Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology Page 6

  “But the cops—those tickets—”

  “I’m comin’ to get you. Don’t do anything stupid.” She hung up the phone.

  I ran down the back staircase and watched through the door’s smudged four-inch window until her brown Coupe de Ville blazed into the alley. I jumped into her car and slunk down onto the torn vinyl seat.

  She didn’t ask questions. Next thing I knew we were back at NEW IDENTITY.

  She unlocked the store and pushed me toward the phone. “This is no time to be a punk-ass chicken about those parking tickets. Call the cops,” she said, hands on hips.

  When she got all Foxy Brown, I did as I was told.

  The door chimed as I was begging dispatch to send some help. Sweat Stains pushed through the door carrying my fish tank. He plunked it on a sale table filled with beaded handbags. Pinstripes followed behind him.

  I dropped the phone. Jaws hung very still in the tank, staring at Pinstripes, who stared at me. He leveled a pistol at my chest.

  “We know the knife in the tank was fake. Now give us the real one.”

  “The money, too,” added Sweat Stains, leaning against a bookcase filled with cheap shoes. Pinstripes stood six feet in front of me. Carolyn was to my left, and there was no sign of the cops.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I bluffed.

  Wait.

  Did they say ‘money’? I guess I wasn’t bluffing after all.

  I heard tires and looked out the window. A minivan pulled into the lot. Time was running out.

  “You want us to believe you just wandered into Andrew’s store yesterday and picked up a five-gallon aquarium for one little fishie? Nice try. Now give us the money or somebody else is gonna get hurt,” said Sweat Stains, taking a step toward me.

  “I don’t have it,” I said. Nobody else knew the real knife was taped to my calf under my legwarmer. I had to buy time until the cops arrived. “The money’s still in the tank.”

  Pinstripes reached his hand into the water, and Jaws twitched. The sudden movement surprised us. On instinct, I yelled.

  It wasn’t the high-pitched shriek of a teen in a slasher movie or the piercing scream of women in monster flicks who always wear red lipstick. It was a guttural, throaty, primal scream that tore at my uvula and left me gasping for breath. I grabbed the wooden fixture of shoes and tilted it toward my assailants. Lucite wedge sandals and gold Wonder Woman boots pelted Sweat Stains. The bookcase pinned him to the floor. Pinstripes ran toward the door.

  A gun fired and the aquarium exploded in a burst of glass and water that flooded the table. Jaws surfed on a wave that spilled onto the floor and soaked a bin of discount Daisy Dukes. The rubber knife landed on the waterlogged hot pants with a thwud.

  Pinstripes clutched his thigh. Blood seeped through his flat-front pants and mingled with the water-soaked garments, pooling by the rubber knife, making it almost look real—the knife, not the blood. The blood, I knew, wasn’t fake.

  “Police! You’re under arrest!” Fedora shouted from the doorway, a gun in his grip. My hands shot up in the air. “Wait over there.” He waved Carolyn and me toward the register while uniformed officers flooded the room. This time I barely noticed the hullabaloo. Injuries were tended to, handcuffs were clamped on, and bad guys were taken away.

  Carolyn sank onto a beanbag chair, her ’fro disheveled. “I didn’t know you had that in you.”

  Neither did I.

  Pink rocks covered the floor of the store and Jaws limp body glistened against them. Fedora supervised the scene while the wall held me up. It seemed like hours until he approached me.

  “I’m Dan—Detective Noh. I’ve been working undercover trying to get a lead on these guys. Last month we pulled a body out of the lake.” He nodded his head toward the back of the store. “They left him for fish food.”

  “And they killed the pet store owner?” I shuddered, remembering Andrew’s body.

  “Probably knew something about the homicide. I thought they hid the weapon in his store but couldn’t risk blowing my cover for a search.” He scratched his beard. “You kept going in and looking at those cats. I started wondering if you were working with them.”

  “I’m not working with anybody except my shrink—I mean, therapist,” I muttered half-under my breath.

