One day in late October Fernando did not show up for a date to go bicycling in the state park. He was always prompt, and called from his cell when he was to be late. I waited for an hour, and then went alone. I rode slowly on the path through brilliant leaves and the detritus of summer: sagging vines, ferns chilled into brittle tan ghosts, the treacherous red beauty of poison ivy. The light was slanting low as I rode home.
I couldn’t call him. I felt physically sick from worry and uncertainty. Had something happened to him? Had he fallen out of love with me? Was he just exhausted from leading a double life? I was as miserable as a teenager in my fretting, and as mad as one, too.
Walking home from work two days later I felt a hand on my shoulder as I passed the coffee shop.
“Eleanora.”
“Fernando.” I looked at him as if he had been missing for a year. I couldn’t soak up enough of his skin, his thick hair, his sad eyes. “Where have you...”
He took my arm and said, “May I walk you home?”
I looked at him and nodded. As we walked, he was silent and gazed ahead of us, not at me. My heart began to feel a comradeship with the end of the season and the cold breath of winter.
We sat in the swing on my porch side by side until he finally spoke.
“I have decided to take your advice, Eleanora, and place my wife where she is safe.”
I felt the warmth from his arm against mine. We could finally make a life together, this man and I.
“I’m so glad, Fernando,” I said, reaching for his hand.
“Don’t be.” He shook his head. “I have found a residence for her. It is two days driving from here, and I will be living there with her.” His voice was of a gentle steel, but the edges of his mouth quavered. “We leave on Dia dos Mortos. On Saturday.”
"Why so far away?" I shivered. Sunlight, sparse in its autumn feebleness, lit up the blood-red blossoms of a chrysanthemum on the porch, but it didn’t warm me. “Why now?”
“I am sorry, Eleanora.” He put his arm around me and I leaned into his scent and his strength. I was sad to the bone and furious at once.
“Fernando,” I said after a long silence, turning my face to his. My heart raced. “You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”
He stroked my cheek once, slowly, softly, then put his hand down. “I cannot help my life. I cannot abandon my obligations.”
I thought frantically. “Come by tomorrow. Please? Just one last time? I have the day off. We could...”
He put up a hand to stop me. “I will come in the afternoon. But only for a moment.”
I stared as he walked away.
That night I couldn’t sleep. I tangled in my sheets, searching my crazed thoughts for some solution, some way to keep him with me. I wanted to cast my net over him and draw him toward me through the water of our lives, like an enchanted Azorean fisherwoman. Today was Wednesday. I couldn’t bear the thought that I would never see him again after tomorrow. I climbed out of bed and paced my house. My skin burned as if I were ill. I opened a window, but the north air chilled me and I slammed it shut. A full moon lit my garden, shimmering on the purple monkshood flowers and the dark red asters.
My heart rate slowed as I gazed outside. Maybe I could sleep now.
Ghouls in spider webs leered at me as I walked into the Cape Ann Market when it opened at eight the next morning. I’d forgotten about Halloween. I tossed several bags of candy into my basket before picking up kale, onions, garlic, cilantro, and chicken stock. By ten o’clock my kitchen smelled like it was dinnertime, the air fragrant with sautéed alliums and greens. I went outside, pulled on gardening gloves, and filled a wheelbarrow with weeds and dead plants. I clipped a handful of leaves in the hardy section of my herb garden and added them to the stew.
The temperature dipped low with the sun as I sat on the porch swing in my parka that afternoon. The trick-or-treaters would need to wear PJs under their princess dresses and zombie costumes tonight. My eyes followed Fernando as he walked toward me, his head down.
We sat in silence. Fernando covered my hand with his. I looked into his sad eyes and squeezed.
“Here.” I stood and extended the handles of a small bag to him. “I made her some kale stew.”
Fernando grasped the bag. He rose, then embraced me. He made his way slowly down the steps.
“Até logo,” I called after him. I’ll see you soon.
He glanced back, shaking his head.
I walked slowly through the cemetery late Saturday morning. Families sat in the cold on picnic cloths. A slender woman in black laid a mass of flowers on a grave then raised a glass of red wine to the headstone. Children played hide and seek. The sad All Soul’s Day festivities seemed to include almost the entire Portuguese community.
When I arrived home, I turned on the local news. Fernando’s picture flashed. My hand covered my mouth of its own accord. My ears throbbed. My feet felt numb. I leaned toward the screen.
“Local authorities are investigating the suspicious death of area man, Fernando Andrade.” The young newscaster looked into the camera and shook his head, eyebrows knit in TV sincerity. “We talked to his son, George.” The image switched to a tall man with Fernando’s hair and sad eyes. “We can’t think who would want to hurt him. My father was a good man, a husband, a father, a grandfather. He was about to move with my mother, who’s mentally ill, to a residence where she could receive the care she needs.” The camera switched back to the newsman. “Police are looking into the origins of a soup that was apparently a gift to the family, and say they have identified a person of interest.”
The thin wail of a siren grew louder. I left the television and walked out back to sit by the stone Buddha that watched over my garden. I felt my cell phone in my pocket. The phone Fernando had called me on. My heart was an icy stone that chilled me from the inside out. He said he didn’t eat kale stew. As sirens grew near, I wondered what kind of granite would suit the personality of Fernando Andrade.
