Bound by Mystery

by Diane D. DiBiase

Harold hesitated and then sat.

  Fran’s eyes pinned him like a butterfly. “At dinner last night, Lionel said something about you about throwing money away. I checked our portfolio before we came here. You’ve lost even more of our savings. Did he give you another hot tip? Did you fall for it, like all the other hot tips?”

  Harold went slightly green. “No, no, that’s not what happened. I’ll explain the statements to you tonight. You’re not reading them right.”

  Fran went on. “You remember what I said, don’t you? That I’m not living with a gambling addict?” She spared us a glance. “Not one who refuses to get help.”

  Harold shook his head in little jerks. “This is not the time or place. That’s private. And it’s not gambling.”

  “We agreed, Harold—didn’t we agree?—that you would leave the finances to me. And you didn’t. I’m not going to work like a dog so you can lie around the house and lose money in day-trading. We’re done.”

  “Fran, stop it. We’ll talk about this later.”

  Harold stood up, red-faced and frantic, breathing fast. I couldn’t tell whether he was going to punch his wife or clutch his chest and fall to the floor.

  In a voice that had swapped anger for dread, Fran asked, “Where were you this morning? When I woke up, you were gone.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. I took a walk. Why are you asking me? This is crazy.”

  After a stop-frame moment, my mother leaned toward him and spoke softly, sympathetically. “It wasn’t your fault, was it? He swore it was good information, then he laughed at you, didn’t he? He tricked you into losing money, and he brought it up at dinner in front of us to humiliate you.”

  Harold looked at her with eyes showing white like a frightened horse.

  “You came here to tell him to give your money back. He only mocked you. The money was just sitting there. So you took it. You did what you had to do.”

  “That liar owed it to me,” Harold said savagely, and clapped a hand to his mouth.

  ***

  “Poor Bunny,” my mother said. She was in the passenger seat of my Honda, on our way home. A small pot with tiny red blooms sat in her lap, a gift from Ralph.

  “Do you really think she’ll miss Lionel?” I asked as we pulled onto the freeway.

  “Oh, yes. They were close. He never picked on her. I think she was the only person he trusted. He was always trying to be one up on the rest of us. Insecure.”

  Maybe.

  “And will Fran miss Harold?”

  She snorted. “That one’s been on the rocks for years. I’m amazed they made it this far. I’m also amazed that Harold had the guts to jump Lionel. He’s always struck me as a wimp. Fran ran the show.”

  “She’ll be running it alone now.” A half mile later I said, “They make you and Dad look pretty good.”

  She smiled at that. “You weren’t too bored by the conference?”

  I paused to finish passing a semi. “Not after Harold bolted. That got my attention.”

  “You were so fast! Chasing Robby keeps you in shape. And your job, I suppose.” She shifted the seat back a notch and adjusted her boot. “We make a good team, don’t we? We could go into business as Flora and Fauna Investigations.”

  “Cute. But one detail has me puzzled. That dibble-thing that Harold stabbed Lionel with. What was it doing in his office?”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Well, Lionel was a gardener. Why wouldn’t it be in his office?”

  Silly me. This was the woman I’d seen use a trowel as a bookmark. A muddy trowel, at that.

  The Cry of the Loon

  Janet Hubbard

  My agent, Kimberly Cameron, sent my manuscript BORDEAUX: The Bitter Finish to Barbara Peters at Poisoned Pen Press, who immediately said “yes!” to a mystery series set in the wine districts of France. I was thrilled, of course. Then Barbara said, “Did I understand Kimberly to say that you have a draft of a novel set in Champagne?” It turned out that PPP wanted to publish CHAMPAGNE: The Farewell first. I agreed, but realized too late that switching titles would require two massive rewrites. Panic—and Barbara—got me through.

  —J.H.

