Smith's Monthly #11

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  She was exceptional, seemed to have many secrets, and yet laughed easily. She was from out east, she said, and was only visiting the beach for a short time.

  He was on business in Seattle, and had never even been to this beach resort town or old hotel before, but he was growing to like it by the moment.

  He flat couldn’t believe she had agreed to go with him tonight from the bar. His friends back in Chicago would say she was out of his class and too old for him, and after his money and more than likely they would be right. But at the moment he didn’t care.

  She leaned against a section of the brass that decorated the old Lost Cove Hotel’s main lobby. As he watched, her gaze drifted around the plush lobby, drinking in the lushness of the turn-of-the-century setting. Her mouth was slightly open, her eyes shining. He could tell that she liked what she saw.

  He liked what he saw as well, staring at her.

  “They say that every room has a view of the beach,” he said.

  “And I suppose you’ve had girls in all of them,” she said, laughing, knowing that he had never been here before.

  “Of course not,” he said with mock seriousness. “The top floor is the honeymoon suite.”

  She tried to tickle him, but the door to the old elevator slid back with a clank and he ducked inside. She ran her hands along the marbled mirrors and polished brass of the interior as she followed.

  “This is really something.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” he said, staring at her wonderful body and smiling face and long blonde hair.

  He pushed the first floor button on the brass control panel and then leaned back against the side wall, staring at her. “Beautiful.”

  “They say this takes forever to just go one floor.”

  She moved across the small space and into his arms as the door slid closed. “So we might as well make the best of it.”

  He laughed as the lift jerked upward and locked them together.

  SECOND FLOOR

  FAINT VOICES OVERHEAD wake him.

  Jagger Swayne tries to yell, but the gag chokes off all but a low moaning sound.

  He tries to kick, but his legs are tied as tightly as his hands.

  Rope winds across his chest and over and under his shoulders, keeping him so tight against the metal bar that he cannot slide down into a sitting position. Another rope cuts into the skin around his neck and hangs down in front of him like a long necktie.

  That rope ends in a large pile at his feet.

  A loud jolt echoes in the small room.

  Movement.

  He tips his head back tight against the rope.

  The ceiling is moving slowly upward. Light cuts bright gashes across the dark from cracks in the opposite wall. What were streaks of shadow suddenly become greasy black cables.

  He is under an elevator.

  The bar pressed into his back vibrates. It is the rail the elevator moves on.

  In front of him, a thick rope hangs down the center of the shaft. It is tied to the bottom of the elevator and now slowly uncoils from the pile at his feet like a slow-moving snake.

  The other end of that snake is his necktie-rope.

  He frantically kicks and struggles against his bonds as the elevator slowly moves upward. The slight whisper of the rope uncoiling covers his muffled screams.

  Finally, a loud thump echoes down the shaft as the old lift engine on the roof shuts down. The elevator stops at the second floor.

  He tries to take a deep breath against the gag to calm his adrenalin-pumped heart.

  Footsteps sound above.

  Then faint laughter.

  Susan will pay for this.

  Four Months Earlier…

  “You really like this old hotel, don’t you?” Susan asked as she pushed the up button of the old elevator. The door eased open slowly as if the hotel was yawning.

  Jagger set the suitcases down against the back of the elevator and leaned against the brass and mirrored wall. “It feels like home to me.” He shrugged. “There’s just something here.”

  He didn’t want to say that what was special was her. And he loved meeting her here.

  “Ever think you’d like to spend the rest of your life here?” she asked. “Never go back to Chicago?”

  Again, he shrugged, staring at her. “If possible, I probably would. I don’t know why. I just like it.”

  She pushed the button for the second floor.

  The door slid closed and the elevator bumped slowly into motion. “Maybe it’s this old elevator,” she said, and then kissed him.

  As the elevator plodded, he came up for air. “That has a lot to do with it.”

  She laughed, and they kissed for the rest of the ride.

  THIRD FLOOR

  MORE VOICES AND FOOTSTEPS.

  Sweat stings his left eye. He blinks the sweat back.

  The elevator rises.

  The rope snakes off the pile.

  The elevator passes the second floor. He doesn’t know how much rope is in the pile. He fights against the bonds that hold him tight against the rail. He doesn’t know if he is loosening the ropes or not. He cannot feel his fingers.

  A loud thud.

  The rope stops.

  He stops fighting, shakes the sweat from his forehead and looks up. The elevator is at the third floor.

  The old hotel only has six floors. There didn’t seem to be enough rope left in the pile for three more floors. How often did they rent out the top floor honeymoon suite? Maybe he will get loose or someone will find him before then.

  How much time did he have left?

  An hour?

  A day?

  The elevator clicks and starts down, blocking out more and more of the light as it comes.

  This had been their honeymoon night.

