EQMM, August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "But he didn't."

  "No. He didn't. He was going to use the tapes. Some scheme he had on the Internet. Awful."

  "So you sent him a valentine."

  Puzzlement played across those pretty features. She could have been playing at confusion but wasn't. I somehow had the feeling she wanted the tapes not to hide them but to remind her of her arrogance in believing she could truly change a devil like Nick. “How did you know?"

  I handed her the check, along with the letter signed “Dusty.” “Homicide has a matching fragment of the envelope."

  The sadness seemed to press her shoulders with the accumulated weight of mankind's sins. Her voice when she spoke was from Plato's cave, blind of sentiment, touching despair. “It was the only way I knew to bring him down. I tried to warn him off with the letter. I found out about Desirée, and thought the threat would make him reconsider. I was wrong. Nothing stopped Nick. Guilt, ridicule, humiliation, rejection rolled off him like modesty at an orgy. He was funny that way; nothing seemed to get to him, as if he had no conscience. The bomb was the only way, something distant. Had I tried to stab him in the heart, I would have found myself in his arms before the blade could bite. Poison would have been his vitamin. No, the only way it could be done was at a distance. Suddenly. Like a thunderbolt, disguised as a love offering.

  "To him, love was cheap, the last thing he would have taken seriously, thus the best way to lull him.” There seemed to be a tear in her eye, but it could have been the angle of the light. “I'm glad he's dead,” she said with finality. But then, in a softer voice, “I'll miss him, though, and I have a premonition that without him, life will lose meaning. For all the pleasure he gave, he was evil, but the pleasure, oh, the pleasure. It was sublime, and I will miss it and therefore him.” Out of the depths of that cave she looked me full in the face, innocent as God's lamb. “Why,” she asked, “couldn't you leave things alone? Why did you have to do this to me?"

  It was a good question. One that I'd considered but not really articulated. Charity had been immersed in material love. Desirée was a romantic. While Sadie's love was twisted, it was, nonetheless, there. Now, sitting talking to a fallen angel whose passion was driven by faith, I realized I'd have rather it was one of the others who had taken Nick down. Yet, given Nick, none of them could have. Just as certainly, someone needed to sort out the affair for posterity. Someone like me. “It's what I do,” I said. “Call it a labor of love. Call it God's work, but in the end, it's what I do. If I didn't set things straight, it would be anything goes, chaos. Without me and the others—Jewish mothers, Dutch uncles, grade-school teachers—we'd never know right from wrong and all wind up in hell."

  She seemed to understand, though in these things you can never be sure. Then, as if seeking either justification or absolution, she asked, “Was I wrong? To do what I did?"

  Knowing Nick the way I did, it was a devil of a question to answer.

  (c)2007 by Frank Wydra

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Ed Gorman has handed off this column to me, and I plan to continue Ed's practice of presenting a wide variety of blogs for all types of readers. I'll try to mention some prominent ones and to find some obscure ones you might not notice if not for me.

  And speaking of prominent blogs, the first I'd like to recommend is Ed's own: newimprovedgorman.blogspot.com. Like a lot of blogs, Ed's is pretty much free-form. Recently he's reviewed novels as varied as David Goodis's The Wounded and the Slain and Saturday Games by Brown Meggs. He's had an interview with author Charles Runyon, the rumors of whose death proved to be greatly exaggerated. He's presented a list of ten crime novels that he believes should be read and re-read. No matter what he's writing about, Ed is trenchant, informed, and informative. If you're not reading his blog, you're missing one of the real pleasures of the Internet.

  Ed has previously recommended Steve Lewis's Mystery*File blog in this space. It's another blog that's high on my list of pleasures, and it's changed URLs since Ed's earlier mention. It's now found here: mysteryfile.com/blog/. Steve continues to have some of the best-researched articles on mystery you'll find anywhere, along with movie reviews, book reviews, guest columns, letters from his readers, and great photos of book covers, lobby cards, and movie posters. Recent reviews include one of the movie Meet Boston Blackie, R. Austin Freeman's The Jacob Street Mystery, and Richard Burke's The Frightened Pigeon. There's also a letter from Doug Swanson that explains why he is no longer writing the Flippo series. Mystery*File is essential reading for fans of the mystery and popular culture in general.

