by Jacob Stone
Sheila raised the hammer high enough so she’d be able to swing down with enough force to break through the sheetrock
“Stop! Stop!” Penelope’s eyes shifted from her sister’s. “We were going to take you someplace private and have some fun, that’s all.”
“There was a shovel in Connelly’s trunk. The blade kept digging into my side. Your plans were to bury me after your fun.”
Penelope shook her head, but otherwise didn’t say anything. “Why’d you chicken out and change your plans?”
Penelope said something in a low murmur that Sheila couldn’t hear.
“You better speak up. I’m not fooling with this hammer!”
“Tommy’s got a big mouth. I didn’t trust him not to talk.”
For a long minute neither sister spoke. Then Sheila demanded, “Why?”
Penelope shifted her eyes back to Sheila, her expression showing her confusion over her sister’s question.
“Why what?”
“Why’d you and mom and dad hurt me so much? I couldn’t have been older than five when all that started!”
Penelope thought about it for several seconds before shrugging. “Because you were helpless.”
It took Sheila a few seconds to make sense of that. It really wouldn’t have mattered what Penelope had said, but that answer made what Sheila was about to do so much more rewarding, especially given the matter-of-fact way in which she said it. Sheila let out a primal scream as she swung the hammer into the wall, trying to let out all of her hate and disgust and loathing. The hammer’s head tore deep into the wall, and when Sheila pulled the hammer loose, dozens of unhappy bees flew out of this new opening. Sheila was stung several times, but she didn’t care. She stood and watched as Penelope sat paralyzed in fear. Bees buzzed quickly around her face, some landing on her arms, neck, and head.
“Maybe none of them will sting you,” Sheila said. “But you better sit awfully still, because if you scream, or even move as much as a twitch, I bet you get stung. And you better not swat at any of them.”
Sheila kicked the wall and more bees came out. Several bees were now crawling over Penelope’s face. If somehow none of the bees stung her, there was a good chance she would die of fright.
“Remember, don’t scream,” Sheila said. “And no matter how much you’re dying to, don’t swat at them.”
She left the room, slamming the door behind her as hard as she was capable of. It didn’t take long after that—maybe a second, maybe two—for Penelope to scream out, but it quickly became a strangled noise, and seconds after that there was a loud thud. Sheila waited ten minutes and then went back into the room. Penelope was lying on the floor. From all the large swollen red lumps on her face, neck, arms, and legs she’d been stung at least several dozen times. All Sheila could think as she stared at her dead sister was that she hoped it had been sheer agony for Penelope.
Dozens of bees were still swarming the room, but they had calmed down somewhat, and none of these stung Sheila as she moved her sister to the wall where the beehive was located. She used her T-shirt to wipe off the hammer and then while holding the head of the hammer with her T-shirt so she wouldn’t leave any prints, she placed the handle in her sister’s right hand and closed the fingers around it.
It would be a mystery as to why Penelope would do something as stupid as to use a hammer to investigate a buzzing noise in the wall, especially given her allergies, but let the police prove it was something other than that.
Satisfied with how things looked, Sheila left the room again so she could call 9-1-1. Some bees had escaped with her into the house. Good. Maybe her parents will get stung by them when they return home. At least she could hope so.
By pressing down on her bee stings, Sheila was able to generate genuine tears, and her voice shook with pain as she told the emergency operator about the tragic turn of events that had just occurred.
Chapter Forty-one
Tallahassee, 1994
For the first five weeks following Penelope’s death, neither Mr. Proops nor Mrs. Proops said much of anything to Sheila. She’d catch them at times staring at her, but whatever suspicions they had they kept bottled up, at least during those five weeks.
It was only after they had collected Penelope’s life-insurance settlement, because surprisingly, at least to Sheila, they had taken out a two-million-dollar accidental-death policy on her, that they voiced their suspicions.
“I’d like you to explain something to us,” Mr. Proops said to Sheila as Mrs. Proops stood next to him, neither of them looking very happy.
