by Michelle Wan
“He won’t, but better to play it safe. Just don’t forget to tighten it again. And dismantle the wire. After.”
Her mind really did work like that.
“Be here by seven thirty,” she barked out orders, timing it to the minute. “The coal door to the cellar at the side of the house will be unlocked. Let yourself in and wait. I’ll go out at seven fifty. His program comes on at eight o’clock. I’ll leave the door to the kitchen open so you can hear the tv. Pull the circuit breaker just when the action’s building up. Best to do it after eight fifteen and before eight forty-five, but not during a commercial. My neighbor across the street is home tonight and I told her I’d drop by to make a Heart and Stroke contribution. She collects for them. I’ll stay there chatting until I see the lights go out here. I’ll make sure she notices too.”
Her foolproof alibi, I thought.
“Which reminds me,” she went on. “The cellar windows are curtained, but use a penlight, not a flashlight, just in case. I’ll get him good and mad before I go. That’ll put him in the right frame of mind. I want him stewing and in a hurry. He’ll storm down the steps, and goodbye Stanley. Oh, one last thing. Make sure he’s dead. If the fall doesn’t kill him, you’ll have to finish him off.”
“Any suggestions how?” I asked, laying on the sarcasm. “I can’t exactly stab or shoot him if he’s supposed to die in a domestic accident.”
She gave me a pitying look. “You’re the wrestler. Break his neck.”
She’d worked it out, down to the last detail. I knew her plan would succeed, and I knew why all of mine had failed. I was not a natural killer. Marcia was.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I was back at the Beekland house by seven thirty. The coal door wasn’t like a normal door. It opened up out from the ground into a chute. It was where coal for heating used to be dumped in the old days. It was still daylight outside, but as I slid down the chute into the Beekland’s cellar, I slid down into darkness. But not silence. Marcia had promised a fight, and there was a humdinger of a shouting match going on upstairs. I sat at the bottom of the chute for a moment, listening. I couldn’t make out words, just angry voices. They were really going at it. Maybe they’ll kill each other off, I thought. I’ll be rid of both of them. I’ll just slip away the way I came. After dismantling the wire and tightening the lightbulb, of course.
I flicked my penlight on and followed the narrow beam to the foot of the cellar steps. As I crept up them, I checked the wire. It was in place, so tight it plinked. Good to her word, Marcia had left the door leading into the kitchen open a crack, letting through a sliver of light. I switched off the penlight and sat on the top step. From there I could hear more plainly.
“Cheap, cheap, cheap!” Marcia was yelling. “Too cheap to send her to a nursing home. To cheap to hire a nurse.”
“And you’re too effing lazy to take care of her,” Stanley yelled back.
“Oh sure, it’s fine for you. You go out to work. I’m stuck with all the cleaning up.”
“You know she wants to be cared for at home. And she doesn’t want a nurse. What Mother wants Mother gets. Don’t forget that.”
Marcia said in a sneery voice, “Oh, you’re the golden boy. But don’t think she doesn’t see through you. She’s never trusted you. Even when you were a snotty kid. You were sneaky and mean then. You’re sneaky and mean now. She’s always known what you’re like.”
Stanley laughed. “And you think she hasn’t always known what a little brat bitch you are?”
“You make me sick!” Marcia wasn’t faking it. She really was in a fury. “I’m going out!” And then there was a scuffling and a bump, as if she’d shoved Stanley out of the way, and the front door slammed.
Golden boy? Snotty kid? Little brat bitch? I was getting whiplash from trying to wrap my head around what I’d just heard. I recalled the way Marcia had hesitated when I’d asked her if Stanley was her husband. I’d been too rattled at the time to check if she wore a wedding ring. I remembered that I thought the two of them looked like bookends. And then I had it. The photographs I’d seen weren’t the Beekland’s kids. They were the Beeklands. Stanley wasn’t Marcia’s husband. He was her brother.
I’d jumped to the conclusion, but why had she gone along with the lie that he was her husband? To bring me on board, because she thought I’d killed mine? To throw me off the scent of what was really going on? What was really going on? One thing I knew for sure. She was a smart liar who was probably laughing her head off at this moment. Her so-called written confession that she’d had “her husband” murdered wasn’t worth a damn since she didn’t have one. I remembered how she’d refused to name him, and she’d probably disguised her handwriting. I had to face up to the fact that Marcia had run circles around me from the start.
