AHMM, January-February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "What about Adrienne ... Mrs. Beaumont?"

  "What about her?” Manley asked.

  "She may know what happened. She might be able to tell you that it wasn't me."

  "I told you she's on the mainland. I had to tell her about her husband over the telephone. She was devastated. She can't help you."

  "That can't be. I just talked to her. She was telling me her husband..."

  Kane stopped his words abruptly. He didn't know what was in the chief's mind. He needed a lawyer before he said anything else.

  "What?” Manley asked.

  "Nothing ... nothing,” Kane replied.

  * * * *

  Kane didn't know what interrupted his slumber first, the noise of the storm or Rick Brody clamoring through the cellblock.

  The metallic clang and grind of moving metal doors merged with the excited gibberish of overlapping voices. Kane jumped to his feet as overhead lights illuminated the cellblock.

  "C'mon, Danny. Get the hell out of here."

  "What's going on?” Kane asked.

  "We just got an order to evacuate,” Rick Brody answered.

  "Where we going?"

  "You're on your own. Don't get lost. You better find your way back here in a couple of days,” Brody said.

  Kane gazed at him with astonishment, almost unwilling to venture out of the cell with the others.

  "Where's the chief?” Kane asked.

  "Why the hell do you care?” Brody asked laughingly. “Hell, I ain't never seen nobody who didn't want to get out of jail."

  Brody watched Kane's reluctance with curiosity.

  "Look, the chief's up on the strip. They're trying to push the holdouts off the island. You ain't gon’ be in no trouble. We do this every time an evacuation order comes down. All we got back here is a bunch of drunks and misfits like you. It ain't worth transporting y'all over to the mainland lockup. Everybody knows you. We'll just pick y'all up after the storm passes."

  Kane realized that he was standing there with his mouth open and not quite believing what he was hearing. The storm had overextended the small police force. Rick Brody hadn't bothered to confirm why he was in the lockup. Since they never incarcerated people for any serious crimes there, Brody had assumed that, like the others, Kane was in there for drinking, fighting, smoking dope, or some other trivial offense. All of these guys lived on the island and were on a first-name basis with the police, so they could be easily picked up at their homes or jobs at any time. The chief wouldn't be so generous and probably had no idea of the humongous gaff Rick Brody was about to make, but that wasn't his problem.

  "You need a ride or anything?” Brody asked as they walked toward the front of the jail.

  "No. No. I'm all right,” Kane replied cautiously. He looked around nervously expecting the bubble to burst at any second.

  "I hear the interstate's bumper to bumper,” Rick said as Kane stepped into the rain. “You know them back roads, don't you?"

  Kane faded into the darkness. He watched the line of cars creeping north across the bridge. There was no one walking south except him. He hoped to find what he needed in that direction, and he needed to find it before Chief Manley discovered what Rick Brody had done.

  His car was still at Adrienne's home, and returning there would be profoundly stupid, but there was another place he needed to go, and maybe he could kill two birds with one stone. He needed answers and a way off the island, and there was only one place that he might find both.

  * * * *

  The sky had become a blackened void that hurled torrents of rain and howling wind to the earth below. The driving rain whipped Kane mercilessly as he leaned his weight into it until he achieved a precarious balance. As he approached Joseph Walker's home, he saw that only the wooden entry door remained free of protective plywood boards.

  No one answered the bell. Like anyone with a reasonable amount of intelligence, Joe Walker had probably left the island for safer ground. Kane's hopes were rapidly dissolving in the rush of wind and water that pelted the island.

  An unexpected light source found Kane's peripheral vision. He turned toward it and witnessed the garage door's slow ascent. He ran through the pounding rain and confronted a startled Joseph Walker.

  Walker just gazed at him as if struck silent with utter surprise.

  "What are you doing here?” he finally asked.

  "Didn't expect to see me, huh? Thought I'd be locked away in jail, huh?"

  Kane walked closer to Walker, who slowly backed closer to his car.

