Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy

by Dana Stabenow

  I frowned and leaned back against the headboard. But unless she’d told Bradley not to eat the chili, how could she be sure he wouldn’t accidentally take the drugs? And it was clear Bradley had had no idea Suzanne intended to do away with her husband. Once he’d found out, he was horrified. But how to warn him off without giving herself away?

  I heard Victoria’s voice in my head. Suzanne is a vegetarian, Lizzie hates broccoli, Bradley is allergic to tomatoes and blueberries, red wine gives Charlotte a migraine, and Martin is lactose intolerant.

  Safe to leave poisoned chili in the fridge for Martin. The allergy-stricken Brad would never eat it.

  I drew up my knees and thought hard. So, Martin hadn’t killed himself after all. He came home, shot his wife and her lover, and didn’t shoot himself because he didn’t plan to kill himself. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Still, it didn’t make it any less creepy that he’d gone back downstairs, opened a beer, microwaved the chili, and settled in to watch the game while Suzanne and Bradley lay dead upstairs.

  I frowned again. Unless that hadn’t been exactly how the story played out…

  I jumped up, threw on some clothes, paused long enough to brush my teeth, and began hunting for Suzanne. She wasn’t in the third bedroom with Charlotte and Lizzie, nor on the stairwell landing with Edison.

  “Martin pushed me down the steps, you know,” he said in his whiny voice as I hurried past.

  “Shut up, Edison,” I said automatically, and bounded down the stairs. Suzanne wasn’t in the living room with Bradley (TCM was still on, playing John Wayne movies), and she wasn’t in the kitchen with Victoria.

  “Garden,” Victoria said when I asked. “Why? Erica, you look so excited!”

  “I think I’ve solved it,” I said.

  I heard Brad’s voice behind me. He must have noticed my wild-eyed look, too, and followed me into the kitchen. “Solved what?” he asked.

  I shook my head and pushed through the back door. Suzanne was sitting on a little bench set near the house, facing Janet’s backyard. There was a woman working in the garden, but I didn’t think it was Janet. At any rate, she didn’t straighten up and wave, as Janet always did.

  “Suzanne,” I said as I strode toward the bench, trailed by Victoria and Bradley. “You did it. You killed Martin.”

  I heard Victoria’s gasp and Bradley’s little hiss of victory, but Suzanne jumped to her feet. “I did not!” she cried. “I know that’s what Bradley thinks—how could you believe such a terrible thing about a woman you love?—but I didn’t! I didn’t!”

  “You put the morphine in the chili,” I persisted. “You knew Brad wouldn’t touch it, because he was allergic to tomatoes. You just had to wait for Martin to come home and eat the chili, and you’d be rid of your husband. You tried to murder him before he tried to murder you!”

  “Oh, my,” Victoria said. “That would explain why Martin is so angry.”

  “But I didn’t do that,” Suzanne sobbed.

  I ignored the obvious lie. “In fact,” I said, “I’m guessing Martin was already half-dead before he pulled the trigger on you. He didn’t come home, shoot you, then settle in for a little football and beer. He’d already eaten his poisoned dinner and was watching the game when he heard something upstairs. You killed him first.”

  “We had fallen asleep,” Bradley said, sounding weary. He had moved around from behind me so I could see his face. He looked tired, too tired of holding on to secrets for so many years, maybe. “I woke up and heard the TV downstairs. I knew we had to get out of there before he found us, so I shook Suzanne. But she—” He shrugged. “I’d forgotten that it was a bad idea to wake her up suddenly. She had nightmares, and she always came out of a sound sleep screaming. That’s what Martin heard. He was upstairs with the gun before we could get out of bed.”

  “And downstairs, already staggering, before he could leave the house,” I said. “He had no intention of staying there with the two of you dead. But the morphine overtook him while he was in the kitchen, trying to get out the back door.”

  Bradley was staring at Suzanne. “How could you do that?” he whispered. “I would have taken you away from him. I would have kept you safe.”

  “How could you hate me so much?” she wailed. Weeping, she stumbled back into the house.

  “Oh, dear,” said Victoria. “Such a nasty thing to discover.”

  Bradley was looking after Suzanne with an expression of utter wretchedness on his face. “God. And I still love her,” he muttered.

