ARSENIC AND OLD LADIES: Excerpt

By Maggie Shayne

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO AI TRAINING PERMITTED. NO PART OF THIS STORY MAY BE COPIES IN ANY FORMAT WITHOUT THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR, MAGGIE SHAYNE LEWIS, AND THE PUBLISHER, OLIVER HEBER BOOKS.

CHAPTER ONE

Diane leaned farther over the steering wheel, shushing her three passengers, because she could see better when it was quiet. Her night vision stank on ice, as they used to say back in high school in the latter half of the 1970s.

“Are you sure you got the directions right?” she asked again.

“I got the frickin’ directions right, Diane,” Rosa said from the back seat, directly behind her. “You sure you got the cemetery’s address right?” When she got pissy, her slight Spanish accent became more pronounced. And lately, it seemed Rosa was always feeling pissy.

“Of course I got the address right,” Diane replied. “Have we met?” She caught Rosa’s brown eyes in the rearview mirror. Her best pal wore a purple paisley bandanna, and her dark brown-streaked-with-silver curls were sticking out from underneath it.

Rosa rolled her eyes and glanced over her shoulder toward the cargo bay in the back of Diane’s brand-new hybrid crossover with all the bells and whistles.

Harry said it might be the last new one they ever bought. Not a big optimist, her guy. He’d been a little moody since they’d sold the concrete business they’d built together. She still went in a few days a week to help out with the older customers who preferred a familiar face. Harry hadn’t been back once since they’d retired.

Usually, she argued him into a brighter outlook when he got all morose, but she hadn’t done so with this whole “might be our last new car ever” business. As a result, he’d sprung for all the options.

“Just hurry it up, okay?” Rosa said. “This is creeping me out.”

Christine, in the front passenger seat, tapped the dash with plum-colored, high-gloss nails and said, “What, like the rest of us aren’t creeped out?” She had a voice like Bacall or Hepburn and spoke fluent sarcasm. There wasn’t a wrinkle on her face or a gray hair on her head and neither of those things came naturally.

“Is this the left up ahead?” Diane asked, refocusing on the road. “Next left, you said, didn’t you, Rosa?” She could hear the tremor in her own voice.

“That’s what I said. You need me to write it down for you?”

Diane took the left, her headlights spilling over yet another forest-lined road. The cloud cover was so heavy she couldn’t even see the sky. No moon, no stars, nothing.

“What did you tell Harry?” Rosa asked. Her tone had softened, the irrelevant question held a subtle apology.

Diane heard it clearly after twenty years of friendship born in Rosa’s bookshop.

“I told him my friends needed me,” Diane replied with a quick, worried glance toward Bonnie, who sat in the back seat, passenger side, silent. She’d been silent for most of the ride, other than occasionally muttering, “I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t mean it.”

“In the middle of the night?” Rosa asked. “And Harry didn’t even ask questions?”

Diane shrugged. “He’s planning weekend golf with his buddies. First time this year. The snow has melted, you know. He’s completely distracted.” Her sigh was heavier than she meant it to be.

Beside her, Christine rolled her eyes. “Too sure of himself is what he is, or too sure of you.” She snapped her fingers. “You should have an affair!”

“I’d never!” Diane turned her head so hard she turned the wheel with it, and the car swayed a little before she righted it again.

“Your loss.” Christine shrugged and turned to look out the window. Her hair didn’t move from its always perfect, side-parted pixie cut. It was that caramel shade between blonde and brunette. Every few weeks some gray would show up near her temples, but it was never allowed to linger. They’d been friends since attending high school together at St. Agnes’s, long before they’d joined a book club at Rosa’s Reads where they’d met Rosa and Bonnie, so Diane knew she was all talk, but didn’t call her out on it. Christine would never cheat on Jeff. She flirted like Blanche Devereaux, but she’d never go any farther. She loved Jeff. She just didn’t like to admit it, because she didn’t like being vulnerable. Her first husband Jon only made it to 42. Diane thought she was afraid of that happening again, and of how devastated she’d been.

