EQMM, December 2007 Read online

  * * * *

  He told his wife everything that had transpired, lingering over a glass of dinner wine in hopes it would revive his spirits. Rosanna tried her best to help. “No one thinks you killed that man, Michael,” she insisted.

  "Why not? He was going to ruin the lives of at least a half-dozen Rom families. Our people are not like other farmers. They cannot pick up and move to another village or a different country. In Romania, the Rom are relatively safe."

  "So long as they don't call themselves what they really are."

  "The point is, they cannot safely move from these foothills without risking persecution, possibly death.” He stared down at his hands, wondering if somehow he might have plunged his knife into Brunner's chest without realizing it. No, he decided, that was not possible, unless he was completely crazy. “I'm going out,” he decided finally. “I want to speak with that youth Nikolo."

  "Don't do anything foolish,” Rosanna cautioned.

  It was not quite dark as Michael rode one of his horses across the fields to the Fatuloiu farm. Nikolo was their eldest son, full of Rom pride and a fighting spirit. Michael had often wished that Nikolo could have attended school like other boys his age, but he was thankful at least that the parents had taught him to read and write. Too many Gypsies were illiterate, doomed to a life of begging and theft.

  He dismounted and was walking toward the farmhouse when he spotted Nikolo coming from the barn with an armload of firewood. He called to him, but the youth dropped the wood and started running. Michael cursed under his breath and took off after him. He caught up with him within fifty yards and once more grabbed him by the shirt.

  "I don't mean to harm you,” he told the youth. “I just want to talk."

  For all his earlier bluster, it was obvious that word of Brunner's death had already reached the boy and frightened him. “I didn't kill him!” he insisted, almost tearfully. “I was nowhere near Osman's Garage."

  "I know that. I just need to know if there's any way you might have wounded him while you were scuffling up at Creange's place. Do you have a knife?"

  "No! They won't let me carry one."

  Michael didn't believe that for an instant. He knew many young Roms, and by the time they were Nikolo's age every one carried a knife. Even the girls had them, usually in their stocking tops or strapped to their thighs. “We'll see about that,” he said, holding fast to the lad's shirt while he patted him down. He found the knife in a small scabbard near the left ankle.

  The size of it made him laugh. “What were you planning to kill with this toothpick? A mosquito?"

  "I needed a small one so my father wouldn't find it,” he confessed. “Don't tell him."

  "Did you jab Brunner with it?"

  "I couldn't even reach it down there. I've never stabbed anyone with it."

  "Where'd you get it?"

  "My—my sister gave it to me when I turned sixteen. She said a Rom had to carry a knife, even though our parents didn't allow it.” Michael could see that the admission embarrassed him. He was a different person from the young braggart who'd thrown stones and threatened Brunner earlier that day.

  "Could any of your friends have stabbed him?"

  "No one came near him but me."

  Michael weighed the little knife in his hand. “All right,” he said, handing it back. “I'd advise you to keep this in your room. It would be useless in a knife fight, and you might be safer without it."

  * * * *

  In the morning Michael drove down to the county inspectorate's office as requested. He was pleased to see Segar there, along with Senior Agent Balen and another man he didn't know. It quickly became obvious that this man was an executive of MagiGold Corporation, one Heinrich Trantori. He wore thick eyeglasses and a small goatee, perhaps to compensate for the thinning hair on his head.

  As they settled down for their meeting, Segar immediately returned Michael's knife to him. “There was no trace of blood on the blade or hasp, and the murder weapon had a thinner blade than yours."

  "A small blade?"

  "Narrow, but long enough to reach the heart."

  He thought about the small knife he'd returned to Nikolo. It was narrow, but he doubted it was long enough. Agent Balen opened the questioning, asked Michael to recount the events of the prior day again in detail. As he finished, Trantori entered the conversation. “You admit that as a Gypsy king you are opposed to MagiGold's plans for the mine."

  "Certainly I do not wish to see my people displaced."

  "All the people of Romania will benefit from this, including your Gypsies who will be paid good money for their property."

  "What about the farms that are taken over? Gypsies cannot simply pack up and move elsewhere."

