EQMM, December 2006

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Helen was quiet all the way up the gravel walk to the surprisingly modern multilevel house on a wooded hill in the south of the county. At the door, Helen straightened her back, took a calming breath, and knocked.

  The door swung open and Helen strode through with her dazzling smile, her gaze sweeping the room for dignitaries and interesting gossip.

  "Congressman,” she smiled, wiggling out of the smelly embrace of the crusty old lecher who had been elected more times than she could count, despite an official censure for misuse of federal money. “Where you been, you old rattlesnake? We never see you anymore."

  The people's representative simpered and smirked, keeping one liver-spotted hand on Helen's waist. “I can't see enough of you, Helen, my angel,” he leered with meaning. Helen instinctively covered her considerable cleavage. The congressman had a full complement of hands and no part of a woman's anatomy was safe while one of them was unoccupied. She leaned in to give him a buss on the cheek. As she moved on, his eager old claw descended smoothly to cup her butt.

  In the meantime, their hostess swooped on Helen, simultaneously removing the congressman's hand from her friend's derriere with a practiced gesture and putting a protective arm around her, kissing her and steering her toward the bar set up at the end of the long room.

  "Thanks, Samantha,” Helen said. “I'd have fingerprints on my ass if I talked to that old goat another minute."

  "Thank God you're here,” Sam whispered. “Veda Macavoy brought her New York cousin and he's flirting with everyone—female and male."

  "I've got to meet this guy,” Helen purred enthusiastically. “I'm a complete fag hag. I love them. I do."

  She didn't look back at Beau. She didn't need to. She knew he was sweet-talking the congressman about local issues that could profit from attention at the national level. She also knew without looking that some helpful soul had already put a cold beer bottle into Beau's pudgy hand. She and Beau had a rule about parties. They ignored each other, worked the room in their own way and at their own pace, then reconnoitered at the end and told each other everything. They had developed this technique early in Beau's tenure as chief and it stuck. They were able to cover twice the ground, shake twice the hands, and get twice the gossip as they would if they stuck together like an ordinary couple. Say what you want, Beau and Helen were never ordinary.

  Helen had worked her way through a dozen people, two daiquiris, three dirty stories and one interesting-if-true secret when her radar issued a quiet warning. She smiled at the woman who was boring her to sobs with a real-time description of her husband's prostate surgery and turned slightly to put her drink down on a table, catching a glimpse of Beau giving Emily Watson a big hug and a wet, smacking kiss right on her mean little mouth, the bitch.

  Beau was surrounded by his usual troop of fans, all of them soaking up Beau's wisdom, fetching him beers, and laughing at his jokes, even when they didn't understand them. One of the throng was the state highway commissioner and Helen knew Beau was using the opportunity to advance his plan to get new signage on the three exits that led to town. Although he was forbidden to play politics, Beau took every opportunity to upgrade the town's image. He had been instrumental in several recent efforts, most notably in bringing in a new light-manufacturing plant that would employ several hundred. Most of the town didn't even know that Beau labored tirelessly and successfully on their behalf.

  To Helen's practiced eye, Beau was just giving Emily the usual warm greeting, always reciprocated by slavish adoration. She didn't detect anything in Beau's big wet kiss or Emily's bearing that would signal any guilty complicity.

  Still nodding at the prostate horror story, Helen let herself watch Beau for just a second longer. He glanced up across the room and caught her and winked. Helen reddened slightly under her pancake foundation. Beau bent his head back to Emily Watson, who was on tiptoe whispering something to him. It could be anything, and Helen turned her attention back to the medical nightmare.

  "And the doctor said he never saw anything like it. Hard as a walnut. Don't that beat all, Helen? Hard as a walnut."

  Helen was expressing her amazement when she saw Beau, just for a second, put his hand on Emily Watson's bony butt. Or did he?

  * * * *

  Helen was at home Monday evening, waiting for Beau, when one of Beau's officers came to the door.

  "Is the chief here, Miz Goode?” he asked, hat in hand.

