The Ladies Killing Circle Anthology 4-Book Bundle. Barbara Fradkin
Читать онлайн книгу.
on Jack Dempsey to beat Luis Firpo, and another fifty dollars here and now if you can read this note.”
Gunboat stood there dumb. A good word for him, dumb. He could not read a lick, but somehow she had read his secrets, maybe on his big dumb face.
“When I handed you that newspaper tonight, Reggie went for it like a stick of dynamite,” she said. “He was trying to sidetrack me and that stuck in my craw, so I slipped this dirty little trick in.” She tossed the marker down on the bar.
“That’s why you killed Harry Pilgrim. Because you can’t read. When Ketcheson handed you those markers, you weren’t going to let him know you had a glass jaw in the written word department. So you pretended to look it over, shrugged your old shrug, then climbed in the ring and Dempsey licked you fair and square.”
Gunboat looked at his fists, like boulders, which had failed him the one time he had needed them.
“Pilgrim sent you for champagne, and you found out what he was celebrating. The dive you didn’t take,” Miss Doyle said. “Then you knew he’d done what no one could do in the ring. He made you a bum.”
“It was just one punch,” Gunboat said. But it was like a cannon going off, a perfect right uppercut driving the base of Pilgrim’s jaw into his brain. If he’d had that punch with Dempsey, they’d be listening to him on the radio now.
“You found Reggie and came clean, but before he could get rid of the body, those lovebirds stumbled over it. Reggie was running out of time, so he used the shotgun to disguise the weapon only one man around here had.”
They both looked down at his big clenched fist, and she reached out and took it in her two hands.
“I didn’t like it,” Gunboat said. If it weren’t for the boss, he’d still be fighting for hooch in some two-bit joint. Or dead.
“But Reggie insisted,” she said. “He’s one of a kind, isn’t he? Carrying on, a ray of sunshine, knowing everyone thinks he’s a murdering skunk while he’s the truest of pals. It’s the kind of thing that makes me think I ought to marry him.”
“Marriage is a fine institution,” said Gunboat, although he wasn’t too sure.
Neither, it seemed, was she. “Can you picture me living in an institution? And come to think of it, I’d get myself banned from this fine institution if Reggie knew what I’ve been spinning to you. So why don’t we keep mum? I don’t want to gamble with my supply of martinis, and say, how’s that one coming along?”
Gunboat was reaching for the honest-to-God Beefeater, not the bathtub rotgut they used for the saps, when Stevie Pounder bounded up. “The champ is some man! Helps Firpo to his feet after the big knockout. What a class act!”
Speaking of class acts, Gunboat thought, and looked at the marker face down on the bar. “You just made two hundred shekels, Miss Doyle.”
“I knew the champ would come through. Anyone who knocks out Gunboat Merkley is the world’s toughest hombre. But forget the bet.” She picked up the marker and began tearing it into strips. “I’ve lost my taste for grudge matches. In fact, I’ve gone off gambling altogether.”
Too bad, Gunboat thought. He was sure his money would be safe if he bet on her really liking the boss.
THERESE GREENWOOD lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario. She was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis 1999 Award for best short story and winner of the Bloody Words 2000 short story contest.
IT’S A DIRTY JOG, BUT SOMEONE HAS TO DO IT
I have to keep up this facade.
I have to run each day.
I have to look real womanly.
It’s like I’m in a play.
I have to wear an itchy wig.
I have to wear spandex.
I have to wave at all the men
Leaning from their decks.
I have to shave my hairy legs.
I have to wax my face.
I wish that I had taken off,
Instead, I took her place.
I have to run five miles a day
And make the neighbours see
This sweaty, gritty, jogging jock’s
A she and not a he.
I have to keep up this facade
Because I took her life.
And no one will suspect me while
I’m running for my wife.
JOY HEWITT MANN
SIGN OF THE TIMES
MARY JANE MAFFINI
She’s going to kill me. It’s just a matter of time until she gets it right. All I can do is putter about my garden and check over my shoulders for the next sneak attack.
Don’t think I’m imagining it. The woman is capable of anything.
Consider her flawless organization of “Citizens Against Community Homes”. Didn’t that just keep those pesky halfway types out of the neighbourhood? People still speak in hushed voices about her crusade against dogs in the park. Her campaign to wipe out street parking was as organized as any militia, though perhaps a bit more bloodthirsty. So, you see, I don’t have a hope in hell. Now is that a fair outcome for someone with a bypass for every artery and seventy-eight years of peaceful living?
Once, I was a painter. Now I use flowers to colour my life. As far as I can pinpoint, more than ten years have passed since I retired to the privacy of my garden, alone but not lonely. A garden can have that effect. I have grown scrawny where once I was lean, bedraggled instead of fashionably bohemian. I have decided I prefer myself this way, like my flowers, just a bit out of control.
The days pass quite nicely when your mind is busy with where to plant the bachelors’ buttons and how to keep the phlox from creeping into the lilies.
I would be happy if only she weren’t closing in daily. This morning, while admiring the gentle pink of peonies in the early sun, I hear her triple-glazed patio door open and then the smart, sharp clicks of stilettos on the cedar deck that shadows my small garden. My heart rate soars in a symphony of agitation. I shrink back behind my French lilacs and hope not to be seen. Why can’t I make anyone understand what she is doing?
“Miss Ainslie,” she bellows, rather like Wellington lining up the brigade at Waterloo, “you will have to do something about that dog.”
Now what? How can my dog be a problem? In the five weeks since I brought Silent Sam home from the Humane Society, he’s been nothing but a huge, heaving bundle of gratitude. Loving and loveable. Shambling and confused. I have always placed a high value on randomness, a low value on boundaries. So Silent Sam suits me. Mrs. Sybil Sharpe doesn’t.
“I don’t have a problem.” I infuse my voice with false confidence, but I am glad to be out of reach of her two-inch fuschia nails.
“Well, I do. That dog is driving people crazy. If you have no consideration, and I am already fully aware of that, then you will find the city ordinances are firmly on my side.”
I fail to see how Silent Sam can bother anyone.
“The city ordinances can be firmly up your backside as far as I care,” I say, but the sound is muffled by the lilacs.
My doctor pats my hand. “You’ve had a bad couple of months. The key thing is not to get upset and to stick with your regimen: strength, flexibility, cardio.”
“Got it,” I say.
He