AHMM, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "He's in my car."

  "And what was he doing when you left him?"

  Theodore shrugged.

  "I don't know."

  "Why not?"

  "I couldn't see him, he was in the trunk."

  The proprietor appeared speechless for several seconds.

  Then, “How did Karl end up in your trunk?"

  "That's part of the small problem I was referring to, sir. When we got out into the parking lot, Karl kept arguing that he wanted a copy of our special contract he'd signed, the one I'd finally brought in from the car, otherwise he wouldn't show me that he had the key to his lockbox on him like he said he did."

  "In accordance with the terms of our special contract, we are to hold the lockbox key as special security,” completed the proprietor.

  "Right,” emphasized Theodore. “And I knew you'd be unhappy if I came back without the key, so I told Karl I had an extra copy of that contract in the trunk of the car. He could have the extra copy."

  "Special clients never get a copy of the second contract,” retorted the proprietor.

  "I know that, sir, so when he bent over to look in the trunk, I hit him with a head-slapper and pushed him in."

  "You used a blackjack on one of our clients?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir."

  "Then the journalist currently lies unconscious in the trunk of your car?"

  "Not quite, sir."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I guess I accidentally hit him too hard. I think he's..."

  "...dead?” prompted the proprietor.

  "I held a mirror up to his mouth,” replied Theodore. “He wasn't breathing. But I did search his pockets and came up with this silver lockbox key."

  The bail agent tossed a silver key onto the proprietor's desk.

  "Keys,” murmured Cletis. “It all comes down to keys."

  "Excuse me, sir? I don't understand."

  "We have three keys involved in this puzzle, Theodore. One is the silver lockbox key we have here, one is the missing key for the commissioner's safe, and the third is the metaphoric key to locking up all our loose ends."

  "If you say so, sir."

  Cletis Johnston held up the silver key.

  "I suspect this key is a ruse, and there are no gold Maple Leaf coins to be had. However, since making a healthy profit, regardless of the cost, is one of the cornerstone policies of this firm, we will trace the location of the lockbox just in case Herr Morden loaded his trap with genuine bait."

  "What about the second key?"

  In answer, the proprietor picked up the tarnished brass key he'd held in one of his hands earlier when Theodore returned from the jail.

  "Think, Theodore, where is the perfect place to hide a tarnished brass key? Someplace almost in plain sight?"

  The bail agent shifted his eyes from side to side. Nothing came to mind.

  "Look at the color of this old key, Theodore. It's almost the shade of an old penny. I think you'll find the key to the commissioner's safe inside the mason jar of pennies on a shelf of his entertainment center. Do hurry, time is running out before the commissioner returns from holiday."

  Theodore's bulbous eyes bulged even more.

  "You want me to go into the commissioner's residence right now?"

  "We need the red ledger book, Theodore, or else. Even you can see the book will be a great asset to the firm. And I'm sure your cousin Lebanese George with his old high school skills can gain you admittance to the penthouse."

  "But I've got a body in my trunk."

  "Another reason to take George along."

  "Huh?"

  "Our duplicitous and now, thanks to you, deceased journalist is the third key. Shortly after you leave the body in the penthouse, and just before the commissioner returns home, the police and news media will receive an anonymous tip about a homicide allegedly committed by a local official. The commissioner will soon find himself too busy explaining how the dead journalist ended up inside his home. He will have little time to continue his witch hunt into our special bail bond business."

  Theodore watched as the proprietor seemed to arrive at another decision.

  "And while you're at the commissioner's residence, you can also dispose of that incompetent assassin who took a third inept try at me today. Moklal has the man's body stored in that special closet we use for these purposes, the one inside our private parking garage. I'm sure you have a key for that door."

  Theodore nodded.

  "In this manner,” continued the proprietor, “Herr Morden will receive the message we are on to his machinations. And now that there is no one left to testify in a conspiracy case against me, we can rest easy again. Nicely done, Theodore, now get to it."

