Killer Reads: A Collection of the Best in Inspirational Suspense

by Luana Ehrlich

  She reflected on their finances. She could afford to give him a week at home with all of his interruptions. Maybe she’d get some, a little, a tiny bit of work done. If he remained jobless after a week, she’d go to Jacob and ask for a temporary workspace.

  She arrived home to prepare dinner at their usual time. The apartment was empty.

  Betsy lay in bed, wide-awake. She had no tears left and a trashcan next to the bed sat full of used tissues. Married a full three months and two weeks and she lay there alone, her husband’s whereabouts unknown. What cosmic wrong had she committed? Why were all of her relationships lemmings, doomed to jump off a cliff to die a quick death?

  The door to the apartment opened in the middle of the night and Betsy jumped out of bed and rushed to the bedroom door. Rod staggered to the bathroom, neglecting to close the door. She waited. He emerged and turned toward the bedroom, stopping as he saw her silhouette framed by the doorway.

  “I-I’m sawree,” he said, his speech slurred. “I …”

  She stepped forward and caught him as he started to slump over. Placing an arm under his, she helped him to bed. She didn’t like that he’d turned to alcohol for solace, but recognized that she’d left the apartment first. She hadn’t been there for him, hadn’t given him the support he needed. Lying next to him, she stroked his forehead and watched his face in low ambient light. She saw no peace there, despite the alcohol-induced slumber.

  She awoke the next morning to the blended aromas of bacon and coffee. The bedside clock told her she’d managed to claim almost five hours of sleep. Not enough to find any creative traction. She donned her robe and walked to the kitchen where Rod tended to a frying pan full of thick-sliced Kahn’s bacon, her favorite. Several eggs sat next to the range, waiting their turn in the skillet. Beside them sat a large mug of black coffee, which Rod grabbed and sipped before realizing she was there. He turned toward her.

  “I –”

  “I’m –”

  They both stopped, but Betsy took the opportunity to speak up first. “I shouldn’t have left. I’m sorry.” She eased up to him, afraid to yield to her desire to wrap her arms around him.

  “I’m sorry, too.” He stepped forward and took her in his arms. “I-I needed …”

  She placed her lips on his to quiet him. An hour later, they emerged from the bedroom and she took over in the kitchen, rescuing the grease-encased bacon, frying eggs, and toasting slices of Wonder Bread. As they sat opposite each other at their small table and ate, she toyed with his legs using her foot. They ate slowly, silently. His plate nearly empty, he stopped chewing and reached across to play with her hair.

  “I do love you,” he said. “I want you to be proud of me.”

  Betsy smiled and took his hand and kissed it. “I love you, too. And I …” She started to say, ‘… and I am,’ but couldn’t force the word out. She wanted to be proud of him. She wanted to encourage him. Why was it so hard to do that? She completed her comment. “… know I will be.”

  Late the next morning Betsy watched Rod leave to get the day’s paper with its want ads and to renew his effort at finding a job. She felt invigorated and optimistic, the honeymoon far from over. After a quick ‘run’ through the apartment, picking up errant clothes and tidying up the kitchen, she sat at her drawing table and began to sketch a character who’d been incubating in her mind for the past few weeks. The first figure didn’t match her vision, so she balled up the paper and tried again. On her tenth effort, her mental image clicked with what she saw on the paper, but she looked too much like Sally Fleming. Betsy would never deny that Sally and Jim Fleming were the muses behind her idea, but she didn’t want her character to be recognizable as the real person. Still, the character had to display the woman’s verve, quick wit, irreverence, and timely sarcasm – her chutzpah. It was a word she’d just learned and she loved saying it. Yes, chutzpah. She altered the sketch and sat back smiling. There ‘she’ was.

