She sighed. “I love you, too, Stacey. I can’t marry you.”
“Why?” questioned Stacey, his voice a practiced indignant. “What is there that can possibly keep us apart?”
“Six months ago my doctor said I had no more than two years to live. It’s my heart.”
Stacey hugged Doris. He forced himself to kiss her forehead. “Darling, I’m so ashamed. I should have proposed to you sooner. Imagine me dragging you all over the country to those nightclubs. Why, I might have hurt you. Your heart condition doesn’t make any difference. When two people love each other, they should be together to cherish each precious moment, whether it’s for just a few years, or a lifetime.”
They were married. Doris wanted to invite friends, especially her police sergeant friend. Stacey talked her in to not doing so on the pretense that he wanted a small private wedding. Both were happy, Doris because she truly loved Stacey, Stacey because he loved money, especially in large denominations. And yes, Turner was happy, too.
Thus, the weeks passed. Stacey and Turner had their hands on Doris Meadows’ fortune. Or did they? Unforeseen developments began to skewer up their scheme. Stacey started to crack. The birds in the aviary bothered him. They always had, but as he had his mind on how to marry Doris Meadows’ money, he at first hadn’t noticed their wild chirps and screeches. Now married and pretending to be domestically happy, the birds were driving him nuts.
One in particular, a parrot really knew how to get under his skin. The moment Stacey walked into the aviary he would hear a squawking voice say, “Well, hello there, you son-of-a-bitch.” It had been his mistake to say that to the parrot upon seeing it for the first time. Now the bird upon seeing him would say it over and over, “Well, hello there, you son-of-a-bitch.”
Stacey gritted his teeth over his desire to kill the parrot. But then he knew Doris would ask about the missing bird, so damn it all, it had to stay alive.
Nightmares started for him. Every night flocks of the little feathered terrorists had their revenge upon his sleeping body. They would peck him into a bloody pulp and bone mess before covering him with feces. Their screeches became human voices. “We know you are stealing Doris’ money…we know Stacey, we know. You are stealing her money.” He would scream nonstop aloud.
“Wake up, darling! You’re having a nightmare. Wake up!” It was Doris’ voice.
“Huh, what’s the matter?” To Stacey, his voice matched his feelings of being startled and incoherent.
“You were having a nightmare. Oh, just look at you. Darling, you’re soaking wet, and your face is so pale. Are you cold? You’re shivering.”
“No, I’m all right now.” He couldn’t tell her the truth. She mustn’t know the birds were bothering him. “I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt you died and I was all alone. I don’t know what I’ll do without you when you are gone.”
Still shivering, Stacey felt her hugging him closer. Her lips briefly touched his in an attempt to comfort him. “Please, Stacey, don’t think of my no longer being with you. Just relax. You’re going to be all right. Can I get you anything?”
He needed a drink, several of them. “Yes, would you get the decanter of whiskey and a glass from the living room table?”
When Doris came with the whiskey, Stacey was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigarette. He took the whiskey. After two double shots, he mentioned, “You should go back to bed, dear. I’m okay now.”
“All right, darling, but if you need me, just call out.”
Stacey was afraid to sleep. He sat in bed until daybreak, drinking whiskey and smoking. During the day, his nightmare still plagued him and it was only through a supreme effort of will power that he tended to the aviary. He had to keep up the pretense of loving the birds and loving Doris.
The following day Stacey met with Turner. He mentioned his nightmare. Turner chuckled. “It sounds like you drank a bad bottle of booze.”
Turner’s secretary gave Stacey sympathy several times in her bedroom along with a return invitation.
As the weeks passed, Stacey was nightmare free and confident. He kept Doris extremely happy with his pretense of loving her. Yes, everything was going just right, for Stacey Ryan and Jim Turner.
He was out on the desert. Stretching ahead of him, Stacey saw miles of sand. Looking for something familiar, he turned in a complete circle and saw nothing that could guide him to any kind of safety. He gazed upward. There wasn’t a cloud anywhere. His throat begged for water. The sun fried his naked body, the sand burned his feet. He walked and his walking became an endless task never to end, until he stumbled and fell. He couldn’t rise, he could only crawl.
