Saffron’s Menagerie: A Thriller

By Phil Stevenson

Saffron, Apples and Caviar Inc.’ provide assassination services to those that want revenge.
Adorable 29 year old Saffron Justice and her eccentric partner Reg Charles, are brilliant Scientists and Biologists who discover the ‘Mother Key’ elixir whilst at M.I.T. Boston.
After successful revenge death contracts, a private detective is closing in on them. Also two New York detectives, Matt Scott and Barbara Custer become involved in solving these bizarre murders.
Saffron and Reg want to close up their operation.
But one more assignment is asked of them.
Could this be their undoing?
Saffron has a glass menagerie in her front room, but a hidden Menagerie in her basement.
Det. Custer is suspicious when a friend is killed in a car crash. As she brings all the clues together, she too is fooled by Saffron’s Menagerie.
The ending is not at all what you might expect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Jul 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781925819786

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental

For

Nancye

&

Iris

---ooOoo---

CHAPTER ONE

Since women do most delight in revenge,

it may seem but feminine manhood

to be vindictive.

Sir Thomas Browne

MANHATTAN

1.

     A bright red Porsche coupe turns into Bank Street from Greenwich Ave, and slowly drives down the dark grey cobble stone street. It stops outside a line of Greek Revival townhouses. It is a warm, cloudless summer’s day in Greenwich Village, downtown Manhattan. The curbside trees are providing a glorious contrast of green and shade against the red brick buildings. A few pigeons from the local park are cooing in a nearby tree. There are people going about their way this mid-afternoon. A few couples chat to each other and a nanny, with headphones in her ears pushes a stroller with a dozing baby wrapped in a light cotton shawl.

The Porsche comes to a stop outside Number 462. A young man, in his twenties, gets out of the passenger’s side and runs up the stone front stairs to the entrance pediment that adorns the old heavy oak front door. A button is pressed, passwords exchanged and the door is unlatched.

A few minutes later the visitor walks back down the front stairs, clutching a brown paper folder, gets into the Porsche that drives away.

It is Friday, which entices a number of cars into the street with occupants that also make their way to the same townhouse door. They also stay only minutes and then disappear back into the great metropolis.

Ten minutes after the Porsche, a green Chevy Camaro that contains a sole driver goes through the same procedure as before.

Inside the Bank Street townhouse an overweight man, fiftyish, known as Lucky, a name he coined himself, counted dollar bills on his dining room table and stacked them in matching denomination piles. A large covered plastic storage tub was nearby. It contained the items that he peddles each and every Friday afternoon to only a dozen or so well-heeled young Manhattan or Brooklyn types and some older, which sought his wares.

The man has bottle lens glasses on his round fat face that has a receding hairline, with squinty eyes that make him look like an old-fashioned bank clerk. Today, so far, he has netted $6,000. An average sum, however he is happy. If all goes well that figure might go to $10,000.

He looks out from his dining room window down into Bank Street to see a small delivery van arrive. It is his afternoon grocery delivery, as the driver, while whistling, opens the back of the van to retrieve a cardboard box brimming with fruit, vegetables and other assorted goodies. He is a young-looking man, with reddish thick clumped hair adorned by a cap bearing the same logo as on the side of the truck. Large circular sunglasses surround his eyes. He wears baggy jeans and a sloppy sweater that hangs loosely down past his waist. The driver scoots up the front stairs and rings his buzzer.

Lucky covers his cash with a cloth, checks again his visitor via the above door camera and walks to open the door.

We’re on time today, the delivery driver says with a smile.

To which Lucky just nods. He wants him gone as soon as possible. He had complained about the late delivery after 3 pm last Friday. The busiest delivery day and also his busiest day. He doesn’t want grocery deliveries interrupting his lucrative Fridays. And certainly, did not want any indicators that might ward off his clients.

Shall I take it to the kitchen? the driver asks.

Lucky didn’t recognize the delivery guy as the regular, and didn’t care either.

No, I’ll take it from here, was his reply.

Lucky signs the delivery docket, sends the delivery truck on its way, and is soon in the kitchen filling the fridge with the perishables and stacking other items on the kitchen bench. A twin pack of frozen strawberries is thrown into the freezer compartment.

The door buzzes again and he instantly looks to the security monitor to see who it is. Passwords are exchanged and another deal is done.

2.

