Killer Mousse

by Melinda Wells

  I picked her up and nestled her against my chest, taking some comfort in the warmth of her fur and the feel of her little heartbeat. Stroking her, I said softly, “Tuffy’s going to be all right. He’ll come home tomorrow.”

  I carried her with me into the kitchen and gently set her down on the floor next to the sink. I refilled Tuffy’s water bowl, because she liked to drink out of it, and put it down beside her. She took a few laps, then curled up to watch me work.

  It was four o’clock. In two hours or so, the children would start coming around in their costumes, with parents, most of which would be costumed, too. As soon as I showered and put on my Halloween cat outfit—but only the black leotard top with black slacks and the cat ears on my head—I’d have to continue making the batches of fudge that Eileen was going to give to our mystery backer on Tuesday morning.

  I was glad I’d already made the eight little individual white ramekins of crème brûlée I’d promised Liddy for her dinner party. She was entertaining three of Bill’s fraternity brothers and their wives tonight.

  When Liddy arrived just after five, my right arm and shoulder were stiff again from stirring multiple batches of fudge. I had decided not to tell her about Tuffy being in the hospital because I knew it would upset her. I’d tell her when he was home again.

  “The custard is ready,” I said as I led her into the kitchen. “All I have to do is make the hard sugar crust on top.”

  “You look so cute in those cat ears,” she said. “But you forgot your face.” She took her eyebrow pencil from her purse and quickly replicated the dots and whiskers she’d drawn on me Thursday evening.

  Finished, she stepped back, viewed her handiwork, and uttered a self-satisfied, “Excellent.”

  “Thanks again.”

  Liddy looked at the counter where the pumpkin she’d carved with the elephant sat. “You keeping that other elephant out of the room?” she asked.

  “I’m managing.” But I wasn’t going to tell her how. Not just yet.

  “Good girl.”

  I got my cook’s torch from the counter and removed the eight individual dishes of crème brûlée out of the refrigerator. Liddy sprinkled a coating of sugar on top of the custards as I switched on the torch and flamed the sugar until each of the custards had a hard crust. Together, we packed them in the box in which she’d carry them home.

  “Enjoy your party,” I said. “Tell me all about it tomorrow.”

  “I will. One of those wives was a girl Bill liked in college. I hope she’s gained a ton of weight.”

  Chuckling, I hurried ahead to open the front door for her—and Liddy almost collided with Faye Bond. The young girl’s eyes were so red, it was clear she’d been crying.

  “Oh!” Faye said to me. “I’m sorry. You’re busy. I’ll go.”

  “No, it’s all right. Come in.”

  Liddy said “Hello, Faye. Happy Halloween.” With a cheerful grin, she hurried to her car with the pots of crème brûlée.

  Closing the door behind Liddy, I asked, “Are you all right, Faye? Has something happened?”

  “Halloween.” Her voice was little more than a whisper; I had to lean forward to hear her. “This is the first Halloween in eight years I haven’t spent with Lulu.”

  “Come into the kitchen with me. I’m making fudge.”

  “Can I help?”

  “You certainly can. I could use an extra arm for stirring.”

  I offered Faye a piece of the fudge that I’d made earlier. She bit into it, and her reaction was a gratifying, “Wow, yummy.” While she ate a second piece, she perched on the kitchen stool and watched me take out a new pot and put together the ingredients for another batch of fudge.

  “Tell me about your Halloweens with Lulu,” I said.

  “When I was little, she used to take me trick or treating. Mother said Halloween was low class, but she let us go. I guess she thought we were low class. Anyway, when I got too old to go around in a costume, Lulu let me help her give out the stuff to the little kids who came to her house. She called me her Halloween elf…. I really loved Lulu.”

  Faye took to stirring fudge with enthusiasm. I rewarded her by putting the crown from an old Halloween princess costume of Eileen’s on her head.

  Both of our fudge-stirring arms were getting tired by the time I realized it was after six. I poured the last of our new batches into the pans in which they would harden.

