An Ingrid Nielsen Mystery

Marsha Kay and T W Ladd

But it’s the truth even if didn’t happen.

                                         – Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest        

 

In Hollywood anything can happen, anything at all.

                                     – Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

            I knew right off something was very wrong. I’m used to very wrong. Very wrong follows me around like a starving stray puppy. Could I smell it in the air? Stupid question. In southern Kaliphornia something always stinks. Factories, filth, politicians. There was a terrible pain in my forehead – like I’d taken a knife to the skull. Was that new, or do I just hate mornings? And why was I looking down at the dark-haired man? He was the one training me. This was my first day on the job. I was at work. It took a second to fit all of the puzzle pieces back in place. Humpty-Dumpty, and all that. I wasn’t looking down at him. I was on the floor and he was looking down at me.

            I was up in the Hangman Hills, at the residence of the wealthy woman who had hired me, Vernon Lee. I must have blacked out for a minute.

            I had been dreaming I was somewhere else. Somewhere very far away from Hyopolis. There was snow. It was white all around me. The wind was very cold and the big flakes of snow were coming down fast in a low slant. I could feel the damp warmth of the horse under me, as I rode without a saddle. The horse snorted steam from his nostrils. My gelding Poncho. Rays of sunlight broke through the clouds now and then in a blinding glare. I sneezed at the light. With one hand I held the reins. I took off one glove and fished a Kleenex out of my coat pocket. The dream was so vivid — I could feel the itch that was going to make me sneeze. I knew everything that my younger self knew as I rode the horse. We were on a path that ran beside the woods, along a snow-covered hay field. The path was kept clear by the owner who used it to access the woodlot. He sold cordwood all winter.

            That was Michigan, and I was a kid. It was a different world. And there was no magic. I sneezed at the sun and blew my nose. When I’d put the tissue away, I started to put my glove back on – the gloves were the Gore-Tex ones made for skiers.

            That was when I looked down at my hand and wrist. It wasn’t the milky violet that my skin is today… 

            “What happened?” I asked the man who was trying to help me up – or trying to stop me from getting up. I think he had been talking to me. I realized that there had been another person there – a woman. Possibly a maid. But she had left, hurried off – to get help?

            The door to the little room in front of me was broken, the doorjamb in splinters where the bolt had been kicked out. The door was a light-yellow wood and I could see some blood one the edge of it near the handle. Was that my blood? I touched my head. I was bleeding above my eye. Had I been trying to peep through the key-hole?

            Now, I could see into the room. There was a small desk and a woman slumped down over it.

            “Ms. Lee has been murdered.”

            I saw the nickel-plated automatic lying on the floor just inside the room. I didn’t have to check the holster under my arm. I knew it was empty, and I knew that was my gun.

5/6/2021