MOSTLY MURDER: Till Death: a mystery anthology Read online

  Then the television remotes disappeared.

  Then the tablet.

  Then the blender… which I highly doubt Rosaria could have gotten out of our house without Kanya or I noticing.

  I started to wonder if Kanya was giving things away, to the neighbors maybe, or to new friends she’d made in her English classes. She was a sweet, generous person, and too trusting at times. Was someone coming to the house while I was at work and convincing Kanya to hand over our personal things?

  The possibility struck me as odd, given the things that were missing.

  That night, when I noticed yet another thing missing—this time, something definitely too big to have been randomly “misplaced”—I reached the end of my straws and my willingness to ignore what was going on.

  When I first bought the house, I’d bought Kanya one of those tiered, clay pots filled with different kinds of succulent cactuses. We’d been wandering around Old Town Albuquerque and they had a small plant and pottery shop, and she’d been fascinated by it, since the plants were so different here from any she’d ever seen before. So I bought it for her. I had it delivered and everything, since the thing was heavy—and big. It had been sitting in the same spot just below the adobe pony wall around our porch since it first came to our home.

  Now, it wasn’t. Sitting there, I mean.

  Now, like the other four things, the tiered, red-clay pot filled with succulents that Kanya had so carefully watered over the past few years… was just gone.

  I couldn’t believe it at first, truthfully. I looked away and back a few times, trying to convince myself it hadn’t really disappeared. I knew I was looking in the right place. The ring of dirt and water deposits from watering still stained that part of the blue and white flowered tile. But the thing that created that ring, the giant red clay pot with the little holes all over it for different kinds of cactus, wasn’t anywhere in sight.

  Full of dirt and dripping with plants, that pot had to weigh eighty pounds, if not more. I was pretty sure Kanya couldn’t even lift it by herself.

  Heck, I wasn’t sure I could.

  Anyway, I don’t know precisely why that was the thing I latched onto, but it was.

  Once it finally sank in that the pot was really gone, I got off the swing and walked around the porch, looking for the damned thing while thunder and lightning continued crashing overhead. Once I’d finished my cigarette, I left the porch, venturing out to look in our actual yard, thinking maybe Kanya was stronger than I thought.

  I walked all over that desert-landscaped yard and all around our swimming pool, even though the rain continued to pelt down on our part of the mesa and I still wore my shirt and tie and slacks from work. I even wore my favorite pair of loafers still, which weren’t exactly good in the wet sand and fast-forming puddles on the walk.

  I walked around the pool a second time, then around the work shed in the backyard, the one hidden behind an adobe wall near the tall desert palms. I considered using my keys to look inside the shed itself, but I didn’t. The shed was mine, and Kanya knew that. I usually had that key on me, so Kanya would’ve had to move the pot there in the middle of the night, and why would she do that? The very idea was insane. The shed was mine.

  She knew that.

  In the end, I left it alone, focusing on the assorted scattering of cactus and succulents that filled our yard, thinking she must have just moved it somewhere else for some reason.

  I think I spent some thirty minutes looking, but I never found it. Eventually I decided I just needed to ask her, so I walked back to the porch and then into the house, leaving my shoes outside the sliding glass door.

  Once I’d shut the door behind me, I called out to Kanya.

  “Honey?” I put the beer bottle on the coffee table when I didn’t see her, wandering through the lower level of our house. It was a big place, with an open floor plan made up of a kitchen, dining room and living room with vaulted, wood-beamed ceilings.

  “Kanya!” I stood at the foot of the stairs, one hand on the polished pinewood banister. “Kanya! Where are you? I need you to come down here, sweetie!”

  I walked up the stairs, now verging on annoyed, but honestly not sure if it was at her or myself. Usually she answered me right away.

  Was she in the garage? Had she run to the store while I was outside rooting around our backyard like a fool, looking for a missing cactus pot?

  “Kanya!” I bellowed it that time, from most of the way up the stairs. “Are you home?”

  Still nothing.

  After checking our bedroom and the bathroom, I wandered into my office. She was there, on the floor, staring down, like she was in a trance or something.

  For a moment I just stood there, in the doorway.

  Maybe I was in shock.

  “Kanya!” Biting my lip, I deliberately calmed my voice when I saw her jump. “What are you doing? Haven’t you heard me calling you for the past however-many minutes?”

  She turned her head, staring up at me with white-rimmed, terrified eyes like I’d hit her with a cattle prod. Breathing hard, her eyes still as dilated as an alley cat’s, she lurched to her feet, and the leather-bound notebook that I now realized she’d been holding in her lap fell to the floor.

  I frowned down at it.

  It was one of mine from work.

  Looking back up at her, I fought to comprehend the expression on her face. She stared at me from a half-crouched position, as if she might bolt from the room at any second.

  At a loss, I found my voice coming out in a kind of blank puzzlement.

  “What are you doing in here? Why did you take that?”