  Theodore was opening his mouth to protest when he realized that maybe, somewhere in between the threats and the orders, he had just been commended by the firm's proprietor, one of the few compliments he had ever received in his current career. Not sure how to handle anything of a positive nature, he retreated from the inner sanctum in a slight mental fog.

  He was still basking in the warmth of unexpected praise as he passed the desk in the outer office.

  The executive secretary's chair squeaked.

  "I hear you are stuck with the dirty work again,” said the Hindu as he sat tying a large knot in one end of a long yellow silk scarf.

  Theodore drew himself up as tall as he could.

  "I do all this for the betterment of the firm."

  "Of course,” said the cadaverous Hindu as he gently tucked the knotted yellow scarf up the left sleeve of his suit coat. “But as the Mahatma says in his teachings, ‘The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cat's teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.’”

  Not having pets of his own, Theodore continued out to the parking lot, wondering why in the heck the Hindu's conversation had strayed off to the subject of cats and mice. But then Theodore couldn't waste much time on that. What he really needed to figure out now was how to convince his distant cousin, Lebanese George, why he should help carry the bodies of the deceased journalist and the inept assassin out of the trunk of Theodore's car and up to the commissioner's penthouse.

  At least, Theodore consoled himself, he no longer had to worry about being employed for the present.

  Copyright © 2007 R. T. Lawton

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  SOPHISTICATION by EVE FISHER

  Tim Foley

  * * * *

  You might be surprised, but the real estate business does well in Laskin. Farmers retire and move to town, some people get a raise and buy bigger, some don't and buy smaller, and a lot of the kids who couldn't wait to get out of this small town move back as soon as they have children of their own. There's a lot of turnover.

  There are also a few white elephants. The Burrell place, for example, a white wedding cake of a house, complete with five Corinthian columns and a lot of gingerbread. It was too big for any family but the Burrells, who'd had fourteen children, and when Sig Burrell finally had to go to a nursing home, the place was sold and chopped up into apartments. From there it peeled and sagged and popped until it had been transformed from a prairie Tara to Laskin's Bates House, and the only reason its windows were still intact was that people were still renting there. I couldn't remember a time when it wasn't for sale.

  So it was the talk of Laskin just to hear that it had sold. But when we found out that it had been bought by movie stars! Ann Koerner! Mabel Pope! Julian Sargent!

  "Who the heck are they?” I asked.

  "What do you mean, who are they?” Phyllis Nordquist was shocked. “Ann Koerner was in that Lana Turner movie. The one where she kills the millionaire. Or was it Natalie Wood?"

  "Lana Turner? Natalie—How old are they?"

  Julian, we were told, had been in makeup. Julian had been in set design. Julian had been a ski bum. Julian had been a surfer. Julian ... He wasn't tall or particularly handsome, but he had silver hair and a silver tongue, and w
hen his eyes fixed on a female of any age, she melted. I watched him at their housewarming work his charm on my mother, who went from skeptical to intrigued to flustered to downright tropical. Granted, she was lapping up Manhattans—a drink no one else in town would ever have served—but no one but Julian could have persuaded her to drink at all in such a public place.

  I left them in the dining room and went to the living room, where Annie was outlining her plans to give acting lessons.

  "Why not?” she asked. “Half the fresh-faced little ingénues out there come from the Midwest. This way they can get a little training before they go out into the cold, cruel world. And I can assure you there is nothing crueler than a Hollywood producer."

  "But Annie could handle them,” Mabel said proudly. Annie held herself a little higher as Mabel pointed out Annie's name in the movie posters hanging on every wall. “Over here is The Wide, Wide World. Fifth billing, right above Nancy Olson. Queen of Hearts. Seventh, but a very good part, absolutely loads of screen time. Love in the Valley. That was an absolute triumph. Annie played the best friend, who was secretly in love with—Well, you just have to see it. A brilliant performance. There was talk of an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Variety raved about her, and the Times said she was a wisecracking Jane—"

  "Please!” Annie cried. “As if it was a compliment to be compared to that bug-eyed, flat-faced little bitch."

