Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 Page 13

  Lily smiled. “So you do believe me, eh, Gus?” Her grey eyes twinkled in the harsh lighting of the jail’s interview room.

  Gus hesitated before responding. “Let’s call it givin’ you the benefit of reasonable doubt. Believe is kind of a strong word.”

  “Well, hell, Gus, at my age, with these damn crow’s feet, I’ll take whatever I can get from a man, I guess.” She let the easiness of her tone fade when next she spoke. “So after he dumps the body, he disappears. Just a big coincidence that I get my tail caught up in it.”

  “Yeah,” Gus said. “Maybe. But it seems to line up pretty good. The killer dumps the body, retraces his route back down that fire lane, a pitch-dark, deserted, muddy road through the woods, nice and private. He follows it out to the Sunrise Highway and drives right back to the city.”

  “Okay,” Lily said. “What do you need me to look at?”

  Gus opened the manila envelope he had placed on the table and extracted the single sheet of paper it held. He turned it to face her and slid it across the table.

  “That’s a list of Citroën buyers in New York. Take a look at it. Tell me if a name strikes you.”

  It only took a few seconds before Lily looked up, smiling, the twinkle back in her eye. She suddenly looked far younger than her fifty-nine years, Gus thought. Hell, she looked younger than him.

  “Well, well,” she said happily. “If it isn’t Liam Behan. A brogue-prattling Irishman ex-cop drivin’ a sissy-ass French car. Imagine that?”

  Gus Oliver raised his glass of Pabst Blue Ribbon in toast to Andrew Saks.

  “Here’s to the system, Counselor,” he said. “It may not be perfect, but it’s the best one anybody’s come up with so far.”

  Saks raised his own glass, smiling. “Yes, it is. And to Gus Oliver. Nice piece of work, Gus. Very nice.”

  They sat in silence as Mabel Taylor placed The Green Lantern Tavern’s blue-plate dinner special before them: roast pork loin, gravy, mashed potatoes, and spinach. When she left, Gus spoke up.

  “We got lucky.” He turned to the third man at the table, Central Islin Police Chief Bill Carters.

  “See, Bill,” Gus said, “that guy Liam Behan. He was a partner of McAdams when they were both cops. Went way back to the twenties together. Matter of fact, the night McAdams shot that bouncer in The Alimony Prison, Behan was second in charge of the raiding party. Once the Suffolk PD investigators checked Behan out, they learned he and McAdams were suspected of working dozens of shady deals together. They poked around deeper and learned that when McAdams retired and left the city, rumor was he disappeared with money that was half Behan’s, proceeds from their illicit schemes. Judge Maull issued a search warrant, and the NYPD turned up blood traces in the trunk of Behan’s Citroën. Not much, but enough to get a type match to McAdams.”

  Carters cut into his pork. “So Lily’s off the hook?”

  Saks answered. “Well, the judge is weighing my motion to dismiss. First he has to decide if he’ll release her from jail pending a full review. We’ll see. But it looks very promising. And there’s more. You see, two handguns were registered to Behan, both thirty-eights. One was a service revolver from his days on the force. He claims to have sold it when he retired and misplaced the buyer’s information. But he didn’t figure on something. He used that same gun in a fatal police shooting in nineteen fifty. He killed a known gambler, allegedly in self-defense at the time. Internal Affairs had some suspicion it was actually a contract killing for the mob. As a result, they preserved all the evidence. Ballistics on Behan’s bullet was still on file. They matched it to the two slugs taken from McAdams’ body. Case closed.”

  Carters shook his head, chewing slowly. “Well, if Judge Maull is satisfied Lily wasn’t in on it, he can dismiss the charges.”

  Gus sipped his beer. “Actually, the county prosecutor has some say too. But I’d say, yeah. She’s in the clear. She walks.”

  He ate some spinach, then sipped more Pabst. Reaching for a freshly baked biscuit, he smiled across to Saks.

  “Still, after meeting Lily . . . well, a man’s gotta wonder some. Know what I mean, Counselor?”