  "Why did you do it?” Kane asked. “What did I ever do to you? It couldn't have been this business about your house."

  "What's the big deal? Manley let you out, didn't he? So you spent a few hours in the cooler. So what?"

  Kane was on him before he could flinch. He grabbed Walker's neck. All of the night's frustrations boiled inside him. He wanted to choke the life out of Walker, but he wanted to know why it had happened.

  "You sonofabitch! You were supposed to be my friend!” Kane yelled.

  "I'm not your damned friend!” Walker said as he shoved Kane away from him. “Why would you think she would be interested in someone like you?"

  Walker rubbed his neck and gasped for air.

  "Look at you,” he continued. “You make up stories for a living. You ... you wait tables, bait hooks for tourists. What could she possibly see in you?"

  "Is that what this is about ... Adrienne? You've got a thing for Adrienne? Did you kill her husband?"

  "Kill her husband?” Walker replied. “What are you talking about?"

  It suddenly dawned on Kane that Walker might not know as much as he had presumed.

  "What do you think Manley arrested me for?"

  "I don't know. He didn't say. He just wanted to know if I had seen you. I figured you had gotten drunk and done something stupid."

  "Somebody killed Lonnie Beaumont. They hit me over the head. They probably called the cops so that they could find me there. That makes things look pretty bad for me."

  "Not a bad plan though,” Walker mused.

  "Yeah, but you can clear me. You can tell Manley I was with you earlier. I don't know the exact time of death, but he had been dead for a while when I found him."

  Walker started moving toward his car's door again.

  "Now exactly why would I want to do that?"

  Kane was speechless. If Walker wasn't involved in Beaumont's death, why would he be so intent on burning him?

  "You disgust me!” Walker hissed. “I don't know what she saw in you. I offered her everything, but she kept crawling after you every weekend when you decided to make some time for her."

  It was like a slap in the face. Kane had thought he was sharing Adrienne with her husband. He had never imagined that he was sharing her with Joseph Walker. Maybe he had a sixth sense, however. Something always needled him about her. There was always that reluctance to commitment that he harbored inside. He had never known why it was there, but he didn't question its significance. He was sleeping with another man's wife, and in his heart of hearts that was as much as he wanted out of the relationship.

  "So she was screwing both of us,” Kane finally acknowledged.

  "She was screwing you,” Walker retorted. “She made love to me."

  He opened the door to his car.

  "You dumb sonofabitch,” Kane said. If I didn't kill her husband, and you didn't kill him, who the hell do you think did it?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "It matters to me, and it ought to matter to you if you think you're gonna end up with her. If you play this one out, you're gonna have to sleep with one eye open for the rest of your life."

  "I'll take my chances."

  "Where is she? You're meeting her somewhere?"

  "I'm right here, Danny."

  Adrienne Beaumont walked out of the home's entry into the garage. They had been together, and she had probably overheard the entire altercation.

  "That's an interesting theory that you h
ave, but you're the one who's been arrested for my husband's murder."

  She walked over to the car and stood next to Walker.

  Adrienne was moving with a deliberate calmness. She seemed distant and aloof while projecting a smug serenity. There was no grief in her eyes. She seemed far less emotional than Kane had been accustomed to observing. She held her right hand close to her side as if trying to obscure something. Kane could see the pistol, but he pretended that he was unaware of it.

  "So what's next?” he asked. “Where do we go from here?"

  "We don't go anywhere,” she answered. Then she made the gun's presence obvious.

  Walker grinned with apparent conceit. He had been chosen. He moved to encircle her shoulders with his arm, but she stepped away and leveled the gun at his chest. There was a loud metallic click as the firing pin collided with the round in the revolver's chamber, but the bullet failed to discharge.

  Walker was frozen by shock and disbelief. His back was plastered against his car when the revolver misfired a second time.

  Kane jumped toward them, but the third time was a charm. The muzzle erupted a few inches from Walker's chest.

  Adrienne whirled as Walker's dying body fell forward into Kane's path.