  But how can she do this?

  Putting him here seems even beyond her.

  What had he done?

  He had hoped to be a good husband.

  She didn’t give him a chance.

  He glances up.

  The elevator descends on him like the sky falling in a nightmarish dream. He tries to duck, but the ropes will not let him. The elevator rattles to a stop a foot over his head.

  Damn Susan.

  She will never get away with this.

  Never.

  He hears the door slide open. Footsteps shake the cage above him.

  He calls out against the gag and tries to shake his body to make noise. The ropes cut deeper into his flesh.

  The door closes.

  Again, silence fills the tiny concrete darkness and lets the smell of the mold and the damp crawl back over his face.

  Three Months Earlier…

  “What do you really like about me?” Jagger asked as they waited arm in arm for the elevator to get to their third floor suite in the old ornate hotel. “My money or my smile?”

  “Your money, of course,” Susan said, and then giggled in her little-girl giggle. “But you kiss real nice, too.”

  “What happens when I get old and have dentures? What will you do then? You can’t kiss my money.”

  She leaned against him as the elevator bumped past the second floor. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling at him. “I’ll find some part of you to kiss.”

  She always could say exactly the right thing.

  FOURTH FLOOR

  The elevator stops and he stops screaming into his gag.

  He closes his eyes and tries to swallow the thick taste of fear in his mouth. He doesn’t dare throw up.

  He would drown.

  He takes slow measured breaths, then tips his head as far back as the noose will allow. Above him, the light comes into the shaft from the cracks around three doors. The rope sways in the center of the shaft like a pendulum marking the last moments of his life.

  He stares up the nightmarish length and tries to think.

  Why had Susan done this?

  She had been rich in her own right. She didn’t need his money. Or at least he tho
ught she didn’t need it. Even though a friend had warned him, he hadn’t signed a prenuptial. If he disappeared, she would have all his money.

  And none of his friends even knew he came out here. And Susan had always insisted on paying for the room.

  She clearly has planned this for as long as she has known him.

  But how can she expect to get away with this?

  His body will be found.

  He studies the ground around his feet. It’s dirt. And has clearly been dug up a few times in the past.

  Are there others under that dirt?

  Is that where other husbands are buried?

  Other lovers? How many are down there?

  He pushes that thought away.

  How did she get him down here?

  Did she have help?

  Of course she did. More than likely she has a real lover as sick as she is.

  A partner.

  The man with the sly smile and dark eyes behind the front counter of the hotel desk.

  Of course.

  She always demanded they meet at this hotel, always.

  The elevator bangs against the track as it starts down. He feels it through his arms and his back.

  The ache in his jaw is intense.

  He tries twisting his head back and forth to loosen the gag. His skin burns against the rope. Blood drips into his collar and runs down on his shoulder.

  At his feet, the pile of rope grows.

  One Month Earlier…

  “You sure you want to be Mrs. Jagger Swayne?” he asked Susan as he set the suitcases down against the back of the elevator. He could not believe that in a moment of passion last time he had proposed to her and she had accepted.

  She smiled and rubbed against him like a cat against a leg. “It would feel really nice.”

  “You know,” he said, as he punched the fourth floor number. “The sixth floor honeymoon suite is the only floor in this hotel we haven’t stayed on.”

  “Good,” she said. “On our wedding night, we’ll break it in right.”

  The door slid closed.

  And he liked the sound of that.

  FIFTH FLOOR

  THE ELEVATOR STARTS up and he comes alive.

  He measures time with the rope going up and down.

  Up and down.

  His remaining life is measured by the soft whispers of the snake coiling and uncoiling at his feet.

  Stretching up, then back.

  Up.

  Down.

  Up.

  Down.

  Up.

  He screams through his gag.

  She has everything planned. She has pictures of him walking along the rock cliffs above the beach, she has pictures of him taking out a fishing boat.

  He will vanish and no one will know what happened to him.

  And she will take his money.

  One Week Earlier…

  “Did you hear something?” Jagger asked, breaking away from Susan’s embrace as the elevator started up.

  “Just my mind thinking how much I love you and how much I can’t wait for next week.”

  “I had this feeling,” he said. “Cold. Really cold. And a muffled scream.” He tilted his head, trying to listen over the noise of the old lift.

  “Suddenly getting afraid of marriage?” Susan asked, using her lower-lip pout.

  “No, of course not. I must have just imagined whatever it was. You know how I am when I get excited.” He winked at her.

  She giggled.

  SIXTH FLOOR

  FOOTSTEPS ABOVE AND he knows.

  This is it.

  This is the time.

  It has been almost two days.

  Maybe Susan had figured wrong. He watches calmly as the elevator pulls the rope past the second floor and keeps going.

  He can almost hear her voice above him.