The blare of music startled me. Stanley had turned on the tv. I fought down the same old pre-kill nausea. It didn’t really matter if they were Siamese twins, I told myself. Marcia had the video, and I had a job to do.
Bang-on eight o’clock, the theme song of Creeps came on, and then an ad for Nissan. I heard Stanley walk across the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open, the hiss of a pull-top, cupboards banging, the crinkle of plastic wrap and him walking back into the living room. Marcia was wrong about one thing. Their argument hadn’t put him in a rage. He was calmly settling down to watch his favorite show with a beer and chips.
The way a tv thriller works is this: they hook you straight off to get you into it. Then there’s a commercial break. Then more action. As the tension mounts, the commercials get more and more frequent because by now they know you’re not going to switch to another channel. You want to know how it ends.
I only had the sound track to go by, but I could tell when a commercial came on. I knew when the program resumed by the rise and fall of voices, and I could figure out the action from the music. I knew whenever it got low and scary—sort of dunh dunh dunh dunh—building up to the screech of violins, something bad was about to happen. I timed it to perfection. Right on 8:23, just as the music hit a breaking point, I pulled the breaker.
The thin wedge of light at the top of the stairs went out. The music stopped. I didn’t hear Stanley yell, “Shit!” as I’d expected. There was only silence. As if he was just sitting there. Across the street, Marcia would be at the neighbors, watching the Beekland house go dark. Finally, I heard him get up and move across the floor above my head. I pictured him looking for a flashlight, discovering that the batteries were dead. He took a very long time doing it. Now I heard a bump, like he’d knocked into the furniture, then footsteps and the sound of something being dragged around. The door at the top of the staircase creaked open. A pause. My heart skidded in my throat. Suddenly, like a nightmare, something large and formless came hurtling out of the darkness at me. I jumped aside and felt the rush of air as it sailed past. It hit the lower part of the stairs once, bounced off and landed beyond me with a sickening thump.
* * *
Nothing happened. Nothing moved. It’s done, I thought, it’s over. Judging from the absolute stillness, I knew I wouldn’t have to finish him off. At that moment, I couldn’t say what I felt. Relief ? Or more an awful emptiness, like I wanted to curl up on the dirt floor of the cellar and die myself. Or cry. This was no Laurel and Hardy act in a home appliance store no crazy bumper-car ride, down a city street, no disastrous comedy impersonation in a sleazy saloon. This was real death. This was murder. And I was now a bona fide killer. I knew that nothing would ever be the same.
I took a gulp of air and switched on my penlight. The first thing I saw was his arm. It was twisted under his body in an unnatural way. When my beam traveled along his shoulder to his chin, I saw with surprise that something had been stuffed into his mouth. His pale eyes were wide open and strangely naked. He’d lost his glasses on the way down. Then I had a shock. The hair. The hair was wrong. There was too much of it! In a panic I brought the penlight close to shine it fully on the face. It wasn’t Stanley. It was Marcia.
&nbs
p; A flickering at the top of the stairs made me look up. He was standing there, in the doorway, a candle in one hand, what looked like a gun in the other. I stood up slowly, then bolted for the coal chute, but he called out, “I think you’d better stay.”
I stopped and turned. Stanley pointed with the gun. “Is she dead?”
I nodded. I didn’t need to check. There was no life in those staring eyes.
“I heard her go out!” I screamed at him.
He laughed, a really nasty sound. “You heard the front door slam. But she didn’t leave. She couldn’t.”
“What did…? It was supposed—”
“To be me? Give me some credit. I knew she was up to something. I mean, the car that nearly ran me down? And that was you at Benny’s with the needle, wasn’t it?” He sniggered and came down a step. The candle flame lit up his face in a ghastly way as he peered at me. “You’ve lost weight and your hair is different. What’s your real name, by the way? Not Sally Washington, I presume?”
“Sally will do,” I mumbled.
“Well, Sally, do you think I’m stupid? Twice in one week?”
