He’d disappeared, had he?
I didn’t think so — not for a New York minute.
Actually, it was the ding in my right rear — which of course didn’t come about the way Deputy Bethune said it did — that had first set me thinking.
Emerging from a diner in Galway — about three in the afternoon, not eleven at night, nowhere near Route 40 or Bedford Pike — I’d come upon the ding. After studying it a bit, it began to seem a ding of a different color; that is, one produced by a mallet as opposed to a collision.
Add that to the shift in the political winds, and my guess was Felix had set about “doing whatever needs doing.”
I looked at my watch. Still about ten minutes before LaMar could arrive. Why not wake up Barney Cox, I asked myself — rhetorically, since I’d already decided that was a good idea.
Blearily, Barney acknowledged that he had what I’d hired him for. Yeah, it would do the job, he thought. And sure he could bring the stuff over if I really needed him to, but did I know what time it was? I told him I did and that there’d be a crack-of-dawn bonus to sweeten the pot. He purred contentedly and said he was on his way. After hanging up, I called him again to make sure he hadn’t purred himself back to sleep. He had, but promised not to again.
I went outside to look at the moon to see if that had disappeared, too.
Three minutes later, with his customary screech of brakes, LaMar made the scene. But not alone. Of all people, Fay Carteret Loomis was with him.
And out she came firing — before LaMar’s BMW had stopped spinning its wheels, I swear.
“All right,” she said, swinging a suitcase in my general direction while she went back for another, “I’m home. I’ll bet the place is a pigsty.”
“It isn’t.”
Which she ignored. “You never did know how to take care of things, Roy Loomis. If it wasn’t dark I bet I’d see what a jungle you’ve got growing here.”
“I paid young Jamie Anderson to look after your garden.”
“Where are my tomatoes? I bet there isn’t a single one of them left alive. And I shudder to think of the condition my glads might be in.”
I stood up and started back into the house.
That got LaMar into the act. “Damn you, Roy, you better listen to Fay. Considering the mess you’re in, you need all the support you can get.”
“I’ll listen to her whenever she’s ready to talk to me. Fay, why are you back?”
“Because you’re in trouble, you fool. Why else?”
And in the next minute she was in my arms, sobbing fit to kill, and she felt so good there I told her if I’d known what a remedy trouble would be I’d have arranged for some long since. I sat her down on the steps and put my arms around her, holding her close. “Okay, LaMar, what kind of mess am I in?”
“Sam Bethune’s telling it you’re a murder suspect.”
When I felt Fay shiver against me I held her closer and made shushing noises.
“Bethune now says the two witnesses who saw Felix deck you then heard you threaten to kill him. Is that true?”
“Nope. Go on.”
“Go on? All right, Roy, I’ll go on. From where I’m standing, dark as it is, I can see a dinged fender on that jalopy of yours.”
“It’s dinged, all right.”
LaMar swore under his breath.
Fay burrowed into me.
“Roy,” LaMar said, “I’m not quitting on you no matter how big the mess is, but I got something to ask you point-blank. Now I know you didn’t kill anybody, but did you have anything to do with Felix’s disappearance?”
Not being sure just how to answer that, I kept on smoothing Fay’s hair and kissing her forehead occasionally while I tried to work something out. That made LaMar mad, and he kicked his BMW tire to show me.
“Let’s just wait a bit,” I said finally.
“For what? For hell to freeze over? For Bethune to come marching up here with maybe six friends in white sheets?”
“For Barney.”
He blinked. “Will you tell me what the Sam Hill you’re talking about?”
LaMar’s banty stance and slung-out jaw was now making me as mad as he was. “Felix’s disappearance isn’t a real disappearance, damn it. It’s meant to discredit me and win him an election. I mean, who wants a murderer for a sheriff? Most any electorate will put up with a crook, of course, but a killer? That’s a bit much. Anyway, after the votes are counted — me on the short end — he’ll turn up full of explanations. A sudden secret mission for the President of the United States; a short-term bout with amnesia. Does it matter? We’re talking vintage Br’er Foxx. Only this time it’s not going to work.”
“It’s not?”
“No way.”
Fay stood up then and said, “I think I’ll do myself a favor and not listen to the rest of this just now. You don’t mind, do you, shug?”
I shook my head.
After a couple of steps, however, she turned, came back, and kissed me. “But you can tell me about it later if you want to, all right?”
I grinned and said it was.
In the meantime LaMar had been studying me. “You know where Felix is, don’t you?”
I nodded. “At Minnie’s. That pretty little cottage she has out beyond Galway? White picket fence? Nice little rose garden? Private little swimming pool — private enough for skinny-dipping or sportive behavior in general. I set Barney on Felix’s tail right after Deputy Bethune or a designated hitter took a mallet to my fender.” I paused. “Barney and his telephoto lens.”
LaMar studied me some more, then his eyes widened. “You’re going to threaten to show pictures to Edna Mae. By God, you’re going to blackmail Felix into quitting.”
“It’s called doing whatever needs doing,” I said.
Now I don’t think LaMar was as shocked as he pretended to be, because he knows me so well. A lot better than Felix Foxx does.
Out of the Woods
by Henry Slesar
Trumbull was bewildered by the city, by the sea of people who never seemed to notice him. Except on the day he shot and killed the off-duty police officer, pumping his own gas in the station Trumbull had decided to rob.
It had been only three weeks since he had left the Oregon woods. A city girl with a mocking smile had hired him as guide, and in the deep of the forest had suddenly kissed him and told him he was cute. Trumbull was struck dumb with love, and decided to give up the only life he knew.
She didn’t even recognize his name when he called. He took his misery to a shabby hotel and watched his money disappear. Broke and desperate, he bought a cheap handgun. When the cop ran at him, he discovered that it was loaded.
Every newspaper featured a police sketch of his face, chillingly accurate. He stiffed the hotel and took a bus back home.
Nobody in the small town of Culver seemed to know Trumbull had been gone. He was relieved to see that Culver’s only hotel was crowded. The weather was good, and there was a convention in town, and as soon as he walked into the lobby, Sonny, the manager, asked if he wanted a job.
“His name’s Potter,” Sonny said. “He’s just checking in now.” He nodded towards the front desk, at a tall, sad-eyed man in his late twenties.
Trumbull was hesitant about showing his face, but he had no choice. He introduced himself and said he would meet Potter in the lobby at seven the next morning.
He was just walking off when he heard the words of the desk clerk, words that seemed to open the floor beneath him.
“May I see your badge, Mr. Potter?”
He turned and watched Potter slip his wallet from a back pocket, flipping it open.