by Nic Saint
“Yes,” she now said. “Yes, this part of the street is a little tricky to navigate.” Then she cast down her eyes, and made to hurry along. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk, or to be scrutinized by curious mayoral secretaries. She just wanted to get home and have a good cry.
But Mabel was like a dog with a bone. Once she dug her teeth in she wasn’t likely to let go.
“Oh, but you hurt yourself!” she now exclaimed, catching sight of Gardenia’s scraped knee. “You should have that taken care of, honey.”
“Yeah, I’ll put some iodine on it when I get home,” she said with a shrug. “It’s nothing, really,” she added when Mabel kept tut-tutting and tsk-tsking and studying her knee as if it was some long-lost Monet, Manet or Renoir.
“Why don’t you let me take care of that for you?” Mabel suggested. “I live right around the corner.”
For some reason, though for the life of her she didn’t know why, she suddenly thought this wasn’t such a bad idea, and followed the matronly woman to her homestead.
“I know you live outside of town and you really shouldn’t walk around like that. It might get infected.”
“Do you—do you have the time?” she asked. “I know how busy you are.”
But the secretary waved a deprecating hand. “Oh, nonsense. I’m on my break anyway, and Happy Bays isn’t going to fall apart just because I’m away from my desk for a couple of minutes now is it?”
Gardenia had the distinct impression Mabel thought it would, actually, and perhaps she was right. As the mayor’s right-hand woman, she pretty much was Happy Bays, even more so than the mayor himself, Gardenia knew. For Mabel had seen so many mayors come and go that by now she was the rock all these elected officials leaned on when mapping out their ideas for the future of the bucolic little Long Island town.
“This is so nice of you,” she said softly as she tripped along, trying to keep up with Mabel’s vigorous pace. “I just hope it’s not an inconvenience.”
“Nothing of the kind,” said Mabel as she dug into her purse for her key and then unlocked the door of her house to let Gardenia in.
She’d long been in the business of taking care of lost causes, taking in a bunch of stray dogs and cats over the years, and had once even harbored a stray parrot. To her Gardenia was probably simply another stray she brought in from the street to take care of. And then there was the fact that she was a member of the Happy Bays Neighborhood Watch Committee and thus imbued with a strong sense of civic pride, making sure the streets of her town were safe, as were its citizens. In all likelihood she took the state of the town pavements as a personal affront and its victims as her personal responsibility.
“I haven’t seen you in town for a while,” she now said as she pointed at a chair in the kitchen while she took out a bulky first-aid kit from the top shelf of one of the cabinets. “How are you and Roy? And Sam, of course,” she said conversationally. “A big strapping boy he is. You must be so proud of him.”
Gardenia swallowed, then nodded quickly. “Fine,” she managed to squeeze out. “We’re all perfectly fine.”
“You don’t look fine to me,” said Mabel critically. “Are you sure everything is all right, Gardenia? You seem a little out of sorts this morning.”
Finally she broke down and heaved a loud sob. She simply couldn’t help it. Mabel being so nice to her brought it out, and then suddenly, before she could stop, she was pouring her lament into the secretary’s ear. How Sam was being terrorized by a bully. How she’d just lost her job that morning because her horrible boss had decided she wasn’t pretty enough and wasn’t wearing her skirts short enough and her blouses low-necked enough. And how Roy was so stressed out lately from work that he resembled more a cast member of The Walking Dead than the kind man she’d married thirteen years ago.
Mabel tsk-tsked even more this time, even as she efficiently cleaned her wound of the pieces of debris, then applied some disinfectant and wrapped a crisp, white bandage around it. And as she did so, she told Gardenia she knew exactly how she felt. That a long time ago her own daughter Natalie had been bullied mercilessly, and how she herself hadn’t been able to hold down a job for a long time, until she’d landed her current one. And that Mark, her husband, who worked as an engineer at the power plant, had had a tough time there at first as well, and had garnered very little respect.
