“That!Just look at it. My rhododendrons! It’smurder!”
The plant she was pointing at with a finger quivering in rage was indeed half brown on one side, as though it had been burned.
He didn’t hold out a lot of hope for rehabilitation, at least.
“Yeah, that’s a shame. Pretty flower.”
“Itwasa pretty flower, you mean! That Carlotta Kilgore from Elysian Acres takes her beagle out for a walk in the morning and stops right there every morning so her dog can pee on it. Gives it a good soaking, as you can see. The same rhododendron. Every time. Death by dog pee! It’s undignified for such a beautiful flower. And sheknowsit’s part of my display. She knows that’s what puts us over the top each year and why we win.”
Carlotta Kilgore was another older lady, but she had a great mane of dyed black hair and her penchant for red lipstick and snug dresses hinted she might have been a siren back in the day, and maybe still was. The front of her own little mobile home in Elysian Acres featured a variety of statuary: gamboling forest creatures mingling with a variety of gnomes—a smiling lady gnome dancing with her skirts in her hands, a grinning bearded fellow with his hands planted on his hips, a cheerful waving fellow wielding an axe who had more than once given Eli a start when he drove through the community on his rounds late at night. Her yard was a huge hit with any and all visiting grandkids.
But the Heavenly Shores Mobile Estates Retirement Community had a rather cutthroat competition going with the Elysian Acres Mobile Estates over landscaping, and every year a grand prize was awarded by an allegedly impartial committee to both the finest landscaping and the community that showed the most creativity.
The contest got a little hairy. A lot of these retirees who bought these mobile homes had left behind high-level corporate jobs in finance and marketing and old habits died hard. The rest were just wily. They weren’t afraid of a damn thing, not confrontation, not death, nothing.
And Eli knew their idea of morning was often about four a.m. The streets around Heavenly Shores practically teemed with track-suited dog-walkers around then.
“Have you ever actually seen Mrs.Kilgore do it?” he asked.
“No, but Iknow. That trollop wears White Shoulders, and when I step outside it’s still hanging in the air like a pesticide.”
Eli’s own grandmother had worn White Shoulders; his mother had bought it for her every Christmas and Eli had a soft spot for it. But that was neither here nor there at the moment.
“I notice you don’t have any obvious security devices outside your house. Maybe if you set up a web cam?”
“What’s a web cam? A camera that drops a web down over a criminal when they’re caught in the act?”
When she put it that way, Eli didn’t know why a web cam shouldn’t do exactly that. One day, probably. He could imagine a future in which cops cruised around each morning in recycling trucks, picking up little cocoons comprised of people who’d been netted in the act of peeing against sides of buildings or defacing bus benches with graffiti.
“If cameras could do that, Mrs.Wilberforce, I’d be out of a job. And we still live in a democracy. We’re all entitled to be tried by a jury of our peers. Have you spoken to Mrs.Kilgore about it?”
“She denies it.”
He could justimaginethat conversation.
“Ask your grandson, Bill. Isn’t Bill the one who likes computers?” He’d had many a long chat over the years with half the residents here. “The one who lives in San Francisco?”
The place Glory had been headed a few months ago.
How about that. He couldn’t seem to get through more than a few minutes without at least a glancing thought of her. The problem was that everything he did, said, thought, or felt, could be followed right back to her, the way Whiskey Creek fed into the Hellcat River fed into the ocean.
“Oh yes, my Bill is brilliant!” Mrs.Wilberforce brightened immediately at the idea of her grandson. Eli had known she would. “What a good idea, Eli.”
“He’ll know how to set you up with a security system or a camera that you see on your computer. But while a dog peeing on your rhododendron is impolite and certainly isn’t neighborly, I’m afraid it isn’t strictly illegal, and proving intent might be a bit tricky.”
“I’ve half a mind to pee onherflowers.”
He sighed. “I really hope you don’t, Mrs.Wilberforce.”
They both shot straight up in the air and twirled about 180 degrees when a god-awful sound, a cross between a leaf blower and chainsaw, swelled and in an instant was deafening.
Eli crouched when he landed and put his hand reflexively on his gun. If they were being strafed by enemy planes, there wasn’t much he’d be able to do about it, but at least he could say he’d gone down fighting.
A rotund elderly gentleman in plaid pants and a jaunty matching cap was rounding the corner on a mobility scooter that had clearly been souped up in some fashion. His enormous rectangular glasses magnified his eyes to the size of ping-pong balls.
They went even bigger when they saw Eli and he quite clearly mouthed the wordsoh shit, did a sharp left turn, and went back the way he came.
He cut the engine, and merciful silence reigned again.