Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

The Snow Angel

by Doug Allyn

Two-time Edgar Allan Poe Award winner Doug Allyn continues a series this month that was launched in our March/April 2012 issue with the EQMM Readers Award winning story “Wood-Smoke Boys.” Two further stories in the series, “Death of a Drama Queen” (EQMM September/October 2012) and “Borrowed Time” (EQMM September/October 2013) preceded series police detective Dylan LaCrosse’s return in this dark case set at the peak of the holiday season.

* * *

I smiled when I saw the dead girl. Just for a moment. Reflex, I suppose.

In Kabul, I once clawed through a busload of bodies after a bomb blast, desperately seeking any sign of life. Didn’t find it.

As a Detroit cop, I saw victims almost daily, and even after transferring home to Valhalla, on Michigan’s north shore, I’ve seen more corpses than I care to.

But never one like this.

The teenager was sprawled on the snow-covered lawn, her honey-blond hair wreathing her face like a halo. She was surrounded by lighted holiday figures, a laughing Santa in his sleigh, eight wire-framed reindeer, gaily winking and blinking. The girl’s white satin gown was dusted with ice crystals that reflected the flickering LEDs, making her glitter like the display’s centerpiece.

A snow angel.

The scene was so perfect, it almost looked posed, like the girl had dozed off in the middle of a photo shoot for a Hallmark card.

She hadn’t, though.

Her face and lips were a pale pastel blue, her brows and lashes rimed with frost.

In her last moments, she’d thrashed about, striving to rise. To live. But the bone-deep cold sapped her strength. She slipped into an icy coma and then away, leaving her body centered in the image her struggles had created.

A perfect snow angel.

And at first glance, I couldn’t help smiling. Instinctively reacting to the scene. Who doesn’t love a snow angel?

My partner, Zina Redfern, caught my smile and gave me an odd look. I turned away, trying to morph my grin into a wince. I doubt she bought it. Zina is short, squared-off, and intense. All business. Raven-haired, with dark eyes and a copper complexion, she favors Johnny Cash black on the job. Slacks, boots, and nylon jackets. If she owns a dress, I’ve never seen it. Her heritage is First Nation. Anishnabeg. But she’s a sidewalk Indian, grew up tough in Flint’s east-side gangland. She’s a solid partner, but not an easy read.

“Who called this in?” I asked.

“Mail lady,” Zina said. “She dropped a package at the house around eight this morning. Spotted the girl on her way in, took a closer look on the way out. Called nine-one-one. Van Duzen caught the squeal, found the girl. He pounded on the front door but nobody answered. He thought he’d better wait for us. Mail lady didn’t know anything, so he sent her on her way.”

“Okay.” I nodded, then I turned in a slow circle, scanning the crime scene.

We were in Sugar Hill, the richest enclave in Valhalla. Homes here don’t have addresses, they have names. This one, Champlin Hall, was an honest-to-God nineteenth-century mansion. A sprawling brick Beaux-Arts estate with ornate stonework, towering Gothic windows.

Built by one of the old lumber barons, the estate had been updated over the years. The carriage house became a six-car garage, servants’ quarters now housed exchange students from the Sudan, Serbia, or Ontario, depending on which sports they specialized in.

A half-dozen cars were parked in the circular drive, all of them dusted lightly by last night’s snowfall. No one had come or gone. The only fresh tire tracks were from the mail truck, my Jeep, and Van Duzen’s prowlie, still idling in the driveway, its exhaust rising white in the icy air.

A pristine, snowy Saturday morning. The kind they put on magazine covers.

Except our star attraction wasn’t breathing.

Joni Cohen, Valhalla P.D.’s intern tech, was kneeling beside the girl, collecting her nonexistent vitals.

Tall, gawky, and permanently perky, Joni’s a junior at Michigan State majoring in forensic anthropology. Her class schedule keeps her in constant transit between Valhalla and the capital down in Lansing. Somehow she pulls a 3.9 GPA and still does a first-rate job as a crime-scene tech.

Ordinarily, Joni’s totally absorbed by her work. Whistles softly to herself amidst the carnage of a five-car pileup. No tunes today, though. With Santa and his reindeer beaming over her shoulder, she couldn’t even fake “Jingle Bells.”

“So?” I prompted.

“First impression, it’s pretty much what it looks like,” Joni said, frowning down at the angel. “Hypothermia. There are no tracks but hers, no signs of violence. It looks like she took a shortcut across the lawn, headed for a car in the driveway. Maybe felt woozy, sat down to rest a minute? It was eighteen degrees last night and she wasn’t wearing a coat. She nodded out and... well. She froze to death.”

“Are you all right?” Zina asked.

“No,” Joni said flatly. “I know this girl. Not personally, but I’ve seen her around the Vale Junior College campus. A freshman, I think.”

“Whoa, take a break, Joni,” I said. “The state police Forensics Unit will be here in a few minutes—”

“No, I’m okay. Really,” she said, taking a ragged breath. “My uncle warned me if I did my internship in Vale County, sooner or later I’d be working on people I knew. At least this girl wasn’t mashed by a road grader. Let’s just — get on with it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Time frame?”

“Her body temp’s twenty-one degrees above ambient. I’d estimate she walked out here around eleven. Actual time of death was probably between one-thirty and three A.M. We may get tighter numbers after the autopsy. There’s no scent of alcohol. If she’d been drinking, it wasn’t much.”

“Wasn’t legal either,” Zina said. “I found her purse in the snow beside the driveway. Her driver’s license says she’s Julie Novak. Seventeen. Poletown address, north of the river. But her student ID is from Valhalla High, not the college.”

“Vale Junior College offers advanced courses for gifted kids,” Joni said.

“I’m not sure how bright this girl was, considering,” Zina said. “Do you think her dress is odd?”

“Odd?” I echoed, but she wasn’t asking me.

“Definitely off,” Joni agreed. “It’s more like a prom dress than something you’d wear to a house party. She looks like...”

“A snow angel,” I finished. “What are we now, the fashion police?”

“Nope, we’re Major Crimes,” Zina conceded. “And a lot more went wrong for this girl than her taste in clothes. It was seriously freakin’ cold last night. What was she doing out here without a coat?”

“Let’s ask,” I said.

The front porch was the size of a veranda, three stories tall, supported by Gone With the Wind columns. I hit the buzzer beside the massive front door. No response. Leaning closer, I could hear the faint sounds of tinny TV laughter, somebody yelling for somebody to get the goddamn door. No one came. I tried the knob. It wasn’t locked.

Stepping inside, I felt an instant jolt. Time travel. Frat party funk, the morning after. The aroma of stale beer, cold pizza, reefer, and sex hanging in the air.

Smelled like teen spirit.

I started down the hall toward the TV room.

“Where are you going?” Zee asked, hurrying after me.

“They’ll be in the game room.”

“Who will?”

“Everybody who’s ambulatory.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Once or twice.”

The end of the hall opened into a giant playroom. Pinball machines, foosball, and pool tables lined the walls. In the center, a long, curved leather couch faced a jumbo flat-screen TV.

None of the pool tables was in use, unless you counted a moose-sized lineman who’d wrapped himself in his Val High letterman’s jacket and conked out amid the cue sticks.

Several college-age kids were sprawled across the couch in various states of disarray, bleary-eyed and hungover. Four young guys, three girls, watching a soccer game on the big screen.

“Hey, guys,” I said, holding up my badge. “I’m Sergeant LaCrosse, Valhalla P.D. Who’s in charge here?”

They looked at each other, then back at me. A few shook their heads, no one answered. They weren’t belligerent, just baffled and groggy.

“Okaay,” I said, “easier question. Are the Champlins at home? Parents, I mean?”

“I’m Sissy Champlin,” one of the girls said, nestling deeper in the arms of her bull-necked boyfriend. She had a nose ring, spiky blond hair with blue highlights. “My folks are in... Toronto, for the weekend. We had a little bash last night. We’re the survivors.”

Her boyfriend was staring at me. Sloped shoulders, head the size of a watermelon. U of M sweatshirt. “I know you,” he said slowly. “You played hockey for Val High back in the day, right? Defense?”

“Have we met?”

“Nah,” he grinned, “I’ve seen you on game film. Mark shows that scrap in the playoffs when you and your cousin wiped out Traverse City’s front line. The refs tossed everybody out. Awesome, man.”

“What’s your name?”

“Laslo. Metyavich. I’m goalie for the Vale Vikings.”

With his dark hair buzzed down to fuzz, he looked more like a Cossack warrior in pajamas from The Gap. He was wide enough to be a goalie, though. “Were you here last night, Laslo?”

“I live here, man. We all do,” he added, gesturing at his bleary comrades on the couch. “Exchange students.”

“A girl left your party last night and — got into some trouble. Julie Novak? Does anybody know her? Or who she was with?”

Again, baffled looks.

“Wait a sec,” Sissy Champlin said, frowning. “Julie? A young chick? Wearing a white formal, like a freakin’ bridesmaid?”

“You know her?”

“I know she came to the wrong party,” Sissy sniffed. “That Indian kid brought her. What’s his name, hon? The geek who tutors the basketball players?”

“Derek, you mean?” Laslo offered.

“Last name?” Zina prompted.

“Some foreign name,” Laslo said, without irony. “Patel, I think. Derek Patel.”

“Any idea where we could find Mr. Patel?”

“He crapped out early.” Laslo shrugged. “Lot of guys did. I think some wiseass spiked the punch. Derek’s probably crashed in one of the guest rooms. HI show you.” He started to rise, wobbled, then quickly sat back down. “Whoa,” he said, looking a little green.

“Stay put,” I said. “I know the way.” Laslo slumped back on the couch. Sissy brushed his arm away. She was on her cell phone, frantically texting.

Zina and I headed into the guest wing, an eight-room addition added back in the fifties. Working opposite sides of the hall, we rapped once, then stuck our heads in, scaring the bejesus out of various young lovers. On my third knock, I found an Indian kid conked out atop one of the twin beds, fully dressed in a dark suit and tie. Tall, slender, skin the color of café au lait, thick curly blue-black hair. He sat up slowly, blinking, dazed and confused.

“Derek Patel?”

“I... yes?” He shook his head, then knuckled his eyes. Trying to remember his name. I totally sympathized. Been there, done that.

“Do you know a girl named Julie Novak?”

“Julie? Ah... sure. She was my date last night. Is she okay?”

“Why shouldn’t she be?”

“She ditched me and went home. Said she wasn’t dressed right. I was in no shape to drive, so I gave her my keys and... oh damn! Did she wreck my car? My God, my dad’s gonna kill me—”

“She didn’t wreck your car, Derek. Were you two drinking a little last night?”

“Just the virgin punch,” he said. “Julie’s underage.”

“If you were drinking nonalcoholic punch, how’d you get wrecked?” Zina asked.

“I did a few Jello shots with some of the guys. I’m not a big drinker.”

“What about Julie? Did she do a few shots too?”

“No! Only the punch, like I said. I promised her dad — oh God, her old man’s gonna be totally pissed. He hates me anyway. He’s prejudiced, I think. Is he here?”

“No. Put your shoes on, Derek. We have to go.”

“Are you arresting me?”

I didn’t answer, hoping he wouldn’t push it. He didn’t. Glumly slipped into his tassel loafers instead. I sent Zee off to scout the rest of the house while I walked Derek out.

Outside, the scene had gone from Christmas-card quiet to crime-scene chaotic. Valhalla P.D. prowl cars had sealed off both ends of the circular driveway, their emergency strobes flashing in the gentle snowfall, blocking in the half-dozen cars parked in front of the house. A third prowlie was sitting astride the rear drive that led back to the garage.

The snow angel was blocked from view by the state police CSI van, and the area around her had been taped off with yellow police lines. Techs in black nylon state police CSI jackets were crouched over the vic while Joni looked on. She still wasn’t whistling.

I marched Derek to the nearest prowl car. Joe Van Duzen, V.P.D.’s greenest patrolman, hurried to meet us, six foot, with a blond crew cut. In khaki slacks and his bulky brown V.P.D. jacket, he’s a recruiter’s dream.

“What’s up, Sarge?”

“This is Derek Patel, Duze. He’s a material witness. Park him in your prowlie, keep him on ice. He doesn’t leave and nobody talks to him, understand?”

“Copy that. What the hell’s going on in there, Dylan?”

“The morning after the night before, Duze. Don’t lose this kid, okay?”

“You got it.” Duze eased Derek into the prowlie’s backseat and closed the door.

Zina was waiting for me at the front door, her mood darker than before.

“We’ve got problems, Dylan,” she said. “C’mon.”

“What’s up?” I asked, falling into step.

“I found the famous virgin punchbowl,” she said. “In the living room. There are two of them, actually. One with fruit punch, one with margaritas.”

“Sounds right.”

“I also found these,” she said, holding out her open palm. Three small red capsules.

“Oh hell,” I said, feeling my stomach drop like a freight elevator. “Roofies?”

She nodded. “Date-rape drug. Found ’em on the floor near the punchbowls. Both concoctions are murky, but you can see the remains of some caps on the bottom. I think somebody laced both bowls with GHB—” She broke off as I tapped my collar mike.

“Barden? Is your prowlie blocking the driveway?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Take a walk, check the parked cars in the drive, make sure nobody’s asleep in one. I don’t want any more angels.”

“Angels?” he asked.

“Check the damn cars, Tommy.”

“Copy that.”

“You said you’ve been here before?” Zina asked, as I switched off.

“Right. To parties, back in high school. Mark Champlin was older than we were, but he’d been a three-sport all-star back in the day, and his folks were big athletic boosters. This place was jock central. Parties almost every weekend, free beer, groupies, and Mr. Champlin was good for a few bucks if a player was short. From the looks of this crew, things haven’t changed much.”

“Ever go upstairs?”

“No, it was off-limits. Why?”

“C’mon,” Zee said. “You’re gonna love this.”

She was right. The second-floor rooms were larger, plusher, complete with en suites, and walk-in closets. And at the end of the corridor, a single door stood wide open. Its latch was shattered. It had been kicked in.

I rested my hand on my weapon as I eased through, but there was no need. None at all.

“Wow,” I said, turning in a slow circle, taking in the room. “What have we here?”

The bedroom looked like the honeymoon suite at a Vegas bordello. Mirrored ceiling, angled mirrors on the walls, king-size beds in each corner. A larger, circular bed occupied the center of the room, all five of them close enough for easy hopping, covered in what looked like faux ermine.

A large-screen TV loomed over one corner. On a shelf beneath it, a Sony video recorder was flanked by a long row of DVDs. Half of them were clearly commercial porn, garishly labeled. The other half weren’t labeled at all, only numbered. I opened one. No labels inside either, just a handwritten number on the disc that matched the jacket.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think this room’s wired up,” Zee said, pointing out nearly invisible lenses mounted in the mirrored ceiling. “If they’ve been making home movies, I see my future on a beach in Bimini. Check out the gear on the nightstands.”

Against the wall, between the beds, small bedside tables held a selection of lubricants, massage oils, and sex toys. Some had obvious purposes, a few I could only guess at.

“Okay,” I said, still taking in the room. “We’ve got a party going on downstairs, somebody kicks open the door to this playroom, but does no other damage I can see.”

“The beds aren’t even mussed,” Zina agreed. “Maybe somebody was hoping to get lucky later?”

“It doesn’t matter why. The drugs flip this thing from a teenage tragedy to something a lot messier.” I pressed the eject button on the recorder, removed the DVD, and slid it into an evidence bag. “C’mon, let’s round up the usual sus—”

“Hey! You guys can’t be in here!” a kid said. “You know the rules. Second floor’s family only. No guests!” The boy in the doorway was maybe fifteen, wearing a green Michigan State sweater, but I doubt he was college bound.

His heavy-framed glasses housed twin hearing aids. His eyes were wide apart and guileless, with the slight Asian cast of Down syndrome. I guessed his emotional age at ten or twelve.

“It’s okay,” I said, showing him my shield. He glanced at it, but didn’t react. I doubt he knew what it was. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Joey Champlin. You can’t be up here. My dad doesn’t allow it.”

“Do you know how the door got broken, Joey?”

His face fell, and the look in his eyes was as good as a signed statement.

“You — still have to leave,” he repeated.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Whatever you say.” We already had what we needed, and in a house with an all-star dad and an army of jocks, I doubt many folks paid attention to this kid.

So we did as he asked. When I glanced back, he was gone.

The next hour flew by in a fury. I had patrolmen seal off the house and herd the kids into separate rooms. We took names, ages, and vital stats. No talking. No breathalyzers either. They were of age, in a private home. How they par-tied was their business.

All we wanted was info about the girl on the lawn.

What we got was doodley squat.

A few kids knew Derek Patel from school. Nobody seemed to know his angel date at all. Time to change tactics. Maybe Derek had sobered enough for a conversation.

Leaving Zina to finish questioning the final few, I headed out the front door. And went from hangover central into a grab-ass free-for-all.

Derek Patel was sprawled on his back in the driveway, his face a bloody mess. Van Duzen was wrestling with a big guy in a flannel shirt, who was clearly trying to break free to have another go at the kid on the ground.

I came on the run. Crashing into Van Duzen’s opponent from behind, I snaked an arm around his throat in a crude chokehold. I managed to haul him off Duze, but he was bull-strong and enraged. He kept kicking wildly at Derek on the ground. It was all I could do to hold him back.

I drove a quick body shot into his rib cage, but he was so wired he didn’t even feel it. I had no idea who he was or what the hell was up, and it didn’t matter. We had to shut him down.

Throwing my weight backward, I hauled him down on top of me, still locked in a stranglehold. I tried scissoring my legs around his knees to immobilize him, but it was like wrestling a bear. Couldn’t hold him.

Patrolman Tommy Barden came charging up with his nightstick drawn. He slammed it down hard across the big guy’s midsection, driving his wind out, locking him up for an instant. Barden was drawing back for another swing when Van Duzen shouldered him aside.

“Don’t hurt him, damn it! He’s the girl’s father!”

Duze and Barden piled on, each seizing one of the big guy’s arms, pinning him down with sheer bulk. The four of us lay entangled in a squirming rugby pileup in the snow, straining, struggling.

“Mr. Novak,” I panted, trying to keep my tone level. “Stop fighting us, please. I’m going to ease my hold to let you breathe, but I need you to calm down.”

He didn’t reply. For a moment, we lay frozen in a tableau, a violent counterpoint to the holiday display on the lawn.

I released my hold a little. Novak gasped in a quick breath. And then he broke, sagging back against me. Sobbing like a child.

I had Duze drive Carl Novak into Hauser Center, the “house” shared by Valhalla P.D., the state police, and the Vale County sheriff’s department. No handcuffs. Novak wasn’t under arrest, but he wasn’t going anyplace either.

I ran Derek Patel into the emergency room in my Jeep, pedal to the metal, with lights and sirens. Derek didn’t say a word. Probably couldn’t. His nose was flattened, clearly broken. I guessed his jaw was dislocated as well. I turned him over to the ER staff, and was pacing the crowded waiting room like an expectant dad when my partner rolled in. We stepped out to the corridor, away from the others.

“What the hell happened?” Zina demanded.

“Derek felt woozy, so Duze let him walk around to get some air. Carl Novak showed up, saw his daughter dead on the ground. When Derek tried to talk to him, Novak lost it. Laid him out, broke his nose, maybe his jaw. I warned the ER staff Derek might be high, so they’ll have to run a tox screen before they can work on him. He won’t be talking for a while. Your turn,” I said. “What did you get from the interviews?”

“Short version? Julie Novak left the party early,” Zina said. “Only a few kids noticed and they’re pretty vague on the time. Pretty vague on everything, actually. Half of them are still hammered, the other half are so hungover they wish they were dead.”

“One of them is,” I said. “Any luck with their smart phones?”

“I collected a half-dozen. Joni’s downloading them now. She thinks she can patch together a highlight reel of last night’s action—”

“What in the devil’s going on here!” An Indian doctor in a white lab coat bulled between us, grabbing my shoulder, jerking me around. “The staff says you people brought my son into emergency. Beaten! What have you done to him?”

“Yo! Calm down!” I said, backing him off, flashing my shield. “I’m Detective LaCrosse. Who are you?”

“I’m Dr. Patel—”

“Derek’s father?”

“Yes, I—”

“You need to cool down and listen up, Doctor,” Zee said, stepping between us. “Your son was assaulted. The man who attacked him is in custody. So is Derek. A girl he took to a party last night is dead, possibly of a drug overdose. Does Derek have access to GHB or similar drugs in your home, Doctor? Or your office?”

Patel stared at her, stunned. “Drugs?” he stammered. “Derek? Are you out of your mind?”

“GHB, specifically,” I pressed, keeping him off balance.

“Dear God.” Patel looked away, swallowing. “The, ah, the party Derek attended? It was held at the Champtin home?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I have a — conflict. The Champlins are my patients. By law, I can’t disclose any information—”

“Then you’d better hire your son a good lawyer, sir,” Zina said.

“Wait! Please,” Patel pleaded. “I can’t discuss my patients, but I can tell you that my son did not take GHB nor any other drug to that party. He would never do such a thing. And there would be... no need to.”

“Because... the pills were already there?” Zina pressed. “Are you saying someone in the family has a prescription for them?”

“I can’t comment on that, Detective,” Patel said. “But in good conscience, I cannot deny it either. Do you understand what I’m not telling you?”

“Got it,” Zina nodded.

“Without a release from the Champlins, that’s all I’m free to say. I’m — sorry about before. May I get back to my son?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “But if I were you, Doc, I’d get that release. We’ll be talking again.”

As Patel stalked off, my cell phone hummed. I turned away to take the message. Listened, and frowned. “Okay,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

“Is something wrong?” Zina asked.

“That was the district attorney. The Champlins’ lawyer wants a meet-up, at the Jury’s Inn.”

“Looking for a deal?” she said, surprised. “The case just opened.”

“He doesn’t want a deal,” I said. “He says he can close it for us.”

I left Zina at the hospital. She’d get Derek Patel’s statement as soon as he could talk.

I headed into Valhalla, a quaint, shoreline resort that’s exploded from a small town into a small city in the past dozen years. Internet money, mostly. Yuppies from Detroit, Flint, and Chicago fleeing the cities to get away from it all. And bringing a lot of it with them.

As a boy, raised in the back country, I couldn’t wait to get out of here. But after two tours as an MP in Afghanistan, then police work in Detroit, I’m happy to be back. Most of the time.

The Jury’s Inn is a convenient hangout for cops, lawyers, and media people, catty-cornered from the county courthouse, just up the block from police headquarters. You can order a burger or a beer, cut a plea deal, or nose out a headline without leaving your barstool.

On a snowy Saturday morning, the place was half empty, the jukebox murmuring Motown oldies while three deputies coming off the mid shift swapped fibs and a pair of lawyers huddled over cocktails, dealing their clients’ rights away like penny-ante poker. Our criminal-justice system at work.

At the rear corner of the dining room, a massive, octagonal table sits apart from the others, ensuring privacy for anyone who chooses it.

Today it was Todd Girard, prosecuting attorney for the five northern counties. Tall, blond, and male-model handsome, Todd is North Shore royalty. Lumber money, a Yale grad. A local legend.

Three years ahead of me in Valhalla High, Todd was a deadeye shooting guard in basketball. Our sports shared part of the same seasons, so we passed in the locker room and hit some of the same parties, including a few at the Champlin estate. We weren’t pals at the time, but I knew who he was. Everybody knew who Todd was.

The Girards own lumber mills, paper mills, and pieces of everything else. Their homes are estates in gated enclaves. A hundred-plus years ago, they rode the timber trains into Vale County and logged off the northern forest like fields of wheat.

My mother’s people, the Metis, mixed-blood descendents of the original French voyageurs and the First Nation, arrived around the same time, fleeing a failed rebellion against the Canadian government. In Canada, we’d been woodsmen, trappers, and traders. And, finally, rebels on the run.

In Michigan, we became loggers, axe-men, sawyers, top men. The LaCrosses and our kin did the grueling, dangerous work that made the lumber barons rich. After the timber played out, the Girards stayed on in their Main Street mansions, to manage banks and businesses and wield the local reins of power. Shrewdly, for the most part.

The Metis stayed on too, doing whatever work came to hand. Lumbermen, merchants, mechanics, and carpenters. A few outlaws.

And one cop.

Todd Girard is Old Money, but doesn’t flaunt it. His lambskin sport coat was comfortably distressed and his jeans were faded. A blue chambray shirt, open at the throat. No tie. Business casual for the north.

In school, he was a party animal, but his National Guard unit served a hitch in Afghanistan. He came back changed. We all did. He takes Vale County crime personally now, which keeps his conviction rate in the high nineties.

His number two, Assistant D.A. Harvey Bemis, was beside him. Suited up in his usual three-piece pinstripe and a U of M tie, Harvey is an eager beaver who looks a bit like one, protruding front teeth, anxious eyes. He’s an attack dog in court, a guy you want on your side. But I’ve never had a beer with him afterward. I think he wears his tie to bed.

The third man at the table was plump and sleek, casually dressed in a tweed jacket over a golf shirt. Jason Avery is the most expensive mouthpiece north of Detroit. His silvery mane was a bit disheveled and he hadn’t shaved. I guessed his Saturdays rarely started this early.

“Detective Dylan LaCrosse,” Avery said. “Thanks for coming.”

“Counselors.” I nodded, dropping into the chair facing them. “I’m here as a courtesy to the prosecutor, but I’m in the middle of a homicide case so I’m short on time. What’s this about?”

“The Champlin case,” Todd said. “I’ve known Mark Champlin for years. To avoid any appearance of impropriety, I’m stepping away from this one. Harvey Bemis will take it to trial if it comes to that.”

“Which I hope to avoid,” Avery interjected smoothly. “We need to resolve this mess before it becomes a disaster for the whole north shore.”

“What kind of a disaster?” I asked.

“Before I get to that, I’ll need a guarantee,” Avery said. “I’m willing to reveal information damaging to my clients, but this conversation will remain confidential.”

“We’re all gentlemen here, with the possible exception of Dylan,” Todd said dryly. “Okay, we’re officially off the record, Jason. What’s your big secret?”

“The Novak girl, for openers. I can close that case.”

I stiffened, so did Todd. He had our full attention now.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“It’s my understanding that the girl drank nonalcoholic punch, passed out on the lawn, and... succumbed to the cold. In fact, a tox screen will reveal the presence of a drug. GHB. You have Julie’s date, young Derek Patel, in custody, I believe. As a suspect?”

“He’s one possibility,” I admitted.

“The wrong one,” Avery said flatly. “The punch was spiked. GHB, commonly referred to as a ‘date-rape’ drug, was added to it.”

“By whom?” Todd asked.

“I’m coming to that,” Avery said. “For the record, the drug was legally prescribed, and properly secured, under lock and key—”

“It was locked in the playroom, wasn’t it?” I said, getting it.

Avery nodded. “Quite so. GHB is a legal sleeping pill, but on occasion, the drug is used by my clients to enhance... well. Recreational sex. All those involved are consenting adults. I can supply their names, if necessary.”

“Skip that for now,” I said. “What happened to the girl?”

“Her date, Derek Patel, brought her to the house party. The elder Champlins were away for the weekend, and such parties aren’t uncommon. Their daughter, Sara, was present, as well as a number of exchange students, all of whom are of age—”

“What exchange students?” Harvey Bemis asked.

“Jocks, Harvey,” I explained. “They attend Vale Junior College on sports scholarships.”

“They keep the school competitive and give Mark a new audience for his highlight reel every year,” Todd added. “Cut to the chase, Jason. Who doped the punch?”

“Joey Champlin,” Avery said simply.

The room went dead still. No one spoke for a moment.

“The... handicapped kid?” I said at last.

“I’m afraid so. Last evening, Joey was watching TV with the exchange students when his older sister ordered him to bed. The boy took offense. He has a history of difficulty with impulse control. He broke into the playroom, grabbed a fistful of pills, and dropped them in the punch as a prank.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Todd said, looking away.

“The boy had no idea what the pills were, or what the consequences might be,” Avery continued. “Joey confessed to his sister this morning. He’s very sorry, but...” He opened his hands expansively. “I doubt the boy’s capable of comprehending the damage he’s done.”

“How old is this boy?” Harvey asked.

“Sixteen,” Avery said. “His IQ is in the mid sixties, which places him in legal limbo between juvenile court and adult incapacity. I doubt he can be tried.”

“He can’t just walk either,” Todd said grimly. “What are you offering, Jason?”

“There’s a bit more to it,” Avery said. “Vale Junior College is being vetted at the state level to become a fully accredited four-year institution. I don’t have to tell you what a blessing this would be for the north shore. Kids who lack the resources to pursue a higher education downstate could live at home, attend school here.” He glanced pointedly at me.

“That’s good news,” I conceded. “How is it relevant?”

“Mark Champlin is heavily involved in those negotiations. A scandal at this time could derail the process, perhaps permanently.”

“The snow angel isn’t a scandal,” I said. “She’s a homicide victim.”

“Snow angel?” Bemis echoed, frowning.

“Julie Novak,” I said. “When we found her in the snow, that’s how she appeared.”

“By whatever name, her death was inadvertent,” Avery said. “A regrettable accident.”

“Or negligent homicide,” Bemis countered. “A mentally challenged kid made an awful mistake. Fine. He can plead to it, the judge will place him in a state institution for evaluation—”

“And any hope for his future will disappear,” Avery shot back.

“Joey Champlin’s record will clear at twenty-one,” I pointed out. “Julie Novak isn’t going to see twenty-one.”

“The point is moot,” Avery said. “The Champlins are unwilling to ruin the boy’s life for what was, in every sense, a juvenile mistake.”

“We might be open to a compromise,” Bemis said, glancing at Todd. “If one of the parents pleads to negligence—”

“To be held up to public ridicule and shame?” Avery asked.

“Somebody damn well should be ashamed!” I snapped.

“Dylan’s right, Counselor,” Todd said. “My office can’t just write this off. Especially since Mark and I are friends. You have to give me something, Jason.”

“I’ve been authorized to offer a hundred thousand dollars,” Avery said.

No one spoke for a moment.

“A hundred for what?” I asked.

“Joey’s a mentally challenged minor, with emotional problems,” Avery said quickly. “No good purpose will be served by trying him. The Champlins offer fair compensation instead. Joey will be placed in a secure facility, for appropriate treatment. The Champlins will issue a public statement of regret for the incident and, privately, will proffer a financial settlement to the girl’s family. One hundred thousand.”

Bemis glanced nervously at Todd. The prosecutor’s face showed nothing.

“If, on the other hand, formal charges are brought,” Avery continued, “my admission of Joey’s involvement and the offer of compensation will vanish. The Champlins will resist any attempt to incarcerate the boy, and they have formidable resources. We’re dealing with a tragedy, not a crime.”

“That’s for the courts to decide,” I said.

“You can pursue legal action, of course,” Avery nodded. “But what can you win? Joey will most likely be remanded to counseling and the Novak family will get nothing. Are you willing to risk that, Todd?”

“As a friend of the family, I can’t be a party to this,” Todd said. “It’s your call, Harvey.”

“I... sympathize with the Novak family, of course,” Bemis said, reading Todd’s eyes as he spoke. “But there’s not much point in convicting a mentally handicapped minor of a charge hell barely comprehend. And a court fight could be disastrous for the college.”

Bemis paused, waiting for his boss to comment. Todd didn’t.

“Let’s make it two hundred thousand,” Avery said. “That’s my final offer and it expires in sixty seconds.”

Bemis glanced at Todd, who gave a barely perceptible nod.

“All right,” Bemis nodded. “We can live with that.”

I wasn’t sure who “we” were, but he didn’t speak for me.

“Slow down,” I said. “Before we agree to a settlement, shouldn’t we consult the Novak family?”

“Sorry, but that’s out. They can’t know about Joey,” Avery said. “And an offer of compensation could be interpreted as an admission of guilt. Any approach must be made unofficially, without revealing any part of this discussion. Mr. Novak works as a logger. He might be more receptive if the offer came from one of his own.” He glanced pointedly at me.

“You’re kidding,” I said. “You want me to sell this to Novak? Without telling him anything?”

“He’s free to decline, of course,” Avery said. Taking a checkbook out of his vest pocket, he jotted in a few figures, then slid the check to me.

“This is drawn on my personal account, Detective. Two hundred thousand dollars. When Mr. Novak cashes it, he’ll be given a release to sign, acknowledging it as a final settlement.”

“This is a mistake,” I said. “At least let me tell Novak the truth about what happened.”

“Unfortunately, that’s not an option,” Avery said. “It would violate privilege and open the Champlin family to litigation. I can’t allow it.”

“Novak could be facing felony charges for assaulting the Patel boy,” Harvey Bemis added. “Remind him of that, Dylan. Given a choice between a paycheck and jail time, he’ll do the right thing.”

“Right for who?” I asked. “Novak’s a wood-smoke stud. He’s used to getting up off the deck to come back at you. He won’t take this.”

But I was wrong.

By the time I got back to Hauser Justice Center, Carl Novak had been cooling off in an interview room for over an hour.

Locked up alone in a ten-by-ten concrete box, he had time to absorb the death of his daughter. And to consider a future that could include months, even years, locked in rooms like this one.

He was seated at a small steel table, bolted to the floor in the center of the room. I took the chair facing him. It was just us. Off the record. No one observing from the other side of the two-way mirror, no recorders, no video-cams.

Novak was dressed for work, in a faded flannel shirt, bib overalls, and cork-soled boots. His shoulder-length shaggy hair was shot with gray, his face seamed and weathered by the wind. His knuckles were oversized, scarred from rough labor.

Red-eyed, coldly furious, he listened with folded arms as I offered my sympathies on the death of his daughter, then outlined Avery’s offer of compensation. His eyes widened at the figure. Cocking his head, he eyed me curiously.

