“She didn’t leave you,” I sobbed. “This is my fault.”
“It’s not your fault, Big Sis,” he said, his pale face reddening. “You know what she was like. I’ve been expecting her to leave me for years. Wendy was never happy with me.”
I put my hand on his hand, breathed in the clean smell of soap. “I have to tell you something, Sunny, and you’re not going to believe it. I’m so stupid.” I explained the whole thing. About how I’d been so desperate to get him a birthday present, how I’d come to know Reiss’s mother, how I’d just gone and tried to get her to call off her son, but the damage was done.
“He escaped from jail,” I finished up. “Reiss must have come looking for you and found Wendy instead. We’ll have to call the police. We’ll do it now. I’m so sorry.”I buried my head against his shoulder. I could feel the twitch of his heart underneath me.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Big Sis.” He breathed in deeply. “It was me. I killed her.”
He shook his head slightly, in a move I’d seen countless TV actors do. His face looked different, less genial than it had always been. How well did I know him? I loved him, but how well did I know him? I thought of my sister-in-law, always anxious and angry, always unhappy, always threatening to leave. “We had a fight.
“I didn’t mean to do it, Big Sis. But what if . . .” He paused. “In a way this is like a gift, isn’t it? The police will assume Reiss killed her.”
Off in the distance, fire alarms sounded. Danger. The trinity of the hospital, school, and jail. I thought of what Wendy said all those years ago. That the bullies had recognized something in Jared Reiss. That they had picked on him for a reason. Her words had disturbed me then and stayed with me. Now I knew why. Because my brother should have recognized something was wrong with Jared too. He should have stayed away from him. It was empathy, not kindness, that caused him to befriend Reiss. He recognized another. But what could I do? I loved him.“Yes, Sunny,” I answered.
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Breen
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Fiction
SEEING RED
by Amy Myers
Jack Colby, classic-car detective, is the latest addition to Amy Myers’s impressive range of sleuths, who include chimney sweep Tom Wasp and chef Auguste Didier. Jack is the brainchild not only of Amy but her car buff American husband James, whose nose for a classic car is every bit as good as Jack’s. The first Jack Colby novel, entitled Classic in the Barn, is due out from Severn House shortly after this issue goes on sale. Also not to be missed: her new Marsh and daughter mystery, Murder on the Old Road.
I love cars. I love women. But just at that moment there was no contest. Believe it or not, I was staring at a Cord 812 Beverly. Nineteen thirty-seven, of course. The year. What a beauty. A convertible sedan. All those graceful curves, in and out in all the right places. Poetry? Maybe. But there was a problem. How could such a stunner come to be painted in different shades of clashing red? And badly painted at that. It looked as if a kid of five had set to with a paintbrush, dipping into three jam jars of garish paint as the fancy took him. The convertible top was cherry coloured, the body pillar-box scarlet, and the luscious curves of the wheel arches maroon. Every so often there was a patch of the original cream colour left where the brush had either missed it or decided to economise on paint.
Appalled, I peered in through the driver’s window to see what havoc might have been wreaked on the upholstery. It was then the second problem hit me. There was a blanket over something heaped up in the backseat. At the very moment I took this in, the blanket slipped a little. The “something” was a woman, and from the look of the face that had been revealed, she was dead. Very dead. Even worse, if that were possible, I thought I’d seen her before.
“What’s up, Jack?” someone shouted at me.
Even as I punched in 999 for the police, the owners of the other dozen or so classic cars that had already arrived at the show were beginning to move in towards me, alerted by my yell of horror.
“Keep away,” I shouted back. “Crime scene.” And to make my point even clearer: “Murder.” That much was clear to me from those staring eyes, purple lips, and protruding tongue, even if the glimpse of a scarf taut around the neck hadn’t convinced me.
Only one of the onlookers refused to be daunted by my warning. Johnnie Darling, from Country Classic Car Events Ltd., who was organising this show, must have come rushing up from the main gates while I was feeding instructions over my mobile. He isn’t my favourite person, but he knows his stuff, so I told him to “Get back and stop any more cars coming in.”
