The Mystery Megapack: 25 Modern and Classic Mystery Stories

by Talley, Marcia

  Her father had enough clout to get her out on bail and enough money to get her the best defense attorney.

  The details of the autopsy were so disgraceful, Aunt Marlene had to whisper them when she told all the neighbors—and me.

  “The autopsy showed the groom had had sex just before his death, and not with the bride. At least, those weren’t her blonde hairs they found on him,” Aunt Marlene said, shivering with glee.

  “Anyone could have left blonde hair on him. He was kissed by a lot of women in the receiving line,” I said.

  “No, they were female hairs from ‘down there,’” Aunt Marlene said, each whisper a stab in Gail’s back. “And they found stains and things. He’d been with another woman at his wedding reception. No wonder Gail stabbed him. There won’t be a woman in this town who blames her.”

  “I don’t care what they found,” I said. “She didn’t do it.”

  “You’re loyal to a fault,” Aunt Marlene said.

  By the time of the trial, Gail was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. Her attorney shrewdly insisted the trial go on. Tests had proved the baby was the groom’s, and she had the sympathy of every woman on the jury—and most of the men, too. The defense had done its homework, and made sure there were several fathers with daughters. They wanted to kill Harry all over again.

  I had to testify to what I saw, thanks to Aunt Marlene’s big mouth.

  The bride swore she was innocent.

  I think if Gail had told the jury she stabbed Harry in a fit of rage, they would have understood and set her free. But she said she didn’t do it, that she walked in there and saw the knife in his chest and heard him trying to breathe. She pulled the knife out and that’s how she got blood all over herself.

  The jury didn’t like that. They didn’t mind that she killed Harry, but they hated that she lied about it. Still, they couldn’t be too mad at the poor girl. They only convicted her of manslaughter, and she got the minimum sentence. Her mother will watch the baby when it is born, although her in-laws have sued for custody. I don’t think they’ll get it, but I do think the kid will get the Humphrey millions in trust.

  And Gail was innocent, even if no one believed her.

  Because if Harry got lucky at the reception, well, so did I. No one saw me go in the storage room the second time. They were too busy watching who caught the bouquet. I went in there to tell Harry exactly what I thought of him.

  I was already unhappy when I caught him in there with that simp Ashley. I didn’t mind sharing him with his wife—as I said, I liked married men. But I hated that he had another lover, when he’d promised I would be the only one. Of course I should have known. Harry had just promised to love, honor and obey Gail, and he’d broken those vows in an hour.

  Anyway, I went back in that storage room and told him what I thought of him. And Harry said, “Can you blame me for cheating on you, Vanessa? You look like a drag queen in that dress.”

  So I picked up the wedding cake knife and stabbed him in the chest. I didn’t mean to do it, but once it happened, I couldn’t undo it. Fortunately, there was very little blood. The knife held it in. I thought he was dead, but I was wrong. Harry was just barely alive when his bride came in. She pulled the knife out, trying to save him. Of course that was what killed him. Everyone but Gail knew you’re supposed to leave the knife in when someone’s stabbed like that. When she pulled it out, Harry’s blood sprayed all over his bride. When Gail walked out of the storage room drenched in red, it looked like she’d killed him.

  None of it would have happened if she’d let me wear a different bridesmaid’s dress.

  Gail only served two years of a four-year sentence. I consider that just. I think any woman who’s ever had to wear an ugly bridesmaid dress would agree.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Elaine Viets writes two national bestselling mystery series. Her critically acclaimed Dead-End Job series is a satiric look at a serious subject—the minimum-wage world. Her character, Helen Hawthorne, works a different low-paying job each book, from telemarketer to hotel maid. Publishers Weekly called her hardcover debut “wry social commentary.” The New York Times’ Marilyn Stasio praised “Viets’s snappy critique of South Florida” in her review of Half-Price Homicide, Elaine’s ninth Dead-End Job mystery.

  Pumped for Murder, Elaine’s tenth Dead-End Job book, will be published this May.

