Returning to the kitchen, he resumed his seat at the cluttered table, and after a while, sagged tiredly forward, laying his head to rest on the place mat. As his eyelids began to flutter his breathing grew very rapid and he began to pant like a dog, perhaps like Mariel’s dog, he thought. Then, suddenly, it slowed once more to become reedy and shallow. Trying to lift a hand to reach out for the empty bird cage, he smiled and muttered, “The speech of angels... the language of God.”
From other rooms his choir sang on.
Though Mariel had been successful in keeping the necklace a secret, the songbird proved another matter altogether. Between its near-continuous song celebrating the unfettered freedom of Mariel’s bedroom, and Sailor’s constant yowling and scratching at her closed door, the secret was soon out. The following morning Mariel’s mother discovered the colorful little creature flitting happily about Mariel’s room, leaving its droppings wherever they happened to land. Neither she nor Sailor was amused.
Remaining mute in the face of interrogation as she always did served no purpose in the end, for her mother had heard from other mothers on the street about Mr. Forster’s fussy relationship with birds. An unsettling suspicion began to dawn on her.
Snagging the contested bird within the worn fishnet from an old forgotten aquarium, she confined it within a perforated bait can left behind by her ex and set off down the street. Mariel followed on her purple bike at a distance, silent, resentful, and slightly fearful, but curious for all that.
When Forster failed to answer her repeated knocks, Mariel’s mom marched her formidable bulk to the rear of the house, where she found his hens scattered about the yard and far into the woods. Upon seeing her they stormed forth with hungry shrieks. Ignoring them, she mounted the rear steps, grunting with each, to peer in through the glass of the back door. Forster sat slumped at his table and would not respond to her repeated poundings. An empty mug with a teddy bear painted on it rested next to an outstretched hand. As keen as her daughter, she noticed right away the long scratches that festooned his bare arms.
Turning with a gasp, she swept back down the steps, through the now-fleeing hens, and back up the street to her home, carrying Mariel in her wake by force of will and dire threats. The police responded within minutes of her call.
Mr. Salter was released from custody with a muted apology from the police, even as Forster was bundled away for autopsy. It appeared Mariel had misidentified her assailant in the darkness, a common enough mistake even for an adult. For his part, Salter threatened lawsuits all round.
As to Forster’s motive for breaking into Mariel’s bedroom, the general consensus was the obvious one. But as he was dead, the matter was laid to rest with his body.
Mariel, as a reward for her brave defense of herself, was allowed to keep the bird, and though it was not a dog, she was very satisfied with the exchange. As for the necklace, she continued to keep it a secret from her mother and wore it only when out of the house. Ripper, forgotten in all the excitement, remained in his shared and secret grave, an arrangement that also suited Mariel, as she had no wish for her possession of the necklace to be challenged in any way.
Copyright © 2012 by David Dean
Misprision of Felony
by O’Neil De Noux
A Shamus and Derringer Award winner for his short fiction, O’Neil De Noux has contributed work from several of his long-running series to EQMM. This month he debuts a new character, Detective Joseph Savary. If readers like this New Orleans homicide cop as much as we think they will, we’ll probably be seeing him in a novel soon. Meanwhile, De Noux fans won’t want to miss his latest novel issued on Kindle, the John Raven Beau mystery The Body in Crooked Bayou.
Detective Joseph Savary counted nineteen people on Felicity Street. Four older men sat on folding chairs outside Ojubi’s Barbershop, two women swept the sidewalk beyond the shop, two others hosed off their stoops while chatting with each other, three boys rode around on bicycles, four girls hovered between a parked blue Chevy and a dark green Pontiac, two young men leaned against the outer wall of the Laundromat, another two sat on the loading dock of the long-abandoned warehouse and pretended they weren’t watching the plainclothesman. Savary tapped down his black sunglasses and gleeked the men on the loading dock. No reaction.
Savary had left his suit coat in his unmarked gray Chevy Impala. He was glad he wore a white shirt today, as the sweat wouldn’t show. He loosened his sky-blue tie and rested a hand atop the grip of the nine-millimeter Glock 17 semiautomatic resting in its Kydex holster on his left hip, next to the gold star-and-crescent NOPD badge clipped to his belt. He stood stiffly in front of the boarded-up door of Jeanfreau’s Grocery and glanced at his watch. Two p.m., exactly. Same time, same day — a Wednesday — as two months ago. On that Wednesday, a lone black male put a bullet into the forehead of Jack Hudson, the owner of Jeanfreau’s. Grainy black-and-white video showed a young, thin African-American male in a white T-shirt and low-riding jeans, pulling out a forty-caliber semiautomatic, pointing it at the gray-haired old man. The weapon was tilted on its side, gangster-style, waving in the right hand of the shooter. Jack Hudson, a man who’d bragged he was part Zulu and once shook Martin Luther King’s hand, exchanged words with the gunman, touched his chin and the big pistol went off, snapping Hudson’s head back. The shooter went around, had to kick Hudson out of the way to empty the cash register, stuffing cash in his pockets, snatching two candy bars on his way out. Looked like Milky Way bars, maybe Snickers.
Savary fitted his sunglasses back up and stepped over to Ojubi’s Barbershop. The four men outside, all over fifty, stopped talking. The barber, in a white smock and black pants, stood and stretched.
“Afternoon,” Savary said.
The barber nodded.
“Back again, huh?” The barber was Willie Ellzey, who lived on Terpsichore Street but stayed with his woman on Eurphrosine, as he’d explained. Savary looked at the only man he hadn’t spoken to on his four previous canvasses, twice in the morning, twice in the evening.
“I’m Joe Savary,” he told the skinny man with blue-black skin as dark as Savary’s. “I’m working on—”
“Jeanfreau.” The man didn’t look up. “We know.”
“What’s your name?”
A pair of bloodshot eyes met his and the man said, “Joe Clay. You wanna see my ID?” The voice was harsh, challenging.
“That would be nice.” Savary pulled out his notebook as the man reached around for his wallet, took out his driver’s license. Savary copied down the details.
“You come around here often, Mr. Clay?”
Savary got the same answers he’d been getting since he took over the case. No one saw anything or heard anything. No matter that Jack Hudson was a neighbor, had run the neighborhood grocery store since old man Jeanfreau died in 1968. It was as obvious as the nose on the detective’s face. A local boy did this, but no one was giving him up to the police. It didn’t even matter if Savary was raised three blocks away on Erato Street. The day he started the police academy was the day he’d left the neighborhood — permanently.
He moved to the women. He’d spoken to some of them before, the two young men by the Laundromat as well. One was the son of a fireman and was actually civil to Savary, the other barely mumbled responses. The two sitting on the dilapidated warehouse loading dock who pretended they weren’t watching Savary would not even look at him as he stepped up.