  I said, “Maybe you—” But he cut me off.

  “No,” he said. “She killed a man.” And he stalked around the side of the house to go pace back and forth across the front yard and frighten passersby.

  “I’ll go talk to her,” Victoria said.

  I looked at her curiously. I had discovered the truth, which was what Bradley had said Martin wanted. Did that mean Martin would be at peace? Did that mean all my ghosts would disappear? But Victoria looked the same as ever, brightly colored and almost fleshly. “You realize this might mean the end of Martin’s hold on you,” I said slowly. “You realize that, once he finds out what I’ve discovered, you might all dissipate.”

  I expected her to show a moment’s sadness, but she nodded firmly. “Good. Time for us to move on. We’d all be glad of the rest. But as long as we’re still here, I’m going to go comfort that girl.”

  I watched her go, wondering if I should join the conversation but not ready to hear Suzanne’s protestations of innocence one more time. Before I could go back inside, the neighbor from Janet’s yard waved me over.

  “Hello!” she called. “Come introduce yourself. I’m Marianne.”

  I wondered if she had just noticed me having an excited conversation with my collection of wraiths—whom she probably couldn’t see—and if that had led her to deduce that I was crazy. But as I strolled up to the tangled thicket separating our yards, I saw nothing but friendly interest on her face, which was tan and cheerful. She looked to be in her early thirties, with streaked blond hair and a trim figure. She was wearing gardening clothes at the moment, but it was easy to imagine that she spent most of her days in tailored suits. She had that sort of professional air.

  “I’m Erica,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. I’ve scarcely met any of the neighbors.”

  She gave a little sigh. “None of us gets to know our neighbors in these busy times,” she said. “And I’ve been traveling. But I heard the haunted house had found a tenant for the summer, and I’m glad to see you’re still here. Any trouble with ghosts?”

  So happily worded! So easy to answer in the negative without admitting my affinity for the dead. “No trouble,” I replied. “I love the house.”

  She rested her rake in the dirt and folded her arms on the handle. “So do I,” she said. “I inherited four properties from my aunt, and these two are my favorites.” She gestured at my house, then her own.

  Ah, so Marianne was the niece who still owned the house that had once been Suzanne’s. I supposed Janet had been renting all this time. “You must have been pretty young when the murders occurred,” I said.

  “Sixteen,” she replied. “But my aunt Janet talked about them all the time. She just couldn’t get over Suzanne’s death.”

  “Aunt Janet,” I repeated.

  Marianne nodded. “She lived here right up until the day she died. Personally, I think I’d have moved away from a place where I was so tormented by tragedy, but that was Janet for you. A little obsessive.”

  Janet had died? Janet was dead? Wait a minute, wait a minute. “I’m confused,” I said. “Who was Janet? And she used to own both these houses?”

  Marianne shook her head. “No, she owned mine. Suzanne owned yours. They were sisters. Janet inherited yours when Suzanne died, and I got everything five years ago when Janet passed away.”

  I was staring at her. “Sisters…”

  “I never knew Suzanne all that well, but Janet was strange. Jum
py. My mom said it was because her husband had beaten her up all the time and so any loud noise would scare her. He was killed in a car accident a year or two before Suzanne was murdered. Aunt Janet was never really sane after that. To be honest, it was something of a relief when she died.”

  I felt a moment’s profound dizziness as my mind recalibrated everything I knew. Martin’s chili had been poisoned by someone who had known Bradley wouldn’t eat it because of his allergies—and that Suzanne wouldn’t touch it because it contained meat. Surely a sister would know both those things. Janet had mentioned she was an ER nurse, so she could have had access to morphine even if there hadn’t been leftover pills stashed in Martin’s medicine cabinet. Janet still hated the husband who had abused her and didn’t want to see Suzanne’s life ruined in a similar way. Janet had killed Martin. Suzanne was innocent, just as she’d said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Marianne. “I’ve just remembered I need to make a phone call. So good to talk to you!” And I left her staring after me as I ran to the house.

  I started shouting as soon as I was in the kitchen. Victoria looked up in astonishment from the cookbook I had left open on the counter.

  “Erica, what in the world—”

  “It was Janet!” I called, racing past her. “She poisoned the chili!” I tripped up the stairway, where Edison was lying in wait.

