by Nic Saint
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.
Chapter 4
Felicity Bell stood checking herself in the full-length mirror she’d installed on the back of the bedroom closet’s door. She was dressed in her undies and subjected herself to a critical examination. “Do you think I’m fat?” she asked when Rick passed through the room.
“Say what?” he asked, looking caught. It was the look of a man who’s been asked to lie and has a sinking feeling that whatever his response will be it’s going to be the wrong one. “Um, of course not, sweet pea,” he said. “You look absolutely beautiful.”
She plucked at some belly flab and jiggled it. “Don’t lie to me, Rick. I’m fat, aren’t I?”
“You’re exactly the right size,” he said, sounding more sure of himself. Having lied successfully once, the husband of the species will feel more confident when he lies again. He planted a kiss on her neck, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re absolutely gorgeous, and don’t let anyone tell you different.” This time he wasn’t lying, Fee knew. Rick loved her, regardless of size or jiggable belly flab. Which didn’t mean she wasn’t too fat, of course.
“Mh,” she said. “But not exactly Instagram influencer gorgeous though, right?”
“You could be an Instagram influencer,” he said after a moment’s hesitation.
“For the plus-size crowd.”
“For any crowd. Those influencers are not real people. They use Photoshop and all kinds of filters to look the way they do. I’m sure if you saw one of them in real life—”
“I’d want to throttle their bony necks for looking as good as they do,” she said wryly.
“I think you look stunning,” he said, with a finality that indicated that as far as he was concerned, this conversation was at an end. He withdrew the arms and the kissing lips and resumed his progress out of the room and down the stairs.
Alice passed the door and looked in. “Have you lost weight?” she asked.
Fee was oddly pleased. “You really think so?”
“You look slimmer.”
“I lost three hundred grams.” Though it was entirely possible that the difference was due to the fact that she usually weighed herself when she got up, and this morning she’d weighed herself after the whole black beetle episode had gone down. All the excitement must have burned through three hundred grams of calories. Which reminded her she should probably put a beetle in Alice’s bed every morning. She might lose a lot of weight that way.
“So what are you up to today?” she asked.
“Oh, this and that,” said Alice, placing her own very skinny tush on the bed and bouncing up and down a few times. “Uncle Mickey asked me to help him pick out the fall collection and Uncle Charlie had some urgent business to take care of so he’s put me in charge of the funeral parlor this afternoon.”
“Urgent business, huh. Probably hooking up with Jackie Bouchard again.”
Alice giggled. “I can’t believe the two of them have been sneaking around behind Bud’s back all this time and he still hasn’t caught on.”
Jackie Bouchard was the butcher’s wife Alice’s uncle Charlie had been conducting a torrid affair with for the longest time. They had one of those on-again, off-again type of things going. Fee had no idea what Jackie saw in Charlie. The funeral parlor owner was a potbellied man with a rust-colored mustache who liked to dress up like Elvis Presley. He was about as sexy as the dead customers that populated his funeral home, and just as dynamic.
“What about you?” asked Alice.
“Oh, the usual,” said Fee, finally deciding to stop comparing herself to the likes of Kendall Jenner and maybe check out the Instagram feed of Sophie Dahl instead.
Alice was bouncing her leg, a rare frown on her face. “Do you ever have the feeling that something momentous is just around the corner, Fee? Something that will rattle you straight out of your everyday humdrum tedium and propel you into a life of mystery and suspense the likes of which even James Bond hasn’t been trained for?”
“Um, no. Why? Do you have that feeling?” She picked a T-shirt with a pink sequined heart and the words ‘Kitty Kat’ out of her closet and put it on.
“I don’t know. It’s been far too quiet for far too long. Which can only mean one thing.”
“That we’re leading the perfect lives?”
“That we’re about to go down a rabbit hole of humongous proportion.”
Fee frowned. “I’m not sure I want to go down a rabbit hole, humongous or otherwise.”
“Well, I do,” said Alice decidedly as she hopped from the bed like an overzealous flea. “Have you heard from Brian lately?”
“Nope. Not a word.”
“Maybe we should call him? Maybe he has a juicy case all lined up for us to tackle?”
“Or maybe he’s doing just fine without us and we should let sleeping dogs lie.”
Alice frowned. “I’ve never understood that expression. Why are those dogs lying? Why can’t they just tell the truth?” She then shook her head decidedly. “Whatever. We have a talent, Fee. And it’s wasted in this boring little town.”
Fee regarded her friend curiously. “Did you just call Happy Bays a boring little town?”
