Read The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 for Free Online Page A

until she finished. Then, as the actor walked away, he leaned forward.
    â€œEverything all right, Pen?”
    He was looking at something—her neck, her chest.
    â€œWhat do you mean?” she said, setting the powder down.
    But he just kept looking at her.
    â€œWorking on your carburetor, beautiful?” one of the grips said as he walked by.
    â€œWhat? I . . .”
    Peggy turned to the makeup mirror. That was when she saw the long grease smear on her collarbone. And the line of black soot across her hairline too.
    â€œI don’t know,” Penny said, her voice sounding slow and sleepy. “I don’t have a car.”
    Then it came to her: the dream she’d had in the early morning hours. That she was in the kitchen, checking on the oven damper. The squeak of the door on its hinges, and Mrs. Stahl outside the window, her eyes glowing like a wolf’s.
    â€œIt was a dream,” she said now. Or was it? Had she been sleepwalking the night before?
    Had she been in the kitchen . . .
at the oven
. . . in her sleep?
    â€œPenny,” Gordon said, looking at her squintily. “Penny, maybe you should go home.”
    Â 
    It was so early, and Penny didn’t want to go back to the Canyon Arms. She didn’t want to go inside Number Four, or walk past the kitchen, its cherry wallpaper lately giving her the feeling of blood spatters.
    Also, lately she kept thinking she saw Mrs. Stahl peering at her between the wooden blinds as she watered the banana trees.
    Instead she took the bus downtown to the big library on South Fifth. She had an idea.
    The librarian, a boy with a bow tie, helped her find the obituaries.
    She found three about Larry, but none had photos, which was disappointing.
    The one in the
Mirror
was the only one with any detail, any texture.
    It mentioned that the body had been found by the “handsome proprietress, one Mrs. Herman Stahl,” who “fell to wailing” so loud it was heard all through the canyons, up the promontories and likely high into the mossed eaves of the Hollywood sign.
    Â 
    â€œSo what happened to Mrs. Stahl’s husband?” Penny asked when she saw Mr. Flant and Benny that night.
    â€œHe died just a few months before Larry,” Benny said. “Bad heart, they say.”
    Mr. Flant raised one pale eyebrow. “She never spoke of him. Only of Larry.”
    â€œHe told me once she watched him, Larry did,” Benny said. “She watched him through his bedroom blinds. While he made love.”
    Instantly Penny knew this was true.
    She thought of herself in that same bed each night, the mattress so soft, its posts sometimes seeming to curl inward.
    Mrs. Stahl had insisted Penny move it back against the wall. Penny refused, but the next day she came home to find the woman moving it herself, her short arms spanning the mattress, her face pressed into its appliqué.
    Watching, Penny had felt like the peeping Tom. It was so intimate.
    â€œSometimes I wonder,” Mr. Flant said now. “There were rumors. Black widow, or old maid.”
    â€œYou can’t make someone put his head in the oven,” Benny said. “At least not for long. The gas’d get at you, too.”
    â€œTrue,” Mr. Flant said.
    â€œMaybe it didn’t happen at the oven,” Penny blurted. “She found the body. What if she just turned on the gas while he was sleeping?”
    â€œAnd dragged him in there, for the cops?”
    Mr. Flant and Benny looked at each other.
    â€œShe’s very strong,” Penny said.
    Â 
    Back in her bungalow, Penny sat just inside her bedroom window, waiting.
    Peering through the blinds, long after midnight, she finally saw her. Mrs. Stahl, walking along the edges of the courtyard.
    She was singing softly and her steps were uneven and Penny thought she might be tight, but it was hard to know.
    Penny was developing a theory.
    Picking up a book, she made herself stay awake until