Backyard (26 page)

Edith jumped up instantly and stepped gingerly out of the hosta bed. It was then that Nan noticed she was wearing high heels.

“Where the heck did you think you were going in those things?” she said.

The siren was getting louder. George, now driven to an absolute fury by the desecration of his beloved wood carving and emboldened at the sight of zombie
numero uno
taking flight at his approach, twirled his bat like a baton and searched the backyard for a new target. Looking to his right, he saw the angel-monk. Cross raised, she (he? it?) strode solemnly toward the fence shouting religious-sounding things.

“No help needed in that quarter for now,” George mumbled. “The forces of good are girding for battle.”

“Mr. Fremont!”

It was the really ugly, green-faced, and horribly disfigured zombie at the fence screeching at him, but in a very muffled way that made it hard to hear.

“Mr. Fremont! This has been a terrible mistake! Please forgive me!”

George caught a stray word here and there, then a glimpse of the hatchet dangling from the dark form as the angel-monk approached it slowly, still chanting.

“Droppeth it!” the angel-monk shouted. “Droppeth the hatchet now or thou shalt be turned back into the mulchified muck from wherest thou camest. How darest thou rely on the black arts instead of prayer? How darest thou?”

“Mr. Fremont!” the zombie screeched. “I'm Dr. Phyllis Sproot, and I can explain everything. What in God's name is going on here? Please help me!”

“Eh? Phyllis Sproot?”

George ignored the barely audible pleas. Zombies were well-known mimics, and would often pretend they were people you knew—or, in this case, people you barely knew, but had heard of—in order to catch you with your guard down. He wasn't falling for it.

“Go back to stoking the fires of hell, zombie!” he yelled. Three half-crazed rabbits went zipping past Dr. Sproot, causing her to break into a continuous moan-yelp.

Listen to that! thought George, eager to take advantage of his ringside seat at a once-in-a-lifetime faceoff of good versus evil. Zombie for sure. But pretty darned bad voice projection. And, check this out: hell is unleashing its pestilence in the form of rabbits. Wow! More rabbits scurried over the patio. There was a blinding flash of lightning, followed by the loudest peal of thunder in Livia's recorded history.

“George! Look out!”

The figure that had emerged from the woods had made a very slow and ungainly transit across the northern part of the yard, rattling through the leaves of the arbor trees, tripping over the bench, then clumsily picking itself up. It had taken a swipe at Earlene as she flew by and was now lumbering toward the gate in the fence, arms and head swinging wildly. It was braying something awful.

“That's no zombie!” yelled George, who, having been thwarted twice in his efforts to hit something with his Smokestack Gaines bat, was not about to be deterred this time. “That's a goddamn moose! Standing on its hind legs! And it has terrible eyesight.”

“Zombies?” Nan said. “What zombies? Who said anything about zombies? That zombie who just took off wasn't a zombie. That was Earlene McGillicuddy. This pathetic wretch here doesn't look like a zombie. She looks like . . . like . . . Jackie Kennedy, only with weird glasses on. Wait a second; Jackie Kennedy's dead. Isn't she?”

“I'm not a zombie,” burbled Edith, who was drenched and shivering, and watching very carefully where she put down her high heels, which she had barely been able to keep from collapsing under her all this time. “I'm human. I might look like Jackie Kennedy with glasses, but I'm human. I swear it on a stack of bibles; I'm human!”

“Aaaaaaaah!” Dr. Sproot yelled at the angel-monk, whom George noticed was a heck of a lot shorter than the zombie she was confronting.

As the angel-monk lowered its cross, which for all anybody there knew was made of highly electrified, brain-scrambling heaven stuff, Dr. Sproot quickly ducked out of the way. Attempting to vault the fence like a champion high-hurdler, she caught a foot on the top rail, and fell facedown on the sodden ground with a smack even the thunderstorm couldn't drown out. It barely fazed her. She got up and, still clutching her hatchet, tore off, full tilt toward the street. She missed the two silver maples, but crashed into the side of the Duster. Even that didn't stop her. Scrambling across the hood in a millisecond, she disappeared into the street.

