Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016
- Автор: Дивер Джеффри, Эллин Стенли
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Год: Penny Publications
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 148, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 900 & 901, September/October 2016». Краткое содержание книги:
I was walking down the dead-end road again, probably for the last time.
I wasn’t alone. Brian was humming along beside me in his motorized wheelchair, operating the joystick with two fingers of the hand he had left.
I’d driven him out here in Peg’s van, over her bitter objections. She knew the truth of our promise now. And she feared it. And rightly so. I’d run from my promise once. I could not do it again.
But in the end, it was Brian who convinced her. It was his decision, his call to make. No one else’s.
I’d hoped we could talk on the drive out, but we didn’t. I lowered the van’s ramp, he eased his chair down it, and we covered the last hundred yards to the burned-out cabin without speaking at all.
At the top, he rolled into the yard, pulled up beside the porch... then stopped. Gazing out over the vista below.
Stunned by a view that can literally take your breath away, Brian shook his head slowly. Below us, the treetops rolled into the distance like a vast green sea, stretching to the edge of the world, all the way to the silvery line of Lake Michigan, glistening on the horizon.
“Wow,” Brian breathed at last, “this was worth seeing, man. It’s a fine place to say goodbye.”
“It is,” I agreed. “But that’s not why I brought you here.” I pointed out the name carved in the tree.
“Ringo?” he read.
“He was my dog, when I was a boy. He got ripped up by a bear. I had to put him down. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Until now.”
Brian didn’t say anything to that. Waiting.
“I’ve been dreaming about this place for years, bro. Walking up the old road? Changing the seasons in my mind. It kept me going through the worst times. And now that we’ve finally made it back? I don’t want to settle for a dream, Brian. I want to make it real. But I need some help. Your help.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want to build here, a new home, better than before. But I need money to do it right. So I’ll have to go back to the Sandbox for a while. And I’ll need you here, to oversee the work.”
“Me? What the hell, Jax, I can’t—”
“All I need is your eyes on the site, Brian. Somebody I can trust to see the job gets done right. You’re an expert in back-country construction, I know you can do this—”
“You sonofabitch! That wasn’t our deal!”
“Our promise was for Afghanistan, man. We’re back in the world now.”
“Maybe you are! I’m not, and I never will be. And you’re welshing on me! Again!”
“No, I’m not, truly,” I said, kneeling beside his chair so he could read my face up close. “Listen up, bud. Dreaming of this old place kept me alive. Gave me something to hope for. Maybe it can work the same magic for you. Maybe coming out here every day, to build something new on this land that we fought for, will change your mind—”
“It won’t, damn you!”
“But—” I continued over his objection, “if it doesn’t? If you really can’t hack this world, and you want out? You call me. And I will come back from wherever I am. From the goddamn grave if I have to. And I will keep my Sandbox promise to you. I will help you cross over, Brian. I swear it.”
Our eyes were locked for what seemed like an age. But finally he nodded slowly, knowing it was true.
“Damn you,” he said slowly. “I thought today was my day, Jax. My mind was right. I was ready.”
“You should be ready every damn day. We all should.”
“Maybe,” he nodded. “But just so we’re crystal clear about this? I’ll help build your freakin’ dream house out here, for as long as I can stand it. But if I call, you’ll come on the run?”
I nodded.
“And you’ll put me down? Like your dog?”
“What are friends for?” I said.
The Pact
by Margaret Maron
This year’s winner of both EQMM’s Readers Award and the Agatha Award for best novel, Margaret Maron can also count among her many literary honors the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master and Edgar Allan Poe awards. Writers’ organizations such as the MWA, and fan conventions such as that described in this story, are deeply entwined with EQMM’s history. The inspiration for some of the characters in this story came from real EQMM contributors.
“We first met at a Bouchercon over thirty years ago,” said the white-haired woman, who sipped a tall gin and tonic even though it was barely noon. She wore white slacks and a loose, peasant-style top with colorful hand-embroidered flowers on the sleeves and yoke. It looked expensive and almost disguised the extra thirty or forty pounds she was carrying. Around her neck was a lanyard with her nametag. Morna Brown, a name Lieutenant Steinbock remembered seeing among the pile of books on his wife’s nightstand.
He added it to the list he had begun and said, “What’s a Bouchercon?”
“It’s an annual conference begun by mystery fans to honor Anthony Boucher, a well-respected author, editor, and reviewer of mysteries,” said the other white-haired woman who sat facing him on the couch. Her nametag read Suzu Dunsel. From San Francisco. “Much bigger than this one, which is always held here in Maryland.”
Nibbling an olive from her martini, she explained, “Bouchercon moves around from city to city and that year it was in Philadelphia. We were all under contract to Ashton House back then, a major publisher that’s since folded, and Ashton’s publicist had arranged a dinner party for all their authors who were in Philly that weekend. There were ten or twelve of us, but the others were older and more established.”
“Or they were hardboiled men,” said Morna Brown in her soft Southern drawl. “We were part of the new wave of women mystery writers. I write what’s called Southern cozy and Suzu writes suspense with a female detective.”
Lieutenant Steinbock dutifully added the terms beside their names, then looked up from his notepad. “We being?”
“Morna and me, plus Nanette Parker, Dodie Cantrell, and of course poor Avis,” said Ms. Dunsel, as he added the names to the list he was compiling.
“Dodie Cantrell?” His eyes widened appreciatively at the name of a writer whose books used to appear regularly on the bestseller lists. “The one who wrote Death of an English Spinster? She’s my wife’s favorite author.”
“Be sure and tell her that if you interview her,” Ms. Brown said in her magnolia-flavored accent. “Her sales have been slipping lately.”
“Not as bad as Avis’s,” murmured Suzu Dunsel. She paused and looked at her friend in sudden consternation. “You don’t suppose that’s really why?”
“Why what?” asked Lieutenant Steinbock.
“Why Avis was murdered. And why someone tried to kill Dodie?”
“What?”
“We were having drinks in the lobby bar last night and the lead pipe fell off the railing over there.” Diamonds flashed from the rings on Morna Brown’s pudgy fingers as she gestured to the railing in question.
The hotel where Avis Arthur had been strangled in Room 706 sometime during the night featured a large central atrium that reached up fifteen stories to a clear glass ceiling. The rooms opened onto encircling balconies so that guests could step out of their rooms and look down into the lobby to the open bar and reception desks. The space that Lieutenant Steinbock had co-opted for interrogating witnesses was separated from the rooms here on the second floor by a low wall that was now barred with folding screens and a uniformed officer. A broad staircase led up from the lobby and the area overlooked the bar. Ferns and potted palms lined the waist-high railings on that side.