by Marvin Kaye
After my break, I passed the reception desk. Cindy waved me over and pointed to a basket filled with red and white carnations and greenery. “Sarah, would you take these to Mrs. DeMezzo?”
“Sure. Who’re they from?” The carnation petals drooped, the greenery edged with brown.
“Her son dropped them by, but didn’t stay.” Cindy curled her lip. “Typical cheapskate. Carnations instead of roses, and this arrangement’s so old it’s ready for the trash.”
In the hall outside Mrs. DeMezzo’s room, Brooke carried a dress on a hanger, covered with a dry cleaning bag. She frowned at the dress. “I hope Mrs. Quince is happy this time. I think she’s sent her dress back three times so far.”
“She wouldn’t be happy with these.” I lifted the basket of flowers.
“Frank’s peace offering.” Brooke grimaced. “It’ll be lucky to last another day.”
Mrs. DeMezzo’s room was empty. I checked to make sure the flowers had enough water, then placed them on the side table. She would see them as soon as she entered. When I came out, Brooke was closing Annabelle’s door behind her.
She looked startled. “Oh! I thought you’d gone to the laundry.”
I trailed her down the hall. “Guess she liked the dry cleaning job.”
She grinned over her shoulder. “Don’t know. She was asleep.”
“That’s odd.” I hurried to catch up. “She had a nap earlier.”
“Maybe she’s not feeling well.” Brooke didn’t sound concerned.
“Should we check on her? Or tell one of the nurses?”
Brooke stopped and turned. “Listen, Sarah. You’re new. If Annabelle Quince decides to take a second nap, or even sleep all day, that’s her business. The best thing to do is leave her be.”
I took Brooke’s advice.
Mrs. DeMezzo’s scream brought everyone running, even Mr. Rangely, who hadn’t heard a sound in five years. We clustered around Annabelle’s door. I couldn’t see much in the dimness, just Mrs. DeMezzo weeping by the window. Annabelle lay still on the bed. Murmurs of “strangled,” and “quite cold” passed from person to person, like a chill December wind.
Finally Doctor Pitman pushed his way through the crowd, telling everyone to move away. I helped settle several of the residents, promising to let them know what had happened as soon as I found out.
Mrs. DeMezzo’s door was open, and I peered in. She sat in a chair, her eyes red but dry. Brooke stood behind her, patting her clumsily on the shoulders.
“Can I bring you some tea or coffee?” I spoke softly, even though it wasn’t necessary. Annabelle certainly wouldn’t care.
“That would be lovely.” Mrs. DeMezzo touched my arm. “Would you stay, dear? I’m sure Brooke wouldn’t mind bringing me a cup of tea.”
“Sure.” Brooke looked relieved as she left.
I gave Mrs. DeMezzo a cool, damp washcloth for her eyes, then sat beside her and held her hand.
Brooke appeared with tea and the news that the police had arrived. A tall, lanky detective spoke with Mrs. DeMezzo first, then asked to talk with me.
We met in the airless room usually reserved for grieving families. “Yes, sir?” I perched on the edge of a big leather chair. The detective seemed almost bored by my answers to his questions, until he asked if Annabelle had any enemies.
“Enemies? Like someone who threatened her?”
He perked up. “Did someone threaten her?”
I paused, staring at my hands folded in my lap. “Frank DeMezzo was very upset with Mrs. Quince, but I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it.”
The detective cleared his throat. “We’ll be the judge of that.”
After the detective dismissed me, I returned to Mrs. DeMezzo.
She dabbed her eyes. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Annabelle.”
“Would you like to talk about it?” I asked.
Her smile wobbled at the corners, but she nodded. “I wanted to thank Annabelle for encouraging me to .… Well, to make certain decisions that would ensure I could stay here.”
“That’s when you found her?”
“Yes.” She squeezed my hand. “It was horrible. Her face was discolored, and there was something white around her neck .…”
A handkerchief. Yes, I knew.
The phone rang, and I handed her the receiver.
“At the police station? Oh, Frank!” Two tears rolled down her cheeks. “Don’t answer any more questions until you have a lawyer, Frank. I’ll call Drew Waverly.”