  Duane Swierczynski, besides having a name that's really hard for me to spell, is a crime writer of note (The Blonde being his latest novel), the editor-in-chief of the Philadelphia City Paper, an editor (of Damn Near Dead, an excellent anthology that includes an Edgar-nominated short story by, well, me), and a blogger (secretdead.blogspot.com/) who can be both vulgar and hilarious (see his posts on Allan Guthrie week), personal (posts on the birthdays of his wife and child), and serious (interviews with Ed Holub and Lance Doty, who are, respectively, trying to bring novels by David Goodis and Fredric Brown to the screen). Duane doesn't post every single day, but he's always interesting, so I check often.

  Bill Crider's own blog, Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine, can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com.

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  GIRL'S BEST FRIEND by Judith Cutler

  Once a teacher of creative writing, Judith Cutler has become the celebrated author of several popular mystery series, including the Kate Power police procedurals, and the Caffy Tyler decorator-sleuth books. The antiques dealers featured in her new story for EQMM also star in her novel Drawing the Line, which Allison & Busby released in 2005. She is married to another of this issue's authors, Edward Marston.

  When a guy presents you with an engagement ring, a socking great oval ruby surrounded by diamonds, it might seem a tad ungrateful to subject it to scrutiny with a jeweller's eyepiece.

  Griff, my adoptive grand-father, business partner, and antique-dealer extraordinaire, wouldn't ever soil his lips with expressions like looking a gift-horse in the mouth. But he did ask, as he prepared supper that evening, “Surely that breaches all rules of etiquette, my darling Lina?"

  I slipped the ornate jewel back onto my ring finger, which I wiggled so that it picked up the candlelight. Griff always made meals an occasion, even worrying about the niceties of what cutlery to use when serving Thai stir-fry in an Elizabethan cottage at the heart of a Kentish village. “I think I was a bit bowled over,” I conceded slowly. “All that bended-knee stuff and the promise of a round-the-world cruise for our honeymoon. For me, Lina Townend!"

  "And there I thought chivalry had died out in your generation,” he said.

  "Apparently not,” I said coolly. But how could I snub my dearest friend? “Griff, what was I doing? This is Piers Hamlyn, for goodness’ sake!"

  "Piers Hamlyn, who, despite his predilection for cords and bodywarmers, is a most dashing piece of manhood,” Griff burbled. “Those shoulders! That neat bum!"

  "Those cornflower-blue eyes, perfect complexion, and honey-coloured hair,” I added.

  "And second cousin once removed of your own father, Lord Elham,” Griff reflected, with distinctly less enthusiasm.

  "Which doesn't say much for him, does it?” I asked quietly.

  "Just because Lord Elham—how strange that neither of us ever refers to him as anything more intimate—is not the purest diamond in the tiara doesn't mean his cousin is flawed. Though I must admit,” he continued, allowing a tiny quaver to creep into his voice, and sinking into his frail-old-man mode, “it has been what we used to call a whirlwind romance."

  It had. And considering that women of my generation tended not to demand courtship and rings and weddings before—as Griff gracelessly put it—hopping into bed, it was a very romantic romance. Flowers; candlelit dinners; the question popped within two weeks of our fi
rst meeting at a big and classy antiques fair at a vast country pile—it belonged to another of his cousins—and no attempt to go beyond a not terribly passionate snog.

  What on earth had I been doing? The ring said, in a very snide voice, “Doing pretty well for yourself, considering."

  I whipped it off and peered closely at it again.

  "Oh, Griff, why didn't I tell Piers to ask you for my hand? You could have asked him about his prospects and how he meant to maintain me!” Which would have given me time to think.

  "I take it you wouldn't want me to go so far as to reject him as a suitor?"

  "Yes. No. I wish I knew.” I gave the ring another squint. What was wrong with me? Or rather, what was wrong with it? What had got all my divvy's antennae a-twitch?

