AHMM, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The temperature drops ten degrees while the slushy rain turns to ice crystals bouncing off my shoulders and the werewolf mask. Bragg is appearing in our world. I know it. Where the sidewalk had been wet, it suddenly is slippery. Ahead, at the end of the block, the cemetery gates loom. Instead of the comforting drip from gutters and bushes and trees, the ice hisses against the grass.

  No streetlights. No moon. I shouldn't be able to see the cemetery gates. Every house is dark, but I can see them anyway. They're backlit. Somewhere behind them, a green glow permeates the fog. We walk forward. Mom is silent.

  The green light coalesces, becomes a shoulder, then a head, rising above the gates, twenty feet tall. I want to weep. Inside me, everything turns bitter and liquidy. But there's nothing to do. No time to hide. It's too big. Its eyes are made for seeing in the dark.

  I stop. The demon Bragg swings his head from left to right, as if orienting himself. Of course, the last thing Bragg knew, he was driving away from the girls’ house, laughing probably, probably planning to come back later, when the brother was gone. He might be thinking, where am I now?

  "Stop,” I say to Mom. “Wait here for a minute, would you? I always wanted to go into a cemetery by myself on Halloween."

  I can't see her face. “It's just a plot of land,” she says. “A nice lawn for playing football if it weren't for the stones in it."

  "I know, but I want to give it a try."

  Without waiting for her reply, I let go of her hand and run forward. She has to be safe. There must be distance between us. Ice slicks the cement, and I almost fall. The demon strides toward me, huge eyes glowing green, the same sick green of Bragg's cloud. I know its smell, the slimy feel of it all around me. “Be watching your backside, asswipe,” he'd said. I feel like I'm six again. I want to keep running toward it, but I can't. My legs go rubbery. My fingers are freezing, so I jam them under my arms, and rather than fall, I sit on the icy grass beside the road and wait. The creature grasps the top of the gates—I hear the wrought iron creak—then it steps over.

  "You don't want her,” I try to say. My throat constricts. Nothing comes out. I adjust my mask. If only there were some way to change my eyes. Maybe it will know me by my eyes! It takes a step. The ground shakes. Ice falls from tree branches behind me. Then it is upon me. Huge hands flat on the ground on either side. Its face comes closer and closer. Green-yellow eyes, like a pus-filled wound. I look up, peer through my werewolf disguise, expect it to clap its hands together, smearing me into an explosion of pain. He would break me first. His touch would be fire and stinging nettles and broken glass.

  But he doesn't.

  He stands. Takes two steps. Bends down to look at Mom. Straightens and walks down the hill before I can even scream.

  Hissing like sand, the icy rain falls around me. My chin sinks to my chest, the start of tears brimming in my eyes.

  A touch on my shoulder. “Did you hurt yourself, Scotty?” Mom helps me to my feet. I hug her, which surprises her, I guess, because for a second she stands there. Then she hugs me back. She says, “I'm getting cold. Are you ready to go home?"

  * * * *

  We hear the sirens long before we reach our block. Red and blue lights reflect off the houses on our street. The streets are too slick for us to rush, so we have plenty of time to survey the scene as we get closer.

  Fire engines pour water onto our house, but there aren't many flames. Just smoke. The ends of the house are intact; the middle is gone, flat to the ground, broken timbers sticking up, water-shiny with splintery ends.

  We make the cover of the National Enquirer, you know, with one of those pictures that look obviously doctored, like the face of the devil in the smoke plume above a burning building, except this one isn't faked. A news helicopter took it. The fire engines are in the foreground, providing the light, casting shadows the right way. Our house is in the picture's center, the two walls still standing, and over the middle of the house, the crushed middle, is what looks very much like a giant's footprint. He'd squashed our house like a kitten, someone might say. The footprint of a minor god. In the heat of the morning sun, the outline vanished.

  Mom's talking about going to church. “Just to investigate it,” she says.

  I'm thinking I'll join her.

  Copyright (c) 2008 James Van Pelt

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  Department: Solution to the November “UNSOLVED" by Robert Kesling

  Claude Riggs murdered Earl O'Hara.

