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:
“Don’t make no never mind. Your mama like to whup you anyhow, just for the exercise.”
She put her hand all sexylike on her hip and his heart rate spiked.
“When you gonna get you a job?” she said. “Move on outta there?”
“Now you sound like my damn brother.” Homer didn’t mention the fact that he’d been looking for a job like crazy, but even at minimum wage, no one was hiring anywhere south of Memphis. And without a car, he wasn’t about to take a job that required a two-hour bus ride each way.
He chucked another load of fertilizer into the bed of Lizzie’s pickup. The two-tone red-and-gray truck was a year older than she was, and far worse for wear, but she loved it anyways. Homer had been with her the day her granddaddy died at the wheel, smote by a heart attack on a rutted back road. Luckily, the driver-less Ford had threaded the needle through the windbreak trees as it bounced into a cotton field, so the old coot died with something left to pass down to Lizzie.
“I do reckon the look on Enoch’s ugly face gonna be blue ribbon,” said Homer, snickering at the thought. “He gonna shit his Fruit of the Looms.”
A gust of wind blew the stench up Homer’s nose, causing him to cough up a dollop of phlegm that gagged him. He felt like he was having a seizure. It didn’t help that Lizzie noticed and her blue eyes sparkled as she laughed.
“Pussy,” she said.
The road back toward Clarksdale was so pocked with potholes that Lizzie had to pull over and tarp the manure to make sure too much didn’t bounce out of the truck bed. When she got back in the cab, she reached up to her gun rack and grabbed the barrel of her thirty-aught-six Springfield to lever it downward. A Slim Jim slid out.
Homer frowned. “How can you eat with this stench?”
Lizzie gave him a caustic grin, like she’d just spat through the slats of his gym locker or something, then made a show of biting off a big chaw of the dried sausage.
“You been a jerkwad since kidney-garden,” said Homer.
“Takes one to know one.” Lizzie waved the meat stick under Homer’s nose. “Wanna bite?” Homer felt his stomach roil the catfish and grits he’d eaten for supper.
Twenty minutes later they turned onto Jeff Davis Road, which wound through the closest thing to a ruling-class neighborhood rural Mississippi had to offer. The Honorable Enoch Crood, Judge of the Coahoma County Court, lived at the end of the road, with his perfect wife and two perfect daughters, in a large, historic plantation house down a quarter-mile willow-lined drive. To Homer’s never-ending vexation, Judge Crood also happened to be his pompous, lapsed-redneck brother.
It was Enoch’s wealth that made it so galling when he refused to pay Homer and Lizzie the eighty bucks he owed them. He’d hired Homer to haul a dozen boxes of campaign materials (“Crood Has Tude on Crime”) from the printer in Memphis to Enoch’s in Clarksdale, and Homer had offered half to Lizzie for her truck. Then they’d gone and done the job. A deal’s a deal.
Was it their fault four boxes bounced off the truck and burst open? Was it their fault Crood yard signs went sailing across a half-mile of country highway and surrounding fields? Was it their fault the campaign was fined five hundred dollars for littering? Was it their fault Enoch’s precious name recognition was shredded by local wits and their pitiless punch lines?
To Enoch, the answer to all these questions was yes. Sure, Homer laid the blame on the printer for not strapping the boxes, but they all knew Homer should have double-checked the load. Begrudgingly, if silently, Lizzie allowed that Enoch had cause to stiff Homer. But there was no excuse for withholding her half of the deal. She had not only driven to Memphis and back as promised, but she’d put out her last twenty bucks for gas. It was his refusal even to reimburse her for her out-of-pocket cash that kicked the idea of retaliation from drunken rant to vengeful necessity.
There were still a few hours left before dawn, and the neighborhood was quiet with the exception of a few dogs. But they howled at every critter in the woods, so no one paid them no mind.
Lizzie rolled up on Enoch’s antebellum mansion and cut the headlights and the engine. They glided to a stealthy stop beside Enoch’s shiny new Krypton Green Camaro ZL1 convertible — as Enoch put it, a steal at seventy-five grand — parked right out front in the semicircular drive for all the neighbors to covet.
“Stay here,” said Lizzie. “I’ll get the magic wand.”
She slipped out of the truck, closing the door just enough to kill the light without making a noise. Homer watched her disappear from view as she rounded the corner of the house to sneak in the back door. It was just like Enoch to lock up his car, including a Club on the steering wheel, but leave his house wide open for any pervert to creep in and sniff up the girls’ dirty laundry. Homer shook the image from his mind and hoped Lizzy could get into the house and grab Enoch’s key fob off the gold-plated horseshoe nail by the kitchen door without waking anyone up. Sure enough, a minute later she reappeared, fob in hand. The Camaro’s lights flashed as she unlocked it.
Homer cracked his knuckles in anticipation.
Enoch Crood lay awake thinking about moving to Jackson. After five years as county judge, he was ripe for the picking and the Grand Old Party knew it. Enoch couldn’t wait until tomorrow, when he was going on the nationally syndicated Race Hannibal Show to announce the party’s endorsement of his candidacy for State’s Attorney General in the upcoming election. He’d been trailing in the tight race, but party support could push him to the top, and if he won, he’d become the youngest AG in Mississippi history. His mouth watered at the prospect. If the county judgeship had been a gold mine of graft, he could only imagine the fortune that awaited him statewide. Goodbye Camaro; hello Lamborghini.
The very thought made him hard, which led him to ponder the aphrodisiac effect of state office on Southern belles. His reverie was fouled by the sound of metal scraping on metal. What the hell? He slipped quietly out of bed so as not to wake the missus, but Wanda’s eyes shot open anyway, from the bounce of the mattress.
“What are you doing?” she said. He knew that no matter what he replied, she wouldn’t remember in the morning. She was in that wakeless dream state she’d drift through every time he got up to pee in the middle of the night. He loved her childlike vulnerability at these times, how she’d believe whatever he’d say before drifting back to sleep.
“It’s just the tooth fairy,” he said.
She rolled over onto her side and her dyed-blond hair fell over her face. He watched her breath shift her hair with each of her soft snores and felt a tender, primal need to protect her, fueling his concern over the noise.
He stepped to the second-story window and looked out. There were no lights on outside, and the dimness of the new moon didn’t help, but in the starlight he could just make out a pickup parked next to his car. He noticed movement and stared hard into the darkness to make out what appeared to be two people moving around in the back of the truck. He was baffled by a faint reflection from his Camaro until he realized he was seeing the gleam of the satin-chrome twin binnacles on his center console. The damn convertible top was down. Someone had already broken in!
He’d presided over enough car-theft cases to know that it took only a few seconds to hot-wire an ignition and take off. His pride and joy could be in a Tennessee chop shop within the hour!
Enoch threw a robe over the candy-corn boxers Wanda gave him for Valentine’s Day and raced for the stairs.
Homer and Lizzie were both in the back of the pickup, shoveling the last of the manure. They’d succeeded in filling the Camaro’s passenger compartment to the top of the gearshift, so their job was essentially done. Now they were just housekeeping, cleaning the last of the fertilizer out of the pickup. That’s when Homer’s shovel scraped the bottom of the bed, making an ear-piercing screech.