by Mark Henry
Asking Gil to help was out until dusk so the task of finding the last piece of the puzzle fell on me.
Out in the living room, Mrs. Winterford had succumbed to some medicinal slumber, leaving me wide open to search the shit out of the Dunes of Hazard with her snoring as background music. Walking as lightly as I could, I wound my way through the knickknacks and bric-a-brac to the bar that serves as the bed and breakfast’s front desk opened the top drawer and searched through the keys until I found one marked ‘master’.
The first few doors were merely guest rooms, but eventually I found the woman’s office but no sign of a typewriter anywhere. I dug the note out of my pocket and stared at the raised ‘s.’ It seemed like the key to the whole thing. And yet, I was certain the old lying bitch had done it. Plus, she was certainly guilty of pretending to be handicapped. Probably bilking the government out of food stamps or medical.
I’d eaten people for much less reason.
And, I’d even arranged for the execution. No extra charge to Mrs. Swinton. Now that’s customer service, bitch. I replaced the key and slunk across the room to wake our murderous host.
“Mrs. Winterford?” I looked down at the woman from a vantage possibly too near for her comfort.
The woman’s eyes sprang open and she spasmed atop her chair like a fish struggling for oxygen.
“Tell me all about your writing, I’ve heard good things.”
“You have?”
“Yes. You’re quite famous around here.”
“Well, I’m known for my tight.” She paused, grinning lasciviously. “Plotting.”
“I’m sure of it. You know what?” I brightened, flashing my pearly whites. “I’d like to invite you to co-headline my event at the bookstore tonight. I’m sure everyone will be fascinated by your latest mystery.”
If that didn’t distract her, nothing would.
“Oh, no question they’d be interested,” she agreed.
“Then it’s settled.”
“You’re sure, Mrs. Swinton won’t mind?”
“I’m certain. No worries. In fact, you better bring extra books, we’re going to kill tonight!”
Chapter 10
Sand Dollar Books sat squat and shabby between, on the left, a palatial espresso shop complete with gargoyles, roman-esque columns, and a matching Fiat Abarth out front and, on the right, a modern steel and frosted glass teeth whitening clinic. The store was like the disappointingly hideous child of beautiful parents, by comparison.
“Jesus,” I said, to no one in particular. “At least put a coat of paint on the place. Keep up with the Joneses.”
Even as the words flopped out, I realized their ridiculousness. Mrs. Swinton could probably barely afford the rent on her bookstore income and now she had a funeral to pay for.
A shame, of course, but hey, a shark’s got to eat, too.
I get it.
I decided right then and there to be a patron saint to my industry and make feeding determinations based on reading habits. Haven’t bought a book in the last year? Prefer to see the movie? Books are boring? Just go ahead and get on the dinner table, I’ll be with you in a moment.
Of course, the other rules of the road still applied: food had to be peripheral, on the edge of apathy. I couldn’t very well snack on a philistine who’d end up in the papers. I have scruples—shut up, I have a few—but I’m not stupid.
I pulled the access van up to the front of the store and then decided to back up, blocking the decidedly beautiful frontage of the dentist’s office. I couldn’t do anything about the coffee shop—caffeine addicts will brave burnt out meth labs if there’s an espresso machine inside. That’s a proven fact.
I glanced in the side mirror to see Abuelita pull up behind us in what should have been my slightly dented Volvo. What I saw made my wallet ache. The car was covered in graffiti, which clearly read ‘Zombie Bitch’ on the front hood. The windshield was a spider web of fractures.
“Fucking Golden Boys,” I muttered.
Wendy spun around and groaned at the sight of our ride. “Fantastic. Maybe we could get a rental?”
There was no way I was coming back to Las Felicitas to deal with a car. I shook my head. Wendy gawped.
“Do you need help getting into your chair, Mrs. Winterford?” I asked, shifting my attention away from Wendy’s horrified expression.
On her opposite side, Gil cringed. His forlorn face was pressed against the window, his body contorting away from the woman, but not far enough to outrun her groping hand rubbing up and down his thigh, her pinky giving his junk some come hither pokes.
