Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

Rob’s eyes glistened. “I wish it was a Harley, like Gordon’s.”

“Maybe some day, if you’re nice to me.” She looked around as they heard a car door slam beyond the trees. “They’re back already. Now you know what you have to do tomorrow night. And don’t jump the gun. Don’t call the fire department until you’re sure it’s hopeless. Now hide the milk jug. We’ll have our sandwiches here in the garden. I can’t bear to be at the table with him. You should see the way he eats.” She made exaggerated chopping motions with her teeth. They both started giggling.

While Beryl put the groceries away, Gordon stripped off his T-shirt and wandered out onto the deck where he braced his powerful arms against the redwood rail and proceeded to do a series of push-ups until Beryl joined him carrying two glasses. A sleek, well-groomed brunette, she was one of those women who had perfected the art of concealing her age.

“Cocktail before lunch, darling?”

Gordon leaned over the rail, staring down through the trees to the garden below. “I see lunch is already being served. Guess we’re not invited.”

Beryl came to stand beside him, one hand stroking his muscular brown back. “Sandwiches alfresco. How sweet.”

“Wonder what they’re up to now.”

“Oh, don’t start. They’re not getting into any mischief. One would think you were never a child.”

He grunted. “Selena? A child? She’s the oldest twelve-year-old I ever met.”

“An exceptionally bright child. A precocious child. I should think that dreary little Rob would bore her to tears. Cute, I grant you, but dumb as a box of rocks.”

Gordon flung an arm around her shoulders. “Cute but dumb. Like me, you mean.”

“Cute you are. Dumb you are not. Now drink your cocktail.”

Gordon’s darkly handsome face wore a speculative, brooding look. “I’m not so dumb I can’t tell when they’re up to something.”

“Will you stop? What is it you think they’re up to?”

“I wish I knew. It doesn’t seem to bother you at all, what they did to that playhouse.”

“It’s Selena’s playhouse, darling. What was I supposed to do, forbid her to paint it? It did look frightfully shabby, you know that.”

“But using the same colors as the Valley house?”

“You find that sinister? Really, my pet, Selena loved the Valley house. She still misses it.”

Gordon was not to be appeased. “Painting the same number as the Valley house on the door? Morbid, I’d call it.”

Beryl’s tone lost some of its lightness. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“Well, it bothers me — and she knows it. The way she dragged me down there the other day and told me to look in the window. She’d put her daddy’s picture on that little pine table. And another thing. I don’t think you should let her sleep down there.”

Beryl howled. “Gordon, you’re too much. There’s no harm in her sleeping in the playhouse occasionally.”

“You said she was precocious and that Rob kid is a sturdy little runt.”

“Not physically precocious, you idiot. Tell me the truth. What’s really bothering you? You’re not still imagining things, I hope.”

Gordon gave her a darkly portentous look. “Am I imagining things? Are you sure about that?”

The humor altogether faded from Beryl’s tone now. “How many times must I tell you? She was asleep that night.”

“Later, yes. You made sure of that. But earlier...”

“When she came out of her room? All she saw was a shadowy figure in the darkness.”

“She saw what I was holding. She asked you if I was the milkman, for God’s sake.”

“She was half asleep,” Beryl insisted.

“If she saw what I was carrying she could have seen my face,” he retorted, not angrily but with a stubborn persistence.

“Nonsense. She would have said something after the fire, or certainly when you and I ‘met’ — presumably for the first time — a year later.”

“If she was a normal kid, yes.”

“There’s nothing abnormal about Selena. Far from it. Honestly, Gordon, you’re letting your imagination run wild. Or is it some kind of delayed guilt trip? You didn’t mean to kill Marty. It was an accident. You weren’t supposed to show up that night. Marty wasn’t due back from Portland for another day. He heard you come in and thought you were a burglar. He had a gun, he might have killed you. And it was my idea, not yours, about the fire. How many times must I remind you of all this?”

Revealing an uncharacteristic subtlety of insight, Gordon said: “We should have gone off and got married without saying a word to Selena.”

“What’s our getting married got to do with anything?”

“You must be blind if you haven’t noticed the change in her since we gave her the news.”

Beryl shrugged. “Then I must be blind. Far as I can see, she acts no different.”

“On the surface, no. She hasn’t said anything, it’s the way she looks at me. The way she smiles.”

Beryl leaned over the rail, as charmed by what she saw as Gordon was disturbed. The miniature house among the bright flowers, the two children sitting on the green grass munching their sandwiches, the midday sun spreading a kind of golden varnish over the scene.

“Look at them, will you?” she said. “Did you ever see such a picture of innocence? Like an illustration in a storybook.”

“Yeah, very pretty.”

“Oh, do lighten up, darling. Exercise your body instead of your imagination while I make lunch. You’ll love the avocado salad.”

The following day was as warm as midsummer, the evening as delightfully balmy, with a gentle breeze coming off the lake. Ordinarily, Beryl would express no objection to Selena spending the night in the playhouse; she had dismissed Gordon’s quibble as too fanciful to take seriously, yet she felt obliged to offer at least a token maternal resistance.

“Honey, I’m not sure it’s wise for you to be alone at night down there.”

“Don’t be silly, Mother. I’m perfectly safe. There aren’t any grizzly bears.”

“I wasn’t thinking of grizzly bears.”

“Don’t worry, there’s a lock on the door. Besides, I have to sleep there tonight. Tonight’s special.”

“Special?”

Selena regarded her accusingly. “Don’t you remember?”

“Remember what?”

“It was three years ago tonight. You know, when it happened. The fire and everything.”

Beryl’s hand rose to her lips. “Oh God, yes, you’re right. Fancy your remembering.”

Selena gave her mother a long, considering look. “Mother, dear, I remember everything.”

“Yes, well, maybe it’s wiser not to remember some things.”

“That all depends, doesn’t it? Anyway, I want to spend tonight with Daddy.”

Beryl made a faint choking sound. “With Daddy?”

“With his picture, I mean. Didn’t Gordon tell you? I keep it right next to my cot in the playhouse.”

“That’s sweet.”

There were times when Beryl could not get out of her daughter’s presence soon enough.

Selena did not go to bed at her usual time that night. There was no point; she dared not risk falling asleep. Instead she sat on the shore below the garden watching the lights in the houses across the lake go out, one by one, as the full moon sank lower among the stars. Selena sometimes wondered if she were some sort of freak, born without nerves; she marveled at the absence of any inner turmoil or excitement as the time grew near when she must return to the playhouse and do what had to be done. Her child-woman’s imagination could foresee no possibility of her plan’s failure, compounded though it was of a bizarre mixture of adolescent logic and adult deviousness.