Needles of Silver and Bone

Twilight bathed the unassuming suburban neighborhood in gentle shades of orange and lengthening shadows. The only sounds in the house were Gretta humming to herself as she did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen, Alex Trebek starting Double Jeopardy and the click-clack of the plastic knitting needles.

Every Monday morning, like clockwork, Gretta would arrive at seven with a new bag of yarn.

“Good morning, Miss Dorthy,” she would say in her soft southern drawl. “I found those colors you wanted.” Sweet and smooth as Tupelo honey. She would gather up whatever I had made the last week, scarves, hats, gloves, blankets; and take them to the homeless shelter she ran with her husband.

“Now, you have yourself a good evening, Miss Dorthy,” she said, gathering up her nurse’s bag and her keys. “You make sure that young man takes good care of you tonight.”

I gave her my best innocent smile and turned back to the box television and the start of the evening news. If my day nurse, Gretta, was a saint, my night nurse was her polar opposite.

Just as the evening news was running its final story, keys rattled in my front door and the hinges protested loudly as they were forced to move.

“Toni,” he said as he dropped his bag on the couch.

“Jimmy,” I replied, not turning away from the evening news.

The man with the painted-on tan rambled about the body they had found on the banks of the nearby river that morning. Found by an early morning jogger out with her dog.

Now, I don’t know why its always those trail runners that are finding bodies, but it really makes you question things. Like, how do people not know how to properly hide a body?

Jimmy was moving through the house, locking up windows and pulling down the shades. Closing up the house against prying eyes of bored, nosey neighbors who had nothing better to do with their sad little suburban lives.

“Looks like Henry is getting sloppy,” he said as he passed by my chair.

I found a stopping point and gently folded my current project in the basket that sat by my chair. Henrietta hadn’t been sloppy about a single thing in her entire life, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. Not because I felt the need to defend her, but because I didn’t want to have to replace my night nurse again.

Instead, I stood up from my chair and stretched. “Be a dear and help an old woman to her room,” I said, not adding what I really wanted to say. Get me the hell out of this mu-mu.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is something…freeing…about sitting around all day bra-less in an oversized mu-mu. That and no one looks twice at harmless grannie in a mu-mu and house slippers.

I pulled my wig off of my head and set it on the Styrofoam head in my closet. The short purple curls mocked me as I pulled off the mu-mu. My hair had been solidly silver for nigh on twenty years now, but people notice those things. So, every day, after my hour of yoga in the morning, I put on the ridiculous house dress and absurd wig and sat in my chair.

“Get a move on, Toni,” Jimmy yelled from the living room. “Have you told her yet?” he asked me when I walked out to and sat in my chair to tie my boots.

He moved behind me to twist my long hair into a tight braid. I didn’t need him to do it for me, but it was nice to have someone else care just enough.

“She doesn’t need to know,” I mumbled.

“Antionette,” he chided me, “what are you going to do if they beat down that door one day because you got sloppy?”

“Never gonna happen, kid,” I grumbled. “Get the damn keys.”

Jimmy made one last sweep of the house, making sure it was completely locked up, then led the way to the basement door and down the stairs.

He spun the handle on the table vise that sat on the old worktable and the panel door swung open for him. I grabbed my bone and silver needles while he loaded up his bag. I tried to ignore him as he shook a pill bottle at me.

“I’m not asking, Toni,” he growled. “Take’em or I’m not takin you out tonight.”

I glared at him as I punched the code into the keypad. As the door to the tunnel slid open, I put my hand out for the pills. It did no good to tell him that I didn’t need them. We had long since moved past that particular argument. Plus, you gotta let them win an argument once in a while or they get cranky.

The tunnel to the other side of my third neighbor’s property was long and damp. As much as I hated to admit it, it hurt my knees every time. Instead of focusing on that, I rotated my arms to get the joints loose.

I let Jimmy punch the code at the end of the tunnel and lead the way out into the forested area on the edge of my housing division. The HOA would go ballistic of they knew about the tunnel and the car I had hidden out here.

That Darcy woman drove me insane. She was one more letter away from finding her way to the bottom of the river with a stone corset, if you catch my drift.

Jimmy grumbled something about Driving Miss Daisy as we climbed into the car. I ignored the jab and gave him the directions that Lola had sent earlier that day. I had had to wait when I felt my phone vibrate. Gretta had been sitting on the couch carrying on a mostly one-sided conversation about the shelter, her kids at their private school and her husband’s company.

I had only been half listening until she mentioned a client of her husband’s who had been causing problems for the company. Something about bad investments and an even dirtier divorce. I remembered the name that had come out in our newsletter that Lola sent.

