Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (8 page)

And Dearbhla is dead. But grief still isn’t breaking through, why
should it, when she is nothing to me by blood? That tranquil Gymnopédie bars me from
feeling. The best I can do is try to understand how
she
felt. Dearbhla’s
pain is my mother’s pain, is my own. The pain of knowing that you have loved one
person all your life and he does not give this love back, in full or at all. No—he
frowns, forbids, withholds. He is always the person who has the last word; no logic
can contradict him. The dancing feet are stilled; the piano wrapped up and sent to
storage. My childhood is over.
Mama gone.

The walls of my cell
brighten: another sunset. Oh, I remember it all now. I have all the time in the
world to do nothing else but remember.

Copyright © 2012 by Susan
Lanigan

 
Evan Lewis’s story “Skyler Hobbs and the Rabbit Man,” which
appeared in our Department of First Stories in February 2010, won the Robert L.
Fish Memorial Award for best short story by a new writer. Since then, the Oregon
writer’s work has appeared in the Western anthology
A Fistful of
Legends,
in the
BEAT to a PULP
print anthology, and in
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
(see May 2012’s “Mr. Crockett
and the Bear”). He returns to
EQMM
with another humorous case starring
Holmes adherent Skyler Hobbs.
 

 
Skyler Hobbs, his eyes bright as diamonds, thrust a page of
The
Oregonian
at me.

The headline said
Garden Gnome Bandit Strikes Again.

I said, “So?”

The story hardly qualified as news. The spate of garden-gnome thefts in the
Southeast Portland area had been the darling of TV newscasters for the past
month, always with much grinning and rolling of eyes. One local wag had even
filmed an interview with a talkative gnome who had seen several friends spirited
away by a hooded figure on a bicycle.

Hobbs looked down his long, thin nose at me. “Surely, Watson, you recall the
affair of the Six Napoleons.”

“Wilder,” I said with a sigh. “Jason Wilder.” I’d been renting a room from him
here at 221B SE Baker Street for a year now, and he still couldn’t remember my
name. “Now what’s this about Napoleons?”

“You wrote a quite sensationalized version of the tale for
The Strand,
did you not? Or rather, Watson did.” He added this last bit with a broad
wink.

“Refresh my memory.”

“The crux of the matter was that an otherwise sane fellow was going about
smashing busts of Napoleon, and no one had the slightest idea why.”

“Except,” I said, “Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

He nodded. Modestly. “It developed that one of the busts contained the black
pearl of the Borgias, and he was determined to get it. In the end, all he got
was a room in the jail.”

“Thanks to Holmes, of course.”

He shrugged. Modestly.

“So you think the Garden Gnome Bandit is seeking a rare jewel.”

“Not particularly. But perhaps he does believe something is concealed inside
one.”

I flipped through the paper. “Look, there are plenty of real crimes to choose
from.
Man Killed in Convenience Store Robbery. Arson Suspected in Church
Fire.
Even this one,
Bike Theft Statistics Mount.
Why not
investigate something that matters?”

Hobbs regarded me over steepled fingers. “I fear, Doctor, that you simply do not
understand.”

He was wrong. I understood all too well. My friend Skyler Hobbs, you see,
believes himself to be the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes, and considers such
mundane crimes beneath his notice. He craves the unusual, the outrageous, and
sometimes the ridiculous. And I, the man he believes heaven-sent to be his
Watson, am powerless to dissuade him.

 
In a sane world, a footloose bachelor like myself would spend Friday
night on a hot date, or with a group of buddies at a tavern. But in this world,
the one I shared with Mr. Skyler Hobbs, I sat at a picnic table at Cartopia,
Portland’s hippest food-cart court, at the corner of SE 12th and Hawthorne. It
was nearly midnight, but the place was just coming alive, and hummed to a crowd
of hipsters and slumming yuppies. There were plenty of girls here, and tasty
dishes of all varieties. But as Hobbs kept reminding me, we were not here to
enjoy ourselves. We were here to catch the Garden Gnome Bandit.

Still, I was feeling pretty good. I was scarfing down an order of poutine—a mound
of french fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy—from the Potato Champion
cart and considering which place to try next. At the moment, it was a tossup
between El Brasero (rumored to serve the messiest burrito in town) or Bubba
Bernie’s, whose chicken jambalaya had become legendary.

Hobbs got a beef-brisket turnover (being the closest he could find to steak and
kidney) from Whiffies Fried Pies, but forgot it after the first bite. His
attention was focused on a garden gnome on a table near Perierra Crêperie. The
gnome belonged to Hobbs, and he had placed it there himself as bait.

