AHMM, November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Lucy glanced at Eban to see if he was thinking what she was thinking. He nodded at once. “Don't worry about it, Captain,” she said to Potts. “There's a solution to everything..."

  * * * *

  They were in the after-cabin of the Mary Small with Dawson. Eban had opened a bottle of port, and they sat companionably around the gimbled table with their glasses, Dawson only a little awkward at the invitation.

  "Well, my dear,” Eban said, “I can only hope we won't regret taking charge of Mr. Willis."

  "With a fair wind, we should be at Samoa in a week,” she said. “Then we can turn Willis over to the American Consul, General Churchill. Lord only knows how long it would take Captain Potts to reach the Marquesas against a head wind, with all the more opportunity for Willis to escape and do mischief. And then, could he be trusted to turn the depositions over to the U.S. Consul there and swear to them himself? By then, Willis could have him wrapped around his little finger again, and have Gilkins back in the sail locker. The business is far safer in our hands."

  "Perhaps,” he admitted. “You seem to have thought it all out."

  "Besides,” she laughed, “Mrs. Potts will be able to sleep nights."

  "You have a silver tongue, Mrs. Hale,” Dawson said. “I don't know how you persuaded Potts to elevate Gilkins to first mate after the shabby way he'd been treating him."

  "He had no choice. Gilkins will make a good first mate if he has the opportunity to show his stuff. By the time they reach San Francisco, he'll be able to get a berth aboard any of the Searsport ships there and ship home as first mate."

  "And then,” Dawson said admiringly, “persuading him to take young Goodspeed on as second mate. I'm sorry to lose him. I had my eye on him myself."

  "Goodspeed jumped at the chance, and I don't blame him,” Eban said. “You know as well as I do that the Mary Small won't need a new second mate for some time to come."

  "I hope not,” Dawson said, and they all laughed.

  Lucy suppressed a yawn. It had been a long and trying morning. “It will be pleasant to visit Samoa again,” she said. “General Churchill is such a thoughtful host, and so is Mrs. Stevenson. I do hope Mr. Stevenson is well. He was looking so frail the last time we saw him."

  "I'm sure he has many a tale left in him,” Eban said. “Kicking Jack ought to make him a fine villain."

  Dawson raised his glass. “I'll drink to that."

  Copyright © 2009 Donald Moffitt

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  Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn

  Too often when children appear in adult mysteries, they are either briefly sketched or drawn as unlikely paragons of good or embodiments of evil. This month we look at a few authors who manage to capture the real fears and struggles of kids and teens as they find themselves caught up in crime.

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  Alan Bradley's delightful debut, the sweetness at the bottom of the pie(Delacorte, $23), introduces an unforgettable eleven-year-old heroine named Flavia de Luce who combines the courage, curiosity, and deductive abilities of the best adult detectives with the mischievousness and wonder appropriate to her age.

  Flavia and her two older sisters, Ophelia, seventeen, and Daphne, thirteen, live with their father, Colonel de Luce in Buckshaw, an odd, old Georgian pile with Victorian wings. It is 1950 and the family lives with a cook, Mrs. Mullet, and the Colonel's factotum, Arthur Dogger (the children's mother died when Flavia was only one year old). The Colonel's all-consuming interest is philately, leaving the girls to fly in their own orbits: Ophelia with her music, Daphne with her books, and Flavia with her chemistry.

  The precocious Flavia possesses a first-rate chemistry laboratory, once the province of Uncle Tarquin de Luce, “replete with German glassware, German microscopes, a German spectroscope, brass chemical balances from Lucerne, and a complexly shaped mouth-blown German Geisler tube.” The lab, sealed since Tarquin's death in 1928, becomes Flavia's “sanctum sanctorum,” where the youngster evinces both fascination with and talent for using the equipment as her knowledge “of what could be extracted so easily from nature” increases.

  One morning the de Luces find a dead jack snipe on their doorstep with a rare stamp pierced by its bill. Shortly thereafter, Flavia discovers a dying man in their cucumber patch who manages only to whisper “vale” before expiring.

