The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires - Grady Hendrix Page 0,59

show, Grace had pronounced, whenever you call one of those so-called hotlines, you have no clue who’s on the other end of that phone. It could be anyone.

But the further she got into the book, the more Patricia wondered not how Ann Rule could have missed the clues that her good friend was a serial killer, but how well she herself actually knew the men around her. Slick had called Patricia last week, breathless, because Kitty had sold her a set of her Grandmother Roberts’s silver but asked her not to mention it to anyone. It was William Hutton and Slick couldn’t help herself—she needed someone to know that she’d gotten it for a song. She’d chosen Patricia.

Kitty told me she needed extra money to send the children to summer camp, Slick had said over the phone. Do you think they’re in trouble? Seewee Farms is expensive, and it’s not like Horse works.

Horse seemed so solid and dependable, but apparently he was spending all his family’s money on treasure-hunting expeditions while Kitty snuck around selling off family heirlooms to pay camp fees. Blue would grow up to go to college and play sports and meet a nice girl one day who would never know he was once so obsessed with Nazis he couldn’t talk about anything else.

She knew that Carter spent so much time at the hospital because he wanted to be head of psychiatry, but she wondered what else he did there. She was relatively sure he wasn’t seeing a woman, but she also knew that since his mother had died he was spending fewer and fewer hours at home. Was he at the hospital every time he said he was? It shocked her to realize how little she knew about what he did between leaving the house in the morning and coming home at night.

What about Bennett, and Leland, and Ed, who all seemed so normal? She was starting to wonder if anyone really knew what people were like on the inside.

She ordered pizza and let Blue watch The Sound of Music after supper. He only liked the scenes with the Nazis and knew exactly when and where to fast-forward so the three-hour movie flew by in fifty-five minutes. Then he went upstairs to his room and closed the door, and did whatever it was he did in there these days, and Patricia’s mood darkened while she washed the dishes. It was too late to run the vacuum cleaner and vacuum her curtains, so she decided to take a quick walk. Without meaning to, her feet took her right past James Harris’s house. His car wasn’t out front. Had he driven up to Six Mile? Was he seeing Destiny Taylor right this minute?

Her head felt dirty. She didn’t like thinking these thoughts. She tried to remember what Grace had said. James Harris had moved here to take care of his sick great-aunt. He had decided to stay. He wasn’t a drug dealer, or a child molester, or a mafia hit man in hiding, or a serial killer. She knew that. But when she got home she went upstairs, took out her day planner, and counted the days. She had taken the casserole to James Harris’s house and seen Francine on May 15, the day Mrs. Greene said she went missing.

Everything felt wrong. Carter was never home. Mrs. Savage had bitten off a piece of her ear. Miss Mary had died terribly. Francine had run away with a man. An eight-year-old boy had killed himself. A little girl might do the same. This wasn’t any of her business. But who looked out for the children? Even the ones who weren’t their own?

She called Mrs. Greene and part of her hoped she wouldn’t pick up. But she did.

“I’m sorry to call after nine,” she apologized. “But how well do you know Destiny Taylor’s mother?”

“Wanda Taylor isn’t someone I spend a lot of time thinking about,” Mrs. Greene said.

“Do you think we could talk to her about her daughter?” Patricia asked. “That license plate you saw, I think it belongs to a man who lives here. James Harris. Francine worked for him and I saw her at his house on May 15. And there are some funny things with him. I wonder if we could