by Sean Dexter
She smiled and sipped her drink. “Thank you for the respect, it was refreshing.” She let go of my hand and twirled strands of her blonde hair between two fingers.
Brett Jones and Ernie Deck shared the stage with Nadia and Amanda, two local entertainers backing them up as Brett talked about the song he was about to sing.
Barbara feigned interest in what he was saying. She lit a cigarette and continued to play with her hair.
“I bet you could get us out of here and we could have lunch on your boat,” she said with an impish smile that made promises I didn’t want to think about.
“I don’t think so.” I smiled back and looked at the closest exit. “The police consider me a suspect, so I can’t leave.”
“I don’t have a show until tomorrow afternoon.” Her green eyes suggested things I could only imagine, as she twirled a strand of hair like an impatient teenager. “Suspect?” Barbara turned around in her seat and looked upstairs.
I smiled my reply and read more of the event program. Before I finished I’d read enough to know who killed Dallas.
“Are you going to sell your bird sculptures at the hotel again?” I closed the program.
“You like them?” She turned back to me and stubbed out the cigarette.
“Impressive work.”
“You know, they’re actually very detailed.” She sipped the last of her drink and moved the empty glass forward so Brian would refill it. She lit another cigarette.
“I read that in the program.”
“It’s relaxing.” She looked toward the stage, exhaling a thin stream of smoke. “Writing is work. I enjoy it, and love it when it’s successful, but sometimes facing that blank page, even with an idea in my head, is frightening. But give me a block of wood and I can see the bird hiding inside and I help it come out.”
She fell silent and took the fresh drink from Brian.
The songwriters became aware that the public wasn’t being allowed into the Saloon, even though it was past eleven, and they were not being allowed out. Brett Jones was off the stage and without the music, the hum of conversation seemed loud. All the cops did when questioned was shake their heads. No one in, no one out.
Barbara took a long swallow of her drink and looked at the anxious crowd. She smiled nervously at me, stubbed out her cigarette, stopped twirling her hair, and massaged her temples, elbows on the bar.
“It was an accident.” The words came out in a soft hum, the seductiveness of her voice effortless. Even so, she looked like a child standing next to a broken lamp, when she turned to me.
“How’d it happen?” I kept my voice low.
“You know my brother has a couple of songs on the charts, right?” She tried a shallow, childish grin and took her drink off the bar. “Dennis Linder.”
“And he’s here.” I tapped the show’s program.
“Yeah. He has shows Thursday and Friday with me.”
“So, what happened upstairs?” My curiosity piqued as to why she was confessing to me.
“Dallas wanted me to move back in with him. He’d been working with Dennis like he does with novice writers. He wanted all of us to work together, make a fortune, he said. And Dennis believed him, because he has his own dreams. Our getting back together was supposed to be your exclusive this morning. But I knew he only wanted me because I’d left him. I didn’t love him then and I don’t even like him now.”
She reached out and touched my hand. Her eyes were cold and the sparkle was gone. Would Barbara have been there when Melissa showed up at eleven? Dallas was Dallas, I thought to myself.
She took a sip of her drink, using her free hand. “I waited upstairs and, as usual, he was late, and then he came with the proposition. He talked about success and money and when I said no, he grabbed my shoulders and shook me hard.” Her voice trembled. “He said he’d continue to work with Dennis and ruin us both in the end. I panicked, and he scared me.” Her eyes moved toward the bartender and then back to me. “I knew he’d ruined other careers, and without thinking I struck him with the drumstick.” She was squeezing my hand, hard. “It was an accident.”
“You were by the bar?” I could see the scene in my head and wondered how she handled all the blood.
“Yes. He bled a lot and I pushed him away.” She wiped her eyes with the bar napkin from under her drink. “I guess I hit an artery or something, he leaned against the bar. I grabbed hold of his arm and moved him back to the stage.”
“You didn’t try to take the drumstick out? Or call for help?”
“There was too much blood. I had it all over my blouse and it wouldn’t stop. I wasn’t thinking about anything but the blood and the gurgling sound in his throat.”
“Where’s the blouse?”
“This sweatshirt was behind the bar, so I put it on and wrapped my blouse in an old bag and tossed it in a bin downstairs,” she said. “It was like a dream. No, a nightmare and it happened in a second.”
“They’ll find the blouse.” I was thinking about what the detectives had accused me of.
“Of course, but I wasn’t thinking past the moment.” She took her hand away. “I saw a Kristofferson CD on the bar and put it on loud before I left.”
“Why?” When she said Kristofferson’s name, she tried to hide a smile.
“Dallas was jealous of him, always has been and I knew he was dying and thought it was poetic justice that he died listening to Kristofferson’s hits.”
“How come I didn’t see you coming down the stairs?”
“It happened as soon as he came upstairs,” she said, crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks. “Around nine-thirty and I was downstairs hiding my blouse before quarter to ten.”
So, Dallas went right upstairs from the bar, letting Barbara wait only a few minutes. I wanted her to say more, wondering if I would hear from her bitter side or a sultry woman.
