The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  “I wondered if we could talk.”

  “What in God’s name would you and I have to talk about, McCain?”

  “Why you killed Linda Palmer the other night.”

  She tried to slap me but fortunately I was going into one of my periodic dives so her slap missed me by half a foot.

  I did reach out and grab her arm to steady myself, however.

  “Leave me alone,” she said.

  “Did you find out that Linda and David were sleeping together?”

  From the look in her eyes, I could see that she had. I kept thinking about what Bobbi Thomas had said, how Linda was flirtatious.

  And for the first time, I felt something human for the striking if not quite pretty woman wearing too much makeup and way too many New York poses. Pain showed in her eyes. I actually felt a smidge of pity for her.

  Her husband appeared magically. “Is something wrong?” Seeing the hurt in his wife’s eyes, he had only scorn for me. He put a tender arm around her. “You get the hell out of here, McCain.” He sounded almost paternal, he was so protective of her.

  “And leave me alone,” she said again, and skated away so quickly that there was no way I could possibly catch her.

  Then Pamela was there again, sliding her arm through mine.

  “You have to help me, McCain,” she said.

  “Help you what?”

  “Help me look like I’m having a wonderful time.”

  Then I saw Stew McGinley, former college football star and idle rich boy, skating around the rink with his girlfriend, the relentlessly cheery and relentlessly gorgeous Cindy Parkhurst, who had been a cheerleader at State the same year Stew was All Big-Eight.

  This was the eternal triangle: I was in love with Pamela; Pamela was in love with Stew; and Stew was in love with Cindy, who not only came from the same class—right below the Whitneys—but had even more money than Stew did, and not only that but had twice done the unthinkable. She’d broken up with Stew and started dating somebody else. This was something Stew wasn’t used to. He was supposed to do the breaking up. Stew was hooked, he was.

  They were both dressed in white costumes tonight, and looked as if they would soon be on The Ed Sullivan Show for no other reason than simply existing.

  “I guess I don’t know how to do that,” I said.

  “How to do what?”

  “How to help you look like you’re having a wonderful time.”

  “I’m going to say something and then you throw your head back and break out laughing.” She looked at me. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  She said something I couldn’t hear and then I threw my head back and pantomimed laughing.

  I had the sense that I actually did it pretty well—after watching all those Tony Curtis movies at the drive-in, I was bound to pick up at least a few pointers about acting—but the whole thing was moot because Stew and Cindy were gazing into each other’s eyes and paying no attention to us whatsoever.

  “There goes my Academy Award,” I said.

  We tried skating again, both of us wobbling and waffling along, when I saw Paul Walters standing by the warming house smoking a cigarette. He was apparently one of those guys who didn’t skate but liked to come to the rink and look at all the participants so he could feel superior to them. A sissy sport, I could hear him thinking.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  By the time I got to the warming house, Paul Walters had been joined by Gwen Dawes. Just as Paul was the dead girl’s old boyfriend, Gwen was the suspect’s old girlfriend. Those little towns in Kentucky where sisters marry brothers had nothing on our own cozy little community.

  Just as I reached them, Gwen, an appealing if slightly overweight redhead, pulled Paul’s face down to hers and kissed him. He kissed her right back.

  “Hi,” I said, as they started to separate.

  They both looked at me as if I had just dropped down from a UFO.

  “Oh, you’re Cody McCain,” Walters said. He was tall, sinewy, and wore the official uniform of juvenile delinquents everywhere—leather jacket, jeans, engineering boots. He put his Elvis sneer on right after he brushed his teeth in the morning.

  “Right. I wondered if we could maybe talk a little.”

  “ ‘We’?” he said.

  “Yeah. The three of us.”

  “About what?”

  I looked around. I didn’t want eavesdroppers.

  “About Linda Palmer.”

  “My one night off a week and I have to put up with this crap,” he said.

  “She was a bitch,” Gwen Dawes said.

  “Hey, c’mon, she’s dead,” Walters said.

  “Yeah, and that’s just what she deserved, too.”

  “You wouldn’t happened to have killed her, would you, Gwen?” I said.

