“What will you do, then?”
“Oh, I have my hand upon him. He and the two mates, are as I learn, the only native-born Americans in the ship. The others are Finns and Germans. I know, also, that they were all three away from the ship last night. I had it from the stevedore who has been loading their cargo. By the time that their sailing-ship reaches Savannah the mail-boat will have carried this letter, and the cable will have informed the police of Savannah that these three gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a charge of murder.”
There is ever a flaw, however, in the best laid of human plans, and the murderers of John Openshaw were never to receive the orange pips which would show them that another, as cunning and as resolute as themselves, was upon their track. Very long and very severe were the equinoctial gales that year. We waited long for news of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none ever reached us. We did at last hear that somewhere far out in the Atlantic a shattered stern-post of a boat was seen swinging in the trough of a wave, with the letters “L. S.” carved upon it, and that is all which we shall ever know of the fate of the Lone Star.
BLACK SUNRISE, by Jack Halliday
The sky looked like the back of a broad’s black chiffon blouse.
You know the kind: with spider-like fingers of thicker thread fanning up and out from the solid cloth below the shoulder blades. And the sun struggling to elbow its way through the strands of pollution and failing, providing an eerie contrast between what should be and what stubbornly is.
I found myself at the bottom of a ravine as near as I could figure. My horse was long gone and I can’t say I blamed him for “gettin’ outta Dodge.” I would have gladly gone with, if I hadn’t been tossed, ass over teacups, when he spooked and reared at the backfire and blast of exhaust when they made it away from us.
* * * *
I guess it all began back at the Bottoms Up Bar where I was cooling my jets and looking over the facts on the case they’d dumped on me. There seemed to be fewer and fewer rangers available lately and more and more cases, and I know my way around a horse and…well you get the idea.
Kramer slid this one by me before I could decline so there I was nursing a beer and reading all about Joe Jiminy (I kid you not) and his alleged involvement in a “B & E” that left a rich old duffer of a family practitioner with a squashed skull, an empty safe and a missing wife.
More like a daughter.
Don’t you get tired of cliches?
Of course life is where they come from, isn’t it?
I remember a writing class I took back in college. I wrote up a little mob piece and described the protagonist as a rough-hewed feller with a long scar from eyebrow to chin on his left cheek.
The teacher really took me to task over that one: called it “cliched” and “devicey” and informed me that no editor would ever take it seriously.
Like he would have believed me even if I’d told him I was describing a distant relative!
Anyway, I decided to go on out to the doc’s place and examine the crime scene for myself.
The house and surroundings looked about how you would expect them to. The building itself was an overdone brick, stone and wooden affair with one of those wrap around porches you sometimes see in Queensland, Australia today, or the American south of yesteryear.
I tethered Bill (my trusty Quarter horse) to the porch rail, dismounted and saw nothing of interest either in the yard nor nearby. The house itself was set off from the main road and even that isolated thoroughfare was fairly quiet with only a few luxury cars parked nearby and what looked like a lawn care company van situated near the corner.
I slowly made my way onto the front porch and peered through the slits in the blinds on the small window in the front door. I tried the knob and it opened unexpectedly. The cool blast of the air conditioning unit greeted my perspiring body and I was mighty glad of it. The ride over there, though not much over two hours on horseback, had been under the hottest sunlight of the day. Even though it was getting on towards sunset, the damage had already been done as far as my aging anatomy was concerned. I was happy for the overhang of the porch roof shading my old pony outside.
Now I don’t consider myself overly brainy or anything but anytime there are a couple of decades or more difference in spouses’ ages and the “Mr.” is rich and the “Mrs.” isn’t, my gut starts to tingle just a little bit.
Everything looked jake and I was prepared to agree with the crime boys when I heard a tinkling sound coming from the rear of the house. I wouldn’t say the window exploded or anything, but it definitely resisted an unwanted advance.
I’m a big fella an’ all, but I don’t like being cold-cocked anymore than the next guy so I slipped my Colt .38 detective special from its holster and backed against the wall. The sun was just beginning to say goodbye for the night and deep shadows filled the room, darkening the design on the oriental carpet where I stood, rock still and waiting.
The tinkling was replaced by giggling.
Then the most beautiful twenty-something blond my blood-shot orbs had ever had the pleasure of eye-balling came in, accompanied by the usual accomplice. One of those tattooed idiots with the perpetual “What’s it to you?” look on his pock-marked face. And the blond crew cut with yet another tattoo visible in the center of his pointy dome. The lingering light caught the top of his head as he bent over, revealing the words, “What, Me Worry?” etched in deep, red ink.
I took a deep breath and let it seep out, nice and easy like. I figured it’d be a lot simpler to just reconnoiter rather than to tip my hand this early in the game. At this juncture, I didn’t even know the rules.
While I was musing along this line, the two of them were slowly and quietly going over the place in a desperate search for something of apparently great value, at least to the girl. They were moving in and out of rooms, up and down the hallways of the doctor’s digs, checking corners and crevices, openings and other things that might serve as signposts toward their recovering the missing item(s).
