Murder Old and New

by Chet Williamson

  While Ted headed to the back to wrap some orders, I put a few gems on eBay. The best was the first issue of a Secret Service Stories pulp from 1927, with a Max Brand novel. Brand collectors were still plentiful, and God knows they have a lot to collect, since Brand (whose real name was Frederick Faust), wrote what seems like a kajillion pulp novels and stories under nearly as many pseudonyms. Still, I expected this one to go to a general hardcore pulp collector, since it’s a tough title to find.

  I love dealing in pulp magazines. It’s just incredible that so many of them survived, printed on the cheapest paper imaginable and selling for a dime or a quarter each. They were basically the books of the working class in a time when new hardcovers were two bucks each and most families only made forty dollars a week. Enough people loved them and kept them around so that stacks of them still pop up at auctions and estate sales. Not frequently, but often enough to keep you hoping.

  It’s a real thrill to see those that have remained in nice condition in spite of the odds against them, like damp cellars and baking attics. But some survive, their garish covers still bright and their paper still supple.

  I’d never thought of this before, but older people are like pulp magazines. My time in the Gates Home has shown me that. Some are still bright and supple after eighty or ninety or even a hundred years, while others are as faded as sun-bleached covers and as brittle as that paper stored in a dry attic for far too long, the kind that turns brown and actually cracks apart in your hand as you try to turn the pages. Sometimes those pages flake off in chunks, so that the words that are left tell no story at all, but just hint at one told a long time ago and now forgotten, except for stray thoughts and dimly remembered words spoken by characters long dead.

  Well, that was cheery. But those were the kinds of thoughts that were running through my noggin as I entered the short stack of pulps onto eBay. Sound like a fun date, don’t I?

  Just how much fun Ted found out when he finally crept out of the wrapping room, with a dozen meticulously prepared bundles ready to fall into the kindly arms of the postal service. He had a few stray pieces of packing tape still secured to his knit sweater.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said, rising and plucking away the debris, “you look like a 3M Christmas tree. Don’t rutsch!” Ted chuckled self-consciously at my Dutchie phrase. My Pennsylvania German Grandma Landis had laid that one on me plenty of times when I was a fidgety little girl. Ted obediently held still while I peeled the pieces away. We both stuck tape to our bodies while wrapping, when we had cut off too much, keeping it on our clothing in case at some point we had too little. But I always remembered to take my pieces off when I was done.

  “So,” Ted broached less than subtly when I’d removed the last bit, rolled the pieces up into a ball, and chucked it in the trash, “you have plans for dinner tonight?”

  “Yes. None. I’ve been eating like a pig lately. Tonight’s a cup of yogurt. Plain.”

  “And a hair shirt?” That was pretty good for Ted, who very seldom joked with his goddess. “You don’t need to lose any weight, Livy. You look fine.”

  “Thanks,” I said, but not at all graciously. More in the sense of What the hell do you know, Twerp-Boy? It’s amazing how much baggage a single word can carry if you imbue it with enough venom, and mine was dripping.

  Ted’s face fell so far his jaw wiped the polished wood of the floor, and he muttered, “Sorry…” followed by a spark of self-defense. “I was just trying to…pay you a compliment.”

  I sighed, repentant. “I’m sorry, Ted…I’ve just got a lot on my plate right now.”

  “Well, look, if there’s anything I can do to help, I’m happy to…y’know, work-wise.”

  “And thanks again, but it’s not work-wise.” And I told him about Rachel Gold and Harold’s suspicions and the note I’d gotten.

  After I finished Ted shrugged. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said in that off-the-cuff manner that men use to make the little ladies feel better. It was the same kind of infuriating tone my ex had always used when I’d tell him about things that were bothering me. Well, Livy honey, he’d say, the only person who can make it better is you. Thanks fer nuthin’, dork.

  I don’t know what it is about guys that they can’t understand that every emotional problem can’t be dealt with by yourself. Sometimes it takes days or weeks to work things out and get yourself to the place you want to be. Sometimes it takes long, long talks with a sister or a girlfriend. Sometimes it can take medication. Sometimes it takes a helluva lot of chocolate.

