EQMM, December 2009 Read online

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  Cover Illustration by William George

  CONTENTS

  Fiction: PATTERNS by Richard A. Lupoff

  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Fiction: AN AFTERNOON AT THE COTTAGE by Jean Rae Baxter

  Fiction: ERIN'S JOURNAL by David Dean

  Fiction: MEMORY by Robert Barnard

  Department of First Stories: GONE MISSING by Ryan Daff

  Special Feature: INDEX: VOLUMES ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-THREE & ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR—2009

  Passport to Crime: DEATH OF A FISH CONCESSIONAIRE by Friederike Schmoe

  Fiction: DOLPHIN JUNCTION by Mick Herron

  Fiction: SEA CHANGE by Brynn Bonner

  Fiction: THE PROBLEM by Phil Lovesey

  Special Feature: 2009 EQMM Readers Award Ballot

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  Janet Hutchings: Editor

  Emily Giglierano: Editorial Assistant

  Susan Mangan: Vice President, Design & Production

  Victoria Green: Senior Art Director

  Lynda Meek: Production Artist/Graphic Designer

  Carole Dixon: Senior Production Manager

  Evira Matos: Production Associate

  Abigail Browning: Manager, Subsidiary Rights & Marketing

  Bruce W. Sherbow: Vice President, Sales & Marketing

  Sandy Marlowe: Circulation Services

  Peter Kanter: Publisher

  Ellery Queen: Editor-in-Chief, 1941-1982

  Eleanor Sullivan: Editor-in-Chief, 1982-1991

  Advertising Representative

  Robin DiMeglio: Advertising Sales Manager

  Phone: (203) 866-6688 x180

  Fax: (203) 854-5962

  [email protected]

  (Display and Classified Advertising)

  Fiction: PATTERNS by Richard A. Lupoff

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  Art by Allen Davis

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  It's been more than ten years since Richard Lupoff gave fans a new entry in his series starring insurance investigator Hobart Lindsey and homicide detective Marvia Plum. But after devoting many years primarily to short fiction, he's back to Lindsey and Plum and expects to finish soon a book-length adventure for them entitled The Emerald Cat Killer. Mr. Lupoff's fans also won't want to miss these Lupoff story collec-tions: Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix (Crippen & Landru), Visions (Mythos Books), and Killer's Dozen (Surinam Turtle Press).

  KEWEENAW BAY GAZETTE

  Keweenaw Bay, Michigan

  July 5, 1940

  —

  Mr. Zachary Grand

  Editor-in-Chief

  Grand Publications

  143 West 43rd Street

  New York, 16, New York

  —

  Dear Zach,

  Well, you'll never guess who turned up here in Keweenaw Bay a couple of days ago. Tony LoPresto! What the heck was Tony doing in this little town? Bet you've never heard of it. But there he was.

  I was on my lunch break—stopped into Helen's Cafe for a chicken salad sandwich and an iced coffee, and there he was sitting at the counter. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

  Tony LoPresto! Carried me right back to the days of the Three Cheshire Cats. Remember the Three Cheshire Cats? Of course you do! Tony was as surprised to see me as I was to see him, but as soon as we both got over the shock we started exchanging biographies. It's been what, six, seven years, right, seven years since we said goodbye to North Cheshire Central College. Funny how three fellows who were roommates for four years, formed the best little swing trio that northwestern Massachusetts has seen, chased coeds, shared homework, got into and out of trouble with the local law, and somehow managed to escape with bachelor's degrees, can disappear out of each other's lives as if they'd never known each other.

  But I guess that's life.

  Would you believe that Tony is police chief of Napoleonville, the flower city of Bayou Richelieu, Louisiana? He still loves bird-watching and he was up here on vacation, field glasses in one hand and notebook in the other, studying the local feathered wildlife. Stopped into Helen's for his ham and eggs and ran into me.

