Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“I worked in mental health before,” I heard Nurse say when Elizabeth played the tape for me. “Freddie Shanigan has a borderline personality disorder,” Nurse was saying, “There is some sadism in there, too. And lots of greed. Maybe we should tar and feather him, put him on a pole, and carry him out of town. We would all feel better.” Nurse gave us no specifics, but we knew a few already. The dead woman and her dead baby. An out-of-cash outsider lobsterman’s broken arm that Priscilla, a former army medic, had to splint, because Nurse had strict instructions to ignore the uninsured and Doc was away again. Other seriously ill or damaged poor folks who were referred to nowhere. Coming to think of what Doc was like, it was a wonder we hadn’t taken some action. Ah, right. It was because he treated us, his Thirsty Dolphin buddies, for free.

Some time passed. Elizabeth flew away to visit her sick aunt in Washington but she left some of her gear. Accidentally going through her duffel bag, I located a handgun and marveled at modern technology. This wasn’t army issue from the Vietnam era, we never had those computerized electronic gadgets. Another weapon, a lightweight Smith & Wesson mini revolver, looked more familiar. What with the holsters, body armor, the ample supply of ammo, the binoculars, even the special-model flashlight, I might assume that she had only taken her badge with her.

I missed my secret agent. Tillie slept in my arm again, not in the sheepskin-lined basket Elizabeth bought her.

Acute and severe depression struck, and was medicated away, somewhat, by my military shrink, who suggested I should advertise again. I didn’t, because I didn’t think the script had played itself out yet. For once I was right. A week later Elizabeth called, asking to be picked up at Bangor Airport the next morning. “I need your help.” She used her Marlene Dietrich voice.

She sat close to me in the truck, leaning her head on my shoulder. It was like college days all over, except that I never went to college. Kissing foreplay, but there was no time to finish what we were starting.

“We’ll need a pickaxe,” she said after sitting up straight. “And I hope the You Too is in good shape.”

Boating? Was she crazy? In a ten-to-fifteen-knot wind with occasional gusts up to thirty? It was an exceptionally cold day, too, although by then it was, calendar-wise, spring. The winter birds weren’t considering leaving yet and most of the summer birds were still enjoying southern heat.

We stopped at the cabin to pick up digging tools. The You Too was pushed by wind and current so it didn’t take too long to reach Doc Shanigan’s private harbor. Elizabeth jumped on the dock. I stumbled along bravely, being backup. Tillie rushed ahead.

Doc’s seaplane was out of the water and safely secured in its hangar but the cabin cruiser had got herself stuck under the floating dock and, with only her sleek nose sticking up, looked like a total loss to me. The koi fish were in their pond, moving sluggishly through slowly melting water. The house was dusty, with plenty of cobwebs and an odor breathing out of the refrigerator. Propane fed from a huge tank, powering radiators, had kept the plumbing from freezing, but the tank was running on empty.

No Dr. Fastbuck Freddie Shanigan, MD, anywhere.

Amazing. The plane was there, the boat was there. Had he kayaked ashore? No, the kayak was present too, hooked up to the side of a Japanese-style garden shed.

“My guess is Doc got picked up here, and after some doings, found himself dying on that shot-up recliner,” Elizabeth said, after coming back from a search that took awhile, with me patiently sitting on a rock, Uncle’s rifle across my knees, watching Tillie sniffing around the Zen garden and whining. A pole wall shielded me from the wind, the sun was warm. Elizabeth nudged me awake. “I’m going to dig up that exotic bit of landscaping that’s upsetting your hound. I’ll swing the pickaxe. Maybe you can scrape away some dirt. Your leg is okay?”

Sure my leg was okay, it was made of A-1 aluminum and plastics. My regular leg was okay, too, although I had some arthritis under the kneecap. Not yet advanced enough to bother.

The snow had melted off just a few days before, but the ground was still frozen and we had to hack our way through a few inches of neatly raked pebbles. When, after several hours of guessing and digging we found a little girl’s naked frozen body, we staggered back. “Bingo,” Elizabeth said weakly.

We took a break, then started afresh and found a second corpse, of a little boy this time.

Elizabeth used her cell phone to call “Division.” On the way back to Bunkport she showed me her FBI badge. “You knew, didn’t you?”

As I, modest fellow that I am, had begun to suspect, it wasn’t the romance oozing from my ad that brought beautiful Elizabeth to Bunkport.

Betrayed once again.