by Nic Saint
He wiped his brow, which at this point was liberally covered with sweat, took a deep breath, and planted his fists in the small of his back as he took a little breather.
He wasn’t built for strenuous physical activity. And especially not when the sun was burning down on him and temperatures were soaring. Once, in his younger years, as a beat cop just starting out, walking every corner of his town meant nothing to him. He walked them for fun and pleasure. Now, having just turned thirty, and after several years of dividing his time between filling out paperwork and driving to crime scenes, he was out of shape.
I should never have taken that call, thought Virgil now. A string bean of a man, with a battering ram of a chin, he wasn’t exactly a model of physical beauty, but what he lacked in outward appeal he made up for in diligence. So when the call had come in that morning, he’d put down his donut—freshly baked at Bell’s Bakery—and had listened intently to the voice of distress alerting him of something untoward going down on the other side of town.
“I need you to come down here, Virgil, and I need you to come now,” the woman’s voice had said with an urgency that had the hairs at the back of his neck pay attention.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” he’d asked, picking up a pencil and getting ready to jot down a few vital thoughts on what sounded like it might very well be a crime in progress.
“Robinson Street sixty-nine. Come alone and make sure you’re not followed.”
“I’m not—”
“Horse’s head, Virgil. Horse’s head, remember?”
He’d gulped and almost dropped the phone. “Horse’s… head?” he’d repeated, a little hoarsely. “Is this… Miss Ko—”
“No names! You never know who’s listening. Come alone—and whatever you do, don’t mention this conversation to anyone. No one can know. Oh, and ditch the car.”
“Ditch the—”
“Do I really have to say everything twice, Virgil? My God, you haven’t changed, have you? Yes, ditch the car. Cars can be tracked—you should know. You’re a cop. Come on foot and limber up your muscles. I’ve got a job for you and it involves physical exertion.”
“Physical—”
“Just get here!” And she’d hung up, leaving him to stare at his phone in abject confusion.
“What’s going on?” his colleague asked. Officer Louise Rhythm had recently been promoted to detective, and now occupied the desk directly across from his.
Virgil looked up. “I, um… I need to…” He’d abruptly gotten up.
“Virgil?” asked Louise, giving him one of her trademark ‘has he just lost his frickin’ mind?’ looks. Her cornrows were perfectly coiffed, with some pink braided in today.
“I have to go,” said Virgil, staring at Louise as if she’d just sprouted a second nose.
“Go where?” she asked emphatically, as if talking to a toddler.
“Um… out. On a case.”
“I’m your partner, Virgil. Don’t you think you should enlighten me about this case of yours? That way we can go together? As a team? Since that’s what we are? A team?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking hard, which was always a strain. “It’s private,” he said finally in a moment of snap illumination. “Um, like, a private case.”
“A private case.” She shook her head. “You’re going down to Bell’s Bakery again, aren’t you? To get yourself some more of those delicious deep-fried goodies.”
He pointed at her, relief flooding through him. “Yes! That’s it! Goodies!”
“Bring me five, will you? Pink glaze and sprinkles. Oh, and some crullers.”
He started to back away slowly. He wasn’t used to lying to Louise. In fact he’d never lied to his partner in his life—or any of his colleagues—so this was all new. And weird.
“Virgil!” Louise called after him.
He froze. “Yes?”
She cocked her head. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He gulped, eyes widening. This was it. Just like when Felicity Bell had discovered he’d stolen her Twizzlers in fifth grade. Ice touched his spine and his stomach did backflips.
She sighed audibly, then cocked her index finger at him. “Your gun and badge?”
“Oh, right!” Virgil said. He retraced his steps, reached into his drawer and retrieved the items under discussion, then quickly hurried off again, before Louise could stop him.
The moment his back was turned, he could hear her say, “One of these days he’s going to forget to take his head.”
He’d walked two miles, his shirt drenched and his feet aching, when he remembered the caller’s words: make sure you’re not being followed. So he looked left, he looked right, and he looked behind him. Apart from a child talking to herself while checking something on her phone, there was no one around. So he continued walking, at this point feeling as if he were training for a 24-hour challenge, and he wasn’t even wearing his comfortable shoes.
Deanna Kohl. How about that? It had been years since he’d seen her last. Too many years to count. Last he heard she’d moved away to one of those fancy places in upstate New York. Places where a simple family home could set you back millions. Or was it billions?
He glanced around at the neighborhood he now found himself in. Grimey Hill had really gone downhill in recent years. Many of these older homes stood empty now, their owners having moved away. Weeds infested front yards, grass peeked through the cracks in the pavement, potholes littered the asphalt, and many of the houses were dilapidated.
He knew the area well. It was one of those eyesores that give a town council headaches. Most of the properties had been snapped up by a conglomerate of developers, with only a few homeowners stubbornly holding out. The neighborhood would be razed to make room for a housing tract. Virgil had even considered buying a home for himself here.
He still lived with his mom and from time to time was overcome with a sudden yearning for independence. His mom wouldn’t be happy. She liked having a live-in son who did the odd chores around the house and kept burglars and salespeople at bay.
