And no way was that going to happen.
Still, I couldn't get it out of my head, and not only because of the ick factor. Lawton had seen Shaggy that night in the parking lot. He'd even yelled at Shaggy to stay away from me.
Assuming Shaggy's implication was true, shouldn't Lawton have warned me that Shaggy was the guy behind that original sex tape? When Lawton returned tomorrow, I'd definitely be asking about it.
Late that afternoon, I returned from walking Chucky to find a white van in the driveway and a strange man on the porch. The man wore some kind of brown uniform and carried a clipboard gripped loosely in his right hand.
When I approached the front entrance, with Chucky on his leash, the man turned to face me. He was a lean man about thirty years old and a serious demeanor. "Mrs. Parker?" he said.
I hesitated. "No. But I can give her a message if you'd like."
"I'm from the cable company," he said. "I'm here to disconnect the service."
"Excuse me?"
He cleared his throat. "For non-payment. Final notice should've come last week."
"We didn't receive any notice," I said.
He consulted his clipboard. "It must've went to your post office box. Third notice."
I didn't have access to the Parkers' post office box. In truth, I didn't realize they had one. But as someone who used a post office box myself, I didn't see anything all that unusual about it.
Of course, it did seem unusual that they wouldn't be asking me to retrieve their mail.
About the cable, I really didn't care. I didn't have time to watch anything, anyway. But the Parkers might care if they returned to find it out of service.
"This seems awful odd for a Sunday," I said.
"You're telling me," he said, not looking too happy about it.
"Can't it wait a few days?" I said. "See if I can't clear it up?"
"Sorry," he said. "I'm just the messenger. Of course, if you wanna give me a check, I'll take it back to the office, cancel the cancellation."
The dog food was one thing. The cable, now that was something else. No way was I paying for that. So a half hour later, I was officially without cable TV.
I wouldn't have cared, except for what it said about the Parkers. Were they having money trouble? Or was it just some weird fluke with their bank account?
Sitting in their house – some might call it a mansion – I couldn't help but notice all the luxury surrounding me. I'd been living in their home so many weeks now that I barely noticed. But when I looked at it with fresh eyes, it was pretty obvious that some serious money had gone into whatever look they were going for.
Even all those exotic plants of Mr. Parker's, they couldn't have been cheap. Their plant food wasn't, that's for sure. It arrived once a week by mail from some horticulture shop in San Francisco. In my old neighborhood, I knew kids who weren't treated half as well.
What if the Parkersweredeadbeats? Would I be out all that money? To them, it might be a pittance, but to me, it was a fortune.
And then something worse hit me. What if they were dead, period? They were in a foreign country. Would I even hear about it if they were?"
As the day progressed to evening, I was having a hard time thinking about anything else.
When my cell phone rang just before midnight, I dove straight for it and answered without looking at the display. "Hello?"
"Hey," Lawton said.
"Oh," I said. "It's you."
There was a long pause. Then, he said, "Is this a bad time?"
"No. Not at all. Just waiting for a phone call."
