Death by Chocolate Malted Milkshake

by Sarah Graves

  Then I realized that we must be in one of the abandoned military residences, in the deserted compound past the wire-topped chain-link fence. And it was just as creepy in here as I had imagined.

  In the time it had been empty, the house had settled enough to throw the walls and floors slightly out of true. The fun-house result would’ve been disorienting even without the lingering effects of the drug Norm had administered.

  Taking deep breaths in hopes of settling my stomach, I noted the empty kitchen cabinets’ doors hanging open and the ceiling tiles beginning to fall. Dust motes drifted in the sunlight slanting in the picture window; it was still bright day outside.

  “You’ve been out about an hour,” McHale said, seeming to catch my thought.

  So no one would even be looking for me yet. “Come on, Norm,” I said, trying again for some helpful info, something I could get out of this with. “What’s this all about?”

  Meanwhile, I tugged at whatever it was he’d tied around my wrists. When I woke I’d been lying flat, but now I sat upright with my back against the living room wall, near where the stained beige carpeting ended and the tile-floored dining area began.

  But it was no go on yanking the wrist bindings apart. “What this is all about,” Norm replied, “I’m not at liberty to say, I’m afraid.”

  Me too; the afraid part, I mean. Also, my ankles were tied together. “Oh, I see. But you’re at liberty to abduct me, restrain me, and keep me here against my will on account of it?”

  More yanking, same negative result. The kitchen island’s corner had been fractured by repeated forceful contact with, I was willing to bet, a child’s Hot Wheels toy; it was a young-family sort of house, the kind people moved out of once the bassinet and baby gate had been put away. Now the fake-wood plastic laminate had a tear in it, a dagger of woodlike material sticking up dangerously from beneath.

  Norm looked unhappy but determined. “Sorry about all that. But it’s the lesser of two evils,” he said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me . . .”

  He moved toward the door. “Norm! Darn it, Norm, you just can’t leave me here like—”

  But then I shut up, as more of whatever he’d given me wore off and two things hit me: (a) this house was plenty straight, it had been the drugs in my system making it look crooked; and (b) sure he could.

  He could leave. He could do whatever he wanted. He could set the house on fire on his way out, for heaven’s sake, and there wouldn’t be a thing I could do about it.

  Not one single thing. And he might, too, because—

  Panic struck me. “Norm, I don’t get it.”

  Trying to engage him, to keep him involved in a conversation. Trying to keep him from leaving me here, because if he did, then I might never be found.

  But he wasn’t having any. “I’ll be coming back for you,” he said, “just as soon as I take care of a few things.”

  I didn’t believe him. Burying something on the beach didn’t necessarily make him Toby Moran’s killer, or Miss Blaine’s, either. But this, what he was doing now—

  As I thought this, however, a new possibility suggested itself to me; carefully, I looked away from the closet built into the kitchen cabinetry of the house, near where the absent refrigerator once stood.

  The closet’s door stood halfway open. Any moment now he would remember what was in it. I didn’t look at it again.

  “Please, Norm,” I said, trying to keep his attention, because I was beginning to recall his first few minutes with me in here, back when he was still trying to figure out exactly what to do next.

  The memory of it came in fragments; first, he’d spent a little while walking around nervously, peering around, putting things out of sight. After that he’d promised he wouldn’t harm me, that all this—him burying the blue bandana-wrapped bundle, he’d meant, and putting me out of commission once I’d seen him—wasn’t the way it looked.

  That he wasn’t a killer. But oh, of course, he was, I realized as more of the sedative drug he’d given me wore off.

  He’d killed Toby Moran and Miss Blaine. And now he was killing me. Not directly, but unless I got free or someone found me—

  Both were unlikely; from the absence of graffiti or vandalism it was clear that people didn’t come messing around much in here, and the bindings on my wrists and ankles were tight—

  It would take me about three days. To die, I mean.

  He slammed the door on his way out.