“Right, Jack.” Johnnie promptly obeyed. He’d have to make hasty alternative arrangements for the other hundred or two classic cars on their merry way to what they thought would be a peaceful car show and a chat with fellow fans.
That left me to guard the scene, standing stock-still in order not to muddy it up with more footprints and so forth. The other owners stared at me as though I were the wizard in the midst of a pentagon while they kept their safe distance.
“Anyone see this Cord arrive?” I called out.
There were earnest consultations—undesirable—but apart from the fact that it hadn’t been the first or second to arrive, no one could be sure. Nor could they be sure who was driving it, since everyone seemed to agree that the ghastly paint on the car was what had transfixed them. One eagle-eyed owner was sure it was a man, though, and someone else thought he looked tallish and thinnish. Well, that probably ruled out Danny DeVito. The trouble is that there is no prescribed etiquette for such situations, particularly at car shows being held on the grounds of stately homes like this one, Broadmead Castle in Kent. What usually happens is that one arrives, gets out and admires one’s own car, beats its bounds to draw attention to it, and then proceeds, with a happy nod, to study one’s neighbours’. So with a dozen or so cars all arriving one after another in the space of fifteen or twenty minutes, there wasn’t much chance of consensus.
As I defended the crime scene, I began to feel like that Roman chap Horatius, who held the bridge over the Tiber against the Tuscan hordes. I failed with only one eager intruder. Despite another cry to keep away, Major Sir Peter Manning, whom I recognised as the owner of Broadmead Castle, informed me in no uncertain terms that crime scenes did not apply to him, and stalked straight over to me.
“This is my bloody car,” he yelled. “I’m sure of it. Look what they’ve done to it.”
He bent over to peer at the number plate, putting his hand out to support himself on the car.
“Crime scene,” I barked at him, catching hold of his arm before he could do so.
He straightened up and stared at me. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I know it is. Some maniac’s painted my car red.”
“There’s also a dead body inside.” I was beginning to dislike this man. He wasn’t even an old codger; probably in his late forties or early fifties, and with features as aquiline as Julius Caesar’s, he was clearly accustomed to rule. Not me, he wouldn’t.
He quietened down, though. “You mean they weren’t joking?” He waved his hand at the watching group of thwarted classic car owners.
“The police are on their way,” I said with gritted teeth. “That’s why I’m keeping this clear.”
“And who the hell might you be?”
“Jack Colby, Frogs Hill Classic Car Restorations. I work with the police on car-crime cases.”
“You didn’t do much to get my car back when it was pinched two weeks ago. Look at it now. Flaming red. It was cream . . .”
I’d had enough of this. I spun him round and pointed at the rear seat. He took a quick look through the window and went very quiet.
“But it’s my car. Who is she?”
I thought he was going to be sick. I felt like it myself. I knew very well who she was. It was Bonnie.
“We pay you to find cars, not bodies,” Dave, or more
formally Detective Chief Inspector David Jones, had grunted when I rang his hotline after my 999 call. The specialist crime unit of the Kent police is under his jurisdiction, and I was interested that he had come himself, even though there was a DI with him now hard at work organising the crime scene and SOCOs. The said DI, Denis Mulligan, was the senior investigating officer and every so often he threw me a penetrating look in my role of person who had discovered the body. Dave’s presence was not so much out of regard for my welfare as for the fact that this crime might be of particular interest to him.
Now that the action had been taken out of my hands, the shock was getting to me. I’d arrived early at the show, at about nine-fifteen, hence the small number of cars around when I had foolishly chosen to inspect the Cord. With the gates now firmly locked and the other cars rerouted to a neighbouring farm, Johnnie Darling came back to join me as a spectator.
We and the other car owners were in limbo now that the police were in charge; we were neither free to go nor able to contribute anything other than each his own story. The main refreshment tent had been commandeered by Mulligan as a temporary HQ, complete with tea and coffee conveniently set up in it, of course—and so the major and Johnnie had settled the rest of us in another tent which had originally been destined as the organisers’ preserve, which meant we were somewhat herded together.