  He continued as though I hadn’t said a word. “Word on the street is they extorted fifty grand from the first guy we found. They stabbed him and tossed the body in the lake. But we’re out of leads. Can’t find the money, can’t find the weapon. And we can’t book them for murder without evidence.”

  “I think I can help you with that.”

  I pushed my legwarmer down to my ankle, revealing the plastic bag taped to my calf. I unwound the electrical tape and extended the bag to the detective. He raised his eyebrows.

  Next, I pulled the fish food container out of my handbag and popped off the plastic top. Nestled inside was a roll of money. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

  He looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

  “You said they left him for fish food. They didn’t realize the money was in the fish food.”

  “You knew all along?”

  “No. The pet store owner gave me this when I got the fish. Only I forgot to feed him. The fish, not the pet store owner.” I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead.

  “You seem more like a cat person, anyway.”

  I stared at Jaws, dead on the store’s floor. Detective Noh studied me. “You know, those kittens are down at the station. You should come down and pick one out.”

  So I did. And I named him Jaws 2.

  __________

  Diane Vallere is a fashion insider with a taste for murder. A 2009 winner of the Get Your Stiletto in the Door contest, (Chick Thrill), she started her own detective agency at age ten and has maintained a passion for shoes, clues, and clothes ever since. Find her at www.dianevallere.blogspot.com.

  SLEEPING WITH THE FISH, by KB Inglee

  Autumn 1737

  The woman was . . . had been . . . beautiful. She appeared to be of marriageable age but was not wearing a wedding ring. Fine golden hair peeked out from under her heavily starched white linen cap. Her left shoulder and hip rested among the ferns at the edge of the water while her right side rose and fell with the gentle undulations of the mill pond. Two fish nibbled at the edge of her red and gold striped petticoat. Her dull empty eyes stared past the tops of the old trees and on to the heavens. Her hands were folded upon her breast.

  The cool autumn weather and the chilly water made it look as if only a few minutes before she had settled herself and died. The body was cold to the touch. The yellowed leaves of the chestnut tree had blown across her short gown and under her apron. The stiffness of the dead had already passed from her limbs. She had been dead for more than a day.

  Clarissa Dillon ran all the way to the house, spilling nuts from her basket as she sped along the mill race. “Father, there is a woman dead just above the mill dam. I’ve never seen her before.”

  Without question or comment, Miller Dillon called his journeyman, William Cooper, from the mill and they headed toward the pond, leaving Clarissa standing by the mill door.

  Shaken, she carried her basket with the few remaining nuts toward the house.

  “Morning, Miss Clarissa,” said Isaiah Cooper, William’s brother, cheerful as he always was. He was washing his hands in the basin she had set by the back door early that morning.

  “Did thee see thy sister yesterday?” she asked, pretending this was an ordinary morning, despite the fact her hands shook.

  Half a day’s journey had been far to go for a load of late summer hay, but Isaiah had delivered a box of tools Friend Price had bought from the Dillons at the last Monthly Meeting. And Isaiah had been able to visit his sister and brother who worked for the Prices.

  “Yes, miss. She is getting ready for her wedding. The gift thy mother sent was happily received. Hope thy father will let me and William go. It�
�s only a fortnight away.” Clarissa’s mother had sent a fine linen shift as a wedding gift for Isaiah’s sister.

  “I’m sure he will.”

  “Is thee ill, Miss Clarissa? Thee is pale and sickly.”

  “I am well. I found something disturbing in the woods. A body.”

  “Yes, miss. I know thee to be of tender feeling about the deer and the birds. I can see thee might be disturbed by coming upon one unexpected like.”

  She opened her mouth to correct him but thought better of it. Nodding, she turned and went into the house.

  “Did anyone come in with Isaiah yesterday?” she asked her mother. “There is a dead woman in the woods.”

  “A dead woman? Is that why the men are off in such a rush?”

  “I found her under the chestnut tree on the edge of the mill pond.”

