The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories
- Автор: Пауэлл Тэлмидж
- Год: 2015
- Язык: английский
- Год: Wildside Press
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories». Краткое содержание книги:
He enjoyed sending picture postcards and wild greeting cards from various locales. On my birthday a zany card would enclose a twenty-dollar bill for the purpose of “oiling up a sweet patootie in a cozy bar, courtesy your Unc Dud.”
I always responded, jazzing up the details of my dreary bachelor existence as much as possible. Each Christmas I would try to send him something special — not expensive, necessarily, but something I had shopped carefully for. The kind of Wellington pipe he smoked or one of the baggy sweaters he favored.
Since he was a gregarious extrovert, it didn’t surprise me he was a soft touch. He always had a dollar for the panhandling wino with the seared eyes and burning throat. He never passed up a Salvation Army kettle or the poor box on his infrequent trips to church. And now and then some down-and-outer would hang onto his shirttails for a while. A busted madam, a kid just out of jail, or an itinerant worker stranded in Salinas. Or someone like Odus Calhoun, dubbed “Hardtimes” by Uncle Dudley.
“A born loser,” Uncle Dudley wrote. “One of those birds who gets all the frowns of fate — that’s Odus Calhoun. Worked hard all his life, paid his taxes, and never broke a law. And what did it get Hardtimes? Rat busted in Dallas where I met him, for one thing. Wife dead, and three kids grown up and scattered who’d rather forget him.
“If Hardtimes crosses a street, the drivers nearly run him down. A stray dog follows him home and the first time Hardtimes lets the mutt out the dog catcher is cruising by. The last jalopy he managed to buy turned out to be stolen. He cashed a welfare check and was robbed in sight of a police station. I reckon if Hardtimes inherited a gold mine an earthquake would dump the vein to the boiling center of the earth.”
From later letters I gathered that Hardtimes had settled into the role of handyman, cook, valet, friend, and confidant. “He more than earns his keep,” Uncle Dudley wrote, “and it’s nice to have a fellow critter around. He can’t play checkers worth a damn, so I finally know the joy of winning.”
It seemed to be a good arrangement. Uncle Dudley buffered Hardtimes Calhoun from the jaundiced eye of fate and at the same time escaped the loneliness of his wandering life.
But the fortunate circumstance was relatively short-lived. Three years ago Uncle Dudley wrote me the woeful news.
“Lost my pal. We was on the way to L.A. in my pickup with the camper cover. We stopped for the night at a campground near Yuma, and I couldn’t wake up Hardtimes the next morning. The county coroner said he died peaceful in his sleep from a worn-out heart. I gave him a decent funeral and searched his duffel without finding the addresses of any of his kids. They may never know how their poor old pappy met his end.”
He never referred to Hardtimes again and I respected his wish to leave a painful subject reverently closed.
A new wrinkle in our correspondence was added a couple of years ago. Instead of a twenty, a hundred-dollar bill dropped from one of his offbeat greeting cards. “I put some money where the profit is,” he explained. “So simmer yourself a real high-class patootie this time.”
And my last birthday turned up a blank check signed by Uncle Dudley. “Don’t go wilder than a hog, nephew, but if you hanker to tootle around in a little sports car, do your shopping. Happy birthday, village cut-up.”
His rapidly expanding affluence naturally tickled my curiosity, but he volunteered no details of his financial dealings, and I courteously cramped the urge to pry. I satisfied myself with a guess that he’d hit a run of beginner’s luck in the stock market. His business hadn’t pinned him down. He was still here and there on the map like a flea on a short-haired pup.
The most recent letter from him said: “Writing from the mugginess of a New Orleans August. Going up to Asheville, North Carolina, for a breath of summer-resort air. Drop me a note at the Great Smokies Chilton, Suite Charnot.”
His plans offered me the chance to visit. I had vacation time coming, and the owner of the construction company where I worked had a Porsche he wanted delivered to his daughter, who was in an Atlanta college. With tin hat in hand I appeared in the boss’s office and explained my proposition. He went for the idea, handed me the keys to the car, slapped my shoulder, and counted out more than enough cash to cover the expenses of delivering the car.
From Atlanta to Asheville by air is a matter of minutes, and I arrived on a deliciously cool Smoky Mountain day after I’d delivered the Porsche. I rented a car and drove a modest four-lane expressway ten miles north, took an exit ramp, moved westerly in a snarl of city traffic, and at last was wending up a coolly shaded macadam road. Valleys, rolling mountains, and the scanty skyline of Asheville spread in the distance. A final turn and the Great Smokies Chilton swam into view.
It was a Swiss architect’s dream, worth a pursed-lip whistle. The huge main inn extended a warm invitation. Webbed from it were driveways winding to private chalets tucked into rolling, landscaped mountain greenery. People were sunning, swimming, and loafing at a crystalline lake scooped into the mountainside. At a long sweep of tennis courts, lazier players had knocked off to watch a smashing drive match between two lean, bronzed young giants. Beyond the courts I glimpsed a pair of horses and riders dipping into a steep mountain trail. I slowed for the passage of a golf cart as it chugged across the parking area with two elderly occupants, headed toward the green-velvet golf course that wandered across the plateau near the crest of the mountain.
A Mercedes SEL was gliding from a parking place near the canopied entrance to the inn and I slipped my rented car into the vacated slot.
I got out, giving the surroundings an appreciative survey. A small plaque over the brass-studded door of the nearest private chalet caught my eye. AIN. I lifted my eyes to Ain’s next-door neighbor. The sedate plaque there announced: BRAUN.
I figured out that the third chalet was Charnot, Uncle Dudley’s domicile of the moment.
I was itching to know something about the late-in-life financial wizardry that afforded Uncle Dudley spots like this in which to take the mountain air. But even that was secondary to the thought of seeing him. I was a little giddy as I hurried along the driveway and the feeling wasn’t entirely due to the altitude.
I checked the plaque to make sure my guess was correct, and it was. I turned into the flower-bordered fieldstone walk bisecting the narrow lawn just as the door opened. It framed a blonde wearing a sleeveless white dress. She was young and tanned and so mistily lovely that I wavered to a halt, staring for a moment.
“Hi there,” I said. That was certainly original.
She said nothing, looking at me with eyes of cool green. I was sure she’d spotted me during my brief walk to Charnot and was about to tell me to get lost.
“I’m Jeremy Fisher,” I said. “I was looking for my uncle.”
“Jake-o!” she said with a sudden flash of a smile, using Uncle Dudley’s nickname for me. Her green eyes warmed. “I should have recognized you from the pictures Dudley has of you.” She reached out a hand. “Come in, Jeremy!”
I entered the cool of Charnot, where I got the impression of a well-heeled sportsman’s lodge. A large living room paneled in wormy chestnut was furnished with huge tweedy couches and club chairs, tables and a bar of natural oak, and a fireplace fit for five-foot logs. The ceiling was vaulted and beamed. A heavy oaken stairway led to a gallery overlooking the living room, where bedrooms were tucked under the rear portion of the expansive roof. “Nice, isn’t it?” she said.
“Very.”
“Would you like a drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a wee Scotch.”