The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

by The Mysterious Bookshop Presents the Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021

  “What guy?” Posey replied, chewing.

  “You said someone with mafia connections had relocated here in the past month or two. Was that him?”

  “No. Why do you think it was?”

  “I don’t know—he was a stranger, acted sneaky, and looked dangerous, I guess.”

  “He was dangerous,” Posey said. “And you guys were lucky. I’m thinking he’s the one who killed those people the other night.”

  “But . . .”

  “He was just a thug. Retired mob figures don’t usually hold up small mom-and-pop—”

  “Brother-and-brother,” Danny corrected.

  “—brother-and-brother eateries. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Mitch said. “But why are you so certain?”

  “That your thief wasn’t the gangster?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because your thief was a man.”

  “So?”

  “The Chicago underworld is apparently an equal opportunity employer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The mob guy I told you about,” Posey said, “was a woman.”

  “What?”

  He nodded. “Walked with a limp.”

  It was suddenly very quiet in the café. Posey took another bite of pie and chewed awhile before realizing Mitch and Danny were staring at him.

  “A limp,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah. She was shot not long ago, in the left knee. Or so I’m told.” He finished off the pie, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and pushed his chair back from the table. Standing, he hitched his gun belt a little higher—it slid right back down—and studied the two brothers, who remained seated. “You boys okay?”

  It was almost exactly the same thing Mary Del Rio had said to them half an hour earlier, after stepping up behind the robber and knocking him cold. Thinking of that, Mitch cleared his throat and nodded. “We’re fine.”

  He and Danny stood, shook hands with Posey, and thanked him. After the cop left, the brothers silently cleared the tables. The CLOSED sign they’d put on the front door when Posey arrived stayed in place. They didn’t want any more customers tonight. When they were done, they stood together for a moment behind the counter, each lost in his own thoughts.

  “She was a good actor,” Danny said. “Good liar too.”

  Mitch was still shaken. “She didn’t lie about her leg. She told me it was a recent injury.”

  “She didn’t tell you it was a gunshot wound. You still think all she did was balance their books?”

  “No.”

  “Me either. Accountants die of boredom—they don’t get shot.”

  “Neither do librarians, I guess.”

  A long silence passed. The only sound was the murmur of evening traffic in the street.

  At last Danny said, “You’re not thinking about looking for her, are you?”

  “Looking for her?” Mitch took a long breath and let it out. “No. How could I look for her, now?”

  Danny didn’t reply.

  After another silence, Mitch rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. “You ready to go?”

  “Let me hit the bathroom.”

  A moment after Danny disappeared down the hallway, the front door opened and Robbie Stanton walked in.

  “Robbie?” Mitch said, glancing at his watch. “You left before eight. Where you been?”

  “Across the street, sittin’ on the curb between two cars. Watching.”

  “Watching?”

  The teenager stuck both hands in his pockets and started shuffling his feet. He looked about nine years old. “And waiting,” he said.

  Mitch walked around the counter and leaned back against it. “Tell me everything.”

  Robbie shrugged. “Not much to tell. I was out front, walking back here after delivering Mr. Watson’s order, when a lady came out—that good-looking lady who’s been here most every night. Except tonight she was using a walking cane.”

  “And?”

  “And she recognized me. She told me I might not want to go in right then. She said the police were on their way. Then she left.”

  “So you did what she said?”

  “Oh hell yeah. The police and me, well . . .”

  Mitch held up a stop-right-there hand. “I don’t want to know. What’d you do then?”

  “I went over and sat in the dark and watched. Sure enough, a cop car came about ten minutes later, and then more cops, and then a guy got hauled out the door. He looked dead.”

  “He wasn’t,” Mitch said. “What then?”

  “I kept waiting. Finally, the first cop came out again, got in his car, and drove off. I waited a few minutes more, and here I am.” Robbie paused, looking worried. “What happened?”

  “We almost got robbed. I’ll fill you in tomorrow. This lady—did she say anything else?”

