One Door Away From Heaven

Chapter 44

THE SUN WORKED PAST quitting time, and the long summer afternoon blazed far beyond the hour when bats would have taken wing in cooler seasons. At six o'clock, the sky still burned gas-flame blue, gas-flame bright, and southern California broiled.

Risking economic ruin, Aunt Gen set the thermostat at seventy-six degrees, which didn't qualify as chilly anywhere other than in Hell. Compared to the furnace beyond the closed windows and doors, however, the kitchen was luxuriously comfortable.

While Micky brewed a large pitcher of peach-flavored iced tea and set the table for dinner, she told Geneva about Preston Maddoc, about bioethics, about killing as healing, killing as compassion, killing to increase "the total amount of happiness," killing in the name of sound environmental management.

"Good thing I was shot in the head eighteen years ago. These days, I'd be environmentally managed into a hole in the ground."

"Or they'd harvest your organs, make lampshades out of your skin, and feed your remains to wild animals to avoid despoiling the earth with another grave. Iced tea?"

When Leilani hadn't arrived by 6:15, Micky was certain that something was wrong, but Geneva counseled patience. By 6:30, Geneva was concerned, too, and Micky heaped chocolate-almond cookies — sans almonds, plus pecans — on a gift plate, providing an excuse to pay a visit to the Maddocs.

The blue ceramic curve of sky, firing in a fierce kiln, offered a receptive bowl if the earth, as seemed likely, melted quick away. A long day's interment of heat shimmered out of the ground as though spirits were fleeing up through the open gates of perdition, and the air had a scorched smell.

Perched on fence pickets at the back of Geneva's property, near the bloomless rosebush, crows shrieked at Micky. Perhaps they were familiars of the dark witch Sinsemilla, posted to warn her of the approach of anyone who might be armed with the knowledge of her name.

At the fallen fence between properties, Geneva's green lawn gave way to the withered brown mat that had served as Sinsemilla's dance floor. Micky's nerves wound tight at the prospect of coming face-to-face with either the moon dancer or the philosophical murderer.

She didn't actually expect to meet Preston Maddoc. Leilani had told Aunt Gen that Dr. Doom would be out all evening.

The drapes were shut, the windows bright with the dragon glare of the westering sun.

Standing on the concrete steps, she knocked, waited, and raised her hand to knock again, but took the cookie plate in both hands when suddenly the knob rattled and the door opened.

Preston Maddoc stood before her, smiling, barely recognizable. His longish hair had been shorn; he wore it now in a short punkish bristle, which didn't lend him an edgy quality, as it might have given most men, but made him look like a tousled boy. He'd shaved off his mustache, too.

"Can I help you?" he asked pleasantly.

"Uh, hi, we're your neighbors. Me and Aunt Gen. Geneva. Geneva Davis. And I'm Micky Bellsong. Just wanted to say hello, bring you some homemade cookies, welcome you to the neighborhood."

"That's so kind of you." He accepted the plate. "These look delicious. My mother, God rest her soul, made more varieties of pecan cookies than you could shake a stick at. Her maiden name was Hickory, so she took an interest in the tree that shared her family name. The pecan tree, you know, is a variety of the hickory."

Micky hadn't been prepared for his exceptional voice, which was full of the quiet confidence that money can buy, but which also had an appealing masculine timbre and a warmth as inviting as maple syrup spilling over golden waffles. That voice, plus his pleasant looks, made him a disarming advocate for death. She could understand how he might paint a gloss of idealism over the meanest cruelties, charm the gullible, convert well-meaning people into apologists who applauded the executioner and smiled at the musical ring of the blade meeting the chopping block in a busy guillotine.

"My name's Jordan Banks," he lied, as Leilani had said he would. "Everyone calls me Jorry."

Maddoc offered his hand. Micky almost cringed as she shook it. She had come here knowing she couldn't mention Leilani's failure to keep a dinner invitation. The girl's best interests would not be served by revealing that she'd made friends next door.

Micky had hoped to see Leilani, to suggest by one indirection or another that she wouldn't go to bed tonight until the girl could sneak out to rendezvous after Maddoc and Sinsemilla were asleep.

"I'm sorry, it's not terribly considerate of me, keeping you here on the doorstep," Maddoc apologized. "I'd invite you in, but my wife's suffering a migraine, and the slightest noise in the house pierces her like a spike through the skull. During migraines, we have to whisper and pussyfoot around as if the floor's actually a drum."

"Oh, don't worry about it. That's fine. I just wanted to say hello, and welcome. I hope she's feeling better soon."

"She can't eat when she's got a migraine — but she's starved when it passes. She'll love these cookies. Very kind. See you soon."

Micky backed down the steps as the door closed, hesitated on the dead lawn, trying to think of another ploy to let Leilani know that she'd come here. Then she worried that Maddoc might be watching her.

Returning home, eliciting a new round of shrieks from the crows that stood sentinel on the back fence, Micky heard his mellifluous voice in her mind: My mother, God rest her soul, made more varieties of pecan cookies than you could shake a stick at.

How smoothly the words God rest her soul had flowed off his tongue, how natural and convincing they had sounded — when in fact he believed in neither God nor the existence of the soul.

Hands wrapped around a glass of iced tea, Geneva waited at the kitchen table.

Micky sat, poured tea, and told her about Maddoc. "Leilani won't be here for dinner. But I know she'll come to see me after they've gone to sleep. I'll wait for her no matter how late it gels."

"I wondered. could she stay with Clarissa?" Aunt Gen suggested.

"And the parrots?"

"At least they're not crocodiles."

"If I find the public record of Maddoc's marriage, I can get a reporter interested. He's kept a low profile for four years, but the press would still be curious. The mystery ought to intrigue them. Why hide the marriage? Was the marriage why he left the public stage?"

"Sinsemilla — she's a media circus all by herself," Geneva said. "If the press gives it some play, someone'll come forward who knows Lukipela existed. The boy wasn't hidden away his whole life. Even if his nutcase mother never settled in one place for long, she's memorable. People who knew her even briefly are likely to remember her. Some will remember Luki, too. Then Maddoc will have to explain where the boy is."

"How are you going to find a record of the marriage?"

"I'm brooding on it."

"What if a lot of reporters respect Maddoc and think you just have a grudge against him? Like that Bronson woman?"

"They probably will. He gets mostly good press. But reporters have to have some curiosity, don't they? Isn't that their job'?"

"You sound determined to make it their job." Micky picked up the penguin figurine, which earlier Aunt Gen had explained to her. "I won't let him hurt Leilani. I won't."

"I've never heard you like this before, little mouse." Micky met Geneva's eyes. "Like what?"

"So determined."

"It's not just Leilani's life hanging by a thread, Aunt Gen. It's mine, too."

"I know."