  Clarissa’s mother looked up from her work with a worried expression. “Drowned? Who is it?”

  “I don’t know who she is, but she didn’t drown. She was laid out with care. I know Father was out there yesterday. He would have found her if she had been there then. He and William have gone to fetch to her.”

  “Where are thy brothers? Why didn’t he take them?”

  “Father sent them off early to have some smithing done and to see if the Miller Jones had the estimate for adding a third grindstone. They will be back by dark.”

  “It takes both of them to do that? Who is running the mill?”

  “No one. William and Isaiah were cleaning until Father called William away. Isaiah was headed toward the barn as I came in.”

  Isaiah and William had worked for the Dillons since last summer. William was bright and industrious and would go far. Isaiah was illiterate, in spite of Clarissa’s attempts to teach him to read. The family knew that William would move on to a better position soon, but they could do worse than to keep Isaiah if he stayed on. He was none too bright, but he was hard working and once he learned a chore he did it well.

  Father and William brought back the body and laid it on a board in the barn. Clarissa had a better look at the woman while Isaiah went for Constable Cobb.

  The young woman’s wheat colored short gown was splattered with what looked like dried mud, or perhaps blood, but when Clarissa stripped the body to wash it she saw no trace of a wound. Unlike her other clothing, her cap and apron were spotless. The cap . . . . Clarissa looked more closely. She recognized the tiny stitches, the ruffle that was longer in the back. It was her own cap, washed, starched, and ironed two days ago. A shudder ran down her spine.

  Her mother brought a wooden tub of hot water, some clean rags and soap. “Has thee found anything?”

  “Mother, this is my cap. Why is it on this stranger?”

  Clarissa pulled it off. The hair under the cap was matted with dried blood. Someone had covered the evidence of a dreadful wound with the clean cap. She closed her eyes to block out the sight.

  “The apron, as well.” Mother lifted the hem to look at the careful stitching. Nothing else on the body was from the Dillon household. Someone who had access to Clarissa’s things had dressed this woman and laid her reverently on the edge of the pond.

  “Look at this,” said her mother, indicating the single earring in her left ear. Dark metal with garnet beads.

  “She must have lost its mate in the accident that had killed her. How sad this is. Someone cared for her and now she is to be buried where no one knows her.” Clarissa slipped the earring into her pocket.

  Clarissa and her mother washed the body and laid it out with the same respect as it had been at the pond and covered it with a bed sheet. Later they would wash her clothing and dress the body for burial.

  When they were finished, they closed the barn door on the lonely woman. They scrubbed their own hands and arms until they were red and went to finish dinner. They worked silently for some time before Clarissa called the men to the meal.

  Besides Father, five men from the farm and the mill joined them at the table. Constable Cobb, never one to miss food, especially at someone else’s expense, arrived as soon as they began eating.

  The talk was all of the woman by the mill pond. No one knew who she was. No one knew how she had come to be there. Cobb asked questions of each of them and received unsatisfactory answers. Isaiah had been away all the previous day. William had been working in the mill; Clarissa’s brothers had been sowing winter wheat in a field on the other side of the farm. Any one of them could have laid out the woman. It would have taken only a few minutes.

  “I followed the track of a wheelbarrow out along the millrace. I forgot about it until now,” Clarissa told Cobb.

  “I’ll check for footprints after this fine meal.”

  Clarissa was standing at the table under the window when he said this, and she could see everyone’s face but her mother’s. There was no marked response on any of them except Isaiah, who looked puzzled.

  “Someone pushed the wheelbarrow, so there must be footprints,” she explained to him. “Unless it was a ghost.”

  Cobb laughed. “No ghosts.”

  Clarissa knew that each person’s footprint is his own. She herself had a wide foot with the left turning out more than the right. She was sure he would find and recognize her prints. She could not remember seeing any footprints near the track of the single wheel, yet she had not been looking for them before she found the body and had been too upset to look for them afterwards.

