The Stain
After her divorce, Adriana Sands left her hometown of Morristown, New Jersey, and moved to Saylorsville, Pennsylvania. With the money she received from the divorce settlement, she bought a charming Cape Cod with a spectacular view of the Pocono Mountains. Although the house was nowhere near as grand as the three-story colonial she had shared with her husband, it was cozy and comfortable, and it was all hers.
Adriana moved into the house the day before her belongings were to be delivered. With the rooms free of furniture and boxes, she could wax the hardwood floors in the living and dining rooms, scrub the tiles in the kitchen and bathroom, and shampoo the carpets in the two bedrooms. She had been working all morning when she walked into the smaller bedroom and saw a large spot on the carpet.
"I don't remember seeing that stain on the rug when the realtor showed the house to me," she said.
She lugged the carpet shampooer into the room, poured liquid cleaner into the reservoir and began scrubbing the rug. The pale beige carpet turned several shades darker from the wetness.
"That seems to have taken care of the problem."
Then she pushed the carpet cleaner across the hall and into the master bedroom where she resumed her cleaning.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. when Adriana finished waxing the living room floor. Every muscle in her body ached, and she could barely stay awake. She took a long, hot bath and then inflated an air mattress in the dining room and went to sleep.
The following morning, she took the vacuum cleaner upstairs and vacuumed the master bedroom. When she went into the spare bedroom, she saw that with the carpet dried, the stain was visible again.
"Whatever spilled on the rug is not going to be easy to clean."
After trying several cleaners designed to remove set-in stains—all of which failed to live up to their claims—Adriana decided to simply replace the rug. Two weeks later, a representative of the Carpet Barn tore up the stained beige rug and installed a new, thick-pile Wedgwood blue carpet. A cherry wood reproduction Queen Anne bedroom set was delivered the following day. With the addition of a hand-sewn quilt, the room took on the early American charm exhibited elsewhere in the Cape Cod.
When Adriana stood back to admire the décor, she noticed what appeared to be a stain on the new carpet. On closer examination, she saw the discoloration was in the same area and looked approximately the same size and shape as the stain on the previous one.
"There must be something coming from underneath the floorboards, seeping up into the rug," she reasoned.
The following day she called in a repairman to check if there were any plumbing problems.
After a thorough examination, the plumber announced, "It's not a plumbing issue, Mrs. Sands. All your pipes run on the other side of the house. That's where the bathrooms and kitchen are."
After several more attempts to remove the stain from the new carpet, Adriana went to a home flooring center and bought an inexpensive Oriental accent rug, which she placed over the stain in the carpet. A week later, however, the stain came through onto the Oriental rug.
"This is ridiculous!" she exclaimed.
A lifelong perfectionist, Adriana was upset by the flawed rug. She purchased another, darker-colored Oriental rug and placed a thick, plastic tarp underneath it. Three weeks later, however, the stain returned. Frustrated, she phoned a local carpenter and hired him to rip out the carpeting and replace it with a hardwood floor. When the carpenter's assistant pulled up the old rug, Adriana was relieved to see that neither the padding nor the subflooring was stained.
That's a good sign, she thought.
Her problem finally seemed to have been solved.
* * *
Not long after moving to Saylorsville, Adriana got a job at The Missing Clue, a shop specializing in mystery books and DVDs. She soon made friends with the other employees and several of the store's customers. Two of her closest friends—also divorced women—worked in the gift shop across the street and shared with Adriana a love of Midsomer Murders, the popular British television series.
One day, shortly after the new hardwood floor was installed in her spare bedroom, Adriana was busy placing copies of Patricia Cornwell's latest novel on the shelves when the bell above the front door jingled, and she turned to see Meg Pfeiffer, one of her two friends from the gift shop.
"Did it come in yet?" Meg asked with childlike excitement.
Adriana ran behind the counter and took out the latest boxed set of Midsomer Murders DVDs.
"Here it is," she said with a smile. "Five more episodes of Barnaby and Troy."
"Great! I can't wait to see them."
"Why don't you and Janice come over to my house after work tonight? We can order pizza, open a bottle of wine and watch one or two of the episodes together."
"Sounds like fun. I'll bring a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry's with me for dessert." Meg stopped at the door, turned and asked, "Oh, what flavor do you like?"
"Peanut butter cup. It goes great with pepperoni pizza."
* * *
Meg Pfeiffer and Janice Forrester arrived at Adriana Sands' Cape Cod twenty minutes late because Janice stopped at her house to pick up her younger sister, Piper, who was staying with her for the week. Luckily, the pizza was still hot.
"I hope you don't mind that I brought her along," Janice whispered to her hostess.
"Not at all," Adriana replied. "There's plenty of room and plenty of pizza."