  Kane found the revolver trained on him. It made him back away.

  "How you gonna fix this?” he asked. “You just killed another man. They can tell that you've fired a gun."

  "They've got no reason to look at me. It's not my gun. It's his gun. You came here looking for revenge for what he told the police. The two of you fought and..."

  "Killing is that easy for you?"

  "What do you know about me? What do you know about what I had to live with? Lonnie Beaumont was a piece of crap. He did things to me that a dog wouldn't tolerate. I deserve something out of life, and I'm taking it."

  "I was nothing to you but a part of the plan, I guess,” Kane said. “Somebody to take the fall for killing your husband. You never cared about me, did you?"

  He was desperate. He had to keep her talking.

  "As much as you cared about me,” she replied. “As long as you were getting what you wanted, you didn't care about what I wanted."

  "When did you kill him—yesterday, the day before? Was he already dead while we were at The Greenwood? Was it you or your dead friend who coldcocked me when I left the house?"

  She pulled the trigger abruptly, and once again nothing happened.

  Kane lunged toward her, but she was quicker. She dropped the gun as she slid into the driver's seat of Walker's car. She started the engine and barreled into the storm before he could catch her.

  Kane slid to the floor and stared into the raging weather. There was nothing else he could do. His eyes settled on the pistol. It was an old weapon, and it had probably laid in a drawer for the last ten years or so. Only one bullet out of four fired. What goes around comes around. Joe Walker's dirty deed had probably made him the unfortunate recipient of that piece of ill luck.

  Adrienne had made a mistake of colossal proportions. The gun she had dropped would be his salvation.

  * * * *

  Rob Manley's car drove up to the open garage. He looked stoically at Joe Walker's crumpled body, then back at Kane.

  "You do that?” he asked casually.

  "You think I'm that stupid?” Kane replied.

  "Maybe,” he said. “We found a bag of golf clubs in Beaumont's closet. One of the clubs had blood and hair on the shaft."

  "So?” Kane said.

  "Beaumont appears to have been killed with multiple blows to the head with a brass lamp in the bedroom. The coroner says he was killed earlier in the day. I figure if he were killed with the lamp, there would be no reason to hit him with the golf club. Maybe somebody hit you on the way out of the house just like you said. The forensics people will match blood and tissue, and we'll see."

  "Adrienne Beaumont is in Joe's car on her way to the mainland,” Kane said.

  "It's a small island,” Manley chuckled. “One way in and one way out. Whose fingerprints am I gonna find on that gun?"

  "Won't be mine.” Kane grinned for the first time.

  Kane sat in Manley's car as other officers arrived to secure the crime scene. The storm still roared around him, but he was at peace. It was a small island filled with small people living lies and entrapped by catastrophes of their own making. It was a small island—one way in and one way out. Each one of them had discovered a way out. Kane recognized his good fortune: He was blessed with the only way that mattered.

  Copyright © 2006 L. A. Wilson

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  MOON CAKES by I. J. PARKER

  HEIAN-KYO (KYOTO): ELEVENTH CENTURY, NEAR THE NEW YEAR.

  The old monk leaned heavily on his tall staff. He wore a thin old robe, and the drifting snow had dusted his large-brimmed straw hat and the ragged straw cape with white. His straw sandals clung to feet that were blue with cold.

  Hosshu, who had gate duty at the temple, eyed him suspiciously. The monk looked weak with fatigue as he took the steps one at a time, resting often, making small gasping sounds of effort or pain. Hosshu had no patience with wandering beggars who thought they served the Buddha by renouncing the world so completely that they became a burden on others. This one looked like one of those hermits who spend their lives in some primitive hut on a mountaintop, eating bark and acorns, and then decide to seek out a temple because they are sick and need a place to die.

  It was sinful, to his way of thinking, to run up new debts when one should be clearing his accounts before the New Year. This old beggar was bringing bad luck—and probably disease—at this auspicious time.

