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“...TWO, THREE ,FOUR, five. Strychnine! Yes!”
Meg watched Winston gleefully slam his playing token on the space on the Murder Won game board corresponding to Jack’s Weapon card. Jack—or more accurately, his game character, Jack the Ripper—was Winston’s assigned victim in this round. Winston’s character was Ma Barker, his plastic-and-cardboard token embellished with her likeness.
The point of the game was survival. The last one left alive was the winner. Every player was not only an aspiring murderer but a victim as well, the target of another player’s lethal intent. Players could move their tokens in any direction along the meandering, intersecting paths of the board. To murder your victim, you had to land on the three Weapon, Motive, and Location spaces that matched the three cards your victim drew at the beginning of the game. But you could acquire the corresponding card only if you correctly answered a trivia question related to a historic murder.
If you managed to collect all three cards, your victim was officially iced—and out of the game. In that case you inherited not only your victim’s assets but his or her intended victim as well, giving you a fresh target to pursue.
A howling gust of wind rattled the windows. Far from abating, the storm seemed to be getting worse. The pounding of wind and rain was a constant backdrop. Pete had announced that he had a gas-powered generator in the toolshed some distance from the house. No one had volunteered to brave the elements to fetch it. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
Phone service was out, as well. They had cell phones, of course, but unfortunately, there was no cell reception on the island, so they were essentially cut off from the outside world.
Winston turned to Jack. “Your days are numbered, my friend.”
“Not if you keep on the way you’re going, my friend. You’ve landed on that space three times and you haven’t answered a question right yet.”
“I have a good feeling about this time,” Winston said. He turned to Meg, keeper of the Interrogation cards. “Shoot.”
Neal obligingly aimed a finger at Winston and mimed a trigger pull. He still had that tumbler of bourbon in front of him, Meg noticed. He’d refilled it a couple of times.
She’d known Jack had no intention of joining them for a rousing game of Murder Won, not after everything. But she’d asked him to as a personal favor. They had the next three days to get through, and if the tension level didn’t ease, they’d all be basket cases by Sunday.
He’d studied her expression searchingly. Pete’s dreadful revelation stood between them like a glass wall. Blandly she’d returned his stare, and at last he’d slid his gaze away with a weary little smile. Sure, Meg, he’d said. If it’s what you want, I’ll play. She knew he’d relented in part simply to spend more time with her.
She drew the top Interrogation card and held it near a candle. “Who killed Lucrezia Borgia’s husband?”
“I know that one,” Neal said.
“Shush!” Winston waved him to silence. “That’s a giveaway. Old Lucrezia herself did the deed.”
Meg had never seen her fiancé so animated. Still, she was forced to give him the bad news. “Wrong. Lucrezia’s brother Cesare killed him.”
Neal said, “Who?”
“Give me that.” Winston snatched the card from her fingers, glanced at it, and tossed it back.
Pete unwrapped a cigar and clipped the end. “Told you this was no game for sissies, Ma. Better luck next time.”
Jack tossed the dice and moved his Jack the Ripper token, groaning when he overshot the Motive space he was aiming for: Life Insurance Windfall. He’d already collected Pete’s Weapon and Location cards—Garrote and Taj Mahal—by landing on those spaces and answering the questions correctly.
Meg watched Jack shake a few more sunflower seeds onto the table. Was he chagrined or secretly pleased to have drawn her uncle as his murder victim tonight? His placid expression offered no clue. He never once glanced at Pete, whose token bore the likeness of John Wilkes Booth.
He did look at Meg, though, his crystal eyes smoky in the candlelight. Not furtive peeks when he thought she wasn’t looking, but the bold, interested stare she associated with those early months of dating before she’d let him make love to her. Rainy afternoons in the student-union coffee shop, him looking at her that way over cups of fragrant jasmine tea, her body humming with an acute, almost painful awareness of his nearness, his heat, his knee brushing hers under the table. The artless sensuality of his long fingers as he idly twirled a coffee stirrer.
If there was anything untoward in Jack’s regard now, none of the other players seemed to notice. She told herself she was hypersensitive, emotionally ravaged by the events of the day.
Tanya rolled the dice and moved her Lizzie Borden token eleven spaces, where she was instructed to pay twenty-five thousand dollars in blackmail money. She flung a raw oath and began counting out hot-pink Payola chips. Legal fees were paid with neon-green Mouthpiece chips, and guns and other weaponry with blaze-orange Ammo chips.
She cursed again. “Seventeen grand. That’s it. I’m flat busted.”
Meg couldn’t help herself. Despite her efforts to ignore Jack, she caught his eye and almost lost it. If there was one thing Tanya wasn’t...
“Story of that gal’s life,” Pete said, grinning around his reeking cigar. “Never has enough cash.”
