Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2011

The Lineup

David Dietrich lives in Texas with his wife and twin boys. His last story for AHMM was “Sundown, 290 West” (July/August 2010).

Booked & Printed columnist Robert C. Hahn is the former mystery columnist for the Cincinnati Post.

Joe Helgerson’s YA novel Crows & Cards (Houghton Mifflin), set in 1849 St. Louis, made the 2009 Smithsonian Notable Books for Children list.

Janet E. Irvin received the Best Fiction Award from the anthology Oasis Journal 2010, published in October, for her story “Searching For Mr. Mistletoe.”

Janice Law is professor of literature and a painter whose works have been shown locally around Connecticut. She is the author of Voices (Forge, 2003).

Robert Lopresti’s first story for AHMM appeared thirty years ago, in the June 1981 issue. “Why” is his eighteenth story for AHMM.

Mithran Somasundrum’s most re- cent publication in AHMM was “The Farm in Ratchburi” (October 2010).

B. K. Stevens has published more than twenty-five stories with AHMM. She and her husband live in Virginia, where she teaches literature and composition at Lynchburg College.

Enemies

by Janice Law

If it hadn’t been Turkott, Wallace would have behaved very differently. That goes without saying. Wallace L. Ivery, full professor with an endowed chair in Victorian Studies, was a temperate, cautious, responsible citizen, past president of MLA, member in good standing of the University Senate, reviewer for the best publications, and referee for countless scholarly journals.

He was reliable, too, not a man to panic in a tough situation; witness his success over the years in academic in-fighting and university politics. In his own estimation, he was a good man, tough but fair, with a certain charm and a properly ironic view of the world. If he’d been asked to sum up his personality in one word, Wallace would have picked “reasonable.”

“... to see ourselves as others see us...” et cetera, but Burns was outside his period, and really Wallace was quite decent and rational in his dealings, with one little exception: Peter Havermeyer Turkott III, who summed up every folly and depravity ever associated with the fields of academe. How did he hate Turkott? Let us count the ways.

He dressed like a stevedore, for one. Not that Wallace had ever seen a stevedore up close, but Turkott favored jeans of a certain age and flannel shirts or black turtlenecks under ancient tweed jackets. Sandals in the spring and fall; work boots in the winter. Quelle horreur!

Wallace, as befitted the holder of an endowed chair, dressed formally in dark suits or pinstripes with a vest and wore ties and display handkerchiefs in rich but subdued floral prints, a dignified couture. There was no reason for Turkott’s crack that he looked “like Oscar Wilde in drag,” an unwise remark in every way, given all Wallace knew about him!

But they were “chalk and cheese,” as the British say, on every point. Wallace was something of an Anglophile, which Turkott thought an affectation and had said so more than once. Which showed, in Wallace’s opinion, how limited the man was. Teaching the great Victorians, many of whom were subjects of the Crown, necessitated some context, some feel for the mores of the time.

Turkott, with his Contemporary Culture Studies, “knickers and popcorn,” as Wallace dubbed it, didn’t need to do more than reach for the video and pontificate on the inner meaning of television dramas and “cultural celebrities.” Pathetic stuff.

Unsurprisingly, their animus carried over into department business. Pity poor graduate students who wound up with Turkott and Ivery on their dissertation committees. Pity job candidates unlucky enough to have both come to their trial lectures. Blood on the floor!

This was distressing to everyone, but as Wallace always assured his colleagues, it was entirely Turkott’s fault. And if no one else was going to challenge habitual idiocy, he, Wallace, as one of the senior faculty, felt that he had to speak up. Sometimes he got support on this tack; other times the faculty let him down.

The fact was that Professor Peter H. Turkott III, was also senior faculty, without, to be sure, the cachet of an endowed chair but, in the view of some impressionable minds, as eminent, or possibly even more eminent, than Wallace.

Turkott was forever being interviewed on television, called up as an expert, don’t you know, on the meaning of some disaster in Celebrity World. He spent couch time unpacking the meaning of trendy shows and books whose inner message, Wallace thought, was simply “buy me.”

So it is easy to understand, “self-evident,” Wallace would have said, that when he saw Turkott, he did not react as he would have to any other person on or off campus. This is what happened. He finished up his twilight seminar, three hours from three thirty to six thirty p.m., a gathering highly desirable and always with a waiting list. Turkott could say what he liked, but the Victorians were not “so yesterday” as he thought.

Wallace went out to the car with his briefcase full of papers in one hand and his laptop in its bag in the other. The parking lot was still quite busy; dry leaves were flying in a cold December air that rustled around the cars and lifted the sand that never seemed to get swept up from one season to the next. Needed tonight, probably, as there was snow in the offing.

Since Wallace was on his way to an open house at the provost’s, he decided to lock up his papers and his laptop. He turned his key and threw open the trunk of the BMW, lifted his computer bag automatically, and stopped. Peter Turkott was lying inside his trunk. Anyone else would have screamed or dropped the case, at the very least. Wallace, a man of great reasonableness and self-control, slammed the trunk down and stowed his computer and his briefcase on the passenger’s seat.

Then he went back and, glancing warily around the lot, eased the trunk open. It was a dummy, of course, an over-elaborate prank from his graduate students, a trick of the light — he was much overdue for a visit to the eye doctor. A second look put paid to all that. There was Peter Turkott, with his middle name and numerals and his eminent reputation and public intellectual status, lying wrapped up in a blue tarp with only his face showing, quite, quite dead.

Wallace put his hand forward cautiously: Turkott was not only dead but cold. And that was so typical of the man. Had Turkott been warm, Wallace could have called the police, confident that his presence for the last three hours at his seminar, “Sex and Spirit in Late Victorian Poetry,” put him, what was that ghastly phrase? Out of the frame.

He might have called anyway, being an upstanding citizen, a responsible member of societies large and small. In fact, Wallace was sure he would have called if he and Turkott had not had a serious row in the conference room just the day before. Standing in the parking lot with his rival stiff in his trunk, Wallace had to struggle to remember the quarrel. He thought it had started with Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s feminist novel in verse, and the subject of a letter he’d written in reply to an over-the-top article in TLS.

Yes, the altercation started there, the first tiny slippage before the avalanche. It ended with the department’s administrative assistant threatening to call the chairman out of his Melville seminar and to summon the campus police if they didn’t, right then and there, split the cost of the samovar that had been collateral damage. Naturally, most of the fault lay with Turkott, who combined inaccuracy with offensiveness, but Wallace felt that he had contributed just enough — though under great provocation — to make a 911 call awkward.

So. How to cope? His first thought was that as an unknown someone had put Turkott in his trunk, he could simply pass the corpse along. Wouldn’t the Late Unlamented be better foisted off on some graduate student of unblemished record? Some sunny personality without death feuds or recent threats of bodily violence — although how anyone could take words in a literary critical context as a viable threat was beyond Wallace’s imagination.

Find a car with a trunk that was unlocked, that was the thing. His own car was new and modern and needed the key, which raised questions of expertise and of the provenance of Turkott’s remains, questions to be explored in some leisure hour. For now, Wallace went up and down the rows, discreetly trying the latches on hatchbacks and sedans, clunkers, and SUVs, and even a handsome black Mercedes that was far too good for Turkott.

The one and only possibility was a little white Hyundai. Wallace hustled back to his car, reversed out at top speed, pulled up behind his target, and flipped up its trunk. He was ready to make the transfer when, foul luck, he saw a line of students converging on the lot. No time. Wallace slammed the trunk closed, slid back into his car, and took off.

The dashboard clock read six fifty p.m. — unbelievably only fifteen minutes had passed since his whole life was upended. Where to go with Turkott was the question: the mall was too busy; the dump, barred and locked; the parks, snowbound and mostly closed for the season. What about that excavation on campus, the foundation for the new classroom building? Fenced and patrolled, and in any case, campus was a bad idea, suggesting academics, students, intellectuals with bitter conceptual differences. All undesirable.

Wallace settled finally on the provost’s open house, but not, alas, as a solution for Turkott. He realized that he couldn’t miss the party, because first, he’d promised Morgan to stop in, “soon as my seminar’s over,” and second, he was aware that any deviation from routine might be suspicious. Just the same, when he pulled over on the narrow road up to the provost’s, he checked twice that his trunk was locked, like some nervous nelly.

Outside was bad; inside was worse. Though exchanging little witticisms and interdepartment gossip was normally a pleasure, the party was torture. Eating the provost’s elegant canapés, drinking the quite good wine, badgering the dean — he of the basilisk eyes and the noncommittal stare — about the upcoming budget cuts, even flirting discreetly with the provost’s young, vain, and influential wife, Wallace kept seeing Turkott lying in his blue tarp in the back of the BMW.

If only he could go out and lift the trunk and find Turkott gone. Or if only he could concentrate on a clever solution, despite the wandering modern jazz the provost favored and the laughter and the sallies of competitive intellects all round him. Couldn’t Turkott be digested in some strange agricultural lagoon or incinerated in one of the bio labs? Didn’t the sciences provide useful services like that? I should have paid more attention to such things, Wallace thought. He kept looking covertly at his watch, wishing it were time to make a graceful exit yet irrationally hoping that he could delay a decision.

Finally, he was at the door, shaking hands with Morgan and his misses, who got a quick kiss. “Wonderful party, as always. You’ve spoiled us forever,” the usual persiflage. Then out into the storm, for while they had amused themselves inside, the straggling flakes of snow had regrouped into a thick white shower. Wallace struggled to get the BMW out while his colleagues rushed to be first away, pulling out without looking and accelerating down the narrow road as if they all had corpses in their trunks and the big decisions to make.

Wallace knew that he had to act fast because he couldn’t take forever to get home. He’d been careful to check the handsome grandfather clock in the provost’s hall. It was probably inaccurate, but none the worse for his purposes. I left at quarter of eight; I remember the clock was striking. He could say that if asked, but, of course, he wouldn’t be; it wouldn’t come to that because he’d think of something.

He considered the mall again, with its dumpsters and trash barrels and rows of cars, and he was headed that way on the reservoir road with black water on either side of him and empty road behind and before, when he slammed on the brakes and cut his lights. Enough! He jumped from the car, unlocked the trunk, grabbed Turkott, and with one giant heave, got him from the car to the pavement and then, one step, two, three, to the guard rail and over.

A splash down below; thankfully, the water wasn’t frozen. Wallace stood panting and wet with sweat in the white swirling flakes, until he thought he heard a car. He slammed the trunk shut, slid into the BMW, put it in gear, and roared away. He was at the main road, having almost slid out several times in his haste, before he remembered his seat belt. Fasten it, because everything has to be as usual.

Irene was waiting with dinner for him, and though the provost’s fancy canapés were not sitting any too well, he sat down to pot roast and did his best with it. “Wonderful,” he said.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” said Irene.

Had he been too fulsome? Had he eaten enough? Wallace realized that for the foreseeable future his every action would be problematic. He invented a headache and went up to read in bed, saying that he had an early morning meeting with one of his doctoral students.

“I’ll get the car filled afterwards,” he told Irene, though he realized as soon as he spoke that he had no reason to mention it and that the big station on the highway was not on his normal route.

“Pick up some eggs at the supermarket,” she said.

He stopped himself just in time from saying that he wasn’t going that way and, instead, made much of writing himself a note. This was going to be a wearying business. Even in his afterlife, Turkott was proving a nuisance, and Wallace realized that he would have to be on his mettle.

The next morning, he forced himself to be very bright and helpful with his student, though the chapter du jour was on Conrad’s Nostromo, which Wallace thought singularly ill chosen with its theft and concealments and hidden motives and hidden treasure. He profoundly wished that it was a lighter full of silver that he’d hidden instead of Turkott.

Finally, after two good hours of conscientious toil, with the rough spots of the chapter polished, the assumptions clarified, and the structure, sound, Wallace was able to drive off toward the reservoir. He expected to see police vans and an ambulance and streamers of yellow tape against the snow. Despite his exemplary self-control, his heart was pounding as he entered the strip of forest along the reservoir.

The pines and hemlocks were frosted with globs of snow like whipped cream and a deep blue burned in the sunny sky. Wallace noticed none of this, just the unbroken whiteness of the reservoir on both sides. He almost went off the road in surprise. The black water of the previous night had been replaced by a pure white sheet, and Turkott, who’d bobbed up persistently in his dreams, was locked somewhere under the ice. Eventually, there would be spring, maybe even a January thaw, but not yet, and the delay would produce confusion. Wallace couldn’t help smiling.

At the gas station, he filled the car, ran it through the self-serve car wash, and paid the skinny, shiftless-looking detailer to go over the inside. “One picks up so much sand,” Wallace said, being friendly, making conversation.

The guy grunted and started up his vacuum, whisking away, Wallace hoped, all traces of Turkott and his blue tarp. When the cleaning was finished, he parted with a modest tip and drove back to campus. He arrived, light of heart, to collect the gossip of the day, the absence of Peter Havermeyer Turkott III. Wallace was all ears and properly goggle eyed with surprise.

Oh, the rumors, the joy! A lover was suggested, more than one, the malicious added. Rough trade from the city was the general feeling, though Wallace maintained the high ground on that suggestion. Nonetheless, this useful theory sent the campus police searching various urban alleys and abandoned buildings, while Wallace kept a nervous eye on the thermometer and developed a passion for the Weather Channel.

Come the thaw in February, it was time to reconsider. Big streaks and patches of black water appeared in the reservoir. A sudden freeze closed them up again, catching the mortal remains of Peter Havermeyer Turkott III, partly above the bluish surface of the ice, where he was spotted by a fisherman setting up for the chilly delights of midwinter angling.

Well, he was dead; that was sure at last for everyone, dead as Jacob Marley and, like Scrooge’s partner, returned for the enlightenment of those left behind. Questions? Of course, there were questions, but thanks to a full teaching schedule — Wallace really thought he owed the dean an apology for early complaints about the new teaching directives — Professor Ivery had an alibi supported by dozens of undergrads and a clutch of first-rate graduate students.

Still, the police couldn’t help be interested; who else had they to consider? Turkott had been Wallace’s enemy, though he spent a good deal of time explaining that the bitterness of academic disputes was strictly nonviolent.

“Until now,” said the lieutenant, a skeptical soul, but there was nothing he could do about it. Wallace was an enemy with an alibi, and there seemed to be no handle on Turkott’s killer. Just as well, too, because Wallace was clearly an accomplice after the fact, implicated up to his elbows, and after nearly three months, he could hardly use panic as his excuse.

By the end of the semester, when the investigation was clearly bogged down with every avenue explored leading to the same dead ends, Wallace found himself in a curious situation. He stopped tensing up at the sight of every police vehicle. He no longer had an aversion to opening the trunk of his car, though he still insisted on parking as close to buildings as possible and always near a light.

Thanks to his self-command and intelligence, he had avoided disaster. Turkott, that thorn in his flesh, was gone, and Wallace was the last combatant standing. He was relieved, but not wholly pleased, for campus life had lost some of its savor. The common room bored him; department meetings were beyond tiresome. There were days when he could have confessed to missing Turkott, who’d added a pleasant edge to every academic discussion.

And there was something else, a thought that had only gradually insinuated itself into his consciousness as his anxiety about discovery waned: someone else knew what he’d done and might be a danger to him. On the accepted theory that Turkott, killed by a mysterious stranger, had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Wallace’s new fears were nonsense.

But he didn’t believe the official line for a minute. That he had been implicated at random, by coincidence, offended his sense of importance. His car had been chosen, he knew it had, because the red BMW coupe was distinctive with the litart vanity plate. Anyone hiding a body would have picked a less conspicuous vehicle, unless — and here Wallace felt a little shiver — unless it was a deliberate attempt to implicate him. Or threaten him.

Wallace was amazed that he had not considered this earlier. At first he had been so anxious to avoid scandal, so annoyed at the inconvenience, even so triumphant about his enemy’s demise, that he had not considered himself a target except of Turkott’s posthumous malice. Sloppy thinking.

He realized with a mix of dismay and excitement that his life had changed forever. He had an enemy, a real, not an academic, enemy, someone clever and ruthless, whom he had, inadvertently, protected by confusing the time line and removing evidence.

The killer was someone on campus; Wallace was sure of that. Perhaps in the department, perhaps in one of his seminars, even in the office. Someone hated him and he would have to watch everyone, ponder every word, every gesture, and collect every bit of gossip, every hint of displeasure. Now Wallace began to see the difference between his old “enemy” Turkott, who had produced stimulation, not anxiety, and this new unknown menace.

Was it Edgar, the Americanist, whom he had opposed on certain general education requirements? Wallace sometimes felt under observation when Edgar was in the same room. Or maybe Saul, who, rumor had it, had enjoyed a fling with Turkott. There was something about the way he greeted Wallace, a false bonhomie that jangled the nerves. Wallace was short with them both and scuttled out of the office if they were ensconced there.

Come to think of it, even Marylin was not impossible, was she? The administrative assistant was a big, strapping woman, twenty years younger than he was. Capable of putting a corpse in a trunk? Oh, he thought so.

He had to consider the students and ex-students, too, for Wallace had to admit that there had been a couple of unfortunate dissertation committees. He began to write flattering recommendations for every candidate, especially for former doctoral candidates now on the job market. If they lived in the area, he made particular efforts because it might be anyone, and who knew what the killer wanted?

On bad days, when everyone looked suspicious, when the undergrads seemed like malicious mobs and his graduate students like so many Machiavellian schemers, he sometimes thought about the police. About making a discreet call some quiet afternoon to the campus police headquarters. About expressing his fears. About asking for help.

But “why” they would ask, and then he’d have to tell them about the parking lot and the blue tarp and the terrible effort to heave Turkott, his junior by several years and heavier by several dozen pounds, over the guard rail into the dark water. He wasn’t sure he could do that, and, besides, after nearly a year wouldn’t it be too late to find the dropped threads of DNA or whatever it was that cracked such cases?

By the next December, Wallace had lost so much weight that the department chair asked if he might not want a leave, perhaps move his sabbatical up a year. It could be done. Wallace waved away the idea, though it troubled him. And he was more upset when the dean took him aside one day and paid him many compliments before launching into the merits of the latest money-saving early retirement program.

“Oh, I intend to go on indefinitely,” Wallace said in as airy a tone as he could manage.

The dean fixed him with a cold look. On reflection, he wasn’t sure that he didn’t dislike Wallace even more than he had disliked Turkott. “There have been complaints,” he said. “Some of a serious nature.”

“This has been a difficult year,” Wallace admitted, “but things will look up next semester.”

“I think I can guarantee emeritus status,” said the dean. “At this point in time.” He didn’t have to add, “but not later, not if you delay.”

Out in the parking lot, Wallace found himself shivering. He had his heavy computer bag on his shoulder, and he found it hard to keep his footing on the slick pavement. He actually skidded the last few feet to his car and narrowly saved himself from sliding underneath the BMW.

Open the trunk, put away the laptop. He wouldn’t need it as much now, nor his briefcase, heavy with papers. He lifted the trunk, saw a flash of blue, blue fabric, blue tarp, and tumbled forward, half in the trunk, half on the freezing pavement. He would have come to grief if an alert student, an EMT in training, hadn’t spotted him. He wrapped Wallace in the blue blanket he found handy in the trunk and dialed 911.

“You’re going to be all right,” he kept saying, but Wallace, even semiconscious, seemed distraught. He kept mumbling about a tarpaulin and trying to throw off the blanket and to strike the medical personnel.

The dean, who had seen the commotion, who had, in fact, been watching from his window, came down from the office. “A stroke, do you think?” he asked the EMT chief.

“Possibly a stroke or a seizure, even a tumor. We can’t tell without a scan. There are so many possibilities with the brain.”

“Or the mind? Professor Ivery’s not been himself for several months.”

“Who knows,” the EMT said, as he shut the ambulance door and vaulted into the driver’s seat. “The mind’s such a tricky thing.”

The dean, who prided himself on his dexterity in human relations as well as his knowledge of all things automotive, nodded and smiled. He’d certainly been lucky, but the combination of electronics and psychology had proved unstoppable, and he thought that he could now count on several years of tranquility from the English department.

Copyright © 2011 Janice Law

Pawns

by Janet E. Irvin

Willie shifted the bag of bones from one shoulder to the other and stepped across the threshold of the Out Back Bar. The tavern, empty of all but thin slants of afternoon light, yawned at him, indifferent to his need. Flush with anger at the sting of Dixon’s last words, Willie flexed his free hand and thought about smashing it into Dix’s pale, crafty face.

“You’re fired!” Dix’s words rattled like nails in a can. Even if he had cause, and Willie admitted that there might be cause, Dix shouldn’t have called him out in front of the carny crew. In front of Queenie.

Rubbing his thumb over his lips, Willie scanned the booths and small, square tables crowding the faded green linoleum flooring. He stretched one arm, changed his grip on the bones, and straightened the other, considering the game his theft had set in play. Then he shuffled forward, the bag balanced like a giant fist on his back. He clambered up the barstool farthest from the street entrance, heaved his burden forward, and settled it on the ring-stained bar. Splaying his thick hands upon the counter, he leaned toward the row of bottles lining the shelf and sniffed the boozy air. Inside the sack, the bones sighed.

“Bartender!”

Beyond a row of hanging beads that served as a partition, a door creaked. Willie saw the man’s back first, then the bald spot on top of his head, and finally his pockmarked face. The man staggered to the right a few steps, then to the left. Muscles straining, he grunted, hefted a small keg onto the counter, and wiped his hands on a towel.

“What’ll it be then, little man?” he said.

“Watch your mouth, Gargantua.” Willie knelt on the stool. Balancing his weight on his elbows, he eyed the array of taps behind the bar. Bud. Bud Lite. Some damn microbrew. Harp.

The bartender balled his hands on his hips and nodded at the bag. “Got a pot of gold in there?”

“I’m not a leprechaun, you dope.” Willie jingled the coins in his pocket against the cell phone nesting there. He wondered if Queenie had read his text message yet.

“Could have fooled me.” The man stared at Willie’s gold- and green-striped vest, the green knee pants, the square black felt hat. He’d left without changing his costume. One more thing Dix wouldn’t be happy about. Willie took off the hat and set it on the bag.

“Just bring me a friggin’ beer,” he said.

“Cops’ll be around about seven.” The bartender slapped at the bones with his towel. “What’s in the bag, mate?”

Willie sighed. He had an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before he’d have to find a place to spend the night. Some spot where no one would ask him about the pygmy skeleton, the carnival’s best drawing card, a genuine archeological specimen from the land down under. Willie patted the heavy blue denim laundry bag and thought about leverage. He smiled. “Let’s just say this bag is my get-out-of-jail-free card.”

“Well, may the luck of the Irish be with you.” Hiccuping with laughter, the bartender polished a shot glass and held it up to the light.

“Screw you,” Willie replied, draining his mug and fingering the rest of the change stacked in front of him. “Set me up again.”

Dixon Stout topped off the tank of his truck, hung up the nozzle, and counted the vehicles in the caravan, each one bearing the red-and-white-checked name AJEDREZ. He nodded at the carnies gathered in small knots, smoking and joking as they threw furtive glances his way. Everyone accounted for minus one. Good riddance to that big-headed, flat-faced, lying, thieving dwarf, Willie Stamford Connelly. “He’s run his last con in my show,” Dix muttered, shaking off the squeegee and scraping it over the windshield as he side-stepped around the truck hood. “Passing himself off as a professional actor when anyone could see he was only a dwarf and no Hervé Villechaize shouting “De plane, de plane” to Mr. Roark on Fantasy Island.”

“What’d you say, honey?” Dix’s wife leaned out the driver’s side window.

“Nothing, Queenie. Get me some money, will you?” Dix said. “And make sure King Kardu’s resting comfortable. They’re expecting a genuine unblemished skeleton for the Aboriginal exhibit at that church camp in Nashville.”

Queenie swung her long legs free and slid out of the driver’s seat. Freeing a key from the chain around her neck, she marched to the camper coupled behind the truck and unlocked the door. Inside, a small fan running on generator power whirred as it sprayed cool air across the crowded interior. Using the key, she tapped on the cages holding her collection of exotic snakes. The Burmese python ignored her, but the hooded cobra rose up hissing. Queenie made soothing noises. She paused at the largest box to lift out Verde, her favorite boa constrictor, and ran her hands over his skin. Verde stopped the show every night. She couldn’t afford to lose him. Satisfied that her precious reptiles were safe, Queenie bent over and rustled among the storage boxes, searching for the laundry bag. Then she noticed the door of the safe slightly ajar. When her phone jingled, she sat down next to the box holding the Aussie taipan, Matey, and punched up the incoming message.

Dixon had almost reached the Gas Mart when he heard her shout his name.

“Hey, Dix! Hold up, Dixon, stop!” Queenie caught up to him, one tattooed hand clutching at her breasts to keep them from bouncing, the other covering her mouth, trying to take back the truth. “They’re gone!”

Dixon put out his hands to stop her from falling. “You lost your snakes?” he said.

“Not the snakes, you numbskull,” Queenie said, recovering her balance and her superiority in one breath. “The money. The bones. King Kardu’s bones are gone!”

“Damn that Willie Connelly!” Dixon said, pushing Queenie aside. He headed for the crowd of roustabouts, his right hand curling into a fist. “I’ll wring his felonious neck.”

The wind tossed up grit from the road construction zone along Salem Avenue, scouring Willie’s face and neck when he stepped out of the bar. He blinked and shielded his eyes with his hand. Darting between passing cars, the bag bouncing and swaying in their backwash, Willie scanned the sidewalk for familiar faces. He didn’t see anyone he knew.

“Hey, leprechaun!” The bartender’s shout arrested his steps. A silver Cadillac pealed around Willie’s frozen form, the driver showing him the finger as he sped on. Willie jumped to safety in the gutter and looked over his shoulder.

“Forgot something,” the man called, holding the black hat above his head.

Willie waved him off. “Keep it as a souvenir,” he called back, his words swallowed by the traffic sounds. He did a little jig. Just one more thing to piss off Dix. Patting the money folded into the pocket of his vest, he barreled along the sidewalk. The shuttered storefronts, barred with iron grates and wrought-iron fencing, offered no shelter. Checking behind him once more for pursuit, Willie headed for Riverplace, a section of parkland dotted with benches, statues, and grassy areas that stretched along the Miami River from the downtown business district to the support pillars for the interstate that divided the city into east and west. The sloped ground beneath the concrete overpass offered safety and concealment, while the river running below sealed off the northern approach. He could sleep unmolested there. The bones, shy but cunning, clacked like a lobster’s claw as he stumbled forward.

Dixon nursed his third cup of coffee while Queenie spoke to the crew. He kept circling the problem in his mind. The loss of last week’s receipts and the pygmy skeleton meant the carnival, already teetering on the cliff of financial insolvency, couldn’t meet payroll or their promise to anchor the festival in Tennessee with a spectacular freak show. Queenie’s snakes alone wouldn’t draw enough interest to sell out. And the bank expected a payment at the end of the week or Ajedrez would move into receivership. Four days. That’s all they had. Dixon cursed Willie again.

