Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007

by Donna Andrews

  John nodded. “Another job well done, my dear. Now, about Marchand’s and perhaps—”

  “I accept your invitation upon one condition.”

  “And that is?”

  “You will pay for your evening from the proceeds of your Carville investigation, and I will pay for mine from my proceeds.”

  John, as Sabina had known he would, bristled. “A lady paying her own way on a celebratory evening — unthinkable!”

  “You had best think about it, because those are my terms.”

  He sighed — a long exhalation — and scowled fiercely. But as she knew he would, he said, “An evening out with you, my dear, is acceptable under any terms or conditions.”

  As was an evening out with him.

  The Erstwhile Groom

  by Laura Benedict

  © 2007 by Laura Benedict

  “I’m living proof that dreams do come true,” says Laura Benedict. “I wrote fiction for almost 20 years before selling my novel Isabella Moon (releasing in September) to Ballantine Books.” The book is not, however, the author’s first major fiction sale. She debuted in our Department of First Stories in ’01 under the byline Laura Philpot Benedict.

  ❖

  Kurt follows his wife, Livia, through the kitchen, which is dim even at mid-day because of the heavy awning shading the room’s single window. She pushes open the basement door, presses the light switch, and stands aside so he can carry the bags of canned goods downstairs.

  “Yams,” he says. “Twenty-nine cents a can. You can’t beat that.”

  “Lunch is on the table,” she says. “We’re out of pickle loaf.”

  He knows how much Livia likes pickle loaf, but it won’t be on special again, he thinks, until the next week.

  “Monday,” he says from the basement. “Can it wait until Monday?”

  Livia doesn’t answer. He hears her footsteps clip across the linoleum. Always she wears shoes that he believes other women would wear for dancing, smooth leather shoes with high, chunky heels and deep vamps that hint at the cleavage between her toes. The shoes make her legs look long and elegant. He’s never liked how Livia shows off her legs; though she’s almost fifty, other men still stare at her.

  Kurt sets the grocery bags on the floor and tugs gently at the window shade that acts as a dust cover for the storage shelves on the wall. The shade is crisp and cracked in a few places now, and does not roll as smoothly as it used to. He feels along the top shelf for the grease pencil he uses to date canned goods. He will date them and arrange them on the shelves, oldest in front and newest to the back, knowing full well that Livia doesn’t appreciate his efforts. She will quickly raise the shade, reach in, and take whatever can she cares to, regardless of the date. It’s no wonder, he thinks, that she’s never noticed that there’s something not quite right about the shelves, that they aren’t as deep as they might be.

  It’s been over twenty years since Kurt last entered the windowless room hidden behind the shelves, with its rough stone walls and hard-packed dirt floor. The room had been his childhood hideaway, its floor the dusty terrain of his elaborate war games. It was a place to hide from his mother and her incessant piano playing, a place to run to when his father came home red-faced and frustrated with work.

  When they moved in, their house was one of the larger ones on the street, with a backyard that sloped gently toward the alley behind it. Inside, its many rooms were small, but rather grand, with high, decorated ceilings. But it had languished in disrepair. They might never have found the false wall if his father hadn’t had to install a new boiler in the basement. The door hidden behind the wall was so small that Kurt, still just a boy, had to lower his head to get through it.

  Kurt stood close beside his father, who held a lantern that cast flickering shadows on the walls. His chest felt tight, as though the musty room were sucking the breath from his lungs. The floor was swept clean except for an old ticking mattress in the corner; cobwebs dangled from the ceiling’s wooden beams. It looked to Kurt like a dungeon prison from an old book. When his father held the lantern close to a wall, they could see that many of the deep scratches covering it were words, the confusing lines rude maps.

  “Sklaven,” said his father. Slaves. “The neighbors will all want to come and see,” he said, with some irritation. He told Kurt and his mother to keep the room a secret.