  Elaine’s second series features St. Louis mystery shopper Josie Marcus in her sixth adventure, An Uplifting Murder. The debut, Dying in Style, tied with Stephen King on the Independent Mystery Booksellers bestseller list. Elaine won the Agatha, Anthony and Lefty Awards.

  THE MAD DETECTIVE, by John D. Swain

  CHAPTER I

  THE VACATION

  At the top of a little hill, Jed Hooper shut off the engine and brought his crazy flivver to a full stop. He turned in his seat and spoke to the two passengers, buried under a heap of luggage and parcels.

  “Yonder’s the camp,” he said. “The white one, against the clump of cedars.”

  Frank Weston and his wife gazed with tired eyes over a country well worth coming hundreds of miles to behold. Though fairly well settled, as the Maine countryside goes, it seems almost a primeval wilderness, with most of the farmhouses hidden by the green forest, and only here and there in a clearing, a glimpse of distant homes, with an occasional white spire piercing the treetops. A mile away Frenchman’s Bay glowed blue and gold in the afternoon sun, and in the offing Mt. Desert loomed like a huge purple jewel floating lightly on the breast of the Atlantic.

  “Why, there’s smoke coming from our chimney!”

  Jed Hooper looked through his windshield. “Yes, ma’am. My wife reckoned it’d seem homelike to you. She’ll have a pot of tea waiting for you, and mebbe some of her molasses cookies. Thoughtful about such things, Lizzie is.”

  He slipped in the clutch, and the car started, coasting easily down the slope, crossing a noisy little brook, swinging in from the highway over a grass-grown road which brought them through a ragged orchard to the front door of a well-preserved, story-and-a-half frame house badly in need of paint. Half of an old grindstone formed the doorstep, and as the passengers dismounted stiffly, the door opened and a fat, smiling woman wearing a gingham apron beamed on them, and began to help them unload their bundles before the slower-moving Jed had heaved himself out of the car.

  “Land sakes! That a cat you got there in that satchel with a little window in it?”

  Annie Weston laughed. “Yes, Mrs. Hooper. We thought it wouldn’t be homelike without a cat; so we bought one from the animal shop in New York.”

  Lizzie Hooper lifted the satchel and peered curiously at the alarmed creature which was faintly meowing within.

  “Well,” she decided. “It ain’t much to look at! Got no tail, for one thing. Never could abide a tailless cat. They look sort of unfinished. If it was your own, one you’d got attached to, I could understand; but why on earth you should go buy one! Up here, we’re glad to give ’em away. Why, Jed has got to drown four kittens, right now. Pretty little things they be, too.”

  “Oh, how dreadful!” Annie Weston cried. “I never could bear to do it!”

  “Well, if you had about twelve a year, you’d have to, or the country’d be overrun with wild critters. We got four, right now; and whenever the count runs higher ’n that, there’s a drowning has to be tended to.”

  The city couple entered through the wide doorway, and from its little entry passed into a pleasant, low-ceilinged room in whose far end burned a cheery, open fire. The furniture was simple but effective; little, old, low rockers, with gay chintz covers; a mellow cherry table; a horsehair sofa; a great hooked rug on the floor of wide boards, some samplers and dingy steel engravings on the walls. The table was set out with dishes, cups and saucers; and soon the Westons were devouring fresh molasses cookies, dishes of wild strawberries with cream, cups of strong tea, slices of home-baked bread thickly spread with fresh butter.

  After eating, t
he question of the cat came up. The door was shut, and the animal released, its attention called to a saucer of rich milk. It ignored it and all the inmates with equal impatience and began to circle the room, the fur along its spine raised, whiskers twitching, eager only to find a way out of the room and house.

  “That’s the way with cats in a strange place,” Jed remarked. “They won’t settle down till they’ve learned every nook and hole in the place. You got to butter their paws!”

  “You—what?” Mrs. Weston gasped. “Butter their—”

  “Yes’m. Never fails; you look and see.”

  With some difficulty Jed succeeded in capturing the frightened, bobtailed gray creature, which he held despite its scratching and wriggling, while Lizzie, with the skill of long practice, took a spoonful of butter from the dish on the table, and thoroughly rubbed it into each one of the four paws. This done, Jed set the cat down.

