Kill the Mother!

by Michael Mallory

  “What, they had a crush on her?” she asked.

  I had to tell her everything. “Marcy, Elena worked as a porn actress, and the boys…I guess I should say the young men…they turned up in a porno, too.”

  That seemed to shock her. “Taylor and Burton did a porn movie?”

  “I saw it. They weren’t in a scene with Elena, but she had to be connection that got them there.”

  Marcy leaned back in the sofa. “Good god. I only met Elena once or twice, maybe, but she just didn’t strike me as the street type.”

  “Just like the boys didn’t strike either of us as adults.”

  “Sit with me, Dave,” she said, and I didn’t have to be asked twice. I plunked down beside her on the couch, close. “This is a lot to take in.”

  “I know,” I said. “But now we have to figure out what to do. The boys are out there somewhere, driving Elena’s car. We thought they were abducted, but they weren’t. They hit you and then took off. I think they probably meant to kill you, too, but for whatever reason, they weren’t carrying the gun the used on their mom and Elena, so they improvised, and then fled.”

  “This gets worse and worse,” she moaned.

  “No, it might be good, actually,” I said, just having been struck with a thought. “If they think you’re dead, then they’ll disappear.”

  “That’s good?”

  “For you it is, Marcy.”

  I looked deep into her eyes and saw awareness flooding in. “But if they think I’m still alive, they’ll come back and try to finish the job, is what you’re implying.”

  “We can protect you, though. I can protect you.”

  “Oh, my god, Dave,” she moaned, grabbing my arm with both hands and holding on like it was a life preserver. “Have you called the police?”

  “No, not yet. I wanted to make sure you were all right first.”

  “If I ever complain about having a boring life again, throw something at me, would you?”

  I continued to look into her eyes, and could not help but notice that she was looking back, and then some. Slowly I leaned toward her, and she moved her head slightly toward me, then took her right hand off of my arm and put it on my shoulder, parting her lips slightly. I was just about to go in for the kiss when her phone rang, shattering the moment.

  “Well, I know it’s not you calling,” she said, with a wry smile.

  I heard her message play through, after which a male voice came on. “Ms. DeBanzi, this is Detective Colfax,” it said. “I just want to let you know that we’ve located the twins.”

  In a flash Marcy was up and off the couch, practically knocking me to the floor in the process. She grabbed the phone and said: “Detective, this is Marcy DeBanzi. Yes. Where did you find them?”

  I could just imagine what Colfax was telling her…probably a variation of what I had just told her, that the boys were old enough to drive and probably even have valid California licenses, and they were driving Elena Cates’ car.

  “Detective,” Marcy said, “please forgive me, but I don’t think I’m up to coming in tonight. This is quite a shock. Yes, okay. Thank you. Good bye.” She hung up and turned back toward me. “You were right. The police found Taylor and Burton in Elena’s car. It turns out they actually had drivers licenses under their real names. They’re Eric and someone…I can’t even remember. They’re at the jail. The police wanted me to go down there, but I just don’t think I have the strength right now.”

  “They deserve to spend the night in the slammer, and a lot more.”I was trying to figure out a slightly less blatant way to say Now, where were we? when my phone rang! “Oh, sheez,” I muttered, pulling the cell out of my pocket.

  “No, Dave, don’t answer it,” Marcy said, rushing over to me. “Let it go. It’s probably Colfax, and I need you more than he does.”

  “You do?”

  “I need you, Dave,” she panted. “I need you now.”

  Cue the romantic music.

  ZOOM into CLOSE-UP of the long, lingering kiss.

  CUT TO: INT. NIGHT. MED shot of embracing couple, starting to take each other’s clothes off with passionate clumsiness. Soon they are in a naked embrace and panting like a dog team after the Iditarod. The man picks the woman up in his arms as though she weighs no more than a tiny bird—a tiny, naked, beautiful bird whose lips are parting with desire—and sweeps her into the bedroom, and.…

  Okay, I’m not that strong, and my hand still hurt. But we made it to the bedroom anyway.