  "Nope, I'm waiting on him now,” she said, standing aside so that he could come in. He shuffled back and forth in the doorway, wrinkled his forehead in thought, shrugged, and turned to go.

  Helen reached out and took hold of his arm. “Come on in, now,” she said with a smile. She knew Beau's boys were scared of her, particularly without Beau around. “Now what's this all about?"

  Ten minutes later she was driving on South Main heading toward Wheeling. She didn't even remember getting into the car or starting the motor. Emily Watson was dead. Found beaten to death in her own house, although Beau's boy said it looked like she was killed elsewhere and hauled home after.

  And where was Beau anyway? Helen shook angry tears out of her eyes, trying not to think what she was thinking. Beau did it. She knew it in her heart but she pushed the thought back down. Helen's heart was pounding like a rabbit. She stepped on the gas.

  She was two blocks up Wheeling when she hit the brakes hard enough to snap her head forward, her pillowy bosom air-bagging into the steering wheel. She sat perfectly still as her body from head to toe turned dead cold then fiery hot. Up ahead, near the Greek deli, was Beau's unmistakable big yellow Buick. Just where Louie said it would be.

  Short of breath, Helen barely registered the timid honk from the car behind her. She drove forward and pulled over next to a fireplug. She turned off the key and shut her eyes. The evidence was irrefutable. There was no earthly reason for Beau to be in this neighborhood at this time of day. She remembered that he had mentioned that morning that he might be late. Another trip to the state capital, he'd said.

  Helen leaned forward, resting her head against the steering wheel. She swallowed bile. Her eyes were hot. She began to shake all over. Beau had gone and killed Emily Watson. Beau. She couldn't believe it. She couldn't take it in. Her Beau. Ruining her life. Their lives. And for that filthy skank Emily Watson.

  Her eyes flew open. She stared for a long minute at the dirty yellow steering wheel on which her head was resting, grimy for the most part. Shiny where the fingers gripped it. Yellow? Her head popped up. She was in Beau's big yellow Buick. He had taken her car to the capital and was going to drive it back and give it to Louie to take in for inspection. He'd told her so this morning.

  The heat, the cold, the shaking all instantly ceased. Helen's head cleared and she started the engine and drove slowly past the parked yellow Buick toward the cluster of police cars up ahead. What were the odds? Poor little Emily Watson probably did have a gentleman caller with execrable taste in automobiles and a murderous bad temper, but it wasn't Beau Goode.

  And there was Beau up ahead, getting out of her car, holding his jacket. His boys must have found him. She pulled over quickly, the fender scraping the curb. She flung open the door.

  Beau heard the metal grate on the concrete and turned as she hurled herself toward him. He was startled and seemed to try to ward her off, but she hit him like a train and flung her arms around him.

  "Damn, precious thing,” Beau drawled, unwrapping her arms gently, peering into her face, streaked with mascara and pancake. “What's all this, then?"

  "Beau, I just love you to death, is all,” she panted, overcome by emotion, having lost him and got him back all in the space of a ten-block drive. She tried again to gather him close, but he held her at arm's length.

  "Well, I love you, too, precious, but I've got work to do. You go on home now. Hear?"

  Helen nodded, her breathing slowing, her equanimity restored. Beginning to wonder what Beau's boys must think of her grabbing at the chief in front of the
m. For what?

  "Sure, darlin',” she said lightly, a little loud for the benefit of the boys who were waiting on Beau. “See you later, then."

  Beau nodded, pulling on his jacket.

  She threw them all a jaunty wave and piloted the big old car out around the cruisers. She was at the end of the block when she noticed that her fingers were sticky and had left wet marks where she held the wheel.

  She pulled up at the stop sign under a streetlight and put the car in park. She peered at her hands. Red blotches. What had she gotten into that was red? The only thing she'd touched lately was when she'd hugged Beau.

  Her stomach turned, gorge rising. She swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. Beau.

  Somebody behind her tapped his horn. Helen carefully put the big yellow Buick into gear. The gritty little coal town jumped and whispered around her as she powered the big car back toward home.

