Relentless

genitalia.”
    Nonplussed, Penny and Vivian and I sat staring at Milo with our forks frozen halfway between our plates and mouths. Even Lassie, for whom our hostess had provided a chair at one remove from the rest of us, regarded her young master with a disconcerted expression.
    I looked at Penny, and she shrugged, and I said, “Point taken, Milo,” after which I held back none of the grisly details.
    Judging by the gusto with which Milo ate dinner, at the end of which he demolished a piece of cream pie as big as his head, Waxx’s monstrous crimes rattled him less than they rattled me.
    Of course, my anxiety was higher than Milo’s because my past had sharper claws than his did, and even after so many years of peace and happiness, memory could wound me anew.

   Vivian mostly used a Mustang, but she maintained her late husband’s Mercury Mountaineer in good condition and drove it often enough to keep the oil viscous and the tires supple.
    Because she was a cop’s daughter and a cop’s widow, I thought that she would press us to go to the police in spite of our lack of evidence, but she never did.
    In her garage, as she gave me the keys to the SUV, she said, “There’s something screwy about this. You see that, don’t you?”
    “It’s everywhichway screwy, inside out, top to bottom,” I said. “How do you mean?”
    “This wing nut is clever, he’s careful not to leave proof of his guilt—yet at the same time, he takes outrageous risks and acts as if, at the end of the day, he’s untouchable and always will be.”
    Penny said, “It may just be the confidence of a narcissistic psychopath.”
    Vivian shook her head. “I smell something else. And it’s some stinkI’ve smelled before, if I can remember when and where. Maybe you’d be smart not to go to the police until you have a stack of evidence taller than Milo.”
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Don’t know. Just a feeling. I’ll brood on it.”
    Penny said, “Cubby suspects Waxx
wants
us to go to the police.”
    “Let’s all brood on it,” Vivian suggested. She offered me the big revolver. “I have a box of ammo for it, too.”
    “Keep it,” I said. “You might need it.”
    “I have a 20-gauge pistol-grip shotgun. It’ll stop any book critic ever born.”
    I almost said the book critic might not be the worst of it, but I hadn’t told her about the deformed face glimpsed through the side window of the Maserati. Even I was beginning to think the ogre had been a figment of my imagination.
    “Viv, we have a source of guns,” Penny said. “We can get what we need. We’ll be okay.”
    “I imagine the source would be Grimbald and Clotilda. You better be careful going to them. Waxx might expect that.”
    Vivian wanted to hug each of us, and each of us wanted to hug her, which resulted in such a rustle and flutter of raincoats that the echoes in the exposed rafters sounded like a colony of bats awakening to the idea of their nightly flight.
    Vivian even picked up Lassie as if she were a mere Maltese and, holding her as she might cradle a baby, hugged the dog to her formidable bosom. “You folks … you’re the family I never could have. Anything happens to any one of you, I’m not going to feel like pink for maybe the rest of my life.”
    That declaration resulted in another round of even longer and noisier hugs, with Vivian still holding Lassie and the dog licking ourchins as we embraced with her between us. But at last we boarded the Mercury Mountaineer.
    After pressing the switch to raise the garage door, Vivian returned to the driver’s window of the SUV, tears pooled in her eyes. “Remember, if you get a different disposable phone, you call me right away with the number.”
    “I will. Right away.”
    First thing in the morning, she intended to buy a disposable of her own and call me with the number. We were taking the kind of precautions common to clandestine cells of revolutionaries.
    We loved Vivian almost from the day we met her, but Penny and Milo and I were more emotional at this parting than any of us could have anticipated.
    I backed the Mountaineer into the rain—then drove into the garage once more, put down the window, and said, “We meant to take Lassie.”
    Vivian looked at the dog cradled in her arms. “Mercy me.” After she put Lassie in the backseat with Milo, she took advantage of this unexpected opportunity to say, “Maybe for a while, Cubby, not so blithe. Be an optimist but not a flaming optimist.