by Josh Pachter
“Google it when you get home, sweetheart.” Eve took a breath. “Now, where was I? Oh, Mr. Hoover asked if he had the right address, but he didn’t.”
“That happened a lot. Sometimes the damned doorbell would ring four or five times a week. Like your handsome friend couldn’t give out the right street address.”
“Anyway,” said Eve, impatiently, “Hoover apologized, nice as could be, and went next door.”
“What did he want with the men next door?”
“I don’t know, but they must not have been home, because he never got in.”
“The fat guy hardly ever went out,” said Jack. “They probably just wanted nothing to do with him. If it was Hoover.”
“So why did these guys make you move?” asked Melissa, reaching for a second scone.
“That was years later. Your grandmother’s business had gotten off the ground by then, thanks to her talent and my business acumen.”
Eve muttered something.
“And we had bought our brownstone. Your father was a bouncing baby boy. Then, one day—”
“Stop,” said Eve. “You’re skipping the best part.”
“Here we go again.” Jack stood up. “More coffee? Milk?”
Everyone agreed.
“What’s the best part, Grandma?”
Eve smiled. “I saved their lives, that’s all.”
Melissa’s eyes went wide. “No kidding! How’d you do that?”
“Well. My office was on the second floor, in the back. When I sat at my desk, I looked out at this sad little garden they had next door.” She shook her head. “They had a French cook—”
“He wasn’t French,” said Jack, back again with a full tray. “Belgian, I think.”
“Whatever. Anyway, there was a fence with a gate in it, and he would come out to pick up deliveries. And, oh, there were a lot of them!”
“Because of Fatso,” said Jack. “The guy must have eaten like the Green Bay Packers.”
“You shouldn’t body-shame, Grandpa.”
“Anyway,” said Eve, “I used to watch deliverymen come by with cases of all kinds of food. I would try to guess what was in the boxes that weren’t labeled. They must have been gourmets, next door.”
“Ha,” said Jack. “That’s what you thought.”
“Go on, Grandma.”
“So, the deliveryman I saw most was from Parsede’s. They’re long gone, but they used to be a major liquor company in New York. And at least once a week I would see one of their big blue trucks pull up to the gate in back. The driver would come out in this nice blue uniform with a hand truck stacked with cases of beer.”
“Those clowns must have drunk like fish,” said Jack.
“Anyway, one day the truck arrived and the cook came out to let him through the gate, and I just happened to look down and thought, Hey, there’s something wrong.”
Melissa’s eyes were wide. “What do you mean? Wasn’t it the usual deliveryman?”
“Oh, there were several different men. It was a big company. But, remember, I design fabrics for a living.”
“Used to,” said Jack. “You’ve been retired for, what, two decades? You sound like you still drive into Manhattan every day.”
“Anyway, I finally realized what was wrong. The Parsede’s deliverymen always wore cotton uniforms, but this man was wearing polyester!”
“You could tell that from the window, Grandma?”
Eve nodded. “The way it reflected the sunlight. Fabric was my life, back then.”
“That and your darling son,” said Jack. “And your beloved husband.”
Eve sipped coffee, letting them wait. “Anyway, I worked for another few minutes, and then I thought about all those people I had seen going into that brownstone next door over the years. Police. Celebrities. And suddenly I just knew I had to tell them. Little Tommy was napping—your dad must have been about two—and I picked him up and ran down the stairs. I remember I was just wearing slippers, but I went outside and climbed up their stoop. The young man answered the door—”
“The cute guy,” said Melissa.
“Old Stubby Nose,” muttered Jack.
“I told him that the guy who just delivered their beer was a phony.”
“Wow! What did he do?”
“Slammed the door in her face. Neighborly.”
Eve scowled at him. “That was because he took me seriously, unlike some people around here. He wasn’t going to endanger me and the baby by letting us inside until he saw what was up.”
“So what did you do?”
“I took Tommy home and tried to get back to work. A few hours later, when Grandpa returned from the races—”
“I was not at the races that day. You’re going to have our granddaughter thinking I was a character from Guys and Dolls.”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind. The doorbell rang, and there was the nice young man with a big tray covered by a linen napkin. He said somebody had tried to poison his boss—”
“Fatso,” Jack explained.
“And this was a thank-you. It was a whole meal, cooked by their French chef.”
“He was Danish, I think.”
“All kinds of fancy stuff. It looked beautiful.”
“Wow,” said Melissa. “It must have tasted amazing.”
“Ha,” said Jack. “It was awful. There was this disgusting goo—”
“Caviar, I’m pretty sure.”
“And everything was covered with these nasty sauces. They were so rich, I spent half the night sitting on the damned—”
“That’s enough,” said Eve. “I admit it was a little strange.”
“Needed some ketchup, in my opinion.”
“Well, it was a nice gesture.”
“So is that why you moved out?” asked Melissa. “Because someone tried to poison them?”
“Nah,” said Jack. “We were willing to let that slide. But a couple of years later, there was an explosion that shook our house, damn near threw me out of bed.”
“We thought a gas main had blown up,” Eve said. “That was around the time the city almost went bankrupt, and they weren’t big on—what do they call it?—interstructure?”
