Hoch's Ladies

by Edward D. Hoch

“We have to tell him about it anyway, before he sees it in the paper,” Annie insisted. “I’ll go if you don’t want to, Frank.”

  Munson shrugged. “It’s all yours.”

  Quentis’s body had been removed. Munson accompanied Paseo back to the police station to give them an official statement, while Annie Sears took the rental car and drove back to the dock where they’d interviewed Benedict Quentis. He was nowhere around, and the fishing operation seemed to be closed down for the day. Finally she spotted one of the men who’d been loading fish into the cart.

  “I’m looking for Benedict Quentis. Is he around?”

  “Gone,” the man replied. “Gone home.”

  “Where?”

  “Or maybe to the Corridor for a beer. Who knows?”

  “Where is the Corridor?”

  He gave her directions to a restaurant and bar a few blocks away. At first Annie didn’t see him in the dim light and decided she’d have to get his home address. Then she heard his distinctive laughter and spotted him in a corner booth with a woman.

  She made her way over there and asked, “Could I see you alone, Mr.

  Quentis? It’s very important.”

  He glared at her, squeezing the woman’s shoulder and promising to be right back. They went off to a corner near the restrooms, and she told him his brother was dead. “My partner shot him as he was getting on the ferry to Los Mochis. He wouldn’t surrender.”

  “Dunstan always was a stubborn fool,” he said. “Will you bury him here?”

  He thought about that. “He doesn’t deserve a funeral. Bury him where you like. If there’s an expense, I will pay it. That’s all. He was dead to me long ago.”

  “All right,” she told him, not surprised at his decision. But something was still bothering her, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

  In the morning, she sought out a library that had English-language books. It took her some time to find what she wanted, and then she phoned Benedict Quentis from the police station. “We need you to identify the body,” she told him. “Can you meet me at the morgue in the morning?”

  “What is this? Can’t you check his fingerprints? I haven’t laid eyes on him in nearly twenty years.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but as next of kin the local police say you must identify the body.”

  When she hung up, Frank Munson was standing over her. “What’s that all about? We’ve got plane reservations for this afternoon.”

  “It won’t take long, Frank. It’s just something I want to check on. I messed this up at the start and I don’t want to mess up again.”

  “Was that Quentis’s brother you were talking to?”

  She nodded. “I’m meeting him at the morgue in an hour.”

  “We don’t need any identification. Paseo already sent the dead man’s prints on to San Diego. That’ll prove who he is.”

  “Just humor me. I want to make up for letting him get away yesterday.”

  “All right. Just make sure you’re at the airport by one o’clock.”

  While she waited for Benedict, she spoke with the chief of detectives and phoned her office in San Diego. She had to make sure she was right this time. An hour later she was at the morgue, awaiting Benedict Quentis’s arrival. When he came in he was hurried and nervous. “I don’t want to see his body,” he told her. “Not with bullet wounds in it.”

  “The wounds were in his chest. His face was untouched. He had a shaved head, so he’s sure to look different from when you last saw him.” She led the way in to the morgue supervisor, who pointed at one of the examining tables.

  “That’s the one from the ferry boat shooting,” he told them.

  Annie pulled back the sheet, revealing Dunstan Quentis’s shaved head. Benedict peered at the body. “I don’t know. He looks so different now.”

  He bent over and pulled the sheet down a bit further, revealing his left arm, and took a deep breath. “This isn’t my brother,” he said quietly. “This isn’t Dunstan.”

  Annie allowed herself a slight smile. “Because there’s no tattoo, right?”

  She found Munson with Officer Paseo in the police squad room. “It’s all over, Frank,” she told him.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Dunstan Quentis is still alive. You shot the wrong man.”

  He stood up, shaking his head. “That’s crazy. Paseo here already sent the dead man’s fingerprints to San Diego.”

  “Then I guess you’ve both got a lot of explaining to do.”

