Hubbard nodded. “Sounds good. I found fresh pumpkin juice on the attic steps. What say we visit the scene of the crime?”
During the trooping up to the third floor Kate recalled some Shocksville gossip about Hubbard’s mother. After five boys, people said, old Mrs. Hubbard had really wanted number six to be a ghoul to follow in her husband’s footsteps on the graveyard shift at the cemetery. To help things along, she’d given baby Doug beef tea instead of mother’s milk and meaty bones when he was teething. Then one day she went to the cupboard to get her poor Doug a bone. But the cupboard was bare. (Since then, whenever townie talk turned to youth, money, wedded bliss, or other things that seemed to vanish into thin air, they always added, “like old Mrs. Hubbard’s bones.”)
Another thing. Kate had noticed Hubbard hadn’t eaten any meatloaf at dinner, just pushed it around on his plate before burying it under a second helping of mashed potatoes.
Suppose even before he knew how to walk the baby Doug had chosen the vegetarian way, crawled to that cupboard, and hid the bones he so detested. Kate’s great-aunt Wichita always held that Shocksville things came with a warp in them. Did that go for vegetarianism, too? Had Hubbard learned the trick of changing himself into a vampire fruit bat to raid local sap buckets, orchards, and the very fruit bowls people used to brighten their dining rooms?
Maybe Hubbard wasn’t the killer. But Kate was sure she had in her pocket proof he was the Phantom Sapsucker.
Hubbard yelped on the stairs. “Careful with that scythe, sir,” he urged the Grimmer.
In the third-floor hallway Hubbard announced they were going to reenact the crime and began assigning parts. Kate was sure this kind of nonsense would get them nowhere. She cleared her throat. When Hubbard turned, she held up the apple as if to match its tooth marks to his canines.
Hubbard recognized the apple and turned pea-soup green. “Yes, I’m the Phantom Sapsucker,” he admitted in a trembling voice. “So I stole some fruit and sugar-maple sap. Hey, I slept in your attic. So put me in jail and throw away the key. But Mrs. O’Lantern, I swear I didn’t kill your husband, or Sam Spook either.”
Kate knew right then and there that poor Doug Hubbard wasn’t the murderer. “I believe you,” she said.
The Grimmer agreed. “Your vampire fruit bats are never bloodthirsty.”
“Boy, that’s a relief!” said Anna. “It’s a bummer when the cop’s the murderer.”
“But if it wasn’t Hubbard...” asked Tree, “...then who?” said Owl.
Kate turned to Strawfoot. “That was some story you came up with about the murder rampage, Spud.”
“An educated guess, dear lady.”
“You even explained the pumpkin juice on the attic stairs before Constable Hubbard mentioned it,” said Kate. “Maybe you knew how it was done because you did it.”
“I’m neither bird nor bat,” said Strawfoot. “How could I lock the door from the inside and fly out the transom?”
“My great-aunt Wichita used to say people don’t look behind a door unless they’ve stood there themselves,” replied Kate. “I don’t look behind doors. But I bet if I’d looked behind Jack’s I’d have found you staring out at me.”
Hubbard stepped forward.
“Stop right there, Constable,” said Strawfoot. “Arrest me and I’ll tell the world you are the Phantom Sapsucker and let rural justice take its hideous course.”
With his lower lip atremble, Hubbard threw back his shoulders. “I know my duty,” he said. “Professor Hayford Strawfoot, I arrest you for the murder of Jack O’Lantern and Sam Spook.”
Tapping Strawfoot with the flat of his scythe, the Grimmer added, “Spud, baby, let’s talk moral turpitude here.”
“Wow,” said Anna.
“You get charged with murder and, convicted or not, you’ll lose your academic tenure,” said the Grimmer. “I’ll see to that.” And he could. In addition to his day job, the Grimmer was a trustee at Bogeyman A&M.
Strawfoot’s jaw stuffing sagged downward. “But how will I finish my scientific work?” he protested.