Something landed on his back. Raking claws dug into his spine. He rolled over and saw the winged terror that was pecking the life from him. It was a buzzard! He screamed.
“Stacey darling, wake up. You’re having another nightmare.”
Stacey screamed for several minutes before he became fully awake. He managed to say, “Doris, don’t leave me. Keep me company. If I fall asleep and have another nightmare, I’m afraid I’ll die.”
“I’m right here for you, darling. Did you have the same nightmare?”
“Yes, I did. I dreamt you left me.”
Night after night the dreams plagued Stacey. Doris was certain he was worrying over her heart condition and she loved him all the more for his thoughtfulness.
It was on a Tuesday morning, an hour after breakfast, when Doris announced with pride to Stacy something she was sure would please her wonderful husband. “It’s something I’ve wanted to do ever since our marriage. Last night I made out a new will.”
She sat on the couch next to Stacy, hugged and kissed him. He almost gagged, but thoughts of a new will prevented him from doing so. He managed to say, “Shouldn’t you file that with your lawyer? You do have one, don’t you?”
“Yes, but the will is all right in my wall safe, and it’s perfectly legal. Darling, I’ve left everything to you. It’s all yours for being such a wonderful husband.”
Stacey, realizing this was the news Turner had waited for, decided he must act. Convincing Doris he felt much better, but needed a drive in the night air, he headed for town.
“Stacey, what have you been doing for the last few weeks?” Turner asked when Stacy walked into his apartment.
“Doris has made a new will leaving everything to me.”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been hoping for. Say, you look like you’ve been dragged several miles by a semi-truck. What’s wrong? Are you whacking the Meadows dame too often?”
“Hell no, I haven’t touched her that way. It’s those damn birds. They’re driving me nuts to where I have nightmares about them every night.”
Turner laughed.
“Shut up, damn you!”
Turner stifled his laughter. His face expressed startled feelings. “Are those nightmares really bothering you that much?”
“They certainly are. Now you listen to me, Turner, you have to think of something right now. I can’t stand living with that woman and those birds another moment. Damnit, think! I’m going nuts!”
Silence reigned as Stacey and Turner drank and smoked. On the second half full whiskey bottle, Turner slurred words. “Murder is definitely out. Am I right, Stacey?”
Stacey nodded.
“We can’t do it. The cops would get us for sure.”
“Then we’ll have to wait until she croaks. Hang in there, Stacy.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“You have to. If you don’t this whole deal will turn sour for us. Think of the millions we’ll rake in after Doris Meadows is planted.”
Stacey went home. Was murder really out?
Stacy stopped at the closed door to Doris’s bedroom. I could sneak in her room, put a pillow to her face and in a few seconds she would be dead. I would be free of the birds. I would be free of her.
Two days later Doris Meadows died in her sleep. For
Stacey it was a sigh of relief. In a few days, he would be free and have tons of money to spend.
Police Sergeant Benjamin Raymond and a doctor arrived. The sergeant was a big broad shouldered man with a beefy face and ham-like fists. He chewed a short cigar and attempted to talk at the same time. “I was a good friend. Some months ago, Doris told me she married you. It took something like this for us to finally meet. I’m very sorry that she is no longer with us.” He cleared his throat and swallowed. “Is it all right if I ask you a few questions? It’s just a routine that could wait.”
Stacey feigned a sad sigh. “You may ask your questions now, Sergeant Raymond.”
“Thank you. I knew about her heart condition and the medicine she took. What I want to know is did she complain of feeling ill lately?”
“Yes, last night she mentioned feeling quite dizzy and weak. I suggested that her doctor should be called, but she said nonsense, that she’d be fine in the morning. She kissed me, took a sedative and went to bed. If I’d called the doctor I feel she’d be alive today. I feel so guilty about that.”
“You needn’t blame yourself, Mr. Ryan. With her heart condition, she was living on borrowed time. Did you happen to notice what time it was when she retired for the night?”
“Yes. It was a few minutes after ten. I went to my bedroom around midnight.”
Raymond shifted his cigar to the right side of his mouth. He squinted at Stacey. “Did you hear any noises coming from her room?”
