Ruffly Speaking

capitalized the words.
    “What?”
    “Crackpot House,” he repeated. “ ’Cause there’s a nut that lives there. Crazy lady who—”
    “Stephanie Benson isn’t a nut,” I said. “Far from it. She has a hearing loss, and she’s a priest, but—”
    “Lady next door.Miss Alice Savery.”
    “Oh, her,” I said. “I ran into her. How do you...?”
    “How?Because she calls us. Been doing it for years. Royal pain in the butt.” Kevin’s voice was oddly tolerant, almost affectionate. “Help! Police! House across the street’s being broken into, and then you get there, and there’s a furniture van and a guy delivering a sofa. First time I get called there, I’m on the force all of maybe three days, and I’m all dressed up in my new uniform, I march up with my chest all puffed up, Officer Dennehy to the rescue, at your service, ma’am, and I’m, Jesus, I’m Sir Galahad charging out of the cruiser, and my partner sees fit not to warn me, ’cause that’d spoil the fun. ‘You handle this one, kid,’ he says, and puff, puff, my chest swells up more, and my head does, too. So I go charging up to the big front door, and first thing that happens is—Jesus, that son of a bitch, pardon my French, should’ve warned me—this tiny little lady comes to the door, can’t be more than five feet tall, but that doesn’t stop her! She still looks down her nose at me, and she says, I never forgot it, she says, ‘Constable,’ just like that, ‘Constable,’ she says, ‘I am going to make an exception in your case, but, at this house, service personnel are expected to call at the rear.
    “My God,” I said.
    “And Cardello, my partner, Cardello’s standing there just waiting, because he knows what’s coming, and when I turn around, he’s got this big smirk on his face, and he’s just standing there splitting a gut.”
    “What a nasty woman,” I said. “So what did she want? Why did she call you?”
    “Something dead.” Kevin’s voice was flat but ominous. I quit scrubbing the Bronco and looked toward him. He was looming over the hedge with a wicked grin on his big freckled face.
    “An animal?” I asked.
    “Something dead.” Kevin’s voice dropped to basso profundo and lingered on the word. “Dead,” he repeated.
    “Well, what was it? A squirrel or...?”
    Kevin let me suffer and then, obviously pleased to have suckered me, said, “Not a damn thing. That’s all it ever is, nothing, but that’s not how Alice sees it.”
    “You’re on a first-name basis?”
    “Alice in Wonderland. Not to her face, but that’s a, uh, kind of a nickname.”
    “So what was her problem?”
    “Well, according to her, something—she doesn’t say what, but something —is...” Kevin paused to clear his throat. “It seems like, according to her, all of a sudden, there’s some kind of a bad smell in the house, and the way she’s worked it out, what it’s coming from is that something’s died.” Kevin tilted his head to the side and rapped two big fingers against it. “Nut case,” he explained. “She calls all the time. Calls about everything. Helicopters. Charcoal. Clothes dryers. Got to watch out for them. In winter, where they’re vented outside, they give off this steam, and the way she sees it, the house is on fire. Her house, neighbor’s house, anyone’s house. Men. Strange men. They break into her house all the time. Dig up her garden. Bury things in it. Pollution. Guy walks down the street smoking a cigarette, and she calls us. Dogs. Kids. She hates kids. The sun comes up, she calls us. Like I said, nut case.”
    Thinking of my own tax dollars, the ones Alice Savery was wasting, I said, “And you still have to...?”
    “The one time we don’t—”
    “It’ll be real.”
    “And the thing of it is,” Kevin said somewhat apologetically, “according to her, the way she sees it, it is real, because how’s she supposed to know it’s all in her head? So you gotta feel sorry for her. You can’t help it.”
    “I guess so,” I said.
    “And she goes through, uh, phases. She has these fits of calling us. And then she lays off for a while. And a lot of the time, she just wants someone to complain to, so she calls and complains, and they listen, and that’s the end of it. For now.”
    “Kevin, when I was there the other day, these kids ran in her yard.... Well, one kid did, but he had a couple of friends with him, not that they did any harm, but it was pretty obvious that they just did