Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

by Doug Allyn

  I’d talked about moving for years, though this was the first time Melissa’d agreed to put the house up for sale. I’d come close to this point several times, but there was always something, some goddam something that stopped me. Where could you find a house this inexpensive? Where a more temperate climate, where cleaner air, nicer neighbors? Where would you find doctors as caring and tuned in to us as ours? And our medical records, our records! And the girls and the grandchildren, and two sons-in-law you could really talk to and call on for advice. And work — I was retired, but still did consulting, and though I didn’t really need to do it, you never knew, you never knew. And all my clients were in this area.

  “This,” Melissa was saying, “was our Becky’s room.”

  “Oh, you kept it just like it was,” Mrs. Williams said admiringly, looking at Melissa for confirmation.

  “Yes,” Melissa said.

  Mrs. Williams was referring to the cork paneling on the wall next to the bed, with old pictures and newspaper clips thumbtacked to it — Becky had been quite an athlete. And now in Katie’s room, there were three of her old teddy bears she deliberately kept here for her children when they visited, and the bunny-rabbit table lamp and the table-hockey game, with the few broken men, she always said she was going to take home.

  All part of the trap, too, in a way. You know, don’t you, that memories can be a trap?

  How I’d come to hate this house; oh, how I hated it! I’d loved it once, I did, but it had gone a million miles past serving its purpose!

  My heart was going fast now, with anxiety. Let me be right about these people, I was thinking, let them—

  “You know, George,” Mrs. Williams said, “I think this would be perfect for Gail’s room, and the other would be perfect for the baby. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” He nodded quickly.

  “Let me show you our room,” Melissa said, but she lingered behind for a few moments, gazing into Katie’s old room as though hating to release it.

  Although a stranger wouldn’t ever detect it from her manner, she still didn’t want to move. I was sure. I knew her, she hadn’t changed. And it was probably even one of the reasons she didn’t want an agent, was hoping we couldn’t do it.

  “Yes, this is a nice large bedroom,” Mrs. Williams said.

  “Feel free to open the closets,” Melissa offered.

  “Hmm,” Mrs. Williams said, pleased, at each open door.

  In my study, Mr. Williams said, “Are you retired? I’ve the feeling you might be.”

  “I am. But I still keep my hand in.”

  “That’s always a good idea, I would think. What,” he soon asked his wife, “will we do with this room?” and there was such a tone of worry in his voice that I suddenly visualized it all ending here. Here!

  I said quickly. “You can turn it back into a bedroom. That’s what it was.”

  “Of course, George,” his wife said. “It’ll be an extra bedroom.”

  “I mean all those bookcases,” he said. Then to me: “You must have two hundred books in this room alone. Do you have any idea how many you have altogether?”

  “Quite a few,” I said.

  “It’s really a shame, though,” Mrs. Williams said, “to tear down these beautiful bookcases.” Then she said, “Will you have room for them where you’re moving?”

  “No,” Melissa replied. “We’ll have to store them or sell them or give them away.”

  Smiling, Mrs. Williams looked at me. “May I ask where you’re moving to?”

  “I think,” I said, “we’re going to start off in Spain.”

  “What do you mean,” Mr. Williams asked, “by ‘you think’?”

  “Oh,” Melissa spoke up, “we’re going to put everything in storage, or just about everything, and just take off. Go with the wind pretty much. Bill has always wanted this,” she said, smiling at me, “and we decided it’s time. Just take off. We have a bunch of brochures. Six months in Spain — travel all around there first, we’ve never been there, we’ve never been to most places — and see where we’d like to put down roots for, say, six months before moving on. I was thinking maybe Valencia first, I’ve heard such nice things — you know, on the Mediterranean?”

  “You mean,” Mr. Williams said, “you’re not sure where you’ll be living? You’ll just be... going?”

  “Oh, that’s the idea,” Melissa said. “Then we’ll go to Portugal, although we still might go to Portugal first. We’re like two kids.”

  “So you have no idea where you’ll be settling down.”

