Fain said, “She tore her dress and soiled her stockings climbing into that smokehouse. She knew what a skull-and-bones means on a label; every child with a proper British upbringing is well schooled on that. She found her opportunity to sneak the strychnine into her mother's corned beef when she passed her the platter. The chemists found traces of it in the leftovers. Laurette told Dr. Mooney the rest."
"I'd have gone to prison to spare her that,” Chub said. “I'd have given up everything I own and died in a nursing home."
"Her father will see she gets the counseling she needs,” said Valentino.
"He'd better have a firmer hand than he took with her mother."
Fain said, “A less firm hand is just the thing for her, don't you think?"
Valentino broke the silence that followed. “I won't hold you to your agreement with UCLA. I'll cover the part of the fee Fain's earned out of my own pocket. In time, Laurette may learn to put what's happened behind her. She has an excellent chance at a happy childhood and a normal life."
Chub worked his hands on the arms of his chair. The eyes in the slack face resembled those of the carefree leader of the Pint-Size Pirates. “Maybe I should've killed my parents when I had the chance."
* * * *
Valentino returned to California and lost himself in the myriad mundane details of locating and preserving popular entertainment canned on celluloid. He resigned himself to the proposition that life was too depressing for the Hollywood Dream Factory to make inroads against it for more than an hour or two. For the first time in his career, he wondered if he hadn't dedicated his life to a facetious lie. Progress reports from Weylin Fain about little Laurette's progress in an ordinary school, with ordinary friends and the appearance of happiness in class and at recess, buoyed his spirits temporarily, but he kept returning to that sad old man and his empty victory brought about through circumstances diametrically opposed to the upbeat mood of his vehicles. Carefree comedy had lost its appeal.
Months passed with him in this frame of mind, and many attempts at other acquisitions had succeeded and failed, before Valentino allowed himself to spend any time thinking about the Pint-Size Pirates. In the celebrities column of the Los Angeles Times, he read a brief announcement of the wedding of Chub Garrett and a woman named Gloria Campbell in Dublin's Christ's Church. The photo that accompanied it showed the round, happy face of the groom beside the equally rotund features of his bride, who retained the mischievous eyes and dimpled smile of Glory, the puppy-love interest of Chub Garrett, Sassafrass, Shadow, and Moon Pie, and even the surly Mugs. The text explained that the couple had reunited when Gloria read of Chub's travails in a newspaper in Sydney, Australia—where she'd lived for twenty years since the death of her second husband—and flew to Ireland to lend moral support.
A few days later, a huge carton arrived at the office of the UCLA Film Preservation Department, addressed to Valentino and plastered all over with certificates from Irish and U.S. customs. He spent the day watching reel after reel of the anarchical antics of a gang of Depression-era schoolchildren, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead when the kliegs were switched off for the last time and walls stayed put, and laughed himself to tears.
(c) 2007 by Loren D. Estleman
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department of First Stories: THE BATHTUB ORACLE by Caroline Menzies
New fiction writer Caroline Menzies tells EQMM that her story “was inspired by an old claw-footed bathtub I had once, in which I occasionally heard music, presumably drift-ing up the pipes from some neighboring house. I thought it would make the perfect ve-hicle for something important to be communicated.” Ms. Menzies hails from Owen Sound, in Ontario, Canada.
Maggie Deal was humming a tune when she first heard music coming from the bathtub. For a second she thought it was an echo, but then realized that the bathtub was playing classical music, Bach, perhaps, while she was humming a Queen song she'd heard in a store earlier that day. She knew it was a Queen song only because her son, Paul, had made a federal case out of her humming rock music. Maggie had no use for titles or other details. It was better if she didn't know them in the first place or she might be expected to remember them, and her brain was already full. Paul held the opposite view. With him, everything was worth remembering. Then it had to be categorized, labeled, pinned down, and put in its place. Even music. There must be no loose ends. Maggie often felt like she was a loose end.
