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232
JEFF LINDSAY
worth of cold cuts and a cooler full of soda. I could concentrate on the very real and important problem of putting me back together again. And so thinking all was quiet on the home front, I turned my back for just a moment and was rewarded with a spectacular crash behind me.
The metaphorical plate in question shattered when I came into Rita’s house after work. It was so quiet that I assumed no one was home, but a quick glance inside showed something far more disturbing. Cody and Astor sat motionless on the couch, and Rita was standing behind them with a look on her face that could easily turn fresh milk into yogurt.
“Dexter,” she said, and the tromp of doom was in her voice,
“we need to talk.”
“Of course,” I said, and as I reeled from her expression, even the mere thought of a lighthearted response shriveled into dust and blew away in the icy air.
“These children,” Rita said. Apparently that was the entire thought, because she just glared and said no more.
But of course, I knew which children she meant, so I nodded encouragingly. “Yes,” I said.
“Ooh,” she said.
Well, if it was taking Rita this long to form a complete sentence, it was easy to see why the house had been so quiet when I walked in. Clearly the lost art of conversation was going to need a little boost from Diplomatic Dexter if we were ever going to get more than seven words out in time for dinner. So I plunged straight in with my well-known courage. “Rita,” I said, “is there some kind of problem?”
“Ooh,” she said again, which was not encouraging.
Well really, there’s only so much you can do with monosylla-bles, even if you are a gifted conversationalist like me. Since there was clearly no help coming from Rita, I looked at Cody and Astor, who had not moved since I came in. “All right,” I said. “Can you two tell me what’s wrong with your mother?”
They exchanged one of their famous looks, and then turned back to me. “We didn’t mean to,” Astor said. “It was an accident.”
DEXTER IN THE DARK
233
It wasn’t much, but at least it was a complete sentence. “I’m very glad to hear it,” I said. “What was an accident?”
“We got caught,” Cody said, and Astor poked him with an elbow.
“We didn’t mean to,” she repeated with emphasis, and Cody turned to look at her before he remembered what they had agreed on; she glared at him and he blinked once before slowly nodding his head at me.
“Accident,” he said.
It was nice to see that the party line was firmly in place behind a united front, but I was still no closer to knowing what we were talking about, and we had been talking about it, more or less, for several minutes—time being a large factor, since the dinner hour was approaching and Dexter does require regular feeding.
“That’s all they’ll say about it,” Rita said. “And it is nowhere near enough. I don’t see how you could possibly tie up the Villegas’
cat by accident.”
“It didn’t die,” Astor said in the tiniest voice I had ever heard her use.
“And what were the hedge clippers for?” Rita demanded.
“We didn’t use them,” Astor said.
“But you were going to, weren’t you?” Rita said.
Two small heads swiveled to face me, and a moment later, Rita’s did, too.
I am sure it was completely unintentional, but a picture was beginning to emerge of what had happened, and it was not a peaceful still life. Clearly the youngsters had been attempting an independent study without me. And even worse, I could tell that somehow it had become my problem; the children expected me to bail them out, and Rita was clearly prepared to lock and load and open fire on me. Of course it was unfair; all I had done so far was come home from work. But as I have noticed on more than one occasion, life itself is unfair, and there is no complaint department, so we might as well accept things the way they happen, clean up the mess, and move on.
Which is what I attempted to do, however futile I suspected it 234