  He shook his head, then brightened. “But she gave me a note. Wrote it while we were standing there and told me to give it to you.”

  Mitch took the folded slip of paper from him and said, “Go on home, Robbie. And be careful you don’t get robbed.”

  “Okay, Mr. White. Thanks.”

  Mitch watched him leave, then looked down at the note. Slowly, his heart thudding, he unfolded it and was reading the message when he heard the restroom door swing open.

  “Talk about timing,” Danny called from the hallway. “You and me were standing here earlier tonight, talking about the rising crime rate—and then all this happens. Nothing like getting a gun pulled on you to speed up a decision to sell out and leave, is there?”

  Mitch, staring at the note, didn’t reply.

  Danny ducked into the kitchen and came back out with his leather jacket. “I vote we look for a new owner tomorrow—Ned Dunaway’s still interested, I think—and start checking out places for sale, or a lot to build on, in the Biloxi/Gulfport area. What do you think?”

  When Mitch still didn’t answer, Danny looked at him and paused, one arm inside his jacket and one out. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Mitch said, looking up. “Why?”

  “ ’Cause you look like the cat who caught the canary, that’s why.” He finished putting his coat on. “Who were you talking to a minute ago?”

  “Robbie. He stopped in to bring me something.”

  “Watson’s payment for his burger orders, I hope.”

  “No—I forgot to even ask for that.”

  “We’ll get it tomorrow. I’m just glad Robbie wasn’t here for all the excitement.”

  Mitch paused, focusing. “I don’t think he was meant to be here,” he said. “I think our robber wanted as few people on site as possible, and he’d already been here enough to find out about Robbie’s nightly delivery. I figure that’s why he didn’t know Mary was here tonight. He was probably watching the back door so he’d know when Robbie left, and she came in through the front about the same time Robbie went out the back. Then he waited until he saw the other customers leave.”

  “Makes sense. I guess we were lucky all the way around.” Danny turned up his coat collar and said, “What’s that you’re holding?”

  “A note Robbie brought me.” Mitch gave it to Danny, who fished a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and held the paper up to the light.

  It read, in a neat feminine hand:

  I really do have a sister in Mobile.

  I’ll find you.

  Danny looked up at his brother in amazement. “Well, well,” he said. “What do you think about that?”

  Trying not to smile, Mitch took the note back, refolded it, and put it in his pocket. All of a sudden, he felt like a kid again, a kid on the first day of summer vacation. “I think you’re gonna have to learn how to make gumbo,” he said.

  He fetched his own coat, joined Danny at the door, and both their faces went solemn for a moment. They took a long look around, at the tables and booths, the windows, the counter, the floor they’d swept a thousand times, the lights they’d worked so hard to m
ount just right.

  Without turning, Mitch said, “You said people are crazy down there, huh?”

  Danny nodded. “We’ll fit right in.”

  He walked out then, and a second later Mitch turned out the lights and followed.

  *One of my favorite subjects as a suspense writer has been the ordinary guy with an ordinary job who suddenly finds himself in a desperate situation. In the case of “Biloxi Bound,” my protagonist is one of two brothers who operate a small diner in an unnamed northeastern city. When their neighborhood becomes a hotbed of violent crime, they decide they should move to the slower-paced (and warmer) Mississippi Gulf Coast. That’s an area familiar to me, since I once lived on the beach there and have spent most of my life not too far away.

  To this scenario I added a retired mobster, a friendly cop, a mysterious regular customer at the café, and several plot reversals. When I finished writing the story—crime does of course arrive at the diner before the brothers can relocate—I sent it to The Strand Magazine, which has always been receptive to tales with multiple plot twists and surprises.

  I’m glad I did.

  In 1995, Jacqueline Freimor won first prize in the unpublished writers category of the Mystery Writers of America’s 50th Anniversary Short Story Competition. Since then, her short stories have been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, Red Herring Mystery Magazine, and Murderous Intent, among others, as well as in the e-zine Blue Murder and at akashicbooks.com. Two of the stories received Honorable Mention in The Best American Mystery Stories, the first in 1997 and the second in 2000. Jacqueline’s most recent story is forthcoming in MWA’s 2021 anthology, When a Stranger Comes to Town, edited by Michael Koryta. She lives in Westchester County, New York, and is a musician and music teacher.

