Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 127, No. 6. Whole No. 778, June 2006

by Albert Cornelis Baantjer

  “What about Doreen? The name she was using when she worked her way into Mr. Webster’s company, then his bed, then this elaborate love nest he keeps for his mistresses of the moment — stealing his heart so she could steal the contents of the flash drive. Doreen Kyle.”

  “You get the flash drive, she also gets to live happily ever after?”

  “So you do have it.”

  “Just asking. Does she?”

  He didn’t have to think about his answer. “Doreen has been a naughty, naughty girl and will have to be punished. Isn’t that so, Tiffany?” Another tug at her ponytail.

  “Knock it off, Barron.” She swatted away his hand. “We still don’t know if the doofus has it on him. What say, Doofus? A yes, a no, or a body search that’ll have you singing boy soprano in no time flat?”

  I believed her, but as much as I wanted to get rid of the damned drive, I have this insatiable curiosity jones — it made me the highest-paid game-show researcher on network TV for eleven years before a ratings nosedive knocked Million-Dollar Money Machine into swift oblivion.

  “How about a maybe?” I said.

  This Barron guy frowned. “I don’t believe that Tiffany invited a negotiation, Mr. Hyland.”

  Tiffany uncorked a laugh and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Doofus thinks he’s Harrison Ford or Bruce Willis. Tom Cruise. Matt Damon. It don’t work like that in real life, Doofus.”

  “Maybe first you explain what’s so important about the flash drive and then I tell you where it is?”

  “Ah, progress of a kind,” Barron said. “But surely you already know the answer?”

  “Humor me. Pretend it’s the real-estate round of Million-Dollar Money Machine.”

  “I prefer Jeopardy myself.” He looked off, as though he was enjoying his own humor, but he was all business seconds later. “For all his outwardly sunny disposition, Noel Webster was a shady character on the international landscape. The information he accumulated through devious means, which was then covertly copied onto the flash drive by his wily mistress, is designed to bring down governments.”

  “Jeopardy sucks. Whose government? Which?”

  His head shifted left and right. “That makes it worth millions to certain parties — like the people she agreed to sell it to. Only, she got greedy.”

  “The people. Would that be you and the man-eater?”

  Tiffany showed me the length of her middle finger.

  Barron said, “Didn’t Doreen tell you who when she brought you into her scheme?”

  “Nice try.”

  “We contacted her after she put the drive up for bid. The exchange was scheduled for the reception. Only, Doreen had a change of mind. I suspect she continued shopping and found a buyer willing to go higher. Yes, Mr. Hyland? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “Nice try.”

  “All right, then. Doreen in trade for the flash drive, unless you’d rather have a cash reward.”

  “Doreen will do.”

  Barron held out his palm.

  I said, “First Doreen.”

  At once I had the feeling he’d run out of patience with me.

  Barron shut his eyes and seemed to be counting to ten, then drew a .45 automatic from inside his suit jacket.

  A hundred years later, he shrugged and said, “Why not?”

  He marched from the room, returning a minute later with Faye. Even handcuffed, her face lacking makeup and flushed with distress, she was my kind of beautiful. Her robe was open, confirming a body built for centerfolds. I averted my eyes.

  Barron held out his hand again. I dug into a pocket for the flash drive and pitched it to him. He made a one-handed catch, flipped it to Tiffany, led Faye to the sofa, and settled her next to me.

  Tiffany rested the .22 on the coffee table while she examined the drive. “How do we know this is legit? This legit, Doofus?”

  “Was your birth?”

  She settled a sneer on me. “You’re not out of the woods yet, big mouth, so don’t press what’s left of your luck.”

  “It’s the flash drive Doreen slipped me.”

  Barron said, “Did you monitor it?”

  “I tried. Curiosity. Only got as far as the command for a password.”

  “The right answer... Make any copies?”

  “What for? I was hoping Faye — Doreen — would explain it. Why I called her. Why I brought it with me.”

  Barron said, “One last piece of business before I free Doreen and we leave you to your future. Your driver’s license, please, so we’ll know where to come visit you, should we discover the flash drive is other than represented.”

