Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories (4 page)

"Something like that."

I got down on one knee to examine the two locks on the front door. One deadbolt, one push-button on the knob. When I was done I asked Kerry, "When we left earlier, did I use my key to lock the deadbolt? You remember?"

"I think you did. You always do, don't you?"

"Almost always, unless I'm distracted. I wasn't distracted tonight. But the deadbolt wasn't on when we got back just now." That was the first thing that had made me feel the wrongness—the key turning but the lock not being in place.

"What about the push-button?"

"I'm sure that was locked."

"You think somebody picked it and the deadbolt?"

"I wish it was that simple. The answer is no."

A professional burglar can get past the best deadbolt made, but not even a locksmith with a set of precision picks can do it without leaving marks. There were none on the deadbolt, none on the push-button. Nobody could possibly have come in this way, unless he had a key.

I asked Kerry if she'd lost or misplaced her key recently; she hadn't. Mine hadn't been out of my possession, either. And ours were the only two keys to the flat. Not even the landlord had one. I had lived here for more than twenty years and had had the locks changed more than once at my own expense.

Kerry asked, "Is anything missing?"

"Doesn't seem to be. Nothing disturbed, no sign of forced entry. But I can't shake the feeling someone was in here."

"For what reason, if not to steal something?"

"I can't even guess."

"How could somebody get in, with everything locked up tight?"

"No guess there either."

We prowled the flat together, room to room and back again. There was absolutely nothing missing or disarranged. I checked the locks on the windows and on the back door; all were secure and had not been tampered with as far as I could tell. I did find a half-inch sliver of metal on the floor of the utility porch, the same sort of brass as the chain lock. But it hadn't come from the lock because I checked to make sure. It could have been splintered off just about anything made of brass; could have lain there for days.

We were in the front room again when Kerry said, with an edge of exasperation in her voice, "You must be mistaken. A false alarm."

"I'm not mistaken."

"Even great detectives have paranoid flashes now and then."

"This isn't funny, Kerry."

"Did I say it was?" She sighed elaborately, the way she does when her patience is being tried. "I'm going to make some coffee," she said. "You want a cup?"

"All right."

She went into the kitchen. I stayed in the middle of the room and kept looking around—turning my eyes and my body both in slow quadrants. Couch, end tables, coffee table, leather recliner Kerry had given me on my last birthday, shelves full of bright-spined pulps, old secretary desk. All just as we'd left it. Yet something wasn't as it should be. I made another slow circuit: couch, end tables, coffee tables, recliner, bookshelves, desk. And a third circuit: couch, tables, recliner—

Recliner.

The chair's footrest was pushed in, out of sight.

It was a small thing, but that didn't make it any less wrong. The chair is a good one, comfortable, but the footrest has never worked quite right. To get it folded all the way back under on its metal hinges, you have to give it a kick; and when you sit down again later, you have to struggle to work it free so you can recline. So I don't bother anymore to boot it all the way under. I always leave the footrest part way out, with its metal hinges showing.

Why would an intruder bother to kick it under? Only one conceivable reason: he thought it was supposed to be that way and wanted the chair to look completely natural. But why would he be messing around my recliner in the first place . . .

"Jesus," I said aloud, and again the hair pulled along my neck. I went to the recliner, gingerly eased the seat cushion out so I could see under it. What I was looking at then was a bomb.

Two sticks of dynamite wired together with a detonator plate on top, set into a slit in the fabric so that it was resting on the chair's inner springs. The weight of a person settling onto the cushion would depress the plate and set off the dynamite—

"Good God!"

Kerry was standing behind me, staring open-mouthed at the thing in the chair. I hadn't even heard her come in.

"Not a burglar after all," I said angrily. "Somebody who came in to leave something. This."

"I . . . don't hear any ticking," she said.

"It's a pressure-activated bomb, not a time bomb. Nothing to worry about as long as we stay away from it."

"But who . . . why . . . ?"

I caught her arm and steered her into the bedroom, where I keep my phone. I rang up the Hall of Justice, got through to an inspector I knew named Jordan, and explained the situation. He said he'd be right over with the bomb squad.

When I hung up, Kerry said in a shaky voice, "I just don't understand. All the doors and windows were locked—they're still locked. How did whoever it was get in and back out again?"

I had no answer for her then. But by the time the police arrived, I had done some hard thinking and a little more checking and I did have an answer—the only possible explanation. And along with it, I had the who and the why.

"His name is Howard Lynch," I said to Jordan. He and Kerry and I were in the hallway, waiting for the bomb squad to finish up inside. "Owns a hardware store out on Clement. He hired me about a month ago to find his wife; said she'd run off with another man. She had, too, but nobody could blame her. I found out later Lynch had been abusing her for years."

"So why would he want to kill you?"

"He must blame me for his wife's death. I found her, all right, but when I told her Lynch was my employer she panicked and took off in her boyfriend's car. She didn't get far—a truck stopped her three blocks away."

"Pretty story."

"That's the kind of business we're in, Mack."

"Don't I know it. Did Lynch threaten you?"

"No. He's the kind who nurses his hatred in private."

