Page 51 of The Reaper
ChapterTwenty-Two
DEVON
The next morning, I stood on the step of Stella’s small terraced house, and when she opened the door, she smirked at me then appeared to bend forward, looking for something on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I was irritated enough without her adding to it with her bullshit tricks.
“I’m looking for the cat that dragged you here.”
I didn’t laugh. Her use of pointless sayings was pitiful humour at best.
“Cut the crap, Stella.” I stepped over the threshold, and she didn’t stop me, just looked me up and down like I was a piece of shit. “The less time I spend here, the better. Let me say my piece, then I’ll leave. You don’t want me here anymore than I do.”
“You’ve got that right, tin soldier boy.” She slammed the door behind me and walked back down the hall. “So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
I followed her into her pristine living room full of cabinets of china ornaments and weird creepy-ass porcelain dolls. It was like walking into the horror museum in the film,The Conjuring. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a few voodoo dolls stashed away behind the freaky-eyed Annabelle that stared at me wherever I walked.
“I would offer you a cup of tea, but I don’t want to.” She smirked, inwardly congratulating herself on putting me down.
“I wouldn’t drink it anyway. It’d probably be laced with arsenic.”
She didn’t deny it, just sat down in her recliner chair and lifted her chin defiantly to give me an evil grin.
“It’d be no worse than what you did to my boy. I reckon an eye for an eye would be apt in this instance.”
I wasn’t going to beat around the bush, so I cut to the chase and came right out with it.
“It’s you, isn’t it?”
She swivelled slightly in her chair to face me and gave me one of her deadly stares.
“What’s me?”
“The letters. You sent them, didn’t you?”
Her frown lines deepened, but she gave a low chuckle.
“I haven’t been sending you any letters, boy. Why would I waste valuable stamps and paper on you? Let alone the time it’d take to write down all the reasons I think you deserve to go to prison for being who you are.”
“You didn’t waste money on a stamp though, did you? Just sent your errand boy to hand deliver your vile bullshit.”
She sat up straighter and lowered her gaze, glaring at me through her horn-rimmed glasses.
“Let’s get one thing straight, soldier boy. I haven’t sent you anything. If I wanted to tell you what I thought of you, I’d do it to your face. You should know that by now. Second, I can’t say I’m all that disappointed to hear that someone else is onto you. I hope they pin your ass to the wall. And last but not least, do not ever curse in my house.”
It didn’t matter that she’d said the word ass. She was no lady, no matter how much she tried to convince herself otherwise.
“I don’t believe you,” I stated, folding my arms over my chest. I wasn’t leaving this house until I’d gotten what I came for.
“AndIwill not lose a minute’s sleep over that. So, if that’s all you came here for, to accuse me of sending you some nasty letters, you can leave.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to relieve some of the tension that made it difficult for me to focus clearly.
“Every Saturday we do this.” I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut and willing myself to keep my cool and still get the results I wanted. “Let’s have it out, right here, right now.”
“You really want to do this? Because I have a whole fricking folder of stuff on you. And don’t think I haven’t given copies to the police too. I have and I’ll keep doing it until they sling your ass in jail.”
With dogged determination, she hauled herself out of her chair and went over to her sideboard, opening the drawer and taking out a large box folder. When she sat back down with a heavy sigh, she opened the box and started listing all the evidence she had.
