Тимоти Уилльямз - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 769 & 770, September/October 2005

Reva! My God, suppose that woman went to Reva! If his wife didn’t kill him outright, she’d make the rest of his life unlivable. He inhaled sharply. His head was killing him. If he lost his job, Reva would know why anyway. Everyone at school would know why. He was caught like a mouse in a trap without even the advantage of having been lured there by cheese.

There was only one way out. He would have to go to the bank tomorrow and cash in the CD and give his life’s savings to Miriam Dalroy.

He crept back inside like an invalid, hoping Reva, who was crocheting, wouldn’t notice him.

“What’s the matter with you?” she asked immediately. “What did that woman want?”

“She wanted to talk to me about her daughter’s grades,” he said. “She doesn’t think they’re high enough.”

“Humph!” was the only answer.

By three A.M. he realized he wasn’t going to sleep at all, so he got up and went to the kitchen, made coffee, and sat at the table drinking it until Reva came downstairs to start breakfast.

She took one look at him and said, “You sick?”

“I don’t feel too well,” he answered, and that was the end of their conversation.

His first class was not until eleven, so he went to the bank. In all those wakeful hours, he hadn’t been able to think of a way out of his traumatizing situation.

It was a small bank and he knew all the tellers by sight, most of them by name. “Thelma,” he said to the lanky girl with horn-rims and straight black hair, “I want to cash in my CD.” He handed her the certificate.

She looked at it. “But, Professor Penley, you’ll lose the interest. It doesn’t come due for another four months.”

“I want cash. A thousand one-hundred-dollar bills.”

Her eyes widened behind the horn-rims, and her mouth opened then closed. Finally, she said, “I’m sure we don’t have that many hundreds on hand. We’ll have to get them.”

“I need them by this afternoon. It’s Friday,” he explained. “I can’t wait till Monday.”

Suddenly she smiled, making a joke. “What is this, a kidnapping?”

Yes, he thought, that’s exactly what it is. They’re kidnapping my future. He said, “I’ll come back around three. Please have the money ready.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk to Mr. Herley first?”

But he was already on his way out of the bank. Talking to the manager wouldn’t change anything.

A day of stumbling through his classes — but alert enough to notice that Vivian Dalroy was conspicuously absent — another stop at the bank to pick up the money, another thawed dinner that left him queasy, and then it was almost time...

He had put the money in a huge book mailer that he’d found in the department supply room, and he had hidden it behind the blinds on the front porch. Reva must not see the package and ask questions. He went out on the porch early, not wanting the Dalroy woman to ring the bell and have Reva answer the door again.

Miriam Dalroy came up on the porch, smiling at him. “Well, Professor, do you have something for me?”

“Please don’t do this,” he said, hating himself for having to beg, but thinking he had to give it one more try.

“Think of it this way,” she said. “You’re saving your job and your marriage. Isn’t that worth a few dollars to you?”

Without another word, he reached behind the blinds and pulled out the package.

“I trust it’s all here, so I won’t count it until I get home. By the way, Vivi has told me some other things you did to her, and I think that’s worth another fifty thousand.”

“You get the hell off my porch right this minute!” He had never yelled or cursed at another human being in his life, but now it seemed to come naturally. “You’ve already taken every cent I’ve managed to save in thirty years of teaching and the money from my father’s estate as well.”

She gave him another of her maddening smiles. “All right, Professor, I’ll let you off easy. We’ll try to make do with this.” She clutched the package to her chest, holding it with both hands as she left the porch.

Back inside the house, he went straight to the bathroom and was very sick.

That night, from sheer exhaustion, he slept. He awoke late in the morning feeling heavy-headed, disoriented, and still tired. Thank God he didn’t have Saturday classes. He would have had to call in sick. Surprisingly, Reva had not awakened him when she left the room, so he just lay there wondering if there would ever be any reason for him to get up again.

He had been robbed. Grand theft. They had committed a felony and there was nothing he could do about it. They might as well have held a gun to his head. He wished he could shoot them.

Shoot them! Wait a minute... they held him up, why couldn’t he do the same to them and get his money back? There was a gun somewhere in the back of a drawer in his desk that he had bought when there were several robberies in the neighborhood about ten years ago. When the robber was caught, he had put the gun away and never thought of it again.

Now he had a purpose for getting up. He rushed into the bathroom, shaved, showered, and dressed, then went to the desk in his study. He opened three drawers and fished around in the back before he found the little pistol. He knew nothing about guns, so he couldn’t even have told what caliber it was, but he had made the man in the gun store show him how to load it, cock it, aim, and... he had never shot it. He had put it away loaded, so it was still ready to fire.

“You don’t look so good,” was Reva’s greeting to him when he went into the kitchen. “I hope whatever you have isn’t contagious.”

“I’m on the mend now,” he said almost cheerfully. “I’m going to be all right.”

After plowing through a bowl of cereal, he went to his office on campus to look up the home address of Vivian Dalroy in the student directory. He was very much conscious of the little gun in his coat pocket.

The Dalroys lived in a run-down apartment building on the east side, neither the best nor the worst neighborhood in town. The building had been red brick, painted white, but now the white was peeling off and blotches of red showed through. Inside a musty-smelling hallway, he found their name on a mailbox, 2-C, and went up the not-quite-dark stairway. They must have been running their scam for years, he thought, so why didn’t they live better?

He knocked at the door and it was opened immediately by Miriam. “You can put the extra boxes...” she began, then recognized her visitor. “What do you want?”

He pushed the door open and stepped inside before she could slam it in his face. The room was crowded with boxes on the floor, several suitcases, and hanging bags. Obviously, now that they had his money, they were getting out as fast as they could.

“Who was that?” Vivian asked, coming in from another room, then, seeing him, she took a step back and said, “Oh!”

“What do you want?” Miriam asked again.

“I want my money back. Now.”

Miriam laughed. “Don’t be silly. You got what you paid for. You’re home free with your wife and your job.”

He pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it at her. “I said I want my money, and if you value your life, you’ll give it to me.”

Vivian screamed and Miriam turned pale, then recovered somewhat. “Put the damn gun away, you idiot, before I call the cops.”

“Call them,” he said. “I’ll tell them how you robbed me.”

“And I’ll tell them what you did to me,” Vivian said.

“And you’ll be lying. If you don’t give me back my money right now I’m going to shoot you both.” He put his finger on the trigger to show he meant business.