  TWENTY

  When I woke up the next morning, birds were singing outside a slightly open window. Marcy was next to me, still asleep, lightly snoring, her shoulder and back protruding seductively from the covers. I’m not sure how I had the stamina to be seduced again, but if push were to come to shove, I’d figure out a way.

  With as little movement to the mattress as I could get away with I slid my legs out from under the blankets, stood up, and made my way, shakily, to the bathroom. Passing a clock on the way, I learned it was 6:47. The jewelry stores wouldn’t open for another two hours and thirteen minutes.

  Jewelry stores! Robert Mitchum roared at me. Oh, brother!

  Maybe he was right.

  What I really wanted right now (well, second on the list of things I really wanted right now), was a quick shower and something to eat. I was starving. I hoped Marcy wouldn’t mind if I ransacked her kitchen when I was done cleaning up.

  Keeping the flow down low, so as not to make too much noise, I quickly showered and reached for what looked like a guest towel folded up on the counter. Had she anticipated my staying over? No, it had probably been set out for one of the boys. Still naked as a jaybird, I went back out into the living room, where my clothes were strewn, and put on my shorts. Maybe I should do something nice, like make breakfast for her, too.

  Quickly pulling on my shirt, shorts, and pants, I started for the kitchen, but then I heard a beeping coming from my cell phone lying on the floor. Picking it up, I saw the screen read: One missed call. Right; the one from last night. Pressing the retrieval button, I put the phone to my ear and heard the ubiquitous female introducing the call. That was followed by a male voice saying: “Turn your damn phone on, Beauchamp! This is Detective Mendoza. Detective Colfax is calling your lady friend, and he wanted me to check in with you. Frankly, I rather blow a coyote, but orders are orders.”

  One thing about Mendoza; you always knew where you stood.

  “Those two kids, we found ’em. And guess what? They aren’t named Burton and Taylor. They’re really Eric and Ryan Frost. And guess what else? They aren’t kids. They’re twenty-four years old.”

  Since I knew this, I was about to cut off the call, but then Mendoza’s voice told me something I didn’t know; something that gave me the chills, which lasted even after I had listened to the call one more time and put on my socks and shoes.

  For the next ten minutes I sat there on Marcy’s couch, wondering what I should do. When a voice behind me purred, “How come you’re dressed?” I jumped and nearly screamed. Marcy was standing behind the couch, almost wearing a bathrobe. “Damn, Dave, I hope you’re not like this every morning.”

  “I, uh…Marcy…I.…” I could see her eyes drop down to my cell phone.

  “Did you take that call from last night?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Detective Mendoza.”

  “I see. Did he tell you about the twins?”

  “Yes, he did, including the part you failed to mention. The part about how they were both found yesterday in the back seat of a rust-colored Taurus, dead from gunshots.”

  “Damn,” Marcy muttered, and for the first time I noticed that I could only see one of her hands. The other was being held behind her back. “I figured ditching the car in a mall parking lot meant it would be weeks, months, before it was discovered.” Now she revealed her right hand, and the revolver it was holding. Then she came around in front of the couch to face me.
/>   “Please tell me this is a joke,” I croaked.

  “Sorry,” she said, pointing the revolver in my direction.

  “Are you the one who killed Nora?”

  “No, the two little assholes did that, just like you figured. They’d grown to loathe her, and who can blame them? They were sick of the baby act.”

  Suddenly a white light went off in my head, like the old cartoon light bulb cliché. “It was the twins who wrote that threatening letter to Nora, wasn’t it?” I said. “All this time I was trying to figure out who was close enough to them to include their first names, when it was them all along. They practically signed the note for me, I just didn’t see it. Did the twins kill Elena, too?”

  She nodded.

  “So you killed them out of revenge for killing your sister.”

