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

“Keep your goddam shirt on, you’ve got a job to do.” The tension between them was as tangible as an iron bar. Then Charles said, “Ah, hell.” He sighed. “It’s been a long, lousy day. Meeting adjourned.”

6

Tom Bell had taken the California bar exam in July; the results wouldn’t be out until after Thanksgiving. Meantime he worked as a law clerk for Morgan and Scherer, Alan’s firm. He spent the following morning, and part of the afternoon, shepardizing cases the firm was using in a brief, a job involving concentration, precision, and almost paralyzing drudgery. Then Alan told him to go and gumshoe the Fargo matter.

He drove back to the McCauley house, went into the library, and closed the door behind him. At the phone he made sure his most relaxed manner, and most engaging attitude, were both in place before he punched in the number of Needham’s Flower Shop and Nursery.

A man answered, yelled for Shannon. A woman’s voice yelled back from a distance. Tom waited. At last she said, “Hello,” in his ear, sounding rushed but sunny.

“Hello, Shannon. It’s Tom Bell. From yesterday, at the McCauley house.”

“...Oh. Yes.” Sudden reluctance. “Hi.”

“Can I see you for a few minutes this afternoon?”

“Still checking up on me?”

“Charles is still suspicious. I want to prove him wrong.”

“Because you’re only the gardener’s kid?”

“Because he’s a horse’s ass. I promise I won’t take long.”

“This afternoon’s real bad. We’re short-staffed and getting some new stock in, so I won’t have time. Could you come by my place? I should be home by six.”

He said he would be there and hung up. It was just after four. Time to kill.

It died hard. He wanted to get on with the job, and he wanted to see Shannon again — and at the same time wanted nothing to do with the job. It might mean ripping Shannon from her family moorings. He might have to coldly deceive and manipulate people. He’d never thought of himself as that kind of creep and didn’t want to become one.

In his room, he spent time reading up on wills and related law in Clark, Lusky, and Murphy’s Gratuitous Transfers, finally gave up, and went down to the kitchen to tell the cook he wouldn’t be there for dinner. While he was there Katherine came in to pirate a glass of apple juice. She was just home from UCLA, where she was enrolled as a business administration major.

She demanded, “Where are you off to?”

“Private-eye work for your dad.”

“A date with my look-alike, I’ll bet. I’ll come too, to keep you honest.”

“No way.”

Her eyes grew flinty. “Just try giving me orders, chum.”

“I work better without an audience.”

“Get used to audiences. Or how are you going to argue cases in court?”

“Maybe you don’t want me to find any answers.”

He pushed out of the kitchen and took the back stairs to his room, where he tried Gratuitous Transfers again but couldn’t concentrate. Anyway, he had no way of knowing what might be relevant to the McCauley situation. He gave up and put on a light nylon jacket and hurried downstairs and out the front door. Leaving early was better than staying in the same house as Katherine.

When he reached the garage he found Katherine already at the wheel of her red Corvette. She wore lightly tinted glasses and had a bandanna over her hair. She ignored him as he got into the Accord, but pulled out directly behind him and followed him out into the street.

The community of Topanga was cuddled in shadowy twilight. A few streets poked away from the boulevard into the surrounding hills and hollows. The low frame and stucco buildings had always looked wonderfully rustic and 1930s and inexpensive, which Topanga wasn’t, but big pieces of earth-moving equipment stood around, suggesting that a major reshaping of the landscape had been going on up to quitting time. Maybe the urban 1990s were invading. Too bad.

Just beyond the heart of Topanga, Tom pulled off the roadway and parked in the dust. The Corvette passed him and did the same. Tom got out and walked to it. Katherine was rolling up her window. She stopped when she saw him, looked up without expression.

Tom said, “Please, Katherine, remember that I have to get that girl to trust me.”

“Why should she? I don’t. That’s why I’m checking up on you. — How long will you be?”

“As long as it takes. Please don’t interfere.”

Katherine sighed. “Well, since you ask so nicely.”

“Thank you.”

He turned away before she could change her mind.

There was a low white stuccoed wall around the house with an exuberant bougainvillea spilling over it. Tom went through the low wooden gate and latched it behind him, then took the pathway between two patches of lawn up to the front porch. Beyond the porch, curtains were drawn behind the front windows. The house looked worn, old, and comfortable. It was owned by Mrs. Sarah Needham, whose son David ran the place where Shannon worked.