  Livia’s lunch is frugal: a piece of rye bread smeared with cream cheese and a few olives. She never complains to Kurt, though, about the lunches he asks her to make for him: the sandwiches of Braunschweiger and boiled egg or of gelatinous head cheese accompanied by fresh potato salad made with celery and sweet pickles. He likes to eat a big meal at lunch and a smaller supper that will not weigh heavily on his stomach and cause him to lose sleep.

  Kurt’s sleep is precious. Many nights he lies for hours beside Livia in the room that used to be his mother’s, listening to her gentle, even breaths. There in the dark, his hands aching with arthritis, he tells himself that the door behind the basement shelves is more than secure, that the corpse of Danny Kelley will rest on the other side of it always, undisturbed.

  Before Kurt is able to pick up his sandwich, the kitchen door slams and his daughter, Mitzy, runs through the kitchen and into the dining room. Her nose is running and her face is splotched with red, but she doesn’t stop even to tell them why she has been crying.

  “Mitzy, what is it?” Livia gets up and follows her down the hall and upstairs.

  Kurt stares at his plate. This young man, this Brent, to whom Mitzy is engaged, has brought them nothing but grief. Twice, already, Mitzy has called off the wedding, and Kurt is hoping in his heart that this time will be the end of it.

  Mitzy is sweetly feminine, all smiles and grace. She has Livia’s lush dark hair and thin frame. Her fair skin is prone to delicate round beauty marks. Mitzy’s tender heart disturbs Kurt. Over the years, he has turned away many boys from their door, boys who were sure that Mitzy would want to see them, talk to them, because she’d let herself become too friendly and confiding. She lacks her mother’s dignity, her iron core.

  Livia was the one who helped him pick out a flower for his lapel every morning in her aunt’s florist shop, where he would stop on his way in to work. With her slightly almond-shaped eyes, trim waist, and fashionable clothes, Livia was an exotic for Kurt, so different from the zaftig German girls in the neighborhood — various Karins and Heidis and Gretchens, the ones his mother was always trying to get him to date. What did it matter to him that he was already thirty and unmarried and living with his widowed mother? What did it matter to him that the one time he asked Livia to dinner, she blushed and stammered, finally making an excuse he knew to be a lie?

  Kurt was in no hurry. He knew that, eventually, he would have Livia for his own.

  On Sundays, he began to go to the late Mass so he could sit a few rows behind Livia and her aunt. And was it wrong that he observed her every step as she walked, alone, to the high school for the Wednesday evening meetings of the Sweet Songbirds club? Once, and only once, he’d hidden himself in the doorway of McSorley’s pub until she passed by, stepping out to greet her, pretending that their meeting was an accident. From the amused sparkle in her eyes, he could tell she’d been surprised — did he dare even think, pleased?

  Friday nights were for bingo at the church hall, where Kurt would sit with his mother until the last cards were played. If he chanced to meet Livia’s eye from where she sat with her girlfriends — he was very careful, usually, not to draw attention to himself — she would give him a friendly, if diffident, wave. After bingo, he would dally outside the church, watching her walk away until his mother agitated to be taken home. Who was to know that he went out again after his mother was safely tucked in bed? The alley beside the florist shop was soaked in darkness, except for the light in a second-floor window that he believed to be Livia’s. When it went out, he could go home and sleep a little better knowing she was safe inside.

  Kurt sees the
lights of a car swing into the driveway just before nine. He knows immediately that it is the boyfriend, or fiancé, as Livia would have him called.

  “Papa?” Mitzy’s voice comes down the stairs.

  Kurt goes to answer the frantic knock at the back door.

  Livia has a satin-bound photograph, hidden, she thinks, in the cedar chest at the foot of their bed. In it, a young Livia, looking unhealthily slender in a narrow-waisted, polka-dot dress, stands close to Danny Kelley, who wears a pencil-thin moustache that rides above a small, almost feminine mouth. His right arm encircles Livia’s waist and appears to Kurt, even over the distance of years, to be pulling her to him, forcing her body against his in an intimate, frankly sexual way. There is a look of casual cruelty in his eyes.

