AHMM, July-August 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I'm going home,” Celia said wearily. “If they find anything, call me."

  * * * *

  Back at home, Celia swapped out the booby-trapped hose from Jim's air compressor and stowed it in the Buick's trunk. Jim's murder would have been painless, but now he was dying a ghastlier death, slowly smothering in a mix of noxious gases. She tried to imagine it, buried alive in a deep stone box with scant hope of escape or survival.

  You'd want to tear at the ceiling, try to claw your way free, scrape your fingers bloody raw as it got harder and harder and harder to breathe—

  She found herself gasping.

  He's probably dead already, she thought, surprised at her own unease. She wanted to feel guilty, though the blame wasn't hers. Her plan had been rudely preempted.

  She went into the kitchen and poked around. The shepherd's pie was still in the fridge, tucked away where she'd left it this morning. She started to cut herself a slice, thought, Shame to spoil it for Jim, then caught herself almost missing him.

  She heated a slice in the microwave, but couldn't finish it.

  * * * *

  Celia slept fitfully and woke up tangled in bedclothes, unable to recall her dreams but certain they'd been unpleasant ones. The walls of the bedroom seemed to press in on her, contracting like a deflated lung. The air was hot and stale. Jim's side of the bed was undisturbed, as if she were already a widow.

  She dressed, picked at a piece of dry toast, washed it down with a swig of juice. A TV newswoman wondered loudly if the miners were still alive. “It's a race against time,” she said, the drilling equipment poised behind her. “With no response from the miners, hopes are fading.” She started to say something about methane buildup, but Celia shut it off.

  She got in the Buick and drove out to the riverbank on Old Haverstock Road. She heaved the the doctored hose into the mud-brown water and watched it swirl away. She slammed shut the trunk and headed downtown.

  It was a madhouse. Film crews, journalists, and paparazzi swarmed the plaza, seeking images of tragedy to beam back home. Celia walked among them, drawing little attention. She reached the Civic Center, found a gaggle of townspeople on the front steps. A stout woman with wirebrush hair being interviewed said, “God would never let those poor men die."

  He's done it before, Celia thought, hustling past her.

  * * * *

  Julie was waiting inside.

  "There's no Little League today,” she said, sitting on one of the camp chairs, nursing a Thermos-cup of coffee. “No one cares about baseball."

  Celia recalled Julie's towheaded boys, aged six and eleven, always getting hurt and needing stitches or something. “Where are the kids now?"

  "At their grandmother's. She's keeping them until—” Julie tripped over the words. “—for as long as it takes."

  "I'm sure Dave's fine,” Celia said, not really believing it but wanting to sound supportive. “We've got half the county trying to pull them out of there."

  "I know.” Julie stirred coffee with her finger. “It's just ... I'm not as strong as you are, Celia. I don't know how you keep going."

  Then Edna Braddock came over with some walnut brownies that she'd baked last night at four a.m. because “I had to do something.” One of the other wives had loganberry tarts, and everyone thanked her, though no one was terribly hungry.

  "Look this way!"

  A flashbulb went off in their faces, some young reporter from one of the big syndicates. Celia wanted to pop him one. She sat stock still instead, letting the circus swirl around her, wondering how many banner headlines it would take to chronicle the disaster.

  She smelled gas.

  It was impossible, surely, an upwelling of gas into the Civic Center auditorium? Impossible, but there it was—the noxious tang of methane, making Celia's stomach clutch. She couldn't believe the others had missed it, how could anyone, it was so obvious—

  Then it was gone.

  She sniffed the air, uncomprehending. The only smell was from Edna's walnut brownies.

  "Can I have your attention?” said Douglas Wertham, adjusting the volume on his microphone. “I'm afraid we've hit a snag.” There was a squawk, and the volume became tolerable. “We tried to drill through the obstruction, but the gas hasn't reached safe levels—we could trigger a secondary explosion. We're running the ventilators, and we expect to try again in a few hours.” He exited amid a hubbub of shouted questions.

