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ISBN 1-59201-014-8
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
http://www.booksunbound.com
Publication March, 2003
Cover Art by D. Lee
The Bodies Out Back
Joseph E. Wright
Copyright 2001
All Rights Reserved
Chapter I
Dusk arrived on Manning Street
the same time Phillis Toner did. She checked the number on one of the houses,
then rang its bell. The sounds of traffic seemed excluded from this street, one
of the oldest in the city of Philadelphia. She wondered if such intrusions had
been banned by Molly Montgomary, the woman she had come to see. Phillis told
herself not to be ridiculous. And not to be nervous.
A uniformed maid, an old woman
with a halting walk, admitted her to the house, then quickly disappeared behind
a sliding door. She immediately reappeared. "Miss Montgomary will see you," the
maid told Phillis, pointed toward the open door, then shuffled off, mumbling to
herself.
"Good evening, my dear." Molly
was standing in the middle of a small parlor, a woman of white hair, stern
features, and perfect posture. She was wearing a simple black wool dress and a
single strand of pearls, which Phillis immediately recognized as being quite
expensive. "Do come in." Molly reached out, took the younger woman's hand, and
led her toward one of a pair of chairs in front of the bay window.
Phillis was in her
mid-twenties. Her auburn hair was cut short and her deep, almost-plum-color
eyes were busy taking in both the room and the woman who was speaking to her.
"Please be seated," Molly said
as she sat down.
The maid reappeared with a
small silver tray bearing a decanter and two glasses.
"Thank you, Margaret," Molly
said, then addressed Phillis. "I know you're coming from work, and you should
take a moment to relax. A spot of sherry is just the thing, don't you agree?"
Phillis smiled.
How quaint,
she thought.
Just what I'd expect, the dear offering sherry. I'd rather have a vodka gimlet.
She thanked her hostess.
"I have the answer to the
question you asked on the telephone today. Let me see now." Molly took her
reading glasses from the table next to her and began reading from a small
notepad, which had also been on the table. "All the utilities will be
paid--heat, electricity--so you see you don't really have to worry about them."
She put the pad aside and replaced her reading glasses in their case. "I
understand Mr. Sutton-Sponge arranged to have someone show you the house in
Society Hill. I believe you saw it yesterday?"
Phillis nodded.
"Very well, then. You know what
it looks like. You would be renting the third floor. Quite handsome, if I do
say so myself. And large. I daresay a dozen people could live in that house and
not feel crowded, so you and Pat should have no trouble."
"I understand your niece Pat
won't be back from Europe until the fall." Phillis was beginning to feel
uncomfortable. There was something about the way the old woman was staring at
her with her dark brown eyes, as though she were more than appraising a
prospective tenant for her niece's house. It seemed--so Phillis felt--more like
the witch in the woods wondering how Gretel would taste, once roasted in the
oven.
"Pat is due back in a few
months, my dear. And I just know you'll like one another."
"That's one problem. Actually,
it's the only problem I have. I really don't think it's very intelligent going
into a sharing arrangement like this, even sharing such a large house, without
first meeting the person I'm going to be living with. One should be... well,
careful, you know."
"Oh, I know, my dear." She
reached out and patted Phillis' knee. "You are right. Absolutely right. One
should always be very circumspect in such matters. But, as I explained to you
the other day, the rent is so reasonable because Pat is away so very much of
the time and would like to have someone--the right someone, of course--living
there. Sort of insurance, you might say. So, you see, it will be rented before
Pat returns and I'm afraid if you don't take it, someone else will. And I do so
wish you would. I like you. I don't mind admitting it. I do like you very much
and I think you'd be the right person."
Phillis stood up and stared out
the window onto Manning Street with its old Philadelphia cobblestones and its
narrow houses--some of them stone, most brick, with flower boxes and painted
front doors. There were hitching posts, no longer for horses, but practical
just the same. Since the street was so narrow, they protected both pedestrians
and houses alike from careless drivers.
She had only a few days left
before she would have to be out of her present home. She had returned to
Philadelphia little more than a year ago, partly to stay with her aunt, the
only family she still had left, and partly to search for some roots. At least
those were the reasons she gave others and tried hard to believe herself. She
never knew her father. A dozen years before while in her mid-teens, she had
been uprooted from this city when her mother died and an aunt by marriage had
taken her to Texas to live. Aunt Beth tried hard to be a mother to Phillis.
