Larva Malum - Mike Burns (readnow txt) 📗

there. It was there all right. Whooh! A bit fungusy-smelling. I hoped it wouldn’t tip her off before she got out of the house. Perhaps a bit of body-spray would grease the skids here--so to speak…

No! With the can halfway out of the drawer, I changed my mind and put it back. I took up the box and went back to the kitchen. Once again, I heard sounds in the upstairs bathroom through the air vent in the downstairs one. Open the box, pick up Mrs. Tijeras’s Surprise, as I had labeled it in my mind…put it..!

“Mr. Cinccone?”

That just about sent me out of my skin!

Lucky thing for me that I had had my back to the door between the kitchen and the TV room, through which she had come. It gave me a second to snap the box shut (with the body part still inside), pocket it in my suit-coat pocket, and turn around.

“Mrs. Tijeras! You scared me out of ten years of my life!” I managed to make it sound good-humored and conversational--I hoped!

“Are you all right, sir? You look really upset.” Her eyes flicked down to her purse. She couldn’t have missed the fact that I had been standing directly in front of it, with arms extended toward it. I thought fast.

“Yes, I’m fine. I…thought I saw a roach on the table, running right by your purse. Just saw it right out of the corner of my eye, and really distracted me. I didn’t hear you come in. I THOUGHT I heard you upstairs, in the upper bathroom, right when I walked in…”

“Oh, no, Mr. Cinccone. I finished up there an hour ago. “

I probably frowned at this. “Then what did I…”

The answer turned up in the form of Fenring, my big black neutered male cat, as he came bounding down the stairs, belying his bulk with his speed and agility.

Smiling, my housekeeper nodded in Fenring’s direction. “There’s your noisemaker, Mr. Cinccone. “

I made myself laugh, as she picked him up. “Always nosin’ around, Fenring is,” she said as she closed her eyes and nuzzled the back of his neck. His purr motor instantly went into action.

Then Mrs. Tijeras opened her eyes, and said “But you smell funny. What you been into up there?” She sniffed at him.

I caught a whiff myself from three feet away, and came closer.

OH MY GOD!

As calmly as I could, I relieved Mrs. Tijeras of the burden of Fenring. I recognized that smell. It was faint, but definite. The odor of my GHB, which I aways kept in solution in a bottle in the medicine cabinet up there. CRAP! Did he break the bottle?

I must have left the medicine cabinet open this morning! I’m such an idiot, I thought.

I put Fenring down, conveniently close to the food dish. I started upstairs.

“Where you going, Mr. Cinccone?” my housekeeper asked. “Just to the restroom,” I said casually. I was painfully aware that I normally went to the one downstairs immediately after coming home, from long habit. That couldn’t be helped, though.

Upstairs, I found that the jelly jar I used for keeping the drug in was indeed broken, having been toppled off the glass shelf in the medicine cabinet, which I had indeed left open.

That annoyed me. I could get more easily enough from Dr. Gunndafari (or just about anything I wanted, for that matter), but this was after hours, and he’d be off tomorrow. It certainly wrecked my plans for tonight.

I took some Lysol wipes, my handbroom and dust pan from under the sink and cleaned up the mess. Lucky this stuff had only a faint odor, and mostly from our abominable tap-water, at that.

After a reasonable interval, I flushed the toilet and came down and saw Mrs. Tijeras off.

“Good-night, Mrs. Tijeras.” “Good-night, Mr. Cinccone.”

As I closed the front door behind her and returned to the kitchen, I chanced to look at the table once again.

Crap. There was the body-part laying in plain view, near the edge of the dining table. I threw it into the trash, then thought better of it. I would try again, tomorrow. I fished it back out.


Chapter 7

Dawn over Holimaud, as seen from my bedroom balcony, is such a fine, beautiful thing. How fervently the unfortunate, the underlings of this world, must desire something like this. Well, it’s their own fault that they’re not here to enjoy something this.

The telephone rang. I lifted it from its cradle, hesitating a moment before I spoke.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Burt! Did you forget about our date last night?” A puckish, faux-hurt female voice at the other end.

“No, honey. I had somethin’ come up at the church--suspected vandalism. I ran over to see about it, and by the time I got done talkin’ to the police, and got home, THAT’S when I remembered about our date. By that time, it was so late, I thought it’d be better to wait till today to tell you. I’m sorry,” I finished simply.

“Well, okay, I see what you mean. How ‘bout tonight?”

