Page 9 of Love vs The Ooze Monster!
The more she thought about the man, the more annoyed she got. He’d fired her! After she’d increased his profits, and put so much faith in him, and showed him how to fold a handkerchief properly.
She would simply never get over it.
Lew had clearly been wrong about Boyd. …Which was strange, because her stepfather was usually right. She’d told him, though, when he’d gone on and on: Boyd Cassiday was just too handsome! Her stepfather had been soconvincedthat it blinded Mabel to logic, for a time. Lew could have convinced her of anything, really.
Mabel had spent her whole life relying on Lew’s advice and basking in his undivided attention. After losing both her parents before she was ten years old, she’d been in dire need of some kind of role model. Llewellyn Irving, head of a small-time railroad smuggling racket, was the one she got.
Lew had been in his fifties when he married her young, bright, schoolteacher mother. He had been head-over-heels for her respectable, ladylike presence in his home. With no children of his own, he’d been wary of Mabel, though. At least, at first. Mabel was pretty clever, when it came to getting what she wanted. She’d wanted a father and so she’d set out to acquire one. There were times in a woman’s life, when she had to take the reins or the whole kit and caboodle would fall apart.
Luckily, Mabel was excellent at taking the reins.
Soon enough, Lew had been doting on his new stepdaughter. Filling her room with books and toys. Always willing to listen to her dreams. Making her the center of his whole world. When her mother unexpectedly died of fever, it had just been Mabel and Lew. Both of them had been heartbroken and they’d clung to each other.
Not knowing how else to raise a little girl, Lew promptly began teaching her about the black market, down at the train depot. She’d had a knack for crime. Lew said so himself. For years, Mabel worked at his side and the business grew bigger and bigger. Then came Prohibition and the Irving Syndicatereallytook off.
Lew had been Mabel’s biggest supporter. She’d idolized the man. His death had been the hardest thing she’d ever endured, because they’d beenpartners. Then, Sylvester had swooped in and taken control of the train depot. She’d let it happen, because she hadn’t had the energy to even care. Besides, she knew Lew had wanted a different destiny for her. Still, it made her feel alone to lose the business that she’d help build.
And now she wasreallyalone, because Boyd had fired her! How could he fire her? Didn’t he miss her, at all? She’d thought they were so close to…
“Something wrong, dear?” Mrs. Patten asked, cutting through Mabel’s thoughts.
She jolted and looked over at the older lady. If you were a roomer in Mrs. Patten’s boardinghouse, you were expected at tea on Fridays, so she could lecture you about not having too much fun over the weekend and grill you for information about your week.
Mr. Norris Sterno, who rented a room on the third floor, and Miss Frances Crowley, who stayed on the second floor, were crowded into the fussily decorated parlor, too. Neither of them looked thrilled to be spending their Friday afternoon with Mrs. Patten, but they were making the best of it.
Frances had already detailed the motion picture she’d gone to see with her beau. Frances loved movies. Mabel never had to pay to see one, these days, because the girl would relate the entire plot of the newest release over tea. This one was something about a matador, starring Rudolph Valentino.
Mabel didn’t care for Rudolph Valentino. He seemed entirely too smooth. Having grown up with her large, gruff-spoken stepfather, she was used to large, gruff-spoken men. Street-smart entrepreneurs, who had plans for their futures and the guts to see those plans through. Men like Boyd…
No. She wasn’t going to think about Boyd.
Mabel plastered a determined smile on her face. “Yes, I’m fine.” She assured Mrs. Patten and accepted a refill of tea. “I’m sorry, Norris. My mind wandered, for a second. What were you saying?”
“I was just telling you that the funeral home has been jumping!” Norris worked at the local funeral parlor and had a minor obsession with gangsters. His conversations tended towards the macabre and/or sensationalized gangland tales from the tabloids. “On account of what happened at O'Shaughnessy Speakeasy.”
“Yes, I heard something about that.” Mabel murmured. She’d missed the details, because she’d been intent on escaping Boyd’s warehouse without collapsing into messy tears, though.
“Everyone’sheard about it.” Norris was awkwardly thin, with slicked-down brown hair. He favored high collars, which just accentuated his long neck and prominent Adam’s apple. “The police even came to take a look at the bodies. What was left of them, anyways.”
Mabel glanced at him in mild surprise. “Were they shot that many times?”
“They weren’t shot,at all. Docs don’t know what happened to them. Big hunks of the corpses are missing. Some of their limbs were left, scattered around the bar, but hardly any heads and torsos. And they weren’t hacked apart or anything. It’s like legs and arms were melted off the bodies.”
That was… unusual.
“We ran outta caskets for all the different parts.” Norris continued with gruesome pleasure. “I was thinking, do we combine the pieces thatlooklike they belong together? Or do we order more coffins, and then every hand and foot gets its own? Because some folks are gonna complain about paying double to bury two different…”
“This is hardly appropriate conversation, Mr. Sterno.” Mrs. Patten interjected repressively.
The landlady embraced the studied elegance of her widowhood, forever in black and eternally disapproving. She’d been raised in the formality of the Victorian era, so her home remained a time capsule. The modern pace of the world was a constant drain on Mrs. Patten’s poor nerves. She often lamented as much to the portrait of the late Mr. Patten, which hung over the mantel.
Sometimes Mabel felt sorry for the man, who couldn’t escape his wife’s constant dramatic monologues, even in death.
“Yes, ma’am.” Norris instantly agreed with Mrs. Patten, because not agreeing with her would have been akin to hitting your own skull with a hammer: Pointless and painful. “But, I feel like I need to warn you ladies about how strange it all is. Whatever happened to the folks at the speakeasy, the cause of their death is still out there. You’d best be extra careful walking the streets. Anything that could melt flesh like that has got to be…”
Mrs. Patten cut him off, again. “Thankyou, Mr. Sterno. We’re very grateful for your concern. But, since none of the ladies inthishouse frequents speakeasies, I’m sure we’ll be just fine. Not likesomepeople.” She gave atskof disapproval for all the victims who’d had the poor taste to be dismembered. “Really, those hooligans’ drinking and carousing brought the entire mess on themselves.”
Norris began to defend the dead and melted… only to quickly wise-up and shut his mouth, again. Hitting your skull with a hammer was never the best choice.