  * * *

  Once Norm was gone, I spent some time torturing myself by trying to escape the ties around my ankles and wrists. It would’ve helped a lot if my hands had been tied in front of me instead of behind my back.

  But, of course, they weren’t. I’d seen self-defense instructional videos of people who were tied up this way, who’d gotten free by some complicated maneuver that started with them pushing their butts backward through the circle formed by their two arms and then hauling their legs through, like a magician’s trick.

  I knew better than to try it, though; with my luck, I’d get my whole self tied into a knot and then be unable to untie that. Besides, I still had my eye on that kitchen utility closet.

  Scooting painfully across the floor on my rear end, I reached the edge of the carpet, where the tiled kitchen-dining area began. Then, scooching along the tiles—slipperier, but harder on the tailbone, as it turned out—I reached the kitchen island, where the cabinet corner had the jagged edge torn partway out of it.

  Finally, I turned my back to the cabinet and shoved my bound wrists blindly against the sharp stuff. If the material wrapped around my ankles was any clue, he’d tied my wrists together with package-strapping tape, the thread-reinforced kind. That meant that sooner or later, a sharp edge rubbing against it should cut it.

  Emphasis on the “later,” apparently; also, by now my hands were numb all the way to my elbows. For all I knew, I could be slitting my own wrists.

  Furthermore, although my injured arm was no longer particularly painful—that numbness—and the wound itself was higher up toward my elbow, I didn’t like thinking about what I might be doing to all those nice, neat surgical stitches that had been put into it.

  No blood pool spread out from behind me, however, which I found reassuring. Soon I heard faint poppings and snappings as the thin-but-strong threads embedded in the tape wrapped around my wrists were severed.

  At least I hoped that was what I heard, and not the stitches themselves letting go.... At last the tape fell away entirely; twin bolts of agony shot through my shoulders, which hadn’t moved much for a long time, and I spent a few more minutes just rocking and massaging my bruised wrists and moaning in pain while the circulation returned.

  But I was free, and now that I could see what I was doing it was the work of only a few moments to get my ankle ties loosened, as well. Then it was time to make my way to that little broom cupboard built into the kitchen cabinetry. I hauled myself up off the tiled floor and flopped face-first down onto the Formica-covered kitchen island.

  Which had not been in the plan; the flopping part, that is. Nor was the sudden sound of a car going by outside; my car, I realized from the tink-tink-tink sound of the stone still caught in the hubcap.

  He was moving it, probably to hide it. Which meant that anyone searching for me wouldn’t see it and at least know that they were in the right general area....

  I mean, if I didn’t get out of this pickle by myself. Breathing slowly and telling myself to be patient, that I could handle this, I waited until the sound of my car faded, then straightened again from my flopped-down position across the top of the kitchen island.

  “Oof.” Sort of straightened. Something about being twisted into a pretzel shape and tied that way hadn’t been good for my sacroiliac.

  Or for the rest of me. Black spots swam liquidly in my vision, then merged, while the rest of my body was very annoyingly dissolving and flowing back down onto the floor whether I liked it or not.

  “All right, damn it,” I said,
sitting up again. The black spots returned. But by carefully gauging just how high I could hold my head up without passing out entirely, I slid, rolled, and wiggled the rest of the way into the kitchen.

  The long-unswept linoleum was gritty with ancient crumbs and smeared with some unidentifiable stickiness that I didn’t much want to think about; Bella would’ve had a fit. Near the stove, the stickiness mingled with grease in a way that, if I lived, I was going to have to throw out every stitch of the clothing that I was wearing, and maybe even my shoes.

  And yes, those were insect bodies stuck in the grease patches; a shudder of revulsion went through me as my hand mashed down onto them. Springing up in disgust, I got nearly to a standing position, hooked my arms over the sink, and fumbled at the faucet handles, so thirsty suddenly I thought I might die just from that.

  But the faucet produced nothing. Of course, the place was empty and the water had been turned off. Disappointed, I made my unsteady way back nearly to the broom closet before collapsing again.