“Wednesday night services, tonight. How ‘bout tomorrow? They’ve got a party with dollar champagne, tonight and tomorrow night, at the neighborhood rec center in my development. Adult residents and guests only, of course. “

“Really? How is that place?”

“Real swank. You’d love it. Tomorrow, since it’s Halloween, they’ve got an extra-special guest appearing.”

“Ooh! Sounds great! Who is he?”

“That’s a surprise. I wasn’t supposed to know, and I don’t wanna steal their thunder.”

“Okay, Burt. Just one thing, though. Is he a celebrity?”

“Yep.” “Ooh! I can hardly wait!”

“Yeah, I’m not sure myself what to expect from this guy. “


Chapter 8

That was that. Or it should have been.

Guess who turned up at Wednesday night services, that evening? Yep, my date for the following night!

She had been parked across the street from the rectory, and emerged from her Chrysler Cruiser when she saw me come outside to my own vehicle, five minutes before I was due to appear at the pulpit.

“Hello, Reverend Cinccone.” I was startled. “Hello…I hadn’t expected to see you…this early.”

“I know,” she said, a trifle embarrassed. “I just…I had to come. I talked to somebody who’s been through one of your personal spiritual teachings, you know, one of the one-on-ones. She said it was such a liberating thing, something to set her spirit free from the bondage of guilt and sin, free to soar upward with the rest when the Rapture comes. And what she had to give up was such a small price to pay, she said. So that…” It didn’t sound like something I would say. And I never gave anybody a “one-on-one” teaching--never even used the word “teaching.” It sounded too much like something a Eastern guru would say.

But even more strangely…

I barely heard the rest. “…WHAT SHE HAD TO GIVE UP“?! Who had been talking to this young lady? More important, WHO HAD SHE BEEN TALKING TO SINCE THEN?

I had to think of something, something to tell her, to shake her off the trail, her and…whoever.

“That’s fine, my dear. Enjoy the service. And I’ll pick you up tomorrow, same time we planned. Okay?”

As starstruck as any groupie, she said, “Of course, Reverend. One more day is such a little thing to give up.”

The recurring phrase was disconcerting. Before I went in, I directed her to the front entrance to the sanctuary.

After the service, I ducked out and managed to get gone before she could catch up to me again.


Chapter 9

The community center was a circular building of polished limestone, set into a sunken garden surrounded by a huge oval of manicured grass and flower beds with wisteria and morning glory, in the middle of a nice suburban neighborhood. On this Hallowe’en, the short trellises around the edges of the flower beds were festooned with posterboard ghosts and witches and black cats.

And it wasn’t far from where my companion of this evening lived. I went the site of our date first, and reserved our table. I also persuaded the waiter to pour our two glasses of champagne and set them on the table, explaining that we’d be “back in a few minutes.”

The moment his back was turned, I whipped out my fresh vial of GHB, keeping it palmed. I glanced around. I bent over slightly and began to pour it into her glass.

“FREEZE MISTER! POLICE!”

I looked up, a trifle agitated. A service revolver pointed right at me.

“Mr. Cinccone?”

“Yes.”

“You are under arrest for drug-facilitated sexual assault upon Diane Gunther, assault with a sharp object on Diane Gunther, and attempted drug-facilitated assault upon this young lady…” and here my date came in with another police officer, “…Miss Glennis Tijeras.” Tijeras? That wasn’t what she had said her name was!

Now Mrs. Tijeras, my housekeeper came in, with yet another officer, just in time to hear the officer reel off my Miranda rights. She and Glennis stood close together, and exhibited a remarkable likeness. Of course! Mother and daughter! The Miranda routine wound up quickly.

“One question, Mr. Cinccone, if you feel inclined to answer one,” the first officer asked.

“That depends,” I said. “What is it?”

“Why did you cut that bit of skin off Miss Gunther’s fingertip? Was it just a personal memento for you?”

I had to stop and think a second. Oh, yes, that! The thing I had been about to slip into Mrs. Tijeras’s purse, when I was flirting with danger. “Yes, you could say that,” I replied.

“Like all that jewelry at the house, too, right?” This was the officer who had come in last with Mrs. Tijeras.

“Yes, you could say that, too.”

The second officer, the one who had come in with Glennis, piped up now. “And we saw your collection of true crime books, about Manson, Bundy, the Green River Killer, BTK. They’d keep mementos, too. Were you contemplating a career as a serial killer next? Was this just practice?”

I cocked my most sardonic eyebrow possible at this. “Now officer, you know