  But what of the beautiful Livia, her eyes filled with a tenderness that causes a brief, painful swelling in Kurt’s throat each time he takes the photograph from its hiding place? Her chestnut hair gathers in soft waves across her shoulders and drops a few teasing inches down her back in the style of a sultry Hedy Lamarr. Her arm, graceful in the draped sleeve of the dress, reaches possessively (protectively, perhaps?) across the man’s chest. This is surely not the Livia who stood beside Kurt in the dimly lit Lady Chapel at St. Mark’s Catholic Church, those same fingers pressed into his own large hand as the priest led them through their vows. That Livia’s still-young mouth had acquired new lines and she stood with a stiffness that the girl in the photo would have mocked. An aura of happiness radiates from the photographed Livia, a laughing, confident kind of happiness that his Livia surely could not imagine.

  Kurt turns on the porch light, illuminating the boy’s face through the glass, and wonders that Livia can bear to see him each time he comes to the house. This boy, this Brent whom Mitzy met at a dance at the armory — but for his smooth upper lip and modern haircut — is the image of the young man with Livia in the photograph. Kurt even asked Livia once if Brent reminded her of anyone. But she just said, “No,” and went on reading her book. It bothered him that she didn’t even ask him why he’d wanted to know.

  Kurt opens the door only the width of his body. “Yes?” he says. “What is it?”

  Brent stands with his hands shoved into the back pockets of his blue jeans; he wears a bulky green letter jacket that is too hot for the weather. On its breast is the image of a halo shot through with a flaming arrow. He gives Kurt a toothy smile.

  “Hey, Mr. R.,” he says. “Is Mitzy here?”

  “Mitzy is unavailable. I don’t know the particulars.”

  Brent shakes his head. The smile is gone, replaced by a look of intense sincerity. “It’s just a misunderstanding, Mr. R. A miscommunication, you’d call it. Mitzy needs to hear what I have to say.”

  The air about the boy smells of flowers. Kurt thinks that perhaps the lilies of the valley on the other side of the porch are releasing their scent, but the smell is stronger, sharper. He realizes that the boy is wearing some kind of perfume.

  “If I could come in just for a minute,” Brent says. He lowers his voice, taking Kurt into his confidence. “See, there’s this girl, and she’s been pestering me an awful lot. She won’t leave me alone. She’s just this girl, this kid from the neighborhood.”

  “I’m sure Mitzy will call you at some point,” Kurt says. He’s not interested in the boy’s pitiful confessions. He takes a handkerchief from a rear pocket, blows his nose loudly into it, and stuffs it back into his pants.

  Out in the yard, a yellow rectangle of light shining down from Mitzy’s window blinks out. Beneath the sound of traffic humming on the road in front of the house, Kurt thinks he hears a window sliding quietly open. He wants this boy to go away so he can start making his way toward bed. If he goes to bed much past nine o’clock, he doesn’t sleep well.

  “Look,” Brent says, changing his tack. He takes a step toward Kurt. “Mitzy’s over eighteen. Right? She gets to make her own decisions. And you need to tell her that I’m here and that I want to see her.”

  When Mitzy first came home that afternoon, Kurt thought that she and the young man would have to work things out themselves. But he sees that he has made a number of wrong assumptions about the young man. Acutely aware that Brent probably outweighs him by twenty pounds and has at least an inch of height on him, Kurt steps out of the doorway and grabs him roughly by the upper arm. “It’s time for you to leave, now. You’ve got nothing to say to anyone here.”

  Brent jerks away, his lip twisted in a sneer.

  “Go on,” Kurt says. He’s worried that if he says more his voice will shake.

  Brent shouts up to the window above them. “Mitzy! Mitzy, come down and call off your old man!”

  The two of them stand frozen in the porch light, each waiting, perhaps, for Mitzy to answer or for the other to move or speak. Kurt is no longer tired — the surge of fear, or anger, whatever it was that prompted him to lay hands on the boy, has energized him and made him feel suddenly younger, more vital.

  “Mitzy!”

  Above them, the window slams shut.