“Dix!”

Queenie’s shout brought him back to the the task of finding Willie. She waved off the waitress, slid into the leather booth, and leaned across the table.

“Pull yourself together,” she said.

“How am I going to get the troupe to Nashville?” Dix scrubbed at his forehead, trying to ease the headache that pulsed at his temples.

“Relax,” Queenie said. She lifted one hand and stared at her nails, then wiggled them at Dixon. “I paid for the trip out of the emergency funds.”

“What emergency funds?” Dixon looked up and caught Queenie scowling at him.

“Need to know, Dix, need to know. And you don’t.” She slapped a piece of paper on the table and tapped it with one long crimson fingernail. “Your job is to find Willie.”

“What’s this?” Dixon set down his cup. A splash of undiluted joe slopped over the number Queenie had written on the paper.

“Police sergeant in charge of missing persons. Address and phone number. You’re going to file a complaint.” She brushed her fingers over her chest and waist, rearranging the scarlet brocade shawl that hugged her figure. “Tell the cops Willie suffers from blackouts. Tell them he’s your favorite cousin. Tell them you and the dwarf are lovers. Whatever works. Just do not tell them he stole anything.”

“What’re you going to do?” Dix asked.

“I’m coming with you.” Queenie paused, staring at the concave reflection of her pinched, painted face in a tarnished teaspoon. “Connelly’s on my shit list now.”

Dixon swallowed the rest of his coffee and wiped his mouth. He picked at his napkin, avoiding Queenie’s eyes. “All right, but we’ll have to leave the camper here,” he said, already calculating time and distance and parking fees. He eyed his wife, her fingers tapping out a contingency plan on the cracked, red polyurethane surface, and sighed. “And, Queenie, no snakes.”

“Dix!” Queenie’s outburst caused the other patrons of the diner to swivel in their direction.

“No snakes, Queenie, none. Not even a little one.”

Pursing her lips, Queenie cut her eyes at Dix. She reached into her bag and rummaged among the contents, searching for her lipstick.

“You know,” Dix said, “I used to like that son of a bitch.”

“Yeah,” Queenie said, touching her temple with one ringed hand. “So did I.”

Willie stomped down the straggling bunches of thistle and crabgrass covering the sloping ground. He checked left and right. Only a few of the regular homeless had drifted into the shaded area, their blankets spread out at the opposite end from where Willie stood. Farther down the riverbank, he spotted a thin bald guy tracing figure eights on the lawn. The man’s voice gusted toward Willie, his curses and shouts interspersed with accusations of conspiracy. Shaking off a shiver of premonition, Willie scraped a shallow trench to mark off his space and settled in for the evening. He slid the denim bag under his shoulders, leaned back and closed his eyes. Beneath his head, the bones muttered. Mum-mum-de-mum-onakul.

The odor of urine woke him before the sickle moon had fled the sky. He checked the time on his cell phone. Two twenty-five. No message. Crapola! Willie shifted to a sitting position and scanned the collection of ragtag blankets and garbage bags. He listened for the snores of exhausted men and women, but the acrid smell overpowered his senses. Sniffing, he leaned to his right. The light reflecting from the highway above outlined the shape of a man urinating against the concrete support wall, barely three feet from Willie’s head.

“Hey, pisser,” he said, pitching his words too low for anyone but the intruder to hear. “Go pee somewhere else.”

The man stuffed himself together and turned toward Willie. “They’re coming,” he whispered. He pointed one bony arm in Willie’s direction and repeated his warning. “They’re gonna find you. And him.” Shuffling closer, the vagrant stared at the shadow behind Willie’s head. “He knows.”

Shoving the bones farther behind him, Willie stood up and clenched his fists. He stared at the dark figure wavering before him. The man knew nothing, yet his words shook Willie. Could Dixon find him? Would Queenie come? Shivering, Willie stepped toward the man.

“Get the hell out of here,” he said.

The man backpedaled a few feet, twisted his ankle on a slurry of small stones, and fell hard. Rolling several feet down the slope, he raised up on his hands and knees and crawled closer to Willie.

“Make him stop,” he begged, covering his ears with his hands. “I can’t take it anymore. Make him shut up.” He flung his arms toward the bag once more. Then, raising himself to a stand, he shuffled away.

Willie watched him go, afraid to turn his back, fearful of what might happen if he closed his eyes. The man paused every two steps to check over his shoulder and mutter, his curses a susurrus of fear sliding toward Willie along night’s dark street. When the man disappeared into shadow, Willie lay down again, juggling the man’s absurd pronouncements and the realization that Dixon and Queenie would indeed be looking for him. But he had control of the board, didn’t he? Willie’s sense of righteous anger flared. Instead of giving Willie a better job, Dix had let him go. Instead of sharing herself, Queenie had given him one night and then turned her back. And they’d both lied about wanting him to help run Ajedrez. Willie watched his expectations dissolve in a swirl of feints and false moves. Nothing left of hope but broken promises. If he gave the money and the bones back, they had to reciprocate, didn’t they? The questions circled his head like vultures. Uneasy and conflicted, Willie stayed awake long into the night. Just before dawn, he slept. When he startled awake around seven, the bones were gone.

Dixon and Queenie sat in the truck, rehearsing Dixon’s story. The parking meter posted a two-hour limit, but the meter flag had slipped closer to zero. Dix got out and slid two more quarters in the slot. That should buy them enough time.

“You sure, Queenie?” He leaned back in the seat and studied his wife’s hunched shoulders and exposed cleavage. “You think this’ll work?”

Queenie raised her head from the cell phone keypad. Her dark eyes glared at him, her full, red-limned mouth set in a taut line. “Just follow the plan, Dix, and don’t let on that you’re angry. Okay? I’m going to flush him out with an offer.”

She smiled but Dix didn’t think it would melt anyone’s heart. Her glance reminded him of that Australian reptile, the taipan she kept in a cage beside their bed. Sometimes in the night, he’d wake to the sound of her reading from the Gospel of Mark, They shall take up serpents, while the snakes shifted and hissed around her. Queenie’s Pentecostal roots served them well among the small hill towns of Appalachia, but Dix wasn’t certain how well they’d go over in the big city. He was tired of playing backwater fairs and rural carnivals. It was time to move up to bigger things, and Nashville could be the first step. He rested his hand on the back of her neck. “I just want what’s fair, babe.”

“Oh, you’ll get more than fair, Dixon, I promise.” The way she said it made Dixon’s stomach contract.

They watched the precinct shift change at three o’clock and waited until Queenie’s contact tipped his cap and hurried inside the building.

“Maybe you shouldn’t have fired him,” Queenie said, snapping the lid on the phone and tapping her foot.

“You think that’s as bad as what you did?” Dixon allowed only the merest trace of sarcasm to tinge his words. Queenie, enraged, was a beast he preferred not to confront. “You should have known he’d want more.”

Queenie allowed a smirk. “I just wanted to see what it’d be like is all. With a little guy.” She reached over to smooth Dixon’s collar. “You know there’s no one else but you in my heart.”

“I don’t care who’s in your heart, Queen, it’s your wallet that concerns me.” Dixon swallowed the lie and shot out of the car. Slamming the door, he circled the truck and took the steps two at a time. From the passenger side, Queenie watched him go, her dark eyes slitted, her rouged face a study of sly indifference.

The night people shuffled off around him, heading for coffee shops or that Daybreak place that handed out breakfast and false hope. Willie raced from one side of the underpass to the other, searching for the bag. It took him fifteen minutes. When he spotted the crazy pisser from last night standing at the river, he thought he’d hyperventilate. The man held his arms out over the water, making the sign of the cross at the bag that floated, bobbing and weaving, across the slow current. Willie decided against murder. Blood pounding in his ears, he raced up the pedestrian stairs and hurried across the footbridge. By the time he reached the other side, a boy holding a skateboard had lifted the bag out of the water.

“Hey!” Willie yelled, gasping as he used the handrail to pull himself along. “That’s mine.”

The boy looked up and shrugged. Clutching Kardu’s bones in one hand, he watched as Willie worked his way down the steps. He had almost reached the bottom when the boy flipped on a ball cap, dropped his board to the pavement, and shoved off. Willie bent over to catch his breath and started off again. His short legs and heavy torso refused to obey his command for more speed. He huffed his way to Monument Avenue, clutching at his aching thighs, until he spied a bus labeled Wayne-Wilmington. Struggling along the sidewalk, he reached the stop just as the bus doors closed. Willie used his fists to beat on the glass. The RTA driver, his expression one of pained effort, opened them and let Willie in.

Trying to balance his weight against the bob of the wheels, Willie threw coins in the collection box until the meter said paid and hurried to a side seat. Ahead, weaving in and out of lanes, the boy headed south. The bus lumbered forward, lurching to a stop at every second corner. They passed the Schuster Performing Arts Center and the old County Courthouse. Off to the right, Willie noticed a building with a police precinct sign and a familiar truck parked at the curb. He ducked below the wide bus window until they passed the station. Then he leaned his head against the glass and listened for the bones. They’d been talking to him all night. No reason to think they’d abandon him now.

The parking meter flag flipped to red. Queenie debated whether to feed it again. She had just opened the door when Dix burst out of the precinct and hurried toward her, his face aflame with anger and resentment.

“Get in,” he said, shoving her down and closing the door. He pulled away and searched for a pay lot. “Your guy’s going to call as soon as they hear anything.”

Queenie fumbled with the radio knob, seeking a country station. “What’s wrong, Dix?” she said.

Dixon knocked her hand off the dial.

“We find him, Queenie, I swear I’m going to kill him.” Dixon jammed his foot on the brake and faced her while the traffic signal flashed from yellow to red.

“Not the wisest move, Dixon,” Queenie said, running her fingers along the curve of his neck. She waited for his color to fade from fuschia to pink. “Let’s just concentrate on recovering our property. Willie, well, Willie will be on his own again, just like he was before we took him in.”

Dixon pulled into a lot with a sign reading special events parking $5.00. He held his palm open and waited for Queenie to pass him a bill. The attendant, looking strained and tired, nodded at the next to last space facing Ludlow. Dixon turned off the ignition and watched the theater-goers flooding out of their cars, heading for the Victoria and The Phantom of the Opera.

“How long we been together, Queenie?” Dixon removed his cap and patted his graying hair. “How long have I overlooked your adventures? But this time, you fixed us good.”

“So, we’re back to that?” Queenie scowled and slapped his shoulder again. “Get over it, Dix. You got twenty-five years on me. I have needs.” She studied her nails. “Promising Willie and me we could both help run the show wasn’t a smart move.”

Dixon punched the steering wheel. He slid his seat back, slouched down, and closed his eyes. When he heard the hissing, he opened one eye and glared at Queenie. “I told you. No snakes.”

“Hush, Dix,” Queenie said, cooing at the thick mesh wrap lying coiled and uneasy at the bottom of her purse, “I just want a little insurance.”

Dixon sat up and pushed at her chest. “Against what? Willie? Me? I swear—”

Queenie cut off his reply. Snapping her bag closed, she reached forward with both hands and pinned Dixon’s arms to his chest. Her fingernails dug against his skin.

“Swear what, Dix? What’s yours is mine? Willie’s a dead man? Puhlease.” Leaning her face closer, Queenie frowned at him. “Pardon me if I take my own precautions.”

Caught in her stare, with the specter of losing his life’s work hovering beyond her and the claws of jealousy tearing at his soul, Dixon clenched his jaw and nodded. I am going to kill him, he thought, and then, Queenie, I’m going to kill you. He tried not to think about her snakes.

Up Wayne Avenue Hill the bus swayed from lane to lane, dodging traffic and cyclists commuting from home to work. Although he could no longer see the boy, Willie could hear King Kardu humming, the notes a trail winding from the bag to Willie’s ears. Ha-haha-ha-hum. Willie got off at South Park.

The intersection of the once-thriving Victorian-era neighborhood had gone to seed, its signature triangle building on the northeast corner now boarded and mute. The gas station across from the bus stop could use a new sign. The old one, damaged by some random wind, hung crooked and sagging. On the west side where Willie stood, only a seedy tavern and an old grocery store remained. Down the block, the aging houses were claimed for mixed use by yuppies, baby boomers, crack dealers, and whores. Willie shaded his eyes from the sun. The boy had gone there, to the first large, white painted lady. Willie spotted the skateboard lying discarded in the small square of weedy lawn. He listened. The boy’s voice carried eastward like a sail.

“Danny, come see what I found.” A screen door banged. The boy and the bones faded into silence.

Anxious and determined, Willie eased along the street. He noted the number of occupied dwellings, the placement of garages, and the occasional signs warning of home security alarms. The house where the boy lived lifted above a sprawl of steps that opened onto a wraparound porch. Below the porch, latticework screened an area big enough to store garden tools or conceal a man. Nodding at the possibilities, Willie changed direction.

At the corner grocery, he purchased a poncho, two quart bottles of water, and a handful of candy bars. He squatted behind a tall hedge of forsythia opposite the boy’s house and unwrapped one of the bars. Convenience over substance. He had to recover those bones.

When the sun went down, the family who lived in the house settled down to dinner. Willie heard the scraping of utensils on plates and the excited chatter of boys with a secret. Their voices triggered a memory of that first night Dixon and Queenie took him in. They had served lasagna and made small talk, welcoming him at their table but screening him from their hearts. Swallowing hard to combat the ache of loss and longing, Willie rested against a light pole as traffic dwindled. When the porch light snapped off, he moved. Gritting his teeth against the possibility of spiders and rats, he crossed the lawn and crawled under the porch. He wrestled the poncho under him and wiggled around until he’d made a comfortable depression in the lumpy earth. The first moment the house sat empty, he vowed, he’d step in and take what belonged to him. Engrossed in his planning, alert to every noise that creaked above his head, he missed the chime signaling Queenie’s text, her words a backlit sprawl in the night.

MEET ME NO TRIX IM 4U PROMISE

The first night it rained, water cascading in heavy sheets down the spouting to pool in the dirt edges of Willie’s hiding place. Raindrops slithered through the cracks in the porch flooring and dripped down his back. Images of Queenie and snakes and Dixon’s angry face traded places in his restless sleep. Damp and shivering, Willie woke early, his stomach a constant grumble that matched the skeleton’s complaints. Num-num-num-num-NUM. After the parents left for work, Willie caught the echoes of the boys’ chatter as he and Danny, probably the older brother, examined the skeleton.

“Where’d you say you found this?” Danny’s voice waxed and waned as he moved around the porch above Willie’s head. “Who followed you?”

The boy evaded his brother’s questions, his excitement spilling outward with the bones as he pulled them from the bag.

Willie unwrapped another candy bar and munched away, wishing the boys would leave so he could grab the skeleton and go, but the wet weather kept them all housebound. Willie dozed, his plan drifting on the murmur of Kardu’s song. By midafternoon he felt feverish. His stomach had given up growling, but hunger nagged at him. He couldn’t think how to leave before it grew dark enough to hide his escape. Rereading Queenie’s message, he weighed the pros and cons of surrendering to desire. He ached to see her. Could she be trusted?

Later that night, after a midnight run to the all-night grocery, Willie dreamed of holding Queenie, of rejoining the carnival as her partner and her spouse. But King Kardu’s mumbling woke him. Hum-da-hum. Lal-lal-lal. The thrum of the bones pounded inside Willie’s head. Caught up in his anxious thoughts, Willie forgot about the boys, until Danny leaned his head against the lattice and yelled.

The squad car arrived just after seven a.m. Willie inched away from the officer’s outstretched hand, but he knew if he didn’t come out, they’d just come in and get him. Crawling forward, he scrambled to his feet, brushing off the mud and sand that clung to his pants and feet.

“Mind telling me,” the officer said, pointing out the candy wrappers that littered the ground, “what you’re doing here?”

Willie shrugged off the cop’s restraining hand and looked up at the four faces staring down at him from behind the porch railing. He pointed at the boy.

“He stole my bag,” Willie said.

“That right?” the cop asked. The boy shuffled closer to his brother and nodded. Frowning, the police officer grabbed Willie by the collar and shoved him forward to the bottom of the steps.

“Go get it,” the father ordered, exasperation coloring his command.

The boy came out carrying the blue laundry bag as if it contained Queenie’s taipan instead of the ancient bones of an Aboriginal witch doctor.

“This yours?” the cop asked. Willie nodded. “All right, folks, we’ll take it from here.”

The cop grabbed the bag and Willie’s arm and headed for the squad car. He settled Willie in the back and contacted the precinct. Willie eased closer to the bones. He ran a hand over his dirty hair and groaned as the officer spoke.

“Jenks,” he said, “tell Sarge we found that missing person.”

The gray walls and plain table and chairs of the interrogation room offered Willie no comfort. At his feet Kardu rested, his bones silent for now. Exhausted, Willie placed his head on the table, cushioned it with his arms, and slept.

“Willie!” Dixon Stout’s boom of greeting roused him. The bones jittered. Dixon lifted Willie from the chair and hugged him, his whisper unheard by the policeman who watched from the doorway. “Save it until we get you out of here.”

“This your missing person?” the cop said.

Dixon emphasized his response with a second hug and a clap on Willie’s back. “This is our Willie.” He smoothed Willie’s tangled hair back from his forehead. “We sure were worried about you, son. Glad you’re safe.”

A rustle of warning and Queenie stood there, staring at Willie’s matted curls and mud-splashed clothes, her face a careful blend of joy and sadness. “Poor Willie,” she murmured.

Embarrassed, Willie shrugged out of Dixon’s embrace and slid into the chair. He couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Perhaps,” the cop said, picking up the bag and opening the drawstring to display the contents, “you folks can explain this.” He gestured at the skeleton folded inside.

“Of course, Officer.” Dixon moved away from Willie. He pulled a bill of sale out of his shirt pocket and handed it over. “I own a carnival, and Kardu here is our star attraction. See.” Dixon tapped his finger on the signature at the bottom, at the date, at the description of the artifact.

“Huh,” the cop said, handing the receipt back to Dixon. Queenie popped her gum. “Strange thing to be hauling around.”

No one spoke. They all waited, their eyes shifting from walls to ceiling. Willie stamped his feet. Finally, the cop nodded. “All right. But I think it best you all head on to that church camp — in Tennessee, was it?” He ushered them out of the room.

With Dixon on one side and Queenie on the other, Willie carried the bag to the truck.

“Get in,” Queenie said, placing her hand on his elbow and propelling him into the back seat of the cab. Her purse swung down between them, the contents shifting in a slow slip and a hiss. “Here, wipe your face.”

She handed him one of Dix’s handkerchiefs wrapped around a thin hard object. Willie pretended to fumble with the seat belt while Dixon started the truck. He unfolded the cloth Queenie had given him. A switchblade impressed with the name Billabong slithered out and fell into his lap. Hiding the knife next to the money in his vest, Willie wrapped the monogrammed linen around his neck. He stared at Dixon’s back, resisting the urge to plunge the blade between Dix’s angry shoulders.

Dixon drove two blocks, turned left, turned left again and parked at the mouth of an alley. A For Sale sign sneered down from the warehouse guarding the entrance. Graffiti sprayed along the wall warned that the end was near.

“Get out,” Dix said. He tapped on Queenie’s shoulder with one knuckle. “You, stay here.”

Willie picked up the bones and followed Dixon into the shadows.

A brisk wind swayed the awnings jutting out over the alley. Willie, defiant and out of options, straddled the bag holding Kardu’s bones. In his left hand he waved the knife Queenie had slipped him. Three feet away Dixon raised a pistol and pointed it at Willie’s chest.

“I gave you a chance, Willie, to be something more than a sideshow freak. Instead of making that work, you put a move on my wife, help yourself to my savings, and steal the most valuable showcase I’ve ever owned.” Dixon’s eyes swept over Willie’s disheveled form and settled on the bag. The blue denim jiggled and swayed.

“I thought Queenie was your most valuable possession,” Willie said.

Dixon pressed forward. He held out one hand. “Queenie’s a pleasant distraction. The bones, now, are my upward mobility, my chance to win favor in the world of freaks. Once, I thought you’d serve that purpose. I was wrong.”

“You sell out everyone around you.” At Willie’s feet the bag swayed. Kardu’s humming coursed upward through his body like a train. “You really are a jerk.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m the jerk holding the gun,” Dixon said. “Give them back. Now.”

“You can’t bully me anymore,” Willie shouted, poking the knife at Dixon’s waist.

“You got no moves left, little man,” Dixon said. He squeezed halfway down on the trigger. “Checkmate.”

Willie swore. Behind him, he heard the staccato of high heels clicking on the asphalt paving. Dixon looked up and winced.

“Nobody owns me,” Queenie said, her voice muffled by the garbage bins lined up at the alley’s entrance.

Willie listened to the flapping of discarded papers down the gutter, the rattle-crack of loose shutters. He thought about Queenie, moving him and Dixon around like pawns on a chessboard. He thought about his own need and his greed and the feel of Queenie’s body in his hands. By his feet, the bones shifted. A sound like laughter escaped from the bag. Willie sighed. Dix had it figured right after all. He had no moves left. Mum-mum-mum-nal, the bones jabbered. Willie scrubbed at his nose, trying to figure it all out. His lips and tongue tasted like salt. Dixon moved another half step closer and struck at him with the gun.

Willie staggered back, righted himself and stabbed at Dixon. The knife caught Dix under one arm, leaving a long tear in his sleeve. A slim worm of blood tracked its way down Willie’s hand. Willie stabbed again. This time he caught Dix below his rib cage.

Dixon stumbled, righted himself, and lifted the gun with both hands. One foot caught in the drawstring of the laundry bag, twisting his stance, and the first shot angled to the right of Willie’s head. Dixon pulled the trigger again.

Shaking his head, holding his hands over his ears, Willie fell to his knees. Pulled forward by the blade in his gut, Dixon stumbled, coughing, and collapsed next to Willie. The bag, kicked forward in the struggle, opened. The bones spilled free.

One of Kardu’s fingers sprang loose and gouged itself into Dixon’s eye. The skeleton’s skull rolled over to nestle close to Willie’s broad nose. Humming, cajoling, demanding, the skeleton’s inarticulate chant claimed kinship, obligation, and command, but Willie had moved beyond the bones’ influence, the dwarf’s wide blue eyes gazing up at the crow-black sky.

Queenie stepped out from behind one of the dumpsters. A drumroll of raindrops pelted her head. She brushed them off, then lifted the taipan out of her purse, the snake’s restless length still encased in its binding. Humming her notes in tune with the wordless song leaching from Kardu’s skeleton, she waited. Dixon looked up. His lips moved.

“Queenie,” he said, struggling to raise his shoulders.

Debating the wisdom of introducing venom into Dixon’s bloodstream, Queenie circled the fallen men. The storm-driven wind blew harder, ruffling the fringe on her shawl. Before she made up her mind, Dixon stopped moving.

“Well,” she shrugged, staring at Matey, “guess Dix was right about one thing. No need for snakes.”

Bending, she removed the skeleton finger from Dix’s eye. She layered Kardu’s bones back inside the bag and stuffed the taipan in with them. Twisting the handkerchief free of Willie’s neck, Queenie wrapped it around the money inside Willie’s vest and dropped the wadded bills in her purse. Checking for shoe prints below and faces above in the few windows that overlooked the alley, Queenie moved off, trailed by the rustle of the taipan and the muffled lament of the bones in the bag.

Copyright © 2011 Janet E. Irvin

Why

by Robert Lopresti

“Come in, Alan,” said Captain Stevens. “That was a hell of a job you did on the Mattocks mess.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Lieutenant Poley. He sat down on the worn visitor’s chair.

“I mean it. The report you wrote will be the model we use for, God forbid, any future events like that.”

“Thanks. There’s one more thing.” Poley held out a single page of paper.

“Something you missed? I find that hard to believe because your—” Stevens frowned at the paper. “Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“But my God, man. You can’t resign. How much longer until you could retire on a full pension?”

“Six months and a week.”

Captain Stevens shook his head. “I’m not accepting this. You’re just stressed out. Anybody would be.”

“I’m not stressed. I’m done.”

“My God, Alan. What happened?”

Poley shrugged. His career had ended on Tuesday, the day after Mattocks died. A sense of duty kept him going to the end of the week to finish the report, but now it was time to go.

“The final score is four dead, including the shooter,” Shellcross had said at the Tuesday briefing. “Plus three wounded, but they’re expected to recover.”

“If you use the word score again,” said Poley, “you’ll be back in uniform. This was not a sporting event. Are we clear?”

The detective’s face went red. “Yes, Lieutenant.”

“Good.” He looked around the squad room. Almost twenty cops stared back. “Listen, everybody. This is time for your Sunday morning, church-with-the-in-laws manners. We’ve got reporters in town from all over the country, probably all over the world, and since they don’t have a live perp to point their cameras at some of them are going to look at us.”

“Too bad the bastard killed himself,” said Juarez.

“Saved the state a pile of money on a trial,” said Hacker. “Trials are expensive.”

“I didn’t say I wanted him tried,” said Juarez. She grinned. “I just wished we’d had the chance to finish him ourselves.”

Poley threw a pencil, which bounced off the table and hit Juarez on the chest. He waited until the cops stopped laughing. They had had a hell of a day yesterday. “That’s exactly the kind of thing you can’t say in front of a reporter. Does everyone understand that?”

Nods all around.

“Let’s talk about live suspects first. Now, is there any possibility of an accomplice?”

“No sign of one,” said Washington. “We’ve traced Mattocks from his house straight to the travel agency. No sign that he contacted anyone along the way. We’re still getting his phone dumps.”

“Keep at it. If anyone knew — or had any reason to suspect — what he was doing, we need to know it.” And God help the guy if he exists, Poley thought, because everybody would sure like a scapegoat now, to stand in for the unreachable murderer. Speaking of which—

“Where did he get the guns?”

“Working on that, Loot,” said Garsh. “Everything he carried he could have been purchased legally, assuming he filled out his paperwork and observed the waiting period. We’re checking that.”

“What about our procedures?” Poley asked. “Who’s making sure that we did everything right?”

“Rat Squad,” said Atchison.

“I don’t mean Internal Affairs. I want some of us to check our procedures. See if they were followed and recommend changes if need be. But make sure you cooperate with Internal too. We have nothing to hide.”

Poley sighed. “Okay, now the big one. Any progress on motive?”

Silence.

“Come on. Who’s in charge of that?”

Francey stood up. A big man, he took up a lot of room. “I’ve been compiling it, Loot, but it’s mostly a stack of negatives. The survivors at the travel agency swear they never saw Mattocks before. He has no known connection with any store on that block.”

“There’s got to be some reason he went in there and started shooting people,” said Poley. “Ideas?”

“Was he married?” asked Hacker.

“Divorced last year.”

“So he was mad at his wife. Maybe was she about to take a trip?”

“He wasn’t angry. The divorce was his idea. Said he was bored and wanted a change.”