I was alone again: with my thoughts and my gun and my breathing.
Or at least I thought I was.
Very faintly I heard what sounded like panting or gurgling or gagging.
I was just beginning to wonder if maybe the good doctor had left a servant of some kind behind: against their will. I heard the rear door open and close and I breathed easier, figuring young “Bonnie and Clyde” had left the building, presumably searching yet somewhere else for Elvis or whomever had gone missing.
The vocal sounds were replaced by a scratching noise. Slowly and carefully I stepped out and followed the sound to a cupboard deep in the back of the well-appointed room. With gun in hand, I moved to the side of the door and slowly turned the polished brass knob with my right hand, pulling the door toward me.
The panting began again and I stepped around placing me eyeball to eyeball with him.
“Maybe they’re shooting the next installment of Men in Black,” I said to myself as the little fawn-colored Pug stared up into my blue eyes with his wall-eyed brown ones. He looked like he was smiling, mouth agape and panting.
“What’s your story?” I asked.
Right on cue, his mouth closed, the panting stopped and the smile was replaced by a look of deadly seriousness as he cocked his head to one side with an expression that looked for all the world like pity for me.
I crouched down and his smile returned as I scratched him behind the ears. They felt smooth like velvet. His eyes were shiny, globular marbles and nature had worked the fur on his forehead into a well-defined fleur-de-lis. My guess was, this was the little dude for which Blondie had been searching so diligently. At any rate, he was safe now.
I moved to the kitchen, filled his dish with water and set it down near the doorway. Right on cue he trotted toward it, his sharp nails making a ticking sound on the ornate marble floor. He was drinking like there was no tomorrow, his little belly moving up and down rhythmically. Then he finally stopped, stepped back, licked his
lips and looked up at me with an idiotic smile just before he suddenly spread out on the cool tile, his front paws on either side of his chin which was flat on the floor, making him appear like a little canine sniper. His large kind eyes followed me as I looked around the kitchen in search of clues. It occurred to me that he looked as if someone had somehow fit a human being into a dog’s body.
“Note to self: purchase a Pug at earliest convenience.”
I was starting to wonder exactly what was what when I heard another sound, this one definitely human…and female, if I could trust my forty plus years of meandering around the fair sex. The Pug continued to follow me with his eyes which were slowly closing from boredom. Me? I could use about a lifetime of it. But that was a luxury I couldn’t afford right now. I had a murder/robbery to solve. Or at the very least, to gather a couple of clues concerning.
I realized the sound was definitely coming from upstairs: the far bedroom I would guess.
So how in the world did a dog and an unknown female elude the searching gaze of the CSU?
Who would return to the scene of a crime to deposit one human and one canine?
And where did the young couple fit in?
While I was musing along these lines the sound became a voice, a rather nice one if I may say: insistent and pleading for assistance from the first unlucky ranger to enter the domicile. I grudgingly obliged and began my ascent of the stairs, the sound of my boots apparently disturbing a canine dream of some kind as the little guy’s paws twitched. His squashed face resembled a baby’s as it passes gas. Maybe he was dreaming of finding just the right tree to mark for posterity.
I was in the corridor now, the voice calling out “Help” with the regularity of a metronome. It was coming from the back bedroom all right and I wasn’t taking any chances. I had my .38 at the ready when I opened the door of the overly done master bedroom of the “silenced sawbones.” It was a rather gaudy affair with a lot of shine to it from silken sheets to silver shavers on the nightstand. I moved toward the walk-in closet and announced myself.
“Deputy Ranger Shelton, here” I barked in the best professional voice I could muster. “Are you all right?”
“Yes…but please…get me out of here!”
With that I slowly unlocked the door and was greeted by the “original” of the young blond I’d seen previously prowling the first floor.
“Well?” she intoned, rather indignantly.
“Well, well” I returned and grunted my way onto my knees to undo her restraints.
“Thank you” she said, sardonically, shaking her freckled arms free and getting herself up onto her sandaled feet. I raised myself up in concert with her.
“Did you get him?”
“Did I get whom?”
Exasperated by my apparent stupidity, she repeated the question.
“I said, did you get him?”
I folded my arms over my chest.
“Ma’am, I’m not sure to whom you refer.”
She clicked her tongue and walked to the window, the faint moonlight making her appear almost angelic. She was quite something all right. As if reading my thoughts, she looked over at me as though she were examining an extra-terrestrial. I was beginning to wonder myself if I hadn’t dropped down from outer space, what with the alien looking dog and all downstairs.
“Why don’t you sit down and we’ll have a chat” I offered as I took a seat on the plush red chair in front of the vanity.
She clicked her tongue again and sat on the edge of the bed, opposite me.
“Name, rank and serial number.” The ice began to thaw and she smiled at that one.
“I’m Kay Hawkins, the doctor’s wife, of course.”
“Of course,” I nodded.
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I’m all right or something?” she asked.
“No need for that, that I can see” I returned.
She simply pursed her beautiful lips.
“So here we are then,” I added.