“And just look at us now,” she said, gesturing at herself as she washed her hands at the kitchen sink. “To think I went from lowly secretary to my current position. It’s been quite a miraculous turnaround. A real success story.” Her daughter had eventually blossomed into a beautiful young woman and had gone on to college and was now engaged to be married to a strapping young man, and Mark was now so respected at the plant that he had the director’s ear. “Things can and do turn around in a heartbeat,” Mabel assured her. “You just have to keep the faith and not lose hope, honey.”
She nodded tearfully, Mabel’s kind words doing her a world of good.
“Thank you,” she said between two sniffs. “Thank you so much.”
“There, there,” muttered Mabel, and handed her first a Kleenex, and then the whole box. “Everything will be all right, honey. Just you wait and see.”
When she left Mabel’s house she was feeling a lot better already, and had one thing firmly planted in her mind: just like the mayoral secretary she was going to take care of her problems. And when that was done, she would finally be able to lead the kind of life a true Happy Baysian was meant to lead. But first and foremost she needed the right kind of tools to carry out her mission. And with resolute step, and this time making certain that the pavement didn’t catch her by surprise, she set foot for Mick’s Pick, every Happy Baysian’s first choice when it came to loading up on guns and ammo.
Chapter 6
Alice watched the woman stride into the store with a curious eye. It rarely happened that women visited Mick’s Pick by themselves, and when she approached the counter hesitantly, and asked if she could buy a gun, she was even more surprised. Most women liked to have a gun in the house, just in case some nefarious burglar or prowler or other ne’er-do-well decided that the burgling and the prowling and the ne’er-do-welling was good and set their burgly, prowly, ne’er-do-welly sights on their homestead. But usually they brought their husband along, or sent him as their emissary to pick and choose the right six-shooter for the occasion.
“We sure do,” she caroled nonetheless. She wasn’t picky in her choice of customers. If Gardenia Radcliffe wanted to buy herself a gun, who was she to deny the woman her constitutional right? “What did you have in mind?”
Alice herself was quite fond of guns, which was one of the reasons she still worked at her uncle Mickey’s store, albeit part-time. She had to divide her time between Mick’s Pick and Uncle Charlie’s Funeral Delight and Bell’s Bakery these days, being very much in demand. But since she loved all three of her jobs, she’d decided to keep them for now.
At the outset of her career she had actually wanted to be a cop, but unfortunately the police academy had been a tough nut to crack, and she’d finally given up on that particular dream. Her dad, who was the chief of police, had told her not to bother, and now she envisioned a future for herself as local mogul and retail tycoon. Once upon a time both her uncles would retire, and since they had no children of their own would most likely bequeath their businesses to their favorite niece. She could even vertically integrate the gun store and the funeral home into one single enterprise. Corner the market of death, so to speak. And even though Bell’s was obviously Felicity’s heirloom when her folks retired, she had a stake there as well, having only recently been instrumental in setting up its online presence.
“I, um…” Gardenia hesitated, toying idly with a toy gun on the counter. “I actually don’t know much about guns. Can you advise me?”
“Sure can, honey. What do you want it for?”
The woman stared at her a little trepidatiously. “I want to kill a piece o
f vermin,” she now said, and Alice nodded approvingly.
“A good blast right between the eyes will do the trick,” she agreed, then added, “What kind of vermin are we talking about here? Big, small, medium-sized?” She laughed at her own little joke, but Gardenia seemed dead serious.
“A little bit of both,” she said. “The big kind and the small.”
“Damn critters infesting the home and hearth, huh?”
“They’re destroying our lives. Mine, my husband’s, and my son’s.”
“Can’t have that,” Alice agreed, and thought hard about what to advise Gardenia. She’d seen her around town, her and her husband. They were newcomers and as such stood out like a sore thumb in a small community like Happy Bays, where the locals pretty much knew each other since their inception, and often even months before.