"She acts a little weird sometimes, but don't let that bother you. Ever since she went to Salem on vacation last year she's been into Wicca, and now she thinks she's a witch."
"I know you're talking about me," the teenager called out from the other room. "I'm a psychic, remember?"
Janice rolled her eyes and joked, "Just don't tell us who the killer is. Leave that to Inspector Barnaby. Okay?"
The three older women went into the kitchen and started devouring the pizza, but Piper, the young Wiccan, only drank a bottle of water.
"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Adriana asked politely.
"You know how teenage girls are," Janice explained. "They're all borderline anorexics."
"It's not that," Piper contradicted her. "I'm not hungry; that's all. I feel very strange right now."
"I have Tylenol if you'd like some," Adriana offered.
"I'm not sick. It's just .... Please don't think I'm rude, but there's something disturbing about this house."
"Oh, no," Janice groaned, embarrassed by her sister's odd behavior.
"What do you mean by disturbing?" Adriana asked.
"I see a mark, a stain."
"Cut it out," Janice warned.
"No, please," Adriana protested. "I want to hear what she has to say."
"There is a stain on the wall—no, wait. The stain is on a rug or on a floor."
Adriana's heart pounded. How could the girl have known about the stain? She had not told either Meg or Janice about it.
"What is it that disturbs you about the stain?" she asked.
"I don't ...."
Suddenly, the teenager got up from her chair as though in a trance and walked up the stairs and into the dark spare bedroom. Adriana followed closely behind her, reached inside for the light switch on the wall and turned on the lamp. Piper stood in the center of the room, pointing to the area where the stain had appeared on the rug.
"What's that on your floor?" Meg asked when she saw the large flaw in the wood.
"It can't be back!" Adriana cried. "I've replaced two carpets and two Oriental rugs and finally had wood floors installed, and yet I can't get rid of that stain."
"I see a body lying there," Piper continued, "and the blood is seeping out onto the floor."
"That's it!" Janice cried. "I've had enough of this Sybil Leak shit. Let's go back downstairs. We've got four men waiting for us—Barnaby and Troy and Ben and Jerry—and I was never one to keep a man waiting."
* * *
The following day, Adriana went to the local library where she searched through back issues of The Saylorsville Times.
"Perhaps I can be of assistance to you," Dolores Klinger, the town librarian, offered. I know a lot about the history of this town. What is it you're looking for?"
"I want to find out about a murder that might have occurred in my house."
"Which house is that?"
"It's the Cape Cod on the corner of Hemlock Avenue and Gray Street."
"A murder?" Patience echoed. "I've lived here all my life, and I've never known of a murder in that house."
"What about a disappearance?"
"Not to my knowledge."
Adriana next stopped at the Saylorsville police station. Rather than admit that she was checking on the accuracy of a vision seen by a sixteen-year-old self-professed psychic, she told the officer at the desk that she was doing research for a true-crime book she hoped to write. Officer Malcolm Rudder, a regular customer at The Missing Clue, recognized Adriana and was eager to help her, but he was also unaware of any murder or disappearance that took place in her house.
* * *
Over the next several months, Adriana forgot about Piper's strange psychic vision. She also got used to having a stained floor—there were far worse things in the world, after all.
Life in Saylorsville was good. The transplant from New Jersey loved living in Pennsylvania, was pleased with her house, enjoyed her job and had grown quite attached to her new friends.
"I see we're getting a new neighbor," Meg told Adriana one day at lunch. "Someone has leased the old drugstore."
Sheffield's Pharmacy, damaged in a fire, had been vacant for the past six months and was leased the previous day.
"I wonder if it's going to be another drug store," Adriana mused.
"I doubt it," Meg answered. "There's a new CVS in the Old Mill Mall and a Walgreens on Sullivan Road. That's why Phil Sheffield didn't rebuild after his family's drug store burned. There's too much competition now."
The new business on Main Street turned out to be a sporting goods store, and its owner—an extremely handsome widower—had a penchant for mystery books.
"Do you by any chance have The Winds of Change by Martha Grimes?" the attractive man asked Adriana one morning.
"I'm sorry. We just sold our last copy a few days ago. We reordered and it might have come in with a shipment of books we got in yesterday, but no one's had a chance to unpack it yet. If you don't mind waiting a few minutes, I can go back to the storage room and check the packing list."
"Don't trouble yourself," the man said with a dazzling smile. "I work right down the street, so I can come back another time."
"If the book is in there, I'll put a copy aside for you."
"Would you? That would be great. My name is Clive Parsons, by the way. I own the sporting goods store that just opened up."
At noon Adriana stopped for lunch. Rather than eat the tuna sandwich she had brought with her from home, she decided to walk down to the sporting goods store.
"Here's your book," she told the handsome owner.
"Do you always deliver?" he laughed. "I really appreciate this. How much do I owe you?"
"Nothing. Consider it a housewarming gift."
