Life Expectancy

from work. If I had thought it would have done any good to tether crocodiles around the house and board up all the windows, I would have done so. Instead, I helped the kids with their lessons for a while, then prepared breakfast.
        We were at the kitchen table, halfway through our waffles with strawberries, when the doorbell rang.
        Lucy went directly to the phone, put her hand on the receiver, and prepared to dial 911.
        Annie took the car keys from the pegboard, opened the door between the kitchen and the laundry room, and opened the door between the laundry room and the garage, preparing the route for an escape by wheels.
        Andy hurried into the half bath off the kitchen to pee, so he would then be ready for flight.
        After accompanying me as far as the archway between the dining room and the living room, Lorrie gave me a quick kiss.
        The doorbell rang again.
        "It's mid month so it's probably just the newspaper boy," I said.
        "Right."
        Less in honor of the day than to conceal a shoulder holster, I was wearing a handsome tweed sport coat. In the foyer, I slipped a hand under the coat.
        Through the tall French window beside the door, I could see the visitor on the porch. He smiled at me and held forth a silver box tied with red ribbon.
        He appeared to be about ten years old, handsome, with jet-black hair and green eyes. His trimly tailored pants were of a metallic-silver material; the red shirt silk had sequined silver buttons. Over the shirt he wore a sparkling silver jacket with silver-and-red buttons in a spiral pattern.
        He looked as if he were in training to be an Elvis impersonator.
        If ten-year-old boys were coming around to kill me, I might as well die and get it over with. I certainly wasn't going to shoot a little boy, regardless of his intentions.
        When I opened the door, he asked, "Jimmy Tock?"
        "That's me."
        Holding out the box, smiling like a band mascot marching at the head of a Happiness Day parade, he said, "For you!"
        "I don't want it."
        The smile widened. "But it's for you!"
        "No thanks."
        The smile faltered. "From me to you\"
        "It isn't from you. Who sent you with this?"
        The smile collapsed. "Mister, for God's sake, take the freakin' box.
        If I have to go back to the car with it, he'll beat the shit out of me."
        At the curb stood a sparkling silver Mercedes limousine with red racing stripes and tinted windows.
        "Who?" I asked. "Who will beat you?"
        Instead of going pale, the boy's olive complexion turned taupe. "This is taking too long. He's going to want to know what we talked about.
        I'm not supposed to chat with you. Why are you doing this to me? Why do you hate me? Why are you being so mean?"
        I accepted the box.
        At once the boy broke into the band-mascot smile, saluted me, and said,
        "Prepare to be enchantedl"
        No need to brood about where I'd heard that phrase before.
        He turned on his heel-literally swiveled 180 degrees as smoothly as a pivot hinge-and crossed the porch to the stairs.
        I noticed that he was wearing peculiar shoes, similar to ballet slippers, supple with thin soft soles. They were red.
        With uncanny grace, he descended the steps and seemed to float rather than walk to the Mercedes. He got in the back of the limo and closed the door.
        I couldn't get a glimpse of the driver or any other passengers.
        The limousine drove away, and I took the gift-wrapped bomb into the house.
        Sparkling intriguing, the box stood on the kitchen table.
        I didn't actually believe it was a bomb, but Annie and Lucy were certain that it could be nothing else.
        With smirky disdain for his sisters' powers of threat analysis, Andy said, "It's not a bomb. It's somebody's head cut off and stuffed in a box with a clue in his teeth."
        No one could ever doubt that he was Weena's great-grandson by temperament if not by blood.
        "That's stupid," Annie said. "A clue to what?"
        "To a mystery."
        "What mystery?"
        "The mystery of who sent the head, dummy."
        Annie sighed with theatrical exasperation and said, "If the guy who sent the head wants us to figure who sent it, why doesn't he just write his name on the thing?"
        "On what thing?" Andy