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- Herausgeber: Black Cat Weekly
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
This issue, we have original mysteries by Christina Hoag and Greg Herren (both courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), plus a crime tale by Greg Herren (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman). Our mystery novel is Annihilation by classic American mystery novelist Isabel Ostrander, whose detective fiction was influential in the early 20th century. Of course, there’s a solve-it-yourself puzzler by Hal Charles, too!
On the science fiction and fantasy front, we have a real treat—Phyllis Ann Karr has been going through her files and found the previously unpublished short-story version of her novel Wildraith’s Last Battle for us. Plus, we have classics by David Mason, Cordwainer Smith, and Allen K. Lang. Our science-fantasy novel is Lin Carter’s sword-and-planet tale, Under the Green Star (the first of the Green Star series, very much in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition).
Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:
“Travis and Wilbur,” by Christina Hoag [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“The Antique Caravan Caper,” Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“Housecleaning,” by Greg Herren [Barb Goffman Presents short story]
“Leonardo,” by R.T. Lawton [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
Annihilation, by Isabel Ostrander [novel]
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
“Wildraith’s Last Battle,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [short story]
“Farewell Message,” by David Mason [short story]
“Box-Garden,” by Allen K. Lang [short story]
“Scanners Live in Vain,” by Cordwainer Smith [short story]
Under the Green Star, by Lin Carter [novel]
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Seitenzahl: 830
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
TEAM BLACK CAT
THE CAT’S MEOW
TRAVIS AND WILBUR, by Christina Hoag
THE ANTIQUE CARAVAN CAPER, by Hal Charles
HOUSECLEANING, by Greg Herren
LEONARDO, by R.T. Lawton
ANNIHILATION, by Isabel Ostrander
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
WILDRAITH’S LAST BATTLE, by Phyllis Ann Karr
FAREWELL MESSAGE, by David Mason
BOX-GARDEN, by Allen K. Lang
SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN, by Cordwainer Smith
UNDER THE GREEN STAR, by Lin Carter
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part III
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part IV
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
AUTHOR’S NOTE
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 2024 by Wildside Press LLC.
Published by Black Cat Weekly
blackcatweekly.com
*
“Travis and Wilbur” is copyright © 2024 by Christina Hoag and appears here for the first time.
“The Antique Caravan Caper” is copyright © 2022 by Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“Housecleaning” is copyright © 2016 by Greg Herren. Originally published in Sunshine Noir. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Leonardo” is copyright © 2024 by R.T. Lawton and appears here for the first time.
Annihilation, by Isabel Ostrander, was originally published in 1924.
“Wildraith’s Last Battle” is copyright © 2024 by Phyllis Ann Karr. It was the inspiration for Karr’s novel of the same title, but has never appeared in print—until now.
“Farewell Message,” by David Mason, was originally published in Science Fiction Adventures, April 1958.
“Box-Garden,” by Allen K. Lang, was originally published in Science Fiction Adventures, April 1958.
“Scanners Live in Vain,” by Cordwainer Smith, was originally published in Fantasy Book, Vol. 1, No. 6 (1950).
Under the Green Star is copyright © 1972 by Lin Carter. Reprinted by permission of Lin Carter Properties.
TEAM BLACK CAT
EDITOR
John Betancourt
ART DIRECTOR
Ron Miller
ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Barb Goffman
Michael Bracken
Paul Di Filippo
Darrell Schweitzer
Cynthia M. Ward
PRODUCTION
Sam Hogan
Enid North
Karl Wurf
THE CAT’S MEOW
Welcome to Black Cat Weekly.
This issue, we have original mysteries by Christina Hoag and R.T. Lawton (both courtesy of Acquiring Editor Michael Bracken), plus a crime tale by Greg Herren (courtesy of Acquiring Editor Barb Goffman). Our mystery novel is Annihilation by classic American mystery novelist Isabel Ostrander, whose detective fiction was influential in the early 20th century. Of course, there’s a solve-it-yourself puzzler by Hal Charles, too!
On the science fiction and fantasy front, we have a real treat—Phyllis Ann Karr has been going through her files and found the previously unpublished short-story version of her novel Wildraith’s Last Battle for us. Plus, we have classics by David Mason, Cordwainer Smith, and Allen K. Lang. Our science-fantasy novel is Lin Carter’s sword-and-planet tale, Under the Green Star (the first of the Green Star series, very much in the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition).
Here’s the complete lineup—
Cover Art: Ron Miller
Mysteries / Suspense / Adventure:
“Travis and Wilbur,” by Christina Hoag [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
“The Antique Caravan Caper,” Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]
“Housecleaning,” by Greg Herren [Barb Goffman Presents short story]
“Leonardo,” by R.T. Lawton [Michael Bracken Presents short story]
Annihilation, by Isabel Ostrander [novel]
Science Fiction & Fantasy:
“Wildraith’s Last Battle,” by Phyllis Ann Karr [short story]
“Farewell Message,” by David Mason [short story]
“Box-Garden,” by Allen K. Lang [short story]
“Scanners Live in Vain,” by Cordwainer Smith [short story]
Under the Green Star, by Lin Carter [novel]
Until next time, happy reading!
—John Betancourt
Editor, Black Cat Weekly
TRAVIS AND WILBUR,by Christina Hoag
Wilbur watched the object of his ire through the parted curtain in his RV window, its pleats crusted with grime. “One of these Westside snobs, you know the type, always complaining.” He grunted in disgust.
Wilbur’s voice was white noise to the rumble in Travis Bleachley’s stomach. He’d missed breakfast at the soup kitchen that morning. A drunken blowout the night before, thanks to his neighbor’s monthly disability check, had meant he slept hard through the morning joggers and dog-walkers outside his tent. He decided to bike over to Wilbur’s new spot several blocks back from Venice Beach and cadge a bite to eat.
He’d found his buddy in a foul mood. Wilbur had parked his shabby RV on the street of tidy bungalows and color-coordinated rose bushes only yesterday. The resident had already told him to move on from the curb outside her house.
Travis’s gaze roamed the kitchenette as Wilbur continued his rant. “She’s talking about me to her neighbor. I can tell by the way they’re looking over here.”