Lucky didn’t go out at night. He didn’t like it, especially weekends. He would prefer his casual strolls through Washington State Park during the afternoons, which usually finished with an early evening meal at The Spotted Pig or at Buvette’s, a popular, quaint bistro offering a French small-plates menu at breakfast, lunch & dinner.

Lucky is a loner. Rotund, short, unattractive, sweaty and unpleasant to look at. His crooked stained teeth need some orthodontic care. He is a relation to a ‘speak-easy’ type major New York dealer named Carlos, who provides his inventory at a most reasonable cost. Lucky helped out his cousin big-time some years back regarding an incident, when Lucky perjured himself, by giving Carlos an alibi after Carlos was charged with a break and enter. Carlos then returned the favor by selling Lucky modest amounts of cocaine and cannabis at well below ‘market price’.

Lucky spends all his funds, or most of it, on rare coins, which he gloats over in his third story secured collection room. In fact, he spends most of his time in his collection room, which also secures his prohibited substances. Lucky drinks Pepsi and munches on potato crisps as he dotes on his prized collections of rare Spanish coins. He has a gold doubloon and two silver ‘pieces-of-eight’, minted in the 16thcentury. He loves to look at them and thinks of Blackbeard the Pirate’s look on his face, when opening a chest full of them, with a ribald parrot screeching in the background, ‘pieces of eight, pieces of eight.’

It is now Saturday afternoon, and he decides to dine at Buvette’s and then go home to make his favorite dessert, a strawberry and cream concoction in a big glass bowl that he loves spooning into.

He’s ‘watching’ a rare Italian coin for sale on eBay, and the auction is ending that night. He plans to buy it. The sale ends at 8:35 pm.

He hails a cab to quicken the return of the few blocks to his townhouse and arrives home at 5:45 pm. Just enough time to settle and watch the news at six o’clock.

He walks to his kitchen, opens the freezer door and pulls out the frozen strawberries. It is the twin pack, each single serve separated by a perforation in the plastic pouches. He notices a small rip in one pack, thinks nothing of it, and decides it is the one to eat first. Using his teeth, he opens the pack wider and empties the contents into a very large long glass. He goes back to the fridge and retrieves a tub of thickened cream and spoons it into the glass. The strawberries will take about thirty minutes to defrost, and in anticipation, as usual, he pours himself a large Canadian Club whisky on the rocks. Then settles in front of the television and waits for the news.

He has been fascinated about the Hillary Clinton loss in the recent election and her shock reaction to it, but he doesn’t really care at all. He didn’t vote. After thirty minutes of commercials, more commercials with some news, he has finished his drink and now looks forward to his dessert.

As he enters his kitchen he didn’t notice a small movement in the glass. It may have been from the strawberries moving as they melted in with the cream. It moved again. And then, a third time, as if it was agitated.

As he sat back with the television, he amused himself on the amount of wealth he had accumulated in such a few years. He now almost owned his townhouse and had a magnificent private collection of coins from all over the world. The coins are also an investment, as they will appreciate over time. He knows that he must move on to another location soon, as his visitations on Friday afternoons were not going unnoticed. One local, who queried him in the street during casual conversation, referred to his visitors. His reply always is that he provides a resume, curriculum vitae service for job seekers who want a professional presentation when applying for jobs. Lucky always says that it paid the bills.

He had his favorite long spoon that dived deep into the stemmed glass. By now the strawberries were ready and the cream had melted though the batch revealing artistic strawberry red veins on the inside of the flute.

The spoon went deep into the glass and for a moment it seemed different to Lucky, as he felt something larger in the glass. He brought the glass up to his face to see, when from the creamed red miasma an orange insect jumps out at him and claws onto his left cheek. As if by nature, within a millisecond the insect’s engorged tail sting strikes Lucky’s left eye, into the corner near his nose. Lucky recoils, and by reaction slaps the insect on his cheek as hard as he possibly can. No casual hand flick away! The insect, now mortally damaged, arches its tail and strikes again, driving its sting into Lucky’s right cheek. Lucky gives the creature one almighty strike, feels its external skeleton crack, which causes it to fall into his lap, dead.