“Two hundred grand?” he echoed. “For real? Jesus. Do you know how many cords I’d have to drop to make that much?”

I nodded. “My dad was a logger.”

“I know. I worked with your old man years ago, on Moose’s crew, cuttin’ pulpwood in the Comstock. He’s dead now, right? Car crash?”

“Killed by a drunk driver,” I said.

“Tough break. Anybody offer you two hundred thousand for him?”

I didn’t answer.

“Nah, of course not,” he said. “I liked Dolph, he was steady, a good worker. But your old man wasn’t worth no two hundred grand, dead or alive. But that’s what them people figure my Julie’s worth, eh?”

“Mr. Novak—”

“Save it, LaCrosse,” he said, waving me off. “This ain’t on you, I know that. And it sure ain’t on Julie. It’s on me, and I ain’t even got enough put aside to bury her decent. Been working two jobs just to keep her in school, and I got three more kids to think of. I—” He looked away, swallowing hard. “I’ll take the money. Got no choice.”

“You realize if you do, it’s over. You can’t sue later.”

“Never figured to. But off the record? Just two wood-smoke boys sittin’ in a room? Who done this, Dylan? Who killed my girl?”

“It’s an open case, Mr. Novak. I truly can’t comment. But I can tell you this much. Nobody meant Julie harm. It was an accident, or close to it. Hard as it might be, it’s best to accept that, and move on.”

“Is that what you’d do?”

“I don’t know what I’d do, Mr. Novak.”

“My Uncle Matt was killed in Vietnam,” he said absently. “My ma’s only brother. Know what his wife got? Ten thousand. And a flag to lay on his coffin. Ten grand for his life. I’m getting a lot more for Julie. Maybe I should be grateful.”

He waited for a comment. I didn’t have one.

“Hell, maybe you’re right,” he sighed. “There’s no help for a thing like this. No way to set it right. Tell your people I’ll take the deal.”

“They aren’t my people,” I said.

He met my eyes dead on. Cold as the big lakes in January.

“Sure they are,” he said.

I didn’t attend the snow angel’s funeral. I wasn’t sure how the Novaks would react and I didn’t want to intrude.

A week passed, and then another. Christmas was in the air, and as an early present, Vale Junior College won state approval to become a fully accredited, four-year institution.

Good for us.

I began to think Jason Avery had been right. We’d salvaged a positive outcome from a God-awful situation. Won the greatest good for the greatest number.

I thought that right up until the night Derek Patel disappeared.

Ten days after Julie Novak’s funeral, Derek Patel vanished from the campus of Vale Junior College. His folks weren’t overly concerned when he didn’t show for dinner; the boy often stayed after class on lab nights. But when he wasn’t home at ten, his mother called the school.

A security guard answered. The school was locked down, but Derek’s VW Bug was still parked in the lot. The guard found it unlocked, with the driver’s door slightly ajar. Odd, but not necessarily ominous.

Until he noticed Derek’s keys in the snow beside the car.

And the bloodstains on the headrest.

The crime occurred on school grounds so jurisdiction initially fell to the state police. But when my chief informed their post commander the missing kid was part of an open case, they kicked it to us.

Not that it made any difference.

We had nothing. CODIS, the combined DNA index system run by US & Canadian crime labs, identified the blood spattered in the car as belonging to Derek Patel. Violence had obviously been done, but in the swirling snow and the bustle of the busy parking lot, nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary.

A few students mentioned a rust-bucket white pickup truck parked near Derek’s V-dub around the time he vanished, but nobody got a good look at the driver, caught a plate, or could even swear to the make of the truck.

Maybe a Ford. Maybe a Chevy. White. Rusted out around the wheel wells. Big guy behind the wheel. A working stiff, not a student.

Why a working stiff?

“You know. Tractor cap, canvas vest, wild hair? A wood-smoke boy. Cedar savage. You know the type.”

I knew. Which narrowed my list of potential suspects down to the sixty thousand blue-collar folks who didn’t live in Sugar Hill or the condos along the lakeshore strip.

Rusty white pickups? That slimmed our suspect list down to a thousand or so. But I didn’t need a thousand names. I already knew the name.

I questioned Carl Novak, of course. Spoke to him on the porch of his doublewide in Poletown, a Slavic enclave in the smokestack shadows of the Deveraux hardboard plant. Novak didn’t invite me to step in out of the weather, a deliberate breach of etiquette in the north.

His alibi was rock solid, though. Novak could account for every minute of the day Derek Patel disappeared. Witnesses could vouch for his whereabouts the entire time.

Which proved beyond a doubt that he was involved. Nobody keeps total track of a day, unless they expect to answer questions about it. Innocents don’t need alibis.

Still, on the face of it, Novak was as pure as the new fallen snow. Probably felt ten feet tall and bulletproof. He was sure that he’d won, and he wanted me to know it.

And I did. But there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

Dr. Patel and his family were out of their minds with worry. The state police assigned an electronic intercept team to their home to deal with a possible ransom demand.

They tapped their landline home phone and their cells, ready to identify the relay tower as soon as the call came, then triangulate the signal and home in on it.

But there was no call. No ransom demand. No threats.

As the shopping days before Christmas dwindled down to the final few, there was no word at all.

Derek Patel had vanished as though he’d never been.

And when the dreaded phone call finally came, it didn’t ring at the Patels’ home. Or even at my office. It came to Bowie Cadarette, a conservation officer with the DNRE.

A farmer named Pete DeNoux capped a coyote that had been killing piglets. Pete hurried his shot, didn’t nail the rogue cleanly. Gut-shot him, he thought.

That would have been sufficient for some folks. The wound would likely prove fatal. The predator would crawl off into the brush and bleed out. Even if he survived, he’d be minus his taste for bacon.

But DeNoux was a wood-smoke boy, born in the north. Raised on some unwritten rules. If you shoot something, you damn well put it down. You never leave a wounded animal to suffer. Ever. Not even a thieving coyote.

Pete had no trouble following the blood spoor through the snow. Trailed the rogue male back to the farthest corner of his land, near his fence line.

He found what was left of the animal near its den at the base of a toppled pine. The poor bastard had made it home, only to have his own pack turn on him. Maddened by the blood scent, they ripped him to pieces.

The deep-woods wild has countless graces, but mercy isn’t one of them. It’s a human concept, and not all that common with us.

Satisfied, if a bit dismayed, Pete turned to leave, then hesitated. There were a lot of bloody bones around that den. Too many for a rogue coyote. The pack had been working over another carcass. DeNoux took a closer look, expecting to find the remains of his piglets. The bones weren’t from a shoat, though. Nor a deer, nor anything else he recognized.

At first.

Pete was no biologist, but he’d butchered enough game to know the basics of bone structure.

Even so, it took a good twenty minutes for his mind to accept what his eyes were seeing. Even then he harbored some doubts.

Until he found the remains of a tom tennis shoe...

DeNoux was so shaken, he wasn’t sure who to call. So he rang up the conservation department. And they called me.

Ordinarily, the district attorney would check out a crime scene personally, but Derek Patel’s skeletal remains were tied to a case Todd Girard had stepped away from. I guessed he’d be stepping away even farther now. Faster than a buck on the run.

A.D.A. Harvey Bemis arrived at the coyote den dressed for heavy weather. In his L.L. Bean down-filled parka, with matching tanker cap and furred ear-muffs, he looked ready for a trek across the polar ice cap. I was wearing my usual leather car coat and jeans. In the shelter of the tall pines, twenty degrees doesn’t seem that cold. Especially when you’re seething.

“Is there any question the remains are the Patel boy’s?” Harvey demanded.

“Not much,” I said. “We haven’t found the skull yet, but the shoe is the brand and size described by the family and the blood type’s a match.”

“Why haven’t you... found the skull?” Harvey asked, glancing around the savaged ground as though my officers and the state police CSI team had overlooked it somehow.

“This isn’t the original dump site,” I explained. “My partner and a conservation officer are backtracking it now. Most likely, the body was ditched out near the shore highway. The coyote pack found it there, tore it apart, then carried the pieces back to the den.”

“I thought coyotes were afraid of people.” Harvey said.

“That was before the Internet boom, when folks realized they could do business anyplace you can plug in a laptop. The population along the north is exploding, Harve. We’re crowding onto their habitat and coyotes don’t read Darwin. As they get used to seeing us around, they lose their fear. If they find us dead on their turf, we’re lunch. Like roadkill, chickens in a coop, or a fawn frozen in the snow.”

“Coyotes didn’t kill this boy,” Bemis said grimly. “We both know who did this.”

“Actually, we don’t. Whatever the time frame for the killing turns out to be, I guarantee you Carl Novak’s going to have an alibi the KGB couldn’t break. A family reunion, a christening? He was there, surrounded by fifty witnesses.”

“Then he hired it done!”

“You’re exactly right. He did. And we helped him.”

“Helped him? What—?”

“Novak was working two jobs just to keep his daughter Julie in school, Harvey. He didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Then she was killed and Avery wrote him a check. Tipped him like a bellhop. Two hundred thou for his daughter’s life. And now?” I gestured at the savage clearing. “Look what a backwoods boy can accomplish with a few bucks.”

“He’s not going to get away with this,” Bemis said furiously. “Alibi or no alibi, I want that sonofabitch arrested! I want him hauled into the House in cuffs—”

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean I’m not going to bust him, Harvey. Hell just lawyer up, and well get nothing. Novak’s not the one I want anyway.”

“Of course he is! What are you talking about?”

“His daughter died in the snow, and nobody was held accountable. And now we’ve got another dead kid, or what’s left of one. We gave Novak money instead of justice. So he used our cash to buy his own justice.”

“He bought murder!”

“Damn right. And that’s the guy I want. The sonofabitch who killed this boy for money. And Novak is going to give me his name. Because he’s angry and hurting, but most of all, because he feels justified! He thinks he bought retribution. When I tell him the truth, that he killed the wrong boy, he’ll unravel like a cheap suit.”

“But you can’t tell him! It was revealed in confidence!”

I almost decked him. It was a near thing. I snatched up a piece of Derek Patel’s shattered femur instead, and dragged the jagged end of it across Harvey’s new parka, smearing his coat with blood and slime.

“What—? What the hell are you doing?” Bemis stammered, staggering back, horrified.

“Take a deep breath, Counselor. That’s what justice smells like in the deep woods. Avery cut Novak a check for his daughter and expected him to take it. I warned you it would blow back, and now it has. I helped make this mess, so I’m going to fix it, but I’m done playing games. I’m going to tell Novak the flat-ass truth about what happened. And he’ll give me a name and I’ll bring that bastard in. It won’t be justice, but I’ll have to live with it. This,” I said, tossing the bone at his feet, “is the part you have to live with.”

As I turned away, Bemis grabbed my arm.

“Just a damn minute, LaCrosse—”

Pure cussedness on my part. As he jerked me around, I used the momentum to slap him across the face. Harder than I meant to. He went down like a sack of cement, staring up at me in stunned disbelief.

“I’ll... I’ll have your badge for that!”

“No, you won’t. I’d love to tell a judge about this mess, Harve, but your boss wouldn’t like it. And just so we’re clear? If you ever lay hands on me again, I’ll break your goddamn jaw. C’mon, get up.” I offered him my hand but he brushed it away angrily, and staggered to his feet.

A black carrion beetle the size of my thumb was working its way through the muck on his overcoat.

“You’ve got a bug,” I said, pointing at the beetle.

“What? Oh!” he gasped, horrified. He tried to brush it away, but the beetle clung stubbornly to the fabric, scarfing its lunch.

Harvey plucked it off and cast it aside, but his fingertips came up smeared with Derek Patel’s remains. It was too much. Stumbling into the brush, he dropped to his knees in the snow, retching up everything but his spleen.

I almost felt sorry for him.

But I couldn’t spare the time. I needed to get to Novak fast.

To tell him the truth. And destroy him with it.

I picked up my partner at the shore highway, where patrolmen were taping off the original dump site. Racing back into Valhalla with lights and sirens, we crossed the river to Poletown, to Carl Novak’s run-down double-wide.

I carried the femur with me. Technically, it was evidence, but the forest den wasn’t really a crime scene. The coyotes were only guilty of being coyotes.

When Carl Novak answered my knock, I simply handed him the savaged bone, explained what it was and where I’d found it. And what had actually happened the night his daughter died.

It took a moment for the horror of it to sink in. But when it did, Novak sagged against the doorjamb like he’d been slammed across the knees with a Louisville Slugger.

And then he gave us the hired killer’s name.

A familiar one.

Joni Cohen was right. When you do police work in your hometown, you’re bound to run into people you know.

“Holy crap,” Zina said, scanning the screen of her laptop. We were in my Jeep, idling in Novak’s driveway, waiting for a prowl car to show, to take him into custody.

“What have we got?” I asked, keeping an eye on Carl Novak, as he said his goodbyes to his wife and remaining kids on his porch. Dry-eyed now, but he looked decades older. In utter despair.

“Oskar Sorsa, Big Ox,” Zina read. “Six foot seven, two-eighty. Two-time loser, both busts tied to the meth trade, three years on the first fall, four more on his second. Ganged up in prison with the Aryan Militia. The LEO lists him as a violent offender. Presume to be armed, approach with caution. Paroled to Valhalla after his latest hitch. Elkhart Road? I don’t recognize that address.”

“It’s in the state forest. His grandfather had a cabin back there.”

“You know this guy?”

“I used to see him around logging jobs, back in the day. Never worked with him. He had a rep as a bad-ass then. Sounds like prison made him worse.”

“How do we handle him?”

“We don’t,” I said, swiveling in my seat to face her. “He’s a wood-smoke boy, a survivalist. If we go out there with an army, he’ll rabbit into the back country and well be chasing him for a year. If I talk to him one-on-one, maybe he’ll come in peacefully.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“If I’m alone, at least he won’t run.” I shrugged. “You wait here with Novak for the prowl car. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

“So you can go after Sorsa alone? You’re making a mistake, Dylan.”

“At least I’m consistent. I’ve botched this thing from the beginning, Zee. I’m going to close it out.”

She was right. Going alone is always a mistake. And I knew it.

But I was past caring. I needed this done.

Elkhart Road trails off into the bottomlands east of Valhalla. Low swampy ground, only fit for ducks and muskrats.

And poachers. When I rolled into the overgrown yard at Sorsa’s backwoods cabin, he was dressing out a deer.

The swamp buck was hanging from a large pine, spread-eagled and eviscerated, eyes glassy, its tongue lolling. Ox was peeling off its hide like a bloody blanket, rolling it down from a circular incision at the animal’s throat. He straightened slowly as I stepped out of the Jeep. Still holding the dripping skinning knife.

I’m six-one in my socks, but the Viking type facing me was nearly a foot taller, dressed in grimy coveralls, his hands and wrists streaked with gore from the gutted buck.

Forty or so, his sandy hair was a wild tangle around the edges of a greasy engineer’s cap. Hard gray eyes. His narrow face was permanently reddened by the wind and prison hooch, and marked with a striking set of scars. Three vertical gashes in one cheek, livid as war paint. Gouges from a chainsaw kick-back. Savage and ugly. And not uncommon in the back country.

He eyed my back trail uneasily a moment, expecting an army to come roaring in behind me. When he realized I’d come alone, he relaxed a bit. Probably figured he could handle me. Maybe he was right.

I checked out the yard as I stepped out of my Jeep. A rust-bucket white pickup was parked beside a cabin so warped and faded it looked like a natural part of the forest. Cords of firewood were stacked neatly along the outer walls. A trio of antlered deer skulls were nailed over the door. Trophy bucks. None smaller than ten points. A Model 94 Winchester lever-action was leaning against the doorframe.

“Who are ya?” Sorsa demanded. I could smell whiskey off him six feet away.

“Detective Dylan LaCrosse,” I said, showing him my shield. “Major Crimes.”

“I ain’t done nothin’ major.” He gave me a screwball grin, showing broken teeth, stained meth yellow. “Nothin’ minor, neither.”

“Rifle season closed December first, Ox. That buck’s illegal.”

“Ain’t no season on roadkill. Found this bastard dead in a ditch. Kilt by a truck.”

“Then the truck must have shot it in the eye. I can see the bullet hole from here.”

Sorsa frowned at the deer, then jammed a thumb into the bloody eye socket, obliterating the wound by gouging out the flesh.

“C’mon, LaCrosse, the DNR don’t care if a man takes meat off-season to feed himself. You gonna rat me out?”

“I don’t give a rip about the deer, Ox. I’m here about a boy. Derek Patel.”

He didn’t say anything. But his eye strayed to the Winchester on the porch. Figuring his odds. The gun was only a few yards away. Loaded? Damn straight. He’d only used one round to kill the buck and probably reloaded that one immediately. Out here, weapons stay loaded. Plus, he was still holding the skinning knife. I could practically see the wheels turning in the big guy’s meth-fried mind as he mulled over the geometry of murder. It was painful to watch.

I could have pulled on him then, taking control of the situation. But I didn’t. I waited instead.

“I got nothin’ to say about no boy,” he said at last.

“I don’t need a confession, Ox. Carl Novak already gave you up, chapter and verse. But you can still do yourself some good. Did you do the killing alone? Or did you have help?”

He thought about saying nothing. Or go screw yourself. Same answer, really. But we were past that now. And we both knew it. He edged sideways a half-step. Casually, like he was relaxing. But it moved him a foot closer to the rifle on the porch.

“I didn’t need no help,” he spat in contempt. “The kid was mud people.”

“Mud people?”

“Brown people, or black. One of them low races. Not like us.”

Low races? This snaggle-toothed Neanderthal, butchering a buck like a freaking cave man, actually thought he was superior — I took a breath.

“Okay, you took him alone. How’d you manage it?”

“Easy. I pulled up next to his car, asked him for directions. Clocked him with a sap. Not hard really, but he was already bandaged up. Sap put him down, all the way. Never moved once on the run out to the woods.” Ox edged sideways, another step nearer to the gun. Maybe two yards to go. A single stride for a guy his size. I let him do it, more interested in getting the absolute truth now. Keeping him talking.

“Where did you dump the body?”

“On state land, near the highway. Lot of coyotes around there. I zipped him open. Scavengers will shy away from the scent of people, but if you slit the belly open, spill the guts out on the ground? They don’t smell like people no more. Just guts. Coyotes freak out, fight each other to rip it up. They’ll eat anything if you open it up first. Even mud people.”

He said this last inching over the final half-step, watching my eyes. When I didn’t react, he nodded. He knew then that I wasn’t going to.

“Last question,” I said. “This one’s important, Ox. When you zipped that kid open and left him for the coyotes? Was he dead? Or just unconscious?”

Sorsa grinned at that, shaking his head. Almost ready now. Not caring that I knew it.

“To be honest, LaCrosse? I can’t really say for sure. What’s the difference?”

“It matters. To me.”

“Nah, it don’t,” he said, shaking his shoulders, loosening up. “All that matters now is, I ain’t goin’ back to prison.”

“No,” I agreed. “Probably not.” But I kept my hands at my sides. Made no move for my weapon.

Making it his call. Either way.

The wind was picking up, swirling snow devils across the yard, twisting the gutted buck slowly at the end of its rope, dark blood oozing down from its body cavity, pooling beneath it. I felt a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind. Only the emptiness in Sorsa’s eyes—

He glanced toward his truck — but it was a feint. Flipping the bloody knife at my head with more force than I thought possible, he lunged for the rifle.

Instinctively, I ducked away from the flashing blade. Too late! It banged off my forehead, slashing it open, stunning me. Dropping to one knee, I clawed for my weapon, pulling it just as Ox rolled to the rifle on the porch.

He threw the Winchester to his shoulder just as my gun came up, both of us cutting loose in the same split second, our shots nearly simultaneous. I couldn’t tell who fired first.

His rifle slug burned past my cheek, so close I felt the heat of the muzzle blast. My first round flew high and wide, blowing a chunk out of the doorframe.

He was jacking in a fresh round when my second shot nailed him dead center. So did the next three.

Pete DeNoux wasn’t the only one raised on the rules. When you shoot something, you damn well put it down.

I spent three days on suspension, while the state police conducted an independent investigation, then I had to face a shooting board, in a conference room at Hauser Center. Three command officers from Lansing, and me. I was entitled to have an attorney present. Didn’t ask for one. Maybe I should have.

Some officers serve their entire careers without drawing a weapon. I’m guessing the bureau chief who chaired the review was one of them.

He kept rephrasing the same pointed questions. Why had I sought out a violent felon, a suspected murderer, alone? Why had I attempted an arrest without calling for backup?

Had I ever met the decedent? Had any previous dealings with him? Did I bear him a grudge?

“I knew who Ox was,” I admitted. “In high school, I spent my summers working in the woods, swinging a chainsaw. You hear about guys who are okay, guys to avoid. I thought Sorsa would be more likely to come in peacefully with someone he could relate to.”

“But you couldn’t convince him?” the captain pressed. “How hard did you try?”

“Not very,” I admitted, tired of the dance. “When I suggested it, he threw a skinning knife at my head and went for his rifle.”

He waited for me to expand on that. I didn’t.

“I’d say you misjudged the situation pretty badly.”

I didn’t rise to that either. He was certain I’d gone after Ox alone for reasons of my own.

He was right.

Sorsa had taken blood money to murder a boy he didn’t know. There’s no redemption for a crime like that, no way back. But there was no grudge involved. If he’d surrendered peacefully, I would have brought him in alive.

He didn’t.

So I kept my answers brief, my tone neutral. And in the end, the board decided the case on the facts. Sorsa was an enforcer for the Aryan Militia, a convicted felon in illegal possession of a firearm, and the sole suspect in a homicide. He died with a loaded rifle in his hands and I had a gash in my forehead that took eight stitches to close. The board conferred for twenty minutes. Then ruled the shooting as seif-defense.

Justified.

I’d won, I suppose. It didn’t feel like it.

After the hearing, I headed back to my office at the House. I needed time alone, to think things through. But Todd Girard was there, waiting for me. It was just as well. It saved me the trouble of tracking him down.

He was in the visitor’s chair beside my desk. I dropped into my swivel chair, facing him. Neither of us offered to shake hands.

“You roughed up Harvey Bemis,” Todd said.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “It should have been you.”

“Me?”

“You served in the sandbox, right?”

“Helmand, eight months,” he said. “What’s that got to do with anything?” “Ever sit in on a tribal council?”

“No. Look, Dylan—”

“Bear with me. Tribal councils are pretty straightforward. No judges, no lawyers. Just clan chiefs and their bodyguards, an imam for a referee. Everybody comes strapped, nobody pretends to be neutral. They all push for their own interests. Like we did at the Jury’s Inn.”

“What’s your point?”

“Avery was protecting the Champlins,” continued. “The Champlins were protecting their boy, all of us were looking out for the college. Everybody had a voice. Except the one who mattered most. The snow angel. Julie Novak. That was your job, Todd. To speak for the victim. Instead, you gallantly stepped aside, to avoid a conflict of interest. And you handed the case off to Bemis. Only he didn’t speak for the victim. Didn’t even pretend to. He thinks his job is keeping you happy. And he did that, by protecting your friends.”

“I never asked him to.”

“You didn’t have to ask! You knew how he’d play it. So did the rest of us. But we let it pass. Because it gave us the outcome we wanted. A closed case, a four-year school, serious cash for the Novaks. A good outcome, till it went off the rails. I’m not laying the blame on you, Todd, we all own a piece of it. All we can do now is try to set it right.”

“What do you want, Dylan?”

“Two things,” I said flatly. “First, Bemis is out. Kick him to the curb. He doesn’t have the soul for this job.”

I expected an argument. Didn’t get one. He just nodded. “And the other?”

“Give Novak a break, Todd. Some kind of a deal.”

“Not a chance,” Girard said, shaking his head. “The man paid for a murder, Dylan. He caused the death of an innocent boy.”

“He didn’t know he was innocent! If we’d given him the truth instead of buying him off—”

“Maybe he would’ve murdered the Champlin boy instead!” Girard snapped. “We’ll never know, will we? We only know what he did.”

“We put him in a lousy situation and he made a lousy choice. I’m not saying he walks, but we owe him something. What can you do?”

“I... hell.” Girard looked away, chewing the corner of his lip. “If he serves the minimum with no more trouble, I’ll consider a humanitarian release. That’s the best I can offer.”

“Then I guess it’ll have to do.”

“Not quite,” he said, meeting my eyes dead on. “I need a straight answer from you. About Sorsa.”

“What about him?”

“If you’d brought him in breathing, I could have used his testimony against Novak to put them both away for life. You told the board you went alone, hoping he’d surrender. Was that true?”

I didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so,” he said, rising, looking down at me. In every sense. He waited a moment for me to say something in my defense. When I didn’t, he turned and stalked out.

He left angry, thinking the worst. Thinking he knows an ugly truth about me.

But he’s wrong.

I chewed over his question a good long while after he left.

I’ve known Todd since high school. I didn’t want to lie to him.

But I couldn’t tell him the truth.

Because I don’t know what it is.

Some night, many years from now, maybe I’ll wake in the dark and know to a certainty what really happened in that clearing. I’ll know that I gave Ox Sorsa a choice because I hoped he’d surrender. Or because I hoped he wouldn’t.

For now, I’ll have to live with not knowing.

So will Todd.

I worked at my desk the rest of the afternoon, catching up on paperwork. When I headed out into the fading twilight, a gentle snow was falling. Downy flakes, swirling on the wind. But as I walked to my car, I slowed, then stopped.

Listening.

Up the block, in Memorial Park, a children’s choir was on the bandstand singing Christmas carols, their voices carrying clear and pure in the gathering dusk.

Without thinking, I fell in step with a throng of shoppers and families and passersby, all of us drawn by the music, gathering around that small stage. Letting the old songs carry us back to a time when the world was a simpler place. Or we were too young to know the difference.

Peace on earth, good will to men.

It’s tough to argue with that.

But as I listened to the voices ringing in the icy air, my gaze strayed to the far corner of the park, where a winged figure stands watch over a memorial, a stone tablet that bears the names of the Great Fallen. Local boys who died in the first War to End All Wars. And in all the wars since.

It’s a long list.

The mourning angel that guards it was aglow, decorated for the holidays with glittering lights, her hands spread wide in benediction, a marble teardrop frozen on her cheek.

And my throat seized up. And I couldn’t breathe.

I wonder if I will ever see an angel again without remembering that shining schoolgirl sleeping in the snow.

I hope not.

Home for the Holidays

by G. M. Malliet

G. M. Malliet’s debut novel, Death of a Cozy Writer, set in Cambridgeshire, England, won the 2008 Agatha Award for Best First Novel, was nominated for Anthony and Macavity awards, and made Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2008 list. In 2011 she launched a new series set in an English country village, and garnered another Agatha nomination. The second book in that series, A Fatal Winter (2012), received starred reviews from PW and Library Journal. The author is currently settled in the D.C. area, but she has lived in many different countries, and has a special attachment to the U.K.

* * *

I always liked Dan. To be sure, he drank, in time-honored, hard-bitten cop fashion, and after he retired he drank a lot more. A D.C. cop has more to forget than most people.

But Dan was a good cop, no matter what anyone said.

He’s been gone ten years now. And it had been at least ten years before that since I’d seen him. I’m not counting that waxy facsimile in the pine box at his funeral.

It’s always at this time of year I think of him. And I realized why when I was called out to the Casey house.

The name’s Graham, by the way. Carter Graham. Police detective, newly retired and living the dream aboard the Star-Crossed, out of Avalon. Pleased to meet you.

My sergeant and I were called out to the Casey place last December thirtieth. Mr. Casey had called to say he and his family had returned from ten days in Disney World to find their house broken into. Someone had disarmed the burglar alarm, jimmied the window, and taken whatever looked valuable, leaving the window open in case we just couldn’t figure out how they’d gained entry. It turned out later it was the wife who’d disarmed the system before leaving the place for her boyfriend to ransack, but that’s another story having to do with community property. We see a lot of that stuff. The fancy mega-house built in Ye Olde Plantation style with its big, designer Christmas tree in the foyer — all purple ribbons and ornaments and a matching angel on top — is what put me in mind of Dan.

Only Dan’s story had a murder in it.

Dan had taken the call to another isolated address in Northwest D.C., near Rock Creek Park. It wasn’t that far from where they found poor Chandra Levy years later, but that also is a different story. The station had received a call around five P.M., soon after Christmas. The caller said he’d just killed an intruder. So Dan and his partner and the usual backup drive over to the swank address — hello, Tara! — to find the caller at the door. In the foyer is a body under another fancy purple Christmas tree. But the body was dressed more for Halloween in full burglar regalia — ski mask, swag bag, gloves, and all. Apparently the homeowner had surprised the burglar, there’d been a struggle, and the guy had stabbed the burglar in the neck with the first weapon that came to hand, which happened to be a letter opener. There was no question he’d done it: He said he’d done it. That he’d come home early from vacation and disturbed the intruder. There was the bag full of silver and stuff, its contents spilling out, right next to the homeowner’s suitcases, which he’d dropped at the front door once he’d spotted the in-progress.

There was the intruder, a known case with a history of larceny and petty theft. I forget his name now. The cops were mostly just glad someone had put the guy out of business: He’d had a good long run and wasn’t above doing a little bodily harm if the occasion called for it.

You’re looking at me with that “So?” look in your eyes. Don’t worry, I’m getting there.

Another drink? Don’t mind if I do.

So Dan and his people go through the routine. Nothing much in the house was disturbed apart from the few goods in the bag. The blood guys studied the spatter patterns; somebody took photos with one of the enormous cameras they used back then. Other guys examined the locks and saw that yes, indeed, they’d been jimmied. They took a statement and asked Mr. Ketchum — Bill Ketchum was the homeowner’s name — to stay elsewhere for a few days while they completed the investigation, although what was there to investigate? Open and shut.

Ketchum, in his triumph over evil, was a model of cooperation. He told Dan and Co. he’d be at the Mayflower downtown if they needed him. A few days later, the police called the Mayflower to let Ketchum know the house was clear to move back in. They told him they’d update him as needed at the number he provided. Ketchum might have to come to the station to go through a few more formalities, and sign his statement, but they didn’t expect any complications. The chances of his being charged or having to go to court were zero for killing an intruder inside his front door. Ketchum thanked them very kindly and said he’d probably move back in a few more days. The memories were so disturbing he was thinking of putting the house on the market. They were so sorry, they told him, he’d been through such an ordeal. That’s okay, he told them: It was all the fault of those damn Democrats on the city council. No one knew or wanted to know what he meant by that.

But — and I can see you’re ahead of me here — he never did: He never did move back in or put the house up for sale. He did go back to the house for an hour or two, and put things back where they belonged, and he cleared up the minor forensic mess in the foyer with its enormous beribboned Christmas tree. There was a purple glass ornament that didn’t make it, with little pieces of it to be found here and there. The hall was bare marble, no carpet, so cleaning up wasn’t that difficult.

A few days later, the real Bill Ketchum came home from his trip, none the wiser.

You look confused, my friend.

Come to find out, the real story was this:

Two burglars, working the area as a team, were starting to disagree on the finer points of the art of breaking and entering, with a particular angry emphasis on the division of property. And Burglar #1 — we’ll call him Al — Al decided it was time to retire, after one last job.

As was their M.O., the pair targeted a place with an owner who lived alone but who happened to be on vacation. This particular house was chosen because the guy, as mentioned in captions in the society column, was a regular snowbird, spending the winters in Florida. Al did the choosing.

And while Al was at it, he chose a homeowner with a passing resemblance to himself, and arranged for a fake photo ID. The resemblance wasn’t strictly necessary, but Al thought it was a nice touch, just in case. Then he arranged to meet Burglar #2, his old pal, at Ketchum’s. Al did the breaking in — that was his specialty: locks and alarms, and the gift of gab. He didn’t really need his pal except as a lookout, and to help with the heavy lifting. He waited and when his partner arrived and set to work gathering the silver, he killed him. Al had already taken care to hide the few photos of the real Bill Ketchum that had been sitting around the living room.

That was it. The only props Al needed, apart from the letter opener, were the suitcases, which he’d packed in advance. The letter opener — the murder weapon — is probably still sitting in an evidence box somewhere at the station.

Next, Al called the station, posing as the distraught but outraged home-owner. He put away the gloves he’d been wearing; he’d been careful to touch nothing. Why would police doubt he was who he said he was? It was not standard procedure then or now to ask for photo ID, but Al was prepared, just in case. Burglar #2 had ID on him, too, but the M.E. fingerprinted him at the morgue to be sure.

It also wasn’t standard procedure, but elimination prints should have been taken. Dan should have thought of that, but there is always that chaos at a crime scene.

You wonder how they nailed Al? Well, they never did, not for murder. They caught him in the act during another burglary two years later — it seems he found retirement wasn’t to his liking after all. It was only chance Dan recognized him when they brought him in to the station.

Al told Dan the whole story. I suspect Al was counting on Dan’s discretion, and maybe his help with a reduced sentence. And somehow Dan never did get around to telling anyone higher up.

He’d discuss it with me when he was in his cups, but he knew I’d never tell. It makes cops look bad, this kind of thing. Like we accidentally helped a guy get away with murder.

I mean, we’re human, you know? We make mistakes, rookies especially. You don’t fingerprint the guy who’s been robbed, for Chrissake.

The real homeowner never knew the difference. Besides, one less crook in the world and the case was closed. The tax-paying public was once again safe, and damn the city council.

And that’s all that matters.

I’m telling you, but maybe I’m just making it up.

Maybe Dan was making it up. Dan did drink a bit.

This round’s on me. No, I insist.

The Purloined Pigs

by Dennis McFadden

Dennis McFadden’s stories have appeared in dozens of publications, including the literary journals Crazyhorse, PRISM International, and The South Carolina Review. His crime fiction has twice been selected for the Best American Mystery stories series. In 2010, Colgate University Press brought out a collection of his stories entitled Hart’s Grove. He’s produced this impressive body of work while also serving full time as a project manager for the New York State Department of Health.

