EQMM, July 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He walked down the open corridor to his bedroom. Once inside, he disabled the cameras and set them outside the bedroom door.

  He would have privacy whether his father wanted it or not.

  And he would do what was right—what was normal—for most other kids. Starting the next day.

  Kyle was actually going to talk to his friends instead of talk around them. And he was going to invite the Geek Squad to lunch. Then he'd smile at a pretty girl—a real one, not one he fantasized about on the Internet.

  Because he was beginning to think fantasizing about someone he didn't know wasn't healthy. It was wrong to know the intimate details of some nameless girl from Schenectady without ever meeting her. It didn't matter that she had put those details on the Web, seeking attention.

  He didn't have to give it.

  Any more than he had to indulge his father by creating endless loops of meaningless activities.

  He had to stop thinking about being Kyle Worthington, only son of billionaire Jackson Worthington. He had to stop thinking about being the Big K, the guy everyone envied. He had to start being just plain Kyle, the guy who secretly wanted to know about things like SIM cards and theoretical physics and Shakespearean sonnets. The guy who wanted to be asked to join the Geek Squad not because it would make them cool, but because he had earned it.

  It wouldn't take much to get the kind of grades that sent him to the college of his choosing, not a college his dad bribed to let him in.

  Maybe at that college, wherever it was, he could blend into the crowd, move unnoticed through the hallways, disappear along the quad. No one filming him, no one measuring his every move, no one trying to figure out who he really was without knowing him at all.

  He would like that. True privacy. The kind that had always eluded him.

  The kind the Breck Girl had until she posted a video of herself on YouTube.

  She hadn't understood the downside of being watched all the time.

  Kyle didn't know if there was a downside to extreme privacy.

  But he was going to find out.

  No matter what the cost.

  Copyright © 2009 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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  Fiction: AWAKE by David Dean

  2007 Readers Award winner David Dean (see “Ibrahim's Eyes") shows his versatility this month with a disturbing short-short. The New Jersey author is, by day, the chief of police in one of his state's coastal tourist towns—which gives him an opportunity to observe much in human nature that might eventually prove useful to a crime writer! We have a couple of longer stories by Mr. Dean scheduled for later this year, and he tells us that he is currently at work on a crime novel.

  The old man settled back into the tangled welter of sheets and blankets that comprised his bed and sighed. From somewhere near his feet, his sigh was answered with a similar exhalation. In the moonlight that leaked around the edges of the drawn curtains, he could just make out the silhouette of two large, pointed ears beneath which two concerned eyes glistened and watched. Then, as if in agreement, man and dog grunted in unison and laid their heads down once more.

  For the old dog, sleep returned easily and she was soon snoring, but for her master, a lifetime of loss, regret, and now, loneliness, always awaited his return to consciousness and seized him fast in its talons. To counter this, he had developed a process by which he could soothe his mind of its anxieties and eventually return to sleep. This method consisted of a simple inventory of all the familiar and comforting sounds that his home and dog made within the overall silence of the greater night. It always began with his companion.

  Her deep, steady breathing told him all was well, and this provided the first step towards his greater relaxation. Keeping his own breathing regular while attempting to slow his heart rate at the same time, he allowed his mind to wander through his home of forty years seeking other familiar sounds that reassured him.

  First and foremost was the furnace. During the winter months, the reliability of its great warming breath held no equal as his ideal of comfort and safety from the elements, and now he looked forward to that series of sounds that heralded its arousal. The light tap-tap-tap of the contracting water pipe he had so recently used warned him of the dropping temperature, even as the winds outside scampered with tiny claws across the wall next to his bed. Then, as if on cue, he perceived the barely audible click of the thermostat signaling, from its perch on the wall, that the moment for action had arrived. With pleasurable anticipation, the old man listened for the sounds that must follow.