  Copyright (c) 2006 Meredith Anthony

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  A CONVERGENCE OF CLERICS by Edward D. Hoch

  Art by Mark Evans

  * * * *

  Returning this issue after an eight-year interval is Hoch series character Susan Holt, department-store executive cum amateur sleuth. This episode finds her on a cruise ship overseeing her company's new onboard store. When a customer is found dead, it's up to Susan and an old friend in ship security to solve the crime.

  * * * *

  The first thing that struck her as odd was the number of Catholic priests who seemed to have booked passage on the maiden transatlantic voyage of the Dawn Neptune, one of the largest and most luxurious cruise ships afloat. Susan Holt stood on the upper deck watching them board and realized there must be fifty or more of them.

  Of course, for a ship carrying twenty-five hundred passengers, that wasn't a large percentage, but it was still worth noting for Susan. She was on board as director of promotions for Manhattan's largest and most prestigious department store, and her job was to gauge public reaction to the opening of the very first Mayfield's branch on a cruise ship.

  She was one of those who'd pushed for the seagoing store at board meetings a year or more ago, when the ship was still being built. “Where else can you find a captive audience this large, in one place for seven days, or fourteen days if they do the round trip? Every one of those twenty-five hundred people is going to walk past our shop a couple of times a day, and chances are every one of them will come in to look around at least once during the voyage."

  The shops were arranged around an atrium three stories high that wouldn't have seemed out of place in New York's newest luxury hotel. The space allotted to Mayfield's shop, some two thousand square feet, was almost as large as the ship's casino. Following the customary life-jacket drill upon sailing, Susan was standing outside the shop, admiring the look of the place, when Sid Cromwell, the ship's security officer, came along behind her. “Thinking of buying something?"

  "Hi, Sid. It's impressive, isn't it?” She'd known Sid when he worked security at Mayfield's years ago.

  "This your first store on a cruise ship?"

  "The first, but maybe not the last. What are all the priests doing on board?"

  "We're sailing to Italy, remember? There's a big papal conference scheduled for next week and we offered discounts to any clergy attending it. We have fifty-six, I believe. They were hoping for more, but even with the discounts I guess it's cheaper to fly."

  They were departing from New York and sailing across the Atlantic with stops at the Azores and Gibraltar before going on to Naples and then to Greece. The cruise line had chartered buses to take the clergymen from Naples to Rome, about a three-hour trip. “You taking the round trip with us?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Flying home from Italy. Just wanted to see how the shop managed on its maiden voyage and how we can improve it next time."

  She left him and entered the shop. Lisa Mandrake, the manager, was ringing up a sale. “That your first one?” Susan asked as the customer departed with a familiar Mayfield's shopping bag on her arm.

  Lisa was younger than Susan, a chipper girl in her twenties who'd come to New York to be an actress and ended up at Mayfield's. She was a good choice to manage their first floating store. “Third so far, and we're barely out of port.” She was all smiles, as were her two assistants.

  "I'll check with you periodically, to get a fix on what's selling best."

  One of the priests had entered while they talked and he interrupted to ask if they had any men's sport shirts. “Right over here, Father,” Lisa directed him.

  He glanced at Susan, somewhat embarrassed, apparently feeling an explanation was called for. “I knew we'd be wearing our black suits and collars in Rome. It didn't occur to me that my fellow clergymen would wear more casual attire aboard ship."

  Susan thought she should introduce herself. “I'm Susan Holt, Mayfield's director of promotions. This is our first shipboard shop and we're interested in customer reactions."

  He beamed at her, looking younger than he probably was. “Father John Ullman from Omaha. This is a first for me, too, my first cruise. So far I'm enjoying it immensely.” She guessed him to be in his mid thirties, with a friendly, youthful face and dark hair showing the first strands of gray at the temples.

  "Is this your first trip to Rome?"

  "I flew over for the Holy Year Jubilee in 2000, and I've wanted to go back ever since. It's a wonderful city, especially for Catholics."

