Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998
- Автор: Alexander Gary, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998». Краткое содержание книги:
Suddenly I thought I understood. “Did you call the hospital?” I asked, trying not to sound anxious.
“Yes.” Jake’s voice sounded funny. “They’ve ruled out a heart attack, but they’re still looking him over.”
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I asked. I looked around. This was a small, bachelor kitchen but neatly kept. Table wiped clean, on the counter a pile of unopened mail and a paper bag with the name of the local hardware store on it, Big Eddie’s. Some sticks were poking out of the bag, probably for stirring paint; Big Eddie’s gave them away with every purchase. There was something else in the bag, too, wrapped in a cardboard and plastic wrapper. I could read the words “genuine camel hair,” written on it, but it wasn’t my business to go nosing around in Mr. Hornton’s things. I looked back at Jake.
“Yeah, Herbie, it’s good news,” he finally answered.
“I’ve got something I want to show you outside,” I said.
“Go on out. I’ll be with you as soon as I lock up.”
“So, what am I looking at, Herbie?” Jake asked. He was still acting kind of funny; he seemed to be trying to pay attention to one thing, me, while his mind was on something else.
“I just ran my hands along that gutter,” I said, pointing up. “It’s absolutely clean. If Mr. Hornton had just finished cleaning it, there’d be a trash bag or a pile of dirt and leaves somewhere, but I don’t see anything like that. I think he cleaned it some time ago, not today.”
“Maybe he’s got a leak in the roof.” Jake shrugged. There was a honk from the driveway. Ed Andersen was starting up his black-and-white.
“You get the front door, sergeant?” Ed hollered.
Jake turned with a wave.
“Everything’s locked up,” he said. As Ed tipped his hat, Jake muttered, “Damn, let’s not make this out to be something it isn’t.”
“What?” I snapped. “Why’d you say that?” I watched Ed Andersen take off up the street. Something here didn’t feel right, but I didn’t know what it was.
“I may not know much, Jake, but I do know this: Mr. Hornton wasn’t up there cleaning out his gutters.” I drew in a deep breath; I was finding it more and more difficult being in the same six square yards of space with him. “When you talk to him, that’s the first thing you ought to ask: what the heck was he doing up there?”
But he wasn’t going to be able to. Talk to Mr. Hornton, that is. When we got to my house, Jake came in. My mother would be home in a few minutes, but that didn’t seem to matter. He said he wanted to use our phone, call the station without broadcasting everything all over the airwaves. Then he made one more quick call, turning away from me suddenly as he did.
When he hung up, I could tell by the look on his face it wasn’t good. I caught in my breath as he told me, “Bad news. They have found signs of bleeding in the brain. Elmer’s gone into a coma.” He added, “I’ve got something else to tell you, Herbie. I found a message on his answering machine. I’ve got the tape here.” He patted his pocket. “It looks possible, remotely possible, that Elmer didn’t fall off that ladder. Maybe he was pushed.”
“I know. I know. It looks like an accident.” Jake was arguing on the phone with his captain, who was at a Police Supervisors’ Conference in New Orleans. “Yes, sir, most likely. I can read it to you again, but I can’t play the tape where I am. I can do that from the station if you want—”
A sigh of exasperation as he looked at me, then at my mother.
“Yes, sir, perfectly plausible, may be no connection.” Another pause. “Okay, it’s just the end of a message. The beginning got recorded over by one of those telemarketers that say nothing, then just hang up. Here it is.” Jake read from his notepad one more time: “ ‘You’ll be sorry if you show the dreamers.’ ” “Yes, sir, that’s all there is, plus the fact that his front door was wide open.” A roll of his eyes. “Sure, he could have left it that way — and gotten a house full of flies.”
Pause. “No. No signs of anyone being in the house. Nothing looks touched or seems missing.” Another pause and Jake shifted his weight around.
“Yes, I’ll have it sent to the lab, maybe they can — yes, captain, a male voice.” Pause. “No suspicion of that, but I agree, better to err on the side of caution.”
“I don’t care what’s on it,” my mother said when Jake hung up. “I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Elmer Hornton.”
She folded her arms high over her chest and walked through the narrow archway leading from our kitchen to the living room.
It was a small place, our house, but it had a big kitchen and a comfortable living room paneled in old fashioned knotty pine. Every room had a high, open ceiling with a huge circulating fan that Jake had installed for us. The house had two large bedrooms; mine was off the kitchen through what looked like a closet door but actually led to a narrow, curved flight of stairs. Hers was down a short hall from the living room. It was actually two smaller rooms that Jake had remodeled into a larger one by taking out a wall.
It had a fenced-in yard and a pair of towering sycamores in front, a row of small purple locusts in back. We also had an old rickety half-falling-down garage barely big enough to park a car in. Right now it held a lawnmower, a battered outboard engine I was determined to put back together someday, and lots of odds and ends, mostly mine. But the important thing was that it was our house. After years of being pushed around from rental to rental, motel room to motel room, it was the first real home we’d ever had.
Now she was planning to sell it, move into a stupid condo.
All because of him, Jake Valari, following her into the living room, trying to be nonchalant, casual, and concerned. He got only the last part right.
“Emily, it’s just routine,” he told her. “Probably nothing to it. But I’ll have some of my men ask around, see if anyone heard or saw anything. Sometimes things seem one way and—” He stopped abruptly as my mother hugged herself and turned away.
She was facing me and trying not to cry. But for whom? For Mr. Hornton, whom we both cared for, who’d been our first real friend in this town, and honest to God, was more like a — well, like a grandfather to me than just the guy I did odd jobs for?
Or were her eyes full of tears because of Jake, standing there saying, “And they’re not the way they seem.”
“Yeah?” I said, determined to defend my mother as well as her pride. “Like you seemed to be a nice guy but you turned out to be a jerk?”
“Herbie!” my mother cried. Turning to Jake she said, “I’m so sorry. He has been like this for weeks. Unbearable. Sometimes—” now to me “—I don’t think I know my own son any more.”
“You know me fine,” I said as I left them both standing there awkwardly. “I haven’t changed at all.”
“So, Herbie, who or what are the dreamers?” Jake was standing behind me in the open door.
I was sitting on our back steps, facing the sun as it started to drop westward in the distance. In a few hours it would be doing a slow dance across the waters of Manamesset Bay.
Manamesset Bay, just visible between the locust trees. Suddenly I wished I was out there in my little skiff, just fishing or daydreaming or doing anything but listening to him...
Or worrying about Mr. Hornton.
“Well?” he said. Then, repeating the message on Mr. Hornton’s tape, “ ‘You’ll be sorry if you show the dreamers.’ Any ideas?”
“What kind of voice was it?” I asked.