  Edna Braddock choked back a sob. Julie flung her Thermos cup against the wall, making a Rorschach splash of cold coffee.

  * * * *

  Around five thirty p.m. they tried again, picking a path through the shale and sandstone, securing the roof with expansion bolts and hoping nothing broke loose. The gas had dispersed, but it was slow going just the same. The miners had been without fresh air for nearly thirty hours.

  Father Sandusky held a special Saturday Mass at St. Andrews. Celia and some of the other wives left their vigil to attend services, seeking comfort in shared worship. They watched Father Sandusky ascend to the pulpit, ruddy cheeked and barrel chested, the cleric's collar tight around his bulldog neck.

  "Hope is the noblest of human ambitions,” he said, with obvious feeling. “And the greatest hope is the hope of salvation. As I speak, eighteen men are in terrible danger. But they're men of God,” he said, his gaze sweeping the congregation, “and if they're called home today, or tomorrow, or fifty years from now, their final reward will be just the same."

  Julie sniffled, nodding her head. Celia sensed that the sermon was helping her cope, paving the way for a weary acceptance. Celia herself felt no relief. If Jim was called heavenward, she wouldn't be joining him.

  * * * *

  After mass a bingo game had been scheduled, but the event was canceled. “It's like baseball,” Julie said. “No one wants to play now.” Celia frowned, wondering why a bingo game should be so upsetting to the good citizens of Whisper Creek, until Julie added, “Because what if they win?"

  And suddenly Celia could picture it, the horror of this silly game through the prism of a grief not her own—the prickly business of claiming the jackpot, the strained congratulations, the irony of pocketing a juicy bonus while eighteen men lay trapped under tons of carbonaceous rock, gasping like trout in a bucket—

  "We'd better go,” said Julie.

  They drove back to the Civic Center. It was dark out, the second nightfall since the explosion. The parking lot was overrun with curiosity seekers loudly trading gossip and a growing horde of journalists conducting on-the-spot interviews or doing local-color reports in front of some photogenic landmark.

  Celia and Julie had to identify themselves at the door. The attendant nodded and waved them inside. They were settling into a couple of seats reserved for family members when Edna Braddock ran up and said breathlessly, “Something's happened. I think they found them."

  * * * *

  For an instant Celia thought, I'm free.

  If Jim came out of the dark hole, she'd have a second chance, absolved of her phantom crime, released from this dark place where the grief of an entire town was an indictment of her intentions. She'd greet him joyously, her life restored as surely as his.

  But then she looked at Edna's face, and heard the scratchy voice of Douglas Wertham over the PA system:

  "I'm sorry to inform you,” he said, not looking up, “that the miners have been found, and they are not alive."

  There was a sudden, pin-drop silence. Someone said, “Oh my God” and started crying, and the hall erupted with expressions of grief and horror. Wertham attempted a dry recitation of the evening's events—when and where the miners had been found, their estimated time of death within eight hours of the blast, and the disposition of the bodies. Some of the men had written messages to their loved ones.

  Celia didn't want to read Jim's message. It was poisonous, radioactive. She saw Edna and Julie and the other wives tearfully embracing, drawing comfort from their shared grief. She wanted no part of it. S
he wanted only to flee the Civic Center, to shun the caustic sympathy of friends and well-wishers and escape into the cool night air.

  But the night wasn't cool, it was stifling. Reporters surged toward her, babbling questions: “How do you feel?” “Did it come as a shock?” “What will you do now?"

  She tried to bite back the answer rising like bile in the back of her throat. She wanted to turn aside, deflect their questions, and get out of there. She looked into the forest of microphones and couldn't stop herself from speaking.

  "I was going to kill my husband,” she said.

  There was a moment's pause, a brief silence. She heard someone saying, “I don't know, Rob, some nutcase.” Then the reporters surged past her, surrounding the Civic Center waiting for the others to emerge. Celia shouted after them, but no one seemed to care. The press corps had dismissed her, seeking predictably grieving relatives who better fit their profile.