  Faye followed me into the living room. We looked out the front window and saw the first wave coming down the street: little ghosts and witches and pirates and superheroes, accompanied by men and women dressed as a nurse, vampires, and a baseball player. There was also an Incredible Hulk among the chaperones, and a ninja garbed all in black.

  Faye began to whimper. “I can’t do this.”

  I showed her to Eileen’s bedroom. “Lie down,” I said. “I’ll check on you later.”

  Trick or treating lasted for two hours. By then, Faye was in a deep sleep. I covered her with a light blanket and turned off the bedside lamp. I thought it might be a good thing for her if she slept there all night.

  It was quiet inside my house, and quiet outside. The adorable children in their costumes and their accompanying parents were gone. I pictured moms and dads in their homes, washing painted little faces or dividing the contents of treat bags into portions for the kids to enjoy over the coming days.

  By nine o’clock I was exhausted, from the trauma of nearly losing Tuffy and from making all those batches of fudge. I was looking forward to falling into bed…but then a faint uneasiness began to creep into my senses.

  I held my breath and listened intently. The house was quiet. Too quiet…I told myself that I was imagining things because Tuffy wasn’t here. Even when he was asleep, I had still felt his presence in the house. No, this silence was different somehow.

  Had I locked the back door when I left the house in such a frenzy to get Tuffy to the doctor?

  Yes, I’d locked it.

  I’m sure I locked it.

  Just to reassure myself, I went through the laundry room to the back door.

  Yes, it was locked. I shook my head, silently chiding myself for letting my imagination conjure a goblin that didn’t exist.

  A line from one of Shakespeare’s plays popped into my head. I’d used it when I taught English, the bit from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “Or in the night, imagining some fear, how easy is a bush supposed a bear.”

  Shakespeare’s characters didn’t have telephones to use to call their best friends, but I did. I’d ask Liddy if Bill’s college girlfriend had, indeed, put on weight.

  I reached for the wall receiver and put it too my ear.

  No dial tone. The phone was dead.

  Suddenly Emma let out a bloodcurdling yowl behind me.

  I whirled around—just in time to see a masked figure swing a hatchet at my head!

  41

  Lunging to the side, I twisted away just in time for the blow to miss my head, but I stumbled against the kitchen stool and went down. Before I could get up, he was on me.

  We rolled across the floor, with me kicking and scratching at any part of him I could touch. He grunted and cursed at me, but his voice was muffled by the mask that covered his face; I couldn’t recognize his voice.

  Whoever he was, he was in what I realized was a ninja costume, and he was a lot stronger than I and crazed enough to kill me. On the floor, I was so vulnerable that he would kill me.

  He had a hatchet, and superior strength.

  I needed a weapon.

  Desperation, and a powerful will to live, pumped me full of adrenaline. It gave me the strength to yank out of his grasp, grab the edge of the counter, and pull myself up.

  Knowing this might be my only chance, I lunged for the object at the back of the counter. My ribs smashed painfully against the edge as I stretched to reach my baker’s torch.

  I managed to grab it just as he jumped me from behind, wrenched me away from the counter, and shoved me hard
against the kitchen table. The hand that held the little torch was at my side as I hung on to the plastic pistol grip.

  My attacker’s arm went around my throat; he was squeezing so tight I could barely breathe.

  I gave him a powerful shot in the side with my left elbow. It sent shock waves of pain streaking up my arm and into my shoulder. Probably it hurt me more than it hurt him, but it forced him to loosen his grip just enough for me to coil around.

  I clicked the switch on the torch, brought my right hand up, and gave him a blast of fire on the side of his face. It burned through the ninja mask, into the flesh of his cheek.

  Screaming, he dropped his grip on me, slapped at his face, and yanked the smoldering fabric over his head, revealing the seared flesh on his cheek—and his face.

  Stan Evans!

  Without taking a precious second to process the thought, I gave him another blast of fire on his chest. He screamed again and flailed out at me. His wild blows missed.