  ‘She’ needed a name. As Betsy worked through a mental list of female names, she slipped past Georgia and Georgia Gordon’s habit of calling everyone “Sweetie” came to mind. That was ‘her.’ The perfect antithesis. Sweetie could be sweet, but rarely would be. Now, Sweetie and …

  She returned to a new sheet of paper and began her sketch of Sweetie’s mate. An hour later, with several redraws of the man and a few tweaks to Sweetie, she had the pair, satisfied with each individual alone and as a pair of foils for each other. “Sweetie and …” The first male name that popped into her head was ‘George.’ She thought about it for a moment and nodded. “Why not?” she thought. ‘Sweetie and George’ it would be.

  By mid-afternoon, Betsy had several cartoons completed and captioned. Sweetie and George in a church pew, Sweetie’s nose wrinkled as she leans away and comments, “No, you old fart. We don’t need a percussion section.” George bent over the garden as Sweetie comments on hemorrhoids when she asked for hemerocallis. George sniping as Sweetie applies a new skin lotion, “Trying to put your old whine in a new skin?”

  Betsy started a new cartoon but stopped at the sound of keys in the front door. She jumped up to greet Rod and as the door swung open, she stepped forward only to have him brusquely push past her and plop down on the couch. His face reflected his bad day. She took a deep breath, sat down beside him, and reached up to stroke his face.

  “No luck, huh?”

  He grabbed her arm and pushed her away, the alcohol evident on his breath.

  Betsy jumped up and fled to the bedroom, crying. That was it. She’d escaped one drunk. She would not replace him with another. It was her apartment, in her name alone, and in the morning, she planned to kick him out.

  Twenty-nine

  (Summer 1971)

  **********

  “Why, Jacob?” Betsy stood in front of the creative director’s desk, dumbfounded by the rejection of her “Sweetie and George” creation. “Look at the popular comedians: Jackie Gleason, Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Steve Martin, George Carlin. Some of their funniest stuff is irreverent, cutting edge. We need to tap that.”

  Jacob Meyer shook his head and sighed. “Bets, you know I love you. You know I’ve loved this series since you first showed it to me at dinner months ago. But the executive board is staunchly conservative and won’t yield.”

  Betsy looked at her soon-to-be-ex-father-in-law and took a deep breath. “This … this doesn’t have anything to do with my leaving Rod, does it?” The question had to be asked. She admired Jacob greatly, but she needed to make sure.

  Jacob shook his head again. “No.” He paused. “You know I’m too fond of you to ever …” He gazed directly at her, unflinching. “… to ever hurt you. But I can’t abandon Rod; he’s my son. You were the best thing ever to come his way and he missed the boat, screwed it up royally. I blame him, not you. Our relationship, both working and personal, will not change because of his failure.”

  She looked at the man and saw sincerity. Still, the relationship would change. It wouldn’t stay the same after her divorce was final. There would always be the awkwardness of Rod’s presence between them, the wistful thoughts of what might have been, and the grandchildren who would never be.

  “Thank you, Jacob. I love you, too.” She reached into her briefcase and retrieved a set of papers. “However, business is still business. You once taught me that.” She handed him the papers. “I’d appreciate a signature on these as soon as possible. It’s the release of your right of first refusal on the series, so I can market it elsewhere.”

  He read the papers and looked up at her. “I should get the lawyers to do this, but I see you’re already using our own form.” He smiled. “You’ve learned fast.” He signed both sets of papers and returned one set to Betsy. “My board’s going to regret this.”

  Betsy tucked her set of papers into her briefcase. “Thanks, Jacob. You’ve been a great teacher, but maybe you should have read it closer. I wasn’t trying to pass one over on y’all, but that form releases me from all future rights of fi
rst refusal as well.”

  Jacob stood up, walked around his desk, and gave Betsy a big hug. “You didn’t pass one over on me. I saw that and signed it anyway. My gift to my daughter, and I’ll always think of you as my daughter. Now, please don’t make me regret it by taking all your talent elsewhere.”

  She hugged him again and stepped back.

  “Actually, I kinda saw this coming and I’m going to syndication. King Features has already given me an offer. You should see ‘Sweetie and George’ in the Sunday comics within a month.”

  Jacob laughed. “You really have learned a lot this last year. You know I wish you all the best. I guess I’ll have to start subscribing to the Sunday Enquirer.”

