“No.”
A pause, a look of horror flashed across her face. Marina Westwood screamed and ran from the poolside into the body of the house. Yellich lunged at her as she ran past him, missed, and started to run after her.
“Don’t.” Hennessey placed the test tube in his jacket pocket. “She’s not running from us, she’s running from herself, either that or she’s engaging with life for the first time. Either way, we’ll find her sobbing on the sofa somewhere.”
In the event, they found her on the rear patio looking out over the garden, sobbing quietly. Hennessey stood beside her.
“You know,” she said, “this was all going to be mine.”
“Was.”
“Can’t profit from a crime, can you?”
“No.”
“His brother will inherit it all now.”
“But it wasn’t your idea to murder them?”
“No, it was his.”
“Richardson?”
“Yes.” She nodded as she watched a pair of swans, keeping perfect stations with each other like aircraft in formation, sweep low over the house. “My marriage wasn’t good. My husband was carrying on with Wendy Richardson. I found out about it. Went to see Herbert Richardson. He went cold with anger. He said we should do something. I told him that every Sunday afternoon they swim at our house, I’m out then, but I know they do it. I gave him a key. Came back Sunday evening and he was in the house, by the pool, soaked to the skin. My husband and her lying on the poolside. He’d just jumped into the pool, grabbed them, held them by their ankles facedown until they drowned. He’s a big man, strong enough to do that.”
“Then?”
“Well, then we dressed them. It’s not easy dressing a dead body.”
“I can imagine.”
“But we managed it. Took them out and laid them side by side in a field. Herbert Richardson said, ‘That’ll fox ’em.’”
Which it did, Hennessey thought, and there lay your undoing.
“Where will we find Richardson now?”
“At home. He said to carry on as though nothing had happened. So he’ll be at Penny Farm. There’s nothing between us, me and him. We have nothing in common.”
And Hennessey thought, but did not say, Except double murder. You’ve got that in common.
That evening, with both Herbert Richardson and Miranda Westwood in the cells, having been charged with the murders of Dominic Westwood and Wendy Richardson, Hennessey drove out to Skelton, taking an overnight bag with him. He walked up to a half-timbered house and tapped on the door. The door was opened by a woman who smiled warmly at him.
“Evening, madam.” Hennessey stepped over the threshold and kissed the woman.
“The children are in bed,” said Louise D’Acre. “We can go straight up.”
The Valhalla Verdict
by Doug Allyn
Doug Allyn is simply incredible. Hardly a year goes by when he isn’t nominated or claiming one of the mystery field’s major awards. In 2007, for instance, not only did the Michigan author win a third-place scroll in EQMM’s Readers Award Competition for “Stone Cold Christmas” (1/07), he also received a nomination for the Barry Award for Best Short Story for the EQMM tale “Dead as a Dog” (7/07). This new story is shorter than most of Mr. Allyn’s, but of the same high quality.
The jury wouldn’t look at us when they filed back in. Even the foreman, a rumpled old-timer who’d offered my mother sympathetic glances during the course of the trial, was avoiding our eyes now.
A bad sign. But I wasn’t really worried. The case was open and shut.
A rich playboy knocks up his girlfriend. He offered to pay for an abortion but she refused his money. She wanted the child whether he did or not. A week later, as she was walking home from work, my nineteen-year-old sister, Lisa Marie Canfield, was clipped by a hit-and-run driver who never even slowed down. Dead at the side of the road. Killed like a stray dog.
Police found traces of blood on the bumper of her boyfriend’s Cadillac SUV. Lisa’s blood. A simple, straightforward homicide. In Detroit. Or New York.
But Valhalla is a small, northern Michigan resort village and Lisa’s boyfriend, Mel Bennett, is a hometown hero here. A football star at Michigan State and later for the Detroit Lions, Mel owns the biggest Cadillac/GMC dealership in five counties.
Lisa, on the other hand, was only a shopgirl, a wistful little retro-hippie who sold candles and incense in one of the tourist traps on Lake Street. She was too young to get involved with a player like Mel. If I’d known she was seeing him... but I didn’t know. I’d been too wrapped up in my teaching career to pay much attention to my little sister’s life.
And now it was too late for brotherly advice. Or anything else. Only justice remained.
But Mel Bennett was a sympathetic figure on the witness stand. Tanned, tailored, and charismatic, Mel sheepishly admitted that my sister wasn’t his only girlfriend, he was dating several other women. And one of his lovers, Fawn Daniels, still had keys to his apartment. And to his car.
When Fawn took the stand, she refused to say where she was at the time of the killing. She took the Fifth Amendment instead, scowling at the jury, hard-eyed and defiant as a Mafia don.
And now the jury looked uneasy, even angry. Like they’d been arguing. Perhaps they’d settled on a charge less than murder. Manslaughter, maybe.
It never occurred to me they’d let the bastard walk.
But that’s exactly what they did.
The foreman read the verdict aloud from the verdict slip. “On the sole charge of murder in the second degree, we find the defendant, Mel Bennett, not guilty.” And the packed courtroom actually burst into applause.
Outside, on the courthouse steps, the foreman told a ring of reporters: “We thought Mr. Bennett was credible when he swore he cared for Lisa Canfield and would never harm her. And when his mistress, Fawn Daniels, refused to answer, many of us felt there was reasonable doubt. Maybe she—”
But he was talking to the air. Mel and his entourage swept out of the courthouse and the reporters flocked around them like gulls at a fish market.
Smiling for the cameras, Mel said he had no idea who’d killed poor Lisa, but he was sure the authorities would find the person responsible. He offered his sincerest condolences to her family.
“How does it feel to be a free man?” a reporter shouted.
“I was never worried,” Mel said solemnly. “I knew I could count on a Valhalla jury for a fair shake.”
Scrambling into a gleaming red Escalade, Mel roared away, waving to the crowd, grinning like he’d just scored the biggest touchdown of his life. Or gotten away with murder.
When the prosecutor was interviewed, he griped that Mel Bennett got a Valhalla verdict. A reporter asked him to explain, but he just shrugged and stalked off. Implication? What do you expect from a hick-town jury?
And he was right. Valhalla is a small town. By New York or even Detroit standards, most folks who live up north are hicks. More or less.
My extended family, Canfields and La Mottes, are redneck to the bone, and proud of it. My uncle Deke’s clan, the La Mottes, are the roughest of our bunch, jackpine savages who grow reefer and cook crystal meth in the trackless forests. The rest of us are solid, working-class citizens. Blue collar, for the most part.
All but me. I’m Paul Canfield, the first of my family to earn a bachelor’s degree. I teach political science at Valhalla High School. My relatives call me Professor. A compliment or an insult, depending on the tone.