“I did! Nothing ever happens in this place apart from Mrs. Evergreen letting her dog poop wherever and neglecting to pick up the doo-doo, or Mayor MacDonald having another one of his crazy ideas and managing to get the whole town up in arms against it.”
Fee had to admit that things had been very quiet lately. “Why don’t you ask Virgil if there’s a case you c
an help him with?” she suggested.
She knew that when Alice got it into her head that she needed some excitement in her life there was no stopping her.
Alice didn’t seem convinced. “Virgil?”
“He is a policeman,” Fee pointed out. “He does have cases to solve.”
Alice seemed to have her doubts about that, then shrugged without conviction. “Why not?” she said. “I’ll give Virgil a call. Maybe there is something I can help him with.”
Fee modeled her new pair of jeans. “What do you think?” she asked.
But Alice was already taking out her phone and scrolling down her list of contacts.
“Virgil the gerbil,” she muttered, then clicked the Connect button. “Here goes.”
“Be careful what you wish for!” Fee shouted after her, but her petite blond friend was already pounding down the stairs.
Chapter 5
Rick sat down in the breakfast nook, his tablet in one hand, open on the front page of the Times, a cream cheese bagel in the other, a cup of piping hot coffee nearby. He liked to read the competition before heading into the office, and compare their stuff to his.
“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” said Reece, who was contorting his body into strange and wonderful positions on the living room carpet.
“Do what?” said Rick, dunking his bagel into his cup of coffee and taking a big bite.
“What you’re doing right now.”
Rick frowned at the bagel. “Yeah, I know,” he said ruefully. “Everyone keeps telling me it’s a bad habit. Problem is, I like it so much.”
“You have to fight against it,” said Reece, now standing on his head for some reason. He was, as was his habit, completely in the buff, showcasing that perfect musculature that was the hallmark of every male Hollywood star worth his salt. Problem was, in this position certain things were dangling, and Rick found that the dangling bits spoiled his appetite.
“I do chew, you know,” said Rick. “I mean, I admit I’m a dunker, but I’m also a chewer—and I like to think that the chewing compensates for the dunking. Digestion-wise, I mean.”
Reece eyed Rick strangely. “What are you talking about?”
“The dunking! I know it’s bad—what with adversely affecting stomach fluid production and all—and I shouldn’t, but my bagel just tastes so much better this way, you know.”
“I wasn’t talking about the dunking. I was talking about the reading.”
“Oh,” said Rick, a second wave of guilt washing over him. “You’re right. Reading and eating… I really shouldn’t. It’s just such a habit with me now that I find it very hard to kick.”
“Oh, you can read whatever you want—just don’t read stuff written by the competition. That’s going to mess you up, man.”
Rick laughed a laugh of incredulity. “What, the New York Times? But I always read the Times. And the Wall Street Journal, the Post and about half a dozen other publications.”
“That’s why you’ll never amount to anything in your profession,” said Reece.
The actor now resembled a human pretzel. A naked human pretzel. Rick wondered how he did it. Reece’s spine was probably made of Jell-O, and so were his limbs.
“I don’t get it,” Rick said, because he didn’t get it.
“You keep looking at the competition and comparing yourself.” Reece shook his head. “Wrong, buddy. So wrong. Comparitis is like a cancer. Deadly and relentless.”
“But I have to know what those guys are up to!” cried Rick. “It’s important.”
“No, it’s not. You should spend less time reading up on the competition and more time doing your own thing, Ricky, my man. Trust me. You’ll thrive, hombre. Thrive!”
Rick frowned at his housemate. “Pardon my French, Reece, but that sounds like a bunch of baloney.”
“Well, it’s not,” said Reece, casually tucking his right leg behind his left ear. “If I spent all my time watching movies starring the competition, checking out what Leo is doing, or Brad or Tom or Dwayne, I wouldn’t have any Reece time left, if you see what I mean.”
Rick did see what he meant, but he wasn’t buying it. “But you have to keep abreast of the competition. How else are you going to compete?”
Reece chuckled. “You said abreast.”
“I mean, if I don’t know what Thomas Friedman is writing, or Martin Baron, how am I going to know what’s happening in my field? What’s going on in the world?”
“Aha,” said Reece, removing his index finger from his belly button and pointing it at Rick. “That’s the crux of the matter. If you can figure that out, you’re on your way to greatness. You’ll know the unknowable by being able to ignore the unignorable.”
“What does that even mean? Have you been reading my Dalai Lama book again?”
Reece merely smiled. He had assumed a lotus position and looked like a ridiculously muscular Buddha. “Ignore the competition and do your own thing, Ricky. Trust me.”