  “Jacob, I know you said our relationship wouldn’t change and I appreciate that. I should let you know I’m thinking about leaving town after the divorce.”

  His mouth dropped and a look of disappointment crossed his face.

  “I’ll let you know what I decide. In the meantime, I’ll continue my work on the current card series until you can get your own team up-to-speed on it. I suspect my ‘Sweetie’ is going to become very time consuming and I’ll be needing to back off the card series.”

  He nodded. “I hate to say it, but I think you’re right … and that’s okay with me. I only want the best for you.” He chuckled. “I keep saying that. I really mean it.”

  Betsy gave him one more hug, picked up her briefcase and portfolio, and left. A tear crossed her cheek as she left his office.

  Betsy had tried to keep her marriage but Rod stayed in a state of denial. Hours and hours of counseling, but everything was her fault or that of his multiple employers. Reconciliation after reconciliation, but none lasting long enough to earn Rod a return to her bed. Now, after six months of rancorous discord, Betsy’s divorce finalized. Being young and female had worked in her favor. The judge took the position that Rod should be the breadwinner and granted him nothing of her increasingly substantial earnings. She kept her scant possessions, including the car and everything she had brought into the marriage. There wasn’t much else to split up.

  During that six months, her prediction that “Sweetie” would take up more and more of her time came true. She hadn’t been prepared for the pace of weekly deadlines, but she never failed to meet them, despite the all-too-frequent heated meetings with Rod and the lawyers. By the time the judge signed off on the papers, she had divested herself of every possession that wouldn’t fit into her Mustang and had gotten ahead of the deadlines by a month. More than enough time to make the move to California, the base of the Hearst-owned King Features. She didn’t have to move to the West Coast, but why not? She had no desire to live elsewhere.

  Part of her felt that the further she moved away from her past, the better. The other part wanted to remain closer to North Carolina. Over the previous year, she had hired two different private investigators to find Jimmy Bob. Admittedly, she had had little money to fund the first attempt, but money hadn’t been an issue on the second try. Neither had been successful. It was time to move west, but not to forget.

  So, on the 30th of June, her apartment empty and her car full, she first drove to Gibson Greetings to give her tearful goodbyes to the creative staff and others she had gotten to know so well.

  “Surprise!”

  Georgia Gordon and Carol presented her with a farewell cake, and the creative staff presented her with a personalized, signed collage of her work.

  “Is, uh, Jacob here?” Betsy asked around.

  No one had seen him and he hadn’t called in.

  An hour went by, but no Jacob. So, with a heavy heart and saddened by Jacob’s failure to show, Betsy left Cincinnati, heading west. From St. Louis, she picked up the “Mother Road,” Route 66, now partly replaced by the new interstate, and made the scenic drive through the Ozarks to Springfield, MO. At the northeast end of town, she came across a rough-hewn rail fence separating the road from a dozen or more stone cottages. The sign said “Rail Haven Motor Court.” She pulled into the lot, checked into the office, and rented a cottage for the night. Although the place had a kitchenette, she was not prepared to cook dinner, so she took to the road and a few miles further along she stopped at Red’s Giant Hamburgs for dinner. Perhaps, “stopped” wasn’t the right word for a place that billed itself as the world’s first “drive-thru” restaurant.

  Intrigued by the promotional flyers for local attractions, Betsy decided to explore the Ozarks a bit the next day instead of heading straight out on Route 66. By lunchtime, she found herself in Eureka Springs, AR, and immediately fell in love with the place. The winding tree-lined streets, the quaint Victorian homes terraced into the hillsides, its eclectic shops all combined to give the town a unique appeal. She parked her car and began to walk … and walk … and walk. By dinnertime, she had covered most of the town and California no longer held any appeal.

  She returned to Basin Springs Park at the center of town and checked into the massive, stone Basin Park Hotel. Built against the hillside, all eight floors had “ground floor” entrances.

  “How many nights, Miss?”

  “Three, please.”

  The clerk filled out the paperwork and asked for cash. Betsy completed the transaction and asked, “Do you have any brochures on places to rent?”

