The World's Finest Mystery Part 7

In spite of herself, she smiled. She ducked her head so that he wouldn't see how amused she was. This was serious, after all.

"But I did even more digging. I found out about his record."

His eyebrows went up. "You're good," he said. "Care to share with me how you did that?"

She had thought this through before she came, and now she told him the story she had planned: It was the entire truth minus the driver's license records. Even though anyone could get DMV records simply by writing to the division, she felt almost criminal using them, even more criminal for storing them. Still, if he asked, she would tell him. She only hoped he wouldn't ask.

He didn't, but he was leaning forward now, looking at her with a mixture of puzzlement and respect.

"I would have left it at that," she said, "except I got to wondering, what would a man like that be doing in Seavy Village for so long?"

"Staying clean?" Huckleby said. Clearly he'd thought of that too.

"Maybe," she said. "But when he did spinning cla.s.s, he outlined bike routes, something we could imagine while our feet were hopelessly circling." She took a piece of paper out of her battered purse. "Here are the places he mentioned, and the way he mentioned them. Cascade Head was the one he focused on, but I always thought that was because it was so high. But he could have used the Van Duzer Corridor for the same thing, or maybe something in the Cascades, and he didn't. He just kept coming back to this one, over and over, like his mind was stuck."

Huckleby glanced at the paper. "You're quite specific. How do you remember what he said?"

She flushed. "I was in his cla.s.s for a long time. It got boring after a while. You did anything you could to concentrate. I focused on his words. He repeated himself a lot."

He tapped the paper against his hand. "Nice work," he said. "I knew you'd remember something if you tried hard enough."

"Is it important?" she asked.

"Important?" He kept a grip on the paper while he reached for the phone. "It's the missing piece."

She didn't hear anything for three days. Every time she thought of calling the station, she made herself do something else. The danger with obsession, the Web site told her, was that once one went away, another sometimes arose in its place. Too many, and a person needed therapy. A single one, and perhaps the person needed more to do with her life.

More than computers, exercise, and solitary meals. More than ducking her head to avoid conversations every time she went to the gym.

She joined the aerobics cla.s.s and made a point, that night, of learning everyone's name. She told her brother that she thought his expansion a bad idea at this stage in their business, and he was so pleased that she used the word "their" that he didn't even try to argue with her. He asked her what she thought the business needed, and she told him all the things she had never said. To her surprise, he made a list and walked out of her office, studying it, ready, he said, to make changes.

On the third day, the local 5:15 newscast announced that a suspect was being held in the murder of Tom Ansara. A man, with a name Patricia didn't recognize, an out-of-towner, as the announcer called him with obvious relief, who had business with Ansara that predated his arrival in Seavy Village.

She was surprised she hadn't heard from Huckleby. She would have thought that, as a courtesy, he would have told her first.

And then she wondered where that a.s.sumption came from. She had provided a small bit of information in an ongoing investigation.

He owed her nothing. She owed him nothing. And that's where things would always stand.

The details came out bit by bit, not in the local paper, which saw itself as a promoter of tourism on the coast and as such tried to cover up the seamier stuff, but in the Oregonian, which followed the entire case with an interest unusual in their non-Portland coverage.

Tom Ansara's real name was Andrew Thomas. He had arrests in several states for drug crimes, most of which were minor possession violations. But two states had more serious charges against him, one in an unlikely connection with a group of art thieves operating in Los Angeles. Ansara fled the area after some Miros, Pica.s.sos, a Jackson Pollack, and an original Dali were stolen from a house in Brentwood. He came to Oregon, took a new name, and hid, careful to stay away from Seavy Village's minor drug trade, and managing, somehow, to break off his relations with women before things became too serious.

He hadn't had anything to do with the art heists, had merely stumbled on them in the course of his other shady dealings, and knew, somehow, who was involved. Police a.s.sumed he dated one of the thieves, hearing the plans for the Brentwood theft from her. But the heat on that was high, and someone threatened him. When he came to Oregon, he made notes of all he knew and buried them on Cascade Head.

He had mailed a letter to himself the day he died- obviously he had been worried; perhaps he had seen his killer, a man named Will Garetson. In the letter, Tom explained that he had hidden a box, and how far it was from Highway 101, and he gave a detailed description of the unusual tree and rock formation near the burial site. Unfortunately, he had left out what part of 101 he was talking about. When Patricia- "a private citizen" as the papers called her- had come forward, she had provided the missing piece of information: where exactly the box was. The police looked on Cascade Head at the correct distance from 101, found the distinctive tree and rock formation, and proceeded to dig.

They found the box, and in it, the names of the people involved in the heist, a tape recording with their voices on it planning that heist, and a list of the items that they had hoped to take. Also in the box was a note about the reasons Tom had hidden in Oregon: It wasn't because his conscience had finally gotten to him about the heist or because he had been discovered by the thieves. It was because, on the two jobs the thieves performed before his disappearance, they had killed security guards, and Tom was beginning to fear that killing for sport was becoming the reason behind the heists, not the theft itself.