“Who was the girlfriend?” said Juarez. “Men don’t leave until they have a new cook and housemaid ready.”

“You’re leaving out the most essential service,” said Atchison. People laughed.

“No sign of a new romance,” said Francey. “No sign he was stalking anybody at the travel agency either.”

“Did he have problems with some other travel agency?” asked Kelly. “My in-laws went on a cruise and got so sick they had to be hospitalized. Couldn’t get a cent back.”

“Family says he never used travel agencies,” said Francey. “Most vacations they took were by car.”

“Two of the employees were Japanese,” said Washington. “Any chance this was a hate crime?”

“No evidence in that direction. The techies are going through his computer, but they haven’t found any hate sites. No evidence of drug abuse, by the way.”

“The man was a bore,” said Atchison. “Maybe that’s why he did it.”

“Work problems?” asked Garsh.

“Boss says his job was as secure as anybody’s is these days. No trouble with co-workers.”

“Jesus,” said Juarez.

“That’s a point,” said Katz. “This guy have any religious hangups? Maybe he thought travel was sinful.”

“Went to church on Christmas and Easter,” said Francey. “What else?”

Twenty cops sat in silence.

“Hell,” said Poley. “Maybe there wasn’t any motive. Maybe the guy was just nuts.”

Captain Stevens scowled at the gun and badge Poley had placed on his desk.

“Damn it, Alan, I said I don’t accept your resignation. Take a month off. You’ve earned it. When you come back, if you want I’ll put you in charge of records till you can retire.”

“The burnout squad?” said Poley. “No thanks. I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’m through here.”

Stevens raised his hands helplessly. “For Pete’s sake, why?”

Poley shook his head. “Motive,” he said, “is overrated.”

After the Tuesday briefing Poley had gone home. He was too tired to eat, although he knew he should be starving. The photographs of Mattocks’s victims had finished any appetite he could have raised.

He took a beer out of the fridge. Before opening it, he unloaded his pistol and locked both gun and ammo in the small safe in the hall closet. He had started doing that just before the first baby was born and never failed to do it now, even though Janey had left with the kids years before.

Somehow that thought brought Michelle Bedeker to mind. That had been the only time he had fired his weapon in more than twenty years of service.

Afterwards, he had gone to the department’s psychologist, because that was policy. Just a formality, he figured, but he was astonished when the shrink wanted him to come back for another session. “Maybe several. We’re just starting here, Sergeant.”

“You don’t think it was a righteous shoot? Everyone else does.”

The shrink was a thirtyish guy with a sour lemon face. “I don’t like that phrase, but yes, you did the right thing. Ms. Bedeker had a knife at a child’s throat. You saved the boy.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“My problem is that you don’t think it was justified. Don’t tell me otherwise, Sergeant. Your body language calls you a liar every time you mention her.”

Poley had sighed. “Tell me what I need to do to go back on duty.”

“We need to talk more. See what your real problems are.”

“From where I’m sitting, Doc, it looks like you’re my problem.”

“How’s your marriage, Sergeant?”

Poley’s face went blank. “That’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Give me a chance. Maybe I can help you.”

After half a dozen sessions the doctor gave up. Janey left anyway.

Poley sighed. He ought to go to bed, but he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Instead he went to the bathroom to let out some beer.

He looked at himself in the mirror. He thought about Juarez and wondered again why her husband had left such a terrific-looking woman. She was the one who had suggested that Mattocks’s motive might be a girlfriend on the side. Funny, now that he thought about it.

Poley’s reflection frowned back at him.

Washington, the only black on the squad, had suggested that it might be a hate crime.

Hacker thought the killer might have been having marital problems. Poley had caught him sleeping over in the crib room last month.

Garsh, who had more write-ups than most of the squad together, had asked if Mattocks had had work problems.

Atchison, the compulsive joker, guessed that the man had done it because he was a bore.

Nobody saw the killer at all. Mattocks was just a fun-house mirror.

At the press conference a reporter from the financially shaky local paper had asked if Mattocks had been laid off. The local TV newsman asked if he was stuck in a dead-end job.

“And what did you say, Lieutenant?” he asked the face in the mirror.

Maybe the guy was just nuts.

Copyright © 2011 Robert Lopresti

The Calculator

by Mithran Somasundrum

“I am a calculator.” That was the first thing he said to her. Can you imagine? The two of them in the McDonald’s at Chidlom, central Bangkok. The place so crowded on a Saturday afternoon that when they took adjacent tables at the far wall they were effectively sitting next to each other. Atiya thought he was asking for a calculator and passed her Nokia across. He looked at it sadly (“Like he felt sorry for it,” she said.) and shook his head. “No, that’s not a calculator.” Pointing to himself. “Me, I’m a calculator.” And he could prove it. The cube root of a six-digit number? No problem, rattling off the answer to ten places when the Nokia could only reach nine. Or how about picking a random seven-digit number and then doubling it continuously? He could get further in fifteen seconds, in his head, than she could furiously keying the numbers into her phone. After that she laughed and conceded. “Okay, you’re a calculator.”

Was he trying to pick her up? I wondered aloud. Atiya was in her mid twenties and had the classic heart-shaped face, dark eyes, and full lips that brought men to Thailand. Or if her looks didn’t, they were at least responsible for keeping them here. She shook her head. No, definitely not. She knew all about displays of male plumage. She’d come to our Chinatown office directly from work and was still in the light purple blouse and dark purple skirt of Siam Commercial Bank. When they put her at a counter it happened all the time: Some rich, middle-aged guy who thinks she must be impressed by the stack of cash he’s just handed over decides she’ll make the perfect mia noi (minor wife). She was used to requests for her phone number and used to batting them away. But The Calculator (Anthony, apparently) wasn’t like that.

“So what was he like?”

“Very thin, very white, very lost.”

It really did seem to her that he just needed to talk, and so she listened while he told her he came from London, was unemployed, had been in the kingdom four days. It’s got to be said, there are more ambitious pickup lines.

As a reward for not hitting on her, she suggested they meet the next day, same place, and she’d take him to see the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. I raised my eyebrows at that. “Because?”

“He needed a break. Stop thinking about his competition.” This was the World Human Calculator Championship — what else? I’d never even heard of it, but apparently it was going on in Bangkok right now. He’d showed her the events page of The Bangkok Post (she hadn’t heard of it either) and said, “That’s what I should be doing.” Anthony looked so stressed that she said, “No, you need to relax.” Atiya shrugged. She was the one putting her younger sister through college. It was her doung[1] to be responsible for other people. So the next day she turned up at the McDonald’s, took a corner table, sucked her way through two vanilla milkshakes, and after an hour realized he wasn’t coming. “I have a feeling about these things. When my mother died, I knew. It was the same stretch of road she took every month, here to my uncle in Rayong. But that evening, suddenly I knew. I sat by the phone and when it rang I thought, ‘I have to look after Fon now.’ It’s the same. Something bad happened to him.”

Not surprisingly, the police didn’t see it like that. “They just laughed at me and said, ‘He’s gone to Pattaya to look for girls.’ They think I’m some Thai woman who’s lost her farang[2] boyfriend.” She crossed her arms under her chest. “I have a good job, I have my own car. I don’t need a farang to look after me.”

I looked across to Doi’s desk, caught her eye, and shrugged. “I’ll be honest, it’s not a lot to go on. But if you’re really willing to pay for this, then it’s two thousand baht a day, two days in advance. Okay, look... make it one thousand five hundred, one day in advance.” After Atiya went out I said, “As it’s for a good cause.”

Doi made a face. “A good cause with good legs.”

Atiya didn’t have Anthony’s phone number or the address of his guesthouse, which left me only the Calculator Championship itself. They were holding it in Pantip Plaza, the computer geek Mecca of Thailand. Six floors of motherboards and CPUs, memory sticks and hard drives, LAN cables and webcams, and basically anything else guaranteed to make a geek drool, not to mention pirate CDs of all the most up-to-date software, newest films, and the latest porn.

The floors of Pantip rise around an internal courtyard, the first half of which was devoted to Pantip’s particular brand of miscellaneous tat: alarm clocks, binoculars, hair curlers, laser pointers, megaphones. The space beyond this had been cleared out to make way for a small stage covered in red velvet, set in front of four rows of chairs. Up on the stage were two tables, each with two chairs facing each other. A large whiteboard, currently blank, loomed behind the tables. Nothing was happening on the stage, while of the chairs below, about half (thirty-odd) were taken. I would like to report that the audience for the World Human Calculator Championship represented a true cross-section of Thai society: dark-skinned manual laborers, middle-aged professorial types, hi-so women dripping jewelry, young girls in low-rise jeans... I’d like to report that, but I can’t.

Yup, they were all guys under thirty. Everyone had left his girlfriend at home, possibly on his hard drive. Well, they do say clichés exist for a reason.

I spent some time scanning the audience, looking for — I don’t know — the Least Geek Geek. Or the Most Geek Geek. Then two white guys came up onto the stage and took seats facing each other. The one on the left was in his late twenties, had a shock of unruly red hair and a flinty, unhappy face. He stared down at the table, as though forced onto the stage against his will. The guy on the right was about ten years older, slightly podgy, wore a Hawaiian shirt, a black goatee, and an air of quiet toleration, like a film star who was used to being noticed. He looked at his opponent, looked out at the crowd. Then a Thai woman in a tight black bodysuit joined them, tossed her hair a couple of times, and told the crowd via a microphone how excited she was to begin the last match of round one. She placed a sheet of paper and a pencil in front of each competitor, paused, and said, “Go,” into the microphone. Each man snapped over his paper and sat staring. Redhead looked angry, Goatee looked blank. On the whiteboard the woman wrote 4 (square root) 9648573. For a beat nothing happened. Then Goatee snatched up his pencil, stabbed an answer onto the paper and dropped the pencil as though it had burned him. Redhead made a despairing noise, pushed his chair back and stared up at the ceiling. The woman took Goatee’s paper and wrote 55.733 on the board. Below that she wrote the true answer, demonstrating what the crowd, with its calculators out, could already tell. The man had been right to the first five figures. There was a scatter of applause and the two men shook hands. As the audience drifted off I reflected that while it wasn’t the most compelling spectator sport in the world, the more you thought about what you’d seen, the more special it became.

Redhead jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and slouched off to the escalator. I wondered what he was thinking. Unlike a physical competition, he couldn’t blame luck or the bad bounce of a ball. The loser was stuck in his own mind. As I watched, he went up to the second floor and, once there, ambled over to the booth selling coupons for the food court. Meanwhile, Goatee had gone, disappeared into the crowd.

Off to one side of the stage there was an organizers’ table. The emcee in the black bodysuit was there, chatting with the woman behind it. I went over. “Excuse me, a friend of mine is competing here. His name’s Anthony.”

“Mr. Ann-tony.” The woman behind the table nodded as though she’d been expecting me. She wore a businesslike white blouse and dark blazer, the effect offset somewhat by a pair of shocking pink spectacles. Turning an A4 list towards me, she pointed, “Care-wen-dish?” I scanned the list of names. Anthony Cavendish was the only Anthony there, so presumably it had to be him. “You have a number?” the woman asked.

“No, sorry. Actually, I came here trying to find him.”

She took on the frowning, reluctant look of someone about to be drawn into an argument. “We can’t give a refund. I’m sorry. It said in the rules.”

“Right, and that’s because...?”

She waved a hand at the stage. “Round One already finish. It’s too late.”

“You mean he never turned up?” She shook her head. “Oh well, don’t worry. I mean, I’d explain that to him if only I could find him.”

“You try his friend?”

“That’s a Thai woman, right?”

“No, a Thai man.” She craned her neck to look over my shoulder. “He was here asking as well, but I can’t see him now.”

I thanked her and left, thinking: This is what I should be doing.

I decided on lunch for myself, bought a plate of grapao moo at the food court, then went looking for Redhead. He was sitting by the railing overlooking the courtyard, toying with a bowl of noodles. He glanced up, saw me by his table, and said in one of those Birmingham accents that always sounds querulous, “Eh, mate, d’you know what this is?” He was holding a wobbling brownish red cube between his chopsticks.

“It’s coagulated chicken blood.”

“Oh well, that’s all right then,” he said taking a bite. “Can’t be too careful in the tropics, can you?”

“Hey, by the way, sorry about losing down there. It’s amazing you can even try something like that.”

He shrugged. “Blown out before I got started.” He took in the fact that I was still standing in front of him. “Have a seat, if you want.”

We shook hands and introduced ourselves. He was Colin Krasinsky (“Me dad’s Polish but I don’t speak it”), worked for the DHSS, and was going to use his remaining time here as a holiday. “I’m owed some leave.”

“And you seemed close to getting it.”

“Mate, you’re always close to getting it. It’s brutal, this game.” He sighed. “Heinrich’s a piece of work.”

“Guy you were playing?”

“He’s a motivational speaker, y’know. That’s where the money is. It’s not in the calculations, it’s in being the person who can do them.”

“Why not try it yourself?”

“I would... but I’m not very motivational.” He looked out across the food court. “Can’t believe they had it here. Computers everywhere you look. It’s like they want to tell us we’re obsolete.” He raised his head and intoned, “You are the discarded fag ash of the electronic world.” I decided he was probably right about the motivational speaking. “There’s a contestant here I’m trying to find. Bloke called Anthony Cavendish.”

“Yeah, I was wondering why he didn’t show. Lucky ol’ Enrico got a bye.”

“You know him then?”

“We all know each other. There aren’t many people in the world who can do this. In fact, I was talking about it to Anthony one time.” He leaned over the table. “Take your footballer. Top zero point one percentile in the country will probably be enough to get you a flash house, a Porsche, and a lingerie model girlfriend.” He sat back and pointed to his chest. “Me, on the other hand. I am in the top zero point zero zero one percentile of human calculators. Not to be coming it, but I am. We all are. And I’m on peanuts from the DHSS, Anthony was in a sub-post office last I heard—”

“I think he’s unemployed now.”

Colin shook his head. “Never lasts long. Calculating on work time. I’ve told the lad.”

“The reason I’m looking for him is there’s someone who thinks he might be in trouble.”

“Someone who?”

“A Thai woman.”

Colin grinned. “The sly old dog.”

“But why would he come all the way here and then not show?”

“Beats me.” He frowned. “I wonder if Heinrich knows? He’ll be pissed.”

“Because?”

“He was going to help Anthony pay for his plane ticket, that’s what I heard. Always a bit on the brassic side is our Anthony.”

“That was nice of him. Heinrich, I mean.”

“We’re brothers. I know that sounds wet, but... it’s only other calculators who understand you. Say you get the seventh root of a nine-digit number in under thirty seconds, who are you going to tell?”

“You could tell me, I’d be impressed.”

“Yeah, but can you see how it’s so much harder than the fifth root?”

“Fair point.”

“Poor ol’ Anthony. And he could have been the Man here.”

“You mean he could have won it?”

Colin nodded. “If you’re talking brain power, yeah. I’ve seen the lad do ninth roots for fun. But it’s never just that. People like me and Heinrich, we’re not the greats but we know how to compete.” He pointed his chopsticks at me. “You’ve got to bring your game to the table. Whereas Anthony... he’s a dreamer. I can be talking to him about football and he’s looking out the window multiplying license plates. Then he comes to a championship like this and while everyone’s getting their head together he’s thinking about football.”

“So what are your plans now?”

“Ko Samet, I reckon. I’ll have a word with Heinrich probably. Get the gen.”

“Heinrich knows Thailand then?”

“Comes every year. That’s motivational speaking for you, that is.” He sat back and put his hands behind his head. “Have you noticed how some people sort of do, and some people sort of don’t?”

“Do?”

“Life, you know. They sort of get it.”

I gave Colin my card, copied down his mobile number, and asked him to call me if he heard from Anthony. Then I wised up and asked if he’d given his Bangkok address to the organizers. He had.

Back at the organizers’ table I had a chat with Pink Spectacles and learnt her name was Malinee. She told me Anthony had done the same.

“So you must have talked to him?”

“No, it’s by the Internet. Have a Web site.” She clicked at her mouse while staring at the flat screen monitor. He pay for an entry fee by the Internet as well.”

“Can you tell me when?”

“It’s the twenty-third,” she said, the white screen reflecting off her glasses. Today was the thirtieth, so he’d paid from England. Then she said, “It’s the same as Bausch-man. Mr. Heinrich. Same card.”

“You mean Heinrich paid Anthony’s entry fee? The guy on the stage just now?” She nodded. “You know, I could really do with finding out where Anthony’s staying.”

“I’m sorry, we can’t give the addresses.”

“It’s just that a friend of his thinks he might not be well. She wants me to check on him.”

Malinee tilted her head to one side, considered me in a friendly, interested way, and relented. It was the Orchid Guesthouse in Banglampoo, a low-budget area where all the backpackers go. I borrowed a pen and scribbled the address on the palm of my hand. Then I checked on the Championship schedule. Heinrich would be appearing in the quarterfinals in two days’ time.

“He left,” shrugged Mr. Wen, owner of the Orchid Guesthouse. He was a large Chinese-Thai man, sitting in his office bare chested below a ceiling fan. A small portable TV balanced on a filing cabinet was showing a Thai boxing match, the reception from the indoor aerial waxing and waning. Mr. Wen was behind his glass-topped desk, bills and receipts visible under the glass. On the wall behind him was a commercial calendar and above that a picture of the king. The tiny office had no windows and the ceiling fan really did very little in the way of breeze.

“So we’re talking two days ago?” I asked. Mr. Wen nodded. Before his chat with Atiya then. “And he didn’t say where he was going?”

“Yes, he didn’t say.”

“How did he seem?”

“Seem?”

“Happy? Sad? Worried?”

Mr. Wen shrugged. “He seem like he want to leave. Why don’t you ask his friend?”

I thought, not again. “Is this a man or a woman?”

“It’s both.”

“What did they look like?”

“The woman.” He put up his thumb. “Suey.” Beautiful. “The man... he’s a man. They want to know where he go.” He added in Thai, “And don’t ask me if they’re happy or sad, I’m not a fortune-teller.”

I left Mr. Wen a business card for good measure and went off to get a bus back to Chinatown, reflecting that Atiya’s sense for things gone wrong was turning out to be pretty good.

It was about half past two by the time I got back to our office. The fiery March sun was slanting in between the slats of the venetian blinds, throwing bars of shadow onto the wall behind my desk. A standing fan was rattling through a half circle. It wasn’t much cooler than Mr. Wen’s office. Doi was busy translating the documents of a farang who was applying for a resident’s permit. It was the only work we had. So I resorted to my usual strategies when there was nothing to do: drummed my fingers on my desk, set about clearing out the drawers of said desk, considered rereading today’s Khao Sod, drummed my fingers some more. Doi looked up and said, “Vijay, why don’t you go if there’s nothing for you?”

“You never know, we might get a client.”

She pouted. “Whenever you say that no one come.”

And sure enough no one did. But at close to five my phone rang. “Vijay, now what are you up to?” It was my police captain friend, Mana. “At the moment, drumming my fingers on the desk to help Doi concentrate.”

“Don’t joke about, I’m serious. Who you annoy?”

“No one as far as I know.”

“Your work was supposed to be helping farangs with gem scams. You’re not supposed to trouble big people.”

“I didn’t think I was.”

“Someone phone my boss and make him nervous. Now he wants to know all about you. I’m supposed to check you have a work permit. You have one, right?”

“Not a totally up-to-date one.”

A heavy sigh came down the line. “Please tell me you at least have a visa.”

“Yup, that bit’s okay. But look, the only case I’ve got is finding a farang who’s gone missing. He’s no one special. Just some unemployed guy from London.”

“Who wants to find him?”

“A Thai woman.”

“The girlfriend?”

“No, it’s not like that. Just... someone who thinks he needs finding.”

“Vijay, look, I’m going to tell my boss everything’s okay. You’re lucky you live in my precinct, you know that? Remember, this is Thailand. You don’t make trouble for people at the top.”

I told Mana I wouldn’t, which was easier said than done considering I didn’t even know who this person was. All I did know was that I’d only given out two business cards, and it was for damn sure Colin Krasinsky did not have a hotline to the rich and famous. Which meant the man and woman who’d visited Mr. Wen had come back, and he’d told them about me. Or possibly, they’d told him to get in touch if anyone came asking. Either way, it had only taken a few hours for Mana’s boss, a chief inspector, to be at someone’s beck and call. The secret life of Anthony The Calculator was getting stranger and stranger.

The next morning I made it to Pantip Plaza before ten o’clock and hung around outside the tinted glass doors, waiting for them to open. When I got inside I found Malinee already there setting up her computer. Again she was in a serious business outfit — navy blue trouser suit — topped off by her dippy pink specs. I wondered if that particular look was supposed to say something about her, and if so, what.

She saw me and smiled. I decided to play the farang-in-trouble card, which among ordinary working people succeeds surprisingly often. It’s a part of Thai national pride and a part of Thai kindness to want that foreigners come here, enjoy themselves, then go home and speak well of the country. So I told her how Anthony was still missing and how people in England were worried. Perhaps if I could speak to Mr. Heinrich, that might help. I knew she wasn’t supposed to give away addresses, but this was an emergency. And he was Mr. Anthony’s friend, had paid for his registration, remember?

Eventually she agreed and searched it out. No backpacker hangouts for Heinrich, he was in the Amari Watergate, a short walk from Pantip. Very convenient and very expensive.

At the Amari reception desk I asked for Mr. Baushman’s room and phoned up. When I told him it was about Anthony, Heinrich said he’d come down immediately. I sank into a deep lobby armchair and enjoyed my surroundings — polished marble floor, high, chandeliered ceiling, bus-boys and waiters padding through the calm, air-conditioned hush. When Heinrich arrived he was in Bermuda shorts and a bright yellow silk shirt of Indonesian design.

I waved him over and introduced myself. Taking a seat opposite, he said, “This is strange. To my knowledge Anthony has never been in Thailand before. Who is this woman who takes an interest in him?”

“Just someone he met, someone who thinks he’s in trouble. What do you think?”

He sighed. “With Anthony, how can we know? But it is a pity.”

“And a waste of money, I’d have thought. Colin said you were going to help him with the plane ticket?”

“I paid half, two hundred and thirty-seven euros.”

“And what about the competition? Is there an entry fee?”

“I paid with my credit card. But if you have taken my address from the organizers, then perhaps you already know this fact.” I opened my hands and grinned. “Anthony did not have a card. In some ways he is not wholly of the modern world. But he promised to return something to me.”

“You believe him?”

Heinrich shrugged. “I do not care. I help him as a friend, and I help him for the realization of potential. He has the ability to be a great calculator, another Nakamura. But he must learn to compete.”

“Colin was saying something like that.”

Heinrich fingered his shirt. “This was not purchased from calculations. Neither my hotel room. I am a motivator, I liberate human potential. And you know, I am good at this. I have held seminars for Siemens, Mercedes, Beh-Meh-Veh. All these people I can motivate, but I cannot motivate Anthony.” He sat back. “What do we conclude from this?”

“Perhaps it’s because those people were competitors, like yourself, Heinrich.”

He nodded unhappily, and then said, “I want to know, who is this woman who wishes to help him?”

Walking back to Pantip past the mats on the pavement (plastic toys, children’s clothes, mobile-phone cases) and the food carts (fried chicken, gelatin sweets, freshly squeezed orange juice), I was starting to wonder about Atiya myself. After I finished with Heinrich I’d phoned her at work. She agreed to pay for a couple more days searching, which was pretty decent, all things considered. But I doubted she’d go much longer without some concrete results.

Inside the mall an audience had gathered. On the whiteboard it said quarterfinal. The stage was still empty, but off to one side a pear-shaped Chinese man was pacing like a boxer, his chunky fists clenching and unclenching. The emcee was there, again in high heels and another tight black body suit. I had a feeling that, for this particular audience, she was as much of a draw as the competition itself.

As soon as she saw me, Malinee waved me over. “You just miss Mr. Anntony’s friend.” She came out from behind her desk and walked me down past the stage. “He went... there.” She pointed to a guy in light blue jeans, sneakers, and a dark blue cotton shirt. As he turned, I saw a pair of aviator sunglasses hooked onto the front pocket. The Least Geek Geek competition had a winner. “Thanks, I’ll go and have a word. Just right now. Thanks.” I waited till she’d gone back to her desk, then followed him up the escalator to the second floor. He ignored the food court and took a brief, incurious stroll past the shops. When someone offered him a packet of porn CDs he grinned and patted the man’s shoulder, as though to say, you don’t think I can’t get the real thing? At the end of the corridor of shops he went out to the car park. I followed and watched him click his key fob to pulse the headlights of a black Toyota Fortuner. I scribbled the license plate on my palm and went back inside to phone Mana.

“Vijay, this had better not be the same case.”

“No, no, quite different. It’s the usual thing, this one. You know, forty-something guy, young wife. He thinks she’s playing away from home and instead of doing the sensible thing and talking to her about it, he hires me. Anyway, I saw her getting into this Fortuner and I know hubby wasn’t driving.”

I could hear him tapping keys. “That’s good to know, you don’t want to... this guy’s even older. She left her husband for a sixty-five year old?”

“Oh well, you know how it is. Trading up sugar daddies.”

“His name’s Boonchai Wongsawat and he lives out in Tungkru. The address is Phutta Bucha Road, Soi forty-four and the house number is... Vijay, it’s a triple nine, if this guy can—”

“Great, just what I needed. Bus coming, I’ve got to dash. Bye, Mana.” I wrote the address on my forearm and looked at it. Thought: Why am I never carrying a notebook when I need one? Then thought: It was a triple nine address.

In countries where people believe in fate they also believe in luck, and in Thailand nine is a lucky number. The Ministry of Transport auctions off license plates containing only nines, and the highest possible combination — two Thai characters followed by 9999 — goes for around ten million baht. The same fetish applies to house numbers. If you have enough pull you can see to it that your house gets a big nine combination, irrespective of the street’s number sequence. Which made Khun Boonchart old money and serious influence.

I left the air-conditioned cool of Pantip to get an expressway bus that would take me across the river, out to the suburbs of Tungkru. But “express” was the wrong word for the caravan of hot, exhausted metal we joined, and by the time we’d come off the toll road it was three p.m. I was starving. So I had lunch at a curry shop and asked which bus would take me to Phutta Bucha.

By the time I’d got there it was almost three thirty. Soi 44 was a narrow, straightish lane. At its entrance there were a couple of motorbike taxi guys sitting at a stone table under a tree, playing draughts with bottle tops. I waved away their offers and strolled down, keeping to the right-hand side where the shade was. The mouth of the soi was all shops — hairdresser, general store, pharmacy, then further in it was residential, houses behind high walls, and about a kilometer down, number 999. This wasn’t so much a house as a compound, with five saloon cars lined up outside. High vanilla-white walls were topped by cobalt blue metal spikes. The same shade of blue had been used for the ornate metal gates set at each end of the compound, almost twenty yards apart. It was hot and still and, away from the mouth of the soi, relatively quiet. I walked up to the gates and peered inside. In the center of a gravel courtyard was an oval fountain where two faux Roman cherubs were being cheerfully soaked. Behind that, white walls, white Doric columns, and broad white steps leading up to an entrance of black-tinted glass that revealed nothing. At either end of the courtyard was a covered area for cars. The black Fortuner was parked here, next to a silver Mercedes. And lots of free, shaded space.

