From the Tales of Saint Anthony, the Johnny Holiday Mysteries
These short stories follow the lives of people who populate the fictional city of Saint Anthony (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and make their appearance in the first Johnny Holiday novel, The...
Helga Magnusson sat with her companion, Celene Forrester, in the back of the cream-colored sedan. Their mutual friend, Dr. Peirce Johnson was in the driver's seat; they had kept him busy chauffeuring them about town.
The car belonged to Celene, to her father to be precise, the notorious Colonel Forrester who was reputed to be the most powerful man in Saint Anthony.
The three of them had spent the afternoon together, primping and preparing for a mini-bacchanal: smoking opium, imbibing ether, ingesting various other substances apart from the alcohol that Celene appeared to drink like water.
Helga played along while she covertly concealed the scant amount of intoxicants that she actually consumed; she did not want to lose her head, though she wanted Celene and Dr. Johnson to believe that she had.
Helga was on a mission and she would not be deterred; she was in Saint Anthony pretending to be her twin sister Ingrid, who she had drawn away from the city on a ruse. The game of switching identities was one they had played many times before...they were good at it.
Helga was getting away with it; at least she believed she was.
She was certain that neither the foppish Dr. Johnson, who seemed to be distressed and preoccupied with something else entirely, nor the reckless drunken debutant suspected a thing.
On this occasion Helga and Celene had dressed themselves like ladies of the night, wearing nothing but scanty lingerie, as had become fashionable in the jazz clubs and dance halls of Saint Anthony. They wore clear-plastic raincoats to keep themselves dry through the storm, concealing nothing at all of their figures.
The three of them left Dr. Johnson's residence just as it was beginning to rain.
Together, they visited a couple of speakeasies where wealthy people met anonymously to explore their peccadilloes, which they spoke of as the mystical dimensions of hedonism.
Helga and Celene danced together like lovers while Dr. Johnson watched them and fretted, but all the while Helga was merely killing time until she would be able to rendezvous with her husband, the crime boss Karl Thorrson.
Karl had no idea that Helga was here in Saint Anthony; he had no idea that she had tricked her sister into leaving town for the day. He had no idea that Helga was posturing as Ingrid, and he had not slightest inclination that Helga intended to kill him.
At the appropriate hour Helga excused herself from the niche they were sitting in at the Café Bohemian, she stepped over Dr. Johnson where he sat slumped over with poor posture, and Celene who was laying across his lap, smoking one of her slender cigarettes.
Celene watched her go to the front desk and make a phone call, after which she quickly returned to collect her companions and guide them toward the exit, suggesting that they go to her studio at the warehouse for more fun.
A trip to Ingrid's sanctum was the enticement that guaranteed the two of them would come quickly, they were students of the occult, and all such devotees were eager to spend time in the abode of a witch.
Helga was not surprised at their readiness; Celene however, was simply playing along. She had already ascertained that Helgo was not Ingrid.
On the ride from Jewett's Park to the studio off Lake Street, Helga became fixed on her desire to kill her husband; the more she concentrated on that the harder it was to maintain the illusion she had been casting...her Ingrid mask began to crack.
When they pulled up to the loading dock she saw that her informant had been reliable and her husband had already arrived. Her heart began to pound with a heady mixture of bloodlust and fear.
She was done with him...she had come to hate the monster she was married too; he had become a grotesque thing. Helga was so intent on seeing him dead that she did not notice Celene pluck the tiniest hair from her neck and blow it back at her like pixie dust.
Her adrenalin pushed her out the car door.
She did not notice how woozy she was feeling or how light on her feet she had become as she went to confront her husband. She did not realize how weak she had become when she lifted the pistol and fired the gun.
She did not know how she had been betrayed until the bullet she had prepared glanced off the giant Thorrson, ricocheting back at her, at which point she had become undone.
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