Paul and his family—Simone and the two children, Austin and Stephanie—lived in Maggie's house, but you wouldn't know it was hers anymore. They inhabited the main area of the spacious four bedroom rent-free, while she occupied the small granny flat addition at the back. Paul was renovating in lieu of paying rent. Eventually he would tear down the wall and turn the back apartment into a mudroom, a laundry room, and a storage area. Eventually. That meant when Maggie died, and she intended to make him wait a very long time.
When he had picked her up outside the bank, after the last of her errands was done, he heard her humming the tune. He raised his eyebrows and scrutinized her from over the top of his glasses.
"Mom, I didn't know you liked rock music."
"Who says I do?” she snapped back. He had a habit of making her feel like she was either ten years old, or the seventy-five years she was ... someone who hadn't yet assembled all her marbles, or someone who had a full bag once but was now losing them.
"Well you're singing glam rock from nineteen eighty-six."
"I am not ... whatever that is."
"Yes, you are. It's Queen's ‘Who Wants to Live Forever?’”
"Which Queen?"
"That's the name of the band, ‘Queen.’ But they're not around anymore. The lead singer, Freddy Mercury, died of AIDS. You do remember what that is, don't you?"
"Of course I do. You get it from African mosquitoes. I'm not stupid!"
He sighed loudly. “No you don't. It's from body fluids. And I didn't say you were stupid, just forgetful sometimes. Oh, never mind. Anyway, Simone likes Queen. I'll ask her to loan you her CD if you'd like to listen to it."
"No thanks, you've already ruined it for me."
* * * *
For the first few seconds after she realized the bathtub was playing its own tune, the hairs on her arms started to quiver as goose bumps rose beneath them. She was standing naked, about to climb into the tub. Her first instinct was to grab a towel and cover herself, as if she was being watched. She wasn't sure at first where it was coming from, so she walked around putting her ear to every surface until she concluded that the bathtub was definitely the source. She touched the water with one fingertip, half expecting to get electrocuted. Then, Paul would find her. Eventually. She shuddered at the thought of him seeing her dead-naked and hoped it would be someone else. A paramedic, perhaps. Certainly not Simone, Miss High and Mighty, with the half-starved body of a model, who glanced sideways at Maggie's plate whenever they dined together. She obviously thought Maggie didn't notice those sneaky looks of disdain. Celery sticks and small portions of dry meat filled one quarter of Simone's plate, while Maggie ate normal food, like potatoes, meat, and gravy. Simone even had the nerve to bring her own food in a little glass bowl the last time Maggie had them over for dinner.
"This isn't potluck,” she'd said.
"Simone's got allergies,” Paul replied, as if his skinny wife couldn't talk for herself.
"Oh, and just when did she get them? She ate my food last time."
"I was just diagnosed last week,” Simone answered, then quickly changed the topic of conversation to Austin's soccer game.
No, Maggie wouldn't have her discovering her dead-naked body. That would be the final indignity. She wondered for a minute if she should start bathing in her swimsuit—the one she'd bought when she won the free cruise to Jamaica fifteen years ago. It was still in perfect condition, since she'd only worn it once on the cruise. Then no one would find her dead-naked in the tub.
She dipped in her entire hand and still di
dn't get electrocuted. Instead, it seemed to surge with some kind of strange energy, though that could have been the liniment on her wrist reacting with the warm water. Still, she was fascinated and turned the taps off. The music was even stronger then and sounded ghostly, not the type of thing one heard every day, unless you were in the presence of pimply teenagers with their Discomen or whatever other gadgets they had for blasting music onto their eardrums. What she was hearing now kind of resembled the tinny sound you could hear leaking out of their ears if you accidentally got too close to one of them. But there weren't any teenagers lurking nearby. Or even close neighbors, since the house was detached. Maggie wondered if it was otherworldly. Whether someone on the other side, wherever that might be, was trying to contact her. This thought both excited and scared her. She dropped in her bath salts and climbed in, pretty sure now that if her hand couldn't get electrocuted, then probably the rest of her body wouldn't. The warmth was soothing, as always, and she settled back and listened to the first of many Saturday-night bathtub concerts, all the while waiting for an actual message from the spirit world.
