Cliff Roberts Thriller Box Set

by Cliff Roberts

  “If I do that, then I get stuck with the bill for the next thirty years. How is that fair to me?” he questioned. “Besides, the value of the house isn’t what it used to be. Since the housing market crashed, the value is less than what is owed on it. No one is going to lend me money on equity that doesn’t exist.”

  “It’s the only way you’ll get to keep the house, stupid,” April stated. Then she abruptly bent over and grabbed her stomach. “Oow, God this hurts!” she yelled as she leaned over the chair for support.

  “What’s with April?” Tyler asked as if he was concerned.

  “You okay, sis? What’s wrong?” Wendy stood up and stepped quickly over to April, who was doubled over and leaning heavily on the dining chair.

  “Oh God, this really hurts,” April cried out a second time. While Wendy was trying to help her sister, she was overcome by the poison herself. She abruptly howled in pain, clutched her stomach and dropped to the floor on her knees. Severe stomach cramps were a side effect of the poison, as well as blurred vision, headache, nausea and hallucinations.

  April joined her sister on the floor a moment later and both women lay there, writhing in pain. He stepped around the couch and stood staring down at the two women. Yes, this was working nicely, he told himself. Neither woman bothered to looked up so he didn’t have to look away to avoid their pitiful looks of fear and pain, mixed with a healthy dose of incomprehension. Over the next few minutes, the women turned a deathly pale white and stopped wiggling around, though they weren’t quite dead yet.

  “I’m going to call for help,” Tyler stated loudly as he picked up their unfinished cup of iced tea taking it with him as he left the room. He then stopped in the kitchen collecting the disposable plastic pitcher of tea from the refrigerator and took it outside where he tossed both the cup and the pitcher into the hole as planned. He then he went into the garage and pulled out a large roll of Visqueen plastic sheeting from under his work bench. He cut off a large piece in which to wrap April, laying it on the garage floor next to the piece that he had laid out earlier for Wendy. He wondered if he could fit both of them in the makeshift coffin as he headed back to the house.

  Unbeknownst to him, while he had been out in the garage, he’d had another visitor. Danny, Wendy’s new boyfriend, had shown up. Like April, he, too, thought he would provide moral support for Wendy. Though in reality, he was jealous of Wendy going to see her estranged husband. So he had decided to show up and stake his claim to her, in no uncertain terms.

  He knocked on the door several times and when no one answered the door, he tried the door knob and discovered it was open. April had only ingested a small amount of poison, due to her habit of taking small sips rather than large mouthfuls when drinking, and so she was hallucinating instead of dying.

  After Tyler had left the room, she had gotten to her feet and stumbled into the kitchen to look for the phone but she couldn’t find it. Tyler had disconnected it in favor of his cell phone, which was upstairs in the master bedroom by his computer. Unable to find the phone, she settled for a large carving knife which she took out of one of the kitchen drawers.

  In the process of searching for the phone, she had stumbled into the table, knocking one of the chairs sideways and nearly falling down. She’d caught herself on the table and jerked herself back to a standing position, which yanked the table a few inches from the wall. The slip and near fall had jarred her, and she’d whipped her head around, dislodging an earring. It popped right out of her ear and dropped to the floor, rolling under the edge of the table. She failed to notice it in her disoriented condition, and she stumbled back to her sister’s side.

  She then knelt down next to Wendy, just as they had been when Tyler left. She intended to stab Tyler when he came back, from wherever it was he’d gone. Time seemed to drag on for April as the seconds seemed like minutes. Tyler had only been out of the house for five minutes and yet she’d swear he’d been gone over an hour. Her sense of time was screwed up due to the poison flowing through her veins. It also affected her vision and her coordination as well, but she wasn’t going to give in. She was going to get this guy and make him pay for what he was doing to her and her sister.

  Upon stepping into the house, Danny saw Wendy and April lying on the floor and he became frantic. He raced over to them and knelt down next to Wendy, pulling her up into his arms.

