by Jane Elzey
Chapter Six
“This is horrible.” Zelda pushed her bangs from her eyes as she stood at the door of Tiddlywinks surveying the damage. “Who would do such a horrendous thing?”
Amy couldn’t respond. How could she accuse her best friend’s husband without accusing her best friend at the same time? Of course, the timing could have been a coincidence. There was no proof or evidence to point a finger at Zack, or at anyone for that matter. It wasn’t that Bluff Springs was crime-free. It wasn’t a crime-heavy town, either, but it did have its share of break-ins and burglaries.
By the time Zelda arrived, Amy had already taken pictures of the scene, then began to pick up the pieces strewn on the floor. Making slow but steady progress, she stacked items to be repaired in one pile and those that were a lost cause in another. She wouldn’t trash them just yet. Maybe they could be upcycled into something clever. No idea as to what that was at the moment, but she and Zelda could get creative later.
The closed sign still on the front door of Crumpets and Cones was expected. Sammie had left a message by phone that she was taking time off. That, too, was a benefit of small-town living. Shopkeepers and restauranteurs with family emergencies and such often had to close their business for a few days under those circumstances. Not everyone had staff to pick up the slack.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Zelda said. “What can I do to help?”
Amy accepted Zelda’s warm embrace. “The good news is that I am insured, and I think it really looks worse than it is. My insurance will help replace what’s ruined, and most of the games can be replaced. Not the antique ones, though. Those may be a complete loss. It’s going to take some time and energy to hunt them all down again.”
Rian appeared behind Zelda. “We’re here to help. Tell me what to do.”
“I want your help,” Amy said, “and I appreciate your willingness, but I don’t know what to ask you to do. I feel lost.”
“We can sweep up the glass. We can help tidy the shelves.”
“Aren’t you going to open your shops?”
Rian stuffed her fingers in the top pocket of her jeans. “I’m okay if we close the Cardboard Cottage until we get this sorted out,” she said. “What about you?” Rian asked, turning to Zelda.
“I’m okay with that. We’re in this together. Lock, stock, and barrel.”
Lock, stock, and barrel. She liked the sound of that. Tiddlywinks was in a state of chaos, which put them all in a state of chaos. More mess than loss, with the exception of the antique marbles that were missing from the curio cabinet. Amy thought again of the strange man with an interest in the cabinet. Maybe Zack wasn’t the guilty culprit. Now she was glad she hadn’t spoken any blame to Zelda, even if it was on the tip of her tongue.
They spent the morning bringing Tiddlywinks to a point of order that she could live with for the time being. While making her list of items to replace when the insurance funds arrived, she looked up as Ben, Rian’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, arrived carrying a load of building supplies. Ben was a cop a couple of counties over, and his presence made her realize that Rian was more invested in that relationship than any of them knew.
Ben nailed plywood to the open doorframes at the front door of the Cottage and at Tiddlywinks Players Club. Zelda, armed with paint and brushes, painted Closed for Repairs on the wood and added colorful daisies and curlicues that matched the Cardboard Cottage & Company sign.
“You really need an alarm,” Ben said. “And a security camera.”
“On my list,” she said as the lock went in place. “Let’s call it a day. And thank you. All of you. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
“Well if I were you, I would be in Little Rock with me and Genna,” Zelda offered, unknowingly smearing paint on her cheek as she swept bangs from her eyes. “She’s going stained glass hunting down near Little Rock. She’s going to look for a replacement for your door.”
“Wow!” Amy said. “Genna didn’t waste any time.”
“She was going anyway. You know how Genna is about her stained glass collection. But now, we can go with her.”
“You go,” Amy said. “I’m not feeling like a road trip. Genna can take pictures of anything that catches her eye. I’ll give her the dimensions of the door.”
Zelda glanced at Rian.
“Thanks, but we’ve got plans,” Rian said with a side glance at Ben.
“I bet you do,” Amy said and watched as Ben’s face colored.
Chapter Seven
Amy tossed under her lavender-scented sheets until they coiled around her like a python wrapping its prey. She felt the wind in her face as if she were flying in the breeze. Horse and rider sailed through the mud, rider pressed tightly against the flanks of a horse with wild and determined eyes.
“Bonaparte,” a voice said in her head.
She sat up and turned on the light.
If she had her days straight, there were only a few days left in the racing schedule at the Hot Springs racetrack before the Arkansas Derby. Maybe Bonaparte was running in one of them.
Pulling a dog-eared diary from the bedside drawer, she smoothed the purple paisley cover, smelling faintly of lavender. The book matched the color of the walls. The walls matched the drapes. The drapes matched the sheets and the pinstripe nightshirt she wore to bed. These were now clammy as if she had ridden the horse through the mud herself.
She scribbled an entry, and then glancing at the bedside clock, she saw it was just after midnight. Reaching now for Psychic Studies for the Intuitive from the bedside shelf, one of the many that promised to decipher dreams and visions of the telepathetic, she pulled the bookmark from the page and began to read herself back to sleep.
The phone jarred her to the present.
“Hello?”
