Family Pets
Mason Ridgeway, a successful certified public accountant, decided it was time for him to get married; after all, he was already thirty-four years old. He owned his own accounting firm, and while not exactly rich, he was comfortably well off.
A man of my age and financial means ought to be married, he reasoned. All I need to do is find the right woman.
Unlike most men, Mason would base his choice on logic rather than on emotion or physical attraction, an easy decision for him since he had never been one to be swayed by the baser passions of lesser men. He knew only too well that marriages based solely on sexual desire usually ended soon after the hot blood cooled.
Ever the pragmatist, Mason set out to find a woman that would best suit his needs by using an approach similar to the one he took when buying a new car. If a Subaru had all the required options, he figured, why waste money on a Lexus or a Mercedes Benz?
Physical beauty and a shapely figure were not important factors nor was intelligence, for that matter. The ideal wife for Mason Ridgeway was one who was amiable, who was willing to care for a house and cook his meals and who would not throw his hard-earned money away on clothes, jewelry or other foolish female frippery.
After several months of careful, patient searching, Mason's eye fell on Lindy Hanlon, a thirty-one-year-old widow he had met at the Chamber of Commerce's annual March of Dimes fundraiser. Lindy was pleasant, hardworking and thrifty—just the qualities he was looking for in a wife. The only concern he had was that the widow was the mother of two young children, and Mason did not care much for kids. But once he met the two youngsters and saw that they were quiet, obedient and well-mannered, he decided to propose to the mother.
Since Lindy owned a four-bedroom house situated on five acres of farmland, Mason opted to sell his one-bedroom townhouse and move in with her and the children—once they were legally wed, that is. Unfortunately for Mason, it was not until after they were married, that the groom learned of the family pets.
* * *
When Lindy opened the door to her house, Mason, a fastidious and compulsively neat man, was unpleasantly surprised by the odor.
"What's that smell?" he asked politely.
"Oh, that's just the cats' litter box," Lindy explained. "I guess the cat-sitter didn't change it yesterday."
"Cat-sitter?" her new husband echoed.
"Yes. I paid Spiro, the teenager next door, to take care of my cats and other pets while we were on our honeymoon."
"Cats? You don't mean to tell me you have more than one?"
"I have four," the bride answered proudly. "All of them were strays, but now I've given them a good home."
"And, pray tell, what about the other animals you mentioned? Please don't tell me you have a dog as well."
"We did, but we had to have him put to sleep last year. He was seventeen years old, and his kidneys were failing."
Lindy put her head down, still grieving the loss of the family's Irish setter.
"Anyway," she continued after a few moments, "in addition to the cats, we have two canaries, four hamsters, a rabbit, a dozen or so goldfish, an iguana and a snake."
"What, no partridge in a pear tree?"
Lindy smiled good-naturedly.
"The kids have been after me to get a horse, but at the moment, we don’t have a barn on the property. Maybe someday."
"And where do all these animals stay, inside or out?"
"Inside—except for the rabbit. We have a hutch for him in the backyard."
"Good God!" Mason exclaimed. "It will be like living on Noah's ark."
"Don't tell me you don't like animals," Lindy said, knowing she would never be happy with him if he didn't.
"Not particularly."
She had loved and taken care of many pets in her lifetime and could not conceive of having married a man who was not an animal lover. Mason, on the other hand, had never owned a pet, not even as a child. He believed, as his parents had, that domesticated animals were not only messy and destructive but that they were an unnecessary expense and a nuisance to care for. However, he had only been married a week, so he thought it best to avoid any confrontation with his new wife.
"I suppose I could get used to them, though," he said unconvincingly.
When Lindy and Mason went upstairs to the master bedroom, an obviously well-fed orange cat jumped off the bed and greeted its mistress by rubbing against her leg and purring. Lindy bent down, scooped up the animal and hugged it as if it were one of her children.
"Dickens," she cooed, "Mommy missed you so much."
This was a side of his wife Mason had not seen before and one he did not admire in the least. She was behaving like a fool. He even felt a slight twinge of disgust as Lindy kissed the cat on the bridge of its nose. Then, one by one, the other three cats—Shakespeare, Poe and Hawthorne—came from different parts of the house to greet Lindy and be coddled by their adoring owner.
"I hope you're not going to kiss the snake and the iguana."
Lindy was too busy lavishing affection on her cats to reply.
* * *
As the weeks passed, Mason came to deeply regret his change in marital status. It wasn't as though Lindy failed to live up to his image of a perfect wife—she did. And the children were no problem at all. No, the thorn in his side was the constant presence of the family pets.
"Damned cat!" he swore under his breath as he pushed Hawthorne off the chair and sat at the head of the kitchen table.
Only after feeding the cats did Lindy place her husband's breakfast in front of him.
