The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

by Louise Penny

  “Dad? Is that you? How are you? We’ve been worried about you—”

  “Worried, why?”

  “I’ve called and called, but you never seem to be home—what are you doing, spending all your time at dance clubs or what, the racetrack?” She let out a laugh. “Robbie’s starting college in a month, did you know that? He got into his first-choice college, SUNY Potsdam, for music? The Crane School?”

  He didn’t respond. After a minute, when she paused for breath, he said flatly, “I need a loan.”

  “A loan? What on earth for? Don’t you have everything you need?”

  “For the mortgage. I—well, I got a little behind in my payments . . .”

  It took a while, another five minutes of wrangling, but finally she got it out of him. When he’d told her the whole story, everything, the $30 million, the disbursement, the bribe money, Graham’s treatments, even the two-day debacle in London, she was speechless. For a long moment he could hear her breathing over the phone and he could picture the expression she was wearing, her features compressed and her lips bunched in anger and disbelief, no different from the way Jan had looked when she was after him for one thing and another.

  “I can’t believe you,” she said finally. “How could you be so stupid? You, of all people, a former professor, Dad, a math whiz, good with figures?”

  He said nothing. He felt as if she’d stabbed him, as if she was twisting the knife inside him.

  “It’s a scam, Dad, it’s all over the papers, the Internet, everywhere—the AARP newsletter Mom used to get. Don’t you ever read it? Or listen to the news? The crooks even have a name for it, 419, after the Nigerian antifraud statute, as if it’s all a big joke.”

  “It’s not like that,” he said.

  “How much did you lose?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Jesus! You don’t even know?” There was a clatter of pans or silverware. He could picture her stalking round her kitchen, her face clamped tight. “All right,” she said. “Jesus! How much do you need?”

  “I don’t know—ten?”

  “Ten what—thousand? Don’t tell me ten thousand.”

  He was staring out the window on the back lawn and the burgundy leaves of the flowering plum he and Jan had planted when their daughter was born. It seemed far away. Miles. It was there, but it was shrinking before his eyes.

  “I’m coming out there,” she said.

  “No,” he said, “no, don’t do that.”

  “You’re eighty years old, Dad! Eighty!”

  “No,” he said, and he no longer knew what he was objecting to, whether it was his age or the money or his daughter coming here to discipline him and humble him and rearrange his life.

  One More Phone Call

  The house belonged to the bank now, all of it, everything, and his daughter and Robbie were there helping him pack up. He was leaving California whether he liked it or not, and he was going to be living, at least temporarily, in Robbie’s soon-to-be-vacated bedroom in Rye, New York. Everything was chaos. Everything was black. He was sitting in his armchair, waiting for the moving van to take what hadn’t been sold off in a succession of what Angelica called “estate sales” and haul it across the country to rot in her garage. In Rye, New York. For the moment all was quiet, the walls just stood there, no dog barked, no auto passed by on the street. He was thinking nothing. He couldn’t even remember what Jan looked like anymore. He got to his feet because he had an urgent need to go fetch a particular thing before the movers got hold of it, but in the interval of rising, he’d already forgotten just what that particular thing was.

  So he was standing there in the ruins of his former life, a high desperate sun poking through the blinds to ricochet off the barren floorboards, when the phone rang. Once, twice, and then he picked it up.

  “Mason?”

  “Yes?”

  “Graham Shovelin here. How are you?”

  Before he could answer, the deep voice rolled on, unstoppable, Old Man River itself: “I have good news, the best, capital news, in fact! The funds will be released tomorrow.”

  “You’re”—he couldn’t find the words—“you’re okay? The, the treatment—?”

  “Yes, yes, thanks to you, my friend, and don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I’m weak still, of course, which is why you haven’t heard from me in some time now, and I do hope you’ll understand . . . but listen, we’re going to need one more infusion here, just to assure there are no glitches tomorrow when we all gather in Mr. Oli­phant’s office to sign the final release form—”

  “How much?”