  Its provenance, for one thing. Every dealer likes to know where an item's been before it comes to him. You might think it's enough to know the maker, but forging manufacturer's marks is easy-peasy to a master, as is copying a painter's signature on a faked masterpiece. So you want to know who bought it and from whom, all through its life. In the case of a picture, the number of times it's been exhibited and where. As for a ring like this, it's tricky and hardly worth bothering, so long as you can see the hallmark on the band, in this case one declaring it was made in Birmingham, that City of a Thousand Trades, way back in 1879. So it was the right age to have a silver mount for the stones, as opposed to the stronger platinum claws used later.

  Everything was right about it.

  Or not.

  "I'd love you to take a look at it,” I said. “After all, it's not exactly my area, is it?"

  "At our level, dear heart, we have to be Jacks and Jills of all trades. I know you can beat most people hollow when it comes to Victorian china, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't turn your hand to other things. I know, I know. You were spot-on with the date—but then,” he added, “I'd have been disappointed if you hadn't been. You worked hard to learn the assay marks.” He smiled, and tucked a lock of my hair in place. “There's a good brain between those ears of yours, my child. For all you worry about having no paper qualifications, you're a very bright young woman."

  I didn't argue. But school and I had been relative strangers to each other, thanks to my life in care after my mother's death. You'd have expected my father to take me in, maybe. But not my father, Lord Elham, of Bossingham Court. Lord Elham, old rogue that he was, had taken no more notice of me than he'd taken of my other thirty siblings. But then, he claimed he'd never known about any of us, not in any detail. And indeed, it was me who'd found him, not the other way round. ("I who'd found him, dear heart,” Griff would have told me gently.) And he hadn't been especially keen on me, at least not until I'd dug him out of a particularly nasty hole and managed to cast him in the light not of a greedy criminal but of a public benefactor. My father called himself a gentleman—but since I'd always believed in the adage gentleman is as gentleman does, I'd yet to see him deserve the term. Or the title Noble Lord. Lord Elham. And no, that didn't make me Lady anything, since I was born on what Griff would call the wrong side of the blanket. Well, with all those brothers and sisters in the picture, you'd probably worked that out for yourself. He'd taken the huff when I'd refused to leave Griff and go and live at Bossingham Hall, but that's another story.

  "Now, do I look at this bauble as if admiring your betrothed's taste, or as if valuing it for auction?"

  "As my dearest friend,” I said humbly. “And under a very strong lamp."

  "Tomorrow morning, then."

  Before I washed up I hung the ring on a little Edwardian ring-tree that for as long as I could remember Griff had kept beside the kettle. That was Griff for you. Forward planning. Or, more likely, seeing a charming little item going cheap and giving it a good home. Most of the stuff we bought we had to sell, of course—that's how dealers make a living. But Griff made it a rule that we only bought what we ourselves liked. Usually.

  "If you like something, you find out about it,” he'd told me when he'd first employed me. “And the more you know about something the more people regard you as an expert and come to trust you. Trust is like virtue—it's its own reward."

  "And it doesn't damage your prices."

  He'd chuckled. “Clearly, dear heart, you are a dealer in the bud."

  Over the next two or three years, I'd blossomed a bit. What I was best at was restoring damaged Victorian china, and not passing it as perfect. Unlike some I could name. So people trusted me when I said something was good, you see. And my prices rose accordingly. Occasionally other dealers would come to me when they found something hard to shift. If it was pukka, and only then, I'd pop it on our stall and sell it at the usual commission. Not that I would be selling Piers's ring on my stall, for goodness’ sake!

  "What worries me,” Griff said as he wiped up, “is that despite his lineage Piers works at the lowest end of the market. Collectibles, indeed! Junk, in other words."

  "There's room for all sorts—and we're not exactly at the top end ourselves."

  I wished the words back: What Griff was really afraid of was that I'd abandon him.