  “Perhaps someone at Monthly Meeting will know who she is,” said Mother.

  After dinner Father and Constable Cobb went off to the barn and the others returned to their tasks.

  Late in the afternoon Isaiah found her by the hen house. “Miss Clarissa, I found something I thought thee would like.” He handed her a trinket made of metal with dark red beads attached. She had the mate, from the woman’s left ear, in her pocket. The loop at the top which held the ear wire was broken. She had not found the wire in the woman’s hair or the borrowed cap.

  “Where did thee find this?” she asked.

  “One of the sheep had it in her wool. I didn’t think sheep wore such things and I thought it would look better on thee.” He smiled shyly.

  * * * *

  On First Day, the family piled into farm wagons and mounted every rideable horse on the property and headed for Kennett Monthly Meeting. Clarissa had tucked the pair of earrings in her pocket in hopes that someone would recognize them.

  The morning was spent in quiet contemplation but the afternoon was social and everyone used the opportunity to catch up on news. The woman on the Dillon property was a big topic.

  Amy Cooper had come with her brother Darby and was happy to see William and Isaiah. Darby found William and pulled him aside at once and they spoke privately until the four of them went off by themselves to trade family gossip. Amy’s intended was there, as well, and he was properly introduced to the Dillon family. Miller Dillon found other millers to discuss the ups and downs of business. The biggest topic was finding laborers. Monthly Meeting would be where William would find a new employer and where Father would replace him.

  Near the end of the afternoon a young man Clarissa had never seen before came up to her. “Is thee Clarissa Dillon?” he asked.

  “Yes, I am.” He took her arm and led her away from the crowd.

  “My name is Nathaniel Foster. I’m told thee has an earring from the woman thee found. May I see it?”

  “Does thee know who she might be?” She pulled the delight from her pocket.

  He didn’t answer. He took the pendant from her hand and sighed. “It’s hers. I made them myself. Tell me what this woman looked like.”

  “I’m sorry.” She handed him the twin Isaac had given her. “Here is the mate.” His face grew sadder and sadder as Clarissa described the woman. “I washed and wrapped her and she was buried in the Meeting burial ground. I’d be happy to add her name to the marker. Perhaps thee could come visit her grave.”

  “Her name is Hannah Price. She lived with her au
nt and uncle. We were to be married in the spring but a month ago she said she had other interests. I was certain she would change her mind after a while. Then one day she was gone.”

  Clarissa rested her hand on Nathaniel’s arm. “I’m sorry. Whoever put her by our pond laid her out with reverence and care. That’s not much consolation for the loss of a loved one.”

  “Thanks,” he muttered as he turned away.

  * * * *

  Clarissa rode back home on the chestnut mare, seated behind William.

  “I know what happened, mostly,” she told him.

  It had been her intention to confront him in the presence of others, but at a distance so their conversation was private.

  He was silent for a bit, then he urged the mare to a trot, leaving the others behind. Clarissa tightened her arms around his waist as he turned into a farm lane. She had not counted on this.

  “What is it thee knows?” he asked, pulling the horse up.

  She glanced back at the road.

  “I know that the woman, Hannah, was killed elsewhere and came back with Isaac in the load of hay. I think he knew nothing of the actions taken by either thee or Darby. He is too open and truthful. He was truly puzzled by the gewgaw that turned up in the wool. The earring must have fallen off on the wagon and been swept up when the hay was unloaded. Thee pulled her blood-stained cap off and disposed of it, and replaced it with mine, along with my apron.”

  William turned in the saddle and met her eyes with a warmth she had never seen in them before. She drew back in fear as he reached out and touched her cheek.

  “I won’t hurt thee.” She knew he spoke the truth. “Her apron was torn and dirty. If she was to have a new cap, she should have a clean apron to go with it.”

  He drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to her. “When we Coopers find love, we are possessive of it.”

  My Brother William,

  I am sending my treasure under the hay. Isaiah doesn’t know. Take utmost care.