Cans of tuna and Spaghetti-Os were stacked on the counters. Styrofoam cups of ramen and soups. A bunch of blackened bananas. A packet of brownies, however, was open. In a fluid swoop, Travis darted from the dinette table and stuffed one in his mouth.
“Did you tell her that you have the right to park here for seventy-two hours?” Travis said after he swallowed quickly. A painting was propped up right behind the brownies. That was new. It was of a woman. Maybe. The right body parts but they were scrambled, the colors garish. Looked like someone tripping on acid had painted it. He glanced at Wilbur. He was still peering through the window in the door.
Travis swiped another brownie, hesitated and shoved a third in the deep pocket of his fisherman’s vest. Then he spotted the signature on the bottom left of the canvas. A big W followed by a squiggle, the final “a” looping the whole word in a circle. “Wilda.” A ghost glimmered in his memory. Didn’t Wilbur tell him the other day, in a rare revelation after more than a few shots of bourbon, that his mother was a famous painter? She had some weird name, different than Wilbur’s. Wilbur said he’d changed his last name and she had written him off.
Travis had discounted the story at the time. You could never believe street dwellers’ tales. People told all kinds of fanciful legends about who they used to be, how they fell victim to hard times and hard people. Still, every now and then the stories turned out to be true. Like Sly Stone, the soul singer who lived in a van over in Crenshaw or the trust fund kid who ended up sleeping on a Skid Row sidewalk. And there was something about Wilbur. He wasn’t like most people reduced to living in RVs around LA. He was better spoken, seemed to know stuff, like he came from money, had education, a bit of class. Travis never questioned how he’d ended up living in a shitty RV. A cardinal rule of living on the street. You didn’t ask people’s histories. They’d tell you if they wanted.
“I told her to go check the city code. Then she called my RV an eyesore,” Wilbur was saying.
Travis actually agreed with the resident, but he held his tongue. “They all think they’re better than us,” he said instead. “Discrimination, that’s what it is.”
“Anyone can end up living in an RV,” Wilbur said. “People who live in houses don’t own the streets. I got as much a right to park on the street as they do. What’s it to them if an RV’s there for a couple days?”
“She did catch you taking a dump in the drain,” Travis pointed out.
Wilbur dropped the curtain and turned. Travis rapidly brushed crumbs off the table.
“When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Wilbur said. “My tank’s full, and it’s the end of the month. I don’t have the money to go down to Dockweiler. The fee they charge for emptying the septic is highway robbery. It’s a basic human need.”
“It’s greed. Bleeding people dry.” Travis pointed to the painting. “Is that your mom’s?”
Wilbur replied with a scowl. He plucked the painting from its perch and took it over to his bed, opened a drawer underneath and slid in the canvas. Travis craned his neck. The drawer looked to be full of paintings.
“I thought she cut you off without a penny. What was her name again? Wilda, right?” Travis said. Her surname came to him. “Wilda Stavic. Is that your nest egg you were talking about? The stuff you snuck out from her studio?”
“None of your beeswax.” Wilbur returned to the kitchenette and pursed his lips as he studied at the half-empty packet. “Looks like you enjoyed my brownies.”
“I was hungry.”
“You can get your own, you know. The bakery over on Rose has expired stuff for cheap at closing every day.”
“They should be giving it away if it’s expired. Greed, like I said.”
Wilbur eyed him. “You smoked all of your check this month already, didn’t you?”
Travis shrugged. He never pretended to be anything he wasn’t. “You got anything else to eat?”
“I got some chips.” Wilbur foraged in a cabinet. He drew out an open bag of sour-cream-and-onion potato chips and tossed it to Travis.
“Those are the same chips you had last time.”
“I just bought ’em,” Wilbur said, indignant.
“Wouldn’t be the first time you gave me stale chips.”
“You got some nerve, you know that?”
“You know if I had it, I’d share it, Wilbur,” Travis said.
“Yeah, but just so happens you never have it.”
Travis slid out from the table and slung a stained backpack over a shoulder. “I gotta get going now, Wilbur. Thanks for the snacks, man.”
Wilbur stood in the doorway watching Travis cycle off into the dusk. He smiled.
* * * *
Travis biked the quarter of a mile to the beach. Evenings were always the best time to hang when the tourist traffic died down and the hippie kids came out to party. Local residents always complained about the bands of young people who traveled the West Coast stealing and begging to feed meth and heroin habits, but Travis found them to be generous with whatever they had. Sponge and share alike.
He locked his bike to a lamppost and bummed a Marlboro and a light off a dreadlocked twenty-something playing Frisbee with a small dog. He sat on the sand and leaned against a palm tree’s rugged striations. The Pacific Ocean shimmered with the day’s last golden spangles. He closed his eyes. The thrum of bongos and plastic buckets from the drum circle and the clacking wheels from the skateboard park syncopated with the lub-dub of his heart.
Wilbur. Sitting on a stash of his mother’s paintings. He said he’d had no contact with her for years. Like Travis himself. His family back in Sanford, Michigan, refused to bail him out of jail the last time. When he got out, he took off for the West Coast. Nobody in his family of morons had ever seen the ocean.
“Hey, Trav.” He opened his eyes. It was Merry, “as in Christmas,” as she’d introduced herself. These kids all had odd names. “Can I bum a light?”
He handed his cigarette to her. She used it to fire up a hand-rolled cigarette. A thought occurred to him as she puffed.
“You got your phone on you?”
“Yeah. You need to make a call?”
“I need to look something up. On the Internet. I ran out of minutes.”
She took her phone out of a pocket and gave it to him. He stared at it, unsure how to proceed.
“You want me to do it for you?” He handed back the phone. “What do you want to search?”
“Artist by name of Wilda Stavic.”
He spelled it and she typed it in, waited a moment. “Here it is. There’s a pretty long Wikipedia entry on her. Looks like she died nine years ago.”
Travis felt a spark. “That’s good, right? I mean, artists are worth more when they’re dead.”
“Yeah, that’s generally how it works.”
She handed him the phone so he could read for himself. Wilda Stavic was known for abstract expressionism. Her style turned progressively more surrealist as she developed schizophrenia and refused to take medication. She said it dampened her creativity.