  The businessman smiled. “They can if they stop being Gypsies. Many already have."

  "It's difficult for those who are illiterate, whose entire life has been centered around these few acres of land."

  As he finished, Balen cut in. “We're not here to argue the merits of the gold mine but to determine who killed Serge Brunner. You claim, Michael Vlado, that he collapsed while alone in the room with you. Later examination uncovered a stab wound. Until there is some other explanation you must remain our prime suspect."

  "His knife didn't match the wound,” Segar reminded him. “The tiny office had no windows and no other knife was found anywhere in the garage. The only possible explanation is that he was wounded earlier, at Creange's house, and didn't realize the extent of his injury."

  Michael shook his head. “I spoke with Nikolo Fatuloiu last evening. He was the only Rom youth who had direct contact with Brunner, but he had no weapon that could have inflicted the wound."

  "Where does that leave us?” Balen wanted to know.

  "Back to Hans Creange,” Michael decided.

  He suggested that Segar accompany him to Creange's place, but his friend professed to have other business. Michael's route took him back past Osman's garage, and when he saw Una Osman washing a car out front he decided to stop.

  "They did not arrest you?” she asked, surprised to see him.

  "They had no evidence. My knife couldn't have killed him."

  "Then who?"

  "I was hoping you or your husband might answer that."

  Osman himself appeared then, smoking his pipe and lugging a fender for a black Porsche. “Have they completed their investigation?” he asked, setting down his burden.

  "Not yet. They're working on a number of factors. I was wondering about something. When the place was searched, neither you nor Una was carrying a knife. That is most unusual for Roms."

  Osman shook his head. “Not for us. Una and I live as Romanians, not as Gypsies. Neither of us has ever carried a knife and you will find none here. The tools of my trade include nothing that could have made the wound."

  "And he wasn't even in the room with you when it happened,” Una was quick to point out.

  "I know that.” Michael felt suddenly helpless. Whatever he'd expected to find, it wasn't here. “But you and your husband both expressed opposition to reopening and greatly expanding the old mine."

  "Of course!” Osman said. “An open-pit mine of that size would be a terrible blight on the landscape. It would drive people from the area even if their farms were not directly affected."

  It was true. Michael knew it was true. And someone had tried to stop it by killing MagiGold's representative.

  * * * *

  Hans Creange was working in his yard when Michael pulled up and parked. He put down his hoe and wiped some drops of sweat from his forehead. “Just in time for me to take a break. Spring planting is always a chore."

  "You do it all yourself?"

  "Just this front part. I hire Gypsies for the field work."

  "You didn't want to lose that, did you? Serge Brunner represented the end of the life you've been living."

  "Captain Segar, or whatever his job is now, said the same thing. He said I shouldn't sell."

  "Did you kil
l Serge Brunner?” Michael asked suddenly.

  "Kill him? He was alive and well when he left here. I'd have more reason to ask you the same question."

  "With a blade thin and sharp enough, he might not have realized he'd been stabbed."

  "They said on the news that the wound was to the heart. How could he have driven you to the garage with such a wound?"

  "I don't know,” Michael admitted.

  "Well, whatever happened, I am pleased that he's dead."

  "They'll only send another."

  "And perhaps someone will kill him too."

  Michael drove back to his farm. He was unusually quiet during dinner and Rosanna could sense something was wrong. “What is it?” she asked finally.

  "I've talked to everyone involved with Serge Brunner and I still don't know who killed him. The police suspect me, I know that. Maybe even Segar still suspects me."

  "Talk to me about it,” she urged.

  He poured them a little wine and started in, thankful for her concern. “There are only six of us who had any contact with Brunner yesterday. For a few moments I feared I might have stabbed him and blocked it from my memory, but my knife couldn't have made that wound. Segar wasn't near enough to him that I remember, and if Brunner was stabbed at Creange's house he couldn't have lived more than a few minutes. That would seem to eliminate both Creange and the youth Nikolo. The murder must have occurred at Osman's Garage, but I was alone with him when it happened. Osman's wife Una was in the back somewhere and Osman himself didn't enter the room until after Brunner collapsed and I called to him. Even then, he had no knife and I was right there with him all the time."