“Infrastructure,” said Melissa. “What happened?”
“It was our neighbors,” said Jack. “They had a late-night visitor”—he harrumphed—“and the guy decided to blow himself up in their guest room.”
Melissa turned her head from one grandparent to the other, as if she were trying to catch a sign that they were making things up. “Really? Was he a terrorist?”
“We never heard the whole story. It got hushed up. But the fat guy paid for an engineer to come check our house for us.”
“He said everything was fine,” said Eve.
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Of course, Tubby was paying him, so how much could we trust him? You could buy off any city inspector, back then, so who could believe a private contractor?”
“But that wasn’t the end of it,” said Eve. “A couple of days later, there was another explosion, right on their front stoop. If we’d been going out, we might have been killed!”
“Grandma! Really? Another terrorist?”
“Nah,” said Grandpa. “As I understand it, it was some ex-employee of theirs who went postal.”
“But that was the final straw,” said Eve. “We put our place up on the market and decided to move to New Jersey.”
“Did you ever hear from them again?”
“We did, once. When they saw our ad, the nice fellow came over and invited us to have dinner with him and his boss.”
“Wow! Did you go?”
“For more of that awful food?” asked Jack. “You kidding? Plus, for all we knew, a whole street gang might have come in with machine guns while we were ha
ving dessert.”
“That’s some story,” said Melissa. “Do you have any, like, souvenirs from those people?”
“Not a one,” said Eve.
“Ha!” crowed Jack. “And you’re always claiming my damned memory is going.”
“What do you mean?”
He bent over the tray and started shifting things onto the coffee table. “We do have one souvenir, kid. This is the very tray your grandmother’s pug-nosed boyfriend brought the food over on.”
“Really?”
Eve frowned. “That’s right. I’d forgotten that.”
“Yeah. You’re slipping.”
Melissa bent over to examine it. “It’s beautiful! And engraved. Are those initials in the middle?”
“They must be,” said Eve. “I wonder what they stand for?”
“Miserable Neighbors?” guessed Jack.
His wife sighed. “You’re reading it upside-down, Grandpa.”
Acknowledgments
Many people provided invaluable assistance in the preparation of this book. I thank them, one and all, especially:
Lawrence Block, Jon Breen, Loren Estleman, Marvin Kaye, and Dave Zeltserman for providing copies of their stories and permission to include them here.
Robert Goldsborough and John Lescroart for granting permission to include chapters from their novels, and Joseph Goodrich for permission to use an excerpt from his play.
Michael Bracken and Robert Lopresti for taking on the challenge of writing original stories especially for this volume.
Janet Hutchings, Jackie Sherbow, and Deanna McLafferty at EQMM for tracking down some of the hard-to-find material.
Ira Matetsky and Jane Cleland of the Wolfe Pack for invaluable suggestions and other assistance.
Rémi Schultz in France for providing a copy of Thomas Narcejac’s “L’Orchidée rouge,” Rebecca K. Jones for translating it into English, and Editions Denoël in Paris for obtaining the reprint rights from Narcejac’s heirs.
Virginia Brittain for granting permission to include her husband Bill’s story, and Bill’s daughter Susan Brittain Gawley for her kind assistance. Scott Mainwaring for granting permission to include the excerpt from Marion Mainwaring’s novel. Carol Demont at Penny Publications for granting permission to include the story by Norma Schier. Vaughne Hansen of the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc., for granting permission to include the story by Mack Reynolds.
Otto Penzler and Charles Perry at the Mysterious Press for instantly recognizing that The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe was a book that needed to be published, and for shepherding it through the publication process.
Rebecca Stout Bradbury, the late Barbara Stout Selleck, and the Rex Stout Literary Property Trust, faithful guardians of the literary legacy of Rex Stout, for their enthusiastic support, and for granting permission to use the Nero Wolfe name and characters.
And, most of all, thanks to Rex Stout, whose creation of Nero Wolfe in 1934 inspired the authors of the stories and other material contained in this volume.
Copyright Information
“As Dark as Christmas Gets” is copyright © 1997 by Lawrence Block. First published as a pamphlet by Otto Penzler (Mysterious Press, 1997). Reprinted with the permission of the author.
“The Archie Hunters” is copyright © 2020 by Jon L. Breen. It appears here for the first time. Published with the permission of the author.
“The Possibly Last Case of Tiberius Dingo” is copyright © 2020 by Michael Bracken. It appears here for the first time. Published with the permission of the author.
“The Woman Who Read Rex Stout” is copyright © 1966 by William Brittain. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted with the permission of the author’s estate.
“The Sidekick Case” is copyright © 1968 by Patrick Butler and originally appeared in The Saturday Review. Every attempt has been made to contact Mr. Butler and/or his heirs. Anyone with information regarding the current copyright holder is encouraged to contact Josh Pachter regarding compensation for this use of the story.
“Who’s Afraid of Nero Wolfe?” is copyright © 2008 by Loren D. Estleman. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Murder in E Minor is copyright © 1986 by Robert Goldsborough. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the author.
