Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology Page 5

  “Those guys got ahead of me in seniority only ’cause I did my duty in Nam and they didn’t. Now that’s not fair, is it? The day Donny went to the slag heap to fix the truck, he and I came to work together. After the shift, I drove up to the top of the slag to pick him up. He razzed me about next opening day: him being in his blind with a 24-pack while I was stuck at work. Before I knew it, I whaled his head with a chunk of ore. Pitched him off the side and planted that cigarette butt.”

  “Why Paul?” I said. “He was behind you in the seniority.”

  “I never did like him and if anyone got suspicious, it might point the finger at someone else. Made you suspect Moose, eh? Everything was going fine until Margie got you involved. No one else tied it to deer season.

  “When I got to Moose’s truck, he was already there. I figured if you was both dead, they’d pin everything on him.” He stood up. “Now Seamus, you got yourself a problem. Hypothermia will set in soon. I know you. You ain’t gonna shoot me, gun’s wet anyway. And you got no proof. I wore gloves, see?” He turned and took a step toward Moose’s truck.

  He was right, I wouldn’t kill him.

  I slammed the rifle butt into his knee. He crumpled to the ground wailing in agony. I thought about the victims and Margie’s concern for his welfare and what this was going to do to her. I slammed the rifle into his other knee.

  Accidents happen.

  __________

  James Montgomery Jackson lives with his life partner, Jan Rubens, on a remote lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. They winter in Georgia. Besides mystery short stories and novels, Jim’s writing credits include short memoir and non-fiction pieces. He is sometimes master to their dog and always servant to their cat.

  IDENTITY CRISIS, by Diane Vallere

  “I want to buy a fish.”

  “Are you sure? Looks like you want a kitten.”

  Five rambunctious balls of fur climbed over each other in their attempt to paw at me through the glass. The loudest, a puff of gray, crouched over a newspaper article about a body found at the lake half a mile away. His wet spot distorted the already blurry photo.

  It was the fifth time in as many days I’d stood here. Surprising I hadn’t left a nose print on the glass. “No. I want a fish. A mean one.” One that I’m not going to start to love. I don’t want to get attached.

  How was I supposed to explain that my shrink—I mean, therapist—suggested I get a pet? After watching me break down repeatedly after my cat of fifteen years left to rub ankles with a higher power, she—the therapist, not the cat—thought having something to care for would allow me to understand the circle of life. She—the cat, not the therapist—had seen me through two career changes and three breakups, but those I’d gotten over. I’d suggested a cactus. My shrink suggested a fish.

  “Miss, what’s your name?”

  I adjusted my white patent-leather headband in the reflection of the glass and answered, even though the grey kitten with the litter box problem had been calling it out since I’d walked into the store. “Mia.”

  “Mia, I am Andrew.” He answered in a stilted Armenian accent. He shifted his weight back and forth and stepped slightly away from me. “I help you find fish.”

  “A mean fish.”

  A lanky man in a wrinkled Hawaiian shirt and half-crushed straw hat eased past me as Andrew mopped his brow with an already discolored hanky. Didn’t help that, in this unseasonably hot weather, the industrial fans in the corners of the store did little more than exchange the scent of animals from one side to the other. It also didn’t help that my vintage sixties dress was 100% polyester. Looked cute, though.

  The front door bell chimed and two men entered. The first man was straight from the pages of GQ, with his pocket square tucked into an expensive pinstriped suit and the sort of casually unkempt longish hair that came courtesy of a stylist. His friend was the opposite, with a loose tie, rumpled shirt, and perspiration circles under his arms.

  They stood by the register, watching us. I cleared my throat to draw attention back to me. “My mean fish? And I’ll need a bowl, too.”

  “I have just the fish in mind.” He waved me towards a tank where a feisty bluish-green blob swam agitated laps. “He swims alone.”

  He glanced toward the men loitering by the register, mopped his brow again, and then refocused his attention on me. “I have special tank. Wait here. I keep spring water out back. Good for betta fish.” He disappeared out the back door.