  From within the greater darkness of the attached garage came the barely audible hiss of gas followed, after what seemed a long and dangerous time, by the businesslike snap of the igniter. Then, with a satisfying, distant roar, the flames were brought into being to warm his home. In his mind's eye he could picture the dancing light playing across the stained concrete floor of the garage. And then, as the finale, the heater fan located beneath the staircase whirred into life as the warm air coming through the vent reached it to trigger its assistance in pushing the warmth up to the second floor. The house now hummed contentedly to itself as it dispelled the tendrils of cold that had seeped silently through the walls. The old man secured the blanket beneath his chin, even as his eyes began to dart and play beneath his eyelids.

  As sleep began to reclaim him at last, the voices of his wife, Claire, and their children, called to him from somewhere not far away, though their actual figures were still withheld from him. In the dusty living room, the French clock he had bought her as a gift in Europe began to chime the hour in light, tinkling notes and, like a hypnotist, he counted each one as they sank him deeper and deeper into the welcoming darkness.

  The old man, now decades younger, watched as his lovely young wife toweled off his children next to the pool beneath a benign sun in a peerless sky, and smiled contently. The only sound that intruded was the reassuring crackle of expanding wood that signaled the triumph of the furnace over the nascent cold; the walls and doorframes returning to their intended shapes and sizes.

  Claire noticed him watching and returned his smile. The kids were fussing about being called out of the water and though he could not hear their words, their body language was unmistakable. A popping sound from somewhere to his left startled him, and he found himself vaguely troubled as to its source and meaning, but loath to turn away from his wife and children even for a second. Even so, Claire's face wavered in his vision like the surface of a pond disturbed with a pebble. When it settled again into the plump-cheeked, grey-eyed features that he was familiar with, her expression had changed to one of concern, the laughing smile having vanished like the sun he could no longer feel or see above him. She approached him still carrying a dripping towel. The kids leapt soundlessly into the pool behind her back.

  She spoke to him and he strained to hear her words, “Did you remember to lock the front door?” she whispered, the words seeming to come from a great distance.

  He stared back at his wife in bereaved silence. Was this all she had to say to him ... her husband of fifty years, after so long a separation? The mundanity of her words struck him to the heart and a sob caught in his throat that snatched him back to awareness.

  As he opened his eyes, his young wife's words blew into tatters like an old cobweb, and he struggled to catch them before they vanished. But the sound that seemed to have prompted them returned to him with terrifying clarity and he understood in that instant that it had come from one place and that place alone—the seventh step of the stairwell outside his bedroom door. As the furnace switched off and its efforts faded into a long sigh, the house lapsed into the silence of a held breath. Then the dog began to growl...

  Copyright © 2009 by David Dean

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  Fiction: A WASTE OF DEATH by Donald Olson

  Donald Olson is a master of the cozy mystery story. His settings are often familiar domestic environments, em-ploying a closed circle of chara
cterswho know each other well. And there is an element of gentility to his style that one rarely encounters nowadays. But if there is something reminiscent of the past in all of this, it must also be said that the things that motivate Mr. Olson's characters are thoroughly up-to-date. We salute him on his 100-plus tales!

  With only a token wrinkle of disgust, careful that no drop of blood from the croquet mallet stain the beige linen skirt of which she was particularly fond, Violet Rusken wiped the murder weapon vigorously on the grass, then continued to hold it as she gazed down upon the dead body of her employer.

  Audrey Fisher's body lay where she'd fallen, her head touching a blood-smeared wire wicket. The phrase “sticky wicket” crossed Violet's mind and she almost smiled. A heavy blow had shattered Audrey's skull, no doubt as delicately boned as the rest of her expensively clad body; that body, Violet was satisfied to realize, which would never again enjoy the unwilling embraces of her husband Edward.

  Dear, sweet, long-suffering Edward, freed at last from the shackles of a loveless marriage.