  “Wendy, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Talk to me, baby,” but Wendy was unresponsive. Danny, fighting back the urge to panic, clutched her to his chest while he fumbled in his pocket for his cell phone, intent on calling 911.

  April hadn’t really heard what Danny said nor did she realize it was Danny through her blurred vision and growing disorientation. She thought it was Tyler holding Wendy. So, believing she was striking out at Tyler, April lunged at the blurred vision of Danny.

  Seeing movement out of the corner of his eye, Danny looked up just in time to see a flash of silver before April plunged the large kitchen knife into his chest. He had dropped Wendy in an effort to block whatever it was that had flashed past, but it was too late. Danny’s eyes burst wide open at the sudden pain and he gasped for air as the knife sliced its way through part of his lung and then pierced his heart. He was dead before he and April tumbled over on top of Wendy’s now lifeless body.

  Remembering her sister was dying, April fought back the urge to simply lie there. She forced herself to stand so she could go and get help. Despite her blurry vision and mental disorientation, she managed to stumble to the front door, which Danny had left wide open in his haste to aid Wendy. April grabbed the door for balance as she stumbled through the opening, pulling it nearly closed behind her as she stumbled across the porch.

  When she reached the steps, they proved to be too much for her to manage. In her disoriented condition, she didn’t realize the steps were even there and she plunged head long off the top step, landing hard on the sidewalk, badly scraping her arms and legs. She left several small bloody smudges on the sidewalk as she scrambled to her feet. She stood staring into space not comprehending what she was doing or how she had gotten there. After a few moments, she turned her head, saw Wendy’s car, and remembered that she needed to get help. Although exactly what kind of help and why she needed it, she no longer had a clue.

  Slipping into the driver’s seat, she was overcome, blinded by her blurred vision and mental confusion. She laid her head on the steering wheel hoping it would pass. She quickly drifted into semi-consciousness and would have drifted into unconsciousness if her head hadn’t slipped off the steering wheel. When it did, she banged her head against the driver’s door window, startling herself awake.

  Briefly, she had a flash of comprehension. Remembering where she was and what she was doing caused her adrenalin to kick in once more. She fumbled with the ignition switch until she remembered she needed keys to start the car. Luckily for her, Wendy was not security conscious. She always left her keys in the console between the seats so she wouldn’t lose them. With the keys in hand, it took April three tries to get the right key and finally start the car.

  Tyler was just reentering the house when April was fumbling with the keys. If he had just looked up, he’d have seen her in the car, but he was so focused on the task at hand he failed to do so. When April started the car, the sound of the house’s side door opening and closing masked the sound of the car starting enough, so Tyler failed to notice that as well. That was two mistakes already and the night was still young.

  Stepping inside the house, he didn’t fail to notice that things had changed in the kitchen. He’d made sure prior to Wendy’s visit that the kitchen was neat and orderly. All the chairs were neatly pushed up under the table. All the cabinet doors and drawers had been closed. Every dish was in the dishwasher or a cabinet. In fact, when he had gone outside, the room was still neat, but not now.

  There was a chair that was shoved over almost sideways, the table was pulled several inches out from the wall on an angle, and the drawer, where he kept
his big carving knives, was open about two inches.

  “So, how’s everybody doing?” he called out in an effort to determine if the women were still alive. “I called 911 and they are on their way.” Tyler began to feel sick in the pit of his stomach as he wondered why they were still alive. Hearing no response, he stepped forward a half dozen steps which took him just inside the dining room, where he froze.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Shit!” he exclaimed. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. In a daze, he stood staring at the two bodies on the floor. Oh sure, he’d left two bodies on the floor, but he’d left two women. Now there was a woman and a man. “Shit!” he exclaimed again.

  At first, he didn’t recognize the guy, but then he realized it was Wendy’s new boyfriend, Danny, the other man. The first thought that crossed his mind was, how in the hell had he gotten here? Then, while he stood there, baffled, he noticed something sticking out of Danny’s chest. It looked black, like a small pole of some kind. No, it was a handle. Yeah, it’s a handle, he thought.