"Then what makes you so sure he's the one who planted the bomb?"

"He showed up here one night a couple of weeks after the accident. Said it was to give me a check for my services—I probably shouldn't have, but I'd sent him a bill—and to tell me there were no hard feelings. I knew about the abuse by then, but he seemed contrite about it, said he was in therapy . . . hell, I bought it all and felt sorry enough for him to let him in. He wasn't here long, just long enough to ask to use the bathroom and sneak a quick look at the back door."

Kerry said, "I don't see why the bomber has to be somebody who was here before tonight."

"That's the only way it makes sense. To begin with, he had to've gotten in tonight through one of the doors, front or back. The windows are all secure and there's nothing but empty space below them. There're no marks of any kind on the front door locks, no way he could've gotten a key, and he would've had a hard time even getting into the building because of the security lock on the main entrance downstairs. That leaves the alley staircase and the back door."

"But that one was—is—double-locked too."

"Right. But the lock on the door is a push-button, the kind anybody can pick with a credit card or the like. There's a tiny fresh scratch on the bolt."

"You can't pick a chain lock with a credit card," Jordan said.

"No, but once the spring lock is free, the door will open a few inches—wide enough to reach through with a pair of bolt cutters and snip the chain. That explains the brass sliver I found on the porch floor. Easy work for a man who owns a hardware store, and so is the rest of it: When he was here the first time, he noted the type of chain lock back there, and among the other things he brought with him tonight was an exact duplicate of that lock. After he was inside, he unscrewed the old chain-lock plates from the door and jamb and installed the new ones, using the same holes—a job that wouldn't have taken more than a few minutes. Then he reset the spring lock, put the new chain on, and took the pieces of the old lock away with him when he was done planting the bomb."

"If he relocked the door," Jordan said, "how did he get out of the flat?"

"Walked out through the front door. Opened the deadbolt, opened the door, reset the push-button on the knob, and closed the door behind him. Simple as that."

Kerry said, "It would have worked, too, if you hadn't realized the deadbolt was off when we got back and felt something was wrong." She shivered a little. "If you'd sat down in that chair . . ."

"Don't even think about it," I said.

I
t was a balmy early summer
 
night, pungent with wood smoke and the sweetness of honeysuckle. In the willow garden behind the small frame house, crickets sang sonorously and tree frogs were in full-throated voice.

On the porch, in the deep shadows at the far end, Ellen and George Granger sat in silence without touching, without looking at each other. They had been sitting there for some time, listening to the night sounds.

George said finally, "What're you thinking about, Ellen?"

"You really want to know?"

"I asked, didn't I?"

"I was thinking about our perfect crime," she said. "I was thinking about Tom."

He was silent again for a time. Then, "What for?"

"T'was an evening just like this one when we murdered him."

"Don't use that word!"

"There's no one around to hear."

"Just don't use it. We agreed never to use that word."

"T'was an evening just like this one," she said again. "You remember, George?"

"Am I likely to've forgotten?"

"We shouldn't have come together so often," Ellen said.

"If we'd been more careful he wouldn't have caught us. But it was such a beautiful night . . ."

"Listen," George said, "if it hadn't been that night it would've been some other soon after. We couldn't of hidden it from him much longer."

"No, I suppose not."

"Worked out fine as it was," he said. "Wasn't no one else around that night. Worked out just fine."

"George, why didn't we run off together? Before that night? Why didn't we just run off somewhere?"

"Don't be silly. I had no money, you know that. Where would we of gone?"

"I don't know."

"No, course you don't."

"If only Tom hadn't been so jealous," Ellen said. "I could have asked him for a divorce. Things would've been so simple, then; we wouldn't have done what we did."

"Well, he was jealous," George said. "He was a jealous fool. I'm not sorry for what we done."

"I wasn't either, at the time. But now . . ."

"What's the matter with you tonight, Ellen? You're acting damned peculiar, you ask me."

"T'was a night just like this one," she said for the third time. "The honeysuckle, the wood smoke, the crickets and tree frogs. It could've been this night."

"Don't talk silly."

Ellen sighed in the darkness. "Why'd we kill him, George? Why did we do it?"

"Chrissake. Because he caught us together, that's why."

"At the time we said it was because we were in love."

"Well, there was that too."

"That too," Ellen repeated. "At the time that was everything. It was what made it all right, what we did."

"Why in hell are you talking this way?" George said in exasperation. "We committed the perfect crime—you said so yourself, then and just a couple of minutes ago. Nobody ever suspected. They all thought it was an accident."

"Yes. An accident."

"Well then? What's the matter with you?"

Ellen said, "Was it worth it, George?"

"What?"

"What we did. Was it worth it?"

"Sure it was worth it. We got married, didn't we?"

"Yes."

"We been happy together, ain't we?"

"I suppose we have."

"You always said you weren't sorry."

"So did you. Did you really mean it?"

"Sure I did. Didn't you?"

Ellen was quiet. From somewhere down the block, a dog bayed mournfully at the pale moon—or maybe at something in the dark. The crickets created a symphony all around them.