Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 131, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 799 & 800, March/April 2008

I began to doze, though I tried to keep awake, otherwise by morning I’d still be stuck up Sergeant Peters’s chimney.

“Guv,” came a sleepy voice sometime later, jerking me awake, “what are you doing?”

“Just thinking, Ned.”

I went over to him where he lay on the floor and tucked our tuggy cloth around him for warmth. As I did so, I saw that blessed book hidden in the folds. He’d brought it back, instead of handing it over to the law.

“What’s that, Ned?” I said sternly.

“It’s my book, Gov.” A silence, then: “You won’t go to hell, will you, Gov?”

I was taken aback. Me? Why should Ned think that? “I hope not, Ned,” I said cautiously, not being able to think of anything I’d done to deserve that recently.

It all came out in a rush then. “But you said I’d be foolish if I kept it, but I did, and when I looked at my book it said that if you call someone a fool you’re in danger of hellfire.”

“That don’t apply to chimney sweeps,” I comforted him, as I went back to my fireside.

I must have dozed off again, because I thought I saw Big George coming for me, but he stopped and said he didn’t do it. Flirty Fan was trying to win my favours, and Mr. Weasel Lepin was trying to steal from my pockets when he thought I wasn’t looking. Mr. Guggins himself seemed to be directing the traffic, telling me what to do, though not who did it. Then he disappeared into hellfire and the flames roared up. By then I knew the answer, however, and I must have slept peacefully because I woke up with the birds and Ned’s Good Book as my pillow.

I went to the police station early that morning and asked for Sergeant Peters, who came eagerly in to see me. “Who is it then, Mr. Wasp? Big George?”

“No,” I said. “Not him.”

“Flirty Fan. I knew it,” said he.

“Not her.”

“So it’s the Frenchie?”

“Not him either.”

“Who then?”

“Mrs. Guggins,” I replied. “She came down in the night and heard Guggins’s lecherous talk to Flirty Fan and fancied they were having a go in there. Then she heard Flirty Fan go out and so, being a touch over the top with gin, swept in to have a go at Mr. Guggins brandishing the knife.”

“How do you reckon that, Mr. Wasp?” asked the sergeant admiringly (or so I like to think).

“She had to make sure someone found that body, but not in Guggins’s room, full of that lovely stolen loot. So that meant pulling the body through that door into her part of the dollyshop. Flirty Fan, Big George, and the Frenchie all came in through the rear door and couldn’t have pushed that door open to get the body through because of the stuff behind it. Only she could have opened it from her side. Hell, Sergeant Peters, hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

© 2008 by Amy Myers

Doug Allyn’s astonishing success in the field of short mystery fiction is nowhere more apparent than at EQMM , where he has won a record eight Readers Awards. He joins us this month with a character we haven’t seen before, in a case that involves a college party gone wrong. Mr. Allyn and his wife are Michiganers and musicians who, until recently, played the clubs in their part of the state.

I was working hotel security at the Ponchartrain in Detroit, taking a break in the third-floor bar, when her face flashed on the overhead TV. Sara Silver, the network correspondent with a career as brilliant as her name. She was interviewing Kathy Bates on a news show. Noticing my stare, the guy next to me followed my gaze up to the tube.

“Beauty and the beast,” he quipped, sipping his scotch.

“Yeah? Which one is which?” I asked. Which earned me a look. Kathy Bates is a great actress but she’s no head-turner. “I went out with her once,” I explained.

“Who? Kathy Bates?”

“No, the media babe, Sara Silver.”

He started to scoff, but a glance my way changed his mind. I’m not gorilla size, but I’m big enough. And life’s scuffed me up some.

“No kidding, you really dated Sara Silver?” he said, doubtfully. “Where did you take her? Las Vegas?”

“Nope, to a frat party. Roughest night of my life.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, pointedly turning back to his scotch. I knew what he was thinking. A small-time hotel dick dating Sara Silver? Tell me another one.

I didn’t bother. He wouldn’t believe me anyway. But it happened to be the truth. I really did trip the light fantastic with Sara Silver once, on the wildest night of my life. Only it wasn’t a date, exactly.

Because I didn’t ask her out. She asked me.

I wasn’t a detective then. Just an ex-dogface, a couple of years out of the Marine Corps, taking a few college courses, trying do decide what to be when I grew up.

Meanwhile, I helped pay my rent by bartending part-time at Shannon’s Irish Pub, a sports saloon just off the Westover College campus in Lansing. A jumpin’ joint, Shannon’s, foosball tables, pool tables, and pinball machines. Busy all day long, totally nuts at night.

Preppies would start popping in at noon to knock down a beer between classes, shoot pool, or line the bar for the usual intellectual collegiate repartee; Freud and Kant, easy a’s and easy lays.

Occasionally I’d have to eighty-six a kid who overdid it, but for the most part the college boys were pretty mellow.

Their women were even better. Coeds and townie girls prowled Shannon’s like tigresses around a waterhole, scouting for upwardly mobile mates. But sometimes they’d settle for an affable bartender.

The first time I saw Sara Silver, I figured she was just another Westover babe on the hunt. Sat at the far end of the bar, away from the others, nursing a white wine spritzer. Attractive, but nowhere near the network knockout she is now.

Her blond hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, held by a silver clip. Fine-boned features, slim legs, her figure tomboy taut but unmistakably feminine. Her oversized glasses gave her a studious look. Figured she was waiting for an intense, long-haired type with wild eyes and wilder politics.

Wrong. She was looking for me.

“You’re Tommy Malloy, right? The ex-Marine?”

“Guilty,” I said, sliding a napkin under her glass. “Do I know you?”

“Sara Silver,” she said, keeping her voice down, making sure we weren’t overheard. “I’ve been asking around. I understand you tend bar for a lot of fraternity parties.”

“I do my share.”

“Have you ever worked a Delta Omega party?”

“Once. And not recently. Why? Do you want to hire a bartender?”

“Not exactly,” she said, meeting my eyes. “I need a date.”

“I don’t understand.”

“There’s a party at Delta Omega tonight. I need an escort to get in. Can you manage that?”

“Probably, but I’ve got a better idea. Let’s make it dinner and a movie instead.”

“I’m not looking for a boyfriend, Malloy, just somebody to get me into the Delta House party. Tonight. Are you interested or not?”

“Miss, I’d love to take you out. Sometime. But not to a Delta House bash, and definitely not tonight.” It was my turn to glance around to be sure we weren’t overheard. “It’s a pig party,” I whispered.

“I know.”

“Really? Do you have any idea what that means?”

“Of course.”

“I doubt that. Pig-party rules say the frat boys have to bring the ugliest chicks they can find. You don’t remotely qualify.”

“Thanks very much. I still want to go.”

“No, you don’t, damn it! Listen, it’s a really ugly scene, and I’m not just talking about the girls. It’s loud, lewd, and crude. Everybody drinks too much, the guys are jerks, the girls are desperate—”