Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

Noodling by Lisa Lepovetsky

Several of Lisa Lepovetsy’s stories appeared in EQMM in the 1990s, and we’re glad to have her back with this tightly constructed tale. In addition to writing stories in both the mystery and horror genres for various magazines, the Pennsylvania author is a published poet with many credits in literary magazines. She teaches writing and literature classes at both the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State. She also writes and hosts mystery dinner theater (sometimes on cruise ships!).

“Angie’s little Lizzie says she sees a ghost at night sometimes, wandering a-round the pond out by their barn.”

After this pronouncement, Marla Hartmann looked around the room at the other ladies making noodles for the Ail Saints Episcopal Church fundraiser. When nobody responded, she continued, “Apparently she thinks it comes out of the woods at dusk, circles the pond a couple of times, and then returns to the trees. I don’t know how she could see anything that far away, but she swears she sees it.”

This was my first time “noodling” with the church ladies, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react to this information. Smalltown gossip has never been to my taste. So I said nothing, and just turned the handle on the noodle cutter, watching the thin strips appear underneath as the flattened dough passed through the metal teeth.

Marla was Angie’s aunt, and lived “next door,” a mile and a half closer to town on the same dead-end dirt road. Though I didn’t know her well, Angie and I had gone to high school together ten years earlier. I tried to imagine her little girl peering out the window of her trailer at a wavering phosphorescent face, but the picture just wouldn’t come.

“Lizzie might well see spooks,” Marla continued as she deftly caught the noodles in her plump hands and draped them on the adjacent table. “Those two kids don’t get much attention these days. I think Angie’s been hitting the sauce since Jimmy Joe left. Turn that crank a bit faster, Gwen,” she added, glancing at me. I did.

“Can’t blame her for that,” said Etta Bollinger, a tall, thin woman with unnaturally red hair. “Left alone out there in the middle of nowhere with two young sprouts, one still in diapers.”

She and her twin sister Ella bent over two other machines, putting wads of dough through increasingly narrow rollers to get them to just the right thickness before they went through the cutters. Ella was shorter and plumper, and had let her hair go gray. The sisters looked nothing alike, but dressed in similar clothes and lived together in the house they grew up in.

Ella glanced at me. “You and Angie are of an age, aren’t you, Gwen? Do you know her?”

“Not really,” I muttered, trying to guide the dough through the blades without getting my fingers caught. “She was a couple of years behind me in school. I just knew her in passing.”

“You must have known Jimmy Joe, then,” Marla said.

“He wasn’t in any of my classes,” I answered. “I was in the band when he was on the football team, though, so I knew who he was. That was about it.”

“Your husband — what’s his name, Henry — he was on the football team too, wasn’t he? His mama was bragging on him all the time, as I recall.” Ella leaned back with her hand on her hip, stretching out a kink.

“Yes, he was. That’s how I met Jimmy Joe, I guess.”

“That Jimmy Joe loves my noodles,” Marla said, laying out another set of noodle strips on waxed paper. “Of course, I never use machines; just a rolling pin and a sharp knife, that’s all I ever need.”

“Well, it would take us too long the old-fashioned way,” said Etta, “trying to make enough noodles to sell at the holiday bazaar. It’s only two weeks away. Hard to believe it’s November already. The time does fly. Angie and the kids coming to your house for Thanksgiving dinner, Marla?” She took another ball of dough from the big bowl and squeezed it deftly between her palms before feeding it through her flattening machine.

“I suppose so. Though I have to wonder what she did to make Jimmy Joe leave so suddenly. That girl’s a sneaky one sometimes.”

“Sneaky my Aunt Hilda,” Etta said disgustedly. “Angie’s too simple, and too busy with those babies, to be sneaky. You have to admit Jimmy Joe always had a wandering eye, and a wandering foot. He was a missing person waiting to happen. That’s why the police didn’t spend more effort looking for him. His kind of man is the reason I never got married.”

“He’ll be back, you mark my words,” said Marla, raising her right forefinger and letting a batch of noodles ribbon onto the table under the machine. I stopped cranking for a moment and flexed my fingers, but said nothing.

“He may not be perfect,” Marla continued, “but he’ll be back to take care of those children.”

“Not perfect,” snorted Ella, stretching her back again. “He took care of those kids by going to the Red Dog every Friday night and carousing with his cronies, playing pool and drinking, while Angie stayed home waiting for him. He probably has a woman on the side too, a sharp-looking boy like him. He’s probably shacked up somewhere right now.”

“Or he’s run off with his latest honey,” Etta said. “He and Angie had a big blowout just before he took off. That’s what my boy Bobby says. And he should know — he was the officer who took Angie’s call when she reported him missing.”

“Etta, would you take these noodles up to the sanctuary to dry?” Marla asked, holding out a large flat box of noodles. “If you can find a place to drape them. I think the back pews still have some room left.”

Things were quiet for a few minutes after Etta left; the only sounds were the creak of the handle on the rollers and Ella’s tuneless humming. I glanced out the window and watched the first flakes flutter down onto the brown grass. Winter was coming early this year; I was glad. I like winter — the purity of the white snow on the ground, like a blanket covering all our sins, so we can start over again in the spring. And the streams and ponds freeze over — that’s the best part. Then the kids can go ice skating, gliding across the smooth surface, not worried about what might be swimming below.

But I didn’t say those things. I didn’t want to enter the conversation, draw attention to myself. I hardly knew these women. I had joined the church because Henry’s mother wanted me to, therefore Henry wanted me to. And I don’t like to fight with Henry; keeping him happy keeps me in our nice big house with the three-stall garage and a swimming pool and tennis court out back. He may not always make me happy, but his money does.

“Is Angie helping out with the bazaar again this year, Marla?” Ella asked.

Marla shrugged. “I doubt it. With Jimmy Joe gone, she’d have to pay for a sitter, and they don’t really have the money for that. He didn’t exactly leave her well-off, you know.”

Yes, I thought; we all know about Jimmy Joe’s finances. Like all small towns, everybody pretty well knew everybody else’s business. Although, some lucky people were able to keep their secrets a secret.

Like the fact that I know who the “ghost” is that little Lizzie sees wandering down by the pond every week. And the fact that I know where Jimmy Joe’s gone and that he’s not coming back.

Jimmy Joe and I had a nice thing going for a while, and neither Henry nor Angie knew anything about it. He’d claim he was going to the Red Dog, and I’d say I was going out with my camera, and we’d meet at various places — a clearing in the woods when the weather was nice, his old barn when it started getting colder. He was more interesting than Henry, and a better lover. I really enjoyed our time together.

But then Jimmy Joe decided he’d fallen in love with me, and wanted to get married. He was going to tell Angie all about us, and ask her for a divorce. I had no intention of leaving Henry; I like my life the way it is. I tried to explain this to Jimmy Joe in his barn one night, but he got angry and tried to hit me. He missed, but I grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a heavy wrench, and hit him with it as hard as I could. He went down and never got back up again.

I loaded him in a wheelbarrow, but it took me some time to decide what to do with the body. I made good use of some old rope and a cement block. I’ve been coming back to Angie’s place regularly to make sure he’s still hidden.

I hope the pond freezes over soon.