Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012
- Автор: Макдермид Вэл, Манфредо Лу
- Год: 2012
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 853 & 854, September/October 2012». Краткое содержание книги:
“Chloral hydrate, Swiver,” said Jamison. “I gave her a dose in the room, but she hadn’t had much of her drink when you came busting in. I just slipped another in her scotch.” He pushed her away, and she tipped over the arm of the davenport. “I just came over here to pay Joe, get the necklace, and leave the murder weapon. If you weren’t so smart, he might have never known I’d borrowed it. Good scotch, Joe. But I need to get back to the hotel. I have to play the part of the shocked and grieving husband. Or widower. Let me have the necklace.”
“I don’t have it here.” The little Frenchman had couilles, staring down a Colt in the hands of a man who’d killed once already that night. I sipped my drink and slipped my tongue into it, to see what diamonds tasted like.
“Where is it?” asked Jamison. His voice was very cold and even now.
Velma sat up, weaving like a cobra. “You killed your wife?” she said.
“You hear a lot of stuff about me, doll, but they can’t prove any of it,” said Jamison. “You’re my alibi.”
“Not anymore, you rat,” she said, and tipped back over. Jamison turned the gun and stuck it in her ribs. “If you’re not my alibi, I don’t need you anymore.”
Sometimes you’ve just got to make your play. “All right, you bastard,” I said, “I have the necklace. I came over here to get it back for the Golden Gate Insurance Company.”
“Loyal to the end, eh, Mr. Swiver? I hope you were well paid for your services... in advance. Where is it?”
I said, “It’s in my glass,” and flung it at his face. He swung his gun around and fired a shot at me, but now he had to move the gun in a wide arc to bring it to bear. That gave me time to dive for the floor and Jamison’s shot missed. The scotch got him in the face; the necklace flew out, and he put up his left hand for it. The crystal tumbler tumbled harmlessly off his shoulder. Joe Damas sprang across the cocktail table, scooped up his knife, and plunged it into Jamison’s chest. The Colt went off one more time and Joe slipped down in a heap.
Jamison’s head lolled back, eyes open, with the Corsican vendetta knife sticking out of his chest. Joe had pushed his shiv right into the bad man’s pump. There was a festive spread of red on Jamison’s white dress shirt. If that was a rental tux, he was going to lose his deposit.
I scrambled to Joe’s side and turned him faceup. “C’mon, Damas, tell me you’re okay.”
“Damn it, Swiver,” he gasped. “I had a bad feeling about tonight as soon as I saw you.” I pulled his shirt open. It looked like Jamison had drilled him through a lung. There was a chance.
“Velma, call an ambulance,” I said. She fought off the drug and got on the blower fast. “Hang on, Joe. They’re on their way.”
“Frank,” he said.
“Yes, Joe?”
“Can you light a bleu for me?” I dug his last Gauloises out of the pack in his pocket, lit it up, and put it between his lips. He took a drag and smiled at me with moist brown eyes. “Des ennuis des chagrins s’effacent; heureux, heureux à en mourir,” he said, and exhaled his last. Troubles, sorrows disappear, happy, happy to die. It was a line from “La Vie en rose.”
I put an arm around Velma’s waist and walked her around the apartment while we waited for the police. I felt tired, cold with grief for Jane, hollow from the loss of Joe Damas. “I want those pictures, Frank,” she said.
“There are no pictures, sweetheart. Three dead and there’s nothing to show for any of it.” She leaned in close and wrapped her arms around my waist.
She was holding me up by the time the cops got there. Velma had always been tougher than me.
Copyright © 2012 by Harley Mazuk.
Never Enough
by Ralph Ellis
Crime fiction, Ralph Ellis told EQMM, hooked him when he was a college student and accidentally picked up The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett. He went on to work for newspapers across the Southeast, often reporting on crime, and now lives in Atlanta, where he is the editor for an online news organization. This is his first published work of fiction, but he has already completed a mystery novel about a police reporter and is at work on another.
Joe Kenner leaned down and examined the dead woman’s feet, being of the belief that shoes reveal a person’s character. One tan sandal had slipped off to reveal the brand name. Chanel. A thin gold bracelet encircled the narrow ankle of the same shapely foot, which looked so soft and supple Kenner had the urge to squeeze it. Brenda, his wife of thirty-seven years, had feet hard as hoofs.
The woman had been shot in the waiting room at the Honda dealership on the Millerton bypass. Kenner hoisted himself upright with a groan and walked in a semicircle around the body. He registered tan slacks and pressed white blouse, unlined olive complexion, and slender but curvy figure. Somehow, he knew, her good looks got her killed.
“Tell me what you know,” he said to Tim Brownlee, his protégé. Brownlee was the mayor’s nephew, a smooth-faced twenty-five-year-old with no discernible skills other than knowing how to get along.
“She brought her Escalade in two days ago for valve work and came to pick up the car,” Brownlee said. “But when they gave her the car she complained they didn’t wash and wax it. So they went to work and she sat down in the waiting room.”
“I don’t need to know that unless she died of boredom.”
“A man walked into the waiting room and said something about having a baby and then he shot her. He walked out and drove away. Nobody stopped him because they were freaking out. I mean, things like this just don’t happen around here.”
Kenner glanced at the body. “She doesn’t look pregnant. What’s the description of the shooter?”
“Slim, blond, about forty, wearing khaki pants and a blue polo shirt. And a baseball cap.”
“Great,” Kenner said. “He looks like all the white guys in town. Let’s go down to the country club and find some suspects.”
The manager of the dealership walked up shaking his head and said the video cameras had been malfunctioning for a few days. Kenner gave him a disapproving look and the manager handed over the woman’s work order without being asked. Her name was Kimberly Collins and she lived in Henry Plantation, a new, high-dollar subdivision. Kenner guessed she was in her mid thirties.
“What’s her husband’s name?”
“She didn’t say she was married,” the manager said. He was a tubby guy in a short-sleeved white shirt and a black tie. The nametag said Nick Glass.
“She’s wearing a big rock. How could you miss it?”
“We just talked about the car.”
“So you hit on her,” Kenner said. “You asked her out, didn’t you?”
“No, no. I just picked her up at her house and brought her to the dealership. It’s a service we offer to some customers.”
Kenner put on his Mount Rushmore face. Glass went pink, then red, then bright red. A tiny trickle of sweat slid down his round cheek.
“Talk to your people,” Kenner commanded. “Help them remember something else, understand? Call me today at three o’clock with an update.” Kenner turned to Brownlee and said, “Let’s go find the loving spouse.”
Brownlee drove the unmarked Crown Victoria while Kenner watched the fast-food joints and tire stores of Millerton slip by. He called it Mullet Town, because of the prevalent male hairstyle. Nine months ago, shortly after his fifty-eighth birthday, Kenner retired from the Atlanta Police Department, where he’d spent quality time with his share of dead bodies. He followed Brenda to her hometown of Millerton, where she had a sick mother to look after. Kenner went stir crazy from boredom before the movers left. Then strange old ladies knocked on the front door with baked goods and expected him to make conversation. Desperate to get out of the house, he jumped when Mayor Cecil Wood created a detective’s job for him, making it clear Kenner’s primary duty was turning Brownlee into a reasonable facsimile of a police investigator.