* * *

When he was three or four his mam told him there was no such a thing as Santy Claus, nor Father Christmas, nor any of them. She told him Santy Claus was invented in the dark ages by Oliver Cromwell solely for the purpose of keeping the Paddies simple and deluded. His da disagreed, saying there was no way a Brit could ever be so clever, but his mam was nothing if not firm in her convictions, and the one time his da brought home a Christmas tree — a spindly wee orphan of a tree at that — didn’t his mam come in and pitch the thing straight through the window, tinsel, ribbons, and all. A brilliant enough event in its own right, made all the more so by the fact that they were living at the time in the third-floor tenement on Rutland Place, the tree narrowly missing old man McGonagall as it crashed to the cracked and dirty pavement down below. Up until now, that had been Lafferty’s most memorable Christmas.

Up until now. The snow falling on Blue Bucket Lane, a rare and fabulous thing, was only the beginning. Miraculous mightn’t have been overstating the case, not so much for being the first snow to fall on the village of Kilduff in any number of years, and not so much for happening on the very eve of Christmas, but for the nature of the transformation, Blue Bucket Lane going from a squalid stretch of brown mud, dead grass, and bland cottages into a wonderland of glitter and grace. Lafferty stood for a time in the doorway, watching the plump flakes float down dark and white through the lamplight, gathering on the berm of the lane and the dirty yards, clinging to the clusters of branches and limbs.

Miraculous too, the snowfall, for its timing. Had it come two nights earlier, it would have found your man shivering sleepless and homeless under his sodden old newspapers at the base of the Kilduff Cross on the green across from his turf accountant’s shop. Having finally been tossed out of her house for all and good by his wife, Peggy, the locks on the doors changed, the Gardai forewarned and watching. The last straw — his extended visit to tend to the needs of the widow Reagan — having finally broken the back of the camel in question. So it was easy for Lafferty to look out now at the new snow, spotless as the soul of a baby, and imagine a fresh beginning. He was no spring chicken anymore, Lafferty wasn’t, turning the corner at forty before you knew it. Time to settle down, grow up. Time to try to make a go of it with Peggy. Hadn’t they once upon a time been crazy mad with the lust and the love for one another, two decades ago to be sure, but wasn’t that a feeling that might be recaptured, and wasn’t the snow falling so white and fresh a sign that slates could be wiped clean, that leafs could be turned, that lives could start over again.

Peggy came up to him in the doorway. “Move your arse, Terrance, or I’ll be after tossing it right back out in the snow again. My guests’ll be here any minute.”

“Yes, my love,” said Lafferty.

“ ‘Love’ my arse,” said she.

“Oh, I do,” said he, “I do,” and Peggy had to smile, at last. Having long ago grown immune to his charms and inveiglements, it had been awhile since she’d smiled at his clever bon mot, and he took the smile to be confirmation that the sign of the snowfall was true, that clean slates and turning leafs and fresh beginnings were all possible in God’s sweet world.

“The toilet needs scrubbing,” said Peggy, the smile run away from her face.

She was giving her Christmas party. She’d invited her friends and coworkers from St. Christopher’s, where she was a nurse. In addition to a pack of promises concerning the nature of his future behavior, which included gainful employment, it was the party, in fact, that helped him worm his way back. Not just the labor of the preparation, mind you, for appearances beyond polish and shine were important, the appearance in particular of a happy couple graciously, charmingly (this is where Terrance came in) entertaining their guests on a Christmas Eve. She cooked, he cleaned. And cleaned and washed and dusted and swept and mopped and scrubbed and polished, one chore after another, eager and uncomplaining, at least within her earshot. His mam hadn’t raised her son for physical labor, much less physical labor befitting a scullery maid, but a night or two in the cold and barren roads of Kilduff could fine-tune a man’s attitude, and nor had his mam raised a fool. Lafferty looked at the condition as temporary. He figured after the new leaf was turned, after the relationship was reestablished, then the labor would naturally sort itself out by appropriate role and gender, and the old order would eventually reemerge. All he had to do was keep his nose clean and his tool sharp. And though he doubted the old order would go so far as a move back to Dublin, who knew? He’d never wanted to leave the city in the first place, to move to a godforsaken village the likes of Kilduff, out in the heart of County Nowhere. When she’d told him she wanted to leave, to quit the city, to start anew in a small cottage in a little village, where perhaps she and Terrance could start over as well, without all the gambling and drinking and unsavory sorts to lead him astray, and maybe even have the child she’d been hoping to have, he’d told her by God he was staying. He was a Dublin boy through and through, born and bred. But once again the want of a roof over his head put the spoil to his best-laid plans, forcing a reconciliation, a reluctant move to the country. That particular reconciliation, like all those that followed, had faltered, and so Lafferty hoped — sincerely this time, perhaps — that this one might somehow fare better.

It was in the very spirit of that reconciliation, in fact, that Lafferty went to the bother of procuring a gift, a Christmas gift, for the first time he could remember, maybe for the first time ever. In the thrift shop by Connor’s News Agent, he found a porcelain pigs figurine, forking over the last two bob to his name, two bob he’d worked hard to attain, a coin or two at a time here and there, beneath the cushions of Peggy’s sofa, in a little ceramic box in the corner of her dresser, scattered in the junk drawer of her kitchen cabinet. For didn’t herself collect pigs. If there was any irony in her penchant, Lafferty never looked for it. She had porcelain, pewter, stuffed, and plush, pigs of all sizes, shapes, and colors, on this shelf or that, this room or that, kitchen, bedroom, and parlor. The figurine he’d spotted amidst the junk in the thrift shop stood out head and shoulders above the other pigs, and he suspected it might be what Peggy might call adorable: six inches high, white in color with only a blush of pink, a mama pig and baby pig standing up on their hind legs, clutching one another as if in fear, looking up with four large and wondering eyes at the world at large. It came in a box that Lafferty wrapped in pretty paper he found in Peggy’s desk, and stashed the thing on the top shelf of the closet in the bedroom behind a shoebox and well out of sight to surprise her with come Christmas morning. He couldn’t wait to see the look on her face.

Guests began arriving, smiles as white as the snow they were shaking from their shoulders. Time and again, Lafferty showed his own teeth, as well as the jolly dimple in the middle of his own chin. They were nurses mostly, of either or indeterminate gender, with significant others and spouses, a receptionist or two, and technician as well. Some he remembered from this gathering or that, some he didn’t, though he’d have been hard-pressed to put a name even to those he did. He saw to it that all were hailed and well met, that a drink was in every hand, including his own, to be sure, nibbles within easy reach, taking their coats to brush off the snow and pile on the bed in the bedroom. The tree was lit up and sparkling, the music loud and choirful, the gas flame in the stove sputtering blue and red and yellow, a fine approximation of a Yule log. The chatter was loud as well, bouts of laughter frequent and earnest. An hour in, it was apparent the thing was going right as the mail, and when Lafferty looked at his wife talking up a big fellow with gold in his teeth and his wife who was skinny and pale, Peggy all smiles and ease, he figured the roof over his head was secure, at least for the immediate future.

A woman named Cassidy came, a woman known by all as Cassie. When Peggy introduced him he said pleased, and Cassie said she’d met him before, did he not remember, and Lafferty had to admit he did not. At the Commodore Pub, said she, the day they gathered to bring in the summer. If drink was taken, Lafferty explained, that might account for his failing to remember a face so pretty as hers, at which point Peggy interjected that with Terrance there was always drink taken, which might account for his failing to remember where he lived a great deal of the time. She’d a pretty face indeed, Cassie did, nose regal and thin, brown eyes hiding a quiet panic, her eyebrows, sandy and fine like her hair, set straight in a line beneath a forehead with an eternal crease of incomprehension. She appeared entirely unable to quite put a name to whatever it was she was watching. When Peggy told him from the corner of her mouth a bit later that Cassie, plump, lonely, and neglected, had “problems,” that her husband had left her, and Peggy had invited her mostly from pity, Lafferty took in the desperate and thirsty look of the woman and saw her for what she was: a mortal temptress God had placed on the path to his reconciliation. The flesh of her body, near as Lafferty could judge beneath her loose-fitting dress and sweater, seemed at the crossroads of aging, still firm enough to be enticing, ample and relaxed enough to be inviting.

He caught himself holding his breath. He neither meant nor intended to be judging the flesh of another woman. He meant to spurn temptation. He looked at his wife. Pretty, prettier, dark hair in thick waves and ringlets, fine fistfuls of flesh evident beneath the close-fitting clothes. She was the woman for him. Amen and case closed.

For a time Lafferty chatted up a fellow with the ugliest wife he could find. His name was Conboy, beanpole tall and lanky with a small face and square jaw, hair balding back across the crown of his head. He paused before every laugh to make sure, Lafferty guessed, that he got it. His wife, Angelica, was a frightful scramble of straight hair, chicklet teeth, and a wee nose buried by the heft of her glasses, but Lafferty loved her wit. When the topic turned to the lamentable earthquake in Turkey and the countless hundreds dead, didn’t she say, “Ah, sure, they probably all had it coming,” and Lafferty hoped he could grow up someday to appreciate a woman such as that. Passing through the parlor, he exchanged cowboy quick-draws with a big heavy fellow by the name of Quinn with tight curly hair and a roadmap of red veins and splotches on his cheeks, the big fellow clutching his chest like it was shot full of hot lead, and in the kitchen he fell in with Browne, a grave and studious man, the prominent gray hair of his eyebrows threatening to conquer his face altogether. Browne was espousing to his wife, Ginger, and a cluster of others his conviction that there was no such thing as the present, that the present didn’t exist, that the word itself should be stricken from the dictionaries of the world. Someone said what about now? Right now when they’re all standing about, weren’t they in the present, and Browne said certainly not, it’s in the past by the time the word leaves your lips. Someone said now quicker but Browne insisted it still existed only in memory, nowhere else, and for a time they stood about shouting now quicker and quicker, trying in vain to snatch the present and keep it from becoming the past. Lafferty saw Cassie standing at the fringe, feigning interest, trying to hide the confusion on her brow. She was standing directly beneath the overhead light of the kitchen, which lent her fine, sandy hair a metallic and reflective quality that Lafferty could have taken for a halo, if he’d been so inclined.

When the time came for party pieces they congregated around the tree, great flakes of snow still licking at the window from the darkness outside. Ginger Browne went first, encouraged by the crowd who’d heard her first-rate voice before, giving a grand rendition of “O Holy Night,” hitting the high notes with gusto. Song after song followed, three nurses in a fine bit of diddlyi, Lafferty concluding they must practice in the ward when they ought to be healing people, and a little man named Enright offering a quavering version of “Wild Mountain Thyme,” making the most of a voice that was mournful and thin. Will you go, lassie, go, sang every voice in the room, except for that of a dark fellow by the name of Adams who’d been sulking behind his close-cropped beard since the moment he arrived on the outs with his wife. When it came time for Lafferty’s own piece, he demurred, glancing at Peggy, who knew that his usual was a rousing rebel song, “The Boys of the Old Brigade,” far from a favorite of hers, and he’d not had enough drink taken at any rate, wasn’t in the mood, too busy being the host, too busy minding his p’s and q’s — a redundant effort on his part, as Peggy was minding them too. When they urged and insisted, Lafferty stepped to the middle of the room, cleared his throat, and recited,

“Eggs and bacon, eggs and bacon,

If you think I’m going to sing it,

You’re sadly mistaken.”

The rhyme was well received and Lafferty was off the hook, and he opened himself another bottle of stout, and looked at the clock on the mantel. Another piece or two ensued, till it petered out over a sad effort by Mr. and Mrs. Quinn, who stumbled through a Bavarian folk song they picked up on German holiday. Lafferty noticed his own cheeks had got sore from smiling. A sad state of affairs. In an evening at the Pig and Whistle with his mates, didn’t his smile last twice as long, and didn’t his cheeks never grow weary of it. There were different qualities of smiles, those that came easy and those that did not, those that took place, say, for instance, at your wife’s Christmas party with a passel of partiers you hardly knew, and with the keen eye of your wife forever watching for the smile to be sure it was there and sincere, and which required all the more toil to maintain. Cassie was one of the first to leave, fetching her coat from the bedroom and carrying it with her out into the snow, pausing only to say a few words to Peggy passing by. Lafferty thought she’d have slunk out undetected if she’d been able, and he was relieved to see her depart, taking with her the fleshy temptation, seeing it as the first step toward an empty house, which was to say toward an empty bedroom in which he and his wife, Peggy-o, could at last consummate their reconciliation. For wasn’t your man growing all the more randy with each passing stout, each passing hour, the longer he’d looked upon the temptation, having been celibate now for so many days. Five at least, going on six.

But weren’t his hopes to be dashed. For after the last guest had finally straggled out into the snowfall, after your man had made a conscientious and conspicuous effort to tidy up the desperate litter of bottles and ashes and saucers and such while herself only sat in the quiet and rested, didn’t she go into the bedroom then all alone. And tell him through the closed and locked door that he’d earned his way back into her home, but not yet back to her bed.

There was always the pigs. His ace in the hole was the pigs up his sleeve. Lafferty, disgruntled and randy and lonely, stood for a time with his simmering blood in the dark of the living room looking out through the window at the flurries still chasing one another around the lamppost. The ground was covered and glistening, the tree limbs gleaming as well. Two nights ago being warm and dry and sheltered from the snow would have been plenty enough, but now it seemed scant consolation. You always want more than whatever you have, a truth he was born with. He considered for a time tapping on her door again and telling her of the pigs, of the gift he had for her that couldn’t wait till morning for her to open. See what else it might open. But in the end he did not. Best not to press the issue, best not to hurry the woman. In the end he decided to wait. He was certain she’d adore the pigs once she’d laid her eyes on them, and the morning would come soon enough. Love in the morning was a favorite of his. In the end he was content to take the little wool blanket from the shelf in the hallway and wrap himself up on the sofa safe from the snow and the cold, listening to the warm hum of the flame in the stove, savoring as he fell asleep the pleasant anticipation of delayed gratification.

As soon as he heard her next morning with the kettle he was up and into the bedroom, and straight to the closet shelf. But there was nothing there but empty. He reached deeper. Still nothing. He knocked aside the shoebox, the other boxes and what-nots and bric-a-brac, searching with increasing anxiety for the gaily wrapped parcel of pigs. He looked on the floor of the closet, in the rest of the room, on the shelves with the other pigs, everywhere there were pigs, to see if she’d discovered the thing and placed it on display. It was nowhere to be found. The pigs were missing entirely.

In the kitchen she stood, in her purple robe, her hair sideways to Sunday from sleeping. He in his rumpled trousers said, “Did you find it? Did you open it?”

“Find what?” says she. “Open what?”

“I’m after buying you a gift, which I hid in the closet. It’s not there now.”

The look on her face said not again, Terrance. The lips on her face said nothing.

“I bought you a bloody gift — it’s gone. It’s missing. It’s not there now.”

“Terrance—”

“I amn’t lying!”

She couldn’t look at him. She turned to her cup, saying nothing. Lafferty’s heart was hammering. He wasn’t lying. Not this time. Peggy stood at the kitchen counter, her head with a sad little shake, not looking toward your man in the doorway. Outside through the window the morning was blazing, a brilliant sun rising on new-fallen snow. Lafferty let his fist unclench, his blood settle down, his thoughts travel back. There was the time he’d given her the squashed box of chocolates. Another time the empty ring box, and once before the roses that were spotted and wilted too soon, and there’d been other assorted gifts down the years, all ruined or flawed — all ruses of one sort or another, all attributable to imaginary thieves or cheaters, all engaged in imaginary plots to beat down the good intentions of your man.

But this time he wasn’t lying, not at all. Except in the eyes of his Peggy-o.

Peggy went off to work, St. Christopher’s being open as ever, Christmas day or not. Lafferty sat at the table while she fixed herself another cup of tea and toast, never offering any to him. If you get hungry, help yourself, she said as she was leaving, which was something at least, he supposed. She showered and dressed behind closed doors, and as she was leaving she told him to finish picking up from the party, if he didn’t mind, not bothering to hear if he minded. He stood at the window and watched her drive off in her little brown Ford, watched the warm sun turning the snow to slush. Blue Bucket Lane shiny, wet, and black.

He looked around at the leftover litter, then back again out through the window. The leftover litter could wait. He hadn’t given up hope, not yet, for the idea of the pigs and the role they might play was still very much in his mind. He hadn’t given up on his pigs.

He showered and dressed. Made himself a cup of tea, took a biscuit from the tin, brushed his teeth like a good lad. Glanced out again at the sun going higher, the snow going slushier. Never once taking much notice of the shower or clothes or tea or biscuit, the toothbrush or sunshine or slush. Lost in thought was he, of pigs and reconciliations. He rummaged through Peggy’s desk till he found her address book, and sure enough there was the one he was seeking. Peggy was nothing if not an organized woman. Putting on his jacket, he walked down the lane into the heart of Kilduff, squinting against the brightness from under the bill of his cap. He made his way past the Pig and Whistle, so regrettably closed, past the green which was still mostly white, where stood the Kilduff Cross, his erstwhile home. A pack of brats on the green, noisy and busy, building snowmen, throwing snowballs, all in a frenzy, racing the sun. One he recognized by his crimson cheeks as the Gallagher lad, nephew of one of his mates, and when he flung a snowball at your man, Lafferty caught it on the fly, returning the thing with a good deal more velocity, and, sure enough, not another was flung his direction. At the corner by Connor’s, closed up too, he stopped and waited. That was where the bus stopped as well, and soon it appeared down the road.

Three stops and a half-hour later, one town over, he disembarked, walking up a slushy street of squat trees and close-packed flats, checking the numbers on the doorways. When he found the one he was looking for, 36, he climbed the small stoop and gave a good rap, and the woman named Cassidy came to the door, still dressed in her bathrobe and slippers.

“Terrance Lafferty?” she said.

“In the flesh,” says your man.

“I never thought I’d see your puss again.” The confusion on her brow at its deepest.

“In the flesh,” he repeated. “May I come in? We need to talk.”

“We do? I’m not really dressed.”

“If it’ll put you at ease, I’m willing to undress as well.”

A flash of red shot through her face. The confusion, though, entirely gone.

What was it truly that brought him to Cassie’s? The suspicion ignited by her reputed “problems,” along with the fact that she’d fetched her own coat from the bedroom, all on her own, and ventured out into the night and the snow falling down and the bloody thing over her arm? Not wearing it on her at all?

Or was it the fleshy temptation? The gratification too long delayed?

It was a fine distinction, not worth the time to consider. For didn’t she step aside. And didn’t your man step into the void.

In the grand scheme of things over the length of his life, Lafferty had accomplished nothing. He lived and loved the best he knew how, according to his own set of rules, perfecting the art of getting by, and so he’d never climbed a high mountain, nor built a great bridge, nor won any prize in a race. Nevertheless, he knew how it felt. He believed every life was touched by moments of grace, moments when all things come together in harmony, and the soul rises up in the gooseflesh to take a peek for itself, and this was what Lafferty felt as he stepped inside the neat and dim little room, seeing immediately his pigs on the mantel shelf, feeling the closeness of this woman, this Cassie, who stood sharing his space, sensing a kinship both ancient and new. He looked about the room, goosebumps letting up. Not a stick was out of place. The curtain hung down in pale wavy pleats, a yellow hue from the sun beating off the boards of the house next door. A clean soft carpet of dark and light circles, a trim sofa beneath the window with plush crimson cushions, a doily of lace square in the middle of the coffee table, the chairs and the lamps and tables just so. And the mantel with the candles — the candles and pigs.

“Lovely,” said he, and took a deep breath.

“What is?” she said. Then, “Are them tears? Are you crying?”

“Aye.” He wiped at his cheek. “Tears of joy.”

“Joy? Aren’t you the strange one, though.”

“The joy of reconciliation.” Crossing to the mantel, he looked at the pigs, the mama and baby clutched there together, returning his gaze with their wide fearful eyes. He seized the figurine, held it high, then clutched it to his tweeded bosom. “Reunited once again with my wee piggy darlings.”

How the face of her blossomed in shock and surprise, a dozen replies scrambling helter-skelter in her eyes. Not a one found its way to her mouth. “Why’d you take ’em?” said he.

She finally spoke. “I didn’t know they were yours.”

“Rubbish. You took ’em off my closet shelf.”

“Peggy’s closet shelf. I thought it was something she’d purchased for you. She’s ever after saying what a pig you are. That’s why she collects ’em, she tells everyone. She calls ’em her bevy of Terrances.”

Though stung, Lafferty nevertheless soldiered on. “Why in bloody hell would you be after taking ’em from anybody?”

She sighed, looking down at the floor, at the dark and light circles underfoot. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” says she. “That’s what I’m seeing the shrink for.”

A flaming kleptomaniac. A new one on Lafferty. He’d known plenty of light-fingered chaps in his day, had indeed himself been known to borrow the occasional item that didn’t belong to him in the strictest legal sense, but only out of necessity, when no other option was available, and only when the item in question was something which was well and truly needed at the time of its procurement. The idea of stealing on impulse, of taking something utterly useless just because it was there for the taking, was something he sat on the sofa beside your woman as the whole story poured out of her and tried to wrap his head around. She’d been arrested. A convict she was, indeed, indeed. Six months of weekends in the hoosegow after her fourth arrest for shoplifting, and the reason she was seeing the shrink was because it was a court-ordered condition of her probation. Wasn’t her thieving the reason her husband, an accountant with a hairy back and smudged eyeglasses, had left her in the first place.

“Is he doing you no good at all then, the shrink?” Your man leaned back on the soft sofa cushions, the yellow-hued curtain just over his shoulder. Cassie leaned up on the edge of the thing, her knees this close to touching his own as she wrung her hands, wrung the story out of her. Her bathrobe was soft and pink, of a stuff he thought was called chenille, and it kept falling loose with the wringing. He wondered was she wearing anything underneath, a distraction he found annoying as he tried to listen with sympathy and compassion.

“Well,” she said with a dab to her eye from a ragged scrap of tissue, “I amn’t stealing as often. Your pigs was the first in a fortnight. Nearly.” At that she lifted her face up to look at a far corner of the ceiling, as if trying to put a name to something.

“That’s a bit of progress, sure it is.”

She looked down again with a sigh, avoiding his eyes just the same. She laid a small hand by his knee. “He believes it’s all the fault of my mother.”

“Sure your mother was nowhere near my house.”

“Because my mother never gave me a gift, says he — she was a farming lass, dirt poor and hard as rock she was, and the giving of gifts on a birthday, or even on a Christmas, was something they never fell into. My shrink says it’s because she never gave me a gift, never gave me nothing, not love enough after all, is why I steal things to this very day — still trying to get my mother’s attention, says he, still trying to get her to love me.” At this didn’t Cassie look up at your man, the incomprehension on her brow replaced by an utter and painful understanding. “Terrance, I can’t remember the woman touching me at all after the day I turned ten.”

What was your man to do? Had he any choice then but to touch her? Even kleptos need love, he concluded. A little hug, he decided, only that and nothing more. A wee bit of comfort then.

He awoke in mortal discomfort, the sun on the other side of the house pouring in through the bedroom window. His elbow was aching, his arm was asleep, his ankle was itching like blazes, and Cassie asleep in the bed on the crook of his arm, her breathing trying to rise up to a snore. He’d dozed a bit himself, the session of love having been that vigorous and wholehearted. His skin all over — face and neck and arms and chest, his nether parts all down below — was flaky and crusted, the result of the drying up of all the lovely, salty fluids in which they’d been so bathed. Your man was not prone to regrets, nor could he ever imagine, philosophically, regretting the making of love in any form or manner, yet wasn’t a good deal of the discomfort he felt in his body infecting his thinking as well. Wondering the effect this tryst of fate might have on his reconciliation with Peggy. And sure wouldn’t she be home by now from work, wondering where the hell he was. What time was it? The clock on the stand was on Cassie’s side, facing an inch the wrong way, and no way your man could see it without moving. The sun pouring in was heating the room. On the little chair by the dresser sat the great, fat teddy bear, whose name she said was Eldridge when she moved him from off of her bed. And placed him where now he sat, staring at Lafferty with hard button eyes, the sun on his lower left foot. Just behind the closet door then, he noticed it there, for the first time, the end of the briefcase poking out.

When she came awake a few minutes later rubbing her nose, a bit of drool had pooled on his arm, and she wiped it away, then from her chin, embarrassed. She looked into his eyes, inches away, and for a moment he thought the confusion would run away with her face entirely, as if the memory of who he was was gone. As well as that of who she was. He watched the pieces fall together, a few of them anyway, behind her eyes as she blinked. “What time is it?” she said.

“You’re after reading my mind,” says he.

She sat up and looked at the clock. “Half four.”

“I’d best be heading home,” he said. “Peggy’ll be back by now.”

“Where was she?”

“Work,” he said, as though the question was a silly one. “You should know.”

“Peggy wasn’t working today. I make out the holiday shifts myself.”

Lafferty borrowed her confusion, put it on his own brow. “She told me...”

Cassie smiled, her wagging finger coming up to the dimple of his chin. “Don’t tell me you thought himself was the only one stepping out for his wee adventures.” But her finger quit wagging at the look on his face, the eyes of her growing tender. “I’m sorry, Terrance, I just assumed... Everybody knows. We thought it was an open marriage kind of a thing, yours and Peggy’s.”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his back to her. “Of course I know.” Of course he did. Hadn’t he seen her once with another man, or thought he had. But the restaurant where he thought he had was dim and smoky and he’d not got a clean look, and never made a word of mention about it, for hadn’t he himself been there at the time with another woman who was not Peggy. And hadn’t he convinced himself in all the days since that of course it hadn’t been her. And wasn’t the biggest, thickest, most self-centered eejit that ever breathed air sitting right here and now inside his own skin. “Of course I know,” he repeated. “What class of bloody eejit do you take me for?”

Cassie behind him said nothing. She touched his back in a kind of tickle where a small birthmark the shape of a tear was reputed to live. “I hope you knew,” said she. “You better bloody well have knew. Terrance, I amn’t the kind of woman to sleep with somebody else’s husband, not unless I thought it was... you know...”

He turned. She was leaning up against the pillows, clutching the sheet to her chest in earnest, the ache across her face. “Of course,” he said. He showed her his teeth. “You’ll steal the odd pig now and then from a woman, but never the same woman’s man.”

Cassie smiled too, a smile of a faltering sort. “Yes,” she said, “that’s it.”

He touched her cheek and he kissed it. Then he stood up to dress. Passing by Eldridge toward his clothes in a heap, he noticed the briefcase again peeking out from the closet. “What’s this?” says he, grasping it by the handle, hoisting it up.

Cassie sighed and slumped back down in the sheets, rolling away from him. She buried her face in the pillow, the words coming out of it muffled and low. “That’s the only other thing. That and your pigs was the only two things this past fortnight.”

He turned it, taking in the look of it. Sturdy brown leather, scuffed and worn, brass snaps and locks and corners. “Where’d you steal it from?”

She came up for air. “From the back of the ambulance. I was walking by on my way out of work. Sitting there offering itself to me, it was.”

“Ambulance?”

“They brought in two men, a car wreck. Desperate shape they were in, skulls cracked open, blood everywhere, this close to dead. I don’t know if they made it or not.”

Lafferty looked it over more closely. “What’s in it?”

“I have no bloody clue, Terrance. It’s locked.”

“Heavy,” he said, giving the thing a heft or two. Cassie sat up and started to dress, bra first, then underpants. Not your man. He sat back down naked on the bed, placing the briefcase across his knees. “Don’t you wonder what’s inside?”

“Aye,” says she, dropping the dress down over her head. A plain thing it was, with green dots. “But I hate to break it open. Ruin the bloody thing.”

“Probably nothing but papers inside.”

“Maybe magazines, I was thinking. Maybe books.”

“Have you a paper clip?”

She fetched one and stood watching him pick the lock. When he lifted the lid, the sight turned them both into stone, except for the quick blinking of four bulging eyes. For wasn’t the thing filled to the brim with bright Euro banknotes, high-denomination notes at that, all purple and yellow and green, from side to side, corner to corner, top to bottom. Reaching up over the rim. “My God,” she gasped when finally she could.

Lafferty thought his heart was going to attack. “What the bloody hell...” was all he could manage. He slammed the lid shut.

“Open it back up!” says she.

“Did anybody see you take it?”

She thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I never looked around. Sure I never do.”

“Suffering ducks and the price of turnips.”

“Terrance, I don’t care for that kind of language. Open it up again.”

He did. The money was still there. “What the bloody hell are you going to do?”

She sat down beside him on the edge of the bed. They both touched the banknotes, his right hand, her left, caressing, lingering. “I’ll have to get it back somehow. I certainly can’t keep it. I’m not a bloody thief.”

He looked at her. “You know what I mean,” she said. “Not a thief like this. I’ll have to get it back somehow to its rightful owner. Somehow without getting collared again.”

“Your rightful owner might be hard to find,” says your man. “The men carrying this around are not likely to be rightful owners. Nobody rightfully carries around a hundred thousand quid in cash.” They caressed a bit longer. “Someone’ll be looking for it. Someone’ll be looking hard, very hard.”

“How’ll I get it back to ’em? Do you suppose they’d miss just a few of them bills?”

“Yes, they would, and I don’t know. But you better be about it quick.”

Her hand dug down, riffling up through the bills. “I’ve an idea,” she said. The tone of her made him look up from the swag for the first time since he’d opened the case. He saw the face of a naughty girl, Cassie, no confusion on her brow whatsoever. “Let’s pour it all out on the bed,” says she, “and we can do it right on top of it like the king and queen of Siam. We can say we come into money.”

Lafferty sighed a worried, sweaty sigh, which may have been accompanied by a nervous giggle. Not a bad idea, he supposed, but not one he could wholeheartedly endorse. “I don’t think you appreciate the gravity of the situation here.”

“I do,” she said. “Of course I do. But what’s another hour? And, I might point out, Terrance, your oul fella there is plumping out at the very idea.”

He couldn’t deny it. The danger, the decadence, the pure raw power of possessing, even for a bit, a bald fortune such as this were a strong aphrodisiac, not to mention the suggestion itself coming from the mouth of the woman. Nevertheless, your man was reluctant to dump out the money and all the unholy jumble, wondering how they’d ever pack it back together by neat denomination and stacked so tidy, but he was just this close to overcoming his qualms when the first knock sounded at the door in front. Followed by another more urgent.

Lafferty froze, but Cassie says, “Just my neighbor for a happy Christmas or some such,” and leans down for quick peck, saying, “I’ll be back in a shake. Dump it all out on the bed.” But he didn’t. Instead he shut the case, wondering how she could know the knock of her neighbor, doubting she could, a doubt soon confirmed when the next knock was a crash, the front door shattering in, followed by voices, the deep, angry voices of men. In his naked panic he snatched the first garment at hand, her pink bathrobe, shoving the briefcase aside with his foot, heading for the door in back. Donning the robe, slipping outside in the hard slush and cold of the yard, the sun hidden low, the protests of Cassie in the living room growing louder, the gruff and mean voices of men, then the sound of a fist thumping flesh.

The sound made him sick, stopped him short. He could run back to the rescue. No. There was more than one man, there were two or three men, they would be men who fought, mean men, not men who only loved for a living, him and Cassie would just be beaten or killed, or worse. Lafferty’s thoughts raging a blind frenzy. Help. Getting help was the only thing. Police, no matter, anyone, anything. A neighbor. A phone. He ran to the door of the house that was closest, his robe flying open, his naked feet unaware of the cold and the wet. He pounded but nobody answered, the door was locked when he jiggled the knob. Wrapping the robe tight, he went to the next door, and the one after that, door after door, but nobody answered at any, though there were curtains moving, faces peeping. No one would answer a door, no one would listen to the pleas of a man in a pink chenille robe up to his elbows and knees and open in front, shouting and pounding and running wildly from this door to that.

There were three men, tattoos and earrings. Crouching in the slush behind a juniper bush he watched them leave Cassie’s place. Carrying the briefcase, casing the road. When they’d driven away in a silver Peugeot, he waited, the curtains of the neighbors moving and shimmering still, and when he’d waited long enough he made his way back to her door. Through the shattered thing on its hinges he stepped. Cassie on the bedroom floor. Her face red meat, pulp, swollen and split, her fine, sandy hair all matted and red, dress gathered up by her waist, her nakedness there on display. Blood all about. He felt for a pulse. She was breathing. Sirens in the distance. He pulled down her dress to cover her decent, then dressed in a hurry — another art he’d perfected — returned quickly to the mantel, and was gone again out through the back, from garden to garden behind the flats, slipping off like a thief in the twilight to wait for his bus.

“Oh my God. They’re absolutely adorable. Terrance—” She looked at him standing there as though seeing him for the first time. “I can’t believe you actually bought me a gift. You actually bought anyone a gift. I’m impressed. It tells me something, Terrance.”

“What does it tell you?”

She stood. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table with a solitary cup of tea when he’d come in and presented the parcel without a word, watching her open it. Now she came up to your man, put her arms around him. “I’ll show you what it tells me,” says she. Lafferty sniffed, trying to catch a whiff of the other man.

In her bedroom they took off their clothes. Peggy was leaner, younger than Cassie. Lafferty looked for signs of the other man. Over inch after inch of his wife’s naked body, he looked closely for signs of the other man so as to block from his mind the image of Cassie the last time he saw her. He climbed into bed beside Peggy. When she began to kiss and grope he took her chin, gave her a peck, said let’s go slow, and when he did that, she looked at him again with the same awe the pigs had inspired, wondering who on the face of God’s sweet earth was this man in the bed beside her, this new man, mature and tender. She reached to the stand for the figurine, holding it there for them both to admire. “They are so adorable. I just love them.”