“I’m eating. Can’t this wait?” Sheila said between bites of corn flakes.
“No, it can’t.”
Sheila rolled her eyes. “Fine. What do you want me to explain?”
“Not here. Outside.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Her parents led the way to the rose bushes outside of what had been Penelope’s room. Mr. Proops got on his hands and knees and crawled behind the bushes.
“There’s a hole in the wall here,” he yelled out.
“If you say so,” Sheila said.
“There certainly is one! I’ve got my finger sticking inside of it.”
“Okay.”
Mr. Proops crawled back out, making sure to avoid the branches covered with thorns. Once he was on his feet again, he dusted himself off.
“That hole looks like it was made by a drill,” he said, his eyebrows bunched in an accusatory look. “How do you suppose it got there?”
Sheila shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“You made it,” Mrs. Proops said, her breathing shallow as she stared at Sheila.
“Why would I have done that?”
“You made that hole and you got those bees into it!”
Sheila stared with wide-eyed innocence before giving any indication that she understood Mrs. Proops accusation.
“You’re saying I murdered Penelope? By using bees?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying!”
“And you think this also?” Sheila asked Mr. Proops.
“Somebody drilled that hole,” Mr. Proops said, his eyebrows bunching even more.
“Well, if somebody really did drill a hole there and figured out a way to get bees into it, I think the police would figure it was the parents who were collecting on a two-million-dollar life-insurance policy they had taken out on their dead daughter. I have to admit that I’ve been wondering about that policy ever since I saw that letter you received from the insurance company. Why would you have taken out that policy if it wasn’t so that you could murder Penelope and collect all that money? And just between us, how did you get a whole hive of bees into the wall?”
Mr. Proops eyelids lowered, but he otherwise didn’t respond. Mrs. Proops slapped Sheila hard enough across the face to leave a mark.
“You’re nothing but an ingrate,” Mrs. Proops forced out. Her lips pressed hard enough together into a spiteful line that wrinkled the skin around her mouth, making her look thirty years older. Then she smirked nastily and said, “A peanut-brained piece of trash. Penelope was so much better than you.”
Sheila smiled at that. A hard smile that felt like it had been permanently plastered onto her face. Like it would take a chisel and hammer to remove it.
“Mother, you know what I find interesting about you accusing me of such a bizarre thing? You’re the one who spends hours fretting over your rose bushes. If there was a beehive in that wall, wouldn’t there have been a lot more bees flying around here? Why didn’t you notice them? Unless you did this?”
Mrs. Proops right hand flashed out as she slapped Sheila again, this time the crack from the blow sounding almost as loud as a gunshot.
She took a step forward, her breath sour in Sheila’s face. “I want you out of my house now,” she said.
“You heard your mother,” Mr. Proops said. “We won’t tolerate you here any longer.”
Sheila’s lips were still locked into that same icy, harsh grin. Nothing in the wor
ld could’ve gotten that grin off her face then. For the next thirty seconds she stared with pure, unadulterated hatred at her parents. Mr. Proops was unnerved enough by it that he stumbled back a step, but otherwise stood his ground. At the end of those thirty seconds, Sheila turned from her parents, went back into the house to collect her pocketbook and a few other belongings, and then left for the bus stop without saying another word to either of them.
Chapter Forty-two
Tallahassee, 1998
Sheila’s parents had a habit of sleeping in the buff, so it was easy enough for Sheila to inject Mr. Proops in his right shoulder without having to fool with pajamas. She would rather have injected him in the eyeball, but she was afraid he’d scream if she did that and wake up Mrs. Proops. When she saw the reaction from injecting a dose of succinylcholine into her father she realized he wouldn’t have been able to scream if she had done what she wanted. The needle had woken him up, but other than opening his eyes all he did was flop for a brief moment like a fish that had been reeled out of the water, and then the paralysis took over.
