Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº17

By Laura Benedict, Margaret Randall, Lee Matthew Goldberg and 5 more

Issue Nº17: Winter 2022 features

A curated collection of short fiction including stories by Edgar and ITW Thriller Award nominee Laura Benedict, Margaret Randall, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Bob Chikos, Caroline Taylor, Mark Jonathan Harris, Scott Cumming, and Dana King.

Interviews and Reviews by Joe R. Lansdale, J. B. Stevens, and Jeffrey A. Lockwood.

Art and Photography by Wiesje Peels, Trijntje Keijser, and Dimitar Karanikolov.

This issue also features a preview of the new graphic novel The Many Deaths of Laila Starr by Ram V (Author) and Filipe Andrade (Illustrator).

NY Times Bestselling author Reed Farrel Coleman has called Mystery Tribune “a cut above” and mystery grand masters Lawrence Block and Max Allan Collins have praised it for its “solid fiction” and “the most elegant design”.

An elegantly crafted quarterly issue, printed on uncoated paper and with a beautiful layout designed for optimal reading experience, our Winter 2022 issue will make a perfect companion or gift for avid mystery readers and fans of literary crime fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mystery Tribune
• Release date: Feb 17, 2022

Book preview

Inside Cover

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ISSUE NO. 17

MysteryTribune

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

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Heathen Ad

MysteryTribune

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P.O. Box 7638, New York, NY 10116 / email [e-mail]

To subscribe go to mysterytribune.com or call [phone]

Publisher and Managing Editor

Ehsan Ehsani

Associate Editor

Elena Manatina

Contributing Editor(s)

J. B. Stevens, Allen J. Sheinman

Cover Illustration

Victoria Stebleva

Design and Art Direction

Leo Lipsnis

Subscriptions and Advertising

Rachel Kester

IT Manager

Jack Rodriguez

Contributors

Bob Chikos, Mark Jonathan Harris, Caroline Taylor, Scott Cumming, Lee Matthew Goldberg, Margaret Randall, Laura Benedict, Dana King, Ram V, Filipe Andrade, Wiesje Peels, Trijntje Keijser, Dimitar Karanikolov

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Surfing

Contents

ISSUE NO. 17

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Editor’s Note

Ehsan Ehsani

Ehsan Ehsani

Publisher and Managing Editor

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For the 3rd year in the row, Mystery Tribune has continued its lead as No. 1 mystery magazine on web in terms of number of visitors. This is, in part, thanks to our loyal readers and fans who support us in different ways.

When it comes to our print edition, although we have been growing year over year, the trajectory is not even close to that of our digital presence. One might ask: given the challenges of publishing a physical edition, why do you still publish one?

Well, the answer is personal: a true multi-sensory experience can’t be created without a physical presence. I grew up reading Mickey Spillane, Agatha Christie, and Sidney Sheldon in paper format and I still vividly remember the amazing smell of those new books, the mind-blowing covers and the way touching the pages felt.

(Side note: I was reading Mickey Spillane books in hiding as my parents had banned them in our household given the high dose of sex and violence).

With Mystery Tribune, the goal was to recreate those feelings and bring joy to crime and mystery lovers: after all, there is no way you can smell or hug a web-page.

So here it comes: another issue of Mystery Tribune featuring fiction, art and photography and essays from some of the most talented authors and artists in our community.

In this issue, I especially enjoyed The Chocolate Room by Edgar-nominated Laura Benedict, The Invitation by Margaret Randall, and art and photography work of Wiesje Peels & Trijntje Keijser.

As always, thanks for supporting us and please let friends and family know about Mystery Tribune and give them the gift of #goodmystery.