  I stood by the kittens, because it was the only place to stand, mind you. A crackly voice on the transistor radio tucked alongside the register sputtered about the heat wave. Pinstripes squeezed past the aquariums filled with snakes and lizards and bent next to me, peering at the cats.

  “You getting a kitten?”

  “No, a fish.”

  He eyed me up and down. “You sure? You look more like the kitten type.”

  “Looks can deceive.” I glanced over my shoulder. Sweat Stains rested against the front counter. The guy in the hat ignored us, leaning against a terrarium, head buried in a dog-eared paperback. His straw fedora shadowed his face. Or was it a homburg? I always get those confused.

  Andrew returned carrying the fish equivalent of Wayne Manor, halfway filled. The bottom was covered in small pink rocks. The fish swam mad dashes back and forth. “He is fighting fish. Very mean. You will like him.”

  “I can’t afford that aquarium!”

  “Special price for you. Twenty dollars includes fish and tank. This is better for him to transport.” He set the tank on the counter and punched keys on the register. I pulled a twenty from my beaded coin purse. Andrew looked at me, then at the men loitering by the reptile cages. “Take food, too. Special promotion. Complimentary.” He thrust a small vial of fish food into my handbag. Pinstripes approached us.

  “That’s too heavy for you to carry. I’ll get it.”

  “I can make it.” I slung my handbag across my chest and wrapped my arms around the tank, then balanced it with my knee. He was right—it was heavy. I struggled to get a better grip.

  “A pretty thing like you shouldn’t have to carry that.” He tugged on the tank until I was forced to let go. Andrew had disappeared to the back of the store. Sweat Stains was gone, too. Fedora squinted at us and tucked his book in his back pocket. Pinstripes turned towards the door and tipped his head for me to follow him. Fedora trailed a few steps behind.

  “Which one’s your car?”

  I hesitated.

  “Lemme guess,” he said, with a backwards glance at my white patent-leather boots. “The Union Jack Mini.” He headed towards my car, not waiting for confirmation. Maybe there was such a thing as too much personal expression?

  “You maybe wanna get a drink after we drop this off?”

  “No—no thank you.” His unexpected proposition unnerved me.

  The lot was speckled with cars but no people. I glanced at the store where I worked, hoping Carolyn, my manager, was out front on a break. Of course she wasn’t. She was manning the store while I was buying a fish, no doubt restocking bloody knives or fishnets. NEW IDENTITY, her costume-slash-vintage store, was in the same strip mall as the pet store, which explains why I was able to visit the kittens five days in a row. I mean, fish. Her assortment of thrift store fashions came via flea markets and estate sales and kept me in scooter dresses and sixties attire for less than I’d pay on eBay. Plus, it was fun. Most of the time.

  Pinstripes reached my convertible first and set the tank on the passenger seat. He picked up something from inside. I didn’t want to leave my fish alone for one more second. He—the stranger, not the fish—looked at the item in his hands. My nametag. I’d been looking for that for a week. He scanned the row of stores, pausing on NEW IDENTITY, then nodded my direction and dropped the tag back into my car. With hands in the pockets of his suit he walked towards a Mustang parked in the far corner of the lot. I gave him a nice lead, tossed my handbag on the floor, and peeled out. My handbag tipped and the cont
ents spilled. Water splashed from the tank.

  “That was weird, right?” I said to the fish. He didn’t answer. I scooped up my cell phone and plunked it in the cup holder. Then I turned on the radio and caught a reporter calmly talking about the only thing anyone was talking about these days, the town’s recent homicide and law enforcements lack of leads.

  “Any information leading to the arrest and or capture of the Stone Lake Killers should immediately be called in to the police on this hotline number . . .” He rattled off a series of digits while I shuddered.