“What’s going to happen, now, Mick?”
Her amorous voice and frightened schoolgirl look made me want to grab her hand and run away.
“You have to turn yourself in,” I said instead. It was my turn to touch her cold hand. “Tell them the truth. But you have a problem.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said and placed her free hand over mine.
“The whittled drumstick, it looks like you planned to use it as a weapon,” I said. “It looks premeditated and the cops said the murderer watched Dallas bleed to death instead of calling for help. They won’t buy it was an accident.”
“The dead son-of-a-bitch is still screwing with my life!” With teeth clenched, she controlled the anger, but her face couldn’t hide it. “Instead of leaving when he was late, which I should’ve, I waited because Dennis wanted me to talk to Dallas.” She pulled her shaking hands from mine.
“You need an attorney,” I said.
She had stopped crying, but still looked helpless.
“I know a local one, Nathan Smith. I’ll call him.”
“How do I do it?” She reached out and touched my face. “I guess there’s no lunch this time.”
“Maybe when this is all over.” I got up.
I called Nathan’s cell and gave him a brief explanation of what was going on. His office was three blocks away and he told me sit still and hold on to Barbara. I promised I would. Then I found Detective Morales, and asked him to allow Nathan into the bar.
He looked at me with concern in his black Latin eyes and grinned. “Why? You going to confess?”
“Something like that,” I said and walked back to Barbara.
Nathan showed up within a half hour and after a few minutes of hassle from Luis at the side entrance, he walked in. He’s a tall man with wavy white-blonde hair, a trimmed beard, who likes colorful shirts, linen pants, and Italian loafers.
I introduced him to Barbara and he had me step aside until they finished talking.
“The Chief is here?” Nathan kept his arm around Barbara’s shoulder, like a bear hugging its cub, as he motioned me to join them.
“In the office.”
“Remember to listen to me and do what I say.” He looked at Barbara and she nodded. “Lead the way, Mick.”
Barbara took the final swallow of her drink, stubbed out what had to be her twentieth cigarette and, while holding my hand, walked to the Saloon’s office.
“Why tell me?” I asked as we walked.
“I thought you’d take me to lunch and we’d be out of here,” she whispered, her face blank of any expression. “When I knew you couldn’t, I wanted to see if you’d believe me.”
“Did I?” We stopped outside the office.
“I think so.” She gave me her schoolgirl smile and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered into my ear.
I knocked on the door and opened it, without saying anything more.
“Not now, Mick,” Richard barked.
“Someone wants to turn herself in,” I said and pushed the door open.
Barbara moved forward, Nathan stood behind her, and she smiled her best at the three men in the office.
“I’m Barbara Linder.” Her sultry tone had the men stand. “And this is my attorney, Nathan Smith.” She turned to me, the little-girl-lost look locked on her face.
Yeah, she’ll do well with a Key West jury, no matter what story she told.
Michael Haskins was born and raised outside of Boston, where he became a journalism addict while in high school working a weekend midnight-8 a.m. shift at the old Boston Record-American. While in California, Haskins worked part time as a freelance photojournalist. He moved to Key West in the mid '90s and became the island's daily paper's business writer/editor. After five years of that he left to work as the city's public information office. The first book in his Mick Murphy Key West Mystery series was published in 2008. He freelances for Reuters News and writes for The Weekly newspaper. His short stories have been published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. He is currently writing his eighth Mick Murphy mystery.
A Matter of Heart
by
Bill Crider
A lot of hardboiled writers also excel in Western fiction. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. There are many similarities between the lone wolf PI fighting for justice in the urban jungle and the lone cowboy who rides into town to dispense justice. Bill is one of those writers dabbling in both genres. I am delighted to show off his work with this story that was printed years ago in Murder for Mother and has a new chance to shine again in my anthology.
The telephone woke me from a pretty good dream, one in which my knee had never been damaged and in which I was just being handed the football by the head linesman after going over a thousand yards for the third straight year as a Dallas Cowboy. I was reaching for the ball as the cheers of the sell-out crowd turned into the shrilling of the phone.
I turned on a light and looked at the black plastic Casio on my left wrist. Then I picked up the phone. “It's four fifty-six,” I said into the mouthpiece.
“I didn't call for a time check,” Dino said. “I got a job for you.”
“Somebody wants a house painted at four fifty-six in the morning?”
“It's not that kinda job. Are you gonna come over here or not?”
I wanted to say no and get back to the dream, but Dino was an old friend, if friend was the right word for the guy who'd ruined my knee when we were in college and nearly gotten me killed a few months back when his daughter was kidnapped. But it was his house I was living in.
“Right now?” I asked.
“What, you think I meant next week? Of course, right now.”
“I have to get dressed.”
“Fine. Get dressed. Then get your butt over here.”
He hung up. Sometimes I think he takes me for granted.
I rolled out of the bed and looked around for my jeans and short-sleeved sweatshirt. They were lying on a chair with the book I'd been reading the night before—Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned. I was trying to improve my mind.
After I dressed, I opened the back door to look for Nameless. I didn't have to look far. He came charging through the opening, skidded to a stop by his food bowl, and looked back over his shoulder at me.