* * * *
Paul was almost finished renovating the main part of the house. He had completely gutted the kitchen. Where once there had been a pantry, he'd put in an oversized fridge with an icemaker on the door. His scotch would never go unchilled again. He'd replaced the single white porcelain sink with a double brushed stainless-steel affair and moved it to the newly installed island in the middle of the kitchen, complete with a granite countertop. Maggie thought a sink in the middle of a kitchen was a strange notion, but Paul defended it by saying it was much more convenient for food preparation. When they would actually start “preparing” food was anyone's guess.
He had also redone the main bathroom and put in a second bathroom downstairs. They had glass sinks that Maggie thought looked like birdbaths, and upstairs the bathtub was full of strange holes that quite worried her. She thought the children might get toes or fingers stuck in them, but Paul insisted it was safe.
"That's a Jacuzzi, Mom. You need one of those for your arthritis.” He was itching to get his hands on Maggie's bathtub. Not because he liked it. He wanted to take it to the junkyard and that upset Maggie a great deal.
It was one of those old claw-foot affairs, painted green on the outside, though it was chipped and worn. One of the legs had been broken after a flying sink hit it. The plumber responsible promised to fix it, but he had merely amputated it and put a big iron bar in its place. Maggie was furious, but still wasn't willing to part with it. She loved its shape—the way it conformed to her body. It was deep and long and now it played music.
"Mom, what is it with you and this bathtub? One of these days, you'll slip and hurt yourself getting in and out of that thing. Some of the modern versions are just as room but much safer. They have an overflow drain so there's no danger of flooding. And I still say you'd learn to love a Jacuzzi."
"I love my bathtub, and now it plays music to me every Saturday night."
"Music? What are you talking about?"
"Nothing,” she said.
"Forgetting our pills again, are we?” he said.
She scowled at him and fell silent, wishing she'd never even mentioned the music to him. He didn't believe in anything that required an open mind, the way she did. She wondered how he'd gotten to be that way. She had always been intensely superstitious. Her mother had been like that and so had her grandmother. When Maggie played bingo, which she did every Friday afternoon, she took five talismans to attract luck. One was a rabbit's foot she'd had for fifty years that was withered and almost hairless. There was also a porcelain poodle—the last thing Charles, her late husband, had given to her. She also had one of her first grandchild's socks, and a picture of a castle in Scotland that supposedly housed the ghost of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had been told once by a fortuneteller that she was Mary reincarnated, so she considered it to be a picture of her ancestral home. The last and most recent addition to her collection was a sealed bottle that she'd bought from a street vendor in Toronto. It was full of air and one single grain of rice that was mounted on a raised piece of molded plastic. There was Chinese calligraphy etched on the rice that you needed a microscope to read. When the vendor saw her he said, “Wait, wait,” and selected one particular bottle from the many dozens that were on his display. “This one. This one for you. Special. Just you. It say ‘bad luck.’ You keep it sealed up and no more bad luck come to you."
She lined them all up around her bingo cards and whenever she was one number away from a win, she touched the sought-after number with one of her lucky charms. The next time she used a different charm. This was her system, rotating them all consecutively before beginning again with the first. Everyone there had a system of some kind to encourage luck. Some people got up and turned around three times between games. Others had leprechauns or angels sitting around the edge of their cards. Some players crossed themselves and held little statues of the Virgin Mary, praying to her to give them a miracle. If someone did happen to win, whatever he or she had worn or eaten for snacks on that lucky night had to be duplicated week after week, and obsessions were born. Everyone who was considered a regular sat in the exact same place each week. If someone new came and inadvertently took someone's chair, they were politely asked by the management to move to the drafty section of the hall with the wobbly chairs that no one else would sit on. When one of the regulars died, the rush to claim the newly opened spot caused a few nasty incidents.
At bingo, nothing was considered unusual behavior, but Paul and Simone would have thought it all to be extremely strange. They made fun of such things. When Maggie bought the grain of rice for twenty dollars, Paul said, “Mother, tell me you didn't really spend twenty dollars on that?"