  “Hardly.” She smiled and slowly backed up to a chair and sat down, never taking the gun off me. Were I a movie P.I., I would have charged her, overpowered her and taken the gun away before she put the distance between us. Now if I even tried to rise from the couch, I’d be dead. “I had come to hate Nora even more than they did, so I gave them the gun and showed them how to use it.”

  I had not expected this. “I don’t get it, Marcy,” I uttered. “You could have simply gone about your business having nothing more to do with her and the boys. Why plot to kill her?”

  “Because she knew something about me that I really don’t want known. It’s a little secret from my past that was uncovered when she hired the private detective to find me. As long as Nora was around, there was a chance that my secret would come out.”

  “I’m betting you’re not going to tell me what it is.”

  She mouthed the word no without making a sound. Despite my curiosity, I was actually relieved, because had she told me, I was certain she would have felt obligated to kill me. This way, maybe I still had a chance. Maybe. “Okay, if Nora had something on you, I understand why you would want her out of the way,” I said. “I can also guess why you wanted the twins to do the dirty work. If something went wrong, they would get the blame. But I don’t understand why the boys agreed to do it. Even if they hated Nora, they were adults. They could have told her to stuff it and taken off any time they wanted to.”

  “Sure, they could have, but if they did they’d lose any hope of being millionaires.”

  “Millionaires?”

  “Nora’s estate, most of which she inherited from her parents, is worth a little over four-million dollars.”

  “So that’s what this is about? You wanted Nora dead because she was threatening you, but Burton and Taylor wanted to inherit her fortune.”

  “And just like Nora helped her own mother to an early grave, the boys did not want to wait for nature to take its course.”

  “Sheez. Hey, wait…how do you know what happened to Nora’s mother?”

  “Nora told me.”

  I was starting to get a headache. “I thought you weren’t close enough for sisterly confessions.”

  “We weren’t,” Marcy said. “I guess you can say I forced the issue. I always knew there was something not quite right about the twins, and then one day Taylor let something slip. We had just had a small temblor and he casually commented that it was nothing like the Northridge quake, which he then went on to describe with convincing accuracy.” She leaned forward. “But the Northridge quake took place in 1994, before they should have been born. When I mentioned this to Nora she tried to laugh it off, but I wasn’t convinced. Then she broke down and told me that her real sons had died as a result of her mother’s negligence.”

  “Wait a minute. She told you the boys had died?”

  “Yes. She also said that she had to restrain herself from strangling her mother with her bare hands, but opted for driving her to take her own life. But that didn’t bring back her babies, so she found her new husband, Randy Frost, on a website that connected the single parents of twins. She reeled him in and convinced him to marry her so his boys would have a mother. What she didn’t tell him, at least at first, was that she was planning on having his sons continue her unfulfilled crusade for fame and fortune. But here’s the sweet irony: Nora got conned back. She didn’t learn the boys were so old until after the marriage took place. Frost knew his deployment was inevitable, and he wanted his sons taken care of. They were about seventeen then, still not quite old enough to be on their own, especially those two. When Nora found out about the hypogandism, well, I think whatever rationality she had left broke off and floated away. She forced the two to play their roles, I think out of spite, at first, but then she started to believe her own press again.”

  “And the boys just took it in hopes of inheriting?”

  “I can’t prove it, but I think she was drugging them to make them more acquiescent.”

  That also explained their zombified demeanors.

  “And you never thought it strange that she was confessing all this?” I asked.

  “Nora knew I wouldn’t dare go to the police because if I did, she’d reveal what she knew about me, and while it would be very hard to prove that Nora had driven her mother to suicide, what I’m keeping hidden can be easily verified.”

  From where I was sitting, there wasn’t much she was keeping hidden, given the way her robe was gaping. I was trying not to be affected by it.

  “Okay, let’s just get this over with,” she said, raising the gun.

  “What about Elena?” I blurted out. “Why did the boys have to kill her?”

