Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005
- Автор: Dean David, Dempsey Timothy F.
- Год: 2005
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: ISSN 1054-8122
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005». Краткое содержание книги:
He started paddling the canoe deeper into the cove, and away from the lights and the boat and the body that intrigued him so. He had another half-hour or so of fishing left to do, and even though he hadn’t caught a thing, he was enjoying it so, on his first real day of vacation.
After dinner that night, Mom and Dad went out to the rear deck, and he joined them, working a crossword from a puzzle book. He was doing crosswords now that were designed for adults, not kids like him, and he liked being able to solve the tougher puzzles.
Mom and Dad talked to each other as he held the pencil and puzzle book in his hand, and he kept quiet. Sometimes they talked and sort of forgot he was there, if he kept his mouth shut and didn’t raise any attention.
Mom said, “You got that planning-board meeting tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, I do,” Dad said, his voice sounding tired.
“The Oyster Bay project,” she said. “Am I right?”
Dad shook his head and took a sip from his after-dinner glass of wine. “Yeah, you’re right. Stupid fools. This is a lake. There ain’t no oysters in there. That’s what you get when you deal with flatland developers.”
Mom smiled. “Don’t be harsh, Henry. You used to be a flatlander, too. And you’ve got lots of family down south — especially in and around Boston — who might take offense to that.”
“Then let them,” Dad said, his voice just a bit loud. “Guys like these developers come up here, don’t appreciate the lake... it’s going to be a problem.”
“Oh?”
He looked out to the lake, and Pat kept his pencil still, wondering what was going on.
Dad shook his head. “These developers... we’ve tried everything, by the book and not by the book, to block and delay, and it looks like it doesn’t matter anymore. No matter how long we’ve lived here, no matter how much we love this lake and want to protect it, there’s not much we can do. Theu’ve got the funding lined up, and they’re ready to tear up half of the most undeveloped lake in the state, for fifty new homes. Can you believe that? Fifty new goddamn homes.”
“Henry,” Mom said. “Your language.”
“Oh, sorry. Well.” His dad turned to Pat and said, “How goes it, sport?”
“Not bad.”
“Running out of puzzles?”
Pat smiled. “Not today, that’s for sure.”
He asked, “How was your fishing?”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“Catch anything?”
“Lots of weeds.”
Dad laughed. “Well, at least you tried. Going out tomorrow?”
“Probably,” Pat said. “Can I go out to the other coves?”
“Sure,” Dad said. “I don’t see why not. Just be careful.”
Mom said quietly, “Anything new about that body they found this morning?”
Pat kept still again, hoping that his dad wouldn’t say something like, “Well, we’ll talk about it later,” or, “No, nothing,” but Dad pulled through and said, “Yeah, Chief Poulton came over, needed some sandwiches ‘to go’ for his folks. Guy they pulled out was old, maybe in his eighties. No identification on him. Dressed in just a pair of pants and a T-shirt. And the chief said, well, that the medical examiner found something strange when he looked at the body.”
“What’s that?” Mom asked.
Dad looked over at Pat, who was desperately pretending to be working on a puzzle.
“The old guy’s lungs,” he said.
“What about them?”
“They didn’t have any water in them.”
“So? They didn’t have any water and... oh. Now I understand.”
They were silent for a moment, and Pat couldn’t stand it. “Dad?”
“Yeah?” His father lowered his wineglass.
“What... what does it mean, what you said there? That there wasn’t any water in his lungs.”
Dad looked at Mom, and Mom looked at Dad, and then Dad said quietly, “It means the old man didn’t drown.”
Pat looked at his parents, and Mom went on. “It means, dear, that the poor man died, and then somebody put him in the lake.”
“Oh,” Pat said, the pencil in his hand feeling useless, the puzzle book no longer attractive. He was fascinated by what Mom and Dad had just said, but knew if he said any more, they would shut him out of any other news. “Wow,” he said. “That’s pretty strange.”
Dad nodded. “Yep. Pretty strange.”
And two days later, another body was found, at the other end of the lake, at Pinkham’s Cove. The cove was way on the south side of the lake, a place that Pat had only canoed to once before. Since it took three hours to paddle over there in a straight shot, with three hours for a return trip, it didn’t leave much time to catch one’s breath and do some fishing. The cove was clustered with small islands with tall pines, stretches of swamp, and boulders barely awash from the lake water that caught unwary speedboats roaring through. Pat had never liked Pinkham’s Cove, and when Dad had told him about the body being found there, he shivered. It made sense.
Dad was late for dinner, but made up for it by bringing steamed lobsters from the restaurant for the three of them to eat. Again, they were out on the back deck, cracking open the shells and dipping the lobster meat into drawn butter, when Dad announced that another body had been found.
“Stranger and stranger,” Dad said. “Another old person this time, but a woman. Wearing only a cotton nightgown. That’s it. No identification or anything else.”
Mom gently wiped at a drop of butter that was on her chin. “I don’t like it, Henry. I don’t like it at all.”
Dad shrugged. “Who does? Sounds like some wacko out there, dumping bodies in the lake for no reason. And the funny thing is, neither of them seemed to have any trauma. It looked like they died naturally.”
“The lungs,” Pat said.
“What?” Dad asked.
“The lungs,” Pat said. “Was there any water found in the lungs?”
Dad ate another piece of lobster. “Nope. It looks just like that poor old guy they found two days ago.”
Mom looked at Dad and then at Pat. “You... you better stay in our cove from now on,” she said. “Until this gets straightened out.”
“Mom!” he protested. “Our cove is so small, and the best fishing is out on the main lake, and I haven’t caught hardly anything this summer yet!”
Dad started to speak, but Pat kept on going. “I’m good enough to go fishing by myself, I should be able to—”
“Pat,” Dad said.
He stopped. Dad was using that tone of voice again. Pat lowered his head, the lobster not tasting that great. “Okay,” he said.
The day after the second body was found, Mom drove down to Boston to visit her mother and other relatives in the area. She had also gone down the week before, and both times, Pat had begged off going down with her. Pat had been down to Boston exactly three times to visit Mom’s side of the family, and except for side trips to see the Red Sox play at Fenway Park, he hadn’t enjoyed it much. Boston was too big and loud and noisy, and Mom’s relatives were a loud bunch, too. There were uncles and aunts and cousins whose names he could hardly keep straight, and most of them worked for the city in the police department or fire department or public works or other places like that. They drank a lot of beer and talked about the job, though the way they pronounced it was “The Job.” Every time he visited them, he could hardly wait to get back home to the quiet of the lake.
Mom had asked him to come along, but when he had put up a fuss, surprisingly enough, she hadn’t argued back. He’d planned to get some fishing in while Mom was away, but the day started off with rain, and so he went to Dad’s restaurant. It was right in the center of town and was called Hanson’s Pub and Grub, and Pat spent most of the time in the kitchen. He put on a white apron and helped empty the large automatic dishwasher of silverware and plates. Dad didn’t pay him in cash, but he did pay him in restaurant credit, so he could stop by every now and then for a Coke or a burger.