Page 9The Chocolate Room

Fiction

The Chocolate

Room

by Laura Benedict

The back wall of The Treat Shoppe’s chocolate room looks like a big, brown splatter painting that you might see in an art museum’s contemporary wing. This is accidental art. Like moonlight through branches is art, or the crosshatched prints of bird feet in the snow. It’s a glorious collage of dark and milk chocolate and smashed red strawberries and tiny dashes of bright lemon crème. A chocolate lover’s lickable fantasy. Until you see that the smears and drips and dashes lead to Reg Price’s beaten body slumped against the foot of the wall. His bald head hardly looks bald anymore, as it’s coated with the same thick chocolate decorating the wall. Reg is nothing like proper art. Everything about Reg shouts that he’s just a dead old man: his glasses lie nearby on the floor, crushed and twisted, one of his eyes is closed, while the other reveals a sliver of murky white. His head lolls carelessly to the side the way no head of a living person could. A couple of half-dipped strawberries rest between his legs. The painting above him (Can I call it a painting? I think I will.) is dry, frozen in time—solidified because the entire store is frigid with air-conditioned cold. Is it wrong that my first instinct is to want to take a video? Or a few close-ups? It doesn’t matter because, once upon a time, I had a phone with a killer camera, and dozens of apps, and Track Friends, and a cat game I couldn’t stop playing, but now I don’t. Owning that phone also meant that certain people could find me. So now I can only stand here thinking jesusmaryjoseph , what do I do now?

I take a deep breath—my hand over my mouth because, yes, the Reg Price accidental art installation smells bad—so I can think. I’m not sure when he died, but Reg wasn’t even supposed to be back from vacation until today. The store’s been closed for a week, and I’m down to fourteen dollars for groceries and cigarettes until I get paid in four days to prove it.

There are a dozen things I know I should do. Could do. First, I shut off the light, and press the button that lowers the blind on the chocolate room’s picture window that looks out into the showroom. I close the door behind me so that Reg can, you know, rest in peace. Feeling sick, I lean against the wall. One time I walked in on Reg with one fat hand inside the lower half of his apron, his eyes squeezed closed. His sturdy brown-framed glasses had slid halfway down his sweaty nose. That was gross in a whole different way.

Paulina… shows up a little after eleven to do the books in the as she does every Tuesday and Friday. Help with the door, please!

My first instinct is to get the hell out of the store and never look back. It’s just a question of when I should do it. If I do it right now, I’ll look guilty, especially if I take all the money in the store, which I would need. If I call 911 instead, there will be questions, and police and people in paper suits looking serious. Later, a grubby white room with plastic chairs and a video camera in a glass bubble in the ceiling. I’m screwed either way.

What I can’t do is panic.

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Paulina, whose husband is Reg’s nephew, shows up a little after eleven to do the books in the back office, as she does every Tuesday and Friday. Help with the door, please!

There’s a change in the store’s atmosphere whenever Paulina arrives. Family princess. Real Housewife of Wherever wannabe. Bearer of fat, darling baby girls with moist black curls and ears that get pierced on their first birthdays. Any baby born into the Sokolov family is a big deal. And although Paulina is only a Sokolov by marriage, she’s golden as long as the babies keep coming.

I wonder what will happen to Paulina when her womb dries up.

Tuesdays, she drops her three-year-old at the preschool down the block, and so only has the youngest in a double stroller that cost more than twice my month-to-month rent. Sashi stares up at me, her brown eyes solemn and judgmental. The tiny diamond studs in her ears set Paulina back six hundred and fifty bucks. The stud in my own nostril is the same size, but cubic zirconia, and it occurs to me to switch one out while Paulina is in the office. Sashi’s chubby olive hand brushes an earlobe, as though she can read my mind. Any other Tuesday, Reg would be keeping half an eye on me from the chocolate room, knowing exactly what I’m doing.

Walk her around if she cries. Paulina bends to press a kiss on Sashi’s curls. Heading for the office in the Pepto Pink back hallway, she throws a No chocolate, no sugar. You hear? over her shoulder. From photos she’s shown me, I can tell her sashaying butt gets bigger with each baby. The bold, peach and white print tunic and Lycra leggings don’t do it any favors.

Of course not, I reply, looking down at the girl.

To see us side by side, you’d never guess that Paulina and I are the same age. Paulina is always dewy. Ripe. Where I have lines on my forehead and around my mouth, her brow is tan and Botox smooth. She dyes her rich black hair to hide creeping gray. Me, I’ve been completely, prematurely gray for two years because I had a devastating Major Life Event.

Paulina pauses in the hallway. Not a full stop, but a moment like a breath. I suck in my own breath. Her left hand twitches, like she might open the door to the chocolate room. If the room is dark and the shade drawn, it means Reg isn’t there, and the only reason for us to go inside would be to stock candy in the plastic counter boxes from which we fill the trays in the big glass case. Finally, she turns to the office door, across the hall. Before she unlocks it, she tilts her head around to look at me, her ponytail extension swinging. Have you heard from Uncle Reg?

