Cold Death

by Mary Stone

  Bethany drank all of that in, her eyes wide and owllike in her gaunt face.

  “Now, would you like me to tell you a story?”

  No response. Better than the screams I’d received earlier in the week, but still not as gratifying as a yes.

  My gaze wandered over her pajama top, to the mangled collar full of gouges. Teeth marks, from where she’d gnawed on the material in a losing battle to hold hunger at bay. Every day she grew a little weaker, and in turn, closer to complete capitulation. Fighter or not, Katarina’s brat would eventually accept the difficult lesson that all the other stubborn women in my life had learned, some more painfully than others. Attempts to thwart me were futile.

  No, I possessed nary a doubt that in the end, Bethany would yield to me as the master of her destiny.

  For now, I would savor the process.

  “Good girls who listen to stories get a snack.”

  Bethany’s breathing hitched on a tiny, hopeful intake of air, and she licked her lips. Likely fearing another trick, she hid any other signs of excitement well. That little demonstration of self-control was better than women double, even triple her age, a reality that tickled my pride once again.

  While weakness bored me, I did so appreciate a quick learner.

  I reached into my pocket and extracted a plastic-wrapped granola bar. As I dangled the prize in the air, her features sharpened with hunger and turned her appearance almost feral. An atavistic gleam entered her eyes, like the promise of food had summoned some long dormant beast from hibernation.

  Gaze glued to the bar, her breathing rate quickened. She offered me a single nod, and being the magnanimous sort I was, I chose to accept her gesture in lieu of a verbal agreement.

  “Excellent choice. So, I suppose we’ll start this tale in a similar fashion to all great stories. Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived alone with his mother in a tiny house. Though the boy never quite fit in with the other children, and he and his mother couldn’t afford much in the way of creature comforts or possessions, it was okay because the boy knew his mother loved him very much, and that was what mattered the most. Sadly, that all changed when a filthy rich man with more money than character crashed into their lives. Like many rich men, this intruder was greedy and had never learned how to share. He wanted the little boy’s mother all to himself, so once he and the mother married, he sent the boy off to a school far, far away.”

  Lured into the story in spite of herself, Bethany’s gaze crept from the granola bar in my hand to my face. “Did the little boy not want to go away to school?”

  I shook my head. “Not at first, no. Remember, the little boy loved his mother. He wanted to stay home with her and was scared of living without her in some strange new place. But gradually, the boy became accustomed to his new home at the school and grew to enjoy certain aspects of his life there. You see, the boy had always enjoyed learning, and this particular school had exciting new lessons to teach. The sort of lessons that went far beyond what he could have learned under his parents’ roof while attending the public school back at home. Over time, he even fell in love with a brilliant woman, who taught him more of the true nature of people and life than he’d ever dreamed possible. The important lessons that most students were never lucky enough to learn.”

  Katarina’s whelp’s eyes were wide and trained on mine as she soaked up every word. As a reward for her interest, I extended the granola bar toward her, holding tight when her greedy hands shot out to grab the other end. “Now, what do you suppose happens next in the story?”

  She tugged at the bar, but I held firm. Catching on to my game, she relaxed her grip. Her smooth brow furrowed as she considered my question. “Did the little boy and the woman get married?”

  I released the snack. “Well done. That is an excellent guess.”

  The wrapper crinkled as she tore at the plastic with trembling hands and teeth, like a raccoon raiding a campsite picnic. She ripped off a hunk and swallowed the bite after two chomps.

  So perfect, how she was falling into my trap without the slightest inkling. Though dated now, Skinner and Watson’s operant conditioning theories had yet to fail me. Shaping behavior with both punishment and rewards was a technique still implemented by animal trainers for one simple reason…it worked.

  So cute, the way humans believed they were elevated beyond monkeys or Golden Retrievers when, in actuality, they reacted the same as baser mammals when stripped down to survival mode. I’d accepted the truth long ago. The members of our supposedly superior species were nothing more than animals awaiting the right trainer.