  I didn’t have a sister nearby, and Karen, my one girlfriend, had shot me down with her nyah nyah-nyah nyah nyah, your note’s from Grover, so the best I was getting was Ted’s I wouldn’t worry about it.

  “Gee. Thanks for the words of encouragement, Doctor Phil,” I riposted, and felt a warm rush of schadenfreude as Ted’s mug went down for the second time. Then I decided to play nice. If he went under a third time the poor chump might drown.

  I glanced at my watch, saw it was 4:30, and said, “Ted, why don’t you leave early today? Everything’s wrapped and I can hold the fort till five.”

  What I had thought a nice gesture on the boss’s part had just the opposite effect. His expression was as deflated as if I’d just debunked Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Jesus all at once. And I realized too late that from his point of view he’d been banished from the queendom by the pissed-off monarch. Damn, but it’s tough work being a deity, especially with such a sensitive worshipper.

  “I mean…” I added feebly, “…if you want to.”

  “Sure,” he said quietly. He tugged on his peacoat and picked up the messenger bag in which he carried his lunch, iPhone, iPad, and whatever book he was currently reading, and shuffled to the door. “See you tomorrow,” he said with a sad attempt at cheerfulness, and hit the road, Jack.

  I sat there feeling like a heel for a while, and finished putting the pulps on eBay. By then it was well after five, so I locked the door, turned the “Open” sign to “Closed,” switched off the lights, and headed upstairs to my Fortress of Solitude, where Supercat, a/k/a Fudge, was waiting, wondering why I hadn’t yet deigned to feed him.

  I opened a new can of feline delectability (it smelled like funky fish to me, but Fudge loved it), fed his majesty, and then sat down with my yogurt, damn it, and yum yum. As I tried to eat it slowly, sloooowly, and enjoy that creamy, tart taste as it slid over my tongue, I realized I was ignoring the local TV news with its extremely ignorable stories of road salt supplies in the local townships and zoning for big box stores. Instead I was thinking about the Gates Home, two deaths in seven days, an old man’s suspicions, and a warning note that Nancy Drew would have taken seriously, even if Karen Kaylor didn’t.

  Fudge devoured his can of cat food, which seemed to be about a fifth of his body weight, in far less time than it took me to finish my cup of plain yogurt, a teeny-weeny infinitesimal fraction of my own weight, and gee, I wonder who enjoyed theirs more?

  I got a quick shower and put on my most comfy flannel pajamas, then settled in front of the TV with a cup of fat-free hot chocolate and the two-disc DVD of My Fair Lady, which, I remembered partway through, I’d seen in a theatre with my mom and dad when I was a little kid. I didn’t understand much of it, but I remember liking the singing and dancing and thinking that the lady was real pretty.

  Of course, that memory made me think of my mother and how she was down at the Gates Home where you were supposed to beee-ware because some mad killer might be stalking the halls late at night, snuffing out little old ladies while they slept. And slowly my mind clicked away from My Fair Lady and into a montage of scenes from the film I was writing and editing in my head called Beee-ware Lady! It started out with Vincent Price’s dead dad in his coffin in The Raven, that 1964 Roger Corman classic (yes, I like old horror movies too, as long as they’re not too gross), and old dad is reaching out and grabbing Vincent by the throat, and warning his son to (you guessed it) beee-ware…r />
  Then the scene changes, and it’s Vincent again, but now he’s in his House of Wax makeup, all burned and icky, and he’s in the morgue at night, but instead of pulling back the sheets to find the pretty dead girl he wants to cover with wax, he’s in the Gates Home, moving silently from bed to bed, seeing which old lady he wants to kill next.

  And then, lo and behold, he looks down into my mother’s face.

  Chapter 10

  There are some things a daughter just can’t handle, and having her sweet mother meet a wicked demise by the likes of Vincent Price in proto-Freddy Krueger makeup is one of them. It wasn’t until I opened my eyes that I realized I’d been sleeping. The TV screen was black except for green letters saying “VIDEO 1” that had come up when the DVD player had shut itself off after the movie was over.

