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’re not thinking straight.” He dropped to one knee and took Lizzie’s pulse. Wanda prayed that he wouldn’t find one. He looked up, eyes glazed. “Thank God she’s still alive.”
“Praise the Lord,” said Wanda, wondering how she might kill Lizzie without Enoch knowing.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked, laying Lizzie’s hand on her chest as if she were pledging allegiance.
Wanda knelt and grabbed one of the front tails of Lizzie’s shirt to rip open the side seam.
“I was thinking of setting your mind at rest so you could go on Race Hannibal tomorrow and seal the deal. I’m sorry about Homer, Enoch, but what’s done is done. There isn’t a thing we can do for him except pray for his soul. I know it’s painful, but our future is in your hands. You’ve got to step up.”
She yanked at Lizzie’s placket, sending buttons flying, turning the right front of Lizzie’s flannel shirt into a long flap attached at the yoke. Wanda bunched up the soft fabric to compress Lizzie’s head wound, where blood was soaking through her hair. In raising the flap, she exposed Lizzie’s breast and noticed it catch Enoch’s eye.
“I’ll tend to her,” Wanda snapped, surprised by the snarl in her voice. She softened her tone. “You go wrap Homer’s body in a blanket and bring him on over here.”
“We need to call the paramedics for Lizzie,” said Enoch.
“She’ll be fine. I didn’t hit her that hard.”
“Her head’s bleeding. She could have a concussion.”
“Trust me, she’s okay. You go on. We’ve still got a lot to do and you’ve got a big day tomorrow. You need to get your beauty sleep.”
He snorted as if sleep seemed preposterous, but followed her instructions and headed off to find something to wrap the body in. She wondered if he was fool enough to call an ambulance anyway.
As soon as he was out of sight, Wanda raised the shovel and gave Lizzie’s head another wallop, then rolled her into the grave. Working quickly to be done before Enoch returned, Wanda pitched enough dirt onto the body to cover it, hoping the reduced depth of the hole would be obscured by darkness.
A few minutes later, Enoch returned with Homer, rolled up in a horse blanket, slung over his shoulder. Wanda noticed Enoch had been crying again. She appreciated the emotional blow of losing a sibling, especially by one’s own hand, but Jesus... he needed to suck it up. They had too much at stake.
“Where’s Lizzie?” he said.
“She came to,” said Wanda. “And she was furious. Lit into me like a hellcat, then just ran off.”
Enoch eyed Wanda, seemingly weighing the credibility of her story.
“She didn’t look like she was fit to crawl, much less run,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” said Wanda. “But there you go.”
He sighed and dumped Homer in the grave, then grabbed a shovel and began to cover his brother.
“I think we should give that girl some money when this all shakes out,” said Wanda. “I feel bad about what she’s been through.”
“You’re a kind and generous woman,” he said.
What a blind fool, she thought. “I love you,” she said.
“I love you too.” Something in his manner made her wonder.
“We’re going to get through this,” she said. “Together.”
She watched him dig his shovel into the dirt pile and marveled that such a rube had ever survived the mental rigors of Ole Miss Law. She vaguely recalled Homer, at someone’s wedding, taunting Enoch about forsaking his roots. Once a redneck, always a redneck.
Then Lizzie’s arm punched up through the earth. Enoch screamed. Wanda cursed under her breath.
Enoch bent over the kitchen sink, working gently around Lizzie’s wounds to prevent them from opening up again as he rinsed Mississippi mud out of her hair. He sensed Wanda’s eyes on the back of his head.
“This is inexcusable, Wanda,” said Enoch. “Outright shameful, even for you.”
Lizzie’s bleeding, it turned out, was minimal, as Wanda had smacked her with the flat of the shovel so each point of impact made only a small, shallow split in her scalp. The blows, however, had concussed the girl, judging by her wooziness, moaning, and caterwauling.
“I’m sorry, baby,” said Wanda. “She threatened to turn you in if we didn’t pay her a hundred thousand dollars a year for the rest of her life. I panicked.”
“You’ve turned an accidental shooting into attempted murder in the first degree, dammit. I’m an officer of the court. I swore an oath to God almighty!”
Lizzie cried out in pain and Enoch realized he’d allowed his anger to stray to his fingers.
“Sorry, Lizzie,” he said.
“I need some aspirin,” said Wanda. Then, looking at Lizzie, “I’ll get some for her too.”
As soon as she left the room, Lizzie said, “Please, Enoch. Don’t let her kill me.”
“No one’s going to kill anybody,” he said.
“She clobbered me with a shovel with you standin’ right there. Then she tried again when you was gone, and lied to you about it. How do you know she ain’t plannin’ to make three times the charm? Three strikes and I’m out.”
“She knows I won’t stand for it,” he said.
“Ow!” She batted his hand away from her wound. He’d hurt her again.
“Sorry. I’m not too good at this,” he said.
“You did that on purpose.”
“Now you’re getting paranoid.”
“That can happen to a girl when someone tries to kill her twice in one night.”
Wanda came back with a bottle of aspirin. Enoch looked up and said, “Go get her something clean to wear. These clothes are filthy.”
Wanda’s eyes flared angrily, but she turned and headed upstairs.
“You and me, we share a background,” said Lizzie. “She ain’t got nothin’ in common with us. Her kin ain’t even from around here. You got no idea what she’s thinkin’.”
“Of course I do. We’ve been married eleven years. We’ve got daughters.”
“So you wasn’t surprised when she whacked me behind your back.”
His silence answered her question.
“I thought as much,” said Lizzie. “And now that she gone and done that, she’s got even more to lose if I talk. I’m not being paranoid, Enoch. That woman is crazy and you know it. You think she’s gonna chance goin’ to Parchman as a convicted felon instead of Jackson as the belle of the ball?”
He wrapped a yellow towel around her hair, taking extra care not to touch her wounds. She turned to face him, the last clouds of her concussion offset by fear.
“She’s just using you, Enoch. If she wasn’t drooling so bad over bein’ queen of Jackson society, she’d let you hang out to dry for Homer’s murder and take all your money for herself. And you know why? She don’t love you.”
“That’s a low blow, Lizzie.”
She gave him a look filled with empathy and pain as she stroked his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Enoch. But she told me so her damn self with a big ole belly laugh, like she was gloatin’ about it. Just before she smacked me upside the head and dumped me in that grave.”
Enoch threw an ice cube in his bourbon as he watched Wanda mop up the last of the mud from the kitchen floor. He could hear the water running upstairs, where Lizzie was taking a neck-down shower before changing into the sweat suit Wanda had given her, instead of lending her. Though Wanda only used those sweats for grungy chores like weeding or occasional housework, he knew she wouldn’t want them back after they’d touched Lizzie’s body. A good laundering could wash out Lizzie’s physical presence, but that wouldn’t help Wanda exorcise the cooties of a younger, sexier woman. Wanda could be annoyingly touchy about such things.