  Bradley spins a clever web that reaches far into Colonel de Luce's past, the vagaries of stamp collecting, and old-school traditions. It is up to Flavia to sort out the connections that bind her father and the dead man, and the circumstances that lead the police to consider her father the prime suspect.

  The sibling rivalry between Flavia and her sisters brings plenty of smiles, and Flavia's ability to maneuver in a world run by adults, using a brilliant array of tactics, is captivating. Her chemistry skills repeatedly prove invaluable, but ultimately it is her courage and heart that will win readers completely and leave them eagerly awaiting an encore performance.

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  THE ODDS (Minotaur, $24.95) is Kathleen George's fourth mystery to feature Richard Christie and his Pittsburgh Police Department colleagues. The children here—Meg, Laurie, Susannah, and Joel—are scene-stealers who take over the book and capture readers’ hearts.

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  George's series features a fine ensemble cast of police officers, and with Commander Richard Christie in the hospital as the novel opens, detectives Colleen Greer and John Potocki here take the lead. Greer and Potocki catch a call for a boy found dead of an overdose—possibly an accident, possibly a homicide. Their victim, and the witness they find to identify him, are part of an ongoing narcotics investigation, and the two homicide detectives find themselves “borrowed” by the narcotics division.

  Intertwined with the police investigation is the story of four remarkable kids trying to make it on their own: After their father dies, their immature and incompetent stepmother abandons them in the middle of the night. The oldest child, Meg, is almost fourteen. Joel, the only boy, is nearly twelve, followed by Laurie, eleven, and Susannah, seven.

  Intent on at least delaying the specter of foster care and their almost inevitable separation, the kids, led by Meg and Joel, find impressive and inventive ways of coping with school, jobs (car-washing, babysitting, etc.), cooking, and the myriad little crises of running a household. And if that wasn't enough to contend with, Joel finds a dead man and a wounded man in an abandoned house.

  The wounded man is Nick Banks, an ex-con paying off a debt and caught up in a drug dealer's mess. He pleads with Joel to help him and not to call either the police or the hospital because someone is trying to kill him. The upshot is that the kids undertake to help Banks in spite of their own difficulties.

  It would be easy for an author to stumble while handling a situation in which four children must cope, believably, with all that the resilient Philips children must. George not only manages it beautifully, but also invests each of the children with their own evocative strengths and weaknesses. The result is a thoroughly satisfying mystery that boasts memorable children and a heartwarming resolution.

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  Robert B. Parker is best known for iconic private eye Spenser, first introduced in 1973 and scheduled to return in October 2009 in The Professional. In the meantime, chasing the bear: a young spenser novel(Philomel, $17.99) introduces the teenaged Spenser as the adult character confides a tale of his youth to his long-time paramour, Susan Silverman.

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  While aimed at readers “ages 12 up” according to a press release, Spenser fans will enjoy the book's insights into the adult character. And the narration is pure Spenser, although the sexual innuendo common to their exchanges is toned down considerably.

  Spenser's mother died during his birth and he was raised by his father and his two uncles: “all over six feet, all more than two hundred pounds, and all of them hard as an axe handle.” They
taught him some tangible skills, such as boxing, but mostly they taught him the values and the toughness so evident in his adult self.

  The fourteen-year-old Spenser befriends classmate Jeannie Haden, whose parents are divorcing. Her father is an abusive drunkard, known to Spenser and his friends as the town boogeyman—a brawler, poacher, and thief. Spenser's first adventure involves trying to protect Jeannie from her father in a situation where he must rely on his own wits and ingenuity to save both of them.

  Spenser also gets an early lesson in race relations when a small Mexican boy, Aurelio Lopez, becomes the target of school bullies. Spenser's actions place him in the middle of a developing struggle between Mexican kids and white kids—another situation where he can get advice from his male relatives, but must stand on his own.

  The lessons young Spenser learned are illustrated in actions and encapsulated in the dialogue between Susan and Spenser: “Every person is afraid sometimes. Thing is not to let it run you. Thing is to go ahead and do what you need to do."

  If Parker is successful in capturing the youthful audience Chasing the Bear is aimed at, he stands to gain a growing future audience for his adult Spenser novels.

