Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006
- Автор: Бетанкур Джон Грегори, Jr. William J. Carroll,
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2006». Краткое содержание книги:
“Bingo,” said Howland. “Got a hit. Wanna guess who?”
“Rumbold.”
“Bingo again,” Howland said. “Good work, Detective.” He was teasing now and Beau was feeling good. He asked Jodie if she could take a brief statement from her young admirer as Beau headed for the interview room.
Turning on the video recorder, set on its tripod in the corner of the room, Beau read Rumbold his Miranda rights from a waiver-of-rights form, and Rumbold initialed next to each “right.”
No problem, Rumbold contended. “Sure, I’ll talk to you.”
Beau started with the preliminaries, Rumbold’s age, place of birth: Chicago. The usual background information revealed Lee Rumbold was a Vietnam veteran, U.S. Navy, in-country, gunner’s mate on a swift boat, a plastic patrol boat along the Mekong Delta.
“How long have you been cutting Lily Chauchoin’s grass?”
“Who?”
“The lady who lived in the house with the twenty-one steps out front. St. Charles Avenue.”
“Only cut it three or four times.”
“You ever go inside her house?”
“Nope.”
Beau kept his face expressionless as he went on, letting Rumbold paint himself into a corner he’d never get out of, letting him explain his whereabouts for the last three days.
“So the last time you cut Mrs. Chauchoin’s grass was three days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t read the papers much, do you?”
“Nope.”
Beau watched the man’s eyes as he told him, “She was murdered.”
“No.” Rumbold blinked, then looked down at the tabletop and fidgeted as he sat in the hard wooden folding chair with its front legs shaved down a half inch to make the interviewee lean forward uncomfortably.
“Her house was burgled,” Beau continued. “Ransacked.”
Rumbold sat up and shook his head. “Why would anybody do that. She didn’t have any money.”
Beau continued staring into Rumbold’s eyes. “She pay you in cash?”
“Yep.”
“She tell you she didn’t have any money?”
“Huh?”
“How’d you know she had no money?”
Rumbold sat back and looked up into the video camera lens. Beau loved it when they did that, looking right at the jury with “guilty” written across the face.
“Everyone, even her next door neighbor of forty-two years, thought she had money.” Beau let that sink in a moment before repeating his question, “How’d you know she had no money?”
Rumbold swallowed loud enough for Beau to hear.
“All right, let me try another question. If you never went inside the house, how did your fingerprint end up on the glass box next to the body?”
Rumbold started shaking his head, putting his elbows up on the table, clamping his hands against his temples.
“We know what happened,” Beau said. “You wanna tell us how it happened?”
Rumbold took his time. Didn’t mean to kill her, of course. After cutting the grass, Lily brought him some tea in a paper cup, a paper cup. All the money in that big house and he wasn’t good enough to drink from a glass. That’s what sparked him to shove his way in and “rob the place.”
Unfortunately, Lily Chauchoin panicked. “I just wanted to shut her up,” he said.
As the statement concluded, Beau filled out the arrest form, charging Rumbold with first-degree murder. He looked into Rumbold’s eyes for a long moment and remembered what Sally Branson had said about being wary of men with wide-set eyes. “Too much trash going on inside,” she’d said. And he remembered Ann Falimy saying, “Nobody’s completely innocent.”
It was Beau’s job to prove Rumbold was completely guilty. After booking Rumbold, Beau would get a search warrant for the man’s apartment, certain he’d find something belonging to Lily there.
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” Beau asked, as he led Rumbold out.
“Yeah.”
Beau pointed to the coffee area. “All we have is Styrofoam.”
At ten the following morning, as Beau pulled up in front of Lily Chauchoin’s, a white van pulled in behind him and Jerol Philiber climbed out. They met next to the wrought-iron gate.
“That student come and talk to you?”
“Yeah. You read the paper this morning?”
“Didn’t mean to interfere,” Philiber said. “I see you caught the killer.”
The door opened and another version of Lily Chauchoin stepped out on Lily’s gallery. Her sister from California waited for Beau. She raised a hand and waved tentatively. She was waiting for the details of her sister’s murder, a job Beau never relished, but knew how to handle.
He thanked Philiber again. “Nosy citizens are appreciated. And you didn’t interfere at all.”
Philiber seemed relieved, shot Beau a smile as they shook hands. Beau opened the gate and told the cableman, “Keep your eyes open.”
“I will.”
Beau crossed to the steps and counted them on the way up, “One, two, three...” Like a mantra.
One for the Road
by Gigi Vernon
Marilyn drained her gin, then carefully set the glass down on the bar, which seemed to bob like a rum-running boat on a choppy crossing of the Detroit River.
“Bottoms up,” the swell-looking gangster on the bar stool next to her said with a wink.
With difficulty, her numb, clumsy fingers screwed a cigarette into her holder and, without turning away from his soothing smile of admiration, she groped behind her for the lighter in her purse. Her fingers pawed at thin air. She turned to look. No purse on the counter. Or on the empty seat next to her, or in the darkness on the floor of the speakeasy.
The cigarette and its holder flopped out of her mouth and rolled away. She turned back to the gangster extending a lit match to her and socked him in the arm. “Very funny. Give it back,” she said, her tongue and lips thick on the words.
“Give what?” he said with a cocky grin, then blew out the match flame suggestively.
“My purse, numskull.” She slid off the barstool.
Ray would kill her if she’d lost the protection payoff to the cops. He’d send one of his suits to rub her out and she’d be dead by tomorrow. Maybe he’d somehow already discovered the loss and had already sent someone. A vision of her bullet-riddled corpse floating in the river came to her.
She belted the creep again, then groped him, trying to search him, keeping her feet under her with difficulty.
Grinning, his hands held up as if he were under arrest, he said, “Hey, if you want to get fresh with me just say so.”
“Give it back,” her voice rose into a screech. She whacked him, trying to push him off the bar stool.
At the commotion, the jazz band faltered into silence, as did the frenetic tapping of Charleston-jiggling couples.
“Ray doesn’t like his molls messed with!” she heard herself accuse the startled spectators. She wondered if everyone already knew she was no longer Ray’s. She glared, or at least tried to glare, attempting to focus through a murk before her eyes, almost as if she were already at the bottom of the muddy river. She swayed in the hush, waiting for someone to confess.
No one stepped forward. Instead, the crowd parted for the head bouncer, Ralph, a middle-aged man, beefy, with bushy eyebrows and mustache and a missing front tooth. He frowned, annoyance crinkling his broken nose. “Marilyn, Marilyn,” he crooned in a low voice. “Pipe down. What is it with you? You gotta make a spectacle of yourself everywhere you go?” He snapped his fingers at the band.
A bass player tentatively plucked a string and the rest of the band answered. They revived the interrupted tune and the dancers caught the rhythm. Conversations and drinks were picked up again.