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

two. Then, slipping from bed, she tried to follow the flashes of light, the shadows.
    Bending down, she put her hand on the baseboards, as if she could touch those funny shapes, like mice on their haunches. Or tiny men, marching.
    â€œSomething’s there!” she said out loud, her voice surprising her. “It’s in the walls.”
    In the morning it would all be blurry, but in that moment clues were coming together in her head, something to do with gas jets and Mrs. Stahl and love gone awry and poison in the walls, and she had figured it out before anything bad had happened.
    It made so much sense in the moment, and when the sounds came too, the little
tap-tap
s behind the plaster, she nearly cheered.
    Â 
    Mr. Flant poured her glass after glass of Amaro. Benny waxed his mustache and showed Penny his soft shoe.
    They were trying to make her feel better about losing her job.
    â€œI never came in late except two or three times. I always did my job,” Penny said, biting her lip so hard it bled. “I think I know who’s responsible. He kited me for seven hundred and forty dollars and now he’s out to ruin me.”
    Then she told them how, a few days ago, she had written him a letter.
    Â 
Mr. D.—
I don’t write to cause you any trouble. What’s mine is mine and I never knew you for an indian giver.
I bought fine dresses to go to Hollywood Park with you, to be on your arm at Villa Capri. I had to buy three stockings a week, your clumsy hands pawing at them. I had to turn down jobs and do two cycles of penicillin because of you. Also because of you, I got the heave-ho from my roommate Pauline who said you fondled her by the dumbwaiter. So that money is the least a gentleman could offer a lady. The least, Mr. D.
Let me ask you: those books you kept beneath the false bottom in your desk drawer on the lot—did you buy those from Mr. Stanley Rose, or his handsome assistant Larry?
I wonder if your wife knows the kinds of books you keep in your office, the girls you keep there and make do shameful things?
I know Larry would agree with me about you. He was a sensitive man and I live where he did and sleep in his bed and all of you ruined him, drove him to drink and to a perilous act.
How dare you try to take my money away. And you with a wife with ermine, mink, lynx dripping from her plump, sunk shoulders.
Your wife at 312 North Faring Road, Holmby Hills.
Let’s be adults, sophisticates. After all, we might not know what we might do if backed against the wall.
​—​yr lucky penny
    Â 
    It had made more sense when she wrote it than it did now, reading it aloud to Mr. Flant and Benny.
    Benny patted her shoulder. “So he called the cops on ya, huh?”
    â€œThe studio cops. Which is bad enough,” Penny said.
    They had escorted her from the makeup department. Everyone had watched, a few of the girls smiling.
    â€œSorry, Pen,” Gordon had said, taking the powder brush from her hand. “What gives in this business is what takes away.”
    When he’d hired her two months ago, she’d watched as he wrote on her personnel file “M R . D.”
    â€œYour man, he took this as a threat, you see,” Mr. Flant said, shaking his head as he looked at the letter. “He is a hard man. Those men are. They are hard men and you are soft. Like Larry was soft.”
    Penny knew it was true. She’d never been hard enough, at least not in the right way. The smart way.
    Â 
    It was very late when she left the two men.
    She paused before Number Four and found herself unable to move, cold fingertips pressed between her breasts, pushing her back.
    That was when she spotted Mrs. Stahl inside the bungalow, fluttering past the picture window in her evening coat.
    â€œStop!” Penny called out. “I see you!”
    And Mrs. Stahl froze. Then, slowly, she turned to face Penny, her face warped through the glass, as if she were under