Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Look, I could come back some other time... or maybe forget the whole thing.”

“No, no, come in and meet Charles and Katherine.”

He stepped back from the door.

“You sure it’s okay?”

He met her eyes. So like Katherine’s, but showing something Katherine’s had never shown: puzzlement, an almost quizzical caution.

“It’ll never be that,” he said. “But now’s as good a time as any.”

3

She came inside. He closed the door feeling oddly dangerous, like a blade with more than two sharp edges.

He led her across the hall to the library, knocked discreetly, opened the door without waiting for an answer. He ushered her inside, closing the door behind him.

The room was long, low-ceilinged, the gleam of polished wood and fine leather giving the impression of wealth taken too much for granted ever to seem ostentatious. The furniture was rich but utilitarian, a sofa and chairs made to be sat on, tables to be worked at, two walls lined with books to be thumbed through or read at leisure.

Alan Scherer, his coat off, sat in a low-slung leather chair with a glass of beer on a table by his elbow. He was a big man but soft, as though he’d never done anything more athletic than sign his name. He was only a year or two younger than Charles, but his face was unlined and friendly. He wore tinted aviator glasses and was taking a bite out of a sandwich. Beyond him, behind a considerable desk, Charles turned the page of a document. He had another beer on the desk blotter.

Glancing up briefly, Charles said, “What are you doing in that silly outfit?”

Alan smiled amiably until something snapped in his eyes. The smooth face became as hard as granite. He looked at Charles, back at the girl, swallowed. Charles looked up from his reading, beginning to frown.

“We have a visitor, gentlemen,” Tom said. “May I present Miss Shannon Fargo. Mr. Charles McCauley, Mr. Alan Scherer, his lawyer.”

Charles said blankly, “How d’you do?” and got to his feet behind the desk. Alan Scherer rose a few inches above his seat cushion, then fell back. Charles waved at the sofa while his expression went from surprise to closed mistrust. “Won’t you sit down?”

Shannon Fargo took the letter from its envelope and gave it to Charles, then went back and sat on the edge of the sofa, tightly folded hands in her lap.

Tom hitched a leg over the corner of a library table, watched Charles sit back down and read the letter. He read it again, handed it silently to Alan Scherer, and fixed his daughter’s look-alike with an empty stare.

He said, “Hardly a chummy letter, is it?”

“No,” the girl said.

“What was your relationship to Michael J. McCauley?”

“I didn’t even know him.”

“But you came in answer to the letter anyway. Taking a bit of a risk, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t going to come, at first. But some friends looked you up at this address, hardly Skid Row, and said, hey, you never know, y’know. So I came.”

“Who are these friends?” Scherer asked, leaning forward to put the letter on the desk.

Shannon looked at Tom for help. He kept his face alertly neutral, looked away at the two men, then expectantly back at Shannon.

“Just... some friends.” Her voice wobbled.

“Have you some objection to telling us their names?”

“Yes, if you’re going to hassle them.” She stood up. Her voice had firmed. “Look, they were wrong, I was wrong. I came in answer to a letter from a dead man and apparently something’s—”

“How did you know he was dead?” Alan asked.

“I told her,” Tom said.

Charles said abruptly, “Get Katherine in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom left. When he came back a minute later, saying she’d be right down, he found Shannon Fargo standing in front of the desk, refolding the letter.

“If you’ll let us keep that,” Alan Scherer said, “we can have it authenticated.”

She dropped the letter onto the desk. She was almost in tears.

“Blow your nose on it for all I care. It’s a sick joke played by someone with a sick mind.”

Tom said gently, “Michael McCauley didn’t have a sick mind.”

“We don’t know that he wrote that letter,” Charles objected.

“I don’t care who wrote it,” Shannon said, and turned to the door into the hall — just as it opened. Katherine came in wearing jodhpurs and a heavy sweater.

She closed the door, suddenly froze.

Shannon gasped.

Time went by.

Finally Katherine, her face like ice, approached for a closer look, raised a hand to push a lock of hair away from Shannon’s face. Then she took Shannon’s hands in both of hers and studied them, turning them over. They were blunt-nailed, already work-roughened. Katherine’s were slender, white, cared-for.

She released Shannon’s hands. Her voice was thin, precise, like an engraving on glass.

“You’re a fraud, of course.”

“How would you know?”

Shannon walked to the door and let herself out and closed the door quietly behind her.

Katherine’s lip curled. “Where did that come from, and what did it want?”

“I don’t know,” Charles growled. “Find out, Tom.”

Tom said, “Yes, sir,” with acid emphasis, and followed Shannon out.

Charles stared at the door he had left by.