If so, I’ll deny it-just as I did yesterday, when the house was crawling with police wanting to know where I was when my stepmother and father were hacked to death so viciously that one of his eyeballs was flung from its socket.
Never again will I see that terrible glint in his brown gaze, betraying his hideous plans for the wee hours.
Never, never again.
The nightmare is over; at last, I am in control.
For a long time, Maggie just looks at me.
Perhaps she, too, suffered sleepless nights. Perhaps she, too, lay awake, listening in dread for the creak of a heavy masculine step on the stairs. Perhaps she, too, fantasized about making it stop.
“My name,” she tells me in her soft brogue, “is not Maggie.”
No, it isn’t. But it’s the only thing my sister Emma and I have ever called her. It was easier that way; the maid before her had been Maggie.
I look her in the eye. “I’m sorry… Bridget.”
She nods, clearly satisfied.
No fool, Bridget Sullivan. She grasps what so many do not: that things are often exactly as they seem.
“I accept your apology, Miss Borden. Old habits die hard, I know.”
At long last, I smile.
“Please,” I tell her, “call me Lizzie.”
The bestselling author of more than seventy novels, WENDY CORSI STAUB has penned multiple New York Times bestselling adult thrillers under her own name and more than two dozen young adult titles, including the current paranormal suspense series Lily Dale, which has been optioned for television. Her latest thriller, Live to Tell, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and launches a suspense trilogy that will include sequels Scared to Death and Hell to Pay. Under the pseudonym Wendy Markham, she’s a USA Today bestselling author of chick lit and romance.
Industry awards include a Romance Writers of America Rita, three Westchester Library Association Washington Irving Awards for Fiction, the 2007 RWA-NYC Golden Apple for Lifetime Achievement and the 2008 RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award in Suspense. Readers can join her online at www.WendyCorsiStaubcommunity.com.
Programwith a Happy Ending by Cynthia Robinson
The worst part about dying alone in front of your TV is that you can’t get to the remote control. Victor Secco learned this soon after he died in his Barcalounger. His TV was on. In fact, it was blaring. That’s what the headlines said: Mummified corpse found in front of blaring TV.
It’s hard to say when, exactly, Vic’s pharmacological catatonia crossed over into the big sleep. He was up to six or seven Ativans a day, and a couple of Ambiens at night, and then Marina would give him a Ritalin when she wanted him to transfer funds or sign checks. It was all kind of like being dead already. Only you watch a lot of TV.
The first couple of girls who came over-the girls from the service-they would say things like, “Let’s get you outside, Mr. Secco.” Or, “How about some fresh air, Victor?” He’d tell them, “Fuck you. Get out of the way of the TV.”
They didn’t get it. They thought Victor watched so much TV because of the stroke. They didn’t get it when he said he wanted a happy ending, either. They thought he was talking about the TV show. Like he gave shit whether or not Crystal got back together with Jack.
Marina got it, though. She was the third or fourth girl the service had sent over. He waited until she was giving him his sponge bath. Then he said he’d like a happy ending. She smiled, slack-jawed and lupine, and she put a towel over him down there and worked her fist up and down until he was very happy.
“You are bad boy, Victor,” she said in that crazy Russian accent. The accent made it better. He liked to pretend he was James Bond and she was a KGB operative trying to seduce government secrets out of him.
Sometimes he wished that had actually happened. If an operative had approached him when he was at TRW, he would have sold everything he could have copied onto a floppy disk. But no spies ever came forward. No windfall. No house in the Balearic Islands, no bank account in the Caymans.
Instead, Victor had to slog it out, stacking up commissions, one contract at a time. Ballistic-missile systems. Smart bombs. Nerve gas. You work like an asshole. Lots of overtime. Taking clients out for lunch, drinks, dinner, drinks.
And now, for what? So he could sit in front of the TV, goofed up on meds, with nothing to look forward to but his daily hand job.
Marina wasn’t supposed to come over every day. But she said it was obvious to her that Victor needed her there. The people at the agency didn’t understand. She said she’d work for him freelance. Off the books. Cash. She brought groceries, and meds, and she’d turn on the soft- porn station when he was ready for his happy ending. That made it go faster. And she started doing more things for him, extra things. Running his errands. Picking up around the house. Selling his car. Putting his golf clubs and stereo and the furniture he didn’t need onto eBay.
“You’re so alone, Victor,” she’d say.
He’d point the remote at the TV and change the channel.
One day he looked down at his watch.
“Hey, Marina,” he said. “What the fuck. This isn’t my Rolex. This is some Mickey Mouse watch.”
“Is yours, Vic,” she said.
“Look at the second hand,” Victor yelled. “The second hand of a Rolex sweeps. This is not a sweeping motion. This is ticking. It ticks. Like a fucking Timex! That’s not sweeping. This is some cheap shit from Bangkok.”
“Time for your meds, Vic.”
“Some piece of shit knockoff,” Victor said.
She popped a couple of Valiums in his mouth and tipped the Dixie Cup to his lips. Didn’t I just take my pills, Victor wondered.
“Drink your Ensure,” Marina said.
“It tastes funny,” Victor protested.
Marina stuck the bendy straw in Victor’s mouth and rubbed the crotch of his tracksuit until all the Ensure was gone.
“God damn it!” Victor said. “That shit tastes so bitter.”
“Your detective show is on, Victor,” she said, handling the remote control.
Victor loved that show. It was about a renegade cop who uses psychic powers to find murder victims. The cop’s powers led him to a 7-Eleven. He was convinced there was a corpse in the back of the standup freezer. Vic felt a touch of indigestion. They exhumed the body from behind the frozen Salisbury steaks. Vic felt prickling up and down his legs. It spread up his torso.
He heard a man’s voice. A Mexican accent. Where’s the Mexican? There’s no Mexican on this show.
Then he recognized the voice. It was Pedro, the pool guy. He was talking to Marina. They were in the room, behind him. Victor heard the glass patio door sliding shut. Giggling. Marina and Pedro. He was whispering. She shushed him.
Next, they were standing in front of him. Marina was biting a hangnail on her thumb. Pedro bent down and peered into Victor’s face.
“Why are his eyes open like that?” Pedro asked. He waved his hand in front of Victor’s face. “I think he’s dead.”
“Get the laptop,” Marina said. “And take those gold chains off of him. They could be worth something.”
Pedro went to turn the TV off. Marina stopped him. She said they should leave it on, loud, like normal, so it looks like he’s home, just watching TV.
“Should I turn off the AC?” Pedro asked.
“No,” Marina said. “Leave it on. Or else he’ll stink up the place and the neighbors will call police.”
They left.
Baretta came on the TV. In the old days, back when he and Joanne still lived in Laguna Beach, Victor would come home from work and watch Baretta. Or Kojak. Those two were his favorites. Although, he also liked Rock Hudson in McMillan & Wife. That was before McMillan was a fag. That reminded him: he used to watch Rockford, with that guy who was Maverick. And, speaking of fags, Victor liked Ironside because Raymond Burr was a cripple and could still solve crimes without getting up. Victor thought he’d heard that Ironside was a fag, too.