Chapter Thirty-One #5
She gave him a wan smile, the best acting job of her life. She really wanted to cry or scream, or both. “Sounds like Lorenzo, all right,” she said lightly. But her voice cracked.
The living room door gusted open, and they both jumped, startled, when Grady walked in. Snow was falling outside. He hung his damp cap on a hook and carefully wiped his shoes on the mat after he closed the door. Snowflakes powdered the shoulders of his black suit coat.
“You needed a better coat in all that weather,” Mazelle said. “Everything all right?”
He raised his eyes to hers, which said, Hell no, everything isn’t all right.
“Fine, ma’am,” he said instead, clipped. “Took a walk.”
“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” she reminded him.
“Yes, ma’am. Good night.” He nodded to Sam. “G’night, Mr. Davis.”
“See any bears?” Sam asked Grady as he started to climb the stairs.
Mazelle tensed. Grady hadn’t heard her impromptu cover story when she discouraged Diahann from going outside. Grady glanced at Mazelle and saw the alarm in her face.
“No, sir,” he told Sam over his shoulder. “If there was any bear out there, it’s long gone by now. And it durn sure won’t be coming back.” He directed that last part to Mazelle.
He knew. Maybe he didn’t know it all, but he knew enough. Mazelle couldn’t guess whether the glumness in Grady’s eyes was related to the task she had asked him to perform or because he somehow sensed her kiss with Sam. Either way, his eyes made her deeply sad too.
Who had she become? Who would she turn Grady into?
Or Scout?
At least she’d been right about Scout: He would never hurt Grady. Scout knew better.
But for the sake of herself, her guests, and her family, Mazelle would have to make sure that Scout would never hurt anyone again.
At first daylight, while the rest of the household was sleeping, Mazelle went outside to inspect the spot where Scout had dragged Jeff Meek’s body like a gift to her.
Yesterday’s glorious cloud formations were gone, leaving behind a slate-gray sky that matched her mood.
The disturbance in the brush where the mutilated body had lain was obvious, but she didn’t see any remaining blood in the thicket by the road because the night’s snowfall blanketed everything white.
Some of the cluster of branches had been moved, she noticed, so Scout might have been cleaning up his mess all night.
As she’d instructed Scout, not a shred of clothing was left behind.
Just like the old days, Scout did what he was told.
No Mazelle without Scout, no Scout without Mazelle.
“Good boy,” Mazelle whispered, although she didn’t hear him near her.
She carried her shovel from the ski lift railing all the way to the front gate looking for signs of blood or struggle, but she saw none.
Mazywood looked pristine in the strengthening morning sunlight, exactly as she had conceived of it after her humiliating experience being smuggled into the Ambassador Hotel.
For Mazelle’s whole life, entertainers like Sam had delighted audiences at hotels and resorts where they were not allowed to sleep.
And in this instant, the great Sammy Davis Jr. and rising star Diahann Carroll were sleeping under her roof.
Safe, like Sam had said. Maybe she couldn’t rise to the atmospheric heights of her friends, but she could give them a welcoming place to rest. Mazelle’s sense of purpose blunted the pain.
But as she surveyed the oversized Mazywood logo on the ranch gate, the rage she’d felt after Sam’s revelation stirred her blood again.
The large sign felt like Lorenzo’s triumphant grin above her.
What had she been thinking? How could she have embraced Lorenzo’s cage for her as a celebration on a sign post for everyone to see?
Mazelle’s eyesight blurred with hot tears that immediately turned frigid in the morning air.
She went back to the carport and replaced the shovel in Grady’s neat row of tools.
Then, she grabbed the axe.
Aside from a few lessons on splitting firewood from Daddy when she was young in Gracetown, Mazelle had never picked up an axe.
But she marched back to her ranch gate with the axe and took a furious swing at the thin left pole, and the feeling of the wood submitting to her blade with a loud chunk uplifted her even as the blow vibrated uncomfortably through her arms. Her second swing was so wild that she nearly missed the pole altogether, only chipping it five inches above her first scar.
