Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [57]
Ruby steered the Mustang out of the parking lot. Another five miles and she’d be looking for Maddox Road, where Jody’s cabin was. Along the sides of the road, frame houses gave way to meadows and woods. There were fenced-in pastures where horses and cattle grazed.
The meadows hugging the sides of the road surrendered to dense trees, and Ruby slowed down. She found Maddox Road on her left and made the turn. It was a narrow two-lane road badly in need of paving. The trees grew denser and the sky was nearly shut out. The road rolled up and down several hills before Ruby saw what she hoped was Jody’s driveway on her right. There weren’t names or numbers on either of the mailboxes, but Ruby had gone the one point six miles Map-Quest wanted her to go. She slowly nosed the Mustang up the unpaved driveway. Spike started looking all around, sensing that they were arriving somewhere. After half a mile, Ruby saw a bright blue house on the left. An enormous woman in a pink housedress was sitting in a rocker on the front porch.
Ruby stopped the car and leaned out the window.
“Hi, I’m looking for Jody?” Ruby tried to sound cheerful.
The woman fanned herself with a magazine and squinted at Ruby. “She ain’t here,” she said.
“This is her house though?” Ruby asked, wondering if the large woman was a patient that Jody had, for mysterious reasons, brought along for the ride.
“Nah, next one down. Little white house. Like I said though, she ain’t there. Saw her and that boy driving out a few nights ago, and they ain’t been back.”
“I guess I’ll go on over to her house just to check.”
“I may be fat, but I ain’t blind,” the woman said. “Jody ain’t there.”
“Thanks,” Ruby said. “I just want to see the house. Maybe leave her a note.”
The woman shrugged and rested her head on the back of her chair.
Ruby drove forward and, about a hundred yards down the road, came to the little white house. She got out, and Spike bounded out of the car and raced ahead into the shrubs surrounding the house.
“Spike!” Ruby panicked, imagining the dog disappearing into the forest and getting devoured by bears.
Spike emerged from the bushes, shook himself off, and looked at Ruby as though she was insane.
“Don’t run off like that,” she said. He tilted his head. “Stop being cute,” she added.
Ruby knocked at the front door, softly at first, then adding a little force to it. Jody might have come back without the large neighbor’s noticing. No one answered though. Ruby peered in the windows. There was a small kitchen with quaint 1950s appliances. The counters and sink were crammed with dishes.
Ruby tried the doorknob. It was locked but flimsy. She took out her bank card and did the honors. Utterly effortless. Spike trotted ahead into the little house. The garbage container was overflowing with empty cans, eggshells, and Styrofoam containers congealed with meat. Ruby had always thought of Jody as a tidy individual yet here she was breeding varmints in her kitchen. Ruby walked from the kitchen into the living room, calling out “Hello?” Nothing.
The mess was nauseating, and Ruby was starting to think her psychiatrist couldn’t possibly live here when she noticed the elegant yellow purse on the kitchen table. Ruby had seen this purse a dozen times. She’d always admired its modishness even though she would have felt like a drag queen carrying such a purse. She contemplated the sacrilegious-seeming act of looking inside the purse and was about to open the clasp when she heard Spike knock something over in the living room. She went to see what the dog had gotten into. Clothes, luggage, and take-out containers were strewn all over the floor, and Spike was gnawing on the remains of a rotted roast chicken.
“You can’t have that.” Ruby tentatively tugged on the chicken. She didn’t know if Spike had any food aggression. He let go without growling