Helen leaned forward, resting her head against the steering wheel. She swallowed bile. Her eyes were hot. She began to shake all over. Beau had gone and killed Emily Watson. Beau. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t take it in. Her Beau. Ruining her life. Their lives. And for that filthy skank Emily Watson.
Her eyes flew open. She stared for a long minute at the dirty yellow steering wheel on which her head was resting, grimy for the most part. Shiny where the fingers gripped it. Yellow? Her head popped up. She was in Beau’s big yellow Buick. He had taken her car to the capital and was going to drive it back and give it to Louie to take in for inspection. He’d told her so this morning.
The heat, the cold, the shaking all instantly ceased. Helen’s head cleared and she started the engine and drove slowly past the parked yellow Buick toward the cluster of police cars up ahead. What were the odds? Poor little Emily Watson probably did have a gentleman caller with execrable taste in automobiles and a murderous bad temper, but it wasn’t Beau Goode.
And there was Beau up ahead, getting out of her car, holding his jacket. His boys must have found him. She pulled over quickly, the fender scraping the curb. She flung open the door.
Beau heard the metal grate on the concrete and turned as she hurled herself toward him. He was startled and seemed to try to ward her off, but she hit him like a train and flung her arms around him.
“Damn, precious thing,” Beau drawled, unwrapping her arms gently, peering into her face, streaked with mascara and pancake. “What’s all this, then?”
“Beau, I just love you to death, is all,” she panted, overcome by emotion, having lost him and got him back all in the space of a ten-block drive. She tried again to gather him close, but he held her at arm’s length.
“Well, I love you, too, precious, but I’ve got work to do. You go on home now. Hear?”
Helen nodded, her breathing slowing, her equanimity restored. Beginning to wonder what Beau’s boys must think of her grabbing at the chief in front of them. For what?
“Sure, darlin’,” she said lightly, a little loud for the benefit of the boys who were waiting on Beau. “See you later, then.”
Beau nodded, pulling on his jacket.
She threw them all a jaunty wave and piloted the big old car out around the cruisers. She was at the end of the block when she noticed that her fingers were sticky and had left wet marks where she held the wheel.
She pulled up at the stop sign under a streetlight and put the car in park. She peered at her hands. Red blotches. What had she gotten into that was red? The only thing she’d touched lately was when she’d hugged Beau.
Her stomach turned, gorge rising. She swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. Beau.
Somebody behind her tapped his horn. Helen carefully put the big yellow Buick into gear. The gritty little coal town jumped and whispered around her as she powered the big car back toward home.
Copyright © 2006 Meredith Anthony
A Convergence of Clerics
by Edward D. Hoch
Returning this issue after an eight-year interval is Hoch series character Susan Holt, department-store executive cum amateur sleuth. This episode finds her on a cruise ship overseeing her company’s new onboard store. When a customer is found dead, it’s up to Susan and an old friend in ship security to solve the crime.
The first thing that struck her as odd was the number of Catholic priests who seemed to have booked passage on the maiden transatlantic voyage of the Dawn Neptune, one of the largest and most luxurious cruise ships afloat. Susan Holt stood on the upper deck watching them board and realized there must be fifty or more of them.
Of course, for a ship carrying twenty-five hundred passengers, that wasn’t a large percentage, but it was still worth noting for Susan. She was on board as director of promotions for Manhattan’s largest and most prestigious department store, and her job was to gauge public reaction to the opening of the very first Mayfield’s branch on a cruise ship.
She was one of those who’d pushed for the seagoing store at board meetings a year or more ago, when the ship was still being built. “Where else can you find a captive audience this large, in one place for seven days, or fourteen days if they do the round trip? Every one of those twenty-five hundred people is going to walk past our shop a couple of times a day, and chances are every one of them will come in to look around at least once during the voyage.”
The shops were arranged around an atrium three stories high that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in New York’s newest luxury hotel. The space allotted to Mayfield’s shop, some two thousand square feet, was almost as large as the ship’s casino. Following the customary life-jacket drill upon sailing, Susan was standing outside the shop, admiring the look of the place, when Sid Cromwell, the ship’s security officer, came along behind her. “Thinking of buying something?”
“Hi, Sid. It’s impressive, isn’t it?” She’d known Sid when he worked security at Mayfield’s years ago.
“This your first store on a cruise ship?”
“The first, but maybe not the last. What are all the priests doing on board?”
“We’re sailing to Italy, remember? There’s a big papal conference scheduled for next week and we offered discounts to any clergy attending it. We have fifty-six, I believe. They were hoping for more, but even with the discounts I guess it’s cheaper to fly.”
They were departing from New York and sailing across the Atlantic with stops at the Azores and Gibraltar before going on to Naples and then to Greece. The cruise line had chartered buses to take the clergymen from Naples to Rome, about a three-hour trip. “You taking the round trip with us?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Flying home from Italy. Just wanted to see how the shop managed on its maiden voyage and how we can improve it next time.”
She left him and entered the shop. Lisa Mandrake, the manager, was ringing up a sale. “That your first one?” Susan asked as the customer departed with a familiar Mayfield’s shopping bag on her arm.
Lisa was younger than Susan, a chipper girl in her twenties who’d come to New York to be an actress and ended up at Mayfield’s. She was a good choice to manage their first floating store. “Third so far, and we’re barely out of port.” She was all smiles, as were her two assistants.
“I’ll check with you periodically, to get a fix on what’s selling best.”
One of the priests had entered while they talked and he interrupted to ask if they had any men’s sport shirts. “Right over here, Father,” Lisa directed him.
He glanced at Susan, somewhat embarrassed, apparently feeling an explanation was called for. “I knew we’d be wearing our black suits and collars in Rome. It didn’t occur to me that my fellow clergymen would wear more casual attire aboard ship.”
Susan thought she should introduce herself. “I’m Susan Holt, Mayfield’s director of promotions. This is our first shipboard shop and we’re interested in customer reactions.”
He beamed at her, looking younger than he probably was. “Father John Ullman from Omaha. This is a first for me, too, my first cruise. So far I’m enjoying it immensely.” She guessed him to be in his mid thirties, with a friendly, youthful face and dark hair showing the first strands of gray at the temples.
“Is this your first trip to Rome?”
“I flew over for the Holy Year Jubilee in 2000, and I’ve wanted to go back ever since. It’s a wonderful city, especially for Catholics.”