But her third blow was sure, building on the progress of the first, and this time the pole shuddered under her assault.
Mazelle didn’t hear her shriek of satisfaction. But everyone else at the lodge did.
“What the hell are you doing?” Grady said.
Yes, ma’am and No ma’am was just for show in front of guests.
He put his hand on her shoulder for her attention, and it was true that she had not realized he was there, perhaps hadn’t heard him speak.
Her rage had propelled her to a fugue state.
“Mazelle,” he said gently, oh-so gently. “What’s wrong?”
She was panting, and when she laid the axe down, Grady took it from her hand as if he were worried she might rampage. He had rushed out so quickly that he was only wearing his plaid pajamas and no socks with his dress shoes, which must have been the first shoes he could slip his feet into.
Mazelle glanced back and saw both Sam and Diahann staring from the living room picture window, roused by her commotion outside. Above them, the upstairs curtains were parted and thirteen-year-old Ricky was watching from the window. She had made herself a spectacle.
“Grady… I’m sorry…” she whispered. “There’s something I never told you. Something… I brought back from Gracetown. And that awful man from the gas station…”
“Hush, Mazelle,” Grady said. “Not now.” He looked furtively over his shoulder at the guests watching from inside. “What’s all this with the axe? This gate cost—”
“I want it gone,” Mazelle said, her whisper urgent. “This sign. This name. I never want to see this name again.” Her last words were a child’s sob.
Grady hugged her close, comforting her like a father. His warmth was a blanket against her. “All right, now,” he said. “All right. You let me tend to it. Pull yourself together. Marguerite will be here soon to fix breakfast, and you don’t want her to see you like this.”
“I want to watch,” Mazelle said. “I want to see it fall.”
“All right, then. Whatever you want—you know that. Just stand back,” he said.
Since they could not predict which way the tall gate might tumble—into her yard or into the road—Mazelle stepped back beyond the duck pond, almost as far as the front porch.
She kept her back turned to her guests so they would not see the anguish on her face, as if this morning’s activity were only a planned improvement project.
When Marguerite arrived, she instinctively gave Mazelle a mug of steaming coffee fixed the way she liked it: lots of cream, lots of sugar.
Chop. Grady chopped down the left pole until wood and metal groaned and the large engraved MAZYWOOD placard swung precariously halfway to the snowy ground. Then he moved to the right side, and his practiced blows against the pole soon brought it tumbling down too.
As it fell, sunlight broke through the thick clouds.
Mazelle saw the day’s first glimpse of the mountain peak wreathed in the gray, its icy ridges bright in the new daylight.
The wreckage of felled wood was a mess blocking her driveway now, of course.
Grady would have to clear that too. But she inhaled the morning air as if her lungs were finally free to breathe.
Mazelle turned around to see if her guests were still watching.
Diahann was gone, but Sam was a witness from the window in his chinchilla coat, although he was still inside.
He raised his coffee mug as if to toast, and she raised hers in return.
He understood, bless him. If she could have married anyone, she might have chosen him.
But she was already married, in truth. To Grady, who kept her secrets. To Scout.
Mazelle glanced higher to see if Ricky was still watching from upstairs, and now both of her children were gawking from the window.
Ricky stood behind Sadie, as always, with protective hands on her shoulders.
What else had the children seen from that window?
Did they know about Scout too? She would have to be so much more careful in the future.
At thirteen, Ricky’s shoulders were filling out as he became the ultimate joke on her: He looked more like his father each day.
He was already taller than Sam. Grady often reminded her that it wasn’t the boy’s fault that he favored his father so much, but on that morning of clearing away painful relics, Mazelle caught herself wishing she had never had a son—or a daughter, although Sadie looked more like her and Mother.
Maybe she could send them to a prep school and be free of them like she had just freed herself from Lazy Mazy.
From the shadows under the house, Scout chittered so softly that she almost didn’t hear him. There he was! There was her good baby. Scout was hiding exactly as she had told him to.
Buoyed by Scout’s presence so close to her, Mazelle mustered every ounce of her abilities to give her watching children a loving mother’s smile.