Damn, she thought, on seeing how fast the drug had worked. She moved over to the other side of the bed, and jabbed Mrs. Proops in the cheek with the other hypodermic needle she had brought. As with her father, Mrs. Proops also woke up and flopped for a second before the paralysis froze her.
The room was dark, mostly just in shadows. Mrs. Proops’ eyes were also open, and Sheila wanted her parents to see her, so she turned on her mother’s night table lamp.
“Hi, there,” Sheila said. She kept her voice low even though nobody passing by outside would’ve been able to hear her—assuming anyone would be passing by her parents’ house at two in the morning. “Long time, no see, huh? What’s it been, four years? You’re probably wondering why you can’t move. Simple reason for that. I injected both of you with a drug I stole from the hospital where I work. If I had injected you with a fatal dose, your respiratory system would’ve shut down completely and you’d be dead now, so don’t fret. This paralysis is temporary. From what I’ve read, in a half hour or so you’ll be able to wiggle some of your fingers, and a half hour after that you’ll be able to move around, although sluggishly, like one of those zombies from Night of the Living Dead.”
She walked back to Mr. Proops’ side of the bed, and she lowered her face so that she was staring eyeball to eyeball with him. Her fingers searched out one of his nostrils, and after she had gripped several of his nose hairs, she yanked them out. He lacked the muscle control to wince from the pain, but from the way his eyes jerked in their sockets, there was no doubt that it hurt him. Sheila straightened up.
“I did that for my benefit,” she said. “From what I’ve read about this drug, it’s not an anesthetic, so it won’t numb any pain; in fact, it actually makes you feel more uncomfortable, more distressed. I wanted to see that for myself, and dear father, the reaction I saw in your eyes told me everything I wanted to know. Anyway, it’s a relief to know that you’re going to be feeling everything that will be happening.”
She had brought a large paper bag with her, and she dumped the contents onto the bed. Four scented candles, a bottle of massage oil, and several copies of the type of newspapers that you get from adult bookstores, the ones that advertise services and products. Sheila placed two candles on each night table and lit them. With that done, she rolled Mr. Proops toward Mrs. Proops. It wasn’t easy rolling all that dead weight, and she had to flip him over three times before she had him lying partway on top of Mrs. Proops, and then she had to yank and pull on him before she had him positioned the way she wanted him. The exertion left her breathing hard, and she needed to stand for a moment to catch her breath.
“That will do,” she said, nodding to herself as she approved of her handiwork. She took the massage oil and squeezed out a large puddle of it next to her parents, and then squeezed a lot more of it all over them.
“This stuff is highly flammable,” she said. “Not very smart to be using it when you have lit candles around, especially when you spread these obscene adult newspapers all over the bed. Oh well, if people weren’t doing stupid things, like Penelope punching a hammer through a wall to find out why she was hearing a buzzing noise, these types of dumb, tragic accidents would never happen.”
Sheila reached past Mr. Proops’ exposed buttocks so she could grab the adult newspapers and spread them over the bed and on the floor. With that done, she reached for one of the candles on Mrs. Proops’s night table so that she could knock it onto her massage oil-drenched parents, but she stopped herself and instead kneeled so she could look into both her parents’ faces.
“You were right about Penelope. I drilled that hole and encouraged a box of bees that I had bought to go into the wall and build a hive. I was also the one to break open the wall with the hammer. You should’ve seen how petrified with terror Penelope was as those bees crawled over her face. What a dummy she was. Here she was, deathly allergic to bees, and after hearing a buzzing in her wall for three months, it never occurs to her that there might be an active hive in there. Makes you wonder what we might’ve found if we cracked open her skull. A peanut? A raisin? A dog turd?” Sheila leaned in closer, her voice soft as she whispered, “I’ll tell you a secret. Whenever I need to cheer myself up, I think about the way Penelope looked with those bees swarming over her. Sometimes when I need to treat myself to a special memory, I visualize the way she looked after being stung by all those bees; her face and body covered with all those swollen red lumps.”
