yeah, do that. Jasper, you’re an embarrassment to your sex. And you know he’s …” He made snipping motions.
“Love isn’t always about sex, sex isn’t always about love.” So saying, Adrian walked to the gate. “Go on, Sadie, give the guy a break. I brought you some stuff.”
Thinking of the personalized torture video, Raylan eyed her warily as she came through the gate with Sadie. “You brought me some stuff?”
“There’s more in the car, but I need help with that.”
Jasper raced around Sadie, rolled in the grass, jumped in the air. And Adrian smiled as she handed Raylan the black yoga bag. “How’s the first day of school going around here?”
“Okay so far, but now I’m starting to worry about it.”
She passed him the gym bag, and it proved heavier than it looked.
“Yoga mat, blocks and straps, exercise bands, wrist and ankle weights.”
“Oh. You shouldn’t have.”
“What are friends for? You got the instructional video?”
“Yeah. Yeah, but things …”
She smiled her thousand-watt smile. “Busy, busy.”
She positively beamed amused understanding. He didn’t trust it for a minute.
“Why don’t we take these in, then we can get the free weights out of the car. I can help you take them downstairs—assuming that’s the best area for you. Then I’ll get out of your way so you can go back to busy.”
What, he asked himself, was happening?
“Free weights? You brought me free weights?”
“And a complimentary membership month so you can stream Work Out Now dot com when you’re ready.” She slid right by him into the kitchen.
Smooth as a snake in the grass.
“Oh, Raylan, this looks really nice. It looks happy. Organized and happy,” she added. “The schedule calendar, the board with kid art and snapshots.”
She turned to him. “Can I be a pain in the ass and—”
“You’ve already qualified.”
She just laughed, shook back all that hair. “I can’t deny it. But you said I could come by sometime and see your work. If you’ve got anything done on the new character.”
“Yeah, it’s moving along.” Trapped, he set the bags on the kitchen island. “My office is around here.” He led the way, around the island and through the open glass-paneled doors.
She stopped in the doorway. “Oh, this is wonderful! All the drawings. And it’s such good light—I guess that matters. And so organized, again, with all the pencils and the brushes and an actual drawing board. I guess I thought you did it all on a computer.”
“Some do. Sometimes I do. But I like old-school.”
“This is old-school?” She stepped to the board and the spread on it. “The house, I love it. It looks like ours with a shot of Beetlejuice.”
That not only made him grin, it hit straight to the heart of pride. “Yeah, I guess it does.”
“And she looks so … so sad, so alone. It makes her sympathetic, so even if—when—she does terrible things, the reader will feel for her. And this, you’re drawing her big, full body, in movement.”
“Her transition, yeah.”
“You studied anatomy?”
“Well, yeah, in college. You’ve got to know how things connect to make them come alive on the page. Musculature, spine, rib cage.”
“There’s common ground. You can’t teach fitness, not safely, not well, unless you know how things connect, react. So, I love your setup here, and your happy home, and one day I’d also love you to explain this whole process to me. But you’re working, and I have to get back. Let’s get those weights inside.”
“How do you know I didn’t already buy weights?”
“I asked Jan.”
“Betrayed by my own mother.”
It took half an hour, after which Raylan deemed he’d thoroughly worked out for the day. By the time he’d carted in the last set—thirty-five freaking pounds each—she’d put together the two-tiered rack, and had it filled but for the last two slots.
His ready-to-finish basement now looked a little terrifying.
“You really need a bench.”
“Stop.”
“You’ll see.” She waved a hand. “It’s good it’s already got hardwood flooring, and the light’s not bad at all. The space is more than adequate.”
She stood on long, long legs in black running shorts with bright blue piping. To match, he assumed, the bright blue tank that showed off long, toned arms.
The running shoes matched, too. That same blue with the discreet NG—New Generation—logo in black.
Mariah, he thought, would approve.
“You won’t like it much at first,” Adrian said as she wandered that space. “But by the end of the second week, you’ll see benefits. You’ll sleep better, feel better. And by the third week, it’ll be a habit. You’ll come down here to work out just like you take a shower, brush your teeth. Just part of your day.”
“So you say.”
“Yes, I do. Just remember, if something hurts, back off. If it’s uncomfortable, push through. But pain means stop.”
“It already hurts.”
“Man up, Wells.” She poked a finger in his chest, then turned to go up the stairs.
He paid attention because he needed that back view for the art.
“Oh, do you have a blender?”
He was a little afraid to answer. “Yes.”
“Great. There’s a sample of our superfood smoothie in the bag, and some suggestions for other homemade health drinks.”
“Get out of my house.”
“I’m going, and I’m taking your dog’s girlfriend with me.”
When she stepped out, she saw Sadie lying on the grass with Jasper’s many offerings in front of her. Sticks, two balls, a half-chewed rawhide bone, a ragged tug rope, and a stuffed kitten.
“God, that’s so damn sweet. She’s going to cave,” Adrian predicted. “How can she resist all that love? You know, you could drop him off with me sometime. Let them hang together while you work.”
“You work, too.”
“Yeah, but big yard, big house, and Popi would love it.”