Lafferty looking in vain for something adorable. What he saw was two helpless pigs clutching one another in fear, four eyes filled to the brim with mortal terror.

Heaven Knows

by Marilyn Todd

Last year Untreed Reads brought out all of Marilyn Todd’s Claudia Seferius Ancient Roman mystery novels in e-book format. Now they’ve followed up with her High Priestess Iliona series, set in Ancient Greece. Reviewing the first Iliona novel, Blind Eye, Kirkus said: “Todd casts an eerier mood in this series hick-off, hut provides the same abundance of historical tidbits and robust prose.” This new story isn’t historical hut it’s not quite set in the present either...

* * *

“Come in, Frank. Sit down.” St. Peter waved me to the chair in front of his desk. It was deep and cushioned, like floating on air. “Thanks for coming so quickly.”

“Didn’t realize I had a choice,” I said. “Only last time—”

“I know, I know. One minute you’re driving down the Ml in thick fog. Next thing, here you are, with no recollection of that twenty-two car pileup, much less the lorry that smashed into you at sixty miles per hour.” His mouth twisted. “Sorry we couldn’t cushion the shock, Frank. There’s nothing I’d like better than to give everyone a heads-up on these things. Just doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.”

Better for me than for most, I supposed. No devastated wife throwing herself on my coffin. No traumatized kids growing up scarred. Even my parents beat me to it by thirty-nine years, after a car wreck claimed their lives on the north side of London. We O’Donnells are obviously magnets when it comes to twisted metal.

“If it’s about being behind on my report—”

When you arrive, you’re asked how you’d like to spend eternity. What would make you happy forever? I was a detective in the police force before I went private, I said. Any chance of—? Rhetorical question. Heaven always gives you what you want. Which means that although my job is to reunite new arrivals with their loved ones, this is a big place and the issues are complex. Tracing them is not always easy.

“No, no, no, Frank, nothing of the kind. Any time you’re ready, no rush.” St. Peter smiled. “Time has no meaning here, and in any case—” he allowed himself a soft chuckle “—it’s not as if either of us is going anywhere, is it?”

“Glad to hear it. Because for a moment, I thought I was being reassigned.”

“Reass—? Oh, you mean expelled. Absolutely not, Frank. No way. Once you’re in, you are in.”

“Funny, but I recall some bloke by the name of Lucifer was served with an eviction notice awhile back.”

“History, schmistory.” St. Peter swatted it away as if a wasp had slipped in through the Gates. “We’ve tightened the Admissions procedures since then, talking of which—” He leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Are you happy, Frank?”

“This is Heaven,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

No answer. He just sat there, stroking his neat little Van Dyke beard, dark eyes staring into space. Through the Gate House window, I watched cherubs weighing the feather of truth, while angels read the newcomers’ auras. Integrity. Loyalty. Honesty. Humour. Every human attribute splayed out in a vast spectrum of colour, like some celestial peacock, shaded according to strength.

“Thing is,” St. Peter said, “we have something of a conundrum on our hands.”

A few taps on the divine keyboard brought up a photo on the big screen behind him. Blond girl, pretty, laughing into the camera.

“Lucy Fuller,” he said. “Twenty-four years old. Events organizer. Single. She sustained seventeen stab wounds close to her home in Winchester, where her attacker either left her for dead or ran off on hearing footsteps approaching.”

A second picture flashed up alongside. Middle-aged couple with kind eyes and a springer spaniel at their feet.

“John and Susan Kincade were walking their dog in the woods, dog started barking, and bingo. Without Mrs. Kincade’s nursing skills, a strong mobile signal, and an exceptionally rapid response from the emergency services, Lucy Fuller would have died.”

“Except she obviously did, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Now that, Frank, is precisely the kind of logic we’re looking for on this case, so let me ask you a question. How do you feel about going back in the field?”

My stomach tightened. “You mean Earth?”

“We... don’t actually think of it in those terms, but, yes. A temporary return to your old life.” He spread his hands. “Sort of your old life, anyway. Technically you won’t be alive, and you most certainly won’t be allowed to contact your loved ones—”

What loved ones? An ex-wife who hated my guts so much she burned every item I owned, then posted a video of her bonfire on YouTube? Or my colleagues from the police force, who felt I sold them out when I opened up as a private detective?

“Can’t say it holds much appeal.” An understatement, if ever there was one. “Especially when I don’t see a problem. I’m assuming Lucy Fuller died of her injuries?”

The Boss wouldn’t be talking to an ex-CID officer if she’d slipped under a bus.

“Laceration of the renal artery led to delayed complications, but before she died, she identified this man” — a third photo flashed up, replacing Lucy’s rescuers — “as her assailant.”

Slim build, dark hair, easy grin. In his Coldplay T-shirt, two-day stubble, and crumpled jeans, he didn’t look the seventeen-stab-wound type. Then again, who does? I reached for the file, which told me his name was Craig Langstone, twenty-six years old, also from Winchester, where he worked as a media consultant. Somewhere in the file it probably told me what a media consultant was. I was too busy reading how, for almost a year, he and Lucy had been an item. Until she caught him in bed with another woman.

“What am I missing?” I flicked through the report a second time, in case I’d skipped a page. “Says here, he committed suicide the day after she died. Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience.”

Guy has fling, guy regrets it, guy tries to win back girl, girl tells him where to go, guy gets angry, things turn nasty, girl ends up in hospital or worse. Overcome with guilt — or because the net is closing in — he tops himself. I’d seen it happen a dozen times during the course of my career. Heard of it hundreds more.

“Well, now, that’s where things get complicated,” the Boss said, leaning back. “Craig Langstone turned up at the Gate House—”

Everybody does, this being the start point for the admittance/elimination process.

“—swearing black was white he didn’t do it.” St. Peter grinned. “Hardly an exceptional event, in my experience, either. Except.” He threw up his hands. “When the cherubs weighed the feather of truth, it passed with flying colours, and when the angels read his aura, that also came out tops. To be absolutely certain, we had the seraphim put him through the Soul Scanner, but guess what? Not the faintest trace of evil to be found.”

“Then the girlfriend’s lying. Or at the very least mistaken.”

“Our view exactly. In the end, we brought in the archangels to test her, that’s how serious it was, but the thing is, Lucy’s story never wavers. She was taking her usual Sunday morning run when Craig jumped out and struck her from behind.”

“She didn’t see him?”

“No, but she recognized his voice, and during the course of the attack he referred to things that only the two of them could possibly have known.”

I want you out of my life, he kept shouting. I want you out of my life. The same words over and over, which at first she did not understand.

You’ve made a mistake! I’m Lucy Fuller, I live—

Remember that night we made love on the beach? When you lost your earring and we spent half the night searching for it, and it was caught on my shirt all along?

That was when she knew it was Craig. That, and various other things he brought up. Silly things. Insignificant things. Like their pet names for each other, the first meal she cooked him, that picnic by the river when his ice cream cone fell in the water, bobbing downstream like a raft. Even then, she’d thought it was just his fists he was using. The man she knew — the man she’d loved — would never lie in wait with a knife...

“Which leaves me something of a predicament,” the Boss said. “She says he did it, and she’s telling the truth. He says he didn’t, and he’s telling the truth. Until we get to the bottom of this, I’m not in a position to grant admittance, or exclusion, to either party.”

“Oh no, not Limbo?”

“Now you see why I asked you here.” His face twisted. “Uncertainty is ten times worse than Hell, Frank. In Hell, there’s no false hope.”

Four contented years of reuniting children with parents, widows with husbands, lovers with one another, congealed like duck fat in the pit of my stomach. Memories flooded back. Of cold, lonely evenings. An even colder, lonelier bed.

“When do I leave?” I asked brightly.

Winchester, for those of you who have never been, is just an hour and a half from London and a completely different world. Bordered by lush water meadows on the east, golf courses on the west, it has a town centre lined with half-timbered houses and boasts what was once thought to be the original Round Table from King Arthur’s court. Turn any corner and you’ll find a courtyard, arch, or alleyway virtually unchanged from Chaucer’s day, not to mention a twelfth-century castle, an almshouse built by William the Conquerer’s grandson, and the longest damn cathedral in Europe. It doesn’t hurt, either, that the river cuts right through the city, creating an oasis of calm and tranquility in a distinctly uncalm, untranquil world.

I stood beneath the statue of King Alfred, the one who burnt the cakes, feeling the spring sunshine warming my face for the first time in over four years. Despite countless visits to Winchester Prison during my spell in the force, this was the first time I’d stopped to listen to the voices of the chapel choir drifting on the air, and suddenly it seemed a lighter, freer man who wandered round the cathedral close, gazing up at the stained-glass windows while the organ resonated round Jane Austen’s grave. And as I walked through gateways that had stood for a thousand years, and passed mills that were almost as old, I felt an unexpected pull...

“Be careful,” St. Peter warned, once I’d been primed, updated, and kitted out for travel. “Don’t allow yourself to become emotionally involved.”

“No worries there,” I laughed. “Plug-ugly flatfoots like me, we never get the girl.”

“Who’s worried? Plug-ugly flatfoots like you can take care of yourselves!” He paused, and the smile dropped from his face. “Seriously, Frank. It’s the living I worry about. Once they cross over, we can erase any bad memories, if that’s what they want. But while they’re still in the physical zone, there’s nothing we can do to influence events as they unfold. Despite what some people think.”

“I’ll be good.”

“I know, but— Emotional attachment means someone gets hurt when it comes time to leave, and if it isn’t the traveller we send back, it’s the person they leave behind, and I’ve seen it happen too often. All chance of a happy future destroyed, because they’re literally chasing a shadow.”

“Trust me.” I gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “Fifty-four’s too old to start going off the rails.”

“Deny the Holocaust, deny paternity, deny the existence of God if you must,” he laughed back. “But never, ever deny the male midlife crisis!” He shook my hand. “Best of luck, son. Those kids are counting on you, and remember: no diversions, no involvement, just facts.”

“No diversions, no involvement, just facts,” I promised.

Yet an hour into the mission, what do I do? I fall in love with a city.

Mind you, at least the girls were safe.

But now, with two carefree faces burning a hole in my conscience, it was time to leave the castles, crypts, and tearooms and set to work, with the crime scene top priority. Hardly the freshest I’d ever worked, because, like St. Peter said, time loses its significance once you cross the Threshold. Craig and Lucy’s sojourn in Limbo might mean unchanging spiritual agony, but in earth times, seven years had drifted by. A lot of time for a murder investigation, but it was crucial to get a feeling for this peaceful, wooded hillside, where a young woman was ambushed, stabbed, and left for dead.

I want you out of my life.

I closed my eyes, picturing Lucy, barely out of breath at the start of her run, thinking she’d tripped, until she felt herself being hit in the back, and heard a man spitting hatred into her ear.

I want you out of my life. Out of my life. Out of my life—

I opened my eyes, staring down at the spires and rooftops until the hatred faded. Right then. I drew a deep breath. Next stop Lucy’s parents, and if you think it’s tough standing on the spot where a girl was viciously attacked, it’s child’s play compared to questioning the bereaved parents. The only thing worse is breaking bad news.

I needed to tread carefully too. If they got wind that my investigation wasn’t kosher and contacted the police, they would also realize that neither Frank O’Donnell nor his so-called agency existed. That in itself wasn’t a problem. I’d be whisked back, they’d be confused, no one would be any the wiser. But if this mission was aborted, who knew when the next attempt would be made. In another seven years, memories would have faded to dust, witnesses might well be dead. What chance, then, of Craig and Lucy ever being released from their spiritual prison?

I am man enough to admit that my hand was shaking as I rang the Fullers’ doorbell, the first of several interviews, and by the time night fell, my head was splitting after putting so many decent, wounded people through the wringer. Even after renewing my acquaintance with Chivas Regal — perhaps the only true friend I’d ever had — I still couldn’t shake off their pain and suffering. Much less the guilt of forcing them to relive the blackest moments of their lives, probing memories they’d spent seven years trying to bury.

Somewhere in the early hours, I dropped into my hotel bed, no longer some distracted tourist revisiting a foreign land in which so much had changed and yet so little.

My only thought was, shit. Tomorrow, I get to wreck some other poor sod’s life.

“Mrs. Langstone? Frank O’Donnell from the DIA.” I handed her a card that looked every inch the biz. “I wonder if I might have a word about your son?”

She handed the card back. “I’ve never heard of the DIA.”

“It’s a new initiative. Our brief is to clarify certain unresolved issues which—”

“You work for the government?”

“A private corporation. May I come in?”

“No.”

Hostility’s nothing new. Mothers either welcome you indoors, burst into tears, then swear their son’s a good boy, an honest boy who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Or they hurl abuse because their baby’s being victimized, those bastard cops set him up, he was at home eating pizza at the time. (And, of course, that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.) Occasionally, though, they slam the door in your face, but what made me wedge my foot in this particular door had less to do with a murder investigation. More to do with the fact that, with her long blond hair, tight top, and skinny jeans, Craig’s mum was one foxy-looking woman.

“Five minutes, Mrs. Langstone. Please.”

Blue eyes scanned the clear blue sky and the stillness of the newly unfurled leaves. “Very well, we’ll walk. Give me a minute.”

Most men, I thought, would give her the earth if she so much as crooked her little finger.

Rather than stand, like some hapless vacuum-cleaner salesman, staring at the glossy woodwork that had closed gently, but firmly, in my face, I leaned my elbows on the railings, watching the water gurgling past.

My home was the Victorian terraced house that I’d inherited from my parents. At the time of their crash, I’d barely turned fifteen, and my aunt — my father’s sister — was appointed my legal guardian. In the face of ferocious opposition from my uncle to sell the house and put the cash in trust, she rented it out. In part, this paid for my keep. Mainly, though, the income gave me pocket money that most boys my age could only dream of, and a home of my own once I turned twenty-one. All of which appealed to the gold-digging virtues of my ex-wife, attracted to the money not the man. Not that I was rich, but when you’re poor, comfortable equates to wealth, and that’s about the best I can say in her defence. Sixteen years later, when I simply couldn’t hack it anymore, she became so enraged when the court ruled in my favour about keeping the house that she burned every single one of my possessions, including the few remaining photos of my parents. Needless to say, I haven’t seen her since. In either dimension.

But roomy as the homestead was, it sat on a busy junction, plus I was never what you’d call handy with paintbrushes, screwdrivers, or garden forks.

This ancient flour mill, smack bang in the middle of town and converted into small, upscale apartments, was as far removed from tired and weed-infested as it was possible to get. Two hundred metres from the road, and you couldn’t hear the traffic. Amazing. Just water rushing through the mill race, the quack of hungry ducks, and a boisterous choir of birdsong from the trees. Times like this, I wished I could tell my willow warblers from my blackcaps. But at least I recognized the sparrows at my feet.

Just when I’d decided she’d had no intention of coming out, the front door opened and Craig’s mother emerged, zipping up a leather jacket that half the women half her age wouldn’t dare to wear. “This way, Mr. O’Donnell.”

Yes, ma’am.

We followed the Itchen through the park, then out along the open water meadows, an artist’s paradise of rolling downlands, wildflowers, and waving catkins. We watched rainbow trout basking underneath the bridge, heard the occasional plop of a vole dropping into the water, and once caught the unmistakable-even for me — turquoise and orange flash of a kingfisher. On the way out, we discussed the weather, the economy, the problems in the Middle East. On the way back, we agreed that Pink Floyd were the best, stood in different corners when it came to politics, and discovered that we were both ambivalent when it came to Quentin Tarantino, which had to be a first.

“Well, that was a pleasant walk, Mr. O’Donnell.” You could almost hear the barriers go back up. “Now perhaps you can tell me what exactly, after all this time, is unresolved about my son?”

I have a trick to break down barriers, and subtlety isn’t it. “His innocence,” I said.

“Oh, really? And what makes you such an expert?”

Everyone handles grief differently. There’s no right way, no wrong way, though I wasn’t sure brittle was helping. Still. If that’s how she wanted to play it...

“Sorry, Mum.” I’d read Craig’s suicide note so many times, it was imprinted on my eyeballs. “But the police don’t believe me and I can’t prove otherwise. If there is an afterlife, I can at least convince Lucy. Either way, we’ll be together. Be happy for me, Mum. Love, C.”

The clenching of fists was her only hint of emotion. I ploughed on.

“I spent twenty years in the police force, sixteen as a P.I., Mrs. Langstone, and contrary to popular belief, most suicides don’t leave notes. Those that do, they’re either short and abrupt, or they’re long, rambling over-protestations of innocence by men who are as guilty as sin.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“His letter hurt you, I know that—”

“Stop right there.” For all she tried, there was no snap to her voice. “You know nothing about me, Mr. O’Donnell, much less how I feel.”

“Maybe I know more than you think. For instance, I know you don’t trust me, and to be fair, I don’t blame you.” All manner of shysters would have stepped forward after the tragedy, offering everything from psychic healing to séances and messages from “beyond.” That was the reason for this walk. Establishing trust. Somewhere along the way, I must have passed the test, but these things cut both ways. “I also know this cool-calm-and-collected manner of yours is an act.”

The mere fact that she didn’t bat an eyelid when I turned up out of the blue showed the amount of effort she’d put in, keeping it all together.

“You didn’t keep me hanging around on the doorstep because you’re cold or distant, or even suspicious. You needed that long to regroup.”

“Or I could just be another longtime single mum, who’s used to being strong and in control?”

“You could,” I agreed. “But no one’s that tough.” I stared at the pavement. Ran my hands through my hair. Changed tactics. “You had a son. Your only child. And when he died, you felt you’d failed him. If only you’d phoned him more often— Talked more about it— Made him stay with you after he’d won bail, instead of letting him go back to his own flat—”

The same guilt trip the bereaved always take. That, as his mother, she should have recognized the signs. Should have phoned the Samaritans. Should never have let him out of her sight...

“Mothers are supposed to protect their children, Mr. O’Donnell. They’re supposed to fight for them. Kill for them. Die for them, even. Not let them slip through their fingers like water.”

“With hindsight, we’d all be heroes, Mrs. Langstone, but I can tell you now, you did not fail your son. You believed in Craig when no one else did, you believe in him still, and, for the record, so do I.”

Her expression hadn’t changed, but tears began rolling down her cheeks, splashing onto her jacket.

“Angie,” she said. “My name’s Angie. I think you’d better come in.”

The flat was as neat inside as out, everything tidy and in its place, smelling of coffee, fresh flowers, and clean laundry. I used to think I had minimalism down to a fine art, but her beige sofas, floaty voiles, and glass-topped tables added a sophistication that left me in the shade. There were no photographs, at least none on display, but a set of watercolours, a sketchbook, and a pile of dog-eared paperbacks proved this was no sterile showhouse but a refuge. Not just from the busy insurance office where she worked, but a means of escaping from the past.

Guessing she’d need a moment to compose herself, I asked to use the bathroom, and spent so long pretending to wash my hands that she probably thought I suffered from OCD. By the time I returned, I expected to find her plumping the cushions on the sofa, lip gloss and mascara picture-perfect, every inch a woman in control. The only thing I’d got right was the sofa. Face in hands, she was perched on the edge, rocking back and forth. Same as she’d probably done every night, every weekend, since her son hanged himself...

I scooped her in my arms and opened a floodgate. Bitter, silent tears gave way to anguished howls, which turned to wracking sobs. And while she heaved away seven years of pent-up pain, I wondered why Ken Langstone bothered getting married if he intended to continue the bachelor life. Why men like him wanted kids in the first place, when they had no intention of hanging around to kick a ball, read them stories, go to school plays. And why more wasn’t done to make feckless fathers keep up with the payments, instead of forcing their young wives to work two jobs to pay off their debts.

When Angie finally lifted her head from my shoulder, her eyes were puffy, streaked, bloodshot, and red-rimmed. What stood out above everything else, though, and which surprised me above everything else, was that they were smiling. “You have a tight grip, Mr. O’Donnell.”

“Had to. You’ve held things together for so long, I didn’t want the pieces falling apart on your lovely white carpet. And it’s Frank.”

“Well, Frank, thank you.” She blew into a Kleenex. “No one’s held me like that for a long time.”

She was lucky. No one had ever held me like that.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” I said, because if there’s one thing a police officer knows, it’s his way around a kitchen. More sympathy can be shown, more confidences drawn, sometimes even confessions, over a simple cup of—

“Are you kidding?” She reached down and brought out a bottle. “After waiting seven years to clear Craig’s name, I deserve something stronger than tea. Glasses are in the cupboard behind you.”

I picked out two crystal tumblers and thought, Chivas Regal, Pink Floyd, Tarantino. Wonder what else we have in common.

“Lucy was a lovely girl,” she said, sliding onto a stool and leaning her elbows on the black granite breakfast bar. “Smart. Funny. One of those women who light up a room every time they walk in, you know? Until some psychopath comes along and wipes everything out, and the worst part is, Frank, the police didn’t even look for anyone else.”

Not true. Extensive searches and lab analyses were carried out at the time, witnesses questioned to the point of exhaustion, the details distributed to police forces across Britain and Europe, in an attempt to link this crime with others. But between the paramedics, the Kincades, and, bless them, their dog, any evidence that might have exonerated Craig, or pointed the finger elsewhere, was destroyed. On top of that, Lucy wasn’t the type to make enemies, which meant there was no one else in the frame. Especially when she was a hundred percent certain.

“Have you spoken to her parents?”

“I have.”

A visit that hammered home — as if I’d needed reminding — that, in a murder case, it was never just the one life that was taken. The ripples of destruction stretch wide and cut deep, and the truth is, they never heal. The crusading, inspirational lecturer that used to be Roger Fuller had become a shuffling old man, whose wife slept in a separate bedroom, because every time she closed her eyes at night, the tears wouldn’t stop welling.

Why? That’s what I don’t understand. Why?

Which was pretty much as far as that interview went. Roger Fuller repeating the question over and over, shaking his head, shaking his hands, as if the very movement would somehow give him an answer. Sarah, his wife, bringing out photos, mementoes, certificates, clippings, in a desperate attempt to keep her daughter alive, when the only thing she could think about was her daughter’s death.

If Langstone couldn’t face being dumped, why not kill himself and leave it at that? Roger spat. This way, everyone suffers.

He was right. Everyone did. But not on account of Craig Langstone.

“I had a long chat with the Kincades too.”

At least, with Susan Kincade. Her husband, John, was in Winchester Hospital, in the final throes of pancreatic cancer.

It’s ironic, she’d said, ruffling the ears of the spaniel I’d seen in the photo, just a little stockier now, with white hairs round his muzzle and eyes. My training prolonged that young woman’s life, but in the end, I was unable to save the person I love most in the world.

Another irony was that if her nursing skills hadn’t prolonged Lucy’s life in the first place, Craig Langstone would never have been in the frame.

Is there anything else you can tell me about that morning? Any detail that struck you as odd?

The police always look closely at who’s first on the scene, but in this case, you couldn’t get two more law-abiding, upstanding citizens than a ward sister and her bank-manager husband.

Nothing. Sorry.

The ultimate irony, of course, was that if it hadn’t been for Susan, Lucy would have died on the spot and her killer would have got off scot-free.

You have nothing to apologize for, Mrs. Kincade. You did everything you could. We shook hands on the doorstep. For both your husband and Lucy Fuller.

When she smiled, I caught a glimpse of the woman on St. Peter’s screen, before sorrow added two decades to her face and subtracted three stones from her body.

It wouldn’t be long before John Kincade crossed the Threshold, and I knew what would happen. Eighty-year-old widows revert to twenty-year-old brides, to rejoin the husbands who died fighting in action. Spinsters revert to their childhood, so they can be loved unconditionally again by their parents. While every man with cancer opts for the lean, strong body of his youth—

For an instant, looking into her sadness, I was tempted to ask what she’d want for eternity, so I could reunite them that much quicker. Then I remembered the Boss’s warning about becoming emotionally involved, and walked away.

In any case, who would believe me?

“I’ve also talked to Craig’s friends, his old boss, his work colleagues.” I gave Angie a rundown on the interviews, partly because I knew she’d be interested, but mainly to satisfy myself that I’d left no stone unturned. “Ditto Lucy’s friends, her boss, her work colleagues.” I paused. Warmed the whisky between my hands. “I had a long talk with the woman Lucy caught him in bed with as well.”

An old flame called Nicole who worked in IT, and I have to admit, having seen photos of Lucy, I’d been expecting the opposition to be something of a femme fatale. A huntress, a predator, someone I’d take one look at and go, wow. But that’s why I’m a P.I. Good at tracking, good at detecting, bloody awful when it comes to reading women.

“I don’t understand it.” Angie topped up our glasses. “They saw each other a few times, sure. But once Craig clapped eyes on Lucy, ka-boom.”

“Love at first sight?”

She tipped her head on one side. “You don’t believe it can happen?”

I sipped. Slowly. “On the contrary. I believe that it can.”

“Craig was devastated when Lucy accused him of cheating. He admitted bumping into Nicole, but that’s it. He swore he never made any arrangement to see her again, and said he absolutely did not sleep with her.”

I know. His feather of truth passed the test on that too.

“Yet Lucy caught them together,” I said. “She’d just flown home, after a week in New York, let herself into his flat, and found a woman wearing nothing but wet hair in the bedroom. The shower was running, Craig was delivering his usual off-key rendition of ‘Rolling in the Deep,’ and there were two sets of everything — coffee cups, wineglasses, underwear — scattered around.”

“Then that’s it.” Angie looked poleaxed. “He really was cheating.”

“Nicole’s not what I expected,” I admitted. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good-looking girl behind those glasses” — nowhere near as classy as Angie, or as outgoing as Lucy Fuller — “but, let’s say, more mouse than cat.”

This is my fault. Nicole hugged her arms to her bony, flat chest and stared at a point on the carpet. If Craig and I hadn’t met in that coffee shop— Her eyes screwed shut in unquestionable grief. The stupid thing was, I knew it was a mistake, hooking up with him again.

Because you can’t relive the past?

Because he’d changed, Mr. O’Donnell. Hot one minute, ice cold the next, so much so, I wondered if he wasn’t on drugs. But the police didn’t find anything in his apartment.

Doesn’t mean he wasn’t using.

She bit her lip. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. O’Donnell, I don’t really know about things like that. Only that Craig wasn’t the man I remembered, and I felt so bad for his girlfriend, walking in on us like that. What a shock—

“She said that?” Angie downed the contents of her glass in one shot. “Hot one minute, ice-cold the next?”

You didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. Just like when Lucy was stabbed...

“Jesus Christ, are all men liars and bastards? Get out. Get out of my house!”

“Angie—”

“Don’t you ‘Angie’ me. You lied to me, Frank.” She slumped down, with her head in her hands. “You told me Craig was innocent.”

I leaned with my back to the worktop, watching the way her long blond hair tumbled round her sculpted collarbones. Remembering the vanilla scent of her shampoo, as she’d sobbed on my shoulder. You have a tight grip, Mr. O’Donnell...

“I won’t apologize for my methods. Raking up the past, making people hurt, that’s my job. It’s how I get results. How I find the truth.” I pulled out a stool and sat opposite her. “But I didn’t lie to you, Angie. Your son didn’t kill Lucy Fuller.”

The theory that began to take shape in St. Peter’s office had crystallized with every step I’d taken. Because if neither the victim nor the accused is lying, you have to ask, who else had a motive?

Her head shot up. “Nicole?”

“Nicole.” What, for Craig Langstone, was a couple of dates and casual sex turned into an obsession for her.

“She loved him that much, she’d kill to have him?”

“Love had sod all to do with it, Angie.”

With stalkers, it’s about control. They don’t take kindly to being dumped, much less supplanted, and maybe Craig gave her a key to his flat, maybe she copied it. Either way, she bugged the place and planted cameras, recording every move he made, every word he uttered. I know, because when I called on Nicole, I used that old trick of asking to use the bathroom to have a good old snoop around.

“How long she’d waited for the right circumstances to come together is anyone’s guess,” I said.

Weeks? Months? before Craig and Lucy’s schedules dovetailed and she could put her plan into action. Starting with that so-called random meet in the coffee shop.

“Knowing Craig had left early for work and that Lucy was on her way round, Nicole let herself in with a key. She swirled wine in the glasses, coffee in the cups, placed them on the bedside table. Then she rumpled the sheets, scattered clothing around, ran the shower, and played a recording of Craig’s god-awful singing. After that, it was only a question of stripping off and waiting for Lucy.”

No doubt her original intention was to drive her away. Craig could deny the affair until he was blue in the face, but Lucy had seen the evidence with her own eyes, and men who cheat lie all the time.

“Nicole would be there to pick up the pieces. Hers would be the shoulder he cried on.”

Only stalkers don’t have normal emotions, so turning up on his doorstep bursting with plans for their future wasn’t the smartest of moves.

“That’s when he most likely told her he didn’t love her, how could he, hell, he hardly knew her. It was Lucy he loved, and whatever it took — and however long — he’d never stop trying to win her back.”

God knows how Nicole responded to that. Did she threaten him? Beg? Plug away with her crazy plans for their future? Whatever, it was enough to make him lose his temper. There is no “us,” he shouted at her. I want you out of my life—

“Which is when she realized that staging a tryst wasn’t enough. Would never be enough.” Her only chance of having Craig was to get rid of Lucy once and for all. “Except killing her wasn’t enough either. She needed to rub her nose in it.” Make her suffer mentally, as well as physically, so that the last words she’d hear were Craig, telling her that he didn’t want her. “Seventeen stab wounds is a lot,” I said, more to myself than to Angie. “Suggesting a crime of overkill and rage, regardless of how carefully it might have been planned.”

Lucy thought she’d tripped, but at five foot five to Craig’s six foot three, he’d have had no trouble overpowering her. Nicole, on the other hand, was petite, and one look at the crime scene showed me why she chose that particular spot. Two silver birches, one either side of the footpath. Where better to stretch a piece of string?

As plans went, Nicole must have thought hers was pitch perfect. Until Craig ruined everything by killing himself. No wonder the poor girl was gutted.

“There’s a problem, though.” I took both Angie’s hands in my own. “To prove it, and put this bitch in jail for the rest of her life, I need help. Your help, to be precise.”

I could run, I could jump, I could smile, I could cry, and prick me, like Shylock, then I bleed. But Frank O’Donnell was buried in North London four years earlier. He can’t suddenly stand up in court.

In the meantime, the sun was setting and, as every good general knows, an army marches on its stomach. I could, I said, rustle something up here. Spaghetti, chili, chicken in white wine, because if there was something I was good at round the house, then it was cooking.

“I do a mean paella,” I said. No idle boast. “Or, if you prefer, we could go down the pub?”

I’d spotted a pretty thatched inn, just a stone’s throw away. All oak beams, horse brasses, and roaring log fires.

“Uh-uh.” Angie pointed to her streaky panda eyes. “I look a fright.”

She looked beautiful.

“You look fine.”

“Really?” She reached for her jacket. “Then what are we waiting for? It’s been ages since I’ve eaten out.”

“Me too.”

With a table right next to that roaring log fire, we ate and we laughed and we drank and we talked. We talked about the trials of being a teenage mum, the tribulations of being a teenage orphan, and the problems we’d faced in our marriages. But mostly it was about music and movies, trivia and travel, the best advice our mothers ever gave us, and who we’d hate to be stuck in a lift with. Did I mention that we laughed a lot too? A real lot?

Quite how our lips touched, I’m not sure. One minute I was saying goodnight on her doorstep, the next we were in each other’s arms like a couple of lovestruck teenagers. I tried to pull away, telling her this was wrong, she was vulnerable, it would be taking advantage. She said shut up, Frank, at fifty-three she knew her own mind, and she’d decide what was taking advantage and what was not, thank you. Maybe so, but I explained that I was just passing through. So help me, I’d never be able to see her again. Not once this case was over. She didn’t ask why. Just kissed the tears from my big, ugly eyes, and led me into the bedroom.

Later — much later — she rolled on her stomach and said, “Do you believe in the afterlife, Frank?”

“If you’re asking do I think Heaven’s made out of clouds, that angels have wings, and St. Peter sports a long, straggly beard, I’d have to say no.”

She laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me they don’t strum harps all day either, and the Pearly Gates aren’t made out of mother-of-pearl.”

“Who’d go to Heaven if eternity meant buffing those to a shine?” I kissed her forehead. “Why do you ask?”

“Craig. He said, Be happy for me, Mum.”

“He meant well.”

“I know. And for seven years, I’ve put on this brave front, thinking, Christ, if he is up there looking down, the last thing I want is him feeling bad about killing himself. He needs to know that I fully accept he was a grown man at the time, capable of making his own decisions. Even if I didn’t agree with them! And that he’s my son and that I’ll always love him, just as I will always be proud of him.” She twisted round and cupped my face between her hands. “But until today, that’s all it’s been, Frank. An act. Then you came along, and I can honestly say, you’ve made me happier than I’ve felt in a very long time.”

For the second time that night, I heard myself saying, “Me too.”

While wondering, who’d have thought happiness could hurt so bloody much?

I didn’t report back to the Boss in person. Just submitted a brief statement of facts, exonerating Craig, endorsing Lucy’s testimony, and confirming that justice was done. No lengthy explanations about how, between us, Angie and I pulled the same “bumping into” trick that Nicole pulled on Craig. Or how, while the women chatted, I played the Artful Dodger, easing Nicole’s purse out of her handbag, thereby giving Angie the perfect excuse to call and return the wallet that had somehow fallen on the floor.

In any case, St. Peter wouldn’t be interested in how, once inside Nicole’s starter home on the south side of the city, Angie asked to use the bathroom. Then snooped around, just like I’d primed her, capturing, on her cell phone, walls covered with pictures of Craig, of hundreds of DVDs, CDs, and scrapbooks through which Nicole relived her obsession, as well as a variety of cameras, audio devices, and computer hardware. All the paraphernalia, in fact, that every self-respecting stalker needs.

