Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
He’d smoked his cigarette nearly to its butt when he heard heavy, branch-breaking footsteps in the woods and was sure they belonged to his son. He had always been as graceful as an elephant rampaging through a circus tent. When Miller was a boy, Ezell had taken him hunting on a few occasions, but he had whined and moaned and finally refused to go at all. A sour, bookish boy, Miller had grown into a sour, bookish man.
Now Ezell flicked away his cigarette, glanced up at the gray sky. Once he’d worn a heavy silver wrist watch, but like nearly everything else he’d had — home, wife, family — he’d lost it over the years. Even so, he knew it wasn’t much past two in the afternoon. Miller would be furious he’d been dragged from behind his librarian’s desk. Ezell had had enough of his son’s eye rolls, harsh words, and exasperated glances to last him through this life and on into the one that was yet to come. Thinking about the way Miller mocked him made his stomach churn with anger, and he sprung to his feet, hands balled into fists, shoulders squared. Deep into his seventies, he still had the broad chest, the muscled stomach, and the thick arms of the forty-year-old logger he’d once been. Now he determined that if Miller didn’t watch his tongue he might have to learn a hard lesson he should have remembered from when he was a boy.
Another thought occurred to him. What if it wasn’t Miller who was stomping his way towards him, but somebody else, maybe the same someone who caused whatever tragedy it was that drew him here? His heartbeat stuttered; a hard shiver rattled his teeth. For the first time in God knew how long, he was scared of something other than the darkness that had settled upon his memory. But then a wisp of a girl in a ratty sweater and dirty jeans stepped through a strand of blighted dogwood and sassafras.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. She spoke as if they had at least a passing acquaintance, but he couldn’t get a hold of how that might be. “What do you have treed out here anyway?” she asked.
He couldn’t figure who she was or how he knew her, and he was afraid he might weep in frustration. “Girl,” he said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You come here so often I figured you must have something treed,” she said. “That was one of my daddy’s sayings.”
The image of this girl getting out of a small, boxy car with primer-coated fenders jumped into his head, and the shadows burned away. “You belong in that cabin, don’t you?”
“It’s not ours. We’re renting it.”
“You live with your daddy.”
She gave him a shy, embarrassed grin, shook her head. “That’s my boyfriend. He’s a little older, is all. And I’m nineteen, so I can live with whoever I want. I keep telling my momma that, but she doesn’t listen.”
“Mommas can be stubborn that way.”
“You’re telling me,” she said. “Do you got a cigarette? I thought I smelled one.”
He wasn’t sure one way or the other. But when he reached into his coat pocket, he felt the crumpled Camel Lights.
“You’re a lifesaver,” she said. “I ran out like an hour ago, and I’m feeling a little too hazy to go into town.” She lit her cigarette and then pulled a strand of hair from her eyes. “So why do you come out here all the time?”
It wasn’t her question that knocked him off balance but the fact that she’d asked it at all. To Ezell it seemed as if it had been years since anyone had cared why he did anything.
“It’s somewhere to go, I guess. I was a logger for a time and then hauled lumber after that. I’m used to being outdoors or on the road. I get restless sitting around the house.”
Instead of rolling her eyes or acting as if listening to him was a painful ordeal, she smiled and said she knew exactly what he meant. Well, not about the logging or truck driving but about getting away from the house.
“My boyfriend gets in moods when he’s tweaking. Quick tempered, you know? Sometimes I just walk around until I figure he’s run off somewhere or else passed out.”
“He sounds like an asshole.”
“Naw.” She shrugged, gave him a crooked grin. “Maybe.”
“He beat you?”
“Christ, mister,” she said. “That’s not any of your business.”
“My daughter had a boyfriend who beat her once. Hurt her pretty bad,” he said. “His name was Watkins, I think, or could be it was Watson. A piece of crap like that ain’t worth remembering anyway.”
“Yeah? So what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suspect somebody killed him. Hell, I might have.”
She grinned again. “I meant with your daughter. Is she all right now?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Her name is Sarah. I remember that.”
“That’s a pretty name,” she said. “I need to get back to the house. If he ain’t passed out or run off, he’ll come looking for me.” She stared at Ezell as if she were debating whether or not to reveal a secret, then said, “Listen. I don’t care if you come out here. But be careful. Josh and a couple of his friends have got something going in a little trailer not far from here. They see you creeping around, they might mistake you for the law. He can get pretty mean when someone riles him.”
“That so?” he asked. “Well, I’ve been known to get mean a time or two myself.”
“Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
She was heading back into the woods when an image jumped into his mind. He saw a blond woman, naked and bleeding while a little boy stood in a corner clutching a rumpled bedsheet and staring wide-eyed at what was happening.
“You know anything about a woman who got hurt around here?” Ezell asked.
“Huh?”
“Bad hurt, maybe killed?”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” she said.
He was ready to accuse her of lying, but then in his memory, he smelled exhaust fumes, saw a black ’55 Mercury, and heard a Patsy Cline song playing on its radio. “It was before your time, I reckon.”
“Was she a friend or something?”
The image of the woman, the car, the terrified little boy slipped away, and he shook his head. “I can’t quite say who she was.”
Miller and his fat schoolteacher wife fed him bland meatloaf, lumpy potatoes, watery green beans, and acted as if they were bestowing a great blessing when they heaped the mess on his plate. There was no bread, no seasoning, and only lukewarm milk to wash the slop from his mouth. Disgusted, Ezell smacked his lips and slurped his milk just to watch the irritation flicker across the lady schoolteacher’s expression.
“Wipe your mouth,” Miller said.
“What?” Ezell asked.
“There are mashed potatoes smeared across your chin,” the schoolteacher said in the careful, patient tone that usually meant she wanted to scratch out his eyes.
Ezell touched his chin and then the haze settled upon him. He couldn’t remember what it was he needed to clean his face. He looked around, desperate, ashamed that such a thing was happening.
“The paper towel,” Miller said. “It’s right there beside your plate, for God’s sake.”
Ezell grabbed the napkin and scrubbed at his face. “Thank you for telling me what I could see with my own eyes.”
Miller looked as if he wanted to speak sharp, but the schoolteacher warned him off with a shake of her elephant’s head. Ezell didn’t know what she had going for her, but he figured it must be as sweet as honey the way she jerked Miller around like a small dog on a leash. He remembered an army buddy saying that big girls were the best when it came to putting the love on you. This buddy, Thomas Stamps, had theories about all manner of things. A few of them even made sense.