Travis recalled Wilbur saying she was crazy, that she liked to use her stiletto heels as weapons and crack him on the head with them. He’d taken Travis’s fingers and guided them to the divots in his scalp. Travis had clucked sympathetically. He’d been on the receiving end of many a frying pan and rolling pin himself.
The Wikipedia article said she’d had no children, but Wilbur had said he was as good as dead to her, so it made sense. It was the last sentence of the Wikipedia article that imprinted itself on Travis’s brain. “Stavic’s works have increased in value in recent years, selling for tens of thousands of dollars to private collectors at auctions in New York and London.”
Well, I’ll be damned, Travis thought. Wilbur was telling the truth.
* * * *
The next day, Travis couldn’t stop thinking about the paintings. Wilbur had a whole drawer of them, maybe more stashed around the RV. He surely wouldn’t miss one. Or two. He might not even realize how much they were worth. Travis decided to pay him another visit, see what he could suss out.
As he biked closer, he spotted Wilbur’s silhouette moving inside the RV. Then Wilbur turned, looked straight at Travis and darted out of sight. Strange, but Travis was used to strange.
Travis knocked on the door and cracked it open. “Hey, Wilbur.”
“You back already?” Wilbur said in a croaky voice.
Travis entered. It took a moment for his eyes to focus amid the dimness. Wilbur was sprawled across the bed like a beached walrus. Hadn’t he just been moving around?
“You taking a nap?”
“Nap! I’m in pain, man. I got gallstones. Gotta get my gall bladder out.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Went to the doctor this morning. He wanted to check me into the hospital right away, but I said I gotta take care of my RV first. I gotta go into the hospital tomorrow first thing.” Wilbur tried to sit up, grimaced and fell back on a stained pillow.
Travis felt an opening. “How long you gotta be in?”
“Doc said three to five days, depending on how I recover.”
“What you gonna do with the RV? You gotta move it or they’ll impound it. You know that lady’s got the time you arrived down to the second. One minute over seventy-two hours, she’s calling the cops.”
“I’ll move it, then I’ll be out before another seventy-two hours is up.”
Travis licked his lips. “What if you ain’t out? I mean, complications can happen, right? The doc said three to five days.”
Wilbur scratched his beard. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Here went nothing. “You know, Wilbur, if you want, I could move the RV for you. In fact, I could drop you off at the hospital and then park it along the Culver Loop. It’ll be good there for a few days, out of the way. I can keep an eye on it.”
Wilbur studied him for a moment.
“I won’t go nowhere,” Travis said. “Everybody ’round here knows me, you know that.”
“If you take off, I’m reporting it stolen. I got your full name.”
Travis suddenly felt lightheaded with possibility. “I’ll pick you up at the hospital, man. How ’bout that?”
“How ’bout you fix me some coffee? Nescafé’s on the shelf.”
* * * *
The following morning, Travis was at Wilbur’s RV by eight. As he drove to the hospital, Wilbur issued non-stop instructions.
“Now don’t go cruising around. Hospital to the Culver Loop, that’s it. I marked how much gas I got. And don’t be using all my water, either. Don’t drive over forty. She starts to shake.”
Travis let the admonitions roll off his back. “No problem, man.” He pulled up in front of the hospital entrance. “You want me to come in with you?”
“I got two legs.” Wilbur descended, his toothbrush and comb sticking out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
“I’ll come visit you later today, after the operation.”
“I don’t want visitors. I got your number. I’ll call you when it’s time to pick me up.”
As soon as the sliding doors swallowed Wilbur, Travis floored it to the Culver Loop just south of Venice. He parked at the end of a queue of ramshackle RVs that lined the curb like a sloppily stitched seam. Crouching, he opened the drawer under the bed. A pile of abstract paintings. He pulled open the drawer next to it. Ditto.
“Wilbur, Wilbur, Wilbur.” He shook his head.
He looked around for something to put them in. He spotted a suitcase handle on a shelf above the bed. He yanked it down, tossed out the clothing and filled it with the paintings. Twenty-seven in total. He had to sit on the case to zip it closed. He knew just where to take them.
When Travis first arrived in LA, he ended up in downtown’s Skid Row, conveniently located within walking distance of Union Station. He soon found out how to survive on the street—who sold what, which street corners belonged to whom, who’d get you drunk or high and then roll you, and where to sell stuff, no questions asked.
He steered the RV into an alley on San Pedro Street and crawled along looking for the familiar dark red brick of an old building. There it was. He parked by the dumpsters and got out, dragging the suitcase behind him.
“Sol!” he yelled up at the side of the building. “You home? I got stuff for ya! Sol!”
A window on the third floor flew open and an old man leaned out, hands on the sill. He was wearing an undershirt, his belt buckle dangled open. Greasy gray hair hung in hanks around his ears.
“Broadcast it on TV, why don’t ya?”
“It’s Travis. Remember me? I got you—”
“I remember, I remember. What is it?”
“Let me up.” He gestured to the suitcase.
Sol eyed the case then disappeared from the window. Travis trotted to the door. When the buzzer sounded, he yanked it open with a screech of rusty metal.
Minutes later, the case lay splayed open on the wooden floor of Sol’s living room.
“Paintings?” Sol said. “What am I gonna do with paintings?”
“Not just any paintings. They’re by Wilda Stavic.” He pointed to the signature.
Sol looked dubious.
“She’s famous. Check the internet. And she’s dead,” Travis said.
Sol thumbed in a few words on his phone, read, hiked his eyebrows.
“See?” Travis pointed to the signature.
“Wait here.”
Sol entered the bedroom and closed the door. His voice scraped like a rake through gravel. Travis sneaked closer to listen.
“I get my cut, right?” Floorboards creaked. Travis beelined back to his spot by the case. The door opened. Sol shrugged on a short-sleeve button-front as he walked into the living room.
“My art gal is coming over.”
“How long she’s gonna take?”
“She’ll get here when she gets here. You got someplace you gotta be?”
Travis shook his head.
“So you can wait.” Sol chin-pointed to the sofa and shuffled into the kitchen. The sound of running water and clattering dishes filtered into the living room.