  “No-Nothing… nothing…” She stammered the word, her accent coming out thicker than usual. “I wasn’t doing anything, Bobby, I swear… nothing. I’m sorry… I know I’m not supposed to be in here. I was looking for a book… a book I saw…”

  I stared between her and the notebook on the carpet for about a minute. I was waiting for her to go on, to give me more detail, more of a real explanation, but it never came. She knew what I wanted, but for once, she wasn’t my usual, sweet-natured and agreeable Kanya.

  She just stared at me, like I was a malevolent spirit. Like one of those beings with the bulging eyes and the sticking out tongues from one of her Buddhist temples.

  I considered addressing the issue of her going through my things, then decided that wasn’t the relevant issue right then. After a few more seconds of us both just standing there, I decided to go back to the thing that brought me upstairs in the first place.

  “Where’s that pot of cactus I got you?” I said. “You know… the big one. From Old Town. What did you do with it?”

  Whatever I expected her reaction to be to that question, it wasn’t what I got.

  Her face went white.

  I mean, you read about people’s faces going white in books and so on, but I’d never actually seen it happen in real life before. Her normally rosy cheeks went a bloodless, corpse-like white. I saw her eyes shift to the pad of paper on the floor again, then back up to mine.

  Finally, I lost my cool.

  “What is wrong with you?” I motioned towards her with a sweeping hand. She flinched. “What happened to the cactus pot? Why are you looking at me like that? You’re acting like I’m asking you something crazy, Kanya!”

  Her face still white as chalk, she plastered on a falsely cheerful smile.

  It looked grotesque, like some kind of paper mâché mask.

  “Are you hungry?” Her voice still carried too much accent, which I knew meant she was afraid or upset or in the grip of some other intense emotion. “I make lasagna for you,” she said, still smiling that terrifying smile. “Just like recipe from your mom. Your favorite. Should be ready now, I just get out of oven—”

  “No, Kanya! Not until you tell me what—”

  “I get it now,” she said, her voice still overly sweet, despite that white face and the big eyes. “I get you whatever you want, darling Bobby. Right now.
Okay? Mai pen rai.”

  I knew the last meant something along the lines of “It’s all okay,” or “It’s no trouble” in Thai. She said that a lot, it was kind of a running joke between us at times.

  Before I could figure out what I could possibly say to this, she scurried past me like some kind of rodent with its tail on fire and ran down the stairs.

  I honestly don’t know why I let her go. I don’t know why I didn’t chase after her and make her say something that made sense to me… but I didn’t.

  I just stood there, staring down at the notebook that lay open on the beige carpet, hearing her footsteps as she clattered down the stairs in her high heels. I listened to the distant sounds of her bustling around the kitchen not long after that, the open and shut of the door of our self-cleaning oven, the clink of glasses and silverware as she set the table. I don’t remember what I was thinking at the time, but at some point, I must have come to some kind of conclusion. Something that made me decide to let her off the hook, for now at least.

  Not long after that, she called me down for supper.

  I didn’t bring it up with her again, not until the next thing happened.

  I don’t know why I didn’t.

  Maybe my friends are right. Maybe my mother is right.

  Maybe I love my wife too much.

  * * *

  The next thing to disappear was the keys to her car.

  We tore that house apart, looking for them. They were the custom kind, the kind that cost a few hundred dollars to replace, and both sets were missing, the spare and her day-to-day ones, which made the whole thing that much weirder. After five days of looking, doing everything but ripping up the carpet and digging in the yard, I gave up and ordered her a new set of keys, which set me back a pretty penny to replace both sets.

  I didn’t know what to say to her about that, either.

  She still wouldn’t offer much, certainly nothing approximating an explanation or an apology. She didn’t even help me look really; it was more like she followed me around as I looked, wringing her hands until they were red and white in turn. I honestly don’t know if she was worried I wouldn’t find them or worried that I would.

  I tried to find some pattern in the missing things, but I was at a loss.

  I considered locking things up that might disappear, maybe in the shed in the backyard that had only one set of keys, but since I had no idea why the things were disappearing in the first place or what might be next, I couldn’t see much point to that, either.

  I pleaded with Kanya to tell me what was wrong, why she was doing this.

  She never told me though. She never told me anything.

  After an hour of my pleading with her, she burst into tears.

  The next day, I woke up with my first finger missing.

  * * *

  It’s going to sound insane, but I didn’t notice right away.

  I did my usual rollover, hit the alarm with my good hand, and my body felt heavy and groggier than usual, so I didn’t think to look at myself that closely. Looking back on it now, I’d probably been drugged, given how odd and out of it I felt.

  It was only when I planted my hands on either side of me on our double-padded mattress to shove myself up and out of bed, that I let out a startled cry.

  When I looked down at my bandaged hand, it was like the potted cactus at first.

  I couldn’t make myself believe it.

  I just sat there, holding my breath as I stared at my hand, trying to make it real.

  Then it’s like an electric jolt of current went through me.

  Stumbling and running for the bathroom, I let out a cry when I stubbed my toe on the low riser in the doorway, skidding and tripping on the tile before I caught my balance on the granite counter that rimmed our his-and-her sinks. I stared at the bandage on my right hand, panting, and again noticed the odd shape it was.

  I think by then, I knew.

