Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (57 page)

Her big brown eyes were open now, watching him.

“Good to see you,” she whispered.

“My God, Ellie.” He tried to gather his wits. “How long has she been poisoning you?”

“Little at a time,” she said, wincing as she spoke.

“Don't talk now, not if it hurts. Has it just been since I left?”

She nodded, the effort seeming to wear her out.

A month. A month of arsenic. “I'm not leaving again, Ellie. Except to take you with me.”

She continued to watch him, but now the barest smile came to her lips.

He had started down the stairs when Miriam, dinner party in tow, entered the foyer.

“What are you doing?” Miriam screeched.

“I'm taking her to a hospital. To see a real doctor. You had better pray to God that I'm not too late.”

Miriam tried to block his way. “She's too ill to move! You have no business …”

“Careful, Miriam,” he said in a low voice. “She's awake and lucid. Shall we discuss this in front of your guests, or do you want to wait until after Harry describes your so-called doctor to the gents at the sheriff's office? Ellie's blood work will probably give them all they need to go after both of you.”

Miriam paled, then stepped out of the way.

“What's going on here?” one of the guests demanded.

“My sister's …”

“
Fiancé
,” Bill supplied as he reached the front door. “Her fiancé is taking her to a hospital.”

The group followed him toward the car. He wasn't watching them. He was watching Ellie. She moved her hand, covered his with it. Her skin was cool and paper dry. “You're safe now, Ellie,” he told her.

“I'm coming with you!” Miriam said, hearing the guests murmuring behind her.

“No, you aren't, miss,” Harry said, helping Bill into the backseat.

“She's her sister!” one of the guests protested.

“Her sister will remain here with you,” Bill said. “She wants to tell you about a Hitchcock film.”

“What are you talking about?” another man asked.

“
Notorious
,” Bill said, closing the car door.

“Y
OU'VE WON,
sir, haven't you?” Harry said as they drove off.

“I've had help,” Bill replied. “All along, I've had help.”

Ellie squeezed his hand.

“We've got to
stop meeting like this.”

He couldn't believe Maudie had actually said that, in all seriousness, less than fifteen minutes ago at the Kentucky Hunker Inn.

“Right,” he'd said, pointing his foot to slide on the first sock. “In the future I can just cross the street from my house to yours. Saves a motel bill, too.”

Then she had pursed her rosebud mouth and uttered the next cliché. “If you don't tell your wife about us, I will.”

“Maudie! Love!” He twisted around to grab and agitate her. It was like shaking his ten-year-old son, all loose, light bones.

“Let go,” she squealed. “No more touching me till Karen knows.” She brushed his hands off her arms and swatted his chest.

Staring morosely at the flaccid sock caught on his toe, he said, “I'll take care of it tonight.”

“You'll tell Karen tonight? You promise?”

“I promise. Tomorrow night latest.”

“Arrrrgh!” She flounced off the bed, snatching up clothes, red hair wild as a bonfire. “All right, Craig Richard Longworth. You have exactly two hours from this moment. That's—” she wrenched his arm out of his lap to read his watch “—eight forty-six. If you haven't broken the news to Karen by then,
I'm
telling her at eight forty-seven.”

“Jeeze, Maudie—”

The slamming bathroom door chopped off all appeals.

Now on his way home, Craig turned the Camry in at Trudy's Tavern, needing to soothe his nerves and shore up his resolve.

The first beer disappeared as if he had a train to catch. Looking over the sparse early evening crowd, he sipped the second.

“Burger and fries?” Trudy suggested.

What the heck, might as well spoil his supper; Karen wasn't going to feed him tonight after they had their little talk.

Swiveling on his stool, leaning his elbows on the bar behind, he studied faces. Most of them were familiar, including Lionel Eads's, who was nuzzling the pale ear of a buxom blonde boothmate. Craig didn't recognize the lady, but he did know she wasn't skinny, redheaded Mrs. Eads. Torn between being scandalized and being envious, he stared at their blatant billing and cooing till Trudy slammed his hamburger plate onto the counter.

Turning around, he sighed. It was a whole different story for Lionel. He didn't have any children for his wife to take away if he asked for a divorce.

Divorce. The word conjured up horrendous visions of infinite alimony and inequitable division of property. Karen would get the stereo and the boat, and he'd get the Mickey Mouse telephone and the 1970 fake leather encyclopedias.

Craig took a vicious bite of the hamburger, swabbed grease off his chin with the cocktail napkin, and lurched forward under a hearty slap to his back.

“Hi, neighbor,” Lionel bellowed. “Whaddya know?”

Squinting over his shoulder, Craig nodded at Lionel and took another look at the blonde waiting for the next round of beer and sweet talk.

“I got a date with your wife in the morning,” Lionel said in the same robust volume, hand-signaling an order to Trudy.

Grinning was an effort that made Craig's face ache. “Yeah? Why's that?”

“We're going to plant a half-ton boulder on that sinkhole in your backyard.”

“Oh. Oh yeah. Karen did say she'd contracted to have that covered over. We've been afraid one of the kids would twist an ankle in it. Or worse.”

“Hey, Trudy honey, how about some service?” Lionel called as she rushed by with empty pitchers.

“Um, who's the young lady with you?” Craig stage-whispered, curiosity overcoming tact.

“My sister.” Lionel punched Craig's arm.

“Does your wife know you have a sister?”

“You mean, does my sister know I have a wife!” Reaching across Craig for the mugs Trudy offered, Lionel roared a malty laugh.

A few minutes later Craig watched them leave, holding hands and giggling like teenagers.