  “That’s why he’s here, Paul. He thinks we did it.”

  “Right now,” I said, “I’d be more inclined to say you did it.”

  “He works for Whitney,” Walters said. “I forgot that. He’s some kind of investigator.”

  She said, “He’s trying to prove that Rick didn’t kill her. That’s why he’s here.”

  “You two can account for yourselves between the hours of ten and midnight the night of the murder?”

  Gwen eased her arm around his waist. “I sure can. He was at my place.”

  I looked right at her. “He just said this was his only night off. Where do you work, Paul?”

  Now that I’d caught them in a lie, he’d lost some of his poise.

  “Over at the tire factory.”

  “You were there the night of the murder?”

  “I was—sick.”

  I watched his face.

  “Were you with Gwen?”

  “No—I was just riding around.”

  “And maybe stopped over at Linda’s the way you sometimes did?”

  He looked at Gwen then back at me.

  “No, I—I was just riding around.”

  He was as bad a liar as Gwen was.

  “And I was home,” Gwen said, “in case you’re interested.”

  “Nobody with you?”

  She gave Walters another squeeze.

  “The only person I want with me is Paul.”

  She took his hand, held it tight. She was protecting him the way Mr. Styles had just protected Mrs. Styles. And as I watched her now, it gave me an idea about how I could smoke out the real killer. I wouldn’t go directly for the killer—I’d go for the protector.

  “Excuse us,” Gwen said, and pushed past me, tugging Paul along in her wake.

  I spent the next few minutes looking for Pamela. I finally found her sitting over in the empty bleachers that are used for speed-skating fans every Sunday when the ice is hard enough for competition.

  “You okay?”

  She looked up at me with those eyes and I nearly went over backwards. She has that effect on me, much as I sometimes wished she didn’t.

  “You know something, McCain?” she said.

  “What?”

  “There’s a good chance that Stew is never going to change his mind and fall in love with me.”

  “And there’s a good chance that you’re never going to change your mind and fall in love with me.”

  “Oh, McCain,” she said, and stood up, the whole lithe, elegant length of her. She slipped her arm in mine again and said, “Let’s not talk anymore, all right? Let’s just skate.”

  And skate we did.

  5.

  When I got home that night, I called Judge Whitney and told her everything I’d learned, from my meeting with Bobbi Thomas to meeting the two couples at the ice rink tonight.

  As usual, she made me go over everything to the point that it got irritating. I pictured her on the other end of the phone, sitting there in her dressing gown and shooting rubber bands at an imaginary me across from her.

  “Get some rest, McCain,” she said. “You sound like you need it.”

  It was true. I was tired and I p
robably sounded tired. I tried watching TV. Mike Hammer was on at 10:30. I buy all the Mickey Spillane books as soon as they come out. I think Darren McGavin does a great job with Hammer. But tonight the show couldn’t quite hold my interest.

  I kept thinking about my plan—

  What if I actually went through with it?

  If the judge found out, she’d probably say it was corny, like something out of a Miss Marple movie. (The only mysteries the judge likes are by Rex Stout and Margery Allingham.)

  But so what if it was corny—if it turned up the actual culprit?

  I spent the next two hours sitting at my desk in my underwear typing up notes.

  Some of them were too cute, some of them were too long, some of them didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.

  Finally, I settled on:

  If you really love you-know-who, then you’ll meet me in Linda Palmer’s apt. tonight at 9:00 o’clock.

  A Friend

  Then I addressed two envelopes, one to David Styles and one to Gwen Dawes, for delivery tomorrow.

  I figured that they each suspected their mates of committing the murder, and therefore whoever showed up tomorrow night had to answer some hard questions.

  It was going to feel good, to actually beat Judge Whitney to the solution of a murder. I mean, I don’t have that big an ego, I really don’t, but I’d worked on ten cases for her now, and she’d solved each one.

  6.

  I dropped off the notes in the proper mailboxes before going to work, then I spent the remainder of the day calling clients to remind them that they, ahem, owed me money. They had a lot of wonderful excuses for not paying me. Several of them could have great careers as science fiction novelists if they’d only give it half a chance.