  I fished the license from my wallet and tossed it onto the coffee table.

  Tiffany leaned forward to retrieve it, putting the .22 momentarily out of her reach.

  Faye dove onto the table and captured the gun. She rolled onto her side and got off a two-handed shot that smashed into Barron’s left eye. He went down as Faye hit the mile-high white pile carpeting on her back, Tiffany immediately on top of her.

  A gunshot ended their battle before it began.

  Tiffany gripped the edge of the table and struggled to her feet. She threw me a look of triumph and bowed like she was taking a curtain call; only, she kept going. Her face struck the table nose first, accompanied by a loud cracking sound, while blood splashed onto the glass surface from the modest bullet hole between her breasts.

  Faye was on her knees beside Barron. She found the key to the handcuffs and freed herself, then hurried over and threw her arms around me, pressing her body tightly against mine while her lips played thank-yous over my face and neck.

  She released me, saying, “I’m sorry about putting your life at risk tonight. They’d have killed us — me, for certain — if you hadn’t stepped up to the plate the way you did. I owe you my life, Hyland with an H, and I always repay my debts.”

  Her lips found mine again, briefly, before she went after the flash drive, clutching it like a winning lottery ticket before she stashed it and the .22 in a pocket of her robe, which she didn’t bother closing. She was in the process of handing over my driver’s license when I said, “Is it true what they told me about you?”

  The question caught her off guard. She reared to attention and crossed her arms over her breasts. “If they said I was a federal agent setting them up for a bust, yes,” she said. I shook my head.

  “Look, later I’ll show you my ID and my gratitude, but right now the phone is over there. Call nine-one-one while I throw on some clothes.” She wheeled around and fled the room, and—

  That was the last I saw of Faye Allyson.

  Or Doreen Kyle.

  The cops sent me home after I told them enough about what I knew to satisfy them that I’d innocently wandered into some kind of lovers’ quarrel that would not be untangled until Doreen Kyle turned up. Two federal agents arrived at my door the next day, flashing badges and phony smiles. They got the same story. I didn’t mention the flash drive either time. I played dumb when the agent chewing a lump of gum surreptitiously asked about “Faye Allyson” and answered their questions about Million-Dollar Money Machine, most dealing with Honeychile Lane, the cover girl who operated the money-machine lever.

  It took a few weeks before the story a columnist for the Los Angeles Daily tagged “The Mystery of the Missing Mistress” faded into a few paragraphs on the back pages of the news section, then disappeared entirely. By then, I’d received enough media attention to get work doing research for Jeopardy and Who Dies Next? a reality pilot for Fox.

  The jobs lasted a couple of months and I was able to catch up on outstanding debts before the money ran out and I went back to feeding myself after funeral services.

  Every so often, I slugged the flash drive into my computer and wondered what I’d learn were I able to bust the password.

  Wondered who the customers were and the small fortune the drive would bring if I knew where to sell it.

  Wondered if I’d still be alive had Barron and Tif
fany learned that what I’d handed them was blank, a last-second substitution I made before leaving home, planning to use my “Oops!” as an excuse to see Faye Allyson again.

  Most of all, I wondered about Faye, who had skipped out of Noel Webster’s love nest leaving behind ambiguity and unanswered questions.

  And me.

  I was trying to decide between another Beluga on blini or the Kobe beef on toast points at the gathering for Martin Gardener, the real-estate tycoon who’d made his billions turning Indian desert wasteland into gambling spas, when some sixth sense made me turn around.

  The woman sauntering toward me from halfway across the tented courtyard was my kind of beautiful, tall, lean, and lanky, her body as sublime as a building designed by Frank Gehry, sending temptation inside a black mourning dress that quit mid-thigh and contained swaying breasts that cried for attention. Her platinum-blond hair piled high to give fuller display to an angelic face promising heaven on earth. Her green eyes flashing lustful signals to go with equally dangerous lips that I recognized even before they connected with mine.