The buzz of an engine came from behind me and one of the motorbike taxis swept past, a middle-aged woman on the back, seated sideways with her shopping in her lap. I looked up to where the bike had come from and saw the other taxi driver was looking down the soi. I had the idea he was watching me, and as I strolled back up to the entrance, flapping out my wet T-shirt, it seemed that was indeed the case. At least as far as I could tell, given I couldn’t see his eyes behind his dark glasses.

I stopped in at the general store, bought two bottles of Fanta from their refrigerator, and carried them over to the taxi driver. He was a big, dark-skinned guy whose corded forearms were covered with blue protection-from-evil tattoos. I handed him one of the bottles, and he took it in a silent, matter-of-fact way, like a tribute that was owed to him. I sat where his friend had been.

It’s a given in Bangkok that any long soi will have a bunch of motorbike guys making a living from ferrying people down it. And it’s a given those guys will know far more about the life of the soi than the soi’s residents realize.

I said in Thai, “It’s really hot.”

“Really hot.”

We were agreed on that then.

I ran the cold bottle along my forearms.

“So, the house down there. Nine-nine-nine. What’s going on?”

“What do you think?” If I couldn’t make an intelligent guess, why should he help me?

“Lots of shaded parking space inside, but cars parked out in the heat. For a house a long way down a soi, away from nosy people, from the wrong kind of cops. Cops who haven’t been paid off. I think it’s a casino.”

His dark face split into a very white grin. “That’s what we all think.” He shrugged. “No one knows for sure. The visitors don’t use us; they all have cars.”

“But it’s the same people who keep coming?”

He nodded. “In the afternoon there’s older women. Hair up here and small handbags. In the evenings it’s mostly men. On Friday nights a Jaguar always comes, leaves very late.”

“I bet you can remember the license number.” He could as well and I keyed it into my phone, as it was just getting silly scribbling on myself the whole time. “What else stands out?”

“There’s a Chinese-looking guy, bald head, comes in an old red Mercedes. He left very angry one night, drove very fast. Almost hit my friend.” He glugged down some Fanta. “Have a young woman with him usually. Suey. But when he was angry he left by himself.” He shrugged. “Many of the cars have tinted windows. At night you can’t see much.”

“Think I could get a game there?”

He looked troubled. “Pii[3]... why would you want to do that? I’m not looking down on you, but I’ll speak straight. You can’t afford it. This game is for rich people.” I let him convince me and then we went on to other things, football and politics and how business was. Still concerned, he gave me his phone number and said if I wanted a game he could find a much cheaper one from his brother-in-law.

As I was walking back to the bus stop he called after me. “Pii. You thought it was a casino... just from the cars?”

“That wasn’t the only thing.”

“Twenty-one, right? That’s the game you can win at?” It was late afternoon. I was back in the office chatting with Doi. She frowned. “I don’t think you win at anything. The casino win.”

“Most of the time. But for twenty-one it’s different. I remember reading about this someplace. It’s the only game with a memory. They put four decks into the shoe. Every card that comes out changes the probability for the cards that are left. If you keep track of everything that’s been played and keep calculating the odds, you know when to bet against the house.”

“Vijay, I think it’s so difficult.”

“There’s a bunch of people in this city right now who could do it for fun.”

I thought about Colin Krasinsky, in the top zero point zero zero one percentile of calculators and still no lingerie model girlfriend. And unlike Heinrich, no motivational speaking to bring the money in. So what did he turn to? And then you had Atiya, who was apparently altruistic enough to hire a private detective to find someone she’d met just once, in a McDonald’s. Or in a different reality, had fallen out with her Mercedes-driving sugar daddy and now needed a new source of funds. I decided I wanted a chat with both of them, together.

First I phoned Colin and found that he hadn’t left for Ko Samet after all, but was still in the city. (“Just thought I’d check out Patpong, eh?”) I told him I needed his help in finding Anthony and as he let me convince him, the scales of my suspicion dropped in his direction. Then I phoned Atiya and told her the same thing, and when she let me talk her into phoning in sick at the bank and coming to meet me, the scales righted and were level again. I leaned back in my chair with my hands behind my head thinking about the two of them, and suddenly I realized that, while picking him out was going to be difficult, I did actually know where Anthony was.

At close to eleven in the morning Doi went to get him. She was supposed to stay in touch with me by phone and had her sister Lieng and her brother-in-law Oot along to help. It wouldn’t be easy, given that none of us had seen the guy, but I had an idea of what they should look for. Meanwhile, I was in the food court at Pantip, which was filling up fast. I was sitting with a glass of iced tea at a table for four and was constantly waving away people who wanted to know if the seats were taken.

Colin arrived first, carrying over a bowl of noodles. “I’m quite getting into the food here. And it’s like, sixty p. for lunch. So what’s the score with our Anthony?”

“Looks like he wandered into some sort of trouble. Or was led into it.”

“Yeah?” He looked mildly interested. “Poor bugger.” I like to think I’m good at spotting when people conceal things, mainly because I get so much practice. My clients hardly ever tell me the whole truth, and never in the divorce cases. Who can face the whole truth about a failed marriage? But it had to be said, Colin was very good at putting up a front. Or was completely innocent. “Someone convinced him to try and get rich.”

Atiya came over. She hadn’t bought any food and was again in her tight purple skirt and purple blouse. “Vijay, I have to go back this afternoon. If I miss a whole day I need a doctor’s note.” Colin was looking at her with interest and obviously wondering what she’d said. I introduced the two of them and explained why she was looking for Anthony. He leaned over the table. “I’m a calculator as well, y’know. Tell me any five digit number.”

She gave him a tight smile. “It’s okay, I believe you.”

I said, “So about Anthony. I think he was card counting in a casino.” I added for Colin’s benefit, “This is a gambling-mad country where gambling is illegal, other than the state lottery. So basically, you get underground casinos everywhere. I think he won big in one and they put the frighteners on him. And I think one of you already knows this.” Colin and Atiya looked at each other. Colin put up his thumb. “Nice one.”

My mobile went. Oot said, “Vijay, I think I saw him. A guy with binoculars. But then I lost him.”

Atiya said, “What nice one?”

“Oot, tell Doi and Lieng, maybe he’s heading their way.”

“Figuring out about the card counting.”

“I don’t know what’s card counting.” She looked genuinely puzzled. I said to Colin, “How’s it go, zero point zero zero one percentile but still no Porsche?”

“So?” He looked genuinely puzzled as well. There’s usually a point where I figure people out, but it didn’t seem to be happening. I went back to Atiya and said in Thai, “It’s good of you to pay me to find Anthony. I just wonder what you get out of it.”

“I get to know he’s safe. What’s wrong with you?” Colin’s phone rang and he answered it. While he spoke into the phone she said, “I don’t know about counting.”

Colin looked up from his phone and said, “Eh, mate, Anthony’s just called me. He says there’s someone following him.”

“Tell him not to worry.”

“Ant, don’t—” Colin put the phone down. “He’s rung off. What was that about?”

“Why was he phoning you, I wonder?”

“Remembers my number, doesn’t he? He’s a calculator.” He grinned at Atiya. “Like I am.” Then he said to me, “But he doesn’t have a mobile, if that’s what you mean. Must have been phoning from a call box.”

I dialed Oot, bent under the table, cupped my hand over the phone and whispered in Thai, “Find the public phones. That’s where he is.”

Atiya said in English, “What are you doing? Why you being so strange?”

“I’m being strange?” I asked, straightening up.

“You are a bit actually, mate,” said Colin.

My mobile rang. Oot asked, “Where are the public phones?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you to find them. Try Doi.”

Atiya said, “Doi from your office?”

“I think you should both know, my life has contained many people who’ve tried to deceive me.”

“See, this is a bit weird as well,” said Colin.

I said to Atiya in English, “He went to a casino in Tungkru. Phutta Bucha.” She looked blank. “You fell out with your previous source of funds.” She was looking at me as though I was mad. “Then a guy in a McDonald’s tells you he’s a human calculator and the baht signs go up in front of your eyes. Why else would you come to me?”

“I came because my friend tell me. She live in Chinatown. She said you work hard and don’t charge much.” She crossed her legs and gave me a haughty, triumphant look. “And you know what else? She said if I wore this skirt you’d give me a discount.” This is what you get for being a good Samaritan.

Colin leaned across the table and said, “I can vouch for her.”

“You’ve only just met her.”

“Yeah, but I know about people. DHSS, innit? We get all the scams.”

Atiya smiled at him. “Thank you.”

I decided to raise the stakes. “The reason I called you both here is that I already know which one of you set up Anthony.” They both turned to me, then Colin looked over my shoulder, waved his hand, and frowned. I turned back. “What is it?”

“Heinrich. I thought he’d seen us. Never mind.”

“What would Heinrich be doing here? He’s competing tomorrow.”

“I told him what you said, about finding Anthony. I thought he’d want to know.” Damn.

“So, Vijay,” Atiya put her chin on her palm. “Which of us is it?”

“Neither, now that I come to think of it. It’s Heinrich.”

My phone rang. Oot was panting. “Vijay... I found the phones... no one there.”

“Okay, keep looking.” I stood up. “Come on, we’re going to get Anthony.”

“But we don’t know where he is.”

“Of course we do. He’s here, where else would he be? He doesn’t know this city and besides, he couldn’t keep away. He’s up on one of the higher floors with a pair of binoculars, watching the whiteboard for the next set of numbers.” I said to Colin, “You and I will try and find Heinrich. I think he’s figured that out.” To Atiya I said, “You try and get to Anthony, you’re probably the one person he trusts.”

“So I pay you to find Ann-tony and now I’m finding him.” She stalked off. Colin watched her hips sway down the food court and said, “I’d have given her a discount as well.” Then his phone rang. He answered and said to me, “Anthony. Says there’s still someone after him.”

“Tell him not to worry. It’s a friend of mine.”

“Ant, relax, it’s a mate.”

“Big guy, sloping shoulders?”

Colin repeated the description and said to me, “No, slim guy, polo shirt, aviator sunglasses.”

“In that case tell him to run like hell.”

Colin waved the mobile. “Gone already.”

We started pushing our way to the escalator. It wasn’t easy. I’d chosen this time because I wanted to be sure the Championship had started, but the problem was the place was now packed out. As we jostled our way up the steps I phoned Oot. “Where do they put the public phones here?”

“They fix them in the wall.”

“I mean where, Oot?”

“It’s out towards the car park. The corridor to the toilets.”

We ran around to the next escalator, dodging bodies and banging shoulders. “What was Heinrich wearing?”

“Light blue shirt, sort of patterned malarkey.”

We levered our way up the next escalator. On the corridor above I couldn’t see any such shirt. “Come on, we’ll go up again.” We ran around and my phone rang. Lieng asked, “Vijay, twenty-five thousand baht for a notebook computer, you think it’s too much?”

“Lieng, the guy with the binoculars? Remember? Could you concentrate on finding him for two minutes?”

“Well, excuse me for asking.”

Up on the next corridor Colin shouted, “There!” I looked and couldn’t see anything. Colin shrugged. “I’m sure it was.” We pushed our way down and such was the press of bodies I almost missed him. He was in the Apple shop looking at a MacBook, his phone in one hand. “Waiting for a call, Heinrich?” He glanced up and took in the fact that Colin had come in behind me.

“Always in the Apple product we find the superior design quality.”

“And poseurs buying them, but then, I’m an old Luddite at heart. We know about the casino in Tungkru and the card counting, so you can call off your henchmen.”

“I know nothing of henchmen, only of an opportunity I extend to Anthony.” He said to Colin, “Yes, it’s true. I arranged for this. Anthony phones me in Frankfurt and again he has no job and no money. I have learnt about the casinos here and so I apply this knowledge.”

I said, “In return for a percentage of the winnings, I presume?”

“It is standard business practice.”

“You must have known the casino owners would go after him.”

“For this reason I chose carefully. I know a woman who plays there.” He shrugged. “Okay, so someone visits him and points a gun of some description. This is just a bluff. It is not cheating to card count, it is only a higher understanding of probability.”

“Right, and the fact that he’s now got some psycho after him?”

“Again you are misunderstanding. This is not the owner of the casino, only the son. He wishes to hire Anthony to damage a rival casino.”

“My God, and you think he’d agree? He’s scared out of his wits as it is. Can you just phone the guy and call him off?” Heinrich gave me a heavy satirizing shrug and made the call, speaking in a mixture of English and German-accented Thai. “So are you happy? This is an opportunity he loses.”

“And so do you. But why do I think the casino’s served its purpose already? You must have known how they’d react to a card counter. And how Anthony would take it. But that removes some of the competition, right? After all, your motivational gigs are all about being a calculator. If you become the World Champion Calculator, I’m guessing your fee goes up. And Anthony’s good. Perhaps the problem wasn’t he couldn’t compete but that he was learning to.”

“You apparently forget I help pay for his plane ticket.”

“And by doing so gave him a sense of obligation. Whereas if you hadn’t paid there was a danger someone else would. Colin says you all stick together.”

“Pish, pish. This is a state of mind on which you are speculating. It is utterly unproveable.”

“Maybe, but like I say, calculators stick together. They can draw their own conclusions.”

Colin said, “Not classy, Heinrich. Not classy at all.”

“I am not to debate class with an untermensch.”

At that point a woman in denim hot pants and a pink spaghetti-strap top came in and ticked her way over to Heinrich. He put a hand on her hip and called her liebchen. Mr. Wen had been right, she was beautiful, although in a completely different way from Atiya. As for the owner’s son, I didn’t see him again. He must have just got in his Fortuner and driven off. And as for Anthony, after everything, I never did see him at all. Atiya phoned to say she’d found him on the fifth floor and that was that. I later heard they’d arranged again to see the Emerald Buddha, and Colin had somehow managed to wangle his way along. Lieng took Oot off to look at the computer she wanted and Doi left Pantip to go and shop for clothes at a mall nearby. Heinrich and his liebchen left together with her cooing about couldn’t he buy her an iPhone, ti-rak[4]?

On my own in the noise and bustle of Pantip, I felt oddly deflated for some reason. Everything had come together, and yet it felt like one of those divorce cases where no one wins.

With nothing better to do I went down to the ground floor to see how the Calculator quarterfinals were going. Between bouts I got chatting with Malinee. I decided those pink specs weren’t any kind of statement. She liked pink so she wore them to work. Why not? People don’t have to be more complicated than they first seem. I liked that thought and I liked chatting with her, and so I asked for her phone number. But this time I didn’t scribble it on myself or key it into my mobile. I just tapped the side of my head and said, “I’m a calculator, I’ll remember.” And you know what? Two days later when I called her up, I still could.

Copyright © 2011 Mithran Somasundrum

Death in Rehab

by B. K. Stevens

“I’m not so sure about this job,” he said. “It sounds dangerous. You’ll be surrounded by addicts.”

“By addicts committed to overcoming their dependencies.” She started to pour herself a third cup of coffee, paused, and decided she didn’t need it. “That’s not dangerous. That’s inspirational.”

“Maybe. But they’re still addicts, and addicts do dangerous things. Did you read the local news this morning?” He found the right page and pointed to a headline. “ ‘Gambling Addict Embezzles Millions, Disappears’ — probably in Vegas by now, the paper says. Or this story — ‘Small-Time Drug Dealer Killed Execution Style’ — probably because he stole from his bosses, the paper says. Or this one — ‘Shooter Flies into Drunken Rage, Wounds Two’ — the police haven’t caught that one, either.”

She sighed. “In the first place, I don’t think people who fly into drunken rages are necessarily alcoholics, and I’m sure not all alcoholics fly into drunken rages. In the second place, there won’t be any alcoholics at the center — no drug addicts, either, much less any drug dealers. It’s not that sort of rehab center. The temporary agency said no one there has substance abuse problems.”

“Really? What sorts of addictions do these people have?”

“The agency didn’t say.” She carried her dishes to the sink. “But I got the impression the addictions are fairly mild. Anyway, I probably won’t have much contact with clients — I’ll be tucked away in an office, typing and filing. I’ll be perfectly safe, Sam. So, you’re meeting with the Hartwells today? What sort of lawn ornament do they want?”

“They’re still arguing. She wants a birdbath; he wants a family crest. So I’ll have to use my negotiating skills, steer them toward a compromise.” He put the newspaper down. “Not exactly what I had in mind when I went to art school, Leah.”

“I know.” She walked back to the table and put a hand on his shoulder. “And I’m sorry no one bought any of your sculptures at the gallery show last week. Well, next time for sure. Want me to take homework duty tonight, so you can focus on your design?”

“That’d be nice. Last night, Sarah spent half an hour kvetching about her religious school assignment; I tried to explain it but didn’t have much luck. And it does seem unreasonable to expect kids to do religious school homework every night.”

“It’s the counting of the omer,” she said, looking through her purse. “Every night is part of the point. Now, I’ve got my keys, I’ve got my pencil — what am I forgetting?”

“Your notebook.” He handed it to her. “As usual.”

Tuesday, April 26, 1:05 p.m.

Lunchtime — my first chance to take notes. It’s been a surprising morning. Some of my observations are bound to provide useful data for the book.

When I arrived, I was struck by how beautiful this place is. It looks like a resort, not a rehab center: An immense lobby with a marble floor, a courtyard with a sparkling fountain, broad corridors, walls lined with cheerful watercolors, a stunning variety of vibrant flowering plants everywhere. The director ushered me into his elegantly furnished office and insisted I call him Fred.

“We all use first names here,” he said. “Guests, staff, visitors, everybody. It helps guests feel special. And it reinforces the idea that everything that goes on at the center is confidential, that the life guests live here is separate from the lives they live outside.”

What happens in rehab stays in rehab, I thought, noting that he referred to the people who come here for treatment as “guests,” not “patients” or “clients.” “The name of the center reinforces that idea, too,” I said.

He beamed. “Exactly. The Cocoon Center — a safe place for people to change and grow, to transform themselves into something beautiful. Our six-step program makes that possible.”

“A six-step program? Don’t most rehab centers have twelve-step programs?”

“We did some editing.” He shrugged. “Our guests like fast results. We dropped the Higher Power stuff; some guests find that a stretch. And listing people one has harmed, making amends — that damages self-esteem. Our program is more positive and forward-looking.” He handed me a slim pamphlet and a thick folder. “The pamphlet explains how it works. And skim through those files on the guests in your therapy group.”

“My therapy group?” I said, confused. “Secretaries participate in therapy groups?”

“Oh, you’re not here as a temporary secretary. Didn’t the agency explain? You’re here as a temporary therapist. You have a master’s in communication, right?”

A PhD, actually — but I’ve learned to leave that off my resumé, along with any references to my years as a professor. Most places don’t like hiring secretaries who seem overqualified. “But I don’t have much background in psychology,” I said. “And I’ve never worked as a therapist.”

“You’ll do fine. It’s all about helping people open up — your background’s perfect.” His face grew somber. “And it’s an emergency situation. I had to fire a therapist yesterday. I caught him smuggling contraband to a guest.”

“Drugs?” I said, apprehension growing. “Alcohol?”

“Oh, no. Our guests have no interest in drugs. And they’re all welcome to enjoy cocktails in the lobby at five and wine with dinner, so alcohol isn’t an issue. Still, there are some things some guests shouldn’t have. This particular guest is addicted to video games and had been on the wagon for two weeks — until his therapist slipped him a portable PlayStation. It’s a heartbreaking setback.”

I hid a smile. An addiction to video games sounded harmless enough. But if it grew into an obsession that interfered with work or family — yes, I supposed it might require treatment. “It must be upsetting to have one of your own staff members break one of your rules.”

“It’s a terrible betrayal of trust,” Fred agreed. “And trust is central to our work. We trust our guests, too. Unlike most centers, we don’t search guests’ luggage when they arrive: We just have a friendly chat about what they should and shouldn’t have, and they voluntarily surrender anything that seems problematic. But this incident left me no choice. Last night, for the first time in the center’s history, I conducted a search of guests’ rooms. Not an intrusive one — just a quick look to see if anyone else had bribed that therapist to smuggle things in. I did have to confiscate some items; I’m sure some guests are upset. Give them a chance to talk about that during your session this morning.”

“This morning?” I looked at the folder in dismay. “I’m not sure I can be ready.”

He glanced at his watch. “You have nearly an hour. All the guests in your morning group have been at the center less than a week — one is arriving today, in fact. After one week, guests are reassigned to their permanent groups; we like to keep people with similar addictions together. But this morning you’ll have a variety.”

“And this afternoon?” I asked, afraid I knew what the answer would be.

“You’ll have two other groups. I’ll put those files together for you.” He stood and smiled. “I have complete confidence in you, Leah. I’ll come back at ten and show you to the Caterpillar Room.”

Seizing the folder, I read frantically, trying to absorb as much information I could. Three minutes before ten, Fred returned to hurry me to a room that felt both spacious and cozy: walls painted a soothing light green, a dark green couch with two bright red throw pillows, pastel print armchairs, a mellow oak coffee table and matching end tables. At the back of the room I spotted a refrigerator, a microwave, and a bookcase stocked with paperbacks. All the comforts of home, I thought — if you come from a very nice home.

“This room is reserved for our first-week guests,” Fred told me. “A place for both working and relaxing while they adjust to the center’s routine. Your group members will be returning from their Independent Meditation Hour soon. As for our newest guest, he’s still checking in — I’ll bring him here in ten minutes or so. Enjoy your first session.”

Before I could ask a single question, he was gone. I’m not qualified, I thought. I’ll say something wrong, and someone will go into hysterics or commit suicide.

But I had no time to indulge in such fears. A slightly chubby, slowly balding man in his early forties started to walk into the room, saw me, and froze, eyes wide with confusion.

No way to avoid it — I had to try to act professional. “Hello,” I said, holding out my hand. “I’m Leah.”

His eyes brightened, and he gave me a shy, warm smile. “What’s a Hebrew name meaning ‘weary?’ ” he said.

So this must be Felix. I remembered the description from his file: “Jeopardy! addict — obsessed with trivia, speaks only in the form of questions.” He’d been a Jeopardy! grand champion about a decade ago, winning enough to start a highly profitable online investment company that he ran from his mother’s basement. Quite a success story — except that his glory days had left him incapable of interacting with others in normal ways. “It’s nice to meet you, Felix,” I said. “Would you like to have a seat?”

But he couldn’t respond to questions, only to statements that let him reply with a question of his own. He smiled silently, walked to the refrigerator, took out a bright blue thermos labeled “Felix,” and chose a chair near the back of the room.

The other group members arrived together: a honey-haired woman of twenty or so, striking in a white pencil skirt and a silky red top; a lean, muscular man of about fifty, wearing sweatpants and a sleeveless orange tank top; and a gaunt woman in her thirties, dressed in a shapeless black skirt and a gray sweater worn thin at the elbows. They all took thermoses from the refrigerator and found seats. The gaunt woman immediately reached into the oversized purse slung over her shoulder, pulled out an embroidery hoop, and hunched over it, stitching furiously. The others stared at me.

I sat down and cleared my throat. “I’m delighted to be here,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as insincere as I felt. “I’m Leah, your new group leader — your temporary new group leader. I understand you had a rather upsetting experience yesterday—”

“ ‘Rather upsetting,’ hell,” the lean, muscular man cut in. “It was damn upsetting. Fred had no right to search our rooms. The brochure guaranteed our privacy would be strictly respected. I wouldn’t have signed up here otherwise.”

“Yes, that’s the only reason I came to the center,” the stylish young woman said, “because it promised our privacy would be guarded stringently.”

Quickly, I matched the guests with their profiles. The lean, muscular man was Brian — wealthy entrepreneur, overweight since childhood, lost over eighty pounds in just six months, now so obsessed with diet and exercise that his doctor feared he’d endanger his health if his body fat percentage sank any lower. And the young woman had to be Courtney, a chronic plagiarist on final probation with her college, facing expulsion unless rehab made her change her ways.

“Damn it, Courtney,” Brian said, “don’t just repeat what I said. You do stuff like that all the time. Don’t you have any ideas of your own?”

“I didn’t simply reiterate your statement,” Courtney protested. “I used different words, in a different order. And I have plenty of thoughts that originate with me.”

“Is that so?” Brian said. “Then I guess it’s just a coincidence that during yesterday’s session, the so-called reflections you shared matched up almost word for word with what Martha had written in her Recovery Journal. I bet you’d gone into her room the night before, snuck a look at her journal—”

“Sneaked a look,” the gaunt woman said. “No matter what anyone thinks, sneak is not an irregular verb — never has been, never will be. Get used to it.”

So this must be Martha, the compulsive proofreader. I’d try to draw her into the discussion in a more constructive way. “Martha, how did you feel about the search?”

She looked up from her embroidery — a sampler, featuring cross-stitched words and an eagle soaring past a beautiful mountain. “I resented it,” she said. “Fred confiscated my Fowler’s English Usage.”

“I can see why,” Brian said. “You shouldn’t dwell on that stuff so much.”

“I don’t dwell on it,” she shot back. “I just like to browse through it for an hour or so before bedtime. It helps me relax.”

I tried to remember more details from her file. “As I recall, you used to be a copy editor — is that right?”

Savagely, she thrust her needle through the taut circle of linen. “I’m still a copy editor,” she said, “and a tutor. I do freelance work now.”

“She used to work for a publisher,” Brian put in, “but she was fired last year. She got on her co-workers’ nerves by correcting their grammar at staff meetings. I understand how they felt. It’s not much fun when someone keeps pointing out your mistakes.”

“Yes, their reaction is comprehensible,” Courtney said. “Nobody enjoys having their grammar corrected.”

Martha glared at her. “Nobody enjoys having his or her grammar corrected. ‘Nobody’ is singular. Good God! Don’t you know anything? And for your information, some people do enjoy being corrected. Some people are eager to learn, to improve themselves.” She let her needle rest a moment and fingered her bracelet — a clumsy, heavy-looking circlet composed of large red beads.

So far, the session was not going well. Maybe I should ask Courtney a question, to try to force her into saying something that was truly her own. “How are you enjoying your first week at the center, Courtney? Do you feel you’re making progress?”

She looked around uncertainly, then shrugged. “It’s all right. I mean, the massages are nice, the yoga’s okay, and I like the hot tub. As for progress — who cares? I’m only here because my parents talked the dean into giving me another chance.”

“Misplaced limiting modifier,” Martha muttered, but nobody paid much attention.

“Courtney plagiarized eight times,” Brian said helpfully.

Courtney smiled — a quick, secretive smile. “I got caught eight times. So the dean said he wouldn’t let me back unless I went to rehab. Or Daddy could’ve given the college another building, I guess. But rehab’s cheaper.”