  Good old floor, I thought, hugging it affectionately. Whatever Norm had given me, it was definitely still working.

  But now I was at the broom closet door and hauling my way up it, first grabbing it by its handle and then latching on to the mop propped just inside.

  “Shall we dance?” I inquired slurringly of the fraying mop head, which didn’t reply.

  Behind the mop, though, was what I really wanted: my bag. Because when we got in here, McHale had carried it over his shoulder while he used both hands to steady me. Then after he let me drop to the carpet, he’d shoved the bag in here, where it still hung on a utility hook.

  Maybe he wasn’t thinking clearly, or maybe he wanted it out of sight just on general principles. Not that anyone else was likely to be wandering in here, or looking in the windows, either. Behind its forbidding-looking chain-link fence, the abandoned cul-de-sac these houses were built on was like the set of a low-budget zombie film; all it needed were the undead, themselves.

  Any hope of my being rescued, in other words, was so far down on the list of likely events that I’d be better off depending on the kindness of one of those shambling deceased folks.

  Still, my bag was here; snatching it, I turned from the broom closet and helplessly kept turning, sudden dizziness sitting me down hard on the filthy floor yet another time.

  But the bag was here; I yanked the zipper open and rummaged inside. And . . . yes! My phone was still there. Only . . .

  I pushed buttons and stared vexedly at the thing. It was on, it was charged, I’d checked to be sure it worked. So why wouldn’t it—?

  And then I realized: that fat black wire sticking out of the kitchen wall wasn’t a cable TV connection. It was for a telephone. A land line, to be precise; when these houses were built, cell phone service didn’t even exist way out here.

  So no one would have realized then that on the beach cell phones worked fine, but in this grim little neighborhood—backed up to a high, impenetrable granite ledge—there could never be a usable signal. Like many places in downeast Maine—at the lake, for example, or out on Route 9—solid geographical features simply prevented it.

  So I was stumped. I could, I supposed, just get up off the floor and walk out of here, except that getting up at all seemed impossible, suddenly. I swigged from the water bottle in my bag—Hallelujah ! I thought when I came upon it—but that only added more nausea to the vertigo that hit me every time I tried rising from a sitting position.

  Also, the stitches in my arm had gotten dislodged, after all; I wrapped my sleeve tightly around it as best I could, so in addition to being a truly spectacular visual mess of the blood-drenched variety, it now also hurt like hell.

  Finally, even though I was not dead or in any danger of being so very soon, someone else was. If Norm thought I’d been following him, it meant he thought I knew or suspected something that he was willing to kill me in order to hide.

  And who else would he reasonably expect to know whatever I knew or suspected? Ellie White, that’s who. The notion shot me full of a fear at least as powerful as the drug he’d injected me with.

  My friend, my partner in baking and in snooping, the one I would share any information with . . . he’d think I must have confided in her, or at least he wouldn’t be willing to take the chance. So unless I missed my guess, he was on his way right now to eliminate that whole “sharing information” business, first on her side of the equation.

  And then, once he had her out of the way, on mine. And what that meant was that I needed to get out of here pronto, not only to save my own life but, even more immediately and urgently, to save Ellie’s.

  Too bad that while I was thinking this Norm McHale burst back into the house unexpectedly. I scrambled up, heedless of dizziness, but too late.

  Now, catching sight of me standing there unsteadily, clearly ready to vamoose at the very first opportunity, he nodded sharply.

  “I knew I should’ve dosed you again.” He advanced on me, pulling a syringe from his jacket pocket and yanking the needle protector from it without taking his eyes off me.

  The needle glinted evilly. A crystal-clear droplet hung from it. Backstepping, I tried evading him. But he was faster and steadier on his feet, and in an instant he was upon me, jabbing the needle into my hip and pushing the plunger.

  I remember my knees going watery and my vision clouding, the walls speeding past me as if I were in a glass-walled elevator going down fast.