“No one’s going to steal it in front of all these witnesses,” I said.

“I do not expect them to,” Hobbs said. “But it is quite possible someone will
display an undue interest in the little fellow. At the very least, he may
provoke comment, and I shall be listening.”

His reasoning was not altogether bad. Cartopia was in the very neighborhood where
most of the garden-gnome thefts had occurred, and the court was a favorite
hangout for denizens of the night. If anyone had knowledge of the Bandit, it
would be folks like these. It was even likely the bandit, himself a denizen of
the night, would pay occasional visits to this mecca of comfort food.

Cartopia was aptly named. Each of these eateries was actually a small trailer,
and they now circled the corner lot like a wagon train under siege. Because this
was Portland, a variety of canvas, metal, and plastic tents stood ready to
shield patrons from occasional showers.

We had been here the better part of an hour, and while the gnome had drawn
curious glances and colorful jokes, it had yet to ferret out a suspect or clue.
Which was fine by me. I was enjoying the poutine and the view.

At the table with Hobbs’s gnome, a group of young women chattered and picked at
their crepes, watching the crowd and watching the crowd watch them. I was
watching one girl in particular, a slim, blue-eyed minx whose hair was the color
of carrots.

All at once our eyes met, locked, and before I could turn away, she winked at me.
Relieved, and more than a little excited, I winked back.

She said something to her friends, who looked at me and giggled, and I felt my
face burn. The redhead rose with catlike grace, snatched up the garden gnome,
and stood examining it.

“Watson!” Hobbs was stiff with excitement. “Someone has taken the bait!”

“Uh, maybe,” I said, and got no further because the redhead came sashaying toward
our table, the gnome swinging in her hand.

She stood the little bugger on the table between Hobbs and me.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Candy.”

I cleared my throat and swallowed. “You certainly are.”

She gave me a wicked smile.

Hobbs gaped at her with no more expression than a trout.

Candy thumped the gnome’s head. “I saw you put this guy on our table. Is this
some pervy way of trying to meet girls?”

I shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

She slid onto the bench beside me and batted her black eyelashes. “If you like,”
she said, “you can buy me a cactus and mushroom burrito.”

So I did.

 
While Candy and I flirted, Hobbs turned away, pretending to study
the crowd. I felt sorry for him—a little. His plan had netted him nothing, but
had snagged me the company of this lovely young lady. In profile, Hobbs bore a
striking resemblance to a young Basil Rathbone, and I wondered if this chance of
nature had inspired—or merely accentuated—his peculiar delusion.

The table next to ours was occupied by four boys who looked no older than
thirteen. Under normal circumstances it would be strange to see them out this
late alone, but Cartopia was something of a magical carnival, where all things
seemed possible.

I’d been trying to tune out their conversation, devoted mostly to movies,
vampires, computer games, and girls. I had assumed it was annoying Hobbs as
well, until he abruptly turned to face them.

“Say, lads, how would you like to earn a bit of pocket money?”

All eyed him stonily a moment before one spoke up. “How much?”

Hobbs extracted a coin from his pocket. “A shiny new quarter. Each.”

“Jeez,” said another. “Who do we have to kill?”

“Nothing so difficult, I assure you. I merely seek information regarding a hooded
figure riding a bicycle in this neighborhood.”

“I know him,” said a boy with a shock of white hair. “Cost you five bucks.”

Hobbs squinted at him. After much agonizing, he pulled out his wallet and gave
the kid a five. “What can you tell me?”

“He’s the Garden Gnome Bandit, of course. Don’t you watch TV?”

“I know his sobriquet,” Hobbs said testily. “I wish to know his given name and
where he lives.”

“Heck,” said the kid, “if I knew that I’d sell it to CNN for a million
dollars.”

When no further information was forthcoming, Hobbs turned about in disgust.
“When,” he asked of no one in particular, “did our younger generation become
such a nest of vipers?”

Hobbs directed his sour disposition at Candy. “I must inform you, miss, that the
good doctor cannot possibly take you to wife. He is fated to marry a woman named
Mary, or Margaret. Something beginning with an ‘M.’”

Candy rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, damn.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ain’t it a shame?”

I dreaded the explanation that must surely follow. That because Hobbs considered
me his Watson, sent by providence to assist him in his work, I must therefore
follow in Watson’s footsteps and choose a wife with the same initials as Mrs.
Watson, the former Mary Morstan.