  Copyright © 2009 Robert C. Hahn

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  Novelette: REGARDING CERTAIN OCCURRENCES IN A COTTAGE AT THE GARDEN OF ALLAH by Robert S. Levinson

  I was making mad love to Jean Harlow, who was begging for more, when the call woke me up. It was barely five in the morning, daylight still a rumor outside my bedroom window, an hour invented for poor graveyard shift types and those early-to-bed-early-to-rise working stiffs earning their daily bread navigating trolley cars or parking milk bottles at kitchen doors.

  I recognized Strickling's voice from his stutter once I shook my head clear of brain fog and the delicious Jean, also because nobody had ever taught my boss at MGM about an invention called the clock or because he'd never learned to tell time—definitely not when there was a real or imagined crisis involving one or more of the actors whose images he created and protected as head of the studio's publicity machine, a responsibility that also gave him jurisdiction over my job, keeping our stars safe from the real world.

  "Did I wake you, Al?” he said, sounding as fresh as a floorwalker's boutonniere.

  "Never,” I said, covering the mouthpiece to hide the sound of me clearing my throat of the night's collection of phlegm. “What's buzzin', Strick?"

  "Need you to hit it on all sixes over to the Garden of Allah in that jalopy of yours,” he said.

  I knew better than to wait or ask for a reason. Strickling wasn't one to trust Ma Bell when it was anything more than small talk or some mundane assignment, like shepherding a Crawford or a Gable to an interview at the Derby or to a premiere at Grauman's Chinese.

  I said, “How's an hour sound?"

  "Excellent,” he said, “although thirty minutes would sound better."

  The Garden of Allah, on the Sunset Strip at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights, was the hotel paradise of choice for picture business types with a common interest in revelry, ribaldry, and chronic alcoholism. A main building and twenty-five villas spread over three and a half acres of formal gardens, palms, and other tropical trees played home to celebrated actors, musicians, artists, and, farther down the status scale, authors such as Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Fitzgerald.

  The resident clown was one of Metro's contract players, writer Robert Benchley, who considered drinking a hobby when he wasn't making it his business. He was asleep in a wheelbarrow in the lobby when I got there, still in the bib-and-tucker he had on last night at the Biltmore Bowl for the Academy Awards dinner where his New York cronies Hecht and MacArthur had picked up an Oscar statuette for The Scoundrel.

  I threw a smile at Dusty, the middle-aged switchboard girl I'd yet to see without a Camel dangling from a corner of her mouth or ashes powdering the shoulders of the fashionable dresses that frequently came her way as thank-you gifts from residents who sought her out for more than their phone messages.

  "He beat you here by five minutes,” she called over to me, too discreet to mention Strickling by name. “Said for you to meet him at the cottage.” She lowered her voice to a whisper in sharing the cottage number, like she was protecting a state secret.

  Somehow, it got a rise out of Benchley, who opened half an eye and wondered, “Mind wheeling me over to my domicile, my good man? A generous tip awaits you for services rendered."

  Dusty said, “Don't pay Bobby never no mind. He's been fried like that since he got here."

  "Ah hah!” Benchley said, shooting a finger at the ceiling. “I thought I recognized the smell on his breath. Curse of the working man, or so I've been told.” He shut his eyes, settled his chubby face back on a shoulder, and was sawing wood within seconds.

  * * * *

  I double-timed my way into the courtyard and around the pool Alla Nazimova had ordered the builders to shape like the Black Sea, to remind her of Yalta, her birthplace. It was the silent screen star who transformed the hollow below street level, what once was a millionaire's dominion, into the drinkers’ paradise that Louella Parsons's Examiner column revealed was driving Valentino's one-time leading lady broke.

  I reached the cottage, and before I could knock, the door creaked open and Strickling pulled me inside. He replaced the chain lock and flipped the light switch, double-checking that the thick drapes were fully drawn.

  "Anyone notice you this time of morning?"

  "Far as I could tell, only Dusty and Benchley."

