The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 by Elizabeth George Read Free Book Online Page A

dragon painted up the front. “He said their skin felt different. They smelled different. He was strange about smells. Sounds. Light. He was very sensitive.”
    â€œBut you loved him, didn’t you?” Penny’s voice more insistent now.
    Her eyes narrowed. “Everyone loved him. Everyone. He said yes to everybody. He gave himself to everybody.”
    â€œBut why did he do it, Mrs. Stahl?”
    â€œHe put his head in the oven and died,” she said, straightening her back ever so slightly. “He was mad in a way only southerners and artistic souls are mad. And he was both. You’re too young, too simple, to understand.”
    â€œMrs. Stahl, did you do something to Larry?” This is what Penny was trying to say, but the words weren’t coming. And Mrs. Stahl kept growing larger and larger, the dragon on her robe, it seemed, somehow, to be speaking to Penny, whispering things to her.
    â€œWhat’s in this tea?”
    â€œWhat do you mean, dear?”
    But the woman’s face had gone strange, stretched out. There was a scurrying sound from somewhere, like little paws, animal claws, the sharp feet of sharp-footed men. A gold watch chain swinging and that neighbor hanging from the pear tree.
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    She woke to the purple creep of dawn. Slumped in the same rattan chair in Mrs. Stahl’s living room. Her finger still crooked in the teacup handle, her arm hanging to one side.
    â€œMrs. Stahl,” she whispered.
    But the woman was no longer on the sofa across from her.
    Somehow Penny was on her feet, inching across the room.
    The bedroom door was ajar, Mrs. Stahl sprawled on the mattress, the painted dragon on her robe sprawled on top of her.
    On the bed beside her was the book she’d been reading in the courtyard. Scarlet red, with a lurid title.
    Gaudy Night,
it was called.
    Opening it with great care, Penny saw the inscription:
    Â 
To Mrs. Stahl, my dirty murderess.
    Love, Lawrence.
    Â 
    She took the book, and the teacup.
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    She slept for a few hours in her living room, curled on the zebra-print sofa.
    She had stopped going into the kitchen two days ago, tacking an old bath towel over the doorway so she couldn’t even see inside. The gleaming porcelain of the oven.
    She was sure she smelled gas radiating from it. Spotted blue light flickering behind the towel.
    But still she didn’t go inside.
    And now she was afraid the smell was coming through the walls.
    It was all connected, you see, and Mrs. Stahl was behind all of it. The light spots, the shadows on the baseboard, the noises in the walls, and now the hiss of the gas.
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    Mr. Flant looked at the inscription, shaking his head.
    â€œMy god, is it possible? He wasn’t making much sense those final days. Holed up in Number Four. Maybe he was hiding from her. Because he knew.”
    â€œIt was found on his body,” Penny said, voice trembling. “That’s what she told me.”
    â€œThen this inscription,” he said, reaching out for Penny’s wrist, “was meant to be our clue. Like pointing a finger from beyond the grave.”
    Penny nodded. She knew what she had to do.
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    â€œI know how it sounds. But someone needs to do something.”
    The police detective nodded, drinking from his Coca-Cola, his white shirt bright. He had gray hair at the temples and he said his name was Noble, which seemed impossible.
    â€œWell, miss, let’s see what we can do. That was a long time ago. After you called, I had to get the case file from the crypt. I can’t say I even remember it.” Licking his index finger, he flicked open the file folder, then began turning pages. “A gas job, right? We got a lot of them back then. Those months before the war.”
    â€œYes. In the kitchen. My kitchen now.”
    Looking through the slim folder, he pursed his lips a moment, then came a grim smile. “Ah, I remember. I remember. The little men.”
    â€œThe little