  “Hello, Faye,” I said, when I could breathe again.

  “Not Faye,” she said. “Helena.”

  “Elena?”

  She shook her head and brightened the tent with her smile. “Helena. With an H. Same as Hyland with an H.”

  “You’ll always be Faye to me,” I said, reaching into my pocket for the flash drive I always carried with me against this moment.

  Distilling the Truth

  by Marilyn Todd

  Copyright © 2006 Marilyn Todd

  Art by Allen Davis

  Marilyn Todd’s name will forever be linked in most readers’ minds with Ancient Rome. Her twelfth book in the series whose protagonist, Claudia Seferius, solves mysteries while plying her trade as a wine merchant was published in January. (See Sour Grapes/Severn House.) In this short story, however, Ms. Todd chooses for her setting Cognac, France, the town in which she recently settled, and a time in the not too distant past.

  ❖

  The instant Marie-Claude’s husband told her that he’d compiled a dossier detailing the chief inspector’s corruption, complete with dates, names, and times, then placed the file personally in the hands of the commissioner, she knew it was all over. No wonder he waited until he’d finished his tartiflette to tell her what he’d done. She’d have thrown the damned dish on the floor and to hell with dinner, and he could have whistled for his île flottante as well. As it was, she didn’t hear him out. What on earth was the point of lengthy explanations?

  “You’re a fool, Luc. No one likes a whistle-blower.”

  “I didn’t join the police to be popular.”

  “It’s the end of your career, you know that? They won’t keep you on in Paris after this!”

  “Blackmail, extortion, what was I supposed to do, Marie-Claude?” He laid down Le Figaro and turned his gaze to her. “For years, Picard has been preying on the very people he was meant to protect. I couldn’t simply turn aside.”

  “And I’m sure the commissioner shook your hand and thanked you warmly for your efforts.”

  One side of Luc’s face twisted uncomfortably. “Not exactly, no.”

  “You see? No one likes a whistle-blower. They’d rather close ranks and have a bastard in their midst than admit to one bad apple, and you already know my feelings about the commissioner.”

  Like when they were invited over to dinner and she overheard him talking to her husband in his study when she went to find the bathroom.

  “Your wife is truculent, selfish, and a pain in the cul, Luc—”

  The rest was drowned by children’s laughter upstairs, but who cared? That was the last time she’d eat at that pig’s house, she told Luc, and if her husband felt bad about making excuses when future invitations arrived, then so much the better. She wanted nothing to do with a man who insulted her, and it wouldn’t have hurt Luc to have stuck up for her, either.

  “—couldn’t agree more, sir—”

  Truculent and selfish, her cul. She pushed her thick curls back from her face. She had married too young, that was the trouble, and to a man ten years older than herself at that. Admittedly, after six years Luc was no less handsome and his back was as strong, but that type of love can’t sustain a marriage indefinitely. And when he wasn’t working all the hours le bon Dieu sent, he had his head stuck in a file or wanted to talk politics, and not even French politics, either. Honestly! Who cared whether rich diamond deposits had been found in Siberia or how many communists this Senator Mc-Whatever-His-Name accused in the American State Department? What was going to actually change people’s lives were things like the new television transmissions that were now coming out in colour, not some piece of paper signed by Egypt and Britain over a canal in Suez that Luc insisted was going to have far-reaching consequences. But however exasperated Marie-Claude got with her husband, she’d never once known him to lose his temper.

  Not even when, a mere fortnight after Luc delivered his sanctimonious dossier, the commissioner transferred him to Cognac.

  “You’ll like the South,” Luc said confidently, as their train pulled away. “Twice as much sunshine, warmer summers, better winters—”

  “Better theatres, Luc? Will they have better street cafés and shops? Will they get subtitled versions of On the Waterfront, do you think?” By all accounts, it was set to scoop an Oscar. “Will they have better parks? Better gardens? Women in peignoirs leaning over the balconies, calling obscenities to men in the street?”

  He looked at her beneath lowered lids as the train chugged through the forests of Rambouillet. “You never liked Montmartre.”

