Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

“Well done, you,” said Wanless to Montgomerie.

“Cop’s intuition,” Montgomerie replied. “Let’s take a closer look, but don’t touch.”

They approached the car. “Here.” Montgomerie pointed to the concrete beneath the driver’s door. “Here be blood.”

Wanless looked at the dark stains on the concrete. “They lead to the shrubs,” he said.

“Don’t they just.” Montgomerie stepped towards the shrubs and peeled a branch back. He noted signs of a recent disturbance, broken saplings, crushed vegetation, footprints in the soil. Blood on the leaves. He stepped back. “Better get onto Control. This is the scene of Jack Cunningham’s murder. Can see it, can’t you? Red-bearded guy left before Cunningham, waited by Cunningham’s car, dragged him into the shrubs, did the business, bundled the body into his own car, and dumped it in a gutter close by.”

Wanless nodded. “Aye. I can see it as clear as daylight.”

Wanless and Montgomerie remained at the crime scene until Donoghue arrived with a scene of crime officer and six constables and a sergeant who proceeded to cordon off the area with blue and white police tape. Pike stormed out of the pub complaining about the parking space he needed until he was snarled at by the uniformed sergeant, at which point he retreated rapidly.

“What do you plan now?” Donoghue pulled on his pipe.

“Visit Jack Cunningham’s intended,” Montgomerie said. “See if she can identify the bear with the beard.”

Donoghue nodded.

“Which one?” said the woman.

Montgomerie’s jaw sagged. “What?”

“I said, which one.” The woman stood on the threshold of her flat, two up left, 136 Mansfield Street, Partick, Gil. “She’s got two.”

“She can’t have two fiancés.”

“Sally can. So which one’s dead?”

“Cunningham,” Montgomerie replied meekly. Deflated. “Jack Cunningham.”

“Jack, eh.” The woman shook her head. “He’s the one I would have liked to have seen her with. Still, now she won’t have to agonize about which one to go for, will she?”

“Sorry, you are...?”

“I’m her stepmother.”

“I see. Is Sally in?”

“No, no, she’s away into the town, buying clothes again, I expect.”

“Can we come inside?” Montgomerie asked. “This is a confidential matter, just the sort of thing your neighbours will love.”

“Aye, so they will, on this stair they will.”

Sally Aushenbaucher and her stepmother’s home was clean, delicate, neat, fragrant, predominantly pink, with a dash of white here and there. Montgomerie “read” the room. No man had lived here for many years.

“Aye.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher reclined in a chair. “Please take a seat.” Montgomerie and Wanless did so. “Aye, see, when I married her father, she was ten, so she was. This is my house now, bought and paid, my man’s been away this seven years. He left me the house on the condition that Sally be allowed to live in it until she married, and he left her enough money to survive without working until she was married. So she never worked. She’s a daft girl. She wouldn’t be daft if she was mine, but at ten her personality was formed. All ‘me, me, me, me’... aye, she’s no daughter of mine, I can tell you. But I agreed to her living here because she’s attractive and I knew it wouldn’t be long before she was away, but I didn’t expect her to have two fiancés.”

“How can she?” Montgomerie asked. “I mean, you can’t wear two engagement rings — what did she do, wear one or the other depending on who she was spending time with?”

“It wasn’t like that, see she wasn’t engaged engaged, if you see what I mean, she was just, well, sort of engaged.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Aushenbaucher.” Montgomerie smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, she’d got to that stage with both of them, considering themselves engaged, but still to make the announcement, buy the ring, have a party. But she couldn’t decide which one to go with and which one to break if off with. See, Jack was an accountant, she was fond of him and he offered safety, won’t ever be hungry as an accountant’s wife, but she thought he was dull. The other was a guy called Shane Short.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher grimaced. “I didn’t care for him, but Sally thought he was exciting. He’s an ex-marine, built like an ox, fiery red beard and a temper to match his name. Can’t keep a job, but the lassie’s go for him. Sally said she wished she could put them both in a pot and melt them into one person, get the best of both. The daft lassie, she’s got photographs of both guys on her dressing table, one at each side, as if looking at her.”

“Do you have a photograph of Shane Short?”

“Plenty. He loved his image. I’ll let you have one. Anyway, both guys kept pressing Sally for a date to announce the engagement, so she solved the problem by telling them about each other. She thought they could work something out, help her make a decision. The daft lassie.”

Montgomerie groaned. “Do you know Shane Short’s address?”

“Aye.” Mrs. Aushenbaucher reached for her handbag. “It’s in my wee book, here in my bag.”

After she thought that a decent time had elapsed since Jack’s death and Shane’s arrest, a little over a week she thought fitting, Sally Aushenbaucher dressed in her most fetching outfit and went to a nightclub. Alone. She was looking for a man. She knew it wouldn’t be difficult. Men pure killed for her. So they did.

© 1996 by Batya Swift Yasgur

Since she last appeared in EQMM Batya Swift Yasgur has sold short fiction to several other magazines. In collaboration with her agent and colleague Barry Malzberg, she authored stories this year for Fantasy and Science Fiction and Realms of Fantasy, as well as producing a story recently published in Science Fiction Age. Her new piece for EQMM concerns a police detective with an interesting moral dilemma.

“Why me?”

“A nice Jewish question,” MacAllister answered. “Why you? Because you’re of their faith, that’s why.”

“But I haven’t been a practicing Jew for years—”

MacAllister shrugged. “Jews will probably open up more to another Jew than to an outsider.” He smiled his toothy smile and clapped me on the shoulder. “Go on, Schwartz. Here’s the file. Find out who murdered the rabbi.”

But you don’t understand, I wanted to shout at his fleshy back as it retreated from my little cubicle. I’m worse than an outsider. Worse than a goy. I’m an apikores, an apostate, my own parents won’t have me in the house. You don’t understand, MacAllister. I don’t want to prowl around the study of some dead rabbi any more than I want to sit at the feet of some living rabbi. Can’t I slosh through the mud and investigate that body that washed up on the banks of the Hudson last week? Or risk my neck in Harlem dredging up information on that missing baby? I’d gladly take a gunshot or two, but keep me away from ghosts with yarmulkes, keep me away from the shadowy echoes of Hebrew prayers and Talmudic chants.

But there’s no arguing with MacAllister once he’s made up his mind, once his red face creases into its smug folds, once he thinks he knows. You do as you’re told, like a child in religious school.

So here I was, uncomfortably edging my way into the shivah, the room where the mourners, family of the deceased Rabbi Weissman, were receiving guests to comfort them.

A hushed room, covered mirrors, a buxom woman in a formless dress, torn at the collar in memory of the dead, her head modestly draped in a scarf, dabbing red eyes. The rebbetzin, I guessed. Mrs. Weissman. Two young men, Rabbi Weissman’s sons, on either side, one with earlocks and a Hebrew book open on his lap, the other looking more modern, with The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning in his hand. A bevy of people, men with yarmulkes, women with wigs or scarves, long skirts, long sleeves. Murmured snatches reached my ears: “Yes, he was a tzaddik , a holy man...” “To think, such a tragedy!” “A murder — in our community — what next—”