“Well, you could always use rat poison if rats are your personal peeve,” she pointed out, albeit reluctantly. Mick’s Pick didn’t carry rat poison, but she felt she needed to advise her customer of the cheaper—and less noisy—option before she got down to business. She was honest that way.
“Oh, no, I don’t want to use rat poison,” Gardenia said adamantly, then a hard look came over her rather sweet face. “I want to look them in the eye when I pull the trigger. I want to see the fear when they know that the end has come and that I’m the one who’s going to put a bullet in their heads.”
“Yeah, I can see how that might be gratifying,” Alice agreed. “Set an example for the rest of the nest, huh? Lay down the law?”
Gardenia nodded seriously. “I want to make sure nobody ever touches my family again, Miss Whitehouse. Ever.”
“Spoken like a true homeowner,” said Alice admiringly. “Well, in that case I can recommend one of our tried and true specimens…” And as she launched into her sales pitch, first inquiring about budget—which wasn’t something Gardenia was particularly concerned about—and caliber—the bigger the better, apparently—she quickly moved over to the close, and placed the gun—a Kel-Tec PMR-30 that held a whopping thirty bullets—back on the counter to fill out the necessary paperwork. As a token of her appreciation, she added in an extra box of ammo, just in case this nest of critters proved bigger than expected, which it always did in her experience.
“Mick’s Pick thanks you, Mrs. Radcliffe,” she said with a smile.
When she made no move to hand over the gun, Gardenia hesitantly asked, “So… can I have my gun now?”
With the same smile, she said, “Sure thing, after you receive permission from the State of New York. Which will take about six months. Once you have the permit you just swing on by and this little puppy is all yours.”
Gardenia’s mild-mannered face suddenly screwed up into an expression of utter and extreme dismay. “But I need it now! Can’t I have it right now?”
“Nope. Afraid you can’t. But six months really isn’t all that long. Time flies and all that, huh? Ha ha.”
Gardenia wasn’t laughing, she noticed once again. Not a smile in sight. In fact she was scowling fiercely now, and suddenly huffed, “I see what this is. You’re all against me.” She flapped her arms wildly. “All of you ganging up on me! Trying to bring me down. But it’s not gonna happen! No way!”
And with these words, she stormed to the exit and departed even before Alice had the chance to point out that her future father-in-law owned a gun range and she could offer her a twenty-percent discount if she signed up now.
With a sigh, she shrugged. Probably she should have explained about New York gun laws before making Gardenia salivate at the prospect of owning her very own peashooter, but then that was Uncle Mickey’s sales technique for you: first you sell the gun, and then you talk about the license.
And she was just about to put the Kel-Tec away again when the theme song from Tom & Jerry sounded. She picked up her phone and smiled when she saw it was her better half desirous to have speech with her.
“Howdy, pardner,” she caroled happily. “How’s things in Vancouver?”
She knew that Reece knew they’d been visited by his pyrotechnic friend but wasn’t going to breathe a word about it. She wanted to keep him in suspense by pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Rainy. And gloomy,” Reece said, sounding pretty gloomy himself. “Yesterday we were out filming in the rain all day. All day! The director seems to think it will improve the grittiness and starkness of the footage but all I’m getting out of it is a cold. I’ve been sneezing all through my scenes.”
“Yeah, and we just can’t have a fighter pilot battling the flu, huh?”
“Well, the director says it makes me look more haggard and forlorn, which is exactly the kind of realism he’s going for, so…” He paused. “I’m starting to think I signed up for the wrong movie, babe. I thought this was going to be the next Star Wars but it looks like it’s the next After Earth instead. All about the inner life of a fighter pilot as he battles depression while fighting an intergalactic war. Lots of close up shots of my face while I’m thinking deep thoughts, which will be added in later as a voice-over, I guess.”
Reece and deep thoughts were not a good combination, Alice agreed. As much as she adored her movie star fiancé, she knew he wasn’t exactly a deep thinker. “So no action involved, huh?”