  I dropped the torch, grabbed the kitchen stool, and swung it at him, catching him smack on his collarbone. I heard a crack as he reeled backward. He lost his balance. As he fell, the back of his head caught the corner of the table, and he collapsed on the floor, unconscious.

  Stan Evans lay there, not moving. But I didn’t know how long he’d be out.

  I yanked open a kitchen drawer and grabbed one of my chef’s knives and the roll of duct tape I’d used to repair an old electric cord until I was able to replace it.

  Stan was lying on his face, blood from the blow to his head seeping through his tangle of red hair. Quickly, I pulled both of his arms behind him and, using the tape, bound his wrists together tightly. Then I rolled him over onto his back. The burn on his face was red and ugly. The spot on his chest where I’d given him the second blast of fire was red, too. When he regained consciousness, those burns would be painful. After what I’d had to do to save myself, I knew that I’d never be able to use that torch again for cooking.

  I cut more tape off the roll and bound his ankles together. It was time to call John.

  My telephone was dead; Stan must have cut the line outside.

  Cell phone. It was on the counter next to the stove, where I’d put it this afternoon when I came home from Dr. Marks’s hospital.

  Bless whoever developed the cell phone.

  I heard footsteps in the hall and looked up to see Faye Bond standing in the kitchen doorway.

  She was holding Mack’s baseball bat in both hands, and she looked ready to swing it—at me.

  42

  I said, “You can put the bat down, Faye. There’s nothing to worry about now. Everything’s under control.”

  Faye didn’t put the bat down. She was staring at me, but there was such a strange look in her eyes that I wasn’t sure she was actually seeing me.

  On the floor, Stan groaned. His eyes blinked open. “Oh, God, I hurt.”

  The sound of his voice seemed to bring Faye back to the present. Her eyes focused on Stan. Still holding the bat, she demanded of him, “What happened?”

  “I need a doctor.” He began to whimper.

  “He tried to kill me.” I brought the cell phone up and pressed one key.

  “Put that down,” Faye snapped.

  “I’m calling—”

  She moved a few feet closer to me, near enough to knock my head off if she swung the bat. “Put that phone down. Now.”

  I did, placing it on the counter beside me.

  “Hands where I can see them,” she said.

  I brought my hands around to the front and let them hang at my sides.

  Stan was groaning louder. “Please, it hurts so much!”

  “Do something for him,” Faye said.

  “I have burn ointment in the bathroom—”

  “Stay where you are.” Inclining her head toward the refrigerator, she said, “Ice. That’s good for burns. Put some ice on his face.”

  Carefully stepping around Stan, I took several paper towels from the roll next to the sink. Crossing to the refrigerator, I pressed the lever on the icemaker function and used the towels to catch the handful of cubes that came tumbling out.

  Like the ice cubes falling into my hand, suddenly the disconnected pieces of the murder puzzle that I’d seen out of context were falling into place. I began to make out a coherent picture.

  I knelt beside Stan and pressed the wrapped ice cubes against his cheek. The cold gave him a little bit of relief.

  “You threw poisoned meat over the fence to kill my dog, didn’t you? You wanted to get him out of the way so you could get into the house tonight.”

  He didn’t reply, but I knew I was right.

  “Let me call the police, Faye. Stan murdered your mother.”

  She wasn’t surprised. Almost casually, Faye said, “We were in love. Mother wouldn’t have let us be together. She’d have said Stan wasn’t ‘suitable,’ so we had to get rid of her. She deserved to die anyway because I know she killed my father.”

  Stan’s eyes snapped wide open. “Faye, shut up!”

  “Why?” Referring to me, Faye said, “She can’t tell anybody. She’s going to die, too.” Faye’s calm tone was even more chilling than her words.

  I had to keep her talking. That one digit I’d pressed on the keypad was a number on speed dial. If the call got through, and if what was being said in this kitchen could be heard…

  A big “if.” I couldn’t count on it. My mind was swirling with questions and glimpses of answers.