He arrived at the house in question. Yep. This was the place all right.
He took a deep breath, straightened his tie, and pushed through the wrought-iron gate, now rusted through. It clattered to the ground with a dull clunk. Virgil gulped. Bad sign.
He approached the front door, stepping over an ornamental stone frog that had stumbled off its perch, and pressed his finger to the bell. It didn’t produce the merry tinkling one likes to hear in the suburbs. Instead it rasped like a bottle fly with smoker’s cough. Inside, he could hear footsteps approach, and he arranged his features into the appropriate expression of professionalism and seriousness one likes to see in a cop making a house call.
The door creaked open and a woman appeared. There was a smudge of blood on her cheek and her eyes were a little wild, but she still looked as stunningly beautiful as ever.
“Oh, Virgil,” she said, throwing her arms around him. “I thought you’d never show.”
Chapter Two
A black beetle walked across Alice Whitehouse’s face. She could tell it was a beetle from the tiny little beetle feet tickling her cheek. Instantly awake, she threw back the covers with a mighty scream and kept on screaming even as she thrashed about, trying to remove the horrible bug from her face.
Immediately her housemates flocked to: Felicity, rushing in from the bedroom next door, along with Rick. Who didn’t flock to was her bedmate, and when she looked over, she saw that he wasn’t even there!
“What’s going on?!” cried Fee.
“Yeah, what’s with all the noise?” asked Rick, rubbing his stubbled cheek with a look of annoyance.
“There was something crawling on my face!” Alice cried, searching around frantically.
“What?” Fee squeaked. Like Alice, she didn’t enjoy creepy crawlies invading her private space, especially when she was sleeping. “What was it? A spider? A mouse? A RAT?!”
“I think it was a black
beetle,” said Alice, now checking the comforter, which had fluttered to the floor. Fee picked up her pillow and started slapping it against the wall.
“You were probably dreaming,” said Rick, ever the skeptic. Rick was a reporter. Being a skeptic came with the territory.
“I got him!” suddenly screamed Fee. “Kill him, Rick! Kill him!”
Rick turned to look, as did Alice. In plain view, right in the middle of Alice’s Alice in Wonderland carpet, sat a black beetle of minute size. Still, it looked pretty horrible to Alice.
“No! Don’t kill it!” she said even as Rick started to remove his slipper. “My carpet,” she explained. “It’s going to leave a stain. Besides... It’s not right to kill the poor creature. He can’t help it if he wandered into the wrong bedroom and onto the wrong face.”
Or the right one if her act of benevolence was to be taken into consideration.
“Why don’t you scoop him up in a little jar and put him outside, Rick?”
“If I put him outside he will simply come back in and then tomorrow night he’ll be on my face,” said Rick. “Or yours,” he said, gesturing with his head to his girlfriend.
Fee shook her head violently, her mass of red curls dangling. “I don’t want him on my face. I can’t have weird bugs on my face, Rick—do something!”
“He’s not a weird bug,” said Rick. “He’s just a little beetle. Nothing weird about it.”
“He’s not little—he’s huge!” said Fee.
“He’s not huge. I’ve seen bigger beetles.”
“He’s horrible! Get rid of him—humanely,” she added for Alice’s sake.
“All right, all right. I’ll put him in the backyard. He might like it so much he won’t return to the scene of his most heinous crime of crawling all over Alice’s face.”
Alice shivered, but managed to say, “Thank you, Rick. You’re the best.” Speaking of the best, she wondered where her boyfriend was. “Where is Rock?” she now asked.
“Rock?” asked Fee with a frown. “Who’s Rock?”
“You mean Reece,” said Rick, searching around for a receptacle with which he could carry out his act of mercy.
Alice squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Um...” She vividly recalled her dream—as vividly as if it was real. Her boyfriend Reece Hudson, the hunky movie star, had fallen madly in love with Angelina Jolie and had dumped Alice. Not a tragedy, for she’d met an equally hunky male, a cop this time, working for her dad, and had happily dated him while solving crime in Happy Bays as the head of the Happy Bays Neighborhood Watch.
“Alice?” asked Fee. “Are you all right, honey?”
“It’s the beetle,” said Rick. “It gave her a big scare.”
“I’m fine,” said Alice. Or was she? That dream had seemed so real…
She became aware of water running in the bathroom, then being turned off.
A loud singing voice now intruded on the homey scene in the bedroom.
“Shake it off—shake it off,” the baritone sang slightly out of tune.
The three people present turned to the door when the singing grew louder. And then Reece strode in, a towel casually slung around his waist, water droplets clinging to his manly chest. He smiled broadly. “Hey, you guys. Got a little party going on in here, huh?”
A lifting sensation caught Alice by surprise. She actually teared up a little.
“Oh, Reece,” she said.
Reece came over and wiped away a tear. “Hey, hey,” he said. “What’s the matter? Whatever it is, don’t you worry about a thing. Reece is here to make it all better.”
“I dreamed we broke up,” she said, a slight lump in her throat.
“Broke up? Never.”