  “Oh, that’s the last thing we want to do,” she said. “We’ve had enough of settling down. We’re going to rent here, there, everywhere the wind and our whims take us. That sounds, oh... I guess poetic, but that’s what we’re going to do.”

  “Sounds like a dream,” Mr. Williams said with a slight, awed shake of his head.

  “The idea,” Melissa said, “is to get away from everything you always assume you have to do, have to have. Live at last for ourselves. No more gardener just because next door has one. No more must have a new car every two years because you don’t want to have the oldest one on the block. No living in fear, like — ‘I can’t do this, I can’t do that because I might break a hip and what’ll I do, who will I call, who’ll care?’ I’m sick of fear. Children, grandchildren — God bless them, but we’ll see them once a year, twice a year. They’ll do fine. I don’t have to spend the rest of my life worrying about will they cross the street safely, will they do this, that, as though living near them is some kind of safety. And this may make me sound hard, but let them worry about us for a change.”

  “That’s something,” Mr. Williams said; and meanwhile I was staring over at Melissa in fury, for she was really taking years of my words and throwing them back at me, even embellishing them. And it was everything she’d ridiculed before!

  You know, Mr. Williams’s voice cut in, what his dream was?

  “I’d really like to live somewhere where it’s always sunny. The beach and shorts and barefoot thing. Really. Well, maybe someday.”

  “Honey, someday we will,” his wife said. “You know we’ve talked.”

  “What she’s talking about,” Mr. Williams explained to us, “is what I really want some day. Well, some year. A charter fishing boat.” His face was suddenly red, as though he was embarrassed. “You know, move with the seasons to the warm spots.”

  It was so idealistic a dream, so corny even, so much a cliché, that I couldn’t believe he had let himself say the words. But almost instantly something strange happened in me. I didn’t know this guy, what he did for a living — though I pictured him in some corporate, somewhat above entry-level job, but he seemed so simpleminded that I felt a rush of warmth toward him, a kind of... love. Like suddenly he was a son I wanted to protect. And what happened next, though it might not seem much, only brought it to a boil.

  “We’ll get it one day,” Mrs. Williams said. Then, almost immediately putting an arm through his, “Honey, look at those windows. Do you know what curtains I can see going there?”

  We were walking back downstairs soon. I know we went down to the finished basement, then out to the garage; I remember hearing Mrs. Williams admiring how neatly I kept my tools, but that’s about all — my head and heart were pounding. And it was, I think, just when we came back into the living room that Mrs. Williams said, “When could we have possession?”

  “Would two months be all right?” Melissa asked.

  “Oh fine, that’s just right.”

  “Well, the one vital thing we haven’t asked about,” Mr. Williams said, “is price. What are you asking?”

  He had turned that simple-minded face to me and was looking at me with a mixture of eagerness and concern. But I’m just guessing at that — the thing was, I could barely see him. There were waves in front of my eyes, sent up by the tumult of my heart.

  One-ninety at the most, I’d insisted to Melissa. If not, then the best offer...


  “Three hundred thousand.”

  It just came out, just like that. And through those waves in my vision I saw Mrs. Williams’s face fall, but his — am I guessing this? am I making this up? — seemed to lift. Then they both turned to Melissa as she exclaimed, “Bill!”

  “What’s the matter? It’s what we said.”

  She looked at me squarely. Then, quietly, “Yes, I know.”

  “Well,” Mr. Williams said after a slow look at his wife, “it’s way too much for us. I should have asked right away. But it is quite a house.”

  They were mumbling thanks now, Mrs. Williams almost in tears, and I think I shook hands with them, but the next thing I really remember is standing facing the closed door as though in the silence of a bell jar. I remember a feeling of tremendous elation — more than that, the greatest possible pure joy. I’d saved him! And given it to that little bitch! Not forever, maybe, no one could save anyone forever, but it wouldn’t be me who helped trap him!

  I was waiting, my back turned to her, for Melissa to speak up, to taunt, to yell. But nothing. And gradually, aware of it as if for the first time, I felt myself sinking back into it, the trap, the large-toothed trap. Back into the hovering madness.