“Here’s the deal,” said the Grimmer. “Plead guilty to the murders. We’ll call your piddling leap for gain and glory a crime of passion. You won’t hang. The judges always consult with me on death penalties. I can promise you life at the county prison farm. You can continue your scarecrowery studies there.”
Strawfoot brightened. “You mean I’d be outstanding in my field again?” He struck a limp but noble pose. “I accept your offer, sir. Perhaps I can atone for my crimes by making the world a better, a crow-free place.”
“One more thing, everybody,” said the Grimmer, “We’ve all got to swear not to reveal the Phantom Sapsucker’s identity.”
“Who...” said Owl, “...wouldn’t?” added Tree.
Anna put her arm in Hubbard’s. “A wife can’t be made to testify against her husband,” she said.
“Of course I’ll never tell,” said Kate. “As for Strawfoot, my Jack wasn’t vindictive. He’d have voted for life on the prison farm, too.”
“My lips are sealed,” Strawfoot assured everyone.
“Okay,” said the Grimmer. “Confession’s good for the soul. So let’s hear it.” He gestured to give the professor the floor.
Strawfoot took a deep breath and began. “Well, after he gave Spook permission to search the attic I heard Jack say he wanted Spook’s help to prove I was juggling the numbers in the scarecrow banding.
“Just as I feared, he’d caught on to what I was doing. The banded birds Jack scared away always came back. Mine never did. Why? Because I paid them to take a little vacation at the shore. I even paid Mr. Big, the Crow Magnum himself, to put out a contract on Jack.
“But if Jack was starting to blab, I’d have to do the job myself. And fast. And get Spook, too. Back in my room I watched through a crack in the door until Spook started up the attic stairs. Then I came up behind him and put a real dent in his fedora with my trusty putter and pushed him headfirst out the window.
“I hid when Miss Rexia clattered up the stairs. After she left I knocked on Jack’s door. I told him I had fresh data for our scarecrow study. He invited me in, never dreaming how far I’d go to win the Cowbell Prize.
“As he sat busily gathering up the papers he’d been showing Spook I stepped around behind him and crushed his head open. I dumped every paper on his desk into the fire, a real messy job because now they were covered with his pumpkin juice. Then I used his key to lock the door so I could make a thorough search for anything else incriminating. Hearing Kate in the hall, I flattened myself against the wall next to the door in case she had a key. I stayed there behind the door until she left. Then I ran to my room.”
Strawfoot held out his wrists for Hubbard’s handcuffs. “Well, let’s get started,” he said. “My scientific work can’t wait.”
Kate lay in bed listening to the distant music as Shocksville’s Halloween Parade stepped off. Listening was better than sleep, which, since that damned aluminum-siding salesman, always brought the O’Lanterns the same terrifying dream.
They would be standing together in the doorway on a dark Outside night watching an endless procession of children move along the street and up the walks to the houses and down again. Each child carried her husband’s head with an inside light to help it find the way. (Jack had told her how ancient kings made drinking cups from the skulls of their enemies.)
The youngest children came first, costumed as little angels, ballerinas, killer bees, and ladybugs. When they reached the door where the O’Lanterns stood they all said, “Triggertreed” and offered Jack’s head for them to drop candy in. The older children followed, cheerleaders, ninja warriors, Spider-Men in several sizes like nesting dolls, lady vampires, zombies, and, finally, coffins and tombstones with legs.
Kate wasn’t afraid of the children. It was the guardian creatures hovering all around them, always just beyond the light, who made her tremble. They frightened Jack, too. He said they whispered that they
carried destruction in their fingertips. They told Kate they knew the O’Lanterns were not, as the children believed, neighbors dressed up for the occasion. She could tell those ominous dark shapes hated Shocksville even more than Shocksville feared them. She did not know why.
Kate stared up into the darkness, trying to picture the Grimmer and Anna Rexia leading the parade, trying to fight off sleep. Much as she wanted to see the procession of children all carrying her Jack’s bright smiling head, she dreaded facing that terrible dream alone.