  Instead of running about as before, the cat looked slightly puzzled. It shook first one, then the other of its paws; seated itself, and carefully licked each one clean. The process took some time; and when done, the cat seemed for the first time to notice its saucer of milk. It sniffed daintily at it, found it good, and lapped up the very last drop, as well as another saucerful which Lizzie poured. Thereafter the city cat sat peacefully down beside the fireplace, blinked its eyes, washed its whiskers clean, and began to purr.

  “Well, I’ll be darned!” said Weston. “How come?”

  Jed chuckled. “Seems like the one thing a cat regards above all else, is to clean itself of anything that gits onto it; ’specially its feet. While it was licking off the butter, it forgot it was in a strange place; and the taste of butter made it remember it was hungry. So, having eaten in a place, why, that makes it seem like home. Same as I hope you folks do after eating ma’s molasses cakes and tea!”

  Annie Weston laughed. “We certainly do, don’t we, Frank? You see, this is really our honeymoon! Yes, when we were married all that Frank could spare was just three days. Of course, we went to Atlantic City! And every year since then, we’ve promised ourselves a real honeymoon. And this is it; we’re going to stay two months, and forget business and everything. Going to wear old clothes, and go to bed with the chickens, and rise with the sun. Why, we haven’t even subscribed for a daily paper! We’ve put New York behind us, stock-market reports, theatrical reviews, divorces, crimes and all. It’s quiet we want, and just to be ourselves and get acquainted.”

  Jed and Lizzie both nodded appreciatively.

  “Well, you’ll git all the quiet you want! Nothing ever happens here more exciting than a hen stealing her nest, or a school of mackerel reported out in the bay, or the like of that. We ain’t even had a funeral for more’n a year. Folks live long, up in these parts, even if they don’t live very fast!”

  While Jed showed Weston about the yard, and explained how to start the wooden pump if it got obstinate, and pointed out the ruinous chicken run and the bearing trees of what had once been a fine fruit orchard, his wife took Mrs. Weston all about the house, with which she fell in love at once. It was primitive to a degree the city woman had never dreamed of; no running water in the house, a wooden sink, scrubbed clean, great beds with queer contraptions of tauted ropes for springs, shelves of quaint old china and pewter, everything immaculately clean, and nothing lacking save modern plumbing and lighting. The latter consisted of old kerosene lamps, and tallow candles.

  “It’s plain,” Lizzie admitted. “But it served old Miss Jarvis more’n fifty years. She was born and died right in this house, and her father before her. This chinaware and the furniture was hers. It all belongs to a niece, who lives out to Minnesota. We have the leasing of the house. An artist had it last summer. He spattered paint some; I cleaned it off as well as I could.”

  The Hoopers rattled off in their car, cordially urging their tenants to call on them for any help needed. They could supply milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, salt pork, fresh-killed fowls, advice, and back numbers of a weekly newspaper, the Farmer’s Almanac, and the Rural Agriculturist.

  Alone, for almost the first time in five years, the Westons looked at one another, laughed happily, took hands and executed an improvised dance about their living room, kitchen, and parlor. The cat, already entirely at home, was out in the yard clumsily attempting to catch grasshoppers, an exciting game which had not, in its brief life passed in a bird-and-animal shop, been called to its attention.

  “Are you going to be contented, Frank?” his wife asked a little wistfully.

  “Am I? Why, I’ve left everything in such shape that I don’t even want to see a newspaper; and only half a dozen people have my mail address. That’s our mail box, by the way; that galvanized tin out on the gate post, with the little red tin flag sticking up in it. I’m going to loaf and grow fat, and make love to you!”

  “You may grow thin, on my cooking! It is years since I touched a frying pan; and then I had an electric range, a cookbook, and all sorts of devices to save labor. You’re going to suffer indigestion for a few days, old boy!”

  “Well, I’ll work it off splitting kindling, and digging clams, and tramping through the woods!”

