by Sarah Graves
Glancing down, I saw blood dripping off my elbow, which seemed only right for an extremity that felt suddenly as if nails were being hammered into it. Marienbad tied my wrists together, the restraints biting harshly into my skin, while Norm scrambled across the floor, still trying to grab Ellie’s ankles.
But by now she’d gotten the twine wrapped around them undone; evading him nimbly, she raised a large vase that she’d snatched off the fireplace mantel and brought it down hard.
Rolling from beneath it at the last possible instant, he slid across the floor, heaved himself to his feet once more, and turned to advance on her again. She hopped up and scampered away from him.
But when she sprinted for the hall, Marienbad blocked her and knocked her backward into the parlor once more just as Norm, his face wild and his hands grasping convulsively at her, seized her again.
And this time, before I could do anything or shout a warning, he bent to grab up the loaded syringe that he’d lost in the struggle and jammed the needle into her thigh.
Moments later, she sagged with a sigh. Gripping her under her arms, he dragged her out while Marienbad frog-marched me after them. Down the hall toward the rear of the house, past the parrot, who at the commotion had gone warily silent in his brass cage . . .
At the end of the dark, dreary hall, a swinging door led out to the kitchen, a large, fluorescent-lit room whose white-metal fixtures, scuffed wooden table and chairs, and dull linoleum floor gave the room about as much charm as the inside of your average meat locker.
Fly-specked curtains, torn shades . . . apparently Norm’s penchant for decoration didn’t extend to the utility areas of the house.
“Sit,” Marienbad ordered. “Go on, do what I say.”
She yanked out a chair and shoved me into it. Theoretically, of course, that was my big chance to jump up again and overpower her, overturning the table, maybe, to keep Norm at bay just long enough for Ellie and me to escape.
In that theory, though, my shoulders hadn’t just been getting yanked halfway out of their sockets and there wasn’t a by-now-really-very-scary amount of blood running down my arm.
Also theoretically, Ellie wasn’t completely out cold from whatever Norm had injected her with, but in real life she was. So the two of us were, as my son Sam would’ve put it, fuster-clucked.
“Why’d you do it?” I asked. Hey, this whole thing had gone to hell, pretty much. I’d told my dad not to come in here no matter what, since however bright and bushy-tailed he seemed I did not need him having another heart attack.
Also, despite all that had happened, according to the clock on the kitchen wall I’d only been in here a few minutes. So he wouldn’t be rescuing us; not soon enough, anyway.
Which was why I decided to wing it. “Come on, Norm. How’d you go from being a nice, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly type of guy to being a bloody murderer in such a short—
“Shut up.” Marienbad was stuffing things into a paper bag: more syringes, the shiny glass ampules of sedative that I imagined went into them, a plastic envelope of what looked like a lot of money—
Wait a minute, a bag of money? Slumped forward onto the table, Ellie moaned and stirred. “Norm,” I began, “where did all that—?”
“I said shut up!” Marienbad slammed the bag down onto the kitchen counter and swung around to face Norm.
“We’re leaving, okay? We’re getting out of here right now, get whatever you want to take with you and—”
But Norm just couldn’t resist the chance to excuse himself; I could see now how he must have thought that his embezzlement and tax evasion crimes were really okay, if only he had a good enough reason.
And what he said next proved it. “Look, we really didn’t have a choice. Toby found out that Marienbad was paying herself a living wage instead of skimping along on ramen noodles half the year, whenever the tourists weren’t around.”
The light dawned. “A living wage,” I repeated. In winter, the beer drinkers at the Ducky would never support that. Like the rest of us, she’d be lucky to keep the lights on, outside of tourist season.
“You mean she was—”
“Yeah, that’s right, I was skimming,” she cut in snarlingly. “Whatever came in, I took twenty percent and didn’t report it. Paid less in taxes, had a few more bucks so I could at least run the heat.”
Ellie lifted her head and looked around blearily. “What’s going on?” she slurred, then passed out again.
