The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

It was a sultry afternoon and Mrs. Morrow looked wan and tired, with hardly enough remaining strength to snap the shears. Mrs. Cappelli wondered why Greg wasn’t handling the pruning tool. He was at home. Who could doubt it? He was in there torturing a high-amplification guitar with amateurish violence. His discordant efforts were audible a block away.

“I’m Maria Cappelli,” Mrs. Cappelli said pleasantly. “It’s very nice to have new neighbors.”

Mrs. Morrow accepted the greeting with hesitant and standoffish self-consciousness. Her glance slipped toward the house, a silent wish that her son would turn down his guitar. She was a thin, almost frail woman. She needs, Mrs. Cappelli thought, mounds of pasta and huge bowls of steaming, mouth-watering stufato.

Mrs. Morrow remembered her manners with a tired smile. “Ruth Morrow,” she said. She glanced about the yard. “So much to do here. Inside, the place was all dust and cobwebs.” Her gaze moved to Mrs. Cappelli’s comfortable abode of stucco and red tile. “You have a lovely place.”

“My husband built it years before his death. We used to come here for winter vacations. To me, it was home, rather than New York. I love Florida, even the heat of the summers. My son was born in the house, right up there in that corner bedroom.” Mrs. Cappelli laughed. “Shortest labor on record. Such a bambino! When he decided to make his entrance, he wouldn’t even take time for a ride to the hospital.”

Mrs. Cappelli’s unconscious delight in her son brought Ruth Morrow’s fatigued and hollow eyes to Mrs. Cappelli’s face. Mrs. Cappelli was caught, held, and slightly embarrassed. Such aching eyes! So many regrets, frustrations and bewilderments harbored in their depths... They were too large and dark for the thin, heavily made-up face that at one time mast have been quite pretty.

“My son is named Greg,” Mrs. Morrow murmured.

“Mine is named John. He’s much older than your son. He has a wife and five children — such scamps! — and he comes to see me now and then when he can take the time. He is a contractor up north, always on the go.”

“He must be a fine man.”

Mrs. Cappelli was urged to say something comforting to the wearied mother before her. “Oh, John sowed an oat. I guess they all do, before they settle down. Nowadays John is always after me to sell the old antique, as he calls the house. Come and live with him, he nags. I tell him to peddle his own papers. This is not the old country where three or four generations must brawl under one small roof.”

Mrs. Morrow nodded. “It’s been real nice of you to say hello, Mrs. Cappelli. I do have to run now. I work, you see. At the Serena Lounge on the beach, from six in the evening until two o’clock each morning. I always have a good bit to do to get ready for work.”

“The Serena is an excellent place. John took Isadora and me there the last time he was down.”

Ruth Morrow punched the tip of the pruning shears at a small brown twig. “Being a cocktail waitress isn’t the height of my ambition, but without professional training, it pays more money than I’d ever hoped to make. And God knows there is never quite enough money.”

It might ease the situation, Mrs. Cappelli mused, if her boy dirtied his hands with some honest toil. She said, “The honor of a job is in its execution, and I’m certain you’re the best of cocktail waitresses.”

The sincerity of Mrs. Cappelli’s tone brought the first touch of animation to the tired face with its layered icing of makeup and framing of short, dark brown hair. Before Mrs. Morrow could respond, the front door of the house slammed, and Greg was standing in the shadow of the small portico. Both women looked toward him.

“Greg,” Mrs. Morrow called, “this is Mrs. Cappelli, our next-door neighbor.”

“Hi,” he said, bored. He gave Mrs. Cappelli a single glance of dismissal, dropped to the walk with a single smooth stride and headed around the house.

“Greg,” Ruth Morrow called, “where are you going?”

“Out,” he said, without looking back.

“When will you be home?”

“When I’m damned good and ready!” He rounded the corner of the house and was out of sight.

Mrs. Morrow’s face came creeping in Mrs. Cappelli’s direction, but her eyes sidled away. “It’s just his way of talking, Mrs. Cappelli.”

Mrs. Cappelli nodded, but she didn’t understand. How could Mrs. Morrow accept it? Parental respect was normal in a child, be he six or sixty.

A car engine was stabbed to roaring life and Greg raced down the driveway. He cornered the car into the street with tires screaming.

“I really have to go now, Mrs. Cappelli.”

“It was a privilege to meet you,” Mrs. Cappelli said.

“Well?” Isadora asked us soon its Mrs. Cappelli stepped into the house.

“She is a poor woman in the worst of all states,” Mrs. Cappelli said, “a mother with a cruel and unloving son.”