  But this was no time for idle daydreaming. Much to be done. First and foremost, disposal of the body. No problem there. Violet was not a dainty little teapot like Audrey but a woman of impressive stature, a robustious woman with a rich soft turban of chestnut hair and eyes on fire. That was Edward's phrase—Your eyes are on fire, he'd whispered on that memorable magic night which had changed Violet's life. Actually, it had happened only once and Edward, poor darling, had all but groveled with apologies the next morning. He'd had too much to drink, he hadn't known what he was doing, it would never happen again, blah-blah-blah.

  Oh, but it would, Violet was confident of that. She was banking her heart on it. Edward loved her, must have secretly lusted after her ever since she'd gone to work for Audrey. Yes, it would happen again and again and again now that Audrey, the bitch, was no longer in the way. Edward's discreetly proper behavior ever since that wonderful night could not fool Violet.

  She looked away from the croquet court to the pool below the terrace and the timber-and-stucco house beyond, then she strode purposefully to the toolshed behind the garage, hitched the trailer to the riding lawnmower, drove it across the lawn to where the body lay; with Audrey hefted onto the trailer she headed for the riverbank. There, with spade and pitchfork, Violet bent to her task and in hardly more time than it would have taken to plant a row of tulip bulbs Audrey was safely buried in the mucky earth, her grave hidden among the forget-me-nots and reeds growing so thickly along the riverbank. This done, Violet retrieved the mallet, gave it a thorough scrubbing, and replaced it in the rack before going back to the house to freshen up.

  Then for the risky part; well, maybe not so much risky as tricky. In Audrey's sumptuous dressing room Violet packed a few of Audrey's clothes and toiletries in an overnight bag, donned a pair of Audrey's gloves, made sure the car keys were in Audrey's handbag, and was soon on her way to the county airport in Audrey's baby-blue Mercedes, first dropping the bags off at her own apartment in town. At the airport she parked in a far corner of the lot, waited to be sure she was unobserved, then calmly walked into the terminal, waited for the city-bound bus, and climbed aboard.

  Violet was proud of the cool efficiency with which she'd done what had to be done, but then efficiency, along with her secretarial skills, had landed her the job with Audrey Fisher, her main task being to assist Audrey with the manuscript of a book she was writing about her late father, that old bore the Senator.

  Violet had no fear that Audrey's disappearance would change her own status; the bulky manuscript was not yet ready for the publisher and Edward, moreover, would rely on her help getting Audrey's affairs in order. Violet had always found Edward, like many exceedingly handsome men, somewhat lacking intellectually. It didn't take a vast amount of brain power to run the estate agency Audrey herself had managed before marrying Edward. Most of the real work, Violet felt sure, was left in the capable hands of Edward's young assistant, Todd Landry, not one of Violet's favorite people.

  * * * *

  Edward returned from his office four hours later to find Violet hard at work in Audrey's study.

  "Violet, what are you doing here? I understood you were spending the day at the Gresham Library. And where's Audrey?"

  Violet smiled at him, undressing him with her eyes and hoping he got the message. “I finished earlier than expected and thought I might as well come in instead of taking the rest of the day off as Audrey kindly suggested. She wasn't here when I got back."

  Edward checked the time. “She knows we have an early dinner date with the Randolphs."

  "Maybe she went shopping."

  "Well, you might as well go home,” he said.

  "I want to check some things with Audrey. I'll wait."

  At six she went downstairs. Edward was hovering by the french doors in the living room holding a drink.

  "No word?” Violet said.

  "No. I called and canceled our dinner date. Funny. She can't have forgotten."

  Poor Edward, Violet thought. He really did look flummoxed. What an inspired pair of frauds they were. Actors to the hilt. Edward faking such concern for his missing wife, she pretending to know nothing about Audrey's whereabouts. Why must they play this idiotic charade?

  She offered to fix him something to eat. He shook his head. “Don't bother. You'll want to get home."

  As if he really believed that. Eager to get back to that lonely cubbyhole in Gresham? “I insist,” she said firmly. “You must eat something, Edward. Take my word for it, there is nothing to worry about."