Kind of like Bonnie had been since Mark had passed a little over a year ago.

Diane adjusted her mirror to better see Bonnie. She was the youngest of the four of them at sixty-three. Her hair was still mostly butterscotch blonde, but there were inch-wide strips of mist gray in between. She wore it in a cut that curved inward, just brushing the tops of her shoulders. Her signature bangs were always a little too long, a valance for brown eyes that were rounder than usual tonight.

December before last, Diane had been awakened at five a.m. by Bonnie’s phone call. Mark had quietly died in his sleep beside her. It had been fifteen months since that cold morning, when she and Rosa and Christine had rushed to Bonnie’s to surround her and to hold her up through all that had to come after. The girls had got there even before the ambulance.

She navigated a sharper than expected curve on the narrow road that wound through the countryside of Cortland County, New York and she slowed down a little bit more. “I can’t see in the dark for crap,” she said to lighten the mood, which was as dark as this night. Suitably. But still. “I think it’s worse by the week.”

“Get the cataracts removed,” Christine said.

Diane shuddered. “I just can’t let them cut into my eyes. God, wouldn’t that scare you?” Then she glanced at Christine.

Christine sent her a sheepish look. “Me? Scared of surgery?”

Rosa snort laughed.

Maybe, Diane thought, she should think about a little enhancement herself. The old gals weren’t as perky as they’d once been. Maybe that would re-ignite Harry’s guttering flame.

No. No surgery, not at sixty-seven.

“Jeez,” she said, squinting. “I swear it just got a shade darker.”

“It can’t get any darker,” Bonnie said, and the other three exchanged worried looks. At least she’d finally said something, though.

Rosa said, “Well, Diane, if you can’t see to drive at night, we’re gonna need to find Bonnie a different frickin’ hobby.”

There was a moment of stunned silence as all three women looked at Bonnie, Diane by way of the rearview mirror.

Bonnie’s shoulders twitched and she made a strangled noise like she was trying to hold back a cough. Then she burst out laughing, and then they all did. Diane laughed so hard her eyes teared up, and yeah, it was a stress reaction, but it was also funny.

“Hobby,” Bonnie muttered, shaking her head. “This is definitely not another new hobby.”

She laughed a little more, and then it became soft crying. But she mopped up her face with the heel of her hand, and said, “I’m just glad you knew where there was a morning funeral planned.”

“At my age, I’m on the mailing list,” Diane replied, and a lesser chuckle moved among them.

Diane was the oldest. She’d be sixty-eight in September, and she was facing her seventies with a sense of dread. It was all going by so fast. She wasn’t sure she’d done enough to make her life meaningful, to leave the world better than she’d found it, other than producing one wonderful gem of a son. Timothy, was on the west coast working in a Hollywood creature shop, creating special effects and panicking about AI. But he would adapt and evolve.

The biggest evolution she’d undergone lately was letting her hair go gray. It had turned a deep, steely color with a little bit of its old dark blond still lurking here and there. She wore it in a below-the-ear bob, with a few wispy bangs that tried to hide the newest wrinkles in her forehead. She’d found bucket hats did a better job, though. At least that was what Christine said, when delivering a heartfelt compliment on her taste in hats.

The girls listened to Christine about two things. Fashion and fitness. She said women in their sixties ought to do push-ups and squats every day so they wouldn’t lose mobility in their seventies. And darned if Diane wasn’t doing them.

No one had said, but she suspected they all were.

Everyone had gone quiet, and that was worse than the bickering. Christine must’ve read her mind. She turned on the radio. It played the end of Lyin’ Eyes by the Eagles, and just as Diane relaxed into its harmonies, it ended, and a booming male voice replaced it. “Hey, folks! It’s Dangerous Dan the Used Car Man and have I got a deal for you!”

Christine snapped the radio off. “Fuck you, Dangerous Dan.” And when everyone gaped at her, she said, “What? I know him, mildly. Same country club.”

