Murder is My Racquet

by Otto Penzler

  “Why are you talking like that?” Jane asks him, as they switch sides after the first set. Franklin and Jane have taken only one game, and her composure is fraying.

  “Like what?” he asks, wiping the handle of his racquet. He is watching Kaylie as she takes a long swallow of some bottled iced tea drink with a dancing elf on the label. Tangerine-Raspberry Glee.

  “Like what?” he asks again.

  “Oh, I say, chaps! Spot of bother with Jerry over Saulier. The Archies are pounding the hell out of the air.”

  “That’s not what I sound like,” he says, but he keeps quiet through the next three games.

  By the fourth game Franklin has found his serve and it keeps the set competitive. It pleases him to feel the ball thundering off his racquet, and he takes a secret pleasure in watching Jarrett flailing after an ace, wrong-footed and off-balance. He imagines that Kaylie will see him in a whole new light. Perhaps she will talk about it at the office. “You should see this guy on the court. He’s got a cannon in that arm!”

  The set is tied at three games when Franklin begins crowding Jane at the net. He keeps riding her heels, reaching around to stab at the drop shots. “Stay back,” she says, after their racquets tangle on a return. “You’re all over me.”

  “Sorry,” he says, in his carrying voice. “Try to cover your clay.”

  “If you say that one more time, I will kill you,” she says. “I swear to God.”

  Jarrett and Kaylie take the second set, and the game turns in the third. Franklin’s arm is tired and Jane has grown timid and fretful after catching a ball on the shoulder. Jarrett is impatient to finish. He says something about clearing the court for fresh players. Earlier he had been taking something off the balls he hit to Jane, now he smacks them straight up the gut. She can do little more than get out of the way.

  They’re down a break when Jarrett sends a two-handed smash up the middle. Jane can’t move in time. The ball catches her on the side of the head, right at the jawline below her ear. Her racquet clatters to the ground and her hands fly to her face. Kaylie is around the net in a heartbeat; Jarrett runs off the court for a towel and some ice. Two players from the next court run over to see if she’s all right. Jane is embarrassed by the fuss. She works her jaw muscle and says she’s fine. She was just startled, is all.

  Franklin has been strangely quiet during all of this. He doesn’t know quite what to do or say, and he recognizes that Jarrett’s remorse over the incident has given him an edge. Now, as Jane smiles and declares herself fit to play, he gathers himself to be magnanimous. “Don’t worry about it,” he says to Jarrett. “These things will happen.” Turning to Jane, he says, “Next time, cover your clay.”

  She picks up her racquet and slams it against his head with every ounce of strength she can muster. It is a peach of a shot. A real dipsy-doodle. Franklin is dimly aware of the red clay rushing toward him, of the voices raised in alarm, of the expression of mute horror on his wife’s face. He perceives these things as if from the window of a passing car.

  For the first time in many years, he feels as if he has all the time in the world. His mind is lit up from within, calling forth moods and mementos long since lost to the clutter of shopping lists and spreadsheets and canine entry systems. He sees his mother in a long calico dress, glancing backward over her shoulder as she reaches to hang a piñata. He hears his father’s steps heavy on the wooden porch, indignant over the discovery of a broken taillight. He tastes the coppery bite of a new retainer as he presses his lips against those of his seventh-grade girlfriend, huddled behind the splicing table in the audiovisual room. He fingers the three dollars in his pocket as he stands outside the house, waiting for a ride to the hobby shop. He feels his grandfather squeeze his hand goodbye that last time.

  His thoughts take a bad bounce and he finds himself at the beginning of that terrible year. He sees it all—the doctor moving slowly toward him along the corridor, the grim face, the shake of the head, the pink balloon slipping from his fingers and floating lazily to the ceiling. He recognizes this for what it is, the moment when the game turned. He swats it aside. No point in arguing a bad call.

  Franklin’s head strikes the ground and there is now a great deal of blood coming from somewhere. He is aware of this but it does not interest him much. For him, it is a winter day in Columbus. He is in his dorm room, sophomore year. There is a poster over his head, Picasso’s Don Quixote, and the gooseneck lamp on his desk has a large jagged chip in the plastic shade. He has just walked Jane back from the library, but she is already on the phone, telling him that she misses him.