  The quicker little Bethany understood that her most basic, essential survival needs relied upon exhibiting the behaviors I desired, the quicker she’d acquiesce to my reins.

  Lulled into a good mood by this recent success, I allowed Bethany to scarf down the granola bar without interruption and lapsed back into storytelling mode. “No, I’m afraid the boy and the woman never did get married, although there was a time when he would have liked nothing better. Alas, the woman already had a husband, even though she loved the little boy more. The pair of them were so in love that they created a baby together, but the woman lied to the boy when he asked and pretended like the child belonged to another man. Wasn’t that horribly, terribly wrong of her?”

  I broke off when my own voice penetrated my ears, taut and sharp as a guitar string wrapped around a gasping throat. A glance at Bethany revealed no observable symptoms of fear at all. Rather, the child agreed with my summation of Letitia’s vile act with a bob of her head.

  My fingers dug into the blanket like claws.

  See, Letitia? Even an eight-year-old agrees that you behaved in a despicable manner.

  “She tried to hide the child from the boy, but he was too smart for her tricks. Far smarter than she gave him credit for. You see, she’d forgotten that she’d already taught the boy most of her tricks, so he was hard to fool. And, as often happens, the student had surpassed the teacher. Knowing that she lied, the boy hunted high and low for his child. Along the way, he stole a few other children he stumbled across too, snatching kids from undeserving parents who didn’t appreciate them and selling them to parents who did.”

  The story tumbled out faster now like an outside force was pressing on me, insisting that I hurry to the conclusion. Bethany polished off the food in silence and hunted for crumbs in the sheets. When she finished, she pulled the blanket up higher, as if protecting herself from my growing unhappiness with the direction the story was taking.

  Her reaction was inconsequential. All that mattered was that I spew the remainder of this sordid tale into the world before I burst.

  “Of course, the boy did end up finding the child, but not until he was a grown man, and his daughter was almost a full-grown woman herself. The reunion went nothing like he’d hoped. His daughter had no idea she’d been given up for adoption as a baby and didn’t believe the boy. When he tried to tell her the truth, she called him a dirty liar, crazy, all sorts of repugnant names. The boy bore her ignorance without faltering, though. The moment he laid eyes on the girl, he knew, and none of her denials could change his conviction. She was the spitting image of some photos he’d seen in albums of his mother at that same age.”

  With my mind lost in the past, I was barely aware when I rose from the bed and paced across the hardwood floor.

  “But no matter how many times the boy tried to reveal the truth, the daughter denied him, just like her birth mother had done years before. The boy lost his temper then, and who could blame him? Morrigan was a foolish little whelp who ran wild and ended up getting herself pregnant, just like her mother. The boy never meant to hurt her. Of course he didn’t, because attacking a pregnant woman is a cowardly act, and the boy was a man by then, and the farthest thing from a coward.”

  My spine stiffened at the mere suggestion. Me, a coward? Ludicrous. The unfortunate turn had been Morrigan’s fault. The haughty, arrogant bitch took after her mother a littl
e too much.

  “She hit the boy first, you see. Called him all sorts of vile names. His reaction was instinctual, his lashing out reflexive. One little push, that was all. How was the boy to know that pregnancy had caused her center of gravity to change and impact her balance? He couldn’t possibly have guessed that his tiny shove would make her stumble and strike her head on the flagstones. If he’d injured her on purpose, would he have rushed her to the hospital, visited her every day in a disguise, to ensure that the innocent baby survived? The answer is no. Of course not.”

  Old frustration cascaded through me as I recalled the unfortunate chain of events.