  “Oh, not much, Mason, not much at all.”

  Michael Bracken

  Smoked

  from Noir at the Salad Bar

  When Beau James raised the twin service-bay doors of the converted Conoco station at 11 a.m. Tuesday morning, he had already been smoking brisket and ribs for more than eight hours, just as he had six days a week since opening Quarryville Smokehouse twelve years earlier. Rain or shine, Tuesday through Sunday, he served a two-meat menu, offering a single side and no dessert, and closing when he had no brisket, ribs, or coleslaw remaining.

  Beau worked the indirect-heat pit alone, not allowing anyone to learn his technique for preparing fall-off-the-bone beef ribs and moist brisket with dark peppery crust, and four days a week he also worked the counter alone. He only hired help—his girlfriend’s teenage daughter, Amanda—on the weekends, when business typically doubled. The Quarryville Smokehouse lunch plate consisted of a choice between chopped brisket, sliced brisket, or beef ribs, accompanied by a scoop of coleslaw, four bread-and-butter pickle slices, a slice of sweet onion, two slices of Mrs Baird’s Bread, and a twelve-ounce can of Dr Pepper. He offered no sauce and had been known to refuse service to anyone who requested it.

  That Tuesday morning he wore his graying black hair in a ponytail that hung below his shoulders and a red paisley bandanna covered the expanding bald spot on the crown of his head. He had on an untucked black T-shirt that covered the tattoo on his left upper arm, faded blue jeans, and well-worn black harness motorcycle boots, a clothing selection that never varied and simplified dressing in the dark. He had gained a few pounds since opening the smokehouse, but at six foot two, he remained slender.

  Like most mornings, Tommy Baldwin was sitting at one of the picnic tables beneath the canopy that had once sheltered the gasoline pumps. He had retired from Shell Oil after a lifetime spent as a roustabout, was living comfortably on his pension, and had nothing better to do each morning than read, eat barbecue, and visit with Beau. As the service-bay doors rolled up, Tommy stood and grabbed the popular state-named magazine he had been reading. He walked through the six picnic tables arranged in the service bays and into the former Conoco station’s showroom, which had been transformed into the smokehouse’s order and pickup counter.

  “The usual?” Beau asked of the grizzled retiree.

  Instead of answering, Tommy tossed the open magazine on the counter. “Have you seen this?”

  Beau wasn’t much of a reader, so he hadn’t. He picked up the magazine and found himself reading a review of Quarryville Smokehouse, a review that referred to his place as “the best-kept secret in West Texas, certain to be a serious contender in the forthcoming roundup of the fifty best barbecue joints in the Lone Star State.” Next to the review were a photograph of the chopped brisket lunch plate and another of him working behind the counter—a photograph for which he had not posed.

  “Jesus H.” He threw the magazine down and glared at Tommy. “When did you get this?”

  “This morning’s mail.”

  Beau swore again. He had been relocated to Quarryville thirteen years earlier so no one could find him. Without asking again if Tommy wanted his usual order, Beau scooped chopped brisket into a Styrofoam three-compartment takeout container, added coleslaw and accessories, and shoved the container across the counter, not realizing he’d gone heavy on the brisket, light on the coleslaw, and h
ad completely forgotten the pickles. He slammed a cold can of Dr Pepper on the other side of the still-open magazine.

  Tommy slid back exact change. “I thought you’d like the publicity, maybe get more business. You can’t be making much from this place.”

  “I get by.” Beau glared at his most reliable customer. “That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “What about that girl of yours? You want to take care of Bethany, don’t you? Her and her daughter?”

  “What do they have to do with it?”

  “I see the way she looks at you,” Tommy said. “I’ve never had anybody look at me the way Bethany looks at you. I’ve seen you look at her the same way.”

  “So?”

  “You can’t live for yourself, Beau. You have to live for the people you love,” Tommy explained. “I thought I could help, so about a year ago I sent a letter to the editor, telling her about your barbecue.”

  Beau stabbed at the magazine article with his forefinger. “This is your fault?”