  Lisa helped him pick out a dark blue sport shirt with a pattern of small, subtle palm trees and he left quite pleased. “We should run a special on sportswear for priests,” she said with a chuckle.

  An older priest came in, introducing himself as Father Broderick. He already had a sport shirt, but was looking for some socks. “Any color but black,” he told Lisa. “I think I'm the eldest in our flock and I don't want to look it."

  Susan chatted with him for a few minutes and then went off.

  She was at the first seating for dinner, and she joined more than a thousand other passengers in a huge dining room that ran the width of the ship. Sid Cromwell had been assigned to the same table, and he arranged to sit next to her. “So what have you been doing with your life, Susan? Are you still living with Russell?"

  "Not for nearly eight years. You're really behind the times, Sid. I'm a full-time career woman now, in charge of Mayfield promotions."

  He reached over and tucked in a loose strand of her hair. “You must do something besides work all the time."

  "Sure. I lie awake nights thinking of more work I can take on."

  "You won't have much to do on this crossing, just check in at the shop a couple of times a day. We could relax and enjoy ourselves."

  "Aren't you working security?"

  "I get time off. Are you sharing a cabin with someone?"

  She shook her head. “All to myself. It's one of the perks of the job."

  "Suppose I come by your stateroom tonight around ten when I'm off duty. We could go up to the Crow's Nest on the top deck for a nightcap."

  She considered the offer. “Ring my room when you're off. If I'm free I'll meet you up there. I'm in 556."

  * * * *

  Father Ullman wasn't the only priest who'd come aboard the Dawn Neptune without casual clothes. After dinner Susan saw a second one, about the same age as Father Ullman but with thinner hair and more of a paunch. She approached him as he was leaving the dining room. “Pardon me, Father."

  He turned toward her with a smile. “Yes, my dear?"

  "I'm Susan Holt from the Mayfield's shop here on board. We've had some priests stop in to look over our sport shirts. I thought I'd mention it in case you wanted to be a bit more casual on shipboard."

  "Well, thank you, young lady. I'm Father Dempsey from Little Rock. I might take you up on that suggestion."

  "You've got quite a group going to Rome."

  "This is just a small contingent. We have another couple hundred flying over. I preferred this more leisur
ely method of travel, even if it is more expensive."

  "The Dawn Neptune is quite a ship,” Susan said.

  "That it is! I already had the tour of the ship's bridge and met the captain."

  "Captain Mason. We had some meetings with him last month about opening our shop. You'll see him again at tomorrow night's dinner. It's more of a dress-up affair and he'll be greeting everyone at the door. They'll even take your picture with him, if you like. That's the way these things usually work."

  Father Dempsey smiled at her. “This isn't your first cruise."

  "I've been on a couple for pleasure, but this is a working one. I have to write a report on Mayfield's first shipboard shop."

  They chatted awhile longer and then Father Dempsey went off with one of the other priests who wore a sport shirt with his black trousers. Susan checked in at the Mayfield's shop and found that business was still brisk. Lisa Mandrake was waiting on customers while one of her assistants was restocking the selection of bathing suits. There'd already been a crowd at the ship's pool.

  She was back in her stateroom well before ten and when Sid Cromwell phoned about that drink she was more than willing to join him. The Crow's Nest was on the very top passenger deck, just below the ship's bridge. It afforded a spectacular forward view of the ship's progress. Even at night there was often something to see. “Look there!” Sid said while they waited for their drinks. “That's lightning."

  It was indeed, and for the next twenty minutes, over their drinks, they were treated to a rare view of a thunderstorm at sea, growing constantly closer until it veered off to the south and out of sight. “You don't see those every day,” Susan commented.

  "I arranged it just for your first night,” Sid told her with a grin.

  "How about you? Are you keeping busy on security matters?"

  "Not yet. That usually comes around the third or fourth day, when the close environment of the ship starts fraying nerves and causing altercations. Of course, this is the Dawn Neptune's first transatlantic voyage and things might be different."