  Mimi, Lulu, me…Why me, then not me, but now me again? What were they trying to hide? No, wait—maybe it was Stan who was trying to hide something. Maybe the two of them weren’t entirely equal partners.

  “Cut him free.” Faye waved the bat at me. “Now. If you don’t…”

  “All right,” I said, “but I need my knife.”

  “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not going to let you get your hands on a knife. Unwrap the tape.”

  That would buy me a little time. I needed it because I was about to make a guess. Pretending to tug at the tape holding Stan’s feet, I was watching Stan’s face as I told Faye, “I’m surprised you’d want to be with this man, after he’d been your mother’s lover.”

  Faye gasped in shock because the expression on Stan’s face was as good as a signed confession. I should have guessed about that relationship sooner. Lulu had almost told me when she said she would have named Mimi’s mystery lover, except that it would hurt someone. I couldn’t imagine whose feelings she would care about more than Faye’s.

  Faye was staring at Stan, her eyes full of horror and disgust. “No…no, you couldn’t have….” Her voice was little more than a strangled whisper.

  Pressing my luck, I said to Faye, “So you didn’t know about Stan and your mother? Lulu knew, but she wanted to protect you so she kept quiet. Stan killed her because he was afraid she’d slip and tell you.”

  I watched Faye’s eyes darken with fury. All her attention was on Stan.

  “You killed Lulu? You told me Della did it! You said that’s why we had to come here tonight and kill her!”

  “I didn’t kill Lulu,” I told Faye. “Now you know who did.”

  “No, no, she’s lying!” But Stan’s face betrayed him.

  Keeping up the pressure to divide these two, I said, “With your mother dead, you’re rich, Faye. Your potential as an heiress—that’s why Stan went after you when you came home from college. He’d been your mother’s lover, but that couldn’t have been much fun.” I stood up as I spoke and slowly backed toward the counter. “You were young, and with Mimi dead, you’d have all that money. Stan couldn’t let you find out about his past with the mother you hated, so he killed Lulu. Then he thought Lulu might have told me, that night when we were at your house. He chased me all over Brentwood in a stolen studio car—he had access to all of them—but I got away. After he murdered Lulu, he convinced you that I had to be killed because I’d done it. But that’s not true, Faye, and in your heart you know
it.”

  I kept my eyes on Faye as I asked Stan, “Why did you pick tonight to kill me? Was it because you saw Faye with Gilmer York? Did you blame me for putting them together? You had to know she came with me because you were in the security office when Angie let us in. Gil York is very good-looking. He’s on television. You were afraid that a young girl like Faye might fall for him, and then where would you be? You would have murdered Mimi and Lulu so you could marry Faye for her money, but with another man finding Faye attractive, she might realize she had more choices than just you. You probably saw the possibility that the big-money prize you killed for could slip away.”

  “It was Faye’s idea to kill Mimi,” Stan cried. “She figured out how to do it—she ground up peanuts and put ’em in a little bag, and she used some pudding to show me how to mix them in so Mimi wouldn’t suspect anything. All I did was what she told me to do!”

  “You used your keys to sneak into the studio; you cut the cord on the refrigerator,” Faye snapped.

  I saw the look of insane hatred in Faye’s eyes. Stan saw it, too.

  Faye’s mind seemed to be focused on a single thought. “You killed Lulu—even though you knew how much I loved her.”

  He whined. “That old woman was going to keep us from being together. But we can still have everything we planned, baby. It’s not too late!”

  “Yes, it is,” Faye said softly.

  Desperate, cowering against the wall, Stan looked at me and cried, “Hit her, baby! We’ll get out of here and go someplace and be together like we planned.”

  Faye was standing over Stan now, concentrating on him, as though there was no one else in the room except that whimpering, begging man on the floor.

  Slowly, I reached my right hand out along the counter, until I touched…

  Faye raised the bat high over her head. With a blood-chilling wail she was about to crash the weapon down onto his skull, but—