Robert Lopresti - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 56, No. 5, May 2011

“I need it.”

“Well, yeah. Of course. But tell me why you need it.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Okay. But I’m gonna make a guess anyway. You lost your job and you’re only robbing a bank because the satellite TV company is threatening to cut off your service if you don’t pay.”

“Dang,” I said, “you got it on the first try.”

Bev gave me a withering look that could have turned a grape into a raisin in the blink of an eye.

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Rex,” said Bev. “You need to give some serious thought as to what you’re doing here and if it’s what you really want to be doing with your life.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Give me all the money in your drawer and I promise I’ll leave and think about what you said, long and hard.”

Bev stared me in the eye. It felt like the human lie-detector thing my mother used to do.

“Does your mother have any idea what you’re up to?”

“She’s my getaway driver,” I said.

Bev let loose a belly laugh that caused heads to turn in our direction.

“I’m guessing she’s at home wondering what her little boy is up to. Probably has no idea you’ve entered into a life of crime.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Be nice if it stayed that way.”

“It’s a little late.”

“Maybe. I think I know a good boy when I meet one. You haven’t made any real threats or demands or called me any bad names. So there’s hope.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” said Bev, finally getting around to loading cash into a plastic grocery bag she dug up from somewhere, “Well, I’ll just get this together for you and let you get on your way.”

“Thanks.”

“See? You’re polite.” She paused “Do you want the change too? Probably another ten or fifteen dollars worth here.”

“No thanks.”

“Okeydokey.”

Bev stole a glance toward the front door.

“Haslam’s finest waiting for me out there?”

“To be expected, isn’t it?”

I nodded.

“You’ve got the gift of gab, Bev. Kept me talking like a fool for how many minutes now? Bet you pressed the alarm button the second I told you to give me the money.”

Bev winked and said, “I’ll tell ’em to go easy on you, this being your first time and all.”

“Thanks,” I said, leaving the money on the counter.

I walked out of the bank with my hands raised, but there were no police waiting for me. Nor were there any behind me as I passed the Haslam City Limits sign. I kept my speed under the limit, said a silent “thank you” to Bev, and pondered a career change.

Copyright © 2011 David Dietrich

The only reason that Sheriff Huck Finn ever went fishing was to catch forty winks, and no, a wink isn’t some kind of fish you’ve never heard of. So as soon as I spotted him down by the river holding a bamboo pole, the dreads hit me. For one thing, it was too early in the day for him to be out and about, unless he was dodging work. And if he’d already caught wind of the fact there was some sheriffing needed doing, that doubled or tripled the hazards I was facing as his deputy.

So I waited a while, secretly hoping that someone else might wake him up. After all, there was an entire survey crew working along the riverbank where he was resting, but he snoozed on, ignoring the way they shouted numbers back and forth, and slammed their poles around, and pretty near tripped over him. Hearing other folks work was like the singing of a lullaby to that man.

Finally I gave up waiting and went to stand beside him, positioning myself so that my shadow fell over him. It was a coolish October morn in the year 1904, and cutting off his source of heat woke him up sooner than gunshots would have. Lifting his white hat for a look, he grumbled, “Can’t you see I’m thinking?”

“We got us another one,” I told him.

“You sure?”

“All the signs,” I told him. “Ain’t breathing. Don’t yelp when I poke him. Look of terror on his face.”

“Well, you’ve been known to make mistakes before, Deputy. Maybe you better go double check.”

“Don’t you even want to know who?”

“Not yet.” He eased his hat down over his eyes. “Might get my hopes up.”

In addition to being lazy, the sheriff was also a stubborn cuss, known to hold grudges and play favorites whenever possible, though so far as I knew, wishing his enemies dead was as far as he ever took it. I wandered off without mentioning where I was headed and when I might be back. Naturally I made a point of walking away from the Whipplemore place, not that I expected to fool him. Something told me he already knew which way I was headed.

Marquis, Iowa, where we lived along the Mississippi, had maybe a half dozen streets you could count on in the wet part of the year. After a drought or hard freeze, another dozen streets became passable. During a flood, you’d better have a boat.

Cedric Whipplemore had lived on one of those back streets that no one had bothered to name. His place had gables and tall windows that were shrouded with heavy draperies that people said had once belonged to a famous theater. That was back in Cincinnati, where Cedric came from. The curtains gave the windows a heavy, haunted look, which fit right in with everyone’s view of Cedric, who owned the local opera house. No need to tell you which. There ain’t but one.

At first his opera house was a rip-roaring success. Around these parts howling cats can nearly always draw a crowd. But eventually Cedric made the mistake of falling in love with one of his singers. After that, it was all moonlight and mud. Same old story. St. Louis has quite a pull around here and it was calling to her. He begged her to stay. Right on the main street he did it, down on his knees. There’s old-timers around willing to tell you the story. Don’t even have to bribe them with a chaw. But she laughed him off and said she didn’t want anything to do with his little one-balcony opera house. To everyone’s surprise — and delight — he rose up off his knees and cursed her. Said he hoped that steamboat she was boarding never made it to St. Lou but ended up planted on the bottom of the river. And do you know, he got his wish. A huge explosion ripped that boat apart down by the Clarksville ferry.

Reason I’m telling you all this? That’s how Cedric Whipplemore got his ghost. She came back to try for a high C whenever there was a ring around the moon and hearts were full of romance. Poor Cedric had to shut his business down because she scared all his customers off. Least that’s what Cedric always claimed. Me, I think maybe he was just too brokenhearted to go down there anymore. Whichever the case, the Whipplemore opera house has been vacant since before the sheriff hired me on as a deputy, told me that my given name of Stanley Two-shot didn’t fire up his imagination any, and took to calling me Injun Joe. It wasn’t a huge insult that he didn’t like my real name, seeing as how he didn’t care for his own either. A name like Humfredo Mullendorfer, which was the handle the sheriff’s ma and pa dropped on him, didn’t have voters doing handsprings along the levee, so he changed it. Plucking a name out of a boy’s book, he took to calling himself Huck Finn and got himself elected a lawman.

And now Cedric Whipplemore was an old man, an old dead one at that, having flopped over his dining room table with a look of terror on his splotchy face and his telephone receiver clutched in his splotchy hand. I was sitting in the next room with the closest things he had to family, waiting on the sheriff.