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:
“Okay,” said Lizzie. “Start shovelin’.”
Wanda and Enoch each picked up a shovel and began filling in the hole.
“Don’t break a nail, now, Wanda,” said Lizzie.
“Eat my tampon,” said Wanda.
“How ’bout I just bury you alive? Then me and Enoch can be together in love like we was always meant to be.”
“You must be joking,” said Wanda. “He’s got no interest in trailer trash like you. He’s got a shot at state office. You think someone like you can help him do that? You need something between your ears, darling. Not just between your legs.”
Lizzie glanced at Enoch, hoping he’d come to her defense, and Wanda took the opportunity to whack her a third time with the shovel.
Enoch stared in disbelief as Wanda rolled Lizzie back into the grave.
“This time she’s staying there,” said Wanda. “And if you want to be AG, you’d better start looking at the big picture. You want to go all the way to Washington? You need to be ruthless.”
“If you say so.”
Then he picked up the shotgun and blew a hole in Wanda’s gut.
“My friends, I have the pleasure today of speaking with the Honorable Enoch Crood,” said Race Hannibal, “former Coahoma County judge and soon to be sworn in as the chief law-enforcement officer of the great state of Mississippi. Welcome to The Race Hannibal Show, Your Honor.”
“Thank you, Race,” said Enoch. “I feel privileged to be here. I just wish my dear departed wife Wanda Sue was alive to see this. Of your twelve million fans, she was number one.”
“I must tell all you loyal listeners out there, on the rare chance that you’ve been living in a cave lately, that for this man to be here today is a true testament to courage. It was only a few months ago that he had to cancel an appearance on this show due to the most heart-rending of catastrophes. His loving wife and dear brother were murdered by a shotgun-wielding Democrat she-devil, who would doubtless have killed Judge Crood as well, had he not defended himself with the lethal blow of a shovel to her cranium. The emotional fallout alone, of this horrible tragedy, would have felled a lesser man. But Judge Crood picked himself up and said, ‘No sir, I will stand tall in the face of adversity with the Lord by my side!’ Is that not so, Your Honor?”
“It is indeed, Race. When disaster strikes, you can either let it beat you to a pulp or you can stare it down and move forward. I chose the latter.”
“It was surely by the blessing of Jesus that you had that shovel in your hand when Lizzie Johnson went bananas. But it looks like your loss will be Mississippi’s gain. The polls showed you losing before this all happened, but the big-hearted folks of this state rewarded you with the sympathy vote you needed to gain election.”
It occurred to Enoch that Wanda had always claimed to be the key to his success, and she had proved it with her death. He smiled at the irony.
“I’m just hoping,” said Race, “that you can assure my listening friends that you won’t let this violent experience turn you into a gun-control nut like certain other gunshot victims whom I shall refrain from glorifying by naming.”
“No chance of that, Race. I’m just thankful that the Lord preserved me to go to Jackson and fight for law and order.”
“And justice for all,” said Race.
“Amen to that.”
© 2018 by Craig Faustus Buck
Long Slow Dance Through the Passage of Time
by Marilyn Todd
Booklist said of Marilyn Todd that she “paints antiquity with a particularly suspenseful brush and skillfully tangled plots.” Her novels are all set in ancient times, thirteen in ancient Rome, three in ancient Greece. At short-story length, the British author more often revisits the recent past, as in this tale of the mid twentieth century. Her flair lor setting the historical scene shines here too!
An owl hoots from the ancient, spreading oak. Voles rustle through the fallen leaves along the hedgerow. The bell of St. Giles tolls three.
Lying here in the dark, my thoughts turn to Richard.
Then again.
My thoughts always turn to Richard.
“Miss Sneed, what a pleasure. I’ve heard so much about you.”
Perhaps I looked at him too sharply, ’cause he blushed.
“Nothing bad, you understand. Quite the contrary. It’s just that my parishioners... well, some of them gossip... oh, not in a spiteful way. I meant the way they chatter...”
Funny how people stammer and gush to cover the embarrassment you caused ’em in the first place.
He cleared his throat. Held out his hand. “Reverend Jenkins. Richard. What I’m trying very, very badly to say is, the church is holding a dance on Saturday night in a bid to attract some younger members to our congregation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the posters—”
“Rock and roll.”
Couldn’t miss ’em. Plastered over every wall and arch and bombed-out building, presumably because bill posters was only prosecuted if the perpetrator of this heinous crime was someone other than a man of the cloth.
“Good, because the, um, the thing is, Miss Sneed, it seems you have quite a reputation when it comes to the jitterbug—”
And other things besides, I thought, but you know the Yanks, and what was said about them during the War. Oversexed, overpaid, and over here. Maybe they was, but Dolly Sneed always had a brand-new pair of nylons, didn’t she? Wore pretty shoes, the latest fashions, swung a handbag stuffed with Hershey bars, all at a time when everything from jam to milk to chocolate and tinned fruit was rationed, and the government only allowed you one measly egg a week. So up yours, all you snotty little cows who laughed at me in class, and wouldn’t let me join your stupid little cliques. Not so stuck-up after that, were you? In your ugly, ration-book frocks and pencil lines down the back of your legs, to make it look like stockings. Who had the last laugh then?
“—so I was wondering if you, er, know anything about this new dance craze? Might teach me how to do it?”
And that’s how it started, Richard and me. Us rocking and rolling in an empty hall to Elvis Presley’s “That’s All Right, Mama” (another bloomin’ Yank!), perfecting our moves to Bill Haley and Fats Domino, so he could show a bunch of teenagers that God was cool and church was fun. And I could show a bunch of frumps from school that I still had “it,” and not just that.
That I had “it” in spades.
Unlike them, I’d kept me figure. The Americans, bless their generous hearts, were still flying their B-26s and B-29s out of Bovingdon back then, and though I never actually saw Clark Gable or Bob Hope wandering round Watford during the War, I caught a glimpse of James Stewart one time (least, I think it was him), and I’m pretty sure that bloke outside the dairy was William Holden. Spitting image from the back. That walk, you know...? The point being, you never knew who you might bump into. Maybe get a lucky break in Hollywood, or even British films.
Which is fine when you’re eighteen. Not so fine when you’re knocking thirty, not going steady or even courting, and are what the government deem a spinster and your old school friends call an old maid.
Richard wasn’t stupid. But at the same time, despite the War, or perhaps because of it, he wasn’t very worldly either. Pretty girl, witty, unconventional, independent, naturally men would be attracted to her like moths to a flame, but—
“What you have to understand, luv, is that these men were married, and married men get lonely.”
Wouldn’t you, I added, giving him my well-rehearsed shudder at the horror of being stationed half a world from home, not knowing if you’d ever see your wife and kids again, or even live to see the sunset.