“George!” screamed Nan, who was still holding her prisoner at bay, though half expecting her to vanish into the time warp at any moment. “The moose!”

What happened next occurred in a washed-out blur of violence and confusion. George grunted and charged headlong toward the moose, which he quickly toppled with one big uppercut to the chin from his bat. As the moose lay dazed on the ground, with George stooped over it, ready to let loose with another power stroke, he suddenly realized that the siren had stopped. So had all the shrieking, screaming, and moaning. Even the thunderstorm was spent. The rain, thunder, and lightning were retreating toward the east. The moose, however, was singing.

“Tall and tan and young and lovely . . . the girl from Ipanema goes walking . . .”

“What tha . . . ?”

“And when she passes, each one she passes goes ‘aaah.' ”

“Hey!” came a petulant croak from the other side of the fence. “Hey! What the hell is going on over there? Are you Fremonts having an orgy, or what?”

Four more rabbits scampered across the yard. As George studied the figure more closely, he could see now that what lay beneath him, croaking out “The Girl from Ipanema,” was no moose, but an unreasonable facsimile of a moose. In fact, it was the worst moose costume he had ever seen. He was startled to see two more figures standing over the faux moose and looking down at it. It was Jeri and Tom Fletcher. They were each armed with pool cues, the tapered ends of which were pointed straight down at the moose thing.

“Burglars are coming up with some pretty weird costumes these days,” Jeri said.

Burglars! But of course, George reasoned; these were burglars, not zombies. There were no such things as zombies! What was he thinking? Still, who the heck was it who deposited that tomahawk in Miguel's head, and why?

“All I know is that this is the worst singing burglar of a moose I ever heard,” George said. “Who'd want to bossa nova to that?”

“That's no moose . . . and I don't think it's a burglar.”

Nan, still holding her butcher knife, stood over the recumbent moose form and shone the flashlight down at it.

“George, how could you ever think that was a moose, even in the dark? I mean, look at it; that's Pat Veattle. And you must have broken her jaw, or nose.”

“Pat Veattle!”

“Of course. The moose costume matches what Steve told us about. And the insane behavior. And she's singing ‘The Girl from Ipanema.' That was the first tune she ever recorded, that polka version of‘The Girl from Ipanema.' Besides all that, she's very drunk. Can't you smell the fumes?”

The other three stooped over to within a few inches of the groaning mouth of the costume.

“Phew,” said Jeri, flapping her hand dramatically in front of her squinched-up nose. “Now that you mention it.”

“Then who is . . . that?” said George, turning and pointing his bat accusingly at Edith, who had stealthily slipped through the gate and was trying to make her way, high heels dangling from her hand, down the slope and to the road.

“Hey, you!” yelled George. “Hold it right there. You've got a lot of explaining to do.”

“You heard him!” said Jeri menacingly as she and Tom ran to interpose themselves and their pool cues between her and the escape route to the road. Edith instantly complied and threw up her arms.

“Hey!” came the voice from the other side of the fence. “Hey! I told you to shut up. I'll sue you. I'll sue you Fremonts for disturbance of the peace.”

“Oh, shut up yourself, Grunion!” Jeri yelled. “Or I will sue you for being a first-class jerk and a public nuisance to the neighborhood as such.”

There was the squawk of a police radio. Down on Payne Avenue, a police cruiser with flashing light had pulled up behind the Duster and Camaro and an officer with a flashlight was inspecting the license plates. Another one, with the radio, approached them, her own bobbing flashlight marking her progress up the steps and across the patio.

“A little late for a party, isn't it, boys and girls?” she said. Nan instantly recognized the voice.

“Sergeant Sneed!”

“Smead! Sneed's back at the cruiser checking those tags.”

“Sergeant Smead! How nice to see you. You were just out here last month. How can we help you, Sergeant Smead?”

“Well, you will have to tell me that. It appears every call we've had tonight has involved this particular address. We had a call from a neighbor about excessive noise. Make that three neighbors. All reported repeated screams, which must have been very loud on account of the thunderstorm that was going on at the time. Then, there was a young lady running hysterically down Sumac, screaming something about a moose, also at this address. Then, there was a call about murderous spirits rising from their burial grounds. We didn't take that one too seriously. . . .”