  “Everything would have worked out fine if the boy hadn’t suspected that Morrigan recognized him during a visit and forced his hand. She was spiteful enough to ruin his life by crying assault, and then what would the boy do? In the end, she left him no choice. The boy couldn’t stomach a future in a prison cell, so once she returned home, he waited outside her house, hidden away in the bushes. One night when she ventured outside to grab her mail, he struck. He stifled her cries with a hand over her mouth and slit her throat. He remembers how warm her blood was when it gushed over his fingers. He laid her limp body on the walkway when she stopped struggling and slipped away.”

  “What…what happened to the baby?”

  The small, high voice made me whirl in my tracks. The shape of the lump beneath the covers suggested that Bethany was curled into the fetal position, and the eyes that peeked over the top of the blanket were wide with fear.

  I’d been so swept up in the past that I’d failed to notice I’d shared the entire story out loud. I strolled back to the bed and smiled down into her pinched face. “Of all the babies the boy ever stole, Morrigan’s child was the one he took care of the most.”

  Bethany’s eyelids drooped as fatigue settled in, but she jerked them open again, too wary to succumb to sleep when I was still so close.

  “Clever girl.” A strange tenderness surged into the hardened space beneath my ribs. Keeping my touch gentle, I swept the hair off her forehead before grazing my knuckles along her sweet, soft cheek, whispering as her eyelids drifted shut again.

  “Ma petite fille.”

  26

  Blue, purple, and red paint slashed across the white canvas in a riotous, violent outburst, dominating an entire wall in the gallery of the Gibbes Museum of Art. Helen Kline tilted her head to the left, then right. She tapped a French manicured nail to her chin as she attempted to puzzle out the meaning behind the nebulous shapes. The painting’s vivid colors had captured her attention from the moment she’d entered the special modern art exhibit in the third-floor gallery, but she had yet to make up her mind as to what she thought of the piece.

  Hands on her hips, she stepped closer to the painting. When that didn’t do the trick, she sighed. This was why she preferred classical or more realistic art over most contemporary pieces. How was one to form an educated opinion over a painting’s merits when you weren’t even sure what you were viewing?

  The beginning notes of a Bach concerto intruded on her ruminations. Helen plucked the phone from the zippered pocket of her Italian leather handbag and ended the alarm. Ten minutes until her appointment time with the new donor. She’d best start for their designated meeting spot in the second-floor atrium.

  After one last glimpse of the confounding painting, she headed for the elevator, her low heels clicking across the blond hardwood floors. When the doors opened, a young mother pushing a towheaded toddler in a stroller exited, smelling of baby powder and spit-up.

  Helen’s gaze tracked the woman and child until the doors slid shut and blocked them from view. She guessed the mother’s age at twenty-five, perhaps thirty. Around the same age as Eleanor.

  She exhaled a long breath as the elevator squeaked its descent to the second floor. Why couldn’t that be her daughter pushing a stroller and enjoying a leisurely day at the museum? Helen sniffed, longing for one of those sweet beings to be on the agenda in the foreseeable future for Ellie.

  Baby or not, why couldn’t Eleanor consider working in a nice, safe, culturally rich environment like the Gibbes Museum? Although Helen supposed any job would suffice, as long as the duties didn’t include Eleanor thrusting herself into harm’s way every five minutes.

  Her daughter was so beautiful and intelligent. Helen entertained no doubts that she could succeed at whichever endeavor she chose.

  Why, then, did her only girl insist on tormenting her mother by picking one of the most dangerous careers possible?

  Helen smoothed the peach collar of her designer blazer in the mirrored wall and patted her carefully styled blonde hair before clicking out of the elevator in the direction of the Patrick Dougherty installation. As a member of the museum’s charity foundation, she’d wandered these airy, clean halls enough to turn left through the Twentieth Century Charleston exhibit without consulting a map.

  She arrived at the atrium with five minutes to spare. The treelike sculpture inside was another example of contemporary art, but one that appealed to Helen’s sensibilities. With this piece, the artist had managed to strike that delicate balance between the whimsical and the absurd. The sculpture was a crowd-pleaser, which was why Helen had selected the atrium as the perfect meeting spot.