  I called Pamela three times, pretending I wanted to speak to Judge Whitney.

  “She wrapped up court early this morning,” Pamela told me on the second call. “Since then, she’s been barricaded in her chambers. She sent me out the first time for lunch—a ham-and-cheese on rye with very hot mustard—and the second time for rubber bands. She ran out.”

  “Why doesn’t she just pick them up off the floor?”

  “She doesn’t like to reuse them.”

  “Ah.”

  “Says it’s not the same.”

  After work, I stopped by the A&W for a burger, fries, and root-beer float. Another well-balanced Cody McCain meal.

  Dusk was purple and lingering and chill, clear pure Midwestern stars suddenly filling the sky.

  Before breaking the seal and the lock on Linda Palmer’s door, I went over and said hello to Bobbi Thomas.

  She came to the door with the kitten in her arms. She wore a white sweater that I found it difficult to keep my eyes off of, and a pair of dark slacks.

  “Oh, hi, Cody.”

  “Hi.”

  She raised one of the kitten’s paws and waggled it at me. “She says ‘hi’ too.”

  “Hi, honey.” I nodded to the door behind me. “Can I trust you?”

  “Sure, Cody. What’s up?”

  “I’m going to break into Linda’s apartment.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You’ll probably hear some noises—people in the hallway and stuff—but please don’t call the police. All right?”

  For the first time, she looked uncertain. “Couldn’t we get in trouble?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And aren’t you an officer of the court or whatever you call it?”

  “Yeah,” I said guiltily.

  “Then maybe you shouldn’t—”

  “I want to catch the killer, Bobbi, and this is the only way I’ll do it.”

  “Well—” she started to say.

  Her phone rang behind her. “I guess I’d better get that, Cody.”

  “Just don’t call the police.”

  She looked at me a long moment. “Okay, Cody. I just hope we don’t get into any trouble.”

  She took herself, her kitten, and her wonderful sweater back inside her apartment.

  7.

  I kind of felt like Alan Ladd.

  I saw a great crime movie once where he was sitting in the shadowy apartment of the woman who’d betrayed him. You know how a scene like that works. There’s this lonely wailing sax music and Alan is smoking one butt after another (no wonder he was so short, probably stunted his growth smoking back when he was in junior high or something), and you could just feel how terrible and empty and sad he felt.

  Here I was sitting in an armchair, smoking one Pall Mall after another, and if I wasn’t feeling quite terrible and empty, I was at least feeling sort of sorry for myself. It was way past time that I show the judge that I could figure out one of these cases for myself.

  When the knock came, it startled me, and for the first time I felt self-conscious about what I was doing.

  I’d tricked four people into coming here without having any proof that any of them had had anything to do with Linda Palmer’s murder at all. What would happen when I opened the door and actually faced them?

  I was about to find out.

  Leaving the lights off, I walked over to the door, eased it open, and stared into the faces of David and Millie Styles. They both wore black—black turtlenecks; a black peacoat for him; a black suede car coat for her; and black slacks for both of them—and they both looked extremely unhappy.

  “Come in and sit down,” I said.

  They exchanged disgusted looks and followed me into the apartment.

  “Take a seat,” I said.

  “I just want to find out why you sent us that ridiculous note,” David Styles said.

  “If it’s so ridiculous, why did you come here?” I said.

  As he looked at his wife again, I heard a knock on the back door. I walked through the shadowy apartment—somehow, I felt that lights-out would be more conducive to the killer blubbering a confession—and peeked out through the curtains near the stove: Gwen and Paul, neither of them looking happy.

  I unlocked the door and let them in.

  Before I could say anything, Gwen glared at me. “I’ll swear under oath that Paul was with me the whole time the night she was murdered.”

  Suspects in Order of Likelihood

  1. Millie

  2. Gwen

  3. David

  4. Paul

  That was before Gwen had offered herself as an alibi. Now Paul went to number one, with her right behind.

  I followed them into the living room, where the Styleses were still standing.

  I went over to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel and said, “One of us in this room is a murderer.”