  THAT WHICH IS TRUE

  Jacqueline Freimor

  At nine o’clock that morning a court officer ushered us twelve jurors and two alternates into a windowless jury room at 111 Centre Street. Silently, we shuffled around a large, scarred conference table, and each of us claimed a seat. My fellow inmates looked disturbed, probably because we’d had to check our cell phones at security. I wasn’t upset by that, but then again, I belonged to the one-wall-phone-in-the-kitchen-with-a-twenty-five-foot-long-cord generation. The twenty-somethings in the room looked like they wanted to set their hair on fire.

  What bothered me was that I’d been selected in the first place. I was so sure they would strike me. I was betting nonrefundable tickets to Maui on it.

  “Mrs.—” the defense attorney had said, his eyes flicking from his clipboard back up at me—“Tannenbaum.”

  “Ms.,” I said.

  He paused. “Ms.” He managed to sneer with his eyes; neat trick. He checked the clipboard again, then looked up, frowning. “That’s Norma Jean Tannenbaum?”

  “Jeannie.” Mentally, I dared him to tell me Norma Jeane was Marilyn Monroe’s real name, but he wisely moved on.

  And on. The questioning continued at a glacial pace while I squirmed in my seat. Finally he got to the good part.

  “Would you state your occupation, Jeannie?”

  There it was—my get-out-of-jury-duty-free card. “I’m a private investigator.” I hid a smile. I could smell the ocean. I could taste the mai tais.

  He raised a bushy eyebrow. “Really.”

  “I’m under oath, aren’t I?” I knew why he was surprised, though. I was a woman of a certain age, which meant I held no appeal for most men, which meant I was invisible. I wasn’t offended. Invisibility was my superpower. And the lawyer didn’t appeal to me, either, a middle-aged man with dull gray hair and a paunch that even his expensive bespoke suit couldn’t hide.

  Not that I was looking. I had Harry. And Harry and I were going to Hawaii next week—if I could get out of jury duty.

  The attorney scribbled something—hopefully Strike! Snarky PI!—on his clipboard. He pursed his lips. “So, um . . . Jeannie, would your experience as an investigator adversely affect your ability to keep an open mind about my client?”

  I was tempted. Sorely tempted. I even opened my mouth, the Yes ready to slither out from between my lips like the lying snake it was. “No,” I said, and the lilting strains of “Aloha ‘Oe” faded into the ether.

  Now the court officer, a stocky white woman with the shoulders of a linebacker, took attendance, and I took the opportunity to size up the other jurors. We were a diverse group, age- and ethnicity-wise, and about evenly split between women and men. Most were dressed in degrees of casual, but the slender, metrosexual black guy sitting next to me was dressed like Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men: white button-down shirt, belted gray pleated slacks, and a skinny tie—with an actual tie clip. He caught my gaze, raised an impeccably shaped eyebrow, and gave a tight smile. I smiled tightly back. He and I were the only ones taking the measure of the group. The rest seemed to have decided that the only rational response to this situation was to pretend we were on the subway and studiously ignore one another.

  The court officer snapped her folder shut, and we all looked her way. “All present and accounted for,” she said, “and on time. Good.” She consulted a giant black watch on her thick wrist. “I’ll be back in about an hour to take you to the courtroom. Restroom’s over there.” She left, closing the door behind her.

  Someone sighed, and everyone got busy, rummaging in their bags and backpacks and spilling out all manner of food, drink, and reading matter on the table. Among the bottles of water, soda cans, and granola bars, I spied the latest blockbuster novel, a Bible with a worn black leather cover, and a Sudoku book, as well as a bunch of trashy and highbrow magazines. One scruffy young white guy was fiddling with pieces of a plastic toy in his lap—how old was he, ten?—and an elderly woman had pulled out a deck of cards and was setting up a hand of solitaire. It was charming. I thought everyone played solitaire online.