“Gil!” I scolded. “That’s no way to treat our hostess! Especially since you didn’t cough up that massage.”
His eyes pleaded.
I clapped sharply, drawing the woman’s attention, though her claw didn’t recede. “Let go of his junk, Mrs. Winterford. We have an event.”
She withdrew her hand with a snap and a sneer.
As I suspected, the promise of talking up her books turned the lights on. Mrs. Winterford straightened, shifting upright and pointed feverishly toward a button on the dash. I poked it and the back doors opened, a reticulating arm swung the woman’s wheelchair out and around to the side of the van.
I stepped out and around to the sidewalk, leaving Wendy and Gil to wrangle the murderous author. “I’ll check in with Mrs. Swinton to see if we’re all set to go.” I peered in the shop window. Eight or nine people were smattered amongst a few rows of chairs lined up before a podium and a table of my books and a few of Mrs. Winterford’s. “They’re already waiting, so make it snappy.”
Inside, I clutched the bookseller’s hand and nodded knowingly. “Almost.”
She grinned mischievously. “We’ve got you set up over here but feel free to relax in our green room.”
I was led to a chair outside the men’s bathroom. “Cozy. Maybe I’ll find a date back here.”
The woman shrugged. “Anything’s possible. Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee?”
“Sure.” I couldn’t drink it, the after effects would be explosive, but at the very least I could smell and sometimes that was as good as the real thing. For a while there, after seeing a documentary about eating disorders, I’d taken to chewing human food and spitting it into Ziploc bags without swallowing anything. I found it ultimately unsatisfying but had told Wendy about it and I suspect she does it to this day. If only she’d had a spittoon for her Twix bars this weekend, she might have been more active in the investigation and less so on the can.
Gil pushed Mrs. Winterford up next to me and I gave her the kind of smile I reserved for colleagues I didn’t want to eat. “I counted nine.”
“At least six of them are my regular fans, darling.” She patted my hand. “But don’t worry, I’m sure of few more people have heard of you.”
When Mrs. Swinton called us to the event space, a crowd of at least a dozen had joined the ones I’d seen. Most notable among the faces was Thad Chumley’s handsome mug. He talked breezily with a few other men and across the crowd to two women who’d taken spots in the front row, toothsome girls in wigs.
The bookseller stood at the podium, gripping the edges as though she’d fall over from the weight of the grief and made our introductions. “Thank you so much for supporting small business and independent booksellers here in Las Felicitas. We struggle on, but with your help it’s a little easier. Oh, who am I kidding?”
She burst into tears and fled to the room. A woman near the back of the crowd followed quickly behind her, presumably for the purposes of head nodding and timely flinching, the usual expressions of empathy employed by the peripherally acquainted.
“Well, that’s one less for us,” Mrs. Winterford groaned.
I took a step toward the podium but before I could speak the author behind me chimed in. “As you know, I’m Mrs. Marissa Winterford, author of such classics as The Billionaire Playboy’s Secret Thalidomide Baby and The Sheik’s Harem of Trafficked Nymphomaniacs.”
My mouth dropped open. Not at the titles, though I’d not seen any of those sitting out at the house, but at the smattering of applause. It was as though she were a well-respected author and these books stood alongside the greats of literature.
I glanced at the covers, jagged cut outs of faces on roughly hand drawn bodies were thankfully obscured by big blocky lettering, none nearly as heavily-weighted as the woman’s name—look in the dictionary under delusional and you’d find this: Marissa Winterford, Bestselling Author. The only way Mrs. Winterford could make such a claim would be with the following codicil: Marissa Winterford, Bestselling Author at the Las Felicitas Alcoholics Anonymous meeting—and even then, only on the day the drunks were making amends. To call any of them books was an overstatement, none could have been longer than a hundred pages, less considering the thickness of each page. I couldn’t even imagine the discount printer that put this shit together, it looked like construction paper.
