Megan Abbott - The Best American Mystery Stories 2016

She was aware that she was talking very loudly, and her chest felt damp. Lowering her voice, she leaned toward him.

“I think there might be a clue in my oven,” she said.

“Do you?” he said, rubbing his chin. “Any little men in there?”

“It’s not like that. It’s not. I see them, yes.” She couldn’t look him in the eye or she would lose her nerve. “But I know they’re not really little men. It’s something she’s doing. It always starts at two. Two a.m. She’s doing something. She did it to Larry and she’s doing it to me.”

He was rubbing his face with his hand, and she knew she had lost him.

“I told you on the phone,” she said, more desperately now. “I think she drugged me. I brought the cup.”

Penny reached into her purse again, this time removing the teacup, its bottom still brown-ringed.

Detective Noble lifted it, took a sniff, set it down.

“Drugged you with Old Grandad, eh?”

“I know there’s booze in it. But detective, there’s more than booze going on here.” Again her voice rose high and sharp, and other detectives seemed to be watching now from their desks.

But Noble seemed unfazed. There even seemed to be the flicker of a smile on his clean-shaven face.

“So why does she want to harm you?” he asked. “Is she in love with you too?”

Penny looked at him and counted quietly in her head, the dampness on her chest gathering.

She had been dealing with men like this her whole life. Smug men. Men with fine clothes or shabby ones, all with the same slick ideas, the same impatience, big voice, slap-and-tickle, fast with a backhanded slug. Nice turned to nasty on a dime.

“Detective,” she said, taking it slowly, “Mrs. Stahl must suspect that I know. About what she did to Larry. I don’t know if she drugged him and staged it. The hunting knife shows there was a struggle. What I do know is there’s more than what’s in your little file.”

He nodded, leaning back in his chair once more. With his right arm he reached for another folder in the metal tray on his desk.

“Miss, can we talk for a minute about your file?”

“My file?”

“When you called, I checked your name. S.O.P. Do you want to tell me about the letters you’ve been sending to a certain address in Holmby Hills?”

“What? I... There was only one.”

“And two years ago, the fellow over at MCA? Said you slashed his tires?”

“I was never charged.”

Penny would never speak about that, or what that man had tried to do to her in a back booth at Chasen’s.

He set the file down. “Miss, what exactly are you here for? You got a gripe with Mrs. Stahl? Hey, I don’t like my landlord either. What, don’t wanna pay the rent?”

A wave of exhaustion shuddered through Penny. For a moment she did not know if she could stand.

But there was Larry to think about. And how much she belonged in Number Four. Because she did, and it had marked the beginning of things. A new day for Penny.

“No,” Penny said, rising. “That’s not it. You’ll see. You’ll see. I’ll show you.”

“Miss,” he said, calling after her. “Please don’t show me anything. Just behave yourself, okay? Like a good girl.”

Back at Number Four, Penny lay down on the rattan sofa, trying to breathe, to think.

Pulling Mrs. Stahl’s book from her dress pocket, she began reading.

But it wasn’t like she thought.

It wasn’t dirty, not like the brown-papered ones. It was a detective novel, and it took place in England. A woman recently exonerated for poisoning her lover attends her school reunion. While there, she finds an anonymous poison-pen note tucked in the sleeve of her gown: “You Dirty Murderess...!”

Penny gasped. But then wondered: Had that inscription just been a wink, Larry to Mrs. Stahl?

He gave her books she liked, Benny had said. Stiff British stuff that he could tease her about.

Was that all this was, all the inscription had meant?

No, she assured herself, sliding the book back into her pocket. It’s a red herring. To confuse me, to keep me from finding the truth. Larry needs me to find out the truth.

It was shortly after that she heard the click of her mail slot. Looking over, she saw a piece of paper slip through the slit and land on the entryway floor.

Walking over, she picked it up.

Bungalow Four:

You are past due.

“I have to move anyway,” she told Benny, showing him the note.

“No, kid, why?” he whispered. Mr. Flant was sleeping in the bedroom, the gentle whistle of his snore.

“I can’t prove she’s doing it,” Penny said. “But it smells like a gas chamber in there.”

“Listen, don’t let her spook you,” Benny said. “I bet the pilot light is out. Want me to take a look? I can come by later.”

“Can you come now?”

Looking into the darkened bedroom, Benny smiled, patted her forearm. “I don’t mind.”

Stripped to his undershirt, Benny ducked under the bath towel Penny had hung over the kitchen door.

“I thought you were inviting me over to keep your bed warm,” he said as he kneeled down on the linoleum.

The familiar noise started, the tick-tick-tick.

“Do you hear it?” Penny said, voice tight. Except the sound was different in the kitchen than in the bedroom. It was closer. Not inside the walls but everywhere.

“It’s the igniter,” Benny said. “Trying to light the gas.”

Peering behind the towel, Penny watched him.

“But you smell it, right?” she said.

“Of course I smell it,” he said, his voice strangely high. “God, it’s awful.”

He put his face to the baseboards, the sink, the shuddering refrigerator.

“What’s this?” he said, tugging the oven forward, his arms straining.

He was touching the wall behind the oven, but Penny couldn’t see.

“What’s what?” she asked. “Did you find something?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his head turned from her. “I... Christ, you can’t think with it. I feel like I’m back in Argonne.”

He had to lean backward, palms resting on the floor.

“What is it you saw back there?” Penny asked, pointing behind the oven.

But he kept shaking his head, breathing into the front of his undershirt, pulled up.

After a minute, both of them breathing hard, he reached up and turned the knob on the front of the oven door.

“I smell it,” Penny said, stepping back. “Don’t you?”

“That pilot light,” he said, covering his face, breathing raspily. “It’s gotta be out.”

His knees sliding on the linoleum, he inched back toward the oven, white and glowing.

“Are you... are you going to open it?”

He looked at her, his face pale and his mouth stretched like a piece of rubber.

“I’m going to,” he said. “We need to light it.”

But he didn’t stir. There was a feeling of something, that door open like a black maw, and neither of them could move.

Penny turned, hearing a knock at the door.

When she turned back around, she gasped.

Benny’s head and shoulders were inside the oven, his voice making the most terrible sound, like a cat, its neck caught in a trap.

“Get out,” Penny said, no matter how silly it sounded. “Get out!”

Pitching forward, she leaned down and grabbed for him, tugging at his trousers, yanking him back.

Stumbling, they both rose to their feet, Penny nearly huddling against the kitchen wall, its cherry-sprigged paper.

Turning, he took her arms hard, pressing himself against her, pressing Penny against the wall.

She could smell him, and his skin was clammy and goose-quilled.

His mouth pressed against her neck roughly and she could feel his teeth, his hands on her hips. Something had changed, and she’d missed it.