"Three eggs sunny side up—just the way you like them," she said with a smile. "Bacon cooked crisp, but not burnt. Two pieces of toast, golden brown with one teaspoon of low-fat spread and two teaspoons of strawberry jam. Lastly, a cup of coffee, light with two sugars."
"You sound like a waitress," he snapped, trying to ignore the strong smell of the cats' canned tuna.
"I was just trying to lighten things up a little. In case you hadn't noticed, you've been a bit grumpy lately."
"Of course, I'm grumpy. I haven't gotten a decent night's sleep since I moved into this ... this ... zoo. How can anyone sleep with those rats running in their wheels all night long?"
"They're hamsters, dear, not rats," Lindy corrected him.
"Whatever they are, they're a menace and I don't understand the ...."
Mason suddenly stopped speaking mid-sentence, put his finger in his mouth and pulled out a short, orange hair.
"Ugh!"
He gagged and pushed his unfinished breakfast away.
"Aren't you going to eat?" Lindy asked.
"I'll stop at the diner on my way to the office. The food may taste lousy, but at least there won't be any cat hair in my eggs."
Mason's bad humor did not improve when he tripped over the iguana on the way up the stairs.
That night when he came home from work, he decided to lay down the law. After all, he was the man of the family, the breadwinner, and as such, his word must be followed.
"From now on," he announced authoritatively, "the cats will stay outside, and all the other animals will be kept in the basement."
The children looked silently up at their mother, horrified that their stepfather had banished their pets. Lindy looked at her husband and laughed, hoping her good spirits would lighten his mood.
"I'm sorry about the hair in your food this morning, but there's no way I'm putting the cats outside. It's too dangerous. They could get run over by a car. Besides, the children want their pets in their rooms, not in the basement."
Mason was flabbergasted. He had not anticipated outright disobedience from his wife.
"But I want them out of this house."
"I don't care," Lindy said, becoming annoyed at her husband's dictatorial manner. "After all, this is their home, too."
Mason saw her assertion of independence as tantamount to a declaration of war.
* * *
For the next few days, Mason stayed away from home as much as possible, eating his meals in a local restaurant and coming home only to sleep—on the couch. His sulking did him little good; Lindy would not capitulate.
"She puts those damned animals before her own husband!" he grumbled.
I ought to get a meat cleaver and slaughter them all, he thought momentarily.
But he knew she would never forgive him if he did; after all, she still cried when she thought about the dog.
"That's the only bad thing about pets," she said on more than one occasion. "They have such short life spans."
Mason—ordinarily an unimaginative man—had a sudden stroke of brilliance.
And I can shorten those life spans considerably, he concluded. All I have to do is make sure it looks like an accident.
The following day, Mason's attitude toward his family did an unexpected about-face. He took his wife out to dinner and bought each of his stepchildren a new toy.
"Forgive me, please," he apologized, feigning remorse. "You were right, Lindy. This house is big enough for all of us: you, me, the kids and the animals."
Yet while he was smiling on the outside, Mason was plotting the deaths of the family pets on the inside. He knew he could not kill them all at once. He would have to pace himself, perhaps take as long as six months. First, one of the hamsters. The snake would go next, then Dickens, the cat who insisted on jumping up on the bed at the break of dawn while he was trying to sleep. Mason smiled grimly as he concentrated on the details of his foul plan.
Finally, he stood up and headed upstairs for the night. Dickens and Poe were sitting on the pillow shams. Their piercing green eyes followed him about the room as he prepared for bed.
"Get outta here!" he said angrily and tossed a towel at them.
"Just wait a few months," he said to himself, smiling malevolently. "And then no more pussycats. I won't have to chase them off my bed or my chair, and I won't have to go to work with cat hair on my clothes."
Mason's plan to eliminate the animals in the house proved to be more difficult to implement than he had imagined. When he tried to smother one of the hamsters, Shakespeare the cat jumped onto his back and dug its claws into his neck. Mason dropped the hamster, and it raced through the tunnels of its Habitrail to safety. When he tried to strangle the iguana, the snake wrapped itself around his leg. He turned his anger on the snake and was subjected to a lashing by the iguana's tail.
"What is this? Are you animals teaming up against me?" he asked illogically. "Well, you may have won the battle, but I'll win the war."
Mason gave up the idea of killing the animals one by one. Instead, he would take a drastic step and rid himself of all of them in one fell swoop.
The following Sunday Mason suggested that he and Lindy spend the day out with the children.
"What do you want to do?" she asked, glad that he was finally showing some interest in family life.
"I thought we'd go to the zoo."
Lindy looked at him, open-mouthed.
"I would think you have enough putting up with the animals here."
He forced a smile.
"Actually, they're beginning to grow on me. Besides, you told me your kids—our kids—love horses. I heard they have riding trails at the zoo. I thought they might enjoy it."