  But—damn, I thought as I fell, this makes twice in a single morning—I don’t remember hitting the floor.

  Ten

  “Wha?” I opened my eyes. Bright daylight stuck daggers of pain through them, into my skull.

  I was lying on my back, looking up at the blue sky, which seemed to have two round pink moons hung in it, peering down at me.

  My vision cleared. It was the two guys from the lakeside cottage near Miss Blaine’s.

  I blinked again. This couldn’t be happening. How had they . . . ?

  “Jeeze, lookit ’er arm. That’s bad, we better get ’er to a—”

  I sat up. The world only spun around a couple of times. As soon as I got my coordination together a little better, I would run.

  But they had other ideas. I was lying in the weedy front yard of the abandoned house where Norm McHale had recently attacked me for a second time, dosing me back into a chemical dreamland.

  I blinked around painfully some more. The sun was now over on the afternoon side of the sky. Ellie . . .

  The guys seized me, one under my shoulders and one at my feet, and loaded me into an old gray van through the sliding side door. I was still too wobbly and woozy to do anything useful about it, which I guessed put an end to the whole running away idea for the moment, too.

  I had the brief, unrealistic notion that I might scramble up into the van’s front seat and drive away very fast—the keys were in the ignition, and the guys hadn’t gotten in themselves yet—when a new face appeared in the not-yet-closed side door.

  “Hello? Is anybody . . . oh, dear, are you all right?”

  It was the woman I’d delivered the trays of baked goods to earlier, Sally Sanborn.

  “I was out for a walk, I thought I’d come down to the beach, but as I arrived, your car sped past me and you weren’t in it.”

  Norm, that would’ve been, leaving the scene of the crime. Or one of his crimes, anyway; she sucked in a breath.

  “Well, that didn’t seem right. And then Popsy got away from me.”

  She waved at the little dog frisking around happily on the weedy lawn. “He ran up here, and when I chased him I saw that door was open. Which it never is.”

  Right. They’d all been boarded but this one. She gestured at the house.

  “So I crept up and peeked in and there you were, out cold on the floor, and in the grass by the steps outside I found this card.”

  It was a business card. TWO GUYS MOVING & HAULING, it said.

  Those words were also on the sid
e of the van that had just shown up, I realized muzzily, driven by the same fellows who’d been at the camp opposite Miss Blaine’s cottage. And they’d been on their caps . . .

  Alarm bells rang in my head: Oh, come on. A dropped business card? Give me a break.

  It was all too ridiculously coincidental; I knew this even in my muddled state, which by the way was still impressive. Whatever Norm had shot me up with still had me firmly in its grip.

  “So I ran home and called them,” Sally finished just as the two guys returned.

  “I don’t get it.” I drank from the water bottle she handed me. “Why didn’t you just call the cops? Or The Chocolate Moose?”

  She knew I’d come from there, after all, and she had the number; she’d used it just this morning, calling us to ask for a delivery.

  Now she looked away uncomfortably. “I didn’t think you needed an ambulance. And unless it’s a real emergency I’d rather not call the police about anything right now. You see, my son is—”

  The light dawned as I recalled the young man at her house. “He’s a fugitive of some kind? He’s wanted for something, is that it?”

  She nodded gratefully at me. “Nothing huge, it wasn’t anything violent, thank goodness. But he’s broken the terms of his probation. And since I’m fairly new around here, no one knows I’m his mother. . . .”

  “He’s moved in on you,” I finished for her. “Sounds like a real prince.” I stretched my extremities, all except the wounded one that was bleeding again.

  “But why not call The Chocolate Moose, then?” My headache was fading and my fear had also decreased substantially, as it occurred to me that as long as Ellie was at the shop, she was probably safe.

  Customers coming in, people passing by on the street . . . in front of witnesses, Norm McHale wouldn’t be able to do anything to her. And I’d be back there before closing time . . .

  “Why not,” I repeated after swigging from the water bottle once more, “just call Ellie?”