More thanks to everyone whose taken the time to review. I'm really pleased you're enjoying the gnomes! :)
7 – The Tableau
They stood propped against the windscreen, glued together in mockery of an old-fashioned courtly kiss. Lacking moveable limbs, one gnome was simply lying sideways, face angled down towards the other gnome's painted arm. In itself, it could have been kind of funny if not for the note and the blood – smeared over the kissing gnome's face, trailing in streamers down his ceramic green jacket. The recipient's arm and the right side of his body were coated in a livid black-scarlet, running over their feet and down the hood of Parker's abused Holden. Five thin channels of blood marred the duco, slowly dripping onto the bumper bar.
He almost didn't need the note to understand that it was a warning. But what was it a warning of?
"What kind of a sick fuck did you piss off, Pretzels?" Alice demanded, voice rising from a whisper to something very nearly shrill. "Just ... fuck..."
"No one." How did this make the slightest bit of sense? The first gnome had been on Raif's doorstep, not Parker's, and who could have known that Parker was about to jump out of his bed and knock on Raif's door? Unless someone had made a mistake, given that Raif's door was right beside Parker's ... but that didn't make any more sense. Who the hell could he have annoyed? It had been quite a few months since he had last dated anyone, and that had ended amicably enough once Seb had decided Parker was too boring to live with. As far as he was aware, he was on good terms with all his neighbours...
None of which, in any case, explained the note.
"Are you sure?" George demanded; they both stepped closer to him. Parker wondered if a blonde librarian and a cross-dressing art historian had any chance of protecting him from whoever had arranged this tableau, but it was nice that they didn't back away from him and decide this was far too creepy to be dealing with. "Is there anyone who might be slightly annoyed with you, even?"
Who? A borrower, disgruntled, because the library didn't carry a certain magazine? His mechanic, sick and tired of trying to figure out, for the fifteenth time, why Parker's car wouldn't start? Maybe Elise had finally realised that everyone hated her cooking and was trying to get revenge on the block, one resident at a time?
He disregarded the last idea instantly. If Elise wanted revenge, she wouldn't have harmed her beloved gnomes. She'd just go out and poke everyone with knitting needles or something...
Stay well away. From what?
Raif genuinely meant 'as soon as I can', Parker realised; he watched a silver hatchback zoom down the road at about ten kilometres above the speed limit, only just slowing enough to make the turn into the parking lot before slamming to a halt that had his brakes squealing in protest. That likely explained the scratches, then – Raif didn't care about his car or the fact he probably made his mechanic cry every time he went in for a service and a wheel alignment – and the loud noise of his slamming car door only confirmed it.
"Him?" Alice's narrow eyebrows rose right into her hairline.
"Yep," George replied. "He actually looks half alive right now. You've got to see him in daylight and a dressing gown..."
Night and actual clothing definitely helped Raif's cause, dressed once again in jeans and the too-big trench coat. Parker couldn't have called him sprightly, but he even moved with a sense of urgency; Parker wondered if he had taken a dose of pain meds just before hopping in the car. Even his skin tone had a very pale flush to it – not enough to make him seem healthy, but just enough that Raif didn't seem quite so grey. The shadows under his eyes blended into the dark: he looked ghostly, but not as frail as he did come daylight.
"So what is he going to do, anyway?" she murmured – polite enough to make sure Raif didn't overhear, not caring if Parker did. Parker agreed with her in any case – he still wasn't sure why he had called Raif, and not the police, except that he didn't need to hear some overworked police officer tell him it was probably just a prank and that there wasn't anything they could do about it, beyond make a record and move on to the next homicide case. Or any case that didn't involve gnomes...
Raif carried a dark backpack and a large leather camera case, and swung the bag onto the ground as he stopped and stared at Parker's car. His eyes were wide, drinking in the glow from the street lights, but he didn't seem at all startled.
"This is my co-worker, Alice," Parker began, wondering what someone was supposed to say when they called their neighbour out to deal with blooded garden gnomes. "Alice ... my neighbour, Raif." He still couldn't manage the rolling sound, but Raif didn't seem to care. "And you know George."
