Nobody's Victims

The Ninth Tenant-2

"I give her a week, maybe two," Mrs. Donatello laughed, her folds of fat shaking. Pass Go: give me $200. And I’ll bet she hears the little Wallinsky boy’s crying, first. That’s how Koker got it."

"No, even a ghost can tell she’s not the tender-hearted sort," Miss Pierce sniffed, counting her pile of play-money. "I say she’ll hear the Mad Lover first, lurching around with his dripping butcher-knife, looking for Suzanne Bradley." She gave a delighted little shiver. The Deranged Boyfriend was her favorite among the ghosts. "After all," she added, inevitably, "He was the first!"

"Then maybe he’ll be the first one she sees, too," said Bruno Gallondri, rattling the dice, "Swinging by his neck from the chandelier."

"No," pronounced Mrs. Brown, "The Bathtub Full of Blood—and Holloway floating in it."

"Surfacing," Glimke corrected, scribbling more notes. "First the hands, hanging loose from his cut wrists. Then his bloated face. Then the rest of him… But I don’t think she’ll stay and watch that long."

"Maybe she’ll see old Mrs. Gomez, with her head still in the oven," Dubcek considered. "She was number three, wasn’t she? Ah, Mrs. Holloway was the only tenant who saw that one; that’s what made her give up and run."

"When do you think Ms. Hart will run?" Glimke started a new page. "Or do you think she’ll… stay?"

"She’ll stay," smirked George Gallondri. "You know these Liberated types: too stubborn for their own good."

"And too greedy to give up that nice, cheap rent," his brother added. "She’ll stay until she drops."

Glimke frowned. He’d already started shaping a plot with a good Love Interest, and it properly had to end with the heroine/victim throwing her pride to the winds and herself—sobbing abandonedly, of course—into her True Love’s arms. Still, he could always work it the other way: Proud Hart holds out and Dies Gruesomely For It. A modern morality play. "How do you think she’ll do it?" he asked.

"Too many sleeping pills," shrugged Mrs. Brown, who wasn’t terribly imaginative. "I want to buy the waterworks."

"You’re over-mortgaged," Miss Pierce cautioned. "I think she’ll cut her throat with a kitchen-knife."

"It’s been done," Dubcek reminded her. "Mr. Olson, remember?"

"Yes, he was number seven." Mrs. Donatello grinned at the dice. "Say, nobody’s seen his ghost yet. Maybe she will."

"I think those Jesus People saw him," said George Gallondri, scratching his chin. "They saw everybody."

There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. The last tenants—Reverend and Mrs. Falmon and their half-dozen hard-praying friends—had caused considerable argument among the regulars. Nobody wanted to speak ill of religion, of course, but then again the Falmons and their friends had been really awful people: unbearably smug and utterly sure they could "exorcise the spirit of evil" from apartment #4 with their noisy and nonstop praying. The ghosts had driven them out in two months flat, which ended the problem, but the Jesus People were still something of a sore topic.

"Uhm, well," Bruno amended, "They saw just about everybody, to hear them tell it, though they didn’t give many details. The more they prayed, the more the ghosts came out. Couldn’t eat, sleep or turn their backs without something nasty happening. Couldn’t take baths, either. Heh!"

"Couldn’t take it, period." Mrs. Donatello laughed again, quaking like a plateful of molded pink jell-o. "And the things they said as they left… My, my! For such proper, God-fearing folk, they sure knew a lot of nasty words!"

"Miz Hart doesn’t seem the religious type," commented Mrs. Brown. "Hmph. Does anybody want to buy a railroad?"

"I wonder just what type she is," Glimke pondered, nibbling his pen. "I mean, background: education, personal quirks, love life… That sort of thing."

"College graduate, majored in Archeology." Mrs. Donatello smiled sweetly as she dropped her well-timed bomb. "Couldn’t get work in it, though. She tried teaching, but had to quit. Some sort of scandal, I think. She said the faculty didn’t like the way she taught, uh, ‘details of third-millennium BCE goddess worship’, whatever that means. My bet is, she had an affair with one of her students. Hee-hee!"

"That wouldn’t be much of a scandal these days," Miss Pierce sniffed. She hated to be upstaged in her own parlor. "But how would you know all that about her?"

"Oh, I made a point of being in the hallway when she came to sign the lease," Mrs. Donatello preened, "And we struck up a little conversation."

"Not so little, knowing you," Dubcek snickered. "What else did she say?"

"Well…" Mrs. Donatello paused briefly for dramatic effect. "I invited her in for some tea, and she accepted, and we talked about tea for a bit. She knows quite a lot about herbal remedies, and home pickling, and homemade perfumes and incenses, and that sort of thing. Oh yes, she also knows how to hand-weave, and sew, and knit, and make pottery and jewelry. She made those silver earrings herself, you know. Those big hoops with the little crystal stars inside, they’re supposed to represent ‘Inanna, Queen of Heaven’, or some such thing. She made that pendant, too: that abstract thing that looks sort of like a long-tailed butterfly or a two-sided tomahawk. Solid silver, all of it—except for the inlaid stones of course. And—"

"Another Artistic Type," Glimke pronounced, scribbling notes.

"But what did she say?" Miss Pierce insisted.

"Why, my dear…" Mrs. Donatello smiled wickedly. "She asked me right out: ‘Who was murdered in that apartment?’"

There was shocked silence for all of five seconds, while Mrs. Donatello triumphantly plunked down a house on Park Place.

"And you told her?!" Mrs. Brown shrilled.

"Well, yes. Everything," Mrs. Donatello confessed.

"Everything?!" Glimke threw down his pen. "Bad art! You should have told her only about the Bradley Murder, and let her learn the rest by degrees!"