Three with Sutherland’s, I told him in my head, only you don’t know it. Four if you count tonight.
“Why?” I cried out. “Why do you hate each other so much?”
He shrugged. “A bad case of sibling rivalry? We’re twins, you see. I know twins are supposed to be close, but she was a bitch to share space with even in the womb.”
Yeah. I could see Marcia planting her foot in Stanley’s face in her race to get out first.
“Any more questions?” He was toying with me, and he sounded like he was enjoying himself.
I obliged. I wanted to keep him talking. “She said it had to be done by Sunday. What was her hurry?”
“Money.” He breathed in through his mouth. “Our mother’s very rich. She’s having a brain tumor removed on Monday. At her age it’s high-risk surgery. If she dies, she’ll leave a couple of million behind. Marcia wanted to be sure there was only one heir. Me, as it turns out.”
He looked at me curiously. “How did she recruit you? I don’t suppose you’re in the yellow pages.”
I didn’t want to answer that. Instead, I said, “How did you know it would be tonight?”
He shrugged. “Well, I was sure Marcia would have another go, and it had to be before Monday. Of course, I didn’t know what or how. You might say I was in the dark, haw-haw.” He took another step down.
One more. I held my breath. One more and it really will be lights-out for you. Come on, you little shit.
“Until I found the wire.” He pointed to the third step. “So when she tried to leave the house, I knocked her out, tied her up and gagged her. And I waited. To see when it would happen and how you were involved. When the power went, I knew.”
They were obviously twins. His mind worked just like Marcia’s.
“And you threw her down the stairs?”
“It’s what the two of you had in store for me.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “What are you going to do now?” I croaked.
“Well, let’s see. If you don’t tell, I won’t.” He actually giggled. “In a minute I’m going to call nine-one-one.” He held up the gun. That was when I saw it was a mobile phone. “But first you’d better untie her and get rid of the gag. Got to make it look natural. Get rid of this wire too. Then you’re going to say we were all upstairs watching television. You’re my alibi, you see. A friend of Marcia’s. She invited you over. The lights went out, and she had a bad accident.”
I didn’t wait to hear more. This was his murder, not mine. Let him make it look natural. I wasn’t hanging around to alibi him. I scrambled up the coal chute, out of the cellar and ran. I was pretty sure Stanley would stick to his accident story. He had to, but either way I didn’t care. I didn’t care that my prints were on everything, the wire cutter, the lightbulb, the steps. I’d been so sure of Marcia’s plan I hadn’t bothered with gloves. I didn’t care that Stanley might one day discover Marcia’s video or my real name. I just wanted to be out of there, out of the house, away from the horrible Beeklands.
* * *
On Sunday night, Wild Woman Wanda really ground my face into the mud. My heart just wasn’t in it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Almost two years have passed and a lot has happened. Marcia’s death went down as an accident. I never had any follow-up from Stanley. I didn’t exactly hang around waiting for him to follow up. The day after my defeat to Wanda, I phoned Roz to say I was quitting my job at the post office. I loaded up my car again—I was mostly packed anyway. I left the rest of my stuff with Jimmy or gave it to Goodwill, had my mail forwarded to his address and drove out of Franks forever.
After a couple of months, I let Jimmy know where I was newly settled. I never told him about the Beeklands, about my week in hell, but I did make him promise not to tell anyone how to find me, especially not a creepy, mouth-breathing accountant or a goon with a broken nose. I laid low, ate junk food, drank more wine than was good for me and grew my hair back. Sometimes I went jogging, not for fitness but because it was a way of running out on life. As I ran, I wondered how things could go so wrong. Mostly I sat around doing nothing.
I could afford to. I was a wealthy woman. North American Life paid up, and my new bank account was richer by a quarter of a million bucks. Or two hundred and twenty thousand, after I’d settled Chico’s gambling debts. Because Bernie went after Jimmy when he couldn’t find me, and even though Jimmy told me to sit tight, I couldn’t let them work on him.
But it was my experience with Marcia and Stanley that had really shaken me. It left me jumpy. It left me paranoid. If life had taught me one thing, it was that I couldn’t trust anyone. Monsters like the Beeklands lurked around every corner. Worse, I couldn’t trust myself. I hadn’t actually killed Marcia, but I’d made four attempts at murder and let myself be used by her. What kind of monster did that make me?