So he vanished, and it took them a long time to trace him. He made two mistakes: He took a regular job, and he kept the old Social Security number. Eventually Garetson found him. In fact, the article said, the man who killed Tom had been the self-defense instructor at the gym a few weeks before Tom's death. Because instructors were rarely in the building at the same time, Tom hadn't seen him. Garetson had discovered Tom's routine, where he lived, and who he had offended in Seavy Village, and had apparently decided the best way to kill the man was to do it at the gym, where all the women he slept with would then become suspects.

It would have worked if it weren't for that letter, and Detective Huckleby, who felt there was something wrong with this case from the beginning.

Patricia read the articles with avid interest, worried when she learned how easy it had been for a killer to infiltrate her small town and target a man, calmer when she realized one of the reasons the man had been targeted was because of his own behavior.

It took a week for the Oregonian to print all the articles, but when it was done, and Garetson was in jail awaiting trial, she felt as if it was over. Or at least part of it. She could still remember the touch of Garetson's hands on her neck as he held her in place, using her to demonstrate to the rest of the self-defense cla.s.s how to do the chokehold. When his arm had wrapped around her throat, she had thought how easy it would be for him to squeeze and how easy it would be for her to die.

Apparently, he had killed Tom with no struggle. She had been right. It had been easy, after all.

So she went back to her life, changed as it was. Her brother gave her more responsibility at the i.p. and she found a jogging partner, a woman whom she had spoken to a few times at the gym and felt an affinity for. They were developing a friendship composed of short conversations followed by a mile or more of gasping silence. She found that she liked talking with someone. She actually looked forward to it.

By the end of the second week, she made it through two days without thinking of Tom. Then Huckleby walked into her office. He leaned against the door, smiled at her, and let his blue eyes draw her in.

"Do you do lunch?" he asked.

"Only on every other Thursday," she said, and was surprised at the tartness of her own reply.

His smile widened into a grin. "I'm buying."

She went with him to the health-food restaurant next door. He ordered the only meal with beef in it- a shredded beef taco concoction made with cream cheese instead of sour cream- and she had their homemade tomato soup and fresh sourdough bread.

"You never followed up on the case," he said after the food was served.

"You didn't keep me informed."

He took a bite from the taco and half the cream cheese fell out. He set the food down. "I was a little busy."

"But you got him," she said.

"We got him. It's up to the L.A. cops to get the rest." He sounded relieved at that.

"More excitement than Seavy Village is used to," she said.

"More than we want," he replied. Then he put an elbow on the table and watched her. She had never had anyone watch her eat before.

"You know," he said, "in all the times we talked, you never did tell me how you felt about him."

"About Tom?" she asked, stalling. She put her soup spoon down and picked up the bread, shredding it.

"Yes."

She shrugged. "He was my spinning instructor."

"And?"

There was no harm in telling him now. No harm in saying anything. She felt herself flush. She had to look away. "And I hated him."

He let out a slow whistle, as if he hadn't expected it. "Because he was a drill sergeant?"

She shook her head. The soup was nearly gone. She had made a mess of the bread. There were crumbs on her side of the table. She stared at them instead of looking Huckleby in the eye.

"Because of how he looked at me, in the beginning. Like I offended him just by being in his presence."

To her surprise, Huckleby took her hand. She raised her head, saw him looking at her with empathy, not disgust. She wanted to look away, but couldn't.

"Do you know how many times you told me that fat people get treated differently?"

"They do," she said.

"You're no longer fat," he said.

"I always will be." With her free hand she tapped her chest. "Inside. I'll always remember how it feels. Like an alcoholic. I'll always be a fat person crammed into a skinny sh.e.l.l."

"If you want to be," he said. "No one sees you that way anymore. No one treats you that way. The loathing I hear when I'm around you comes from you."

He said the words softly, gently, to lessen their sting. But they still hurt. She blinked, startled. No one had ever talked that way to her before. But then, she hadn't let anyone talk to her, really talk to her, for years.

"I don't want to treat anyone else that way," she said.

"But you do," he said. "You a.s.sume all the rest of us will look at you with that same disgust that Ansara had, and you hate us in advance."

"I don't hate you," she said.

He smiled and squeezed her hand. "It's a start, at least."

"Of what?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Friendship, maybe something more. If you're willing."

She had never fantasized about him, not in this way, never imagined what he would sound like in bed, never allowed herself to think a man like this one would even be interested. He was a person to her, not a Greek G.o.d who looked down on the less-than-perfect with complete disdain, like Tom had been. Only Tom hadn't been. He had been as imperfect as she was. It just hadn't been apparent from the way he looked, the way he dressed, the way he spoke. Only his eyes had showed it, and only if someone paid attention.

