Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 09/01/12 (37 page)

He decided to begin his investigation at the employment agency, and immediately
realized how ridiculous or suspicious he must have looked walking into the place
and asking about a person whose name he didn’t know who fit such-and-such
description. After recovering from this momentary embarrassment, he snuck a peek
at all the women working there, another waste of time, since they were all
wearing uniforms, and the woman he was looking for wasn’t wearing one when he
saw her enter the building the day before. They told him that a lot of people
came by the office every day to drop off photos and resumes, looking for work.
Could he possibly see the applicants’ photos? he dared to ask, and immediately
regretted it when they answered, with some disdain, that it was impossible: That
information was confidential.

He limited himself to a few timid glances at the female employees working in the
offices and waiting rooms next to the employment agency. And with a heavy heart,
he realized that this method was getting him nowhere. Describing a woman’s
physical appearance fifty times over in every office in the building was
complete idiocy.

After work that day, while sitting in his armchair by the picture window staring
at the cold, flickering light outside and pondering the situation, he remembered
that when the police are looking for an unidentified suspect they sometimes use
an Identi-Kit or a sketch artist. That could be the answer. The next morning he
impatiently went about his normal routine, but at lunchtime he didn’t go to his
usual pub, he went to the park where all the street artists go who specialize in
drawing portraits of the passersby. A skinny guy with long hair who was making a
charcoal drawing in the shade of a tree seemed just right for the job. He
approached the artist and told him what he wanted. The guy ran his hand through
his long, stringy hair and said that it would be a bit complicated, but he’d
give it a try. The man had to pay in advance for the portrait of the mystery
woman, and spent the next half-hour trying to recall her features as accurately
as possible. The artist sat there patiently changing the details that didn’t
square with the man’s memory, until he ended up with a drawing of a face that
only looked a little bit like the woman he was looking for. Out of curiosity,
the artist asked if this was a case of a missing person, or if the subject of
the drawing had died. No, it was just for sentimental reasons, the man answered
with a lazy smile that he figured must have looked phony to the other man. He
took the portrait and went back to work.

Have you seen this woman? He repeated the question over and over on each floor of
the building he had seen her enter. The answers were always vague. Some of the
people he questioned even tried to avoid speaking to him and quickly moved away.
They must think I’m from the police, he thought. A few shook their heads
doubtfully: They thought they might have seen a woman who looked like the one in
the portrait, but that was it. Even the doormen and janitors couldn’t offer more
specific details. A drawing isn’t as good as a photo, one of them said to him.
He looked at the portrait for the millionth time and saw that it was true. The
portrait captured the features of someone he had brought forth from his
imagination. Frankly, it could have been anybody, or nobody.

But the failure of the people in that building to recognize the sketch didn’t
discourage him completely. Maybe somebody else would recognize her, and so—his
hope surging like the brief, weak flame of a single matchstick—by some stroke of
luck he might still meet her, and he wasn’t going to miss that opportunity.

He had the portrait laminated in plastic so it wouldn’t get damaged, and started
to carry it with him wherever he went, along with the folders containing his
professional documents. Sometimes, in some of the places he went, he ventured to
show them the portrait to see if any of his business contacts might know the
woman. He would explain that it was a distant relative who had disappeared, but
the family hadn’t given up hope of finding her. A photo would be much better,
they invariably told him. Didn’t the family have a photo of her? Sometimes when
he showed the portrait to people he had already talked to, their reactions were
more confused: They looked at him as if he were touched in the head, an
eccentric old fool who wandered around showing everybody a woman’s portrait and
asking if they knew who she was.

But his determination never wavered. And when a successful business deal brought
in some extra money, he decided to spend the money on a bunch of classified ads
in all the big newspapers, reproducing the woman’s portrait along with a brief
notice asking anyone who could provide information about her to contact him by
phone. He used his office number because he wanted to be absolutely sure that he
wouldn’t miss any calls, and he started to neglect his work, staying glued to
the phone in case the next ring brought some news that would finally bring him
face-to-face with the mystery woman.

And it worked. He started getting calls. But to his great disappointment, most of
them came from liars and jokers. Some of them even tried to wheedle money out of
him in exchange for some supposedly useful piece of information. He dismissed
them out of hand. Others provided him with a street address where they said he
would find the woman, and he went to the places in question, taking the
laminated portrait with him. At one address, he came across a half-crazy woman
who claimed that she was the woman in the portrait; she also thought that he was
a theatrical agent offering her a contract. In the remaining cases, people gave
their opinions about how this neighbor or that acquaintance looked something
like the woman in the portrait. They treated him like someone important, someone
trying to solve a mystery that was worthy of column space in the newspapers
because of an urgent need to identify the person in the enigmatic portrait.
Holding on to a slim hope, he followed up on all their suggestions, but nothing
came of it: The women in question didn’t look anything like the one he was
looking for. And so the sketch proved useless. He had wasted his money trying to
find her with it.