"Damn right," growled Bruno Gallondri. "She would’ve had to come around to each of us, the way it’s always been."

"We’d have told her about the other tenants, one at a time," George Gallondri added.

"Each in turn," snapped Miss Pierce. "Plenty of stories for all of us."

"We’ve practically got it down by heart," Dubcek finished. "But you— You went and told it all at once!"

"Why, I couldn’t help it!" Mrs. Donatello almost wailed, doing her best to cower in her chair, though there wasn’t much room for that. "She kept asking and asking, wanting more details. I swear, I actually had trouble getting rid of her! You never saw anyone so eager to find out all about apartment #4."

The other regulars looked at each other.

"Another Koker, maybe?" Dubcek ventured.

"Maybe another Falmon," George Gallondri gloomed.

"Perhaps a trifle different," Miss Pierce considered. "More likely one of these New Age mystics, downright eager to see a real, live ghost."

"If so, she’ll get more than she bargained for." Mrs. Brown laughed nastily.

"They’ll eat her alive," Bruno Gallondri agreed.

"Or seduce her into joining them." Glimke smiled, eyes narrowing. "After a suitable period of growing madness, of course. Yes, she might be an interesting novelty after all." He picked up his pen and began making more notes.

Ms. Hart moved in the next day—or rather, her furnishings did. Furniture, boxes, crates, suitcases and all were brought up to the top floor and left in the long hall, almost blocking the way to the door. Nothing was brought into the apartment itself. Miss Pierce and Mr. Glimke were the first to notice the stalled train of items stringing down to the landing, and took care to ask the impassive movers about the odd arrangement.

The moving-men only shrugged and reported that the customer had particularly asked them to do it this way. They had no further information, and weren’t interested in speculating on the customer’s peculiar request. They unloaded the last boxes, left them in the hallway, and drove off.

Glimke lost no time reporting this odd development to the other tenants, while Miss Pierce took the opportunity to inspect the unguarded property. She was quivering with excitement by the time the other tenants filed up to her apartment to hear the latest news.

"I couldn’t get into the trunks, of course," Miss Pierce reported as she handed out tea and macaroons, "But I did manage to look in some of the cardboard cartons, and my dears, they’re all stuffed with books on the most arcane sort of things."

"Such as?" Dubcek mumbled around a mouthful of sherry.

"Herbalism, of course—I expected that—and anthropology and archeology too, but Classical studies? I swear, some of those books are written in Latin, and Greek, and the other languages I can’t even guess. There’s a whole set of hardcover books—it must be the complete version—of The Golden Bough. Enormous thing! And there’s another, called The White Goddess, that looks terribly well-thumbed—"

"In… deed?" Glimke sat up a bit straighter, intrigued. He’d heard of those titles, somewhere, a long time ago.

"—And there was another box packed full of all sorts of metal… things: brass and copper, and I think I saw some silver—or at least silver-plate. All candlesticks, little bowls, cups, bells, little statuettes and things—simply a curio-collector’s delight. The furniture is terribly elegant, very simple, classical, almost severe design. She has excellent taste in furnishings, that’s for certain."

"So she’s got money and taste." Dubcek shrugged. "But do you have any idea why she left all that valuable stuff lying out in the hallway?"

"I haven’t a clue… unless perhaps she wants to paint the place first."

"Painting takes too long," George Gallondri opined. "She wouldn’t leave her stuff lying out for that much time."

"Maybe she just wants to scrub the place down first," Mrs. Brown speculated. "That wouldn’t take too long."

"Ooh, maybe she’s seen The Stain growing!" Mrs. Donatello enthused, "Or noticed the smell in the bathroom, showing up already."

"Or she’s just naturally fussy-clean," Bruno Gallondri suggested. "I’d like to know, though, just how she expects to drag all that furniture in by herself."

"Hope she doesn’t expect me to help," Dubcek sniffed.

"I can’t get a handle on this," Glimke muttered, chewing the end of his pen. "She’s some sort of businesswoman, has money but no checking account… as if she wanted to avoid official notice. Mystic, scholarly, ex-teacher, downright eager to see the ghosts… but somehow she doesn’t look like the high-strung, wafty, nervous type."

"Maybe she wants to study the ghosts," Mrs. Brown shrugged, reaching for another macaroon. "Maybe she’s the dedicated scholar type."

"That wouldn’t sell." Glimke frowned at his notes. "You don’t want a super-competent type for a heroine, not in a thriller."

"We’ll see how competent she is when the ghosts come to get her," snickered Bruno Gallondri, refilling his sherry glass. "They’ll knock the smarts out of her."

"But how?" Glimke puzzled, scribbling another note. "How will they express…? Hmmm, just what is a ghost, anyway?"

"A Spirit of the Departed, of course," sniffed Miss Pierce, "Bound to earth by some great passion of love, duty or… terror."

"But what powers them? Where do they get the energy to show themselves, or make physical things happen?" Glimke tapped his pen against his teeth. "’Upon what meat doth this, our Caesar, feed’?"

Just then they heard the front door opening. They all froze, listening.

Sure enough, the footsteps were characteristically light and quick, and came steadily up the stairs, flight after flight.

"It’s her," Dubcek whispered. "Wait, wait…"

They crouched immobile about the dining room table, silent as conspirators, listening. The light, firm footsteps passed the door and thudded up the hallway to the last flight of stairs.

Glimke dared to get up from the table and tiptoe out to the door to watch Ms. Hart’s progress. He was back in a moment to report. "She was carrying a big suitcase, and she looked… hmm, I’d say purposeful—but smiling. Definitely smiling. An odd sort of smile…" He frowned, puzzled. "Of course, I only got a quick glimpse of her face, made sure she didn’t see me. It could have meant nothing."