The whole conversation gave Rick an idea. He could do an article about air-headed Hollywood stars spouting pseudo-religious nonsense. But Rick had no time to contemplate the piece, or even write up an outline, for at that moment Alice came stomping down the stairs. She was yelling into her phone. “What do you mean you can’t talk right now? What is so important that you can’t even spare a minute to chat with one of your oldest friends?”
She was silent for a moment, and Virgil’s voice could be heard, explaining patiently that he would talk to her later.
“No, you will talk to me now—Virgil? Virgil!” But Virgil had hung up on her. Alice stared at her phone, as if it had just turned into a snake and had bitten her in the ear. “He hung up on me!” she cried. “Can you believe that? Virgil hung up on me! Virgil!” she added, just in case the message hadn’t come across as intended.
“He’s probably busy,” said Reece, who now rose effortlessly from the floor, possibly by harnessing the power of levitation, and casually strode to the door.
“Pants, babe,” said Alice, still frowning at her phone.
“Gotcha,” Reece said with a grin, and plucked the pair of boxers from the air that Alice now threw him. He put them on without breaking stride—once again defying the physical laws of nature that apply only to mere mortals like Rick, and moved to the door, opened it and walked out into the morning sunshine. He returned a few moments later with a plastic-wrapped copy of Variety, a plastic-wrapped copy of Hollywood Reporter, and of course the Happy Bays Gazette, the local rag in which Felicity had a baking column.
“Why do you need Virgil?” asked Rick.
“I was hoping he was working on a case and I could help him solve it.”
“Alice wants to spice up her life,” Reece explained. “She feels our lives have become a little too vanilla and need some excitement.”
“A good mystery should do the trick,” said Alice. “Or anything, really. A ghost hunt, or even a nasty poltergeist messing up someone’s home. At this point I’ll take anything.”
“If you want excitement you could fly out with me to the table read of my next movie,” said Reece. “There’s plenty of excitement to be had, trust me.”
Alice grimaced. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Reece, but a bunch of actors sitting around reading from a script doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world.”
“Not unless one of those actors is so obnoxious he gets stabbed by one of his colleagues,” muttered Rick, dunking another bagel and shoving it into his mouth.
“It could happen,” said Reece. “Our director is not well-liked, that much I can tell you.”
“What are you filming?” asked Fee, who’d arrived downstairs.
“They’re doing a remake of Murder on the Orient Express,” said Reece, yanking away the plastic covering of his copy of Variety and taking out the magazine. His face was on the cover and he studied it carefully.
“Didn’t they just do a remake?” asked Fee, popping a piece of bread in the toaster.
“No idea,” said Reece. “Like I just told Ricky, it’s not a good idea to be too focused on the competition. Our ambition is to make this the only Murder on the Orient Express people will remember. All other versions will pale in comparison.” He put down Variety and picked up Hollywood Reporter. Here, too, he was featured on the cover.
“So what’s your part?” asked Rick. “No, don’t tell me. The guy who’s brutally stabbed because everyone on the train hates his guts, right?”
Reece held up his copy of Hollywood Reporter as if it was the skull in Hamlet and struck a pose. “Do you think I have a good side and a not-so-good side, babe?” he asked.
“All your sides are good,” said Alice, who was now punching a strongly worded message to Virgil into her phone.
“You’re the victim, right?” asked Rick, pressing a point. “The one who viciously gets stabbed a dozen times?” He hated to admit it, but sometimes he wished he could stab Reece himself a dozen times. The actor could sometimes be just a little too... Hollywoody.
“Mh?” said Reece, putting down the magazine. “Oh, I play Hercule Poirot, of course. The lead,” he added, in case Rick hadn’t gotten the message.
“I should have known,” Rick muttered, and picked up his tablet again. But when he started reading the latest Paul Krugman op-ed piece, he suddenly found he didn’t enjoy it as much as he normally did. Reece’s fault, of course. The actor had told him not to let the competition get into his head and now he’d gotten into Rick’s head himself!
As he passed the table, Reece clapped him on the shoulder and leaned in. “Don’t thank me, Ricky,” he said. “Always happy to dispense a little wisdom to my friends.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Rick muttered darkly.
“Why don’t you let me talk to Virgil?” Fee suggested. “I’m sure he’ll listen to me.”
Gaston, the foursome’s ginger cat, had slunk in from the backyard, and was rubbing himself against Rick’s leg. He picked him up and placed him on his lap. If he couldn’t read the papers, the way he’d done for the last fifteen years of his life, at least he could pet the cat. Unless Reece had a theory about that, as well.
