by Bill Alive
I’ve been on a farm or two, so I had my expectations: a rustic barn, fencing for pasture, a cozy clapboard house.
This was not that farm.
It might have looked standard and non-threatening twenty years ago. I did catch the tilting dark bulk of an old barn and a semi-normal house. But since the old days, things had gotten … weird.
Odd little buildings had sprouted everywhere, ramshackle sheds and hoopish greenhouses and decrepit trailers. They seemed laid out on some twisty plan, which was more disturbing than if they’d simply been random.
And everywhere, everywhere, were bushes and vines and writhing plant life. I didn’t see one square foot of normal lawn. It was like ruins being swamped by a dark jungle. Except that you sensed the presence of a grim will guiding the growth.
We parked near a trailer and trudged up to the dark house. Even on the porch, vines overflowed from pots and groped for us with scratchy tendrils.
“She’s really into plants,” I said. “Like … ingredients … for spells…”
Mark rolled his eyes, and knocked three sharp raps.
No answer. The still air seeped with cow manure and lush humid plant life, thriving and feeding on rot.
“Guess she’s not in,” I said. I uncoiled a bit with relief.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?” barked Helga Lubitsch.
I jumped, and hit my head on a hanging pot. Helga Lubitsch had materialized on the porch stairs. In the moonlight, her eyes and glasses glittered with unholy energy. She gripped a fistful of cut plants that smelled potent.
Mark gave her a smooth smile. “Mrs. Lubitsch, I hope we didn’t startle you.” Then he looked grave. “I’m sorry to inform you, but one of your milk clients has just been found dead.”
Helga panicked.
Her huge face crumpled, the plants smashed to the steps, and she clutched her cheeks with both hands. “Oh my Gott!” she bellowed. “Who? Not from my milk? Oh my Gott!”
Mark was squinting down at her in full focus mode. “It appears your milk had definitely been consumed.”
“Oh Gott. Oh Gott. You’re sure they are dead? You’re sure it was my milk? Who was it?”
It was all so rushed, so pat, so perfect. I didn’t believe it. I blurted, “Who do you think it was?”
Mark facepalmed. Like, an actual facepalm, for once.
Helga snapped her gaze at me, and her terror seemed to melt. “Who are you two? You are not police officers.” She squinted at me. “I know you! The little twerp who works for Vivian!”
I cringed. For one long instant, I seriously expected to get turned into a toad.
But Helga stomped toward us up the steps and jabbed a finger at Mark. “How do I even know you are telling the truth?”
“Trust me. You’ll be hearing from the cops.”
“Then I’ll talk to them. Not two hoodlums who show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night.”
“You’ll have to forgive my friend here,” Mark said calmly. “If we could just ask a couple—”
“Get out!” she roared. “Before I call the police myself!”
I said, “The cops are kind of busy.”
“OUT!”
She practically force-pushed us off the porch. I’m still not sure how we wound up on the gravel. Then she lumbered into her house and slammed the door.
Mark sighed, then crunched back toward Thunder.
“I think she was acting,” I said, hurrying after him.
“Don’t think so. She seemed genuinely surprised.”
“Maybe she was just surprised we got here so fast,” I said.
“Doubt it.”
“Doubt?”
He eyed me. “I could have made sure, but some genius got her pissed at us. That’s the only vibe we’re getting before Gwen takes over.”
I felt it best to change the subject. “Okay. Who’s next? There must be someone else we can talk to.”
“Like who?”
From the shadows, a man said, “Hey.”
This time, we both jumped. I scanned frantically around the shadows. It took way too long to spot him, but I hadn’t expected that anyone was actually using one of the ancient trailers. The trailer’s windows were dark, but on the doorstep, a tall, skinny man was leaning against the door frame. The moon shone down on his thick, curly hair.
“Kelsey?” I said.
He nodded once, then just stared at us. His eyes were wide, and haggard, and bloodshot with fear.
Chapter 22
Kelsey hesitated, then hustled down the steps in his quick awkward jerks. He rushed right up to Mark.