“Not much cheaper,” Brian said. “They really fleece you at this place.”

“Unstated antecedent,” Martha said, and went back to stitching.

Courtney had gotten started now, and she wasn’t stopping. “I don’t see why my parents won’t just let me drop out. I mean, college is so stupid. You’ve gotta spend hours writing all these dumb essays. My parents just want me to go so I can get the right kind of job for a few years and then marry the right kind of man and go to the right kind of parties. But I don’t want that. I mean, ever since I was a kid, my mother’s been dragging me to garden shows, and horse shows, and charity luncheons, and it’s all so boring. I don’t wanna waste my whole life doing that stuff.”

“What do you want to do, Courtney?” I asked.

She sat forward eagerly. “I wanna be a personal assistant. I wanna go to Hollywood or New York, meet somebody famous, and, like, assist her. I could help her shop for shoes and purses, and drive her home from parties when she gets drunk, and bail her out, and stuff. I’d be perfect for that. I mean, I’m really pretty and really smart, and I’ve got great taste and a great personality. I don’t see what else anyone could want.”

“What is an interesting vocabulary?” Felix asked. He mumbled it; I don’t think Courtney heard.

“Well, lotsa luck, kid,” Brian said. “Your parents won’t give you one penny for a harebrained scheme like that. And you don’t have money of your own, right?”

“I will,” Courtney said, “as soon as I turn twenty-five and come into my trust. But that’s so old — who’d want a personal assistant who’s practically middle-aged? And who’d care if an assistant can write a dumb essay?”

The teacher in me couldn’t let that go unchallenged. “College can be valuable in ways you haven’t considered,” I said. “Even if you don’t think the skills and knowledge you’re acquiring are relevant to your career choice, you’re encountering ideas that can deepen your understanding of the world. And if you do your work honestly and independently, you’ll develop work habits and discipline that can help you succeed in any field you enter.”

She looked at me sourly. “Work habits and discipline. Oh, wow. Now you’ve got me excited.”

Brian looked ready to hurl back an insult, but the door opened, and Fred walked in, accompanied by a tall, fit, thirtyish man with a mass of curly blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a half-shy, half-flirtatious grin. I think we all gasped at once.

“Hello, everybody,” Fred said. “This is Roland. He arrived today, and he’s joining your group. I have to get going, so Leah can handle the introductions.”

I stumbled through them. Fred should have warned me, I thought. Both of my daughters have crushes on Roland. He’d first won fame as a stand-up comedian, a favorite on late-night talk shows. My daughters fell in love with him when he landed a role on a situation comedy, playing the easygoing coach of a hapless girls’ soccer team. And now he was set to star in his first movie, a romantic comedy pairing him with one of the most famous young actresses in Hollywood.

But during the last few years, most of his publicity had come from his off-screen antics — rowdy behavior at restaurants, shouting matches with directors, a reputation for missing rehearsals, bounced checks, disputes with the IRS, arrests for reckless driving. I wondered which of those offenses had brought him here.

“It’s great to meet all of you,” he said when I’d finished the introductions. He grinned — an amazing grin, one that seemed to prove, all by itself, that he was smart, funny, friendly, thoroughly nice. “I’d like to say I’m glad to be here, but I bet you wouldn’t believe me.”

It wasn’t funny, but we all laughed. Even Martha looked starry-eyed. “Why are you here, Mr. — but no.” She remembered the first-names-only rule just in time. “Why are you here, Roland?”

He smiled at her, and her jaw went slack. How many years had it been since any man had smiled at Martha that way? “Little matter of a disagreement with a judge, Martha,” he said. “I’d been doing maybe seventy — who knew it was a school zone? — and this fat, greasy cop wouldn’t listen to reason. Then the court date slipped my mind. I’ve got lots of appointments — it’s hard to keep track of them all.”

“It must be difficult to remember everything,” Courtney said eagerly, “when you have such a busy schedule.”

He rewarded her with a smile. Probably, celebrities don’t mind when someone echoes what they say; probably, they’re used to it. “Damn straight,” he said. “But the judge started spouting all this garbage about contempt. So my attorney and my shrink and some other folks got involved, and the judge agreed to suspend the sentence if I went into rehab. Not some fancy celebrity rehab center, she said — a real rehab center, far away from Hollywood. So my agent checked into it and came up with this place.” He looked around the room and shrugged. “Not too bad.”

“The judge must’ve figured you have an addiction, right?” Brian said. “To what?”

Roland sighed; his shoulders slumped; his grin drooped. “I’m addicted to failure, Brian. I have a crippling fear of success. Every time my career seems ready to take off — like with the movie I’m doing — I get scared, and I screw up somehow, just to derail things. I can’t stand the thought of being too rich and famous, I guess; my shrink says deep down, I’m terrified that it’d turn me into a phony. But I have to get a handle on this fear; I’m determined to do it; with your help, I can do it.”

He smiled again — a brave, humble smile, aimed at all of us. For someone with a crippling fear of success, I thought, he’s done pretty well — a popular comedian, a television star. But I’m no psychiatrist; if that’s the official diagnosis, fine. “We’re delighted to have you join us, Roland,” I said. “Do you have questions about the center — about its philosophy, for example, or its rules?”

He shrugged again. “Fred gave me a brochure. I think I pretty much got everything down.” He looked around the room again. “What’s with the thermoses?”

“They’re one of the homey touches here,” Brian said, sounding honored by the privilege of informing a celebrity. “See, the kitchen staff fills the thermoses by nine in the morning and puts them in the refrigerator, so we’ll have something to drink during therapy sessions and free periods. You can have just about whatever you want — just tell the staff. Me, I always have mineral water.”

“Sounds tasty,” Roland said. “What’s in your thermos, Martha?”

“Sweet tea,” she said, blushing — with pleasure, I thought. “When I was a little girl, we’d visit my aunt in Georgia every summer, and she’d make sweet tea and serve it to us on the front porch. It’s a precious memory, because—”

“Yeah, and I bet your aunt’s dead now,” Brian cut in, perhaps upset because Martha had drawn Roland’s attention away from him. “All that sugar! Before you know it, you’re obese, you’re diabetic, you’re dead. I used to have a sweet tooth — I admit it. No more. I quit cold turkey six months ago and haven’t had a grain of sugar since. I don’t even want it any more.”

“Well, I always ask for diet soda in my thermos,” Courtney said, with an arch look at Roland. “No calories.”

“Loaded with artificial sweeteners, though,” Brian pointed out. “Worst possible thing for you. They throw your whole metabolism off, make you digest food less efficiently. You’ll be fat before you’re thirty, Courtney.”

“I can’t imagine that.” Roland gazed at Courtney with a frank appreciation that made her look ready to swoon. He turned around in his chair. “What about you, Felix? What’re you drinking?”

I’d almost forgotten Felix was in the room — he’s so quiet that he melds into the furniture. Now, he looked deeply flustered, clearly wanting to respond but not able to manage it. At the risk of feeding his addiction, I decided to help. “The beverage in Felix’s thermos,” I said.

He sighed with relief. “What is skim milk?” he asked.

Brian guffawed. “Milk. That figures. You gotta make allowances for Felix, Roland — nice enough guy, solid businessman, but sorta odd. And sorta secretive. It took me a long time to get him to admit he’s never had a real date with a girl.”

“You, by contrast, immediately announced you’ve been divorced three times,” Martha said, stitching viciously. “I suppose that makes you feel superior to Felix.”

“Hey, at least I’ve been married — more than you can say, Martha. And at least I know how to talk to women.” Brian’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “Felix does have one woman in his life, though. Let’s see — how should I phrase this?” He thought for a moment, then turned to face Felix. “The category is Millionaires Who Have Never Had Houses or Apartments of Their Own. And the answer is Felix.”

Felix hung his head. “Who still lives with Mother?” he said, his voice barely audible.

Clearly, it was time to take control of the session. I asked the guests to get out their Recovery Journals and share their reflections, and that took up the rest of our time. Brian accused Courtney of copying ideas from his journal — her reflections did sound remarkably similar to his — but that was the only moment of tension. I sent the guests on their way and hurried to the office to read files for my afternoon groups.

After half an hour, feeling uneasy about the conflicts that surfaced during the morning session, I decided to check on the group members, who had a free period now. Passing through the courtyard, I spotted Brian and Roland locked in conversation; Brian was talking about the profits one of his companies had garnered during the last quarter, probably trying to persuade Roland to invest. Unfortunately, Brian was punctuating his sales talk with push-ups, and I had to tell him to stop — he’s not allowed vigorous exercise while he’s in rehab.

I found Courtney and Felix in the Caterpillar Room. Courtney was reading a well-worn copy of a Sue Grafton novel, probably borrowed from the room’s small library; Felix was trying to look interested in the paint-by-numbers landscape he was completing. Poor man — he’s not permitted to read in rehab, for fear he’ll add to his store of trivia. I asked about Martha, and Courtney said she’d decided to take a nap before lunch. Well, all that seemed normal enough.

And now I really should have something to eat myself. I’ve used up most of my lunch hour taking these notes, and I need some nourishment to give me strength to face my afternoon groups.

“So I never got a chance to take notes about my other two groups,” Leah said. She rinsed the last plate and handed it to Sam. “I didn’t get another free minute all day.”

“Too bad.” Sam dried the plate and placed it in the cupboard. “How did your afternoon groups go? Any problems?”

“Not really. Some people in the Verbal Addictions group were hard to take. I didn’t mind the rapper so much, and the rhymer was sweet. But the punster and the insult addict! I enjoyed the Compulsive Hobbyists group, though. I learned a lot about coin collecting. And did you know there are hundreds of Civil War reenactments every year, in over thirty states? Did you know there are American Civil War reenactments in Italy and Australia?”

“I’ll store the information away carefully,” Sam said, “in case I ever go on Jeopardy! This Felix sounds like a pretty sad guy.”

“I don’t think he is, actually.” Leah plunged the skillet into the suds and started scrubbing. “I think in his own weird little world, in his own weird little way, he’s happy. His mother pressured him to go into rehab — she loves him dearly, she says, but she’s worried about what will happen when she passes away. She’s got a point. So, how did the meeting with the Hartwells go?”

“Brilliant,” Sam said. “Genius. I did some Internet research and found out ‘Hartwell’ means ‘well of the stags.’ So I did a sketch of a well with big bucks standing on either side, just lousy with antlers — it’s a bird bath and a family crest. Both Mr. and Mrs. loved it. They signed a check big enough to cover our mortgage payments for two months. So if you don’t want to go back to this center tomorrow—”

“Of course I do.” She stopped washing dishes and turned to look at him. “I made a commitment to Fred, to the people in my groups. Why wouldn’t I want to go back?”

“I guess I’m the one who doesn’t want you to go back,” Sam admitted. “I still worry about your being around all those addicts. Did you listen to the noon news today? It turns out that gambling addict has been embezzling for years but hiding it so cleverly that no one caught on to it before. The police followed a trail that seemed to lead to Atlantic City, but it turned into nothing — who knows where that embezzler’s holing up? And that small-time drug dealer shot execution-style, Arnold Belmont — did you know he was just nineteen? An informant told the police his suppliers killed him for stealing two hundred thousand dollars — but they didn’t find the money. As for the person who wounded two people in a drunken rage, the police have no leads. I don’t like it, Leah. All this crazy, violent stuff going on, and it feels like you’re in the middle of it.”

“I’m in the middle of silly squabbles between plagiarists and proofreaders. There’s absolutely no connection between that and those scary stories in the news. Well, that’s the last of the dishes. Go finish your design. I’ll play homework police.”

She quizzed Rachel on her multiplication tables, then turned to Sarah. “How are you doing on that history essay?” she asked.

“It’s done,” Sarah said. “Math’s done, too. So all I have left is religious school. I still don’t get it, Mom. Why is Mrs. Goldberg making us do this every night?”

“It’s part of counting the omer. Remember? It’s a way of marking the forty-nine days between Passover and Shavuot, between the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Sinai. And during those days, it’s traditional to study PirkeiAvot. Mrs. Goldberg just wants you to take a few minutes each night to think about one saying from Pirkei Avot. I think it’s a wonderful assignment.”

“That’s because you don’t have to do it,” Sarah said, pouting.

“Watch your tone, please,” Leah said, not too gently. “That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

“I know. Sorry. Okay, then. Pirkei Avot — I keep forgetting what that even means.”

“There are several ways of translating it,” Leah said. “My favorite is ‘Ethics of the Sages.’ It’s a book of moral teachings that some great rabbis of the past have handed down to us. What saying did Mrs. Goldberg choose for tonight?”

Sighing, Sarah opened her notebook. “It’s a saying of Rabbi Ben Azzai: ‘Be as quick in carrying out a minor mitzvah as in carrying out a major one, and flee wrongdoing; for one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah, and one wrongdoing leads to another wrongdoing; for the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah, and the reward for a wrongdoing is another wrongdoing.’ I don’t get it.”

“I bet you will,” Leah said, “if you just think about it. You know what a mitzvah is, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Sarah said. “It’s a Commandment.”

Rachel twisted around in her chair. “No, it isn’t. It’s a good deed.”

“You’re both right,” Leah said, “because the Commandments teach us to do good deeds. And when we do good deeds, we’re honoring the Commandments.”

“But this saying doesn’t make sense,” Sarah said. “We should be as quick about doing minor mitzvoth as about doing major ones? So clearing the table is as important as, like, saving someone’s life?”

“Ben Azzai doesn’t say they’re equally important,” Leah said. “I think his point is that doing minor mitzvoth helps us develop the habit of doing the right thing. Then, when an opportunity to do a major mitzvah comes along, we’ll be ready. See? ‘One mitzvah leads to another mitzvah.’ And ‘the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah.’ ”

Sarah scrunched up her nose. “So the reward for clearing the table is that I get to clear the table again?”

“In a way,” Leah said, smiling. “Every time you clear the table, you take a step toward becoming a helpful person who will be ready to help in lots of ways, both big and small. Ben Azzai also says the opposite is true — ‘one wrongdoing leads to another wrongdoing.’ If you get into the habit of doing things that are wrong, even just a little bit wrong, you’re more likely to become someone who does lots of wrong things, including things that are very wrong. Does that make sense?”

“I guess.” Sarah picked up her pen. “I guess I can write a paragraph about that. You think it’s okay to use clearing the table as an example?”

“I think it’s fine,” Leah said, and kissed her on the forehead, and went downstairs.

Wednesday, April 27, 2:47 p.m.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to take notes or not. I have plenty of time — afternoon groups have been canceled, and we’re all sitting around, waiting for news. But I feel so numb that it’s hard to hold onto my pencil. Still, I feel I should try to write things down. Somehow, I feel that’s important.

From the moment I got to the Caterpillar Room, I should have sensed that something was wrong. When I arrived five minutes early, Brian was already there, looking flushed, doing crunches.

“Oh, Brian,” I said, “you know you’re not supposed to do that sort of exercise. You should conserve your calories. Why don’t you get your thermos and take a seat?”

“Maybe that’s a good idea.” He walked slowly to the couch. “I don’t feel so great.”

He’d forgotten his thermos. I opened the refrigerator door, spotted the purple thermos labeled “Brian,” and set it on the end table next to him. “Maybe you worked out too hard and got dehydrated. Have some water.”

“In a minute.” He sat hunched forward, pressing one of the three bright red throw pillows against his stomach. “I’m not thirsty right now.”

Felix scurried in next, managed a slight, silent smile, got his thermos, and sat in the same chair he’d chosen yesterday. A minute later, Martha arrived, found her thermos and a chair, and immediately took out her sampler. I walked over to admire it.

“ ‘Fools hate reproof,’ ” I said, reading the cross-stitched words, “ ‘but the wise love correction’ — that’s from Proverbs, isn’t it? The translation I know is slightly different.”

“I edited it,” she said, adding several quick, hard stitches to the eagle’s tail feathers. She took a sip from her thermos, frowned, and set the thermos down.

“It’s certainly an appropriate verse for a copy editor,” I said, “or a tutor.”

She winced. “Yes. I’d planned to give it to someone, but now I suppose I’ll keep it.” Without setting down her needle, she reached over to touch the bracelet on her left wrist. The oversized red beads were shaped like apples, I noticed. That was clever — ugly, yes, and gaudy, but clever.

Roland strode in next, and the whole room seemed instantly brighter. “Hey, who’s always late for rehearsal?” he said. “Ten o’clock on the dot, and here I am. This place is helping me already — I bet I’ll be all the way rehabilitated within a week. Let’s see if they remembered my thermos.” He flung open the refrigerator door, found the yellow thermos labeled with his name, sipped, and smiled. “Orange juice. Just what I requested. Now, if I can get them to add some vodka — but that’s probably against the rules.”

Why was I laughing? He hadn’t said anything even vaguely amusing. But I couldn’t help it. “It might be a bit much to expect in the morning. Well, as soon as Courtney gets here, we’ll start.”

Seven or eight minutes passed. I was about to go look for her when she stalked in, looking peevish. “Sorry. My mom called, and she would not shut up.”

“I’m sorry, Courtney,” I said, “but there’s a rule against receiving outside calls at the center.”

“Fred waived the rule for me, since I’m under twenty-one. My parents can call me — that’s it.” She grabbed her thermos and hurled herself into an armchair. “Next time you see Fred, tell him as far as I’m concerned, he can waive his damn waiver.”

I decided I didn’t need to respond to that. “All right. Today, you’re all supposed to work on your personal inventories. Who’d like to start?”

Thank goodness for Roland. Immediately, he launched into an enthusiastic description of his mistakes and shortcomings, mixing sometimes startling confessions with charming little jokes and side comments reminding us that he was basically a great guy. Nobody else contributed much. Felix, of course, said nothing — I’d gotten used to that. Twice, Martha corrected Roland’s grammar; beyond that, she too stayed silent. Courtney just stared at her clenched hands, not making eye contact with anyone. And Brian — Brian’s silence was the most puzzling. Yesterday, he’d chimed in constantly, always ready with a complaint or a criticism or a revelation designed to embarrass someone else. Today, he sat hunched over the pillow, breathing heavily, his face visibly damp with sweat. Midway through Roland’s account of a wild spending spree, I glanced at Brian and saw that his shoulders were shaking.

“Excuse me, Roland,” I cut in. “Brian, are you all right?”

“I dunno,” he said. “My stomach’s cramping up something awful, and my heart’s racing like crazy. It can’t be the crunches — I just did thirty-seven.”

“Another misplaced limiting modifier,” Martha said. “You mean, ‘I did just thirty-seven.’ ”

“Maybe you should lie down,” I said. “Roland, could you help him to his room?”

But Brian didn’t make it that far. Even with Roland’s strong arms to support him, Brian took only two steps before collapsing to his knees, retching miserably. Martha got a wastebasket to him just in time, and I raced down the hall to the nurse’s station.

By the time we got back to the room, Brian was stretched out on the couch, panting rapidly. The nurse crouched next to him. “Did you feel sick when you got up this morning, Brian?” she asked.

But he was too wretched to answer. “He seemed fine,” Martha volunteered. “I saw him walking through the courtyard during Independent Meditation Hour — he looked perfectly healthy.”

“So it started suddenly. Could be food poisoning,” the nurse said. “It would help to know what he had for breakfast.”

“What is oatmeal?” Felix supplied. He stood at the end of the couch, looking pale.

“I had the same thing, from the same serving dish,” Roland said, “only I had four times as much as he did. The only other thing he had was water.”

“That pretty much rules out food poisoning,” the nurse said. “Let’s get him to his room. I’d better call the doctor. Leah, inform Fred.”

For reasons I didn’t exactly understand, I grabbed Brian’s yellow thermos. It felt light. Later, after the doctor arrived, I opened the thermos and saw it was almost empty. I hadn’t noticed Brian drink anything during the therapy session, but maybe he’d had some water during Independent Meditation Hour — the thermoses would be filled by then, and guests can go wherever they like to meditate. Could someone get food poisoning from mineral water? It didn’t seem likely, but I didn’t know enough to rule it out. I went to Brian’s room and told the doctor about the thermos.

“I doubt that has anything to do with it,” the doctor said, “but I’ll take the thermos along and have the water tested, just in case. We’d better get this man to the hospital. His heart rate’s completely erratic.” He looked down at Brian, who lay on his bed soaked in sweat, seeming oblivious to everything, his whole body shaking. “I checked his file. Losing over eighty pounds in six months — that can put a strain on the heart, just as gaining weight rapidly can. And if he’s still been pushing too hard on diet and exercise, that might well bring on this sort of attack.”

It was a reasonable explanation, but I felt uneasy. After the ambulance took Brian away, I went to check on the other guests in the group.

I found them all gathered in Martha’s room. Martha sat at her desk, staring fixedly at a small antique clock that looked like a family heirloom; Felix stood nearby, holding a large plastic file box labeled “Cooking with Flair,” flipping idly through the dozen or so laminated recipe cards it contained, stealing anxious glances at Martha. Both Courtney and Roland stood by the window. He gazed out at the Cocoon Center’s lush grounds; she spoke to him softly, her hand resting on his arm. When I said Brian had been taken to the hospital, Roland turned around sharply.

“But he’ll be okay, right?” he said. “Even if it’s a heart attack, people survive heart attacks all the time. And he’s in basically great shape, and they got him to the hospital quickly — they’ll know how to take care of him there.”

“Yeah, heart attacks often aren’t fatal,” Courtney agreed. “Plus Brian’s receiving prompt medical attention from knowledgeable experts, and his overall fitness level is good. He’ll be fine, won’t he?”

“I hope so.” I glanced at my watch. “It’s your lunch hour. You may not feel like eating, but it’s probably good to stick to the schedule.”

Obediently, they filed out. Not knowing what else to do, I walked back to Brian’s room and found Fred locking the door — standard procedure when a guest left the center unexpectedly, he said, to protect personal possessions. In view of what had happened, Fred had decided to suspend all planned activities for the afternoon while we waited for news. So I grabbed a sandwich and came to the staff lounge to take these notes.

4:15—

Moments after I wrote the last sentence, Fred came to the lounge to deliver sad news. Brian is dead.

“If you feel that strongly about it,” Sam said, “call him.”

Leah propped her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands. “He’ll think I’m an idiot.”

“Probably. But if you think there’s even a chance it’s murder, you should call.”

Sighing, Leah took the well-worn business card from her wallet and dialed the number. “Lieutenant Brock? It’s Leah Abrams. You won’t believe this, but I think it’s happened again.”

Within the hour, Lieutenant Brock sat at their kitchen table, listening to Leah’s narration while Sam poured coffee. She gave quick descriptions of the Cocoon Center and of the people she’d met there, a more detailed description of what had happened that morning. When she finished, he stirred his coffee slowly.

“I can see why you’re upset,” he said. “Watching a guy who seemed strong and healthy get so sick all of a sudden, having him die — I’d be upset too. And after what you went through those other four times, it’s no wonder you expect somebody to get murdered whenever you take a temp job. But I stopped by the hospital on my way over here, and it sure looks like a natural death this time. The doctors agreed on that, and nobody from our department is giving them an argument. The guy was fifty-two, he’d been obese all his life, he lost so much weight so fast, he was still starving himself and overdoing the exercise even though his doctor warned him to slow down — all adds up to a heart attack.”

“I know,” she said. “But so many things seem so odd. What about the water in his thermos? The doctor said he’d have that tested — did he?”

Brock nodded. “Yup. Pure mineral water. No trace of poison of any kind.”

“Oh.” Leah rubbed her forehead. “Will there be an autopsy?”

“No reason for one,” Brock said. “Cause of death seems clear. The guy’s only heir — an estranged son from his second marriage — flew in from Chicago to arrange the funeral. He hasn’t requested an autopsy.”

“But you could request one,” Leah said. “Couldn’t you? Lieutenant, I really think this man was poisoned.”

Brock sighed. “Testing for poisons is expensive, Mrs. Abrams, especially since we don’t have any idea of which poisons to test for. Let me ask you this. If this guy was poisoned, it pretty much had to be by someone at the Cocoon Center. Now, nobody there will profit from his death — his son’s gonna get everything. Can you think of any other reason why anyone at the center would want this guy dead?”

“I can’t,” Leah said. “He wasn’t a nice man — he insulted almost everyone in our group. But none of the insults seemed harsh enough to provide a motive for murder. And I don’t know how the poison could have been administered. It wasn’t in the oatmeal he had for breakfast, evidently, or in his thermos. Maybe it was in a medication — he probably took vitamins. You could have those tested, couldn’t you?”

“I could,” Brock said, “if I had any justification for it. And we’ve got a lot of other stuff on our hands right now — trying to find that embezzler and figure out who killed that small-time drug dealer and track down that drunk who shot two people.” He paused, drumming his fingers on the table. “Well, hell. You’ve helped us solve four murders. You’ve got damn good instincts — you’ve proven that time and again. I’m gonna request that autopsy, Mrs. Abrams. If the captain gives me a hard time, I’ll weather it — and if the autopsy reveals anything interesting, I’ll call you. Why don’t you see if you can get into this guy’s room at the center, check out his medications?”

“I think I can manage that.” Her shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“No problem.” He took a last sip of coffee and stood up. “Say, what’s happening with that book of yours, the one about impactful disclosure through nonarticulate signifiers? Is it coming out soon?”

“I didn’t find a publisher for it, actually,” she said. “An intern at a university press seemed enthusiastic about my proposal; unfortunately, he couldn’t get it past marketing. I’m working on a new book—

A Hermeneutics of Workplace Communications: Contra-Experiential Expectations, Obfuscated Infrastructures, and Exertion-Intensive Behaviors. I feel sure this one will have wider commercial appeal.”

“No doubt about it,” Brock said. He winked and left.

Thursday, April 28

When I volunteered to pack Brian’s things, Fred accepted gratefully. Just as I’d expected, I found several bottles of vitamins. There wasn’t much else to pack — just toiletries, sweatpants, tank tops, underwear. As I was rolling up socks, I heard something crinkle. Odd, I thought, and reached into the toe of a thick white sock and pulled out two crumpled Snickers wrappers.

So even our dieting fanatic cheated sometimes, I thought, smiling sadly — the cheating made Brian seem more human, and that made my task feel more poignant. I started to throw the wrappers away, then paused.

Brian had boasted that he’d conquered his sweet tooth. He’d said he hadn’t tasted or even craved sugar in months. That, obviously, had been a lie. Sometimes, obviously, he’d sneaked sugar. What if the sugar craving had hit him again? When I’d walked into the Caterpillar Room yesterday morning, he’d been doing frantic crunches. Had he been working off calories he’d just indulged in on the sly?

Sitting on the bed, I pictured Brian’s almost empty thermos, pictured Martha taking a sip of sweet tea, frowning, and setting her thermos down. Had Brian come to the Caterpillar Room early to guzzle down most of Martha’s tea? Had he covered up his theft by pouring most of his mineral water into her thermos? Unlike other guests at the center, Martha hadn’t been pampered all her life. If her tea tasted too weak, she probably wouldn’t complain. She’d probably just frown and stop drinking.