  Millie Styles snorted. “This is just like a Charlie Chan movie.”

  “I’m serious,” I said.

  “So am I,” she said.

  “Each of you had a good reason to kill Linda Palmer,” I said.

  “I didn’t,” David Styles said.

  “Neither did I,” said Paul.

  I moved away from the mantel, starting to walk around the room, but never taking my eyes off them.

  “You could save all of us a lot of time and trouble by just confessing,” I said.

  “Which one of us are you talking to?” Gwen said. “I can’t see your eyes in the dark.”

  “I’m talking to the real killer,” I said.

  “Maybe you killed her,” David Styles said, “and you’re trying to frame one of us.”

  This was pretty much how it went for the next fifteen minutes, me getting closer and closer to the real killer, making him or her really sweat it out, while I continued to pace and throw out accusations.

  I guess the thing that spoiled it was the blood-red splash of light in the front window, Cliff Sykes, Jr.’s, personal patrol car pulling up to the curb, and then Cliff Sykes, Jr., racing out of his car, gun drawn.

  I heard him on the porch, I heard him in the hall, I heard him at the door across the hall.

  Moments after the door opened, Bobbi Thomas wailed, “All rig
ht! I killed her! I killed her! I caught her sleeping with my boyfriend!”

  I opened the door and looked out into the hall.

  Judge Whitney stood next to Cliff Sykes, Jr., and said, “There’s your killer, Sykes. Now you get down to that jail and let my nephew go!”

  And with that, she turned and stalked out of the apartment house.

  Then I noticed the Christmas kitten in Bobbi Thomas’s arms. “What’s gonna happen to the kitty if I go to prison?” she sobbed.

  “Probably put her to sleep,” the ever-sensitive Cliff Sykes, Jr., said.

  At which point, Bobbi Thomas became semi-hysterical.

  “I’ll take her, Bobbi,” I said, and reached over and picked up the kitten.

  “Thanks,” Bobbi said over her shoulder as Sykes led her out to his car.

  Each of the people in Linda Palmer’s apartment took a turn at glowering at me as he walked into the hall and out the front door.

  “See you, Miss Marple,” said David Styles.

  “So long, Sherlock,” smirked Gwen Dawes.

  Her boyfriend said something that I can’t repeat here.

  And Millie Styles said, “Charlie Chan does it a lot better, McCain.”

  When Sophie (I’m an informal kind of guy, and Sophia is a very formal kind of name) and I got back to my little apartment over a store that Jesse James had actually shot up one time, we both got a surprise.

  A Christmas tree stood in the corner resplendent with green and yellow and red lights, and long shining strands of silver icing, and a sweet little angel right at the very tip-top of the tree.

  And next to the tree stood the beautiful and elegant Pamela Forrest, gorgeous in a red sweater and jeans. Now, in the Shell Scott novels I read, Pamela would be completely naked and beckoning to me with a curling, seductive finger.

  But I was happy to see her just as she was.

  “Judge Whitney was afraid you’d be kind of down about not solving the case, so she asked me to buy you a tree and set it up for you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t even have Bobbi on my list of suspects. How’d she figure it out anyway?”

  Pamela immediately lifted Sophie from my arms and started doing Eskimo noses with her. “Well, first of all, she called the cleaners and asked if any of the rugs that Bobbi had had cleaned had had red stains on it—blood, in other words, meaning that she’d probably killed Linda in her apartment and then dragged her back across to Linda’s apartment. The blood came from Sophia’s paws most likely, when she walked on the white throw rug.” She paused long enough to do some more Eskimo nosing. “Then second, Bobbi told you that she’d stayed home and watched Gunsmoke. But Gunsmoke had been preempted for a Christmas special and wasn’t on that night. And third—” By now she was rocking Sophie in the cradle of her arm. “Third, she found out that the boyfriend that Bobbi had only mentioned briefly to you had fallen under Linda’s spell. Bobbi came home and actually found them in bed together—he hadn’t even been gentleman enough to take it across the hall to Linda’s apartment.” Then: “Gosh, McCain, this is one of the cutest little kittens I’ve ever seen.”