  But this was just that couple! There’d be others!

  “You’re crazy,” Melissa’s voice said, very quietly. “You know you’re crazy?”

  I didn’t turn around.

  “What’ve I told you?” she went on. “You blame me, you blame everyone, you make” — her voice kept getting higher — “every kind of excuse — every kind — it’s this, it’s that, it’s everything but yourself. Yourself”

  I leaned my forehead against the door.

  “You are crazy.” Her voice came closer. “You know that? You’re crazy!”

  I remember thinking: Don’t say that anymore. Please? Please? and I whirled and strode past her without a look.

  Now, maybe this is another excuse. But why did she have to follow me? And why did her presence behind me close every path but into the kitchen, with its drawers, its — that beautiful kitchen?

  I’ll Never Leave You

  by Donald Olson

  © 1994 by Donald Olson

  A new short story by Donald Olson

  To his considerable output as a short-story writer and contributor to nonfiction journals, Donald Olson has recently begun to add film scripts; his beautifully constructed short stories seem to beg for dramatic adaptation. EQMM has a handful of new Donald Olson stories to offer over the coming months...

  ❖

  “I’ll never leave you,” he said, not menacingly, yet giving the impression of flexing even the muscles of his cavernous brown eyes, those eyes that had first attracted her, eyes with the depth and serenely deceptive tenderness of certain animals of the cat family. His name was Guy Subjack and he was the athletic director of Moon Brook Golf and Racquet Club where Irina had first met him.

  From where they were parked Irina could see the rolling greens of the golf course and just beyond, across the highway, the equally lush expanse of Lakeview Cemetery.

  “Guy, don’t talk nonsense,” she said, wondering why they must all behave so tiresomely when it was over.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Darling, we had an affair, not a romance.”

  “I’m only a dumb jock, tell me the difference.”

  “Romance is what we’re all looking for, but we settle for affairs — after a certain age, when we realize the search is hopeless.” This pricked his anger. “God, you make me sound like something you picked up at the market. Something fresh and appealing to the eye that didn’t quite suit your taste when you got it home.”

  “So some of us have fickle appetites, sorry.” She didn’t wish to be cruel, she wasn’t trying to hurt him, but she’d had no idea he was going to prove so difficult. For two weeks she’d been trying gracefully to end the affair and his puppy-dog persistence had begun first to bore and then to alarm her. Calling her at home when she’d made it clear that was a no-no, and if not exactly stalking her, seeming always to be just around the comer from wherever she happened to be. Of course, she couldn’t avoid him at the club, but she resented having to give up its social activities for fear he would make a scene in front of her husband.

  “You made a mistake if you thought you could treat me like all the others,” he said truculently. “Take my word for it, you can be hurt, too.”

  “Is that a threat, Guy?”

  “Take it any way you like. You’re not dumping me.”

  “You’re young, Guy, but that’s no excuse to act like a child. Face it. It’s finished.”

  “There’s only one way it’ll be finished. If one of us ends up over there.” He waved a hand toward the cemetery.

  “That’s not funny. In fact, this whole thing ceased to be amusing when you began taking it seriously. You can drop me at the club. I’m going home.”

  “Time to get hubby’s din-din, is it?”

  “Oh, you do remember I have a husband.”

  “I’m not the one who forgets it.”

  He let her out of the car at the club’s backdoor, away from prying eyes. His hand closed around her wrist. “I meant what I said, Irina. Think about it.”

  She jerked her hand loose. “Don’t ever call me again, Guy. Don’t ever speak to me.”

  The detective’s name was Armand Daversa. He was young, heavy-browed, bull-shouldered, with searching green eyes.

  Dr. Russell handed him a cup of coffee. “My wife just woke up. She’ll be down soon as she’s dressed. I gave her a mild sedative last night so she’s still a bit groggy. As I am, for that matter.”

  “Understandable, sir. Before your wife joins us perhaps we might run over what you told me last night. By the way, have you had a chance to determine if anything’s missing?”