“Help me!” Zelda squealed.
Her eyes widened in the dark.
“He—he—he’s dead! They found him in the parking garage!” The words barely came through the receiver above Zelda’s sobs.
Dread soured in her stomach. “Zelda? Is that you?”
“At the hotel. With my favorite champagne!”
“Zelda, what are you saying? Where are you?”
“Zack is dead!”
Amy let go of the breath she was holding, heart pumping fast as Zelda’s words hurled into her ear. She exhaled audibly.
Zack Carlisle was dead.
“Where are you?”
“I—I’m staying at the Bennfield Hotel. In Hot Springs.”
“What? What are you doing down there?”
Zelda drew a stuttering breath, her words choked by emotion.
“Zack called and said for me and Genna to meet him here. He—he said we could play the ponies. I thought he was going to g-g-give me money for our cruise tickets. I thought that’s what he was after in the safety box.”
“Zack is dead?” She couldn’t believe it was true.
Zelda drew another stuttering breath. “Cops are everywhere,” she wailed, “and Genna’s already left! I can’t reach her.”
“Are you still at the hotel?”
“I’m at the police station.”
“The police station! Are you being arrested?”
“No! Come . . . help me!”
The conversation stopped as Zelda’s sobs overtook her.
“Get them to take you back to the hotel and just stay there,” Amy pressed. “Don’t talk to anyone else. I’ll be there as fast as possible. I’m leaving right now.”
As she dialed with one hand, she grabbed necessities with the other and then, stuffing them into her overnight bag, she cursed into the phone as the call went to Genna’s voice mail. She left a message and then dialed Rian only to leave the same.
Where were they? Why weren’t they answering their phones?
She glanced at the clock. Twelve forty. Of co
urse, they wouldn’t answer a late-night call.
Amy maneuvered her car skillfully through the dark mountain road and then floored the Miata when the wheels hit the interstate on-ramp, pushing the car until the speedometer reached eighty-five. The drive to Hot Springs would take her more than three hours at a safe speed from here. She knew she needed to make it in less. Gripping the wheel, she willed the miles to fly past and the cops and the deer to stay safely out of sight and off the road.
Her doubts had to stay safely submerged, too. And yet, suspicions, like the boulders in the river they kayaked in the summer, were ever-present and dangerous. Those sleepers, the rocks unseen just under the surface, would toss you into the cold current if you didn’t keep a close eye on the river. No, she hadn’t kept a close eye, and now her suspicions were surfacing with bone-jarring fear.
In six years of friendship, the four friends had talked about many things. But never murder. Not until last week. Last week it was just a drunken joke. What woman didn’t want a crappy husband dead and gone at some low point in her marriage?
Dead as in dead husband. Dead as in stiff husband. Dead as in too close to the truth.
Amy bit her lip. Her gut tightened. How else was it possible that Zelda had wished Zack gone, and now he was?
Zelda wanted him dead. Was that what happened? They would do anything for each other. Rian, Genna, Zelda, herself. That was true. But murder? The word tumbled in her head.
Had they taken friendship that far?
No. She couldn’t believe that. How could she believe that? How could she betray her best friends with such a thought?
“No,” she said out loud to the darkness. “I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.”
She shook her head, and tears she didn’t realize were there fell down her face, and yet she couldn’t shake the doubts from her mind, which rode with her for another hundred miles.
Chapter Eight
The hotel room was eerily quiet. Amy’s voice seemed to echo off the walls of the old hotel. This was their favorite place to stay during horse racing season and lazy spa getaways when all four of them could find the time. Today it felt dark and dirty. She arrived before dawn, her stomach in knots and her hands aching from their grip on the wheel.
Zelda was now snoring softly in the adjoining bedroom, and she, now whispering into the phone, knew Rian was straining to hear.
“The cops say it was a hit-and-run accident. But with a strange twist. According to the cop I talked to, the impact wasn’t what killed him—something about probable velocity and rate of speed in a parking garage. I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Police mumbo jumbo.”
She cupped her hand around the phone. “What killed him was the champagne bottle he was holding. The bottle broke when he hit the ground and a shard of glass pierced his neck.” She paused. Rian was silent. The room seemed to hum in the quiet.
“He bled to death.”
“Hail Mary,” Rian said.
“Nach a Mool! This cop said even if the EMTs arrived earlier, they couldn’t have saved him. He bled to death within minutes. It was Veuve Clicquot,” she added.
“What?”
“The champagne. It was Veuve Clicquot.”
Zelda’s favorite. Rian sighed into the phone.
“They identified him from his wallet. So, it’s clear he wasn’t robbed. He still had his credit cards and a wad of cash in his pocket.”
“What else did he have on him?” Rian asked.
Amy reached for the envelope the police had given Zelda. “His cell phone,” she said, dumping the contents on the bed beside her. “There’s a ring of keys. I don’t know what this is. Maybe it’s part of a check that’s been torn up. I can’t tell.”
“Is that all?”
“There’s a receipt for a purchase at Victoria’s Secret. And another for the champagne. No bag of pot if that’s what you’re asking. If there was one, I’m guessing it was seized by the police. There’s a single key on a round cardboard ring. It’s marked L91.”