“No, sadly I didn’t.”
“Okay, I’m sure that wraps everything up. I want to thank you for your patience and understanding, Mr. Ryan. I’m terribly sorry this happened. Doris was a wonderful person.”
Three days later the doctor’s report said Doris Meadows died from a heart attack. Burial was two days later. Stacey, playing the part of a faithful husband who couldn’t live in the manor any longer now that his wife could no longer walk through life with him, gave the cook and housemaid two weeks’ pay in advance and discharged them. He informed them he would be selling the manor along with the aviary through a real estate company and going away in a few days.
And so Stacey Ryan had everything he’d worked for. He laughed, cell phoned Turner, told him to come over and then he sat down to a bottle of whiskey. After his third drink, time began to drag. Where was Turner? Stacey kept his eyes on a grandfather’s clock in the corner. Twenty minutes had gone by since he phoned. He gulped another whiskey. The clock became larger. The swinging of its pendulum hypnotized him. Its ticking became the thunderous beating of a bass drum. Thirty minutes now. He finished the bottle and threw it at the clock, hitting its face, but not the pendulum.
“Stop that noise. Stop that ticking. Stop it!”
He swore and ran to the safe, fumbling with sweating fingers until he finally dialed the right combination. He tore open the manila envelope, read its contents and screamed.
I, Mrs. Stacey Ryan, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath my entire estate and money to my loving husband, Mr. Stacey Ryan, provided he spend the entire amount of my money on enlarging and maintaining the bird menagerie. I’m sure Mr. Ryan will love this as he so appreciates our feathered friends.
Insanity gripped Stacey. He ran for his car parked in the driveway. He gunned the vehicle onto the main highway. He had to get away, anywhere away from the aviary, the birds. Escape, that’s what he would do, he would escape from the birds. Wait, what was that coming toward him? What was it? It had huge eyes glowing at him in the dark. It was a bird, that’s what it was, a giant bird.
“I’ll kill it! I’ll kill it! No bird can stop me.”
The crash happened a second before the car’s speedometer touched a hundred miles per hour. It was a terrible grinding of metal, a tinkling of broken glass that seemed to go on forever before a deathly silence returned.
* * * *
At the state mental hospital, Police Sergeant, Benjamin Raymond waited in the office of Head Psychiatrist, Doctor Garfield. Raymond had waited for an hour and was at the end of his patience when a man wearing a white coat seemingly appeared from nowhere. His sad face answered the question Raymond was going to ask.
“A preliminary examination of Stacey Ryan is not favorable. At the moment he’s suffering from a complete mental breakdown. Whether he can ever be normal again, well, it’s doubtful, but in time perhaps he might recuperate somewhat. At the moment I have few hopes that he will. Who found him?”
“A couple of my officers did. Ryan was perched on a pile of wreckage mimicking a parrot and hollering nonstop, Well hello there, you son-of-a-bitch. He was unhurt. Two people in the other car were killed. They were Jim Turner, an Attorney at Law, and his secretary.”
* * * *
Teaser – “All right, Turner,” Stacey said as Turner poured him a second Scotch, “give me the skinny on your latest scam.”
“Okay, six months ago an elderly man walked into my office. His name was Matthew Hamilton. He wanted to make out a will leaving all his worldly possessions to his niece, a one Doris Meadows, age twenty-seven, who was living with him at the time. Hamilton was a retired oil man worth mega bucks and Doris was his only next of kin.”
“Turner, you keep saying Hamilton was. What is he, a stiff?”
The Lawyer laughed. “As usual, Stacey, you’re racing ahead of me. I didn’t think too much of that money at the time as there was no possible way I could latch on to it. Now there is a way. Hamilton checked out, killed in a car wreck two months ago. Doris Meadows has inherited everything.”
“Okay, so how do we get the dame’s money?”
“That’s simple Stacey. You’re going to marry the gal.”
About the Author
As a snot-nosed kid Wayne Greenough had stories running around in his head. As a wild-eyed-teen-ager Wayne Greenough had stories running around in his head. As a mole-crusted-old geezer Wayne Greenough has stories running around in his head that he sends to publishers.
The Aviary Page 2