Genius, that woman. Our hits came out in the form of a nursing home newsletter. The nursing home did indeed exist and was completely legitimate. On paper.

I had been over the moon when I had looked at the text when Gretta was cooking dinner. Lola must have made the connection between my sweet day nurse and the man that worked for her husband.

“Southside, Toni, fuck,” Jimmy grumbled. “What in the hell are we doing down here?”

He pulled the car up to the address I gave him. The abandoned warehouse was owned by Lola and the Silver Acres Nursing Home. No one would think to look for the car in there. At least for a few hours and as long as no one followed us.

Jimmy pulled the bag out of the trunk and slung it over his shoulder as I checked my boots for the needles. “I really don’t like this, Toni,” he said for the umpteenth time.

“So stay in the car,” I tossed over my shoulder as I walked out of the warehouse.

“Like hell,” he grumbled from behind me.

The side door to the whorehouse was open like Lola said it would be. The owner owed her several favors. I have never been brave enough to ask why.

The target was in the same room he always was on Wednesday nights with the same hooker. And this idiot had the nerve to go home to his wife every time. Well, until recently. When an anonymous letter had been sent to his wife with some very incriminating pictures.

I swear I had nothing to do with it.

The door to the sound-proofed room opened silently. When would people learn that squeaky hinges were a godsend? And there he was. Tied down in the middle of the room, ball gag in his mouth, with the Amazon of a dominatrix standing over him. Talk about convenient.

When he finally saw me standing behind her, he barked out a laugh over the ball gag. Until he saw Jimmy. Then he tried screaming the safe word. Pity you can’t say much over those ball gags once they are used correctly.

“Took you forever,” the dom complained. “I don’t get paid enough for this.”

The man shot daggers at the dominatrix as she smiled sweetly at him. He had the good manners to fight Jimmy just a little bit as he lifted him to his feet.

“I think he’s trying to buy his way out of this,” I mused as Jimmy marched him past me.

Jimmy gave me an incredulous look. “You can understand him?”

The dominatrix gave me a knowing look. “Hey,” I said, putting my hands up in mock surrender, “years of listening to people beg for their lives. Not that…you know, your profession isn’t…respectable.” I mumbled.

“Whatever, Toni,” she sighed. “Tell Lola that my debt is paid. I’m out.”

What the fuck was Lola into?

We managed to make it to the car without anyone seeing us. Not that it would have mattered in this part of town. Someone being stuffed into a trunk while bound up like a pride parade party favor wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary.

The dump had to be down river, far enough away that if he did surface, it wouldn’t lead anyone back to me. The leather-bound turkey fought and screamed as I dragged him down to the edge of the water. I had to give it to him, he sure was adamant about living.

“Jesus, Toni,” Jimmy complained. “Can’t you get someone else to do this?”

Just then, Henry came bursting out of the woods a little ways up river and was running straight for us. Fuck. I didn’t have time for this.

I rushed around behind my target, slit his throat and jabbed the needles into his lungs. Dragging him out into the water was harder than it used to be. I held the body down until I was sure it wasn’t going to resurface and ran back to the shore where Henry had reached Jimmy.

“We gotta get out of here, Toni,” she gasped. Blood ran down the left side of her face and her left arm hung limply.

I nodded for Jimmy to carry her and put my hand out for the keys. We reached the car just as three large men in expensive pen-stripe suits ran out of the woods where Henry had emerged.

“What the fuck, Henry?” I barked as I threw the car into gear.

“It was a setup,” she managed to get out before she passed out on Jimmy in the back seat.

I cursed as I tore through the city to the garage I had built into the hillside just outside of my tunnel. Jimmy kept updating me on Henry as I drove, parked and led the way through the tunnel.

In the basement, we got Henry cleaned up, patched up and hooked up to an IV. I stripped off her blood-soaked clothing, mine and Jimmy’s and tossed them into the industrial furnace that I had down there. Hey, old ladies get cold easy.

I made the call to Lola as Jimmy was getting changed.

“Lay low for a while, Toni,” she whispered into the phone when I answered. “I’ll call you when I can.” Then the phone went dead. I looked at Jimmy and shook my head. Something had gone horribly wrong.

The next morning, I drug my tired body through yoga and my shower, then pulled on my wig and mu-mu. Gretta arrived at seven and started breakfast. Pancakes with a side of bullshit pills.

That afternoon, for the first time in forty years, the newsletter from Silver Acres Nursing Home did not arrive in the mail. I stared at the television, barely noticing the Days of Our Lives re-run, my knitting sitting discarded in the basket.

When Jimmy arrived that evening, he arrived with suitcases and a solemn look. “Got an extra room, Antionette?”