  Donors tended to loosen their purse strings more when they got a taste of the art their contributions funded.

  The sculpture’s woven twigs and branches often served to soothe Helen, but they had little effect today as she meandered through the exhibit. Her head was far too full of those awful news reports about Eleanor’s boss to relax. She fiddled with her sleeve, fretting. Such a gruesome murder, and in the police department’s own parking garage, no less. What kind of criminal risked that type of exposure?

  Only the most brazen. The kind who would let nothing stop him from attacking again, Helen suspected. And who was to say that her Eleanor wouldn’t be the next target? She wrung her hands together and shuddered. No wonder she’d found more gray hairs this morning. This whole situation was simply too dreadful to consider.

  Helen returned to the front of the atrium to wait, fighting the uneasiness in her stomach. She’d tried so hard to accept Eleanor’s career choice, to set aside her qualms and be supportive, but how could anyone expect a mother to endorse a job that seemed dead set on killing her child?

  She fiddled with the tasteful tennis bracelet on her wrist and smoothed the frown from her features. At her age, too much frowning would deepen the wrinkles by the hour. Along with the gray hairs, her wrinkles had grown by leaps and bounds since the day Eleanor signed up for the ridiculous detective job.

  Her heel tapped an anxious beat on the floor before she steeled her spine and adjusted her blazer’s hem. This absurdity had carried on quite long enough. It was past time for her to schedule a chat with Eleanor about her future. Of course, the conversation would require a delicate touch. Even as a toddler, Eleanor had dedicated herself to proving the old redheaded stereotype about stubbornness true.

  A rueful smile curved Helen’s coral lips. Good thing for her that the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. She might not be as obviously muleheaded as her feisty offspring, but she was plenty strong-willed in her right, if more polite with how she voiced her positions.

  They didn’t call Southern ladies steel magnolias for nothing.

  She toyed with the links on the tennis bracelet and plotted. Her husband had been pestering her for the past two months to start planning a family vacation in celebration of their upcoming anniversary. Helen liked to pride herself on rarely resorting to manipulation to get her own way. In this instance, however, a little guilt wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not when Eleanor taking a break from that ghastly job could very well be a matter of life and death.

  Besides, the stress of fretting over her daughter’s safety was taking a toll on Helen’s health, and Eleanor was long overdue for vacation from work.

  And if Helen could convince her daughter to change careers during
the trip? All the better.

  Who knew? Perhaps she could persuade Eleanor to assist her here at the museum. When it came to fundraising, extra hands on deck were always beneficial. Helen enjoyed the planning, organizing, and community outreach that accompanied her position as head of the charitable foundation. Maybe Eleanor would learn to appreciate working in the nonprofit sector too.

  The satisfaction of achieving goals and seeing her visions become reality filled Helen with satisfaction. Once they met their next fundraising goal, the museum could hire contractors to fix the out-of-date electrical wiring that hindered parts of the western wing. Without the much-needed repairs, the risk of accidental fire loomed over the museum like a hovering funnel cloud.

  Two hundred thousand dollars. That was the amount that Mr. Ray needed to sign on his check today in order for the museum to reach its goal. She smoothed her palms along the jacket’s lapels and fixed her mouth into an encouraging smile.

  Helen Kline imagined that soliciting donations was similar to heading into battle. Outfits and attitude were crucial. The main difference was that the bloodshed in the business world was financial instead of physical. Here, a nice suit or a Louis Vuitton purse took the place of armor, while compliments and quick wits were the weapons of choice.

  High-pitched stage whispers snagged her attention, and her smile widened as a frazzled teacher wearing glasses and a ponytail herded a horde of elementary-aged students in matching orange t-shirts down the hallway. So young now, but they grew so quickly. Some days, she could scarcely believe her own children were fully grown. All three of the boys were men now and had entered into safe, respectable professions with nary a fight.