The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17 (47 page)

“Preposterous!” Willard cried. “Outrageous!”

“But you never intended to share the spoils with him,” Quincannon said to the actress. “You wanted the entire ten thousand dollars. To finance your ambition to become a serious actress, mayhap? A trip east to New York?”

An eye-flick was his only response. But it was enough to tell him that he'd guessed correctly.

“I give you credit, Miss Dupree,” he went on. “You planned it well enough in advance. You had two days to make your arrangements, after learning from Mr. Willard that I would be at the Hotel Grant last night. You found out, likely from Sonderberg, about the abandoned house next to his building; he may even have helped you gain access. Sometime yesterday evening you went there and made final preparations for your performance—applied makeup, arranged a rocking chair near the window, created the illusion of an old woman seated there.”

“Yes? How did I do that?”

“By placing a dressmaker's dummy in the chair, covering the head with the white wig, and draping the rest with a large shawl. This morning I found the dummy where you left it, in the foyer closet.”

Willard made disbelieving, spluttering sounds. The actress said, “And why would I have set such an elaborate stage?”

“To flummox me, of course. You knew I would follow Sonderberg from the hotel and that I would be nearby after he arrived home with the satchel. Your plan all along was to eliminate him once he had outlived his usefulness, and to do so by making cold-blooded murder appear to be suicide and staging an apparent vanishing act must have seemed the height of creative challenge.”

Willard should have been swayed by this time, but he wasn't. His feelings for Pauline Dupree were stronger than Quincannon had realized. “My dear,” he said to his paramour, “you don't have to listen to any more of this slanderous nonsense—”

“Let him finish, Titus. I'd like to know how he thinks I accomplished this creative challenge he speaks of.”

“It wasn't difficult,” Quincannon said. “So devilishly simple, in fact, it had me buffaloed for a time—something that seldom happens.” He paused to fluff his freebooter's beard. “Your actions from the time you set the scene in the house were these: You left the same way you'd entered, by the rear door, crossed along the walkway, and were admitted to Sonderberg's quarters through his rear door. Thus no one could possibly have seen you from the alley. How you explained the old crone's makeup to Sonderberg is of no real import. By then I suspect he would have believed anything you told him.

“You waited there, warm and dry, while he went to the Hotel Grant. When he returned with the satchel, he locked both the entrance to the cigar store and the inside door leading to his quarters. You made haste to convince him by one means or another to let you have the satchel. Then you left him, again through the rear door, no doubt with instructions to lock and bar it behind you.”

“Then how am I supposed to have killed him inside his locked quarters?”

“By slipping around into the side passage and tapping on the window, as if you'd forgotten something. When Sonderberg opened it, raising it high on its hinge, you reached through the bars, shot him twice, then immediately dropped the pistol to the floor. Naturally he released his grip on the window as he staggered backward, and it dropped and clattered shut—the loudish thump I heard before I ran into the passage. The force of impact flipped up the loose swivel catch at the bottom of the sash. Of its own momentum the catch then flipped back down and around the stud fastener, locking the window and adding to the illusion.

“It took you no more than a few seconds, then, to run to the rear walkway and reenter the house, locking that door behind you. While the patrolman and I were responding to the gunshots, you drew the parlor drapes, removed the dressmaker's dummy from the rocking chair, donned the wig, and assumed the role of Letitia Carver. When I came knocking at the door a while later, you could have simply ignored the summons; but you were so confident in your acting ability that you decided instead to have sport with me, holding the candle you'd lighted in such a way that your made-up face remained shadowed the entire time.”

A few moments of silence ensued. Willard stood glaring at Quincannon, disbelief still plainly written on the lovesick dolt's pooched features. Pauline Dupree's expression was stoic, but in her eyes was a sparkle that might have been secret amusement.

“Utter rot,” the banker said with furious indignation. “Miss Dupree is no more capable of such nefarious trickery than I am.”

“Even if I were,” she said, “Mr. Quincannon has absolutely no proof of his claims.”

