Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 104, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 633 & 634, October 1994

Tucking my feet under the chair to avoid knee contact, unplanned or otherwise, I thought about a friend of mine in the Metropolitan Police, a murder investigator.

He says there are two tribes of killers, and there is no point in punishing one sort, because having taken a life, they would kill themselves sooner than do it again. The downside, according to this expert, is that for some of the other tribe, murder gets easier with practice.

“I’m not talking serial killers,” he explains, “just your outwardly normal citizen, driven to violence. A few degenerate into being capable of knifing the bloke who beats ’em to a parking space or compliments their girlfriend on her hairdo.”

Tom Oates belonged to the never-again tribe. Ben Basgate told him that the place to which Tom had devoted all his adult life was doomed to become a golf course, and — detonation. A freak event, an unrepeatable anomaly. I was utterly sure of that... but not utterly enough to bet my life.

And Selina, as you will have guessed by now, wasn’t just any old wife. She was Mrs. Tom Oates.

Even if I didn’t make a pass (Tom represented an inhibiting factor powerful enough to discourage that), the danger was that sooner or later I would be tempted to tell Selina why her husband was morose. Then... who knows? The best possible prediction was one hell of a mess.

Say I kept my mouth shut and my hands to myself. Selina wanted a male admirer to share her woes and provide implicit assurance that her company was valued. Jealous husbands resent such males. Somebody was bound to see us together, or merely intercept and interpret a look between us, generating gossip until...

Until, for the sake of argument, I had an accident.

So — I reflected as duckling in orange sauce was served and she said what a pretty restaurant this was, I’d always known places she would like — the only solution was polite but firm rejection.

“Selina,” I began, and she asked, “Yes?” on a rising note. The light was flattering in there, but I noticed the lipstick on her wineglass and the way her hands looked older than the rest of her. And, heart twisting, I chickened out.

“Just Selina,” I lied. “Good to see you again.”

From the way she tucked in, the cuisine was good. I couldn’t taste the food.

Before the year was out my phone would ring and a familiar voice would ask if I was alone in the cottage because she needed a friendly ear. Or she’d be walking her dog — well after dark, of course — and just happen to drop in. For the first time in my fairly disgraceful life, the prospect was deeply repugnant.

Again I opened my mouth. Again I could not bring myself to tell Selina to grow up and get lost, in whichever order she preferred.

Painted into a comer, I did what any upright country gentleman would have done.

Two or three times a year I go to London for a council of war with my agent, Hal Maitland. Needless get-togethers in this era of phone, fax, and computer, but we eat and drink tax-deductibly, spinning yarns about the good old days (good because they’re behind us) when he was a publisher’s PR man and I a persecuted hack on the Daily Excess. We invariably pronounce a solemn curse on that dreadful rag; and still read the thing every day.

Hal and I were in the Groucho Club a few days after that distressing reunion with Selina. He’d outlined sundry interesting possibilities, then guffawed. “Nearly forgot... There’s this idealist at a tiny little West Coast college who thinks you’re a loss to academe and wants to do something about it.”

“Whereabouts on the West Coast — Dorset, Devon, Cornwall?”

“California, you dolt. Head of English department at this place has gone overboard about Wails and Whispers. According to the professor, and she should know, it’s a—” Hal squinted in an effort of memory, and recited “ ‘an allegory of Britain’s vanishing class structure, at once elegiac and profoundly pessimistic.’ ”

We looked at each other. Wails began as an entry for a BBC-TV drama anthology of social comedy. The Beeb said they didn’t want vulgar farce, thanks all the same. Waste not, want not: I turned it into prose, cut the custard pies, added copious French quotations and Latin tags, and Hal found a publisher who believed what agents told him. It sold all of two hundred and fifty copies — fifty of those bought at special rates and entombed in a carton at the back of my garage.

When he’d wiped his eyes, not to mention evidence of Caesar salad off his tie, I asked Hal for more details.

He snorted dismissively. “Left the letter at the office, nearly put it in the round file, my wastebasket. One of those writer-in-residence deals. Nothing there for you, chum. They’ll spring for a round-trip air ticket and provide an apartment on campus, but the place is at the back end of nowhere and they wanted you there by the end of next week when whatsit, semester, starts. Far too short notice.”

“Wrong,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

© 1994 by Doug Allyn

The protagonist of this new story by Michigan author Doug Allyn, Michelle “Mitch” Mitchell, started life as a man in the stories “The Puddle Diver” (AHMM10/86), “Night of the Grave Dancer” (AHMM 9/88), “Icewater Mansions” (EQMM 1/92), and “The Ten-Pound Parrott” (EQMM 2/92). It was only when Mr. Allyn expanded the story “Icewater Mansions” into a book that he decided a female protagonist would serve his series better, and so we find superimposed on the earlier “Mitch” a completely new character who shares some of the old Mitch’s history but otherwise has sprung fresh from the author’s pen...

I hate tending bar in the morning. People who drink before noon tend to be surly and sarcastic, especially to a woman. Or so I thought until I hired a male bartender. He quit after three days. And two fistfights. Apparently morning grumps are gender-neutral.

Bartending isn’t a trade I chose freely. I inherited The Crow’s Nest, a northern Michigan bar/restaurant with a tackle shop attached, from my father. We weren’t close, my father and I. I was surprised he left me the Nest, but not surprised its mortgage payments were four months behind. Still, the bar has a terrific view of Huron Harbor, I was ready for a change in my life, and as a single woman with a young son to support, I do what I have to.

Summers are best. I spend most days in the dive shop renting boats and scuba gear while Corey plays on the beach. Sometimes I pick up odd jobs skin diving for things tourists lose on the lake bottom. Outboard motors, tackle boxes. And sometimes bodies.

In the fall, the sunbirds fly south, my son returns to his private school, and I work myself half to death trying to ease the ache of missing him. Heck, I’ll even tend bar in the mornings.

And sometimes it gets interesting. A Wednesday morning in late fall, a young Hispanic guy in a black leather jacket and faded jeans wandered in. I’m tall for a woman, nearly five-ten, but he was taller, six foot plus. He was probably in his late twenties but didn’t look it. He had a pasty, junk-food complexion and a permanent pout hiding behind a scrubby goatee.

He took a seat at the bar, ordered a double shot of Wild Turkey, neat, knocked it back with a single gulp, then ordered another.

“Little early, isn’t it?” I said.

He eyed me a moment, and I braced myself for a blast of morning static, but he just shrugged. “Yes, ma’am, I guess it is. Do me a Coke instead. Do you know a guy named Walter McClain?”