Even though Mr. and Mrs. Proops were paralyzed, their eyes still darted around in their sockets and Sheila could see the fear in them. She breathed in deeply and smelled the fear that their bodies exuded. It was definitely palpable; a sweet, sickly smell, and she breathed in deeply again, letting that odor fill up her lungs. In a way it was a shame that the drug left them unable to speak. Not because she had any questions she wanted to ask them, because she couldn’t care what either of them would have to say. She wanted them to be able to talk only so that she could hear them beg for their lives. Even more so, she wanted to hear them scream when she set them on fire. The thought of them being unable to scream while being burned alive seemed particularly off-putting to her, as if she were going to be cheated in a way.
“It wasn’t very bright of you to keep that spare key under the fake rock outside,” she said. “Especially if you thought I was devious enough to kill Penelope the way I did. You should’ve been smart enough to realize that I’d also be coming back to kill both of you, although to be fair, it wouldn’t have mattered if you had found a different hiding place. The latch for one of the kitchen windows has been broken for years, so I could’ve gotten in that way, but I do thank you for making it easier for me.”
A thumping noise from outside stopped Sheila. She lifted her head and listened intently and heard the noise again and realized it was either a snake or some other critter hitting the glass patio door. She smiled to herself over letting something like that spook her. She lowered her head again and this time stared directly into Mr. Proops’ eyes. She had no interest in saying another word to her mother. The faster that woman went to hell, the better. But Sheila did have something more that she wanted to tell her father. Because she knew what he had been planning.
“Let me tell you another secret,” she said. “I snuck into the house a month after you kicked me out, and I found the insurance policy, and what do you know, you bought the same accidental death coverage for each of us. I wondered about that for all of five minutes before understanding why. You were planning to kill me for the money, but it would’ve looked funny if I was the only one you bought the coverage for, so you bought it for all of us. I guess I was lucky that I killed Penelope while you were still working up the nerve to kill me in some sort of accident. And guess what? Before joining you tonight in your boudoir, I searched through your desk, and sure enough, you’ve still been maintaining that policy. Still planning to kill me for the money, dear old father? I guess yo
u waited too long.”
The fear exploding in his eyes right then was really something remarkable. Sheila watched it for a moment, and then stood up. Instead of knocking over one of the candles, she adjusted several of the newspaper pages so that when one of the candles burned down a quarter of an inch, it would set a page on fire, which would set more of them on fire, which would shortly after that ignite the bed. Sheila moved to the door, but she found she couldn’t walk away. Instead she had to watch the candle burn down. Once the newspaper caught on fire, she left the room and fled from the house.
She had parked her car (a beat-up Honda Civic that she’d bought with a hundred and fifty thousand miles on it) four blocks away because she didn’t want any of her parents’ neighbors to see or hear it, and she was almost a full block away before she heard the crackling noise that the fire made. She looked over her shoulder and saw the blaze. The house had been a tinderbox and it had gone up fast. She wished again that her parents had been capable of screaming. It would’ve been so nice if she could’ve heard them scream.
Chapter Forty-three
Los Angeles, the present
Henry waited until the blonde waitress was only a few feet from her car before stepping out from the darkness.
“Brenda, thank God I caught you,” Henry said.
The waitress spun around to face him, startled, and was about to scream when she recognized Henry from the last two nights. “What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I left something really valuable inside the restaurant. I was so worried I wouldn’t get back here before the place was locked up for the night.”
All at once Henry’s knees buckled and he clutched at his chest. Then he pitched forward face first onto the dirt surface of the small parking lot behind the restaurant.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Brenda gasped out as she rushed forward to Henry. She got down on her knees next to him and put her hand against his neck to search for a pulse, and was surprised to feel it beating as fast and strong as it was. With a surprising quickness, he grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her down and rolled on top of her. He pushed his left forearm into her throat to keep her from screaming, and then punched her hard in the nose, breaking it. Her eyes fluttered for a moment before rolling up into their sockets. She was out cold.
