Kiss and Kill

by Richard Deming

  Actually I had no intention of crossing International Bridge. I knew the immigration service lifted car registrations at the bridge and returned them when visitors came back over it. Whether they kept track of the number of people in each car, I had no idea, but I wasn’t going to chance having to explain on the way back why my passenger had stayed in Canada.

  I didn’t have any difficulty finding my way around, as the main routes of the town were dotted with directional signs. A little after ten-thirty we reached the park on the American side of the falls.

  “Oh, look!” Mavis said. “The lights across the river are on!”

  It was a magnificent sight. For a thousand feet, a frozen curtain of ice some hundred and sixty feet high stretched to Goat Island. And beyond the island, for another two thousand feet, the Horseshoe Falls reached toward the Canadian shore. Two dozen huge searchlights at Queen Victoria Park bathed the glittering ice in constantly-changing colors.

  As I had expected, there weren’t many people outdoors on so cold a night, even with such a beautiful spectacle to watch. The parking lights of one or two other cars could be seen in the park, but I had deliberately stopped some distance from any of them. There were no pedestrians at all in sight.

  “Let’s get out a minute,’” I suggested.

  Obediently, Mavis climbed out of the car and followed me over to the observation rail, huddling so close to me because of the unexpectedly cutting wind, we probably looked like a single person from a distance. I hoped that the people in the other cars were far enough off so that they couldn’t see us at all. But even if they could, I doubted that they would be able to make out whether we were one or two persons. And certainly they couldn’t distinguish what we were doing.

  At the observation railing there was not even the protection of trees to break the steady force of the wind. When I put my arm about Mavis, she shivered even in its protection. Neither of us said anything, momentarily held spellbound by the gigantic spectacle. Conversation would have been difficult anyway because of the combined roar of falling water and the wind.

  Beneath the ice I realized that water was tumbling down as usual. Below us, in a gorge between perpendicular walls two hundred and fifty feet high, there were gaps of open water in the frozen lower river. In the summertime the whole stretch would be boiling rapids, I realized, but it was frozen to relative sluggishness now.

  Somewhere beyond the rapids, I knew, lay the famous whirlpool.

  Glancing around, I could see no cars other than the ones which had been there when we arrived. And even as I looked, the nearest one flicked on its lights and drove away.

  Gently I took Mavis’s purse from her hand.

  “What do you want?” she shouted up into my face over the combined roar of water and wind.

  “Your identification,” I said in a normal tone she couldn’t possibly have heard.

  Looping the strap of the purse over my wrist, I spun her around, grasped her under both arms and heaved her over the railing.

  She probably screamed, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of the falls and the whistling wind.

  I removed her wallet from the purse, checked over the other items to make sure there was nothing in it to identify the body as that of Mavis Howard, and tossed the purse after her.

  With bad luck, I figured, her body would be discovered the next day. With good luck, if it got under the ice, not until Spring. And in either event, it would neither be identified nor conform to the description of anyone reported missing. It was hardly likely that anyone reading the description of the dead woman’s extremely feminine clothing would ever associate her with the plainly-dressed Mavis.

  The simple explanation that my sister had taken the stenographic job she had gone to Buffalo to see about, had to start work immediately and had asked me to forward her clothes would serve as a temporary excuse for her absence from Westfield. Eventually I could receive word that she was moving back to Florida.

  I contemplated disposing of her weekend bag, which now had in it the suit she was wearing when we left Westfield. Then I decided it would be safer to smuggle it back into the house and pack it right in with everything else when I ostensibly got ready to ship her clothes to Buffalo.

  I stayed in a tourist cabin just outside of Buffalo that night. I went to sleep dreaming of Helen.

  Helen and Dewey weren’t expecting Mavis and me back until late Friday night, but there was now no reason to waste all of Friday. I was up at six A.M. and on the road by six-thirty. At eight in the morning I pulled into our garage.

  I came in the back door quietly, as Dewey usually slept late and I didn’t want to disturb him. The door to his room was open, but he wasn’t in it and the bed was made. I was a little surprised, as I’d never seen him up this early before, and certainly had never before known him to make his own bed.

  My feet made no sound on the carpeted steps as I went upstairs. At the top, I grinned at the loose balustrade, resolving to fix it that morning as soon as I had kissed Helen hello.

  Apparently Helen was still asleep, as the door to our bedroom was closed. Quietly I went into Mavis’s room, hung her coat in the closet, unpacked her bag and put the items away. I put the bag at the back of the closet.

  Then I was turning the knob of Helen’s and my bedroom. I pushed the door open gently, smiling a little in anticipation of seeing her soft blonde hair spread across the pillow.

  The smile froze. Helen was in bed all right, but her arm was thrown in sleep across the bare chest of Dewey and her head was nestled on his shoulder.

  I was just standing there in stupefied shock when Dewey’s eyes suddenly popped open. For a long moment we stared at each other, neither speaking. Then he abruptly sat erect, pushing Helen unceremoniously to one side, and his hand darted under his pillow.

  An instant later I was staring into the bore of a .45 automatic.

  “Come in, Mr. Howard,” Dewey said. The stupid expression was gone from his face and his voice was crisp. Suddenly he looked older than the twenty-two years he was supposed to be. His gangling awkwardness and doltish expression had merely created the illusion of youth. With sick astonishment I realized he was a fully mature man, possibly as old as Helen.

  His lips spread in a tight smile as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and came erect. He was wearing only pajama bottoms.

  Helen had sat erect, the covers falling to her waist to reveal she had been sleeping nude. Her full lips thinned to a narrow line.

  “Where’s Mavis?” she asked sharply.

  I let out a humorless laugh. “She stayed in Buffalo.”

  “Permanently? You mean she took the job?”

  “Permanently,” I said dryly.

  Dewey commanded, “Turn around and lean against the wall. With your hands flat on it.”

  I stared at him until his lips thinned and his finger across the trigger began to tense. Then I turned my back and placed both hands against the wall. A moment later the gun muzzle dug into my spine and quick but efficient hands moved over me.

  “Okay,” Dewey said. “Turn around again.”

  When I turned, I discovered that Helen had slipped into a robe.

  “This isn’t incest, is it?” I said to her.

  Staring at me, she emitted a sharp little laugh. “Incest? Dewey’s my husband, you damned fool.” She looked at Dewey. “We’ll have to do it now. We can take care of Mavis later, but we’ll have to do this now.”

  Dewey motioned toward the only straight-backed chair in the room. “Take your choice,” he offered. “Sit or catch a bullet in the guts.”

  I decided to sit in the chair.

  With a couple of neckties from the tie rack in my closet Helen expertly tied my hands and feet while Dewey held me under his gun. Then she effectively gagged me with a couple of handkerchiefs from my dresser drawer.

  Dewey went out of the room. In the hall I could hear the reluctant screech of nails tearing loose as he pushed the upper hall railing forward. After a few mo
ments there was a rending sound and then the crash of lumber falling into the front room.

  Dewey came back and looked at me. “Suppose the first drop doesn’t kill him?” he asked.

  “Then we’ll carry him up and drop him again,” Helen said calmly.

  She stooped to loosen the necktie binding my ankles enough so that I could walk at a hobbling gait.

  “Get on your feet, my love,” she said. “You’re going to take a short walk.”