Peter DiChellis
Peter DiChellis concocts sinister and sometimes comedic tales for anthologies, e-zines, and magazines. He is a member of Friends of Mystery and the Short Mystery Fiction Society, and an Active (published author) member of the Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America, and International Thriller Writers. Find him on his blog about short mystery and crime fiction: shortwalkdarkstreet.wordpress.com.
Callingdon Mountain
Peter DiChellis
The odd Callingdon Mountain story began for me with a phone call last winter. But I still remember every detail, every twist, because what happened in the end has forever changed, in a small though vital way, how people look at me and how I look at myself.
The man who called me wailed into the phone. “This murder is killing the resort’s reputation, it’s just killing us.”
I imagine so, I recall thinking. I bet it was a tough break for the victim, too.
“Nobody but you can help us,” the man pleaded. “You solved a bewildering murder case before, almost exactly like this one. Do you have any idea of the chaos we’re experiencing here?”
Yes, I did. The media was buzzing with news of the perplexing murder at the legendary Callingdon Mountain Ski Resort. Fanciful headlines trumpeted Impossible Callingdon Mountain Killing! and Invisible Callingdon Mountain Killer? But whether reported by newspapers, TV, radio, online news, or the true crime blogs I followed, the strange story was always the same.
A new promotional event at Callingdon Mountain featured a celebrity skier named Donegal Cain. As part of the event, and in view of a dozen witnesses, Cain climbed into one of the resort’s enclosed gondola trams for the mile-and-a-quarter airborne ride to the top of Callingdon Mountain Peak. Though the gondola would hold up to eight people, witnesses confirmed that Cain departed alone, and very much alive, cheerfully waving to an admiring crowd through the gondola’s window. The gondola then sailed skyward, hanging from its mechanical cable, without incident and without stopping. It remain
ed in full view the entire ten minutes it glided through the air on its ascent to the mountaintop. So nobody could have entered or exited the gondola’s enclosed compartment along its route. But when the gondola arrived at Callingdon Mountain Peak, Donegal Cain’s dead body was discovered inside, alone, stabbed in the back with a knife from one of the resort’s dining rooms.
The man who’d called me, a top administrator at the resort, wailed into the phone again. “Just think about it, Donegal Cain was alive when that gondola left for the mountain. And he was alone. And after that, nobody could have gotten in there with him. Nobody. Yet someone got inside, killed him, and then disappeared, all while the gondola was in mid-air. And the killer had the nerve to use one of our own steak knives.”
“Sir,” I said, “this is a matter for the police, not a private investigator.”
“Police. We’ve got more police here than you can count, and they’re all baffled. The State Police, the County Sheriff’s deputies, even a Callingdon City Police part-timer who thinks he’s a detective because he writes mystery stories.”
“Sir, the investigating officers will not welcome a private eye meddling in their case.”
“Wrong. The resort has a lot of political influence, both with the state legislature and the Governor’s office. We’ll put in the word. After all, back when you were a cop you solved a murder just like this one, a murder nobody else could solve. We’ll tell our politician friends all about how you found a dead victim in the snow with two sets of footprints leading to the body. One set of footprints for the victim, a different set for the killer. But there were no footprints going away from the victim’s body. So how did the killer leave? You solved that one and you can solve this one—and before our snow melts, if you don’t mind. This is bad for business. Very bad for business.”
“I was a patrol officer then, not any sort of detective,” I said, though long ago I admitted to myself that I’d solved the case of the missing footprints by pure luck. I eventually failed my police department’s detective exam three times, left the force, and hung out a private eye shingle. I now make a wearisome living snapping photos of wandering spouses for suspicious wives and jealous husbands. Taking a crack at solving a real mystery was a tonic I craved at my core. Yet how could someone like me expect anything but frustration from the Callingdon Mountain case?
“If you come to Callingdon Mountain right away, I will pay double your usual fee,” the administrator said. “And I guarantee full cooperation from the local authorities. Full cooperation.”
As much as I tried, I couldn’t resist such a peculiar and challenging mystery, not to mention the money. “I’ll do it.”
That evening, at my invitation, two Detective-Sergeants from the Major Crimes Unit of the State Police joined me in the posh restaurant at The Callingdon Mountain Grand Resort Hotel. They sat across from me at the table, listening while they devoured the expensive dinners I’d bought them as a peace offering.
“Full cooperation?” Detective-Sergeant Harlan Trut bellowed. He stopped attacking his steak long enough to poke his fork at my face. “Do I look like the kind of person who’d give a low-rent gumshoe like you full cooperation?”
No, he sure didn’t. A scowling giant with a long snout nose and a mane of black hair greased back on his enormous head, Trut looked like a mutant descendant of Godzilla and the Bride of Frankenstein.
Detective-Sergeant Jennette Zoya, a tall woman who moved like a fit athlete, glanced up from her grilled salmon and joined the cooperation festivities. “Here’s the one thing we can tell you,” she confided to me with a smile. “The Chief Medical Examiner is ruling it a suicide.”