No Bones About It
by Marc R. Soto[1]
© 2007 by Marc R. Soto; translation © 2007 by Steven Porter
Marc R. Soto was born in Cantabria, in northern Spain, and currently works as a software programmer in Madrid. He uses his spare time to write short stories, and is the winner of several literary awards, including a prize for young talent sponsored by Spain’s largest publisher. One collection of his stories is already in print in Spain, and another is scheduled for release later this year. His work has never before appeared in the U.S.
❖
Irene had one of those insipid and vaguely mouselike faces you immediately associate with religion teachers and old maids who work in libraries: eyes small and dark, slightly watery, as if they were always about to laugh or cry; lips that pursed outwards from her pointed chin when she smiled; hair, fine and straight, cut in a classic bob; teeth, small and even, with no trace of tobacco or coffee. She didn’t have a spectacular figure, nor did she dress in a provocative manner. Everything about her was straight, sober, and calm, like the cloister of a Cistercian monastery.
And in spite of that (or maybe precisely because of it), I fell in love as soon as I saw her in front of me in the queue at Carrefour’s checkout number 4 in El Alisal. I remember the number because when I looked at the sign I realised that was exactly the number of months that had passed since, in an uncharacteristic fit of bravery, I chucked Raquel out. We’d been together for almost seven months, three and a half of which had been total hell. She was so damned insecure! Behind every look that someone gave her, there was criticism; behind every gesture, a lie; behind every silence at the dinner table, an infidelity. With her, it was bound to be stormy. At the end we were falling out on a daily basis, so one day I told her I loved her but we each had to follow our own destinies. It was the most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life, and never had I felt more pride or guilt about anything.
Compared to Raquel, the woman who preceded me in the supermarket queue seemed a nun just out of the convent. She was dressed in a brown skirt that fell a few centimetres below the knee, flat shoes, and a beige jacket over which her hair flowed, revealing the smooth curve of her neck once in a while. There wasn’t a great deal in her basket: a lettuce, two tomatoes, and half a dozen apples. It wasn’t necessary to look at her ring finger to work out that she was single.
The conveyor belt carried her shopping into the hands of the checkout assistant. Irene (back then, of course, I didn’t know her name) paid with a brand-new twenty-euro note, and carrying the bag, walked out with short nervous steps. I remained there, resigned to watching how she moved away while the checkout girl scanned the bar code of my new razor blades and said to me in a professional voice, “Four sixty, sir.” I paid, thanked her; she answered, “And thank you,” and got on with her own thing.
When I received my change I saw that Irene, oblivious to the stream of people who were coming and going through the mall, had stopped in front of the window of a shoe shop. I wanted to savour her proximity once more, so I decided to pass next to her before leaving. However, just when I was behind her, she turned around, ran into me, and our bags flew into the air.
“Oh, goodness me,” she exclaimed, blushing. “Sorry. How clumsy I am!”
I smiled while I helped her pick up the apples, which had scattered all around us.
“It was my fault.”
“No, it was me.”
And suddenly we burst out laughing: a man and a woman in their thirties laughing like teenagers in front of the window of a shoe shop in a mall. I know that it’s difficult to believe, but sometimes things happen like that, as if it were written somewhere, in one of those Norma Seller romantic novels.
Anyway, the thing is, we sat down in a cafe, introduced ourselves, and exchanged telephone numbers. We had a long conversation. She kept tucking a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear while fixing her sparkling little eyes on mine. I reeled off the worst jokes in my repertoire one after the other, and she laughed at each and every one of them. An hour and a half later we said goodbye with two kisses on the cheek that left me keen on a third, and promised to phone each other.
On my way to the car, the fresh air of the parking lot made me think again. I didn’t need anybody, thank you very much. After leaving Raquel I had also stopped serving drinks in 7 SINS to concentrate on preparing for the Santander Council entrance exams, as well as on the novel I had been dreaming of since I was seventeen. This was the time when my Casanova lifestyle was to take a U-turn; the last thing I needed was to get embroiled in a relationship. What had occurred in that shopping mall was beautiful and sweet, but superficial, the type of event that tends to get boring when repeated, like a song by Bryan Adams.