I did, however, mention that the police, with a bit of pushing admittedly, reopened the case, and that their search warrant provided them with all the evidence they needed. Adding, at the end, how Nicole, far from repentant, remained arrogant in her belief that Lucy wasn’t good enough for Craig. Killing her was like squashing a spider, good riddance to bad rubbish, she said. The bitch was only holding him back. Her only regret seemed to be that Craig committed suicide before he understood who he was meant to be with.

I stayed with Angie in Winchester for as long as I could, toasting Nicole’s arrest with champagne, making love in the moonlight, listening to Pink Floyd at full pelt with our eyes closed. And when it came time to leave, you can forget that parting is such sweet sorrow crap. Sorrow is sorrow, full stop. I simply threw myself into reuniting lost loved ones like there was no tomorrow, and, given all those astral planes I had to contend with, never gave it a thought when St. Peter summoned me to his office.

“Do you remember what I asked you, Frank, last time you were here?”

“Did I want coffee, tea, or a glass of cold beer?”

“I asked, you dolt, if you were happy!” Grinning like a loon, he motioned me to sit. “After that lorry ploughed into you, we asked if you wanted to be young again. To go back to the time before your parents were killed, because nearly everyone wants to relive the days when they were happiest. But not you, Frank. You didn’t change one damn thing.”

“Yeah, well. I’m comfortable inside this plug-ugly hide. Kinda grown used to it over the years.”

“You’re also one of the few who didn’t want your bad memories erased either.”

“Good times, bad times,” I shrugged. “They made me who I am, and if there’s one thing I learned on that little planet called life, it was that the moment you move one piece of the puzzle, another slips out of sync. All I wanted was to keep on doing what I’m good at. Finding answers.”

“That’s what we’re here for. Giving people what they want. But the thing is, Frank, sometimes they don’t see the full picture.”

“Meaning?”

“You believed you were that plug-ugly flatfoot who never got the girl, so that’s what you became. And to compensate for the loneliness, you immersed yourself in helping people. Trying to give everyone a happy ending. Didn’t always happen. They can’t all be Craig-and-Lucy-happy-ever-afterlife. But it never stopped you trying.” He gave a couple of clicks on the celestial mouse. “Not once, Frank. Not once.”

I can’t remember what I was about to reply, because I was distracted by the music that suddenly filled the office — Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone — and the scent of... the scent of...

Vanilla shampoo?

I twisted round in my chair. On the left, cherubs were weighing the feather of truth. On the right, angels read the newcomers’ auras. Then, while I watched, the elegant, grey-haired old lady who’d shuffled over the Threshold just as I arrived emerged from the Tunnel of Light in a tight top, skinny jeans, with her long blond hair tumbling over her shoulders.

“Angie?”

“Like I said. People go back to the times they were happiest.” St. Peter stroked his neat little Van Dyke beard with satisfaction. “Now go take that woman’s hand, and the next time I ask you, are you happy, I want to hear you say, yes, you bloody are. Oh, and Frank.”

“Boss?”

“Do everyone a favour, watch a Humphrey Bogart movie, will you? Ugly guys do get the girl.”

Limelight

by Howard Halstead

Department of First Stories

Already a well-published author of non fiction, British writer Howard Watson, who’s chosen to use the pseudonym Howard Halstead for his mysteries, makes his fiction debut this month. And it’s a special debut from EQMM’s standpoint, since it was a subscription to our magazine that got this talented author interested in writing mysteries. His latest nonfiction is 2013’s The World Atlas of History’s Greatest Heroes and Villains — which we imagine may have left him with plenty of ideas for crime stories!

* * *

He was there too early, of course. He knew he would be, but he couldn’t help himself, his nervous energy propelling him forward to get dressed too quickly, to get the bus too soon, to walk too fast. Never mind, he thought. After all, this could be the day that changes my life, and that’s not the sort of day for which you want to be late. He held his secret close amongst the other riders on the five A.M. bus, amongst the office cleaners on their way to another despondent day, the two quiet, head-lolling young men he suspected were still drunk, the jolly old lady who did not sit alongside her jolly old friend but shouted news of the weather and a surprising death across the aisle in the same jolly but slightly mystified voice. He hid his sheen from them, he hid his small smile. He played at being just another weary man who had to take a chilly, early-morning bus before the decent folk, the worthy folk, awoke to the pre-timed, central-heated warmth of another satisfying day.

He found the location easily after stepping off the bus, drawn to the familiar huddle of large white vehicles cattling together in the half-light and drizzle on a vacant lot in the heart of the city. He still did not let on when the day-glo — vested security man looked at him as he walked through the gap in the hoardings surrounding the site. The man sharply jutted forward his shaved, swarthy head by way of interrogation. “Background,” Hugh replied, and the bullethead nodded once again to show his reluctant acceptance of the answer. Background, Hugh thought, as if that word could sum him up, on today of all days, when he would be stepping into the limelight and playing with the gods.

He crouched there, suddenly aware of what he had done, another man’s blood soaking into his clothing, and he felt nothing but the visceral, earthy thrill of it pulsing, fresh and vital, through the newly awakened core of his being.

He ignored the catering van and turned and swivelled amongst the puddled pathways created by the dozen white trucks that had formed their own little township of departments — costume, hair and makeup, production office, and the Winnebagos of the stars. A piece of white A4 was tacked to the door of each Winnebago announcing, as usual, the character-name of each occupant rather than the name of the actor. He tried not to notice the names, knowing that if he saw one in particular a wave of nerves would wash through him and leave him standing staring, stultified before the door. No, there would be plenty more opportunities for the surprising transgression of boundaries: He would meet “Meybrick” later, and real names would be exchanged — not for the first time — before battle would commence.

First, he had to announce himself to the production office, preferably to the second assistant director, the 2nd AD. He mouthed the words, making sure he kept the tone friendly, casual, as if this was just another day, a walk in the park: “Hi, I’m Hugh Simmons. I’m your ‘Colin’ for the day.” That would be just right, establishing who he was and what he was doing here in just a few seconds, and not really making a big thing about not being just background, a “supporting artiste,” an extra.

He saw the production-office sign stuck on a glass door halfway along the side of one of the trucks, and was glad to see that the light was already on and there was some indistinct movement from within. Against his natural inclinations, he knew that it was best to appear confident in these situations, so he bounded up the three metal steps and was rapping on the glass door, sliding it across, and announcing himself before he had time for the nerves to kick in. He got as far as a bungled, “Hi, I’m Colin...” before he realized that he had stepped into a tense meeting between three people, none of whom looked at him, even while one of them cut him off with a terse, “Wait on the dining bus.” The speaker was younger than Hugh, perhaps only twenty-five, but Hugh was no match for his stem jaw, his aristocratic dismissiveness, and, not least, his deliberate lack of eye contact. Cowed, Hugh stumbled down the steps again and landed squarely in a puddle, the water lapping over his shoes and flushing cold through his socks.

Three-quarters of an hour later he was still sitting alone on the dining bus. He had used the time wisely, preparing himself for this extraordinary day. The wheels had been set in motion just twenty hours earlier when the agency had phoned and asked whether he was free. “You’re all right with dialogue, yeah?” In truth, he had no idea. No scripted word had ever passed his lips even though he had graced film sets with his slight presence a thousand times, his forte being silently to fill a few pixels, to move inconspicuously from A to B while the heroes performed their magic and moved the plot forward by a few beats. To make the background plausible by endlessly walking to and fro fifty yards from camera, to sit in a bar or office, miming away, to provide a tiny, plausible bit of ambience as the real-deal action commenced, but most of all to turn up on time, to bring the right sort of clothes, to never ask questions, to never speak to the stars or the director, to not do anything that disrupted the precious filming process — this was his lot and he was glad of it. Unlike many other extras, he had never previously wanted to be the star, to speak the words, to have the bovine adulation of the masses; he had never stood there in the shadows cursing, finding fault and thinking he could do better, if only someone would notice him and give him a break. But today was different. He was ready to take centre stage.

The agent had taken his momentary silence to mean that of course he was happy with dialogue, that he would not make a fool of himself in proximity to a star, and folded the conversation with: “They just need someone short to say a couple of lines to Simon Styles, as apparently he’s a midget who hates tall people. They sacked the proper actor. Details later.” His first reaction was to think that, actually, Simon Styles was not as short as everyone said he was, and his second was to almost black out with the words “SIMON STYLES, SIMON STYLES” screaming through his head, over and over again. Fortunately, the agent had already terminated the call as Hugh would stand there for the next five minutes — mind fractured, mouth agape, bowels turning to water — as he dumbly held the silent phone to his ear.

Sitting on the dining bus, he looked at the single, precious page of script once again. He knew the words — in fact, he had known them backwards within five minutes of the agency emailing them through — but still he read them again, one last time, just to be sure, and another last time, just to be surer.

And now they were streaming onto the catering bus as if by some unseen cue: overweight, fry-up bearing crew members — noisy, rambunctious, owning the space — and a few extras, who were more tentative and careful not to sit at the same tables as the crew. More extras drifted in, all male, and sought out their own kind, even if they did not know each other, to form their little satellite planets at the edge of the universe. A desultory young runner, who didn’t bother identifying herself, walked towards him and said, “Hugh?” When he smiled she slapped the day’s stapled call sheet and script on the table and walked off again without further comment. He couldn’t help but fee! a slight frisson of pride to see his name alongside “COLIN” on the front cover, and turned to the script to make sure nothing had changed overnight. Hugh recognized some of the faces around him, yet no one shared his table as he sat there conscious that he had not taken off his coat, that his feet were cold and wet, that when his mind scrabbled for the lines he knew so well a moment ago he could now find nothing, nothing at all, just a desperate black void. Suddenly

He felt powerful and calm. He inspected the cut across the victim’s neck and placed two fingers just below it. Nothing. If he had found even the faintest pulse he knew that the rage would have boiled up again. He knew with absolute certainty that he would have taken the man’s head in his hands and beaten it against the toilet bowl, the walls, the floor, until his face was an unidentifiable mush, until even the weakest glimmer of life had been entirely extinguished.

He felt acid burning in his stomach and he was ravenous. He returned from the catering truck with a plate piled high and managed to defy gravity by also carrying two full polystyrene bowls. A soldier’s breakfast, he told himself, to set himself up for the day; after this they could throw anything at him and he would be ready. In twenty minutes’ time the whole breakfast — the scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, burnt fried tomatoes, crispy fried bread, greasy hash browns, mushrooms, porridge, yoghurt, and fruit — would be rushing through his throat the wrong way in a continuous stream that threatened to block the chemical toilet. In eighteen minutes’ time, Lee Taylor would step onto the dining truck.

After the initial jolt, Hugh told himself not to panic. Lee, wearing his customary leather biker’s gear and heavy boots, swaggered his way down the aisle of the dining truck, barely pausing as he slapped an extra on the back of the head. The young man, who had been studying a bacon sandwich slightly warily, managed to look shocked, ready for a fight, and delighted in the course of a second.

“Hi, Lee. Ha-ha.”

But Lee had moved on and was already saying to another extra, “Saw you on the telly last night. Big closeup.”

The extra, a heavily built East Asian with an over-gymed neck, tried to muster nonchalance in his “Yeah? What was that then?” but his huge smile gave the game away.

“So close I saw right up your nose. Pretty sure there was an ounce of coke jammed up there.”

The whole bus laughed in ribald communion, except straight-faced Hugh, who knew that Lee would keep on walking right up to his table and take a seat opposite him. A cat toying with a mouse for its morning exercise. But Hugh would be strong today. He still had his little secret; he knew that the near future held events that would give Lee more than a little pause for thought.

“Nigel,” Lee said, smirking at his own familiar joke. Sometimes he called him Trevor, sometimes Sebastian, but never, ever Hugh. His leather trousers creaked as he sat down and looked directly into the eyes of Hugh, who was forced to look away. “Bet you’re glad to see me.”

The blood was running along the dirty linoleum floor, finding the line of least resistance amongst the piss stains and shoe marks old and new, dried and wet, its redness looking fresh, vibrant, and so cruelly full of life as it made its way towards Hugh’s boots.

He steeled himself to look into Lee’s steady, amused eyes, and that was it. The world blackened and he was hit by overwhelming nausea. He stumbled to the honeywagon in a haze, his legs propelling him forward, his mind a scattering of thoughts, of the word honeywagon evolving as the name of a mobile toilet, of Lee’s smile, of the wetness of his socks, of his mother telling him not to pick his nose, of Grace kissing him for the first time, out of the blue, with him stunned and amazed, of the overladen breakfast plate, shining with grease, of the Christmas party, of the words of the script jumbling on the page, of being at the Christmas party with Grace on his arm, of his foot slapping into another puddle, of the vomit lurching through his epiglottis and being desperately swallowed, of being drunk at the Christmas party and trying to find Grace, of the prospect of meeting Simon Styles with the smell of vomit on his breath, of pushing through a door, this toilet-cubicle door and the bedroom door merging into one, and finding Lee with his hand inside Grace’s trousers, of the wet dirty floor and the marks that would be left on his trousers as he knelt down, with his throat and mouth involuntarily forced wide by the Magimixed breakfast.

To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

He was stunned as the hair and makeup assistant simply buzzed the clippers from his hairline over his crown and right down to his neck, leaving a comical wide tramline of stubble straight through the middle of the thick thatch of mid-length auburn hair that his mother had always said was his best feature. The tramline was widened by another flowing sweep of the clippers, followed by another and another until he saw a gaunt, shaven Auschwitz victim staring back at him in grim, wide-eyed surprise. He had been given no warning. The young female assistant had just said, “You’re playing Colin, right?”, affixed a shiny black cloak around his neck, and commenced to give him a number one without uttering another syllable. The transformation from Hugh to Colin had taken less than a minute. Before entering the hair and makeup truck, he had already been to costume and been laden with army gear — combat fatigues, helmet, boots, belts, rucksack, attachments whose function he would never know — but he had still felt like Hugh just wearing a fancy-dress outfit. He would be handed his gun just before filming commenced, and he thought that perhaps that would be the time, once fully adorned, that he would truly feel like Colin. But no, the haircut did the job. He felt weak, scared, put upon and out of his depth; he knew it was just a shadow of what a young man must feel like emerging from the confusion and hurly-burly of war preparations to find himself on the front line, facing real terror and ashamed of his fear. At the first buzz-through of the clippers, he felt quietly angered that no one had asked his permission, or even warned him, before completely changing his appearance for months and months to come, just for the sake of one day’s work. He managed to say, quietly, too quietly, “But I think I will be wearing a helmet,” but there was no way back after the first valley had been sheared along the length of his scalp. The assistant just shrugged without a trace of sympathy and carried on mowing.

As she proceeded to smear brown, grey, and green makeup onto his face, he stared at himself. It’s fine, he thought to himself. All this — the hair, the rucksack they had filled with bricks to give it authentic weight, the wet socks, the too-tight boots, Lee’s smug face — would soon be worth it. An opportunity of pure beauty — beyond mathematics, science, or the plotting of history — had opened itself up before him and everything was going to plan.

Alice had exclaimed in shock as he said it and he wondered, just for a moment, whether he had done the right thing. Earlier, he had tried to tease her, telling her that she was going to have an important visitor in a few moments, but not letting her know who it was. But his mother’s face remained impassive and she kept her eyes shut, although he knew that she was awake — her index finger and thumb continually rubbed the small St. Christopher’s medal she always wore on a delicate chain around her neck, as if the saint alone could ease her final journey. In his rehearsals she had been geed up just by the mention of a visitor and by the time he revealed the truth, unfurled in finely judged, delicate layers, she had forgotten her world of pain entirely, her colour was blooming once more, and she was bursting with excitement. In reality, she seemed barely to know he was there, lost in the intricacies of the pain not masked by morphine and weighted beyond pleasantries with the crushing prognosis. After so many years of sharing such a deep bond, an unspoken and unbroken understanding of which they were so proud, after all the troughs of trouble they had faced together, she had moved beyond him in the last couple of days; for the first time in his life, from mewl to disorientated adolescent to quiet, careful, adult Hugh, he could not touch her.

When his clues that “you know him and yet you do not know him” and “he is two-dimensional at work but will be three-dimensional at exactly eleven o’clock” were just left hanging fatuously in the close, sickly-sweet air of the hospice room, he abandoned the plotted scene. He held her thin hand delicately.

“Simon Styles is coming to see you in just a minute.”

And there it was. An audible intake of breath. When her eyes opened, always so bloodshot and dry these days, they were full of fear, and she now held her St. Christopher’s medal tightly in her fist. Then she focused on Hugh for the first time in more than three days, and a smile slowly widened. She closed her eyes again and giggled.

“Don’t tease me, Hughie,” she said, gripping his hand as hard as she could. She opened her eyes again and looked at her serious, imploring son, and she knew he was not teasing. He had listened to every word she had said in the last month as the destination of her illness became all too inevitable, and he had sieved soft for anything he could turn into a moment of joy. “What are your favourite flowers in the world?” “What are your top ten favourite films?” “Who is your all-time favourite actor?” All asked in the same artlessly casual, all-too-important tone as he moved the beaker so she would not have to stretch or adjusted the blinds to coax sunlight into the room. He knew the answer to the last question only too well. Only one man brought a youthful, girlish, hopeful look to her eyes.

She tried to keep up her energy as eleven-fifteen came and went without a visitor. Her boy tried not to seem tense, but looked at the time on his phone every minute. By eleven-thirty Alice was slowly rubbing her medal again and was slipping back into her other world, unable to hang on any longer even for the sake of her son, who still stood, holding her other hand, but was now staring fixedly at the door.

In the closing miasma she saw something new in him, something terrifying, an anger fuelled not just by an unreliable actor who had made a promise he did not keep or by the horror of losing his mother, but by a growing tumour of hatred for every part of the careless world. She prayed that Grace, who seemed to her so odd and so fickle, would save him.

Yes, he was Colin now all right. Loaded with the paraphernalia of army belts and bags, he found it difficult to sit back down on the dining bus in any comfort. Something would be digging in his back, but if he shifted position, another hard object attached to his belt would take over its role. It didn’t help that he had decided to keep the army helmet on in order to hide the devastation that had been wrought to his hair. The helmet didn’t fit properly and sloped at an angle across his eyes, but he had no idea how to adjust it, trusting that the costume department would sort it out before the cameras rolled. He felt humiliated, ill at ease, and scared whether he would be able to do his duty when the time came. No one else on the dining bus gave him any attention. The crew had disappeared to perform their roles in the magic of film, leaving only extras straggling back from costume, awaiting the order to go to set. He had seen the ritual transformation many times before: As soon as some of the extras — even the more mild-mannered of them — had adorned a uniform or been given a replica gun, they would become boisterous, pally and ribald, assuming the mantle of real men who were in their own exclusive club of soldiers who protected the nation, who sure-footedly and valorously strode the fine line between life and death. Their newfound self-importance choked the air, and all because they were going to be filling a few pixels in a battle scene in which not even their nearest and dearest could possibly recognize them. Hugh knew that Colin would have been perpetually cowed by such men throughout his training and on the journey to war. He looked at his lines again and this time knew them off by heart without focusing on the print. He knew what Colin felt in the instant that he uttered those few words. Yes, he was Colin.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Lee banged his helmet down on the table and sat down opposite him.

“What you got there, then?” Before Hugh had a chance to react, Lee had grabbed the sides out of his hands. He read the scene slowly. Hugh could see him mouthing the words as he read. He knew without doubt that he had struggled at school and had hid his shame by thumping his classmates in the playground. The insight ignited a flicker of superiority but Hugh knew it would soon be dampened.

“You?” Lee looked at him incredulously. “You’re Colin?” He then broke into fulsome laughter and reached over with both hands to woggle Hugh’s cheeks. “All grown up now, then. Lines and everything.” As he stood up, he batted Hugh’s helmet off his head, revealing his shaven dome. It was only at that moment that Hugh realized that Lee’s hair had remained untouched, that he had somehow managed to keep a mid-length haircut that no one in the army would ever get away with. Lee turned to address the whole truck. “Pretty little skinhead here has got lines, can you believe it? He’s running with the big boys now.” Each and every one of the extras looked at Hugh and smiled or smirked. “Spielberg’s got his number too. Wants him to star in ET Two. Figures he can save money on makeup.” And with that the truck exploded with laughter.

Lee turned back to Hugh and gave him a light double slap on the face. He leaned in close, far too close, and whispered, “Try not to shit yourself.” As Lee walked down the aisle to the exit, laughing loudly and prompting another wave of conjoined hilarity, Hugh imagined taking out a knife, grabbing Lee’s hair, and pulling his head backwards as he calmly ran the blade across his throat.

He looked up and saw that the blood spray had arced a single thin line along the ceiling and down the wall. He stood still, allowing himself time to admire the fine, artful delicacy of the evenly spaced dots of red. Such astounding beauty in nature; such intricate patterns amongst the chaos.

As the 1st AD led Hugh over the rough terrain to meet Simon Styles, he really wished he could walk properly. The army rucksack was surely improbably heavy for an infantryman, the boots were scorching his heels with every step, his helmet kept sliding down and obscuring his vision, and he was now additionally encumbered by a rifle, which was also far heavier than he thought probable. Just a hundred yards from the trucks, the location was the site of a demolished building. The ground was gnarled and pitted, and there were enough concrete blocks, strewn bricks, pieces of buckled ironwork, and mud to immediately conjure wartime devastation without the set designers having to explore the wilder outreaches of their imagination. As Hugh stumbled in the wake of the 1st AD, trying to straighten his helmet while continually threatening to overbalance, he realized that he was more nervous about this moment than about remembering the lines. He looked up to see the 1st reach Simon Styles and turn around to introduce Hugh. He was clearly annoyed that Hugh was still twenty yards away rather than at his shoulder. As Hugh attempted to quicken his pace by half jogging towards them, the butt of his rifle got caught between his legs and almost sent him sprawling. He could clearly see the 1st AD mouth, “For God’s sake!”

Simon Styles stood there in his immaculately presented army uniform, smiling benignly. He raised his hand and Hugh thought for a second that he was about to give him a wave of recognition, but the hand continued its slow, measured path towards a curling forelock, which he gently moved a couple of millimetres away from his left eye. Colin was clearly the only character in the entire film for whom the authenticity of a severe scalping was deemed necessary. As Hugh stumbled again, he saw that his progress had become a source of entertainment for Lee and a group of a dozen other extras who were standing to the side of the lot, awaiting instructions.

As he finally reached the pair, the 1st AD said, “Simon, this is...” He had to look down at his call sheet for a prompt. “Hugh.” He didn’t feel the need to add his surname. Hugh was glad. He didn’t want to be recognized — it would spoil the surprise — and his full name might have triggered a memory. He needn’t have worried. Simon’s steady appraisal showed not one jot of recognition. The helmet, scalping, and uniform had transformed Hugh, and Simon clearly hadn’t made the link to a strange event three months ago when a short, angry, twenty-nine-year-old man steamed down a corridor towards him with a look of vengeance in his eyes. He was calmness personified and his face broke into the smirking smile that had wooed millions of cinemagoers across the globe. He seemed to be in control of every cell of his body, continually ready for anything — a closeup, an aggressive paparazzo, a bedraggled extra given an audience with the king. He showed no sign that just yesterday his love life had been the subject of front-page tabloid conjecture alongside photos of his girlfriend, emerging starlet Kathleen Harrison, outside a nightclub in the arms of another man. Simon reached out to squeeze Hugh’s shoulder and gave him the No. 2 Smile, the full works, a generous, gracious expression of pure, open delight at the privilege of being in another’s company, a smile rarely seen in performance but which was almost always gifted to a chat-show host. “Good to meet you, Hugh. Looking forward to working with you.”

Hugh was unable to speak, and found that his head had taken the unilateral decision to just keep nodding repeatedly. He told himself that the unbidden muteness didn’t matter right now. He had already decided that he would wait until the end of the scene, after they had spent a couple of hours filming together. Then Hugh would do exactly as the actor had done just now — place his hand on Simon Styles’ shoulder, give him his own version of the No. 2 Smile, and say, “Hey, Simon, remember when you were asked to take an hour of your precious time to fulfill the final wish of a dying woman?” Yes, that would be perfect. There would be a look of genuine surprise on Simon’s face, a surprise that would erupt into a whole new expression once Hugh had reached into his pocket and delivered his coup de grâce. It would be a fitting, filmic moment.

Hugh tried to be calm, tried to control himself, but as he sat on the dining bus during the lunch break, still ignored by every other extra, his mind kept on skittering back to the events of the morning. The shame. The injustice. But more than anything, the lost opportunity. He knew he was unlikely to get that close to Simon Styles ever again. The carefully scripted moment had suddenly evaporated and the chance of the coup de grâce had washed away in the persistent drizzle. The first rehearsal hadn’t gone well, he realized that. Just before “Action,” he had been distracted by seeing Lee laughing with the 1st AD. How did they know each other? Hugh wondered. How could the 1st, who seemed a sane enough person, lower himself to joke with this particular extra of all people? In Hugh’s experience, filmlandia was the most hierarchical place on earth and extras were ritually treated like the crap beneath the bottom of the barrel. Suddenly the action was underway and Styles was tearing across open ground, swerving around dead and dying extras dramatically to throw himself down onto a carefully placed mat beside Hugh, who had been positioned behind a small pile of rubble. Hugh had said his lines the wrong way round, blurting out, “Save us, Meybrick,” as soon as Styles had landed by his side. He heard the director — beer belly, beard, and a look that managed to combine graceless stupidity and the surefire knowledge of his own genius — growl with some malice, “This gentleman know his lines?”

But then Hugh mustered his concentration enough for Simon to say, “Well done, kid,” after the third rehearsal. They were both still lying prone behind the rubble, so close their bodies were touching, and for a second Hugh wondered whether this was the moment. He could say his piece, quietly, right here, right now, reach into his pocket, and, before anyone could stop him... but Styles was already getting to his feet and the heads of the hair, makeup, and costume departments were swarming all over him. Meanwhile, the assistant who had shaved Hugh’s head that morning was brusquely grabbing him by the shoulder, turning him onto his back, and roughly smearing more huge goblets of green and brown makeup onto his face. He wasn’t looking forward to the later shots that would reveal his wound, when presumably they would use industrial glue or three-inch nails to secure the prosthetic pieces onto his face.

During the first real take, it dawned on Hugh that he was actually doing this right, that it felt real, that an instant connection and understanding between the characters of Colin and Meybrick was coming through. He managed to give extra gravity to the turn of his head towards Meybrick and deliberate weight into his final line, “Save us, Meybrick. Save us all.” The only problem, he realized as soon as he heard an angry “Cut,” was that he had said “Simon” instead of “Meybrick.” He sat up to see the 1st AD look up to the heavens and then nod towards Lee. In a matter of seconds, Lee was lying in Hugh’s position, while Hugh was being told by the 3rd AD to pretend to be a dead soldier lying facedown in the mud at the very edge of shot. He realized that perhaps Lee had somehow managed to manufacture this, had plotted it out since the moment he had seen the script in Hugh’s hand.

For the next two hours, he lay there during take after take while long-haired, bulky, clearly-nothing-like-Colin Lee sometimes messed up his lines — but nobody seemed to mind. Worse, between takes he was immediately friendly with Styles. The actor seemed to take all this in his stride, responding to Lee’s overbearing banter, laughing at his jokes, and flashing the No. 2 Smile to all and sundry to show how comfortable he was with the situation, that he was, despite the fame, a man of the people. He even laughed when Lee said, loudly, “Saw your girlfriend in the paper yesterday. What a tart.” Styles then shook his head, smiling and tutting as if to say, “Women, hey, what can you do?” Lee pushed on further, way over the line. “Man, she’s been around. I think I might have had her last week.”

Styles’ expression was frozen, just for a millisecond, but then creased into laughter as he lightly jabbed Lee in the stomach. He then shouted to the director, “Hey, Barry, you’ve had Kathleen too, haven’t you?”

“Oh yeah, Simon, that sweet girl sure likes them large.”

As Simon laughed, Hugh wondered whether he had ever felt the way he had after he had seen Grace with Lee. He looked at the actor, with his smooth, seemingly unaging skin, his confident, calculated movements, his easy laughter... perhaps he could ride over the end of a relationship so easily because he knew there would be another amour along any minute, another actress on the way up, and that it was all just part of the game. For Hugh, there wouldn’t be another one along in a minute — there wouldn’t be another Grace in a lifetime — and it wasn’t a game. He then realized that Simon was looking at him — he hadn’t been forgotten after all, lying there in the mud — and that his face was now expressionless, calm and impassive as the crew’s tittering continued unabated. He then turned back to Lee, and quietly said something that had the extra doubling over and choking with laughter. Gasping, Lee gestured towards Hugh. “I’ve had his girlfriend too! Seriously!”

As he pieced together his memory of the morning’s events on the dining bus, Hugh’s splintered mind was hauled into focus by a single, overbearing emotion: rage. Direct, pure, and total. It grew and it burned over the next ten minutes. When Lee swaggered down the dining bus, put his arm across Hugh’s shoulders, and said deliberately loudly, “Sorry, Laurence, first your girlfriend and now this. Not a good year for you, is it?” Hugh found himself on his feet, his hands around the larger man’s neck, attempting to throttle the life out of him. As Lee bent his fingers back and the bullnecked Asian extra pulled him away and held him, Hugh was sent into even wilder paroxysms of fury because Lee had managed to keep on laughing throughout the attempted throttling. Hugh thrashed his arms in an effort to reach Lee once more, but the extra held him tight. Suddenly all his energy disappeared, and he became despondent and limp.

“Let him go,” said Lee. “He’s finished.”

“Not yet,” Hugh wanted to say, but he just walked off the bus, unable to make eye contact with any of the stunned, staring faces.

There was blood on his hands, his boots, and his uniform jacket, but he would make no effort to cleanse himself, for this blood was justice, this blood was truth. He stood looking down at the corpse for a long, final time. No acting was necessary. He felt calm. He felt complete.

He returned to the dining bus, sat by himself at the familiar, empty table, and waited for the future to unfold. He laughed to himself. Write and rewrite the script, rehearse and rehearse over and over again in your mind, and yet all plans can flutter away in an instant. Then chance, coincidence, fate, the dark spirit of the world, or perhaps simply the chaotic collision of atoms — call it what you will — will conjure a new trick, seemingly on a whim, beyond the possibility of the scripted aforethought. He came here to do one thing, and one thing alone, and here he was now, at the heart of something far deeper. He laughed again. The laugh must have been out loud, for the Asian man was studying him warily. Perhaps he hadn’t seen the blood drying on Hugh’s hand and crusting on his uniform, but he knew that something was off-kilter, that the spinning of the universe had been jolted for a second, just enough to threaten chaos.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Hugh had been standing alone in the wasteground nearly a hundred yards away from the group of white film vehicles when a flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw Simon Styles walk up the three steps into the honeywagon. He stood there dazed for a second, wondering what was wrong with this picture. Then it occurred to him. Why was Simon using the communal honeywagon lavatory when he could use the one in his own private Winnebago? Only then did the importance of the scene make its way through to his brain. This was his opportunity. It had been presented to him on a plate, and the setting was far better than the middle of a film set — a lavatory, yes, but private and discreet. He recalled the line — “Hey, Simon, remember when you were asked to take an hour of your precious time to fulfill the final wish of a dying woman?” — and felt in his pocket once more. And then he was running over the open ground again, stumbling through potholes, but this time without a care as to who saw him. This time, he would not be stopped.

But then, as he pressed on and his lungs were already protesting, Simon was already stepping down from the honeywagon, straightening his jacket and walking away. Hugh found extra speed, the uneven ground stopped hindering him, and he reached shouting distance.

Simon Styles, now twenty yards away from the honeywagon, turned around to face him, No. I Smile — the half-smile, half-smirk — at the ready. Hugh stopped in his tracks, almost at the honeywagon door, as the smile faded from Styles’ lips.

“Hugh,” he called. “I’m sorry about your mother.” And then he nodded, his face grave, portraying his regret that he had not said anything earlier, that he had recognized him all along, that the world was a terrible place, that the loss of a mother was a terrible thing. Hugh reached into his pocket, but he was too far away, and he was suddenly crying and blubbing. He only managed to nod and turned to walk up the steps into the honeywagon. Simon moved as if to follow him.

Hugh looked down at Lee’s prone body. He must have had his throat slit from behind but had fallen onto his back, with his head near the toilet bowl, his torso wedging open the cubicle door and his legs protruding towards the urinals. An artery must have been severed. Blood was still flowing freely from the wound but it was clear from his open eyes that Lee had already gone to meet his maker. Nonetheless, Hugh felt for his pulse. He was transfixed by the clean edges of the slit. He stood up again and looked around the honeywagon door, but Simon had disappeared. Hugh could have walked away then. He could have called out, raised the alarm, and named names, and surely Styles’ uniform would have at least minute speckles of blood. But he simply returned to the body and looked again at life departed for the second time in three months. How different it was on this occasion. He felt no remorse, no pity — nothing but a strange surge of power and delight. He knew what to do. He was about to step into the limelight. He would act out the scenes with unparalleled brilliance, and no one except one other man would ever know the truth.

The overweight, desultory runner stepped onto the bus.

“Anyone seen Lee? He should be back on set.”

Hugh thought she said it far more quietly than the situation merited. No one answered, but the bullnecked man continued to look at Hugh, and was now intermittently focusing on the dark, rusty crust of blood on Hugh’s hand. Hugh did not remove his hand from view. He merely smiled and raised one eyebrow slightly. The extra got up and said to the runner, “He went to the honeywagon awhile ago. I’ll see if I can find him.”

