The Mystery Megapack

fire?”
    “Will be. I’m going to burn your boat,” she said and turned on her heel.
    She grabbed the can and navigated cautiously so she didn’t disturb the target area, even though the moon spilled its light through the ragged cloud cover and she could see a little. After she got into position, it seemed like an eternity before he flew out the side door. She had taken the bulb out of the porch light, but she could still make out the angry contortion of her husband’s face.
    “Gina. You know I’m not letting you get away with this,” he said, but, agonizingly, took only two steps closer to the trap.
    “You got this comin’, Axel.” She turned and splashed water on the boat.
    He charged, moving faster than she had ever seen him go. And then he snapped from view.
    She listened to the night, suddenly worried someone might have heard them. At first all was quiet. Then she heard a moan and saw the top of Axel’s head pop out of the hole.
    Adrenalin surged as she jumped up on the trailer fender and grabbed the shovel, then flew down and bashed him on the head. The impact wasn’t really a loud sound, but the meaty thud made her stomach lurch. Worried about the loss of cover with the moon out, she moved quickly and mechanically. Up, get a shovel full of dirt, down, throw it over him. She was horrified that the gravelly dirt made so much noise as it hit his body. She intensified her efforts: step down to the edge of hole, let the dirt slide down the walls, back up on the fender, and scoop. Finally she gathered up the soiled tarp from the bottom of the boat and pushed it in on top of him. Thank goodness she had toiled in the garden season after season, building up her stamina, because it took until dawn threatened to top off the hole. Only minutes though, to rake the area smooth in preparation for the cement job.
    “Guess you wish that I had canceled tomorrow’s pour now,” she said and inspected her work.
    * * * *
    As she wiped the garden tools across the grass to give them a preliminary cleaning, she thought about the rose bushes in their burlap coats that she had tucked away in the shadows behind the house. They stood ready to be planted around the edges of the new carport when it cured.
    Axel planted in his hole meant that all the dirt wouldn’t fit back in, so she had gone ahead and piled the extra soil in a mound (such handy planting material) beside the roses.
    Gina was sure it would be a long time before anyone noticed he was gone, what with his travel all week and his fishing on weekends. His boss sure wasn’t going to call her, or anyone else for that matter, to ask about his missing salesman. The guy had covered too many times in the past when Axel was off with that woman. If anyone ever did come looking, they’d find the boat parked right where he left it on the concrete deck that Axel himself had ordered.
    She went into the shed to retrieve the hidden Cosmo to plant in the boat’s storage compartment. The address label would make a nice piece of incriminating evidence to tie the witch to her husband. Tricia Peller: a person of interest.
    Gina had hidden the magazine on the top of the tool cabinet, and she stretched to fetch it down. Once in her hands, she couldn’t help encircling the address label within the flashlight’s beam for one more look.
    “Tricia Peller,” Gina sneered. And then some bold type at the edge of the illuminated halo caught her eye.
    Gina read, “Christmas Edition: December 2006.”
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    C. Ellett Logan spent her formative years in the Deep South, an experience that informs her settings and troubles her characters, Southern-Gothic-style. Currently, she has found the perfect home in Northern Virginia in the crime-fiction community, landing coveted spots—for her short stories in Chesapeake Crimes anthologies (Wildside Press)—and on the board of Sisters in Crime’s Chesapeake Chapter. Her completed manuscript, Miasma , is set in the swamps of Georgia’s low country.

WAYS OF DARKNESS, by E.S. Pladwell
    The ghostly reflection of a flashlight upstairs threw downward its faint illumination toward paneled oak and candelabra in the vast dining-room where Petey Ingalls jiggled nervously on his toes and strained his attention for hostile sounds. Petey was ill at ease. He had been so since he arrived. He had turned a few tricks—mere cottage affairs—but this intrusion into a millionaire’s stately home had a tendency to overawe him.
    Alongside him were