Mark winced and stepped away.
Kelsey didn’t seem to notice. “Someone really died from our milk? You’re sure?” he said. He talked even faster than I remembered, a sputtering gush like a hose turned on too hard. “I heard you talking to Mom.”
“Whoa!” I said. “Hold up, Helga Lubitsch is your mom? I thought you just worked for her.”
He didn’t seem to notice me either. “I knew it. I knew it,” he said. He bit the knuckle of his forefinger. “I kept warning her.”
“About what?” Mark said, with a sharp edge.
“Sanitation!” Kelsey said, waving both long arms as if he were flagging down a rescue plane. He paced back and forth in a narrow circle.
“Are you serious?” I said. “If the wrong bacteria get into that milk, people can die!”
Kelsey’s face twisted with fresh terror. “You can’t say anything about this! Nothing!” Then he seemed to retract, taking us in with a cagey regard that looked uncomfortably like his mother. “But who are you guys anyway?” He peered at me. “Wait! I know you! You were the cad trying to proposition Yvette!”
“Proposition?” I blurted. Seriously, this family. “One, I just freaking wanted her phone number. Two, Mark and I are private—”
“—people too, Kelsey,” Mark interrupted. “No need to worry.”
“We can’t keep this quiet!” I said. “The cops think Vanessa killed him!”
Kelsey spasmed. I’d thought he was terrified before, but now he looked like he might have a seizure. Oh right, I remembered. The Vanessa obsession.
“Not Vanessa!” he shrieked. “Dear God! No! No! No!”
Mark was grimacing. He had to be shielding — I was nearly shielding myself. This dude was intense. “Kelsey, relax,” Mark said, strained but soothing. “They’ll test Ed’s blood. Once they find lethal bacteria, they’re not going to suspect Vanessa of using poison.”
“But—” Kelsey said.
“What the hell do you care?” I snapped. Okay, maybe I wasn’t being super tolerant to a fellow Vanessa fan, but the dude was a big hypocrite.
In a low voice, Mark said to me, “Could you relax?”
“No!” I said. “He supposedly thinks Vanessa’s a slut!” I got in Kelsey’s anguished face. “I barely meet you and you launch into this rant about her ‘boyfriend’, and now you’re acting all concerned?”
Kelsey’s face contorted as he tried to master himself. I had no idea what the hell his problem was, although he couldn’t be super thrilled about his mom killing someone with poop-tainted milk.
Barely keeping it together, he said, “I stand by what I said. Her actions were completely inappropriate for a man who was not her husband.”
“Her husband is dead!” I said.
“What man was this?” Mark said, as if he hadn’t heard.
“I told you—” I said, but Mark glared me to shut up.
Fortunately, Kelsey was already prattling. “He didn’t have a uniform, but he had to be a pizza guy,” he said eagerly. He seemed relieved to get back to his comfort zone of moral contempt. “He rattled away in a cruddy old orange car with a pizza sign stuck on top. And I tell you, sir—” He glared my way. “She was absolutely flirting with him.”
He shuddered with outrage.
Mark said, “With a guy rocking a beater car like that? He must have been good-looking.”
“I assume so,” Kel
sey said, with prim disdain. “I didn’t see his face, but from the back, he was certainly tall and broad-shouldered. His physical attractions were obviously sufficient to gratify Vanessa’s insatiable vanity.”
I’m not a violent person, but I was ready to shove this guy’s face in the nearest pile of cow pies.
Mark edged away from both of us. “Well, Kelsey, if you’re right, maybe Vanessa’s guilty after all.”
Kelsey’s face twisted with fresh panic.
“What is it?” Mark said.
“I can’t … it’s not…” He bit his finger again. “There’s, there’s other things…”
“What things?” Mark said.
Behind us, a shotgun racked.
I know you think you’ve heard that clack on a gazillion cop shows, but let me tell you, that is not in the same universe as hearing it right behind your back, at night, with no warning, out in the middle of Creepsville…
… especially when you turn around and the gun’s in the mitts of Helga Lubitsch.