“None whatsoever. I just have to sit in my spaceship and stare moodily into the camera, looking depressed. What kind of a movie is that?”
“An unbelievable one. People are going to want their money back.”
“You’re right. This is going to be a major bomb,” Reece concluded, and didn’t sound happy at all, which would probably make his director happy.
“Capture this mood, babe. Capture the mood and hold on to it and use it to infuse your next scenes with the necessary desolation and despondency.”
“You sound just like my director!” Reece cried. “He’s always yelling the same thing. Trying to make my life as miserable as possible and then telling me to use that emotion! Look, babe, I’m seriously thinking of pulling the plug on this one. It’s going to be a dog, I can feel it. Can’t I come home to you?”
Alice laughed. “Just hang in there. Show some grit already will you?”
She knew why Reece wanted to come home. He wanted to see for himself how his little scheme was working out. And then she did what she’d told herself she wouldn’t do. But curiosity was a tough desire to battle. “Do you have the equipment to make a person feel like they’re flying through the air?”
“Sure. They’ve got everything down here. It’s a big-ass contraption, though, with pulleys and wires and a big, giant green screen. They also have a wind tunnel that makes your eyes water and your cheeks flap as if you’re flying at mach whatever speed. The entire thing is as big as a Boeing 747!”
“Is it, um, is it portable? I mean, can you take it home with you?”
“Babe, I’m telling you, it’s as big as a jumbo jet! So no, I can’t take it home with me. Wanna try it out? Come up to Vancouver. Cheer me up!”
“I can’t cheer you up, babe. That would ruin the whole movie.”
“Yeah, like it ain’t ruined already,” he riposted morosely.
After they had disconnected, she gave this some thought. Reece had sounded so sincere. If he’d really set up this entire thing, wouldn’t he have given some indication? She knew he wasn’t that good an actor that he could fake his innocence. He was an action star, not exactly a character actor, even though his agent kept throwing these serious parts his way from time to time.
So how did he make this all happen? How did he make it rain in their living room, for instance? She’d looked all around for some kind of sprinkler system and had found zilch. No wires, no nothing. However Reece was going about this, it was a genius setup, up there with the greatest magicians. And she knew for a fact that if this really was Reece, he hadn’t done this by himself. Someone else was behind this. Someone with the chops to pull it off.
She finally shook her head. She wasn�
�t going to ask Reece. It would spoil the surprise, and she was really liking this whole ‘I’m the official emissary from Allard and I’m going to destroy your realm’ gag! Besides, if this Severin was as handsome as Fee said, she couldn’t wait to make his acquaintance.
And as she checked the box containing the Kel-Tec PMR-30, she noticed to her surprise that the gun… was gone! And not just the gun, but also the box of hollow-point .22 mag rounds Gardenia had asked to check out. Oh, crap, she thought as she ran her fingers through her hair. This wasn’t good!
Chapter 7
Virgil Scattering was going about his rounds when he thought he noticed something out of the ordinary. As a member of the Happy Bays Police Department his was not a life accustomed to experiencing extraordinary things. As a rule, the small town he patrolled was one of those peaceful hamlets where nothing of peculiarity ever happened. Apart from the occasional jaypooping dog or jaywalking pedestrian, life was not exactly happening in Happy Bays.
They’d had a spate of murders a while back, but the murderer had assured the judge it was a one-time thing, and since he was now serving twenty-five to life, his words carried the aura of certainty. And then of course there was that whole ghost wave that had momentarily held the town in its grip, but even on that front, the spectral front, it had been eerily quiet lately.
All in all, being a copper with the HBPD was a tedious affair, and sometimes Virgil, a string bean of a man with a battering ram of a chin and not much in the form of a brain, longed back to those heady days when every day seemed to herald in a fresh murder or some ghost flying off the handle and generally making an ectoplasmic mess of things.