Travis took a seat. He dabbed his forehead with a frayed bandanna. The last time he felt this nervous was when those detectives hauled him in on the holdup of a 7-Eleven back in Michigan even though he was ninety-five percent sure they had nothing on him. Five percent, however, was still five percent. He calmed himself. He had his story about the paintings ready. He urgently needed to piss, but he didn’t want to let the suitcase out of his sight. Sol was a crook, just like him.
He focused instead on what he would do if this score came through. He could buy an RV, a new one, or nearly new, travel the country, from sea to shining sea, take in the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore. Hell, he could even go to Canada, Mexico. Why stop there? He could go all the way to the end of South America. Living was real cheap down there, so he’d heard, and so were the women. A tsunami of hope overwhelmed his chest. Things like this never happened to ol’ Travis. This could be the start of a whole new life, but he had to play it right.
The noises in the kitchen stopped. Sol stood in the threshold of the doorway, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “She’s coming up.” He tossed the towel into the kitchen and crossed to the front door. A tall, thin woman dressed in a black sleeveless dress, a string of pearls and towering heels walked in a few seconds later. Her hair was pulled back in a bun with not a strand out of place, and she wore candy-apple red lipstick. Her eyes fell on the case.
She took a pair of white gloves and a loupe from her purse and carefully picked up a canvas. She examined the signature, the back side and other details of each painting.
“What’s the provenance?” she said as she scrutinized the pieces.
“The prove…?” Travis said.
“Where did you get them?”
“Her son, Wilbur, is my best buddy. Or was. He just died. Gall bladder exploded. He left me his RV, and these were in it.” The lie slid right off his tongue. It sounded good, he thought, realistic.
“Remarkable,” she muttered. She looked directly at Travis for the first time. “You have no bills of sale or any documentation, I take it?”
Travis shook his head.
“I’m not going to waste my time or yours. I’ll give you five thousand for the lot.”
Travis knew they’d lowball him. “I know what they’re worth. You’ll have to do a lot better than that.”
Sol and the woman half turned to confer in a whisper. Then the woman turned back to Travis. “Twenty-five thousand. Cash. Take it or leave it.”
* * * *
That night Travis made up for all the birthday parties he’d never had as a kid. For once, he’d played everything perfectly. He’d let the paintings go cheap, but he was no fool. Sol and the woman knew they were hot, and twenty-five grand was twenty-five grand. There were times when you took the money and ran, times when you held out. This was one of the former.
He called his lady friend, Ginger, showed her a good time in a bar then she showed him a good time in the alley out back. He shambled back to the RV alone, priding himself on playing this smart, not telling Ginger or anyone else that he’d come into money. The next day, he’d drive the RV to downtown LA, park it and hop on a bus east. He’d be two states over before Wilbur got out of hospital. Sorry, buddy. It’s dog-eat-dog, you know that.
He sat at the table in the RV and noticed a full pint of whiskey conveniently left on the counter. He grabbed it and took several hearty gulps. Thanks for the nightcap, Wilbur. Then he dumped all the money from his backpack onto the table. He plunged his hands into pile and repeatedly showered himself with a confetti of bills as he drained the bottle. Like a gangster in the movies.
That was the last thing he remembered.
He woke up in bed with a headache that felt like an axe cleaving his skull in two and his mouth desert dry. Then he remembered the new life that awaited him. That motivated him to get up. He had to get going. He staggered to the bathroom.
When he came out, he crossed to the table where he’d left the cash. He squinted. He couldn’t see anything there. He really needed glasses. Wait. More light. He yanked open a curtain. His stomach plummeted like a roller-coaster drop. The money was gone. He got on all fours, checked the floor, the cracks in the bench seat, every nook and cranny in the RV. Every last bill, gone.
What the hell happened? Who did he let in here last night? Ginger? Someone else? He flopped onto the banquette. The biggest break of his miserable life, and he’d blown it. Nothing new, though. He was his own worst enemy. He’d learned a long time ago to accept failure and found the answer was simply to move on. At least he’d got a good night out of it.
He checked his pockets. He had enough cash for a bus ticket to Santa Barbara, maybe farther north. Travis cleared the cupboards of all the food and stuffed it in a bag. He didn’t bother closing the door of the RV. It swung back and forth as the ocean wind gusted.
A Week Later
Giles slurped the bottom of his piña colada through the straw and looked around for the waiter. There he was, scuffing through the sand with his tray. Giles waved and held up his empty glass. The young guy nodded and pivoted back to the palm-roofed bar hut.
This was the life he deserved. A spacious apartment, a proper bathroom, gourmet food. He really should have come to Belize directly after the forgery scheme collapsed in London instead of returning to the States. It was so much more pleasant here, but he knew it was easier to disappear in a big country than in a small one. Even then, he took precautions. Bought that RV junker for two grand, lived like a hobo in Venice Beach. His getaway plan had been easy enough to put into place, but it was harder than he thought to stick with. He’d wanted to remain underground for a whole year, but life in a tin can with the mentally ill and addicts as neighbors soon wore thin. Plus, his cash supply dwindled faster than he’d anticipated. He started his exit strategy as soon as he met Travis six months ago. The fool bragged about his burglar expertise and fence contacts. He was lazy and greedy, thought he was smart. The perfect stooge.
Giles drove into the desert every so often to paint the Wildas, drying the oils on top of the RV, carefully etching a crack on them here and there to show some age. He’d chosen Wilda Stavic, a mid-tier twentieth-century artist, purposefully. She wouldn’t attract too much scrutiny by authenticators, and he only had to date the works by a few decades not a few centuries. And being an abstract expressionist, her style was easy to replicate in less-than-optimal conditions.
He chalked auction house “serial numbers” on the backs, rubbing them half off so the works looked previously bought and sold. He brushed the edges of the canvases in tea to age them and picked the weave, so it frayed slightly. He even dipped some stickers in tea and stuck them on the back like they’d been through galleries and auction houses. It was more than Travis would need, but if he was going to sell them for a decent price, they would need to pass reasonable examination. Then Giles returned to the streets of Venice and resumed his life as “Wilbur LaForge.” His private joke.