  A killing in my hometown. That’s what had finally convinced me to listen to my shrink. Because some poor shlub had gotten stabbed and dumped at Stone Lake, halfway between the store and my apartment. No one had noticed that the guy had gone missing. He didn’t have a wife. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He didn’t have a pet. Nobody had cared that he didn’t show up for work. When the cops found his body, he’d been dead for days and the trail had been left cold. They determined his identity, and the multiple stab wounds must have told them a thing or two about how he’d died, but other than that, no leads. I didn’t know what had gotten him killed, but I didn’t want to end up like him.

  That’s when Dr. Clark suggested I get a pet. A pet, she reasoned, would make me feel less vulnerable and alone. Just a thought, she’d said. I glanced at the tank on my passenger seat. The fish had his back to me and was staring at the door. I asked for mean, not antisocial. Would it kill him to make an effort?

  Back home, I struggled with the heavy tank until it was finally parked on the dining room table. Dinner for one happened in front of the TV. For the past year and a half, the table had been a place for me to throw the mail and set the dirty dishes when the dishwasher was full. Now it was living quarters for my new roommate.

  Out of breath, I slumped into a chair and peered at the fish. He stared me down, fins flapping, gills puffed up. “I want you to stay mean, so I’m naming you Jaws.”

  He dove towards the bottom of the tank. It was out of scale with the rest of my small apartment. I found an old Barbie, already pockmarked by water adventure from when I was a kid, and anchored her feet under the pink rocks. Jaws circled her. I would have stayed to watch him—curiosity, not getting attached, mind you—but I had to get back to work. I already knew I wouldn’t get one of the three designated employee parking spaces out front, which meant I’d have to leave my car around back or risk another ticket.

  When I pulled into a space close to the front door of NEW IDENTITY, Carolyn stood, hands on hips, chin jutting out.

  “You gonna get another ticket if you park there.”

  Working at a costume-slash-vintage store can have an unfortunate effect on your life. Carolyn was going through her Foxy Brown phase. I suspected it had more to do with the heat, her natural enormous ’fro, and a surplus of hip-huggers in our inventory, than her self-professed rage against society. But, committed to the persona as she was, she’d studied the whole catalog of blaxploitation movies and occasionally kept a fake pistol in her hair. And hey, if she refrained from commenting on my close approximation of That Girl, who was I to question her?

  We’d boiled our lives down to a series of six month-long character sketches, dressing the parts and spouting off recycled dialog originally written by someone in Hollywood. People knew me by my costumes, not my personality. Nobody actually knew who Mia Thomas was. Some days even I wasn’t sure. And on the really dark days, I wondered if anyone would care enough to find out. Or if they’d even noticed that I existed at all. That’s largely the reason I’m in therapy.

  “I don’t want to park around back. I like my car where I can see it.” Plus, the Mustang was still in the corner. I followed her inside.

  “I forgot to tell you,” she called out while straightening some hangers. “Some guys were in here asking about you.”

  “What guys?”

  “Corporate-money looking. Like Donald Trump but without the hair.”

  “You mean they were bald?”

  “No, I mean without the Donald Trump hair. Cute, too. Well, one was, but the other was sweating a lot.”

  Hmmmmm. “What did they want to know?”

  “When you were coming in next. And where you lived.”

  I whipped around to look at her. “You didn’t tell them anything, did you?”

  “Of course not! But—”

  “But what?”

  “Remember those parking tickets you wedged between the register and the catalogs?”

  I nodded.

  “They’re gone.”

  Besides Jaws, there was something fishy about the situation. I left NEW IDENTITY and headed towards the pet store to ask Andrew about the men that had been asking about me.

  The chimes above his door announced my arrival, but Andrew wasn’t going to answer my questions. His body lay on the floor, surrounded by a crimson stream of blood pooling on the uneven concrete at the foot of the reptile cages.

  I raced out the door and back to NEW IDENTITY.

  “Call the cops!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut but the image remained. “Andrew—dead—blood—” I clung to the counter to offset my spinning head.