  Two of the Three Cheshire Cats back together! Naturally we reminisced about good old North Cheshire Central College, good old President Lucas Smith, poor old Professor Percival Dunning, and all the great times we had together. And of course, the Three Cheshire Cats. I still play a little piano, although just for fun. Tony says he hasn't touched his trumpet in years. Do you still keep your old bull fiddle around, Izzy—or should I say Zach?

  When your name came up, Tony told me that you went back to your old hometown and got a job in the publishing world. How things change, don't they? Good old Isaac Goldberg, editor of the North Cheshire Literary Quarterly, is now Zachary Grand, editor of Grand Adventures, Grand Western, Grand Mystery, and Grand Ghost Stories.

  Did I leave anything out?

  Those pulp magazines are a far cry from the Literary Quarterly, I guess, but everybody has to earn a living. Who would have thought I'd become production manager of the Keweenaw Bay Gazette?

  Tony says you're always looking for new talent, which is how he discovered you're “Zachary Grand.” I'd like to try my own hand at something like that. Being over on the production side of the Gazette is okay, but I sometimes get an itch to try writing the stuff instead of printing it. Thought maybe the sad end of poor old Dunning might furnish the ingredients for a story. Might even find a place in your Grand Mystery pulp. Just let me know, old roomie.

  It's been fun reminiscing about the old days anyway, please write back when you get a chance.

  Meow, Cats, Meow!

  Robert “Bobcat” O'Brien

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  KEWEENAW BAY GAZETTE

  Keweenaw Bay, Michigan

  July 15, 1940

  —

  Mr. Zachary Grand

  Editor-in-Chief

  Grand Publications

  143 West 43rd Street

  New York, 16, New York

  —

  Dear Zach,

  It was great to hear from you after all these years. I know you must be dreadfully busy there at Grand Publications, running all those magazines, and I'm actually flattered that you remembered me as you did. I'm also flattered that you asked about my job here at the Keweenaw Bay Gazette. A small-town weekly is a far cry from your line of big magazines.

  Actually, what I do here at the Gazette is not so different from the work I did on the North Cheshire Literary Quarterly when you were the editor-in-chief. My title here is “production manager” but in fact I'm pretty nearly the whole production department. The owner is a fellow named Jack Miller. Editor-in-chief is Tim Holcomb, although he's also our chief reporter, feature writer, and advertising salesman. I'll send along a half-dozen recent issues so you can see what we're all about.

  What passes for hard news in Keweenaw Bay is the opening of hunting season in the fall and fishing season in the summer, weddings, funerals, and births, and graduation at the local high school. Come out here for a visit and you'll think you're in an Andy Hardy movie.

  My job—well, I set type, pull and read proofs, lay out
pages, and even run the press. We set type on a secondhand Mergenthaler Linotype that we got at a bankruptcy sale at the KearsargeRecorder when they went belly-up. Of course, at the Quarterly we hand-set type and ran vellum on a press. Out here, we run newsprint on a small rotary, a Goss Sextuple that's older than Methuselah but still runs okay. Not nearly as pretty as the Quarterly, but a whole lot cheaper.

  You know, I've been thinking about the old gang at North Cheshire since Tony LoPresto was here. You and Tony and I were quite the trio, weren't we, and I mean that in more ways than one. I've been thinking about some of the young ladies we chased, too. Remember Carolyn Deering, Annie Mayfield, Jennie Lipton? I'll admit, I used to dream about Annie. What a girl! What a figure! I wonder what ever became of Annie and the others.

  And the professors, oh, weren't there some characters in the faculty? Shakey Simmons, Henry von Eisen, Percival Dunning. Poor guy. Remember how he used to whisper his lectures? Well, not exactly whisper, but you remember that soft, breathy voice he always used. Remember how he got it?

  Oh, you wouldn't, of course. He didn't like to talk about it, never mentioned it in class, I only remember him talking about it one time. It was at one of his Friday-night soirees. He used to invite a few students in to his apartment there in Wellington Hall on Friday nights. He'd lay out sandwiches and serve brandy and put on music, and we'd talk about everything from the benzene ring to Schopenhauer to the history of the Hittites. Of course, there was a certain amount of pairing off, too. Normally coeds wouldn't have been in a men's dorm but Dunning used to invite them to his parties and nobody complained.