“Yeah, we broke up when you fell in love with Angelina Jolie and then I got involved with a local cop.”
“You got involved with Virgil?”
“No, his name wasn’t Virgil. It was Rock… something.” The dream was fading fast.
“Never heard of him,” said Reece. He turned to Fee. “Who is this Rock dude?”
“No idea,” said Fee with a shrug.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Alice with a smile, placing her hands on Reece’s chest. “I’m so glad you’re back.”
“Back? I was never gone,” said Reece. “And as far as Angelina Jolie is concerned, she can’t hold a candle to you—my precious ladybug.”
She smiled through her tears. “Ladybug. Now there’s a beetle I like.”
Rick cleared his throat. “So do you want me to catch your black beetle or not?”
Reece cocked an eyebrow at the beetle. It must have been the sheer power of the actor’s personality, for the offending little bug suddenly spread its wings, took flight, and zoomed straight out of the window!
Reece grinned and spread his arms. “Hot potato!”
Chapter Three
Deanna looked as beautiful as Virgil remembered. She still had that gorgeous face with those high cheekbones, perfect bone structure, full lips, large eyes and perfectly coiffed blond hair. When he stepped into the house, following her into the living room, his heart skipped a beat—or maybe even two or three beats—and it was as if he was transported back to the moment he’d met her for the first time, as a cadet at police academy where she’d been his instructor.
Even then she’d been fully aware of her fatal allure and had done little to mitigate the impact of her shapeliness on her hormonal pupils. Virgil had been but one of many admirers, and he’d never even been aware that she’d been aware of him until that auspicious night in the swamp. The recruits called it the hellhole, because of the millions of mosquitoes that seemed to labor under the misapprehension that they were in charge, and that the cadets bused in for their nocturnal training were simply food items on the menu.
The recruits had been induced to crawl through the undergrowth in an exercise aimed at teaching subterfuge, camouflage and the skill of sneaking up on a suspect unseen and unheard. Virgil had quickly been both seen and heard, and by Deanna Kohl herself no less. He’d seen her first—or that’s what he’d thought at the time—and had lain perfectly still. Finally, after a tense few minutes, Deanna had crouched down next to him.
“Scattering. I saw you five minutes ago. What the hell are you waiting for?”
“I, um, I thought I’d, um, stick around,” had been his eloquent response. It had elicited a tinkling laugh from the instructor, and she’d patted his head affectionately, not unlike one would a favorite puppy.
“I like you, Scattering. You may not be police academy material, but you’re funny. Now go and get your donut and hot cocoa and report back to HQ on the double.”
“But…”
“The games are over for you, sonny boy. Now get.”
And that had been the end of that. He’d later fantasized about spending a few more minutes chatting with Deanna Kohl in that undergrowth, imagining what could have been, but even then his self-esteem hadn’t been all that much to write home about, and Deanna most definitely was way out of his league. So much so she inhabited a different universe.
He entered the living room and Deanna stepped aside, a thoughtful look on her face as she studied Virgil.
On the floor, spread out across the rug, lay the body of a large man. His shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a hairy barrel chest and protruding belly, and there was a hatchet buried in his throat, and a whole lot of blood pooled around his head.
Virgil swallowed. “He looks dead,” he said.
“Your powers of observation are unparalleled,” said Deanna. “Yes, he’s dead.”
“Did-did you do this?”
Deanna nodded slowly. “I could lie and tell you I didn’t—but what’s the use?”
“Who is he?”
“Who cares?”
“He kinda looks familiar.”
He stared at the man for a moment, but a wave of nausea made him look away.
She extracted a pack of cigarettes from the recesses of her dress, and offered him one.
>
“No, thanks,” he declined.
She shrugged and lit up. “It was an accident, of course.”
Virgil sighed. “I don’t know why you called me, Deanna,” he said, even though he knew perfectly well why she’d called him.
She laughed a dry laugh, and flicked her ashes to the floor, hitting the dead man.
“Please don’t do that,” he said. “You’re messing up the crime scene.”
“And we’re going to mess it up a lot more,” she announced.
He gave her a look of surprise. “What?”
“You and I are going to dump this body where no one will ever find it, and then we’re going to wipe this room clean. We’re going to scrub and scrub until the last remnant of DNA of both him and me is gone forever. And do you know why we’re going to do that, Virgil?”
He gulped. He had a pretty good idea. Still he asked, “Why?”
She smiled that infectious smile that had made his heart beat a little faster when he’d seen her answer the door just now. “Because you owe me.”
He sagged down onto a chair, draping his boneless limbs across the piece of rickety furniture like a damp rag. “Yes, I do,” he admitted. And now he was going to pay. Big time.
Start Reading A Game of Dons Now
About Nic
Nic Saint is the pen name for writing couple Nick and Nicole Saint. They’ve penned novels in the romance, cat sleuth, middle grade, suspense, comedy and cozy mystery genres. Nicole has a background in accounting and Nick in political science and before being struck by the writing bug the Saints worked odd jobs around the world (including massage therapist in Mexico, gardener in Italy, restaurant manager in India, and Berlitz teacher in Belgium).