"Are you with the local Welcome Wagon?"
"No."
"Then may I repay you for your kind gesture by taking you out to lunch?"
"Thanks. I'd like that."
* * *
The following weekend Adriana invited Clive Parsons to her house for a home-cooked dinner. The meat sauce had been simmering for close to an hour when Adriana opened a box of pasta and put it in a pot of boiling water.
"Is there anything I can do to help you in the kitchen?" Clive asked.
"Yes. You can open the wine. I always get pieces of cork inside the bottle when I try."
While the pasta was cooking, Adriana put a loaf of garlic bread in the broiler. Then she quickly set the dining room table. As his hostess drained the pasta, Clive lit the candles, setting the scene for a romantic dinner for two.
After eating the delicious meal, he suggested they watch television in front of the fireplace, a perfect end to a chilly autumn day.
"Is there anything in particular you'd like to watch?" Adriana asked.
Clive poured them both another glass of wine, handed one to her and replied, "No. Why don't you just go through the channels until we find something that interests us?"
They passed on an Eagles' football game, a number of popular sitcoms and reality-based programs and settled for an old James Cagney gangster film. After the movie came to an end, Adriana got up and went to the bathroom. When she returned to the living room, she saw Clive intently watching an episode of Unsolved Murders.
"A young Connecticut woman was murdered nearly two years ago," the host announced. "The chief suspect is her husband, but the police have been unable to locate him."
Adriana uttered a muffled cry when she saw the photograph of the man wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of his wife.
It was Clive Parsons!
Her guest turned at the sound of her voice, and Adriana stared at him, frightened.
"I'm sorry you had to see that," he said, rising from the couch and walking menacingly toward her.
"So, you're wanted for questioning."
She laughed uneasily as her eyes looked for an escape route.
"That doesn't mean anything," she said nervously.
"Oh, come on. You're a smart woman. You must know the police have a good idea I'm the killer. Why else would they show my picture on national television?"
With a suspected killer blocking the front exit, there was only one place Adriana could go. She turned and ran up the stairs, hoping to make it to her bedroom where there was a lock on the door and a phone on the night table. Unfortunately, Clive was much quicker than she was. He caught up with her in the second-floor hallway.
As his hands encircled her throat, Adriana brought her knee forward and kicked. Her pursuer momentarily doubled over with pain, and she ran into the guest room.
Suddenly, she felt his hand grab a fistful of her hair. Her head was yanked back, and she almost fell. Her hand reached out and grabbed one of the brass and wood bookends on the dresser. As Clive Parsons again attempted to strangle her, Adriana brought the bookend down on his head.
The first blow had no effect on him, so she hit him a second and third time. The killer finally fell to his knees after the fourth blow. Although dazed, he still held on tightly to her. Adriana summoned all her strength and hit him one last time. Once free, she ran to her master bedroom, locked the door behind her and phoned the police.
Less than ten minutes later, she heard the sirens. Two patrol cars pulled into her driveway, and four police officers ran into her house. Only when she heard their footsteps in the hallway did Adriana unlock her bedroom door.
* * *
An ambulance took the hysterical woman to the emergency room where Dr. Shirley Straatmaker gave her a mild sedative to calm her. Then the police phoned Janice Forrester, who picked her friend up at the hospital and drove her home.
"Wouldn't you rather spend the night at my place?" Janice asked.
"I'm afraid if I don't go back to my house tonight, I may never be able to."
"Well, at least let me stay with you."
Adriana readily agreed. The last thing she wanted was to be left alone.
She and Janice were cleaning up the mess from the ill-fated pasta dinner when Adriana began to cry.
"I just can't believe it really happened."
"Come on," Janice urged. "I'm going to put you to bed, and then I'll finish cleaning up down here."
As the two women walked down the upstairs hallway, they could not help looking inside the spare bedroom where Adriana had almost been murdered. On the floor where Clive Parson's body had lain was a puddle of blood.
"I'll clean that up, too," Janice promised.
Adriana barely heard her. She was staring in horror at the puddle of blood that perfectly fit the shape and dimensions of the stain that had plagued her from the day she moved into the house.
"Your sister was right," Adriana whimpered. "She said she saw a dead body on that spot."
Janice let out a nervous chuckle.
"Maybe she is a witch after all."
Once her friend fell asleep, Janice scrubbed the blood from the guest bedroom floor. Afterward, she went downstairs, finished cleaning the kitchen and then watched an episode of Midsomer Murders before going to sleep herself.
Adriana Sands bounced back quickly after her harrowing ordeal, but she never spoke of the man from the sporting goods store or of the phantom bloodstain on the hardwood floor in her spare bedroom, which, thankfully, had finally disappeared.
No, Salem, I'm not blaming you for the stain on the rug. I know you're trained to use the litter box.