  This is the one and there is not enough rope.

  He spits Susan’s name against the gag. He hopes she chokes on his money.

  No one stops the elevator.

  No one will.

  He did this to himself. He hadn’t been able to see the real Susan, all he had been interested in was the sex.

  It seemed she had money. He never figured out where she got the money from. Now he knew.

  He hadn’t paid attention to all the signs, the rush to get married, the desire to always come to this old hotel, to not meet his family and friends until later, to surprise them later, she had said.

  They would be surprised when he vanished without a trace and so did all his money.

  He closes his eyes and waits.

  At his feet, the rope slowly uncoils and measures him with a soft brushing sound.

  Above Him…

  “We should open the champagne while we’re still in the elevator,” Susan said to her new husband, Benson Stevens. “When we get to the room, I have other things in mind.”

  She rubbed against him, more turned on and excited than he had seen her before.

  They had dated for about six months in Portland up until he asked her to marry him. She had said she needed some time to think about it and had vanished back to Seattle for a number of months, calling him to tell him she still loved him, but she couldn’t decide.

  Last night she had called and said if he wanted to marry her, they needed to do it tomorrow before she got cold feet. The wedding had been quick and easy in Reno, then they had flown back on his private jet to what she called “Their hotel,” for the honeymoon.

  He loved the old hotel. They had visited it often. The place always seemed to turn Susan on even more than usual.

  Benson picked up the bottle from where she had set it under the control panel with its lit number six. “Always thinking,” he said.

  “I try,” she said, rubbing against him.

  He had the outside wrapping and the wire off the bottle by the time they passed the fifth floor. He planned to pop the cork just as they reached the top.

  Two feet short, the elevator slowed.

  Then it paused, as if it didn’t want to go all the way.

  He could hear the elevator engine straining.

  Straining.

  Until Finally…

  The elevator jerks upward.

  The newlyweds bump together.

  The cork pops off the bottle with a much louder sound than he had expected.

  Benson holds the bottle up while the champagne bubbles out and drips on the carpet leaving a dark, round stain.

  Susan damn near climbs all over him, kissing him with more passion than he could ever imagine a woman having.

  The door to the sixth floor slides open, exposing the huge honeymoon suite with its plush red carpet, red hearts on the walls, and huge tub next to a stone fireplace. A massive four-poster bed dominates the center of the room.

  He pushes the hold button and pours the champagne.

  First her glass, then his.

  “A toast to us,” he says.

  “And marriage,” she says, giving him that smile that he both loved and that scared him just a little.

  Their glasses click lightly together.

  He doesn’t notice she doesn’t drink a bit of the champagne as she lures him into the big room before the drug takes effect.

  Pilgrim Hugh solved some odd cases before, but an old, smelly couch sitting in the middle of a beautiful lawn seems to have full-blown strange written all over it.

  With his friend and beautiful assistant, Carrie, he must figure out why the couch ended up there and what the woman living in the perfect home hid (besides a bad facelift and a heart of stone).

  A very cold case on a very hot day.

  THE CASE OF THE INTRUSIVE FURNITURE

  A Pilgrim Hugh Incident

  ONE

  PILGRIM HUGH HADN’T seen a piece of furniture so ugly since the night his first wife had attended an auction in a barn and mistaken chicken droppings for a French designer signature on a chaise lounge.

  Just like that chaise lounge, the standard Am
erican couch in front of him on the perfectly mowed, perfectly green lawn could not have been given away, let alone sold. The once tan cloth had faded to a pale, dirty white and one of the three cushions had a very large dark spot on it that looked to be the remains of a cola stain from a distant time in the past. Even the stain had faded.

  And he hoped it was cola. Safer to just think it was and move on.

  The couch looked long, like a full adult could stretch out and not touch either end, but damned if he was going to test that. What had started as a decorative wood trim on both arms and across the front of the couch was now scarred and dirty and the cloth on both arms had worn through to the threads.

  The entire thing smelled musty and of long storage. He had spent many hours through the years, especially while in college and law school, on couches he was sure looked and smelled far worse. Only difference was those couches were in dark rooms, not sitting in bright sunshine in the middle of a freshly mowed suburban lawn.

  He nodded to the poor cop named Dennis, a young kid with freckles on his nose, who had been unlucky enough to answer this call. Dennis stood in the shade of a nearby small poplar tree as Pilgrim walked around the couch, studying it, but finding nothing more than an old couch.

  It was the kind of couch you see sitting beside a road with a “free” sign on it and no one takes it for a month and the rain ends up soaking it and the city finally has to haul it away and try to find the owners who dumped it to pay the costs.

  Over the last few years as a freelance private detective and lawyer, Pilgrim had gotten some strange calls, but this call on a rogue couch had to rank right up there on the strange meter.