“No, it’s not funny at all. Didn’t you tell me that he insisted that you use pesticides instead of the natural methods I suggested?”
“Oh yes. He said it was bad enough the time I already spent in the garden without doing extra stuff. He wouldn’t permit it. What could I say? He went out and bought the chemicals for me, so I used them. I really didn’t have any choice.”
“Yes. That was another thing. You had no choice. You have no friends, either, I noticed. And you weren’t even permitted to talk with people in the shop. You had things delivered to you, you didn’t shop, didn’t visit anyone, never went anywhere... I noticed.”
Mrs. Elias stiffened. After a long silence, she said, “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m merely answering your questions. Here’s a question for you. Did you ever have your ‘lunch’ analyzed by a pathologist? No, of course not. How silly of me, you weren’t permitted to leave the house. Well, I did. They contained pesticides, not enough to kill you, but enough to make you ill. Increasingly ill, because the doses were gradually increasing.”
Mrs. Elias’s lips moved, but nothing came out.
“Ironically, it was only because of your wonderful constitution that Ike claimed to have been tending that you survived until I managed to get a good look at you that morning a few weeks ago. You looked so pale and drawn—”
Mrs. Elias made a small noise that suddenly exploded into high-pitched laughter.
“Oh, yes,” agreed the witch. “I know that, too. What a collection of poisons you managed to cultivate in that garden of yours. I realized that I not only saved your life from Ike’s loving stranglehold, but I saved you from throwing your life away by murdering your husband. Tell me. Why didn’t you just try to escape along conventional means? Like talking to a divorce lawyer?”
Mrs. Elias gazed at the witch long and carefully. Then she said, “I really hate this carrot juice. May I have some of that wine you’re drinking?”
“No, dear. Not until you’re better. Give it another month.”
Mrs. Elias sniffed at her glass and made a face. “To answer your question, because he said that if I ever tried to leave him, I’d be dead within the day. He said I was his, only his. He was terrifying. He never threatened... idly. So I believed him. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
They sipped composedly at their respective drinks. Finally Mrs. Elias said, “So you poisoned Ike with his own concoction?”
The witch looked scandalized. “Of course not. I would never make paella with days-old reheated food. For pity’s sake. How disgusting.”
“You mean it was all fresh and — and poison free?”
“Every bite. Ike’s not the only fishmonger in town. How could I poison a living creature, anyway? How disgusting, making paella with leftovers. Those atrocious lunches. Tcha.” The witch made a face.
“Then how did you kill him?”
“Kill him? I certainly killed nobody. It was his obsession with you that killed him. His pathological jealousy made him imprison you in that house and ultimately drove him to destroy you. He was afraid he couldn’t hang on to you much longer, and if he couldn’t have you, no one would. He knew about the milkman, you see.”
Mrs. Elias began a protest that the witch held up a palm to forestall. “I know. I know there was nothing going on between the milkman and you. But to someone like Ike, just the mere existence on the same planet of another male was more threat than he could handle.” She smiled suddenly. “You know, I’ve never agreed with that movie song that Sam played again. About kisses. Do you know the one I mean?” She glanced at Mrs. Elias, who gazed back with equanimity. “Charlie showed an unexpected flair,” I thought.
“And don’t forget: Ike had also just received the shock of thinking he’d swallowed a few days’ worth of the poisons he’d been feeding you. I think by then he must have been adding fatal doses. I wonder what he thought when you kept living? Well, never mind. Fear plus rage, my dear, compounded by a macho stupidity he had of not taking care of his blood pressure properly. He killed himself.”
Together they gazed out over the water companionably for a while. Then the witch said, “By the way, I think it’s rather deplorable that the only thing you could think of to get yourself out of trouble was to murder. I think you need to learn other methods of surviving in this world, my dear.”
Mrs. Elias smiled at the witch and stretched her young, robust, and not visibly depleted body. “Please don’t call me Mrs. Elias any more. That name brings back memories of my stomachaches. My name is Rachel.”
“Very well. Rachel Elias.”
“No, just Rachel.”
The witch nodded. “My name is Mrs. Risk.”
“What can I call you?”
“You can call me Mrs. Risk, Rachel. Fetch me that volume by that log, dear. We have a lot to do.”
Nobody Wins
by Charles Ardai
Leon Culhane was one of those men you look at twice when they pass you on the street, the sort who looks as though he stepped off a poster for a horror movie once and couldn’t figure out how to step back on again. He had the kind of face that would scare small children, and more than a few adults.
When he came into my office, he had to duck, and even so, the top of his head brushed the lintel of the door. I offered him a seat across from me, but we could both see he wouldn’t fit in the chair. I only wished I had seen it before I had offered. He didn’t take offense; he just leaned one elbow on top of my filing cabinet, put his chin in his hand and started telling his story.
I tried to listen without looking. I tried to — I couldn’t. His face was flat, as though someone had smashed it with an iron, and when he talked, the words came out of a pair of lips that looked drawn on — they never moved. His eye sockets could have held golf balls with room to spare, and if there was an inch of skin on his face that wasn’t pocked with acne scars, I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t a face you wanted to look at, but it wasn’t a face you could do anything but look at, either.
When he came to a pause, I shook my head and asked him to start again. I hadn’t heard one word.
“Carmine Stampada gave me your name,” he said slowly, and this time I just looked down at my notepad and listened. “He said you know your way around a missing persons case, that you found his wife when she took off for the Keys.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I found her facedown in a swimming pool.”
“You found her,” he said. “Now I want you to find somebody for me. Her name is Lila, and she’s my fiancée. I have a picture that I’ll show you if you look up.”
I looked. He held out a four-by-five still of a lovely girl with auburn hair. I couldn’t imagine her marrying him in a million years. But imagining isn’t my job. I handed the photo back. “Attractive,” I said.
He nodded. “Three days ago she told me she was going to her brother’s for the weekend. She was supposed to be home this morning. She never showed up.”
I looked at my watch. It was I only twelve thirty. “Maybe I she’s stuck in traffic.”
“Maybe she is,” he said, “but the traffic’s not on the way home. I called her brother, and he never saw her. He didn’t know anything about her coming for the weekend.”
I thought I knew what he was implying. “You think she—” how to put this delicately? “—headed for the Keys?”
He shook his head. “Not Lila.”
“So what do you think happened?” I asked.
He squeezed his hands together, cracking some knuckles. “I think someone took her.”
“And why do you think that?”
“I think that, Mr. Mickity, because when I woke up I found this on my doorstep.” He reached into a jacket pocket, pulled out a velvet-covered jewelry box, and placed it on my desk. I had a feeling there was more in it than jewelry.