Read Online The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 by Otto Penzler - Free Book Online Page B

her in bed, smiling widely and eagerly. There were little teeth on her tongue and small, triangular teeth fringing her lips.
    Mattie got to the Bridge Group early the next afternoon and waited, with impatience that surprised her, for Olivia Korhonen to arrive. The Group met in a community building within sight of the Moss Harbor wharf, its windows fronting directly on the parking lot. Mattie was already holding the door open when Olivia Korhonen crossed the lot.
    Did she look even a little startled—the least bit taken aback by her prey’s eager welcome? Mattie hoped so. She said brightly, “I was afraid you might not be coming today.”
    â€œAnd I thought that perhaps
you . . .
” Olivia Korhonen very deliberately let the sentence trail away. If she had been at all puzzled, she gathered herself as smoothly as a cat landing on its feet. “I am glad to see you, Mattie. I had some foolish idea that you might be, perhaps, ill?”
    â€œNot a bit—not when we need to work on our strategy.” Mattie touched her elbow, easing her toward the table where Jeannie Atkinson and old Joe Booker were both beckoning. “You know we need to do that.” It was a physical effort to make herself smile into Olivia Korhonen’s blue eyes, but she managed.
    Playing worse than even she ever had, with foolish bids, rash declarations of trumps, scoring errors, and complete mismanagement of her partner’s hand when Olivia Korhonen was dummy, she worked with desperate concentration—manifesting as lightheaded carelessness—on upsetting the woman’s balance, her judgment of the situation. How well she succeeded, and to what end, she could not have said; but when Olivia Korhonen mouthed
I will kill you
once again at her as she was dealing a final rubber, she fought down the ice-pick stab of terror and gaily said, “
Ah-ah,
we mustn’t signal each other—against the rules, bad, bad.” Jeannie and Joe raised their eyebrows, and Olivia Korhonen, very briefly,
almost
looked embarrassed.
    She left hurriedly, directly after the game. Mattie followed her out, blithely apologizing left and right, as always, for her poor play. At the car, Olivia Korhonen turned to say, evenly and without expression, “You are not spoiling the game for me. This is childish, all this that you are playing at. It means nothing.”
    Mattie felt her mouth drying and her heart beginning to pound. But she said, keeping her voice as calm as she could, “Not everybody gets to know how and when they’re going to die. If you’re really going to kill me, you don’t get to tell me how to behave.” Olivia Korhonen did not reply, but got into her car and drove away, and Mattie walked back to the Bridge Group for tea and cookies.
    â€œOne for the sheep,” Pat said on the phone that night. “You crossed her up—she figured you’d be running around in the pen, all crazy with fear, bleating and blatting and wetting yourself. The fun part. And instead you came right to her and practically spit in her eye. I’ll bet she’s thinking about that one right now.”
    On the extension, Babs said flatly, “Yes, she sure as hell is. And
I’m
thinking that she won’t make that mistake again. She’s regrouping, is what it is—she’ll be coming from another place next time, another angle. Don’t take her lightly, the way she took you. Nothing’s changed.”
    â€œI know that.” Mattie’s voice, like her hands, was unsteady. “I wish I could say
I’ve
changed, but I haven’t, not at all. I’m the same fraidy cat I always was, but maybe I’m covering it a little better, I don’t know. All I know is I just want to hide under the bed and cover up my head.”
    Pat said slowly, “I was raised in the country. A sheep-killing dog doesn’t go for it just once. This woman has killed before.”
    Babs said,