Anne, who had been wrapping cake squares, came over to me and said, “Not your ghost story again? People think you’re too fond of being spooky.”
“It’s seasonal. At Christmas I’m fond of being jolly.”
“It’s ridiculous, boys dying on the anniversary. And Mr. Fox can’t be crazy about having his house described as haunted.”
“Do I say haunted? I mean cursed. Bad things happened in that house. Let me tell you...”
Jimmy Boggs appeared, nodded to me. He said, “Hi, Anne.”
She said, “Jimmy.”
On a principal’s income I never had much cause to deal with stockbrokers. Retired, I had even less reason. Jimmy knew that, but he still came up wanting to be friendly.
“What are your kids doing?” I asked him.
“Party at the high school. What were you saying about bad things at the Fox house?”
“It was long before you moved in,” I said. “Gertie Fox and a man nobody knew were slaughtered there one night. As a matter of fact, it was close to Halloween.”
“What do you mean, nobody knew the man?”
“The police established that there had been a man. There were some bones. But the rest of him had been dissolved in a bathtub. Mrs. Fox’s body was intact, pretty much. But the man...” I shook my head. “That was what, thirty-five years ago? Long before the police had DNA to work with.”
“My God. I knew Lester Fox was a widower, but—”
Anne shook her head. “That story is as disgusting as Stark... Staring... Madness. And you told it to me the night you proposed, twenty years ago.” She glanced from me to Jimmy. “This guy thought a proposal should come with a ghoulish story. Can you believe it?”
“But what about Lester Fox?” Jimmy asked. “Didn’t the police investigate him?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Lester was in New York as usual that Monday and Tuesday, with dozens of people to vouch for him. He may have suspected Gertie was seeing someone. That was never clear. They were a young couple, hadn’t been married long. The killer or killers were never found.”
“Do you think he hired someone?”
“The police didn’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“If you were a killer for hire, would you take the time to dissolve one of your victims in a bathtub? The killer must have been there twelve, fifteen hours — at least those were the newspaper reports. The police followed up the way you would expect with a murder that looked personal. They tried to find someone in Gertie’s background, or Lester’s. They canvassed the neighbors. All to no avail. So do you blame me for mentioning the Fox house?”
“Good grief,” said Jimmy Boggs. “How could Lester keep living there?”
“As a shattered man,” I replied.
Anne said, “I hope you’re not going to tell that story tonight.”
I laughed. “Lou Arnholt would never let me back in.”
Kids started pouring in around dusk, orange and Day-Glo bags stuffed, half of the bags already handed off to parents. Connie Boggs came in with a handful of preschoolers. She ignored her husband Jimmy and joined Anne selling cake.
It seemed to me she ignored Jimmy pointedly, but it’s hard to tell what goes on with people.
I went over and asked Gary Becker where he had gotten the galvanized tubs. He told me they still had them at Wolverine Hardware.
“Not much demand for them except for floating apples,” Gary said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I told him.
“You don’t know what?”
“They could be handy. You never know until you need one.”
He accepted that as retiree wisdom, in other words, nonsense.
A little before seven, someone got the kids onto the bleachers and turned on a boom box that played a song about the bogeyman. Then Mrs. Wimblemeier and Mrs. Tatum, dressed up in skeleton costumes, lip-synched to “’T’aint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin and Dance Around in Your Bones.” I could tell that a few of the parents thought the bit about taking off your skin was suggestive. I sat back and wondered what Jimmy Boggs thought of it.
After the songs, Lou turned down the lights and I sat in a chair facing the bleachers and told about six boys dying on Halloween with their faces contorted into masks of Stark... Staring... Madness. I don’t know; it didn’t seem to scare anyone.
I hunted up Wallace Wimblemeier, who had been retired longer than I had, and he commiserated with me. Once you got Wallace talking he said whatever came to mind.
“Even the little ones are sophisticated today,” he said.
I steered us to the cake table.
“You really laid it on thick tonight about the Fox house,” Anne said. “You’re lucky if Mr. Fox doesn’t sue you.”
“I said a haunted house ‘much like Mr. Fox’s’.” I glanced at Wimblemeier. “For some reason I was thinking about that story tonight. Gertie Fox and all.”
He responded. “I remember her. She was Gertie something else originally. You dated her, didn’t you, when you were in your teens?” He grinned at Anne and wobbled off.
The party wound down. I chatted up Becker and Arnholt and watched as Jimmy Boggs said something to Anne that drew a vigorous headshake. Becker gave me one of the apple-bobbing tubs, and I carried it home as we walked comfortably through the night. The ghosts and ghoulies and young witches had all gone home. Some of their houses were dark. I glimpsed Jimmy Boggs and his wife a half block ahead of us, walking hand in hand.
I reached out with my free hand and took Anne’s.
Sometimes a good scary story does the job. Sometimes it doesn’t.
The Furious Cat
by Susan Thibadeau
Hunger drove me to Harry’s kitchen. I crossed the stone patio and slipped through the mansion’s unlocked rear door. No one was there. Good.
Stealthily, lest any loud footfalls alert my cousin and he put me to work too soon, I made my way across the impeccably clean tile floor. As I approached the granite countertop I began breathing again. This was turning out to be a piece of cake.
But self-congratulations were shortlived as an undeniable need to sneeze took hold. I let out one, then another, then a third. There might have been even more if I hadn’t been thrust into excruciating pain by a dark fury attacking my chest, ripping through my T-shirt, and swiping at my face. I don’t remember screaming.
“Jake! What’s all the screaming about? What are you doing to the cat?”
Harry crossed the kitchen with Mrs. Griffin, his housekeeper, close behind. She lifted the black monster off me, coaxing it to release what was left of my shirt.
“There, there,” Mrs. Griffin rocked the fat cat in her arms and came the closest I’d ever seen her come to glaring at me.
“What is that?” I pointed to the feline, who was starting to look vaguely familiar.
Harry sighed. “Why, a cat, of course.”
“I can see that. What I meant was, why is there a cat here?”
My cousin handed me a paper towel. “It looks like Marlowe gave you quite a work over.”
I dabbed the scratches. Some were deep and it hurt as I sopped oozing blood. It hurt even more when another round of sneezes overtook me.
Marlowe’s back stiffened in Mrs. Griffin’s arms. “I don’t think he likes the sound of sneezes,” she said, carrying the cat into her sitting room. A minute later she returned with a first-aid kit. “I’ve put him in his carrier for now.”
To make up for the damage the cat had done me — three large gauze bandages’ worth — Mrs. Griffin set about making a Western omelet. As it cooked, cat cries filtered into the kitchen.