I pressed my hand against my forehead. Last night, I’d lain sleepless for hours, trying to figure out why anyone at the center would want to kill Brian. Should I have been trying to figure out why anyone would want to kill Martha?

Immediately, the inconsistencies started hitting me. “Martha hadn’t been pampered all her life” — a ludicrous understatement. She’d been fired. She’d been subsisting on freelance copy-editing and tutoring. She probably didn’t have health insurance. How could she afford this place? Maybe she was independently wealthy. But her sweater was worn at the elbows, and she didn’t act like an heiress. She acted like a bitter woman used to being treated shabbily. I looked around Brian’s room again. He’d brought only a few things here — only clothes, vitamins, toiletries. Only the sorts of things one would expect someone to bring to a rehab center. Martha had brought an antique clock and a recipe file. Why?

My cell phone rang. “We got lucky, Mrs. Abrams,” Lieutenant Brock said. “I put a rush on that autopsy — the coroner owes me a favor — and the first test he did turned up positive. Oleander poisoning. Probably ingested in liquid form, the coroner said — that’s probably why it acted so quickly, especially since this guy didn’t eat much and his stomach was always mostly empty. Probably, someone stuck oleander stems in water, extracted the poison that way, slipped it into something he drank. Only problem is, the coroner says the water would taste really sweet. And this guy didn’t drink anything but water, right? You’d think he’d have noticed—”

“Actually, he may have had some sweet tea yesterday. It’s too complicated to explain now, but would adding the poisoned water to sweet tea hide the taste?”

“I’d think so, yeah. Now, you said there are lots of flowering plants at this center. Any oleander?”

“I don’t know what oleander looks like. I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay. I’ll head over to the center now and check. Just sit tight till I get there. Don’t confront anyone. Looks like we’re dealing with a killer, Mrs. Abrams.”

I closed my phone and glanced at my watch. Almost 10:00. I had to go meet my group. And someone in that group might be a murderer.

When I got to the Caterpillar Room, Felix sat in his usual chair near the back of the room; Martha sat in a pastel print armchair, working on her sampler, not looking up. Did she suspect someone tried to kill her yesterday? Probably not — she looked tired, but not frightened. Both Roland and Courtney sat on the dark green couch, rather close together. He’d piled up all three of the red throw pillows and was leaning back against them as he told Courtney about his movie.

“It’s not a standard romantic comedy,” he said. “My character has an arc. At first, he’s cynical, doesn’t believe in love anymore, because he’s divorced. His turning point comes when he meets the Amber Andrews character. She’s cynical, too, because she just got dumped by the guy she dated in the last movie.”

“A sequel.” Martha pursed her lips. “Too bad. Sequels are always disappointing. Name one sequel that won an Oscar.”

“What is Godfather II?” Felix said, eagerly.

Martha smiled. “Quite right, Felix. That was a sequel, and it was excellent. Well. Half of it was excellent.”

“Yeah, fifty percent was good,” Courtney said. She seemed out of her depth.

“True,” Roland said “The part about Michael was lame, but the part about young Vito getting drawn into a life of crime — fantastic. There’s a character with an arc. Vito’s turning point comes when a small-time gangster asks him to hide some guns—”

“Who is Clemenza?” Felix sat forward, his face pink with excitement.

“Right,” Roland said. “Vito doesn’t realize what he’s getting into, but now he’s guilty, too, because he helped Clemenza.”

Courtney nodded vigorously. “Vito’s not innocent any more. He’s a criminal, just like Credenza.” I don’t think she had any idea of what she was talking about.

“That’s enough movie trivia.” Martha’s face had gone pale. “Leah, could we please move on?”

“In a minute,” Roland said. “I wanna develop the parallel with my character some more. See, there’s no turning back for Vito. He sinks deeper and deeper—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Tossing her sampler aside, Martha stood up and stalked out of the room.

Roland lifted both hands in a helpless, uncomprehending gesture. “Hey, what’d I say? I was just describing Vito’s arc.”

I didn’t understand it, either. Picking up Martha’s sampler, I gazed at the image of an eagle soaring past a beautiful mountain. Slowly, things started coming together — Martha’s bracelet, Martha’s room, even the stories Sam had been following in the news and the lawn ornament he was making for the Hartwells. “Felix,” I said. “The meaning of the name ‘Arnold.’ ”

His face clouded with confusion. “What is ‘eagle?’ ” he said.

I nodded. “And the meaning of ‘Belmont.’ ”

His eyes darted to the sampler; his voice dropped to a whisper. “What is ‘beautiful mountain?’ ”

I nodded again. “Please take a break, everyone. I need to speak to Martha.”

Taking the sampler with me, I found her in her room, sitting at her desk, staring down at her bracelet. “I’m sorry I made a fuss,” she said. “I got upset by all the talk about guns and crime.”

An odd response from someone who evidently enjoyed Godfather II, I thought. But it was time to stop noting inconsistencies, time to start explaining them. “Those are interesting beads,” I said. “Shaped like apples — apples for the teacher? Was that bracelet a gift from a student?”

Her back stiffened visibly. “From a young man I tutored for a while, yes.”

I set the sampler down on the desk. “Was this supposed to be a gift for the same student?” I paused. “For Arnold Belmont?”

She looked up at me, her face stretched taut with fear. “Oh, my God — they found me. They sent you to kill me. Please, I’ll give it back, every penny of it. And I swear I didn’t know what was in the box — I didn’t open it until I heard he was dead.”

“It’s all right.” I sat down on her bed. “I’m not a drug dealer, and I don’t work for drug dealers. I’m just a temporary secretary with a husband who reads newspaper stories about local crimes. The symbolism on your sampler helped me see the link with Arnold Belmont. Were you creating a family crest for him?”

She nodded slowly, watching me, probably still not sure if she could trust me. “He didn’t like the name ‘Arnold.’ He called it ‘a sissy name.’ I was trying to show him it’s a beautiful name, a noble name.”

“But he died before you could give it to him,” I said. “Was it like the scene in Godfather II? He came to you one night and gave you something and asked you to keep it for him. He must have feared that his suppliers suspected him of stealing the money. He didn’t want them to find it in his possession; he thought he’d be safe that way. But they killed him anyhow.”

“He was just nineteen.” A tear started down her cheek, and she rubbed it away. “In so many ways, he was such a nice young man — so respectful, so eager to learn. He didn’t mind when I corrected him. He hoped to go to college some day, to change his life. He was eager to embrace the opportunities so many young people despise and resent. He’d never told me what he did for a living, but I suppose I’d always sensed it was something — well. Not quite kosher.” She managed a wry smile. “Even so, I agreed to keep the box. When I heard he was dead, when I opened the box, I had to face the truth.”

“And you must have feared that he’d told his killers where the money was before he died,” I said. “You must have feared they’d come looking for you. So you decided to hide in a rehab center while you figured out what to do, and you took your most precious possessions with you in case it never felt safe to go home, in case you decided you had to disappear somehow. Why didn’t you go to the police?”

She lifted her shoulders. “I was afraid that they wouldn’t believe me, that they’d think that I must be involved in illegal things, too, that they’d think I was Arnold’s accomplice. I was afraid they’d arrest me.” She paused. “And I wanted to keep the money. I’ve worked so hard, I’ve been treated so unfairly, I’ve struggled so much — I felt I deserved it. So I used some of it to pay for a two-week stay here. I hid the rest.”

She’d chosen her rehab center wisely, I thought — one that promises complete confidentiality, one that doesn’t search guests’ belongings when they check in, one that doesn’t mind accepting payments in cash. Had Fred suspected that something about Martha was, in her phrase, not quite kosher? Had he been too eager to fill his luxurious rooms to care? “Has someone taken the money, Martha?” I asked.

She looked startled. “No — that is, I haven’t checked today, but I don’t think so. Why would you ask?”

I gestured toward the recipe file. “It’s a large file but contains only a few cards. I thought you might have hidden the money there, and someone might have taken it.”

Again, she smiled wryly. “Very observant. Yes, I did keep it there at first. But when Fred searched our rooms the other night, I got nervous. I don’t want the money found in my possession — I’d rather risk losing it. So I moved it.” She hesitated, then looked at me directly. “I moved it to a very safe place, Leah. I’m sure it’s still there. And there’s a lot of it. I’ll give you half if you—”

“No,” I said. “A policeman’s on his way here. When he arrives, tell him everything.”

She let out a sound that was halfway to a sob. “You called a policeman? He’s coming to arrest me for keeping the money?”

“Not to arrest you,” I said. “To figure out who tried to kill you.”

Before Lieutenant Brock arrived, though, I just about figured it out myself. It had made no sense to me that anyone would want to murder either Brian or Martha — there didn’t seem to be a motive. Now that I knew about the money, the motive seemed clear. Someone had found the money, and wanted it, and figured stealing it would be safer if Martha weren’t around to report the theft. Of course, she wouldn’t have reported it — she’d have been too afraid of getting in trouble herself — but the would-be thief didn’t know that. And then Martha prevented the theft by moving the money to a new hiding place, and Brian messed up the murder by drinking Martha’s tea. That must be one frustrated wrongdoer, I thought.

But who was it? It might be a guest or staff member I hadn’t met. My thoughts, though, focused on our group. Not Felix — he evidently had plenty of money and very few wants. If a new biography of Alex Trebek came out, Felix might be tempted to splurge, but he could manage that without stealing from Martha. And Courtney came from a wealthy family, and Roland probably made more in a week than most people do in a year. But Courtney yearned to pursue a path her family would never support, and Roland had IRS troubles and lavish spending habits. Either might covet a hefty stack of cash. Which one had found it? Which had schemed to steal it?

There was a knock on the door, and I stepped into the hall to talk to Lieutenant Brock. “What’s going on?” he said. “I told you to sit tight, not to confront anybody — and I find you holed up with a patient. Is she the one you suspect? You trying to interrogate her all on your own?”

I shook my head. “Martha’s not the murderer, Lieutenant. She’s the intended victim. Did you find any oleander?”

“Whole bunch of it, right in the courtyard. What do you mean, intended victim?”

“I have things to tell you,” I said. “So does Martha.” I took a deep breath. “And then I think you should talk to someone named Courtney.”

“So where did Martha hide the money?” Sam asked. “The second time, I mean.”

Leah poured lemonade first for Lieutenant Brock, then for herself — Sam had made sweet tea, too, but no one seemed interested. “She hid it in a throw pillow in the Caterpillar Room. I should have known. On my first day at the center, there were two throw pillows on the couch — I mentioned that in my notes. The next day, there were three. You see, after Fred conducted his search, Martha got nervous, took a pillow to her room, and sewed the money into it while pretending to be napping during the free period. Then she put the pillow back where it belonged. I noticed that there were three pillows the next day, but the change didn’t really register. And naturally Martha chose a hiding place that let her use her sewing skills. I feel foolish about not making those connections.”

“You made plenty of connections,” Brock said. “I still haven’t figured out all of them. What made you sure it was Courtney, not Roland?”

“Several things,” Leah said. “Brian accused Courtney of sneaking into Martha’s room the night before the search and copying ideas from her recovery journal. I’m sure he was right — Courtney copied ideas from Brian’s journal, too, the next night. While she was in Martha’s room, Courtney must have looked in the recipe file.”

Sam frowned. “Why would she do that?”

“Probably because it looked so out of place. Why would anyone bring recipes to a center where all meals are provided? Felix was looking through the file, too, after Brian got sick — anybody would be curious. Anyway, Courtney saw the money, but she didn’t take it right away.”

“She took three hundred dollars,” Brock put in. “We found it under her mattress — serial numbers matched ones we had for the drug money. She probably figured that much wouldn’t be missed, and she was right. Then, after Roland came to the center, she started itching to take the rest. He told us she flirted with him, talked about going to Hollywood with him when he left the center, having him introduce her to celebrities who need personal assistants. He admitted he encouraged her, also admitted he wasn’t especially serious about it — mostly, he was thinking about getting some action to brighten up his days in rehab. Anyway, Courtney would need money to keep her going a while once she got to Hollywood. I bet that’s when Martha’s stash started looking good to her.”

“I bet you’re right,” Leah said. “So she poisoned Martha’s tea the next morning — I hope you can prove that, Lieutenant.”

“Well, when I arrested her, she said I couldn’t charge her with murdering Brian because she’d never meant to murder him; she’d meant to murder Martha, and Martha was fine. She said it wasn’t her fault that Brian drank Martha’s tea. Not the world’s strongest defense. But now her parents have her lawyered up good — I’m not holding my breath waiting for more confessions. We found a custodian who spotted her clipping oleander, though, and a vase with traces of oleander in the back of her closet — we’re getting closer. And maybe you can come up with more evidence, Mrs. Abrams.”

“Probably nothing that would stand up in court. There’s the fact that she was late to therapy on the day of the poisoning. She said she’d gotten a phone call from her mother — did you check on that?”

“Yup,” Brock said. “Her mother was getting a tummy tuck then, definitely not talking to her daughter. You figure Courtney was late because she’d been searching Martha’s room, going nuts when she realized the money was gone?”

“Yes,” Leah said. “She’d definitely want to grab the money before Martha got sick; afterwards, the room would be full of doctors and nurses, and then Fred would lock it to protect Martha’s possessions. Also, not everyone would be able to recognize oleander — I can’t. But Courtney said her mother ‘dragged’ her to garden shows for years. I bet Courtney learned a lot about plants, just by osmosis. I also bet a jury wouldn’t be impressed by that.” Leah smiled ruefully. “They probably also wouldn’t be impressed by evidence from Pirkei Avot.”

“From Pirkei Avot?” Sam said. “From Sarah’s religious school homework? That helped you realize Courtney tried to kill Martha?”

“It did. ‘Flee wrongdoing,’ Rabbi Ben Azzai says. Even minor wrongdoings are dangerous, because ‘one wrongdoing leads to another wrongdoing.’ Not that plagiarism’s a minor wrongdoing — it’s a serious academic offense — but Courtney’s spent years breaking rules and thinking only about what she wants, not about what’s right. When the temptation to commit a major wrongdoing came along, she didn’t have the character to resist.”

“Yeah, character isn’t something you develop overnight,” Brock said, “or in six easy steps. Even a sweet tooth isn’t easy to overcome quickly — Brian found that out. That reminds me. Did Courtney’s arrest get you in trouble at the center?”

Leah sighed. “Fred fired me. And he complained to my agency, saying I’m a meddler who stirs up trouble. He would have preferred to let Courtney get away with murder, I suppose, to protect the center’s reputation. Oh, well. There are other temporary agencies. And I’ve developed reservations about the Cocoon Center. I’m sure some rehab centers do fine work, but Fred’s emphasis on quick results, on avoiding unpleasantness — I’m not sure that’s the right approach. Human beings aren’t caterpillars. Retreating from the world and sealing oneself up in a safe, comfortable place for a short time isn’t necessarily the best way of transforming oneself. I wish everyone there the best, though. What about Martha? Will she go to jail for withholding evidence?”

“No chance,” Brock said. “I got no interest in charging her — she basically panicked and blundered into this. And she’s cooperating fully now.”

“I’m glad,” Leah said, “especially since I think she and Felix may have a future together. Did you notice, Lieutenant? After you arrested Courtney, when we were all in the Caterpillar Room, Felix walked over to Martha and said, ‘I hope you’re not real upset, Martha.’ And she said, ‘Thank you, Felix. I’m fine.’ ”

Leah smiled brightly. The two men stared at each other. “So they made polite chitchat,” Sam said. “So what?”

“Don’t you see? He initiated a conversation with her — and he didn’t put it in the form of a question. And he made a grammatical error — he modified an adjective with another adjective, not with an adverb — but she didn’t correct him.” Leah’s eyes got dreamy. “They must be in love.”

“Definitely.” Brock covered his mouth with his hand. “Romance is in the air, all right. Now, what you said about one wrongdoing leading to another — I got that. But Roland’s an old pro at wrongdoing, too — picking fights, cheating on taxes, speeding. How did you decide Courtney was the murderer, not him?”

“One final piece of evidence,” she said. “Again, nothing you can use in court. On my first day at the center, during the free period, Courtney was reading a well-worn copy of a Sue Grafton novel — a copy of Sue Grafton’s very first Kinsey Millhone novel. A Is for Alibi.”

Sam breathed in sharply. “You’re kidding. A Is for Alibi — oleander poisoning. Courtney even plagiarized her murder method.”

“Talk about consistency of character,” Brock said. “Hey, I bet you can get a book out of all this, Mrs. Abrams — something about micro-transgressive behaviors eventuating in macro-transgressive behaviors, maybe. I bet you could find a way to link that to workplace communications.”

Leah smiled. “I’m already working on the title,” she said, and poured him more lemonade.

Copyright © 2011 B. K. Stevens

Bankasaurus Rex

by David Dietrich

I walked into the Haslam Bank and Loan and marched straight for a teller window where a customer had just finished her transaction. The window was at the end of the counter and the two windows beside it were closed, which made it perfect for a private conversation. I was about to speak when the teller beat me to the punch.

“Excuse me, sir, but there is a line,” she said. “You’ll have to wait your turn.”

She was my mother’s age, maybe a bit older, sweet smiles on the outside but tough as nails inside, Texas to the core. The plastic plaque on the counter said her name was bev, which made me think of my mother’s best friend when I was growing up. Her name was Beverly. But I digress.

“I was just going to...” I began to say, but she shook her head and pointed with a fully outstretched arm and an unusually long index finger toward the line.

“They’ve been waiting patiently,” said Bev, “and so will you.”

It felt like my opportunity to protest had passed, so I hung my head in shame and trudged to the back of the line, catching nasty glances and looks the whole way.

“I can’t blame ya for cuttin’,” said the crusty old-timer in front of me. He said his name was Clem. He looked like he should be manning the chuck wagon in a John Wayne movie. “Seems all I do these days is wait in line. And for what?”

I took it to be a rhetorical question, but he kept staring at me like he was expecting an answer, so I said, “I know what you mean.”

“Yeah,” he said, clearly happy that we were brothers-in-arms in the battle against inefficiency.

After that yeah he paused to take a breath, then launched into a rant that didn’t stop even when it was his turn at a teller window. Standing at the window he turned in my direction and continued his discourse from ten feet away until the teller handed back his passbook and sent him on his way. By the time he shuffled out of the bank I knew his positions on gun control, water rights, speed limits, the metric system, and the use of electronic line equipment at Wimbledon.

We waved our goodbyes and as luck would have it, I found myself back at Bev’s window.

“Hello,” she said, stretching the last syllable twice around the block, “and welcome back.” I opened my mouth to speak, but Bev wasn’t finished yet. “We appreciate that you’ve chosen Haslam Bank and Loan for your personal financial services needs. How may I assist you today?”

I waited to make sure she was really finished before saying, “Give me all the money in your drawer.”

Bev cupped her hand around her left ear and said, “Excuse me, son, but did you just ask me to give you all the money in my drawers?”

“No, ma’am,” I clarified. “I said in your drawer. Singular, not plural.”

“Good thing, because that would have been rude,” she said, looking simultaneously pleased and disappointed. “So this is a robbery?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Why are you afraid?” she asked. Then she shifted into a low, conspiratorial whisper and asked, “Is someone forcing you to do this?”

She looked around, like she was trying to figure out who in the bank was putting me up to it.

“No, ma’am. I’m here of my own free will.”

“Oh,” she said, shaking her head. If her disappointment had begun at Level 5, it was up to Level 8 by now. Were I a guest in her home, her Texas hospitality would still obligate her to make me supper, but there’d be no dessert coming my way. “Get on with it, then.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds. Apparently she attended the Clem School of Patience.

“Well, get on with it.”

“I already did. It’s your turn.”

“How’s that? You haven’t even handed me a note yet.”

“I don’t have a note. I told you verbally instead of putting it in writing,”

“Verbally? Whole lotta good that does me. How am I ’sposed to prove to my boss and the po-lice that I really was robbed and that I’m not just an incompetent teller who gave ten thousand dollars to a customer who only wanted to withdraw ten?”

“I don’t know. They’ll just have to take your word for it.”

Bev shook her head and said, “It really is customary to have a note.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll remember that next time.”

“You do that,” said Bev. “This is your first time, I’ll bet.”

“First time?”

“Robbing a bank. Or trying to, anyway.”

“That’s none of your business. Just give me the money.”

“What’s your rush?”

“This is a bank robbery. They’re supposed to be fast.”

“A note would have helped speed things up.”

“You want me to write one now?” I grabbed the pen tethered to the counter.

“Too late for that, but I appreciate the thought.”

I returned the pen to its holder.

“So,” Bev continued, “we’re noteless. Let’s see what you did bring. How about a gun?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Knife? Bomb? Flamethrower? Crossbow?”

I shook my head four times.

“So what’s the threat? Why should I give you a penny?”

“Because I’m dangerous.”

Bev let loose an ego-deflating laugh.

“Look out, it’s Public Enemy Number One!”

“You’re mocking me, Bev.”

She faked a frown.

“Sorry, sweetie. But let me tell you something. I’ve been working in banks longer than you’ve been alive. When I worked in Dallas I saw more robberies than most FBI agents will ever see. I’ve had guns shown to me and pointed at me. I’ve had dudes holding briefcases and backpacks claiming they were filled with explosives. I’ve even been in a takedown robbery with all the big guns and ordering people onto the floor and such. So it’s gonna take a little more than no threat whatsoever to get me to cough up any cash.”

“Fine. I do have a gun,” I said, quickly lifting, then lowering my shirt, giving her a flash of the dollar store cap gun stuffed into my waistband. “I just didn’t want to scare you.”

“How thoughtful of you,” said Bev. She could have taught the Sahara a thing or two about dryness. “I’ll play along and pretend that’s a real gun. Did you bring a bag for the money?”

“Actually, no, I didn’t.” This was getting embarrassing.

Bev shook her head. “Do you think we keep bags handy just in case we get robbed by a forgetful crook? Because I can assure you, we do not.”

“I hadn’t thought about that,” I admitted.

“Sounds like there’s a lot you haven’t thought about. Maybe this isn’t the profession for you...”

She left it hanging there, waiting for me to fill in my name. It took me a few seconds to think of one.

“Rex,” I said.

Bev laughed again and repeated my fake name, adding a marathon-length ess sound to the end. Everyone else in the bank must have thought we were having a grand old time.

“Okay, Rex. So you showed up without a note, sporting a toy gun and lacking a bag for the money. Not good. Care to tell me why you want the money?”

“I need it.”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But tell me why you need it.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Okay. But I’m gonna make a guess anyway. You lost your job and you’re only robbing a bank because the satellite TV company is threatening to cut off your service if you don’t pay.”

“Dang,” I said, “you got it on the first try.”

Bev gave me a withering look that could have turned a grape into a raisin in the blink of an eye.

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Rex,” said Bev. “You need to give some serious thought as to what you’re doing here and if it’s what you really want to be doing with your life.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Give me all the money in your drawer and I promise I’ll leave and think about what you said, long and hard.”

Bev stared me in the eye. It felt like the human lie-detector thing my mother used to do.

“Does your mother have any idea what you’re up to?”

“She’s my getaway driver,” I said.

Bev let loose a belly laugh that caused heads to turn in our direction.

“I’m guessing she’s at home wondering what her little boy is up to. Probably has no idea you’ve entered into a life of crime.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Be nice if it stayed that way.”

“It’s a little late.”

“Maybe. I think I know a good boy when I meet one. You haven’t made any real threats or demands or called me any bad names. So there’s hope.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” said Bev, finally getting around to loading cash into a plastic grocery bag she dug up from somewhere, “Well, I’ll just get this together for you and let you get on your way.”

“Thanks.”

“See? You’re polite.” She paused “Do you want the change too? Probably another ten or fifteen dollars worth here.”

“No thanks.”

“Okeydokey.”

Bev stole a glance toward the front door.

“Haslam’s finest waiting for me out there?”

“To be expected, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“You’ve got the gift of gab, Bev. Kept me talking like a fool for how many minutes now? Bet you pressed the alarm button the second I told you to give me the money.”

Bev winked and said, “I’ll tell ’em to go easy on you, this being your first time and all.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaving the money on the counter.

I walked out of the bank with my hands raised, but there were no police waiting for me. Nor were there any behind me as I passed the Haslam City Limits sign. I kept my speed under the limit, said a silent “thank you” to Bev, and pondered a career change.

Copyright © 2011 David Dietrich

The Case of the Telephoning Ghost

by Joe Helgerson

The only reason that Sheriff Huck Finn ever went fishing was to catch forty winks, and no, a wink isn’t some kind of fish you’ve never heard of. So as soon as I spotted him down by the river holding a bamboo pole, the dreads hit me. For one thing, it was too early in the day for him to be out and about, unless he was dodging work. And if he’d already caught wind of the fact there was some sheriffing needed doing, that doubled or tripled the hazards I was facing as his deputy.

So I waited a while, secretly hoping that someone else might wake him up. After all, there was an entire survey crew working along the riverbank where he was resting, but he snoozed on, ignoring the way they shouted numbers back and forth, and slammed their poles around, and pretty near tripped over him. Hearing other folks work was like the singing of a lullaby to that man.

Finally I gave up waiting and went to stand beside him, positioning myself so that my shadow fell over him. It was a coolish October morn in the year 1904, and cutting off his source of heat woke him up sooner than gunshots would have. Lifting his white hat for a look, he grumbled, “Can’t you see I’m thinking?”

“We got us another one,” I told him.

“You sure?”

“All the signs,” I told him. “Ain’t breathing. Don’t yelp when I poke him. Look of terror on his face.”

“Well, you’ve been known to make mistakes before, Deputy. Maybe you better go double check.”

“Don’t you even want to know who?”

“Not yet.” He eased his hat down over his eyes. “Might get my hopes up.”

In addition to being lazy, the sheriff was also a stubborn cuss, known to hold grudges and play favorites whenever possible, though so far as I knew, wishing his enemies dead was as far as he ever took it. I wandered off without mentioning where I was headed and when I might be back. Naturally I made a point of walking away from the Whipplemore place, not that I expected to fool him. Something told me he already knew which way I was headed.

Marquis, Iowa, where we lived along the Mississippi, had maybe a half dozen streets you could count on in the wet part of the year. After a drought or hard freeze, another dozen streets became passable. During a flood, you’d better have a boat.

Cedric Whipplemore had lived on one of those back streets that no one had bothered to name. His place had gables and tall windows that were shrouded with heavy draperies that people said had once belonged to a famous theater. That was back in Cincinnati, where Cedric came from. The curtains gave the windows a heavy, haunted look, which fit right in with everyone’s view of Cedric, who owned the local opera house. No need to tell you which. There ain’t but one.

