Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс, Пикард Нэнси
- Год: 2008
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 5. Whole No. 801, May 2008». Краткое содержание книги:
“Does she have parents? Someone who could perhaps talk to her—”
“Well, I don’t know, do I? We weren’t playing happy families, Joe. We were only together for a couple of weeks.”
“An official complaint, perhaps? Now that I’ve paid witness to this stalking, this harassment, perhaps you want me to... accompany you to the police station?”
Tom barked a sudden laugh. “You’ve never actually been a copper, have you, Joe?”
“Never. Not ever.”
“But you talk the talk. No, I don’t want you to accompany me to the station, thanks anyway. I want something more direct than that. I want you to put a stop to it. To all her crap.”
Joe had been afraid that’s where this was leading. “You think she’ll listen to me?” He was older than Tessa, true — could easily be her father — and perhaps a little elder wisdom was what she needed: But still, he was afraid. Not of confronting a madwoman; more of being mortally embarrassed. “There is a law,” he suggested. “The Protection from Harassment Act?”
“I know,” Tom said. “You think that’s going to carry weight? Quote section thirteen, paragraph six at her, and watch enlightenment dawn?” He leaned forward. “She’s barking, Joe. You’ve seen what she’s like, waiting round my office to harangue me when I leave. Not to mention she seriously messed me about, wiped my computer. I like things ordered, Joe. This was out of order. So. Are you going to help or not? I mean, that’s what you do, right? You’re a private eye. You take on clients.”
“Yes,” Joe sighed. “It’s what I do. I take on clients.”
“Good.” Tom passed a key across the table. “I want you to mess her place up, Joe. Same way she messed mine. Fair’s fair, right?”
“I suppose it is,” Joe agreed. “Fair’s fair. Yes.”
Tessa left home for work at nine-fifteen. It was all right for some, Joe noted, a judgment tempered by the knowledge that if he himself didn’t reach the office before eleven, it wasn’t like anyone would notice. As it was, this morning he’d been up at seven; by half-past, had been slumped twenty yards down the road from Tessa’s front door, his trusty newspaper on the car seat next to him, in case a disguise was called for. Was it really necessary for him to observe, first-hand, Tessa’s departure? Yes, it was. If he was going to let himself into her place with the key Tom had given him, he wanted proof positive she was off the premises. He figured that was the way Philip Marlowe would have played it, “What would Marlowe do?” being Joe’s regular mantra. Marlowe wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. Well, that wasn’t true. But it was the answer Joe wanted, which was substantially more important.
“You still have this?” he had asked Tom on being given Tessa’s door key. “Won’t she have changed the lock?”
“Trust me, that’ll get you through the door.”
“But—”
“Trust me.”
So Joe’s hand had clamped round the key as if his fist were taking an impression.
Now he straightened in the driving seat as Tessa reached the corner, crossed the road, and headed for her bus stop.
Give her another ten minutes, he thought. It was likely she’d be waiting at least that long; time enough to remember she’d left her purse behind, or her paperback, or any one of a hundred items she never left home without. But his body was in unwilled motion, eager to get this part finished whatever excuses his mind could conjur; his body was excavating itself from its car, brushing the creases from its coat; was pulling its collar up in a completely unsuspicious attempt to obscure its face for the benefit of anyone curtain-twitching, wondering what the guy in the car was up to. Housebreaking in broad daylight was not a game for the nervous. So if he was engaged in it, he couldn’t be nervous: QED. Unnervously, then, Joe made his way to Tessa’s house; unnervously fished her key from his pocket as he did so; unnervously dropped it as he tripped on the kerb, then had to frantically scrabble before it disappeared down a drain.
Now that, Joseph — he chided himself — could so easily have ended in farce.
He looked around. Weirdly, there was nobody in sight; or maybe it was normal; what did Joe know about this particular street at this particular time of the morning? Key safely in his fist, he released a breath just as a bus passed the end of the road, on its way to collect Tessa Greenlaw and transport her out of the area. There was no more room for hesitation. He had the key in hand, the door in his sights. What he was about to do was illegal, but would only look unusual if he farted about while doing it. Farting about was not something Marlowe would do. Again, QED.
Nobody shouted as he walked directly to Tessa’s door; no sirens blared as he slid the key into its lock. It turned. The door opened.
He was in.
This was only the second time he’d let himself into another person’s house without their knowledge — not without help, either time. But this was different. He was here to do damage: well-deserved damage, he reminded himself, as his conscience threatened to kick in — this wasn’t random vandalism; it was a message. That’s what it was. A message.
Nothing immediately suggested itself as Joe scouted round the ground floor, but once he’d climbed the stairs and discovered what was evidently an office, his next move became clear.
He set to it with a will.
“So why did you break into Tessa’s place?”
“I wanted to see if the key worked,” Joe explained. He took it from his pocket: a recent copy, shiny and unscratched. “They exchanged keys. He told me that. But when they broke up, he made an extra copy of hers before giving it back. That’s why he was so sure she wouldn’t have changed the locks. She didn’t know he had it.”
“It was Tom stalking Tessa, wasn’t it?” Zoe said flatly. “Not the other way round.”
“It’s a creepy thing to do, isn’t it? Keep a copy of your ex-girlfriend’s key. Except he had me doing the actual stalking,” Joe said. “There’s the crux, you might call it. The nub.” He recalled his self-clarification, following Tessa: that this wasn’t stalking but surveillance. “Prior to persuading me to, I think the word would be trash her place. Yes, trash.” He recalled for her Tom’s words in the bar: “‘Why do things yourself when you can pay someone else to do them?’ He was talking about fetching drinks. But...”
“You discerned a principle,” said Zoe.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“I didn’t much like him.”
“Yes, but...”
“But what?”
“You don’t much like anyone, Zoe,” Joe explained. “It’s not like you were making an exception.”
They were in the office, which was the mostly neutral ground of their marriage.
“Point,” Zoe said. “But I thought you were his friend.”
“I was, but was he mine? What sort of friend sends you off on a job like that?”
“The kind who’s taking revenge.”
“On poor Tessa, yes. She dumped him, I’m assuming.”
“Guess so,” Zoe said. “And he called her, didn’t he? Asked her to meet him after work, once he’d arranged for you to be following her. Then blew her off when he eventually came out. So what you saw was her quite reasonably losing her rag, and you never did hear what he was saying.”
“I think so, yes. There are ways someone clever could find out, probably, with phone records and technological trickery, but for myself, yes, I’m sure he faked it.”
“Can’t think why she went.”
“Sometimes women are gentle like that,” Joe suggested. “She would have been feeling guilty, perhaps, about dumping him. He maybe made an overture of friendship, or offered to apologise for something.”
“And you’re not worried she trashed his place first?”