Might as Well Be Dead is copyright © 2017 by Joseph Goodrich. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the author.
“The Purloined Platypus” is copyright © 2017 by Marvin Kaye. First published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and reprinted with the permission of the author.
Rasputin’s Revenge is copyright © 1987 by John Lescroart. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the author.
“The House on 35th Street” is copyright © 1966 by Frank Littler and originally appeared in The Saturday Review. Every attempt has been made to contact Mr. Littler and/or his heirs. Anyone with information regarding the current copyright holder is encouraged to contact Josh Pachter regarding compensation for this use of the story.
“The Damned Doorbell Rang” is copyright © 2020 by Robert Lopresti. It appears here for the first time. Published with the permission of the author.
Murder in Pastiche is copyright © 1955 by Marion Mainwaring. This excerpt is reprinted with the permission of the author’s estate.
“L’Orchidée rouge” is copyright © 1947 by Thomas Narcejac. First published in Usurpation d’identité. Reprinted with the permission of the author’s estate. The translation as “The Red Orchid” is copyright © 2020 by Rebecca K. Jones and is published here with her permission.
“Sam Buried Caesar” is copyright © 1971 by Josh Pachter. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
“At Wolfe’s Door” is excerpted and adapted from The Private Lives of Private Eyes, Spies, Crimefighters and Other Good Guys (Grosset & Dunlap) and copyright © 1977 by Otto Penzler. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
“The Case of the Disposable Jalopy” is copyright © 1979 by Mack Reynolds. First published in Analog Science Fiction / Science Fact and reprinted with the permission of the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
“The Frightened Man” is copyright © 1970 by Norma Schier. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (as by O. X. Rusett) and reprinted with the permission of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.
“Julius Katz and the Case of Exploding Wine” is copyright © 2015 by Dave Zeltserman. First published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and reprinted with the permission of the author.
About the Contributors
LAWRENCE BLOCK (1938– ) has been widely regarded as a man who needs no introduction, and that’s exactly what he’s going to get here.
MICHAEL BRACKEN (1957– ) is a novelist and prolific short-story writer. He has received the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction as well as two additional Derringer Awards. He is the author of the private-eye novel All White Girls and several other books. More than 1,200 of his short stories have appeared in AHMM, EQMM, Mike Shayne’s Mystery Magazine, The Best American Mystery Stories, and many other anthologies and periodicals, and he has edited six anthologies of crime fiction, including the three-volume Fedora series. He lives and writes in Texas.
REBECCA STOUT BRADBURY (1937– ) is the daughter of Rex and Pola Stout. She has worked for Good Housekeeping and at Marshall Field and Company in Chicago and currently serves on the board of the Colonial Dames, volunteers for various community groups (including the USO), and is a Stephen Minister at the La Jolla Presbyterian Church.
JON L. BREEN (1943– ) is the author of eight novels (two of which were short-listed for Dagger Awards), over a hundred short stories, and two Edgar Award–winning reference books, What About Murder?: A Gu
ide to Books About Mystery and Detective Fiction and Novel Verdicts: A Guide to Courtroom Fiction. His first story, a parody of Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct books, appeared in EQMM in 1967, and he wrote EQMM’s “Jury Box” book-review column for about thirty years. His critical work also appears in Mystery Scene.
WILLIAM BRITTAIN (1930–2011) was a prolific author of short crime fiction, contributing more than sixty stories to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine between 1964 and 1983. From 1979 to 1994, he wrote fourteen children’s books; in 1983, The Wish Giver won a Newbery Honor Award. In 2018, Crippen & Landru published a collection of all eleven of his “Man Who Read” and seven of his Mr. Strang stories as The Man Who Read Mysteries: The Short Fiction of William Brittain.
PATRICK BUTLER contributed half a dozen miscellaneous pieces to The Saturday Review between 1967 and 1970, mostly to Martin Levin’s “Phoenix Nest” feature—beginning in the September 9, 1967, issue with a poem titled “Memo: Rand” and reading, in full, as follows: “An iron fist in an iron glove / Is Miss Ayn Rand’s response to love. / The Rands, I think, were once more pally; / Or so it seemed when I saw Sally.”
LOREN D. ESTLEMAN (1952– ) graduated from Eastern Michigan University in 1974, and his first novel was published two years later. He is the author of the Amos Walker detective series, the Peter Macklin hit man series, the Valentino film detective series, the Deputy US Marshal Page Murdock series, and many other books in the fields of suspense, historical western, and general fiction. The winner of more than twenty-five national writing awards, including three for lifetime achievement, he lives in Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan.
ROBERT GOLDSBOROUGH (1937– ), the official continuator of the Nero Wolfe mystery series, also is a longtime Chicago journalist, having worked in writing and editing capacities for the Chicago Tribune (21 years) and the trade journal Advertising Age (23 years). In addition to being the author of thirteen Nero Wolfe mysteries, he also has written six Chicago historical mystery novels (five from Echelon Press) that feature Chicago Tribune police reporter Steve “Snap” Malek. His most recent Nero Wolfe novel, Death of an Art Collector, was published by Mysterious Press and Open Road Integrated Media in 2019.