“All right, sure.”
“Great. Come on, Sadie. Tell the kids I said hi.”
“I will.”
She rubbed the now dejected Jasper as she started for the gate.
“I’m going to say thanks for the stuff, but I don’t actually mean it.”
She tossed all that hair again. “You will.”
To avoid any more howling, Raylan bribed Jasper with a Milk-Bone. He got him back into the house, stood there, shaking his head.
“I get you having all this for that big, beautiful girl. But it doesn’t feel right, not really, for me to have this—this thing starting up with the tall, gorgeous fitness queen. And I don’t know what the hell to do with it.”
Since he didn’t, he ate a leftover chicken finger for lunch, then went back to work.
Summer beat hot fists against oncoming fall straight through September. Backyard pools stayed open, gardens burgeoned, and air conditioners continued to hum. Floaters brought their tubes and rafts and kayaks to Traveler’s Creek to cool off on lazy rides under the shade of arching trees that stayed stubbornly green.
In October, like a fingersnap, summer sizzled out. Fall blew in on brisk breezes, painting the trees with vivid, striking colors that drew the hikers and bikers and sent the Canadian geese honking their way north.
Adrian pulled into Rizzo’s parking lot on what she considered a perfect fall day with madly colored trees against a wildly blue sky. The crisp autumn breeze sent some of those bright leaves tumbling and scuttling and swirling like miniature gymnasts.
After she and Dom got out of either side, she opened the back to clip the leash on Sadie.
“Don’t work too hard, Popi.”
“You either. Barry’s going to drive me home before dinnertime. How about I bring home some manicotti?”
“Who’d say no to that?” She kissed his cheek, and loitered an extra minute until he’d gone in the back door.
It would be his first full day back at the shop after a late summer cold had laid him low for a few days. Probably, she thought as she walked Sadie toward the post office, because he—they, she corrected—had run around so much meeting with the architect, the engineer, the contractor, the town planner.
Worth it, now that he was back to a hundred percent, she thought, and if all went as planned, work would begin on the youth center.
She started to tie Sadie’s leash to the bike rack outside the post office when she heard the desperate howl.
“Uh-oh, sounds like your boyfriend’s around. Just let me get the mail, and we’ll go give him a quick thrill.”
Sadie sat, always obedient, but she cast her pretty eyes toward the howls. And Adrian saw longing in them.
She had, as predicted, caved.
“Five minutes,” Adrian promised, and stepped into the lobby.
She saw Raylan, with a huge box on the counter, talking to the postmistress. She gave him the once-over, nodded. Trim, slim, but no longer too thin. He looked, to her critical eye, well on the way to being fit in his jeans and hoodie.
Summer, as she’d noted before, had combed sun-kissed fingers through his hair.
She felt a little of Sadie’s longing, pushed it back, then poked her head in the door. “Hi, Ms. Grimes. Hey, Raylan, I heard Jasper singing the song of love when I leashed Sadie outside.”
“I better get out there before he eats his way through the car door.”
“If you’ve got any time, we could walk them down to the park, along the creek.” Where she’d planned to take a run with Sadie anyway.
“Sure. We could do that. Thanks, Ms. Grimes.”
“Oh, not to worry. We’ll get this up to New York for you. And don’t you look pretty today, Adrian.”
“Thanks. I’m trying out our new style of running tights.”
“My granddaughter loves your brand. She wears them every day for training. Cross-country,” she told Raylan. “Varsity. We’re going to take States again this year. Mark my word.”
“What size is she?” Adrian asked.
“Slim as a wand, long of leg—like you. She wears a size two. I couldn’t get my left leg in a two, even at her age.”
“Favorite color?”
“She’s fond of purple.”
“I’m going to bring her in a pair in the new brand, see how she likes them.”
“Oh, now, Adrian, you don’t have to do that.”
“Good running for her, good marketing for me.”
“She’ll be just thrilled.”
“I want her honest opinion. I’m just getting the mail from my box.”
“You have a good day now, both of you. And those sweet dogs.”
Raylan stepped out as Adrian pulled her post office box key out of one of her snug side pockets.
“Does that make green your favorite color?”
“Yes, how did you … the tights. We’re calling this color Forest Shadows, pants and hoodie, the top Loden Explosion.” She sent him a bland smile as she put the key in the lock. “We also make men’s running tights.”
“No. Never. Death will come first.”
She opened the box, started to reach in for the stack of mail. He saw her hand stop, ball into a fist. He saw her face change. Amusement dropped away into apprehension. And, he thought, fear before she grabbed the mail, stuffed it in the bag she wore cross-body.
“Well, good to see you. I’ve got to get going.”
He closed a hand over her arm before she could bolt. “What’s wrong? What’s in there?”
“It’s nothing. I should—”
“Tell me what’s shaken you up,” he finished, and steered her outside. “Hey, Sadie.”
Before Adrian could do so herself, he untied her leash from the rack.
“None of my business, you’re thinking.” Sadie tugged him, as politely as possible, toward the pitiful whines coming from the lowered window of his car. “You’d be right. Then again, it was none of somebody’s business who hauled a ton of dumbbells over to my house.”