  "You, there,” he called out from a safe distance. “Best not tarry here. It's getting dark and the snow's getting worse. I'm about to lock up for the night."

  The old monk stopped and raised his head so he could look up at Hosshu from under the brim of his hat. His face was deeply lined and pale except for some feverish redness under the eyes. “I need a place to stay overnight,” he said in a meek voice. “Just until the New Year."

  Hosshu shook his head firmly. “Not here, old fellow. We're full up for the celebrations.” In fact, room might have been found, but the abbot expected noble visitors and would not want them offended by the sight and smell of this one—or worse, infected by whatever disease the man carried.

  Because of the meekness of the man's plea, Hosshu expected him to turn around promptly and retreat under the rock he had crawled from, but the old monk's eyes narrowed, he grasped his staff more firmly, and took the last steps with surprising energy.

  "You have no business turning people away,” he said quite sharply. “Now go to your abbot and tell him that I must stay.” He waved Hosshu away with an imperious gesture.

  Hosshu opened his mouth in outraged response, but the strange monk hobbled past him and lowered himself to the ground under the sweeping roof of the temple gate. He clearly was not going to leave, and Hosshu did not want to touch him. Biting his lip, he went for reinforcements.

  * * * *

  The day after New Year's, the sun reappeared, the snow began to melt, and Akitada took his dog for a walk to check for signs of spring among the many trees along the banks of the Kamo River.

  An hour later, they were back, muddy, chilled, and limping. The dog had picked up a thorn in one paw, and Akitada's old leg injury rebelled against the cold and exertion. Akitada sat down in the warm sunshine on the steps to his house to remove the thorn and then brush dirt and twigs out of the dog's coat. After his unfortunate remark about the excessively sweet moon cakes this morning, he had no wish to offend his wife and staff again. His household had been under the impression that he was fond of the sweet confection and had gone to great lengths to procure the ingredients and to prepare the cakes for the New Year. Now an instant coldness had spread through the family, and Akitada had escaped to the less complicated relationship with his dog.

  The dog, aptly named Trouble, had been wi
th him for several years now, and because both managed to give offense to the women in the household despite their best intentions, a bond had formed between them. Akitada was brushing, making soothing comments, and getting his face licked when the tall, well-dressed monk arrived.

  Young monks of a lofty type were not seen very often at his house, and Akitada suspected this one might be lost.

  "Yes?” he asked while Trouble went to investigate the visitor.

  "The servant sent me to you.” The monk twitched his neat, black silk robe away from the dog's inquisitive nose and stared down at Akitada, whose muddy gown was covered with gray dog hairs. “Umm, Lord Sugawara?” he asked dubiously, kicking the persistent dog away. Trouble wrinkled up his nose and growled.

  "Yes.” Akitada called the dog back and resumed brushing him. He aimed the strokes of his brush vigorously in the monk's direction. “And you are?"

  The monk stepped away from the cloud of dog hairs and extended a folded note with two fingers. “Shinnyo, private secretary to His Imperial Highness, the bishop,” he said stiffly and cast another disbelieving glance at the semiruinous state of the Sugawara residence. It was clear that he thought master, dog, and house well matched, and unworthy of his visit.

  But Akitada forgot him. He laid down the brush and unfolded the note. Only one member of the imperial family was a bishop, and he was an old friend.

  * * * *

  A few hours later, he sat, more suitably attired, in Bishop Sesshin's study, sipping hot tea and feeling sorrowful.

  Sesshin had grown shockingly old. Once a plump man filled with lively energy, he had shrunk to a mere shadow of himself. His eyes were still kind, but his hands shook, and his skin hung in yellow folds where the flesh had disappeared from the bones. It was all too easy to see the grinning skull beneath the face.

  Worse, there was a vagueness in Sesshin's manner that suggested he had little patience for business with the living any longer. Seeing him this way grieved Akitada greatly because he was fond of Sesshin.

  "You and your family are well, I trust?” he asked Akitada after a long silence.