He baited Travis’s hook by drinking with him one day and “revealing” his story about a famous insane mother whose paintings sold for thousands of dollars, how she’d cut him out of her will, but he let it slip that he had a stash of paintings that he’d made off with. Showing Travis the scars on his head, real remnants of a violent mother, were a touch of genius, even if he said so himself.
Then he reeled him in with the “accidental” display of his mother’s painting in front of the brownies that he knew Travis wouldn’t be able to resist and showed him where he kept them. The final piece was the gallstone surgery story.
He’d left a tracking device on the RV, so he knew that Travis had taken it to the fence downtown. Then he armed himself with a monocular and bivouacked in a tent in the marshy wetland across from the Culver Loop to wait.
When Travis returned late at night to the RV, clearly blotto, Giles knew his plan was rolling out as silky smooth as the fake Isfahan rugs he’d sold in Boca Raton. As extra insurance, he’d left a bottle of booze laced with two antihistamine cold pills in the RV. He knew Travis wouldn’t be able to resist it. He waited until he could hear snores from inside the vehicle, then let himself in with a spare key. The fool had made it easy. He’d left the cash out in plain view, scattered like Monopoly money. Giles made sure he got every last note, then walked to Lincoln Boulevard and summoned an Uber. Travis could keep the RV for his trouble.
Giles congratulated himself. He still had it. He’d doubted himself after he fell for that woman in London, gave her one of his forged Picasso sketches. She’d promptly tried to sell it and got caught. No, that was a momentary blip when emotional attachment had lowered his guard. His instincts were still razor sharp.
The waiter arrived with his fresh piña colada. “Anything else, sir?”
“Not right now, thank you.”
Giles slid the pineapple and cherry off the plastic cocktail sword onto his tongue as his eyes swept the beach. But twenty-five thou wasn’t going to last long with his preferred lifestyle. And even more than the money, he loved the con. The power and control of the game, of getting over. His gaze settled on a middle-aged woman sitting alone. A tourist. German, if he had to hazard a guess. He’d seen her before on the beach and in the restaurant by his house. Always by herself. His spidey senses tingled.
He called back the waiter. “Send a drink to the lady.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Christina Hoag is the author of noir novels Law of the Jungle, The Blood Room, Girl on the Brink, and Skin of Tattoos. Her short stories and essays have appeared in literary reviews including Mystery Tribune, Lunch Ticket, Toasted Cheese, Other Side of Hope, and Shooter, and have won several awards.
THE ANTIQUE CARAVAN CAPER,by Hal Charles
For weeks Detective Dani Harlow’s Aunt Estelle had been excitedly anticipating the visit of the Antique Caravan to Shadow Creek. And now just as videotaping of the hit syndicated television program was scheduled to begin, Dani’s aunt had called to report the antique brooch she planned to have evaluated had been stolen.
“You know how much I’ve been looking forward to the caravan,” said Estelle. “They’ll probably film only the very best antiques, and I was so sure Great Grandmother’s sapphire brooch would be chosen.”
“When did you realize the brooch was missing?” said Dani.
“I set it on the kitchen table after breakfast and went out to putter in the garden. Then, around 11:30 I came in to get changed for the TV studio, and it was gone.”
“Did you have any visitors this morning?” said Dani.
“Fred Jennings from next door stopped by to wish me luck with the caravan. He always has a smile and a kind word even though he’s struggled a bit since being laid off from the factory.”
“Anyone else?”
“Laura Thompson wanted to sell me a magazine subscription to help her go on a class trip this summer. She waited so patiently while I searched for my checkbook.”
“Is that everybody?” said Dani.
“Beulah Bowman showed up just as I was headed for the garden,” said Estelle. “She didn’t have time to come in, but she just had to show me the crystal vase she’s taking to the caravan.”
After checking around the kitchen table to be sure the brooch hadn’t fallen on the floor, Dani headed next door to talk with the neighbor. “Mr. Jennings,” she said as she approached the lanky man sitting on his front porch, “I understand you visited with Aunt Estelle earlier today.”
“I sure did,” said Jennings, standing to greet Dani. “Wanted to wish her luck with that antique show today.”
“It seems the piece of jewelry Aunt Estelle wanted to take to the show is missing,” said Dani.
“Oh no,” said Jennings. “She was so excited about the show that I even forgot to give her my good news about being called back to the factory.”
Finding it difficult to believe Jennings could steal from his neighbor, Dani walked down the street to the Thompsons’. “Laura?” she said to the red-haired girl standing near an SUV in the driveway.
“Yes,” said the girl with a smile. “Aren’t you Ms. Harlow’s niece, the detective?”
Dani nodded, then said, “Were you at my aunt’s earlier today?”
“Sure was,” said Laura. “Her subscription put me over the top. I’m waiting for Mom to take me to school to register for our class trip.”
Unless Dani was a poor judge of character, the bubbly teenager wasn’t cut out for a life of crime.
Heading back to her aunt’s, Dani wondered if perhaps Estelle, who could be a little absentminded, hadn’t simply put the heirloom somewhere other than the kitchen table and forgotten where in the excitement of the day.
As she approached Estelle’s, Dani recognized the huge black sedan belonging to Beulah Bowman, her aunt’s longtime friend but constant rival.
“Dani,” called the heavy-set woman as she exited the vehicle, “I thought I’d stop by to offer Estelle a ride to the studio for the filming.”
“I’m afraid Aunt Estelle won’t be going to the studio,” said Dani. “Her antique brooch is missing, and it looks like it was stolen.”
Beulah clicked her tongue. “Poor Estelle. I’m always warning her to be more careful. You leave a valuable piece of jewelry on a kitchen table, and what can you expect?”
“Oh, I’d say you can expect to spend some time at the local lockup,” said Dani sternly.
SOLUTION
When Beulah alluded to the brooch being left on the kitchen table, Dani remembered that her aunt said Beulah hadn’t had time to come in the house on her earlier visit. The only way Beulah could have known the heirloom sat on the table was if she had taken it. Confronted, Beulah admitted that she had waited for Estelle to go outside to the garden, then slipped in and taken the brooch in an attempt to eliminate the competition for the Antique Caravan spotlight. Happily, Estelle forgave her remorseful friend, both ended up appearing on the show, and karmically Estelle received the higher assessment.