  "Annie!"

  Annie waved her hand, scattering cigarette ashes everywhere, and asked, “Does anybody here know anything about gloxinias?"

  Later that evening, I had just stuffed a whole giant chocolate covered strawberry in my mouth—from my fourth plate of hors d'oeuvres—when Annie came striding up to me. I was already standing by the windows in the fond delusion that I was hidden among the drapes, and under her eye I was fumbling for the window latch, when she said, “Stand up straight. You have the neck of a swan. Show it off.” And she swept off.

  It was a wonderful evening.

  I don't know if Annie ever got any acting students—any that paid money. Probably not. It takes a long time for Laskin to trust newcomers, and these three were strange indeed. But a group of us, all early teens, all misfits, quickly gathered around Annie. There was Phyllis, who lived vicariously through gossip magazines, and a good thing, too, because her parents were so strict she couldn't even hang out at the Tastee-Freez. Paul was so big and burly that it took me twenty years to realize he was gay. Jean was desperately shy. Brian, thin and sensitive and a major dork. Me. And a couple of others who came and went and didn't count.

  Annie would let us come about once a week, in the afternoon: “No one who's ever been in the theater ever gets up before noon, darlings.” Even then, she was always half asleep, her voice deep and drawling, her breath heavy with smoke and something sweet that Phyllis thought was mouthwash but I knew was gin. But she did put us to work. We read scenes aloud, practiced entrances and exits, sitting and walking, and what to do with our hands.

  "Hands are the dead giveaway of the amateur,” Annie would say. “Look at Laurence Olivier or Montgomery Clift. They didn't hulk around with their hands in their pockets. Ladies don't pick at their nails. No, you cannot hold them as if you were in love with yourself. And they're not dead weights, either. They have life! Movement! But natural. Always natural. Even when a thousand people are watching."

  Hands were hard.

  Usually, just as we were all dying of frustration, Mabel would come in with pop or lemonade or tea and start talking about Annie's movies. And then Annie would tell us stories about Hollywood, feuds and casting coups, affairs and tragic accidents, murders and suicides, and endless parties. It would have been more interesting if she'd ever mentioned current movie stars, but we listened raptly anyway. Hollywood was Hollywood, and stars were stars, and it was a leg up on everyone else who didn't have an acting coach, much less one who had actually attended the Academy Awards.

  For a while, everyone was curious about Annie and Mabel. Even my mother pumped me for information about what they wore, what they ate, what they said. But neither of them went out much, and after a while everyone lost interest. It was Julian who became part of Laskin. He did the shopping and ran the errands. Soon he joined the men at coffee down at Mellette's Lounge in the mornings. “The ladies like to sleep in,” he said. (He always referred to Annie and Mabel as “the ladies.") “I'm more of an early morning person,” even though no one ever saw him before ten. Then Gladys Johnson got hold of him and talked him into coming to duplicate bridge on Tuesday nights. Soon he was the life and soul of every public entertainment Laskin had, joking and flirting, and so courtly. That was my mother's word. “He's a gentleman of the old school. I'd love to know how he got mixed up with those two."

  So would everyone else. But he never spoke about it. Never really talked about Hollywood that much. “The ladies have all the good stories,” he'd say. “I was just grunt labor. Get up early, work hard, go to bed early, missed all the parties. Oh, I had some fun, but I like this a lot better. Small town living, good neighbors, clean air. I wish I'd come here years ago. Might have made something of myself."

  At which point some lady couldn't resist telling him that he seemed fine to her. He was getting quite a following, and things might have gotten sticky, but he always turned down any invitations to private parties. Too busy. Had to run an errand. Promised “the ladies” he'd do something or other. Always regretful, always wistful, always leaving the would-be hostess with hope.

  And then Phyllis Nordquist got pregnant. Mother forbade me, on pain of death, to ever go near Annie's again.

  "But they had nothing to do with it!” I wailed. We'd been talking about putting on a play for months, and I knew that now they finally would without me.