  [DAY] Sun. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Dan & Julia North [HOMETOWN] Texarkana

  [DAY] Mon. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Bart & Ida Parks [HOMETOWN] Seattle

  [DAY] Tue. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Fred & Kathy Quimby [HOMETOWN] Tulsa

  [DAY] Wed. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Andy & Gina Moore [HOMETOWN] Utica

  [DAY] Thr. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Claude & Lola Riggs [HOMETOWN] Wallawalla

  [DAY] Fri. [HUSBAND & WIFE] Earl & Helene O'Hara [HOMETOWN] Valparaiso

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  Department: BOOKED AND PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  The strong female leads in many crime fiction series attract strong male foils, but their relationships are often difficult, producing not only romance and passion but also tension and, sometimes, heartbreak.

  Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone novels have seen both the P.I. and her agency grow since her 1977 debut in Edwin of the Iron Shoes. Now, twenty-five novels later, McCone is married to Hy Ripinsky, who runs a powerful corporate security company, and their marriage seems on solid ground after last year's The Ever-Running Man. Sharon's current problem is the title of Muller's new book: Burn Out (Grand Central, $24.99).

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Sharon is exhausted and depressed. She's left the agency she founded in the capable hands of Patrick Neilan and Ted Smalley and retreated to their ranch to recharge and consider her future. She's had enough of the violence she's encountered as an investigator but she has no desire to sit behind a desk and manage other operatives.

  Sharon is sucked into the problems of ranch hand Ramon Perez when his niece, Amy, goes missing. Deaths follow as the search for the missing teen continues and Sharon finds her investigative instincts kicking in when she determines that the keys to Amy's disappearance appear rooted in the distant past.

  Like all of Muller's best work, Burn Out is about Sharon's personal growth as much as the mystery to be solved. Sharon discovers new truths about herself as she develops a relationship with a cantankerous horse, learns more about her own Shoshone heritage, and begins to come to terms with her future. Muller's long-lived series is one of the strongest sustained series in crime fiction.

  * * * *

  The relationship of Carlotta Carlyle, Boston P.I., with mob-connected Sam Gianelli has provided a lengthy story arc over several novels by Linda Barnes. Lie Down With the Devil (St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95) is the twelfth book in the Carlotta Carlyle series that began with Trouble of Fools in 1987. Carlotta is an ex-cop who sometimes drives a cab when the P.I. business is slow. She's six foot one, plays a guitar, and loves volleyball. While Boston is her usual stomping ground, she has roamed as far as Colombia, and she has battled terrorists, rebels, arsonists, blackmailers, and murderers.

  Carlotta's relationship with Sam threatens to implode in Devil. Sam is in hiding to avoid a secret federal indictment, and Carlotta recalls both her grandmother's Yiddish proverb—"He who lives with a devil becomes a devil"—and its English corollary “Lie down with the devil"—as she contemplates their relationship. The man she's engaged to won't tell her where he is, won't tell her what crime he is under indictment for, and definitely doesn't want Carlotta to try to help him.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  But Carlotta can't help probing, even if it means seeking help from a mob lawyer like Eddie Nardo or chasing down her former colleague Joseph Mooney at the firing range. She also can't resist taking on a simple case when her assistant Roz asks her to help a friend-of-a-friend, a bride-to-be who has rec
eived an anonymous note accusing her fiancé of infidelity.

  Before long, Carlotta finds herself a pawn in someone else's game—but even a pawn can become a powerful piece. When Carlotta takes the offensive to escape a frame-up, uncover a fraud, and learn the truth behind Sam's indictment, she is on a mission that will transform her life in unexpected ways.

  * * * *

  In her latest book, The Laughter of Dead Kings (Morrow, $25.95), the prolific Elizabeth Peters returns to art historian/amateur sleuth Vicky Bliss for the first time in fourteen years—and to Vicky's relationship with master thief Sir John Smythe. Not only that, in this “conclusion” to the Vicky Bliss series, Peters reveals a surprising link to her Amelia Peabody series.

