Something Wicked

They were nearing the marvelous scene when Mortimer lifts the window seat and finds the body, one of the most delicious moments in theater. Onstage, Max strode around the living room. Janet picked up her pail from the sideboard and her cape, hat, and gloves from the table and left for the kitchen. Alone, Max continued his search for his lost manuscript. Annie’s lips parted in an anticipatory smile.

Max lifted the lid of the window seat. The play called for him to drop it, walk away, do a double take, and dash back. Instead, he remained in a half crouch, staring down.

Henny and Janet were just offstage, of course, ready to come on.

Max tuned, his face grim.

Henny and Janet stepped onstage, puzzled, then hurried to him.

He reached out to bar them from the windowseat. Janet craned to look past him, her hands flew to her throat, and her high, agonized scream rose in the musty air of the auditorium, then splintered into choking sobs.

The bicycle tires left a single track across the rippled tide-flat. The rider pedaled slowly, obviously enjoying a sunset outing, admiring the silvery glow of the chalky gray strand, the creamy gold of the gently waving sea oats on their wind-sculpted dunes. Every so often a weathered gray boardwalk provided access from the beach to the homes hidden behind the dunes. But the rider was oblivious to the tangy salt scent and silken caress of the breeze now flowing back to sea as the sun set. Instead, it was the emptiness of the scene that pleased, for no one moved on this stretch of Broward’s Rock beach so far as the eye could see.

So, the first objective had been met, an unobserved approach.

At the next boardwalk, the rider dismounted and dropped the bicycle on its side. The scuff of sneakers against the sand-filmed wooden slats couldn’t be heard over the rustle of the breeze through the sea oats. It took not quite thirty seconds to reach the patio behind the Buckners’ rambling beachfront house. A pink-and-yellow plastic sea horse rocked in the shamrock-shaped pool. Blue terry-cloth beach towels hung from webbed chairs. A
Fortune
magazine fluttered on a cane table, held in place by carelessly dropped, salt-rimmed goggles.

“Sandy? Dick?”

The call hung unanswered in the hush of twilight.

The bicyclist stepped over a furled beach umbrella, called out again, and knocked sharply on the French doors, but, just as expected, no answer came. The Buckners were not at home. There was always noise, motion, confusion, and disarray when Dick and Sandy were there.

A warm flush of anticipation suffused the bicyclist. And when the door, unlocked, swung in, there was a sharp, heady sense of triumph. Of course, Dick and Sandy left their doors unlocked. They were careless, messy, and heedless.

The den smelled of pipe smoke and an odd combination of dried newsprint and paints from Sandy’s collages. The Sunday papers littered the floor. Across the room the last shafts from the setting sun glittered on the glass panes of the gun case.

Now, crumpled gardening gloves were pulled from a jacket pocket and donned. A gloved hand twisted the handle.

An ugly twist of sheer fury flamed for an instant.

The hand rattled the handle. Locked. Locked!

But they were so careless, so idiotically undisciplined…. The haze of anger cleared, cold analytical thought returned, the gloved hand swept above the case, and a key clattered to the floor.

Less than a minute later, the bicyclist rode off into the dusk. Two target pistols in a capacious carryall thudded against the right leg as the rider pumped, a solitary figure against the dusky sky, enjoying the solitude of an evening outing on the beach.

Shane shifted the tiller, and the wind kicked into the sails.
Sweet Lady
surged ahead. He savored the heavy heat of the noon sun, the beading of water against his bronzed skin. He glanced down at the matted golden hair on his chest. By God, he still had the body women lusted for. He ignored the puffy softness of his belly and admired his trunk-thick legs. He recalled the quick glance of interest from that dark-haired girl on the
Dancing Cat.
Maybe he’d ask her over for a drink when he got back. He liked the look of her legs, long and slim, and a soft little butt. The familiar heat coursed in his crotch. Then he remembered. Shit. Another rehearsal. But only a few more days and all that would be over. He would be free. Free of this stuffy, boring island. Free of Sheridan. His shoulders hunched. Sheridan kept badgering him to learn his lines. Said it would look better. Hell, what difference did it make? God, he’d be glad to see the last of Sheridan, go his own way.

Only a few more days.

Carla knew the room was a perfect backdrop for her: the muted bone of the linen-sheathed sofa and chairs, austere yet luxurious; the woven cotton rug with alternating diamonds of rust and brown, cobalt and moss green; the crystal clarity of the glass coffee table with its gleaming beveled edges. She moved through the open doors and stepped out onto the balcony overlooking the sound. Moonlight swept over her. She glanced down at her soft satin trousers. Turning, she slowly looked back into the living room and the mirrored wall opposite. Her reflection shimmered in the moonlight—jade green silk jacket, ivory trousers. She saw an apparition from long ago, cheeks faintly flushed, long ebony hair hanging straight and still. God, she hadn’t looked like this since … Her mind veered away, but the pain that slumbered in her marrow flared, and she felt a moment’s panic. She’d sworn that it would never happen again. Never. It hurt too much.

