The Subtle Art of Brutality

The wife: white female, black and blue, thin, busty. From down the hall a toddler-aged girl comes running to us, mismatched socks on both her feet and hands, a cowboy hat cocked off to the side on her head and about three pounds of costume necklaces around her neck. Big blue eyes with high cheekbones. Beautiful and radiant as only an innocent child can be.

She sees me, halts, runs back the way she came. Abigail turns to go for the child.

“How can I help you, Mr. Buckner?”

“Well, Ms. Boothe hasn’t checked in for a few months, and Mr. Derne asked me to kick over some rocks looking for her. I don’t suppose you’ve seen or heard anything living here, have you?”

“Oh yeah.” He says, shaking his head. “Tons of shit. Jesus, that gal leaves a mess in her wake, let me tell you.”

“Please do.”

“We’re still finding evidence of how much she partied. Obviously we toured the house before we bought it. She was still living here. Mr. Derne said he asked her to tidy up but she didn’t listen. Had her bras tossed over the bedroom door, piles of dirty clothes everywhere, I swear she was trying to turn us off of the place with her squalor. I was surprised we didn’t find a used rubber sloughed off into a pile in the corner or something.

“She left streaks of various colored paints up and down a wall in the back bedroom, like she was checking out several colors. Trying to see what fit, I dunno. Never decided on one. Just left the streaks. What she did manage to paint entirely was moody, like she was trying to express her inner...angst or turmoil or whatever.”

He guides me down the hall to a freshly painted room. “I haven’t gotten the time to do this one yet,” he says, showing me a second bedroom which is painted in black and depressing purple vertical stripes. Even the baseboards are black.

I want to tell him to burn it down and start over but decide not to.

We get back to the living room and he offers me a chair. Continues his tale. “Looked like she was coming out of something bad. Had self-help books lying around, little inspirational sayings posted here and there, all themed around recovering from personal catastrophes. I saw a couple of phoenixes on book covers, the word ‘survivor,’ phrases like ‘new day,’ ‘start again,’ ‘start fresh,’ ‘start anew.’ You get the idea.

“When we were putting in the gardens out front, I couldn’t move a stone or stir the grass without a cigarette butt or beer bottle cap surfacing. Found a couple of doobie roaches also.”

I smirk. “I know the type.”

“Yeah. When we first moved in I put my drum set down in the basement and went to both the neighbors. Apologize in advance for the noise. The woman living to the south of us there, Mrs. Franklin, she said the drumming would be welcome after the late-night noise and carrying on Ms. Boothe was known for.”

“Obnoxious parties?”

“The neighbors made it sound like it was all the time. She said the cops were called at least once a month.” He shook his head and his face fell. “One day a couple of buddies brought their guitars over and we played downstairs. The basement is unfinished and I never thought to search the house for dope...but I’ll be damned if we didn’t find it.”

“Like what?”

“Glass pipe. The guy who sold the house to Mr. Derne was originally going to make the house his retirement home. Before he finished it he and his wife bought something down south they liked better. Waterfront, I think. Anyways, he installed thin wooden slats along the beam ceiling to hang a drop-down ceiling from and just never got around the ceiling itself. Delilah had sheets stapled to the slats; the place looked like an opium den.

“But anyways, I guess her or one of her friends stashed a pipe and lighter in the ceiling, wedged between the rafters and the AC ducts. When my friends and I played, the bass tones literally just rumbled it out. Fell to the floor and shattered. We didn’t hear it because of the noise from playing. Abigail, the baby and I were down there the next day and the little girl saw the glass, ran to it.

“Abigail stopped her right before she reached that crackhead bitch’s dope pipe. I was fucking furious.”

“I would be too. Still have the pipe?”

“No. I just tossed it.”

Obviously

he is glad to have this vent about Delilah. Some people just clam up when they’re asked to speak about someone they don’t know. Other folks are quick to dump everything they’ve seen or heard. The latter helps out better. “Anything else?”

“Now that I think of it, she grew a lot of morning glory flowers out back. Probably tripped on the seeds.”

“Could be. Or she liked flowers.”

“Maybe. I think it was for the dope.”

“Alright,” I say. Look around. “Got that real estate agent’s name, by chance?”

“Tabitha. Tabitha Derne. Over off of Highway 8. Works for Hoffman Real Estate.”

“Thanks. Anything else?” Always ask more than once.