by Joan Boswell
“Mrs. McGuire laugh in my face when she sees it, says I never was a real singer, only a dance hall floozie. She say she tells everyone about it if I do not give money.” Franconi turned to stare at Julie. “I have some cash which I give her, and then she want more. First it is for chocolates, and then she say she need money to pay the rent. I do not have any more, not without asking my son. And his wife want to know why. So you see, I have no choice. I have to kill her.”
“What about the gun, Mrs. Franconi?” Julie asked softly.
“Oh, it is old. From the war, when we leave Europe. We need it for protection, and my Guido hide it when we come into this country. I keep it with my music. No one ever know I have it.”
She ran her hand through her hair. “I sew a dress, pink to look like a nurse, and I take Mrs. McGuire’s key one day when she naps and take it to the shop to make another one. Oh, she fuss about where it is, but she look foolish when they find it in her dresser drawer. I plan that, too.”
And that’s probably why nobody had thought to mention it, Julie thought. How clever. How sad. This was one case Julie wasn’t elated about closing.
Franconi sat back down and tried to smile. “I make good plans, yes? No one see me. I could just walk in without a costume. Still, it’s good to have something to keep my mind and hands busy. She have to die. You see, no one can know. No one around here. They already laugh behind my back. I know. And especially not my son’s wife. She already is embarrassed by me...by my looks, my accent. I’m not good enough for her. But in the old days, she would not have been good enough for my son.”
Julie left David Gant’s office feeling relieved. Her mother could well manage the monthly fee at the residence, and the waiting list wasn’t very long. Just one more item to deal with. She headed for the lounge.
“Ah, Mr. Sorens, just the person I wanted to see.”
He looked up startled, then polished off the drink in his hand. “Why, it’s the doll. Good to see you. You on duty?” He gave her an exaggerated wink and started whistling.
“Something more important,” Julie told him, trying to keep a stern face. “I’ve come to see about my mom moving in here. But there’s just one thing.”
“Does she have legs like yours?”
“That’s the thing, Mr. Sorens. My mom isn’t...” She stopped. Her mom wasn’t what? Able to watch out for her virtue? Capable of having fun? What right did Julie have to run her life? It’s bad enough she was pushing her into a seniors residence.
Sorens leaned on his cane. “Yes?”
“I’m bringing my mom here on Friday to have a look around. I’d like to introduce her to you.”
He wiggled his shaggy eyebrows. “I’d like that, doll.”
“Just one thing, Mr. Sorens...remember, she’s my mom.”
As owner of Prime Crime Books in Ottawa, Linda Wiken gets the best of the mystery world—she buys them and writes them, too. Her short stories have appeared in the seven Ladies’ Killing Circle anthologies, and the American magazines Mysterious Intent and Over My Dead Body. She has been shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story from the Crime Writers of Canada. As a volunteer with the Ottawa Police Service for over fifteen years, she has developed a strong, sometimes scary interest in police procedures.
Chocolate to Die For
Joy Hewitt Mann
I’d priced it, put it on a shelf
And slowly walked her by it.
I’d put it in a gorgeous box,
Knew well that she would try it.
I’d glued the lid on really tight,
Made sure that she would pry it.
That kind of chocolate bomb-bomb
Will really ruin her diet.
Payback
Jean Rae Baxter
Carter sat in the booth closest to the door, warming his hands on his coffee mug. He would rather have met Jacob some place dark and secret. But it was too cold.
At the White Spot Grill, people come and go. Carter figured he wouldn’t be noticed. He was not the sort of person that attracted attention. He was a blue-eyed man with dirty-blond hair cut close. He wore glasses. He was neither tall nor short. His black leather coat was neither new nor old. He wore scuffed brown boots.
When he saw Jacob through the glass of the White Spot’s door, Carter put his right hand under the table, laying it on his thigh. He probably should have kept his right hand hidden all along. It was the only thing about him that people would notice.
