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

Somehow Paul helped her keep the car upright until they could bounce it to a stop at a crazy angle on the side of the hill. He got out and scrambled down over the icy rocks to where he could see that the wire had almost decapitated the cyclist. There was more blood than he thought possible melting the snow under the fence, and the man’s closed gray face beneath the helmet already possessed the look of secret knowledge that Paul had seen on other dead. He didn’t touch the body, but painfully made his way up the slope where he could hear Maggie being sick.

Then other cars stopped, and a police car, and finally an ambulance.

She was arrested immediately, probably, Paul thought, because of the sight of the slaughter on the fence, even though the cyclist had almost certainly been dead when he hit it.

He called his lawyer, who arranged for bail. Vehicular homicide Paul thought a very serious charge for someone who had spilled a cup of coffee. But a death had been the result of that, and the Boulder court was very sensitive to the large cycling population, which had been outraged at the accident.

In the end, Maggie was sentenced to thirty days in jail, a sentence which the judge suspended in return for forty hours of community service. Paul’s lawyer told him that she had been lucky. It could have been far worse had Paul not been there for her as her employer, and had she had a prior record.

Maggie had that pale, haunted look that he hated while she was going through the maw of the legal system, but once it was over, she seemed to become herself again, growing stronger and more confident each day. “Community service,” she reported, at this time of year largely consisted of picking up trash blown about the city and county. She performed this estimable service on weekends and three evenings after work.

It was while she was finishing her sentence that Dick threw his back out and couldn’t attend the Concrete Conference in Houston as planned. Paul’s foreman’s tickets were paid for, as was his room, and fees for the conference. Paul grudgingly agreed to go. There was too much information concerning new products and applications of same to let it go until next year. He would have to fly. There wasn’t time to drive; besides, he had spent enough hours recently on lonely roads.

Fortified with Dramamine and a few scotches, he got through the flight and spent the next two days being inundated with information. His hotel room was piled high with handouts; catalogues, articles, and advertising of all sorts. After days crammed with meetings, cocktail parties, and banquets, the organizers planned a break in the schedule, freeing the participants for a day of needed relaxation and sight-seeing. Since Paul had seen all he had ever wanted to of Houston in years past, he rented a car and drove to Corpus Christi.

He drove south mainly to be driving, and it felt good to be out of the hotel and on the road again, but he also drove because he wanted some time to think over the events of the past month, about which he had become uneasy.

By now Maggie was spending most of the time she wasn’t patrolling the county for litter with Paul. In the last few weeks she had seemed more relaxed and open to him, showing an interest in scores of things he had not paid much attention to before, being clever, being alive, being Maggie. She was a beautiful woman and a generous lover, and Paul thought himself very lucky.

Except for his unease.

He had seen Maggie time and again put down that coffee cup in the car without spilling a drop. It troubled him enough to cause him to drive south to Corpus Christi, which the article in the Boulder newspaper had listed as the home of Bobby Cremmins, the cyclist who had died.

He didn’t know what he expected to find there. He had talked to Cremmins’s roommate in Boulder, who had said he didn’t really know very much about him. Cremmins didn’t have any close friends that he knew of in Boulder. He had divided his time between training and the business school at the university. He had no girlfriend in particular. He was very “focused,” his roommate had said. The roommate expressed no sorrow or regret at Cremmins’s death. He said he thought Cremmins’s parents were dead but that he had an uncle in Texas. He didn’t think they corresponded much. Paul had left him uneasier than ever.

Paul had gone to the library and looked up the article that he had remembered in the national magazine. It wasn’t very long or very informative. Cremmins had grown up in Corpus Christi, gone to the University of Houston, and come to Boulder to train while he attended CU’s business school. The article was short and described Cremmins as ambitious and dedicated to his sport.

From what little information Paul had amassed, Bobby Cremmins didn’t seem like a very likable fellow. He supposed few really dedicated types were. Not a reason to get himself killed. Besides, Maggie could hardly have had time to meet Bobby Cremmins in Boulder, let alone know him well enough to be offended by him. If there was any connection between them, it would have to be in Texas.

He found several Cremminses in the Corpus Christi telephone directory. Two were out, and the third had never heard of Bobby Cremmins. Not knowing what else to do, he drove by one of the addresses in an older neighborhood of small houses more than a mile from the gulf, yet having the damp, slightly decayed look that comes from living near a large body of salt water.

A. Cremmins still wasn’t home, but one of the neighbors was and told him that Al Cremmins operated the service station a few blocks away. From Al Cremmins, who was busy trying to resuscitate an older car, and who was not especially communicative, he learned that Bobby Cremmins had been his nephew and an arrogant S.O.B.

He asked Al Cremmins if he knew Margaret Detweiler, but the man shook his head in dismissal and went back to work on the car, which looked sorely in need of his services.

Paul looked in the telephone directory under CPAs and found one Edward Detweiler. It was a name he hadn’t really wanted to find. It disquieted him. He looked at it a long time before he punched the number. He was able to make an appointment with Detweiler that afternoon on a “tax matter.” Paul thought that at this time of year the man probably didn’t have time for personal matters.

He ate a tasteless lunch, drove part way to Padre Island under a lowering sky the color of ashes, then went to his appointment with Edward Detweiler, who suggested that he call him Ed.

Detweiler’s offices were impressive, with a lot of plants and glass, and were staffed with mostly harried-looking men in shirt sleeves and a few intense young women hunched over adding machines and computers. Detweiler himself was no longer young. Paul would have put him at least ten years older than himself, but he was a well-dressed, handsome man with steel-rimmed glasses and a full head of graying hair which he wore a little longer than was fashionable. He greeted Paul in a private office and closed the door, to simulate, Paul supposed, confidentiality in tax matters, even though the work would doubtless be assigned to one or more of the industrious young people in the next room.

“I confess I don’t have any tax problems, Mr. Detweiler — Ed. I’m really here to see you about Margaret.”

“Margaret?” The man leaned forward. “Is she all right? Nobody here has heard from her in months. Where is she?”

Paul was disconcerted. He didn’t know what he had expected from Detweiler, but it was not the genuine concern the man was projecting across his expensive desk. And Paul was at a loss as to how much he should tell Maggie’s ex-husband.

“She’s fine,” Paul said. “She has a job, and she’s doing fine.”

The man leaned back, nodding as if relieved. “What is your interest in Margaret?” he asked.