I tried to talk myself through it. Told myself that that very day Homer Pierce and I would file suit against the 7-11 for having such a blatantly insecure store. Sure, a settlement was iffier, taking it that route, but the potential payout was higher. Hell, look at the trauma I was going through. Maybe we’d even litigate this one.
But I was fooling myself. Instead of thinking about a nice thick settlement check, I found myself reaching for my wallet out of my back pocket, and blindly handing it up to him. Then I slid my Rolex off the uncasted wrist and easily handed that back, too, without turning my head. Maybe it was the ammonia working me over. Everything in my body loosened up there for a moment. Hell, for a moment, even the muscles in my back relaxed.
Helen Tucker
The Power of Suggestion
from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
It was getting weird. Downright scary, in fact.
At first he had thought it was a trick, some kind of practical joke she was playing on him. But he soon realized that was a stupid idea, because in the fifteen years they had been married, he’d never known her to play a joke on him or anyone else, practical or otherwise. Nelda was not the joking type. For that matter, more often than not, she didn’t even get the point of a joke he told. She would give that little artificial laugh, but he could tell by the vacant look in her pale blue eyes that she simply didn’t get it.
After deciding it wasn’t a joke, he was positive that it must be some kind of fad or craze going around that he hadn’t heard about. After all, he worked all day and didn’t have time to waste on finding out what sort of nonsense currently occupied the minds of women. He was forty-two years old, one of the leading designers in Beldon and Nelms Architectural Company, and before the year was out, he expected to be made a partner in the firm. Sometimes he even worked at night (and sometimes he didn’t, but Nelda thought he did). You didn’t get to be a partner by staying home day and night to see what your wife was up to or what kind of crap she was reading. Before all this weird stuff began, he’d never known Nelda to read anything but fashion magazines and books about the beautiful people, whoever the hell they were.
He figured Nelda was pretty typical of the average forty-year-old housewife. She had a rinse put on her blond hair, which she wore in a Dutchboy cut, every so often to keep it that color, her skin was still pretty good (probably thanks to whatever that stuff was she slapped on at regular intervals), and she didn’t need a lot of makeup. She was tall, five-eight, and her figure was still good, though she had thickened a bit in the middle. She dressed sensibly, but always in style, and spent just about all the money he gave her on clothes. She could pass for… oh, maybe thirty-five, if you stretched your imagination a bit. She was interested in buying nice things for the house, trying out new recipes, her weekly bridge game with “the girls,” and lunching twice a week with some of her old college friends who lived in the city. To his knowledge, she had never been interested in occult mumbo jumbo or reading books about same.
The weird stuff started about six weeks ago and showed no signs of stopping or even letting up. It was, in fact, getting worse. Actually, it might have been going on for a while before he noticed. He first became aware of the spooky undertones one night after dinner when he sat down on the sofa, on the end by the three-way lamp, to catch up on the latest Architectural Digest. On the table, under the lamp, was a pile of books. The title of the top book was Psychic Experiences Through the Ages. What the hell was Nelda doing with a book like that? He took the second book off the pile. Early Spiritualism. The third book, Psychical Research. And the fourth, Telepathy in Everyday Life. Beneath that book was a bunch of brochures and pamphlets on clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, precognition, and altered states of consciousness.
“Jehovah’s Jaguar, Nelda! Where’d you get this stuff?”
She looked up briefly from her Queen Anne chair by the fireplace. “The library.” Then she was buried again in the book she held, the title of which was Hypnosis and Dream Telepathy.
“Why’re you reading this junk?”
She looked up again, the epitome of patience. “I don’t think it’s junk, Hugh. They were all written by experts in their field.”
“Whatever. Why’re you reading it?”
She lowered the book again. “A couple of the girls think I may have ESP or something like it, and I thought if I read up on the subject, I could find out for sure.”
“So now you’re going to start telling fortunes?”
“Hardly.” She gave him a condescending smile. “Some rather… odd things have been happening lately, and I confess I’ve been a bit shaken by them.”
“Like what?”
“Well, at a recent bridge game, it occurred to me suddenly that I knew every card that was going to be played before it was played.
When I realized that, I also sensed that I knew what cards were in the other three hands even before the bidding began. Of course, with an advantage like that, I mopped up that afternoon.”
He laughed, first uproariously, then derisively. “I’ll take you with me to my next poker game.”
“It isn’t funny, Hugh. It’s a little… frightening.” She paused, then said, “The next thing that happened was a lunch a couple of days later. Ruth and Barb and I were to meet at The Tea Kettle. Ruth arrived at the same time, and I said to her — I don’t know where I got the idea — ‘Barb isn’t coming. She’s going to phone and tell the hostess to tell us she’s ill.’ Sure enough, we had no sooner sat down than the hostess came over and said, ‘Mrs. Long just called and said to tell you she’s not feeling well and can’t make it today.’”
He couldn’t think of a word to say. He just looked at her, wondering if his very practical, down-to-earth wife had all of a sudden run mad.
He had planned to go to Sonja’s that night. After all, he hadn’t seen her for three days. But something about the seriousness of Nelda’s expression, her tone of voice, made him decide to stay home. It was easy enough to get away when he wanted to. All he had to say was, “We’re having some problems with the Grandy building,” or, “That new house on May Avenue, well, the owner has changed his mind about the shape of the deck, so I’ve got to have it done by tomorrow.” And he’d be off for a few hours of bliss with Sonja. Nelda was gullible as hell. She never suspected anything. But tonight — he didn’t know why — he thought he’d better not go.
“Anything else?” he asked. “Or is that the sum total of your psychic experiences?”
“Are you making fun of me?” A small frown furrowed her forehead.
“No, of course not. I’m just curious.”
There’ve been some little things that made me wonder, but nothing as significant as the two I told you about. The thing is, these experiences, as you call them, are happening more often, and each time I get a stronger premonition.” She stopped suddenly and looked toward the telephone on the end table. “Like right now. The phone is going to ring.”
He waited. A minute, two minutes, three minutes. Nothing happened. And then the phone rang.
“Don’t bother to answer it,” she said. “It’s a wrong number.”
An act of Congress could not have prevented him from picking up the phone. “Hello.”