“I don’t understand,” I said, forcing myself to sound interested. It seemed Marienbad liked justifying herself, too, once she got going.
Keep her talking.... “How would Toby Moran find out about . . . ohh,” I finished, getting it, finally.
Marienbad scowled. “Right again. Oh, he was a smooth bastard.”
She stalked to the sink, ran some water, and drank it. By then I’d have killed for that water, which did not seem like a good sign, and the sleeve clinging to my injured arm was soggy.
“Sweet-talked me into a boyfriend-girlfriend deal,” Marienbad went on. “I gave him a bartending job, later I find out he’s pouring drinks but not ringing them up, putting the money in his own pocket.”
I could see why she’d have been outraged; skimming cash out of the Rubber Ducky was supposed to be her racket, not his.
As she talked, she kept putting things in the bag: clothesline, duct tape, a roll of electrician’s wire, a butcher knife . . . yeeks, I didn’t like this even a little bit, all of a sudden.
I mean, not that I’d liked it a whole hell of a lot before. Also, it was getting worse; that woozy, weak feeling I’d begun having . . . that couldn’t be from blood loss, could it?
Oh, of course, it could. The thought sent a worm of fear wriggling through me as I went on: “So you killed him?”
But that didn’t make sense, and Norm seemed to agree. “No, of course not. Of course, she didn’t kill him, that’s not a good enough reason to—”
“Yes, it was,” Marienbad interrupted flatly. “And I should have done it, too, back then when I had the chance. Alone in the bar, late at night . . .”
“But you didn’t,” Norm said soothingly. “You aren’t the type.”
I thought current events were contradicting that notion pretty effectively. “You couldn’t let him destroy you, though, could you?” I asked. “If he’d turned you in to the authorities, it would’ve . . .”
Yeah. Tax fraud was a crime, as Norm well knew, and the IRS didn’t make any allowances for people who wanted petty extravagances like being able to turn the heat on in the winter.
“That’s right,” Marienbad said. “I couldn’t. Like he says, I’m not the type.” She turned, looking straight at Norm.
“So I didn’t,” she finished. “You did that for me, Norm, didn’t you?”
His look turned to one of despair. “But I thought we agreed we’d never tell anyone that unless—”
“I see,” I said, cutting him off. “So really, the whole thing was pretty simple. Except . . .”
It wasn’t easy, imagining them together: he a sensitive collector of decorative things, Marienbad a woman who would just as soon smash a vase over your head as put it on a shelf to look at.
But now as she told her story, I watched him and understood: he adored her, but the reverse not so much. He’d begun understanding that fact, too, I saw from the way his face crumpled.
I had no more time to worry about his feelings, however; for one thing, I could practically feel my red blood count dropping.
And for another, Marienbad was about to start hustling us out of here; to where, I didn’t know, but I doubted that I would like it.
Or that I would have very long to dislike it, either, since she couldn’t very well let Ellie or me survive, could she? Not after what she’d just told us.
I hoped that same notion would occur even more thoroughly to Norm: that she couldn’t let any of us live to tell this tale, him included. Like she’d said, you do what you have to do to survive.
She gestured me sharply to my feet while directing Norm also, urging him to get Ellie stumbling forward somehow. Bending, he slung Ellie’s arm over his shoulder and lifted, hauling her along bonelessly with her feet dragging behind; I followed, with Marienbad behind me.
But at the kitchen doorway I halted. “Wait a minute.”
I braced myself in the door frame. “Just lay it out straight for me, let me understand.”
Ticking off on my fingers, I went on: “First Toby worked for you, then he romanced you, then he stole from you, and then, when you’d fired him and broken off what was left of your romance with him—”
I sucked in a breath. “When the romance ended, he threatened to report your profit skimming to the IRS, which would’ve been disastrous for you. Have I got all that right?”
“Wrong,” Marienbad replied harshly. “You left out the most important thing. First he cheated on me. With that silly girl Jenna Waldrop, of all people,” she added. “And then he stole from me.”