  Copyright © 2012 by Lou Manfredo

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  FICTION

  FINAL VINYL

  by Brynn Bonner

  Brynn Bonner is the pseudonym of a North Carolina writer who debuted in EQMM’s Department of First Stories in 1998 with the Robert L. Fish Award-winning story “Clarity.” She has since been a regular contributor to EQMM. This new story brings back the protagonist of 2007’s “Jangle,” vinyl record shop owner Sessions Seabolt. “Jangle” is now available on audio (http://www.sniplits.com/mystery_stories.jsp). The author’s debut novel, Lies and Embellishments, is due out soon.

  It’s ridiculous the lengths I’ll go to when stalking a rare vinyl record. It’s the thrill of the hunt. Some quest for shipwrecks, gold, the Fountain of Youth, but for this woman, the treasure is rare vintage vinyl records. And I’d be willing to stand up in a room full of people seated on rickety folding chairs drinking rank coffee and confess out loud, “My name is Session Seabolt and I am a vinyl addict.”

  On this Monday morning I’d left my record shop in Raleigh, North Carolina before daylight and headed west. Two hours into the drive I hit a torrential rainstorm that seemed to be stalking me. I had a white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel as I leaned toward the windshield, squinting to negotiate the hairpin switchbacks up into the Great Smoky Mountains to the cabin of a fellow vinyl junkie, Darby Brenner. He called last night and rattled off a list of fifteen albums he’d decided he could let go from his collection—at a bargain price—among them the Yardbirds’ 1965 For Your Love, near mint.

  As it happened, I’d had a call just last week from a collector in Philly. He’s a dead-serious Eric Clapton completist intent on owning every recording Clapton even plucked a string on. The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, Derek and the Dominos. Sideman stuff with John Mayhall’s Bluesbreakers, Delaney and Bonnie, Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band—everything. He’d asked me to keep a lookout for this exact Yardbirds album and hinted he might be persuaded to pay premium for it.

  But I’d have made the trip anyhow. Darby Brenner and I have been friends since childhood. We’re both rock-band spawn. My dad is Sonny Seabolt, one of the founding members of Copper Hill, a Southern-rock band with many things in common with the Allman Brothers. Unfortunately tax bracket isn’t one of them. They did okay, enough for the guys to live comfortably now that they’re getting to be golden oldies. But Darby’s mother, Sarah, a. k. a. SuzyQ, was one of the two female members of the quartet Squares in Pairs. They made a mint. Though the band’s schtick was dressing like nerds, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and pocket protectors, Sarah didn’t carry the part over into her real life. She was a wild woman. As far as I know, Darby’s father’s identity remains a mystery even to Sarah.

  My mother ran off when I was a toddler, so I was raised by a rock band—yet I survived. Darby was raised mostly by a housekeeper named Nadine Blackwell, but he survived too—and so did Nadine. In fact, she’s still looking after him. We were lucky to each have a parent who cared about us, even if their parenting skills were marginal. But we’d both had chaotic childhoods and now, pushing thirty, we’re like old combat veterans still sharing foxhole stories.

  The seal on our bond is that we’re both hooked on vinyl. A couple of years back I gave up my career as a CPA for my dream of opening a vinyl-record store. I’m struggling financially, but so happy I fear any day I might break into a Marie Osmond medley right there in the middle of the store and embarrass myself. As for Darby, SuzyQ apparently felt some guilt over her substandard mothering and assuaged it by giving him an early inheritance. Upon his twenty-first birthday he became, if not filthy rich, at least somewhat soiled. And to everyone’s surprise, including Darby’s, he has a flair for business and quickly turned a small fortun
e into a bountiful one.

  I laughed as I rounded a bend and Darby’s abode came into view. He still insists on calling it a cabin even though the original 700-square-foot structure he bought six years ago—along with half the mountain—has been swallowed up in the 3,000 square feet he’s added since. Now another wing was sprouting from the south side of the residence, excavation was under way for a pool, and the skeleton of a pool house was silhouetted against the brooding gray cloudbank.

  By the time I pulled up in Darby’s driveway the rain had lost ambition and dissolved into a mist so fine it seemed suspended in the air. Before I’d even put the car in park, Darby was out the door from the central atrium he added last year and bounding out to shelter me with an umbrella. He crooked an arm around my neck by way of greeting and we headed for the atrium in lockstep. Darby only tops my five-seven by an inch or so and with his blond hair in a Beatlesque moptop and my own blondish pixie cut, we must have looked like grown-up Bobbsey twins.