The Barb Goffman Presents series showcasesthe best in modern mystery and crime stories,
personally selected by one of the most acclaimed
short stories authors and editors in the mystery
field, Barb Goffman, forBlack Cat Weekly.
HOUSECLEANING,by Greg Herren
The smell of bleach always reminded him of his mother.
It was probably one of the reasons he rarely used it, he thought, as he filled the blue plastic bucket with hot water from the kitchen tap. His mother had used it for practically everything. Everywhere she’d lived had always smelled slightly like bleach. She was always cleaning. He had so many memories of his mother cleaning something: steam rising from hot water pouring from the sink spigot; the sound of brush bristles as she scrubbed the floor (“Mops only move the dirt around. Good in a pinch but not for real cleaning.”); folding laundry scented by Downy; washing the dishes by hand before running them through the dishwasher (“It doesn’t wash the dishes clean enough. It’s only good for sterilization.”); running the vacuum cleaner over carpets and underneath the cushions on the couch.
In her world, dirt and germs were everywhere, and constant vigilance was the only solution. She judged people by how slovenly they looked or how messy their yards were or how filthy their houses were. He remembered one time—when they were living in the apartment in Wichita—watching her struggle at a neighbor’s to not say anything as they sat in a living room that hadn’t been cleaned or straightened in a while, the way her fingers absently wiped away dust on the side table as she smiled and made conversation, the nerve in her cheek jumping, the veins and chords in her neck trying to burst through her olive skin, her voice strained but still polite.
When the tea was finished, and the cookies just crumbs on a dirty plate with what looked like egg yolk dried onto its side, she couldn’t get the two of them out of there fast enough. Once back in the sterile safety of their own apartment, she’d taken a long, hot shower—and made him do the same. They’d never gone back there, the neighbor woman’s future friendliness rebuffed politely yet firmly, until they’d finally moved away again.
“People who keep slovenly homes are lazy and cannot be trusted,” she’d told him after refusing the woman’s invitation a second time. “A sloppy house means a sloppy soul.”
Crazy as she seemed to him at times, he had to admit she’d been right about that. In school after school, kids who didn’t keep their desks or lockers neat had never proven trustworthy or likable. It had been hard to keep his revulsion hidden behind a polite mask as he walked to his next class and someone inevitably opened a locker to a cascade of their belongings. He’d just walked faster to get away from the laughter of other kids and the comic fumbling of the sloppy student as he tried to gather the crumpled papers and broken pencils and textbooks scattered on the shiny linoleum floor.
There had been times, though, when he’d befriended someone sloppy, trying to be open-minded. He’d always ended up cleaning the mess. Take Josh, for instance. He’d been cleaning up after Josh for almost eight years now. Josh didn’t appreciate the rule of “everything has its place, and everything in its place.”
But he wasn’t going to have to clean up after Josh again. Just this one last time.
Steam was rising out of the bucket, making his forehead bead with sweat. The hot afternoon sun was coming through the big bay windows in the kitchen. No matter how low he turned the air conditioning, the kitchen never seemed to get really cool. But the heat and humidity were part of the price of living in New Orleans, like he always said, and the floor was a disgrace.
He lifted the bucket out of the sink after adding more bleach. The fumes made his eyes water, and his back was a bit sore. But the floor needed to be scrubbed. That meant hands and knees and a hand brush. It had been a while since he’d taken the time to clean it properly.
He poured some of the water onto the floor and watched as it slowly spread and ran to the left side. The tile was hideous, of course. He’d bought the house despite the green-and-white-and-beige patterned tile in the kitchen, faded and yellowed from years of use. It was one of those projects he figured he’d have time for at some point, either pulling up the tile and replacing it himself or hiring someone to come in to do it. He’d been in the house now for five years and still hadn’t gotten around to it. He pulled the yellow rubber gloves back on up to his elbows and got down on his knees and started scrubbing.
He liked the sound of the bristles as they scoured the tile. He’d gotten used to the ugly flooring, he supposed, as he ran the brush over it, not really noticing it when he used the kitchen. Maybe it was time to do something about the kitchen. The window frames were yellowed from age, and the walls themselves, a pale green that sort of went with the ugly tile, looked dirty. As he looked around as he scrubbed, he could see other things he hadn’t noticed before—the thin layer of grease on the stovetop around the dials and timer; the filth accumulated under the vent screen over the stove; the yellowing of the refrigerator; the spots all over the black glassy front of the dishwasher. The windows also needed to be cleaned.
“Your home will never look clean if the windows are filthy,” he heard his mother saying as she mixed vinegar and water to use, “but a dirty house will look cleaner if the windows are clean. And you can’t let the windows go for long, else water spots and the dirt will become permanent, and the dirt will also scratch the glass. And you can never ever rub away scratches on glass.”
Should have put that on her tombstone, he thought with a smile as he dunked the brush back into the bucket and moved to a new spot.
Not that she had one.
“She’d be ashamed of this kitchen,” he said aloud into the silence.
He’d wiped dust off the iHome stereo system on the kitchen counter before starting his iPod. It had reached the end of the playlist while he scrubbed, and he hadn’t stopped to cue up another. “But she didn’t work full time either.”
That also made him smile. His mother hadn’t worked nine to five, maybe, but she had worked.
She had always been careful to make sure she wore gloves and a gauze mask when she cleaned, her hair pulled back and tucked into the back of her shirt. Cleanliness might have been next to godliness, but she wasn’t risking her skin or her hair to do it. His earliest memories of her were of her brushing her thick bluish-black hair—she’d always worn it down—before going to bed, putting cleansing masks on her face and creams on her hands. Her beauty rituals were almost as complicated as her cleaning habits. Every night without fail, she sat at her vanity and removed her makeup before putting on the mask of unguents that she claimed kept her skin youthful and her pores clean. When money was tight she made it herself, from cucumbers and aloe and olive oil and some other ingredients he couldn’t remember—but when times were good she bought the most expensive products at the most expensive department stores. Once the mask was firmly in place, she brushed her hair exactly one hundred times, counting the strokes as she went. When her hair was lustrous and silky, she retreated to the bathroom to scrub the mask from her face. Then she rubbed lotions and oils into her hands, trimming her cuticles and filing her nails. Her skin always glowed as she got into bed.