“Oh, same country club,” Rosa said. “Naturally.”

“Don’t you hate when that happens?” Diane asked. Her headlights painted a row of gravestones and her smile died. “There it is.”

“Don’t pull right in,” Rosa said from the back seat.

Diane didn’t even think to question her hesitance. Rosa was fearless. She’d charge in where angels feared to tread, especially where her friends were concerned.

Her own role in their little quartet was, Diane supposed, the leader. That wasn’t arrogance; her friends referred to her that way—frequently. She was usually the first call when things went wrong.

She drove past the cemetery entrance, but there was nothing around. Not even a house, so she turned the brand-new crossover around where there was room and drove back. This time she drove slowly through the open cemetery gate.

“Maybe you should turn off the headlights,” Christine whispered beside her.

“And mow down gravestones?” Diane asked. “I looked up where it was located. Should be…yes. Right there.” She pointed as her headlights picked out a small, bright yellow backhoe with a large pile of dirt beside it. Two shovels were sticking out of the dirt pile at different angles. As she drove closer, she spotted the open grave. It was easily identified by the blue canopy placed over it in case of rain. The canopy was held in place by four poles with cords and stakes for added support. It was several yards away from the dirt pile.

Diane pulled the crossover to a stop right in front of the grave. “This is it,” she said, looking at the headstone. “I went to high school with Tommy Johnson. Just got the email that he’d died yesterday. Calling hours were this afternoon.” She looked at her watch. “Well, yesterday afternoon, now. It’s after midnight. He’ll be interred after a graveside service at ten a.m. I wasn’t planning to attend, but now, I guess I have to.”

“Now, I guess we all do,” Christine said. She opened the passenger door and got out.

Diane opened her door too, but she paused to look at Bonnie in the back. “You can stay in the car if you want. We’ve got this.”

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into it,” Bonnie said. Her eyes were unfocused, and she was rocking in her seat a little bit. “This is bad. This is so, so bad.”

Rosa, still in the back seat with Bonnie, met Diane’s eyes, gave a slight shrug, and opened the side door. Christine was already standing behind the vehicle, and the tailgate was rising in slow motion.

“It’s a really nice minivan, Diane,” she said. “Hybrid and everything?”

“Technically, as my husband keeps telling me, it’s a ‘compact crossover SUV.’” She rolled her eyes. “Thankfully one of Harry’s top requirements was a roomy cargo bay.”

“Not quite roomy enough, though,” Christine said.

Diane joined her at the back of the vehicle and Rosa came around, too. When the tailgate stopped rising, they looked at the bundle in the back. He was wrapped in a comforter from his own bed. They’d had to load him in a sitting position and then fold him double to make him fit. It had been several hours now since they’d stuffed him in there, because the whole thing had happened in broad daylight, and they had to wait until the middle of the night to bury the body. Obviously.

“Harry says he hopes this vehicle lasts as long as we do,” she said.

“God, what a morbid thought,” Christine said. “But I guess we’re in the right place for it. Bonnie, did you bring the frying pan?”

Bonnie got out. “Yeah, I have it,” she said. And she did.

“Okay, then. Let’s get on with this,” Rosa said.

Diane joined her and Christine at the back of the car. Together, they reached in and grabbed hold of the blanket-wrapped corpse.

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A Note from Maggie

Audiobook production begins August 15th. I don't know how long to expect it to take but I'll keep you posted on the progress. It is my fondest hope that it will be ready to release at the same time as all the other editions but it's hard to be sure.

The hardcover edition and the trade paperback edition are distributed through Ingram, where most US booksellers get their books. It will be carried by many booksellers and those who don't carry it can easily order it for you.

Autographed copies are the regular price and can be ordered via my local bookstore All My Friends Books in Cortland, NY through the link above. Orders for signed copies close August 31st.

You can also pre-order unsigned paperbacks and hardcovers anywhere books are sold.

The eBook edition is a Kindle exclusive and can also be pre-ordered now.