  I'm sure he would have invited you, Izzy. He always spoke highly of you. But you were over in Great Cheshire at the synagogue on Friday nights. I had a lot of respect for you. I think you were the only Jew at Central Cheshire, and you didn't bother to deny it, you took whatever you had to and you stood up for who you were.

  That rat von Eisen, Henry von Eisen, I remember he used to rag you every chance he got. I don't know why he hated Jews but he certainly did, and he never missed an opportunity to slam you, pal. Percival Dunning would never have done that, it just happened that he held his gab-fests on Friday nights and you couldn't attend.

  Anyway, one Friday Percival must have had a little too much brandy. I remember he had his radio on. He used to play records most of the time, he was a big fan of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Frederick Delius and Gustav Holst, but once in a while he'd turn on the radio instead. The news came on and there was something about the election in Germany, this thug who was running against old President von Hindenburg. Dunning got pretty upset about it.

  When the news went off somebody asked him why he was so agitated. Dunning said that the Great War was starting up again, that this bum Hitler was worse than the Kaiser and the slaughter was going to happen all over again.

  Everybody else said, Look, Hitler lost the election, there's nothing to worry about, but Dunning just sat there looking unhappy and drinking brandy. Finally a coed, I think it was actually Carolyn Deering, put her hand on Dunning's hand and asked him why he cared so much about Europe, it was three thousand miles away anyhow.

  Dunning was English. Of course you knew that, Izzy, you could tell from the way he talked, right? Everybody knew he was English.

  What he told us was that he'd been a tommy in the Royal Fusiliers in the Great War. He'd been in the Battle of the Marne. There were Spads and Fokkers flying over and cannons going off and both sides were using poison gas. I thought they had gas masks but I guess they didn't work very well, and poor Dunning wound up gassed.

  He said he was nearly dead. His comrades to the left and the right in the trench were dead. He was lying in the bottom of the trench, water and mud nearly a foot deep. He had no food. He was so weak he couldn't move, just lie there with his rifle at his side pointing up in the air, the bayonet fixed.

  The Germans tried a charge, and a German soldier must have lost his footing. He fell into the British trench, landed on Percival's bayonet. It went right through his gut. The German landed on Percival and Percival was too weak even to crawl out from under him. The German was as good as dead, he would have been better off dead but he was alive. He was screaming in pain. Then he just moaned and cried.

  Percival said it took the German a day and a night to die. Finally a German graves-registration unit came through and pulled the corpse off Dunning and took it away, and one of the Germans noticed that Dunning was alive. They pulled him out of there and sent him to a field hospital and he spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.

  That was why he always whispered, Izzy. It was his lungs. They were ruined by that poison gas. It was a miracle that he didn't die. Didn't die then, I mean.

  Say, I'm sorry to ramble on like this, Izz. I know you're a busy man and you have plenty of work to do. I have to get back to setting type myself. You didn't say anything about my writing for your magazines in your last letter. What do you think? Do write when you get a chance, Izz. We old Cheshire Cats have to stick together!

  Meow, Cats, Meow!

  Robert “Bobcat” O'Brien

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  KEWEENAW BAY GAZETTE

  Keweenaw Bay, Michigan

  July 20, 1940

  —

  Mr. Zachary Grand

  Editor-in-Chief

  Grand Publications

  143 West 43rd Street

  New York, 16, New York

  —

  Dear Izzy,

  I'm glad you got a kick out of those copies of the Keweenaw Bay Gazette I sent you. The owner, Jack Miller, wanted to know if we might get a subscription out of you. When I told him I doubted it he made me pay for the copies and postage. What a cheapskate! Well, I guess he's a businessman and he has to watch expenses.