At first his opera house was a rip-roaring success. Around these parts howling cats can nearly always draw a crowd. But eventually Cedric made the mistake of falling in love with one of his singers. After that, it was all moonlight and mud. Same old story. St. Louis has quite a pull around here and it was calling to her. He begged her to stay. Right on the main street he did it, down on his knees. There’s old-timers around willing to tell you the story. Don’t even have to bribe them with a chaw. But she laughed him off and said she didn’t want anything to do with his little one-balcony opera house. To everyone’s surprise — and delight — he rose up off his knees and cursed her. Said he hoped that steamboat she was boarding never made it to St. Lou but ended up planted on the bottom of the river. And do you know, he got his wish. A huge explosion ripped that boat apart down by the Clarksville ferry.

Reason I’m telling you all this? That’s how Cedric Whipplemore got his ghost. She came back to try for a high C whenever there was a ring around the moon and hearts were full of romance. Poor Cedric had to shut his business down because she scared all his customers off. Least that’s what Cedric always claimed. Me, I think maybe he was just too brokenhearted to go down there anymore. Whichever the case, the Whipplemore opera house has been vacant since before the sheriff hired me on as a deputy, told me that my given name of Stanley Two-shot didn’t fire up his imagination any, and took to calling me Injun Joe. It wasn’t a huge insult that he didn’t like my real name, seeing as how he didn’t care for his own either. A name like Humfredo Mullendorfer, which was the handle the sheriff’s ma and pa dropped on him, didn’t have voters doing handsprings along the levee, so he changed it. Plucking a name out of a boy’s book, he took to calling himself Huck Finn and got himself elected a lawman.

And now Cedric Whipplemore was an old man, an old dead one at that, having flopped over his dining room table with a look of terror on his splotchy face and his telephone receiver clutched in his splotchy hand. I was sitting in the next room with the closest things he had to family, waiting on the sheriff.

“Well?”

That well belonged to Becky Finn, who had enough of them to spare. Being the wife of the sheriff, she had plenty of chances to put them to use too. She was a handsome woman, in a stern, blonde way, and I generally stayed as far from her as I did from thundering locomotives, especially when she started asking where her husband was.

“Expect he’ll be along shortly,” I mumbled, praying that was the case. “He had a little work to finish first.”

Covering up for the sheriff was one of my regular duties. Of course he knew his missus would be at the crime scene as soon as I told him we had another one. He also knew that all the other people who owned a telephone in town would be there, too, all seven of them, except for the two who were now dead, and maybe if we squinted real hard we might even have been able to see them, too, looking wispy and peaked and not quite with us anymore but not quite departed from us either. The sheriff generally put on a show worth hanging around for.

About a week back the first dead telephone owner had shown up, a glass of lemonade in one hand, her telephone receiver in the other. I’m talking about the Widow Brown, who’d received a call from a ghost wanting to know if she was ready to pass over to the other side. Nobody figured that restless spirit was talking about the other side of the river. How did we know it was a ghost? Because everyone else who owned one of those infernal talking machines had gotten a call too. And they all claimed the voice they’d heard sounded too stretched out and windblown to be from this world, though that was about all they could agree on. Votes were split on whether it was a man or woman spirit ringing them up. And poor Etheline Spavins, who was fraying on the edges anyway, she kept changing her mind about even that. All her dithering kept her nipping on her nerve medicine, which she was more than willing to share, kindly soul that she was, though I couldn’t help but notice that when she did pass her flask around, everyone’s recollections of the voice grew shriller, not calmer.

’Course sensible folks wanted to pin the Widow Brown’s end on the Confederate captain who haunted her livery stable. Didn’t matter that the widow had been found slumped over her telephone with nary a sword mark or hoof print on her — people figured that Confederate cavalryman finally got some peace. After all, he’d been shot in the back by the widow’s husband in the war and followed him home afterward. On moonless nights he was said to prance his white stallion down main street while brandishing a sword and whooping it up worse than ten comancheros. I’d never seen the fella myself, but everyone who had said it wasn’t a show you wanted to miss.

But was that Confederate captain the spook who did in Cedric too? That didn’t quite make sense, especially with a phantom opera singer waiting in the wings. Naturally half the town — the womanly half — was going to chime in that she deserved her due too.

And that wasn’t the end of our visitors from the other side. We had a real bumper crop of them that year, and everyone wanted to nominate their favorite as the culprit. The only one of the surviving telephone owners who didn’t have an opinion on the matter seemed to be the sheriff’s wife Becky, and that was because she claimed she never answered the phone and didn’t care what the local spooks were up to. So far as she was concerned no one in our town ever said anything worth hearing, and that included the ghosts.

“What I want to know,” Rutherford Dewitt stated for the record, “is what the sheriff is doing to protect those of us who are still breathing. We do pay his salary. Yours too, Deputy.”

I skipped over mentioning how little they paid. Rutherford wasn’t the sort you felt like complaining to. He was too big for most horses to carry and didn’t have any more sense of humor than a hangnail. He spent most of his days glowering and talking louder than necessary because he was hard of hearing but wouldn’t admit it. I answered loudly that the sheriff was tracking down several lines of inquiry, which went over about as well as a storm cloud on a wedding day.

“He has yet to even come talk to me,” Molly McIntosh informed everyone. She was a slight, pasty-faced woman who’d dressed in black ever since her father had passed on some years ago. “I am all alone down at the lumberyard, you know.” Her voice faded away to a hoarse whisper to add, “Almost.”

She didn’t want anyone to forget she had her own ghost, of course. You see, except for Becky, all the telephone owners claimed to have spirits plaguing them quite regular, and since everyone but Becky was getting on in years, they couldn’t sleep worth a hoot and stayed up half the night, complaining to each other over the telephone about what bedevilment their ghosts had been up to. Molly’s restless spirit had been the night watchman at her family’s lumberyard. He’d been burned to a crisp in a blaze that twenty years back turned most of her family’s business to ash. To hear Molly tell it, that spook never gave her a moment’s peace.

“Now now, Molly, you’ve only got one ghost haunting you. I’d think you’d have the decency to let these lawmen concentrate on my place first.” That was Alfreda Scrim, the preacher’s wife, who lived right next the cemetery and liked to reflect that it never rained but it poured when it came to ghosts and such around her house.

“Yes, but Alfreda, you’ve a preacher to protect you,” Molly reminded. “When the clock chimes midnight, I’m all alone.”

“The preacher?” Alfreda harrumphed, having no high opinion of her husband’s way with ghosts, or anything else for that matter. “When the clock strikes twelve he’s gone to world, and I’m all on my own, same as you, excepting I don’t have just one lazy visitor from the hereafter to contend with. I’ve got a whole graveyard full of unhappy sinners right outside my door. And I have to tell you, lately any time my phone rings after dark, they’re stirring. Something about that sound makes them restless. Injun Joe, if you and the sheriff are finally going to start looking for a culprit, I’d say you’d be wise to start in that cemetery.”

“As if they could hear the phone ringing above your voice,” Rutherford declared with a snort. Other than Mrs. Becky, he was the only one with a telephone who didn’t admit to having a ghost, though everyone claimed he had a pair of them. Two little boys, not more than seven and eight, who’d been known to flicker in and out of sight during lightning flashes. People whispered they were his drowned brothers.

“Couldn’t we all just try to not talk about them?” asked a weak, wobbly voice. Naturally that was the local steamboat heiress, Etheline Spavin, speaking. She could lay claim to the best known ghost in town, namely her mother, who’d thrown herself from the widow’s walk of their riverside mansion upon discovering that her husband had a whole other family down below Cape Girardeau. All that personal misfortune had settled a great shyness over Etheline, especially when her father abandoned her with an elderly aunt and went to live with his other wife and kids. Etheline turned inward after that and had as little to do with the outside world as possible. In fact, I was shocked to see her in Cedric’s overstuffed parlor at all. She wouldn’t have been there if her nephew, Perry Woodley, hadn’t pushed her over in that high-backed wheelchair that she hadn’t left for years. But there she sat, with one of her cats purring on her lap and her eyes darting everywhere as if she could see things no one else could.

“Aunty has something she thought you better know,” Perry Woodley said. Being a lawyer, he had a way of saying things that made people expect the worst.

Everyone turned toward Etheline, though slowly, as if they’d rather not.

“Cedric got a call last night,” Etheline whispered with a wobbly chin. “At the stroke of midnight.”

“Does the sheriff know about that?” I said.

“Ask him yourself,” Mrs. Becky answered with a nod toward the doorway, where a white apparition had appeared.

It wasn’t any ghost that’d joined us though, only Sheriff Huck with the morning sunlight streaming all around him thick as a hundred flares. He’d taken to wearing a starchy white suit as if it made him shine like some beacon of justice.

“Who’s bit the dust now?” the sheriff grumbled, though I could tell what he was really asking was, Why me?

Telephones had been around ever since thirty some years back when Mr. Alexander Graham Bell just had to prove he could ship the human voice through metal wires and have it come out the other end. I’m still not sure on what carried it in between, and if I had my druthers, I’d rather not know. Seems to me that people talk entirely too much as it is, and this machine just adds to the racket. The goods news about all that? If it’s taken the town of Marquis, Iowa, thirty years to get seven phones set up, it’ll probably take nine or ten centuries at least to get a phone in every house, so maybe I’m safe.

We wouldn’t even have those seven phones if thirty years ago Becky Finn’s father hadn’t felt a powerful itch to travel all the way to Philadelphia for a chance to see the centennial exposition, and President Ulysses S. Grant, and exactly what rubber from India was. And there was talk of an ostrich egg hatcher that caught his eye too. When he came back with news of what an electric telephone could do, he nearly got laughed out of town until young Jimmy Dubois said that he’d read about Mr. Bell’s work in a scientific journal that some gent on a passing steamer had left behind. That had the loafers on Main Street rolling in the dust and holding their sides, hard as they were cackling. It was all downhill from there.

To save face, Becky’s father had young Jimmy build a phone line between his house and the Dewitt Drug Emporium so that he wouldn’t have to hoof that long three blocks downtown every time he needed another dose of those special salts that kept him regular as the nine-oh-five from Quincy.

Soon as the finer sorts heard that Becky’s pa didn’t have to go traipsing downtown on a rainy day but could just ring Rutherford up and place an order — well everybody who was anybody had to have one of them dowickets put in their house. The line connecting those seven homes up ran in a big loop, with the Dewitt Drug Emporium marking the beginning and end of it. There were some drawbacks to that arrangement. Say you wanted a private telephone chat? Forget it. Anyone on the line could listen in anytime they wanted. And offer free advice if they’d a mind to, which some did. All they had to do was pick up their receiver and have at it. The Marquis telephone line wasn’t any place to keep a secret. On the other hand, it was exactly the place to go if you wanted to fan a rumor, like say news of the town’s ghosts doing away with telephone owners.

“Anybody touched anything?” The sheriff generally liked to pop a question like that to start things off. It let people know who was in charge.

“Did you want us to?” That was his wife, Becky.

He did his best to ignore her, saying, “It appears Cedric didn’t finish his drink.” He strolled behind the dead man, nodding toward the half empty glass. An open bottle of brandy stood next it. “Didn’t bother hanging up his phone, either.”

“Might have been too busy dying to get around to it,” I pointed out.

“So I hear,” the sheriff went on, ignoring me, “that this is some ghost’s handiwork. Anybody care to tell me about that?”

Several did, all at once, so the sheriff suggested at the top of his lungs that they take turns, then pointed at Molly McIntosh to start us off.

“I heard the telephone ring four times,” Molly said.

Four rings was the signal for Cedric’s place. Each house had its own signal. “At the stroke of midnight,” Alfreda Scrim clarified.

“And then?” the sheriff prodded because everyone suddenly clammed up.

When nobody rushed in to answer, Becky laughed and spoke her mind. “They all hurried over to lift up their receivers and find out why someone would be calling Cedric at that time of night.”

“It could have been an emergency,” Alfreda huffed.

“Turned out it was,” the sheriff agreed. “So what’d you hear?”

Now Alfreda and Etheline both ’fessed up to hearing the ghost extending Cedric an invitation to join her in the next world.

“Her?” the sheriff pounced.

“Could have been him,” Etheline wavered.

Making a face, the sheriff said, “That’s what Widow Brown’s ghost said, too, am I right?”

“For once,” Mrs. Becky conceded.

“Did Cedric say anything to the ghost?” the sheriff soldiered on.

There was disagreement, but in the end they decided he’d said nothing, though Alfreda insisted she’d heard him gasp.

Etheline’s jaw trembled extra hard, as if she had something to say, but nothing was coming out. Finally her nephew spoke up on her behalf, saying, “My aunty thinks that these ghosts are upset by people using the telephones. The electromagnetic current those phone lines give off doesn’t give the spirits a minute’s rest. It may be that the only way to stop these terrible deeds is to rip out the telephone lines that are causing—”

“No!” Etheline stubbornly blurted, as if her nephew had willfully gotten her message all wrong. “That’s not what I wanted to say at all, and you know it. I wanted all of you to know that being a shut-in such as I am, my only connection to the entire world is through these marvelous talking machines and that I have decided to bequeath my entire fortune to the city of Marquis, to be used for the installation of a telephone in every house hereabouts.”

That was more than double the talking I’d ever heard from Miss Etheline in all the years I’d known her, and she sounded more than usual off the tracks too. But considering her health, allowances were made, especially when she seized up and started to cough. Her nephew patted her back gently, saying he best take her home to rest. “Her strength’s not what it should be,” he explained

“Poor dear,” Molly McIntosh cooed as Etheline got wheeled away.

“She could be next,” Alfreda Scrim predicted, leaning on her experience as a preacher’s wife. “Her color doesn’t look at all right.”

“I’ll send her some salts,” Rutherford boomed.

“I can tell you one thing,” Mrs. Becky judged, casting a thoughtful glance at the back of Etheline’s wheelchair. “She knows more than she’s letting on.”

That was a trumpet call to battle for the sheriff, who straightened up, hitched his thumbs in his vest pocket, and declared, “Oh, folderol. That poor old girl’s scared half to death, that’s all. I dare say she’s just talking to save her own skin.”

That put Mrs. Becky’s back up considerably, and she let fly, “And how, pray tell, does her promising to buy telephones for this little fly-speck of a town do that?”

“Why, can’t you see?” the sheriff asked. “She’s trying to warn this ghost not to fool with her because if he or she does, they’ll be a lot more than seven telephones around to upset them.”

You could almost hear the juices bubbling inside Mrs. Becky’s head after being talked to so high handed. Without wasting a word, she sashayed out of Cedric Whipplemore’s parlor as if she had far better ways to pass the time than listening to her husband blow hot and cold.

After his wife left, the sheriff sent everyone else packing, too, with instructions to stay away from their telephones.

“Even if they ring?” Alfreda asked.

“Especially if they ring,” the sheriff answered with his steely voice, the one he trots out whenever he wants to promote law and order. “Go on now. Git. Injun Joe and I have our work to do.”

So the two of us stayed behind, all alone with a dead man. I can’t says it was where I would have chosen to spend my morning, but now and then a corpse, especially a ripe one, has been known to liven up the sheriff. And that was always a sight worth seeing.

First thing the sheriff did was take a seat directly across from Cedric, hold the unfinished glass of brandy up to his nose, and make a face. Sniffing the open bottle of brandy, he made the same face again.

“If I was you,” the sheriff advised, “I’d steer clear of this stuff. Don’t smell right.”

Then he went to studying the telephone receiver in Cedric’s hand, and the wire leading to the phone box on the wall behind the dead man, and finally he bent over and took a peek beneath the table. I didn’t bother following his lead ’cause I’d already checked under there. And besides, he was just testing me. If I’d looked, he’d have given me one of those gotcha winks. Straightening back up, he said, “I do have one little question, Deputy. How did this ghost manage to ring up Cedric? I mean, when did Mr. Bell start installing these dojiggers in the Hereafter?”

“Who said there was one there?” I asked.

“Well where else is this ghost calling from?”

He had me there, so I kept my thoughts to myself while we streeled down to the Dewitt Drug Emporium to find out more about how these calls from the other side were getting patched through to the here and now.

The Dewitt Drug Emporium wasn’t anywhere near as big as it sounds. The sign out front was barely wide enough to hold its name, and the store wasn’t much wider, though it was long. Mostly it was filled with glass cases and cabinets and stout smells that kind of grabbed at you as you passed by.

Way at the back there was a narrow counter where Rutherford stood around all day, patting down his fast-thinning hair and talking to himself rather loud. Behind that counter was a tiny room where Rutherford’s assistant lived. That assistant, whose name was Archibald Dewitt, also happened to be Rutherford’s cousin, though the two look about as much alike as December and July do. Archibald was a little bit of a fella, all ears and Adam’s apple, with a full head of hair that needed wetting down every hour or so. And he was jittery. Maybe because of the way Rutherford was always barking at him to move faster.

“The sheriff wants to know about the telephone,” Rutherford announced about five times louder than need be as we traipsed into Archibald’s living quarters. There was a cot, chair, and a couple of hooks for his clothes, and on one wall hung a telephone switchboard with an old kerosene lantern burning above it.

My first good look at the switchboard nearly stole my breath away. The thing brought to mind a grinning skeleton. But once you got used to the tangle of wires and brass facing you, it wasn’t anywhere near so scary, more strange and wonderful, in a complicated sort of way. Archibald glanced from the sheriff to me and back again while clearing his throat three or four times before managing to ask, “Cedric?”

“That’s right,” Rutherford barked. “So what’s on your mind, Sheriff? Those of us still living would kind of like to know.”

“For starters, how’s this monstrosity work?” The sheriff was standing nose-to-nose with the switchboard, looking as though he was about to tug on one of its wires.

“Well,” Archibald started out, doing his best to pull the sheriff’s hand back before he broke something, “whoever wants to make a call cranks up their telephone’s handle and picks up their receiver. That rings that bell up there.” He pointed to a little brass box atop the switchboard. “I pick up the receiver on my end here and ask who’s there.” He demonstrated. “They tell me, and I say how do and ask who they want to talk to, and they—”

Right about then the drug emporium’s front door opened and some lady yoo-hooed for help. Rutherford waved for Archibald to head out front and see to the customer.

“Hold on,” the sheriff said. “I got a couple a quick questions for your man here, and then he can go sell your lozenges. So you talked to the ghost before connecting it up to Cedric, right?”

“Had to,” Archibald reluctantly agreed.

“What’d it have to say?”

“He asked to speak to Cedric. Real polite like.”

“So it was a he?”

“Think so, though it’s hard to tell on these things. Most everyone who owns one is hard of hearing and generally shouts and the connections ain’t much good, crackle all the time, ’specially if it’s storming.”

“All right, all right,” the sheriff said, not liking all the excuses. “Answer me this. Can you at least tell where it was calling from?”

“Not unless I recognize the voice.”

The sheriff ground his teeth a bit before saying, “How about this. Could you tell whether it was the same ghost calling every time?”

Archibald hemmed and hawed a bit before admitting, “Not for sure.”

“Well thanks for muddying the waters up as much as you could,” the sheriff said. “As big a help as you’ve been, maybe you should get on with your drugstore work.”

Archibald took those lumps kind of hard and shoved off toward the front of the store as best he could. Soon as he was gone, the sheriff turned to Rutherford and whispered, “Can he be trusted?”

“What kind of a question’s that?” Rutherford boomed back.

“The kind a sheriff has to ask from time to time.”

That soured the druggist plenty but did drag out the following confession in a somewhat lower voice, “If you ask me, he’s too dang-blamed trustworthy. Got to count everything three ways from Sunday to make sure it’s accurate, that’s Archibald’s way.”

“Fair ’nough,” the sheriff allowed. “Joe,” he went on, giving me a start because I’d almost forgotten I was part of the party, “you got any questions?”

Figuring I had to say something or risk looking a complete fool, I come out with, “You ever use this switchboard?”

“’Course,” Rutherford blared. “If Archibald’s out making deliveries, I have to. And a fat lot of bother it is too. I can’t hardly hear what they’re saying.”

“So Archibald handles most of it?” I said. “’Specially at night?”

“That’s right. Why do you think I let him live back here for free?”

“All right, Joe,” the sheriff butted in, “I think that’s enough of that. No need to get the citizenry all up in arms. Why don’t you head over to the boneyard and see if there’s any ghosts who’ll confess to this business. And if you strike out there, well, check up on all the other spooks with access to one of these telephones. I’ll catch up to you later, after I ask Rutherford here a couple of questions about something ailing me.”

Ailing my foot. He was hoping to pry something out that’d give him an edge in cracking this case before me, so when I stepped out of the back room, I didn’t go far, about two feet was all, and kept an ear cocked for what the sheriff was fishing for. To my disappointment, all I heard him say was, “Rutherford, I’ve been having some problems with rats to home and the missus is scared to death of them.”

Thinks I, that’s the first I’ve heard of Mrs. Becky being scared of anything that walks God’s green earth.

“You got anything on the premises that could handle such varmints?” the sheriff asked. “Other than traps, I mean. I’m always forgetting where I put those blame things and stepping on them.”

Thinks I, Hard to step on anything when you’re all the time napping.

When Rutherford told him they had some poison that ought to do the trick, the sheriff wanted to know all about it, and if it worked on all kinds of rats, and if he had any recent customers who could recommend it to him, so I guessed he really did have rat problems. I didn’t stay around to hear the rest of his woes because just then I noticed who Archibald was helping up front. When he and his customer stepped out from behind a cabinet, I caught sight of the sheriff’s wife Becky. She didn’t seem to be after any rat poison though. It appeared that she and Archibald were chortling about something pleasanter than rats.

Seeing someone enjoy a chat with Mrs. Becky was something of a novelty. Pestilence and drought were usually more her kind of meat. Why, I would almost swear that I heard her tittering like a schoolgirl. I had my doubts that she’d ever made such a sound as that even when she’d been a schoolgirl. And then she turned and left, though not before she curtsied and Archibald bowed, as if they’d just agreed on something.

Needless to say, I was on fire to learn more about that, but when I buttonholed Archibald, he turned all red and forgetful, which left me only one choice — trying to pry something out of the sheriff’s wife. I’d almost talked myself into doing it, too, when I heard the sheriff and Rutherford stepping out of the back room. I took wing before the sheriff got a chance to ask what I was about.

Once outside, I caught sight of Mrs. Becky heading home, so I turned the other way, not wanting to draw attention to my interest in her, and ducked around the nearest corner. My getaway wasn’t clean though. Still looking behind me, I ran smack into the survey crew that had for the last week been trying to find the best place to stretch another railroad bridge across the river and bring Marquis into the twentieth century, same as Mr. Bell and his telephones were all a-pant to do. What with the considerable problems they were having driving stakes into river muck, those surveyors weren’t a happy bunch to begin with, and my knocking over one of their tripods didn’t improve their mood, nor mine, because all the cursing that followed drew the sheriff right to us.

“Injun Joe,” the sheriff bawled out, “don’t you dare punch that man. What’s wrong with you? I thought I warned you not to go knocking anybody into the next county again. And anyway, didn’t I tell you to head over to the cemetery? And you there. Yes, you. I wouldn’t plan on hitting my deputy over the back of the head with that stake, not unless you want to break the stake and spend the next six months in our hoosegow eating my wife’s cooking, I wouldn’t. We take a dim view of assaulting a lawman in these parts, particularly since Joe here’s the only man I got who’s big enough and brave enough to tackle a ghost. In case you haven’t heard, we’re right in the middle of a murder investigation here.”

That got me turned loose, along with several mouthfuls of smart talk about how they wouldn’t want to interfere with any lawman that brave, though they didn’t seem to care two figs about my size. They weren’t any pipsqueaks themselves. But I didn’t pay them much mind, not busy as I was wondering why the sheriff both was talking me up and doing his best to send me on my way. Mighty fishy. It got me to wondering if he was trying to get rid of me so that he could check out something himself. Thinking we’d see about that, I headed for the cemetery, only to double back to main street as soon as I was out of sight. I got there just in time to watch him duck into the law office of Etheline Spavin’s nephew, Perry Woodley.

Often as the sheriff dispenses free legal advice, I supposed it was possible he was dropping in there to discuss the fine points of the law. But I doubted it. The only opinion that ever counted with that man was his own, so I guessed that what he was really up to was having a word with Perry about his Aunty Etheline and that ghost.

I settled in with the loafers mooching chaws out front of the general store, waiting to see what might happen next. Ten minutes shoved off before the sheriff left the law office and headed straight to the Spavins’ riverbank mansion, where Miss Etheline was parked on her front veranda with Molly McIntosh riding shotgun and the usual assortment of cats who had the run of the place rubbing against their legs and bedding down in their laps.

The story of how Miss Etheline came to be wheelchair bound is wrapped in the mists of time, though most every explanation that pokes its head out of those mists says that her mother’s ghost pushed her off the same widow’s walk that she did a swan dive from herself. The poor lady must have been terribly lonely in the Hereafter to pull such a stunt as that.

For most of the next hour the sheriff sipped some of Miss Etheline’s famous tea and still managed to walk a straight line when he pushed off. That tea was known to be doctored with enough medicine to double the glow of a sunset. It had enticed many a dry throat and lonely soul to her door.

From there the sheriff headed to the reverend’s for a word with Alfreda. Of course, words were cheaper by the dozen with her, and she was still flinging them after him as he left. I could hear most of them fine from the tree I’d climbed up. She’d made up quite a list of the dearly departed who were buried out her front door but might still bear the world they’d left behind a grudge. As for my finding out about those ghosts, well, that had to wait until after dark anyway, didn’t it?

That night I started at the cemetery. Soon as Alfreda Scrim saw me at the gate she came charging out to let me know which ghosts I ought to be arresting. Her list of suspects seemed to include an awful lot of folks who’d never given her the time of day whilst they were still among the living. It took her an hour or two to fill me in on all that, but her jaw eventually tired and she left me alone to do my job. I had some pretty one-sided conversations with a headstone or two before everything came to a stop because a low, gargly voice was calling out, “Injun Joe-e-e-e-e.” So I knew the sheriff was hiding somewhere nearby and trying to have himself a little fun.

“What?” I asked, casual like, hoping that I sounded as if I had graveyard voices talking to me daily.

“You’re needed back in town.”

Soon as I got back to the jailhouse, I found out why. Archibald Dewitt was fluttering around worse than a moth with singed wings. It seems the ghost had been telephoning again.

“To who?” I asked, on the grumpy side, I’m afraid, ’cause another reason for the sheriff flushing me out of the graveyard had now presented itself. He knew Archibald was on the prowl and wanted me to handle it.

“Molly McIntosh.”

“Well, we better get on over there then,” I said, shoving past him.

“She ain’t home,” he told me.

That put a stop to my rushing off. “How’s that?”

“She didn’t answer her phone.”

That’s when I started running, fearing the worst, which was exactly what I found when I got to Molly’s place. She was stretched out on the kitchen floor, a glass of spilt milk beside her, one hand reached out toward her telephone as if it was still ringing, and a look of midnight terror stretching out her wrinkled face. “You’re running out of folks to call,” I said, speaking up so the spirit could hear me, though he or she never bothered answering.