Instead, Candy said, “You’re a doctor?”

Sighing, I slipped a card from my shirt pocket and placed it before her.
Jason Wilder,
it said,
Computer Doctor.

Candy read it and giggled. “Well,” she said, “you can operate on my software
anytime.” Then, laying a warm hand on my leg, she stretched and kissed me on the
neck, sliding her lips up to my ear.

I must have closed my eyes for a moment, because next thing I knew a grim-faced
man with a silver Cervélo road bike stood across the table glowering at me. He
wore a black leather vest over a sleeveless Ramones T-shirt, and tattooed snakes
crawled up his arms to bare their fangs on his biceps.

His eyes fixed on mine. “You got some kind of death wish?”

“When I go,” I said, recalling a line from Nick at Nite, “I just want to be stood
outside in the garbage with my hat on.”

“Done,” he said, leaning his bike against the table. “Too bad you forgot your
hat.” He flexed his muscles, making the snakes writhe horribly, and grabbed a
handful of my shirt. The cotton ripped as he yanked me off the bench and spilled
me onto the blacktop.

He bashed me in the leg with a surprisingly heavy chukka boot, and I rolled with
the motion, pushing to my feet just in time to avoid a second kick. Catching him
off balance, I landed a roundhouse right to the side of his head. The blow
should have knocked him to his knees, but he merely snarled and threw a solid
jab to my jaw. My head swam with stars.

“Quinn!” the cry was Candy’s, and she sounded plenty mad. “Leave him alone!”

I blinked, clearing my vision, and saw her grab Hobbs’s gnome from the table and
swing it towards Quinn’s face. He swore as the figure smacked him in the nose,
then wrenched it from her and dropped it at his feet.

“Watch close,” he said to me. “Here’s what’ll happen if I catch you sniffing
around Candy again.” He raised his boot and slammed the heel down on the gnome,
scattering chunks of colorful plastic over the blacktop. “Get the message?”

I did.

Quinn swung aboard his bike like an outlaw who’d just shot the sheriff. With a
parting sneer, he sped off into the night.

I expected some reaction from Hobbs. At the very least, a pointed
I told you
so.

Instead, he turned to Candy. “Quickly! Tell me where that fellow lives.”

She shrugged. “He wouldn’t tell me squat about himself. That’s why I dumped
him.”

Hobbs swung to the four boys behind him.

“I have five dollars,” he said, “for the first lad to bring me that fellow’s
address.”

The boys looked at each other.

“Ten,” said the white-haired kid.

Hobbs grimaced. “Ten.”

 
When my cell phone rang next morning, the kid wanted twenty. I
served as go-between for the negotiations.

“Twelve,” Hobbs said.

“Twenty,” countered the kid.

“Fifteen.”

“Twenty.”

An hour later I pulled my ultra-blue PT Cruiser into a Burgerville lot
kitty-corner from Cartopia. The white-haired kid was there leaning on a black
Schwinn and munching a cheeseburger.

Hobbs spoke through the car window. “Sorry,” he said, pawing through his wallet.
“It seems I only have eighteen dollars.”

“Sorry,” the kid said. “Seems I caught amnesia.”

Hobbs scowled and handed him a twenty.

“Couldn’t get his address,” the kid said, pausing as Hobbs turned purple, “but I
got something just as good. His license number.” He pulled a crumpled paper from
his pants pocket.

Hobbs stared at him. “His bicycle has a license?”

“You don’t know nothin’, do you? Nah, the dude stashed the bike in the back of a
Subaru. You really think he’s the bandit?”

“Quite possibly.” Hobbs eyed the kid with new interest. “You remind me of someone
I once knew. By any chance, is your name Wiggins?”

“That’s a dumb name. Everyone calls me Whitey.”

Hobbs nodded as if the kid had said yes. “Tell me, Whitey, would you be
interested in earning an odd dollar now and then, purely in the pursuit of
justice?”

The kid flicked his fingers, making the twenty snap to attention. “At these
rates, sure. Call me.”

“And how will I reach you?”

Whitey leaned down, looking past Hobbs at me. “Why do you hang out with this
tool?”

I shrugged. “Because I seem so cool by comparison.”

The kid studied me a moment. “Nah,” he said. “You don’t.”

 
While I fired up my laptop and plugged in my wireless Internet
connector (guaranteed to work anywhere this side of the Sahara Desert), I
explained that I had Whitey’s phone number in my cell-phone log.

“Your telephone knows who calls you? That’s ingenious.”