She listened for a moment, then frowned. “No, I won’t be able to pay the retainer. You’ll have to find the money somehow. Maybe you could mortgage your house, or cash in some of your investments.” Her tears stopped.
I closed the curtains. It looked as if Frank would be charged for the murder of Annabelle Quince. Earlier, I had overheard the detectives talking about the monogrammed handkerchief—initials FDM—used to strangle Annabelle, and a wad of fluff from her cardigan found in Frank’s jacket pocket. One that was torn, as if in a struggle.
Poor Mrs. DeMezzo. She’d been through so much. After she phoned her lawyer, I persuaded her to take the sleeping pills the doctor had left, and waited with her until she drifted off.
I missed my usual bus, but the administrator offered to pay our cab fare home this one time. I asked the cabbie to stop at the shopping center a couple blocks away. Outside the all-night drugstore, I fed money into the pay phone. Two rings before I heard, “Well?”
“Your mother’s gone, Mr. Quince.”
A loud sigh. “Excellent.”
“I know these things are always a relief.”
“Yes, indeed. So you’ll be on your way, then?”
“I’ll quit when the police finish their investigation.”
“Police? Wait a minute! You told me it would look natural.”
“I changed my mind. Don’t forget, I’m the pro. I seized the opportunity. And I had the perfect fall guy: another bully.”
A dry laugh. “Poetic justice, eh?”
“Yes.” I grinned. “Two bullies for the price of one.”
THE HEREAFTER PARTY, by Paullette Gaudet
It was the smallest of ads, in the most disreputable of newspapers, so of course it caught my eye: “HAD ENOUGH? Need help ending it all? Spend your last days with us.”
I carried the torn newspaper listing in my wallet for two weeks before calling the German agency and submitting to their questionnaire. I wrote a check, and received a map with directions. A business concern brought me to Germany soon afterward, and I used the map to arrive at 38 Rhineland Strasse.
Apartment B-5 was the number I was directed to buzz, so I buzzed it. A clipped, British voice directed me to come up, so up I came. Thirty steps brought me from the busy German street below to a dingy wooden door with a tarnished brass B and 5 on it. The door was unlocked, and inside amidst richly colored floorlamps and velvet upholstered chairs stood a short, middle-aged man with a tight moustache and bowler hat. His plump frame was rather dashingly camouflaged by a brushed flannel suit of deep blue, which complemented the more piercing hue of his eyes.
“Rafferty, yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Splendid! Have a seat!”
And so I sat, to listen to the plan of my impending demise.
I am not a melancholy sort, by nature. It had just become all too much, as it were. There were financial failures that might possibly have been fixed, and familial distress that could most likely have been resolved. All in all mine was not the worst situation ever seen, but for the past six months I had considered myself the sorriest creature in the world, one whose obliteration might afford some monetary comfort to my nearest and dearest. I had considered the available options, and decided not to pursue them. I wanted to die, but at the very least wished to die well. That is why I was at the Braeburn-Drury agency.
“Tea?” Mr. Braeburn asked, from under his bowler hat.
“Please,” I answered.
&nb
sp; “We have your contract typed up, but wish to confirm the details with you. You are, as of now, listed under ‘Quick and Painless,’ is that correct?”
“Yes, I believe that is what I specified.”
“We are wondering if you’d like to broaden that definition. To ‘Slow and Tortuous,’ perhaps?”
I blinked.
Mr. Braeburn chuckled. “Heavens, no, what good would that do anyone? What I mean to say is that death, by nature, is a solitary event. However, one can ostensibly use one’s death to further a greater good, creating a non-living legacy, as it were.”
“I don’t quite follow.”
“Say, for example, there is another’s death you might wish for. We might combine your suicide with that, thereby killing—well, you know the proverb.”
“Are you suggesting I become some sort of suicide bomber?”
“We’re thinking more along the lines of your own personal enjoyment, in those last moments of life. Something you’ve never done, for fear of death. Something you’ve never considered, for fear of retribution. Going out with a bang, so to speak. Living through dying, and all that.”