She’s cagey, Paulina is. She’s guessed things about me, things I won’t confirm. I think for a second that she already knows something is wrong. Or is she really just asking about Reg? Reg is predictable. He’s usually in before I am, by nine at the latest.

I turn away to straighten the pile of white bags printed with the shop’s logo.

Nope.

I hear the office door unlock, and the lock click back into place after the door’s closed. It’s only in the last month that she’s kept the office locked. Maybe she doesn’t trust me.

What if Reg was killed in a robbery by one of his sketchy acquaintances? The register is undamaged, but someone could have broken into the office safe. Paulina pays me off the books with cash from there every Friday.

Page 15

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Sashi licks and nibbles at the French sugar daisy I’ve given her like a fastidious cat. Glittering drool covers her chin and chubby fist. Every couple of minutes I wipe her sticky hands and face, just in case Paulina comes out. What kind of mother doesn’t let her kid have treats? Maybe Paulina gets off on giving every other kid in town cavities, while her own stay pure.

The bells on the front door jingle and a herd of four- and five-year-olds from the pre-school streams in, followed by their minder—a twenty-something guy named Toby. He’s almost handsome, which is good enough for me. His green eyes are a little close together, and his nose is thin and prominent. His light brown hair is cut short, curling at the ends. In his brown cords and faded chambray shirt, he looks like he should be teaching high school poetry, not the ABCs.

Hands in pockets, he says above the clamor of little voices. Touch only with our eyes.

I want to see the horses! a girl wearing orange overalls and a too-big beret yells.

The kids always run immediately to the white chocolate Cinderella coach that’s as big as a real jack-o’-lantern pumpkin. Its six milk chocolate horses each balance on two delicate feet raised in a gravity-defying trot. The detail in the horses’ tails and faces is extraordinary, and the coach is decked with white molded ribbons and flowers. Reg won’t tell me where his fancy molds come from. He gets a lot of packages from Eastern European countries.

Toby glances around for Reg, who is (was!) over eighty and gets cranky about the kids.

He’s not here, I say.

Toby returns my smile. You busy today?

I nod to Sashi, who’s fixated on a girl pressing her nose and lips on the revolving pie case full of chocolate shoes: baby shoes, duck boots, oxfords, high heels decorated with candy jewels, a red-licorice-soled stiletto, flip-flops with sailboats and bows and ladybugs.

I tell him that Paulina is in the office, a hint that he shouldn’t be too relaxed with the kids. He walks over to the girl at the case and squats to her level and speaks softly. His cords ride up over his ankles and I see he’s wearing socks with an Oscar the Grouch pattern. When he returns, she follows, and asks me if she can have a paper towel to wipe off the glass.

I’ll take care of it, I say. Toby has told me before that the school teaches the kids to accept responsibility for their actions. Personally, I don’t have that kind of patience.

The girl gives Toby a sly look, and runs off. Sashi shrieks in protest, and I hand her another daisy.

You’re not going to give me a hard time about the candy and the baby, right?

He laughs, his mouth open, and I notice that his lower teeth are a little crooked. Also, I don’t see any silver or white fillings. Maybe his mother never let him have sugar either.

Paulina comes out of the office as the children are lining up to leave with their purchases. Toby has just asked me if I want to get dinner with him sometime at the neighborhood’s Mexican cafe. It’s not exactly a surprise, but he asks so casually that I forget that I’ve been hoping he’d ask me out for the entire three months I’ve worked here. I don’t get a chance to answer.

Toby’s eyes catch on Paulina’s full breasts. She’s definitely not wearing a supportive bra, which must be uncomfortable, with what she carries around in front of her. Noticing, she doesn’t react with the hey, mister, my eyes are up here! I would expect from any self-respecting woman. Her cheeks redden, and her gaze slips to the floor. She seems more abashed than angry. I look back at Toby, expecting him to be embarrassed, too. The corners of his lips twitch. The dirty dog is practically grinning!

A bouncing boy wearing a sweatshirt illustrated with a Monster Truck shatters the moment. One hand strangles his candy bag, the other is on his crotch. I gotta pee, Mr. Toby!

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