  He turned and looked at the open drawer where he kept the large carving knives. He owned the Sharpsco Kitchen Carving Knife set. Their TV ad flashed through his mind as he stood there dumbfounded. It claimed the knives were “The perfect knife for carving Thanksgiving turkeys or Christmas hams,” and now it appeared they were perfect for carving back stabbing sleazebag adulterers as well.

  How had Wendy managed to get up and get the knife, let alone stab Danny with it? It didn’t make any sense. Why would Wendy stab Danny? Hell, the bitch had left him for the guy; why would she kill him? Wait a minute, Tyler’s brains screamed. Where’s April? April should be on the floor next to Wendy, but she wasn’t.

  Tyler gave the living room and dining room a once over, but didn’t see her anywhere. He then checked the rest of the main floor and nothing. He then checked the second floor, which consisted of the master bedroom, bathroom and a large walk-in closet, but there was no April. He then checked out the backyard from the master bedroom window but saw nothing. He raced downstairs and double checked on Wendy and Danny making sure they were still dead and still in the dining room, before finding his way down to the basement to check for April. She wasn’t there either.

  Returning to the main floor, he checked yet again to be sure Wendy and Danny were still dead, and that was when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the front door was open ever so slightly. He raced to the door, positive that he would find April lying dead in the front yard, but that was not the case.

  Bursting through the door, Tyler came to a screeching halt at the top of the steps. April wasn’t lying dead in the yard. In fact, she wasn’t in the yard at all or anyplace else in or around the house. She was gone! Wendy’s car was no longer in the driveway. The only car around was parked in front of the house and Tyler assumed it belonged to Danny.

  He stood staring for several minutes at where Wendy’s car had been before he turned and stumbled back into the house. He closed and locked the door behind him, then crossed over to the bookshelf where he grabbed the bottle of Jim Beam whiskey off the shelf. He’d been using it as a bookend for the last two years and when he pulled it away, several books spilled off onto the floor. Tyler paid no mind to the cascading literature, unscrewed the cap off the bottle and took a huge swig.

  Tyler wasn’t what anyone would call a heavy drinker. He mostly drank beer when he was out with the boys after softball games, and he rarely had a mixed drink, let alone did shots of hard liquor. He swallowed the mouthful of liquid and it burned all the way down. When it arrived it did its best to come right back up, but with a little effort, Tyler managed to hold it in. After the burning subsided, and having successfully managed to hold down that first big swig, he quickly followed it with several more big swigs before he stopped and sat down to think over the situation.

  Damn! How did this get away from him so fast? It had been a simple plan and it had remained viable even after Wendy threw the first monkey wrench into the mix by bringing April along with her.

  If he had been smart, he would have refused to let April in and if Wendy didn’t like it, he should have postponed. No, that wouldn’t have worked either. April would have been fully aware of where her sister was and if she didn’t go back to the apartment, April would have sent the police right to him.

  He sat mulling over what had transpired for several minutes. He realized he was in real trouble. April had escaped and was probably on her way to the police right now. Glancing at the bodies, he realized he needed to deal with the problem at hand before the authorities arrived. He needed to dispose of the bodies in the dining room right now and analyze what went wrong later.

  He set down the Jim Beam and went into the kitchen where he got his rubber dishwashing gloves. He then grabbed two plastic trash bags, a roll of paper towels and an all-in-one, bleach based cleaner in a spray bottle. Returning to the dining room, he separated Wendy from Danny, placing a plastic bag covered in paper towels under Danny before laying him down on it. The paper towels were there to absorb any blood that was leaking from Danny, and the plastic bag was to keep any blood from getting on Tyler’s fake hardwood laminate floor. It was advertised to be water and stain proof and it was about to be tested.

  Tyler was surprised to find that there wasn’t all that much blood on the floor under Danny. Based on something he’d read in one of the crime novels, he surmised the knife was holding back a torrent of blood, so he decided to leave the knife in place until he could get the body into the hole in the garden.

