Excerpt of Red Herring by Archer Mayor

Doreen Ferenc slipped her nightgown over her head and let it
fall the length of her body and gently settle onto her
shoulders. This was the reward of every day, this threshold
moment, when, as though dropping a heavy burden, she
exchanged her regular clothing, complete with belts,
buttons, zippers, and elastic, for the sensual, almost
weightless comfort of a simple shift of light cotton.

Not that the day had been more onerous than usual. Her mom
had been in good spirits, minimally judgmental of the
nursing home staff. They’d served Indian pudding for lunch,
a perennial favorite. Her mother had once been an expert at
the dessert, and it had led them both down a path of happy
memories while they’d worked on the quilt for Doreen’s new
nephew. Doreen’s brother, Mark, had recently married a much
younger woman in Nevada, where they lived, and she’d just
delivered their first child.

Doreen and Mark weren’t particularly close, as siblings
went, but they got along, and their mom loved them both. She
preferred Mark, as Doreen well knew, but only because he was
in a position to present her with a grandchild. Doreen had
never found marriage appealing, and by and large didn’t like
kids, which, thank God, she was now safely beyond having
anyway. The quilt had become a salutary talisman of good
tidings to which Doreen could contribute guilt-free.

She left the bedroom in her bare feet and dropped her
clothes into the laundry hamper in the darkened bathroom,
pausing a moment to admire the unexpected snow falling from
the night sky onto the enormous skylight she’d spent too
much money having installed. The house was an almost tacky
prefab ranch—virtually a trailer with pretensions—but she
knew in her heart that it was also the house she’d most
likely die in, so why not splurge a little, like on the
skylight and the heat she poured on to make the whole house
as toasty as in mid-July? She loved winters in Vermont,
including flukily premature ones like this year’s. She’d
known them her whole life, and had, at various times,
enjoyed skiing, snowball fights, and even shoveling the
driveway. But no longer. Now she just wanted to watch the
weather from the comfort of an evenly heated, boring modern
house that was fussed over by a handyman man complete with a
snowplow—assuming he’d attached the plow to his pickup yet.
She had started working fulltime at seventeen, decades
earlier, and now she was going to enjoy all the fruits of a
slightly early retirement.

Entertaining such thoughts, she pursued the next step in her
nightly routine, and entered the small kitchen. There, she
dished out a single scoop of vanilla ice cream, splashed an
appreciable quantity of brandy over its rounded top, and
retired to the living room couch, which was strategically
angled so she could watch TV from a reclining position.

It was snowing—heavily, too—and only October. People hadn’t
switched to snow tires, sand deliveries were still being
made to town road crews, and cars were going to be
decorating ditches all over the state by morning. But Doreen
didn’t have to care about any of it. She was as snug as the
proverbial bug.

Settled at last, she hit the remote, dialed in her favorite
channel, and heard the doorbell ring.

“Damn,” she murmured, glancing at the digital clock on the
set. It was just before ten pm. “Who on earth?”

She placed her bowl on the coffee table, struggled up from
her place of comfort, and sighed heavily as she crossed the
room to the tiny mudroom and the front door beyond it.

Enclosing herself in the mudroom to preserve the heat, she
slipped on an overcoat from the row of nearby pegs, hit the
outside light and called out, “Who is it?” She could see the
outline of a man standing before the frosted glass of the door.

A weak voice answered, “You don’t know me, ma’am. My name’s
Lyle Robinson. I’ve just wrecked my car about a half mile
up. I was wondering if I could use your phone.”

So much for keeping immune from the woes of poor weather.
She then heard him cough and bend over as he clutched his chest.

“Are you all right?”

“I think so, ma’am. I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt, like a
damn fool… Sorry. Don’t mean to offend. I think I just
bruised my chest, is all.”

She hesitated.

“Ma’am?” he said next. “Not that it’ll matter, but I’m a
cousin of Jim and Clara Robinson. They used to live just
outside Saxtons River. I don’t know if you know them.”

“I do,” she blurted out. “So, you’re related to Sherry?”

“Yes, ma’am, although what she’s doing way out west is
beyond any of us.”

Doreen threw open the door.

She was only aware of two things after that: the bare blade
of an enormous knife, held just two inches before her eyes,
and, behind it, a man disguised by a hooded sweatshirt worn
backwards, two holes cut in the fabric for his eyes. She now
understood why his voice had sounded weak.

“Okay, Dory,” he said. “Drop the coat and step back inside.
You and I are gonna get acquainted.”