Alternately, when I introduced myself, there was no applause. Not even Wendy and Gil could be bothered to pretend they’d read my books. Though, to his credit, Thad did smile and flick his tongue between the vee of he index and middle fingers when he thought no one was looking.
I attract only the classiest of gentlemen.
Sighing, I stepped back and watched in horror as Mrs. Winterford began an impromptu reading from her latest literary atrocity.
“Heath Sinclair knew a thing or two about a woman’s privates. One, that they were soft and comfortable and two that they were a precious gift from God’s generosity.”
Oh my god. Who gives a single shit?
Soft and comfortable? Heath sounded like an asshole. What woman wanted her cooch described like the inside of a Dearfoam slipper? They sell that shit at Walmart, for fuck’s sake. I shielded my ears from further literary abuse and signaled to Gil that is was most definitely time to commit a murder.
He nodded, teeth glinting with vicious glee and slipped into the back of the store.
Across the room, Wendy leaned with her elbows on the counter, twirling her hair while chatting animatedly with Mrs. Swinton and an oddly engaged Abuelita. I tried to get their attention, alternating waving and smiling and shrugging for the cloud but to no avail.
As usual, if I wanted anything done, I would need to do it myself. I crept up behind the murderess’s chair and disconnected the exposed battery cables, rendering it about as useful for transportation as an old lady-soaked La-Z-Boy.
“‘It’s so big,’ Delores Del Rey cried. ‘It can’t possibly fit inside my pink paradise.’“
“And with that,” I leapt up and snatched the sheaf of paper out of Mrs. Winterford’s feeble shaking hands. “The reading portion of our evening comes to a close!”
The crowd applauded gratefully, except for a pair of old biddies in the front row as wrinkled as the entire dried fruit aisle. They scowled dramatically and crossed their arms with the kind of contempt only the truly fanatic can muster. Probably hoping the author would refill their empty fantasy banks with sleazy talk of mysterious muslin-sheathed trouser snakes and voluminous canopied beds with downy comforters, a cup of tea steaming on the nightstand or some shit like that.
Hardcore Winterford fans probably had cozy snatches. Roomy, cavernous things. The kind of snootch a romance hero’s dick could just crawl inside with no worries of any pesky friction to make it uncomfortably stiff—courtesy of the Dearfoam factory, of course ($1.97 on Rollback)—soft and comfortable.
I shook off thoughts of old lady poon—where the hell had the thought even come from—and took my place behind the podium. “I think it’s just about time for questions.”
Glaring past the few hands that had sprouted above the audience toward a completely oblivious Wendy, I shouted the question again.
Wendy stiffened and turned my way, straightening her outfit as though prepping for an audition and clearing her throat loudly.
“Yes,” I said. “You in the back. You have a question?”
“Since the two of you are both mystery writers, kind of. I mean barely, but you know—”
“Get on with it!”
“What do you make of the horrible murder of Miss Sandflea?”
The audience grumbled noisily. There were nods, a few snorts from a snoring—and notably hairless—gentleman in the back and the Dearfoam bitches in the front raised their eyebrows with the precision of a synchronized swim team.
“I have my suspicions,” I started.
“Well,” Mrs. Winterford butted in. “The poor girl must have gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. The entire thing smacks of drugs. That pesky problem sweeping through our young people like a bad case of the clap.”
Mrs. Swinton growled audibly.
“But suppose, there was something else at play.”
“Such as?” Mrs. Winterford glared at me, her blue eye shadow crinkling and flaking onto her spidery eyelashes.
“Perhaps—and this is merely supposition—the poor girl’s death served a purpose. A means to an end. What if the murder provided a certain someone or pair of someone’s with a modicum of sustenance. For the killer himself, food, and for his accomplice, something even more disturbing, a premise.”
Gasps, maybe. Actually, I think they were only in my head.
Mrs. Winterford’s eyes widened. “A premise? Are you suggesting that a writer was involved in this malfeasance? Why most of us are of the utmost moral standing in our communities. Paragons of civility.”
I nearly choked on the response. “Of course,” I agreed. “I myself am a well known philanthropist and advocate for child safety.”
