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:
They froze.
“She-it,” said Homer.
“Let’s git,” said Lizzie.
They leapt to the ground from opposite sides of the truck and jumped into the cab. Lizzie fired up the Ford. Homer let out an adrenaline-fueled whoop. The front door of the house flew open. Lizzie stomped on the clutch and jammed the stick into first gear.
Two gunshots blasted in quick succession and Lizzie flinched as a warm, viscous liquid burst across the right side of her face. Her foot slid off the clutch and the truck jerked to a stall. She was seeing red and realized it was splattered across the inside of the windshield. She felt like her brain was in a spin cycle. She turned to Homer and saw a mess of roadkill where his head was supposed to be. She couldn’t comprehend what her eyes were force-feeding to her brain. Time slowed to a crawl and what must have been a split second felt like hours before a scream exploded from her soul.
Enoch grabbed his shotgun from the coat closet and threw open the front door in time to see the pickup taking off. The stench hit him at the same time as the light through the open door illuminated what they’d done to his car. He boiled over with rage and vented it with both barrels.
The truck came to a stop a few yards down the driveway. Through the near-deafening ringing in his ears, he heard a woman start screaming. He was smacked by the realization that he’d made a horrifying mistake.
“What the hell are you shooting at out here?” It was Wanda, behind him, shivering from the cold as she cinched the belt of her dressing gown.
“Get back in the house,” he said.
She ignored his command but remained in the open doorway as he slowly descended the porch steps, approaching the truck with his shotgun raised just in case. The woman’s screams had died down to a sobbing, endless chant: “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod.” He peered through the passenger window and still couldn’t see much, but the smell of blood was overwhelming.
Something in the girl’s voice rang a bell.
“Lizzie?”
He lowered his gun and gently opened the passenger door. The dome light came on to illuminate the carnage. There was nothing recognizable about the virtually beheaded man, but there was no mistaking Lizzie, even covered in blood.
“Jesus, Enoch!” she shrieked. “You killed your brother!”
He reeled away from the truck and threw up.
Wanda Crood had to close Lizzie’s hand around the glass and lift it to her mouth to get her to take a sip of sweet tea. It did little to shake Lizzy from her trance as she slumped on the rattan sofa at the far end of the front porch. Wanda wrung her rag into the bucket of pink water and wiped more debris from Lizzie’s hair, which was clinging to Homer’s remains like a grieving mama in denial.
Enoch had pulled his brother’s body from the truck and now knelt beside it on the ground, bawling. Wanda paid him no mind, knowing he’d hate for her to watch him cry. His manly facade was high on the long list of things that annoyed her about him. What was he so broken up about anyway? In eleven years of marriage, she’d never heard him say one kind word about Homer. And on those rare occasions when the two brothers socialized, Enoch liked to grind Homer down like a pencil shoved in an electric sharpener. Such a hypocrite.
She would have left him long ago if it weren’t for his earning capacity, not to mention their girls. She was relieved that Lacy and Macy had managed to sleep through the shotgun blast and the screams. She knew it would fall on her to tell them about Homer’s death, and it wouldn’t be pleasant. The girls, unlike their father, were quite attached to Uncle Homer. He’d taught them to catch fish and hunt squirrels and gut them both. They loved to watch him blow smoke rings through smoke rings and make quarters disappear up his nose and come out his ears. Maybe she could tell them Uncle Homer went traveling for a while. Maybe North Korea, where he couldn’t get to Facebook or Skype.
She watched Enoch wipe his snot on the sleeve of his robe, leaving dark stains on the silk like skid marks. Typical. She could only imagine how disagreeable he was going to be, stigmatized as the moron who shot his brother over a prank. If there was one thing Enoch worshipped more than his car, it was his lordly image around town. Little did they know it was she who had engineered his rise to fame and fortune. Now he was a contender for one of Mississippi’s most powerful offices, a position of great prestige and staggering perks, and she’d be right there with him, basking in the envy of the state’s highest society.
Through teary eyes, Enoch watched Wanda continue to sift through Lizzie’s hair, like a chimpanzee picking nits. He wondered what she was thinking. There was no way this was real. No way he’d committed fratricide. No way Homer was gone. No way his Camaro was full of manure. No way his life had become a nightmare in the blink of a muzzle flash. He pinched himself, hoping to wake up in another reality. No dice.
“Did you call nine-one-one?” he said.
“What’s the point?” said Wanda. “He’s dead. You want to kill two birds with one stone?”
Lizzie looked up. “Two birds?” Enoch saw focus creep into Lizzie’s eyes. Her expression grew wary.
“One life is gone. No point in ruining another,” said Wanda.
“For God’s sake,” said Enoch. “It was an accident. We need to call the police.”
“And then what?” said Wanda. “Have this killing hang over your head for the rest of the campaign? The Dems’ll have a field day. You won’t even be able to count on the damn NRA. They wouldn’t touch you with a ten-gauge pole after this. You call the cops, you can kiss your election goodbye. Goodbye Crood’s place in history. Goodbye political future. Goodbye Maserati.”
“Lamborghini,” he said, staring miserably at his brother’s corpse.
“How about goodbye Wanda and the girls?”
This got his attention with a bang.
“What are you talking about? It was you and the girls I was trying to protect.”
“I married a winner, Enoch. If that’s not who you are, I’m out of here.”
“How can you even say that? I love you. I love those girls. I need you now more than ever.”
“Then do as I say,” she said. “You’re too rattled to think for yourself right now. And get away from that corpse while I figure this out.”
As he struggled to his feet, he noticed Lizzie eyeing Wanda like a cat watching a gopher hole, fully sobered from her shock. With subterfuge in the air, he suspected Lizzie’s bullshit detector was bleeping like a Geiger counter.
Wanda put a finger on Lizzie’s chin and turned her face to look her in the eye.
“You with me on this?” said Wanda.
Lizzie considered her answer for a moment. “You gonna shoot me too, if I ain’t? ’Cause I surely don’t see what’s in it for me except maybe a jail cell down the line for coverin’ up a murder.”
Her tone and glare were defiant.
Enoch wandered up, eyes red, and looked from one to the other.
“You know damn well it wasn’t murder,” said Wanda.
“That’s for a court to decide, ain’t it, Judge?”
Enoch didn’t appear to register the question, as if she were speaking Chinese or Bantu. Wanda looked him in the eye.
“You go hose off your hands,” she said. He seemed relieved to have marching orders as he headed across the yard.
Wanda turned back to Lizzie. “Let’s have it,” she said. “What do you want?”
Lizzie put her finger to her cheek with a mockingly thoughtful look on her face. “Money?”