  My horror movie had been a dream rather than my imagination, and I had just dreamed it was my imagination. Which it was, if you know what I mean. The clock read 11:45, and I was amazed I’d slept that long before the nightmare woke me.

  Now that it had, there was no getting back to sleep. The image of my mother with a hideous fiend looming over her refused to go away, and, illogical as it was, the only remedy for it was for a dutiful daughter to go down to the Gates Home at midnight (Bwah-hah-hah) and make sure that all was well.

  Yes, I could have called her, but I didn’t think Mother would respond well to me waking her out of a deep sleep to say, Hi, Mom, just thought I’d call and see if you were okay. Although it would have been revenge for the time she called and woke me at eight in the morning in my college dorm room to warn me not to eat a certain brand of frozen pizza because she’d heard on the news they had tainted mushrooms. Like every morning I had mushroom pizza for breakfast.

  Another option would have been to call the constant care nurses’ station and ask someone to go and check on her, but the night gals were understaffed, and if a resident really needed help while the nurse on duty was checking to see if my mother was sleeping soundly, I’d never stop feeling guilty over it.

  I dumped a highly-annoyed Fudge off my lap, changed into jeans and a sweater, pulled on my boots, threw on a jacket, and headed out the door. A light snow was falling as I climbed into the van, one of those poofy Christmas card snows that looks pretty and does no harm. It melted on the surface of the street as soon as it landed, and I drove through it with ease.

  I parked a block away from the Gates Home. I figured I might as well drop off Tom Drummond’s mini-recorder rather than wait until my next visit, so I grabbed the bag from the back seat, and walked quickly toward the building across the snow. In the short time it had taken me to drive there, the snow had become wetter and heavier, and my feet now left a trail behind me on the sidewalk.

  Nearly all of the windows in the Gates Home were dark, and I went to the main entrance and unlocked the front door. The Gates Home has a policy that regular residents who can come and go at will are given two sets of keys—one for themselves and one for a family member. The constant care wing is handled case by case, but since most residents there are physically or mentally challenged, they get no keys. After five o’clock, you also need a numbered code to leave the building.

  The night security man sitting at the reception station waved me through when he saw me—I’ve visited Mother on previous evenings, though never so late—and I punched in a four-digit code and went through a door to the stairs. At the second floor I punched in the code again to shut off the alarm when I opened the stairwell door, and dropped off Tom Drummond’s stash at the nurse’s station, with a request that the bag be taken to him in the morning. Then I went back down the hall, down a ramp, and through the heavy fire door into the first-floor resident wing.

  As the door closed behind me, I was aware that the hall was colder than usual. In winter the home is heated to around 74 degrees, since the residents complain endlessly if it’s colder than that. I don’t know if it’s because your skin gets thinner as you age, but seniors sure do feel the cold.

  But even I felt it as I entered. It was like someone had left a door open somewhere, and I decided to go down and check the outside door at the end of the hall, the one with the push bar that led down a ramp to the employees’ parking lot. It was then that I noticed the wet spots.

  The dark blue commercial-grade carpet that covered the hall floor readily showed a zigzag pattern of droplets of water or melted snow. They went door to door, back and forth across the hall, and were wetter in front of the doors, as if someone with snowy feet had been going to each, trying…

  The last of the wet spots was right in front of my mother’s door.

  I moved quickly and quietly down the hall to my mother’s closed door and tried the knob. It was unlocked.

  Not giving a damn about stealth now, I pushed open the door and gasped at what I saw. In the dim glow of the Maxfield Parrish night light I had gotten Mother when she moved in, a figure was crouching over her bed just the way Vincent Price had in my dreams. For a second I was frozen, but then whatever’s the opposite of maternal instinct (daughterial instinct?) kicked in and I barked what was intended to be a loud “Hey!” but sounded more like a garbled squeak.

