Barbara Callahan - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

You certainly can’t call this first-degree murder, my lawyer told the press the next day. It was a terrible accident. A terrible, terrible accident. I doubt the D.A.’s even going to bring charges. You wait and see.

I can honestly say that I wasn’t even aware where I was after I left the tavern. I just instinctively took the usual way home. I forgot entirely that I’d be passing by her condo. I just wanted to be home, in my own bed, slipping into darkness.

She could have been anybody. I don’t expect you to believe that, but it’s true. Wrong time, wrong place.

They were coming from the yuppie bar across from her condo, covering their heads with newspapers they must have dragged along from inside.

And there was this person stepping into the beam of my headlights — and I was slamming on the brakes — and then there was this other figure reaching for her, jerking her back from the path of my car, but in doing so he himself stumbled and fell into the way of my skidding car and—

Daniel Ahearn, my lawyer, says to me, “You wait right here and I’m going to let her have two minutes with you.”

“You going to be here, too?”

“Are you crazy? Of course I’m going to be here. But she’s been calling and coming up here all day long.”

“I’m afraid to see her.”

“Chet, look, what happened was an honest accident, just the way you told me, right?”

He knew better and I knew better. But I had to keep repeating the story so eventually I’d believe it, too.

I’d seen her running out into the street and then I was back in that alley where I ran the killer down that time. All the misery she’d caused. Poor Laura and the kids. And ruining Michael’s life after he’d tried so hard to be trustworthy and sober again and—

But then Michael had suddenly pulled her back and tripped in front of my car and by then I couldn’t stop and the sound he made when the car hit him — I knew he was dead; I knew he was dead.

“So she’s going to come in here and go all hysterical on you and accuse you of being a murderer and tell you you’re going to the gas chamber. But you’re going to do what?”

“I’m just going to sit here and calmly tell her that I’m sorry. That it really was an accident. That it was just this terrible coincidence that I happened to be driving by that night.”

“And that’s when I say, ‘I hate to put it this way, Jane, but his loss is as big as yours, wouldn’t you say? He accidentally killed his own brother.’ So, you ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“Remember, just keep taking a lot of good long breaths to keep yourself cool.”

I took a good long breath.

“That’s right,” he said, “just like that.”

He patted me on the shoulder and then he went through the door to the reception area.

She was already screaming and sobbing when he brought her in.

She stood in front of me like an interrogator. She didn’t talk. Between sobs, she shouted. “You think you’re going to get away with this, don’t you, Chet? Well, you’re not. Not when the D.A. gets all the witnesses lined up. Even his wife’s going to testify against you, you know that, Chet? Do you know that? As much as she hates me, she’s going to testify against you!”

And that was when she slapped me. I couldn’t tell if it was skill or luck but I sure felt it.

She touched her stomach. “Thanks to you, your brother’s baby won’t have a father. Maybe you’ll think about that when you’re in prison, Chet. His poor little kid without a father.” She started crying again. “This was supposed to be so good, so happy for the three of us. But you couldn’t let that happen, could you, Chet? You had to make sure your little brother did just what you wanted him to, didn’t you? So you killed him! Your own brother! You killed him!”

She spit at me. It covered my nose and immediately dripped down to my upper lip. My lawyer stepped in then and started dragging her to the door. She was still screaming in the outer office. I imagine the wealthy clients sitting in the reception room were wondering what was going on.

When he came back and closed the door, he said, “That is one nasty bitch.”

“She said my sister-in-law’s going to testify against me.”

He waved me off. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, Chet. You think she wants her kids to hear about what kind of man your brother was?”

“How about bond?”

“Just what I predicted. Judge said no bond. You’re on your own recognizance. I brought along all your awards and commendations. Nobody thinks you ran Michael down on purpose. It was raining and dark and he just stepped too far out into the street. His blood alcohol was way over the limit. I’m not arrogant enough to call this a slam-dunk. No serious criminal case is. But I can practically guarantee you you’ll never see prison. You’ll be free.”

That was the word that was supposed to make me feel better. Free. I kept thinking about it all the way home and all the way through our quiet dinner and even when we were in bed and when I couldn’t respond to Jen as I usually do.

Free. But I knew better than that now, didn’t I?

Copyright © 2007 by James Powell

Art by Ron Bucalo

“I had a bit of luck researching this one,” James Powell told us. “I discovered there was a narrow-gauge railroad through the Mt. Cenis Pass from 1868 to 1871, when it was destroyed. I suspect it was used to bring up men and equipment for the job of digging the tunnel through Mt. Cenis. But it seemed as if it was put there just for my story.

As a young man in the 1840s, Ambrose Ganelon, founder of San Sebastiano’s famous detective agency, had witnessed the rage for elephant-foot wastepaper baskets and umbrella depositories, when every European gentleman wanted the first of those whimsical furnishings for his den and the second for his front hallway. At the time scrupulous Arab traders added to the slaughter of the animals by rejecting all but the right front foot, the same foot the Moslem used to enter the mosque, considering the others unclean. Thus was born the critical African ivory shortage of 1868.

In that year, Ganelon kept a careful eye on the dwindling ivory supply. Of late, the wealth of his archrival the evil Dr. Ludwig Fong centered on his many European billiard parlors, smoky dens where crimes were planned and stolen goods disposed of, and on his mah-jongg parlors, where ladies of fashion gambled, puffed on opium pipes, and gossiped, providing ample fodder for Fong’s thriving blackmail enterprises. Every click of a billiard ball or a mah-jongg tile, some said, meant a groschen in the Eurasian master criminal’s pocket.

As the ivory shortage grew, Ganelon began circulating stories about the fabled ivory towers of Timbuktu, that center of African Arabic learning. Fong took the bait, and he and his lieutenants left Berlin and set out for the Dark Continent, where they raised a heavily armed band of men and a caravan of ox carts, meaning to loot the city of its ivory.

With Fong away, Ganelon, an amateur oboist of the first rank, had time to visit the Polyhymnia Club, where the music lovers of the principality met to read Vox Humana and other musical periodicals and discuss their avocation. There he found his old friend from university days, Max LeGrand, maker of fine pianos for the concert stage. In better times, LeGrand and Fong had been rivals in the purchasing of African ivory. LeGrand prized it for its density and whiteness and would use no other for his piano keys. The recent ivory shortage had compelled him to close his atelier and put his workers on half pay.