And she was always able to find some man willing to help out a pretty widow lady and her son.
“I do what I have to do,” was all she would say when she went out for the evening, lightly scented, with minimal makeup applied, just enough to hide some things and draw attention to others. “Remember to not let anyone in if they knock, okay?”
She would kneel down beside him, or when he was older, go up on her tippy-toes to give him a kiss on the cheek.
He only met the ones who lasted more than a few dates, the ones who had money or might lead to something. He was never sure—still wasn’t—what exactly she got up to with the men. She wasn’t a prostitute, or at least she didn’t consider herself to be one. But she hustled the men somehow, got money and jewelry and presents from them, certainly enough for them to live on. She always had cash, never had credit cards. Sometimes the men would give her a car to use, but she never took it with them whenever they moved on.
Sometimes when they moved on it was in the middle of the night, in a rush, hurriedly packing everything they possibly could and heading for the station and catching the next train out of town. They never wound up anywhere that didn’t have a train station or an airport.
She wouldn’t ride the bus.
“Why do we have to change our names every time we move?” he’d asked her once, on a late-night train out of St. Louis, as the cornfields of Illinois flew past, barely visible by the light of a silvery half moon. He was maybe nine or ten at the time, old enough to ask some questions, old enough to start wondering why they moved around so much, old enough to wonder why they had no family, no roots, no credit cards, no home.
She’d smiled at him, leaning down to kiss his cheek, smelling vaguely of lilies of the valley. “We don’t want people to be able to find us, do we?”
“I don’t even know what my real name is anymore,” he’d grumbled.
She laughed in response. “I think in this next city you’ll be David.” She tapped her index finger against her pointed, catlike chin. “And I’ll be Lily. What should our last name be?”
They’d settled on Lindquist that time, for some reason he couldn’t really remember now, and they’d chosen Pittsburgh as their new home, their new city, their new adventure.
They’d rented a little two-bedroom cottage in a suburb, and she’d put him into the local school. There was enough money so they didn’t have to worry for a while, and he liked it there. He liked the cozy little suburb with the nice kids in the neighborhood and the nice teachers in the school and the friendly neighbors who gave him cookies when he brought them their newspaper from the curb. He liked it there so much that he hoped they’d stay. He liked being David Lindquist. He was making friends, and sometimes, after he went to bed and turned out the light, he prayed to God—any god—that they’d be able to stay there, put down roots, and not ever move again.
They were there three months before she started getting itchy, when afternoon coffees with the neighbors and discussions about what was happening on Days of Our Lives and gossip about other women in the suburb began to bore her. She’d said they wouldn’t have to worry about money for a long time, but he should have known better than to think she would become just another housewife. Should have known that being the widowed Mrs. Lindquist, who kept such a clean house and was raising such a nice son and always had time to listen to anyone who had a problem, would begin to bore her.
She started going out in the evenings, after he’d gone to bed. She never said anything, just checked his room before she left. He would pretend to be asleep until he heard the front door shut, then he’d look out the window and see her getting into the taxi waiting at the curb. Maybe it was because she had money socked away that she got so careless this time, that she didn’t cover her tracks as well as she usually did.
It was three in the morning when a cry woke him from a dream about Star Wars,when he got out of bed and went into the living room, where a big man he’d never seen before had his mother pressed up against the wall and was choking her. She was trying to get away.
He didn’t mean to swing the baseball bat so hard.
“You’ve killed him,” she said finally, her throat raspy and her neck bruised from his thick hands. She staggered a bit as she stepped over to the body, kneeling down and feeling for a pulse in his neck. She looked up at him, her hair disheveled, her face wild. “I’m glad you killed him.”
“We need to call the police—”
She pressed her index finger against his lips to stop him from speaking. “We never call the police,” she whispered, a half smile on her bruised lips. “Never call the police.”
She staggered into the kitchen and came back with a kitchen towel. She wrapped it around the man’s head, tying it into a knot. “Help me drag him into the bathroom.”
The cottage had two bathrooms, one in the hallway that he used and a private one off her bedroom, which he never got to use. It seemed to take forever, and the dead man seemed to weigh a lot more than he should, but they finally heaved him to the hall bathroom and into the tub. “There,” she said, panting, “we can leave him there for now.”
She pushed him back into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. “You can shower in my bathroom tomorrow morning. We need to clean up the living room.” She laughed—a harsh, cynical laugh. “Thank God I didn’t pick a house that’s carpeted.”
More of her wisdom—never pick a home with carpet.
He stopped scrubbing, dumped the dirty bucket of water back into the sink, and reached for the mop. “I haven’t thought about Pittsburgh in years,” he said with a laugh. He dragged the mop through the bleach solution on the floor, wringing it out into the sink before mopping up more of the water. The floor where he hadn’t mopped yet looked even dingier in comparison to where he’d already cleaned, and his back was already starting to ache a little bit. But now that he’d started, he couldn’t not finish.
“Always finish what you’ve started,” was another one of her sayings.
He’d come home from school that next day to find her sitting in the living room, coolly cutting up credit cards into a big mixing bowl on the coffee table. A leather wallet lay on the table next to the bowl, along with an expensive-looking gold watch and a man’s ring, also gold. A wad of cash was on the other side of the bowl. “Almost finished,” she said, her tone almost gay as he shut the front door. She nodded toward the wad of money. “Almost two thousand dollars, David!”
He didn’t say anything, just walked down the hallway to the bathroom. The door was open, but there was also a horrible antiseptic odor coming from there that he’d smelled long before he reached the doorway, where it was so bad his eyes watered. But the bathtub was empty.
“Caustic lye,” his mother said from the end of the hallway, her hands on her hips. “You’ll want to stay out of there for a few days. You can just use my shower until it’s safe.”
“What—what happened to him?” He managed to stammer the words out.
“I told you, caustic lye,” she replied with a roll of her eyes. “Now do your homework. I’m going to start making dinner.”