Hugh leaned back and closed his eyes. He thought back to his last meeting with Simon, three months ago. Hugh had stood in the hospice room, staring at the closed door, holding his mother’s left hand until she had stopped rubbing her St. Christopher’s medal and fell into a deep sleep. He had to do something, anything. His rage could not be contained anymore. He let go of his mother’s hand, pulled open the door, and, furious at his own impotence, hurtled down the corridor, straight into Simon Styles. “You’re too late, you’re too goddamn late. She’s asleep.”

“God, I’m so sorry.” There were no smiles, no smirks. There was no doubt that the apology was genuine. “I’ve been in traffic, stuck behind an accident. I couldn’t get hold of my agent to warn you.” He proffered flowers, chocolates, grapes, and a box of DVDs. He refused to allow Hugh to wake his mother, and said that he would wait alone in the coffee shop across the street, reading scripts, until his mother woke up naturally, no matter how long it took.

And he did just that. He was still there two hours later when Hugh went to find him. Hugh desperately wanted to be in the room with them, to talk about films, to gossip, to become friends, but this was his mother’s treat and he could not bear to sully it with the demands of his own ego. He knocked on the door an hour later, and found his mother with her eyes closed, but a smile upon her lips, and Simon Styles holding her hand in both of his own.

She died two days later, but she went softly, so softly.

When he detected the change in the atmosphere outside the dining bus, Hugh put his hand in his pocket and took out the box he had never managed to give to Simon Styles. He opened the box, delicately placed the St. Christopher’s medal around his own neck, and waited.

Noodling

by Lisa Lepovetsky

Several of Lisa Lepovetsy’s stories appeared in EQMM in the 1990s, and we’re glad to have her back with this tightly constructed tale. In addition to writing stories in both the mystery and horror genres for various magazines, the Pennsylvania author is a published poet with many credits in literary magazines. She teaches writing and literature classes at both the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State. She also writes and hosts mystery dinner theater (sometimes on cruise ships!).

* * *

“Angie’s little Lizzie says she sees a ghost at night sometimes, wandering a-round the pond out by their barn.”

After this pronouncement, Marla Hartmann looked around the room at the other ladies making noodles for the Ail Saints Episcopal Church fundraiser. When nobody responded, she continued, “Apparently she thinks it comes out of the woods at dusk, circles the pond a couple of times, and then returns to the trees. I don’t know how she could see anything that far away, but she swears she sees it.”

This was my first time “noodling” with the church ladies, and I had no idea how I was supposed to react to this information. Smalltown gossip has never been to my taste. So I said nothing, and just turned the handle on the noodle cutter, watching the thin strips appear underneath as the flattened dough passed through the metal teeth.

Marla was Angie’s aunt, and lived “next door,” a mile and a half closer to town on the same dead-end dirt road. Though I didn’t know her well, Angie and I had gone to high school together ten years earlier. I tried to imagine her little girl peering out the window of her trailer at a wavering phosphorescent face, but the picture just wouldn’t come.

“Lizzie might well see spooks,” Marla continued as she deftly caught the noodles in her plump hands and draped them on the adjacent table. “Those two kids don’t get much attention these days. I think Angie’s been hitting the sauce since Jimmy Joe left. Turn that crank a bit faster, Gwen,” she added, glancing at me. I did.

“Can’t blame her for that,” said Etta Bollinger, a tall, thin woman with unnaturally red hair. “Left alone out there in the middle of nowhere with two young sprouts, one still in diapers.”

She and her twin sister Ella bent over two other machines, putting wads of dough through increasingly narrow rollers to get them to just the right thickness before they went through the cutters. Ella was shorter and plumper, and had let her hair go gray. The sisters looked nothing alike, but dressed in similar clothes and lived together in the house they grew up in.

Ella glanced at me. “You and Angie are of an age, aren’t you, Gwen? Do you know her?”

“Not really,” I muttered, trying to guide the dough through the blades without getting my fingers caught. “She was a couple of years behind me in school. I just knew her in passing.”

“You must have known Jimmy Joe, then,” Marla said.

“He wasn’t in any of my classes,” I answered. “I was in the band when he was on the football team, though, so I knew who he was. That was about it.”

“Your husband — what’s his name, Henry — he was on the football team too, wasn’t he? His mama was bragging on him all the time, as I recall.” Ella leaned back with her hand on her hip, stretching out a kink.

“Yes, he was. That’s how I met Jimmy Joe, I guess.”

“That Jimmy Joe loves my noodles,” Marla said, laying out another set of noodle strips on waxed paper. “Of course, I never use machines; just a rolling pin and a sharp knife, that’s all I ever need.”

“Well, it would take us too long the old-fashioned way,” said Etta, “trying to make enough noodles to sell at the holiday bazaar. It’s only two weeks away. Hard to believe it’s November already. The time does fly. Angie and the kids coming to your house for Thanksgiving dinner, Marla?” She took another ball of dough from the big bowl and squeezed it deftly between her palms before feeding it through her flattening machine.

“I suppose so. Though I have to wonder what she did to make Jimmy Joe leave so suddenly. That girl’s a sneaky one sometimes.”

“Sneaky my Aunt Hilda,” Etta said disgustedly. “Angie’s too simple, and too busy with those babies, to be sneaky. You have to admit Jimmy Joe always had a wandering eye, and a wandering foot. He was a missing person waiting to happen. That’s why the police didn’t spend more effort looking for him. His kind of man is the reason I never got married.”

“He’ll be back, you mark my words,” said Marla, raising her right forefinger and letting a batch of noodles ribbon onto the table under the machine. I stopped cranking for a moment and flexed my fingers, but said nothing.

“He may not be perfect,” Marla continued, “but he’ll be back to take care of those children.”

“Not perfect,” snorted Ella, stretching her back again. “He took care of those kids by going to the Red Dog every Friday night and carousing with his cronies, playing pool and drinking, while Angie stayed home waiting for him. He probably has a woman on the side too, a sharp-looking boy like him. He’s probably shacked up somewhere right now.”

“Or he’s run off with his latest honey,” Etta said. “He and Angie had a big blowout just before he took off. That’s what my boy Bobby says. And he should know — he was the officer who took Angie’s call when she reported him missing.”

“Etta, would you take these noodles up to the sanctuary to dry?” Marla asked, holding out a large flat box of noodles. “If you can find a place to drape them. I think the back pews still have some room left.”

Things were quiet for a few minutes after Etta left; the only sounds were the creak of the handle on the rollers and Ella’s tuneless humming. I glanced out the window and watched the first flakes flutter down onto the brown grass. Winter was coming early this year; I was glad. I like winter — the purity of the white snow on the ground, like a blanket covering all our sins, so we can start over again in the spring. And the streams and ponds freeze over — that’s the best part. Then the kids can go ice skating, gliding across the smooth surface, not worried about what might be swimming below.

But I didn’t say those things. I didn’t want to enter the conversation, draw attention to myself. I hardly knew these women. I had joined the church because Henry’s mother wanted me to, therefore Henry wanted me to. And I don’t like to fight with Henry; keeping him happy keeps me in our nice big house with the three-stall garage and a swimming pool and tennis court out back. He may not always make me happy, but his money does.

“Is Angie helping out with the bazaar again this year, Marla?” Ella asked.

Marla shrugged. “I doubt it. With Jimmy Joe gone, she’d have to pay for a sitter, and they don’t really have the money for that. He didn’t exactly leave her well-off, you know.”

Yes, I thought; we all know about Jimmy Joe’s finances. Like all small towns, everybody pretty well knew everybody else’s business. Although, some lucky people were able to keep their secrets a secret.

Like the fact that I know who the “ghost” is that little Lizzie sees wandering down by the pond every week. And the fact that I know where Jimmy Joe’s gone and that he’s not coming back.

Jimmy Joe and I had a nice thing going for a while, and neither Henry nor Angie knew anything about it. He’d claim he was going to the Red Dog, and I’d say I was going out with my camera, and we’d meet at various places — a clearing in the woods when the weather was nice, his old barn when it started getting colder. He was more interesting than Henry, and a better lover. I really enjoyed our time together.

But then Jimmy Joe decided he’d fallen in love with me, and wanted to get married. He was going to tell Angie all about us, and ask her for a divorce. I had no intention of leaving Henry; I like my life the way it is. I tried to explain this to Jimmy Joe in his barn one night, but he got angry and tried to hit me. He missed, but I grabbed the closest thing, which happened to be a heavy wrench, and hit him with it as hard as I could. He went down and never got back up again.

I loaded him in a wheelbarrow, but it took me some time to decide what to do with the body. I made good use of some old rope and a cement block. I’ve been coming back to Angie’s place regularly to make sure he’s still hidden.

I hope the pond freezes over soon.

Some Flames Never Die

by Percy Spurlark Parker

Percy Spurlark Parker appeared in EQMM’s Department of First Stories forty-one years ago with “Block Party.” He’s gone on to write many more stories for anthologies and magazines, including our sister publication, AHMM, and he’s the author of two published novels. He’s one of the original members of the Private Eye Writers of America and a former president of Mystery Writers of Americas Midwest Chapter. He returns to EQMM this month with an entry in his Trevor Oaks P.I. series.

* * *

After I got over the initial shock of her walking into the Game Room, I could just about break it down to the number of years and months since I’d last seen her. Given a minute or two and I could probably have come up with the exact number of days. It wasn’t that I was a lovesick sap or anything. Sure, I’d thought about her over the years, what could’ve been, maybe even what should’ve been, but her not being around hadn’t made a monk out of me by any means.

It’s just that when you’re laid up in the hospital after you’ve injured your knee at football practice and the doctors tell you they can fix it so you can walk, but forget about any plans for a pro football career, and you tell your girlfriend expecting some words of solace or encouragement, but instead she blows you a kiss and says adios... Well, you just tend to remember things like that.

Back then. I’d been a second-string offensive end for UNLV. I had my girl, and another two years of college ball to make the pros take notice. I was six foot four and a solid two-fifty; she was five-nine without heels. We were a power couple on campus. I used to like the way people looked at us. Life was good, full of promise. But then came that day at practice when I was making a cut and my cleats got jammed into the turf and I got hit at the same time. I can still hear the pop my knee made.

In retrospect, maybe it was a good thing she left me. At the time, I wasn’t a nice guy to be around. I probably would’ve done or said something to force her to leave anyway. Anger and self-pity don’t make a great combination.

She’d taken a few steps into the Game Room and stopped, almost posing, getting the attention of everybody in the joint. There was actually a moment when the booms and bangs of the arcade games were silent as the players gawked.

She’d always had a great figure, tall and statuesque, a graceful stride to her walk, just the right amount of hip action. She’d put on a little weight since our college days, but it had all gone to the right places. She was wearing knee-high, spike-heeled boots, a tan skirt, and a tan fur-trimmed leather jacket with a fur cap cocked to one side of her head. It was a fitting outfit for Vegas’s changeable November weather.

From where I stood, which was behind the counter on her right, the mink cap and trimmings looked genuine. It meant one of two things: Either she had enough money to buy some real fine fake fur, or she had enough money to buy the real McCoy and to tell PETA to go to hell. The key here being she had enough money for either. She’d evidently hit the mother lode since the last time I’d seen her, the rock on her left hand being further proof of my assessment.

Her dark brown hair was thick and luxurious, its ends mingled with her mink collar. Her complexion was just a little darker than the tan of her jacket. She’d had a nose job — it wasn’t quite as wide as I remembered — but her lips were still full, inviting, if I let my mind wander in that direction.

Her lips smiled, and her big brown eyes widened somewhat as she came over to me. “Hello, Tree.”

Tree was the tag I’d been handed back in high school, and it had followed me into college ball. Trevor “Oak Tree” Oaks. There were only a very few who still used the name today.

“Hello, Val,” I said, my throat suddenly going dry.

“Bet you didn’t expect to see me again.”

I swallowed, got my composure. “Truthfully, I used to dream about one day passing you on the street and you’d be selling pencils or asking for a handout, and I’d stop, smile, and just keep going.”

She shrugged. “I guess I deserve that. But surely you’ve gotten over it. You couldn’t still feel that way after all this time.”

“No, I’ve learned to accept life’s little twists and turns.”

“Good. I would hate to think you’re holding a grudge.”

Actually, I’d gone from the pencil thing to an earthquake swallowing her up, to a bunch of fire ants slowly doing a number on her. As I said, back then I wasn’t a very nice guy to be around.

“I suppose it’s only polite for me to ask how your knee is doing?”

“It’s kept me off the football field, and I can generally tell when it’s going to rain, but otherwise it’s okay.”

“That’s good to hear... about you managing all right, I mean.”

“Thanks for the concern,” I said. “So, now that the amenities are out of the way, what can I chalk this visit up to? You surely can’t be here to get back together. You seem to be doing all right as things are.”

Her smile perked a little. “Yes, I’m doing very well these days.” Then she sobered, looked around the place. Some of the gamers still hadn’t returned to their play. “Is there someplace private where we can talk?”

“My office,” I said, coming from behind the counter.

She followed me to the back end of the arcade where the closed office door confronted us. I knocked, not waiting for a reply before opening the door.

Holly Warrington, the only full-timer I employ at the Game Room, looked up from my desk and the stacks of invoices she’d been working on.

“I’m going to need the office.”

“Sure,” she said, standing and stacking the papers to one side. She was a few years older than myself, dark complexion, with high cheekbones, her hair in long tiny braided dreads, and a body that most showgirls strive for.

She came from behind the desk and slid past us as she exited the office. It might have been my imagination, but along with the polite smile she and Val exchanged I thought they also shared an icy stare.

I closed the door as Val sat in one of the two chairs in front of my desk, and I went around and sat myself. “Now, what’s this all about.”

“I need a private detective.”

“I didn’t know you were aware I have a license.”

“Not that I’ve been keeping tabs on you, but I still have ties here in Vegas. I’ll admit the arcade threw me for a moment.”

It says Miller’s Game Room out front, no mention of my name or the P.I. side of the business. Gus Miller had been a good friend. He left the Game Room to me in his will. I’d never put any thought into changing the name of the place, or making any reference to my being a private investigator. My action, or rather inaction, hadn’t seemed to put a dent in either one of the businesses.

“The Game Room was left to me by a former client,” I explained. “Didn’t think it made sense to keep another office when this one was here.”

“Sounds practical. I don’t believe that was one of your traits when we were going together. You wanted the fanciest car and the biggest house, as I recall.”

“Yeah, well. What can I say. I grew up.”

“I think we both have,” she said with a nod.

“So, what do you need a private detective for?”

“My niece, or rather my husband’s niece. She’s going on trial in two weeks for murdering her boyfriend. And from all indications, she’s going to be convicted.”

“Did she do it?”

“She says she didn’t.”

“That alone isn’t much of a defense.”

“That’s what her lawyers are saying.”

“Who’s the accused?”

“Bethany Andenbeck. Do you know the name?”

A slight chuckle involuntarily slipped from my mouth. “Yes, I do.”

If you lived in Vegas, you knew the name. The Andenbecks owned a piece of at least a fifth of the casinos in the state, one or two properties in Atlantic City, and some European investments also. I remembered reading about the murder when it occurred about eight, nine months earlier. Neighbors reported hearing gunfire and seeing Bethany run out of her boyfriend’s apartment with a gun in her hand. I remember at the time thinking, Andenbeck or not, she didn’t have a chance in hell of getting away with it.

“So, you’re part of the Andenbeck clan now?”

“Stephen and I are coming up on our fifth anniversary. He’s Allen Andenbeck’s youngest son. We met at a Lakers’ game. Found out we both had roots here in Vegas and, well...”

“I see,” I said, knowing damn well that once she latched onto him, poor Stephen hadn’t had a chance. “Look, with all the Andenbeck money behind your niece I’m sure this case has been checked out six different ways from Sunday. I don’t know what you expect me to be able to do at this late date.”

“We were hoping you could prove her innocent.”

“This is Vegas, Val, but I’m not a magician.”

“That’s the type of attitude that’s her biggest problem, Tree. Everyone from the police on down believes she’s guilty. No one has really been on her side. Even her lawyers are advising her to take a plea bargain.”

“That may be her best option.”

“We need someone to take her side in this. Someone who can really make a difference.”

“And that’s supposed to be me?”

“You’re our last chance. If you can’t come up with something that convinces everyone she’s innocent, she’s going to be found guilty for sure. You’ll be paid handsomely, of course.”

“Listen, Val. Being able to write my own paycheck is pretty tempting. But being in this business you develop some scruples. You have to. It’s like a defense mechanism. At least I have, sometimes to my own detriment, I’ll admit. But I don’t take money under false pretenses. I honestly can’t see where I’d be of any help.”

She clinched her lips. Sighed. “How about this, don’t make your mind up right now. Talk to her first. Hear her side of things. Will you at least do that?”

“I think it’ll be a waste of all of our time, but okay. How soon can I see her?”

“Right now if you’d like. She’s outside in my car.”

Bethany hadn’t been alone; Stephen Andenbeck was also waiting in the car with her. The three of them filled my little office, the two ladies sitting while Stephen stood behind them. He wore a thick wool turtleneck sweater, blue in color, and a pair of designer jeans. His sandy blond hair flowed in a rambling pattern, sweeping over the tops of his ears. By contrast, his niece’s blond locks were chopped short, somewhat haphazard and yet fashionable.

“Thanks for agreeing to see us, Mr. Oaks,” Stephen said. His voice was a rich measured baritone, which somewhat surprised me coming from his slender frame. “I was hesitant when Mrs. Navilone suggested you, but then Val seems to have faith in you also.”

“Belle brought me to your attention?”

“Yes. She said if anyone could help, it would be you.”

Belle Navilone was from old-school Vegas, a widow of one of Vegas’s crime bosses. I’d worked a number of jobs for her and she’d been pleased with the outcome. She’d wanted to put me on her payroll, or at least a standing retainer. I liked a little more freedom than either of those arrangements would allow. We settled for her calling when she needed me. And as an addendum she directed a lot of business my way.

I leaned back in my chair looking directly across to Bethany. She was slender-framed also, but in a good way. She wasn’t a world-class beauty but she was close. She had large deep blue eyes, a pert little upturned nose, and a faint splash of red covered her lips, which seemed to have a permanent pucker.

“Before I commit myself, I think it’s best if I hear your side of the story, Ms. Andenbeck.”

She cleared her throat, sat up a little straighten “I don’t believe I shot Ricky.”

“You don’t believe?”

“I can’t remember what happened exactly, but I just know I wouldn’t have shot him. I couldn’t have, I loved him.”

“There’s something missing here,” I said. “From what I understand, there were witnesses who heard gunshots and saw you running from your boyfriend’s apartment carrying a gun.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true. But you see, I’d been drinking pretty heavy that evening. I don’t even remember Ricky bringing me to his apartment.”

“What do you remember?”

“Hearing some noise that woke me up.” She shrugged. “I had the gun in my hand and Ricky was lying on the bedroom floor. I don’t know. I guess I panicked and ran.”

“What did you do with the gun?”

“I must have dropped it outside of Ricky’s apartment building. The police say they recovered it in the bushes by the entrance.”

“Your gun?”

She shook her head. “One of Ricky’s. He was a nut about them. He always had several guns in his apartment. At least one in every room.”

“Just lying around?”

“Sometimes. You’d move a newspaper, or a sofa cushion, or a pillow and one would be lying there.”

“Seems rather careless to me.”

“What can I say, that was Ricky.”

“Where did you do all this drinking?”

“Little place on Fort Apache, The Frosty Mug. Ricky and I used to hang out there a lot. It was kind of our spot.”

“So, you got a snootful and you don’t remember the boyfriend escorting you out of the joint. Do you always drink that much, Ms. Andenbeck?”

“No, it wasn’t the norm, but you see, we’d had an argument and broken up two weeks earlier. We’d just gotten back together and, well, I guess I overdid it.”

“Did you and Ricky go to The Frosty Mug together, or did you meet up there?”

“We met there.”

“And when you said he brought you to his apartment, I presume he used his car, which left your car in the club’s parking lot.”

“I suppose so. I had to send someone back to get my car. Is that of any importance?”

“Just filling in the gaps.” I took a moment, running it over to myself to see if there was anything I’d missed. “You said you two had argued. What was that all about?”

“Ricky had an eye for the ladies. I thought when we started going together I’d cured him of the habit. But a friend of mine said she’d seen him out with someone else. He said she was mistaken. I didn’t believe him. But he kept calling me, swearing he hadn’t done anything wrong and wanting to get back together. I couldn’t say no to him.”

“Maybe you should’ve,” I said. “Jealousy has always been a prime reason for murder. I’m sure the D.A. is going to point that out to the jury. You were just getting back together, something happened to awaken your suspicions again, you were inebriated, guns were easily accessible, and your boyfriend winds up dead.”

“I can see how it looks that way...”

“And everyone else will too,” I cut in. “Look, I understand your lawyers are suggesting you seek a plea bargain.”

“Yes, they are, but how can I? Deep down I know I didn’t kill Ricky, regardless of how drunk I was.”

“It’s probably your best bet. A plea bargain might get the charge reduced to involuntary manslaughter. You might be looking at two, three years tops.”

“I didn’t do it. I just know I didn’t,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

Stephen put his hands on her shoulders, awkwardly trying to comfort her. “Please, Mr. Oaks, won’t you help us?”

“Yes. Tree,” Val said, leaning forward. “We need you.”

“Quite a party,” Holly said, as the trio exited the Game Room. “New clients?”

“Yeah, for all the good I’m going to do them.”

She was behind the counter by the register, a half-full cup of vending-machine coffee in front of her. She waved off my offer to get her another as I dropped some coins into the machine for myself. We used to keep a pot going behind the counter. The vending machine has proven to be more convenient but a lot less tasteful.

I explained to her who the trio were and what they were asking me to do.

She pushed her lips out slightly. Her lipstick was dark brown, almost matching her smooth complexion. “So, that was the ol’ girlfriend, huh?”

“Yep, that was her.”

“I can see why you never spoke highly of her.”

“What d’you mean?”

“As good as she looks, her leaving you high and dry must’ve cut pretty deep.”

“I got over it.”

“Sure you did.”

“I said, I did.”

“Uh-huh.”

I tried to sound firm, but I wasn’t sure if I was doing it for Holly’s benefit or my own. “That’s neither here nor there. For the moment, Bethany Andenbeck is my new client, and I haven’t the slightest idea how I’m going to help her out of the mess she’s in.”

“Do you believe she’s innocent?”

“I’m not sure about that either.”

“You can’t go at it half-assed, Trevor. You’ve got to throw yourself behind her all the way, or you might just as well escort her to jail right now.”

She was right, of course, just as she is on a number of cases we’ve hashed over. I couldn’t have anyone better as a sounding board. Over the years Holly and her husband Josh have become close friends. He’s a strength trainer at UNLV. Whenever I need an extra set of muscles for some bodyguard work, he’s the first person I call.

“You said Belle dropped this in your lap?”

“Yeah, and she really didn’t do me any favors this time around.”

She shrugged. “You’re getting paid, aren’t you?”

I took the check Stephen Andenbeck had given me out of my shirt pocket and showed it to her.

Her eyes got a bit wider. “Damn, this is favor enough if you ask me.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.” I finished my coffee, tossed the cup in the wastebasket behind the counter, stuck the check back in my pocket, and headed back to my office. Since I’d taken it, I guessed I should try to earn part of it anyway.

Sergeant Joe Glover of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police answered his cell phone on the second ring. “I knew the day was going along too quietly; what’s up, Tree?”

Joe and I warmed a lot of benches back in our UNLV days. He was a running back, but where I wanted to turn pro, Joe’s goal had always been to join the police department. We were pretty tight even back then, and he was just about the only person who put up with my bullshit attitude when I screwed up my knee. I list him as one of my closest friends on or off the force. However, when it comes to any case I’m working on, he’s always been a cop first.

“I just got hired by Stephen Andenbeck to get his niece out of the mess she’s in.”

“As long as he doesn’t ask for a refund, sounds like easy money to me. You might as well kick back and relax. There’s nothing you can do, Tree. We’ve got a slam dunk on this one.”

“Did you work the case?”

“Yeah, it was one of mine.”

“You look at anyone else for it?”

“No need. The neighbors heard shots and saw her run out of the apartment with the gun in her hand. Tossed it in the bushes when she left the building. Her prints were the only ones recovered from the weapon. Comes up with some flimsy excuse that she doesn’t remember. You tell me why I should look any further.”

I couldn’t. There was no logical reason why he should’ve. “Well, I just wanted to let you know I’ll be nosing into the case.”

“This is one time I don’t mind. Tree. Do all the nosing you want. You can’t change the facts. She’s guilty.”

Joe’s words stayed with me as I drove out to the Valley Rose Apartments. It was where Bethany’s boyfriend had lived. Before she’d left my office I’d also gotten the names of her lawyers, the friend who’d said she had seen Banks with another woman, and the address of The Frosty Mug. Places to go and people to talk to, the heart of any investigation. Yet I had very little hope that any of this would be of any help.

Valley Rose Apartments was an eight-story pink building just inside Summerlin, arguably Clark County’s richest community. From the third floor up, balconies were attached to the building on both its north and south sides. Residents used the private parking garage inside the building, peons like myself had to grab one of the slots in the parking lot.

There was a security guard in the building’s lobby, sitting at a desk with six security monitors incorporated in its framework. He was a big white guy, young, more fat than muscle but still big. He looked up at me as I approached, his dark eyebrows lowering over his eyes. If the pose was supposed to be intimidating it really didn’t work. I’ve added ten pounds since my UNLV days, and admittedly I’ve never had the chiseled features of an Adonis, so I know about intimidating poses. It’s a big part of my P.I. persona. But I also know when to use it and when not to.

I tried a smile. “Good afternoon, I’m Trevor Oaks.” I handed him one of my business cards. “The Andenbeck family hired me to look into the homicide you had here a few months back. Wonder if you can help me. One investigator to another?”

His eyebrows rose as his smile grew. He seemed to like me elevating him to an investigator. He nodded, looking at my card. “How can I help you, Mr. Oaks?”

“Trevor, please...” I let it dangle, looking at the nameplate on the shirt-pocket flap of his blue-grey uniform.

“Fellows, Mark Fellows.”

We shook hands.

“You must be talking about Mr. Banks?” Fellows said.

“Yeah, that’s the one. You wouldn’t happen to’ve been working that night?”

“It was my late shift. His girlfriend ran right by me with the gun in her hand. I saw her drop it into the bushes. Pointed it out to Metro when they got here. I would’ve stopped her but at the time I didn’t know she’d shot anyone.”

“Of course,” I said, thinking that, seeing her with a gun, he hadn’t been too anxious about stepping in front of her. But I didn’t go there. Instead I said. “Bet it’s not the craziest thing you’ve seen on the job.”

“I’ll say. I can tell you some wild stuff that’s gone on in this place.”

“We’ve got to get together and swap war stories sometime,” I said. “Tell me, though, how did she get into the building?”

“She came in with Mr. Banks through the garage entrance.”

“I suppose you saw them on the monitor?”

“Sure did.” He nodded.

“How does that work exactly?”

“Pretty simple, really. Every time someone enters the garage this one switches on,” he said, pointing to the monitor on his far left. “I can follow them manually from there with the toggle switch if I want.”

“And did you?”

He offered up a slight grin. “Yeah. She was out of it. Mr. Banks practically carried her to the elevator.”

“There’re cameras in the elevators?”

Another grin. “She was clinging to him pretty good. He felt her up a bit. She didn’t seem to mind. And before you ask, I switched the monitor to his floor. Followed them to his apartment door.”

“How much later was it that she ran out with the gun in her hand?”

“Thirty, forty minutes.”

“Did you see her run out of the apartment?”

“No, but I switched the monitor back to Mr. Banks’s floor when she left the building. Mrs. Sarason and Mr. Lewis were standing in the hall, and then my phone rang. It was Mr. Lewis on his cell telling me to stop the woman coming down in the elevator, that she’d just killed Mr. Banks. I ran out after her, but she was gone.”

That was another point where I was sure the prosecution was going to attack the defense. If Bethany was supposed to’ve been so intoxicated that she didn’t remember how she got to Banks’s apartment, how had she made such an effective escape?

Both Mrs. Sarason and Mr. Lewis were currently at home. I asked him to call and see if they would agree to speak to me. He tried Lewis first and got a quick okay.

Timothy Lewis was almost as tall as I am, wide shouldered, with a slight paunch. He had a good head of brown hair fading to gray, and a square face with a Jay Leno chin. He invited me in, looking at the business card I’d given him. “Mr. Oaks? Mark said you were working for the Andenbeck family?”

“Yes, I’ve been retained by them to see if I can generate any new information that may help Ms. Andenbeck in her defense.”

He nodded. “You do realize the D.A. is calling me up as a state’s witness?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

“I’m really not sure if I should even be talking to you.”

“All I need is a few minutes of your time, just a question or two answered. I’m kind of playing catch-up.”

He bit his lip, looked at my card, back to me. “Aw, what the hell. Come on, have a seat. Can I get you a drink, coffee, soda?”

“No, I’m fine.”

A pair of extra-wide French doors were embedded in the wall across from the apartment’s entrance, giving access to the balcony. The wall to the right housed a door I guessed led to the bedroom. From what I recalled, the outside of the building looked like, the bedroom had another set of French doors with balcony access.

It was a spacious room with a dining area behind and to the right a trio of overstuffed furniture. The dining table was large enough to offer plenty of elbow room for the six chairs encompassing it. The kitchen nook allowed a glimpse of stainless-steel appliances, and the short hall running alongside probably led to a second bedroom and the guest washroom.

I sank into the overstuffed sofa that was planted across from the flat-panel TV hanging on the wall.

Lewis walked over to a portable bar resting in the corner to the left of the French doors. “Sure you won’t have one? I find a gin and tonic rather relaxing in the afternoon.”

Another no from me and he continued to build his drink.

There was a Western on the flat-screen, the good guys shooting it out with the bad guys or vice-versa, I couldn’t tell which, they were all wearing black hats.

“Exactly what did you want to know, Mr. Oaks?” he asked, approaching the sofa with a large old-fashioned glass in his hand.

“Basically just to go over what you saw.”

He sat in a chair that was a cousin to the sofa, took a swallow of his drink, shrugged. “It’s really pretty straightforward. I’m in electronic sales, and I travel a lot. I’d just gotten home. Had a good run and flew in a day early. Just sat my bags down when I heard the gunshots. I was in the army, so I know what gunshots sound like. I went out into the hallway and knocked on Mrs. Sarason’s door—”

“You thought the gunshots came from her apartment?”

“Well, no,” he said, taking another swallow of his drink. “You see, the walls aren’t the thickest in this place; I thought they came from next door in Rick’s apartment. But sometimes sounds can play tricks on you. I went across to Mrs. Sarason’s just to see if she heard anything. Anyway, by the time she came to the door and I explained myself, the Andenbeck girl ran out of Rick’s place with a gun.”

“Did you try to stop her?”

He grinned. “I said she had a gun. I waited until she got into the elevator and I called down to the security station.”

“Did you know Banks well?”

He nodded. “Sure, Rick was a likable guy. We shared a common balcony. We used to talk a lot. Real man’s man. Had an eye for the ladies. Some of the stories he told were really prizewinners.”

“You two ever go trolling together?”

“Who, me? Naw. Strictly vicarious on my part. I mean, when I was younger I had my share, but not anymore.” He pointed to the gold band on his finger. “Happily married. Been eight years now.”

One of the French doors opened and a willowy brunette stepped in from the balcony wearing a long-sleeved, open-collar blouse and a floor-length skirt. She was carrying a tall Tom Collins glass, empty except for a couple of ice cubes.

“Excuse me. I didn’t know we had company.” Her voice was thin and halting, a mild slur to her speech as she sat her glass on the bar.

“He’s a detective doing some follow-up investigation on Rick’s murder,” Lewis said to her over his shoulder, not bothering to get up. “Mr. Oaks, my wife, Sharon.”

We both nodded.

“Follow-up investigation?” she questioned, frowning ever so slightly. “I thought everything was settled, just waiting for the trial to start.”

“Mr. Oaks is working for the Andenbeck family, dear.”

“Oh,” she said, gathering the collar of her blouse together. “Surely you can’t be trying to get her off?” she said, sitting on the arm of her husband’s chair.

When I said she was willowy I wasn’t calling her skinny by any means. There was more than just a couple of bumps under her blouse, and her skirt had a split that opened when she sat, displaying her entwined legs and shapely calves. She was much younger than her husband, I’d say ten, maybe fifteen years, her hair more straight than curly. She had a rather long face and she probably wouldn’t win any beauty contest, but she was cute enough that you wouldn’t have to make up a bunch of stories about why you were with her.

“I’m just rehashing a few things,” I said.

She shook her head, her long auburn locks pretty much staying in place. “I can’t see how this is going to help her.” She reached for her husband’s drink, took a swallow, emitted a silent belch. “She did kill him. How can there be any doubt?”

“Were you here when it happened, Mrs. Lewis?”

“She was in the bedroom, asleep,” her husband answered.

“So, the gunshots didn’t wake you?”

“I woke her and told her what happened.”

“Were you acquainted with Mr. Banks?”

“I knew him, of course,” she said, managing to answer this one herself, although she spoke hesitantly, as if she expected her husband to take over the conversation at any moment. “Ricky was more my husband’s friend than mine.”

“Had either of you seen Ms. Andenbeck here before?”

They both shook their heads.

“We might’ve seen her,” Lewis admitted. “But who could tell with the parade of women he had running through his place.”

I was at an impasse. I hadn’t expected to learn anything and so far I hadn’t. I could nitpick but I couldn’t see where that would get me.

I stood. “I guess that’s about it for you folks. I was wondering, though, if you could introduce me to Mrs. Sarason?”

“Sure,” Lewis agreed, and we left his wife at the bar making herself another drink as we went across the hall to Mrs. Sarason’s apartment.

