Look Again - Lisa Scottoline [117]
“You mean do it yourself?” Connie smiled, surprised.
“Sure. How hard can it be? It’s just destruction. Any idiot can destroy something.” Ellen went to the base cabinet, found her orange plastic toolbox, and set it out on top of the stove, trying not to notice that one burner was missing. She opened the toolbox and took out her hammer. “I’m no contractor, but the sharp end looks like it could do the trick. If I start now, I can get it done by tonight.”
“You want to do it now?”
“Why not? One way or the other, this floor is getting thrown away. I don’t want it in my house another minute.” Ellen took a gulp of fresh air, wielded the hammer, and bent down over one of the gasoline stains. She raised the hammer high over her head and brought its sharp end down with all her might.
Crack! The edge of the hammer splintered the wood, but unfortunately embedded itself there.
“Oops.” Ellen yanked on the handle of the hammer, and its head came free, splintering the wood. “Looks like it works, but at this rate, I’ll be finished by next year.”
“I have a better idea.” Connie stepped around her, opened the door to the basement, and went downstairs, and by the time she returned, Ellen had destroyed only part of a single floorboard. She looked up to see Connie hoisting a crowbar like the Statue of Liberty on This Old House.
“Way to go!” Ellen said. “I didn’t even know I had one of those. Thanks.” She rose, delighted, and reached for the crowbar, but Connie held it tight.
“I’ll use this. You use the hammer. We’ll get this done together. It’ll go twice as fast, and besides, I wanna destroy something, too.”
“Isn’t there a football game?” Ellen asked, touched.
“No matter.” Connie got down on her hands and knees, then wedged the end of the crowbar underneath the splintered floor. “Mark will have to win without me this time.”
Tears came to Ellen’s eyes, and she didn’t know what to say. For once, she didn’t say anything. She got back down on her hands and knees, raised her hammer, and the two women worked together for the next several hours, grimly destroying the evidence of a nightmare, with the only tools they had on hand.
A hammer, a crowbar, and the human heart.
Chapter Eighty-eight
After Connie had gone home, Ellen piled the last of the broken floor-boards on her back porch because reporters were still camped out front. She stepped back inside the kitchen, shut the door against the cold, and closed the window, breathing in deeply. The gasoline smell was gone, but the subfloor was a mess. Removing the top boards had only exposed the older floor beneath, and she hadn’t been able to pull out all the nails. They popped up here and there, making an obstacle course for Oreo Figaro, who walked gingerly to his food dish.
Ellen crossed to the refrigerator, careful not to step on a nail or a cat, and opened the door. She was about to reach for a bottle of water when her hand stopped in midair. Staring her in the face was the Pyrex bowl of lime green Jell-O, with a shiny cavern dug in the middle.
It’s good, Mommy!
She grabbed the water bottle and slammed the door closed, determined to get through the rest of the day. The house had fallen quiet, a hollow echo of how she felt. She checked the clock on the wall—2:25. Odd that Marcelo hadn’t called, and she had yet to call her father. She left the room with the water, twisted off the cap, and took a slug, then went into the living room, hearing only the sound of her footsteps on the floor. She found her purse and dug inside for her BlackBerry, but it wasn’t there. She must’ve dropped it in Marcelo’s car.
She looked up, aggravated, and through the windows she could see a commotion on the sidewalk. Reporters and photographers clustered around a taxi pulling up in front of the house, and in the next second, emerging from the crowd was her father.
Dad?
Ellen ran to the door as he waved off the press, taking the arm of an attractive woman