  If only I could have talked Piers over with a woman. But I hadn't many women friends my own age, thanks to my miserable upbringing, and Griff, though he was dearer to me than anyone seemed able to imagine, was hardly a role model for someone as young and romantic as me (or should that be I?): He'd been in a settled if semidetached relationship for more years than he cared to remember.

  Washing-up done, I dried my hands and slapped on some cream. As beauty routines went, it didn't go far, and Griff tended to nag when I didn't use sunblock or moisturiser. I had to admit that the ring looked better on well-tended mitts than it would have done on my pre-Griff paws. Or did it look too good? Despite Griff's offer, I took it and the eyeglass up to my workroom and switched on the strong spotlight I need for the most delicate restoration work. And then I called Griff.

  "You've got better eyes than I have,” he said, somewhat grudgingly since I'd hauled him from his favourite television program, a docudrama about civilians being tested to SAS standards. “But you're right. Those two stones aren't exactly the same as the others. Pretty close. But a ring that age is bound to have been repaired."

  "Cleaned and repaired?"

  "Why not? The young man wants to impress his beloved."

  "Piers didn't say anything about a repair. He said it came straight from a sale—he'd only cleaned it up a bit to see what he'd got."

  "He's cleaned it very well indeed. To professional standards,” Griff mused. “So why didn't he come clean—as clean as this ring, in fact—and simply tell you it had come with two stones missing and he'd had them replaced?"

  "Why indeed?"

  * * * *

  Next time we met, this time in a church hall in the Cotswolds so cold that Griff's knuckles turned bluey-white, the rest of his fingers purple, Piers presented me with another ring.

  "I'm not asking you to choose between them,” he said pettishly as I slipped it admiringly onto my right hand: It was a sapphire version of my ruby, with a lovely Sri Lankan stone, much lighter than you get these days, that put it back into the Victorian period.

  I bit my lip: I'd better not tell him I preferred it.

  "I'm asking you to sell it. It's too good for my stall: It'll just disappear amongst all the collectibles. But you've got nice, classy stuff. Everything guaranteed antique, with nothing less than a hundred years old."

  I nodded. We were totally out of place at this fair, as Griff bitterly acknowledged, to which we'd only come because Griff had a Thespian friend in the area and because I could meet up with Piers.

  "China, glass, and treen,” I said. “No jewellery."

  "Then it'll stand out all the better, especially with a spotlight trained on it. And your hand to model it.” He kissed it with enough passion to tempt me.

  "I'll have to ask Griff,” I said.

  "He lets you fly solo with your restored china,” he pointed out. “I
can't see how he could object if you want to branch out into jewellery, particularly stuff as nice as this."

  "I'll ask,” I said coldly, “because I value his opinion.” He should have known by now never to argue about anything concerning Griff.

  * * * *

  "Do I recollect that you come of age shortly, my child?"

  "You know I do. And we agreed to have no fuss.” Largely because Griff was increasingly terrified by his own birthdays, and in any case celebrating being twenty-one was a bit old-fashioned these days.

  "It occurs to me that you are so attracted to that sapphire ring that it would make an ideal gift."

  I looked him in the eye. “Not so much attracted as suspicious, Griff. You look.” I passed the lovely thing to him.

  "The sapphire's exquisite,” he sighed. Then he stopped. “How many dodgy stones do you make it?"

  "Three this time. I shall have to mark it sold as seen."

  "And the price? If you do that it'll never reach what he's asking. And I have an idea you were relying on the commission to buy your wedding dress."

  "Wedding, shmedding.” I took the ruby ring off as well. The two big stones blinked enticingly at me. The diamonds surrounding them didn't.

  * * * *

  "Shame,” Piers greeted my confession that we'd not been able to sell the ring. “But why don't you keep trying? And I was hoping you'd shift these earrings for me.” He produced an elaborate case, fine leather and watered silk, containing a dazzling pair with free-hanging emeralds and diamonds on tiny springs.

  "Victorian again.” They were so fine I'd have expected to see them at Christie's.

  "Got this aunt who's fallen on hard times. Doesn't want anyone to know.” He tapped the side of his nose. “Noblesse oblige, and all that."