He looks down in shock and despair. It is a large reddish brown scorpion. Immediately he is overcome with excruciating pain in his eye, cheek and now his entire face. He slumps forward letting his dessert crash to the floor. He tries to stand up, but falls back into the chair and then rolls onto the floor in agony. Within minutes Lucky’s pulmonary system is failing. The system of blood vessels that forms a closed circuit between the heart and the lungs was under attack from the arachnid’s powerful poisonous venom. After a while, pink frothy sputum starts to dribble from his mouth. An hour later Lucky is dead.

SAN FRANCISCO

1.

Saffron Justice is reading her notebook in a comfortable leather seat next to a port window on the Gulfstream G600 private jet. She planned to be in Frisco for about three days if all went to plan. She wears a dark grey Prada fine merino wool suit with a white Prada tie-neck silk crepe de chine blouse. She had slipped her black Bally patent leather loafers off during the flight, and now searches for them as the pilot announces that landing is fifteen minutes away.

There are only five other people on this flight from New York. Four are business people having a quiet conversation, who share documents between each other. The other is a well-dressed graceful lady. They had exchanged smiles from across the aisle during the flight. Saffron took a liking to her as she reminded her of her mother.

Saffron fastens her seat belt and looks out her window. It is an overcast day in San Francisco, so nothing much was visible on the ground.

After the jet landed, she walked across the tarmac pulling her expensive carry-on luggage behind her and heads towards a waiting limousine.

Saffron is twenty-nine years old, five feet eight inches in height with a firm slim athletic body. This is the result of her disciplined workouts and gym exercises. Her eyes are a piercing hazel-green. She can hold a stare with anyone for a long time. Her dark brown hair is tied back in a ponytail that flows down her back. A slight breeze lifts it up and flicks it about. She has an exquisite face, long and sanguine. With a cute pert nose and gorgeous high cheekbones with unblemished skin.

When in San Francisco she always stays at an exclusive guesthouse that is actually on Lombard Street. Very chic, and not marketed on the Internet.

She always pays cash for her lodgings, could receive ‘room service’ from at least a dozen local restaurants and was given the privacy and confidentiality provided by this select establishment.

An express mail package is waiting for her arrival and soon after she is ensconced in her well-furnished suite. The lounge window overlooks the famous brick paved snaking street and she enjoys on occasions watching tourists walk down its serpentine shape in iconic awe.

With all the business arrangements having been met days before, with all loose ends competed, she is now here. Saffron lets out a sigh and mixes herself a gin and tonic, with a dash of bitters.

She retrieves a small atomizer bottle from her luggage and sprays her face, hands and arms with a fine mist. Then she opens the mail package to reveal a cardboard box. Slowly opening the box at one end the contents slide out onto the palm of her hand.

Hello my babies. You both look in great shape, she says to them with a big loving smile.

LOS ANGELES

1.

Ronald Sweet is a large girthed mogul Hollywood producer. His company, ‘Sweets Inc.’, had created some of the finest adventure and thriller movies on the L.A. lots. Academy Awards adorn the private den in his palatial home in Beverly Hills.

Beverly Hills. Yes, that was the place to be and that was his goal as a very young copywriter for MGM Pictures. Now in his late sixties, he had little to do with the day-to-day operations of Sweets Inc., however he still had a say on the Board.

This mild afternoon he is holding a birthday party for his fifteen-year-old son, Ronald Jnr. He adores his son and has already enrolled him into Princeton. He affectionately calls him Ronnie Jay, or just R.J. There are about twenty adults and ten or so teenagers in attendance. Mostly school friends of Ronnie Jay’s, plus his adorable girlfriend, Mary May Masterson, with her short blond Shirley Temple curls and coke-bottle figure.

Afternoon tea is now served, calls out Susan Sweet as she walks from the front steps of the house. Those that want to eat make your way into the marquis tent and help yourself.

A few hungry ones, especially the teenagers, walk their way into the large white tent.

So, tell me Ron, did you ever think you’d be bringing up a teenager in your late sixties? asks his friend and next-door neighbor.

No, never once occurred to me. I’m a bit of a narcissist. Ronnie Jay changed that around for me. And, of course, my wife. She contributed mightily. Ron winked at him as he looks into the tent at his wife coordinating everything to everyone’s wishes. Twenty-five years younger and still hot and tight. ‘Ah, the perks of Hollywood’, Ron smiles to himself.

Come on, says his neighbor, I’m famished.

2.