  ***

  Dusk was approaching when the tremolo of a loon brought a pause to the list-making my friends Sandra and Louise had been at for over two hours. Sandra was in the process of renovating the fifties-style camp she had bought at the south end of a pond in Vermont, around which converged twenty residences, most of them summer homes. At the other end was a cozy bar that offered live music sometimes on weekends. Sandra’s favorite haunt. She could paddleboard there and drink as much as she wanted, then climb on the board to return to camp. She had been warned by neighbors against this practice but laughed them off.

  “Writer John McPhee called that sound the laugh of the deeply insane,” Sandra said. “That must be where the expression loony comes from.”

  “I was just reading up on their different cries,” I said. “That one curdles the blood, but another sounds like a wolf. The tremolo signals alarm. The male is defending his territory.”

  “I’ve been recording them,” Sandra said. “The babies should come soon, by the way. It’s late May, so maybe mid-June.”

  Louise said, “Their cries make me sad. They’re haunting.” She stood and looked out over the pond that one day in the not-too-distant future we knew would no longer be. Sandra had been told that in one hundred years it would not exist.

  She had complained. “So what about my grandkids? They end up with a dried-up pond?”

  We were on the upstairs screened-in porch that housed a bed where Louise and I would sleep tonight. Sandra would stay in her room with her three dogs, who were all stretched out on the floor nearby.

  Sandra was already on her third glass of wine by my count, but then she had probably been sipping since noon. She hid her addiction better than anyone I knew. The only sign that she had crossed over into drunkenness was when she brought up uncomfortable topics. I was often a victim of these; for example, she liked to talk about how I had persevered with my writing career after numerous rejections. By the time she was done, though, her praise sounded more like ridicule.

  Louise and I agreed on the thirty-mile ride over that we would exercise more self-discipline this time, and not get inebriated—which is what usually happened when we had our “girls’ overnight.”

  Sandra had lost interest in the list, and began regaling us with a litany of woes: she was turning sixty-five and being booted out of her vet practice, her mother was in a nursing home, her sister had a rare form of Parkinson’s that caused her to see double, and to top it all, her sister’s son had had the nerve to ask Sandra for permission to marry on her property in town and what could she say but yes, considering her sister’s condition. “Anything to take stress off my sister,” she said. She lowered her voice when she heard a car turn into the neighbor’s driveway. “Bridezilla hates everyone on our side of the family. That’s what we’re dealing with. A bride who hates her groom’s entire family. And on top of that she just charged thirty-thousand dollars to my brother-in-law’s credit card. So much for the simple country wedding.”

  I picked up my glass of chardonnay and sipped. “I’d like to go down and watch the loons while we still have a little light,” I said. Sandra had created a viewing station next to the hot tub, where you could squat and peer through binoculars attached to a tripod. Ignoring me, Sandra said, “If I retire, then what? As it is now I exercise two hours a day, and drink the rest. What would I do in retirement? Exercise four hours a day and drink the rest?”

  I studied her. Short, athletic build. Not exactly stocky, but certainly not lean. Small eyes like those of a groundhog that didn’t balance out her full mouth with slightly buck teeth, yet somehow the overall effect was charming. She pretended not to give a shit, and she swore a lot, which made her seem like one of her aggressive dogs.
Louise and I thought it funny that a vet had no control over her pets.

  “Do you know how lucky you are to be able to retire?” Louise asked her. “I’ll be working the rest of my life.”

  The desultory conversation bored me. Regret had overtaken me. Another evening that would remain fuzzy in my mind, as I now knew I would drink more than usual, and be tired for two days after. None of us were young enough anymore to sustain a big drinking night. I also realized that I both liked and loathed Sandra.

  A sea-change had occurred in our tentative friendship since my Swiss pilot lover, Antonio, and I had driven out to see her eight or nine months ago. He was a real estate junkie, and this particular little camp in the middle of nowhere would interest him. Sandra was in shorts, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Face alive with curiosity that soon turned to avid flirting. Antonio was amused, and accepted a second beer. I had been laughing along with them, barely touching my wine as I was the designated driver, when she lured him out to a kayak to see the house from afar. She was now hanging onto his every word, adoring his accent, and saying so. He told her how he would transform the little cabin. “Build a log house,” he had said.

