Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“I do,” I say. “But I did get the money. In case you’re wondering.” She’s quiet for a few seconds and then says, “Was it hard to get him to give it up?”
I don’t want to tell her the truth about what I had to do, about how he hadn’t listened to reason, hadn’t cared that the money was the only thing that was going to keep Joni from sleeping in abandoned cars and scrounging garbage bins for food. At one time Wendell was my friend, and I don’t want to admit what I did or that it was only his fear of pain that finally caused him to tell me his hiding place. The way I see it, one more lie is the least I can do for the boys we once were.
“It wasn’t hard, not after I explained the situation,” I say. “Not after I made him see it was one last thing he could do for Joni.”
She lets out a harsh, raspy breath. “He wasn’t your friend, Jerry. Maybe you want to think he was, but he wasn’t. I could tell you things.”
“Don’t,” I say. “It doesn’t matter now.”
She scooches close and presses her hip against me. “It’s all right,” she says. “We did what we needed to do and now it’s over. You know that, don’t you? I love you and you love me and this is how we find our happily ever after. You know that.”
“Sure,” I say. “I know that.”
But the truth is I don’t know anything at all. The world and everyone in it seems too complicated for me to understand. At one point Dianne must have loved Wendell, but now, she’s relieved that he’s dead. When we were kids, Wendell was my best friend, but it’s been a long, long time since I was a kid, and those old memories didn’t stop me from putting a bullet in his head. And what about Joni? Will she really be better off without her father? I know he loved her, but Dianne’s right. Love hadn’t stopped him from drinking and drugging himself stupid or stealing from his neighbor or robbing, beating, and then, somehow worst of all, blackmailing a middle-aged man who was terrified his family might find out about his inclinations. But were Dianne and I any better? She says we didn’t kill him for the money, and even if she’s right, that won’t stop us from catching up on our rent and stocking our fridge.
Jerry and Dianne and Wendell and Joni. It’s always been complicated. The only thing that’s for certain is that whether he deserved it or not, Wendell’s dead. But as hard as I try, I can’t find any comfort in that, so I press closer to Dianne, feel the heat rising from her skin and breathe in the scent of shampoo in her hair. Those are good, simple things, and I hold onto them as tightly as I can.
© 2017 by Tim L. Williams
A Gambler's Superstition
by T. J. MacGregor
A writer who’s made her mark not only in the mystery field, where in 2002 she won an Edgar Allan Poe Award for best paperback original novel, but in the field of science fiction and supernatural suspense, T. J. MacGregor first appeared in EQMM in last year’s June issue. The Florida author is back this month with a story about that state’s popular lottery.
1
“I’m feeling it,” Dad says.
“Feeling what?”
We’re having lunch on the front deck at Bart’s, where we come at least once a week. It’s a lovely spot in Key Largo, tucked away in palm trees on a prayer rug of a beach. The Gulf of Mexico spreads out before us, the water a blue as breathtaking as the cloudless sky. Gulls sweep through the cool February air, their cries echoing.
“The lottery burn. I need to buy a ticket when we leave here.”
“What’s the jackpot for the next drawing?”
“Big.” He slips his phone from his shirt pocket, his hands trembling badly today from the Parkinson’s. He uses a stylus to navigate to the lottery site. “It’s estimated at five fifty.”
“Five hundred and fifty thousand?”
He laughs so hard he nearly chokes. “Spoken like a non-lottery player, Jo. Five hundred and fifty million. After taxes, it would be about half that.”
Max Baker, lottery expert. “Maybe I’ll buy a ticket too.”
“I might actually buy several. The last time I felt the lottery burn was the year your mom died. I won fifty grand. That enabled me to pay off the mortgage and take her to Hawaii.”
My mother died a decade ago, when I was thirty, of a sudden heart attack. She was only sixty-four. Dad couldn’t stand living alone in the house that held so many memories of her. So he retired from the high school where he’d been a guidance counselor for more than half his marriage, sold the house, and moved to Key Largo.
In 2012, shortly before he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he married Anne. At sixty-two, she’s twelve years younger than Dad, manages one of the bars on the beach, smokes and drinks too much, and parties like she’s eighteen. As we say in my profession, she has issues. A lot of them.
I’m not sure what he sees in her other than companionship. She’s the complete antithesis of my mother, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe when you’re married to your soul mate for forty years, the second time around demands someone at the opposite end of the spectrum. I wasn’t invited to the wedding, probably a good thing.
We finish our lunch, I pay the bill, and we make our way to the parking lot and my car. He uses a cane when we’re out, but at home he resorts to his walker or an electric wheelchair. Anne complains about the wheelchair, says he’s always bumping into walls, nicking the paint and the door frames. When I was at their place a couple of weeks ago, I touched up the nicks and scrapes and cleaned the place from top to bottom. Anne doesn’t lift a finger to keep the house clean and the rooms stink of smoke. I opened all the windows, turned on the ceiling fans, and went through the house with Febreze. She complained about that too, said the smell made her sneeze.
None of this is new. But it’s getting worse.
Once we’re in the car, his cane propped alongside him in the seat, I tell him that the cleaning woman I hired will be at his house two days from now, on Friday at nine. “Jo, I appreciate it, but Anne doesn’t want some stranger coming into the house to clean.”
“What do you want, Dad?”
“Just to keep the peace and win the lotto.”
“What will you do if you win?” I pull out of the lot and onto a dirt road that eventually takes us to U.S. 1. “What would you do with that many millions?”
“Give half of it to you, that’s first. So you don’t have to work so hard.”
“I love working. But a long sabbatical would be great! What else?”
“I’d buy us a house in Tuscany. And I’d divorce Anne.”
“You can divorce her now, Dad, and move in with me. I’ve got an extra bedroom.” It isn’t the first time I’ve suggested this, but I’ve never before heard him say he wants to divorce her.
“You’ve got your own life, honey. I don’t want to intrude.”
My work is my life. I’m an outsourced school psychologist. I travel to schools throughout the Keys and tend to students with issues both simpler and more complex than my father’s or Anne’s. I’m divorced, no kids, have a friend with benefits, love to read and garden and travel to exotic places when I have the time. That about sums it up.
“You wouldn’t be intruding. Since I’m on the road so much, I could hire someone to cook for you and watch after you when I’m gone.”
“Anne does that.” He points at an old fishing shop coming up on the right. “Hey, let’s try that mom-and-pop place for our lotto tickets. Those places are sometimes luckier.”