Lindy kissed him on the cheek and laughed like a schoolgirl.
"The kids will love it, and so will I. This will be such a wonderful day."
Mason managed to put up a good front as Lindy and her children photographed the monkeys and the lions, fed the deer and fussed over the baby goats. After visiting the Wild Safari exhibit of tigers, elephants, giraffes and other animals torn from their native homes in Africa and transplanted in New England, Mason suggested they stop and eat. At the snack bar, he bought them all lunch and did not complain once about the overpriced microwaved hamburgers, undercooked French fries and watered-down sodas. In fact, he even bought second helpings for himself.
After lunch, they headed for the aviary to see all the exotic, brightly colored birds.
"Can we go ride the horses now?" Lindy's younger child asked eagerly.
"I guess so," his mother replied. Then she turned to her husband, "What do you say, Daddy?"
"I'm not feeling very well," Mason moaned.
His pallor at being called "Daddy" helped convince his wife that he was telling the truth.
"What's wrong?"
"It must have been those greasy burgers and fries. I'm nauseous. I don't dare get on a horse feeling like this."
"Let's go home then."
"Don't be silly. I don't want to spoil it for the kids. You take them horseback riding. I'll stay here and sit down for a while. Perhaps by the time you come back, my stomach will have settled a bit."
* * *
Less than five minutes after Lindy and her children mounted the horses and headed down the wooded trail, Mason hurried to his car. He drove back to Lindy's house, careful to park his Subaru out of sight. He let himself in the back door and then made certain that all the windows were shut and the doors locked. He wanted to be absolutely sure there was no way for the pets to get out.
Dickens and Shakespeare watched him from the window seat in the master bedroom, Poe from the wing chair in the living room and Hawthorne from the upstairs hallway, just outside the bathroom door. Ignoring them all, Mason carried out his plan. He walked into the kitchen and got a candle and a pack of matches out of the junk drawer. Then he went into the cellar and blew out the pilot light of the gas-powered hot water heater.
The accountant's frugal nature thought it a bit extravagant to burn down a house to rid himself of a few troublesome animals, but pest control experts were usually costly. Besides, he never cared much for living in a rural area. He would later insist that they buy property in an area closer to Boston, and he would be sure the new house was in his name. Furthermore, there would be no more pets; he would put his foot down this time.
Mason looked at his watch. He had to get back to the zoo soon before Lindy and the children returned from their ride. He put the candle behind the furnace where no one would see it and took the pack of matches out of his pocket.
A sudden pain made him turn abruptly and drop them on the floor.
"What the ...?"
Poe had sunk his needle-like teeth into Mason's ankle. The man howled with pain and shook his leg, dislodging the cat. Next, Shakespeare jumped on him, climbed up Mason's torso as if he were a tree trunk and dug his claws into his victim's eyes. Mason screamed, and while he tried to pull Shakespeare off, Poe renewed his attack. When he finally managed to get free of the two animals, he thought only of escaping further attacks by his tormentors. Forgetting all about the candle and matches, he turned in the direction of the cellar steps. The cats raced past him up the stairs.
Blood was dripping into Mason's eyes, making it difficult for him to see. He crawled up the stairs on his hands and knees, and when he got near the top, he raised his head. In the doorway stood all four cats, blocking his escape. The snake, the iguana and even the hamsters soon joined them—only the goldfish and the rabbit were unable to participate in the final battle of pet versus man.
The snake made the first move, darting forward and wrapping itself around Mason's leg. As the terrified man stood up and tried to pull the reptile free, he lost his footing and fell backward down the stairs. The blow to his head when he landed caused Mason to lose consciousness.
With their victim helpless and unable to escape, the pets retreated to other parts of the house, far away from the deadly gas fumes that would eventually kill Mason Ridgeway.
* * *
Lindy never learned about her husband's dastardly plan to kill her beloved pets. She incorrectly assumed that Mason had returned to the house because of his upset stomach.
"He probably wanted to take some Pepto Bismal," the widow sobbed, as she told her story to the two police officers who responded to her 911 call. "When he got home, he must have smelled the gas in the basement."
"And when did you get home?" one patrolman asked her routinely.
"When we got back from the horseback ride, I noticed Mason wasn't there waiting for us. I looked for him at the zoo but couldn't find him anywhere, so I called a taxi. Once I got home, I opened the door, and the smell of gas ...."
She shuddered.
"My husband was dead. My poor pets—if I'd got home any later, they might all have died, too."
Shawn understood her concern. He was an animal lover himself.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Mrs. Ridgeway. It was a tragic accident."
Lindy and her children, unwilling to live in the house where Mason was killed, decided to move. With the life insurance settlement and the money she inherited from Mason's estate, Lindy bought a horse ranch out west where she and the children lived quite happily with an even greater number of family pets.
I can't understand why Salem likes this story so much.
