Even the Butler Was Poor

By Ron Goulart

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Copyright 2012 /
Ron Goulart

Cover Design By: David Dodd

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Born in 1933, Ron Goulart has been a professional author for several decades and has over 180 books to his credit, including more than 50 science fiction novels and 20 some mystery novels. He's twice been nominated for an Edgar Award and is considered one of the country's leading authorities on comic books and comic strips. Ron lives with his wife Frances, also a writer, in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

 

Book List

A Graveyard of My Own

After Things Fell Apart

Even the Butler Was Poor

Hellquad

Nemo

Now He Thinks He's Dead

The Enormous Hourglass

Upside Downside

For a more complete bibliography visit his page at
ISFDB
on the Internet.

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Even the Butler Was Poor

T
he Eastport mall was less than a month old and still had a fresh, not quite finished look. No one had as yet died in it.

At about ten minutes before the first death, H.J. Mavity was glancing at her wristwatch yet again. Muttering, "Schmuck," she gave an impatient shake of her head and then started another circuit of the sputtering fountain on the ground level of the new mall.

She counted the mosaic tiles underfoot for a minute or two. Sniffed, with something less than pleasure, the mingled odors wafting out of the various open air restaurants—Se
ñ
or Gringo's Mexi-Takeout, My Man Chumley Fish & Chips, Mother Malley's Oat Muffins.

Now he's eighteen minutes late
, she said to herself after checking her watch again.

H.J., which stood for Helen Joanne—both names she was not particularly fond of—was a pretty, auburn-haired young woman of thirty-one. Thirty-two in June, a little less than two months from now. She was wearing faded jeans—faded by time, not the manufacturer—an emerald green pullover, and scuffed tennis shoes.

Twenty minutes late. Well, what can you expect from a man who intends to take you to dinner in a shopping mall?

This wasn't a date actually. She didn't date Rick Dell. Not anymore.

Rick Dell. You should've known that anybody who'd stick a name like that on himself was only going to cause you grief and trouble. Plus an occasional migraine headache.

H.J. walked by Fritz the Furrier's, the Horizons Unlimited Travel Service, Niknax, Inc., the House of 1000 Candles. She hesitated in front of the Tanglewood Book Shop, then decided not to go in again. The fat boy who was on duty tonight had eyed her suspiciously when she'd browsed in there—exactly fourteen minutes ago.

What she liked to do was turn all the paperbacks that had covers she'd painted face out on the shelves. Quite naturally your average fat boy was going to be dubious about someone who came in to fiddle with novels having titles such as Princess Glitz,
Sweet Pirate Lover
and
Passion in Manhattan
. But that was her specialty right now. Romance.

As far as book covers went. In real life, especially the past year or so, the romances had all been disappointing.

Godawful, in fact.

Topped off by Rick Dell.

How'd you ever allow a man who changed his name, legally and not under duress, to Rick Dell get close enough to touch you?
she asked herself.
A comedian at that
.

The fat boy in the book store was eying her through the window, peering over a stack of half-price calendars. H.J. moved on, dodging three small teenage girls with hair the color of cotton candy. She slowed as she passed the travel agency.

"Maybe I ought to go in and inquire about the rates to Devil's Island."

Three plump older ladies with hair the color of weak ginger ale almost walked into her.

H.J. returned to the fountain.

"What did you throw in there?" a plump blonde mother was asking a forlorn little boy in a chocolate-stained warm-up suit.

"A coin."

"A coin, my ass. I see it floating there. The dollar Nana gave you."

The boy commenced crying. He did it in a very enthusiastic way, eyes scrunching shut, mouth opening wide, smudgy fists clutching against his narrow chest.

"Hush, shush," warned his mother as she leaned to try to retrieve the lost dollar from the blue-tinted water.

H.J. walked over to the escalators. That was when she saw Rick Dell.

Quite a few people noticed him at about the same time. He was stumbling his way down the upgoing stairway, coming a few steps at a time, slipping and being carried back. He was a tall, lean man of forty, dark-haired, wearing a grey suit. At that moment his face was stained with blood from cuts on his forehead and cheek. His necktie was undone and dangling, and several of the buttons on his blood-spattered white shirt were missing.

Dell kept fighting his way down against the current, bumping into shoppers who were heading in the opposite direction.

H.J. didn't move, didn't speak. She stood watching him struggle down to her. It bothered her that she didn't seem to feel anything. Not compassion or fear, not even embarrassment. It was as though she were watching this all on a television screen. The neighbor's screen, seen through a distant window.

Finally Dell reached her. He came staggering off the wrong way escalator, his skin almost dead white and his blood a glittering crimson in the harsh mall lighting.

He caught at her arm. "Sorry. . . I'm . . ."

The first thing she said to him was, "Where's my money? You promised to pay back the $5,000 tonight, Rick."

His eyes were glazed, not quite seeing her. "Money . . . thought I'd get it . . . and a lot more . . . but they screwed me up . . ."

People were starting to gather, muttering and murmuring. Dell became aware of the crowd growing around them. He put a hand on her arm, a hand that was splotched with small raw burns. "Listen, H.J., you can . . . if you're careful . . . got to be careful . . . not like me . . . you can make a lot of money . . . what I owe you . . . and more . . ."

She finally thought to ask, "Rick, what's happened to you?"

"You have to get hold of what . . . I have . . . and use it . . . understand?"

"Are you telling me you have my money stashed away somewhere?"

"Too many people . . . too many ears . . . All you have to do to find it is . . . remember this." His grip on her arm tightened. "Ninety-nine clop clop."

"What?"

"Ninety-nine clop clop."

His hand started sliding down her arm and, just shy of her wrist, let go.

"What the hell, Rick, does that mean?"

Dell sagged, then knelt. He swayed a few times, coughed twice, toppled over onto the mosaic tiles and was still. H.J. knew at once that he was dead.

Someone else was saying something to her.

"What?"

"Do you know him?" asked a frail old man, pointing down.

Momentarily distracted by the old man's glaring Hawaiian shirt, H.J. glanced from him to the sprawled body of Rick Dell. "Why, no," she answered, shaking her head a bit too vigorously. "I don't, no. He simply came up to me and started talking, poor man."

"I think he's hurt bad," observed a pudgy teenage boy, starting to squat beside the dead man.

H.J. suggested, "We'd better get the security guards to help him."

"Good idea," agreed the old man, wiping his spectacles on his shirt tail. "I saw one over yonder by the hot dog stand."

"I'll go fetch him," volunteered H.J., pivoting and pushing her way through the bystanders.

She reached the stand in less than three minutes and kept going. She headed from there to the ground level parking lot and her second-hand Porsche.

She didn't run, but she walked very fast.

P
ossessing not a shred of extrasensory perception, Ben Spanner wasn't at all anticipating what was about to befall him.

He was in the large white kitchen of his recently acquired house in Brimstone, Connecticut. A sandy-haired, almost plump man of thirty-seven, just a fraction short of five-foot eight, Ben, who wore a navy blue apron over his denim slacks and candy-striped shirt, was seated on a stool and consulting a paperback cookbook "Okay, Ceylon Chicken Curry, here we go," he said aloud. "One teaspoonful of ground turmeric." He left the stool and crossed over to the as yet unused spice cabinet and the wall near the sink. "Oregano, dill, anise. . . Where, sahib, is my cursed turmeric?"

He delivered this last in a singsong Indian voice, one he'd adapted from an old Peter Sellers characterization.

He'd have to watch that tonight. Some women didn't like voices.

"Even my wife didn't."

Although that wasn't the reason for the divorce. Well, not the main one.