William Bankier - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

Well, no blood on the Formica today, thought Sam with mixed relief and disappointment; he had sort of wanted to take a crack at that arrogant mug...

“But you run back to Miss Glenda,” Eddie was saying, “and you tell her that if she’s got accusations to make, she can call me herself!”

Sam drove slowly back to the Station. If Eddie was telling the truth about the letters, he was probably telling the truth about Glenda, too, and he, Sam, was once again her willing patsy in some self-serving scheme. On the other hand, if Eddie was lying about the letters, he was probably wrong about Glenda. Naturally Sam favored this interpretation; he wanted to trust Glenda.

He had never exactly liked Eddie. He had just known him all his life — and competed with and envied him. He, Sam, had been a solid hitter and a better-than-good outfielder on their high-school team; Eddie had been a star. He had come back from the war happy merely to have survived; Eddie had come back a hero for having committed some stupid and totally unnecessary act, probably in the throes of a tantrum. Sam had married an attractive, nice, and reasonably intelligent woman; Eddie had married Glenda.

But that was in the past. Now Eddie was completely ordinary. Sub-ordinary, in fact; leaving aside the matter of the letters, he was still a jerk, full of self-pity, rude to his wife, hard on his kids—

Yeah, but at least he had his kids.

A sharp pain in his neck made him realize that he had been hunched forward over the steering wheel for some time, straining to see through a glaze of water; it was raining again.

The rain let up by midafternoon but, nevertheless, Sam decided to cancel the season’s first softball practice, which had been scheduled for that evening. He couldn’t afford to have his rather elderly players — mean age around thirty-five — slipping on a wet field and spraining ankles.

Last season there had been a moment when he had finally realized that he wasn’t going to become a better player. Up until then he had carried in the back of his mind the childish notion that he was still approaching some zenith of perfection, in everything, not just ball; that he was still a kid who was going to become bigger and faster and stronger and smarter and more attractive to women. Ridiculous! Almost forty years old!

Well, with no softball practice he could allow himself dinner. But first he stopped at Kavoian’s Feed and Supply in Parkerville; he needed to talk to their Pest Management Advisor.

He threaded his way through the aisles of western wear and found a young woman arranging bolo ties on a rack.

“Martinez around?”

“I’ll check in the back.”

While he waited he idly flipped through the sealed packets of western shirts. A lot of his friends wore this cowboy crap. He could never see the point. Boots, yes; jeans, yes; they were functional — if you really were riding a horse, not a desk chair — but these shirts. What was so important about having snaps instead of buttons?

Someone had come up beside him and was also leafing through the piles of shirts. He glanced over his right shoulder. Short, sturdily-built, red ponytail — it was Peggy.

Oblivious to him, she pulled out two shirts, looked at them uncertainly, and finally settled on a fancy number in blue plaid, shot with silver threads and decorated with curlicued stitching.

“That’ll look nice with your hair,” Sam remarked. Startled, she looked up and took a moment to place him. Then she flushed a dark red, so that her freckles disappeared.

“It’s for Glenda,” she muttered, and scuttled to the counter.

This happened to be where Sam was headed too, and he strolled along behind her. He was curious about Peggy.

“Well, it’ll look nice with Glenda’s hair, too,” he pursued. “How long have you worked for her?”

“I... I don’t exactly work for her...” she said, clutching the shirt to her bosom like a shield, “that is, she just lets me help out sometimes. After school, and on weekends.”

“For free?” he asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” she said defensively. “I’m sort of an apprentice; I get to learn everything about the business. Glenda knows so much...”

Oh, yeah, she knows things you and I will never learn, he thought. Like how to exploit a teenage crush; she wrote the book on that.

John Martinez appeared behind the counter, and with mutual relief Sam and Peggy turned to their separate business.

At Konnie’s Koffee Kup, Monday was spaghetti with meatballs, Tuesday was barbecued beef, Wednesday breaded veal cutlet, Thursday ham and biscuits, Friday fried chicken, and Saturday prime rib. On Sunday, the bachelors, widowers, and otherwise single men for whom Konnie’s was home had to fend for themselves.

Even breaded veal cutlet was better than scrambled eggs for the third night in a row, so Sam wandered into Konnie’s around seven o’clock. To his surprise, he caught sight of Tom Martelli’s baby blues above a half-eaten Konnie Burger.

“Marie throw you out?” He plopped down on the stool next to him.

“Naw, she took the kids up to Fresno to visit her folks. She left some stuff in the freezer for me, but the house is kind of quiet,” Tom said sheepishly.

“Mmmm.” His cutlet arrived, a pale gray object in a sea of shoe-polish-brown gravy, and he eyed it unhappily. Why in God’s name had he ordered veal? Especially in his present mood; images from undergraduate Animal Husbandry flitted through his mind — calves immobilized in cages for all of their miserable short lives, deliberately kept anemic to produce that milk-white meat the consumer, i.e., he, desired... well, this probably wasn’t veal anyway; it was probably cow lips, or ears, or something, and in any case it was ninety percent breading...

He pushed the plate away from him. “Cathy,” he called apologetically, “I guess I’m not as hungry as I thought. Could you bring me a chef’s salad?”

“Stick with the burgers,” Tom said wisely. “Stay away from the specials.”

“Yeah. Listen, Tom, what would you do about anonymous letters?”

“Getting ’em? Or investigating ’em?”

“Investigating.”

“Well, same thing I do about any other crime. A little talk, a little walk, a little forensics...” He looked at Sam curiously. “Somebody sending you pornographic postcards?”

“No, no, it’s a friend... somebody at work.”

“Female?”

“Yeah.”

“Obscene letters? Or threatening?”

“Both.”

“Hmm. Probably an old boyfriend or ex-husband. I take it she hasn’t talked to the police.”

“Nope.”

“Yeah, well, she probably knows who’s sending them then. She should be careful. Old boyfriends and ex-husbands are a murderous bunch.”

That certainly seemed to describe Eddie Froelich.

The phone was ringing when he pulled into his driveway. He took the stairs three at a time, burst through the door, and grabbed it — and was rewarded with the mindless buzz of a dial tone.

Damn. It was undoubtedly Claire — maybe she would try later.

She didn’t.

Around four the next afternoon he stuck his head into Ray Copeland’s office to say hello. Ray, the station manager, was staring at his desk with puckered brow and chewed lip. He was an extraordinarily kind man, much-loved, who drove his colleagues crazy.

His face cleared momentarily when he saw Sam. “How’s bachelor life?”

“Okay,” Sam said. “I could get to like it.”

“Nora and I wondered if you’d like to come by for some home cooking. Any night.”

“Thanks, Ray, I’d like that,” he replied with special sincerity, remembering last night’s meal. “Maybe next week?” His eyes fell on the Parkerville Sentinel lying on Ray’s desk. “Is this today’s?”