Neal tsked. “You know what happens to naughty little ax murderesses who don’t cough up their hush money.” He snatched Tanya’s Lizzie token and held it over the open top of the little plastic cage attached to the playing board. “No no!” he squawked in a high-pitched voice. “Not Death Row!” He dropped Lizzie into the cage and strapped her into the tiny electric chair.
“Goodness,” Winston said. “I guess it’s curtains for Lizzie.”
Pete said, “And you thought backgammon was cutthroat.”
Meg had accepted her promotion to marketing VP before the decision was made to create a kids’ version of Murder Won. Jack’s words had hit home, mirroring her own misgivings. Did she have the stomach to institute an aggressive campaign for this malevolent game aimed at children her daughters’ ages?
Pete had developed Murder Won seven years earlier when he still owned the handful of service stations he’d inherited from his father. He’d always loved mystery games, but those already on the market were too tame for him, so he invented his own. A few inquiries with the major game companies resulted in two offers, both of which he rejected. He sold the service stations and started his own business in Queens, producing and marketing Murder Won.
It was a gamble that paid off. Faced with the near impossibility of getting his product into stores under an independent label, Pete started with mail-order sales. Word of mouth spread and soon Murder Won became the hot item to own, more popular than Trivial Pursuit in its heyday.
If anything, the unpolished sales brochure and the obscurity of Stanton Game Company, Inc., intrigued jaded murder-mystery fans and boosted sales. Within a year Murder Won was flying off store shelves as well. The game and its various spinoffs had made Pete Stanton millions.
Meg could only marvel that this quirky game that began life seven years earlier with a small underground following was now poised to invade Saturday-morning kiddie shows.
After Tanya succumbed to Old Sparky, it was Meg’s turn. She tossed the dice and moved her Al Capone token, landing on a Location card she had no use for: Oval Office. The game progressed as, one by one, players were annihilated.
Eventually Jack and Neal were the only players left. Neal had only one of the three cards necessary to kill Jack, Ice Pick, while Jack held two of Neal’s cards: Fired Unjustly and Alamo.
Jack hurled a steady stream of taunts at his opponent while patiently attempting to land on the space corresponding to the last card he needed, Rusty Scythe. He kept throwing the dice and overshooting.
While Neal grew increasingly agitated, Jack appeared serene, almost bored. Lazily munching his sunflower seeds, he exuded an air of sublime confidence, even when Neal captured his Motive card, called simply Lust.
At one point Jack smiled at Meg, that lazy, knowing grin that always made her wonder if he could read her mind. Only then did she realize she’d been nervously twisting a strand of hair. She dropped her hands to her lap.
At last Jack landed on Rusty Scythe. A funny grinding sound came from Neal’s throat. Jack looked at Meg, awaiting the question.
She drew an Interrogation card and read: “Who assassinated Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, in 1914, thus precipitating the outbreak of World War One?” She laid down the card and folded her hands, biting back a knowing smile of her own.
Pete chuckled and sucked on his cigar. Neal leaned back in his chair, allowing himself a little smile of triumph.
Jack frowned. Scrubbed at his jaw. Blinked in perplexity. Neal snickered and reached for the dice, but Jack stayed his hand.
“This is just a shot in the dark, mind you, but, well, could it have been that pesky Serb Gavrilo Princip?”
Meg beamed. “Right you are, Jack.”
The counselor’s eyebrows shot up. “My word!”
Neal’s nostrils flared. He held out his hand and Meg dropped the card into it for his inspection.
Tanya said, “Well. You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, Jack?”
Jack said, “I was working toward my B.A. at Binghamton before Meg got... before we quit school to get married.”
“Let me guess.” Winston regarded Jack with something that could almost be called respect. “Your major was history.”
“With an emphasis on modern Europe. I never imagined old Gavrilo would come in handy someday.”
Meg was pleased to have Winston’s assumptions about Jack thrown back in his face. She knew her fiancé viewed her ex-husband as a lowbrow drudge, and the insulting stereotype rankled. Irreconcilable differences notwithstanding, she’d always respected Jack’s intellect and industry and the fact that he wasn’t afraid of hard work. If he’d been willing to direct those qualities into a secure career, they’d still be together.
Or would they? The scene in the living room came back to her with sickening force. The horrific secret her husband had kept from her.
He hadn’t even tried to deny it. He could have just looked her in the eye and said, “Pete’s lying, Meg. He’s trying to cause trouble. You know it can’t be true.”
Instead he’d threatened her uncle’s life—a calm, simply worded promise of retribution. Seeing the look on Jack’s face, the scary intensity, she’d almost believed him capable of following through.
