Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

But a little bit of a head start wasn’t enough for someone who had dropped out of her aerobics class. There was a steep hill in the way that would kill me before Cyrus had a chance, but halfway up I tripped over a root in the ground and fell on my face. Cyrus grabbed my ankle, and I kicked his hand away. We started sliding down the hill together, and I was still scrambling to get away, not even caring if my underwear was showing big time. His big hand grabbed my ankle again and twisted it till it hurt.

“Stop it, Cyrus!”

Only when I heard the voice of Deputy Big Tim McCallister did I allow myself to stop clawing at the dirt. I heard two clicks of a gun, and I knew he was pointing it at Cyrus Ray. I turned my head to make sure, and there was Big Tim looking about as surprised as I had ever seen him, looking at me and then at Cyrus and then back at me, and I realized I was an absolute mess.

“Is this why you wanted me to meet you way out here for my pork rind recipe?” Big Tim asked.

He was still pointing the gun at Cyrus, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He came over to me and put his arm around my shoulders, and I let myself lean against him. “Are you all right, Candace Sue?”

I was still breathing really hard, trying to wipe the dirt off my face while Cyrus Ray hurled every insult in the book at me. “Naomi’s out here,” I said. “Real close.”

“Go ahead,” Cyrus Ray said. “Dig up every tree if you want to. You’ll never find her.”

“He’s right, Big Tim. We could dig up every tree in the county, and I still don’t think we’d find Naomi Ray.” I pointed at the stand of trees, acres and acres of trees. “She’s not buried down here.”

For one moment Cyrus looked relieved, smug even.

“She’s buried up there.” Three heads looked up to where the cars were passing overhead on the freeway overpass, the long white arm of Cyrus’s painting.

“You’re good with cement, aren’t you, Cyrus?”

You might think a body embedded in a freeway overpass would be harder to find than a needle in a haystack. Not to mention more expensive. But it really wasn’t.

It took me a little while to convince Deputy McCallister, however, even though he knew I was onto something the moment he saw the sick look on Cyrus Ray’s face.

When I’d been at the county offices that afternoon, I’d found out that the overpass was still being built when Naomi Ray disappeared. It was just a matter then of going back through the engineering log to pinpoint the section under construction at the time, the night Cyrus carried her body out there and covered her up with his own cement, doing such a fine job the construction workers never noticed.

The county narrowed down the section pretty close and decided to put in some earthquake supports in case this turned out to be a wild goose chase, but they found Naomi right away. Some threads from her red dress were still clinging to her bones.

I couldn’t face going out there, so I stayed home to try to get those dirt stains out of my blouse. It was time to go back to my humdrum life, and after sliding down the hill with Cyrus Ray, that sounded good to me.

But one other thing happened.

“Hey, Candace Sue.”

It was Big Tim McCallister at my door. “You all right?”

I giggled because he’d been asking me that so much the last couple of days.

“Candace Sue, I don’t have anybody to take to the Tri-County Sheriff’s Department Dance, and it’s this Saturday,” he began. Then he stopped.

So I said, “What about me?”

“Well, okay then.”

He turned to go. “I already bought the tickets. In fact, I already wrote our names on them.”

“Taking a few things for granted, aren’t you, Big Tim?”

“No. Too much of that going on around here already.”

The Witch and the Rock Star

by Angela Zeman

“Let’s get this meeting going, folks, we got business to attend to and then something I think you’re all gonna be interested in—” The gavel that Mayor Harold Harper had been banging on the scarred oak table in a steady rhythm, like percussion punctuation, slipped out of his hands. As he stooped with an “oof” to retrieve it, none of the Wyndham-by-the-Sea Board of Village Trustees could distinguish the rest of his words, but they didn’t care. They were too busy twisting in their seats, eyeing the young man sitting towards the back of the large, mostly empty room.

Muscular youths in tight bluejeans, black motorcycle boots, and leather jackets with little chains on the pockets worn over artfully ripped white T-shirts were not an unknown item in tourist-ridden Wyndham. But they were rare at Village Board meetings.

Sensing the mood of his audience, the mayor raced through formalities and reports and stopped on a dime at the point: “This young man, uh, Mark Daniels is his name, is the personal manager—” Here he paused to garner the attention of all the board members. An unnecessary ploy — they were rabid with curiosity, “—the personal manager of... Phantom. You folks know that name, I’m sure... the rock star?”