Sample Sunday: Excerpt: LAUNDRY AFTER MIDNIGHT by Nina Wachsman

Please welcome Nina Wachsman to the blog today with an excerpt from her short story in the new anthology, Justice For All: Murder New York Style 5.

 LAUNDRY AFTER MIDNIGHT 

No one believes anyone in New York, especially not a 12-year old boy. Heck, I wouldn’t have believed me either, but like many things in this city, the unbelievable turns out to be true.

“I’m going down to get the laundry,” I announced to my parents, who didn’t look up at me even though it was one in the morning. Hand on the brass doorknob, I was about to open the front door, when I heard a noise in the hall. My view was limited through the peephole, blocked by the back of a guy in a blue sweater. When he jerked sideways, I could see the lady across the hall swinging her small purse at him by its chain handle. He raised an arm to block her attack. Thunk! A sickening sound, but I couldn’t see where it came from because the blue sweater was blocking my view again. Bang! The slam of the stairwell door was so loud I jumped away from the peephole.

I blinked a few times with my hand still frozen on the doorknob. Then I placed my eye on the peephole again, expecting to see only an empty hall and closed doors. But there she was—the lady across the hall, facing me, her back against her door, slowly slinking down to the floor, her knees crumpling and her blond hair leaving a trail as it stuck to the doorpost. Not good.

“Mom, Dad!” I burst into the dining room banging the table so the laptops under their fingers bounced.

“Did you get the laundry, Neal?” my mother said automatically, not looking up.

 “Come quickly. The neighbor’s hurt. She’s lying in the hall.”

“What our neighbor does is none of our business,” Dad muttered, his eyes on his screen.

“This is no joke,” I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling 9-1-1.”

They both looked up. “What’s got into you?” Dad said.

I pointed a shaky finger to the hall, holding my phone, ready to dial. Chairs scraped back simultaneously, and they brushed by me as they hurried into the hall. I followed.

“Oh. My. God.” My mother said, putting a hand over her mouth. Dad didn’t move, just stared.

The lady from across the hall sat just as I saw her in the peep hole. Up close, her eyes were open, staring at nothing, the dark pupils large and stark against the light blue of her irises. Strands of blond hair were stuck to a large streak of blood that ran down the doorpost. Her coat was open, and something sparkly glinted from underneath.

“I’m calling 9-1-1,” Mom said, her fingers tapping her phone.  “They should be here shortly. Let’s get Neil out of there. This is not a sight for a twelve-year old.”

“Neil, back to the apartment,” Dad said, turning towards me. “I’ll handle the police when they come.”

I was not moving. A real murder, and in my apartment building!

  

Nina Wachsman ©2021

Nina Wachsman is the author of The Gallery of Beauties, a novel of historical suspense, to be published by Level Best Books in 2022. Inspired by family history, it is the story of a courtesan and a rabbi's daughter in seventeenth-century Venice, the city's Golden Age, and is the first of a series. Nina has been a children's book illustrator, art director, and advertising executive. She raised her three children on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a prewar apartment where she currently lives with her husband.