Then one day when I was fast approaching bottom, my doorbell rang. I’d paid off Bernie’s people, so he was off my back. I figured it had to be the cops. They’d opened an investigation on Marcia’s death, Stanley had cooked up some convincing story to frame me and they’d tracked me down. I got up, feeling like my body was filled with wet cement. In a funny way, I was relieved. It would be good to have it over with.
“Yo, Lava!” It was Jimmy. He came through my door like a blast of clean air.
“You’re not lookin’ good, kid,” he said as he dumped his duffel bag on the floor. He said he’d had enough of Al and the pit. He said Bernie gave him a pain in the ass. He said he’d decided to put Franks behind him too.
Over the next few months he gave me a lot of grief about my diet and my drinking, made me start working out seriously and began lining me up for mud-wrestling matches.
I got back into things faster than I expected. I started feeling better physically. My self-confidence returned and with it, gradually, my self-respect. I regained my old fighting spirit, my desire to win. I did some promo bouts in Windsor and Toronto. I wrestled Detroit. I did tag-team events in Florida. In California and Chicago I perfected what has now become my victory dance.
Al’s pit and the Beeklands are now a distant memory. My reputation and my purses have grown along with my string of wins. Jimbo and I are a couple now, not in the way you might think. He’s with me on the road as my manager, cheering section, fitness trainer and life advisor. Lady Lava now gets top billing. I don’t have to beg for matches. Jimbo’s grooming me for the Vegas championships.
Tonight, July 10, I’m opening a new pit in Vancouver called Slurry’s. It’s a big venue with a huge purse because this is the premiere match. I go on in forty minutes. Jimmy’s with me in my dressing room, fussing like a mother hen. He’s worried on two counts. The date. It’s the second anniversary of Chico’s death. And my opponent. I’m up against—you got it—Wild Woman Wanda. I haven’t wrestled her since Al’s. She’s done well, too, with a string
of wins almost as impressive as mine.
“How’s your head, kid?” Jimmy says.
“My head’s good,” I tell him. I’m fit, a couple of years older and lots smarter. I’ve left Chico behind me and I’m up for Wanda. “I’m going to wipe the pit with her,” I say.
“That’s my Lava,” Jimmy croons. We trade high fives.
The crowd at Slurry’s is yelling, “Mud! Mud! Mud!” as Wanda and I come out onto the floor. The emcee wears a tux and bowtie over a pair of black Spandex shorts. He introduces me and Wanda and tells the cheering crowd that the winner of this match will wrestle a mystery celeb later in the evening, free drinks for the first person to guess who. Someone yells, “Madonna?” Someone else says, “The Pope?”
Wanda makes a point of not looking at me, like I’m not worth the trouble. I use the time to check her out though. She still wears her trademark Tarzan suit, and although she’s maybe gained a pound or two, she looks strong and even tougher than I remember. Her hair has gone from bottle-red to purple.
The yelling is deafening as we step into our corners. The ring is big, eight by eight, and the mud is the color of milk chocolate, clean and good quality. I can tell immediately by the smooth consistency. We do the mud bath ritual. We go into our kneeling crouch. The starting whistle shrieks.
The old Wanda would have contacted immediately. Instead, she circles on her hands and knees, inviting me to come to her. I circle too. The crowd is urging us on. We make a few tentative grabs. Someone yells, “C’mon, ladies. Let’s see some dirt!” I choose that moment to launch myself at her. We slap and grapple. I’m on top and planning to stay there. I straddle her, grab her wrists, go straight in for the pin, but she bridges expertly and throws me off. I roll and scramble to my knees. She hurls herself at me.
We grapple again and roll. The mud is extra slippery and I’m having trouble holding her. She takes me by surprise by pivoting swiftly. She clamps my torso with her legs. It’s a powerful hold, and now she has me on my back. I’m stuck. I kick and twist, trying to build up enough momentum to rock her loose but can’t break her death grip. I know the clock is running out, because I can hear Jimmy yelling somewhere to my left. I give a last tremendous heave and wriggle free. The bell sounds.