“This is Mr. Oaks. He’s a private detective working for the Andenbeck family,” Lewis said when she opened the door.

“Are the Andenbecks trying to get me not to testify?” Mrs. Sarason asked, her aged face adding more wrinkles as she frowned.

“No, nothing like that,” I assured her. “Just gathering what information I can.”

She didn’t invite me in, but stood with her door opened only enough to expose half of her, half of a flower-print dress, as though she were a photo and somebody had done a bad cropping job.

“I’ve already told the police everything I know.”

“I understand that, Mrs. Sarason, but if you could just go over it with me, please.”

She pinched her lips together, making her small mouth appear even smaller. Then she looked up at me, over to Lewis, back to me, and sighed. “All right, Mr. Oaks, is it? What did you want to know?”

“Just what you saw, that’s all.”

“It wasn’t much. Mr. Lewis knocked on my door and asked me if I’d heard any gunshots. I told him no, and just about then the Andenbeck girl runs out of Mr. Banks’s apartment. She got into the elevator and Mr. Lewis called downstairs for the security guard to stop her.”

“When she came out of the apartment did she point the gun at you?”

“No. She had it in her hand, but she didn’t point it at us. She just looked in our direction for a moment then ran to the elevator.”

“When she ran to the elevator, was she stumbling, or did she look unsteady?”

“Not that I noticed. She just ran to the elevator and it opened right away for once, and she was gone.”

I thanked the security guard on my way out, telling him I’d keep in touch, which wasn’t altogether a lie. I occasionally call in extra help for bodyguard work. I might have a need for him someday.

About the only thing I’d learned was that Mr. and Mrs. Lewis both liked their late-afternoon cocktails. Nothing jumped out at me that would throw a wrench into the prosecution’s case. I could check in with the Andenbeck lawyers, or try to catch up with the woman who’d seen Banks stepping out on Bethany. I could even drop in on Belle Navilone and ask her why the hell she had thrown my hat into the ring, but I couldn’t see where either would do me any good. That left only one other place for me to try.

The Frosty Mug was on Fort Apache just off of Tropicana. It was a medium-sized joint, more rustic than upscale, the usual tables, booths, dance floor, but they did have backs for their barstools. The place was about a third full, which I’d guess was pretty good for this time of day in the middle of the week. Some light rock was being piped through the wall speakers. I grabbed a stool at the end of the counter and waited for the bartender to come my way.

“Yes, sir, what can I do for you today?”

“Beer. Whatever you got on tap will do.”

He got a mug, filled it until it had about a half-inch head, and sat it in front of me.

“That’s three-fifty unless you want to start a tab.”

“Naw, this’ll do,” I said, and I gave him a twenty. When he brought my change back he sat it on the counter. I placed my business card on top. “Hear this used to be Rick Banks’s hangout.”

The bartender had a quick smile that popped a dimple in his right cheek. “Ricky? Yeah. Did you know him? Hell of a guy. We all miss him around here.”

“You wouldn’t happen to’ve been working that last night he was in here?”

“Me? Naw, that was Stan. But he told me what happened. Really nothing out of the usual, except he was back with the Andenbeck doll.”

“That was unusual?”

“For Rick? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, he had his repeaters. But if he was in here regularly, you know, three or four times with the same piece to where you could figure they were maybe going together, once they split it was over.”

“So, Rick brought other women here?”

“Yeah, he had somebody else in here a couple of times that I know of after he broke up with the Andenbeck babe.”

“Remember what she looked like?”

He shrugged. “Nothing special, dark-haired. That was the thing about Rick, he really didn’t care what they looked like. I mean, I never seen him with any dogs, but other than that he wasn’t too choosy. Man had a lot of notches on his gun, so to speak, he got into half the thongs in this joint, and that’s a conservative count.”

“Any jealousy flare-ups?”

He shook his head. “Not with the regulars. This joint’s a meat market, there’s no pretense in here. The women like it just as much as the men, and they let you know it.”

“Sounds like my type of place.”

“Buy me a drink and I may let you take me home.”

She was a redhead with dark green eyes and a wide, pink-lipped smile. She had been sitting at the bar when I first came in, and had managed to occupy the stool next to me without me noticing.

“The drink’s no problem,” I said. “But I’ll have to take a rain check for anything else. I’m working.”

She gave me a slow once-over, her green eyes locking onto mine. “You a cop?” “Private.”

“Private, huh?” She was wearing a lightweight jacket, unfastened. Her bra, which was easily visible through the thin fabric of her blouse, was obviously a size too small. “You carry a gun?”

“It’s in the safe in my office,” I said, which it was. I rarely carried it unless the job really called for it. I’d rather rely on my size and my fists.

Her short red hair bobbed slightly as she nodded. “Interesting.”

The bartender brought her a three-olive martini, taking the rest of my change off the counter, and got busy at the other end of the counter.

“Interesting good, or interesting bad?” I asked.

She reached over and felt my bicep through my jacket, her perfectly shaped eyebrows raising a mite. “I’d say, good. I’m Lilly.”

“Trevor.”

“Nice to meet you, Trevor.” She put the three toothpick-skewed olives in her mouth, slowly sliding them back out through her lips leaving two olives impaled. “Are you sure you can’t take some time off? Don’t you get like a lunch break or something?”

“I couldn’t trust myself to just confine it to a lunch break.”

She smiled. “That’ll be all right with me.”

“I’m sure it would. But maybe you can help me get through my work a little faster. Did you know Rick Banks?”

“Hell, who in this joint didn’t?”

“I take that as a yes?”

She nodded. “Absolutely. Me and Ricky were close friends.”

“How close?”

She winked this time. “As close as you can get under the sheets.”

“I see. So, you and he were a couple?”

“Naw, nothing like that.” She tasted her martini. “We just did the mattress mambo every now and then. When we weren’t otherwise occupied. No strings, just fun. Ricky knew how to please a lady.”

“Was it the same setup with the Andenbeck woman?”

“You mean the bitch that killed him? Naw, she had a real jones for him. I think Ricky had a little bit of it too, or he was thinking about all the money her family had. When they split, he kept trying to get back together with her, even though he brought another woman in here like the split didn’t mean anything to him.”

“I guess a player always has to keep up appearances.”

“Yeah, maybe. But he didn’t have to hook up with anything new. There was plenty female butts in this place he could’ve tapped. And she was married to boot.”

“You sure?”

“I checked her out. Wanted to know where I dropped the ball. I saw the rock on her finger. She was all hugged up with Ricky but she really didn’t look too comfortable, like she wasn’t used to being in public without her hubby at her side.”

I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer, “This woman, on the thin side, dark hair, longish face?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

I’d gotten into this case thinking there wasn’t a damn thing I could do that would make a bit of difference. Bethany Andenbeck was guilty as hell and that was that. The police thought she was guilty. Her lawyers thought she was guilty. Anyone looking at the evidence would think she was guilty. Bethany herself wasn’t a hundred percent sure of her innocence.

But you never can tell what just a little digging will turn up. I couldn’t fault Joe and the rest of the folks at Metro. They had an easy one handed to them, their time would be better spent investigating other cases instead of one that was so open and shut.

Mark was still on duty when I returned to the Valley Rose Apartments. I had him phone upstairs and Timothy Lewis agreed to see me again.

He was standing in his doorway when I got off the elevator.

“Forget something?”

“In a way.”

He stepped back as I entered, dosing the door behind me. His wife wasn’t in sight, but one of the French doors to the balcony was open. A slight breeze filtered in.

“What is it this time, Oaks?” His words came out harsh and there was a red tinge to his eyes, the effects of at least a couple more late-afternoon cocktails.

“I thought I’d give you the chance to turn yourself in before I go to the police with what I’ve learned.”

“What the hell you talking about?”

“I’m talking about your wife being home alone when you’re out of town. I’m talking about Banks not letting an opportunity get by him.”

“You’re way off base here, Oaks.”

“Am I? I’ve found people who saw Banks and your wife all hugged up together. When did you find out about them?”

“I think it was a mistake letting you back up here. You better go.”

“The truth is going to come out. You’ve told too many lies to keep it hidden.”

I’d begun piecing it together on my way back. What had seemed like inconsequential blips in our earlier conversation now loomed as major inconsistencies. Why had he gone across the hall to Mrs. Sarason’s to see if she’d heard any gunshots, when the likeliest first person he should’ve turned to was his wife? And what about him referring to Banks as Rick and his wife using the more familiar Ricky? There were things that had been there for me to see, but I was too convinced Bethany was guilty to pay any attention to them. “When you called down to the security station you told Mark that Banks had been shot. Yet Mrs. Sarason never said you went into Banks’s apartment. How did you know?”

“Get out.” He was breathing heavily, his nostrils heaving with every breath, his bloodshot eyes getting wider. “I said get out.”

“Ever see those shows where the defense lawyer gets the state’s witness on the stand and cuts them to shreds, has them admitting they’re the guilty party? That stuff does happen, you know. What do you think the Andenbeck’s high-priced lawyers are going to do to you?”

He pushed me, one big paw to my chest. I gave him that, I was being abrasive. But when I didn’t budge he swung, and that was a different matter altogether.

I leaned back, twisting my body, and the punch just grazed my right shoulder. I responded with an overhand left that clipped his chin. He staggered back. I bored in with a right to his stomach, another left. He fell back onto the dining table, knocking over the flower centerpiece, then came up swinging again.

I caught most of it on my left arm, was about to deliver another right of my own, when his wife screamed.

She’d been out on the balcony again and she stood just within the apartment by the French doors. Her tall glass crashed to the floor as she grabbed both sides of her head. “Stop it, stop it. I can’t take it anymore. I told you someone would find out.”

Lewis pulled away from me. “Be quiet, Sharon.”

“No, I can’t let this go on. I just can’t...” She turned and ran onto the balcony. She was over the railing before either of us could get to her.

I’d been on the right track, but I’d hooked up to the wrong caboose. Lewis hadn’t suspected anything about his wife and Banks. As far as he’d known. Banks was a fun guy and his wife was as devoted as they come. It wasn’t until he’d come home early that day. The French doors were open and he’d heard the gunshots. He’d gone out onto the balcony and next door to Banks’s bedroom, where he’d found his wife holding a gun, Banks dead on the floor, and Bethany in a drunken stupor across the bed. He’d acted fast, wiping the gun clean and putting it in Bethany’s hand. Then he’d gotten his wife out of Banks’s apartment and back into their own, closing both sets of French doors.

The rest was pretty much what had been the official story, getting Mrs. Sarason involved, calling down to the security station. He hadn’t expected Bethany to awaken and run out carrying the gun, but it helped the story he’d fashioned.

I went down to headquarters and gave Joe my deposition as Lewis was being arraigned for accessory to murder, then I made my way over to the Andenbeck estate. The D.A.’s office had already contacted the Andenbeck’s lawyers, and in turn the lawyers had contacted the family. I got a warm reception when I arrived, an offer of a bonus which I initially turned down but allowed to be forced on me.

Leaving, I’d just made it to my car when Val called to me.

The night had turned a little cool, but she looked warm and cozy in a cream-colored long-sleeved blouse and a pair of dark green slacks, her neck adorned with a string of oversized pearls. Maybe the warm and cozy part was just the way I felt looking at her.

“I wanted to thank you again,” she said. She was close enough that a light breeze caused the scent of her perfume to swirl around me.

“I got lucky.”

“Maybe there was some of that, but you didn’t have to take the case. If it had been anyone else, I’m not sure we would’ve gotten the same results.” She paused, lightly bit her lower lip. “And there’s something else that’s long overdue. I owe you an apology, Tree, for the way I acted when you got hurt. I was young, and thinking only of myself. I should’ve stayed by your side.”

I looked over her shoulder at the three-story mansion that was just a small portion of the Andenbeck empire. “Forget it,” I said. “Besides, you would’ve missed all this.”

She smiled. “There is that. I’ve been fortunate. Stephen loves me very much. If he just thinks there’s something I want, he gets it for me. We have a wonderful marriage. I just wanted you to know it’s been good seeing you again, and... With all I’ve got, I know I’ve still missed something by not being with you.”

She reached up, kissed me quickly, and then she was gone, no lingering looks, no sighs, just the full lip-to-lip embrace and then she rushed back indoors.

As I drove away I knew if she’d asked me to forget the past and go off with her I wouldn’t have hesitated. There was still something there. I guess some flames never die. But I also knew the thought of us getting back together wasn’t realistic. She was where she wanted to be. Stephen Andenbeck was her personal treasure chest, and she loved all the things he showered upon her, even though she hadn’t said she loved him.

She really hadn’t changed at all.

Blunt Instruments

by James Powell

James Powell is a past winner of the EQMM Readers Award, a recipient of the Arthur Ellis — Canada’s most prestigious mystery-fiction award — and probably the author most often nominated for the latter in the short-story category. His inimitable blend of fantasy, mystery, and humor is particularly well suited to tales set at Christmastime, and he has contributed to many of our holiday issues over the years. This story has in its sights that most iconic of holiday foods, the fruitcake.

* * *

The high priest of ancient Egypt’s litter came over a Giza dune. When that dignitary stepped out and saw more of those strange things stretching to the horizon he turned his wondering eyes skyward. Why, by the gods? Why? Well, at least by now he knew what to do with them.

Just as the local Chinese authorities reported, the squarish objects lay as far as the eye could see. General Lo of the Imperial Guard leaned down thoughtfully from his saddle. It was said that when his people met something new their first question was how does it taste. Drawing his sword, he cut off a semi-soft corner of the nearest block, impaled and raised it to his lips. He quickly spat the thing out and looked skyward disapprovingly before galloping off to inform his Imperial master.

One moment the Bishop of Chartres stood brooding before his unfinished cathedral. The next he was surrounded by a caravan of carts and wagons drawn by oxen or peasants from the countryside bearing what would be the first of many loads of construction blocks to finish the great church. He raised his eyes to heaven in thanks for his answered prayers.

On a dull December day, Professor Austin Hobart, his well-worn leather briefcase in a gloved hand, left the University of Toronto School of Architecture and crossed a campus made shabby by gray, week-old snow. As he went he looked skyward. No sign of a white Christmas there. But then he smiled. Nor of baked potatoes either.

Melmoth Hall, his destination, stood quiet, as befits an academic Saturday. Hobart found his younger colleague Roger Ludd’s office door ajar, a sign the man would see students. But as Hobart reached up to knock he heard Ludd’s voice speaking loudly and angrily into the telephone. He stepped back to wait on a bench across the hall.

Hobart had come there on a small matter. During one of his class discussions on roof theory, widow’s walks, and belvederes, a student brought up a legend from her hometown of London, Ontario, that baked potatoes had once come raining down from the sky, her father claiming he had seen them in his youth impaled on the ironwork around their widow’s walk.

Another student suggested she ask Ludd, who was a bit of a campus celebrity as the author of several popular books about similar meteorological phenomena. In another of his attempts to understand his students’ interests, Hobart had recently dipped into Ludd’s latest, Manna From Heaven, lucking into the part where frog’s legs reportedly fell from the sky in France and by chance landed on a frying pan sizzling outdoors, where they hopped about as they cooked, inspiring a new national dish and the dance called the cancan. He found the book of no scholarly value. But since faculty gossip described Ludd as something of a ladies’ man and the student was a pretty thing, Hobart decided he’d better speak to Ludd himself. So here he was in the hall, waiting out the man’s loud conversation.

As a young man, Hobart believed he’d been put on this earth to design great buildings. But during his architectural studies he soon saw he lacked the creative facility for that and had turned to teaching, where he might at least write wise articles shaping architectural thinking, articles that had never come. But he soldiered on, hoping to become an admired mentor and teacher. However, despite his efforts and with only a few years to retirement, he still had difficulty relating to his students.

After a bit Hobart stood up, deciding to come back another day. But just then, with a loud shout of “Bitch!”, Ludd slammed down the phone. So he crossed to the door and knocked.

“Come.” Ludd’s tone implied he expected a student. Nor had he bothered to take the scowl from his face until he saw his visitor. “Ah, Bogart, isn’t it?” he said, for they had met once or twice at faculty get-togethers, and gestured to a chair.

Hobart corrected him on his name and sat down. “I haven’t seen you around much lately,” he offered as a polite conversational opener.

“I don’t get out much these days,” said Ludd, and Hobart thought the man’s eyes strayed to the industrial hard hat on his coat rack. Then Hobart mentioned why he’d come.

Smiling, Ludd asked, “Was there any music?”

Hobart didn’t understand.

“ ‘Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of “Greensleeves”...’ ” quoted Ludd by way of explanation. “The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act Five, Scene Five,” adding, “Wrong Windsor, I’m afraid.”

Thanking him, Hobart jotted down the Shakespearean reference in his notebook and rose to go.

“You interested in things falling from the sky, then?” wondered Ludd.

“I’m familiar with your work,” said Hobart diplomatically. “But, of course, my field is architecture.”

Ludd brightened. “Even better,” he said, laying his hand on the thick manuscript on a corner of his desk. “My latest.”

Hobart sighed. Clearly the man wanted to talk. Well, Ludd had heard him out about the potatoes. So politeness obliged him to return the courtesy. He sat back down but kept his gloves on to suggest he had business elsewhere. In fact, he was heading home to an empty apartment, his wife having died five years before. Their children were not much for visiting old Dad since then.

Ludd hesitated for a long moment as if unsure where to begin.

Impatient to move things along, Hobart nodded at the phone and then the hallway. “I couldn’t help hearing,” he said. “I take it your latest has been rejected.”

“Transom House loved it,” said Ludd grimly. “My editor’s eager to publish. She only asked me to make one teeny-weeny change. When she told me what it was I absolutely refused.”

“What kind of change?” asked Hobart.

Ludd shook his head. “Maybe I better start at the beginning.”

Hobart groaned inwardly at these words but listened as Ludd began the story of the race of very intelligent creatures who lived a solar system or two away. (He called them “our late cosmic neighbors.”) They valued above all else the time for lofty contemplation. To this end they grew skilled at inventing labor-saving machines. They also simplified their lives by choosing a diet of one single food made from grain, distilled wine, and fruit and nuts. In fact, eventually they were able to bypass agriculture completely by extracting all the necessary ingredients directly from the soil, devising vast automated machines to burrow deep into the earth and extrude just the right amount of nutrition their population required and cut it off into daily blocks.

“Hold it,” laughed Hobart, “those ingredients, it sounds like we’re talking fruitcake here?”

“Right you are,” said Ludd. “And things went well for these people for several centuries on their fruitcake diet and they grew wiser and wiser. Then one day a mechanical malfunction occurred and the machines started producing more blocks than the population required and in a wild variety of sizes. Our neighbors pondered the situation, of course, and decided it was natural for created things to rebel against why their creators had made them. At first this did not seen to be a serious problem. They simply allowed the blocks to dry and used them to cobble their streets and roads and built bridges and things of that sort. But then the overproduction abruptly increased and the surplus food came tumbling out, creating a sudden mountain of blocks drying in front of the entrance to the food-making facility. The bravest among them, which was to say the least wise, scaled this growing obstacle to get to the machine’s controls to correct the problem but lost their lives in the attempt.”

Ludd made a gesture that took in the entire world and said, “This is where we come in. These ingenious people devised space dumpsters to rocket the blocks off to distant corners of their solar system, beyond the pull of their sun’s gravity, where they released their cargoes and came back for more. Other worlds, ours included, have been getting hit with fruitcake meteor showers ever since. The atmosphere softens the damn things, but they harden up soon enough.”

“But how come you know all this?” broke in Hobart again.

“That part was easy,” said Ludd. “In their final days, as the machines ate up their world and spat out fruitcake and their landscape imploded around them, our doomed cosmic neighbors embedded tubes inside the blocks containing messages to warn the universe of the fruitcake menace. At Chartres a mason found one when a block broke open accidentally. Both church and state tried to suppress the information, but clues to it found their way into secret Masonic lore. From that I was able to uncover one of these blocks myself.”

“But how...” protested Hobart.

Ludd anticipated his objection. “How could I read it? The same way the mason did. For simpler folk like us our cosmic neighbors included a decoder ring in each tube.”

Hobart had to smile. Clearly the man was a harmless crackpot. If his book ever was published he’d be laughed off the face of the earth. “Come on, a decoder ring?” he scoffed.

“I know, I know. It sounds crazy,” admitted Ludd. “Look, I guess word leaked out about the decoder ring somewhere along the way. I’ll bet those radio people got wind of it, the ones who wrote that late-afternoon adventure series for kids, the one about the boy who could cloud his parents’ minds so that they couldn’t see him. You know, the one whose loyal listeners could send in for decoder rings and get secret messages from the show? What was that show called? It was way before my time.”

“The Five O’Clock Shadow,” supplied Hobart.

“You’ve got it,” said Ludd, adding, “Anyway, we’re still getting hit by fruitcake and coming up with ways to get rid of the damn things. Even Canada got into the act. Think about the Empire State Building.” He tapped his manuscript again. “The Gemini meteor showers favor the northern hemisphere in late December. I’ve gotten hints there was a big one in the Hudson Bay area in the early nineteen twenties. Don’t forget the Scarlet Hernia epidemic.”

Hobart cocked an eye. What Canadian could? Back then the Royal Canadian Mounted Police came down with a strange limp. The official explanation was something to do with some defect in the latest batch of corduroy breeks. But other stories going around spoke of mysterious sealed railway cars loaded in secret by masked men in scarlet coats coming down from Hudson Bay carrying no one knew what.

“Some say those trains were bringing arctic ice to fill a sudden shortage for New York City Christmas office party drinks,” said Ludd, shaking his head. “I say fruitcake. To build the Empire State Building.”

Ludd stood up, reached around with both hands, and lifted a gray, oblong object down from a high shelf on the bookcase behind him. “And here’s another of those blocks, this one with the message tube and decoder ring still inside. I know. I’ve had it X-rayed. When my book is published, and it will be, Transom House be damned, I’m going to crack this thing open on live television for all to see. That should get book sales jumping.” Ludd thumped the block down on his desk.

Suddenly Hobart wasn’t laughing anymore. The block indeed gave off the ghost of an odor he’d smelled before and it brought back boyhood memories. Back during World War Two, his father away in the army and his mother working long shifts in a defense factory in Toronto, young Hobart had been sent to live with his grandparents in a small town in southern Ontario, a hamlet actually, one too small to have a mayor. His grandfather was reeve, elected by the other councilmen. In a distant corner of his grandfather’s garden was a large hole around which these councilmen and his grandfather gathered in the fall in what looked like some kind of ceremony and gazed down into the hole’s considerable depths. Once, when out of curiosity Hobart approached the hole, his grandfather warned him off, afraid, the boy assumed, he’d go too close to the edge and fall in. But he remembered from that quick visit this same fruitcake smell.

And there was more. A town Christmas was impressive for a boy from a big, anonymous city. On the eve itself a horse-drawn sleigh decorated with bells with his grandfather at the reins disguised in a beard, Santa costume, and many-pillowed belly (Hobart had heard him practicing his ho-ho-hos) led the parade, escorted by the councilmen in elf hats. Carolers singing songs of the season followed next. Afterward the carolers would continue up and down the streets of town.

Later that night, noises in the dark street brought Hobart to the window in his little attic bedroom and he saw the sleigh, now without bells, and his grandfather, minus beard and belly, and the elves, all wearing pillows tied to their heads with scarves, turn into the alley beside the house. As they passed under the streetlight he thought he saw some kind of blocks and a tangle of what looked like several arms and legs in the back of the sleigh.

Next day, the talk around the breakfast table centered on the disappearance of two of the carolers, the town postmaster and schoolteacher who sang baritone and soprano in their church choir. They had, it seemed, chosen Christmas Eve to run off together to the States, probably Saginaw, Michigan, the usual destination of such happenings in those parts.

A day or so later, Hobart noticed the postmaster’s little dog hanging around the hole in the yard until his grandfather drove him off.

Hobart hadn’t understood then. Now he thought he did. And it might explain Ludd’s hard hat too. But hoping he might be wrong, he said, “But with all that falling fruitcake people could have been killed.”

“Many were,” Ludd replied, tapping the block. “Our cosmic neighbors here were sorry about that. As best I could decode their message they said, ‘Hey, fruitcake happens.’

“To protect themselves,” he continued, “wiser worlds than ours started patrolling their skies with saucerlike vehicles to catch incoming fruitcake and spin them back into space. I even suspect the more compassionate among them sometimes may have patrolled our skies too.”

Wild as it was, Hobart suddenly believed what Ludd was saying. But he tried once more, hoping the man would deny this absurd, this hideous truth. “Are you telling me that the Pyramids at Giza, the Great Wall of China, and Chartres Cathedral were merely our way of disposing of stale fruitcake from outer space?”

“Bingo,” said Ludd. “But call it what you like. I say getting rid of evidence. And, hey, did you never wonder why there is no hieroglyph in ancient Egyptian for ‘fruitcake’ or ideogram for it in Chinese or no word for it in French? The best they can do is Bûche de Noël Anglaise. And by the way, in Spanish fruitcake’s ‘adobe’.”

Sensing from Hobart’s face that he’d made a convert, Ludd continued earnestly, “Why, you ask, didn’t we hear about all the people killed over the centuries by falling fruitcake? Because the powers-that-be have hushed it up. They’d say if people knew they’d run panicking in the streets. But the most important thing was that this knowledge gave them a handle on power. Now they could say, We know something too terrible for the masses to know and that gives us the right to tell them what to do.

“Think about how fruitcake has shaped modern life,” he said. “Like television. A whole civilization sitting around watching a box with a screen on it. It’s all about keeping us inside. Shopping malls are the same thing. Get ’em under roof where they can’t be hit by falling fruitcake going from store to store.”

Ludd shook his head. “Well, you can’t run democratic governments like that. No sir! We are adults. We’ve got to face up to the truth. And I’m the boy to lead the way.”

Now he looked at Hobart and confided, “Look, call me crazy, but I’ve always had this feeling that I’ve been put here for a purpose bigger than myself. Writing this book I decided, damn it, this was why!”

For a brief moment Hobart actually found himself envying the man, having had that same special feeling of purpose himself so very long ago. Now all of a sudden it sprang up inside him again. No, he realized, he couldn’t let this man reduce the meaning of life to keeping out of the way of falling fruitcake and disposing of the evidence. All the finest artistic achievements and monuments of human endeavor mustn’t become some kind of fruitcake absurdity. Poor Ludd was a lunatic who had lucked upon a terrible truth. But one he could not be allowed to make public. No, his book must never be published. Strange how things work out. The man who believes he’s been put here to reveal this terrible secret meets up with the man who now knows that his mission in life had always been to make sure that it wasn’t.

Hobart knew he had to act quickly. But how? Then it came to him. “May I look?” he asked, nodding at the petrified fruitcake. When Ludd nodded back Hobart picked up the block in his gloved hands and carried it over to the window next to the bookcase as if to examine it in the daylight.

As he did, Ludd said, “Hey, back there you asked what itsy-bitsy change my Transom House editor wanted. Well, get this. She’s a vegetarian. She saw fruitcake from outer space as an attack on her core beliefs. So no fruitcake. She wanted me to make it guess what? Meatloaf. Meatloaf! Give me a break. No, she won’t be publishing my book. But somebody else sure will. And it will blow the lid off the biggest secret in the history of the world.”

Ludd was directing all of his resentment at the telephone now. Hobart wished there was another way to stop him from publishing his damned book. But he knew there wasn’t. Uttering a prayer for both their souls, he raised the fruitcake shoulder high and brought it down hard on the man’s head. Ludd fell forward across his desk.

The fruitcake broke in half with the blow. The pieces dropped to the floor and out popped a metal tube. Hobart shoved the tube and Ludd’s manuscript into his briefcase. Then he left the office, giving one last glance back at Ludd’s body. Maybe the authorities would think Ludd had been killed when something like traffic vibrations had inched the block forward until it finally fell from its high shelf. Then he left the office, closing the door firmly behind him to spare any student the shock of discovering the body.

Hobart started on his walk home at his usual pace, glad for the time to think things out. Then he looked up at the sky, quickened his step, and wished he’d brought Ludd’s hard hat.

Terrible as it was to kill a man, he knew he’d done the right thing. When spring came and made the ground diggable, he would bury the tube and Ludd’s manuscript in some deep out-of-the-way hole in his grandfather’s memory. The thought made him remember something his grandmother had once told him way back then. With a nod at the hole at the end of the garden she said, “Your grandfather’s a wise man. He thinks ahead.” She meant, he now understood, that he’d dug his hole before winter and the fruitcakes came. It seemed ironic now, for later his grandfather had been replaced as reeve by a young newcomer to town who built a fallout shelter large enough to hold all the council members and their wives. Hobart wondered if fallout was a code word for fruitcake.

Anyway, he knew he’d done the right thing. What really bothered him was that long ago he thought he’d been put here for some high artistic purpose. Not to kill some poor sap who’d lucked onto a terrible truth. No, he didn’t like that part of it. And this reminded him of what their late cosmic neighbors had said about those malfunctioning fruitcake machines, how it was the natural tendency of created things to rebel against their creators. Well, Hobart damn well knew if he’d been created for a lifetime of grinding out fruitcake he’d have rebelled too. Here was something more for him to think about during the long, cold winter ahead. He might even read over Ludd’s manuscript and translate the tube. Yes, and he might even find himself thinking clearer with the decoder ring on his finger.

When Hobart reached the door of his apartment building he turned back for a moment. “Look out, world,” he warned the horizon. “Maybe fruitcake does happen.”

Death of a Sunflower

by Ragnar Jonasson

Translated from Icelandic by the author.

Passport to Crime

Ragnar Jonasson is the author of four crime novels published by Verold Publishing in Iceland. A TV series based on the books will soon begin filming in North Ice land, where the books are set (see Sagafilm). One of the novels also came out in Germany in 2011, and received rave reviews. The following tale — the authors first for EQMM — appeared in a German magazine before being translated into English for us. It’s set against the backdrop of turmoil created by the 2008 collapse of Icelandic banks.

* * *

He always knew that he would return to the scene of the crime.

He didn’t know that fifty years would pass. Now, he was an old man who had carried the burden of this sin — this crime — which had changed everything. As a result he had moved abroad and lived there for decades, like an outlaw. His native Iceland had no place in his heart anymore — and hadn’t had a place there since this dramatic night in 1958. Iceland meant nothing to him, but now he had returned there nevertheless.

From the tower suite at Hotel Borg one has a bird’s-eye view of Reykjavik. The city comes to life, the colorful houses are transformed into a magnificent kaleidoscope. The Square of Austurvöllur becomes oddly minute and the large parliament building looks like any other building. Nothing is like it was before, the point of view changes everything.

It is New Year’s Eve and the noise from the fireworks is thundering. The sky is lit up like an abstract painting, colours from imaginary cans of paint scattered all over the place.

The colours of the sky cast a glow into the suite where all the lights are turned off. Everything is so strangely quiet in spite of the loud fireworks. Everything is as it should be except for the still body in the middle of the floor. Life fades away during the dramatic symphony of the fireworks; a new year makes its entrance.

Fifty years ago. New Year’s Eve, 1958. For fifty years her death — her horrible death — had been on his conscience. She had said goodbye to this world while others were saying goodbye to the old year. She was called Sóley, named after a sunflower, bright and beautiful, with her long blond hair.

And now he was back in Reykjavik, standing outside of Hotel Borg, a city landmark which had changed very little during the years.

For one short moment he travelled back in his mind to that fateful day fifty years ago, but he did not stay there for long. Now it was 2008 again. On Austurvöllur Square there were unusually many people for a cold day in December. People were protesting against the government and the general state of things following the collapse of the Icelandic banks. Some were holding picket signs or shouting, others were making noise with pots and pans. Police officers tried to protect the parliament building.

What had happened to Reykjavik since he moved abroad? Had the small town turned into a big city? Or did that maybe happen fifty years earlier? There was a dark cloud of anger over the downtown area. The noise from the protests was overwhelming and the protesters uncomfortably close to him. He hurried into the hotel lobby, where he felt safe. At least for the time being. The currency of Iceland had collapsed with the banks, so his hotel room turned out to be much cheaper than when he had made the booking.

He was still burdened with guilt, after all those years. Why the hell had he done what he did? Sóley — the girl he had loved more than anything in the world. What came over him?

An elderly lady was sitting in a comfortable chair in the lobby, reading an English translation of a book by the Icelandic Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness. He was still able to read Laxness in the original Icelandic; he had not totally forgotten his origins in spite of the exile.

He was a sailor through and through, traveled extensively when he was a young man but always returned to the harbour in Reykjavik. Then he met this charming girl. He intended to marry her. But everything changed on New Year’s Eve 1958.

A few days after her death he had gone on yet another ocean voyage, but this time around he didn’t want to return home. He made a home for himself abroad. Sóley was gone forever, existing only as a memory in the shadowy place in his mind that he tried to avoid at all cost.

He was a young man when he started drinking. At first he drank to relax, but then — later on, when Sóley had died — he drank to avoid relaxing, so that he would not have to think of her. He had been under the influence of alcohol that day in 1958 — that New Year’s Eve. He had been drinking with his buddies on the previous evening; the evening turned into night and then the night turned into day — and he was still drinking. Was he not able to control his drinking, as he had always believed?

He could still envisage her — as she had been before she died, but also her gruesome lifeless body. What had he done?

Everything reminded him of her. His heart was still filled with guilt.

She had invited him to a New Year’s dance at Hotel Borg — he accepted the invitation with anticipation. He never imagined it could end this way. Of course not — of course it never occurred to him. Things would have gone differently if he had not taken that first drink on the day before the dance.

They were to meet in front of the hotel at half-past nine.

In front of the hotel.

Now, fifty years on, he was standing in the lobby and staring out the window. He wanted to grab a cup of coffee and something to eat, but the restaurant was closed due to a live television broadcast. The leaders of the political parties in Iceland were to discuss the political highlights of the year. The protesters had now moved closer to the hotel.