  Carolyn made the phone call and within minutes red and blue lights pulsated across the scene like a Fourth of July disco. Black-and-whites exploded with boys in blue and yellow crime scene tape. I told the cops about the three men who had been in the store—Sweat Stains, Pinstripes, and Fedora. There was no sight of them now. It took every ounce of energy to get to my car. Carolyn closed the store, too shaken up to care about peddling neon fishnets to the trannies in the neighborhood—the only customers we had these days.

  I drove home and stared at Jaws. He swam in quick, jerky circles around Barbie, checking her out. Slowly she tilted and glided to the bottom of the tank where her hair fanned out around her face. A few stones shifted out of place from her tiny stiletto-molded feet, revealing an ebony handle with rivets and a steel blade running through the middle.

  A knife. Buried in the rocks of my new free aquarium, given to me by a pet store owner whose shop was less than a mile from a lake where someone had been found. Dead. And now Andrew, the pet store owner, was dead, too. Murdered, probably.

  That can’t be good.

  Suddenly scared by what I had, I turned off the lights and huddled next to the tank. The blinds were shut and the ancient air conditioner chugged and spit enough to drown out the neighbor’s TV. The only light came from the base of the aquarium, an eerie green glow that illuminated Jaws, Barbie, and the knife.

  Someone pounded on my front door. “Mia? Mia Thomas, are you in there?”

  I crouched in the shadows on the side of the tank. It was a man’s voice, and had an unsettling resemblance to Pinstripes’.

  Muffled voices floated into the apartment. “Her car’s in the lot. Should we go in?” The doorknob jiggled.

  “Not yet. Let’s figure out her patterns first.” Footsteps receded down the hall.

  Those men probably had something to do with Andrew’s murder, and the knife in my fish tank, and now they were coming for me. I had to get out of there. I dug through my handbag in a futile search for my cell phone. I’d turned off my home phone a month ago in an attempt to save money, and, as usual, had left my phone in my car. There was no way to call for help. But if I was being watched, how was I ever going to leave?

  I plunged my hand into the cool water. Jaws dove to the bottom and hid behind Barbie’s flaxen hair. I pulled the knife out and put it in a Ziploc bag, then replaced it with an old rubber knife left behind from a Halloween costume. I taped the Ziploc-bagged knife to the inside of my calf with electrical tape and covered it with a pair of legwarmers from my Flashdance phase. A glance out the window showed the Mustang parked a few spaces from my Mini. No getting the cell phone now. I changed into shorts and a slashed sweatshirt and ducked under the strap of my handbag. I ran to the bedroom, and climbed out a window that faced the al
ley out back.

  I kept a barely running scooter in the alley. It leaked oil like there was no tomorrow, but I was only worried about today. I pulled on the helmet and cranked the key until it sputtered to life—with the gas gauge on E. I needed a close, safe haven with a phone. I drove to my shrink’s office.

  The curbside parking in front of Dr. Clark’s office was full. I parked on the street in front of a minivan and locked the helmet to the seat, then started toward the office door. Inside the minivan, a man peered over a newspaper at me. I dropped my head and hurried past, increasing the length of my stride. Dr. Clark’s security-coded door wasn’t far, but I wasn’t there yet.

  A car door shut behind me. My walk became a jog. Footsteps sounded. My jog turned to a sprint. At the front door I punched the four-digit code into the keypad and yanked the metal handle the second it buzzed. The hydraulic arm kept the door from slamming, though I threw my weight against it. After it clicked shut I raced up the stairs, and then turned to look behind me. Fedora’s unshaven face stared up at me through the glass door, one floor below.

  I ran down the hall and pounded on Dr. Clark’s door. She didn’t answer. I tried the knob, but the door was locked.

  A lab technician poked her head out of an adjoining office. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’m being followed.”

  She looked at the poster on the wall. Experiencing feelings of depression or paranoia? You can get help. “Maybe you should make an appointment.”

  “Can I use your phone?” My hands shook. I glanced over my shoulder.

  She pointed inside her office. “Right there.”

  I called Carolyn and told her about the knife and the fish tank and the men at the store and the stalker outside.

  “Why you calling me? You gotta call the cops!”