“That was me,” said Nan, sheepishly.

“Rising from the dead?”

“No . . . no . . . of course not. It was me who made that call.”

“Hmmm. Now, it appears we have found the vehicles belonging to two young men who reside at this address that have been linked to a certain amount of mayhem in the surrounding neighborhood. And what's this?”

Sergeant Smead shone her flashlight down at Pat Veattle, who was still mumbling what must have been verse seventeen of “The Girl from Ipanema.” “Ah-ha, and here is our moose . . . or someone dressed as a moose. Gee whiz, that's a bad moose outfit.”

“Isn't it, though,” said Jeri.

“Hard to believe someone actually thought this was a moose.... I mean, the snout looks pretty moosey, but those antlers, sheesh! Those are just a couple of beat-up old rabbit-ears antennae. You can get those Styrofoam antlers, you know, over to Jumpin' Judy's Party Store. Uh, sir, could you drop the bat please, sir?” George, without thinking, had begun practicing his Smokestack Gaines swings.

“Huh?”

“The bat, sir. Could you lay it down, please? You make me nervous swinging it around like that.”

“Sure,” said George, propping it carefully against the fence.

“Sir and ma'am, please drop those pool cues.” Jeri and Tom instantly let the cues fall to the ground. “Ma'am, your knife, please.” Nan turned and flung the butcher knife expertly into the fence post, burying its point with a vibrating thud one inch into the wood.

“Wow!” said George, unaware until now of his wife's knife-throwing skills.

“Sergeant,” Nan said. “Bullwinkle here and the woman holding up the high heels are trespassing on our property. They are the ones who started all this mess.”

Sergeant Smead heard a noise along the fence line. She pointed her flashlight directly into the eerily glowing eyes of four rabbits.

“Looks like you've got a little rabbit infestation problem here,” she said. She then swung the arc of the light over toward the woods. “And what's that over there?”

“Cages,” George said. “Maybe that's where all those rabbits came from.”

“Backyard sabotage!” Nan snorted. “So that's what Earlene McGillicuddy was doing here. Did I hear that Dr. Sproot caterwauling away . . . and where did she go? Is that the same Dr. Sproot who's the archaeologist, and who wanted to buy our house?”

“She's no archaeologist,” Jeri said. “Obsessive gardening nut, and a first-class . . . well, I won't say what. She's blackballed me twice from gardening clubs. Even more obsessive than you guys, but without the wine and good graces. She was out here, too?”

“Aha!” George said. “So that really
was
the infamous Dr. Sproot. And with a hatchet, no less! At first, I thought she was a—”

“George!”

“Well, she sure looked like one. Did you get a look at that puss? Uuuugly.”

“What on earth was she doing here?” said Nan, eager to steer the conversation away from George's zombie fantasies as quickly as possible. “More snooping?”

“If I know Phyllis Sproot, she was here on a sabotage mission herself, maybe to chop something down,” Jeri said. Another rabbit went whizzing by.

“We had a report of a woman in hysterics with a hatchet walking down the street not five minutes ago,” Sergeant Smead said. “She was wearing a gas mask. That must be the suspect in question. Another patrol just picked her up. There was another woman in a black car who was speeding down Sumac and hit a telephone pole a couple of blocks from here. She was babbling about some kind of disturbance. She come from here, too?”

“Must be Earlene,” sniffed Jeri. “That's just like her. The first whiff of trouble and she goes to pieces.”

Sergeant Smead's radio crackled with the voice of Officer Sneed.

“Hey,” George whispered to Nan. “What happened to the angel-monk? I don't see the angel-monk anywhere.”

“The what?” said Nan through teeth that had begun to chatter. “Brrrrr!”

“The angel-monk. Sent from on high to save us from the forces of darkness. Didn't you see the angel-monk?”

Nan clamped her hand over George's mouth.

“Please keep your yap shut, George,” she hissed. “No more talk about zombies and angel-monks. Pul-eeeze!”