She felt a little floaty hit of adrenaline, like she used to get in her early spinning cla.s.ses after she had been on the bike awhile. Just when she thought she would be ready to quit, something in her body would adjust and she would feel slightly dizzy, slightly high. A little afraid and a bit proud of herself at the same time.

Friendship. Something more. If she was willing.

"All right," she said, and squeezed Huckleby's hand.

There was no longer a need for fantasy. The fantasy had made her blind to the realities around her. Some of those realities could have harmed her- the arm around her neck, the same arm that had crushed Tom's throat- and others could have helped her, allowed her to see that things were different now, that she was different and, perhaps, always would be.

She was no longer spinning her wheels on a stationary bike. She had been moving forward for a long time; and she had finally noticed.

Brendan DuBois.

The Summer People.

BRENDAN DUBOIS first came to prominence as a short story writer, becoming so deft that his crime stories now frequently appear in Playboy. He combines a tight, sometimes lyrical style with some truly original storylines, as in his first story in this year's annual, the masterful "The Summer People," which appeared in the November issue of EQMM. He has written several novels, the most recent of which, Resurrection Day, won the Sidewise Award, which is bestowed on the best alternate-history novel of the year, an intriguing what-if about the Cuban missile crisis turning into World War III, and the effects thereafter.

The Summer People.

Brendan DuBois.

The drive north from Ma.s.sachusetts had taken the better part of three hours, and the first half-hour of the journey was still with Roy Toland as a dull ache continued between his shoulder blades. Those thirty minutes had been spent in b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic, snarling along Storrow Drive in Boston, the air conditioner in their Jeep Cherokee struggling valiantly to keep things cool and comfortable in the hundred-degree weather. Twice people had cut him off- one in a Volvo that had a b.u.mper sticker that said VISUAL WORLD PEACE- and since he and his wife were officially on vacation, Roy let both drivers live.

Now, bouncing down a dirt road towards Morrill Lake in northern New Hampshire, his wife Nicky was rubbing the sore spot on his back, saying, "Only a few minutes more, Roy. Just a few minutes more."

"Oh, I know," he said, pa.s.sing a point in the road where a signpost listed about a dozen names of people owning summer cottages on this part of the lake. "But before you know it, our week will be up and it'll be time to head south."

Her hand rose up a bit to tug at his hair. "That's seven days away, love. Let's just enjoy the time and not worry about the trip back."

Then he rounded a slight bend in the road and smiled. There it was, the summer cottage they rented the first week of every August, and just the sight of it was enough to finally undo that knot between his shoulder blades. It was simple- one-story with light red paint on the clapboards. The place had a solid concrete foundation (important for keeping out four-legged pests such as field mice and chipmunks) and a screened-in porch that was about fifty feet away from the cold blue waters of Morrill Lake.

A blue canoe was chained to an oak tree, and about the cottage were tall pines that gently creaked as the wind from the lake pa.s.sed over them. Roy walked with Nicky down to the water's edge. Before them were the wide waters of the lake, and to the north, the outlying peaks of the White Mountains. The only sound was that of the wind and the gentle slap of the waves, and the far-off murmuring growl of a powerboat.

Nicky slipped her arm through his. She had on khaki shorts and a white polo shirt, and her muscular arms and legs were quite tanned. Her sungla.s.ses were pushed back on her short blond hair, and she said, "I've been thinking of this view for the past couple of hours, and it's still better than what I remember. Smell that air? Smell anything unusual?"

"Just the trees, that's all," he said, smiling at her enthusiasm.

"Right," she replied. "No diesel, no gasoline, no exhaust. Nothing."

"Well," he said, gently pulling his arm free. "If you want to smell some steaks barbecuing, we'd better get unpacked and dig out the cooler. Hungry?"

"Starved." He walked with her back to the cottage. To the left of the cottage was a grove of trees and underbrush that blocked their view of the other cottages on the road. To the right was a larger home, two-story and painted white, which belonged to the Pelletiers, who owned the rental cottage. Henry Pelletier- a retired papermill worker from Berlin- was outside, raking. He waved a hand and they both waved back. "Welcome back to Morrill Lake, you two," he called out.

"Thanks, Henry," Roy said. "How's Mrs. Pelletier doing?"

"Oh, she's on the mend," he said. "Doctor says the st.i.tches will be coming out soon. I'm sure she'll be glad to see you when she's feelin' a bit stronger."

"Glad to hear that, Henry," Roy said. "Oh, I'll be over later to pay the other half of the rent."

"Jesus," Henry said, smiling and going back to work with the rake. "Don't be in such a hurry. Get yourselves unpacked 'fore you have to worry about that."

As Roy unlocked the front door with the key that Henry had earlier mailed to them, Nicky said, "We've been here five minutes, and already I feel like we're in a real home. You know, back in Boston we still don't know our upstairs neighbors?"

"I know that they like Gilbert & Sullivan and that their bed squeaks," Roy said, switching on the lights. "That's all I need to know."