  That popular series, currently eighteen volumes, began with Amelia journeying to Egypt in 1884 in Crocodile on the Sandbank (1975), where she met and fell in love with archaeologist Radcliffe Emerson, sharing adventures with him past the end of the first World War.

  The Vicky Bliss series predates Amelia; it launched in 1973 with Borrower of the Night. But until this year, the most recent tale of the adventuresome art historian was 1994's Train to Memphis.

  Bliss is the assistant curator of Munich's National Museum, working for and with the director, Anton Z. Schmidt, one of Peters’ most endearingly eccentric characters. Her love interest is John Tregarth, a k a Sir John Smythe. As Smythe, he was the mastermind behind complex and daring international art thefts, but as Tregarth he is reformed and runs a legitimate antiquities business in London.

  Vicky is in London with John when their friend Feisal, Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt, arrives with a fantastic tale of woe. Thieves, in an operation worthy of one of John's exploits, were able to connive their way into the Valley of the Kings and abscond with Egypt's most famous king. That is, they took the remains of King Tut.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Feisal, after being assured by John that he was not behind the theft, which has not yet been made public, agrees to return to Egypt while John and Vicky begin to investigate who might be behind the theft.

  Before long Vicky, John, and Schmidt are all in Egypt, though seemingly working as much at cross purposes as they are as allies as they try to determine who stole King Tut and how they can recover him before the theft results in a disastrous scandal. As more and more signs point to John's involvement in the crime, his suspicious behavior has Vicky wondering if perhaps he is not as reformed as she had thought.

  Peters delivers her usual blend of adventure and romance in the long-overdue return of Vicky Bliss.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Robert C. Hahn

  * * * *

  In Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost (Henry Holt, $14), Kate Meaney is a ten-year-old sleuth in 1984 suburban England. A neglected child accompanied only by her stuffed monkey and her nineteen-year-old friend Adrian, Kate wards off shoplifters, keeps files, and trails suspicious characters through the mall. But when she is supervised by Adrian on a bus ride to her high school exams, Kate becomes a case herself; she vanishes completely, and Adrian is driven out of town. Twenty years later, a lonely security guard, Kurt, befriends Adrian's sister, Lisa. Both are employees at the same mall Kate used as her beat, and both begin to unravel Kate's disappearance two decades before.

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Much of What Was Lost is less plot-driven and more meditative, moving toward well-crafted revelations through the everyday details of Lisa and Kurt's life. Both are haunted by Kate's disappearance and stymied by their jobs, and O'Flynn sharply describes the placid, consumerist mall culture they serve. In constructing a wholly recognizable suburban world, O'Flynn skillfully lures unsuspecting readers into genuinely creepy moments, as when Kurt spots a small girl on his security camera one night. The journey may not be a fast-paced one, but the final disclosures feel rewarding and whole.—Laurel Fantauzzo

  All Points Bulletin: Three mysteries for young readers take the shelves (and in one case, the Internet too) this fall. The Case of the Peculiar Fan (Philomel, $14.99) by Edgar Award-winner Nancy Springer is the fourth book in the Enola Holmes series. Here, the titular young female detective investigates how to free a friend from a terrible orphanage. * Teenage Scottish sleuth Horatio Wilkes returns in Something Wicked (Dial, $16.99). Alan Gratz's sophomore instalment of the Horatio series tracks the gumshoe's efforts to nab the murderer of a Scottish Highland Faire founder; echoes of Shakespeare's Macbeth abound. *The 39 Clues: The Maze of Bones (Scholastic, $12.99) by Rick Riordan is the first in a series of interactive mystery books that uses puzzles, plot twists, the Internet, and a series of clue cards to assist young readers in solving the mystery of how the most powerful family in the world, the Cahills, first gained its strength. The deal is sweetened by real-life prizes for the first young sleuths who figure out the truth.

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  SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER

  She was tired of this man so much older than she was—this man who did not even justify his existence by spending his fortune on her. She poisoned her husband.