“Holy crap!” I shrieked. “Aren’t you supposed to be a hippie?”
“The Sixties are over, kid,” Helga said. “This place is a fortress of food.” Her accent was ratcheting up to Movie Nazi intensity. “When gas hits a hundred dollars per gallon and the hordes come ravaging from D.C., you think a mere ‘private property’ sign will do the job? It has not worked for you.”
She jabbed the gun at my ribs.
“Ow! Geez!” I said. “You can’t just shoot people!”
“You can’t just trespass either. Yet, here you are. After I told you, get off my land. And this is not a county where you shoot a prowler and he sues you to pay his therapy. No. The local judge and I went to high school together. We are very close. Now get out.”
Mark said, “I’m sure this is all very upsetting—”
Helga whipped up the gun and fired at the sky.
The blast was SO FREAKING LOUD. I clapped my hands to my ears, expecting to find blood.
“We’re going,” Mark said.
We slid into Thunder. As Mark backed fast out her driveway, Kelsey stayed frozen on his trailer steps, cowering behind his mother with the gun.
Chapter 23
My ears kept ringing as we Thundered back to civilization. Plus, taking those curves at top speed isn’t super easy on the stomach. I didn’t breathe easy till we ditched the back roads and pulled onto the country highway.
“That woman is crazy!” I shouted over Thunder’s muffler issues. “I can’t believe you don’t suspect her!”
Mark shrugged. “Have to trust my vibes.”
“Did you vibe anything from Kelsey?”
“Nothing useful. He was too terrified.”
“Of what?”
“Everything. Anything. The dude’s an abyss of fear.”
“It can’t help to have a crazy mom who carries a shotgun for the hungry zombie hordes!”
“True enough.”
“So you really think they’re clear?” I asked. “If it wasn’t Helga, who else would aim for Vanessa and miss?”
“The poison could have been meant for Ed,” Mark said. “At the house, I saw the cooler where the milk would be delivered. It’s just a cooler by the back door, in an open garage. Kelsey or Helga would leave the milk in half-gallon jars. Anyone could twist the lid off and do whatever they want.”
“Oh no! We have no idea who would want to kill Ed! He could have fifty people who hate his guts!”
Mark smirked. “I’m sure the murderer hates to be an inconvenience.”
I groaned. “But why would they use the milk? That’s Vanessa’s thing. Even Roxanne didn’t think Ed drank it.”
Mark screeched the brakes. He slid into a driveway and whipped Thunder into a nausea-pumping U-turn.
“Dude!!” I cried. “Why are you driving so crazy tonight?”
“Maybe cause someone died?” Mark said, as he floored it down the highway back toward town.
“Do we have to speed?”
“If we want to catch Roxanne before the cops.”
“Roxanne! Whoa!” I shouted. “She must hate Vanessa more than anyone! She could poison the milk, and she’d think Ed wouldn’t drink it!”
“Brilliant deduction, Villette.”
“But wait, she was at the game store! You think she could manage to set up a murder for Ed’s wife and then come out acting like she hoped he’d show up for game night?”
“There are worse alibis.”
Mark didn’t slow till we hit the speed trap outside town. Those last blocks felt like crawling, but at last we pulled up at the game store.
We were too late.
The whole Main Street had that desolate air it gets after ten o’clock. Even though it couldn’t have been more than an hour or so since we’d left, the store had cleared out, except a couple diehards playing Star Wars chess.
Zack was leaning against his door jamb, staring off into the night like a wistful sailor.
Mark hustled up to him. “Where’d Roxanne go?” he said. “Did the cops take her?”
Zack nodded dully.
“Damn it,” Mark said. “Do you have her number?”
Zack scowled.
“Sorry,” Mark said.
I said, “Can’t the Kid get her number in like two seconds?”
Zack frowned. “Who?”
Oops. I made a mental note to keep my nicknames private.
Mark said, “I gather the cops told you about…”
“You gather,” Zack said.