  “Nothing, so far as I can tell.”

  “Odd.”

  “Decidedly.” Darwin Russell’s keenly intelligent features were set in an expression of anxious bewilderment. “As nothing was stolen and my wife was not sexually assaulted, it poses a quandary as to the intruder’s motive. Maybe what he did to Irina was out of spite because he found nothing worth stealing. We don’t keep valuables in the house.”

  “Not likely he’d have done what he did even before ransacking the house. And binding your wife and leaving her in the car with the engine running in a closed garage would be carrying spite a bit far.”

  “Then how in God’s name do you explain such a gratuitous act of violence? Unless he was a maniac.”

  “Maniacs aren’t usually so methodical. He could as easily have killed Mrs. Russell right here in the house. The only apparent reason for lugging her out to the car would have been to fake a suicide, which is ruled out by his having tied her to the wheel and gagged her.”

  Russell refilled the detective’s coffee cup. “I’m not a religious man, but I can’t help feeling some force of providence was responsible for my coming home from the seminar to pick up that file when I did. If I hadn’t... dear God, I don’t even want to think about it.”

  Daversa rose as Irina appeared at the door. Russell hastened to take her hand and lead her to the sofa. She was very pale, which in no way detracted from her beauty. Her cloud of dark chestnut hair was gathered loosely in a bun on her neck, her gold-flecked eyes deeply shadowed.

  “You’re sure you’re up to this, darling?” Russell inquired anxiously, still holding her hand.

  “Quite sure. Coffee, please, darling.” But then she seemed reluctant to release his hand.

  Daversa promised to make his visit as brief as possible. “We got most of what we need last night. I’m wondering if after a night’s rest you might have remembered anything in clearer detail?”

  Irina’s hand trembled as she lifted the delicate china cup to her lips. “I’m sorry. It happened so fast. I sat down to watch television here on the sofa shortly after Darwin left for the seminar. It was a rather noisy sitcom. I didn’t hear anyone br
eak in the backdoor. He was just suddenly there, behind me, grabbing me. All I saw before I fainted was that frightful stocking mask over his face. He didn’t say a word. When I came to I was in my car, unable to move. The engine was running. I knew I was going to die. There wasn’t a prayer Darwin would be home until late... much too late.”

  She put the cup down shakily and reached for her husband’s hand. Tears came into her eyes. “When I heard a sound and turned my head to the window it was like — like seeing God’s face.” A trace of color stained her cheeks, as if she feared the detective might find her words foolishly extravagant.

  “Afraid I can’t live up to that image,” Darwin chaffed her, “but I trust I won’t be rebuked quite so often in future for my absentmindedness. If I hadn’t forgotten that file...” He too looked on the point of breaking down.

  A confusion of emotions had kept Irina awake a good part of the night, despite the sedative. She knew it was her duty to tell the police about Guy Subjack, blaming herself for not taking his threatening remarks seriously, but if she were to do that, Darwin would learn of her affair with Guy and that was the last thing she wanted to happen; following the exposure of an earlier affair, she had made a solemn vow to Darwin that it would never happen again.

  Daversa was asking her if the keys were already in her car; she admitted she was usually careless about leaving them in the ignition when the garage was shut.

  “We’ve no enemies,” Darwin insisted. “It’s utterly senseless, like something one sees on TV. Tell me frankly, Lieutenant, what are your chances of catching this guy?”

  Daversa spread his hands. “Ask me again in a few days. I might be in a better position to give you an answer.”

  Later that afternoon, on the flagged terrace overlooking the garden, Irina lapsed into a long abstracted silence. Beside her, Darwin was trying to read, but as usual those particular sounds of summer to which his ears were so sensitively attuned kept distracting his attention. He found himself watching a dragonfly patrolling the edge of the lily pond, its five eyes scouting for food to satisfy its insatiable appetite; if food were not available it would be quite capable of devouring part of its own body. A keen amateur etymologist, Darwin was knowledgeable about insect lore.