  I stood on the dock, watching them skim across the water in kayaks, looking back at the camp and me, except I suddenly felt invisible. A deep anger welled in me. They returned and popped open two more cans of beer. Antonio glanced at me, and I saw a hint of shame that disappeared before I could name it.

  “We have to go soon,” I had said.

  Sandra’s response was to heat up the gas grill and throw a few sausages on it. She looked at me for the first time in an hour, vaguely surprised to see me. “Oh, Rachel, stay for dinner, then go,” she said. “I want to get Antonio’s advice about the upstairs.”

  We stayed. She had transformed into a sparkly eyed, rapt listener. I had never imagined her listening to anyone. Antonio had grabbed her interest, and it was clear: she wanted him. I could gauge her level of inebriation when she told him her college SAT scores. A poor girl from Pennsylvania who had managed to become a vet, dyslexia and all. The only way I could dispel the gloom that had overtaken me was to reassure myself that we would never have contact with her again. I would make sure of that.

  As we were about to leave, he took out his phone and said, “You two girls stand there and let me get a photo.” I hesitated, and then moved closer to her, towering over her, as he said, “smile.” He was having the time of his life. Another concern ripened in that moment. I had seen the gallery of photos of women he had “dated” over the years, some of them from the distant past. Was I about to be relegated to the gallery?

  I complained a few days later to Louise who said I was being silly. “She was drunk, I’m sure,” she said. “And doesn’t remember it.”

  “That’s Sandra’s excuse for everything,” I said.

  When I emerged from my reverie, Sandra was looking at me. She said casually, “I had started to think that Antonio was my real friend. At least he comes to see me.”

  I tried not to let on how her shocking statement had catapulted me into a state of confusion. I stood mute. Was she taunting me? Was she telling the truth?

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “He stopped over a month ago. Out of the blue.” She frowned. “I thought it was a little rude, to tell you the truth. To show up unexpected.”

  Louise interjected quickly, “I’m sure he didn’t mean to intrude.” I hated the way Louise instantly conjured up excuses for peoples’ behaviors that had nothing to do with reality.

  “He said he wanted to see the progress on the renovation,” Sandra filled her glass with wine, and offered the bottle of red to Louise, who filled hers. “He landed his Piper at the local airport and drove out.”

  That was a hell of a drive, I thought.

  I looked at her now as I would a rival. Hair in dangly ponytail, visor, no makeup. A pint-sized boxer. But it wasn’t about looks, really. It was what she had promised him that night with her gaze, her raucous laughter, her swearing, everything to lure a Swiss-German repressed man into her net.

  She turned back to Louise, who said that we should make dinner. I heard Sandra say, “Well, I had to tell her, right? He wasn’t going to.”

  Louise lowered her voice, “I never trusted him. I know it’s a cliché, but he’s a pilot.”

  You are the cliché, Louise! I wanted to shout. I wasn’t ready yet to let Antonio go. I wasn’t even close to letting Sandra snatch him from me.

  I stood on the porch and gazed across the pond, exquisitely still as the last light of day was fading into shadow. I stepped out onto the porch and sat on the chair to watch the loons. They were monogamous, I had read somewhere, for at least five years. Exactly the length of time Antonio and I had been seeing each other behind his Swiss girlfriend’s back.

  I heard swearing inside and went back in. “Dinner’s gone,” Sandra said. “The dogs managed to eat all the burger. I guess we’re meant to go to Brambles.”

  The bar.

  Louise cast a worried look in my direction, and I looked away. I had never felt so trapped. So unsure. I had never in sixty-six years felt my fate so callously unfolding. Sandra marched out and climbed onto her paddleboard against Louise’s admonitions. “Let her go,” I said. “It’s a half mile at most, and we can reach her from the path if we need to.”

  Sandra arrived at the same time we did, and pulled her paddleboard up onto the bank and dismounted. It was routine for her. We waited, and a twinge of admiration seeped through me. She was a piece of work, as her friends called her.