Snatches of conversation—or rather exchange of comments, as there was no real communication between us—became repetitive: “Who is it?” “Seen that red, have you?” “Who’s this Bonnie?” “Nicked, of course.” “That paint job’s a crime.” Was the paint or Bonnie more important here? I wondered. Time to mourn the car once we were over the shock of her death.
I couldn’t take it any longer, and went outside again to find Dave, who was busy filling out forms on a picnic chair tucked between an Austin-Healey and a Delahaye. “Has she been identified yet?” I asked him. “It was Bonnie, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “Looks like it. Her handbag was dumped on the floor. On our books as Eva Crowley, to be exact. Well and truly strangled with her own scarf.”
I thought of the lively attractive girl with the eyes that would dance no more. She had enlivened the majority of car shows, both locally in Kent and elsewhere. Bonnie, as she was known to aficionados, was a car show groupie. She had no apparent car of her own, but she loved classics. She loved their owners, too—the rich ones, anyway. Wherever I turned up, she’d give me a wave to indicate that we might be mates, but not to bother applying for her favours. Just as well. What I earn wouldn’t keep Bonnie in petrol perfume.
Why did we call her Bonnie? I’m not certain. She was bonny. She liked posing by car bonnets, and if she could charm the owners enough, on them, but the more likely reason was that she sometimes arrived at a show with a chap called Mick Clyde, which made her nickname Bonnie a natural one, like the two American gangsters. And now it seemed from what Dave was suggesting, Bonnie and Clyde might have been just that. Their relationship? Mick might have been her brother, for all I knew. Certainly he didn’t seem to object to her merrily making advances to any classic-car owner she fancied. Bonnie must have been in her late twenties; she was dark-haired, as slim and lithe as Raffles, and walked, with a swing, through life so happily that men jumped at the chance to walk at her side. Women seemed to like Bonnie too, because she was a pro. She never made the fatal error of addressing her charms only to the menfolk. She was delightful, and if the sun wasn’t out when she arrived at a show, she worked a kind of magic that ensured everyone thought it was.
“Is Clyde on your books, too?” I asked.
“Yup. Probably working as a team. I was thinking of calling you in, but you’ve saved me the trouble.”
“Or Mick did,” I pointed out.
“No honour among thieves, you mean. Wrong. The body was cold, killed yesterday sometime, rigor still present, so probably afternoon or evening. Unlikely Clyde would have carefully driven her here if he’d had a hand in her death.”
“Was the Cord actually registered for the show?” I’d seen the show badge on the Cord’s windscreen but that might be a fake.
“Yup,” Dave said again. “In the name of Philip Stein, registered yesterday. Must be a false name, of course. It’s the major’s car, reported stolen two weeks ago.”
As the major had said. “Bonnie’s handiwork?” I asked.
I must have leapt in too quickly, because Dave picked up my interest. “Fell for her, did you?”
“Couldn’t afford her.” If only.
I stood watching as the pathologist and photographers finished their jobs and departed; everything from old sweet wrappers to ants who’d chosen their paths badly was being packaged as evidence. The body was being removed and I contemplated the thin line between my happy images of the live Bonnie and the silent waste of her dead body. No jeans and T-shirt for Bonnie at such shows. She always came with the thousand-dollar Carla Bruni touch. High heels, slim-fitting dress, large hat. It took Bonnie to bring these ingredients to life. Had they also brought her to her death?
“What was she wearing?” I asked Dave abruptly.
“Skirt, bling, blouse—good stuff. She’d had sex not long before her death, no signs of force, though.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “Tell me about these thefts.” Safer ground.
“Quite of lot of classic cars disappearing over the last year. You should know.”
“All from shows?”
“Wrong. Taken from hotel forecourts, car parks, all sorts of places.”
“What’s in common that makes you think it’s one gang’s work?”
