For a moment, there is only silence, a deep, still silence that a voice finally breaks.
“You always whistled that tune, Mark. So full of yourself, so certain Cat would always come back to you. It drove me crazy. But you didn’t whistle it after you said that Cat was in Seattle. You didn’t, and I told you so. Remember?”
I burst out laughing. It’s freakin’ Freda got up in disguise.
Freda slips the black wig from her head, dangles it in her hand at her knee, and leans forward until her eyes gleam in the light.
“I don’t think you know all the lyrics to that song, Mark. The cat keeps coming back, but in the last stanza as a ghost. In a way, I’m Cat’s ghost.”
“Whatever you say, Freda.”
Then I notice the glint of the little revolver Freda has pointed at me from the cradle of her lap. Good old Freda.
I throw up my hands. “You got me, Freda. What now? You going to call the cops?”
Freda leans back in the chair, concealing her eyes in shadow again.
“My word against yours, Freda. And there ain’t no corpse. Not so you can find one, anyway.” It occurs to me, then, that Freda’s recording.
“Taping this, are you, Freda? Evidence? Then let me explain that I knew all along you guys were setting me up. You, Richard, Craig, and little Julie. So I turned the hoax back on you, I played the big bad killer you expected me to be. Ha, effin’ ha. Do you hear that, all you cops reviewing this tape? Big practical joke! As far as I know, Cat’s still in Seattle.” I shrug my shoulders — hands still in the air — at Freda.
The foot of her crossed leg begins to bounce. Who knew Freda had such great legs? She doesn’t look half bad when she’s dolled up.
“Evidence? Perhaps proof is a better word.”
“Sorry, Freda, I don’t think any law-enforcement agency will accept this as proof of anything.”
“The thing is, Mark, we — me and the rest of Cat’s friends — don’t have much confidence in the justice system dispensing justice. We agreed that if I proved you killed Cat — and I think your confession is good enough — I should go ahead.”
“Go ahead with what?” If freakin’ Freda thinks she’s scaring me...
“We all loved Cat, you know. Really did love her.” She leans forward again. Her eyes have a set look that says whatever she’s planned, in her mind, it’s already over. I feel a sudden chill.
“You’re finished yourself, Freda, if you kill me with your own gun. Evidence, after all.”
“The thing is, Mark, this isn’t mine.” I notice, then, that Freda’s wearing a surgical glove on the hand holding the gun. “It’s Cat’s.”
I snort. “Cat would never own a gun.”
Freda smiles. “Don’t I know.” She turns the gun slightly, looks at it almost reverently. “I think she agreed to buy it only to please me. She was never convinced it was such a dangerous world. I selected a model of handgun suitable for her, helped with the paperwork, got the gun licensed in her name. But Cat’s heart wasn’t in it.” Freda releases a breath.
“I went with her when she took possession of the gun. She didn’t want to take it to her apartment — maybe you were there — but to mine.
“When we reached my apartment, I wanted her to take the gun out of its case, her to hold it, get accustomed to it, attached. She handled it for less than a minute — she did try. But then she returned the gun to the case, secured the lid, and pushed the case across the table to me. ‘I’m sorry, Freda. I can’t. Could you return it for me, please?’ ”
Freda raises her eyes from the gun, and they are as deep and dark as wells. As deep and dark as the end of the gun’s barrel that she also raises and centers on my forehead. “Cat’s gun, Cat’s prints. Maybe even Cat who entered the apartment building, if there was anyone to see. Cat who runs out. As for me, I’m at the gallery, attending a showing of Craig’s most recent works, as Richard, Julie, and all Cat’s friends will testify. So you see, Mark, in a way, Cat came back.”
The Lost Boy
by Robert Barnard
Robert Barnard is the winner of the 2003 Crime Writers Association Cartier Diamond Dagger Award for lifetime achievement. This highest honor in British crime writing goes to an author who has already won the American Nero Wolfe, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards, and has received eight nominations for the Edgar. We present a Barnard novella this time. The author’s latest novel is The Mistress of Alderley (Scribner; 4/03).
The young man in jeans and chunky pullover walked out of the sportswear shop into the broad upper walk of the shopping precinct, his little boy riding high on his shoulders.
“Where to now, Captain?” he asked. “What’s the menu: Coke, ice cream, or lemonade?”
The child’s eyes sparkled, but he thought long and seriously and when at last he said, “Lemonade, Daddy,” the man wondered whether he said it because it was the last option mentioned. Often his apparent pondering was really the sign of his general thoughtfulness.
“Okay, well, we’ll go to the ice-cream stall downstairs, shall we? They have drinks as well there, so you can make up your mind finally when you get there.”
“Yes!” said the little boy enthusiastically.
They made an attractive sight as they took the escalator down to the lower floor of the shopping precinct, the little boy glorying in his wondrous elevation above really grown-up people, crowing down on them and drawing their attention. The man was about twenty-five, casual altogether, but his jeans were clean and above the neck of the pullover could be seen the bright check of his shirt. The face would not have attracted a second look, but when it did, the passerby would have noted light brown hair cut short around a long, thoughtful face.
“Here we are, Captain,” he said as they arrived at the ice-cream stall on the ground level. “Now, take a good look and tell me what it is you’d like.”
“What a lovely little boy,” said a middle-aged woman, joining the queue behind them.
“Malcolm?” responded the man softly, his hand ruffling the hair of the boy, now on the ground and staring through the side glass of the stall. “He’s a cracker. But we don’t tell him.”
They looked at him. He was oblivious to their conversation, single-mindedly surveying the range of desirables on offer.
“Take your time, Captain,” the man said.
“He’s got a good father, that’s for sure,” said the woman, half in love with the man’s youth and healthy look. “These days men pretend they’re shouldering half the burden, but really they leave most of it to the mother as they always did.”
“He’s everything to me,” said the young man simply. “He’s what makes life worth living. We’ll be phoning his mother in a while, to tell her we’re both all right.”
“Oh — don’t you come from here?”
“No, we’re not from these parts.”
“I want the red one,” said the little boy, pointing to a bright pink bowl of ice cream.
“The red one, right. I think that’s cherry, not strawberry.”
“Sherry. I want the sherry one.”
So the cherry one it was. The man paid for a double scoop of ice cream, refused one for himself, and when he’d paid over the money he nodded to the woman and led the boy by the left hand out of the St. James’s Mall and into early spring sunlight. The boy walked confidently, his hand in the man’s, while the other one held the cornet, which he was licking enthusiastically.