  There is a Browns game on. Nick Skorich’s last year and Brian Sipe’s first. Franklin is trying to listen through an earpiece without letting Jane know that he is listening. “What did you say?” he asks.

  “I’m just saying that it’s going to be great. Thanksgiving.”

  “Of course it’ll be great. Why wouldn’t it be?”

  “Oh, you know. You meeting my parents. That whole parent thing. But it’ll be good. Great. I have no clams whatever.”

  Franklin reaches for the transistor and spins down the volume. “What?”

  “I said I have no qualms about it. You and my father will get along great.”

  “That’s not what you said. You said clams. You said you have no clams whatever.”

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. Clams.”

  She giggles. “I didn’t.”

  “You did. You said you have no clams whatever.” He swings his feet onto the desk. “Why don’t you have any clams? This worries me, I have to admit. What if I want clams? Will we be able to get them if we need them for some reason?”

  Jane is laughing now. “Stop it. That’s not what I said, I said qualms.”

  “Have it your way. I’ll just qualm up.”

  Phipps hands off to Pruitt and Pruitt fumbles, but Franklin does not care. A beautiful girl is on the other end of the phone laughing at his wry manner and telling him that she misses him. If he were to press the phone closer to his ear, he would hear a certain strident tremolo in her voice that might alarm him, but he is not listening for that now. He adjusts his earpiece and turns the radio back up.

  He has no clams whatever.

  To the uninitiated, tennis is a genteel sport, steeped in white clothes, lemonade, and polite applause. But to those who truly love and know it, the deceptively well-mannered lawn game can be a secret hotbed of all manner of criminality and even extreme violence—as revealed all too clearly in common sport terminology like “overhead smash” and “killer serve.” Now award-winning editor Otto Penzler presents shocking and mind-teasing tales of murder and detection on and off the court by fourteen of today’s finest authors of mystery and suspense fiction.

  Lawrence Block’s “Terrible Tommy Terhune” spotlights a temperamental champ who’s the master of the serve but can’t quite manage his rage… in “Six Love” by James W. Hall, the father of a court prodigy goes to homicidal lengths to erase a very personal shame… Mike Lupica’s “The Rematch” combines the game’s reigning bad boy, a hated umpire, and a highly unsportsmanlike abduction… a surprising source tries to force a superstar to throw the big match in “Close Shave” by Ridley Pearson… and Lisa Scottoline’s “Love Match” keeps score on a friendly tennis lesson between two cops that leads to the discovery of a chilling crime.

  Other thrilling volleys show you how to booby-trap a court the lethal way… how the wrong grip can literally kill you… and why you should never, ever play against your spouse. These and other ace stories by Kinky Friedman, John Harvey, Jeremiah Healy, Stephen Hunter, Judith Kelman, Robert Leuci, Peter Lovesey, David Morrell, and Daniel Stashower display the unbeatable masters of the literary drop shot at the very top of their game.

  Carolyn Hartman

  OTTO PENZLER owns The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City and founded the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler Books. He has written and edited several books, including the Edgar® Award
-winning Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection and the anthology Dangerous Women, and is the series editor of the annual Best American Mystery Stories of the Year.

  “Tennis is not all about gentility—a fact amply illustrated on the following pages. Here, some of the giants of the mystery genre have brought their murderous intentions to center court.

  “There’s murder, of course, some of it not terribly genteel at all. You’ll encounter blackmail, voodoo, insanity, and clever scams. You’ll see that human behavior doesn’t vary that much, whether it’s on the pro tour, at the country club, or on a public court.

  “Whether the action is centered on a top-ranked player, a hopeless pitty-pat struggler, or a ball boy, there are always secrets to keep and mysteries to unravel. And who better to create these mysteries (and solve them) than a gathering of some of the world’s top-ranked crime writers?”

  —Otto Penzler, from the Introduction