“Why, Sonny?” I yelled. “Why couldn’t you let that happen?”
“Ain’t you guessed by now, boy?” he said. “I’m her real daddy.”
“Sonny, wait,” I said. “It wouldn’t have made any difference. Carol would have gotten what was coming from her mother’s estate anyway.”
“Just like them Indians are getting their fair share, huh?” Sonny grinned ruefully at me as he raised the shotgun again and pointed it at me. “You don’t know much about going up against a rich man, do you, boy? And I reckon you ain’t gonna have no more time to learn.”
My legs felt too weak to run. Paralyzed with fear, I closed my eyes. The shot came and my knees gave out, and I rolled in the dirt, anticipating the terrible pain. Suddenly I heard a gurgling sound and realized I wasn’t hit.
Sonny was. He staggered convulsively in front of me. The shotgun discharged explosively, scattering a cloud of dirt off to the right.
Another shot, and Sonny’s body jerked violently for a few seconds as he curled over and fell in a twisted heap. I ran forward and pulled the shotgun from under him. Jim Buck came running up carrying his 30–30 Winchester. I cradled the dying man in my arms.
“Rick, you all right?” Jim asked. “I was out patrolling when I saw you...”
Sonny’s body shook again, and he brought a darkly stained hand up and looked at it.
“Dark blood... Hit my liver,” he said haltingly.
“I’ll call for an ambulance,” Jim said, turning to run up to his squad car.
“No,” called Sonny. “Got to hear... this...” A couple more labored breaths and Sonny told us that he’d killed McKitrick and planted the Sig Sauer in Joe’s truck.
“Saw it outside the bar.” His mouth twisted in a pitiful attempt at a smile. “Seemed a neat way to tie things up.”
“Why’d you do it, Sonny?” Jim Buck asked.
Sonny’s eyes darted from Jim to me. Then he shook his head. “Tell Carol I’m...” He started to whisper to me, then his mouth dropped open and a blood bubble spread over his lips, not bursting until I moved his head. His hands fell limply to his sides. “What’d he say?” Jim asked. I shook my head. “Wonder why he killed McKitrick?” Jim said.
The scrap of the envelope with Hardy’s return address stirred in the hot wind, then fluttered out over the edge of the canyon and disappeared. “I guess that’ll be his secret,” I said.
The Cancellation
by Reginald Hill
© 1996 by Reginald Hill
Readers may be surprised to find the creator of police detectives Dalziel and Pascoe turning his band to the private-eye story, but Reginald Hill has always ranged freely across genre lines in his sixteen-year career as a mystery writer. His latest creation, black P.I. Joe Sixsmith, is as irreverently portrayed as most of Mr. Hill’s other characters, and the result, as usual, is uproariously funny.
“Hello.”
“Who’s that?”
“It’s Joe, Aunt Mirabelle.”
“You sure? Why didn’t you say so before?”
“Because it’s my phone in my office, Aunt Mirabelle. I always answer it.”
“Not when you know it’s me ringing you don’t, boy.”
Joe Sixsmith sighed. As a leading light among the black P.I.’s of Luton who’d served their time as lathe operators, he felt entitled to a little respect.
“What do you want, Auntie?”
“You know Mr. Tooley’s funeral?”
“We talked about it last night. You said it couldn’t be till next Thursday ’cos they’d had a rush on at the crem and I made a note and said I’d definitely be there. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. Well, it’s this afternoon. Half-past three.”
“Today? But you said...”
“I know what I said. And I told that funeral director friend of yours it was a crying shame that folk had to be kept lying around so long, especially when they’d only got one frail old sister who’d travelled all the way from Belfast to sort out the effects and had neither the money nor the strength to be travelling back home and back here again in space of a week...”
“Yes, Auntie,” said Joe, risking an interruption. “You said all this. So what’s changed?”
“Mr. Webster from the parlour rang this morning to say there’s been a cancellation and did we want it?”
“Lou said a cancellation? Of a funeral? You sure?”
“Don’t you start again, Joseph. Just be here three o’clock sharp. Don’t want that old lady going home saying they don’t know the meaning of good neighbourliness here in Luton.”
Joe grinned broadly as he replaced the receiver. It was true that for many years Mirabelle had undoubtedly been a good neighbour to old Mr. Tooley, making sure that he continued to be well fed even when, as often happened, he contrived to lose most of his pension at his much-loved dog track by halfway through the week. But this argosy of Christian charity to a miserable sinner was in risk of foundering on the rock of old Miss Tooley, the grieving sister, who, so far as Joe could judge, had no intention whatsoever of travelling home to Belfast and back in a week. On the contrary, she seemed more than content to more than fill her brother’s place, resting in his flat with Good Neighbour Mirabelle coming round with three hot meals a day, in between which she spent most of her time on the Good Neighbour’s line, pouring out her woes to her numerous acquaintance back in Belfast.
So news of the cancellation must have come like a gift from God to Mirabelle.
Possibly in compensation for these uncharitable thoughts, and in despite of the shortness of notice and the fact that at ninety-three, old Mr. Tooley had outlived most of his two-legged friends, Mirabelle had managed to drum up a fair turnout, enough to fill both funeral cars, with Joe having to squeeze in the front seat of the hearse next to Lou Webster whom he’d known since school days.
“Okay, Lou?” he asked.
“Fine. Yourself, Joe?”
“Fine. Get a lot of cancellations in your line of business, do you?”
“Not a lot. In fact, it takes something unusual.”
Joe contemplated eternity for another dignified furlong. But his mind kept drifting back to the cancellation.
“So what was unusual about this one?” he asked.
“Mr. Tallas? For a start, he died abroad.”
“You say he was called ‘Dallas’?”
“Tallas. It’s Greek. That’s where he was, in Greece, visiting his family. But seems he’d been born here, had British nationality, and wanted to be buried here. The insurance company — guy called Smith — rang to say it had to be postponed. Family complications. I wasn’t best pleased, I tell you. One thing you can’t afford in our game is smell.”
Joe tried eternity again but it was no good.
“Smell?” he said.
“You know. Bad-meat smell. Mr. Tallas died in a car accident, probably all cut up and left out in the sun till they got round to shovelling him into a coffin, you know what these wops are like, all mañana out there.”
“Think that’s Spain, Lou,” Joe pointed out gently.
“Is it? Won’t fall out about a couple of miles. Anyway, first thing I noticed when I picked him up at the airport was the pong. You had to get up close but I’ve got a nose for it. I thought, hello. Don’t want you lying around in my parlour too long.”
Joe shuddered and looked behind him.
“No need to worry about Mr. Tooley. Time I’m finished with a client, you could sit him in your living room and keep him there for a month without anyone noticing, except he didn’t move much.”
“Got a girl on the cheese counter at the hyper like that,” said Joe. “So what did you tell this insurance guy, Smith?”