  Rosanna, who had a flare for fantasy at times, suggested, “Una might have climbed up into the ceiling panel, gotten above the room where you were, pushed aside one of the panels, and stabbed Brunner with some sort of spear."

  At least the idea brought a smile to Michael's face. “You've never been to Osman's Garage, have you? There are no ceiling panels. The walls and ceiling are plaster, the floor is stone. No windows in the room where he died, no place large enough for someone to have hidden."

  "Perhaps an idea will come to you overnight,” she said.

  Already the press and television news had placed the blame directly on the Gypsies. He retired that night after seeing the president of MagiGold Corporation denounce the killing of his employee as the barbarous act of Gypsy thugs. His dreams were swirling, misty things as he imagined the Roms stripping him of his leadership position because of the unexplained crime.

  He awakened relieved that it had been only a dream, but the mystery was no closer to a solution.

  * * * *

  It was afternoon when Segar's familiar black government car appeared on the road. Michael left the horses and walked out to meet his friend, wondering if the police had decided to arrest him after all.

  "Is there anything new?” he asked, kicking a small limb off to the side of the road.

  Segar was smiling, looking very pleased with himself. “Michael, you really must get a personal computer up here."

  "What would that do for me?"

  "You could search the Internet, as I did last evening."

  "I'm afraid computers would be lost on most Roms. How do they read a computer when they cannot read a newspaper or a book?"

  "But you can read, and you could have looked something up as I did."

  "What? Gold mines?"

  "No, allergies."

  Michael thought about it. “Brunner mentioned his allergies were bothering him, but what does—?"

  "Tea is often considered to be good for allergies, but on the Internet I found some rare cases of an allergy to jasmine tea, especially to the tea dust. Remember how Brunner smelled the leaves? And he said he'd never had it before."

  "You're telling me the tea killed him?"

  Segar shook his head. “But there's a strong possibility an allergic reaction might have caused him to lose consciousness for a few minutes."

  "That still doesn't explain how he was killed."

  "Think about it, Michael. What did you do after his collapse?"

  "I called to Osman for help. He came in, knelt by the body, and said he was dead. I never took my eyes off him."

  Segar disagreed. “I was arriving at that very minute and you said you saw me, so you had to look away for an instant. That was when Osman stabbed him."

  "He had no knife!” Michael protested. “I would surely have seen a knife."

  "But what was he doing when you opened the door and called to him? You told me he was removing the last slivers of glass from the broken windshield. He came in and knelt by the body with a sliver of glass—a dagger of glass—in his hand. Brunner may have moved or blinked his eyes, something to show he was still alive, and Osman plunged the glass dagger into his heart. He pulled the man's jacket over the wound and carried the weapon away with him."

  "I never saw it,” Michael admitted.

  "Because it was glass."

  "But wouldn't it have broken going into his chest?"

  "Not unless it hit a rib. Remember this wasn't ordinary window glass but strong laminated glass from a car's windshield."

  "We'd better go talk to him."

  Segar placed a friendly hand on Michael's shoulder. “I had Agent Balen arrest him an hour ago. He says he never meant to kill Brunner, but when he knelt by the man with that sliver of glass in his hand, he wanted to do something for the Gypsy heritage he'd ignored all these years. You looked away for an instant and he killed him."

  Michael was silent for a moment. Then he said, “In a way we all killed him. Creange gave him tea that apparently brought on his allergy, Nikolo cracked his windshield with a rock, I didn't realize he was still alive, and Osman stabbed him with a piece of glass. It was a chain of regrettable events."

  "Don't blame yourself,” Segar said. “I just wanted to tell you what happened. I'll be heading back now."

  "You must stay for supper,” Michael insisted. “You solved the mystery when I failed. That deserves a reward."