  The clerk looked at her with a bit of surprise on his face.

  “O’er there on that table is the real estate information, but most young folk migratin’ to town seem to end up in one o’ them communes around town. Cheaper.”

  “Thanks, but I need a quiet place to work. Something nice.”

  “Got a job?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “How old’re you?”

  “Old enough.” This man was becoming irritating.

  “Runaway?”

  “Look, it’s no business of yours. May I have my key, please?”

  The man handed her the room key, and continued his twenty questions.

  “What kinda job?”

  Betsy’s patience wore thin. “I have to park my car.” She turned to exit the lobby.

  He spoke up behind her. “I’ma askin’ ‘cause my sister has a cottage on top the hill here, on Eureka Street. It’s not advertised, but she’s lookin’ for a renter. She don’t want no bunch of flower children, or marijuana smokin’ hippies, or rent skipping drifters, so I’m doing due diligence, I think they call it.”

  Betsy hesitated at the door, her hand on the brass push plate ready to open the door.

  “Beautiful place. Best deal in town, for the right person.”

  Betsy turned around and returned to the desk. The way he’d said those words caught her attention. The owner’s apparent willingness to let the place sit empty while waiting for the right person or persons as renters spoke volumes about the owner and her pride in her property.

  “How nice?”

  “Two bedroom, kitchen, large main room, bath and a half, smaller workroom, detached garage, full width front porch lookin’ southeast over the valley. Well maintained, everything works like it should. Even got a flower garden.”

  “How much?”

  “Hundred fifty a week or four hundred for a month, includes utilities. Might be willing to negotiate for something long term.”

  The price didn’t scare Betsy this time. She had the money. The man had her interest and she could tell he knew it.

  “You the right person?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t know what the competition is, and I’d sure want to see it first.”

  “Gotta prove to me you’re the right person. Age?”

  “Twenty-one.” Well, almost, she thought.

  “Job?”

  “Do you have a copy of Sunday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette?”

  “Should be extras in back waitin’ for the distributor to pick up.” He walked into the back office and Betsy took that moment to rush to the table holding the real estate flyers. She quickly scanned the rental section of one to see that the man was correct in calling
it a good deal. However, she didn’t have time to scrutinize all the papers to prove his claim of being the ‘best deal in town.’ He returned to the desk with a copy of the newspaper.

  She extracted the color comic section and found the “Sweetie…and George” block. “Here.” She handed the section back to him and pointed to the comic.

  “What about it?”

  She pointed to the by-line and then to her registration. “That’s me.”

  He looked at the cartoon and compared the signature with the one on the room registration. “No way.” He scrutinized her, his brow furrowed. “You’re only twenty-one and you do this?” She nodded. “I’ll be,” was his only reply.

  She turned toward the front door again, ready to move her car.

  “Alright then. Tomorrow morning, 9 a.m. Meet me here!” he yelled after her.

  Four days later, after scrutinizing more than a dozen rentals, Betsy left the Basin Park Hotel for her new residence, a three bedroom, two-bath home with a loft workspace and great light – right next door to the hotel clerk’s sister’s rental. But he wasn’t upset. Neither was his sister, Tammie.

  “I know you’re going to love it here,” said Tammie as she passed the keys to her home to Betsy. Angela, her teenage daughter, pouted as she looked on.

  “Mom, why do we have –?”

  “Shush, girl. We’ve talked about this already.”

  Tammie and Angela had spent the previous two days moving their belongings from their home to the rental next door. Betsy was certain the extra two hundred dollars a month above the price of the rental and a yearlong lease had convinced mom into switching.

  “Angela, I’m going to need furniture, household goods, all that stuff. Do you like to shop?” Betsy guessed the girl didn’t have much opportunity to shop for more than necessities. “I’ll need some help, and I need someone to show me around. Are you up for that?”

  Angela smiled and nodded.

  The following day, the mayor personally invited her to the next city council meeting, where he welcomed her to the community and gave her a ceremonial “Key to the City.” After the meeting, a young woman approached her.