She squinted at me. “Here we are.”
It turned out that she’d heard the sneak-thief enter the house but was sucker-punched from behind before she could even press any alarm buttons (and the house had plenty of them). She had been unconscious during the entire episode, only stirring when the young couple’s breaking and entering routine had roused her from her unwanted sleep.
“What about the CSU?” I asked.
“CS what?” she countered.
“The crime scene unit that investigated this business.”
“Well, if there was one, I wasn’t aware of it. I heard and saw nothing: nothing at all.”
That explained an awful lot. So there was no investigation prior to mine after all. Why would Kramer send me up here to follow up when there had been no preliminary? And how did he know Jiminy figured into this? And just exactly how was that couple of Pug-chasers involved? My head was beginning to hurt trying to fit pieces of a puzzle together that seemed to come from different boxes.
“Mrs. Hawkins, as I said, I’m Ranger Shelton and I was sent up here to follow up on…to…ah, investigate…”
“Yes…to investigate the robbery?”
“I’m afraid it’s a bit more than that” I offered.
“You see, your husband…your husband is deceased.”
Her face nearly exploded as she gasped, “What?!”
I reached over and patted her tan forearm.
“Just calm down, Ma’am. We’re going to take this very slowly.”
With that, the emotion drained out of her face and she sighed into herself as she seemed to fold inward, any remaining emotional strength slowly oozing out of her body as her shoulders slumped in defeat, her expression empty and nonplussed. She looked up, asked weakly, “Dead, really dead?”
“That’s what my supervisor said, yes.”
She shook her lovely head from side to side as though she were being hypnotized.
“I just can’t believe he’s gone, dead: murdered.”
I pursed my lips trying to think of a rejoinder to that one.
“Can you think of anyone who might want to harm your husband?”
Looking vacantly at the floor she responded woodenly. “Not a soul. He was very well liked, Vernon was. Working here was almost like being a country doctor for him, only with a much wealthier class of patients of course.”
“No doubt.”
She looked up at me with those unusual blue eyes, almost cobalt-colored, but with tiny flecks of lighter blue floating in the irises. “Robbery I can understand, but not murder, definitely not murder.”
I sighed out some exasperation and folded my arms over what used to be a six-pack that might have passed with a significant push years ago.
“Anyone else live here, on the premises?”
She pulled a face and looked away from me at that one.
“April…my daughter…doesn’t live here exactly, but does show up often and at rather inopportune times, usually looking for money.”
“She the one the pooch belongs to?”
Touching my forearm, she gasped, “My God, don’t tell me Barney’s been hurt.”
“No,” I reassured her.
“He’s downstairs sleeping off a belly full of water.”
She smiled brightly. “Thank God he’s all right; he’s like a little deformed son to us.”
“Kinda grows on you I would imagine.”
I was just going to suggest to her that she take a trip downtown with me to make an official statement, when the telephone rang. She looked at it, startled, then at me. I nodded and she answered it.
“Yes?”
She shrugged her shoulders at me.
“Why I wouldn’t have any idea; I certainly didn’t. No, I don’t know when another time would be convenient.” She hung up the phone.
Her eyebrows bunched together.
“That was a lawn care service.”
“One you normally use?”
She squinted, as though trying to make some
sense of the call. “No; that’s the odd thing. He sounded like I knew all about the appointment.”
“And when was that?”
She shrugged. “He said this afternoon, at four.”
Suddenly, she looked up at me with the expression of a child asking permission of a teacher to use the restroom.
“I’m thirsty suddenly. Would you mind terribly if we continued this downstairs?”
“Not a bit” I lied. I was actually thinking of a nice, cold beer someplace back in town. “I wouldn’t mind whetting my whistle either.”
She smiled stiffly and I followed her downstairs and watched and waited at the table while she fixed us up with two iced teas. Pug opened one sleepy eye only slightly and went back to canine dreamland where he could chase another school bus. What would he do if he were ever able to catch up with one?
She evidently noticed my admiration for the little nasally challenged half-pint.
“As I said, his name’s Barney. Been with us for about six years. You’ll notice the black on his muzzle is starting to turn gray. It happens earlier than folks think. They actually used makeup on ‘Frank’ when they did the second ‘Men in Black’ picture.”
“Guess he did need ‘dental’ after all then, didn’t he?”
“I imagine.”
She suddenly just stopped talking and looked at me with those very unusual eyes. I was so intrigued I could only return her stare. She tried to say something, paused, changed her mind and then resumed her gaze. I was beginning to sense a familiar stirring in the usual places. This was starting to become “awkward” as they say in merry old England.
She sighed.
“I can’t believe he’s gone; the doctor is dead.”
I leaned back in the chair.
“Mrs. Hawkins…”
“Kay,” she interrupted.
“‘Kay,’ I don’t think there’s too much more that can be done about things right now. You’re absolutely certain you didn’t hear anything downstairs earlier, before the break-in, nothing at all from the crime unit search?”
She shook her head in a deliberate “No.”
The Detective Megapack Page 105