And yes, I did say that with a straight face. What?
I didn’t eat that poor girl in the park. In fact, I gave the dumbass some decent advice. Reserve your judgments. I’m about to turn this shit around.
Gil appeared from the GLBT shelves and nodded that he was ready.
“What I’m suggesting, Mrs. Winterford, is that a certain writer living in Las Felicitas arranged for a little late night feeding for a local wereshark.”
“A what?” she coughed.
“Wereshark. Don’t be coy. We found this note.” I snapped the piece of paper from my pocket and read it aloud. “The odd floating letter ‘s’ would have been easily reproduced on your typewriter, if I could have found it! Poor girl went to meet her secret admirer and got doused with a bucket of chum from the roof.”
Mrs. Winterford sighed. “How, might I ask, would I traverse the stairs to the roof of the Felicity?”
I searched for an answer. I’d suspected it was because she could actually walk, but barring throwing her out of the chair and risking possible faux-pas-age, I merely shrugged and winked at Gil to do the thing. He came rushing forward, a maniacal grin replacing his permanently-affixed dour expression, in his hand a sloshing bucket of gore. Mrs. Winterford craned her neck back as far as she could, her expression pained and frightened.
I almost felt a stitch of empathy spark in my cold dead heart.
Almost.
Gil shouted, “Dinnertime!” And heaved the bucket. The contents splattered the woman with more chum than would have ever been necessary, even I shouted, “Excessive!”
Her white robe soaked up the mess quick, turning into a puffy pink sponge, fish heads, tails and entrails clinging precariously from the swelling knit. Mrs. Winterford screamed—but not nearly as hard as I would have had my outfit been ruined, of course, I’d have never been caught undead in anything as hideous as a terry cloth muumuu.
“I’ll tell you how!” I shouted. “Because you can walk, hell run, and you’re about to prove it for me!”
The sound of her cries was nothing compared to the sheer aggressive howls of five of the men and one woman who stood bolt upright in the audience. They stood screaming toward the acoustical tile ceiling while folding chairs flew in every direction, ricocheting off the walls, ceiling and old lady heads. The Dearfoam Girls hit the deck as mouths started stretching, skin tightening and t
aking on a terribly unattractive thickness as they toughened into the gray hide of a pod of great whites—or whatever the word is.
Gaggle? Herd? Who fucking makes up that shit?
Regardless, the room flooded with a salty sea air as the weresharks yakked up huge balls of wet seaweed like cats with intestinal funk, splattering the already chum-stained bookstore carpet and the old ladies—who probably had never been used to a liberal splashing of bodily fluids.
Mrs. Swinton, Wendy and Abuelita scaled the front counter as the heady brew sloshed about, while Gil and I made for the back of the store and climbed atop a bookcase to get a better vantage.
Mrs. Winterford shrieked horribly and I felt a stitch of regret that I quickly passed off as hunger pangs—because come on, regret is for the living. She yanked at her wheelchair’s joystick to no avail and finally, craning her body toward the approaching school shouted, “Eat shit, fish fuckers!”
My eyes wide with anticipation. I couldn’t believe she was waiting so long to dart from the chair to safety, I almost shouted, “Run, bitch! Run!”
But she didn’t move.
When the sharks descended on her, I realized my error.
The feeding frenzy began with a particularly smooth and familiar shark, Thad who dispatched her head in a single snap and then peeled off to let the others have at the rest of her. Blood splattered the ceiling, floors, chairs and much to Mrs. Swinton’s horror, the books on the shelves.
“Jesus Christ!” she screamed, bounding from the check stand as the sharks shuffled out, humbled under the barrage of her beratement. “You assholes couldn’t have done this outside where I could hose the place down?”
I climbed from my perch and tiptoed through the gore. “Mrs. Swinton. If we’d done that, the police would suspect you. Only a lunatic would set up a destructive event inside her own store. Look at this mess!”
Mrs. Swinton’s lip curled into a hideous snarl, as though I hadn’t done her a favor. “I might have to kill you.”