  "Dusty's never a problem for us, and Bobby has enough trouble remembering his own face in the mirror,” Strick said, his cultivated voice still betraying his West Virginia origins, familiar from all those movie trailers the studio had him narrating. “Getting so he gives drunks a bad name. Fitzgerald's a match, shot for shot, and not one story out of him worth making into a picture since Mr. Thalberg put him under contract. Gatsby may have been great, but definitely not Scott."

  "I hear Fitzgerald's writing a book about Mr. Thalberg?"

  "Scott'll be done for before any book like that ever gets finished,” Strickling said, not quite to himself as he slicked back his neatly trimmed black hair and craned his face around the room looking for a soft landing spot. “You forget I ever said that, Al,” he said.

  Nothing ever got past Strickling, who at thirty-nine years of age had the intuitive smarts of the late detective Billy Burns. He was Metro's “fixer,” who knew how to stash under the rug anything that might damage the studio's reputation.

  He'd seen I was panning for hidden significance to the remark, my mind linking it to the curious circumstances surrounding the supposed suicide of Paul Bern, Jean Harlow's husband, about four years ago. This happened before I did some favors for Strickling and he sweet-talked me into the Metro fold at four times what I was pulling down as a private investigator chasing after alimony-delinquent daddies and setting up Kodak evidence on cheating spouses, small-change favors that skirted the law, kid stuff compared to some of the stunts I'd since pulled for him that not only skirted the law, but dressed it in head-to-toe chichi Chanel.

  "Forget what?” I said.

  A grin that flickered and disappeared like a burst balloon showed he endorsed my answer.

  "Notice anything strange?” Strickling said, throwing a hand around the room.

  Nothing looked out of place or out of the ordinary since the last time I was here a week ago, depositing Wally Beery for a rendezvous. Wally was cheap as well as cautious.

  By going through Strickling he saved himself the bundle it cost to import a germ-free dish who knew all the moves and could be counted on to keep her mouth shut. Usually, it was a dancer angling to trade up from the back row of the chorus line in a MacDonald and Eddy or Eleanor Powell musical.

  Wally wasn't the only occasional guest. The cottage was a private refuge bought, paid for, and maintained by Metro for the exclusive use of people of value on and off
the Culver City lot, a confidential medium of exchange for favors requested and received, for whatever purpose and no questions asked.

  The sitting room was pure Cedric Gibbons art direction, overstuffed elegance out of a Grand Hotel suite, while the dining area was more upper crust Dinner at Eight and the modest kitchen looked like a scaled-down version of the standing set for Mickey Rooney's new Andy Hardy series.

  I said, “What am I missing, Strick?"

  "Check the bedroom,” he said.

  I passed through the curtained doorway into a lavish bordello of a bedroom, the walls dressed in crimson silks, the ceiling mirrored over a circular bed the size of Rhode Island in the center of a floor layered in exotic Persian rugs on plush carpeting taller than uncut grass. The room resembled on a grander scale the suites in the executive building where anxious starlets were groomed for stardom by Metro's cadre of producers, whose casting couches sometimes did more business than some of their movies.

  The air, as usual, smelled like a rose garden in full bloom, the source: bottles of room freshener strategically placed around like mouse traps, only meant to kill lingering sweat and other body odors. It clogged my nose and coated my tongue, set off an allergic reaction.

  "Gesundheit,” Strickling said as I sneezed my way back into his company. He had settled on one of the burnished leather sofas facing an antique burl walnut coffee table and signaled me to settle on the other. “You find anything strange now?"

  "Actually, nothing to sneeze at."

  He didn't get the joke.

  "No sign anyone used the cottage earlier?” he said.

  "Not even Goldilocks or the three bears."

  If Strickling got the joke this time he made it one of his secrets.

  He narrowed his eyes and said, “What about Gable?"

  "Clark? What about him? I haven't seen him since the Oscars at the Biltmore Bowl last night. I got him to his car and waved him on his way home not long after Mr. Griffith stepped up to the podium to announce the Best Actor award was going to Vic McLaglen for The Informer. It might have been a different outcome if Clark, Charlie Laughton, and Franchot Tone weren't all in the running against him, all from Mutiny on the Bounty. At least you were able to win the picture itself an Oscar."