When that hellishly strained dinner had finally been over, the girls had practically fallen asleep in their pumpkin pie. Together Meg and Jack carried them upstairs and put them to bed. For a few charmed minutes she allowed herself to pretend they were a normal family doing normal-family things.
Together they sang the requisite lullaby, “Hush, Little Baby.” Jack had begun that particular bedtime ritual when Marie was a newborn, and he’d serenaded all three girls to sleep with the same song. In the last year of their marriage he’d rarely made it home by the girls’ bedtime, but whenever he did, he was the vocalist of choice.
When he and Meg had separated, she’d tried to avoid the painful reminder of her ex-husband by substituting another song from her limited repertoire, but the girls would have none of it. Only “Daddy’s song” would do. So she’d carried on the tradition in her own wobbly soprano for the past two years.
Hearing Jack’s deep, velvety voice crooning the familiar words again caused a bittersweet ache to swell her throat. She feigned a little cough, not trusting her voice.
They took turns kissing the girls and making them into “sausages,” tucking the covers tightly down the length of their little bodies as they giggled and tried to lie perfectly still. When the two of them stood to leave, Jack laid his heavy, warm hand on her shoulder just as he often had when they were married. It was a wordless communication, a reaffirmation of love and solidarity—and pride in their daughters, their little miracles. And just as she’d often done back then, she’d reached up to entwine her fingers with his.
And abruptly dropped her hand without touching him...
Pete’s gusty sigh jerked her back to the present. Rising, he dropped his cigar stub into his half-filled coffee cup, earning a sneer of disgust from his wife. “Well, folks, as the tomcat said while making love to a skunk, I’ve enjoyed about as much of this as I can stand. I’m gonna hit the hay.”
*
SOMETHING WAS TEASING Jack’s exhausted brain back to consciousness, something more than the noise of the storm. And much more pleasant. A soft, rhythmic stroking on his bare neck and shoulders.
He sighed and stirred restlessly. The uneven terrain of leather upholstery under the thin sheet he lay on brought him closer to wakefulness, as did a smooth, solid something against his nose that he dimly identified as the back of the sofa.
More feather strokes as the top sheet inched down and he felt cool air on his bare torso.
“Meg...” he mumbled, shifting onto his back. Some primitive part of him sensed the ardent feminine softness hovering nearby. His arms reached for her, his mouth seeking hers, even as a tiny spark of lucidity registered that something was off-kilter.
Greedy hands yanked at his tangled sheet and blanket. “I’ve waited so long for this.”
Tanya! His eyes sprang open, though he could make out nothing in the ink-black living room.
He tried to sit up, only to find himself snagged by the covers she was furiously trying to free. She whispered, “Do you have any idea how hard it was waiting for that old fool upstairs to fall asleep?”
“Tanya—” He grunted as her elbow found his solar plexus. “This is no good.”
“Oh, it’ll be good.” Success. The sheet and blanket went flying. “Take my word for it. It’ll be good.” She pounced on him like a Doberman on prime rib. She was wearing something silky and not much of it. Her hair felt wiry against his face. He’d bet it had absorbed more chemicals than a toxic waste dump.
He pushed on her shoulders. “Now, listen, Tanya. This isn’t gonna happen. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but—”
“The stubble’s coming back.” Her nails scraped his cheek. “Good.”
He wore only pajama bottoms. When he felt her yank the drawstring at his waist, he seized her hands and bolted upright.
And squeezed his eyes shut against the beam of light that suddenly speared them. “What the hell...?”
Neal’s hoarse stage whisper came from the upstairs railing overlooking the living room. “I knew it. You son of a bitch!”
Tanya cursed under her breath. “Here we go.”
As Neal raced down the stairs, his flashlight played over the scene of impending debauchery. Jack hurriedly retied his drawstring. “Listen, it’s not how it looks.”
Neal snorted. Jack would laugh, too, in his place.
Tanya hissed, “You don’t own me, Neal. I didn’t make any promises.” The light targeted her face and she squinted at her lover defiantly.
Jack braced himself for vitriol, only to hear a whimpering “Jeez, Tanya, how’d you let him talk you into this? I thought we had something special, you and me. I thought you cared.”
She pursed her lips in annoyance. The harsh light found every little line around her mouth and eyes. Where did this woman come off claiming to be twenty-nine?
Jack ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. “Listen, you guys have a lot to talk about, so—” The light seared his eyes and he shielded them with a hand.
“How could you do it with him, Tanya? An ex-con. A criminal!”
“You wanna know the truth, that turns me on,” she said, chin high.
“Is that what I have to do to keep you?” The light danced maniacally as Neal slammed the flashlight into the back of the sofa. “Knock over a liquor store? Maybe a couple of gas stations?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, grow up, Neal.”
“Could you guys try to keep your voices down?” Jack pleaded.
