Noble Vista Blues

by Joseph S. Walker

About the Author: Joseph S. Walker's short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly Magazine, Tough, and a number of other magazines and anthologies. He has been a finalist for the Edgar Award and the Derringer Award, and has won the Bill Crider Prize for Short Fiction and the Al Blanchard Award.

Excerpt

A lot of folks called my home, out on Noble Vista, a McMansion. Maybe that was supposed to be funny, since my money came from fast food, more than twenty locations in four cities. I promise you, though, nothing on Noble Vista reeked of grease, and I ate my meals off china, not out of paper wrappers.

It was the home I didn’t even know enough to dream of when I was starting out. Three stories, plus a finished basement, on a full acre of meticulously manicured lawn. A four-car garage, and a heated swimming pool, and a kitchen big enough to service any of my restaurants. It had a full gym, an eight-person whirlpool, and a screening room that could seat twenty. There was a library lined with books, the colors of the bindings complementing the cherry shelves. There were a bunch of guest rooms that would have been kids’ rooms if there were any kids. I think the maids who came three times a week were the only people who ever went in them. The first time my wife Glory saw the place, she asked me how Bertha liked things up in the attic. I laughed, but I think she knew I didn’t really understand the joke.

Sometimes in the middle of the night I walked around the house, my bare feet comfortable on the heated floors, counting light switches or power outlets or windows, just trying to get a fix on the scope of the place.

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