  “I suppose so.” Tommy glanced at the magazine and the open Styrofoam container next to it. “You forgot my pickles.”

  “Fuck your pickles.” Beau didn’t bother with the serving spoon. He reached into the pickle jar, grabbed a handful of bread-and-butter pickle slices, and threw them on top of Tommy’s chopped brisket lunch plate, flinging juice across the counter, the magazine, and Tommy.

  The retiree shook his head, tucked the magazine under his arm, and carried his lunch to one of the picnic tables outside, where he adjusted the holster hidden at the small of his back and set aside most of the pickles before he began eating.

  The lunch rush, such as it was, kept Beau busy for the next few hours. After he sold the last order of ribs, put the cash and checks—he didn’t accept credit or debit cards—in the office safe, and shut everything down, he saw Tommy still reading his magazine. He rolled down the service-bay doors, carried two cold cans of Dr Pepper outside, and settled onto the picnic table bench opposite Tommy. “Don’t you ever go home?”

  Tommy looked up. “There’s nothing there for me.”

  Beau put one Dr Pepper in front of Tommy and opened the other. After a long draw from the can, he said, “About earlier.”

  “Sorry for the surprise,” Tommy replied. “I didn’t think a little publicity would be a problem.”

  “You have no idea the world of hurt that’s about to crash down on me,” Beau said. He drained the last of the Dr Pepper. “There’s no way you could know.”

  Beau had been one of the United States Marshals Service’s easiest Witness Security Program relocations, a man without baggage. He had no family and no desire to drag any of several random female companions with him into a new life. The San Antonio office had recommended Quarryville, a dried-out scab of a town in West Texas that had once shipped granite east to Dallas. After the quarry closed in the early 1950s, the town began a long, slow slide into oblivion, and few people lived there by choice. With the U.S. Marshals Service’s assistance and money from the Harley-Davidson he’d sold before disappearing into his new identity, Beau purchased and renovated a foreclosed home. On his own he later purchased the abandoned Conoco station he could see from his front window and turned it into Quarryville Smokehouse.

  He mentioned none of this to Tommy as they sat in the afternoon heat watching traffic pass the smokehouse on the two-lane state highway. When they finished their drinks, Tommy excused himself to use the men’s room around the back, leaving behind the magazine he’d been reading all morning.

  Beau spun the magazine around, thumbed through the pages until he found the article about his smokehouse, and read it again. Had it not been for the accompanying photo capturing his face in three-quarter profile, nothing about the article would have bothered him. In fact, everything the author wrote was quite complimentary.

  Beau lived on the other side of the railroad tracks that paralleled the state highway bisecting Quarryville, on a street that also paralleled the tracks, at the leading edge of a neighborhood of single-family homes constructed for quarry employees during the town’s heyday. He waited until he was safely inside the living room of his two-bedroom bungalow before using his cell phone to call a phone number he had memorized years earlier.

  A no-nonsense female voice answered. “United States Marshals Service.”

  “I want to talk to William Secrist.”

  “He retired nine months ago,” said the voice. “May I help you?”

  Beau paced in front of the gun cabinet containing his and Bethany’s deer rifles. “This is Beau James. Secrist was my case officer.”

  “I’m his replacement, Deputy Marshal Sara Arquette. How may I help?”

  “I’ve been outted,” Beau said. He told her about the magazine article and accompanying photo.

  “I should visit someday to see if your ’cue is as good as the writer says.”

  “You read the article?”

  “I picked up a copy of the magazine yesterday.”

  “So everybody’s seen it?”

  “Not everybody,” she said. “They don’t read Texas magazines in Ohio.”

  Beau stopped pacing and stood at the front window, staring at his smokehouse and the other businesses on the far side of the railroad tracks and state highway. The storefronts along Main Street that weren’t boarded up might as well have been. Only a pawnshop, the ubiquitous Dairy Queen, and a Texaco that still offered full service showed signs of life. “All it takes is one.”

  “What do you expect us to do?”

