Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
The cars overflowed Ryan’s small lot by the road, many parked across the street in the Galway Market lot, more cars than he’d ever seen for a funeral. December twilight, the air turning cold. Candle lights in the windows of Ryan’s, people going in and out, Donnie glad for the twilight that hid, he hoped, the worry on his face. And on Monica’s, the frightened frown beneath the messy bangs. Her hand holding his was sweaty. Inside, she started to sign the book, but he warned her off with a frown and a shake of his head; catching his meaning, she took a sharp breath, put down the pen. The place was crowded, mourners talking in solemn groups of threes and fours, a quiet hymn in the air. Near the casket in the front of the room stood the family, two middle-aged ladies, daughters maybe, younger kids, grandchildren, and there was one older man, a son, perhaps. Donnie felt conspicuous, taller than just about everyone else there, less dressed up, more guilty. Monica whispered, “I don’t see anybody who looks like a cop.”
Donnie whispered, “Let’s hurry up and get the hell out of here.”
Making their way toward the front of the room, toward the casket, through the milling mourners, including Mr. Matson, he overheard bits of conversations: Did they arrest anybody yet? They got any leads? Probably somebody passing by on the highway, probably in North Dakota by now. I’m thinking it was somebody from around here, somebody who knew she’d be there alone. Somebody who knew the camera didn’t work. Did they ever find a weapon?
Do they know how much money was stolen?
Not until this moment did it hit him: If he hadn’t taken the money, it might have all blown over. They probably would have thought it was an accident.
Andrea came into view. She looked to be made out of plastic.
“What are we doing?” he urged from the side of his mouth. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We have to pay our condolences,” she said, from the side of her mouth as well. She headed for the family. Donnie followed. She mumbled something else. He wasn’t sure what, but it might have been, I should tell them, and this was when he panicked a little, when he grabbed her shoulder and stopped her, when people began glancing their way.
He whispered, “What did you say?” surprised at how damp her eyes were.
“I said we should tell them how sorry we are.”
“For what?”
“That she’s dead. Duh.”
“Oh. Jesus. You’re making me nervous.”
He followed her up to the family. They shook hands and hugged in turn, mumbling condolences and gratitudes, and after the last hug, confronted with Andrea in her coffin, puffed up and plastic and peaceful, a far cry from the last time they’d seen her, Monica broke down. She began to cry, to sob, and the younger of the two ladies, a daughter, hugged her again. People stared, and the man Donnie thought to be a son, a man too cleanshaven and smelling of too much cologne, said to him, “Tell me, how did you know Mrs. Mills?”
Not Mother. Not even Andrea. Mrs. Mills.
When the weather turned cold he was always more careful in the trees, when his hands were numb in his gloves, his feet in his boots as well. Nevertheless, high in a half-rotted oak overlooking a half-frozen pond and a barren pasture in the town of Providence, he slipped. His harness started slipping too on the barkless shaft, before it caught and he slammed against the trunk and hung there for a moment, a long, long moment during which Andrea’s blank, dead stare burned into his brain and lingered.
And along with that mortal image, the words so gruff and friendly: Tell me, how did you know Mrs. Mills?
Jesse, manning the ropes from below, called up to him — was he all right? Donnie dug his spikes in. Something in him had changed. He was quietly terrified. It wasn’t the cop — for that’s what he took the man to be, though no one had said it for sure — he thought he’d handled him well enough, telling him he knew Andrea only from Matson’s, but he knew her well, he’d been in often, she was always so friendly, he would really miss her. He’d never forget her dancing in front of the camera, auditioning for Ed Sullivan — he’d been proud of that detail, how quickly he recalled Rosemary’s telling him that, how smoothly he delivered it to the cop, how convincingly. Until Monica, her face knotted in a familiar puzzle, had asked him: But... wouldn’t that mean you knew the camera didn’t work?
Of course it would.
It began to snow, flurries tickling his cheeks in the treetop. A knot tightened in his chest, heaviness creeping down his arms. The chain-saw trembled in his grip.
When they knocked off, it was still early. The flurries were thicker, fussier. He called Monica. “Let’s go do something fun,” he said. “I got a hundred and forty-seven dollars burning a hole in my pocket.”
“I have to go in to work, Donnie. I’m closing.”
“Call in sick.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can. They do it all the time to you.”
He could picture her trying to frown her way through it. “Mr. Baxter will have a fit.”
“Want me to call him for you? I’ll be happy to.”
She thought it over. “Maybe I ought to go in and knock him over the head with a bucket of kitty litter.”
He smiled. “That’s the spirit.”
“And you can rob the place.”
“Bonnie and Clyde,” he said.
“Who?”
For a moment, everything was warm and good. “I’ll tell you later, Sweetie.”
They went to the Wilton Mall. A light snow was falling. The Christmas lights adorning every corner seemed more likely now than they had in the warm early fall when they’d first been put up, but they did little to lift their spirits. During the previews before the movie, he cleaned her glasses for her, and she took his hand, kissed the back of it, nibbled on his knuckle. The movie was Tropic Thunder, and he almost laughed a few times, felt as though he should, almost rose to the occasion. Any other time, he figured he’d have been rolling in the aisle. Monica didn’t laugh much either, though now and then she seemed to be on the verge and looked at him, then held back when she saw he wasn’t. As if she needed his permission. His arm around her, she nestled as close as she could, and when his arm started to fall asleep he put it on her lap, squeezed her knee, and she would hold his hand with both of hers, kissing and nibbling frequently, almost absent-mindedly, leaning on his shoulder until he put his arm around her again. It never ceased to amaze him, how well they fit together, like two pieces of a puzzle, two spoons, just the right size — and not only the sex, all the time, every time, which was often, every chance they got. Cuddling was their favorite pastime. It might have been because she was new to the game, lacking experience, her mother being a meth-head, her father a jailbird, and maybe the same was true for Donnie too; he couldn’t remember ever being held when he was little. Mostly he remembered Rosemary teasing and taunting. He remembered, one of his first memories, peeking out from behind Rosemary’s legs, he must have been hiding behind her, peering out trying to catch a glimpse of the man their mother was confronting down across the fairgrounds, the mean gestures they made at one another near the entrance to the bam, the man he thinks was his father, his only glimpse of him.