  I’m not a medical doctor or anything, but I’m not an idiot either. So I knew, but I didn’t want to know… I couldn’t make myself put the pieces together to form a coherent picture, at least not without first-hand proof.

  Some morbid part of me needed to know.

  After a few more seconds of staring, I gritted my teeth and tried to unwrap the bandage, one-handed.

  When I couldn’t do that, I rummaged through the drawers, looking for something to cut the thing off so I could look at my hand. I don’t think I’d spoken a word since that initial cry when I stubbed my toe on the tile. I might have been muttering under my breath, and I’m pretty sure I was panting so hard it was full-blown hyperventilating by then, but I didn’t speak.

  I also didn’t hear a peep from the other room, where I presumed my wife had to be lying in bed, listening to this, or else sleeping peacefully.

  I couldn’t comprehend that she could be asleep, though.

  Not now. Not given what had happened to me.

  How could she sleep?

  Using the utility scissors in the drawer, I cut the bandage off carefully. I didn’t nick anything that I felt, but by the time I’d finished, red had begun to seep through part of the cloth, and by the time I got it off totally, it hurt like hell, almost like my messing with it had woken up the nerve endings for the first time since I’d gotten up.

  I stared at the bloody stump of my pinky finger.

  Someone had stitched it up unevenly with thick black thread, almost like wire. It looked like something out of a horror movie. I stared at my hand in front of our bathroom mirror, gasping like I’d been running, sweat soaking through the back of my white T-shirt…

  …and then I passed out cold.

  * * *

  I thought long and hard about whether I should go to the hospital that morning.

  When I woke up on the tile floor of our master bathroom, Kanya was crouched over me, shaking my arm, panic in her light brown eyes, panic in her small, delicate fingers. Kanya pleaded with me to go see a doctor, over and over in her broken English. She sobbed when I wouldn’t answer her, when I only sat on the floor of our bathroom, grimacing in pain as I stared in the direction of my office that was just visible through the open door of our bedroom.

  I remember fighting to think through the pain in my hand and my confusion over how genuinely worried she seemed to be about me. That worry seemed so real, so sincere. The depth of my wife’s emotion blanked out my brain. I was so afraid of her and confused I didn’t know what to do or even what to say to her.

  In the end, I didn’t go to the hospital.

  I didn’t even call my doctor at my worksite.

  I called in sick instead, and told them I’d had an accident.

  Kanya waited on me hand and foot, bringing me anything I asked and a lot of things I didn’t ask for. She rubbed my feet and put pillows under my head and collected all the television remotes for me and ordered in food and tiptoed around the house while I slept on the leather recliner in front of our giant, wall-mounted flat-screen television.

  Two days later, when I went back to work, everyone expressed the usual concern and curiosity around what had happened. I made up a story about a lawn-mower, even though we didn’t have a lawn. I told them the motor of the thing had been so damned quiet that I hadn’t realized it hadn’t completely turned off. I’d reached in to check the blade for an obstruction and the damned thing cut my finger clean off before I could get it out.

  Kanya never told me anything about what really happened to me.

  She cried uncontrollably whenever I asked her about it, so eventually I left her alone. I know there are those who would judge me for that, for not immediately calling the police or trying to get her some kind of help, but I honestly felt paralyzed by it all. I couldn’t comprehend that this woman I loved so much could do these things.

  Some part of me desperately clung to the thought that there had to be some other explanation.

  My brain didn’t shut off entirely, of course.

  I’d always prided myself on giving
Kanya her privacy, but the second she took my car to the store to buy more groceries and more beer, I found myself going into her computer and skimming her social media accounts, looking for anything that might explain a change in her behavior. I read her text messages, looking for clues, but of course much of it was in Thai, not English, so I ended up feeling more frustrated than reassured.

  I considered taking screen shots of everything and sending it to a translation service to find out the truth… or at least to unearth some real clues.

  Clues that she secretly hated me. Clues that she had a boyfriend on the side, someone younger or more handsome or maybe more Asian—someone she had more in common with. Heck, I even found myself speculating that she might owe someone money. I thought maybe she got in with the wrong people back before I knew her in Thailand. Maybe those people found out she married well and now she was being blackmailed or threatened.

  I think I would have accepted any explanation, no matter how outlandish, if it might help me understand why my sweet, lovely girl could do such terrible, frightening things.

  I didn’t find anything, though.

  About a week after that, the next finger disappeared.

  * * *

  That time, I didn’t pass out.

  I threw up.

  After I’d filled the sink with bright-orange bile and what remained of the beef stroganoff I’d eaten the night before, I swayed where I held onto the bathroom counter, looking at my own ghostly pale face and the dark circles under my bloodshot eyes. I looked like a caricature of myself. I’d lost weight. I wondered if I’d managed to lose more hair, too.

  I stared at the skin sagging on my arms and the different hang to my belly and I tried to understand what was happening to me. I looked like I’d aged about fifteen years overnight. My face was dusted unevenly with a scruffy beard, but I didn’t kid myself there was anything rugged or sexy about it. It was more the homeless man on the street kind of scruff than anything remotely deliberate-looking.

  For the first time, it really hit me that she would kill me if I didn’t stop her.