He could remember how she looked that night, young and charming in a new white dress — looking forward to celebrating the New Year with him. She had no intention of dying that night. During the last summer of her life, when they were sitting in the shade having a picnic, she actually told him that she was planning on living forever. On that occasion they discussed their future together. He was going to give up his job as a sailor and find something else to do. They planned on building a small house in Reykjavik, the village which was fast spreading out and turning into a city. It was no longer a luxury of the upper classes only to own a house in Reykjavik. A friend of his had, in fact, built a house of his own. This same friend invited him to the party on the evening before New Year’s Eve — the party which, in a way, cost Sóley her life.

Sóley had been in her first year at university, a country girl from a farm in the eastern part of Iceland, the only daughter of an elderly couple. Her father had been determined that she would enjoy the education he had missed. He saved money and made sure she finished her college studies and that she would then go on to study medicine at university. “It will be good to have a doctor in the family when we start losing our health,” he said with a joyful smile, but his voice indicated that first and foremost he wanted his daughter to have a secure and bright future.

Her parents had not been particularly happy hearing about her relationship with the sailor, who was a few years her senior and had little education. They had hoped she would finish her medical studies and go to Denmark for further studies before falling in love. The money in her university fund could possibly have been sufficient to pay for such a trip abroad.

Sóley lived with her aunt in Reykjavik. Her boyfriend had occasionally come over there for supper, a polite young man. Sóley’s aunt put in a good word for him and little by little Sóley’s father started accepting him — emphasizing, however, that she could not give up her studies even though they were to be married. He met his future son-in-law once, in the autumn, in Reykjavik.

The farmer had spoken to the young man after dinner and said these words, which were unforgettable, even half a century later: “I’m trusting you with my daughter. You shall not betray that trust.”

Yet, that was exactly what he had done. Betrayed the trust of Sóley and her parents. He could blame the alcohol or himself — it didn’t really matter. He had deprived her of the opportunity to lead the life she had been expecting, the bright future she was facing until she met him.

Why on earth did she have the misfortune of meeting him?

They had met at a sailors’ festival in downtown Reykjavik. He was with his friends, she was experiencing the big city by herself. He started speaking to her and subsequently invited her down to the harbour where he was to take part in a rowing competition. This was almost love at first sight. She was confident, smart, and sought after. Way too good for him, he felt. Every time he went out to sea he said a reluctant goodbye to her, worried that during his absence she would find another man, a better man. She never betrayed him. In hindsight, he wouldn’t have had to worry or be jealous; he should have focused on his own problems. In the end he turned out to be her worst enemy.

The protests outside of the hotel grew louder by the minute. The political party leaders had taken their seats in the restaurant and the televised debate was beginning. He didn’t know the names of any of these political figures, he never read any news from his old country, was only an Icelander by name — in the passport he carried.

The protests became more violent, a group of people — angry at the state of the economy following the total economic meltdown — attempted to breach the police barriers and make their way into the restaurant. For a moment he felt that they were coming for him, to punish him. He looked away and suddenly felt as if his hands were covered in blood. The blood of the woman he had loved.

Sóley’s aunt had driven her to the dance; it was too far to walk, especially as she was all dressed up for the occasion. One could see a glimpse of the white dress under her winter coat. She made sure that she arrived on time. They were to meet at nine-thirty and she was there at just past nine. Time passed so slowly. Guests gathered outside and when the doors were opened at half-past nine everyone hurried inside, carefree students, friends, acquaintances, boyfriends, girlfriends. Outside were those students who hadn’t managed to get tickets to the dance, but also some older men who were using the opportunity to try to meet young girls. Sóley noticed that two such men had been looking her way now and then, she had looked away and pretended not to notice anything. Then, suddenly, they were gone.

He was late. That was unlike him, but still... Hopefully he wasn’t drinking. He was always so reliable, except when he was drinking. Then he lost all sense of time and place, only thought of the next drink.

She heard the music from the dance, the noise was carried out into the street. She kept looking at her watch.

He has to be on his way.

She said nine-thirty, didn’t she? It was already eleven o’clock now. She didn’t want to betray him, didn’t want to go inside as she also had his ticket. She decided to wait a little bit longer. He had to be on his way. She started walking to keep warm, walked past the corner of the building. She didn’t notice the two men right away, not until one of them put his hand over her mouth and the other one helped drag her away, to a dark alley where no one could see them. They forced themselves upon her, one after the other, kicked her, beat her, until she gave up.

She was unable to call for help, knew she was dying, right there, in a dark alley. Her life slipping away, coming to an end just like the year 1958.

He had booked the tower suite.

He had decided to treat himself, even if he didn’t deserve it, but after all, this would be his last day on this earth. Soon a new year would begin in a new place where he would possibly meet Sóley again. Or perhaps not. It didn’t really matter all that much.

His last memory of her: her body covered in blood in a dark alley. The men who had done this to her had already disappeared. He had finally made it to their rendezvous at half-past eleven; he had been far too late due to his drinking. He couldn’t find her anywhere, asked around but was unable to get access to the dance without a ticket. He wandered around, looking for her — and then, finally, he saw her body. But he was too late. She was already dead.

Tonight he would finally find peace.

His conscience, bloody persistent, would finally let him rest.

The noise from the fireworks was the last thing he heard.

Or maybe rather, the noise from the fireworks and Sóley’s sweet voice.

Murder and the Spiderbrusher

by Amy Myers

In March 2013 Severn House released (in print) the fourth book in Amy Myers’s Jack Colby classic-car mystery series, Classic Mistake. And readers who are fans of the protagonist of this short story, Victorian chef Auguste Didier, will be glad to know that nine of the Didier novels will soon he reissued as e-books from Headline. But the Colby and Didier series form only a portion of Amy Myers’s large and consistently satisfying output in both our genre and that of historical fiction.

* * *

“There’s been murder done at Hathertree Hall, Mr. Auguste.”

Auguste Didier gulped. He had unwisely agreed to visit the Hall with his mother’s old friend Mary Bacon, who had been in service as a housemaid there for well over half a century. She was now living in this small cottage on the estate with the help of a pension from her former employers, Lord and Lady Catsfield.

Auguste had been looking forward to experiencing the delights of the Hall’s kitchen, which Mary informed him was renowned throughout the county for its cuisine, and as a master chef himself he was naturally eager to try it. He had not expected to be plunged into another murder scene, and today an investigation of a soufflé de perdreau aux truffes was as far as he wished to stretch his powers of detection.

He could see Mary’s hopeful eyes fixed on him, however, waiting for some response. Sitting opposite him at the cottage fireside, she looked merely a very elderly lady asking no more of life than the occasional visitor, and yet in this small room, dominated by the photograph of a stern Queen Victoria on the mantelpiece, he was feeling increasingly uncomfortable about the forthcoming visit.

“Terrible thing, murder,” Mary added conversationally.

“Whose murder?” he asked cautiously.

She thought this over. “The sixth earl, that would be. It was the countess did it. Spun her web and drew him in and ate him for his money. Like a spider,” she explained, perhaps noticing Auguste’s aghast reaction.

“You’re quite sure this story is correct?” he asked. He considered making a dash for sanity and the railway station, but refrained. After all, Mary might need his protection if Hathertree Hall was infested with violent aristocracy who preferred eating each other to the pleasures of its kitchens.

Mary looked offended. “My granny told me.”

Confused, Auguste replied without thinking. “Your grandmother is still alive?” That would make her roughly a hundred and fifty years old.

A frown. “Passed away three score years ago.”

Auguste relaxed and sipped some more of the undoubtedly good cowslip wine she had pressed upon him. This murder was safely in the past. There was nothing to concern him — save a faint recollection that his mother had warned him that Mary was considered to be a witch.

“Granny said she put a curse on the place, the countess did, as she was being taken,” Mary continued.

“Taken by the police?” A quick calculation, however, suggested that Mary’s granny must have lived in the days of the Bow Street Runners.

“By the Devil himself. I can see,” Mary said heavily, “you don’t believe me, but it’s true. As true as I’m spiderbrusher to Her Ladyship.”

It took a moment or two for Auguste to recall that ‘spiderbrusher’ used to be the colloquial word for a housemaid. “You’re still in service to the countess?” he asked incredulously. “Surely scrubbing and cleaning are too hard for you.” He was appalled. What kind of people were running Hathertree Hall?

He had said the wrong thing again, as Mary looked very grim. “I’m a real spiderbrusher, Mr. Auguste. I could show them housemaids up there a thing or two about blacking hearths, but it’s special spider duties that Her Ladyship calls on me for nowadays. Terrified of the little brutes, she is. If she so much as catches sight of one of the little critters, she puts a light in her window and I goes up to remove it for her. Won’t trust anyone else to get rid of spiders, she says. I know their cunning ways. I know where the little varmints like to hide. I make ’em run and then I have ’em, sure as my name’s Mary...” She fished around in her mind and came up with a triumphant “Pork.”

Auguste’s heart sank. The sooner this visit to the Hall was over the better, he thought, as he helped Mary to her feet.

“It’s best we go together when there’s murder done. I have the sight,” she added complacently.

Hathertree Hall looked more like the eerie castle from Mr. Bram Stoker’s Dracula than the stately gracious mansion that Auguste had been led to expect. A bleak stone building, it was adorned with forbidding crenellations and towers that gave it the air of a fortress, and its windows looked like mournful eyes gazing out to a world of what might have been. They had approached it along an avenue over which tall trees arched to form a dark tunnel and Auguste could have sworn that bats were swooping overhead. Maybe vampires stalked these grounds at night. After that, arriving at Count Dracula’s Transylvanian residence itself was almost a relief, despite its offputting appearance. Nevertheless, it still felt as if he were leaving the modem world of 1890s England far behind him.

To his surprise, however, there was a very solid modem policeman on the front steps to Hathertree Hall, perhaps to reassure visitors that no vampires would be tolerated here. As Mary turned to lead Auguste round the side of the building to the trade entrance, he was alarmed to see someone he knew coming through the main entrance to the house. It was Inspector Egbert Rose of Scotland Yard.

“What are you playing hell and tommy here for?” Egbert asked, as taken aback as Auguste.

“Visiting the servants’ hall for luncheon.”

“I hope there’s no fish stew on the menu,” Egbert commented inexplicably. “The earl’s been murdered.”

Auguste saw no connection between the two, but his heart sank. He had been involved with murder cases before with Egbert, and despite his liking for the inspector the task of detection came a very poor second to his main love in life. He was after all a master chef, and cooking, not murder, was his métier.

“You are sure it was murder?” he asked cautiously.

“You don’t drown by accident that way, nor choose it for killing yourself.”

“Er — which way?”

“Head in a bowl of fish stew.”

Auguste gazed at him in disbelief. Egbert was fond of jests, and this must surely be one. He pulled himself together. “What kind of fish stew?” he asked with a serious face. Now surely Egbert would laugh.

But he did not. “Cook said it was...” Egbert consulted his notes. “Conger eel done with sherry, water, and herbs.”

Auguste reeled as he realised Egbert was entirely serious. Stewed eels and conger-eel soup had been among the famous cook Alexis Soyer’s recipes, but conger eels were hardly the kind of cuisine he would have expected at an earl’s table.

“One of His Lordship’s favourites,” Mary said approvingly.

Auguste found his voice. “But how could he drown in it?”

“Huge silver bowl, deep and wide,” Egbert replied. “Someone decided to hold his head down in it until he drowned. That’s my belief.”

Auguste struggled to find words to fit this terrible image, but his voice came out almost as a squeak. “Did not any of his fellow diners object?”

“There was no one with him. Wife dines separately.”

“Always does, do Her Ladyship,” Mary intervened. “Says His Lordship brings spiders into the Hall’s dining room to drive her away. Now His Lordship’s gone. I knew it. I have the sight.”

Auguste gazed around the cavernous dining room of Hathertree Hall, where the signs of the recent tragedy were all too evident, although thankfully the body of the late earl was no longer present. Nor was Mary, who had with some difficulty been despatched to the servants’ hall where Auguste would join her for luncheon. Luncheon had ceased to appeal to him, having seen the remains of the congealed conger-eel stew, but Egbert had been insistent he keep to this plan. “You understand how these servants’ halls work — very handy you being on the spot.”

Auguste did not agree. Lumps of cold eel floated in an ornamented silver bowl so splendid it deserved the most delicate of fare within it, and splashes of an ill-prepared stock still remained on the table together with a Worcester plate pushed to one side. More liquid had stained the upholstery of the surrounding chairs.

“Not like my dinner table,” Egbert remarked, seeing Auguste hastily turning his attention to the rest of the room.

Auguste saw his point. This imposing and elegantly designed room was about forty feet in length, with graceful eighteenth-century sideboards, cupboards, and table, the latter long enough to seat over twenty people. Hunting prints adorned the walls and gleaming silver covered the table. Although the earl always dined alone, it always remained fully set, Egbert told him. This formal dining room could have taken its place in hundreds of great mansions, Auguste thought. There were few signs of Dracula here or indeed of any eccentricity on behalf of the owners — and yet the earl had been drowned in stew. Not a frequent occurrence.

“Do you yet know who could have murdered the poor earl?” he asked Egbert, still grappling with the sheer frightfulness of the crime.

“Restricted possibilities. He was getting on in years and on the dotty side, it seems to me. Only four people had permission to enter while he was dining. Anyone else was promptly thrown out. The footman found him when he came to serve the dessert. He was one of the four. The butler, a Mr. Hargreaves, was there as His Lordship arrived, and stayed until the stew was served, and then he left just after the footman, James. The housekeeper, Mrs. Parsons, was one of the four too, but denies she came anywhere near the dining room last evening. The earl’s wife was the fourth but she ate dinner in her rooms as she always does. When James realised the earl was dead he ran out screaming, which brought the butler running in, and he sent a messenger for the police. They called us in. Nothing like shifting over responsibility like a sack of potatoes.”

“Who inherits?” Auguste asked practically, trying to keep his eyes averted from the scene of this atrocious if incongruous murder.

“A second cousin, a Mr. Alfred Wheal, a farmer in Sussex, now the eleventh earl of Catsfield. Should be arriving any time now.”

“Did he spend a lot of time at Hathertree Hall?”

“None at all, I gather. Deceased couldn’t stand the sight of him. Forbade him the house until he was dead.”

And now he was. Could that be a line to follow? Auguste took another careful look at the room. Everything looked so conventionally grand but even in the best-kept rooms spiders lurked, just as passions raged within the most conventional of men. Spiders, like passions, were shy of the light and of human society. Spiders spun webs to trap unwary flies, just as humans too could be overtaken by the emotions of others.

The route to the servants’ hall revealed a far different picture of Hathertree Hall from the dining room. Dust was everywhere, in the air, on the floors, on the musty prints and hangings on the walls, and where doors were open, Auguste glimpsed the same neglected picture inside. Windows were shuttered and fireplaces and hearths were littered with ashes and charred coals. Carpets and furniture were dingy and uncared for. This did not bode well for what he would find in the kitchens and servants’ hall, he thought. It was perhaps as well that luncheon had already ceased to be appealing. Mary Bacon’s opinion of the cuisine might well have been formed through the rose-tinted spectacles of yesteryear.

The smells emerging from the kitchens slightly reassured him, however, and to his relief the servants’ hall, while hardly opulent, was of the same standard of cleanliness and comfort as the dining room. The lower servants — surely far too few of them for this large establishment — were already at the table and awaiting the arrival of the upper servants. Any lingering hopes Auguste might have had for the cuisine rapidly vanished. A meagre selection of cold meats and what might have been a shepherd’s pie for a particularly unfortunate shepherd were awaiting the moment to wreak vengeance on their consumers. Sitting on Mary’s far side was a footman, perhaps forty or so, who seemed more lively than the rest of the servants and proved to be James, who had discovered the body. Auguste looked at him carefully. Discoverers of the bodies were always of interest in an investigation.

Mary Bacon’s elbow dug painfully into Auguste’s ribs. “Here comes His Nibs,” she cried all too audibly.

His Nibs was obviously Mr. Hargreaves, the butler. On his arm was a severe-looking woman in black, and behind them four other upper servants. Together they made a formidable and depressing sight as they made their formal entrance and the lower servants rose to greet them. This must be a very formal household to maintain the custom of a full procession of upper servants coming to grace the servants’ hall for the duration of the meat course. Auguste took a careful look at the butler; he was not only as ancient as his master must have been but almost reptilian in the way his head moved back and forth on the long neck.

“That’s Mrs. Parsons prancing at his side,” Mary said scornfully. There was clearly no love lost between her and the housekeeper and Auguste could see why. Keys jangled at her waist as if to give warning that she would give no quarter. She was younger than the butler — perhaps a mere sixty — and her darting eyes flew suspiciously round the table.

Auguste decided he would not wish to be a chef in Mr. Hargreaves’ household, and was proved right when James became an instant target. “Where’s your livery, James?” thundered Hargreaves.

The footman went pale. “The police took it, and the wig too.”

Hargreaves frowned. “There are spare liveries and wigs in the livery room. No footman appears indecently clad under my jurisdiction. Kindly rectify this appalling situation immediately luncheon is over.”

“But no one will be visiting, Mr. Hargreaves. The police are here.”

The eye fell upon him. “Standards have to be maintained, James.”

Except in housecleaning, it seemed. Auguste decided to point out the priorities. “The tragic murder of His Lordship must surely disrupt routine procedures.”

There was instant silence, broken at last by Mary. “I told him there’d been a murder in the house. I have the sight.”

“Such a pity that the sight forgot to inform you in advance that His Lordship would meet his death yesterday evening,” Mrs. Parsons said acidly.

“Spiders will crawl,” Mary retorted darkly. “That’s what I said, and crawl they did.” She gave a shriek. “I see it, I see it... He’s here in this house, that murdering spider.”

“More than we’ll be in a day or two,” James growled. “We’ve all been dismissed, remember? That’s what the old goat said.”

This caused more of a stir, and everyone began shouting at once. “Silence!” roared Mr. Hargreaves.

Auguste tried to take this in. Surely he had misunderstood. “You’re all leaving the household?”

“His late Lordship was given to such wild statements,” Hargreaves said loftily. “Of course he did not mean it.”

“He did, Mr. Hargreaves,” Mrs. Parsons said coldly. “Even I was not exempted.”

“But did he arrange for replacements? If not, surely the heir will wish to retain you all,” Auguste pointed out. Here was most certainly a motive for wishing His Lordship dead.

“If Her Ladyship lets him in the door,” James sniggered.

“He is the new owner of Hathertree Hall. How could she keep him out?”

“She’s clean off her onions,” James replied matter-of-factly. “Ain’t she, Mary?”

“I’m Her Ladyship’s spiderbrusher,” was Mary’s proud reply. “I won’t hear a word said against her.”

Her fellow servants seemed all too ready to say words against her, but the prolonged ringing of the bell disturbed them.

Hargreaves glanced at the line of bells. “Her Ladyship for you, Mary. No doubt a spider needs removal.”

It wasn’t just Her Ladyship off her onions, Auguste thought. The whole household seemed as dotty as Egbert had pronounced the late earl. Unable to resist the chance of meeting the countess, Auguste followed Mary as she set off carrying brooms, dusters, and dustpan through the servants’ corridor, up the dusty stairs, and along corridors so thick with cobwebs that he couldn’t blame the spiders for thinking they had a permanent home in Hathertree Hall. What would he find when they reached Her Ladyship’s rooms? A Miss Havisham sitting amidst the cobwebs like a big spider herself?

Far from it. It was an anticlimax to find that the room to which Mary led him was impeccably clean, although Spartan to say the least. Only one painting adorned its walls — to avoid homes for spiders? — and the furniture was sparse. Her Ladyship was at first sight unremarkable for an elderly lady well in her seventies. Small, grey-haired, she looked unusual only in that several necklaces hung around her neck, and three tiaras adorned her head.

“One should not wear jewels so early in the day,” she told Auguste gravely, “but I have always been a rebel.”

“My condolences, Your Ladyship,” he murmured, having been introduced by Mary as a chef to King Louis Philippe, who had left this earth well before Auguste had entered it.

“Thank you, Mr. Didier. Inhabiting a room ridden with spiders is far from pleasant.”

Auguste rapidly changed his first impression of comparative sanity. “I meant for your late husband’s death.”

“My husband? Ah yes, very sad. But he has only himself to blame.”

Auguste forced himself to treat this as rational. “Is that because he was going to dismiss all the servants?”

She looked puzzled. “Possibly, although he has explained to them that I could do all the work instead of them. He even refused at first to allow me to retain your services, dear Mary. I would have been most upset had not Mary foreseen that this would not come about.”

“Doom. I saw doom,” Mary explained.

“And this morning Algernon has changed his mind. Mary may stay. Is that not thoughtful of him?”

“I told you he would, Your Ladyship,” Mary said complacently. “I have the sight.”

Auguste struggled to ignore the fact that Algernon had died most horribly the previous evening. “But why should your husband have wished to make life so difficult for you both?” It could hardly be for financial reasons. That jewellery alone would pay the servants’ wages for many a long year.

“It’s quite simple,” she said kindly. “My husband has decided to be a hermit and to give his life to contemplation. That is why he always dines alone, and only Hargreaves, Parsons, and a footman may enter the dining room without instant protest. I am permitted to enter if I wish, but am not allowed to speak.”

“But a house this size...” Auguste began feebly.

“I agree with you, young man.” The countess nodded vigorously. “It is indeed a mistake when one considers the number of spiders my husband allows on the premises.”

“Perhaps his heir will take a different view.” Her constant use of the present tense in referring to her husband was confusing and he wondered whether mentioning the new earl was a step too far.

It was not. “I trust that he will. My husband cannot abide him. He has to leave the title and estate to him, but the money is all bequeathed to me in order that I might purchase more tiaras. I imagine that will be quite a surprise to this farmer non-gentleman called Alfred.”

Auguste imagined so too. “Why did your husband wish to be a hermit?”

“He is a great admirer of Paul of Thebes, who, as you doubtless know, lived in a grotto for ninety years. No doubt there were no spiders there. Mary — to work if you please. One of these monsters was spotted by myself at least fifteen minutes ago and I ordered it to remain behind the portrait. That, Mr. Didier, is the countess of the sixth earl.” She pointed to the one painting on the walls, that of a merry-looking lady who looked speculatively down at them. “She was a murderess and had little truck with spiders.”

Auguste hoped that the unfortunate spider had made his escape in time, as he himself should do. He had arranged to meet Egbert at two o’clock in the orangery, which he trusted might be reasonably airy and free of dust.

It was, and was by far the most pleasant place he had so far seen in Hathertree Hall. True, the trees looked bedraggled and in need of care, but its furnishings looked comfortable and almost attractive.

As he walked in, however, he could see that Egbert was not alone. Sitting with him was a thickset man with ruddy complexion and clad in a brown lounge suit and brown boots. He looked out of his depth, and must surely be the heir, Mr. Alfred Wheal, now the earl of Catsfield. Auguste pitied him for being pitchforked into this unexpected situation.

Egbert blandly introduced Auguste as a colleague from the French Sûreté Générale, which Mr. Wheal seemed to accept as a perfectly normal addition to Scotland Yard’s forces.

“I came this morning as quickly as I could,” the new earl said nervously. “By railway train. I’m not used to travel. It’s upset me.”

“Murder is always a shock,” Auguste murmured sympathetically.

Alfred Wheal nodded gratefully. “A terrible thing — and by a fish stew. I could hardly believe it. I like stew.”

He was rambling, but not, Auguste thought, because he too shared the dottiness of this household. And murder in this way was so unlikely that it was hardly surprising it was difficult for the heir to assimilate. He seemed to be blaming the stew itself. In former days the instrument of murder was believed to be as guilty as its user, and even now the law still occasionally adhered to it. Although logic told Auguste that the means of death was immaterial compared with the crime itself, his emotions could not be so controlled. To use food — man’s comforter and friend — as the means of murder was giving this case a personal aspect and it was imperative that the murderer be found.

“When did you last see His Lordship?” Auguste enquired.

“He never liked me and I don’t like travel. Must have been a year ago at least. Well,” Alfred Wheal said heavily, “if there’s nothing more, gentlemen, I should pay my respects to Her Ladyship. And,” he paused, “the lawyers. I suppose there will be a will and so forth. I can’t pretend I’m not interested in that, what with wheat prices slumping again.”

“He will shortly get an even greater shock,” Auguste observed, after he had left them. “The countess told me that the house and title go to Mr. Wheal, but the money has been left to her.”

Egbert whistled. “Makes you feel sorry for the fellow, doesn’t it?”

“Not too sorry,” Auguste said. “You should perhaps look closely into his movements, Egbert. Perhaps he was in this area last evening. He was wearing a brown suit. If he had left home this morning, as he claims, he would surely be paying his respects in black.”

At Egbert’s request, Auguste returned to the servants’ hall in the hope that he might pick up in conversation information that had escaped Scotland Yard. Most of the servants seemed to be there, as presumably their usual duties — meagre though they seemed to be at Hathertree Hall — had been abandoned owing to the police presence. He found Hargreaves in the butler’s traditional sanctum, Pug’s Parlour, where he was engaged in polishing heavily tarnished silver.

“This new earl,” he assured Auguste, “will need licking into shape. He’ll need me, won’t he? He won’t dismiss me.” His hands were shaking, and his eyes were full of a desperate hope.

“He would be very foolish to do so,” Auguste told him reassuringly. Unless, he thought, Hargreaves had murdered the new earl’s predecessor. He braced himself in Egbert’s interests. “I am, as you know, a friend of Mrs. Bacon. I am also with the Sûreté, working with Scotland Yard. Would you tell me what happened yesterday evening?”

He looked nervous. “I did nothing wrong, monsieur. I waited in the dining room as usual until His Lordship entered at seven o’clock. I then pulled the bellrope for James to bring in the fish stew. His Lordship rarely partook of soup, but was a great lover of stews, whether of game or fish or poultry. Even though there was only him to eat it, the silver bowl was always filled to the brim. I can assure you, monsieur, James didn’t kill him, I’d have seen that. Besides, I trained that boy. When James left, I had a quick word with His Lordship before I followed him. I asked whether he still wished to dispense with my services at the end of the week. He told me he did. His future way of life was to be devoted to nature and contemplation like Paul of Thebes.”

“Who was to do the cooking?” Auguste asked with interest. “His Lordship himself?”

A fierce and shocked eye. “Naturally not. Her Ladyship was to do it. Berries and so forth.”

Auguste rapidly moved on. “And when did you leave?”

“Shortly after James, sir.”

“And James would later have returned to take the empty dishes and bring the next course.”

“Only after His Lordship rang.”

“Did he ring last night?”

“If so, I was not aware of it. His Lordship was dead, of course.”

Quite, Auguste thought. So why had James returned to the dining room?

Mrs. Parsons also appeared eager to impress the new owner of Hathertree Hall. She was in her stillroom surveying empty jars as if considering with which delicacies she might fill them to appeal to a farmer. She eyed Auguste with deep suspicion when he announced his mission on behalf of the Sûreté.

“Why should the French police be so interested in Hathertree Hall?” she demanded.

“I am not at liberty to reveal that,” Auguste informed her grandly.

She was clearly not convinced, but at least made no more demur. “I most certainly did not enter the dining room last evening. Why would I?”

“His Lordship was going to dismiss you. Perhaps you might have wanted a quiet word with him.”

“No one had a quiet word with his late Lordship. He was deaf,” she snorted.

“So he might not have heard if someone had come in unexpectedly?”

Trapped, she hesitated. “He always heard that perfectly. He was merely deaf when he chose. But I did not go there last evening. I was in this stillroom and then retired to my own rooms.”

Where no one could vouch for her presence, Auguste thought.

Unlike the housekeeper, footman James was impressed to be visited by the Sûreté and all too eager to tell his side of the story.

“No, I didn’t hear the old geezer ring the bell,” he told Auguste blithely. “I reckoned he’d had time enough to empty the whole blasted bowlful down his gullet, so I went to collect it anyway. And then I saw him. Gave a yell likely to wake the dead. Only it didn’t. I lifted up his head, saw he was a goner, and dropped it back in. That’s how my livery got fishy stew on it.”

“Did you see Mr. Hargreaves or Mrs. Parsons during the evening?”

“No sign of him; saw her, though. She was outside the door as if she was going to go in, then she saw me and scuttled away like the crabby old bitch she is.”

“Could she have come out of the dining room rather than be waiting to go in?”

James shrugged. “Might have been like that.”

“And you were in full livery every evening?”

“His Lordship’s idea — and him going to be a humble hermit,” James sneered. “Every evening I goes to the livery room and puts on those daft breeches, that smelly old wig, powder and all, and prance in like a fairy. I’m hoping this new earl will see sense.”

“If he keeps you all on,” Auguste pointed out.

“He will, all right. We’ll see to that.” James grinned smugly. “After all, could have been him that done it. Barmy Mary reckons she saw him in the grounds last night.”

“I saw him all right,” Mary said complacently.

“Where, Mary? Where?” Auguste was fuming that he had not questioned her closely earlier.

“Don’t know exactly,” she said doubtfully.

“Walking towards the Hall?”

“Doom’s what I saw, Mr. Auguste. Doom. I have the sight, you know.”

Auguste tried to cling on to his patience. “Did you see him through your window, Mary? Or did you see him in a vision?”

“That’s right. Both of them.” She nodded vigorously. “I often gets the sight, especially after a drop of cowslip wine.”

“She might not be as dotty as she sounds,” Egbert remarked, when Auguste relayed what he had gleaned from the servants’ hall, including Mary’s “evidence.” “You were right. Alfred Wheal wasn’t at home last night. He’s now admitted having travelled here yesterday in order to appeal to His Lordship’s better nature, then thought better of it and decided to leave it until today, so he stayed overnight in the village pub. This morning he heard the gossip about the murder, got worried, and turned up at the Hall’s lodge telling the local police he’d travelled up from Sussex. They thought nothing of it, as they knew a telegram had been sent to his home.”

“Nevertheless, he could not have killed the earl,” Auguste pointed out, “because he would not have been permitted to enter the room. Even if His Lordship had relented and allowed him to do so, he would have been facing him, talking to him, and Wheal’s most certain method of murder would have been to strangle, not drown, him.”

“True enough. My money’s on that footman then. Nasty piece of work, if you ask me. The earl wouldn’t worry about him, so James goes back to do him in and then screams out that His Lordship’s dead.”

“But if it’s true that the housekeeper told James she had not been into the room, and if James himself is not lying, then Hargreaves could have killed the earl. If Mrs. Parsons did enter the room, she could have killed him and then scuttled away when James saw her.”

“A pretty stew indeed and we’re in one all right,” Egbert said gloomily. “Pity having to rule out Wheal. He had motive all right — or thought he did. He’s been raising hell ever since he found out about the will. Her Ladyship was very amused. But there’s no doubt that if he entered that room the earl would have been on his guard, not in a position to be pushed face downwards into the stew.”

“There’s one way he could have got into that room unnoticed,” Auguste said thoughtfully.

“And how’s that?”

“There were spare liveries and wigs in the livery room. If His Lordship had thought it was just the footman coming in—”

Egbert groaned. “Don’t tell me. Been down this road before. Remember how you used to tell me no one looks twice at a postman in uniform? You’re suggesting that to the earl all footmen looked the same. He would have thought it was James.”

“Yes,” Auguste said simply. This theory fitted and yet he realised he could not wholly believe in it. Mary had probably seen Alfred Wheal... She had the sight...

He and Egbert walked out into the neglected gardens, lit by the September sunshine. Roses struggled for survival and bushes fought for air, spilling over onto the ill-kept lawns. There was nothing like the smell of autumn, Auguste thought, and nothing to compare with a Kentish September, full of the rich promise of harvest. Fruit ripening on the trees, dropping onto the lush grass, spiders’ webs shimmering with dew where the sun had not yet caught them...

Spiders’ webs. Surely that was the clue? His excitement grew as he grasped what could have happened.

“It was the countess,” he said to Egbert, once he was sure he was right. “She had been driven to desperation by the actions of her husband and took matters into her own hands. As she saw it, she would be able to arrange life as would make her happiest. She knew Mary had foreseen that she would be able to do so. The earl was going to leave his money to his wife — money that would buy her more tiaras and allow her to keep her spiderbrusher.”

“She’s off her chump, Auguste. Sure you haven’t joined her?” Egbert said caustically. “Any proof?”

“Some. The earl would have let none of the other four steal close enough to him without suspecting something amiss. Only his wife, whose presence and well-being he totally ignored, could have turned so speedily and fatally on him. Like the sixth countess, she was the spider in the web.”

“It was Her Ladyship, wasn’t it?” Mary asked, as he walked with her to her cottage much later that day.

“You knew all the time?” Auguste asked her.

“I have the sight,” she said proudly. “But I didn’t believe it, not at first. You don’t see it clear all at once. You see the web first, and then you sees the spider lady. It was just how the sixth countess did it. She trapped him in the dairy and pushed him into the butter vat. You’ll find the gloves her present Ladyship used in her room, stuffed in her jewel box, all stained with stew.”

“Do you mind very much, Mary?”

“I can’t brush her away, can I?” she said sadly. “She’s stuck fast in my heart.”

“Even though she murdered her husband?”

A pause, then: “Ah well. They say spiders eat their husbands, don’t they?”

Content

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

The Snow Angel by Doug Allyn

Home for the Holidays by G. M. Malliet

The Purloined Pigs by Dennis McFadden

Heaven Knows by Marilyn Todd

Limelight by Howard Halstead

Noodling by Lisa Lepovetsky

Some Flames Never Die by Percy Spurlark Parker

Blunt Instruments by James Powell

Death of a Sunflower by Ragnar Jonasson

Murder and the Spiderbrusher by Amy Myers