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:
I did as Julius asked, and his new assignment sounded as unnecessary as his previous one had become. But Julius was going to make a bundle on this case, and if he wanted to share some of the wealth with Saul, who was I to complain?
The next appointment, George “Buggy” Easter, knocked on Julius’s door twenty-eight minutes later, putting him right on time. Julius brought Easter back to his office, and as the man sat hunched over in his chair, he looked more like a beetle than he did in his driver’s-license photo. Or maybe I thought so partly because I knew his nickname, but it was also because of his thick body, mostly bald scalp, grayish complexion, and thick tangle of eyebrows that almost completely hid his eyes.
Julius proceeded to ask him a series of mundane questions, and Easter gave Julius the same answers I’d given him earlier when I briefed him this morning. Easter was forty-six, grew up in South Boston, went to public schools in the city, didn’t go to college and instead worked odd jobs until he was hired at Boston Premiere Wines when he was twenty-five, first working in the stockroom, then moving on to handle purchases for the wine shop.
Julius gave Easter a puzzled look. “You must’ve spent some time in Alabama?” he asked.
“Never been there,” Easter said without missing a beat.
“That’s odd. I was told about your nickname and how you got it. Buggy. Nobody calls a shopping cart a buggy here. But they do in Alabama.”
“I must’ve heard someone call it that when I was younger, and the name stuck.”
Easter said this without any hint that he was lying. He was good, I had to give him credit for that. He’d probably even hold his own with Julius in a poker game.
Julius agreed with Easter that was probably it. “I don’t know why I even chose Alabama,” he said. “Buggy is a term used throughout the South. There must be something about you that makes me think you’re from Alabama. It’s not your accent. If you were born and raised in a small town in Alabama, say Thorsby, you’ve done a fine job of ridding yourself of your accent, even adopting an acceptable Boston one. Interesting. In any case, we’re done.”
Easter again impressed me by showing nothing in his expression. He simply got up out of his chair and headed toward the door. Before he left the office, Julius called out to him, telling him that he wasn’t investigating a wine theft. Easter looked back at him but didn’t bother asking him what he was investigating. I followed him over the webcam feeds, half expecting the man going by the name of George Easter to head to Julius’s kitchen to grab a knife. It wouldn’t have helped him any if he had tried that. Something that Julius kept out of the press was that he held a fifth-degree black belt in Shaolin kung fu. He would’ve been able to handle Easter if it came to that. I waited until Easter was out of the townhouse before asking Julius if it was really necessary to let Easter leave.
“Archie, we can use all the circumstantial evidence we can get. Besides, it can’t hurt to give the man some additional time to ponder his situation.”
Twenty-eight minutes later, Tom Durkin called to report that Easter had gone straight to the bus station and bought a one-way ticket to Dearborn, Michigan. “I gave him a choice whether he wanted us to bring him to your office or the police, and he chose your office.”
Tom had said us because he was referring to himself and Saul. I had no doubt Tom could’ve handled Easter himself, or really Virgil Huddleston, because that was Easter’s real name. But the man did bludgeon Jim Duncan to death, so I couldn’t fault Julius for taking the precaution of having Saul accompany Tom.
When they brought Huddleston to Julius’s office, the man looked grayer than before and he sat more slumped over than hunched. Julius told Tom and Saul they could wait outside the office. Once Julius was alone with Huddleston, he showed the man copies of the twenty-two-year-old newspaper article I had found about his outstanding arrest warrant. The article included a picture of a much younger Virgil Huddleston, who back then had long hair and a thick moustache, and it described how Huddleston had murdered a man in cold blood. Huddleston gave both a brief look before placing them back on Julius’s desk.
“Unless the police find forensic evidence linking you to Duncan’s murder, it’s doubtful I’ll ever be able to prove that you committed the crime,” Julius admitted. “But your attempting to flee the state after meeting with me should be enough for them to hold you until the Alabama authorities can pick you up, and they will convict you there. You have a decision to make, Mr. Huddleston. Whether you’d rather be convicted of murder in Alabama or Massachusetts. Alabama has the death penalty, Massachusetts doesn’t. Decide now.”
Huddleston looked surprised by that. “You won’t reveal my real identity if I confess to killing Duncan?” he asked.
“No. I was hired to solve Jim Duncan’s murder, and besides, I can only see you convicted of one murder, so I’ll let you pick which one it will be. If you choose Duncan’s, and the police figure out your true identity, that’s outside of my control, but I don’t believe it’s likely.”
If the Alabama police had been able to get fingerprints or DNA samples from Virgil Huddleston twenty-two years ago, they’d be able to connect George “Buggy” Easter to their wanted fugitive, but they didn’t have either. Huddleston had been careful not to leave any behind at the murder site, and he was prescient enough to set fire to the small home he was renting before fleeing so they’d have none to collect. Julius was right. The chances of anyone in Alabama realizing Easter was the same fugitive from their twenty-two-year-old cold case was slim. There was the possibility of Grushnier, or more precisely one of his underlings, alerting the Alabama authorities to Easter’s true identity, but that would only risk exposing Grushnier’s role.
To Huddleston’s credit, he recognized how dire his situation had become, and he glumly accepted what Julius told him. “I’ll confess to killing Jim,” he said.
“Did the people who blackmailed you into committing the crime ever give you the name of who you were doing this for?”
“I’m not talking about that. They made certain threats, and I believe them.”
“This is for my own edification only,” Julius said. “You can tell the police that Duncan caught you stealing the case of Lafite Rothschild, that you promised you’d return the wine to him so that he could bring it back to the store, and instead you brought back counterfeit wine, murdered Duncan, and attempted to frame Prescott. All of which is true to an extent. I won’t contradict you on any of that. But I want to know if during your dealings with these people you ever heard the name Desmond Grushnier.”
Huddleston looked even glummer as he shook his head. “No names were ever given. That’s the truth.”
“Did they know you were going to kill Duncan and try to frame Prescott?”
“No. It happened pretty much as you said. Jim had seen me taking the Lafite Rothschild out of the store and he tried being a nice guy and giving me a chance to return the wine. The problem was I was told what would happen if I didn’t make Blinky sell the store, and it was more than just exposing me. So I did what I did.”
“Blinky?”
Huddleston showed a crack of a smile. “Our nickname at the store for Prescott.”
Griff looked stunned when he came to Julius’s office later and read Huddleston’s signed confession, and he was mumbling to himself as he led a handcuffed Virgil Huddleston away. After they were gone and it was just Julius and me, I told him that his nickname should be Lucky.
“When you gave me that list of states and a time frame to look for newspaper articles featuring pictures of a younger George Easter, I thought you were nuts, at least until I realized why. Still, solving a murder because of a guy’s nickname is as lucky as it gets. Do you want me to try to arrange another poker game now that your luck’s red hot?”