She glanced at the crystal goblets waiting on the jewellike table for the finest, lightest white wine, the best she could offer. And after wine, after conversation, words with long pauses and longer glances, she knew what would happen. A touch, a caress, and the explosion of passion that hurt and destroyed but transformed.

And yet, she knew—in her heart—she knew how it would end. But she was so tired of loneliness and the shell she had built to keep out the world. So tired. So hungry to be touched.

The front doorbell rang.

Carla glanced once more at her own loveliness, then—her face uncertain, her eyes clouded with yearning—she moved toward the door.

Agatha crouched atop the coffee bar, her amber eyes glittering with pleasure, her plump black paw poised.

Annie deftly avoided the swatting paw as she bent down to open the box. “Why don’t you go outside and find a mouse, sweetie?”

Agatha’s tail switched a millimeter, her shoulders hunched, and she launched herself with fluid grace into the just-opened box.

“Agatha, no!” Dropping to her knees, Annie swiftly retrieved the silky cat, who immediately began to writhe, indicating
extreme
displeasure.

“I know. It’s Sunday. You’re bored. You want to play the string game, at the very least, but I have to hurry. I have to hang these watercolors, and I don’t have time to play with you.”

The cat emitted a choking hiss.

“You don’t scare me, kid.” Annie turned, bearing her squirming bundle, toward the back door of Death on Demand.

But Agatha, who could exhibit the liquidity of an eel, undulated free, and, with a final, outraged, over-the-shoulder hiss, disappeared into the darkness of the rattan-chair area of the bookstore, seeking sanctuary beneath her favorite fern.

Annie grinned. If there’s one thing Agatha had, it was spirit, just like her namesake. Agatha would return, more determined than ever to investigate that tempting box. Annie wished that she, too, could hiss. As she lifted out the top painting, she had a wonderful vision of a world where people hissed and flipped bouffant tails to indicate displeasure. Boy, would she ever switch a tail at the next rehearsal, right in Shane’s meaty face. And she would waggle a tail, even if at
long distance, at her well-meaning but
maddening
mother-in-law-to-be.

Still grinning, she focused her attention on the first painting and gave a whistle of admiration. This was the first time Nan Allgood had painted for Death on Demand, and Nan had outdone herself. Spreading the five mounted watercolors on the floor, Annie nodded in satisfaction. They were wonderful! And so perfect for the romantic month of June. Her customers would have a fabulous time meeting the challenge of naming the books and authors they represented. Although she knew it was immodest, she congratulated herself anew on her cleverness in running a monthly contest to draw whodunit fans to her mystery bookstore, which was, of course, the finest this side of Atlanta.

In the first painting, a young woman stared at a gray stone house with mullioned windows, rising above a terrace and lawns that sloped to the sea. A lovely house. But closer inspection revealed that decay flourished. The drive was choked by weeds, pressed upon by unbridled trees, overborne by gigantic hedges, and in the garden, rhododendrons loomed against the moonlit sky. Yet the young woman’s face seemed to hold a memory of the house as it once was, the windows warmly lit, the curtains moving in the gentle night breeze. But the reality, forevermore, was desolate ruin.

In the second painting, a dark-haired young woman in a knee-length black dress and fur-collared coat stared in horror at the contents of a devastated linen closet. Fire had blistered the white paint of the door, and flames had singed the body that lay crumpled on the floor. But the flames hadn’t destroyed completely the victim’s silver fox jacket or the red silk negligee she wore.

A golden-bronze statue of Apollo dominated the third painting. A woman in a torn and dirty dress, her neck bruised and swollen, reached out to cup her hands in the water of a spring. Her companion, his face and hands still streaked with blood, his clothes showing evidence of a fierce battle, held out a gold sovereign to drop on the plinth in front of the statue.

The fourth watercolor brought to mind the glorious days when archeologists were first recovering the treasures of Egypt from the Valley of the Dead. A darkly beautiful woman raised a lantern high within the dusty confines of a burial
chamber. The flickering light sculpted the terror on her face. Above her, rows of vultures painted on the stone wall watched implacably.

The fifth painting had, as did the first, an unmistakably dreamlike quality. The interior of the greenhouse was just blurred enough to hint at nightmare rather than reality. A striking young woman with short black hair and deep blue eyes held a shattered glass flask in her hands. She studied it in sickened fascination while the hundreds of orchids which surrounded her seemed to move and rustle and talk, willing her to die. The orchids ranged in color from white to mauve to deepest purple, and one monstrous bloom, a golden-tawny Great Empress, looked as though it were streaked with blood.