  He easily cleaned up the small puddle of blood and stuffed the used paper towels into the other plastic bag. He then took off every piece of jewelry Wendy and Danny had been wearing: rings, watches, necklaces, and earrings. He made sure to grab Danny’s car keys and wallet out of his pockets and the cell phone that was lying on the floor, which he assumed was Danny’s.

  Inside the wallet he found three hundred dollars which he took, quickly stuffing the cash into his pocket before continuing to clean up.

  The last thing he did before taking Wendy’s body outside was to wipe down the whole main floor, everywhere and every place any of his victims had been. That way the only fingerprints the police might find would be his. Again, all of the paper towels went in the plastic trash bag that he would be burying along with the bodies.

  Tyler easily picked up Wendy’s body and carried it out to the edge of the hole over his shoulder, like a sack of potatoes. He then had to think for a while about how to handle Danny’s body. Danny was a big boy, close to Tyler’s size which meant he was probably about two hundred pounds of dead weight now. Finally he decided to use an old blue tarp he had in the garage to wrap him in and then drag him out to the hole.

  Once Tyler had gotten the flimsy coffin out of the garage and in the hole, he took a moment to change into his old work clothes that he had left in the garage earlier. He dumped Wendy’s body into the hole and then climbed down and placed her in the coffin. Once that was done, he shoved the coffin into the hollowed out space under the garage and went back up after Danny’s body. With Danny’s body next to the hole, he unwrapped it and pulled the knife out of his chest. He then carefully placed the knife in a resealable plastic food bag and laid it on the edge of Wendy’s fake water fountain. He’d bagged it in an effort to keep the fingerprints of whomever stabbed Danny intact and the blood from dripping on anything the police might be able to detect it on, like the flowers, garden ornaments or his clothes. Just like in the books he’d read, the blood gushed out of Danny the moment the knife was removed forming a pool on the blue tarp under him.

  Tyler then rewrapped the tarp tightly around Danny and shoved the body into the hole. The real challenge came into play when he began trying to shove Danny in on top of the flimsy casket. It proved to be a real workout due to Danny’s weight, and the coffin practically collapsed under it. Finally, he managed to get the body shoved in far enough so he could fill in the void.

  He rigged a little chute to help
ensure the dirt, sand and concrete mix got all the way to the back of the hollowed out space. When he had finished filling it, he discovered he had a good deal of the mixture left over. After a moment, it occurred to him it was to be expected since he was now burying two bodies instead of one, as he had originally calculated.

  He spread the remaining mix on the bottom of the hole over top of the bags that the cement and sand had come in and climbed out. Anything that could possibly be tied to the murder and this hole went in it as well, except the plastic bags filled with the bloody trash created when he cleaned up the house. He’d be throwing his clothes in the bags and dumping them in a trash bin somewhere in town. He would realize later that had been a mistake.

  Things he left in the hole included the chute to deliver the slurry mix, any plastic he had used or cut to use but didn’t, the wood he used to support the sides and any scrap lumber he had left over. After filling in the hole, he spread what remained of the top soil across the entire garden. That way no one would be the wiser.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was four a.m. when he finished filling in the hole and spreading the dirt around. Even though he was bone tired, he still had to get rid of Danny’s car. He felt it was crucial to be rid of it before sunrise, so he decided to wait until he’d done that before replanting the garden.

  He stripped out of his dirty work clothes and shoes, then stuffed them into the plastic bag with the bloody cleaning towels from inside the house. He then went in the house and took a quick shower. He dressed in his regular jeans and a shirt again before heading out to drop off Danny’s car.

  At the last second, he decided to take his old hooded sweatshirt with him, not to conceal himself, but because he was feeling a bit chilled. It was fortuitous decision.

  He had planned on dropping off Wendy’s car at the train station, but April had put an end to that plan by driving it away. He momentarily wondered where April and the police were. Surely she had managed to get to a police station by now. It was about nine thirty when she’d escaped. He had thought they would have already been here; after all, a murder had been committed. He quickly chased the thought away and focused on the problem at hand. What to do with Danny’s car?