  Two local detectives had entered the room behind her. One of them said, “You’d better surrender your weapons.”

  “What is this?” Munson yelled. “Has everyone gone crazy?”

  “Only you, Frank. How did you ever expect to get away with this?”

  “Do you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

  “Two things struck me as odd when we called at Striker’s house yesterday. First, he called you by name—Sergeant Munson—though no one had mentioned your name or rank. Then as we were leaving, the teenage girl with him whispered ‘Quentis here’ in my ear. I didn’t realize she was trying to tell me that Striker was really Quentis. But I remembered the tattoo of a harp on his upper arm. When his brother Benedict told us he used the serpent and cup as his logo because it was a symbol of Saint Benedict, I remembered that harp. I spent some time at a library this morning and discovered that a harp is a symbol of Saint Dunstan. It was a religious family, as Benedict told me. I checked with the SD police and learned that Quentis had a harp tattoo.”

  “I know nothing about this,” Officer Paseo muttered without much passion.

  “I think you know everything about it. Quentis had money from his robberies. Once he was arrested it wasn’t too difficult for him to bribe you and arrange for Frank to handle the supposed extradition. You picked me as your partner, Frank, because I was new to the force and you figured I wouldn’t ask questions. You showed me a mug shot of Quentis, which was really a shot of Striker, already set up to take his place. Once down here, you found an excuse to enter the jail alone to pick up Quentis. Paseo came downstairs with you both and in the lobby the switch was made. Quentis became Striker and Striker became Quentis. You brought the bald Striker out in handcuffs while the real Quentis escaped out another door. It might never have worked in a San Diego jail, but down here it was easy.”

  “If I knew he wasn’t really Quentis, why did I shoot him?”

  “Supposedly you’d arranged for him to escape, slipping him a key to the handcuffs. But in truth killing him was always part of the plan. He’d be buried here, and Quentis’s real fingerprints would be sent to San Diego as proof of his death. Quentis would start a new life as Striker. But I hit your gun arm and saved his life the first time, which complicated everything. We met the phony Striker and we met Benedict Quentis. I put a few ideas together and asked Benedict to identify his brother’s body. The tattoo was missing, of course, and I knew the truth.”

  One of the detectives took over the story then. “We arrested the real Quentis at Striker’s home an hour ago. It looks as if you’ll be flying home alone, Miss Sears. Quentis and these two will all face charges here—everything from bribery and prison escape to murder.”

  “I think I’ll enjoy the trip.” She turned to Munson. “I’m sorry I didn’t work out as your partner, Frank. I guess you should have picked a man for this job.”

  SOURCES

  A Traffic in Webs. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, mid-December 1993

  A Fondness for Steam. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July1994

  A Parcel of Deerstalkers. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 1995 An Abundance of Airbags. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, July1995

  A Craving for Chinese. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1995

  A Parliament of Peacocks. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1996

  A Shipment of Snow. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1996

  A Shower
of Daggers. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1997

  A Busload of Bats. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 1998

  A Convergence of Clerics. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 2006

  A Gateway to Heaven. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, January 2008

  Five-Day Forecast. Ellery Queen’s Anthology #48 1983

  The Invisible Intruder. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, mid-December 1984

  Wait Until Morning. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1985

  The Cactus Killer. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 2005

  First Blood. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 2007

  Baja. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, September 2008

  Hoch’s Ladies

  Hoch’s Ladies by Edward D. Hoch is printed on 60-pound Natures recycled acid-free stock, from 12-point Goudy Old Style, a font devised by Frederick W. Goudy in 1915. The cover design is by Gail Cross. The first printing is in two forms: trade softcover and one hundred fifty copies sewn in cloth. Each of the clothbound copies includes a separate pamphlet, The Cases of Nancy Trentino by Edward D. Hoch. The book was printed by Southern Ohio Printers and bound by Cincinnati Bindery. It was published in November 2019 by Crippen & Landru Publishers, Cincinnati, Ohio.

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