Thanks to Archibald spreading the alarm, the sheriff and Mrs. Becky soon joined me, followed by Alfreda and the reverend, Rutherford in his nightshirt, and last of all Etheline in her wheelchair came humping along, pushed by her nephew. Sheriff Huck took me aside to say, “I’ll handle this bunch. I want you to keep after this ghost before it gets an urge to talk to someone else.”

The rest of the night turned out to be longer than a ten-mile hike in tight boots. While the sheriff shooed everyone back to bed, I spent a couple of hours lurking around the McIntosh lumberyard without catching so much as a whiff of the night watchman, who supposedly trailed a smoky scent wherever he haunted. I did, however, discover that the yard’s back gate had been left ajar. That was the first I’d ever heard of a ghost needing to open a gate to go through it.

From there I ambled on past the Dewitt Drug Emporium, but all was quiet. Too quiet, if you asked me. I half expected to spot the two young ghosts who had been Rutherford’s brothers playing leapfrog out front, but I didn’t catch so much as a flicker of them. What I did get an eyeful of was a white horse galloping down main street. Its eyes might have been blazing. I couldn’t tell for sure because I was so busy watching the rider’s sword swoosh through the night air. His blade cut the moonlight to shreds and left me pressed against a dark wall, holding my breath for all I was worth.

Against my better judgment, I struck out after him. On foot, of course. I didn’t have time to wake up my old nag, fling a saddle on her, and give chase, which was just as well. I wasn’t completely sold on catching up to any apparitions. Just seeing the general direction he was headed was more than enough to satisfy me, and besides, as I was tiptoeing after him, I noticed a light still burning at Etheline Spavin’s. Usually her place was dark as the river.

I was beginning to get the notion that I might have been missing a thing or two on my nightly rounds. Keeping that in mind, I checked up and down the street, then crept up to the lighted window to make sure everything was safe and sound with Etheline. I found myself staring at a bedside oil lamp and an empty wheelchair, but I never got a chance to figure out if she was tucked in for the night. A flutter and chill drew my eyes upward first, toward the widow’s walk. With a lurch, I found myself gazing at a cloaked figure I’d never noticed before, only heard of.

For a few twitchy heartbeats that hooded thing and me stood there staring at each other as if one of us owed the other money. That ended when someone screeched behind me. Naturally I whipped around, expecting to find the horseman bearing down on me. But except for moonlight, the street was empty. The screech kept on going, though, sounding awful high and thin to belong to a cavalry captain swinging a sword. Slowly it dawned on me that it might not be a screech but the work of an opera singer trying to tackle a high C. Whoever it was held the note long enough to make the whole night seem about to shatter and come crashing down. The note stretched out thinner and thinner until almost gone. By then I could barely separate it from the rustling of the last few leaves still clinging to the trees. And then it cut off. Everything went back to being still as the instant before you fall asleep.

Rechecking the widow’s walk, I found the cloaked figure gone, and just as I lowered my eyes to the window I’d been peering through, the oil lamp inside got snuffed out, leaving me with nothing to look at but black. I raised a hand to rap on the glass and call out to Miss Etheline, but thought better. How was I ever going to explain what I was doing peeking in a lady’s bedroom window?

Instead, I listened until hearing the rustle of bedsheets. Satisfied all was safe, I pushed off toward the cemetery to see if any ghosts were cavorting out there. I thought there was a good chance there might be, seeing as how that’s the direction the horseman had galloped off.

When I got there a thin layer of mist hung over the gravestones, but nothing was stirring, unless you counted the tail of Preacher Scrim’s horse, which happened to be white and tied up to the cemetery’s gate. When I ran a hand over its flank, I found it’d worked up a fine lather, but a quick glance toward the parsonage told me everything was quiet there.

That summed up my night, though I figured I’d found out enough to make the sheriff think twice about ever sending me after ghosts again.

The next day, about noon, I rolled out of the jail cell where I sleep, stretched and scratched, and headed down to Lady Small’s Café for lunch. The proprietress clanked a cup of coffee down in front of me as if mad at the world, which was unusual, considering what a cheery chatterbox she was. Normally she never got tired of telling me about her days as a circus performer who’d warbled and taken bows before the crowned heads of Europe. She had a photo mounted on the wall to prove it too. Just listening to her call out an order to her cook was worth the price of a meal. When I asked what’d flown up her nose today, she patted her throat and grimaced as if coming down with the first cold of the season, though she didn’t seem to have any sniffles. Still, whatever she had didn’t sit well. You could tell she was just dying to ask me about all the ghosts that were scaring half the town to death. But sore as her throat was, she didn’t have any choice but to let her other customers pester me half to death about what was going on.

They did a bang-up job of it, too, throwing up questions and possibilities fast as I could knock them down. Hard as they went at it, you didn’t need a newspaper reporter to tell you that the whole town was in an uproar. To eat my meal in peace, I had to pick up my roast beef sandwich and leave, though as I was easing out the door, I couldn’t resist letting slip that they could all rest easy because the sheriff was pretty close to making an arrest. So far as I knew he wasn’t any closer to that than Sisyphus was to getting his rock up that hill, and now he’d have everyone hounding him to reveal what he had up his sleeve. Maybe that’d teach him to go whispering my name around a graveyard.

And then, wouldn’t you know, I began to wonder if the scoundrel might actually be onto something he wasn’t sharing. He’d sicced me after those ghosts awful quick and seemed to be finding time to have some fun to boot. Unable to shake the idea that he was holding out on me, I headed toward his house to find out what he’d been up to.

I didn’t bother knocking at the front door but slipped directly around back to the sheriff’s shed, where I found him whittling a hickory stick down to nothing. That was never a good sign, though at least all his fingers were still attached.

“Deputy Joe,” he said, sulking the way he did whenever he and his missus had been chawing on each other, “I’m thinking we’d better gather the interested parties together tonight so’s we can make the telephones of Marquis, Iowa, safe again. I’ll leave it to you to let everyone know. And, Deputy, in case you’re wondering, that includes my missus. She’ll probably take it better from you. Let’s tell them to meet at Etheline Spavin’s place, shall we? You know how hard it is for her to move about, especially so late. Tell ’em a little before midnight. And order up a storm if you can. For drama.”

I never got a chance to try and talk my way out of it. Tossing what was left of his whittling aside, he pushed off for main street before I could, saying he had a loose thread or two to pull together. Perhaps. Just as likely, he was clearing out fast before I tackled Mrs. Becky. All well and good because I was still wondering what her and Archibald Dewitt had been so thick about down at the drug emporium.

But when I circled back up front, I found out why the sheriff had been whittling so fiercely. There sat Archibald in the drawing room, having another word with Mrs. Becky. The two of them appeared stuck fast together as thieves, which left me wondering if the sheriff’s wife hadn’t finally decided to leave her husband for good. Archibald was single enough for her needs and appeared to be just basking in her attentions. And the cookies he was being served didn’t seem to break his molars or curl his tongue, either. Those were good signs if he was planning on running off with Mrs. Becky. She was the kind of woman who had more important things to do than wrestle with recipes over a hot stove.

When I said they certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, Archibald straightened out as if he’d just shot himself in the foot. Mrs. Becky sized me up as if she’d be aiming for my foot next.

“So what if we are?” she asked, cool and level as could be.

“I was just wondering if you were talking about ghosts,” I said.

“That is none of your concern,” she informed me.

When I mentioned that her husband wanted to gather all the telephone owners at Miss Etheline’s place at midnight, she said, “Well of course he does, Stanley—”

Unlike some I could mention, she never took to calling me Joe or Injun Joe. Characters from a story book didn’t interest her at all. Cold hard facts was more her style, much to her husband’s discomfort.

“—he’s always planning things for after dark. Makes it easier to slip away when he flubs up. But don’t worry, Deputy, I wouldn’t miss this soirée for the world.”

That wasn’t anywhere near the answer I’d been expecting, which gave me something else to worry about. I’d never known Mrs. Becky to be so cooperative before. She even gave me a pleasant smile as she showed me to the door.

Etheline Spavin’s parlor had once been the finest room in town, though by now it had begun to list on its foundation. The furniture inside might be oak, but it was all mighty wobbly oak that looked about one overweight guest from kindling. All the cushions were threadbare, and the carpet worn through in more spots than I could count. The clock on the mantel said it was 5:43 and probably had been saying so for the past thirty years or more. Cobwebs connected it up to little cupid statues on opposite sides of the mantle. And of course there was the smell of cats, which filled every cushion and lap in sight.

Sheriff Huck had already appropriated the most comfortable chair by the time I pulled in. A large tabby had joined him. His wife Becky had settled down as far away from him as she could get. Rutherford Dewitt lined up to the sheriff’s left, looking considerably wrung out, and Alfreda Scrim was complaining to her husband, the Reverend Scrim, about how noisy the cemetery had been of late. I had asked the reverend to join us in case any of the spirits we were dealing with got too frisky. No one was paying Alfreda much mind, particularly her husband, who had a glazed look that anyone who’d spent any time around his wife recognized. I took the perspiration on the reverend’s brow to mean that he was uneasy about crossing paths with any spooks. That left our hostess, Etheline, in her wheelchair, and her nephew Perry, who appeared ready to protect his aunt from any spirits who showed up.

One last guest, a stranger, was ornamenting the chair to the sheriff’s right. Although this gent was wearing a tweed suit coat and thin black bowtie, he had a leathery, sun-creased look about him, particularly across his forehead, where a tan line showed that he usually wore a hat. The hat in question was resting on his knee. It was a weather-beaten, shapeless thing. As soon as I stepped into the parlor, this stranger challenged me with a frosty stare that said we’d met before. I didn’t have time to sort that out, though, not with the sheriff suddenly talking over Alfreda.

“Here’s my deputy,” Sheriff Huck announced, sounding as if he’d been bragging about me, which could only mean one thing — he’d found some way to one-up me. “Late as usual, but for a good reason, I’m guessing. Have you figured out which ghost’s to blame, Deputy?”

“Almost,” I answered.

“Only almost?” the sheriff chided. “We need to wrap this business up while we still got some telephone owners alive. Joe, maybe you better fill us in on what you’re thinking, holes and all. Somebody here might be able to supply the rest.”

Modesty wasn’t the sheriff’s strong suit, and there wasn’t much doubt he expected to be the one who’d pull everything together. The twinkle in his eye said he was ready to step on my back — soon as I fell flat on my face — and reveal what had really been truly going on. Unwilling to let him sail across the finish line without even breaking a sweat, I took the plunge, hoping things would sort themselves out as I went.

“The thing you’ve got to know about ghosts,” I started out, trying to sound as though my Indian heritage made me an expert on the subject, “is that they’re usually trying to tell you something.”

“Humbug!” Rutherford Dewitt declared, stomping his foot down.

“I wouldn’t be so fast on the draw there, Rutherford,” the sheriff cautioned. “Joe’s father was a medicine man, you know, so when it comes to the spirit world, I don’t trust anybody more than my deputy here. Ain’t that so, Joe?”

“Sometimes,” I allowed. Turning to Rutherford, I added, “Take those two little tykes that make you so jumpy, Mr. Dewitt. They mostly just want to say goodbye to you, and then I expect they’ll be on their way.”

The drugstore owner gurgled deep in his throat but didn’t manage to get anything else out. Mostly he just turned red in the face.

“What else you got, Joe?” the sheriff asked.

“A strong suspicion,” I said, stepping behind the sheriff and the stranger perched next him, “that it’s not the night watchman at the lumberyard who’s behind all this.”

“And what catapulted you to that conclusion?” the sheriff wanted to know, pleasant as could be, as if I was his prize pupil.

“Just the fact that whoever did away with Miss Molly left the rear gate to the yard open on her way out.”

“That was careless of them,” the sheriff agreed, “but what’s your point?”

Mrs. Becky answered that one for me. “That a ghost wouldn’t have needed to open the gate in the first place. They could have floated right through it.”

“Now that’s some first-rate detecting, if that’s what Joe was thinking,” the sheriff conceded. “But maybe that back gate being open doesn’t have anything to do with our case at all. You know as well as I do that schoolboys are always cutting through that lumberyard rather than going all the way around it. But my deputy did let something slip that gave me the prickles.”

Everyone but Mrs. Becky straightened up some at that announcement. She just shook her head disgusted like, as if she’d heard her husband pretend to know something too often to count.

“I heard him call this ghost a she,” the sheriff went on. “Does that mean you think it’s Cedric’s opera singer who’s behind all this mayhem?”

“Not at all,” I came right back. “And I’d like to also say that you could have saved your money, Sheriff.”

“Oh?” The sheriff sounded innocent as a cardsharp. “What money’s that?”

“The dollar or two that you shelled out to Lady Small to try and hit that high C.”

“What ever gave you such an idea as that?”

“Two things. The fact that she used to sing in the circus while standing atop a horse, and the way she can’t hardly speak today, probably because she strained her cords working for you last night.”

“Pish-posh,” the sheriff said, waving me off. “If that’s all you got to complain about—”

“No, I’d also like to mention that I thought your horse-thieving days were all behind you.”

“Now what are you going on about?” the sheriff asked, turning testy. He’d made a mistake or two in his youth that he liked to keep buried.

“Just that you were seen riding down Main Street on Reverend Scrim’s white horse.”

“On whose word?”

“All the ghosts out to the cemetery.”

“Joe,” the sheriff lectured, “if that’s all the testimony you’ve got—”

“And the reverend,” I tacked on before he could build up a full head of steam.

The reverend gave the sheriff the kind of sad little helpless nod he passed out to sinners, and for once the reverend’s wife’s mouth was open without any sound rushing out.

“I hope you’re going somewhere with all this,” the sheriff crabbed, “ ’cause you’re shedding friends fast.”

“Only this,” I said, strolling behind everyone circled up in the parlor. One or two craned their heads to follow me, but mostly they all stared straight ahead, tensing up as if expecting me to tap them on the shoulder. “One of the people in this room,” I went on, “might not be exactly what they pretend to be.”

“Joe, Joe, Joe,” the sheriff lamented, wagging his head weary like, “that goes without saying. You can’t be human without accumulating yourself some secrets. That much is a given.”

“This particular suspect,” I continued while stopping behind Etheline Spavin’s wheelchair, “has been heard arguing over the telephone with every person who’s turned up dead.”

“I hope you’re getting all that from some kind of reliable source,” the sheriff cautioned.

Well, my theory was a little weak on that point, but I was hoping that Mrs. Becky would step up and join her voice with mine ’cause I was pretty sure she listened at her phone same as everyone else. I should have known that she was at least as prideful a creature as her husband and didn’t want anyone to know that she’d actually stooped to eavesdropping on that party line. When my eyes darted toward her, she was busy gazing out the nearest window, even though there was nothing to see out there but shadows. So my gamble was a bust, not that it kept me from playing my bluff out to the bitter end.

“I’m not just depending on one source,” I forged on. “I’m going by what I’ve seen with my own two eyes.”

“And what’s that, pray tell?” The sheriff fought a yawn.

“That some of the ghosts in this town aren’t as dead as others.”

That revelation at least got Rutherford Dewitt leaning forward to hear what I had to say next.

“Any in particular?” the sheriff quizzed.

“One,” I answered, and without warning, I took hold of Etheline Spavin’s wheelchair and tipped it forward.

What happened after that wasn’t exactly what I’d been planning on. Etheline didn’t stand up to break her fall, which was what I’d been hoping for. No, she tumbled onto the carpet, her legs as curled up and lifeless as a rag doll’s. That wasn’t what all my investigating had led me to expect at all. I had kind of doubted she’d make a run for it. She was in her upper eighties after all. But I did think she might blush a little for pretending to be an invalid all these years and maybe even ’fess up that she’d been sneaking around scaring people to death. How she’d managed that last part hadn’t exactly revealed itself to me — yet. But one step at a time, that’s my motto. Nothing of the sort happened though, and didn’t I feel the fool? Still, that didn’t explain who was wearing a cloak and floating around so grand up on the widow’s walk.

Etheline’s nephew made a grab to catch her but too late. And Alfreda Scrim found her voice long enough to say, “Well, I never.” And the sheriff had to pretend to cough to cover up a laugh ’cause he always enjoyed himself most when I was flailing around and sinking fast.

I didn’t get a chance to worry about any of that though, not as busy as I was trying to help Etheline back into her chair and flinging apologies and wishing I could turn invisible as a ghost myself so that I could fade through the nearest wall. There were six men in that room, and all of us but the sheriff lent a hand to get that poor old lady upright again. Once comfy, she was willing to forgive. Actually, she didn’t even seem to quite understand what had happened to her. Her nephew was another story.

Perry Woodley wanted me arrested on the spot. Given the general mood of the room, I’d be getting off easy if that’s all that happened, but then the sheriff did the one thing I would have never expected. He stood up for me. In his own way.

“Truth be told,” the sheriff said, “the first one I’ve got a mind to arrest is you, Perry Woodley. ’Cause my deputy here ain’t the sort of lawman who goes off half cocked, excepting maybe when he’s been misled by a professional.” He shot his wife a knowing little sneer, as if he suspected that she’d misled me about Etheline Spavin’s arguing with the others over the telephone. His thinking that only made sense if he’d caught her eavesdropping a time or two, so I’d been right about that much. “His instincts were sound,” the sheriff breezed on, “even if his aim was off. Perry Woodley, I do hereby arrest you for the murders of Widow Brown, Cedric Whipplemore, and Molly McIntosh.”

A steamboat whose smokestacks were spewing sparks could have cruised straight through the center of that parlor and I’ve got my doubts anyone would have noticed. Everyone was too keen on watching Perry Woodley straighten up to his full height, which was a good deal higher than any of us had ever noticed before, level a quaking finger at the sheriff’s nose, and demand to know, “What gives you the right—”

The sheriff didn’t even bother to get up, just answered from his chair, “Oh I think you know exactly what gives me the right. For starters, the fact that you happened to buy some rat poison from Rutherford here.”

“To take care of some rats for my aunty.”

“Now ain’t that a little too much to swallow?” the sheriff asked, patting the tomcat on his lap. “What with all the cats around here?”

“Tell him, Aunty.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know w-what to say,” Etheline Spavins sputtered.

“Remember?” Perry Woodley urged with a frown. “For down in the cellar. You don’t let the cats down there.”

Etheline’s jaw trembled as if she was trying to recall what her nephew was talking about but couldn’t. All she managed was a feeble, “Oh, dear.”

“Why would I want to murder those people?” Perry said, turning away from his aunty. “That’s crazy.”

“Maybe because you thought it would leave you rich?” the sheriff suggested.

“What are you talking about?”

“Yes, what?” Alfreda Scrim wanted to know, beside herself to think that someone in Marquis knew something she didn’t.

“His inheriting this mansion,” Sheriff Huck revealed.

“Are you daft?” Perry Woodley cried. “Aunty’s leaving it to the town. To install telephones. Everyone heard her say that.”

“And how do you feel about that?” the sheriff wheedled.

“As if it’s her business,” Perry Woodley answered, though it came out kind of stiff and resentful.

“And mightn’t there be something you think she should do with her inheritance?”

“What are you getting at, Sheriff?”

“That maybe you’re hoping to change your sweet old aunty’s mind about who gets what when she’s gone.”

“I resent—”

But the sheriff was playing to the whole room by then and talked right over him, saying, “If ghosts were to convince Etheline here that these telephones aren’t safe — which they aren’t — then she might forget this nonsense about putting one of the things in every house as her legacy. She might decide to do something else with her worldly possessions, something like leave them to her nephew here, who’s always so kind and Johnny-on-the-spot when she needs something done.”

“Why of all the black-hearted, low-down—” That was Alfreda Scrim sounding a little more country than usual.

“And isn’t it convenient,” the sheriff rolled along, “that he’s a lawyer? In case any wills need changing, I mean.”

“The only thing my aunty’s got of any value,” Perry Woodley spouted, “is this mansion we’re sitting in. And it’s been falling apart for years. She’s been too poor to afford repairs and the next good flood will probably wash it down to Keokuk. So why would I want it?”

But the sheriff went right on spinning his web, saying, “Oh, I think we both know the answer to that.” Nudging the cat off his lap, he stood up to lay out one last piece of brilliance for us to admire. “The railroad’s looking to build a bridge across the river right here at Marquis, and if I’m not mistaken, the only place to do it is through the center of this house. That ought to make it worth a little something, don’t you think, Mr. Leavenworth?”

Here the sheriff turned toward the stranger he’d invited along. Of course everyone else turned with him. And I have to say that the stranger kind of enjoyed being the center of attention because he didn’t say a word in answer to the sheriff, just flashed his dimples while looking around as if the joke was on us.

“Mr. Leavenworth here is the head surveyor for the railroad,” the sheriff revealed.

At least that explained why the gent looked so familiar. We’d nearly come to blows when I almost bowled him over in the alley beside Dewitt’s Drug Emporium.

“I asked him along,” the sheriff continued, “to help fill out this little tale of greed that we have here. Go ahead.” The sheriff nodded to the surveyor. “Tell them how much the railroad is willing to pay for this prime riverbank location, sir.”

That’s when the stranger put on his hat, stood up, and said, “That lawyer’s not your man.”

The sheriff’s jaw did some flopping. “But I thought you said—”

“You old windbag,” the stranger cut the sheriff off. “If you’d been listening, instead of gassing on about how you’d found your murder suspect and your murder weapon, and reckoning you were going to outshine your deputy or bust, well, if you hadn’t been so wound up about all that, you might have heard me tell you what I’m going to say now. The place we wanted to buy belongs to that fool there.” He pointed at Rutherford Dewitt. “His store’s the only site where it makes any sense to build our bridge, and he says he won’t sell.”

“Can’t,” Rutherford boomed in a stubborn voice. “I’ve already left my brothers behind once. Won’t do it again.”

“Now hold everything,” Sheriff Huck squawked, but that’s all he got out. Mostly, he just stood there opening and closing his mouth as if his teeth didn’t fit quite right.

We were all so busy enjoying that spectacle that what happened next locked us up solid as yesterday’s porridge. The telephone rang.

Everybody flinched. Well, maybe not all of us. I did notice that Mrs. Becky was keeping such a close eye on everyone else that she managed to stay seated. Three times the bell rang, which was the signal for Etheline’s house. We all sat there gaping at the telephone on the wall as if it was a hangman’s noose.

“Somebody better answer it,” Mrs. Becky suggested, calm and cool as ever.

That started a stampede. The sheriff got there first because he was nearest but there were seven pairs of ears crammed as close to that receiver as they could get. The only people hanging back were Etheline, who was glancing all around as if she didn’t quite recognize what room she was in, and Mrs. Becky, who was still pretending that she never answered telephones. I didn’t hang back myself, not as much as I wanted to hear who was calling.

“Hello?” says the sheriff.

“Are you ready to join me?” croaked a nervous, wispy voice on the other end of the line. “The time is at...”

I didn’t get to hear the rest of what the caller had to say because just then Etheline screeched, “Is she asking for me? Tell her I’m coming.”

And from the folds of her shawl she pulled out a small silver flask and started to unscrew its cap with a shaky, withered hand. She never got a chance to raise it to her lips though. Mrs. Becky caught her by the wrist before she could get it there. Taking a whiff of the flask, she made a face and announced, “Here’s your murderer. And here’s your rat poison too.” She held up the flask she’d taken away from Miss Etheline, who at the moment had covered her face with her hands and was whimpering. “Everyone knows she was always offering to share her nerve medicine. You weren’t arguing with anyone over the telephone, were you Etheline? Something tells me you were arranging to have your nephew bring a dose of your medicine to friends who were having trouble sleeping after being telephoned by a ghost that sounded an awful lot like you, if someone was to listen instead of trying to talk.”

So I had been right! Partly, anyway. It had been Miss Etheline. I just hadn’t figured out all the particulars. Much as I hate to admit it, the sheriff had stumbled over some of the answer, too, though by my reckoning, not as much of it as I had. If you can’t quite picture how Sheriff Huck took his missus’s revelations, let me help. He laughed, and it wasn’t a pretty laugh, either, but a mean, toothy, don’t-be-foolish sort that fell on deaf ears because everyone was watching Perry Woodley bend down beside his aunty to ask what she’d done. Sounding more than a little surprised, the old lady answered, “Why, I’ll need someone to talk to in the hereafter, won’t I?”

We lost nearly all our ghosts that night. People quit believing there had ever been a phantom night watchman at the lumberyard, and more than one citizen came around to thinking that the cavalry captain on the white stallion was only Reverend Scrim coming home from comforting a member of his flock, though I had me some doubts about that, knowing how much the sheriff likes to dress up in old uniforms from that steamer trunk of his. Word got around too that Lady Small could almost hit a high C, which did away with anyone mentioning the ghost of the opera singer ever again, unless trying to scare someone new in town.

Rutherford Dewitt sealed any further talk about his two ghosts by selling his drug emporium to the railroad and moving west. About the same time the graveyard got awfully quiet too. I’m guessing that was because Alfreda Scrim moved on to arranging her church’s gala Christmas festivities.

That left only the spirit of Etheline Spavin’s mother to haunt our little town, and no one ever noticed that ghost after the following spring’s flood, which swept the widow’s walk and everything beneath it away in a swirl of brown water. I was making rounds the night it happened and have to report that the last I saw of the mansion was a cloaked figure standing atop it and waving farewell. Or at least I think that’s what I saw. And the river swallowed it.

You don’t need to worry about Etheline though. She’d already been moved to a mental hospital by then. I heard she made quite a fuss until her nephew suggested they try giving her a private telephone line. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t hooked up to anything. Etheline could hear her friends just fine.

So now we’re down to two telephones in town — Alfreda Scrim’s and Mrs. Becky’s, and they don’t bother talking to each other, never have. But lately word has gotten around that Sheriff Huck is considering having a telephone installed at the jail, in case people need him for an emergency. That rumor got its wings while everyone was buzzing about how the sheriff’s wife had solved the telephone murders, as they’ve become known in these parts.

It turned out it was Mrs. Becky who put Archibald Dewitt up to calling us at the stroke of midnight to flush out the culprit. Sharp as that thinking was, there’re some who have been mentioning that maybe it’s high time for Marquis to elect a woman sheriff. Mrs. Becky may be considering it too, or at least Archibald Dewitt says so. He’s clerking over at the general store now and seems to know a good deal about what the sheriff’s wife thinks. I can’t disagree with his judgment on the matter. Something tells me that she might be pretty good at arresting people. If she does decide to run for office, I’m not exactly sure who I’ll be voting for. Maybe I’ll just write my own name on the ballot, in case there’s a tie.

Copyright © 2011 Joe Helgerson

Notes

1

Fate

2

Western foreigner

3

Term of respect for someone older

4

Darling

Content

Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2011

The Lineup

Enemies by Janice Law

Pawns by Janet E. Irvin

Why by Robert Lopresti

The Calculator by Mithran Somasundrum

Death in Rehab by B. K. Stevens

Bankasaurus Rex by David Dietrich

The Case of the Telephoning Ghost by Joe Helgerson

Notes