Charles Ardai - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

“Cowper,” she said.

“—because he’s a cement head. What we have here is an anomaly. An old man with a young neck.”

She spoke very slowly. “What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that all parts of a human body age at the same rate. Those two things on your chest won’t always stick out like that, you know—”

She sounded as though something she’d swallowed had gone down the wrong way.

“—and when you see an old man with a young neck it means—”

“Face makeup.” She choked the words out.

“You’ve got it. Now, I’m sure your computer can’t pull out anomalies, but you can scan through a few open cases where a silencer was used and see what turns up. Call me at the office.”

He hung up and dialed Maguire. “Is Dolly around?”

“You mean Dorothy. Yeah, she’s here.”

“Tell her I want her to spend the night with Mrs. — ” He fumbled for the name. “You know who. I’m at her apartment. I’ll wait until she gets here.”

He thrust his hands into his saggy hip pockets and regarded Helga thoughtfully. “A policewoman is coming over.” He lifted a hand as she started to protest. “I know, you don’t need anyone. I think you do. I don’t know why he tried to kill you in the first place, but I do know he’ll try again because he has no idea of what you might have noticed about him. Like having a young neck. Understand?”

She nodded, no doubt in her mind that if she objected, the policewoman would camp outside her door.

“Dolly won’t bother you or get in your way. Now, you’ve had a bad day so far and people have been pushing and pulling at you and you need rest, so go into the bedroom and try to relax.”

She’d wanted to tell him to stop ordering her around. She’d wanted to tell him she’d decide if she needed protection. Instead, she’d marched into her bedroom, closed the door, leaned back against it, and looked around at the familiar intimacy of the room.

This is your life, Helga Vivaldi.

Who would want her dead? Not Uncle Dennis, that dear old man. Confined to a wheelchair and not knowing if he’d see another spring, he still said, “I promised your father to look after you, Helga.”

The closest they’d ever come to an argument was when she insisted on finding a job on her own, rather than taking the one he’d offered in his corporation. “Just like your father,” he’d said. “Stubborn.”

And Aunt Stephanie? Without her support, she couldn’t have made it through the shambles of her life after Allan had left. Cousin Roger? He probably never thought of her from one Christmas card to the next. Mrs. Longwood because she was a day late with the rent? She giggled at the thought. And broke into tears.

She sat on her bed, her face buried in a soaked handkerchief. Not knowing why she wept. Perhaps because of the feeling of failure Allan had left her with. Perhaps because she had nothing to look forward to but more empty years behind the teller’s window. Perhaps because she had no children or perhaps because Uncle Dennis would never see another spring.

If she’d led a soap-opera life, it might make sense, but about the only one who might want her dead was herself.

Why had she bothered to duck?

She heard the door open, voices, and then the door close.

Roth was gone. In her mind, she saw him shuffling down the hall. She felt more lonely than ever.

“Make it short and fast,” said Roth.

“Her maiden name was Stuttgart,” said Polanski. “Her father was a professor at Penn and her uncle is Dennis Stuttgart. Made a fortune in real estate. No brothers or sisters. A cousin Roger who is following in his father’s footsteps in Hawaii. She was divorced from an Allan Vivaldi three years ago. Late marriage and a short one. Evidently he married her for her name. Thought the uncle would see that his nephew-in-law was taken care of, and maybe pass on some of his money when he died. He conned Helga but he didn’t con Uncle Dennis. When he found out he was on his own, he took off with a cocktail waitress who earned big tips—”

“How’d you learn all of this so fast?”

Polanski grinned. “She was divorced, right? Who knows more than a divorce lawyer? He told me what he knew and gave me the name of the family attorney, who filled in a little more. Wouldn’t tell me if she was in the will, but hinted that if she was, it wouldn’t be enough to get the wife and son upset, so her uncle’s money doesn’t look like the reason someone wants her dead.”

Maguire handed him a sheet of paper. “This is what the world’s sexiest bank manager came up with.”

The face was full — old and lined, eyes narrow.

Maguire handed him another. “Since she said she had a better look at him in profile—”

The nose was slightly hooked, the jaw heavy, the brow low. Profiles aren’t that easy to change.

“Okay.” Roth leaned back in his chair. “Here’s what we do next. Poslowski, you know where she goes. Look up all incidents during the last few days along her routes where she may have seen something in her travels she doesn’t know she saw. Then check with the bank to see if there is a bad odor coming from that branch. When some people have a lot of money flowing under their nose, they can’t resist dropping a few bills on the floor so that they can pick them up when no one is looking. Macrory, you go over what’s on the books in the whole area and look for an anomaly. Since you didn’t major in English, I’ll explain that an anomaly is a deviation from what would ordinarily be expected. Understand?”

“No,” said Maguire.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ll know one when you see it.”

He waved them out of the office as the phone rang.

“Roth,” said Marlowe, “I found an anomaly, or what seems to be one, but it’s as far as I can go on my own without being fired. An elderly man walked into a restaurant in Cleveland six months ago. No one paid any attention to him until he pulled out a silenced pistol and put a couple of slugs into a well-known criminal attorney who was having lunch with a female friend. The only reason we looked into it was we thought it was related to organized crime. We still do.”

“Where’s the anomaly?”

“He took off on a ten-speed, which made sense considering how the streets are jammed during the lunch hour. The bicycle was found more than a mile away. The anomaly is that one witness, whom no one paid any attention to, said he pedaled out of there so hard and so fast that anyone as old as he was should have been dead of a heart attack within a few blocks. Now, we either have an elderly man in great shape or—”

“A young one made up to look like one. Like the guy in the bank. You should take this information to Cowpull—”

“Cowper.”

“—and tell him it would pay to look into more of these open cases. Couple more anomalies and he could get to be a big hero and get promoted out of your life before your boobs begin to sag.”

She was still laughing when the phone went dead.

Dorothy was young, with deep russet hair pulled back and gathered with a clip. The slim body was the kind Helga had always wistfully admired; encased in washed jeans, white blouse, dirty trainers, and a man’s leather jacket.

She toured the apartment and settled on the sofa after placing her pistol at her elbow.

Helga recognized it. Glock. She could feel the weight and balance as clearly as if she held it. Uncle Dennis was into handguns and she’d gone shooting with him many times.

You have a natural talent, Helga. You should take up competition shooting as a hobby.

What she should take up as a hobby is shooting Allan, she’d thought. One toe at a time and then the fingers before working her way into more vital body parts. Her uncle asked why his inoffensive remark brought on a fit of hysterical giggling.