Jacob Vogel opened the door and closed it quickly behind him. He was shorter than Carter, with a broad, snub-nosed face, and just as ordinary to look at.
He was wearing a windbreaker, jeans and dirty white trainers. Not dressed for winter. From the brown stubble on his cheeks and chin, he looked like he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days. His eyes fixed straight ahead, he approached the booth and slid onto the bench facing Carter. Jacob’s eyes were burning red, as if he had been crying. Liquor could cause the same effect. Carter smelled stale whiskey on Jacob’s breath.
Seeing him so close, without a glass barrier between them, Carter started to shake. Under the table, he made a fist with his right hand. Wincing at the pain, he felt a year of rage boil to the surface.
Jacob leaned forward. “I gotta get away.” His voice was a hoarse whisper. “I need money.”
Carter grunted. “Sorry. I can’t help you there.”
“You’ve always come through for me.”
“Christ! I’ve been out of work for six months. I’m broke.”
“You can get it for me.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” Carter snorted. “Rob a bank, maybe?”
“My mom will give it to you. I’ve already phoned her.”
“Your mom! Get real. She doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall.”
“I told her you’re the one friend who’s always stood by me.” Jacob paused. “She understands. My Mom’s been through plenty of bad stuff.”
Carter sat there taking it all in. Here’s a guy thirty years old who runs to his mommy when he gets in trouble.
“Go yourself,” Carter snapped. “Why send me?”
“People might see me,” Jacob whined. “Neighbours know who I am. Look, I’ll give you her address. She lives on Mill Street East, about four blocks from here. Get the money. Then we’ll meet.”
Without waiting for an answer, Jacob pulled from his jacket pocket a ballpoint pen and a crumpled cash register receipt.
“What makes you think she’ll have money in the house?” Carter asked. “I mean, serious money. Fifty bucks won’t get you far.”
“She doesn’t trust banks,” Jacob said as he scribbled an address on the back of the receipt.
“How much is she good for?”
“Couldn’t say. Money’s her big secret. She hides it different places. Russians looted her house during the Occupation.”
“What occupation?”
“After World War II. In Germany.”
“You never told me your folks were from Germany.”
“Didn’t I? My father was a Panzerjäger.”
“A what?”
“He knocked out tanks.” Jacob’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “Heil Hitler!”
“Your father still alive?”
“No, no. He died years ago. Heart attack. My mother lives alone...alone with her saints and my father’s army souvenirs.” Jacob pushed the paper across the table to Carter. “I knew I could count on you.” The paper lay on the table between them. Carter leaned forward, squinting at the address.
He flexed his fingers under the table. Two years after the accident, sharp twinges reminded him that his little finger and ring finger were gone. Whenever he felt the pain, he would flex his remaining fingers. It helped.
“If I do this...after I get the money, where will I find you?”
“Right here.”
“The sign on the door says the White Spot closes at ten. It’s nine already.”
“Then bring it to the pl
ace I’m hiding.”
“Where’s that?”
“Five or six blocks from here. It’s an abandoned garage in the alley that runs through the block between Odessa Street and Raglan Road.”
“Is it safe?”
“Nobody ever goes there. Not in winter.”
“Maybe I can’t find it. I don’t know this part of town.”
Jacob frowned. “You can find it. Go two blocks east along Main—”
“I’ll walk there with you now. I need to be sure.” Carter tried to keep his voice steady, steeling himself. Using his left hand, he picked up the receipt bearing Mrs. Vogel’s address. As he shoved the scrap of paper into his coat pocket, his fingers brushed the knife. At the counter, Carter paid for his coffee. He had just enough cash for that. Tomorrow he’d be eating steak.
On the sidewalk, Jacob walked bent over, hugging himself for warmth. Wind-driven grains of snow lashed both their faces. The temperature was minus twenty Celsius. It must be freezing in that garage, Carter thought.