  It was enough. The head snapped up at me and I looked into a pair of eyes bright with either hate or fear, I couldn’t tell which. He (or she, but I assumed it was a man) came right at me and I stood rooted to the spot. If he’d had a knife, he could’ve skewered me, but if he did, he wasn’t in a skewering mood. Instead he just ran right past me, out the door, and down the hall.

  “HEY!” I yelled this time, big and loud. Part of me wanted to pursue him, but I was more concerned about my mother. I dashed the few steps to her bed and saw that she was moving. Her eyes were open but confused. “Mom?” I said.

  “Livy? Oh my…what’s…why are you here?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Oh…yes, I’m fine, but what…”

  I grabbed the call cord above her bed and gave it a good hard yank, then said, “Just stay here,” and ran out into the hall. The man was long gone, but I ran down to the outside door anyway and shouldered it open. There were footprints, widely spaced in the snow, going down the ramp, lost in the darkness of the city, and that was all.

  Inside, behind me, a door opened, then another, and I went back into the hall. The outside door drifted shut behind me, but didn’t fully close.

  “Livy?” Harold Newbury was standing down the hall, blinking at the light. Behind him, in the doorway at the other end of the hall, was a nurse.

  “Get security,” I told her, “and call the police.” The nurse disappeared and Harold came toward me while I knelt to see what it was that had kept the outside door from closing.

  It was a wooden peg about six inches long, the diameter of my little finger. “What is it? What’s going on, Livy?” asked Harold behind me.

  “Somebody was in my mother’s room,” I said. “I think this is how they got in.”

  “Good heavens! Is she okay?”

  I nodded. “Just scared. She didn’t wake up till I came in.” I felt I owed him an explanation. “After our discussion today, I was a little creeped out. I had a sort of…premonition, so I came over here. Now I’m glad I did.”

  “I should say so. But you said the person got in this way?”

  I nodded. “This peg kept the door from closing and latching. You can’t come in this way, but a lot of the staff leaves through here.”

  Harold’s eyes sparkled. “An inside job? You think someone put the peg in when they left?”

  “I’m not sure…I’d hate to think that.”

  “But up here at the top of the ramp,” Harold said, “there’s nowhere to hide. Anybody who came out of the building would see a…a lurker with a peg ready to stick in the door.”

  “True,” I said. “But they might not see just the peg.”

  “Huh?”

  I stepped outside and started to let the door drift shut. “Let it close, Harold, and open it when I knock.”<
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  When the door closed, I leaned the peg against the crack, trying to position it so that it would fall into the gap the door made as it opened. Then I stood up and rapped lightly. Harold opened the door. To my disappointment, the peg fell away from the door. “Again,” I said, and readjusted the peg. Again it fell away. I failed two more times, but the fifth time the peg fell into the proper place, and when the door drifted shut it didn’t fully close and latch, allowing me to pull it open.

  Just then the security guard appeared at the end of the hall. “What’s going on?” he asked, and I filled him in as I went back to Mother’s room. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, confusion in her eyes.

  “Was her door locked?” the guard, who had introduced himself as Jerry, asked.

  “Was it, Mother? Did you lock your room door?”

  “Well, I…I don’t know. I don’t remember to do it all the time…you tell me I should leave my door open…”

  “During the day, Mother. Not at night. From now on, never at night.”

  The police came then. There were two officers, a man and a woman, both uniformed, and when they found out that Harold had seen nothing, they asked him to go back to his room, which he did, albeit reluctantly. Then they put my mother into a vacant room to sleep and called down some CSI people. While we waited for them to arrive, Officers Lamb (the guy) and Mignola (the gal) took me into an empty office and I told them what I’d already told Jerry.

  Once they got me going, it was surprising how much I remembered about the attacker: as tall or maybe a little taller than me, maybe in his mid-forties, long brown hair, thin but wiry, and strong, since he just knocked me out of the way, and I’m a pretty big woman. He was wearing a long dark coat, zipped or buttoned shut, and jeans and running shoes. As intense as his eyes had been, I couldn’t recall a color. He hadn’t said anything, so I couldn’t describe his voice, and, other than those gleaming eyes, I hadn’t gotten a good look at his face at all.