  "Somebody over there did,” she hissed at me. “Something was going on, something you never told me about!"

  "But nothing was going on! We just read scenes and practiced—"

  "Practiced what?"

  "How to...” I stopped. I suddenly knew that telling her that we practiced how to use our hands would not be a good idea. “How to make entrances and exits. That's all!"

  "Well, you've made your exit. And you're not going back there. And that is final!"

  Poor Paul and Brian were under suspicion, of course. Well, Paul was. No one thought Brian was capable of much of anything. And Phyllis—oh, God, I died just thinking about Phyllis. She was only fifteen, and she'd never had a boyfriend, and it just seemed impossible. Nor did it seem any more possible when a warrant was issued for Julian's arrest. I really think popular belief would have stuck by Julian, if he hadn't fled.

  "That man violated my little girl!” Mrs. Nordquist said, quivering all over in the dairy aisle at the grocery store. “I hope they shoot him when they find him!"

  "But...” I began, and stopped when my mother glared at me.

  Mrs. Nordquist turned on me and asked fiercely, “Did he do anything to you?” She turned back to my mother. “You'd better have her checked."

  "Nothing happened to Linda,” my mother said through clenched teeth. Then, taking my arm, she spun around and marched us out of there. She raged all the way home: “I can't believe it! Telling me ... Anyone with any decency would have stayed home ... But no, she's out parading around telling everyone ... The shame alone ... I can't believe..."

  When we got home, I put the groceries down as quietly as I could and started to drift away, back to my room. But she stopped me.

  "Now you tell me right now, was that man ever anywhere around you kids when you were over there?"

  "No!” I cried. “He was never there at all!” And it was true. He'd never been there in the afternoons.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes!"

  "If you're lying to me..."

  "I'm not. It's the truth, I swear it!"

  "Well.” Mother had a grim smile on her face. “It'll be interesting to see what he has to say for himself when they catch up with him."

 
But they didn't. Days went by. Two weeks went by. That was very weird. Usually an APB in South Dakota means a quick arrest. Sure, it's a big state, but it's a hard place to hide in. Everybody knows everybody else, and they can spot a stranger in a flash. How could Julian vanish so completely? The master of disguise, I whispered to Jean at church. She smiled so quickly only I could spot it.

  With Julian gone, Annie took over the grocery shopping and the errands—at a much later hour—driving around in the big old Lincoln with her red beret sticking up above the steering wheel. She acted like nothing much had happened. With the whole town seething, her only comment—to Gladys Johnson, who always rushed in where everyone else held back—was: “Nonsense. It's just a huge misunderstanding. If Julian wasn't such a coward ... But that's all Julian's guilty of. Or could be. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about.” And she actually chuckled as she walked away. That stirred the pot.

  Two more weeks went by, and the Nordquists were going to Florida, where Mr. Nordquist had cousins.

  "It's just been so hard on all of us,” Mrs. Nordquist announced, this time from the toiletries aisle. “We've told Sheriff Hanson to call us, and we'll fly back at a moment's notice to put that monster away. But we all need some space. Some rest. A change...” And she picked up a bottle of aspirin and went to the cash register.

  "Well,” my mother said, “Phyllis won't be pregnant when they come back, that's certain."

  "So that's where they go around here,” Annie commented as she wheeled her cart up next to ours. She was looking at the check-out aisle, where Mrs. Nordquist was fumbling around in her purse. “This farce has gone on long enough,” Annie announced.

  "Well, if you know where he is, I suggest you get him back at once,” my mother snapped back.

  "Oh, I'll do more than that,” Annie said and swept away.

  And the next day, Julian was back. He went to the police station and turned himself in. The Nordquists could hardly run fast enough down there, and they weren't the only ones. It was amazing how many others managed to find some reason to be downtown. My mother, for example, decided she had to pay the electricity bill right then, though she usually just mailed it in. So there was quite a crowd on hand to find out, a few hours later, that Mr. Nordquist had been arrested for Prohibited Sexual Contact.