Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 34, No. 13 & 14, Winter 1989

The quick smile again as he looked to Andrew. “Tell me, sergeant. After your father’s death, after we left the money with your family, why didn’t you return to the university?”

Andrew shrugged. “I knew that my brother would put the money to better use.” He smiled. “And, to be honest, by then I had already determined to become a policeman.” He nodded to the old man. “But I am pleased, now, on behalf of my family, to be able to thank you, m’zee.”

“You’re most welcome, sergeant. It was Joanna who left the money. My daughter let her do it. That was her first time.” A smile. “A twelve-year-old girl. She kept secrets well even then.”

Andrew said, “She swore, in her confession, that Atlee told her Mayani had escaped to the west. To Zaire. That he still lives.”

The old man nodded, smiled. “We need our legends, sergeant. All of us.”

The two of them sat there in the shadows. The stars glittered in the violet sky with a hard white light above the cluster of rosebushes, a dim black form now, indistinct, shapeless as a cloud. A cloud that hovered, Andrew knew, above the plot of earth which for over thirty years had hid the gold, and the bones, of Mayani.

The Hamburger Mind by Evelyn Payne

I took the matter up with Rhoda when the meat loaf appeared on my tray that night.

“This is the third time this week that you’ve served me ground meat in one form or another. I don’t care for ground meat,” I pointed out, trying to be as pleasant as possible. The memory of that phone call from Nellie still rankled, but I wasn’t going to bring that up now.

Rhoda just stood there, her lower lip pushed out mulishly, her black eyes angry. Then she tossed her head, that absurd haystack hairdo of hers waving like a black balloon, and said, “Things are getting more expensive all the time, Tess. You don’t realize it since you’re not doing the buying. Hamburger is just as nutritious as—”

“I have plenty of money,” I interrupted, “and I’m sure Harold gives you enough to run the house without being so parsimonious. Steaks and roasts aren’t so easy for me to chew, but I like chicken, turkey, seafood. And no spaghetti. I’m particularly fond of lobster—”

She actually winced, and I remembered hearing how stingy she had been even as a child, always hoarding her money and begging pennies from visitors; and then she married that no-good husband and had to scrimp and save for years and years. No wonder she thought in terms of hamburger. Her clothes were always neat and clean, but they were obviously old and sometimes darned. The only thing in the world she spent money on was that hairdo of hers. She went to the beauty shop every week and came back with it blacker than ever, teased and shellacked so that no single hair dared stray from its appointed place. It might have been a wig; at any rate, I don’t think she ever combed it herself.

“I’ll make out some menus, and Maria knows how I like things fixed, so you won’t have to bother with anything except the actual buying,” I said, glancing out the window at the side yard. “Oh, and another thing. The garden looks dreadful. Hasn’t the gardener been coming lately?”

“Oh, he wanted to raise his prices, so I let him go,” she said casually. “We can’t afford that much for a gardener.”

“Of course we can,” I snapped. “I’ll take the matter up with Harold when he comes tomorrow.”

She sniffed, the sniff suggesting that I was a gullible old fool and that Harold was probably robbing me blind. She didn’t like him, although he was always very polite and nice to her. Perhaps she’d guessed that he had been opposed to my hiring her to run the house when I couldn’t get around as well as I used to. But I’d felt sorry for my sister, who had had a mighty thin life, and I expect I’d been a little nostalgic about my only remaining relative (Harold is Tom’s nephew, not mine). Of course that was silly because Rhoda is fifteen years younger than I, and I’d been married and gone from home before she even started school.

Well, Harold had been right. Nellie Blair had told me on the phone that morning that Rhoda was going around insinuating that I was getting senile, losing my marbles. Oh, Rhoda hadn’t said anything — it had been a matter of head shakes and gestures and pursed lips. I could visualize it — in six months I’d learned how Rhoda operated. She never wasted a word when a gesture or an expression would do.