No one ever came looking for the man, and after a few more days of terror whenever he saw a police car or heard a siren, he began to settle back into life as David Lindquist. He never knew who the man was—he stopped at the library on his way home from school for a couple of weeks to look through the newspaper without her knowing, but there was never anything in there about him, or if there was, there was no picture. It was almost like he’d never existed, and there were times he wondered if the man ever had, if he hadn’t maybe dreamed hitting a man in the head with a baseball bat to stop him from strangling his mother. But then he would remember the sound of the bat connecting with bone, the way the skull had given, the gurgling sound the man made in his throat as he went down.
He hadn’t dreamed that.
They left Pittsburgh at the end of the school year, saying goodbye to all of their friends and neighbors at a going-away barbecue, selling all the furniture and things and once again taking a night train. He didn’t want to go—he was starting to grow, and he was starting to notice boys, and there was a boy in the neighborhood he really, really liked. But there was no arguing, no point in asking if they could stay longer. When she made up her mind to move on, she made up her mind, and that was that.
This time it was Atlanta where they landed, and she found a nice little house to rent in a quiet neighborhood. She said they were going to keep the Lindquist names for now but not to get used to them.
It was in Atlanta that she found a man who wanted to marry her.
It was in Atlanta where he changed from David Lindquist to David Rutledge, taking the name of his mother’s new husband.
He liked Ted Rutledge, who was a lawyer for a lot of big companies and had a huge house in a rich suburb—six bedrooms, six bathrooms, every room enormous and immaculate and beautifully decorated. She couldn’t keep the house clean by herself, but a team of cleaners came in once a week to scrub from ceiling to floor—and she watched them like a hawk, not tolerating any slacking or missed spots. Ted had a big booming laugh and always seemed to be in a good mood. But Ted also worked a lot, and even though she liked spending Ted’s money, about six months after the wedding, he could tell his mother was getting restless again. He could see it in her eyes, the twitching of that muscle in her jaw, the way she sometimes stood in the window and stared out at the street across the vast expanse of grass that passed as a front lawn.
“Don’t mess this up, Mom,” he warned her one morning before he left for school. “This is a good thing, and we should make this work for as long as we can.”
She’d just smiled at him and nodded.
“You never could trust in your own good luck, could you, Mom?” he said as he poured more water onto the kitchen floor.
He stood up and leaned backward, his hands on his lower spine as it popped and cracked.
But she’d lasted much longer than he thought she would.
He was a senior in high school, straight-A student, letterman on the football and baseball teams (he didn’t care much about playing sports, but it meant a lot to Ted), when he came home from school one day to his world turned topsy-turvy.
“They’d been fighting,” he said numbly, still in shock, to the police officer who’d come in answer to his call, the call he couldn’t really remember making. “I don’t know about what. I know my mom was going out at night while he was at work, but he never seemed to mind, not that I know about.”
His new guardian, Ted’s law partner, told him much later that it seemed like she’d killed Ted and then turned the gun on herself. He just nodded, the same way he nodded when he was told how much money there was and that it was probably best to sell the house and get rid of everything, all those bad memories. He just nodded and went to live with his new guardian until it was time to go away to school.
No one ever wondered about the deaths.
No one ever wondered if maybe it wasn’t just a little bit strange that she’d waited until after her son went off to school before shooting her husband over his morning breakfast and then turning the gun on herself.
No one ever figured out that he’d walked into the kitchen that morning with one of Ted’s revolvers in his hand, come up behind where his mother was sitting, fired the gun into Ted’s face, and before she’d even had time to react, put it to her temple and pulled the trigger himself. No one ever wondered if he’d then taken the gun, put it into her hand, and fired it again at Ted’s chest so she’d have powder residue on her hand.
No one knew that she’d caught him with a boy, seen him in the pool kissing Brad Brown, and that once Brad had gone home she and Ted told him he was going to be sent somewhere “to be cured.”
Sometimes you have to make your own luck, like she always said.
He finished the floor and got back to his feet. The sunlight was already starting to fade, but the tile was finally clean. He glanced around the kitchen. Once the floor dried, he was going to have to clean some more, get those spots he’d noticed. The grease on the stove back, on the vent, the spots on the front of the dishwasher—he couldn’t just leave them like that. He’d never be able to sleep knowing the kitchen was so filthy. And he needed his sleep.
Tomorrow would be a big day for him.
He walked into the living room and gave the room a critical once-over. There was a cushion on the couch that needed fluffing, and the magazines on the coffee table weren’t centered quite right. At least the TV screen shone in the sunlight, and there was no dust on any surfaces. He fluffed the pillow and moved the magazines, fiddling with them until they were just right, the perfect distance from each edge of the table.
He sat down on the couch and looked around. He loved this house. He was glad he’d found it, had made it his own. He’d carefully selected everything in the house, and everything was in its perfect place, as though it had been specifically made to go there. Ten years—it had been ten years since he’d bought the house, had moved in, made it his home.
And now it was all his again.
He’d miss Josh, of course. You live with someone for long enough, you’re bound to miss him when he leaves, no matter how bad things had gotten between the two of you.
Josh had been like his mother, he realized, and that was part of the initial attraction. Josh was a hustler, with no family and no past, just like she was. Josh was good-looking with his green eyes and thick brow and bluish-black hair and slavish devotion to his appearance. But like his mother, Josh wasn’t a whore. And they’d lasted for eight years, eight years with minimal strife, very few fights, very few disagreements. As long as Josh got to go to the gym and lie by the pool wearing the briefest of swimsuits and had money to buy nice clothes, Josh was very agreeable. There was enough money so that neither of them had to work, of course, and he didn’t care if Josh wanted to go out to clubs at night. He didn’t even care if Josh met people and slept with them, as long as Josh was there for him when needed. And he always was. Josh never pouted if he had to change his plans and stay home as directed.
He’d almost loved Josh, really. It wasn’t even like he hated him either.
He’d just tired of him, the way his mother had always gotten bored.
If he had to put his finger on the time when he decided it was time for Josh to go, he couldn’t.
It was just one of those things, like his mother always used to say when she’d decided to move on.
This morning, when he woke up, he knew it was going to be today. He just knew it, somehow, and that knowing was what made him think of his mother for the first time in years.
It felt right.