Mr. Braeburn’s words made perfect sense, on the one hand. I had never walked barefoot on the beach, for fear of hookworms. I had never taken a gentleman’s holiday in Thailand, for fear of incriminating Internet photos. I had lived in a narrow box, fearful of death and humiliation, and now had the opportunity to truly taste life before severing all ties to humanity.
“Go on,” I said, and crossed my legs.
“More tea?” Mr. Braeburn asked. I nodded as he laid three documents before me.
“The answers to your questionnaire noted the perceived attentions of a Mr. Percy Ambrose toward your wife, correct?”
“Yes,” I said. Percy Ambrose was an accountant fifteen years my junior who frequented my London townhome for financial appointments with my wife, Corbella.
“Relations between you and Corbella have not been good as of late, have they?”
Corbella’s auburn curls and creamy skin were but a distant tactile memory, having been untouched by me for twenty-seven weeks. “Relations have been strained,” I allowed.
“Mr. Ambrose has also recently made adjustments to your investment portfolio without your knowledge or consent.”
“Corbella attends to our financial affairs, she was schooled for that. I trusted that her meetings with Mr. Ambrose were for the mutual benefit of our marriage.”
“Hm. It appears that her settlement in the event of divorce has been increased, and that the paperwork for this required only one, fifteen-minute meeting.”
“Corbella has seen Ambrose at our house every Tuesday at 2 o’clock for eight weeks.”
“Yes. But aside from a slight shift in investments and the divorce settlement, there have been no other changes to your financial affairs.”
“Then why…would so many meetings be needed?”
Mr. Braeburn removed his bowler hat and traced its rim with his thumbs. “Here at Braeburn-Drury we deal only in facts, and leave imagination to our clients.”
I placed my teacup in its saucer with a resounding rattle. “I believe I am ready to die.”
“Splendid! Your signature is required on two more forms, then we can begin.”
How do you wish to die? was the first typed question on the Braeburn-Drury questionnaire I received in the mail. I had imagined several possibilities, none of them suitable. I could lie on a silk-sheeted bed, knocked to a corpse by prescription painkillers. There were the messy options of guns and razors, or the leap off a building. There was the slow death of cancer, brought on by smoke and drink. But, I had already spent hours in pubs, habitually taken two sleeping pills above the recommended dosage, and had a fear of heights that threatened to asphyxiate me at the thought of changing a lightbulb. If I was going to die, I wanted to do so with some semblance of nobility. I wished it to be an event that my children could sob about into the arms of future, sympathetic collegiate lovers: “My father…died while attempting to thwart a bank robbery, and/or assassination attempt, or by pulling nuns from a burning building.” That would satisfy the basic requirement of me being dead, and theirs of having a brave parent to be proud of. Corbella would most likely not care how I died, what with being busy in the arms of Percy Ambrose.
I had left my Essay of Desired Death blank—had chosen the “To Be Announced” option. I could not come up with a death I deemed grand enough to suit my life, and decided to entrust strangers with that burden. My own scenarios were too plebeian, too sniveling. I needed guidance for greatness in death, and for that looked to Mr. Braeburn in his bowler hat.
“Your questionnaire states that you enjoy driving motorcars,” Mr. Braeburn said.
“I do like a quick turn on country roads at dusk,” I confirmed.
“You also spend a fair amount of recreational time playing home video games, particularly those involving the accruement of points by running over property and pedestrians.”
I shifted in my chair. “My son’s game, the only one in the house.”
Mr. Braeburn gazed at me with unblinking blue eyes. “Have you ever run over anything, anything at all, on these twilight motor excursions of yours?”
An inappropriate sting of tears met my eyelashes. “There was a squirrel, once, that I almost hit but managed to avoid. I barely missed a tree as I skidded off the road, had a time explaining the resulting transmission trouble to my machinist.” I blinked quickly, and looked up at the room’s tapestried walls. “Poor furry bugger, I couldn’t hurt him just because I’d had a rough day.”
Mr. Braeburn nodded. “Of course. That squirrel was not meeting your wife every Tuesday.”
I stood up from my chair. “Look here, Braeburn, I don’t like what you’re getting at.”