Mark ignored this. “When they told Roxanne, how did she react?”
“You’re kidding me.”
“It’s important.”
Zack glowered. In a low voice, he said, “This isn’t Alexandria, Mark. Roxanne is no Condo Killer.”
“Maybe,” Mark said. “Her ex-husband is dead.”
“From drinking infected raw milk!” Zack snapped.
“Maybe.”
“Mark, I’m telling you, I know Roxie wasn’t at her best tonight, but there is no way in hell—”
“Fine. Noted,” Mark said. “You’re into her, she’s off the list.”
Zack scowled deeper and turned away.
“Hey, listen, you want to help Roxanne?” Mark said. “Let’s get to work. I have a guy you need to find. Pizza guy, old orange car, probably local—”
“Forget it,” Zack said.
Mark looked surprised. “You serious? I need to find this guy. He could be Vanessa’s secret lover.”
“So?”
“So?” Mark said. “That doesn’t sound like Suspect Number One for killing a husband? Ed had just chased the guy off his lawn!”
Zack sighed. “I’m leaving this one to the cops.”
“What? Why?”
“Neural associations!” Zack snapped.
He glared as if this were totally obvious.
Which it apparently was, to Mark.
“Um…?” I said.
Zack huffed with impatience. “I’ve already got plenty of painful neural connections between Roxanne and this death,” he said. “Every second I spend on this case would pack extra myelin onto those links, making a pain super-highway between the grisly death of her stupid ex-husband and the hottest, smartest redhead who ever sashayed those long legs into my gamer paradise.”
As Zack drifted into Roxanne beat poetry, his eyes softened, but Mark winced. He seemed to be vibing Zack’s attraction to Roxanne, and the cognitive dissonance was actually painful.
“If and when this is all behind us,” Zack said, “I need to see Roxanne whole and entire, her own exquisite self, not infected with the memories of Ed the Dead Ex.”
“Fine,” Mark said. “I’ll ask the others.”
“Don’t your dare send them one text,” Zack snapped. “They’re my sanctuary.”
Mark rolled his eyes.
“I mean it, Mark. You’re on your own.”
Mark folded his arms and looked away. “I’ve heard that before,” he muttered.
Zack frowned. But he went inside and shut his door.
We stood alone on Main Street, on a chilly, deserted Saturday night.
Everything was closed. Down the block, the movie theater was theoretically open, but it didn’t feel like it. We used to have one token bar, but it shut down awhile back.
Basically, we were locked out and in the dark.
“Great,” Mark said. “Guess that’s it.”
“That’s it?” I said. “Someone nearly killed Vanessa, they killed her husband instead, and we’re going to let the cops nail her for it?”
“They’re the cops,” Mark said. “We’re a couple of amateur losers.”
My gut twisted. He sounded serious. What was going on with him?
The night pressed in, smothering us with the vast weight of other people’s closed lives. Everyone else was home with families and TVs … and we were out, deluded, and lost.
Then Mark’s phone buzzed.
He gave me a quizzical glance, then answered. The conversation was quick and cryptic, but I gathered that someone wanted a meeting.
When he hung up, I said, “Who was that?”
“Theodore.”
“At this hour?”
“I know,” Mark said. He looked thoughtful, even bemused.
“So is he hiring you again?”
“I’m not sure. He sounded … weird. He wants to meet.”
“Well, that could be good, right?”
He shrugged. “Like, now.”
“Now?” I said. “Where? Denny’s?”
(These days, if you want to make a Saturday night of it, you have to drive out to the next town over. There’s a 24-hour Denny’s. Wild and crazy, for sure.)
Mark shook his head. “St. Joseph’s.”
A chill iced the back of my neck. “Um, isn’t that the church where Olivia died?”
“That’s the one.”
Chapter 24
And I’d thought Main Street was creepy at night.
By day, St. Joseph’s had seemed inoffensive enough, just another hodgepodge church with an big ugly new building grafted onto a tiny old brick classic. But now, in the lonely darkness, the moonlight made the whole thing sinister and bleak.