A FedEx van comes to a stop at the front gates of the Sweet’s residence. The gates are closed, with a security guy inside. A paunchy, stooped woman gets out of the van and slides back the side door to retrieve a small package. The security guard, now in a very relaxed state of mind after taking a toke from a joint a moment before, opens the gates and walks over to the FedEx van.

Parcel for Ronald Sweet Junior, is the driver’s call out.

The security guard thought nothing of it, as other gifts had arrived some time before, so he signs for the delivery. He looks at the FedEx woman. She wears a FedEx cap over her thick short dirty orangey hair and seemed to have a walking disability. However, he got a quick glance of her eyes. They were alive and full of spirit. Piercing even. They mesmerized him for a moment, but he shakes it off as effects from the dope.

Have a good auld time, she says with a dry smile, then gets back into her van and drives away.

3.

R.J. and Mary May walk over to Mr. Sweet to encourage him to join the rest in the tent. For some reason, Ron’s penchant for fine bourbon whiskey always dents his appetite. A maid from the house came out and says that a parcel is at the front gate for R.J.

I’ll go down and get it, offered Mary May, as they receive the news that yet another delivery has arrived.

Ok then. Thank you, Ronald Sweet smiles salaciously at Mary May as she darts off down the long drive to the front gates. Ronald eyes Mary with sinister intent. He would be in heaven if he ever had the chance to bury his face between her legs. Now, that would be true heaven all over again. He has a bad yen for young teenage girls, which had not gone unnoticed when on his movie sets.

R.J., Ron’s wife calls out to Ronnie Jay from inside the tent, Time to cut your birthday cake.

Be right there Mom. Just waiting for Mary May.

R.J. walks toward the marquis and into the merriment that was inside. He sees Mary May run back over the fine manicured lawn, she even gave a Pollyanna skip, while swinging the package in one hand. She joins him and grabs his hand as they stroll into the tent.

Fifteen candles are lit and wait to be extinguished by the birthday boy. R.J. and Mary May walk over to the table to finally do the expected. After a few thoughtful loving words from R.J.’s father, R.J. blows all candles out with a strong adolescent exhale. Mary holds his hand and squeezed it like a baby anaconda. The serpent with the apple.

R.J.’s friends gather around to look at the cake. Mom starts cutting the cake into even pieces. Ron Sweet, from afar, observes the framed shot as if he was enjoying a scene on one of his movie sets. He wants another drink.

Everybody sang ‘Happy Birthday’ with crescendo, and all enjoyed the happiness they shared. It was a great adult and teenage party. Security is very present to ensure all enjoyed without concern.

R.J. was encouraged by his father to mix with the ‘oldies’. Which he did with great charm and maturity. Mary May was always at his side. She loves him. Puppy love maybe, but she loves him.

Mary proffered the parcel to R.J., who used the cake knife to pierce through the plastic post parcel. It reveals a small cardboard box with ‘Happy Birthday’ printed on it.

Do you want to open it? R.J. asks Mary as she tickles his palm with her long fingernails.

Nope, it’s yours, she says, But we can share it if you like.

R.J.’s fingers rip through the outer brown rapping. A small oblong cardboard box remains. R.J. flicks open the rear end. Then looks in. He can’t see a thing, so he empties the contents out in front of him. Two orange reddish brown scorpions emerge and immediately set on each of his hands. Their stings strike into R.J. repeatedly. In a split second, he attempts to flick the insects off, but one holds on, the other lands on Mary May’s dress. R.J. is in shock and quickens his breath. The remaining scorpion drives its sting into his wrist, as if by nature.

Mary May screams in terror and runs from the tent. Get it off! Someone please get it off! She screams over and over as she runs onto the lawn.

Jamie Mack, R.J.’s best friend, runs after Mary and sees the insect crawling up her dress. He takes off his fedora hat and begins to flick at it with the fedora’s short brim. Third attempt he dislodges it, the scorpion falls to the lawn. Jamie came down on top of it with the heel of his shoe and crushed it into the soft clay lawn. It was dead. Mary is still freaking out.

Its dead! Its dead! Jamie yells at her as he pulls her up from the lawn. She is crying and shaking. Jamie put his arm around her.

Let’s go back to the tent and check on R.J.

No, not in there, she resists and makes her way to the front steps of the house.

