Drummer In the Dark by T. Davis Bunn

coquettish to serious in the span of one breath. “Go, Wynn. Do this thing. Or you will be buried by people unearthing the tale and spreading it far and wide. Embellished, inflamed, and made immeasurably worse.”
    He accepted his defeat by finishing his drink and setting the glass on the tray of a passing waiter. “All right.”
    “Excellent. Shall we say six-thirty Friday?” She graced him with a full-wattage smile. “Come now, Wynn. It won’t be that bad. And afterward I’ll offer you a fine dinner somewhere. My treat.”
    As she walked away, Wynn caught sight of the priest slipping through the exit. The little man did not necessarily look his way, perhaps he just glanced at the room as a whole. But it was enough to repaint the evening a darker shade and turn Wynn’s idle longing to dust.

8
    Thursday
    J ACKIE AWOKE to a skyless dawn. She stretched muscles made doubly tired by hours of frustrated cleaning, and stepped onto her tiny balcony. Somewhere close overhead the firmament was swallowed and gone, replaced by a seamless gray nothing. No wind, no sound, nothing to mask the humid heat or the din already rising from the awakening city. One look was enough to confirm that the weather perfectly suited her plans for the day ahead.
    Her reflection in the single remaining fragment of her bathroom mirror looked grim and weary. She prepared camp-style coffee, boiling water in a battered pot, then pouring it directly over the grounds in her only intact mug. As she sipped the bitter brew, Jackie surveyed the final three bags of formerly precious trash.
    The apartment was utterly bare. Every scar and yellowed seam was revealed, every fray and stain in the carpet, every fabrication of a life precariously stitched together. Jackie felt more than exposed. She felt violated.
    Jackie dressed in her standard mourning garb—black calfskin boots, black jeans, black T-shirt, black velvet hair ribbon. She did not need her shredded wall calendar to know the date. The monthly routine was branded upon her soul with a lifetime’s acrid heat.
    She closed her flimsily repaired door and carried the last of the trash bags downstairs. As she walked down the drive, a voice called from out front. Jackie carried the bags with her, both because they were in her hands and because it would be a genuine excuse to leave.
    Millicent’s doctor asked her, “You all right?”
    “Fine.” At least she was not damaged where it showed.
    “Millicent said something about wolves in gray jackets.”
    “I was burglarized.” She glanced at her watch, not because she was late, but merely to show she had things to do.
    The doctor gave no indication he had noticed. Now that he was semiretired, Dr. Crouch fought to slow all the world to his own pace. He was old enough to remember when house calls were expected, and too stubborn to change. “You call the cops?”
    “There wasn’t anything stolen. Just wrecked. And you know Millicent.”
    “She didn’t want to open the door for me, thought maybe a social service type was hiding behind a tree.” He frowned at the bags. “You still ought to file a report.”
    She gave a noncommittal shrug. “How is Millicent?”
    “Crazy as a loon. But other than that, not too bad. You still doing her shopping?”
    “Twice a week. Today, in fact.”
    “Get her some Cream of Wheat. Had to hide her bottom dentures. Looks like her gums are infected again.” He stared at the sagging empty porch. “She moved her mattress and bedsprings into the front parlor.”
    “All by herself?”
    “Sure didn’t get any help from me. Millicent says there’s less moonlight on the street side, which means the beasts don’t howl so loud.”
    “She told me the burglars were cursing something awful,” Jackie replied, hating how she had caused the old lady to worry.
    “She keeps the downstairs rooms clean as a whistle, is all I know. She takes her medicine and she dresses herself, in a manner of speaking. ’Course, the way things