I ripped open a pack of Tender Vittles and dumped it into the bowl. “Sorry I'm so slow,” I told him. He didn't answer. He just started eating.
I had to wait for him to finish because I knew he'd want to go back outside as soon as he was done. Dino would just have to wait, too, but nowhere on Galveston Island is very far from anywhere else. I'd be at Dino's soon enough.
#
“I don't see how you can drink that stuff, much less at this hour of the morning,” Dino said.
I tipped up the Big Red and took the final swallow. “It's not so bad when you get used to it,” I said when I lowered the bottle.
He shook his head. “Liquid bubble gum.”
I set the empty bottle on his coffee table. “You didn't ask me over here to talk about my drinking habits. What about that job you mentioned?”
“It's not house painting.”
“You said that.”
“And it's not alligators.”
I'd looked into the matter of a dead alligator for an old friend not too long ago. “How about kidnapping?”
“It's not that, either.”
“Well,” I said, leaning back in the chair, “now we know what it's not. So what is it?”
“I think it's a murder.”
“Oh boy,” I said. “You got another Big Red?”
#
I'd come back to Galveston after a few years as a private detective. My sister had disappeared, and I was going to find her. I supported myself by painting houses, but Dino involved me in looking for his daughter, who had been born of one of the prostitutes who worked for Dino's uncles back in the days when The Island was as wide-open as it was possible to be in Texas. The woman's name was Evelyn; she had long since given up her trade, but she and Dino had never lived together, though the kidnapping had brought them closer.
I took a drink of the fresh Big Red. “Who do you think's been murdered?”
“A woman named Sue Traylor.”
The name didn't mean anything to me, and I said so.
“She worked for my uncles.”
“Same job as Evelyn?”
“Right. She got out of the business just as Evelyn was getting started, but she was Evelyn's what-do-you-call-it?” He looked at me. “One of the big buzzwords these days.”
“Mentor?” I asked. Considering the profession we were talking about, it didn't seem like exactly the right word.
“Mentor, yeah. Anyway, a few months after Evelyn got started, Sue moved to some little town up close to Dallas. Corsicana. Got a job, married a lawyer. He'd been married once before and had a kid. The lawyer died a couple of years ago, but she and the son lived happily ever after, until yesterday.”
“She got murdered in Corsicana? I'm not going to Corsicana.”
“She didn't get murdered there. She got murdered here.”
“Oh,” I said. “Maybe you better tell me about it.”
#
It seemed that Sue Traylor had been wanting to come back to Galveston for a nostalgic visit for a number of years. The lawyer and the son thought she'd grown up there, but they didn't know anything about her profession. She talked all the time about missing the Gulf breezes and the sound of the waves, so the son had bought her a ticket on the train as a Mother's Day present. She'd arrived in Houston on the Amtrak and then taken the excursion train to Galveston. She checked into the Galvez Hotel, one of the oldest and best on The Island.
“She and Evelyn had been in touch for years, like they were sorority sisters or something,” Dino told me. “Maybe she'd been in touch with some other people too. Anyway, they arranged to meet for lunch, and they had a fine time talking over old times. They went back to the room and talked a little longer, and that was that. Evelyn went home. The maid found Sue the next morning, dead in the bed.”
“How
did she die?”
“It looked like natural causes at first,” Dino said. “Heart attack.”
That explained why I hadn't read anything about it in the newspaper. It wouldn't have been exactly front-page news; it wouldn't have been in the paper at all if the hotel could keep it out. People aren't fond of renting rooms that other people have recently died in.
“But it wasn't a heart attack,” I said.
“Right. Turns out she was poisoned.”
All that was interesting, but I didn't see what it had to do with Dino.
“Did you know her?” I asked. “Back when she was working for the uncles, I mean.”
“I saw her around, yeah. I don't remember her very well. I was pretty young then. And I wasn't one of the people she stayed in touch with, if that's what you're asking.”
“So why are you so interested? And what's the job you've got for me?”
“I want you to find out who killed her.”
“Why?”
“Because the cops think it might've been Evelyn.”
I suppose it was only natural. Evelyn had been seen in the hotel dining room with Sue Traylor at lunch. She'd gone back to the room with her and talked. As far as anyone could determine, no one else had been to the room since that time, and Sue Traylor hadn't left it. Therefore Evelyn must have been the killer. She hadn't been arrested yet, but Dino was sure it was just a matter of time.
“That's why I called you,” he said. “They're starting to get rough with her. They picked her up about midnight and took her down to the station. Questioned her for a few hours, then took her home. You know the drill.”
“And she called you when she got home.”
“Right. And then I called you. What do you think?”
“I think I'd better talk to Evelyn and then find out who else went to that room,” I said.
#
I went by McDonald's and ate an Egg McMuffin before driving by Evelyn's. She lived on a street named for a fish, like all the streets in the neighborhood, and she wasn't happy with the way she'd been treated.
“I'm a respectable citizen,” she said. “They didn't have any right to get me out of bed like that.”