After high school, Phillis got a job as secretary in a small office. She liked
it. What she did not like was the interest her boss took in her: subtle remarks
at first, then outright propositions. Compounding the problem was the boss'
son, Ron, with whom Phillis fell in love. As she stood at the window, she
remembered with bitterness the lost baby, the lost lover whose family sent him
away--paid him off to forget her--and finally, the day she went to see Ron's
father in that hotel room. She knew it was a mistake even as she walked the
hall toward his room, but she wanted to plead with him to bring Ron back. She
didn't care. With the recklessness of youth, she had been ready to swallow her
pride for the man she loved. Flashing before her was the scene of herself
running down a fire escape behind the hotel, the blood on her dress, her trying
to burn the dress, and the fear that the police would find her.
Aunt Beth might have suspected
something had happened. Then, two days later, she died in her sleep. Phillis
wrote to her Aunt Olive, her mother's sister, and spoke of coming back East.
Olive urged her to come to Philadelphia and said she thought Phillis would have
no trouble getting a job. She came. She found a job. She was happy. Then Olive,
like Phillis' mother and Aunt Beth, died. There had been times lately when
Phillis wondered if she were somehow to blame for their deaths.
Why was it,
she asked herself late at night when she couldn't sleep,
that those close to her, those who cared for her, were all dead?
Olive's heirs--of which Phillis
was not one--sold her house, giving her very little time in which to find
another place to live. In the past few weeks, she had contacted what seemed to
her to be all the real estate offices in the city of Philadelphia and had
answered dozens of ads for apartments, only to have nothing to show for her
troubles. The places she liked, she couldn't afford; those she could afford,
she either disliked or they were too far from where she worked.
This house, the one she and
Molly Montgomary were now discussing, the one she saw yesterday, the one she'd
have to share with someone else, was much more than she had ever hoped to find.
It was perfect. There was an enormous living room, which left her near
speechless when she first saw it, with its sixteen-foot-high molded ceiling and
sweeping staircase leading up to the second and third floors. On the first
floor, there was also a formal dining room and an ultra-modern kitchen, both of
which, she had been told, she could use whenever she wished to entertain. Off
the kitchen, there was a garden with a lilac tree in full bloom, the scent
filling the air. The garden floor was red brick and the walls were cement with
built-in planters and benches along two sides.
The second floor of the house
contained a library; Pat's--her possible housemate's--bedroom and bath; a
sitting room; and two guestrooms. Off the end of the long hallway was a pair of
French doors opening onto a balcony. Perfect for sunbathing, she decided when
she saw it. The entire third floor was to be hers, if she decided to rent it.
She'd have a sitting room the width of the house, a bedroom, a functional and
sunny kitchen, bath, dressing room, a second bedroom or den, and more closets
than she could ever fill. And the rent, that was the almost impossible thing
about this whole proposition. It was less than she had allowed herself to
spend. She'd have a little left over each month without having to worry about
the cost of heat or electricity. It seemed too good to pass up.
There were only two drawbacks
she could think of. First, she had not yet met Pat. Second, she would not have
a private entrance. She would enter through the front door, use the staircase
common to all floors, and there was no door to the third floor to ensure
privacy. Still, she did not have to share the other floors, if she did not wish
to, and would not really have to see any more of Pat than she wanted to. What
the hell....
She spun around and almost
startled Molly. "I've decided to take it, Miss Montgomary."
Molly Montgomary beamed. "You
have no idea, my dear, how happy that makes me. You've made the right decision,
I just know that."
Phillis signed the lease Molly
placed before her, wrote a check for the first and last months' rent, wished
Molly a pleasant evening, and left the house. What Phillis could not see as she
walked away from the house on Manning Street was what Molly Montgomary was
doing at that precise moment. With a smile on her face, Molly was tearing
Phillis' check into small pieces and watching them fall like a mini snowstorm
into her wastebasket.
*****
Two days later, on Friday, with
the help of several friends (all of whom told her she was making a big mistake)
and a rented truck, Phillis moved into the four-story house on Spruce Street in
Society Hill, with its dusty-rose brick front, its cream-colored shutters, and
its Wedgwood-blue front door. When the last piece of furniture and the last box
were brought up to the third floor and the last friend had left, Phillis threw
herself into one of her living room chairs and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt
that she had made the right decision. They were all wrong, those
well-intentioned friends of hers. It was not a mistake. She loved her new home
and she knew she would be happy there. The deaths of the past year and a half
were now all behind her.
