Chapter 2

The woman manning (is that an oxymoron?) the desk answers after three rings. "Second Precinct," she says, and she sounds like she, too, has had enough of Halloween. I have the feeling she’s taken reports of one car too many getting egged and that she no longer feels toilet paper strewn in the trees is a police emergency.

"This is Teddi Bayer," I start.

"The Teddi Bayer?" she asks, making me cringe.

"There’s a dead person on my front stoop."

There’s a long pause and then she asks if this is a joke.

"Kids are still out trick-or-treating, including one of mine, and there is a dead man outside my door, and–"

"There’s what?" Jesse asks, running to the front window.

I tell the woman to get the police here immediately. She tells me not to touch anything, adding, "like you don’t already know that." And she asks me how I know he’s dead.

"He hasn’t stopped staring at me," I say, yanking Jesse away from the window and pleading with him to take Maggie, go upstairs and prevent Alyssa from knowing what’s happening. "And there’s blood. Just get somebody here right away, because I have to go find my daughter. There’s a murderer out there somewhere and a lot of kids."

Jesse is shrugging into his coat.

"No way," I tell him. "You stay with Lys. And you call Bobbie." I’m watching out the window to make sure no kids are coming up my walk, and I’m frantically searching for my cell to call Dana – who is supposed to be home by now – while Jesse calls my business partner and best friend Bobbie, who lives next door. "Tell her I need Mike and she needs to stay with you two."

Jesse – the man in the family since I divorced his dad, known in circles that don’t include my children as the scumbag who tried to drive me crazy – argues that Bobbie can stay with Lys, and that I need him. By then, I have Dana on the line. She’s next door with Bobbie’s girls going through her loot and watching Christina Aguilera on an HBO special. Does she have to come home already?

I tell her to stay there, not to come home now. And to call all her friends and tell them to stick together and to get to the nearest home they can trust.

Of course she wants to know why. All I say is that something’s happened and I don’t want her out on the street.

And then the wail of a siren silences us both.

"Is it Daddy?" she asks quietly.

It occurs to me that maybe I’ve said I could just kill him once too often.

"No, Pumpkin," I say. "Daddy’s fine. But there is a man – I don’t know who he is – who needs an ambulance." Or a hearse.

And then I hang up as two patrol cars pull up to the curb and one Mazda RX7 slides into my driveway.

And one sexy detective slides out.

I stand behind the glass of my storm door, watching him approach the house along with four uniforms whose shoulders are raised against the rain.

He bends down and puts his hand against the dead man’s throat, like maybe I was wrong about him being dead. Then he looks up at me, and he is clearly amused. "So now you’re getting them delivered?" he asks.

The three male police officers stare at me like this is some incredible joke. The woman touches her face in some sort of signal I can’t read. She fingers her nose. I still don’t get it. She holds up her hand in front of her face like she’s looking in a mir. . .

And now I know what’s so funny. "There is a dead man on my porch and you guys can’t get over the fact that I’m dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West on Halloween?" I ask, trying to embarrass them instead of the other way around. "None of you has children?"

Drew assures me he hadn’t even noticed. Uh. . . Is that supposed to mean I always look like this? He barks at the uniforms to secure the area while two more cars pull up and a cruiser passes by with a wave in our direction.

"The kids are all tucked in their wee little beds?" Drew asks me. I remind him that he’s got the wrong holiday, but that my kids are safe. He says he’s got a bunch of patrol cars cruising the neighborhood and hustling all the kids home.

They turn the man over and search for his wound, finding blood soaked into his shirt. One stays with the victim while the others look with flashlights for any traces of blood on my front walk that haven’t been washed away by the storm.

"You don’t happen to know whose blood this is, do you?" Drew asks me.

I shake my head and he motions for me to slip outside. The porch light leaves the man’s face in partial shadow, and the cop shines a flashlight on him. He’s ghoulishly white and not as old as I first thought. I feel mountains of candy rising in my chest.

"Look out," Drew says, spinning me around and aiming me toward the porch railing. "She’s a puker."

And he’s right. I am and I do. Lovely. Just lovely.

I dip my head and something glints in the dirt just beside my steps. Slowly, because I don’t want to lose dinner on top of dessert, I thread my way through the cops, and stoop down.

Lying in the dirt is a small white figurine. Above it is the dead man’s open hand.