  “Don’t imagine this changes anything,” the boy says to Kurt. “You watch how everything will be just fine, tomorrow.” He gives Kurt a cheerful salute and starts up the steps into the yard. He pauses and leans down to pick up a handful of smooth pebbles from around the steps. Turning back to the house, he throws the pebbles at the window so that they spatter against the glass like fat, noisy raindrops.

  Kurt watches the car back out of the driveway, its headlights bouncing clumsily as a single wheel rises up over the curb and then down again. His heart is still pounding as the car speeds down the alley, spewing gravel into the night air. He knows that Eda Hidebaugh in the house next-door is probably watching from her darkened window, but he’s angry enough that he doesn’t care.

  One Wednesday evening, Livia left her aunt’s shop, but didn’t go to the high school. As Kurt followed almost a block behind, she walked more quickly than usual, despite her high heels. She passed by McSorley’s and turned, heading toward the Irish part of town — a part of town where Kurt didn’t like to go, where there were gangs of young men and teenagers who intimidated him and made him wish he carried a gun, even a small one, in the pocket of his jacket. But Livia walked confidently. The streets were quiet, with few people sitting out on their stoops. When Livia did pass a group of boys on a corner, Kurt was too far back to hear what they said to her. He only heard a shout and a laugh from one of the boys, but Livia kept walking and they didn’t follow her. Relieved that he wasn’t going to have to reveal himself to defend her (With no weapon, what would he have done? He told himself that his fists would have been enough.), Kurt jogged across to the other side of the street for several blocks, still keeping Livia in sight.

  Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw next. Livia stopped in front of a pub he didn’t know and reached out her hand to the man there who was obviously waiting for her. Kurt hurried forward, watching as they embraced, watching as the man wrapped his arms around Livia and slid one hand down her back to rest it just at the top of the swell of her behind. (So many times Kurt had imagined putting his own hand just there. He could almost feel the linen of her dress beneath his own fingertips.) But instead of pushing the man away, Livia seemed to cling more tightly to him, kissing him harder.

  The next morning, Kurt learns from Mitzy and Livia that things have been decided. Livia calls the priest at St. Mark’s to let him know that the wedding is off, and asks Kurt to drive her to the florist and the dressmaker’s to see about settling the bills even though she knows Thursday is his library day. It looks to him as if the whole foolish affair is going to cost him a least a couple hundred dollars. But he thinks it might almost be worth it not to have that particular young man sitting at his dinner table again, eating his food and drinking his beer. He is glad that Mitzy will not have children with Brent, attractive, sneaky children whom he would have to guard against, to prevent them from stealing his small treasures, like the tiny jade turtles hi
s godfather had brought him from Japan, or doing noisy things out in the yard that the neighbors could gossip about. Kurt flushes with shame at the thought of having such grandchildren.

  Livia comes out of the florist’s wearing an irritated look. More money, he thinks. They had saved for Mitzy’s wedding, but he had hoped that it would come a few years later, after the money had gained more interest.

  “They wanted half the final bill,” Livia says, getting into the Chevrolet.

  “We’re not going to pay it,” Kurt says. “They can try to come and get it from me.”

  Livia shuts the door. “I already gave them a check,” she says.

  Kurt drives away from the florist’s in silence. Is this how things are going to be, now that he is retired? Did she think that she would be making the money decisions? If he’d had any idea, he would’ve stayed on the city payroll, no matter how good the early retirement deal had been.

  “I’ll deal with the dressmaker,” he says. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the edge of Livia’s mouth lift just slightly. Is she laughing at him? He chooses to think that, given what she’d just done, she wouldn’t dare.

  Danny Kelley was known to Kurt, and many others, as a small-time criminal who dealt in liquor and cigarettes without tax stamps, even some marijuana. Kurt was astounded that his Livia would be involved with such a man.

  The lovers met the next Wednesday, and the next. It was on a Monday morning that Kurt came into the shop to find that Livia was gone.

  Brent’s car is in the driveway when they get home. Eda Hidebaugh stands with a hose, watering the plot of struggling strawberry plants at the edge of her yard. Kurt can tell by the way she tries to wave them over that she wants to talk.