Meanwhile, back in the marquis, R.J. is lying on the ground. Ron Sweet had killed the other scorpion, by repeatedly hitting it with an empty beer pitcher. He picks up his son in his arms and hurries awkwardly back towards the house. R.J. whimpers, Dad. Dad, please help me.

Ron Sweet comforts his boy, You’ll be OK son. The ambulance has been called and will be here in minutes.

Ron walks up the steps of the house and past the sobbing Mary May.

Is he alright? She looks up.

Ron didn’t answer and moves R.J. onto the front veranda and lays him out on a large outdoor sofa.

Ron looks around for a moment. People are looking up at him from the front garden. One of Mary’s girlfriends has come to her aid and sits next to her. Jamie is next to R.J., asking if he can do anything.

Help is on its way, Ron replies solemnly.

Soon after, an ambulance drives up the long drive to the house. The paramedics run to the front porch and load R.J. onto a stretcher, then without delay into the back of the ambulance. Ronald Sweet jumps in to be next to his son. Within a few minutes the vehicle is racing its way to the hospital.

As the ambulance arrives at the emergency entrance and the rear doors are opened, they find Ronald Sweet holding his son. Ronnie Jay is dead.

VERMONT

1.

Seven months before the demise of unlucky Lucky, Police Sargent Tom Becker arrives outside Mary Taylor’s house at about 10 a.m. Mary had contacted the Brattleboro Police Department the day before to say what she saw the previous week. The information, though garbled on the phone, was of some interest, so Tom Becker is assigned the task.

Mary Taylor had lived alone for twenty years in her house, which is opposite her now deceased neighbor, Elizabeth Garner a widow and a recluse who had seldom ventured outside her home.

Take a seat sonny, and I’ll make us a cup of tea, Mary Taylor says as she invites the Police Officer into her home. Sit over there near the parlor window and I’ll be back in a jiffy.

Tom Becker smiles politely and accepts her offer and hopes that this is not a waste of his precious time. Tom has lived in Brattleboro all his life and had entered the Police Force at age twenty-three. Now ten years on he had elevated himself to Sargent, which he is proud of. His superiors like him because of his professionalism and competence. The town of Brattleboro, Vermont is small, quaint and has numerous campuses close and nearby. A population of about 13,000. Warmish summers and snow-covered winters, like on the front of Christmas Cards. It also is home to The New England Center for Circus Arts and the Vermont Jazz Center.

Well, this is what I saw last week across the street which might be of interest to you, Mary says as she places a tray with two cups on the parlor room table.

I’m all ears, Mrs. Taylor, replies Tom as he picks up his cup.

I sit here most days and read the paper, or write letters to old friends, or I doze off when bored, starts Mary. I was sitting right here when I saw a small white car stop outside Mrs. Garner’s home last Wednesday afternoon. Mary takes a sip from her tea.

Go on, says Sargent Becker.

‘Well, replies Mary as she put her cup down, The car stopped and I saw the driver’s door open and a cat, of all things, jump out and run up to Mrs. Garner’s front porch and just sit there."

Go on, says Sargent Becker.

Well, then the car drove away. Later on, that afternoon Mrs. Garner’s grandson Bobby Garner, who comes around every other day to check on his grandmother, drove up in his car. He checked the mail box and then walked to the porch.

Was this cat still there? asks Tom.

Yes it was. It had not moved since it arrived. However it didn’t run away when Bobby approached it, in fact it went inside with him as he unlocked the front door. I think that a bit strange, don’t you?

Did Mrs. Garner own a cat?

Yes, but it died a few years back and it was completely black. This cat was a golden color, with a dark face, legs and tail. It looked like one of those pedigree types.

OK, go on, says Tom.

Well, I must have dozed off, because when I looked again, Bobby’s car had gone and it was getting close to dark.

Mary looks at the Sargent intently. But the next morning, when I was here at my table, I saw that same small white car pull up outside Mrs. Garner’s house again. It sat here for a while; when all of a sudden that same cat came darting out from under her house somewhere and leaped into the open driver’s door. I have never seen anything like it, ever. And later that day the ambulance arrived and I saw poor Mrs. Garner being taken away to the morgue, I suppose.

Tom Becker says nothing, just looks at her. He then says, And the white car?

Well, it drove away and I haven’t seen it since.

Did you notice what type of car or registration?

"Not the registration, but it was a small Japanese car like