  “Martin killed me,” he complained. “Just as surely as if he’d pushed me.”

  “Sorry about that,” I panted, and kept going. “Martin!” I called as I dashed toward the third bedroom. “Martin! I know what happened!”

  Suzanne was there, flung facedown on the bed, sobbing. Bradley stood over by the window, his hands balled into fists, his face filled with both fury and longing. “She didn’t do it,” I said breathlessly.

  Bradley stared at me. “What?” Suzanne hiccuped and rolled over on her side to give me a drenched but hopeful glance.

  I felt the air chill behind me, and I spun around to confront the half-formed darkness that was Martin. “You were murdered,” I said, speaking very rapidly. “But not by Suzanne. Her sister, Janet, put the drugs in your soup.”

  Suzanne sat all the way up. “Janet?”

  I nodded. “She loved you. She hated him.”

  Before anyone else could speak, Martin emitted a roar so terrifying that the house actually seemed to shake. It was suddenly zero in the room; for a moment I couldn’t see. I shut my eyes and covered my ears and spent a moment shivering with unutterable cold.

  Then the noise was gone. The room had warmed back to its usual cool temperature. I opened my eyes, and not a shadow remained.

  Bradley was sitting beside Suzanne on the bed. His arms were wrapped around her shoulders, and she was crying into his chest. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured over and over. “So sorry. I love you so very much—”

  I left them to their tearful confessions and went to look for the others. But Lizzie wasn’t in my bedroom, and Edison wasn’t on the stairs. Charlotte wasn’t in the living room, and Victoria wasn’t in the kitchen. I had the sudden conviction that, for the first time since I’d stepped inside the house, I was truly alone.

  I ran up the stairs again, but Brad and Suzanne were no longer in the third bedroom. And the place actually felt as warm as a house ought to feel on a summer day.

  I never saw any of the ghosts again, not even Janet. Now and then, just in case they were still nearby but out of my realm of vision, I would let PBS play all night long on the downstairs television. Occasionally I borrowed a children’s book from the library and read it out loud, just in case Lizzie was listening. I still left cookbooks open in the kitchen. But none of them came back to visit; the house was peaceful.

  I signed the papers that turned my husband into my ex-husband. Much more civilized than slipping him poison.

  I told Marianne I’d be interested in buying the house if she was willing to sell, and she had a price to me the next day. Well within my means, now that Steve and I had divided our property.

  But I was lonely. The house was too big for me to live in alone. I decided it was time to get a cat.

  Glamour

  Mike Doogan

  “It ain’t like being a peasant ‘n the kingdom o’ Tharp is a day at th’ Harvest Faire ina first place,” Alf said to a chorus of grunts and nods. He lowered his nose into his wooden mug of ale and drank, wiping his mouth with the back of a hand dirty enough to plant a crop on.

  “You gotcher locusts,” he said, extending a grimy finger for silence, “cher crows, cher rats, cher blight, cher root rot, cher floods ‘n frosts, cher drafty mud huts wi’ leaky roofs and smoky fireplaces, cher wife what loses interest in you-know-what th’ minnit cher done jumpin’ th’ broom handle t’gether, cher nobility droolin’ over cher daughter what’s onny thirteen, cher barmaids what whacks you if’n you pinches ‘em, cher dragons, cher trolls unner cher bridges and cher drug enforcement agents what’s lookin’ fer cher field o’ kif what you’re growin’ owny fer personal consumshun.”

  The grunts of his listeners reached a crescendo at that, then subsided. The effort of all that talking and grunting led every peasant at the table to take a long pull from his mug.

  “I had me all o’ that,” Alf said, “ ‘cept the dragons, o’course. Ain’t nobody seed a dragon in Tharp since me gaffer’s day. But all else, that was me. ‘Specially thet oily majordomo always comin’ by and saying me Brittney should go to th’ castle for ‘finishin’ school.’ I know what that no-good count be finishin’ all right. And me old woman sayin’ it’d be a good idear ‘cause we want Brittney to have the same advan, advan, ad-van-ta-ges she did. Wimmin.”

  A wave of head nodding ran around the table of ill-fitting planks.