It had been cold like this the night it happened. Jacob driving drunk. The car rolling. Carter pinned by his hand. Sandi, Carter’s girl, crushed under the car. All Carter could see of her were her boots with the three-inch heels, and her crimson blood staining the white snow.
“We saved your hand,” the doctor told him. “You’re lucky you lost only two fingers.”
“I lost my girlfriend,” Carter said.
The doctor looked embarrassed to have been so clumsy. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Every time Carter felt the phantom pain where his missing fingers had been, he felt the pain of his greater loss. Sometimes he deliberately made a hard fist so he could feel that pain. It helped him to remember Sandi—the clean smell of her shiny hair and the silky softness of her skin.
Jacob had escaped with a few bruises and one year in jail. Drunk driving. Motor manslaughter.
“I don’t blame you,” Carter had told Jacob on his first visit to the jail. “It could happen to anybody.”
Jacob had wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.”
Carter had hidden the truth.
In the first weeks, he had felt nothing but pain and grief. But pain turned to anger and grief to rage. How do you kill a guy who’s behind bars? You don’t. You have to wait. So Carter had waited. Every time he had visited Jacob, he had thought how it would be. An eye for an eye, like the Bible said. That would put things right.
Then, this afternoon, one week out of jail, Jacob had done it again. Drunk. Stolen car. Young kid trudging home from school through the snow. Probably with one of those twenty-pound backpacks they all wear. You can’t jump out of the way with something that heavy weighing you down.
Jacob didn’t want to be sent back to prison. Well, he wasn’t going to be. Carter had the knife in his pocket, a clasp knife with a guard to hold open the blade. He’d bought it just for Jacob that very afternoon.
In the garage, out of the wind, it felt warmer. The window —four panes of dirty glass—gave Carter just enough light to see what he was doing.
Since losing the two fingers, his right hand did not have the grip it once had. He knew that. But he was clumsy with his left. Pulling the knife from his pocket, he switched it to his right hand, ended up using both hands to strengthen his grip. Okay, he said to himself. This one’s for Sandi.
The knife entered Jacob’s back horizontally. It was a good, sharp knife with a narrow blade. It encountered no bone. There was not a great deal of blood. Carter pulled out the blade. After wiping it on Jacob’s pant leg, he closed the knife and shoved it into his coat pocket.
Jacob had not screamed. A gurgling sound came from him as he collapsed. Then there was quiet. The only movement was the jerking of his limbs. It lasted only a minute. Jacob lay still, his cheek on the garage floor, one arm under his body and the other reaching forward as if he had been grasping for something when he died.
Carter pulled Jacob’s wallet from his pants pocket. No bills. Just a few coins. Better take the wallet, though. It would give Carter some needed extra time if the cops required a few days to establish Jacob’s ID. Even in winter, somebody might find the body.
Ten minutes later, Carter was walking east on Mill Street. Under a streetlight, he stopped and reached into his pocket for the scrap of paper with Mrs. Vogel’s address. Holding the paper close to his glasses, he compared it with the number under the light by the front door. He took the five steps up to the front porch, stomped on the sisal mat to knock the snow off his boots and rang the bell.
The hall light came on. Through the frosted glass panel beside the door, he saw a shape shuffling toward him. He thrust the paper back into his pocket. Mrs. Vogel did not open the door at once.
“Yes?” she demanded through the glass.
“I’m Carter.”
“Jacob’s friend? Yes.”
She opened the door. Carter stepped inside. Instantly his glasses misted. He could see nothing.
“Take off your coat.”
“No. I’m not staying.” But he removed his gloves.
With his left hand, he pulled off his glasses and shoved them into his coat pocket. He could see well enough without them, at least well enough to see the broad cheeks and snub nose of the woman who stood in front of him. She was in her sixties, a dumpy woman in a shapeless black dress, with thin, greying hair pulled into a tight knot at the back of her head. At the wide part in her hair, her scalp was yellow. Carter was not tall, just five-foot-nine. Yet the woman facing him came barely to his shoulder
“Come in, anyway,” she said. “It’s drafty in the front hall.” Her English was clear, despite her German accent.