“When I find the ten thousand dollars, I'll have all the proof necessary. Hidden here, is it, or in your rooms?”

Again her response was not the one he'd anticipated. “You're welcome to search both,” she said. Nor did the sparkle in her eyes diminish; if anything, it brightened. Telling him, he realized, as plainly as if she'd spoken the words, that such searches would prove futile, and that he would never discover where the greenbacks were hidden, no matter how long and hard he searched.

Sharp and bitter frustration goaded Quincannon now. There was no question that his deductions were correct, and he had been sure he could wring a confession from Pauline Dupree, or at the very least convince Titus Willard of her duplicity. But he had succeeded in doing neither. They were a united front against him.

So much so that the banker had moved over to stand protectively in front of her, as if to shield her from further accusations. He said angrily, “Whatever your purpose in attempting to persecute this innocent young woman, Quincannon, I won't stand for any more of it. Consider your services terminated. If you ever dare to bother Miss Dupree or me again, you'll answer to the police and my attorneys.”

Behind Willard as he spoke, Pauline Dupree smiled and closed one eye in an exaggerated wink.

 

“Winked at me!” Quincannon ranted. “Stood there bold as brass and winked at me! The gall of the woman! The sheer mendacity! The—”

Always unflappable, Sabina said, “Calm yourself, John. Remember your blood pressure.”

“The devil with my blood pressure. She's going to get away with murder!”

“Of a mean no-account as mendacious as she.”

“Murder nonetheless. Murder and blackmail, and with her idiot victim's complicity.”

“Unfortunately, there's nothing to be done about it. She was right—you have no proof of her guilt.”

There was no gainsaying that. He muttered a frustrated oath.

“John, you know as well as I do that justice isn't always served. At least not immediately. Women like Pauline Dupree seldom go unpunished for long. Ruthlessness, greed, amorality, arrogance... all traits that sooner or later combine to bring about a harsh reckoning.”

“Not always.”

“Often enough. Have faith that it will in her case.”

Quincannon knew from experience that Sabina was right, but it mollified him not at all. “And what about our fee? We'll never collect it now.”

“Well, we do have Willard's retainer.”

“It's not enough. I ought to take the balance out of his blasted hide.”

“But you won't. You'll consider the case closed, as I do. And take solace in the fact that once again you solved a baffling crime. Your prowess in that regard remains unblemished.”

This, too, was true. Yes, quite true. He
had
done his job admirably, uncovered the truth with his usual brilliant deductions; the lack of the desired resolution was not his fault.

But the satisfaction, like the retainer, was not enough. “I don't understand the likes of Titus Willard,” he growled. “What kind of man goes blithely on making a confounded fool of himself over a woman?”

Sabina cast a look at him, the significance of which he failed to notice. “All kinds, John,” she said. “Oh, yes, all kinds.”

RANDALL SILVIS

FROM
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

 

Harvey shoves open the door of the bar and comes striding in the way he always does, walking fast, angry, lips moving as he mutters to himself. His brother Will, who owns the bar and at forty-one is two years younger than Harvey, reaches for an icy Schlitz at the bottom of the cooler, gives it a wipe with the bar towel, twists off the cap, and sets the bottle on the bar just as Harvey gets there. Harvey doesn't reach for the bottle right away because he's too angry to drink, too angry to do anything but stand there gripping the curved edge of the cool wooden counter. His fingers knead the scarred mahogany.

“I swear to God I am going to kill that pasty-faced weasel once and for all,” he says.

Will has been standing behind the bar with nothing much to do and thinking about Portugal. In his mind he has been standing on a bluff overlooking the glittering Atlantic, while behind him on a sun-bleached plateau lies a small, well-ordered city with wide clean streets and whitewashed buildings and the dome of a mosque glowing golden in the sun.

