“I’ll say.”
“Dot, what’s the matter?”
“You got up this morning, had a cup of coffee — right so far?”
“I had breakfast,” he said, mystified. “And then I went to the auction room.”
“Read the paper while you ate your breakfast?”
“No, I joined this fellow and we got to talking.”
“About stamps, I’ll bet. Good breakfast?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but—”
“And then you went to the auction room.”
“Right.”
“And bought some stamps, I suppose.”
“Well, yes. But—”
“The Dallas morning newspaper,” she said, “is called the Dallas Morning News, and don’t ask me how they came up with a name like that. You can’t beat Texans for imagination. Go buy the paper, Keller. You’ll find what you’re looking for right there on the front page.”
He picked up the lots he’d won, paid for them, and packed them along with his other belongings in his small suitcase. He checked out of the Lombardy and drove off with his suitcase next to him on the front seat. Traffic was light, and he didn’t have any trouble finding his way to the interstate. He headed for New Orleans, and found a country music station, but turned it off after half an hour.
He broke the trip at the same Red Roof Inn, used the same credit card. In his room he wondered if that was a good idea. But the trip was a matter of record, and one he had never attempted to conceal. Portions of it, of course, were off the record — the car rental, the visit to Caruth Boulevard — but he had no reason to hide the fact that he’d been to Dallas, and had the stamps to prove it.
He ate next-door at a Bob’s Big Boy, and it seemed to him that half the men in the room had moustaches. Like his philatelic friend Michael, and like the man whose fingers he’d curled around the hilt of Portia Walmsley’s kitchen knife.
They’d found him like that, Keller had learned on page one of the Dallas Morning News. Still in a drunken stupor, still holding the knife, and still sprawled out next to the dead body of a woman.
Reading the paper, Keller had learned why the sonofabitch looked familiar. Keller had seen him before, and not in the auction room, or around the Lombardy. He hadn’t seen the man himself, not really. He’d seen the guy’s picture — online, in some of the photos that popped up when he asked Google Images for a peek at Portia. And it was entirely natural that he be photographed at her side. After all, he was her husband.
Charles Walmsley. The client.
A reconciliation, Dot had explained. Charles Walmsley had gone over to his wife’s house, perhaps in the hope of one last look at her before he got to see her in her coffin. And evidently the old magic was still there, and, well, one thing led to another. And somewhere along the way, he remembered that he’d better call off the hit.
So he made a phone call and figured that was that. A single phone call had put the operation in motion, so wouldn’t a second phone call nip it in the bud?
Absolutely. But the person Walmsley called had to make a call of his own, and the person he called had to call Dot, and the new directive took its time working its way through the system. By the time Dot got the word, it was already too late.
Back home, Keller held his daughter high in the air. “Tummy!” she demanded, and he put his lips to her stomach and blew, making an indelicate sound. Jenny laughed with delight and insisted he do it again.
It was good to be home.
Later that evening, Keller went upstairs and settled in with his stamps. After he’d mounted the Obock J1, he called Julia in and showed it to her, and she admired it extravagantly.
“It’s like when somebody shows you their new baby,” Keller said. “You have to say it’s beautiful, because what else are you going to say?”
“All babies are beautiful.”
“And all stamps, I suppose. That’s the original on the right and the reprint next to it. They look the same, don’t they?”
“I bet their mother could tell the difference,” she said.
Two days later, Keller bought a new phone and called Dot. “Take down this number,” he said, and read it off to her. She read it back and asked what was wrong with the old number. “It’s no good anymore,” he said, “because I smashed the phone and threw the pieces down a storm drain.”
“I smashed a pay phone once,” she said, “when it flat-out refused to give me my quarter back. What did this phone do to piss you off?”
“I figured it would be safer to get a new phone.”
“And I figure you’re probably right. You okay, Keller? Last time we talked you were a little shaky.”
“I’m all right.”
“Because you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Our client fell in love with his wife all over again,” he said, “and I killed her and framed him for it. If I’d known what was going on, you can bet I’d have handled it differently.”
“Keller, if you’d known, you wouldn’t have handled it at all. You’d have bought some stamps and come home.”
“Well, that’s true,” he allowed. “Obviously. But I still wish I hadn’t made the phone call.”
“To me?”
“To the cops, after I got out of there. I wanted to make sure they showed up before he could come to his senses and head for the hills.”
“They’d be hard to find,” she said, “in that part of the country. Look, don’t worry about it. You had no way of knowing he was the client, or that he’d canceled the contract. One way to look at it, he’s a lucky man.”
“Lucky?”
“You wanted the double bonus, right? That’s why you left him with the knife in his hand.”
“So?”
“So otherwise you’d have killed them both. This way at least he’s alive.”
“What a lucky guy.”
“Well, yes and no. See, he’s consumed with guilt.”
“Because he didn’t call it off soon enough?”
“Because he got drunk and killed his wife. He doesn’t actually remember doing it, but then he can’t remember much of anything after the third drink, and what’s a man supposed to think when he comes out of a blackout with a knife in his hand and a dead woman next to him? He figures he must have done it, and he’ll plead guilty, and that’s the end of it.”
“And now he’s got to live with the guilt.”
“Keller,” she said, “everybody’s got to live with something.”
Copyright © 2009 by Lawrence Block; serialized in American Stamp Dealer and Collector.
Dear Murderer
by Susan Breen
Susan Breen’s debut novel, The Fiction Class, published by Plume/Penguin in 2008, was praised by Booklist as a “poignant yet amusing tale of family relationships.” A writing instructor who lives in upstate New York, the author has also had short stories published in a number of literary magazines. One of her stories made the 2009 volume of The Best American Nonrequired Reading (Houghton-Mifflin). This is her first mystery story, and, we hope, not her last.
We called my brother Sunny because when he smiled the sun came out. Big grin, curly blond hair, every girl’s dream. But he was kind, too. His kindness was what made him special. One day, toward the end of tenth grade, Jared Reiss was having trouble with his gym lock and my brother helped him twist it open. At the time, of course, there was no hint that Jared Reiss would torture and murder fifteen women. At the time, all you could say of him was that he was a strange kid, picked on by bullies, an average student, and no one spoke to him. Except for my brother.