Revenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

turn the carrot this way … It’s all about the carrot!”
    Mrs. J had done her best to dress up for the occasion. She had put on lipstick and wrapped a scarf over her head. The hem of her dress came almost to her ankles, and she wore a pair of old-fashioned high heels instead of her usual sandals.
    But the scarf only emphasized her narrow face, the lipstick had smeared, and somehow her formal dress and heels seemed to clash with the carrots.
    “Make us look good,” she told the reporter. “In all my years, I’ve never once been in the newspaper.” She let out a husky laugh, and her smile pinched up the wrinkles around her eyes.
    The article ran in the regional section of the paper the next morning: CURIOUS CARROTS! HAND-SHAPED AND FRESH FROM GRANNY’S GARDEN!
    Chest thrust forward to compensate for her slight frame, Mrs. J stood, listing a bit to the right as her high heel dug into the earth; and though she had laughed during much of the photo session, in the picture she looked almost frightened. But the carrot cradled in her hands was perfect.
    I stood next to her, holding a carrot of my own. In the end, I had managed a smile of sorts, but my eyes looked off in a random direction and I was clearly tense and uncomfortable.
    The carrots appeared even stranger in the photograph, like amputated hands with malignant tumors, dangling in front of us, still warm from the earth.
    *   *   *
    “Did you ever meet her husband?” the inspector asked.
    “No, I just moved into the building,” I answered.
    “Did she tell you he was dead?” asked another officer.
    “Yes, she said he had been drinking and had fallen into the sea and died … Or maybe she just said that he was missing. I don’t really remember. We weren’t really very close…”
    I glanced out at the courtyard. Mrs. J’s apartment was empty. The single curtain fluttered in the window.
    “Any little detail could be helpful. Did you notice anything suspicious?” said a young policeman, bending down to meet my gaze. “Anything at all?”
    “Suspicious?” I said. “Suspicious … Once, in the middle of the night, I saw someone running down through the orchard … carrying a heavy box. They took it into the post office, the abandoned one at the bottom of the hill.”
    *   *   *
    The post office was searched and found to contain a mountain of kiwis. But when the fruit was cleared out, it revealed only the mangy body of a cat. Then a backhoe was brought in to turn up the garden, releasing a suffocating odor of pine needles. The tenants at their windows covered their noses.
    As the sun fell behind the trees in the orchard, the shovel uncovered a decomposing body in the vegetable patch. The autopsy confirmed that it was Mrs. J’s husband and that he had been strangled. Traces of his blood were found on her nightgown.
    The hands were missing from the corpse, and they never turned up, even after the whole garden had been searched.

THE LITTLE DUSTMAN
    The train was full. Every seat was taken and people were standing between cars. The heater seemed to be broken and my legs were cold.
    A dozen or so children in navy blue blazers and berets were sitting in the front of the car. The girls had ribbons around their necks and the boys wore bow ties. The man who seemed to be in charge of the children was absorbed in a thick book, but from time to time he would look up to check on them.
    For nearly an hour, we had been waiting there, but the conductor just kept repeating the same announcement over the public address system, that there were mechanical difficulties and it would be some time still before we were moving again.
    Although it was spring and the cherry trees along the track were just beginning to bloom, it had suddenly started to snow. Just a flurry at first, but after a while it showed no sign of letting up, and grew heavier as I watched. In no time at all, everything was blanketed in white.
    “I’ll be late for Mama’s funeral,” I murmured