  Mr. Metrosexual leaned toward me. “Is your name really Norma Jean?”

  “Yes. But the ‘Jean’ is spelled without a final ‘e.’ ”

  He placed a slim hand, fingers splayed, over his heart. “Just a coincidence? Or were you named after MM?”

  I sighed inwardly. “I was named after her. My mother is an actress, and she knew her.”

  His eyes widened and he slapped at my shoulder. “Get out!”

  “Ow. No, it’s true.”

  “Sorry, but this is so exciting! MM is my idol. I’m an actor too.”

  Clearly, everyone could hear us, but just as clearly, they were pretending not to. The woman sitting on the man’s other side—our foreperson, because she had been seated on the jury first—glanced at me briefly and turned away. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her. What did the lawyers call her—Judy? Jody? She seemed about my age and was blonde, skinny, and tan in a way that owed more to money than to genetics.

  The man offered me his hand, nails trimmed into shiny, buffed ovals. “I’m Antoine. Antoine Dubois.”

  We shook. “Nice to meet you.”

  Antoine leaned his elbow on the table and rested his chin on the back of his hand, like he was settling in for the long haul. “So. How did your mother know La Monroe? What’s her name? Your mother, that is.”

  “Stella Mann—born Estelle Tannenbaum. She was an uncredited extra in Some Like It Hot.”

  Again, I caught Judy-Jody glancing at me and quickly looking away. What was up with that?

  Antoine inhaled deeply. “Oh, honey, that’s fabulous! I would give anything to have met Marilyn. Did you have an absolutely glamorous childhood? Where did you grow up? Hollywood? Oh, tell me it was Hollywood!”

  Hardly. I debated describing being shuttled from one foster home to another for most of my early life but couldn’t bring myself to vandalize the beautiful portrait Antoine was painting. “Well, it was Queens, actually. And my childhood was . . . okay.”

  Judy-Jody looked at me again.

  Enough was enough. “Hello?” I s
aid. “Do I know you?”

  Her eyes widened, and she blinked rapidly. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure? I could swear I’ve seen you before.”

  “I said, I don’t think so.” Her lip curled and her nostrils flared.

  That sneer—could it be? Oh my God—it was. In an instant, forty years melted away, and I was in junior high school again, facing Jodi Auerbach, Queen Bee of IS 47, chief architect of the prison of pain in which I served my adolescence. Pretty, popular, nasty Jodi Auerbach, who’d befriended me the first day of seventh grade just so she could drop me a month later.

  My stomach clenched. My hands started shaking. I put them in my lap under the table and squeezed them into fists. For three solid years, Jodi and her minions had made my life a misery. They ignored me when I was standing right next to them. They left nasty notes and, once, a used sanitary pad, in my locker. One would say sweetly, “Going on a trip?” as I walked up to the blackboard, and another would obediently stick out a foot and send me flying. The teachers either didn’t see or didn’t want to see. Jodi’s parents were rich, and her dad was on the school board, while I was a foster kid, at the mercy of strangers. The last day of ninth grade was literally the happiest day of my life.

  Now Jodi gazed at me, and I saw her blank out the recognition in exactly the same way she willed me into nonexistence all those years ago. I struggled to control my breath and keep my voice steady. “My mistake,” I said, enunciating like a drunk pretending to be sober. I shrugged as though I hadn’t a care in the world and turned back to Antoine.

  “Anyway,” he said, “tell me everything. I want all the deets.”

  I knew that I opened my mouth and words fell out, but I had no idea what I was saying—I was too busy beating myself up. For years, I’d thought about how I’d react if I ever saw Jodi Auerbach or her posse again, my fantasies ranging from shaming them in public to impaling them on a pike. But here was my chance, and what did I do? Not a thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The scruffy young guy at the end of the table plonked his toy down. “Oh, for the love of Mike!” he shouted. “Would you shut up already?” He lurched to his feet, almost overturning his chair.