  “What’s that phrase they use to explain why civilians have to die in wars?” she asked. “Collateral damage, that’s it. Elena was collateral damage. She really thought those two idiots were adolescents, until she caught them driving her car. Then she threatened to call the police, and Burton, the moron, let it slip that she’d better not unless she wanted to end up like Nora. Elena called me, distraught, asking what she should do. I told her to do nothing, said I’d take care of it. And I did. I convinced the boys that they had to get rid of Elena.”

  I had a sudden, grim realization. Both Nora and Elena had two bullet holes in them. Each boy must have fired once. To them it was probably another video game. Then I had another flash of insight, which might maybe save my life. “You know you don’t have to get rid of me if you killed the twins in self-defense.”

  “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  “The twins were adopted, but you’re related to Nora by blood, which makes you the legal next of kin, which mean you would inherit the estate, not them. They figured that out and planned to kill you too, but failed in the first attempt. You got to them before they could try again. You could tell that to the police.”

  She shook her head. “They never tried to kill me. That business of getting clubbed on the head, that was just an act to throw suspicion off of myself. After I talked with you on the phone, I told the twins to scram and then drove my head into the wall.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were the element in all this that I hadn’t planned on,” she said. “I figured I could dance past the police, God knows I’ve done it before, but you kept hanging around. I had to convince you that the killer was out to get me, too.”

  God knows she’d done it before? What did that mean?

  Marcy continued: “There’s no way those little bastards would have killed me. They needed me.”

  “I’m lost, Marcy.”

  She smiled and leaned forward. “That’s what I like about you, that lost quality. Okay, try to pay attention. The twins had a big problem when it came to inheritance. Everybody thinks they’re twelve, which means they’d either have to wait a decade or so to inherit the money, or fess up and tell everyone they’re really in their twenties, which means their alibis for the murders get flushed. In fact, a revelation like that would probably propel them to the very top of the suspect list. Either way, they were screwed. But if I were to inherit Nora’s estate, as legal next of kin, I could quietly siphon off some of the money and give it directly to
them. That was the plan.”

  “Which you rewrote by shooting them.”

  “Four-million dollars is way too much money to share with anyone, particularly those little pricks.” She leveled the revolver at my head.

  “You know, Marcy, you have a problem to,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re the last one standing. Everyone else is dead. If you kill me, you’re the only suspect.”

  “Unless I convince the cops that the real killer came after me, and I was forced to kill him in self-defense.”

  Even though I was dressed and she wasn’t, my guess is that I was feeling an awful lot colder than Marcy. “You mean me, don’t you?” I croaked. “You’re going to set me up as the killer.”

  She smiled, and dimples or no dimples, I didn’t like it.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “What the police will learn,” Marcy was saying through her smile, “is that you knew the boys were adults all along, and that they paid you to kill Nora and Elena. But then you wanted even more money, and they balked, so you killed them, too. Upon learning that control of Nora’s estate passed to me, you came and threatened me as well, but it seems you underestimated my determination to stay alive.”

  I wanted to believe that this yarn would never stand up under police scrutiny, but the fact that Marcy had taken me for such a ride was a testament to her abilities as an actress, so it very well might. Add to that the fact that Mendoza, if no one else, would be delighted to hear that I was the murderer.

  You gonna sit there and take this? the voice of James Cagney barked inside my head. Give ’er a good one, right in the mush! Unfortunately, I was all out of grapefruits, while she had a gun. Hold on…was that the murder weapon?

  “I take it you’re holding the gun that was used on Nora, Elena, and the boys,” I said.

  Marcy nodded.

  “So if you use it to kill me, how are you going to make me look like the killer?”

  “You have so little imagination,” she said, rising and sashaying toward me, her robe completely open and revealing her spectacular body in the process. When she got close she held the revolver to my head and began making light circles with the barrel around my temple. Then she raised it and fired two shots behind me that nearly deafened me.