  “Your job,” Beau yelled into the phone. “Protect me. Relocate me. Express some concern for my health and well-being!”

  “I’ll reach out to the Columbus office and see if there’s been any chatter about you,” she said. “I’ll let you know.”

  “You do that!” He could have slammed the receiver down if he’d phoned from the landline at the smokehouse. Instead he jabbed his finger against the disconnect button of his cell phone so hard he almost knocked it from his hand.

  Beau ate barbecue for lunch every day and relied on his girlfriend to prepare dinner. That evening Bethany made deer stew, using meat from a white-tailed buck she’d killed the previous season. Beau had never hunted until he dated Bethany, and after many meals prepared using the game she brought home, he had learned to appreciate her marksmanship.

  Bethany’s teenage daughter, Amanda, had plans with one of her friends, so Beau and Bethany dined without her. They were nearly finished when Bethany said, “You’ve been quiet all evening. Is something wrong?”

  Beau looked up from his last spoonful of stew. Bethany had not changed when she’d returned home from the veterinary clinic and still wore her blue scrubs. Six years his junior, she had the figure of a younger woman, but a lifetime in the Texas sun had weathered her. She wore her highlighted golden-brown hair cut in a stacked bob—short in the back but almost shoulder length in the front—and her pale blue eyes searched his for an answer to her question.

  “I got some bad news today,” Beau said. “I may have to leave you.”

  Stunned, Bethany asked, “Why?”

  “Some people never forget the past, the rest of us try not to remember it,” Beau explained, “and something I did a long time ago caught up to me today.”

  “You can’t do this to me.” Bethany dropped her spoon and leaned forward. Her hair had been tucked behind her ears as she ate and one lock fell free to swing against her cheek. “You can’t do this to Amanda. Her father walked out on us when she was three. You promised us you would never—”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Bethany said. “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “I don’t know. It could be soon.”

  “What about the smokehouse?”

  He shrugged.

  “Don’t you care about anything?”

  “You,” he said, “and Amanda.”

  �
�You can’t care all that much if you’re willing to walk away from us.”

  “It’s because I care about you that I have to leave.”

  Bethany snorted with disgust, folded her arms under her breasts, and glared at Beau. “That’s the worst line of crap I’ve ever heard. You don’t know where you’re going or when you’re leaving, but you’re doing it because you care about us?”

  “I’ve done some bad things,” Beau said. “The people I did them with might be coming for me.”

  “I thought we didn’t have any secrets,” Bethany said with equal parts anger and dismay. “Apparently I was wrong.”

  Beau did not know when—or even if—the U.S. Marshals Service would relocate him. “I’ll say goodbye before I leave. If anything happens before I do, you call this number and ask for Sara Arquette.”

  As Beau recited the number, Bethany grabbed her smartphone to enter it into her contact list. He snatched the phone from her hands. “Don’t put it in your phone. Don’t write it down. Memorize it.”

  At 2 a.m. Wednesday morning, as he was dressing for the day and Bethany lightly snored on her side of the bed with her back to him, Beau heard the distinctive potato-potato-potato rumble of a lone Harley-Davidson motorcycle cruising along the state highway that bisected Quarryville. He kept a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun under the smokehouse’s front counter, but he had grown complacent over the years and had long ago stopped carrying personal protection. The fading sound of the motorcycle haunted Beau until he unlocked the gun cabinet in the living room, removed and loaded his 9mm Glock, and tucked it into a worn leather holster at the small of his back. Then he relocked the gun cabinet and walked across the street, the train tracks, and the highway to the smokehouse, where he fired up the indirect-heat pit and prepped the brisket and ribs he would serve for lunch later that day.

  Alone in the dark, in the fenced area beside the converted Conoco station where Beau smoked his meat away from the prying eyes of customers and competitors—though until the magazine article had appeared, he had never considered the possibility of competitors—Beau contemplated his actions during the coming days. He had more baggage than the first time he had been relocated, and he wondered how easy it would be to walk away this time.