Raif raised his head. "Hi." His eyes narrowed as he turned from a fidgeting Alice to George, smiling back at him. "I'm sorry, I don't think I know this man..."
"Try imagining him in a dress, high heels and a fascinator," Alice piped up. It had been a very long time since Parker had had the shock of realising that George looked nothing like his non-work self; Alice had only discovered the difference at their last block barbeque. She still hadn't quite gotten over it; Parker had seen her break out into giggles for no reason when she walked past a Cosmo-reading George...
"That's Georgina...?"
"Thanks."
"I mean..." Raif stood there for a moment, as if struggling to think of anything that couldn't be construed as offensive. "Um... What time did anyone happen to last see Parker's car...?"
"When we got Chinese. Five thirty?" Parker glanced over at George; he just nodded, still wearing a nasty little smirk. "But ... we've had people coming in and out of the library since then, and with the lights..."
"Someone would have run in, screaming their head off," Alice added. "So probably just between when we kicked out the internet surfers and locking up, and since the blood's kind of ... drippy..." She shuddered. "That's not seriously real blood, is it?"
"Oh, yes," Raif breathed, shuddering enough for most of his body to shake as he took a careful step towards the driver's side door. "It's real."
"You know that?" Parker blurted. How could he possibly know the difference just by looking?
"Can't you smell it?" Raif slid the camera out of its case. Parker could only suppose his neighbour liked photography, because it was an expensive-looking SLR and it took Raif a moment to select from three different lenses.
"Not really," he muttered, watching Raif somehow don the persona of a professional police photographer and taking shots of the gnomes as he rounded the front of Parker's car. He studied them from multiple angles, crouched and standing, flash and without, clicking away as though he were a lousy shot praying for one decent photo to come out. "Why are you doing that...?"
"Because if it happens again, you might want to report this to the police."
Again? Parker shuddered – and then sidestepped, struggling to keep his balance against a wave of violent light-headedness. How could this be happening? Why his car? Why the fuck did Raif bring a thousand-dollar camera and not just take shots with a mobile phone like any ordinary person? What the fuck was going on that it involved bloody gnomes and a note from someone else warning him to stay away – from someone, or something? But who? Everyone else Parker had known for years, except for his new next door neighbour.
Please consider it and stay well away ... or not even we can be responsible for your safety.
Who the fucking hell was Raif that someone sent such bloody messages with garden gnomes? Why him? Parker wasn't any closer to Raif than anyone else on the block...
He looked half dead; he acted like a man with a very serious illness. Except for the fact he might as well have been a retired police officer (lying about the ethnographies, or a man with really strange choice in reading material?) and that he spent too often wondering about at night, none of which made the slightest bit of sense given the blood on his bathroom floor.
"Hey, Pretzels!" Alice grabbed him by the shoulders and held him straight. "How about we sit down over here ... George, there's a picnic blanket in the boot..." He heard the jangle of a thrown set of keys before Alice sat him down on the steps leading to the glass front doors, perching on the edge of the step beside him, clenching one hand tightly around Parker's left kneecap. "If you don't want to go home alone tonight ... I can kick that guy off my couch. I really don't mind."
"It's okay," he muttered, realising that the last thing he wanted was to go home. Who knew what he might find waiting for him at his flat? George bounded up the steps and had him wrapped in a grassy-smelling coarse blanket, despite the fact that Parker wasn't really cold, sitting down beside him with one arm wrapped around his lower back. "I'll be fine..." He paused, swallowed, glancing away as Raif packed away the camera and pulled a pair of disposable gloves from his backpack. It was better by far than the last gnome Parker had handled, but he still couldn't bear to watch him do it... "Thanks, though."
"No worries," she said, cheerful in the way of someone determined not to sound worried. "Besides, George will be there ... right?"
"I'll stay with him," Raif volunteered. Parker glanced up to catch him picking up the gnomes and dropping them into a plastic bag, grimacing as he looked away. "I owe him one for the groceries."
Raif? Parker glanced down at his right hand, clenched around the crumpled notebook paper, and then back up at that earnest-looking face ... wondering if he dared mention the note.
Wondering if he dared refuse Raif's offer...