With these ideas in mind, I was about to erase Irene’s number from the address book of the mobile when, suddenly, I caught myself writing her a text. No sooner had I sent it than the phone vibrated in my hand and the words “You have 1 message” shone on the screen. My heart thumped in my chest. Our messages had crossed in midair. I opened it, answered, she answered me, and we called each other and laughed like two idiots without really knowing what to say, until we finally agreed to see each other the next day.
During the following months we ate lunch together every day, had dinner almost always, and occasionally made love, slowly and without showing off. She gave night classes in a high school and I didn’t have any schedule, so we used to spend the mornings and the evenings together, walking through the city.
There were aspects of her that I didn’t know about, of course, as well as parts of my life that I tried to avoid. In particular, I never mentioned Raquel or the entrance exams that I was beginning to suspect I would never get through, and she just mentioned Paco, her late husband, in passing until the dinner that I will talk about soon. Irene used to chat about her childhood in Quintanilla del Colmenar, a little village near Palencia that I supposed was made up of a cluster of small adobe houses around a little square with a fountain in the centre, in which the water would certainly freeze in winter. Whereas I spoke to her about the books I had read recently and about those that I was thinking of writing with her by my side. Thinking about it, both are excellent ways for two people to get to know each other.
Sure there were details about Irene that were a little shocking to me, but no one reaches thirty-something without acquiring some quirks. For example, it was strange the way that she tilted her head, as if she was trying to listen to a distant melody that only she could hear, or the way that she sometimes whispered, “What did you say?” when I had been silent. On the whole, though, I took those quirks of hers for little eccentricities, and never gave them a second thought.
Anyway, the months passed and we were still together. The matter seemed serious, so one day I stopped in front of the window of a jeweler and thought, Why not? I went in and bought her an engagement ring. With the ring in my pocket, I called her on the mobile and told her to make herself pretty, that I was taking her out to dinner. And I think with that I gave myself away, because when I went to pick her up, she came out of the high school with an impressive black dress adorned with a golden brooch in the shape of a fish.
Nervous as a schoolboy, I parked the car in the city center and took her to a restaurant in calle Rochí. The waiter showed us to our table and left us there, lulled by the sound of the piano, smiling while we toyed with the bread.
After a few minutes, the waiter came to take our order: I chose pepper sirl
oin steak, and I think she decided on salted bass; as a starter, we shared a salad. We ate the first course barely looking at each other. I had thought about leaving the reason for the dinner until dessert, but when the waiter took away the salad bowl and cleared the table for the main course I felt I couldn’t resist any longer, so I put my hand in my trouser pocket where the little box with the ring was. I decided to ask her to marry me at that very moment.
“Wait,” Irene stopped me, her voice trembling. I looked up and saw she was pale. The brooch shone coldly on her chest. “There are... there are a few things you have to know before... well, before whatever it is.”
The waiter arrived then with my sirloin steak and her bass. The moment had passed. The magic had disappeared, as if it had been swept away by an icy gust of wind. I took my hand out of my pocket.
“What kind of things?”
Irene shrugged.
“Things, in general. About my husband, mainly. I want you to know that...” Irene hesitated “...that he’ll always be with me. I will never forget him, I mean.”
I nodded while taking a mouthful of steak. I thought I understood what it meant to be widowed so young.
“But there are other things you don’t know either.”
“That doesn’t matter, dear,” I responded. “We have lots of time ahead of us for—”
“There are some things you might not like.”
A shiver ran down my spine. I had never seen her so serious. Her eyes (I think I already mentioned that they always sparkled, as if she was on the verge of laughter) were completely dry. I’m not making it up. They were dry like those of the fish glittering on her chest. I stretched my arm across the table and took her hand. She didn’t draw it back, but neither did she turn her hand to take mine, nor did she squeeze my fingers.
“Look, Irene,” I said, gulping, “I don’t think there’s anything about you that could upset me.”
“You don’t know how Paco died, for example, or where I studied teaching, or—”
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 130, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 793 & 794, September/October 2007 Page 20