*****
The same day Phillis moved into
her new quarters, Molly Montgomary was on the telephone with Nathaniel
Sutton-Sponge III, Esquire. "Now, Mr. Sutton-Sponge, you do understand what it
is I want, don't you?"
"Yes, Miss Montgomary, I
understand fully." Mr. Sutton-Sponge and his father before him had been Molly's
legal advisors these past fifty-one years since she had reached her majority.
"You'll let me know when you
have the papers drawn up and I shall come into your office and sign them. You
have the spelling correct? The young woman's name, I mean. It's spelled with an
'i' and not with a 'y.'"
"Miss Montgomary, the document
you requested will be drawn up and I shall personally stop by your home for
your signature." He didn't need her to remind him how to spell the young
woman's name. After all, wasn't it he who found Phillis Toner for her? And
wasn't it also he who told Molly that the young woman in question had been
followed into a real estate office, that the information had been gotten out of
the receptionist at the aforementioned real estate office that Miss Toner was
looking for a place to live?
"That is most considerate of
you."
"I do trust, Miss Montgomary,
that you have given this matter sufficient thought." Mr. Sutton-Sponge could
not keep a tone of legal concern out of his voice.
"Yes, yes, I have," Molly said,
a bit too firmly. "This is what I want and I know it's the right thing to do."
Mr. Sutton-Sponge III, Esquire,
felt an urge. It was seldom that Mr. Sutton-Sponge felt any kind of urge, and
when he did, his legal discipline always prevailed. His present urge was to
pursue the matter further with Molly, having nothing more in mind than the
welfare of his client, but experience had taught him one thing over the years:
when Molly Montgomary made up her mind about something, neither he nor his
father--and probably not even the Supreme Court--could change it. He sighed and
bid her a good day.
Bertha Belmont was sitting at
the opposite side of the table, which held the telephone. After Molly replaced
the receiver, Bertha took a sip of her tea and addressed her lifelong friend:
"I do hope you know what you are doing, Moll. I remember an uncle of mine who
had considerable money and he got it into his head to go to Pakistan--or was it
Paraguay? I do get those two countries confused, don't you? I mean, they sound
so much alike. Really, they should make the names of countries simpler and not
similar, so people wouldn't mix them up, I always say. Anyway, he...."
"Bertha, this is not some idea
I've gotten into my head. And, I'm not going away to some remote part of the
world like your uncle. Let us say that what I am about to do is merely payment
for service rendered by that young woman. Miss Toner doesn't know it, but when
she agreed to rent Pat's third floor, she also took on a lot more than she
bargained for."
"Just the same, Molly, I trust
you know what you're doing. I most certainly do. I for one wouldn't care to
interfere with other people's lives the way you obviously are doing. Yes,
indeed, I do hope you know what you're doing."
That makes two of us, Bertha, dear,
Molly said to herself.
Yes, I most certainly do hope I know what I'm doing.
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This is a sample chapter from
The Bodies Out Back
by
Joseph E. Wright
We at
Books Unbound E-Publishing Co.
www.booksunbound.com
hope you will enjoy the entire book!
Author's Biography
Joseph E. Wright was born and wemt to school in New England and later moved to
Philadelphia. He considers Philly his home town.
Joe grew up addicted to the British cozies of Christie and Sayres and the
American counterparts of Queen and Stout. He was a fan of the film noir of
Hammett and Chandler.
His first published novel,
Memorandum of a Murder
(Manor Books) confirmed his determination to become a writer. A short story of
his appeared in
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
While writing, Joe had to make a living, which he did in many ways. One period
of his life, he lived in a dark, rambling, nineteenth century rectory in
downtown Philadelphia. It inspired his
Tales from the Wrecktory
(MetropolisInk) which appeared last year.
Somewhat different from the whodunit style of novel, Joe's
The Remigrants,
the story of those who return from the dead, is currently in the editorial
stage.
The Bodies Out Back
is the first in a completed trilogy starring Pat Montgomary and Phillis Toner.
The next two,
The Maris Cove Murders
and
Aisle of the Dead
should be published this coming year.
Joe and his life partner spend most of the year in sunny Florida.
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