Jasper began to bark now—a thrilled bark as they approached the car. Inside, he bounced like a dog on springs.
Raylan handed the leash back to Adrian and went around to the passenger side to get the spare leash out of the glove compartment.
He found his arms full of desperate dog before Jasper broke free to rush to his heart’s desire.
The dogs greeted each other as if both had been off to war on separate continents. When Raylan finally managed to clip the leash on Jasper’s collar, he straightened, shoved a hand through his now thoroughly disordered hair.
“We’ll give the dogs their lovers’ walk, and you’ll tell me.”
“And people say I’m pushy.”
“You are.”
“You’re no slouch,” she tossed back, but fell into step with him as the dogs gave her little choice.
“Not when it matters.”
By tacit agreement, they took the side street rather than Main, and he gave her time to settle. She needed to; he could see that. He knew faces, expressions, body language. It played into his work.
And the usually confident, straightforward Adrian Rizzo was shaken, scared, and silent.
He waited until they’d walked by houses, the backside of businesses, to the pretty green park where the creek wound its way under the first stone bridge.
“You got something in the mail,” he prompted.
“Yes.”
“From?”
“I don’t know, which is part of the problem.”
They took the walking path along the creek, here where it ran slow and easy. Beyond the park, she knew, it widened, began to dip and rise. Beyond the town where the foothills rolled on, rougher, higher, where cliffs speared out and up, the water quickened its pace.
Deeper into those hills, the white water rushed. It could swell in the spring rains, in the sudden, flashing summer storms, and spill over its banks to flood.
Often, too often, in Adrian’s opinion, what looked innocent, harmless, could turn deadly.
“I need to ask you to keep what I tell you confidential.”
“Okay.”
“I know you’ll keep your word. For one reason, I’ve run into you about three times since Maya told you she was pregnant. I know she told you and your mom before she told me just a few days ago. But you never mentioned it.”
“She said not to, yet.”
“Exactly. I don’t want to upset my grandfather. Teesha’s in the last weeks of her pregnancy and doesn’t need the added stress. Nothing they can do anyway but worry.”
“What was in the PO Box, Adrian?”
“I’ll show you.” With the leash looped around her wrist, she dug into the bag, found the envelope.
“You haven’t opened it.”
“But I know what it is, because I’ve been getting them since I was seventeen, that same careful printing, no return address. The postmark on this … Detroit. They’re rarely from the same place twice. I don’t suppose you have a penknife.”
“Of course I have a penknife. Who doesn’t have a penknife?”
“Me, and I like to open them carefully.”
He dug in his pocket, handed her a small folding knife.
Despite all, she had to smile. “It’s a Spider-Man penknife.”
“I won it at the carnival when I was a kid. It works fine.”
“You don’t lose things,” she murmured, and carefully slit the top of the envelope.
They stopped by the next stone bridge to make room for some runners. And letting the dogs sprawl on the grass, Adrian took out the single sheet of paper. Raylan read over her shoulder.
Another season, another reason you should die.
As the autumn winds blow, on one thing you can rely.
Wherever you go, wherever you run, I will follow,
And when at last we meet, your pleas for mercy will ring hollow.
“Okay, Jesus, sick fuck. You need to go to the cops.”
“I have, since I got the first one. I was seventeen, my first solo DVD had come out the month before. The first came in February. They always came in February, like some twisted Valentine’s Day card.”
Carefully, she slid it back into the envelope, and the envelope into her bag. “There’s a routine—a kind of protocol. I make copies. The original goes to the FBI. I have an agent assigned—the third who’s taken this over since it started. I make a copy for the detective in New York. It started there, and it’s still an open case. I make a copy for the police here, one for Harry, one for myself.”
“So no prints, no DNA on the back of the stamp, no leads because there’s been no follow-up.”
“That’s right.”
“It isn’t February.”
“They came once a year, until I moved here. The first blog I did with the Traveler’s Creek address, two years ago in May, I got one shortly after. The next year, I got one in February, one in July. And this is the fourth this year.”
“He’s escalating.”
“That’s what they say. But it’s still just poems, four-line poems, every time.”
“Stalking’s stalking.” Raylan looked out over the park, all the pretty trees and paths. “Emotional abuse is emotional abuse. Someone who travels, that’s the most logical.”
“That ranks high on the list,” she said, and realized she felt steadier for talking to him. “Cheap, standard envelope, basic white paper, black—always black—ink. A ballpoint pen, that’s the analysis. Always printed, no cursive, no computer or typewriter.”
“Writing with a pen, by hand, is more personal. It’s more intimate.”
She frowned at him. “So I’m told by the criminal psychologist who weighed in. Why do you think so?”
He shrugged. “I mostly write the scripts on the computer, but I do the drawing, the lettering, the inking, the coloring by hand because—”
“It’s more personal.”
“And you’ve got no one you can think of who’d have this kind of grudge, this obsession? You’d have been asked that by every cop who ever interviewed you about it. You’d have thought about it a hundred times. So you don’t.”
Yeah, she thought, she felt steadier talking it through with him.