  “Glad you made it out,” he said, “sorry I didn’t arrange better weather.”

  As I crossed the threshold, I marveled anew at the atrium. It was built in a lodge style with exposed beams and a river-rock fireplace that spanned an entire wall and tapered to the two-story ceiling. All very rustic, but this was Darby’s listening room and I knew he’d brought in an acoustic engineer to design the space. Just behind it was his private record library, a climate-controlled maze of shelves and bins filled with LPs, 78s, and 45s, the inventory catalogued only in Darby’s head.

  “Hope you can stay and hang out,” he said.

  “Awhile, but I want to get back at a decent hour tonight. Where’s Beth?”

  “Oh, she’s around here somewhere,” he said, looking around as if he’d misplaced his wife.

  “She’s right here,” came a voice from behind me. She was decked out in her usual hippie gear, a long-tiered skirt of many colors and a torso-hugging T-shirt, but bowing to the chilly weather she’d foregone the requisite Birkenstocks for boots. With her honey-blond hair caught up in a ponytail she looked even younger than she had on their wedding day a little over a year ago. Darby may not have felony-robbed the cradle, but he’d pickpocketed it.

  “Hey, Session,” Beth said.

  As usual, I couldn’t read her. Was she happy to see me, irritated I was there, or simply didn’t care either way? I hey-ed her back.

  “Want me to bring you two in some lunch?” she asked Darby. “Cook has made up a pot of mushroom soup that smells fantastic.”

  “Yeah, that’d be good,” Darby said, without looking up from where he was sorting through a stack of LPs. “Bring us a couple of bowls and crackers and stuff.”

  As Beth turned to go Darby added, “And Beth, don’t call her Cook. She hates that. Her name is Nadine. Call her by her name.”

  Beth opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it and went on her way.

  “Want to listen to some tunes?” Darby asked, holding up a beautiful copy of Nick Drake’s Fruit Tree, a 1986 release on the Hannibal label.

  “Not if that’s the copy you’re selling me,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to risk scratching it.” I could see the vinyl was shiny and the jacket was in pristine condition, no fading or scrub marks. I’d get $200 for this album alone.

  “Naw, this is my play copy,” he said, “it’s a first pressing, you’re not gonna believe the sound.”

  He settled the record onto a turntable I was pretty sure cost more than my car, lifted the stylus, and pointed me toward an armless lounge chair while he rested the needle into the lead-in groove. As “Pink Moon” filled the atrium it was like being bathed in sound. I closed my eyes and listened, trying to ignore the fact that I’d recently heard this song on a car commercial—pure blasphemy!

  “Oh, I love this song.” I heard a familiar voice and opened my eyes to see Nadine, Darby’s longtime housekeeper and second mama, bustling into the room with a tray laden with steaming soup bowls and all manner of accoutrement.

  “You love practically every song, Nadine,” I said, standing to get a hug.

  “Guilty as charged,” she laughed. “How are you, Session? Haven’t seen you in a blue moon, nor a pink one either for that matter.”

  Just then the outside door to the atrium burst open. We all whirled to see a hulking figure framed in the doorway. I didn’t recognize him at first. The rain had picked up again and he was dripping wet and his face was doing a good imitation of the thundercloud outside. Noland Nicholson was a record hound I’d met through Darby. They were good buddies—or at least I’d thought so up until this moment.

  “So, it’s true!” he shouted, taking long strides toward Darby. “You’re selling off? And you’re selling to her? He turned in my direction and seemed to notice his own accusatory finger poking the air. “Hey, Session, no offense, how ya doin’?” he said offhandedly, then turned back to Darby with full ire. “You told me you’d give me first crack. You said if I pushed this job to the front of the line,” he motioned toward the outside construction, “you’d sell to me! We had a deal!”

  “That was before the place didn’t pass inspection, Noland,” Darby said. “You’re the owner of the company; take some pride, man. Like I’ve been telling you, you do shoddy work, there’s consequences. The deal’s off!”