  “But the gods mus’ think even with all o’ thet a poor peasant might have a mort o’ happiness,” Alf went on, “so las midweek, they sends imps. Cheeky little blighters. Killin’ chickens. Scarin’ cows so’s they stops givin’ milch. An t’day, when I got to the bottom o’ me mornin’ gruel, what’s there but a imp, actin’ all drowned an’ bloated. Gave me a fair start, I don’t mind sayin’.”

  Alf looked over his listeners. The usual after-sunset crowd at the Mangy Owl: Jeb Berry and his simpleton brother George, One-Eye Simmons, Three-Finger Brown, Lefty O’Doul. Peasants all, except for Cheney, who was always putting on airs because he had a government job. Of course, he never said it was shoveling horse crap up to the castle. They’d all arrived at the smoky, low-ceilinged pub just after sundown, exchanging “whotchers” and “how’s the missuses” while Vera, the barmaid, filled their mugs with ale.

  Vera was making another pass around the table, refilling mugs. Her long, raven hair was done up in a single braid and interesting parts of her anatomy peeked from the skimpy outfit that Wilf, the owner of the Mangy Owl, insisted she wear. Despite her abundant charms, not a hand reached for her as she poured the beer.

  That had all changed from a few months before. One night all the customers were pawing Vera like usual, and Wilf was confiding to his regulars that as soon as his missus left to visit her mum, Vera was going to have to come across or he’d pitch her out into the street. The next, Alf found he wasn’t interested in anything about Vera but the wooden pitcher in her hand, and from their actions neither were any of the other men in the pub. Oh, they all still agreed she was a goer, and said “huzzah, huzzah” and so forth, but they were just going through the motions in the hopes of a free mug of ale. Alf was baffled by the change, but didn’t say anything to his cronies. Who wanted to admit to a lack of manliness? But he wasn’t surprised that, when he asked Wilf if he’d done the deed, the landlord vaguely waved a hand and changed the subject.

  Now, as he watched Vera from the corner of his eye, Alf thought he saw something hanging from her neck. But, as always, when he looked directly at her, there was nothing there.

  An icy hand brushed his spine. Everyone knew magic was practiced in Tharp, but that wasn’t the sort of business a self-respecting
peasant like Alf wanted any part of. Nothing was free in life, and the cost of magic was said to be dear. What did the children’s rhyme say? “Girls, cast ye a simple spell / And pay for it with a night in Hell.”

  Besides, kitchen magic was strictly the province of women. And high magic? Even thinking about that was dangerous.

  “So these impses,” George said, “where did they come from, Alf?”

  Alf shrugged his big shoulders.

  “Same place as th’ trolls ‘n’ dragons, I reckon,” Alf said. “Probably over to Spam way. They’s odd, them Spamish.”

  Silence reigned as the peasant mulled the strange ways of the residents of the next-door kingdom of Spam. None of them had ever seen such a person, but they’d all heard stories.

  “An’ then, ‘bout th’ same time, me daughter, me sweet Brittney, up an’ vanishes,” Alf said. Breaths were taken sharply. More than one man in the village of Daughnting Underhill enjoyed running his eyes—or in Simmons’s case, eye—over the girl’s ripening figure.

  “I reckon she’s up th’ castle getting finished,” Alf said, shaking his head sadly. “Me old woman says she don’t know nothin’ ‘bout it, but I suspects.”

  More nods greeted that statement.

  “The ways o’ wimmin pass unerstandin’,” said Three-Finger Brown, who was second in status to Alf at these gatherings. He didn’t have a cost-plus contract to deliver oats to the army like the one Alf’s wife had brought from finishing school to their marriage, but nobody had healthier goats.

  Alf reflected that, for once, Three-Finger had a point. Women were always doing foolish things, like chattering at one another and trying to get their men to bathe and suchlike. And they changed from one day to the next. Like Vera. Or his own Elspeth, now that he thought about it. There was a time he couldn’t wait to have a go in their trundle bed next to the fireplace. And if she wasn’t interested, well, Alf knew his rights and didn’t scruple to enforce them with a clip on the ear. Then, not too long ago, he just lost interest. Strange. Elspeth was still as slim and saucy as the day he’d led her from her parents’ hut, but for some reason he couldn’t quite put a finger on, he no longer thought about demanding his marital rights.