Time flowed on, and coming to grips with this reality, he gradually resigned
himself to the fact that he would never see the mystery woman again. He had
tempted fate by trying to find her, given that all of his encounters with her
had been the result of pure chance; although it had happened many times, in the
end each one was by pure chance. He couldn’t bring himself to tear up the
portrait or get rid of it, which had been his intention when the search he had
undertaken led him nowhere. He simply left it in a drawer and forgot about it.
He had been obsessed with that woman, but in the end he understood that there
was no possibility of having any kind of relationship with her. She would remain
forever what she was: a mystery.

But the unexpected happened, and how. He bought a car, which he was driving one
rainy afternoon on a busy street. His brakes failed and he started to skid and
before he knew it he felt the shock of crashing into a smaller car that had
swerved out of its lane and come zooming towards him. His car was knocked
sideways by the impact. It spun around several times before coming to a halt,
leaving him bruised by the impact, with an absurd, otherworldly feeling that he
couldn’t possibly be alive. Although his seat belt was still attached, he let
himself be carried off by a lazy indifference to his fate. He closed his eyes,
took stock of the situation, and, gradually realizing that the various injuries
he felt from the multiple impacts were actually minor, he let someone help him
out of the car. Then he heard the wailing sirens of several ambulances rushing
to the scene of the accident. And he realized that he had been sitting there,
dazed but calm, for quite a while. Supported by the person who had helped him
out of his car, he saw in the leaden twilight and the slashing rain that the
paramedics were carrying stretchers from the car that had crashed into his,
which had been reduced to a twisted pile of scrap metal giving off the pungent
odor of leaking gasoline. Then the stretchers passed by and he was
thunderstruck: In spite of the semidarkness, he recognized the unmistakable face
of the woman he had fruitlessly searched for after having so many chance
encounters with her throughout his life. It was her. Still slightly dazed, and
trembling, he approached just as the stretcher was about to be loaded into an
ambulance. One of the paramedics asked if he knew the victim.

Still reeling from his devastating encounter with her, he confirmed that he knew
her with a vague gesture.

“She’s dead, and her companion too,” said the paramedic, shutting the rear door
of the ambulance.

A pair of policemen emerged from the crowd of spectators gathering in the rain to
gawk at the accident and asked him to go with them. Overwhelmed by all the
commotion, and his painful bruises, he let himself be led away, quietly, all the
while thinking about how the laws of chance are part of the strange architecture
that destiny designs for us.

Copyright © 2012 by Eliécer Cárdenas;

translation Copyright © 2012 by Kenneth Wishnia

 
Crime fiction, Ralph Ellis told EQMM, hooked him when he
was a college student and accidentally picked up The Thin Man by Dashiell
Hammett. He went on to work for newspapers across the Southeast, often reporting
on crime, and now lives in Atlanta, where he is the editor for an online news
organization. This is his first published work of fiction, but he has already
completed a mystery novel about a police reporter and is at work on
another.
 

 
Joe Kenner leaned down and examined the
dead woman’s feet, being of the belief that shoes reveal a person’s character. One
tan sandal had slipped off to reveal the brand name. Chanel. A thin gold bracelet
encircled the narrow ankle of the same shapely foot, which looked so soft and supple
Kenner had the urge to squeeze it. Brenda, his wife of thirty-seven years, had feet
hard as hoofs.

The woman had been shot in the waiting room at the Honda
dealership on the Millerton bypass. Kenner hoisted himself upright with a groan and
walked in a semicircle around the body. He registered tan slacks and pressed white
blouse, unlined olive complexion, and slender but curvy figure. Somehow, he knew,
her good looks got her killed.

“Tell me what you know,” he said to Tim
Brownlee, his protégé. Brownlee was the mayor’s nephew, a smooth-faced
twenty-five-year-old with no discernible skills other than knowing how to get
along.

“She brought her Escalade in two days ago for valve work and came to
pick up the car,” Brownlee said. “But when they gave her the car she complained they
didn’t wash and wax it. So they went to work and she sat down in the waiting
room.”

“I don’t need to know that unless she died of boredom.”

“A man
walked into the waiting room and said something about having a baby and then he shot
her. He walked out and drove away. Nobody stopped him because they were freaking
out. I mean, things like this just don’t happen around here.”

Kenner glanced
at the body. “She doesn’t look pregnant. What’s the description of the
shooter?”

“Slim, blond, about forty, wearing khaki pants and a blue polo
shirt. And a baseball cap.”

“Great,” Kenner said. “He looks like all the white
guys in town. Let’s go down to the country club and find some suspects.”