  * * * *

  "I don't quite understand,” Sheriff Dan Howard said, his fingers entwined on the desktop. “You're confessing to something that didn't happen?"

  "I was going to kill my husband,” Celia said fervently, as if saying it for the ninth time might be more convincing than the eighth, seventh, or sixth. “I sabotaged his breathing machine. He would have inhaled carbon monoxide. You never would have caught me."

  The sheriff shook his head. “Carbon monoxide poisoning is distinctive and traceable. It's not a very good plan. Can I see this, uh, tube you've altered?"

  "I threw it in the river,” she said.

  "So there's no real evidence of any of this?"

  "I'm confessing. What more do you need?"

  Howard hesitated, choosing his words carefully. He was a big man, sandy haired, fiftyish, thickening at the waist. He had sad brown eyes. He said, “Not everyone handles tragedy in the same way."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The death of a loved one can be very painful. It's hard to believe something so awful could be so random, so out of our control.” He shook his head. “I've seen people convince themselves that something was their fault, even though it wasn't, because as bad as it is to cause something, it's worse to think there's no cause—that the whole thing was just a senseless accident. For some people, that's too much to accept."

  Celia frowned, trying to understand. “You're saying I made this up?"

  "No, ma'am. I'm saying anything's possible. Maybe you thought about it. Maybe you worked it out. Maybe you even set it in motion, though it's funny how there's no way of proving that. All I know is I'm not going to arrest you.” He stood up, opened a file drawer. “Excuse me, I've got work to do."

  "But you have to arrest me,” Celia said. “I was going to kill my husband!"

  "I'm sorry,” he said, turning his back.

  Celia looked at the framed certificates on the wall of Howard's office, at the gun rack boasting six Sharp's rifles, and at the fugitive postings tacked to a cluttered corkboard. She saw the double-locked door marked detention, where suspects were kept in holding cells awaiting transport to Bucks County Jail.

  She went outside, but she wasn't free. She was trapped in a wider cave, a sprawling maze of ground and stone, the sky above no longer a space, but a thick and leaden ceiling.

  She got in the Buick and drove home, down narrow streets seeming to constrict around her, like a tightening hand. She found herself in the kitchen, looking at Jim's uneaten shepherd's pie and thinking of everything they might have had, the squandered chances of a lifetime.

  She smelled gas again. They had a gas range. It was turned off, of course. If she snuffed the pilot and turned the dial, the smell would become quite real.

  Celia wondered if she might do that. There was a certain symmetry to it, but the need was not urgent; she felt no hurry.

  She had the luxury of time.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Terry Black

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  Department: SOLUTION TO THE MYSTERIOUS CIPHER

  Many a man I've known started like you to be an honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stampled into slime.

  —G. K. Chesterton

  From “The Flying Stars” in The Innocence of Father Brown"(1911)

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  Black Orchid Novella Award Winner: HORSE PIT by John David Betancourt

  We're pleased to present here the winner of what will be an annual contest sponsored by Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the Wolfe-Pack. The Black Orchid Novella Award honors novella-length stories in the classic detective mode of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. For more information about the contest, go to www.nerowolfe.org.

  * * * *

  HORSE PIT

  When the telephone rang, I rolled over and squinted at it. Not again. Why couldn't people leave me alone? If I wanted to sit in my apartment and drink until the pain stopped, was that too much to ask?

  Sighing, I fumbled the receiver to my ear. Probably tele-marketers. Best to get it over with.

  "Hullo?” I rasped. My mouth tasted like day-old bread.

  "Pit?” It was David Hunt, my only remaining friend. We had been in the same fraternity in college. I hadn't heard from Davy in a couple of weeks, so the call was due.

  Groaning, I managed to sit up. My head throbbed and my bones ached; the room tilted out from under me. Where had I put that bottle of Jack Daniel's? Probably somewhere under the covers, hopefully with the cap still on. Booze was the only thing that blunted the pain from my ruined legs. And it had the welcome side effect of slowing my always racing mind.