  (c) 2007 by Edward D. Hoch

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  Mystery fiction has long been associated with games and puzzles, usually figuratively but sometimes literally. The battle between sleuth and perp is often likened to a chess game, and Chandler's Philip Marlowe did chess problems for a hobby. Stories by writers as renowned as Henry Slesar and John Lutz have accompanied jigsaw puzzles, while dozens of novels have combined crosswords with detection, including contemporary series by Parnell Hall and Nero Blanc. The first two books reviewed below, among the best of the year, don't include chess puzzles per se, but the game is important in both. The first of a new children's series introduces a puzzle-loving juvenile sleuth, while two books explore the whodunit possibilities of sudoku.

  ***** Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, HarperCollins, $26.95. One of the most acclaimed living American novelists here celebrates two popular genres at once: mystery fiction in its police procedural subcategory and science fiction in its alternate history branch. In Chabon's world, the state of Israel fell in the late 1940s and Sitka, Alaska, is a Jewish refuge. As its reversion to the U.S.A. approaches, Detective Meyer Landsman, whose new boss is his ex-wife, tries to solve the murder of a hotel guest who registered under the name of a past chess master and left behind an unfinished game that may be a clue. An ambitious work that exudes imagination and love of language also proves a genuine and well-constructed whodunit.

  **** Martin Cruz Smith: Stalin's Ghost, Simon & Schuster, $26.95. A televised “blitz” chess tournament is one of several memorable scenes in the sixth novel about Moscow cop Arkady Renko, who debuted in the 1981 landmark Gorky Park. The investigation into some subway sightings of the ghost of Joseph Stalin centers on an ominous turn in Russian politics. The prose, the characters, the unpredictable plot, and especially the picture of post-Soviet life are all outstanding.THE JURY BOX (continued from p. 28
) *** Eric Berlin: The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, Putnam, $16.99. The titular 12-year-old (no relation to this reviewer) didn't realize the ornate wooden box he gave his younger sister for her birthday had a puzzle concealed in its secret compartment, or that he'd have to join with a variety of sometimes threatening grown-ups to figure out its meaning. The gradually revealed central problem and several unrelated puzzles scattered through the book are well calibrated for readers eight and up. This well-written, well-plotted, and well-peopled adventure, including a suspenseful action climax, should appeal to a wide audience of young readers, though they may grow up to prefer EQ and the Golden Age classicists to most of the current adult mystery crop.

  ** Shelley Freydont: The Sudoku Murder, Carroll & Graf, $24.95. Think-tank mathematician Katie McDonald returns to her New Hampshire hometown at the urgent request of Professor P.T. Avondale, an old mentor whose puzzle museum was her childhood refuge. When the professor is murdered, an unfinished sudoku proves a key clue. Though the novel falls short of its early promise and has the common fault of excessive pad-ding and repetition, the char-acters and small-town background have their charms.

  ** Kaye Morgan: Death by Sudoku, Berkley, $6.99. A less distinguished mystery holds greater interest for sudoku buffs. Liza Kelly, Hollywood P.R. woman turned newspaper sudoku columnist, looks into the murder of a puzzle-obsessed actor who bested her in an Orange County, California, tournament. Five original sudokus and their solutions are in-cluded, plus knowledgeable how-to instruction. Solvers who have become arrogant in their success with newspaper sudokus will be humbled by the tournament-level example. (Morgan is the pseudonym of Bill McCay, co-author of the Raven League juvenile Sherlock Holmes pastiches.)

  *** Max Allan Collins: A Killing in Comics, illustrations by Terry Beatty, Berkley, $14. Among the suspects in the bi-zarre murder of a comic-book publisher in 1948 New York are fictional characters inspired by the creators of Superman and Batman. Period-style drawings by Beatty, Collins's collaborator on the Ms. Tree comics, appear on the cover, chapter headings, and a Queenian challenge to the reader prior to the denouement. In homage to Rex Stout, newspaper syndicate troubleshooter Jack Starr provides Goodwin-esque narrative, while his employer/stepmother, ex-strip-tease artist Maggie Starr, is Wolfean in her self-confidence, intelligence, and stage presence if nothing else. Though not quite in a class with the author's Nate Heller books or the Road to Perdition series, this novel will delight fans of comics and Golden Age detection.