“Too many of them in the last year. Not doing too well at the game if it’s a gang at work, though. Most of the cars have been found abandoned, unharmed, and returned to their owners.”
I frowned. “Odd. I wouldn’t have put Bonnie down as the joy-riding sort. Not worth her while. And yet, as you say, it doesn’t sound as though our Bonnie and Clyde made much money out of their illicit business if so many have proved so hot to handle they’ve had to be dumped.”
“Right. Smells a bit, I thought. The case of this Cord is out of line with the other thefts. It was returned to its owner, and it was harmed, if you count the bad paint job as harm.”
“The body disposal was out of line, too.”
“Car rage?” Dave asked hopefully. “Major so hopping mad over his car that he bumped Eva Crowley off?”
I looked at him kindly. “He doesn’t look two cents short of a dollar to me. He could afford a repaint. Why risk killing her?”
Dave shrugged. “Just an idea. I’ve never charged a castle owner before.” He looked rather wistfully at the majestic backdrop of Broadmead Castle. It’s small and young as castles go, but nevertheless part of it is definitely a late medieval turreted fortress. The rest of it lies scattered around in ruins, and the major and his wife inhabit the bit that has been built on relatively recently, i.e., the late eighteenth century. “Risky of Bonnie and Clyde to plan to bring the car back here if they were responsible for the paint job.”
“If it was them. If they’re car thieves at all. Any proof of that?”
“No. Looks a valid line of enquiry to me, though.”
“A weird one.” There was no getting round the fact that Bonnie had been killed yesterday, so indeed, why should the body have been brought here today? “Have you sorted out the order of the other dozen cars that came in with me?”
“A dozen different versions of it at the moment. The only thing that seems certain is that Johnnie Darling got here first in his Porsche. He’d have to be here first to man the gate. His number-two in the Austin-Healey was next. After that we’re in the realm of endless permutations.” Dave gave me a sardonic look. “When did you get here, Jack? Who did you see?”
I was caught. I’d got out of my beloved Gordon-Keeble, given it a loving pat or two, and then I’d spotted the Cord. “I didn’t pay any attention to what was around me until after I’d called you. Got here nine
-fifteenish, saw the red horror, and went straight over to it.”
“Cuff him, Mulligan,” Dave said amiably to the inspector, who had spotted me and was looking for easy prey. On this friendly note, Dave left me to my fate and disappeared back through the crime-scene entrance. I could see Mulligan’s train of thought. First on the scene. Must be guilty. Luckily, several witnesses had seen me arrive in my Gordon-Keeble, and my yell of shock was only a few minutes after that. Even Mulligan gave up on me, temporarily at least. I could see him mentally concocting a revised scenario: killed her last night, drove Cord in, dumped it, rushed to shin over the wall out of the grounds and pick up Gordon-Keeble parked round the corner. No, I reminded myself, silly scenarios were my territory. Police worked from evidence towards a theory—or so I hoped. Then I remembered my fingerprints were on that car. I’d supported myself with one hand to peer more closely at that blanket on the backseat. That was evidence of a sort.
I still couldn’t quite take the whole gruesome business in. For me, Bonnie was the girl on the bonnet, not a corpse in the backseat. I now had to wrestle with the fact that she could be a thief. Not proven, but I had to admit it did add up. It didn’t affect my image of her, however, as the joyous girl with the come-hither eyes.
When Mulligan reluctantly left me, a disappointed man, I couldn’t bear the sight of the crime scene any longer and went back to the tent where the other interned witnesses were huddled together, either waiting their turn at the interrogation tent or relieved that it was over and filling in the time to their release date. Bonnie was known to at least half of those present, and the talk was more animated now that there seemed to be no doubt who the victim was or that the car was the major’s. A series of rhetorical questions was still being repeated time and time again on the lines of:
“Who would dump a stolen car in the grounds of its owner, anyway?”
“Who would want to kill Bonnie?”
And of course, “Who the hell painted that Cord in triple red?”
Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 02/01/11 Page 6