  I hope you didn't mind my mentioning your being a Jew and all, and your attending synagogue in Great Cheshire. I wonder what Percival Dunning would think of the war in Europe if he were alive. He predicted it back in ‘31, I think it was, when Hitler ran for president of Germany against old Paul von Hindenburg. Was it ‘31? No, ‘32, I think. Of course Hitler lost but that was only a temporary setback for him, wasn't it?

  And I wonder what Henry von Eisen thinks. He used to talk about Hitler and his theories of Aryan purity. I wonder what he thinks nowadays. Remember how he used to hate That Man in the White House, said he was secretly Jewish, his real name wasn't Roosevelt at all, it was really Rosenfeld and he was part of the International Zionist Movement and that we needed a Hitler in America to stop Rosenfeld from selling out the country to the Jews? And where is that rat von Eisen now?

  Hey, I don't need to tell you about this, do I? Sorry, Izz.

  I had a nice letter from Tony LoPresto this week. He's back in Louisiana, of course. Who would have thought our fellow Cheshire Cat would turn out to be the Sherlock Holmes of the Bayou Country? Back in our undergrad days it seemed as if Tony's only interests were the time he spent on the bandstand and the football field. Man, could he play that horn! He could have given lessons to Ziggy Elman or Harry James. And when he put down his trumpet and put on a North Cheshire uniform, those pads and that leather helmet, he was something else! You wouldn't think a barrel-shaped guy like Tony, North Cheshire's own Two-Ton Tony, could move the way he did. But...

  Remember the big game in ‘32 against Willow Lakes Institute? The way Tony snagged that pass from the Willow Lakes quarterback in our own end zone, and dodged his way the length of the field to win the county championship for us? Beautiful! And then he turned around and batted .380 for our baseball team in the spring of ‘33.

  But now he's running Bayou Richelieu like J. Edgar Hoover. Who would have guessed?

  I've been thinking about your magazines, Izzy. Somebody like Tony LoPresto could make a great character, don't you think? I don't mean to make a pest of myself and I always enjoy hearing from the old gang, but you haven't responded to my questions about writing for your pulps. I hope I'll hear from you soon.

  Meow, Ca
ts, Meow!

  Robert “Bobcat” O'Brien

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  KEWEENAW BAY GAZETTE

  Keweenaw Bay, Michigan

  August 2, 1940

  —

  Mr. Zachary Grand

  Editor-in-Chief

  Grand Publications

  143 West 43rd Street

  New York, 16, New York

  —

  Dear Izz,

  You are a prince of a fellow, Izzy! Not a word from you in a week and a half, and suddenly there's a package on my desk at the Gazette, all the way from New York City. Once Tim Holcomb, the editor-in-chief, saw the return address he couldn't wait for me to open it, and when he saw what was inside he didn't know what to make of it. I think he suspects you're trying to lure me away from the bright lights and fast action of Keweenaw Bay and get me to come to the big town to work for Grand Publications.

  And I just might do it, too, if I got the right offer. (That isn't a hint, old roomie, I'm just pulling your leg.)

  Still, copies of Grand Adventures, Grand Western, Grand Mystery, and Grand Ghost Stories all in one heavy bundle made quite a stir around the Gazette office.

  I took Grand Adventures over to Helen's Cafe and spent my lunch hour poring over it. It's quite a magazine. I know you've got your competition, but they'll have to go a long ways to top Grand Adventures. That was some picture on the cover. That guy Saunders can sure paint up a storm! That native gal was really something. I hope you don't get into trouble with the censors over it.

  And the story was every bit as good as the picture. Splash Shanahan is some hero! I thought the nasty Sea Lynx was going to put a knife between his ribs at any time. Good writing, good storytelling. I'll bet you never dreamed you'd be publishing yarns like this one when we were working together on the North Cheshire Literary Quarterly.

  Some of the other stories were just as good, and of course there are all the other magazines you sent me. Grand Ghost Stories is next up on my nightstand. I don't mind a good scare every now and then. You are one heck of a pal, Izzy!