Day of the Dead - J. A. Jance [69]
This time Gayle had gotten carried away with herself. Blood spatters were everywhere—on the floor, the walls, and even on the ceiling. In several places the layers of tarp had been cut clean through, leaving the mattress soaked with blood.
Larry decided to get rid of the mattress first. The cot was the size of an ordinary bunk bed, so the mattress was far smaller than a conventional single. Still, working alone, it was hell for him to wrestle the thing up the basement stairs, out through the back door, and into the bed of his old pickup. Then, since he was going to be using the backhoe anyway, he gathered up everything else that needed to go to the dump—the bloodied tarps, the filthy bedding, and—as an afterthought, the kitchen garbage. No sense having spoiled uneaten food sitting around smelling up the place.
Generations of Gayle’s family had made use of The Flying C’s private trash heap a mile and a half from the house. There a tin shed housed several pieces of essential garbage-dump equipment—including a backhoe and a front-end loader. Twice a year Larry had a mechanic from Catalina make a shed house call to keep the equipment in decent running order, because when Larry needed a trench dug—as he did now—there was no substitute for a backhoe.
Once finished with the task, Larry wiped his hands on his jeans and stood back to admire his handiwork. The trash heap looked as though it had gone undisturbed for years. And Larry trusted that would continue to be the case in perpetuity. Gayle, in her wisdom, had made arrangements to gift the property to the Nature Conservancy. Part of that arrangement was why The Flying C no longer functioned as a working ranch. Upon Gayle’s death, the conditions of the gift mandated that all buildings on the property were to be blasted to oblivion, leveled by bulldozer, and then left to be reclaimed by the desert.
Tired but anxious, Larry returned to the house and began the real soap, water, and elbow-grease cleaning. He scrubbed the bed of the truck where the bloodied mattress had left a few dark smears. On aching knees, he used a scrub brush on the back porch and on the stairs. He scrubbed wherever he saw traces of blood and also where he couldn’t. Finally he tackled the basement.
Cleaning that wasn’t as difficult as it might have been. When they’d done the basement remodel, Larry had told the contractor he wanted a drain built directly into the polished concrete floor. Larry didn’t know if the contractor had actually bought the story he’d made up about an overflowing washing machine, but the guy had been happy to install the system—the one Larry made good use of now as he sluiced blood off the ceiling, floor, and walls and let it flow straight down the drain. What could be simpler than that?
He had finished the job as well as he could and was wrapping up the cord on the power washer when he heard the back door open and close upstairs. He’d been so busy—so focused on the task at hand—that he hadn’t bothered to lock the basement door as he usually did. For a moment Larry stood frozen to the spot, his breathing arrested and his heart pounding. Then he heard Gayle’s voice.
“Yoo-hoo,” she called. “Anybody home?”
Relief flooded through him. Once again Larry reveled in the thrill of getting away with something.
“Down here,” he called back. “I’ll be right up.”
First encounters after Gayle went on one of her rampages were usually tense and prickly. Gayle always made it clear that Larry was the one who set her off, and most of the time Larry knew exactly what he’d done wrong. This time he was entirely mystified. He had no idea what he had done to annoy her, but the best thing to do was