It takes Will a moment to adjust to this sudden migration back to his bar and the heat of his brother's anger. Then Howard down at the end of the bar clears his throat. Will takes a frosted glass out of the other cooler and fills it from the plastic jug of daiquiri mix he makes just for Howard, who comes in four nights a week and sits primly at the far end of the bar. Between six and eight each night he drinks four lime daiquiris without uttering a word unless another customer or Will addresses him directly. He is a small man who, according to Will's wife, Lacy, looks the way Tennessee Williams might have looked had he lived to be seventy-eight instead of choking on the bottle cap from a bottle of eye drops. For thirty-seven years he worked at the local driver's license center, where he failed both Harvey and Will upon their first attempts many years ago, Harvey for roll-stopping at an intersection and Will for bumping the curb while parallel parking.

Tonight is a steamy Tuesday in baseball season, but the Pirates are off until Thursday, so the only other customers are four golfers, who came in for burgers and beer. Will is grateful for the golfers because on nights when there isn't a televised sporting event he doesn't sell enough alcohol to cover his electric bill. The big-screen TV at the rear of the room is only two years old, but unfortunately it hasn't helped him to compete with the motel bars out by the interstate. He can't compete with the live bands and free munchies and the college girls in their short skirts. All he has to offer is a clean, quiet place to spend an hour or so with friends without having to shout to be heard, a place where for $14 you can quietly submerge yourself in enough lime juice and rum to soften the edges on some undisclosed misery.

Will looks toward the golfers now and asks with a lift of his eyebrows if they are ready for another pitcher. “We're good,” a golfer says. The TV is tuned to
CNN Headline News
but nobody is paying any attention to it. The air conditioner is working hard to counteract the sticky August heat. There is something loose inside the air conditioner, and every once in a while Will can hear it rattling around in there.

Harvey wraps both hands around his beer bottle but doesn't take a sip. “I mean it,” he says, only loud enough for Will to hear. “So I need to borrow your .357 for a while.”

Will fills a small wooden bowl with salted peanuts and sets it on the counter. “Stevie's upstairs watching TV with Lacy,” he says. “Go ahead and go on up if you want.”

“I mean it, Will. I am seriously going to do it this time.”

Will would say something if he knew what to say. He isn't exactly sure what his brother's troubles are, and he suspects that Harvey isn't sure either. All Will knows is that even in Harvey's lighter moods there seems to be something eating away at him, some worm of bitterness gnawing at his gut. It might have to do with his job as a truck driver for Jimmy Dean Sausage, but Will doubts it. There can't be much stress involved in humping sausage around to regular customers on a regular route. It might have to do with Harvey's marriage, but Will doubts that, too. Harvey and Jennilee have been married for seven years, and Will knows for a fact that his brother is still madly, even desperately, in love with Jennilee.

“I'm going to need that .357,” Harvey says again. Will flinches a little and looks toward Howard. Howard stares straight ahead at the bottles on the shelves, he sips his daiquiri, and he waits without complaint for a streetcar that will never arrive.

Will tells his brother, “Hold on a minute.” He goes to the kitchen, checks the deep fryer, lifts out a basket of wings and another of fries, drains them, dumps each into a separate wicker basket lined with napkins, sprinkles them with salt. He carries these to the bar and hands them to Harvey. “Take these upstairs to Stevie, will you? I'll be right behind soon as I check on those golfers. Lacy and me are splitting a pizza. You want anything?”

Harvey says, “I'm not kidding this time. You might think I am, but I'm not.”

“I'll be up in a minute,” Will says.

In the kitchen he tries to get back to Portugal, but Portugal has been burned away in the sizzle and stink of the deep fryer's fat.

 

At the top of the stairs Harvey kicks the door a couple of times. Five seconds later Stevie, his youngest brother, yanks open the door, reaches for the wings and fries, and says, “About time. I'm starvin' to death here.” To Lacy he says, “Look who the delivery boy is tonight.”

Lacy, seated on the sofa in the middle of the living room, looks over her shoulder. “Hey, Harvey, how ya doin'? Jennilee come with you?”

Harvey doesn't answer. There is a movie on the television, something with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, and Lacy's police scanner on the mantel is crackling with static-filled voices. A floor fan in the corner of the room makes a constant clicking whir. After a moment Harvey asks, “Molly around?”