  The bar was packed. The wine was cheap and served in large glasses. The hamburgers were awful. After an hour Louise said she had a headache from too much wine and would walk the half mile home. I offered to go with her, but she said, no, watch after Sandra.

  I went to the door with Louise, and she said, “I’m sorry about Antonio. We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” I said, in a faux cheerful voice, “I got five years out of him.”

  “I don’t think that’s how you feel,” she said. “I’m sure nothing happened between them. She told me she didn’t feel the lust vibe.”

  “You knew?”

  “She mentioned it.”

  “How are you always so goddamned sure, Louise? You have no idea what they did.”

  “She told me.”

  When I didn’t respond, she said, “Just climb in bed when you get back. I’m taking a pill for this headache and will be out until morning. I’ll leave the light on.”

  I nodded and went back in.

  Sandra raised a glass. “So, what is going on with you and Antonio?”

  I realized that I was drunk, too. The only way to nip this conversation in the bud was to state a fact. “I love him.”

  Her head jerked around. “Really? I thought he was a fling.”

  “Whatever.”

  The little eyes beaded in on me. “He’s defective, you know.”

  “I need to leave,” I said. “I don’t feel well. Let’s leave the paddleboard and walk the path.”

  She was as defiant as a teenager. “No. I paddleboard every night.”

  “We’ve had too much to drink.”

  We walked outside. The air was cool, and I wished I had brought a sweater. “What day exactly did Antonio show up?” I asked.

  “Oh, get over yourself,” she said impatiently.

  “See you at the house,” I said, stalking off.

  I walked, flashlight in hand. A sliver of moonlight fell across the narrow path. I passed a couple of boarded-up houses. The owners would move out over the next two weeks, Sandra had said.

  I heard a splash, then Sandra yelled “shit!” I stopped and stumbled to the front yard of the boarded-up house and saw Sandra’s head bobbing around.

  “Rachel!” she called.

 
I stood there, unsure.

  “Rachel! Goddamn it, my board disappeared. It’s floating your way. Hurry up!”

  I remained silent.

  A gasping sound. She was thrashing around. Desperate. As desperate as I felt when she told me Antonio had come to visit. Everything was still for three beats. Then a soft plea came from the center of the pond. “Rachel? Are you there?”

  “Oh, fuck…”

  A wail that sounded like a wolf’s howl rose and fell. Sandra would be pleased that the loon had cried out at the moment of her demise. I switched on my flashlight and continued walking toward the house.

  Judge Jillian

  David Moss

  After I completed my first novel, This Isn’t A Game, I Googled mystery publishers. Poisoned Pen Press showed up on the first page of search results. One site hyped it as a “fan favorite, run by and for mystery fans.” That sounded good. But I couldn’t make up my mind. Should I submit first to Poisoned Pen Press, or to another place I’ll call Publisher B?

  I was drinking a glass of Oban at the time, which I’d bought after sampling a few other scotches. That’s what I’d do. I’d sample the mysteries. I picked one at random from Poisoned Pen Press’ list of authors. Actually, it wasn’t quite random. I picked Reavis Z. Wortham for the irrational reason that he had a handlebar mustache and cowboy hat. A few scenes into one of his books, I knew it was better than any mystery I’d read in the past year. Finishing the book cemented that opinion. If Poisoned Pen Press published works of that quality, that’s where I wanted to submit my novel. So I did.

  —D.M.

  ***

  A botched poodle-grooming leads to fisticuffs at the kennel club. A couple sues a cake-maker for putting laxative in their wedding cake. A man claims his upstairs neighbor installed a louder vacuum motor to wake him.

  Judge Howard got all the best cases.

  How was Judge Jillian supposed to compete when her producer came up with snoozers like a landlord tries to add clauses to a pre-existing lease? A woman claims her ex owes her money she lent to repair his van. Former housemates accuse each other of breaking the washer and dryer.