When she replied, “Well, actually, yes I did,” he stared at her with his mouth open and his bushy eyebrows forced up against his hairline, freezing his face in an exaggerated attempt to look shocked.
"That's just a big scam,” he scoffed.
Simone was nodding her thin, pointed face in agreement, as she often did when Paul was criticizing his mother. This only encouraged him. “How do you know it actually says what he told you it says? It might say ‘Stupid Old Woman,’ or ‘Fetch Fido his Food.'” They both laughed while Maggie bristled and bottled up her anger like the grain of rice.
* * * *
The music had been playing for six consecutive weeks and Maggie still hadn't received a message from beyond. She was having a particularly trying time with Paul, whose obsessive need to update everything made him relentless in his quest to get her to give up her less-than-perfect tub. The battle was exhausting her, and as she lay in the warm water listening to the last few strains of Handel's Messiah, she decided if this might be the last time she heard the music, she should at least acknowledge it. So she cleared her throat and then said rather loudly, “Well, thank you. I don't know how much longer I can keep Paul's hands off you."
The music abruptly stopped and a watery voice replied, “You're welcome. Paul who?"
Maggie almost had a stroke. She had never thought to speak to it before, but now that she had, she was more certain than ever that it was coming from the other side, wherever that was, and her tub was merely a conduit. She'd read about such things and at first was worried that if she answered she could be opening up the portal even wider and allowing in bad spirits. Then she reasoned that for six weeks she'd had nothing but good feelings from it, so it had to be an angelic spirit.
When she recovered her composure, she stuttered, “Er ... Paul is my son. Don't you know that? He's planning to get rid of you."
Silence ensued for a long minute, during which she didn't know if she should get the bejesus out of there or say something else. While she was still deciding, the voice came back.
"Well, maybe you should report this."
"Me? Not to be rude ... but isn't that your job? Can't you do something from over there?"
"...Who is this? Wh
at's your name?"
"Maggie Deal."
"So Paul Deal is your son? I know him. What's he saying about me?"
"Yes, Paul. He doesn't like loose ends. You're in the way of progress. Just like me. I'll be next, you know. His wife is not very nice either. She's in on everything he does."
"I see. And how is he planning to do this?"
"Crush you with one of those big machines, I expect."
"Ouch! Well, my, my. Thank you for telling me, Maggie. Are you in any immediate danger?"
"No, I don't think so. As long as I don't get electrocuted."
"Oh, rest assured, I'll make sure that doesn't happen. In the meantime, is there anything I can do for you? Anything at all?"
"Well, maybe you could help my arthritis. And I have this strange-looking mole..."
"Oh. Take these pills called Banish. They're herbal, but you can get them at the drugstore. Work like a charm. And have your doctor check the mole. Today if you can. I wouldn't mess around with it. Never know with these things."
"Thank you.” Maggie beamed, thrilled to have a direct line to a benevolent spirit who could not only help her with her problems with Paul, but also give her health advice.
It made her even more determined to hang on to the tub. She would never let Paul get his interfering paws on it. If he did, it would be over her dead body, naked or otherwise.
* * * *
Maggie wasn't aware of the two police officers knocking on the front door, even though there were two more sitting in a second squad car just up the street, and another two sitting in a third. Her windows looked onto the backyard, where the willow tree that Sunday morning swayed gracefully in the balmy May breeze, giving no indication that anything was amiss. The side window of Maggie's apartment only allowed a limited view of the side of the house next-door, which was basically just a brick wall. She wasn't aware of Paul, still in his track pants and sweat-soaked T-shirt after his morning run, being handcuffed and taken to the police station. Or of Simone being picked up on her way home from one of the Sunday-morning play dates that she organized religiously for the children. Nor was she aware that the children had been placed temporarily in foster care while their parents were booked and processed on two charges of conspiracy to commit murder. But that's exactly what happened.
EQMM, December 2007 Page 9