  —Eric Ambler

  From “The Case of the Emerald Sky” (1940) by Eric Ambler

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  Mystery Classic: THE SIGN IN THE SKY by Agatha Christie

  The Judge was finishing his charge to the jury.

  "Now, gentlemen, I have almost finished what I want to say to you. There is evidence for you to consider as to whether this case is plainly made out against this man so that you may say he is guilty of the murder of Vivien Barnaby. You have had the evidence of the servants as to the time the shot was fired. They have one and all agreed upon it. You have had the evidence of the letter written to the defendant by Vivien Barnaby on the morning of that same day, Friday, September 13th—a letter which the defence has not attempted to deny. You have had evidence that the prisoner first denied having been at Deering Hill, and later, after evidence had been given by the police, admitted he had. You will draw your own conclusions from that denial. This is not a case of direct evidence. You will have to come to your own conclusions on the subject of motive—of means, of opportunity. The contention of the defence is that some person unknown entered the music room after the defendant had left it, and shot Vivien Barnaby with the gun which, by strange forgetfulness, the defendant had left behind him. You have heard the defendant's story of the reason it took him half an hour to get home. If you disbelieve the defendant's story and are satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that the defendant did, upon Friday, September 13th, discharge his gun at close quarters to Vivien Barnaby's head with intent to kill her, then, gentlemen, your verdict must be Guilty. If, on the other hand, you have any reasonable doubt, it is your duty to acquit the prisoner. I will now ask you to retire to your room and consider and let me know when you have arrived at a conclusion."

  The jury were absent a little under half an hour. They returned the verdict that to everyone had seemed a foregone conclusion, the verdict of “Guilty."

  Mr. Satterthwaite left the court after hearing the verdict, with a thoughtful frown on his face.

  A mere murder trial as such did not attract him. He was of too fastidious a temperament to find interest in the sordid details of the average crime. But the Wylde case had been different. Young Martin Wylde was what is termed a gentleman—and the victim, Sir George Barnaby's young wife, had been personally known to the elderly gentleman.

  He was thinking of all this as he walked up Holborn, and then plunged into a tangle of mean streets leading in the direction of Soho. In one of these streets there was a small restaurant, known only to the few of whom Mr. Satterthwaite was one. It was not cheap—it was, on the contrary, exceedingly expensive, since it catered exclusively for the palate of the jaded gourmet. It was quiet—no strains of jazz were allowed to disturb the hushed atmosphere—it was rather dark, waiters appeared soft-footed out of
the twilight, bearing silver dishes with the air of participating in some holy rite. The name of the restaurant was Arlecchino.

  Still thoughtful, Mr. Satterthwaite turned into the Arlecchino and made for his favorite table in a recess in the far corner. Owing to the twilight before mentioned, it was not until he was quite close to it that he saw it was already occupied by a tall dark man who sat with his face in shadow, and with a play of colour from a stained window turning his sober garb into a kind of riotous motley.

  Mr. Satterthwaite would have turned back, but just at that moment the stranger moved slightly and the other recognised him.

  "God bless my soul,” said Mr. Satterthwaite, who was given to old-fashioned expressions. “Why, it's Mr. Quin!"

  Three times before he had met Mr. Quin, and each time the meeting had resulted in something a little out of the ordinary. A strange person, this Mr. Quin, with a knack of showing you the things you had known all along in a totally different light.

  At once Mr. Satterthwaite felt excited—pleasurably excited. His role was that of the looker-on, and he knew it, but sometimes when in the company of Mr. Quin, he had the illusion of being an actor—and the principal actor at that.

  "This is very pleasant,” he said, beaming all over his dried-up little face. “Very pleasant indeed. You've no objection to my joining you, I hope?"

  "I shall be delighted,” said Mr. Quin. “As you see I have not yet begun my meal."

  A deferential head waiter hovered up out of the shadows. Mr. Satter-thwaite, as befitted a man with a seasoned palate, gave his whole mind to the task of selection. In a few minutes the head waiter, a slight smile of approbation on his lips, retired, and a young satellite began his minstrations. Mr. Satterthwaite turned to Mr. Quin.