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:
“You saw him?” Now she really looked worried.
“Right, I saw him. Drunk or wasted as he is, he’s not going to be leaping up to save you. You’re going to have to deal with me on your own.”
She nodded slowly. He was thinking too. He’d just been hoping for beer and tuna. But now, with these two marks here, he was expanding his horizons, as they say. Cash, credit cards.
As if reading his mind, she said, “Look, this isn’t my house. It belongs to a business acquaintance of my husband. I didn’t want to drag myself out here into the wild to begin with. Do you have any idea how hard it was to get a cab from the airport to here?”
Like he knew anything about taking a cab anywhere!
“So, take whatever you want, it’s no skin off my nose.”
“Hey, lady, I don’t need your permission.”
She made a sound that started as a nervous laugh but ended as a squeak. “Of course. Of course, you’re right.” Her hand shifted toward the gun, but she didn’t pick it up. “The people who live here,” she said as if choosing her words carefully, “they’ve just gone for the weekend. They were leaving the house to friends of sorts. I mean, we’re not strangers. He and my husband do business.”
“So—?”
“So you don’t lock up your jewelry and extra credit card and emergency cash, like you would if you’re renting to strangers or closing the house for the winter. I mean, you leave some things where they are.”
“Hey, I know how to toss the drawers. You’re not giving me anything new.” He wasn’t a child!
“You don’t know which drawers.”
“A drawer is a drawer.”
“Behind the clothes in one of the closets in one of the rooms?”
She had him there. But it was suspicious, this woman with her gun and all her sudden help. “Why are you telling me this?” He didn’t ask why she didn’t just call the sheriff; didn’t want to remind her of that option. “What do you want from me?”
“I want you gone! You’re scaring me. Just take whatever you like and leave. You have a car, right?”
“You think I’m some kid who walked up here with a bag on my back, like Santa? Yeah, I have a car!” A damned fine car, he wanted to add. A congressman’s car.
“Shhh! If you make a commotion, chances are you won’t wake up my husband, but you could and then we’d all be shocked. I just want you to be gone and everything here to go back to the way it was before.”
Aaron felt like he ought to do something, bang her around a bit to remind her he was in charge here. But he needed to focus on the job, not go all Hollywood. “Show me the stuff”
She shook her head. “Maybe no one followed you. Maybe no one called the sheriff. Maybe. I need to stay where I can watch the road.”
Maybe she was lying to him, but he had to go with his gut. “Okay. Stay there by the window.”
She turned toward the front room.
Her mistake! Before she could take a step he was across the kitchen and had the gun in his hand.
She shrugged. “Damn! It was worth a try.”
The woman sounded like she was reading from a script. He felt stupid, disappointed, like she wasn’t taking him seriously. He waved the gun at her, half expecting her to say it wasn’t loaded.
What she did was to say, “Go ahead, shoot. Gunshots are loud. My husband’s down the hall behind you. Why make trouble for yourself?”
Her giving orders, he had to stop... But no, forget her. Get the cash and get going! “Don’t move,” he said. “If you move, I’ll hear you. I’ll shoot you both. Got it?”
She nodded, a little too much, but he didn’t need to worry about that. He took the gun and stalked off toward the bedroom.
He heard the soft rattle of keys as she slid them off the counter. She must have thought she’d opened the front door a lot more quietly than she had. In a minute she’d be down the driveway and starting the car. He could have gone after her... he laughed. No, no way. This woman would be solving his problem as soon as the sheriff spotted the congressman’s red sports car.
He grinned. It was an elegant move. Someday, after the statute of limitations had run out, he’d be telling his buds about this. Now...
Now he needed to move. If the sheriff found him in here it would blow everything. But he did not intend to come up empty.
He was riffling through the bottom dresser drawer when he heard the siren. He smiled; he would have liked to hear the woman trying to explain the car.
But no time for that. He abandoned the credit cards, watches, and two rings — no need to take a chance with them — pocketed the cash and hurried down the hall.
At the bedroom door he stopped to listen.
No snoring. No rustling.
He hesitated, opened the door, and peered in at the man.
The man wasn’t snoring.
Wasn’t moving.
The man was — oh shit! — dead. Now, in the light, Aaron could see the bullet hole in his chest. The bullet hole doubtless made by the gun in Aaron’s hand.
© 2018 by Susan Dunlap
Downton Shabby
by Marilyn Todd
© 2018 by Marilyn Todd
Race to Judgment
by Craig Faustus Buck
A former journalist and a writer/producer for network TV, Craig Faustus Buck currently writes screenplays, short stories, and novels. His short fiction has brought him a Macavity Award and nominations for the Anthony and Derringer awards. He’s currently nominated for the Macavity for best short story! His first novel, Go Down Hard, was a finalist for the Claymore Award.
“This horseshit’s makin’ me sick,” said Homer Crood, slinging a shovelful into the back of Lizzie Johnson’s ’91 Ford F-150. “Whose frickin’ idea was it to break into the fertilizer plant anyways?”
“Yours,” said Lizzie.
“Since when do you listen to me?”
She leaned on her shovel and gave him a razor-edged glare. He was struck by how the moonlight turned her cornsilk hair all silvery, like an angel, but he knew she’d mock him if he mentioned it, so he swallowed his praise and shoveled another load. He could feel the weight of her gaze, keenly aware that the moonlight was probably gleaming off his scalp. He was only thirty-four, but his black mullet had already thinned to the edge of catastrophe. Life wasn’t fair.
“Don’t you wuss out on me, Homer. Your damn brother stiffed us eighty bucks, and he’s gonna get what’s comin’.”
Lizzie went back to her scooping, breasts swinging loose into the thin flannel of her lumberjack shirt, a sight that tormented Homer. He’d lusted after her since middle school but she hadn’t given him so much as a peck on the cheek since they were six.
“I come home reekin’ like this,” he said, “Mama gonna whup me with a fry pan.”