  "Hi, Davy,” I managed to say in an almost normal voice.

  "You up?” he asked.

  "Kinda.” I yawned. “What time is it?"

  "Midnight."

  That brought me fully awake. Davy was a morning person; he rarely stayed up past ten o'clock. Something must have happened. Something bad for him to call this late.

  "What's wrong?” I demanded. “Are you and Cree all right?"

  "We're fine. It's just ... I bought a racehorse!"

  I blinked. “What?"

  "A racehorse. Pretty cool, huh? His name's Bailey's Final Call, and he's won several stakes races over the last year."

  "Are you insane?” I rubbed my crusty eyes, wishing I'd never awakened, wishing I'd never been born. “You called me at midnight to say you bought a horse?"

  "Yep!"

  "You barely know which end to feed!"

  "That's what jockeys are for."

  I thought he was joking. I hoped he was joking.

  Davy went on, “Actually, I'm one-fifth owner. A bunch of us formed a mini syndicate. Opportunity of a lifetime and all that."

  Since Davy was already worth upwards of fifty million, if anyone could make a profit from a horse, he could. He had a Midas touch.

  But why call me? I had no interest in horses. And why so late? Something didn't fit.

  Gingerly, I eased my feet to the floor. “What are your plans for this unfortunate creature?” I asked. Flicking on the light, I felt around my faded blue bedspread. Where had that bottle gone?

  Davy said, “A few more races, then we put him out to stud."

  "Is there money in that?” Maybe Bailey's Final Call wasn't so unfortunate.

  "For a champion? You'd better believe it. I think—"

  I found my Jack Daniel's—cap on, but empty. So much for that. I added it to the growing pile of empties in the corner as Davy nattered on about his horse, but I only half listened. I'd have to recycle everything soon.

  "—already worth more than a hundred thousand a year in stud fees,” Davy was saying. “There will be more—lots more—if he keeps on winning."

  I whistled. “The sex trade really pays.” What was the average life span of a horse, anyway? Twenty years? Thirty? At a hundred thousand a year ... or more...

  "It pays for horses, anyway."

  "And what did this creature cost?"<
br />
  "A lot."

  "Davy...” A warning note crept into my voice. “I know you're calling because you want my help with something, so don't get cute. How much did you spend?"

  He laughed, but uncertainly, as if he had something to hide. That sent up more warning flags.

  "Spill it!” I ordered.

  "Okay, okay. We each chipped in two hundred thousand."

  I gasped. “You spent a million dollars on one horse? What were you thinking?"

  "Bailey is a champion.” He sounded defensive. “It seemed like a good idea at the time."

  "But now you think you were ripped off."

  A confirming silence followed. My doubts turned into a horrible premonition.

  "Davy-boy?” I said.

  "Let's say I have a bad feeling. Will you help me or not?"

  "I know nothing about racing. I know less about horses."

  "You're the smartest guy I know, Pit. If anyone can spot a scam, you can."

  "I'm flattered, but you need an expert. How about Dick Francis? That guy knows crime and horses. With your money, I bet you could rent him for an afternoon."

  "Get serious, Pit. We've already had two vets and a trainer look Bailey over. They say he's sound of hoof and heart. By all accounts, he's the real deal."

  "Then be happy. You got a bargain, right?"

  "I don't know.” He hesitated. “I can't put my finger on it. But something's wrong. Bailey sold way too cheap."

  "A million dollars isn't cheap."

  "For an investment that's going to yield three to ten million in profit, that's rock bottom. He's worth at least double what we paid."

  "People find bargains all the time. I don't see your problem."

  "Trust me on this."

  "If you're getting cold feet, sell him off and count your blessings. And your profits."

  "I can't. My partners plan on running Bailey in the Kentucky Derby. If I dump my share and something is wrong with him, everyone will think I found out and deliberately stuck my buddies. Lawsuits, ruined friendships, nasty gossip..."