“Suicide?”
Detective-Sergeant Trut ogled his steak but set down his knife and fork, pointed his thumbs in the air, and raised his bulging eyes toward the ceiling. “That’s what the higher-ups want. Suicide. Makes things easier for everyone. Even for us.”
“Much easier for us,” Zoya emphasized.
“C’mon,” I said. “Donegal Cain committed suicide by stabbing himself in the back with a steak knife while riding a gondola to the top of a ski mountain?”
“The Chief M.E. thinks it was a lucky strike,” Zoya said.
“Or maybe unlucky,” Trut said.
“The knife entered Cain’s lower back in the one spot that would do the job,” Detective-Sergeant Zoya continued. “Exactly the right angle to rupture almost every internal organ down there. That gets him dead, pronto, sitting on his butt, slumped in the corner of the gondola. If the knife entered an inch in any other direction, he’d be home sleeping on his stomach. Lucky strike.”
“Still don’t see how it’s ruled a suicide,” I said.
Trut pointed his thumbs in the air again. “The higher ups,” he repeated. “Maybe someone got their full cooperation.”
The next morning I phoned the resort administrator’s office from my room at a budget motel, located on an access road a few miles from the pricey resort lodgings. I had plenty of unanswered questions, but mostly wanted to know whether I should continue investigating the case.
“I’m so sorry, he’s out of the office,” the administrator’s executive assistant said. “He’s meeting with his contacts in the state legislature to ask for their help in ending the terrible publicity from this horrible incident. But he instructed me to give you my full cooperation. What may I do for you?”
Help in ending the terrible publicity? Like obtaining a phony suicide ruling? My instincts screamed that Donegal Cain’s death was a well-planned murder. But how was it committed, by whom, and for what purpose? I decided I’d persist in my detective investigation.
“I’d like to talk to anyone who interacted with Donegal Cain at the resort and everyone who saw the gondola depart for the mountain peak or arrive there,” I told the executive assistant. “Do you know whether any of those people are still here?”
“I imagine most of them are. Would a complete list of all the witnesses help you?”
I was astonished. Maybe my luck had finally turned. “That would be wonderful.”
“One moment, please. I think I have exactly what you’re looking for.”
She put me on hold but returned within a few seconds.
“I found it,” she said. “I have an email here that says if you need any information at all, just contact Detective-Sergeants Harlan Trut and Jennette Zoya of the State Police. The email says they’ll give you their full cooperation.”
“Of course. Thank you.”
Okay, it was time for some old-school detective work. Exactly the kind of work I always wanted to do. As part of my preparation, I’d loaded my phone with news photos of faces in the crowds at Donegal Cain’s promotional event. All I needed now was to match the photos to people at the resort. I steered my decade-old jalopy from my motel’s parking lot to Callingdon Mountain’s base lodge, near where Cain’s gondola ride began. I checked the photos and eyed the room.
Right away, I matched photos to two people. But they couldn’t tell me much. A young woman divulged Donegal Cain was a “total horn dog” and a jilted girlfriend probably killed him “with like, voodoo or something.” An even younger guy would only say “I bet that dude can ski better dead than I can alive” before hitting the slopes to prove his point.
Undaunted, I scanned the room again. Another match. Angular nose, high cheekbones. Dark eyes, olive complexion. Long black hair flecked with strands of silver. An intense woman, thickset, perhaps forty years old.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
“Yes?” She spoke with a conspicuous accent. Eastern European?
I explained what I was doing.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I first saw that poor young man the night before he died. He told me he doubted he would live through the morning.”
“He said that?”
“Oh, yes. It was shortly after I fell asleep. Perhaps midnight. That is when he came to me at the resort hotel.”
“Came to you?”
She handed
me a business card. “I am Madame Fortunata, the most learned psychic in all of the Callingdon Mountain region. You shall have my full cooperation. How may I help?”
“Wait. It was dream? You saw Donegal Cain in a dream?”
“No, no. Not a dream. A vision in my sleep. And I learned more as well. I heard a woman with a shrill voice arguing with a different man, not that poor young man Donegal Cain. But from the arguing, it is certain the poor young man was at the center of a lover’s quarrel. He ended a passionate affair, very passionate, with this shrill-voiced woman. The other man did not approve of Donegal Cain.”
“And the voices were part of your vision?”
“No, no. The voices kept me awake until thirteen minutes before midnight. The vision came later, while I slept.”
I recalled the news photo that led me to her. “You said the vision was when you ‘first saw’ Donegal Cain. The night before he died. What about the next day, the day he died?”
“Oh, yes. I was there when he left for the mountaintop. I saw everything. After the poor young man Donegal Cain went into the gondola car, another man followed him inside. Then two more men. I heard shouting and then laughter. Then the three men left and the gondola departed with the poor young man Donegal Cain alone inside it, smiling and waving through the window.”
“What did the three men look like?”
“Large men, very large. The first one wore a blue parka. The same shade of blue as the gondola. The same shade of blue as the sky that day. The other two men ran into the gondola after him. After the man in the blue parka.”
The Best Laid Plans Page 12