The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,12

the LaBiancas,” Maryellen said.

“He never would have gotten a life sentence for those,” Slick said. “The conspiracy strategy worked. Manson is the one I want off the streets. Beware false prophets.”

“The Bible is hardly the best source for legal strategy,” Maryellen said.

Kitty leaned forward, grabbed another cheese straw, fumbled it, then picked it up off the carpet and crunched into it. Grace looked away.

“That first chapter, y’all,” Kitty said, chewing. “They stabbed Rosemary LaBianca forty-one times. What do you think that feels like? I mean, I think you feel every single one of them, don’t you?”

“You all need to get alarms,” Maryellen said. “Ours connects directly to the police, and the Mt. Pleasant police department has a three-minute response time.”

“I think you could still get stabbed forty-one times in three minutes,” Kitty said.

“I won’t have those ugly stickers all over my windows,” Grace said.

“You’d rather get stabbed forty-one times than ruin the curb appeal of your home?” Maryellen asked.

“Yes,” Grace said.

“I thought it was fascinating to see into so many different lifestyles,” Patricia said, expertly changing the subject yet again. “I was in nursing school so I always felt like I missed out on the hippie movement.”

“It was a bunch of baloney,” Kitty said. “I was in college in ’69 and, trust me, the Summer of Love skipped South Carolina completely. All that free love was out in California.”

“My summer of love was working in the live specimens lab at Princeton,” Maryellen said. “Some of us had to pay our way through school, thank you very much.”

“What I remember from the sixties is people being so nasty to Doug Mitchell when he came home from the war,” Slick said. “He tried to go to Princeton on the GI Bill but everyone just spat on him and asked him how many babies he killed, so he wound up back in Due West working at his father’s hardware store. He’d wanted to be an engineer, but the hippies wouldn’t let him.”

“I always thought the hippies were so glamorous,” Patricia said. “In the nurses’ lounge I’d see pictures of those girls in Life magazine with their long dresses and feel, well, life passing me by. But in Helter Skelter it all seemed so squalid. They lived on that ranch with all the flies, and they didn’t wear clothes half the time and were dirty all the time.”

“What good is free love if nobody showers?” Maryellen asked.

“Can you believe how old we are?” Kitty said. “Everyone thinks of the hippies as being a million years ago, but we all could’ve been hippies.”

“Not all of us,” Grace said.

“They’re still around,” Slick said. “Did you see in the newspaper today? In Waco? They followed that cult leader in Texas the same way all those girls followed Manson. These false prophets come wandering into town, take hold of your mind, and lead you down the primrose path. Without faith, people fall for honeyed words.”

“Wouldn’t happen to me,” Maryellen said. “Anyone new moves into our neighborhood and I do what Grace taught me: I bake them a pie and take it over and by the time I leave I know where they’re from, what their husband does for a living, and how many people live in their house.”

“I did not teach you that,” Grace said.

“I learned by example,” Maryellen said.

“I just want people to feel welcome,” Grace said. “And I ask them about themselves because I’m interested.”

“You spy on them,” Maryellen said.

“You have to,” Kitty said. “So many new people are moving here. It used to be you’d only see bumper stickers for the Gamecocks, or Clemson, or the Citadel. Now you’ve got people driving around with Alabama and UVA stickers. Any one of them could be a serial killer for all we know.”

“What I do,” Grace said, “is if I see an unfamiliar car in the neighborhood, I write down their license plate number.”

“Why?” Patricia asked.

“If something happens later,” Grace said, “I have their license plate number and the date and make of the car so