Нэнси Пикард - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

Monica Wheeler just had to get out of the little scarlet dress. The thing was too tiny. She’d been hoping there might be a cute guy or two here who also happened to be rich, and perhaps even single. But the only bloke who showed the least interest was a man old enough to be her father and fat enough to be her father, mother, and two brothers rolled into one. Since the only other choice was a stuck-up guy in a tacky yellow coat, she was eager for this little escape. A half-hour until dinner. A half-hour before she had to resume this tired little game. She was going to kill her boss for sending her on this publicity stunt.

Kelly Greene walked her upstairs and asked her for the fifth time if she was the murderer. Monica didn’t even know, or care. It was a stupid game about a fake murder. Now, if there was a real body without a foot down there, then things might be a little fun. But this was like playing a game about skydiving: Some things you can pretend, and other things have just got to be for real. She told Kelly that she really didn’t know. Kelly seemed to think it was she. Monica went to her room and wrote in her journal. She figured that Kelly was going to point her out as the murderer so she wrote “I think I’m in trouble.” She wasn’t really sad that she was going to lose this stupid game.

She needed to find something more comfortable to wear to dinner. She was tired of Oliver Powers gawking at her legs, which were showing way too much in this little red dress. She went through her drawers and dug out a more comfortable and conser-vative scarlet pantsuit. She laid out the outfit on her bed. Now she was craving a relaxing shower. She still had almost twenty-five minutes before she had to be back to the group.

There was a knock on the door. It was the old woman from downstairs. Monica had invited her up. She’d spotted a terrible snarl in the old woman’s hair and offered to give her a hand. She had this comb that could work magic with even synthetic hair. The two fought the stubborn tangle and finally worked it loose. They put a tear in Margaret’s beautiful peacock hat, though. “I can sew that later, if you like,” Monica said. Her mother had passed on from cancer years ago. She had recognized the stubborn sadness in the woman’s eyes when she first arrived. Monica immediately had a soft spot for the vulnerable curmudgeon.

She headed for the bathroom, ready to finally get out of the little scarlet number. She was stripped down and ready for the hot water when there was another knock at the door. Was it Sally? She was expecting the girl to stop by. She quickly grabbed the towel off of the sink as she headed for the door, wrapping herself in it as she went.

It was Oliver. He offered her a bagel and asked her out. Charming, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off what her towel wasn’t hiding. Not in a million years would she let Ollie get a look underneath that towel. She politely declined and he left her with the bagel. He took her decline graciously. She gobbled a bite and set the remains beside her journal, then walked toward the bathroom. She wondered again if Sally was going to stop by. And the name stopped her dead in her tracks. She stared at the mirror in front of her. Her hair was tied back in a short ponytail. There were no earrings in her ears. Her neck was bare. She’d taken off the jewelry by habit, preparing for the shower. But she didn’t recall at all where she’d put them. She had a moment of panic and then she turned and went back to her dresser where she’d selected her outfit for dinner.

She yanked out random clothes in alarm as she tried to remember where she’d left the expensive diamonds. She just couldn’t have misplaced them! Sally would kill her. The girl had lent them to her when Monica first arrived at the mystery mansion. “Gosh, those are beautiful,” Monica had said after Sally had introduced herself. The bracelet and necklace and earrings were all of a set. Sally told her that they would go great with her red dress. Monica just had to wear them, she insisted. Monica sensed that the girl was trying to befriend her. She must be used to having to buy her friends. Rather than hurt the girl’s feelings, she accepted.

But now she’d lost the bloody things! She’d had them ten minutes ago. But where? Her mother always said she’d lose her head if it wasn’t attached. Where had she left them? Where? Then the memory welled in her mind. She recalled setting them on the bathroom sink, right between the toilet and the tub. Right on top of the red towel that she was now wearing. Then where were they now? She ran into the bathroom. There was nothing on the sink! Had she been robbed?! What would she tell Sally? But no, she saw them. They twinkled like ice in the harsh winter sun. They had dropped into the toilet when she yanked up the red towel after Oliver had knocked on her door. She even vaguely recalled hearing the splash. She grinned, relieved. Easy enough to fish out.

She took one step onto the tiled floor of the regal bathroom. The jewelry had splashed just enough water from the toilet to make a decent slippery spot right under where Monica’s foot landed. She fell straight forward and her head went right into the porcelain bowl, her face plunging into the toilet’s water and banging hard against the bottom of the bowl. She saw stars. Reflexively, she gulped in a big mouthful of water, choking. She almost swallowed an earring, just inches from her face. She pulled back her head and her skull caught on the underside of the toilet’s rim, making the stars she was seeing double up. Dizzy, she tried to get a footing to shift her weight to lift her face out of the water, but her foot just slipped again, and she went down once more.

She was drowning and she was too disoriented to get her face out of the toilet. Flailing, panicking, she reached up and managed to pull the handle, and the toilet flushed. Water escaped down the drain, giving her a second of succulent air. The bracelet and necklace and earrings chased the water. The jewels were gone. Monica didn’t even notice because the water quickly rose again, burying her face before she even caught a breath. She had just one chance. She reached up and up, trying to grab the toilet handle again, flailing around for the flipper. One more try. One last attempt. She wasn’t going to die in a toilet. She just couldn’t let it end this way.

Copyright © 2006 Eddie Newton

Shortly after this issue goes to the printer, James Powell will be receiving the Grant Allen Award, reserved for Canadian crime-writing pioneers, at the Wolfe Island Scene of the Crime Festival in Canada’s Thousand Islands. Mr. Powell has had more than 75 stories published in EQMM . A longtime resident of the U.S., he has invented his own sub-genre of the mystery, mixing fantasy, crime, and humor.

On a windy March afternoon in 1929, a piebald day, now cloudy, now sunshine, Ambrose Ganelon III drove his white Terrapin convertible with the top up along the narrow, twisting road that tunneled through the Old Forest, the dense stand of trees covering much of Transporpentine San Sebastiano. His destination was Willow-Walk-Behind, a religious retreat house run by the monks of Saint Magnus.

As the trees hurried by, Ganelon recalled his father saying that when Hannibal’s elephants crossed the Alps people thought they were seeing a forest on the march, a Birnam Wood in search of some southern Dunsinane. And, speaking of trees, he remembered reading somewhere that even the oldest of families seldom outlive three oak trees. Grim food for thought, he being the third of his name to operate the principality’s famous detective agency. True, his archrivals, the descendants of the evil Dr. Ludwig Fong, were in their third generation, too. But they had prospered since the War, particularly the English branch of the family led by Dorian Fong-Smythe, while the private detective business had never been worse.