  That evening they ate their first meal alone, with no servant to stand at their elbows, no cook to cater to their whims. And for the first time in long years, both were ravenously hungry. There was a cement-floored, stone-walled little cellar, with only narrow slits for ventilation, and a single door leading from the kitchen; a solid plank of oak, fastened by a hand-wrought iron staple. In the cellar were bins of clean white sand, containing vegetables. There was a keg of cider, and a swing shelf loaded with bottles and jars of jellies, pickles, preserves, relishes, fruits. A big ham swung from an iron hook; underneath stood a keg of salt pork, and a pail of salt mackerel. In the kitchen was flour, sugar, a bread and cake tin, a wood stove and a small oil one. Jed Hooper had caught and cleaned a mess of flounders for them, boiled two fat lobsters, and set a pail of clams by the sink.

  Red, with a new burn on one white arm, but radiantly happy withal, Annie flitted back and forth from kitchen stove to table. They had decided to eat in the kitchen; it was large, extending the entire width of the house, and it had a fireplace, as had nearly every room in the house. They ate until they were more than satisfied, but no indigestion resulted, even though the fried potatoes were scorched, and the coffee was too strong.

  With the setting of the sun, a chill descended; and they were glad to close the door and sit near the fireplace in the living room.

  Romeo the cat, groggy from the amount of grasshoppers he had devoured, dozed at their feet. The wood crackled pleasantly; outside all was still save for the distant hooting of an owl, and once or twice a dry, sharp bark which they supposed to be uttered by a dog, but which was really a young fox out hunting in the moonlight. Then, suddenly and startling, a whip-poor-will began its weird song very near them; stealing to the window, they could just make out its body perched on the old wooden pump.

  The cat, whose experience had been only with birds in cages, pricked up his ears and licked his chops. The song of the night warbler drowned the steady ticking of the wooden clock with its picture of a square-rigger on a very wooden sea.

  “Sounds sort of lonesome, don’t you think?” whispered Annie.

  Frank Weston laughed happily.

  “Sounds good! Haven’t heard one since I was a ten-year-old. Don’t believe I’ve ever thought of one for twenty years. They used to say it is a good sign when one of them comes so near a house. They mostly cling to the deep woods. Guess this one is serenading us, welcoming us home!”

  Tired from their long journey, and the excitement of arrival, they went early to bed. Upstairs, in a half-finished attic, were three small chambers, each with its big bed and old-fashioned bureau and washstand with bowl and pitcher. Fine linen towels, hemstitched by Jed Hooper’s wife, hung on the racks; new cakes of cheap soap were in their china dishes. Annie chose the rear room, which looked out over distant Frenchman�
��s Bay, now shimmering in moonlight, and separated from them by a heavy growth of cedars. Her husband took the front one which connected with it, the door having been removed from its hinges. The lamps were blown out. Romeo settled himself at the foot of Frank’s bed, and began a faint bedtime song. The whip-poor-will had ceased its welcome; it was intensely still now, outside. Listening closely, Annie could hear from the sea the deep respiration of the making tide as it flung itself against the rocky shore. Her thoughts drifted out on the tides of sleep.

  Suddenly, appallingly loud in the quiet night, there came to her ears the heavy drumming of hard knuckles on wood. Downstairs, the front door vibrated to the sound of a knocking that would not be denied!

  CHAPTER II

  THE WARNING

  There was something ominous in that urgent summons, heard in the night. Already the moon was sinking behind the cedar swamp; looking from his window, Frank Weston could make out only masses of shadow relieved by a pallid glimmer that revealed no details. Directly below him, and standing on the old grindstone by the front door, was a dark figure that looked too large to be a man. Who could have any business with them at such an hour, long after the countryside had retired to slumber, the oil lamps blown out in distant windows?

  His voice, despite his efforts to control it, quavered a little as he leaned out into the cool night air, and called softly: “Yes? Who is it, and what do you want?”

  The man below raised his head to the sound, his face showing as a whitish blur masked in a heavy beard and shaded by an old, floppy, black felt hat.

  “Your name Weston? Just got here from the city, ain’t ye? Well, I’m Jason Hodge—your nearest neighbor down the road a piece. Come down so’s I can talk without hollerin’. Got something important to say, and there’s no telling who may be listenin’.”