He ought to go, too. Checking his watch, he decided to put it off till the last minute, and he stood up to challenge someone to darts.

C
RAZY
C
HESTER
G
OMPERS
was telling another outrageous joke. Guffawing, Craig banged his forehead against his wrist on the bar, and one eye focused on the slime-green digits of his watch. Eight forty-two.

Giving a Cinderella gasp, he slapped bills on the bar and caromed to the front door. In a few panting seconds he was spinning tires for home, thirty minutes away if he didn't break any speed laws.

Driving forty in a twenty-mile zone, he argued with himself. Maudie wouldn't really march across their quiet little dead-end street and blab the whole sordid—

Sure she would. She loved him, wanted him, would do anything—

Realizing his preening had allowed a drop in the miles per hour, Craig shook himself and tramped on the accelerator again. The car clock blinked another minute older.

It said eight fifty-six when he turned through the stone arches of Country View Estates (Your Little Piece of the World). He noticed that Lionel Eads's house loomed black as he passed it, and a minute later he was on Strawberry Lane. In no hurry now that he could see his and Maudie's houses, he rolled quietly along, craning to see which lights were on at either place, searching for female shapes inside or out.

Maudie's ranch style was completely dark. Oh-oh. His own split-level beckoned with one gleaming kitchen window. As his headlights swept the barricade at the end of the street, oak trees in the cow pasture beyond waved colorless leaves at a late summer breeze.

“Karen?” he asked an obviously empty house from the garage/kitchen door.

Hearing a clink of sound, he nipped on the outside floodlight and squinted into the backyard. Karen was by the far fence, wrestling a long-handled shovel that had the weight advantage.

Craig strolled out to face her with a casualness he couldn't have faked without a stomach full of beer. “Digging for gold?”

She wiped her cheek with a limp wrist.

“I saw Lionel Eads today,” Craig said with the same false cheerfulness he'd disliked from Lionel. “Says he'll be by tomorrow to cover this up.”

Karen grunted.

“So what are you doing?” Craig said.

“Just trying to level it off. Spread some dirt on it. Make it smaller.”

He eyed her handiwork critically. The fist-sized sinkhole was now more than a foot across. Considering what else he needed to tell her, he didn't think he'd mention she was doing a lousy job.

Jamming hands in trousers, he twisted to look around the board-fenced yard. “Where is everybody?”

“Everybody?”

“Rick. Where's Rick?”

“Slumber party at Mitchy Best's.”

“Uh, I noticed Maude Lamar's house is all dark. Thought she might be over here.”

“Nope.” She threw a half shovel's worth of dirt on the hole, and it slithered out of sight like flour down a funnel. “She was here awhile ago, though.”

“Oh?” Craig cleared his throat and lowered his voice to normal range. “What did our little widow want?”

Karen whacked the hole with the flat of the shovel. “She picked up Rick to take him and her Jimmy to Mitchy Best's slumber party.”

“Oh. I guess she was in a hurry and didn't have much to say?”

“Actually, she did say—” She leaned on the shovel and stared at the house.

Craig poised in a tennis player stance, awaiting a tricky serve.

“—her aunt in Cleveland died. Hope you don't mind if we keep Jimmy till Maude gets back from the funeral.”

A weak breeze licked his damp forehead. “No problem! What's for supper?”

“Oh, I don't know. How about steak?” She jabbed the shovel at a line of loose gravel and scraped it in a sibilant rivulet down the hole.

“You know that's hopeless,” Craig said, buoyed by the reprieve Maudie's aunt had given him. “How many rocks and sticks and junk have we thrown down that hole the last couple of years?”

“And toys,” Karen said. “The boys have been dropping in Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys and other stuff they think they've outgrown. Rick lost his birthday dump truck down here today.” She straight-armed the shovel handle at Craig and bent to get the sweater she'd shed on a nearby bush.

“It's probably part of a limestone cave network,” he said, jiggling the shovel up and down and from hand to hand. He narrowed beer-bemused eyes at the white stripe of neck between her black hair and T-shirt. “Bottomless.”

Eureka
, his mind exalted as the inspiration zapped him, as his arms elevated on their own accord, as the shovel descended with the accuracy of a heat-seeking missile, as the blow reverberated up his wrists, elbows, shoulders.

Karen collapsed without a sound, imploding from a woman to a bundle of clothes. Squeamish about touching her, Craig toed her over to the sinkhole. Her head dropped in. Her shoulders were too wide.

Yanking her up and away, he grabbed up the shovel and made panicky jabs at the opening's edges, twisting off chunks of dirt that disappeared silently inside. Whimpering, Craig tried Karen for size again, dragged her out of the way again, stabbed at the hole's perimeters again.

Now he was expecting her to groan and sit up. He imagined her lying there playing dead till he should have the hole big enough and then—wham—she'd shove him between the shoulder blades and he'd fall into the gaping black, his screams echoing off the clammy walls as he fell, eyes bulging in a vain effort to see as he fell, the air whistling past his ears as he fell and fell and fell.

He slammed down the shovel, grasped his wife, and stuffed her through the opening.

No screams. No thumps. No splash. No sound except his breaths sawing in and out.

Craig spent an hour beside the sinkhole, listening to crickets, expecting two bloody hands to reach out of the abyss and grab him by the throat. Then he went to bed and dreamed a rerun of his fears.

I
N THE MORNING,
as Craig sipped at his fourth cup of black coffee, Lionel Eads and his winched truck and a muscular helper arrived to cover the sinkhole with a granite boulder the color of ashes. Lionel looked as if he could use four cups of black coffee, too; he yawned and stared off into space with red-rimmed eyes.