Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018
- Автор: Ловси Питер, Зельцерман Дэйв
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 152, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 926 & 927, November/December 2018». Краткое содержание книги:
Slipping the phone back into his pocket, Stuart glanced around once more and, seeing no one but an older woman with her back to him watering flowers, hurried to his car and drove away.
“Are you having some kind of problem at work?” Rita asked.
Looking up from his mostly untouched dinner, Stuart tried to keep his expression neutral. “No... of course not. Why do you ask that?”
“You came home early today... which never happens. Is something going on you want to tell me about?”
“No! There’s nothing going on!” Stuart said with more force than he had intended. There was no way he could tell Rita about what had happened — about what he had discovered in that house. She would ask why he went there in the first place and why he had yet to call the police. “Sonia Wycliffe is giving me a hard time, that’s all — nothing new.” This was true enough, he thought.
“When are you going to get over her becoming your boss?” Rita snapped, surprising him with her vehemence. “It’s getting old, Stuart. Either accept the situation or apply somewhere else, for God’s sake.”
“Grow a pair, Dad,” his son added, chuckling.
“Shut your smart mouth, Tommy!” Stuart rounded on the sixteen-year-old. “And pull that goddamn hood off your head at the dinner table.”
It angered Stuart that the boy slouched around wearing a hoodie wherever he went, pretending to be some kind of inner-city thug despite the expensive braces on his teeth.
“I’m done,” Tommy replied, pushing away from the table and standing, his face blank and indifferent. “Peace out.” He walked from the room without a backward glance.
Turning on Rita now, Stuart said, “Nice job, babe. You set me up good there.”
“You’ve set your own self up, Stuart,” she countered without raising her voice, her dark eyes sparking.
“I think I’ll cut my wrists if you two get started tonight,” Stuart’s daughter remarked from her seat. With dyed black hair, black clothes, and dark makeup round her eyes, Stuart thought Shelia looked dead already.
“Let’s drop this now,” he agreed, speaking to Rita while wondering if Brad Twinning had endured dinners like this one. “I don’t want to argue tonight.” Wadding up his napkin, he rose from the table and went in search of a bottle of scotch.
“I don’t care if you change jobs, Stuart,” Rita called after him, “but we can’t afford for you to be fired. We’re carrying too much debt and I’m not making enough money yet to carry the load alone.”
Stuart didn’t miss the “yet” — someday he might become expendable. “I’m not getting fired,” he responded.
When he reached the liquor cabinet he changed his mind and poured himself a stiff shot of bourbon instead.
“What did he say, exactly?” Sonia asked, having summoned Stuart to her office shortly after his arrival at work.
Stuart’s mouth felt dry and cottony; he had drunk too much the night before while sitting up to watch the news for word of the Twinning family. There had been nothing. Now he felt muddled and sweaty. “Just that he had accepted a position elsewhere, but appreciated the offer. Was flattered, he said.”
Sonia seemed to give this some thought. “Where?” she asked.
“What...?”
“I asked where he got hired.”
“Umm... I don’t think he said.” Stuart was having a hard time keeping his eyes on Sonia’s sharp face.
“You drove over to his house and didn’t bother to ask that? You didn’t think I’d want to know who hired away my pick out of two dozen candidates?”
“Well... I... I didn’t actually go to his house, Sonia — I really wasn’t feeling well, remember, so I tried again on my cell and got him that time. So there was no need to actually go there.” He threw up his hands. “I think he might have said Burton-Voight, I’m just not sure.”
Sonia sat looking at him.
“You didn’t go there.” It was a statement, not a question.
Stuart shook his head anyway.
“Stuart,” Sonia began, rising from her seat, “I think you need to give some serious thought to the direction your career is taking here.” She opened the door to her office.
As Stuart walked past her and out into the maze of cubicles that formed the work floor, she added, “I’ve got a good friend who works in personnel at Burton-Voight. I’ll give him a call.”
Walking away, Stuart felt her eyes on his back.
After his meeting with Sonia he spent the remainder of the day pretending to be working, picking up the phone whenever he heard anyone approaching and covering the mouthpiece if they stopped at his office, eyebrows raised at the interruption.
Sonia put in an appearance late in the afternoon. She wasted no time. “Paul Tracy at Burton-Voight has never heard of Brad Twinning, and they haven’t done any hiring in months.”
“Well, I said I wasn’t sure,” Stuart answered. “Twinning seemed upset about something, was kind of hard to understand.”
“Was he, Stu?” Sonia said, not bothering to mask her disbelief.
“Why don’t you call him and ask?” he challenged, knowing what the result would be.
“I did. No one answered... which is strange. You called Twinning on your cell yesterday, right? And he answered?”
“I said he did.”
“Do you mind if I try your phone, then? Maybe I’ve got the wrong number plugged in.” She put out her hand, palm up... waiting.
Stuart almost handed it to her out of reflex, then stopped, realizing that she would see there had been only the one call to Brad Twinning. He felt his face growing warm. “You don’t believe me,” he stated, feeling the walls moving closer, even as his indignation swelled to meet them.
Sonia appeared to give this some thought, then said, “No, Stuart, I don’t. In fact I think you’ve intentionally blocked me on this from the beginning, though why, I am at a loss to understand. So maybe you better give me something here.”
“I’m not used to being called a liar, Sonia!” he shouted, both his frustration and fear of discovery boiling over together. “Get yourself a goddamn warrant if it’s so important! I’ve got a right to privacy!” Brushing past her, he fled toward the lobby, heads popping out of cubicles to witness his passing.
When Stuart returned two hours later, drunk enough to throw himself on Sonia’s mercy, it was to find the contents of his desk packed into a cardboard box and left for him at security. After demanding his ID badge, the guards escorted him off the premises.
On his way home that evening, he stopped his car across the street from the Twinning home. It had not been his intention when leaving the office, but now here he was, staring at the house in the fading light as the shadows beneath the trees swallowed it up little by little.
Sipping from a pint bottle of whiskey, Stuart found himself hating the dead man inside almost as much as he hated Sonia Wycliffe. It felt as if the taint of Twinning’s failed life had been communicated to him like a disease.
As he considered the spread of this contagion, a thought, a possible solution to his situation, crept into his mind: Instead of keeping the deaths of the Twinnings secret any longer, what if he, through an anonymous tip, contacted the police? Once the investigation was done and the times of death determined, he might be able to reverse his trajectory. Despite what ammo it might give Sonia about his having contributed to the tragedy, Stuart could say to any and all how lucky it was he hadn’t stopped at Twinning’s house as Sonia had wanted — he could’ve ended up as dead as the rest of them!