  Ignoring his protests, Violet headed for the kitchen. Their first meal together—alone. Something more exciting than a salad was called for. He must be literally fed up with Audrey's salads, as well as with that boring health regime she kept him on. No more, dear heart, no more. In my hands you'll eat what you like and do as you wish.

  Edward, however, remained too preoccupied to mumble more than a perfunctory compliment on her efforts. Well, of course he was preoccupied. It must be driving him crazy wondering what had happened to Audrey. How she glowed with the knowledge of her little secret.

  "Maybe there was an accident,” she said, now almost enjoying the charade.

  "We'd have heard something."

  "Not necessarily. I think we should call the police. It's been hours. Something must have happened."

  He regarded her with a muddled, indecisive expression. “I guess you're right.” A feeble smile. “I do appreciate your concern, Vi, but there's nothing more you can do. You may as well go home."

  She ventured a comforting pat on his arm as she cleared away his plate. “Please let me stay, Edward. Only until you hear something. All I'd do is sit home and worry."

  "Funny,” he said. “I somehow got the impression you weren't that fond of Audrey."

  How perceptive: “Yes, I can't honestly say I like Audrey, although I do admire her tremendously. Almost as much as I admire your—forbearance."

  "Forbearance?"

  "Edward, don't pretend Audrey is an easy person to live with—or up to."

  As if unwilling to enter that area of speculation, Edward rose from the table, said dully: “I'd better make that call."

  A few minutes later he came upstairs. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded from the dressing-room doorway.

  Violet froze. Posed like a model in front of the pier-glass, one hand on her hip, she was wearing Audrey's calf-length sable coat. Now she quickly slipped it off and turned to face Edward with a repentant smile.

  "Sorry, I couldn't resist. I was just checking Audrey's closet to see if anything's missing."

  "Missing?” he said sharply. “Why should there be anything missing? There's been no robbery."

  "No, not that. I just wondered ... She's gone, her car is gone, no explanation..."

  Violet had to admire his pretense of anxious solicitude. She felt a great wave of tenderness and sympathy. If she could only tell him. “Edward, I'm afraid you're wron
g. A number of her things are gone. Clothes, makeup, toothbrush, an overnight bag."

  Edward's face lost even more color. He sat down on the velvet settee and raked his fingers through his hair. “It doesn't make sense. I just don't understand."

  "Did you call the police?"

  "They said if I don't hear anything before then they'll send someone around in the morning."

  Insisting he wanted to be alone, he would not hear of Violet spending the night. She promised to return first thing in the morning. What did one more night matter, she thought, when heaven lay just around the corner.

  The detective's name was Nobbs and he projected an air of hard-core efficiency under a polite veneer of respectful sympathy for Edward's concern. And he already had news to impart.

  "Your wife's car was found at the airport, sir. Keys still in the ignition."

  "That's crazy! She wouldn't just take off like that. We had a dinner date with friends. She reminded me of it yesterday morning."

  "Could she have been abducted?” said Violet brightly.

  Nobbs frowned. “Any reason to believe that? You said you got here about noon, Miss Rusken. Notice anything unusual? Signs of an intruder? Anything at all out of the ordinary?"

  Violet shook her head. “Apart from Mrs. Fisher's absence, no."

  "Doors were locked?"

  "Yes. I used my own key to get in."

  Edward scoffed at Nobbs's suggestion that Audrey apparently left of her own accord. “She would never have left her keys in the car. It's a brand new Mercedes, for God's sake."

  "Unless she didn't plan to return,” said Violet, provoking an even angrier denial from Edward.

  Nobbs asked Edward for a picture of Audrey. “We'll show it to airport personnel and check outgoing passenger lists. Meanwhile, I'll take a look around here. Aside from that, there's really nothing we can do until you hear something."

  Edward left for the office after Nobbs departed. He called several times during the day to learn if Violet had heard anything and didn't get home until after dark.