I let my hands drop from the door frame; there it was, the bitter personal-emotions cherry on the money-motive cake.
Also, poor Jenna. Still, I didn’t move forward. Instead: “But, Marienbad, why did you have to kill him?”
Anything that kept me from going where she wanted to go was good with me, since I doubted I’d be going anywhere else, ever again.
Or Ellie or Norm, either. “Why didn’t you just get a bunch of the regulars from your bar, tell them he was giving you trouble, and let nature take its course?”
It wouldn’t have been the first time frontier justice got doled out here in Eastport. But: “Don’t you think I tried that? Worked, too, for a while. He even straightened out a little. But it didn’t last.”
She nudged the small of my back with something that felt enough like the end of a gun barrel to get me moving again.
“He wanted his job back. So he could keep stealing. Wanted me back, too. Not that he felt anything for me, just so he could . . .”
The parrot watched silently as we went by. Norm and Ellie were already outside. But so was my dad, in his truck . . . I hoped.
“Just so he could lord it over me,” she finished.
A small laugh accompanied this last remark. “Guess I showed him, though. And Norm,” she added acidly, “was so helpful about it. He even helped with the plan and managed to procure the poison.”
Right, and inject Moran with it.... “Yeah, he’s a real trooper, all right,” I said, mimicking her tone. Then I stepped out, squinting in the bright sunlight after the gloom inside the house.
Ellie blinked dazedly, beginning to wake up but still leaning heavily on Norm. Ahead between towering rosebushes lay the flagstone path leading out to the street; to my left, the smaller gravel path that went down to the barn where Norm kept his vintage cars.
I hadn’t realized before how private Norm’s house was. The big, barnlike garage’s new metal roof peeked over the tops of the roses, but otherwise the house was shielded from casual view.
Also, no big red pickup truck was anywhere in sight. So my dad must’ve realized something had gone wrong; that, however, still left me with a big question: where was he?
Because we needed him, now, we really—
“Stay here,” said Norm suddenly.
He shoved Ellie at me. She fell into my arms as he pushed past me, sprinting off down the path toward the barn. Moments later, from beyond the roses I heard the rumble of a garage door being raised.
I peered around again. Still no pickup truck. Pulling up right there at the end of the flagstone walk would’ve been good. But—
“What’s going on?” Ellie wanted to know. Still holding her up, I could feel her trying to get her footing. She was coming around, her balance improving and the strength returning to her body.
Not enough to run, though, and any moment Norm would be back.
“What,” Ellie quavered, “are they going to do to us?”
Which gave me a bit of hope, because I’d known her for a long time and my friend Ellie White never quavered.
“How are you going to kill us?” Ellie begged Marienbad pitifully. “Tell me, I have to know.”
That was another thing I knew darned well that Ellie wouldn’t do, because for one thing she never begged, and for another we were both very aware that for our captors to be planning anything in advance was the last thing we wanted.
Because maybe they were evil—heck, of course, they were—but they were also unused to this kind of thing, and what we wanted was for them to go on being as clueless and unprepared as possible.
Which meant that Ellie was trying to tell me something....
And then I had it. “Yes,” I chimed in to Marienbad, “how are you and Norm planning to get rid of us, anyway?”
From out in the street past the roses and flagstones came the low grumble of an engine, then a gravelly snarl as somebody revved it.
“Never mind,” snapped Marienbad, urging me forward, but her voice sounded shaky and her eyes when they met mine were desperate. None of this was going the way she’d wanted.
“Because you know what?” I went on, ignoring Marienbad’s reply while hoisting Ellie, who’d just then sagged dramatically in my arms as if the sedative she’d gotten was kicking in again.
Or as if she knew I needed a reason not to be marching obediently down those flagstones toward a waiting car. Norm’s car, of course, and where the hell was that damned red pickup truck . . . ?
“You’re going to have to kill us somehow,” I answered myself. “I don’t think Norm’s going to do it for you this time. Not after you just blabbed about him killing Toby Moran.”