  Nadine and I must have looked like spectators at a tennis match as we followed volleys of accusation and insult until I feared they’d come to blows.

  “Darby!” came a small but commanding voice as Beth ran into the room. “For pity’s sake! Calm down! This is ridiculous.” She waded in between the two men, putting stiff arms out to referee. “You should both be ashamed. You’ve been friends forever and you’re going to act like this over a pile of cardboard and plastic?”

  “Vinyl!” we all corrected in unison.

  “Vinyl,” she repeated, rolling her eyes. As she continued to dress them down like a mommy scolding misbehaving children, both Darby and Noland began to study their shoes and I got a vision of my sweet deal circling the drain. I was bummed, but not upset enough to get in the middle of whatever this mess was to try to save it.

  Noland had left the door to the atrium standing open and now two more men appeared, dressed in yellow slickers. They stood, solemnly appraising the situation.

  “Have we come at a bad time?” the shorter man finally asked.

  Noland glared at the man as Darby motioned them inside. Nadine went to close the door. I noticed she threw the latch this time to shut out any more troubles. She stared at the unfolding scene, her lips set in a hard line.

  “Hello, Ted,” Noland said, spitting each word as if it were a foul taste.

  “Noland,” the man nodded by way of greeting. “You’ll be happy to hear everything passed. You’re clear to start the electrical.”

  “Shoulda been clear the first time around,” Noland tossed back.

  “Look, Noland,” the man said, “this isn’t high school, I’m doing my job. It’s like I told your man John here,” he jerked his thumb at the tall man standing behind him, “it wasn’t his fault. I say John Daws is one of the best construction foremen I know. They changed the code last year and anybody could have missed this.”

  “Well, if it’s not my foreman’s fault, and it’s not your fault, whose fault is it?” Noland persisted, but it was clear he was having to strain to keep up the bluster.

  “Nobody’s, Noland. It was just one of those things,” replied the man named Ted, who I’d now surmised was a building inspector. “You’re all set now and there’s no reason for anybody to be ticked off about it anymore.”

  Noland’s foreman, John Daws, stood silent and expressionless through the whole exchange. He stared straight ahead as they discussed him as if he weren’t there. He was a large man with features that hinted at a Cherokee heritage and was clearly no stranger to manual labor.

  Noland started to argue, but Darby cut in. “Ted’s right, Noland. Beth too. This has gone on long enough. I’ve
been an ass. I don’t know what got into me.”

  He turned his big brown eyes on me in silent supplication. I flapped a hand even as I mentally added up gas money and time lost on this useless excursion.

  “I’ll make it up to you, Session,” he said, “I promise.”

  Beth rubbed his shoulder. “That’s good. Now, can I get anybody anything?”

  I saw a sour look come over Nadine’s face as she caught a few loose strands of salt-and-pepper hair, capturing it with the clasp at the nape of her neck. She didn’t exactly harrumph—not out loud, anyway—but it was clear she didn’t think Beth capable of functioning as hostess.

  Lurking in the doorway that led off to the kitchen I saw a boy who looked to be in his teens. Beth followed my eyes and waved him in. “Everyone, this is my little brother, Kyle. Kyle, say hello.”

  Kyle shuffled into the room but didn’t seem inclined to say hello, or anything else. He stared ahead; his eyes—or at least the one I could see—were dark and brooding. His hair, blue-black as a raven’s wing, was shaved close on the sides and back but long on top, one clump falling to his nose.

  When the silence stretched beyond good manners, Beth blushed and herded him out of the room.

  Darby looked after them and sighed before turning back to us. “Take a load off, Noland,” he said, “we’ll work this all out. How ’bout you, Ted? Lousy day out, we’ve got hot soup and we’re listening to some good tunes. Can you stay a bit?”

  Ted let himself be convinced and the foreman, John Daws, headed for the door, never having uttered a word. No one seemed to note his leaving except Nadine, who intercepted him and unlatched the door to let him out. I saw a look pass between them, but couldn’t begin to guess what it might mean.

  I glanced at my watch, calculating how long I’d need to stay to be polite now that my business here was a bust, and decided a couple of hours would do. After all, it was Darby who needed to stay in my good graces since he’d reneged on our deal.