The
manager of the dealership walked up shaking his head and said the video cameras had
been malfunctioning for a few days. Kenner gave him a disapproving look and the
manager handed over the woman’s work order without being asked. Her name was
Kimberly Collins and she lived in Henry Plantation, a new, high-dollar subdivision.
Kenner guessed she was in her mid thirties.

“What’s her husband’s
name?”

“She didn’t say she was married,” the manager said. He was a tubby guy
in a short-sleeved white shirt and a black tie. The nametag said Nick
Glass.

“She’s wearing a big rock. How could you miss it?”

“We just
talked about the car.”

“So you hit on her,” Kenner said. “You asked her out,
didn’t you?”

“No, no. I just picked her up at her house and brought her to the
dealership. It’s a service we offer to some customers.”

Kenner put on his
Mount Rushmore face. Glass went pink, then red, then bright red. A tiny trickle of
sweat slid down his round cheek.

“Talk to your people,” Kenner commanded.
“Help them remember something else, understand? Call me today at three o’clock with
an update.” Kenner turned to Brownlee and said, “Let’s go find the loving
spouse.”

Brownlee drove the unmarked Crown Victoria while Kenner watched the
fast-food joints and tire stores of Millerton slip by. He called it Mullet Town,
because of the prevalent male hairstyle. Nine months ago, shortly after his
fifty-eighth birthday, Kenner retired from the Atlanta Police Department, where he’d
spent quality time with his share of dead bodies. He followed Brenda to her hometown
of Millerton, where she had a sick mother to look after. Kenner went stir crazy from
boredom before the movers left. Then strange old ladies knocked on the front door
with baked goods and expected him to make conversation. Desperate to get out of the
house, he jumped when Mayor Cecil Wood created a detective’s job for him, making it
clear Kenner’s primary duty was turning Brownlee into a reasonable facsimile of a
police investigator.

“Why’d she bring an Escalade to a Honda dealership?”
Kenner said to Brownlee.

“We don’t have a Cadillac dealership in town. The
nearest one is forty miles away, in Atlanta.”

“What else don’t you have here
in Millerton? Besides professional sports teams and good
restaurants.”

“Traffic jams. Child porn. And murders. Well, not many. The last
one happened three years ago when Bert Burnett killed his neighbor because the
neighbor’s dog bit his kid. He killed the dog too, a young pit bull. Most people
could understand that. This one will freak everybody out.”

“It’s freaking out
the mayor. He’s already called me four times, but I haven’t
answered.”

Brownlee flinched. “Why not?”

“Because I’m working a case.
You are too.”

Brownlee pondered the fact that somebody would dare to ignore
his uncle. Kenner found it remarkable the young man never changed his facial
expression, no matter what the situation. With practice, he might learn to turn that
look of vapidity into a stone face, a necessary tool for a cop.

Brownlee drove
straight through the unmanned guard gate at Henry Plantation, made two lefts and a
right, and pulled into a driveway circling in front of a stucco home of a vaguely
European style. The place cost eight hundred thousand easy, Kenner thought. A light
blue Jeep SUV was parked in front.

A chunky bleached blonde in business
clothes opened the door and exchanged hellos with Brownlee, obviously
acquainted.

“Tony’s waiting,” she said. “He knew you were coming.”

She
led them across hardwood floors, quick and agile in black high heels, and turned
into a bright kitchen. A man with graying blond hair sat at a country French table
typing on a laptop with one hand while talking into a cell phone.

Kenner’s
adrenaline kicked in. Tony Collins fit the shooter’s description, but the clothes
were different: khaki shorts and a yellow polo shirt. He wore gleaming Nike athletic
shoes with socks that only covered half the ankle. Not exactly confidence-inspiring
footwear for a grown man. Collins turned off the phone and stood. Kenner tensed, not
knowing if the guy was a distraught husband or a wife-killer, and squeezed his left
arm over the Glock 9mm tucked into the shoulder holster under his coat.

“What
happened to my wife?” Collins said with his arms outstretched. His diction was clear
and genteel. “Who killed Kimberly?”

“We’re trying to find out,” Kenner said,
and went through the sorry-for-your-loss sentences he’d repeated dozens of times in
the past. Collins and the police officers sat at the table while the woman hovered
in the background. Kenner took out his pocket-sized notepad and a pen and said,
“I’ve got to ask: Where were you around ten o’clock this morning?”

“I was
right here,” Collins said, gesturing around the room and not seeming insulted by the
question. “I have a home office. I own ToCo Investments. Today I was nailing down
some details on the house with Kathy.”

That’s where Kenner knew the woman
from, the real-estate billboard on the bypass with her bigger-than-life mug shot.
Kenner thought she must have some ego.

“I’m Kathy Minter,” she said, fanning
her flushed face with her hand. “I sold them the house. The mayor called me with the
news and I had the sad duty of telling Tony.”