“Please, Mr. Rafferty, sit. Sit.”
I grudgingly obliged. “I must say I don’t understand what squirrels and video games have to do with choosing my method of suicide.”
“Choosing your proposed method of premature life evacuation,” Braeburn corrected.
“Whatever the devil, I thought I was here to help form a plan.”
“That you are, old chap, that you are.” Braeburn rifled through a few pages on the table before him. “We have taken the liberty of researching Mr. Percy Ambrose’s daily habits.”
I could not help but raise an eyebrow. “Have you now?’
Mr. Braeburn nodded. “He leaves his rooms weekdays at 7am on the dot. He walks north on Spring and buys a paper from the sidewalk stand at Spring and Sentry. He scans the headlines, folds the paper under his arm and continues on to Midfield Avenue, where he waits two and one-thirds minutes for the crossing light.”
“Infernal intersection,” I mumbled.
Braeburn nodded. “I agree, an underground crosswalk should be tunneled there. In any event, he then strays from the most efficient route to his office; a left on Corson would shave five, six minutes from his commute.”
“Where does he go?” I asked, with not a little impatience.
“Straight on Midfield, past a small gardened park. The sidewalk curves around the park and yields onto a small, quiet sidestreet where Mr. Ambrose nonetheless stops and looks both ways before crossing.”
I could feel my brow furrowing. “Where does that leave him?”
“At the Rise ’N Shine Cafe & Bakery, where every day he orders a hazelnut latte and tips Pamela, the morning barrista, one Euro.”
I found myself again rising from my seat. “A Euro? Every day? Does Corbella know about this Pamela woman?”
Braeburn hesitated. “I do not know, we have not researched her or her relationship to your wife.”
“Well you bloody well should, since this clown apparently cannot keep his libido in check!”
Braeburn reached over and patted my knee. “I fear we are losing focus, Mr. Rafferty. The point of our research is that Mr. Ambrose obtains his coffee, then opens his paper and reads it while walking across Argon Street
.”
I cocked my head. “He reads while crossing an intersection?”
Braeburn nodded. “It’s a very small street, virtually a bicycle path.”
“But cars may drive down it?”
“They do, occasionally. Not often, at that hour of the morning.”
I formed an image of my mind as a series of gears, and watched a clump of rust fall as two large pieces of metal rotated against each other.
“Tell me your plan,” I said to Mr. Braeburn.
A detailed map of my London neighborhood was plopped before me.
“Your roadster can achieve top speed in less than a kilometer,” Braeburn said. “From your townhome garage, you can take Ellwyn to Midfield, then twist around on Cornwell to hit Argon.”
I nodded, the movements of Braeburn’s finger blurring on the map. “Where am I going, then?”
“Why, to kill Mr. Ambrose, of course.”
I remember the sharp scent of acrid fumes before my eyes focused on Mr. Braeburn’s piercing blue gaze.
“Mr. Rafferty? Are you sentient?” he asked.
I coughed. “I believe so, good man. What happened?”
“You fainted, sir, completely out of the blue,” said Braeburn, capping a vial of smelling salts.
“Sorry about that, don’t know what came over me. What did I miss?”
“We were discussing Mr. Ambrose. Your running into him at high speed.”
I slumped back in my chair and motioned for Braeburn to continue speaking.
“It looks to be a very clean hit; he’ll either roll up onto your hood or simply fall to the pavement where your wheels will finish him off.”
I allowed Braeburn’s words to sink in. “But…then what? Do I stop and make sure he’s dead?”
Braeburn considered this a moment. “I suppose you could back up over him once or twice before moving on, that should do the trick.”
I reached forward for my cup of cooling tea. “I do not wish to appear difficult, Mr. Braeburn, but while the thought of Mr. Ambrose’s demise is, by any means, somewhat pleasurable, I must say this plan seems to lack—well, the means for my demise.”
Mr. Braeburn released a short bark of laughter. “You do keep your eyes on the prize, don’t you? I’m getting to that part of the plan, sir, but it depends upon your receptivity to the mowing down of Mr. Ambrose with your car.”