Marienbad half-turned, looking as if what I’d just said hadn’t occurred to her before. Not looking as if she welcomed the thought, either.
“You could just slit our throats,” I suggested cheerily. “That’s fast, and I saw you brought along that great big butcher knife.”
To her credit, at this Marienbad began looking a little green around the gills. Good, I thought meanly.
“Right here,” I said, drawing a line on the side of my throat with my index finger. My bloody index finger; my arm wasn’t pumping it any longer, but it was still oozing steadily.
“Of course, there’ll be a lot of this stuff.” I held the bloody finger out to her. “And until we do die, you’ll have to put up with a lot of gagging and choking. . . .”
“Shut up,” she grated out, sounding as if she might weep.
I understood; Marienbad had arranged the murder of a passed-out-drunk Toby Moran, and although I didn’t yet quite see how, she was almost surely behind Miss Blaine’s death, too.
But doing it in cold blood to a couple of fully conscious people was something else again, as she’d already begun suspecting.
Too bad that Ellie’s brief bout of alertness really had passed; she was too helpless to run, the thorny rosebushes massed at both sides of the path walling off it as effectively as bricks. And at the end of it Norm McHale waited with his trusty hypodermic needle.
Speaking of which, on second thought the cold-blooded murder idea wasn’t bumming Marienbad out quite the way I’d hoped it would.
“If you must know, he’s going to overdose you both first with that stuff he used before,” she told me smugly.
Rats, so they had planned ahead. “Come on,” Norm’s voice called from down the path.
Fear stabbed me hard as the knife appeared from Marienbad’s bag looking just the way I remembered it: Big. Sharp. Pointy. She jabbed at me, then jerked it back, her eyes widening at the red spot that appeared on my pants leg. Then . . .
The glitter of dark excitement that sprang up in her gaze scared me badly, more than anything so far. Before now, she’d been desperate, and I could understand that.
But something was changing about her; now the phrase “nothing to
lose” didn’t even begin to cover the look in her eyes, like she was in a trap and didn’t care who she hurt getting out.
“Walk,” she said calmly. “Take Ellie with you.”
Ellie had other ideas, shaking my hands off her shoulders before balling her fists out in front of her and stomping—unsteadily, but stomping nonetheless—toward Marienbad.
“Oh, yeah?” she spat, swaying. Undrugged, she might not have been so feisty. But: “You think so, huh?” she demanded. She thrust her fists out, jabbed prize-fighter style with them. “You want some of this? Do you?”
Oh, it was glorious to behold. Just not very helpful.
“Pfft,” said Marienbad, not bothering with the knife. She merely reached past Ellie’s fists and stuck two fingers out, and pushed.
Whereupon Ellie collapsed. “Catch her,” snarled Marienbad as Ellie sagged, the drug she had on board taking firm hold again.
I got between Ellie and the flagstones just before she hit them. In an instant Marienbad stood over me.
“Up.” She jerked the knife. “Or we can do it here, the way you suggested.”
Ellie moaned, her eyelids fluttering weakly. “Oh,” she murmured, catching sight of me, “there’s blood all over your . . .”
Then Norm was there, too. “What’s the holdup?” he demanded, “the car’s sitting right out there, let’s—”
“Do it,” Marienbad ordered. “They’re too hard to handle this way, it’s too risky. Just put them both to sleep and we’ll—”
But he’d already figured this out and was preparing, whipping out the needle and syringe, and fishing two more of those damned glass ampules out of his pocket.
“Quite the Boy Scout, aren’t you?” I snarled, but it came out all mushy.
Apparently some important areas of my brain had begun noticing their blood supply getting skimpy; what with so much of it exiting my body lately, I mean. Heedless of thorns I could barely feel through my fear and wooziness, I leaned back against the massed branches of the rosebushes.
Bees buzzed in them. A plane droned, high overhead. Norm loomed near, his face apologetic but determined.