That meant Beatrice. Beatrice, whom George had been so anxious to protect. She came through as I could have predicted and handled both the funeral arrangements and the plans for my future with no-nonsense efficiency.
Their oldest daughter, Serena, had come home for her father’s funeral. Beatrice chose her as the ideal person to move into my house and care for me until I came to my “senses.” After a brief stint in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan and two years of tramping the Apennines with her latest boy friend, Serena declared herself through with public service and men forever and only too happy to take over my care. In fact, she vowed, it was just the role she would have chosen and she intended to pattern her life after mine.
And here she has been ever since. I’m not sure how it will all work out. Serena is very easy to live with and seems to enjoy being helpful, but she’s really quite pretty. In time she may lose some of her disgust for men.
I’ll just have to see. If in a few years she still seems sincere in pursuing this career, I’ll have to tell her about Aunt Sadie and Sunnyvale. Some of the children of my nieces and nephews are growing up and, looking them over, I can see it’s possible that Serena and I are the last of a vanishing breed.
That Kind of World
by John Lutz
Rodney had worked out the details of the murder...
“Is he dead for sure?”
Rodney Bolton nodded to his sister Alissa Sue as he stepped up out of the slanted Ozark sunlight into the shade of the plank porch. Behind him, his younger brother Jake slammed the one workable door on the rusty Dodge pickup and walked toward the porch to join them.
“Ain’t nobody smilin’,” Alissa Sue said, forcing her own smile. “Ain’t it what we planned?”
“Sure, Ally,” Jake said with a strained enthusiasm belied by his tanned, somber face.
Rodney was the only one of the Bolton siblings whose long, bony features appeared genuinely cheerful. “Jake’s still a mite shaky.” he said, grinning at his sister, who was now a widow.
Alissa Sue frowned at him. She was a pretty girl just turned twenty-two, with dark brown hair, a buxom lithe figure, and innocent blue eyes that had caused a sensation among the local males until her marriage three years ago to Feeny Clark. “Somethin’ go wrong?” she asked Rodney.
“Not wrong,” Rodney said, “jus’ difficult. Feeny didn’t die right away after we hung him, and watchin’ it kinda affected young Jake.”
“Had to keep holdin’ his hands down so he couldn’t grab the rope an’ hoist hisself up,” Jake said. “Took him a time to give out.”
“But he’s dead,” Alissa Sue said brightly. “An’ that’s what counts.” She smiled her best smile, which was something special and at the moment held an extra glitter. “I made us some lemonade. That oughta get Jake to be his old self.”
Rodney was sure Jake would rather have a few jolts of the powerful corn liquor brewed by old Chadwith, but all the Bolton children had been raised in a house that saw no hard drinking. Lemonade sufficed, and by the time the late-afternoon sun had dropped beyond the leafy green spread of the old elm near the derelict silo, Jake was his relaxed and amiable self.
Of the three, Rodney was the planner — though killing Feeny had really been Alissa Sue’s idea — and as he sat with his boots propped high on the porch rail, watching dying shadows and sipping lemonade, he thought back over what had taken place.
Alissa Sue had found out a month ago that Feeny was stepping out with Betty Ann Willton. It was a romance that figured to stay strictly on the sly, as the Clarks and the Willtons had been feuding for nearly a hundred years, but none of the Clarks or Willtons would have been half so mad as Alissa Sue was. And Alissa Sue was wont to act on her anger.
The fourth Bolton child, the middle brother Carl, was an insurance investigator in St. Louis, and he worked for the company that held the policy on Feeny Clark’s life. That was what gave Alissa Sue the idea. She could easily enlist her brothers’ help. In the deep Ozarks, a man committing adultery had good cause to fear his wife’s brothers. Besides, there was $20,000 in insurance money to split, and Rodney and Jake had never liked Feeny.
So Alissa Sue told them about Betty Ann Willton and made up a few things to boot, letting them glimpse some self-inflicted bruises that she blamed on Feeny. Carl Bolton would be the natural one to investigate Feeny’s death for the insurance company, which wouldn’t relish sending a stranger to the wilds, and he would easily give a finding of suicide. Carl wouldn’t be in on the plan; that way it would be more convincing. Besides, Carl wasn’t like his brothers and sister. Especially now, since he’d become what Rodney called citified.
It was Rodney who worked out the details of the plan, made everything simple and safe. One day, when Feeny came home from work at the lead mine, Rodney and Jake would be waiting for him in the small cabin where he and Alissa Sue lived. They would have a rope slung over a beam with a hangman’s noose ready and waiting to deal swift and profitable justice. They would hang Feeny by the neck and make it appear as if he’d hanged himself by kicking a stool out from under him. Feeny was a small man. He’d be easy to handle.
And everything had gone smoothly except for Feeny not dying right away. But then, Rodney supposed that was a something that hadn’t gone smoothly for Feeny. It didn’t hurt the plan at all.
After Feeny was dead, Rodney got the low oak stool Alissa Sue used when reaching things in the top cupboards. He had made sure some of the greyish mud from Feeny’s boots was on the stool, then let it roll aside as though Feeny had stood on it, slipped the noose over his head, and stepped off.
Rodney watched a hawk circling high above the elm in narrowing, soaring arcs, saber-winged and rigid against the breeze. He was satisfied with Feeny’s death. It wasn’t likely Betty Ann would come forward and admit to adultery with a man now dead, so Alissa Sue could play the bereaved widow and have no apparent motive for killing her husband. And, if Betty Ann did say something, it would appear that Feeny had found a way out of his romantic predicament through suicide. And supposing, by some far-removed chance, Feeny’s death was found to be murder, the finger of suspicion would naturally point to the Willton clan.
Alissa Sue went into the house to rinse the glasses and pitcher and put them away. Rodney saw a large colorful butterfly zigzagging its way above the barn roof. The circling hawk spotted the butterfly at the same time Rodney did, for it folded its wings and dropped like a stone to within ten feet of the butterfly, then hit the unsuspecting insect at full speed.
Rodney smiled. It was that kind of world, all right. Best admit it and act accordingly. “Ally Sue!” he called. “Time for you to be gettin’ home to find your husband!”
Alissa Sue giggled as she jumped down off the porch and strolled, her hips swaying, toward the trail to her cabin.
“I s’pose he’ll wait,” she called back over her shoulder.
But it was Betty Ann Willton who discovered Feeny Clark’s body, and the nearby hunters drawn by her screams found her babbling and hugging the strung-up dead man to her breast.
When Betty Ann had calmed down some, she realized she might as well tell about her love affair with Feeny, and, in fact, she seemed almost relieved to tell anyone who would listen. She also told everyone that Feeny had said he knew his wife Alissa Sue suspected them.
Now, that was something the bereaved widow and her brothers hadn’t planned on. But, as long as Feeny’s death was considered a suicide, there was still no danger. And they had little doubt as to how their brother Carl would decide. The only bone in the soup might be in the person of Colver County Sheriff Billy Wintone.