  “It had life,” she retorted. “It had character and substance, it was always noisy, colourful, constantly changing—”

  Marie-Claude broke off. Why was she referring to these things in the past tense? For heaven’s sake, it wasn’t as though she wasn’t going back! No, no, once she’d seen Luc settled in (she owed him that) she would start a new life. A new life with a man who appreciated art, the cinema, fashion, and fun. Someone who liked dancing, for sure!

  “I’ll bet they’ve never heard of Perry Como in Cognac.”

  “You can probably count yourself lucky if they’ve heard of Bing Crosby,” he murmured behind his guidebook. “But this is promotion, Marie-Claude. We’re lucky to get it. Do you want to look through this, by the way?”

  Marie-Claude shook her head. She’d seen enough of those vines and flat-bottomed boats from upside down, thank you.

  “We’ll be able to afford a house of our own instead of a poky apartment on the fifth floor where you can hear everything that happens next-door. We’re close to the seaside, and I’ll bet the air’s better, too.”

  There was nothing wrong with the air in the Rue du Roc, she wanted to say, but his nose was back in the pamphlet and, as Orleans rumbled past, she stroked the hat in her lap. Such a jaunty little number, as well. Très Audrey Hepburn, with just a dash of Ava Gardner. She sighed and closed her eyes. By the time she got a chance to wear it again, it would either have too many feathers or too few, and who would be seen dead wearing green for next season? At Tours, the only other couple in the carriage got off and an old woman with a runny nose got in.

  “Amazing,” Luc said, turning the page of his paper to avoid creasing it. “It says here construction’s under way on the St. Lawrence Seaway that’ll allow deep-draught ships direct access to the rich industrials of the Great Lakes. Direct access. Can you imagine?”

  Marie-Claude switched off. Her husband was clever, conscientious, honourable, but dull. Handsome, rugged, muscular, and tall, yet he lacked passion where it really counted. And now, it seemed, he was a failure into the bargain.

  At Angoulême they changed trains.

  She blamed herself for marrying him.

  A week later, the vineyards around Cognac sprang into leaf and an Englishman called Bannister ran a mile in under four minutes. Less than two months down the line, once the
vines had been pruned and tied back, an Australian beat the Englishman’s record, but by the time the summer sun was swelling the grapes on the hillsides, the Englishman had once again reclaimed his crown in Vancouver, Little Mo’s tennis career was cut short by a riding accident, and a pair of Italians were the first climbers to reach the peak of K2. These things seemed to excite everyone except Marie-Claude, but it didn’t matter, because she kept herself busy making the house nice for Luc.

  It was pleasantly located in the old quarter, halfway between the chateau and the covered market, where the streets were narrow, hilly, twisting, and cobbled, and the houses built of thick stone to keep them cool in summer, retain heat in the winter, and with fireplaces large enough to secrete a small army. But an old man had lived alone here for the past twenty years and she was damned if she’d be accused of leaving her husband to a place which looked (and smelled) like a pigsty.

  A week’s scrub with carbolic transformed it no end, but the shutters could use a coat or three of paint and although she’d considered returning to Paris in August, the weather was perfect for strolls along the towpath, and whilst Marie-Claude knew of lots of people who didn’t bother with curtains and just used the shutters, Luc worked so hard that the very least he deserved, if he wasn’t to have a decent dinner waiting on the table, was to be able to pore over his paperwork in a house that was cosy. One or two rooms, that was all. Bedroom. Salon. Enough to lend a bit of warmth and character where it mattered the most.

  By the time workers had been drafted in for the harvest and Pope Pius X had been canonised, the Algerians had started a guerrilla war against their French protectors, “This Ole House” was on everyone’s lips, and Marie-Claude had run up another pair of drapes, this time for the kitchen, and accepted the offer of part-time work in an upmarket dress shop.

  “I’ll be late tonight,” Luc announced one lunchtime, as he washed his hands in the sink. Close-by, the bells of St. Leger pealed merrily. “The proprietor of one of the smaller cognac houses has been murdered.”