As Carter followed her down the narrow hallway, she asked over her shoulder if Jacob would soon be home.
“That’s not something I can tell you, Mrs. Vogel. Jake’s in trouble.”
“So what’s new?”
She led him into a small sitting room dominated by a white marble fireplace that must have been the homeowner’s pride when the house was built...maybe a hundred years ago. A crack ran diagonally from the right side just under the mantel to the firebox opening.
Carter waited for the woman to take a seat before saying more. She settled into a deep armchair. He did not sit down.
“There’s been an accident,” he said. “Jake was driving.”
“Is he all right?”
“Yeah, but he hit a kid, a boy about ten. The kid was walking along the side of the road.”
“At night?”
“No. Four this afternoon.”
“Where did this happen?”
“Right outside Kilbride, maybe a quarter mile from the village. Jake told me he wanted to stop. He would have stopped.” Carter shrugged. “Look. He knew he’d fail the breathalyzer test. So he kept going.” Carter shifted his gaze away from the woman’s face.
“Is the boy hurt bad?”
“He’s dead. It was on the six o’clock news. His father went looking for him when he wasn’t home in time for supper. He found his son in the ditch, still alive. He died on the way to hospital. The report said he might have survived if he’d got medical attention right away.”
Mrs. Vogel pressed her lips into a straight line. She inhaled sharply, then let out her breath. “Jacob must turn himself in.”
“Look. Jake is hiding. He can’t turn himself in. This isn’t a first offence, you know.” Carter felt the twinges again. This time he pulled his hand out of his pocket, flexed his index and middle fingers.
Mrs. Vogel saw his hand. She looked away.
“Jake told me he’d never go back inside,” Carter said. “Not one more night in the cells. If the police arrest him, they’ll charge him with motor manslaughter, plus leaving the scene of an accident. Jake has to get away. He needs cash.”
She shook her head. “Tell him no. I can’t turn him in. I’m his mother. But he gets no help from me.”
“He’s counting on you,” Carter
said. “He told me you’d give him money.” Carter’s left hand reached into his coat pocket, closed around the clasp knife. When she saw the knife, saw the blade snap open, Mrs. Vogel’s face went pale.
“Oh!” she said. “Did Jacob tell you to threaten me?”
“He said to do whatever it took.”
Both hands grasping the arms of her chair, she hauled herself to her feet. “I’ll get my purse.”
He followed her upstairs to a bedroom that was stuffed with dark furniture. Her black leather handbag lay on the heavy quilt that covered the bed. She opened her purse and pulled out a wallet. “Here,” she said as she handed him a few bills. “That’s all I have in the house.”
“There’s more. Jacob told me.”
Carter raised the hand that held the knife, bringing it level with Mrs. Vogel’s jugular. She stared at the narrow blade.
“Gott im Himmel.” Her breath caught. “Es gibt Blut.”
“Shut up with your Kraut gibberish,” Carter said. “Hurry up and get me the money.”
Carter looked around the room. Hanging on a nail beside a framed print of the Bleeding Heart of Mary was a silver crucifix. Worth something. But it might be hard to fence.
Mrs. Vogel was shaking so hard, Carter thought she might collapse right there in front of him. Her eyes were fixed on the knife. When he flicked a glance at the blade, he saw the stain of blood. Damn! Had she noticed? Would he have to kill her too?
“Get me the money,” he repeated. “Jake’s waiting.”
“It’s here. In a space under...”
She tottered unsteadily to the cast-metal heat register set into the baseboard. Peering at it, Carter saw that the screw that should have secured the grating to the frame was missing. With a grunt, Mrs. Vogel lowered herself to her knees. She lifted off the grating and laid it on the floor beside her. Bending her head, she reached her hand inside the open register. Her breathing was noisy, a wheezing sound. Her head turned toward him.