“’Cause I’d do it, Tanya,” Neal whined. “I’d do that and anything else you asked of me. Anything. You know that. We talked about—”
“We talked about a lot of things,” she snapped. “Talk’s cheap. And boring. Jack doesn’t talk, he takes action. You don’t get it, do you, Neal?”
She stood up, hands on hips, and Jack got to see what she was wearing—and what she wasn’t. The part that was there was pale green and filmy.
She said, “Jack’s not like you. He doesn’t snivel and beg and let some woman tell him when something needs doing. He just takes care of business. He—”
“That’s enough.” Jack stood up, grabbed his sheet and blanket from the floor, and flung them onto the sofa. He’d already forfeited one night’s sleep driving down from Ithaca. He was running on fumes. All he wanted was to get some shut-eye. To spend as much of this miserable weekend as possible unconscious. “Get that light outta my face. Now!”
He sensed the sudden surge in Tanya’s libido, a hot wave of pheromones at this display of bad-boy machismo. The beam of light slowly dropped.
Jack remembered when Neal had been a pimply, snot-nosed kid. It wasn’t that long ago. “For what it’s worth, I didn’t invite the lady here. This was all her idea.”
“Shut up!” Neal barked. “You—You just shut up. And you!” The light swung from Tanya toward the hallway that led to the den. “Come with me, woman. Now!”
She muttered, “Oh brother,” and threw Jack an eloquent look. He knew she wasn’t looking forward to spending the next hour or so pretending to be helplessly turned on by her young lover’s exhibition of macho churlishness.
Apparently emboldened by his woman’s slavering obedience, Neal paused and directed the beam of light to Jack once more. “And if you want to leave this island in one piece—”
“Don’t press your luck, kid.”
The light wavered, swung away. He watched their shadows disappear, heard Tanya’s whispered words, placating Neal.
Jack flopped back onto the sofa and pulled the sheet up. Could the weekend get any worse?
*
JOHN WILKES BOOTH chewed on his stogie and snarled, “How about that look on your wife’s face when I told her you’re a lousy ex-con.”
Jack the Ripper threw down his sunflower seeds and pulled out a long knife. “I’ll kill you, you meddling son of a bitch!”
Jack lunged for Booth and stabbed him in the heart, again and again. The blade made a dull thudding noise that grew louder and louder—
Meg jerked awake. The bedroom was nearly pitch-black. Rain hammered the windows. Tree branches scratched at the glass like bony fingers.
She rolled onto her stomach and pulled the pillow over her head, hoping to blot out some of the noise. And praying she wouldn’t dream about a showdown between Ma Barker and Lizzie Borden.
When she awoke again she was still lying on her stomach with her arms circling her head. She rolled over and found she had no feeling in her right arm. With her left hand she lifted it like a lump of clay and rested it on her middle. She lay there a few moments feeling the rush of blood shoot sparks into her fingertips. She flexed her hand, swung her legs over the side of the bed, and sat up.
It was still dark. She groped for the matches and candle on the nightstand. By the flame’s meager light she peered at her wristwatch: 2:54. The storm hadn’t let up at all. Would the girls be able to sleep through it?
She rose, not bothering to cover her flannel nightgown with a robe, and carried her candle out into the hallway. She peered over the railing. Jack was down there, she knew, sleeping on the sofa, but the flickering halo of candlelight didn’t reach that far.
She inched open the girls’ door and tiptoed inside. This room was furnished with two bunk beds. Marie slept smack up against the safety rail on one of the top bunks, her leg dangling over the side, the flashlight clutched to her chest.
The other top bunk was mussed but empty. Checking the bottom bunk, Meg found Nora and Daisy curled up together, their limbs flopped over one another. She could only assume Daisy had awakened disoriented by the strange surroundings, and Nora had abandoned her own bed to comfort her little sister. Meg smiled and dislodged the tangled blanket enough to cover them.
She left quietly and turned back toward her own room, only to stop short. Something niggled at the corners of her awareness, something... out of place. She peered into the gloom, struggling to discern detail.
Then she saw it. At the other end of the horseshoe-shaped hallway, directly across the chasm of the two-story living room. The door to the attic, half-open. It had been closed when she’d gone to bed, she was certain.
With the candle held before her, she made her way around the horseshoe. Her steps slowed as she approached the attic door, held open by an object, some sort of bundle lying on the stairs and spilling into the hallway.
Laundry, she told herself. Even as her heart pummeled her rib cage.
Laundry. Even when she saw. Even when she crouched down and held the candle over it.
And then she was scrambling backward, the candle slipping from her numb fingers as a scream raced up her throat, a long, low, wounded-animal sound that never made it past the hand she clamped over her mouth.
The candle sputtered and winked out and there was only darkness. And the dead thing on the attic stairs.