“I need that key,” Rian said.
“Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“What do you mean? What is that key to?”
Suspicion rose in her again, like sleeper rocks in the river. Did she really want to know? Or would knowing the answer make her feel guilty of a little more than curiosity and gossip?
“Never mind. It doesn’t make any difference. Where’s Zelda now?”
“Right here. Sleeping. What’s this key for, Rian?”
She could hear Rian’s mental wheels turning. “Amy, it’s really nothing of importance. Just put it in your pocket, and I’ll get it later. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, but she wasn’t satisfied. She wasn’t willing to push it, either.
Rian exhaled into the phone. “Where was Zelda when—when it happened?”
Amy took a deep breath and began to recount the story she had pieced together. “Zelda told me she was asleep at the time. Then she claimed she couldn’t find him. I don’t know what she meant by that. I couldn’t tell if she was having trouble remembering, or if she was changing her mind about where she was. I think the police woke her up late, and she and Genna were at the bar for quite a while. Zack never showed up even though he paid the bill in advance when he made the reservation. Before I could ask any more questions about what the police said, she started sobbing. So I gave her a pill. Maybe tomorrow she will make more sense. Honestly, I don’t know if she remembers. Maybe she doesn’t want to remember.”
Silence filled the distance between the two friends. Sitting on the bed in the darkened hotel room, she watched the shreds of dusty light showing through the gap in the yellow brocade curtain that covered the heavy leaded glass window. Street noise from the busy avenue below filtered up to the third-story window.
“The authorities are scanning security cameras for the hit-and-run car.”
“Oh, no,” Rian said. “Genna’s car!”
“What about it?”
“Her Mercedes will be on the video footage.”
“Why would that matter?”
Rian was silent. “I think her tags are expired.”
“That’s a lie, Rian, what is going on?”
“Genna hit a deer on the way home last night. It did some damage to her car.”
“Genna hit another deer? She’s like a magnet with those things! But, I don’t understand. Why does that matter?”
“It’s just going to complicate things, that’s all,” Rian said. “Really bad timing.”
Her eyes widened. Thoughts tumbled. “What are you saying? Do you think she hit—”
“I’ve got to go,” Rian interrupted. “Things to do,” she added before the phone went dead.
Lowering the phone from her ear, Amy suddenly felt exhausted. Her warm bed and cozy cat felt like ancient history. In some ways it was. She closed her eyes and wished she could wake up from this reality the way she woke up from her dreams.
Was this coincidence that they had been talking about dead bodies over dominoes, and now they had one?
Zelda had made a birthday wish that came true.
The quiet of the hotel room wrapped around her, and she was transported in time and memory. She was sitting in front of a fortune-teller, one of many she had visited over the years. This one had warned her about making wishes. She was in Cassadaga, an old town in Florida where seers, séancers, and spell enchanters made a living working their craft. She and her college buddies drove over to have their palms read and fortunes told. Her friends wanted to know about their future husbands and how many children they would have. But she didn’t get what she paid to hear. The woman grabbed her hand tightly in her own and pulled Amy’s attention in with piercing black eyes. She smelled of stale coffee and cough drops. Her voice was like gravel.
“You mus
t never make a wish you do not want to come true, for this power is in your hands,” the crone told her. “Nothing gives the Moirae more pleasure than to spin and stitch and snip the threads of the hubris of humanity!”
The woman dropped her hand and laughed.
Was she confiding something sacrosanct into Amy’s ear? Was she predicting this? Amy thought the fortune-teller was teasing her. She wanted to be able to see the future, the same way the witch did. With her own eyes, or in the eyes of her dreams. Her innermost wish.
Telepathetic.
The memory troubled her now as much as it had then.
A story by W. Somerset Maugham came to mind. It was an eerie tale about a merchant and his servant. Maybe the horse in her dream wasn’t Bonaparte. It could be the pale horse of Death racing toward its next victim. Maybe Zack drove to his own Samarra, as the servant did in the story, where Death struck him down.
She slipped into the adjacent bedroom and looked quietly at Zelda, who was still sleeping soundly. The faded bruises on her arms were exposed above the sheets. In a rush, she realized this abuse had been happening for a while. There was no doubt it had been happening long before Zelda finally confided her own deeply held secret. Amy’s heart ached with the pang of guilt. No matter how long it had been happening, it was that much too long. Worse, it had gone unnoticed by her friends. Friends who swore to be allies through thick and thin.
Some friend she was.
And now it may be a little too late. Why hadn’t Zelda asked for help?
Amy shuddered. She had asked for help. Zelda asked them to help her get rid of Zack. She said, I need to get rid of Zack. Vamoose. And y’all need to help me.
And now Zack was dead.
Maybe this was what the witch had foreseen so many years ago. Maybe this was the hubris she predicted.
Maybe her dreams were starting to come true.
Except, she didn’t see a hit-and-run killer behind the wheel in her dreams. She saw a horse on the track. She heard sirens and saw a death mask.