Kenner turned back to Collins
and said, “Did your wife have any enemies, receive any threats?”

“No,” he
said, shaking his head. “Everybody loved her. She was a beautiful woman with a great
heart.”

Kathy Minter’s cell phone rang and she grabbed her purse off a chair
and walked out, cutting her eyes at Kenner as she passed.

Collins had only
been married three months but knew surprisingly little about his new wife. She was a
Delta flight attendant and they met on a plane. Her maiden name was Swinton. She was
thirty-nine and used to live in Atlanta, but he’d never been to her old place. She
had family in Florida, but he’d never met them. Kenner thought Collins looked about
fifty—an eleven-year age difference.

“You had no curiosity about her history?”
Kenner said. “That’s kind of odd.”

“Neither one of us is a spring chicken,”
Collins said. “We both wanted a fresh start.”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,
right?”

Collins held his gaze on Kenner, as if deciding whether to blow up or
not.

“We decided the best way was to move ahead. No secrets, but we didn’t
want to get bogged down in ancient history either.”

“The guy who shot her said
something about having a baby. Was your wife expecting?”

“What?” Collins said,
lurching forward. “That’s impossible. We didn’t want children. That’s out of the
question.”

The question had hit a nerve. Kenner knew he wouldn’t get any more
good information and asked for a photo of Kim Collins. Tony Collins led him into a
high-ceilinged living room with sleek furniture and a wall of windows overlooking a
swimming pool and landscaped backyard. Kenner inhaled the new-house smell. Three
photographs of Kim Collins were scattered around the room and an oil painting of her
in younger days hung over the mantle. The husband picked up a framed photo of the
couple from the top of a gleaming baby grand piano and handed it to
Kenner.

“This is recent,” he said.

Kim Collins was so sexy the picture
frame felt moist. She had a long and graceful jaw line, almond-shaped eyes, and a
smile that relegated Tony Collins to wallpaper.

“I’ll bring it back,” Kenner
said.

“Keep it as long as you need to. Just find the killer.”

Brownlee
drove them back to the police station, where they shared a tiny back office crammed
with two old desks.

“You should have introduced me to Kathy,” Kenner
said.

“Sorry, I thought you knew her,” Brownlee said, leaning against his desk
and crossing his ankles. His shiny cordovan loafers would be no good if he had to
chase a bad guy.

“I’m the new kid in town. She was very helpful.”

“She’s
into everybody’s business.”

“Get her down here. She wants to tell me
something.”

The real-estate woman arrived in ten minutes, tapping on the
doorframe and asking, “Y’all needed me?”

Kenner stood and motioned her to a
straight chair next to his desk. She sat and crossed smooth, unblemished legs that
belonged on a much younger, slimmer woman.

“Who’d want to kill Kim?” Kenner
said.

“Oh, every woman in town. Men fell at her feet.”

“She ran around
on him?”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, reaching into her purse to
silence the phone. “But here’s an example. My husband is retired and handles the
books in my business. One day his cell phone buzzed and I picked it up. It was a
text from Kim, wondering if he could meet her for coffee. I didn’t realize he even
knew how to text. I backed Jerry into a corner and he confessed everything. She
started out asking him innocent questions about the real-estate market, but then it
got kind of personal. He loved the attention. He actually picked up her dry cleaning
one afternoon.”

“So you’re confessing to murder?”

“No,” she said with a
smirk. “If I were going to kill somebody, it’d be my
husband. I’m saying Kim
liked the game. She liked to go behind people’s backs and she liked to lead people
astray. With Jerry, she was just staying in practice.”

Kenner leaned back in
his swivel chair and took in the fine down on Kathy Minter’s jaw.

“That’s a
very nice house you sold them. Mr. Collins must be doing okay.”

“Well, not as
well as he hoped,” she said, lowering her voice. “When he moved, he lost some
clients. In fact, they just took out a second mortgage. That didn’t stop him from
buying a brand-new Jaguar convertible for Kim. But no matter how much money he
spent, she wouldn’t quit working.”

“She was still a flight attendant? Why?
He’s loaded.”

“She liked having her own money. And she did what she wanted to
do.”

“Always?”

Kathy Minter nodded, more with her eyes than her head,
and Kenner saw the beauty queen who still lived inside her. He told her what the
shooter had said about babies.

“Wow,” she said. “Kim did not want kids. She
mentioned that several times. I think it was a sore point with Tony.”

They
exchanged business cards and cell-phone numbers. After she left, Kenner told
Brownlee to run background checks on both the Collinses and to get their cell-phone
and landline records through the district attorney. His desk phone rang.

“I
was at the Honder place,” a voice full of gravel said. “I saw that guy drive away
and got part of the tag number.”