Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

Joan Richter debuted in EQMM in August of 1962 with two Department of First Stories entries. The author had been a creative writing student of Frederic Dannay, then editor of the magazine, and she went on to write several other fine stories for EQMM before a job with American Express in the 1980s sent her “rocketing around the world for the next ten years.” She returns to us after this long hiatus with a story that is longer and more complex than her earlier stories...

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Detective Kenneth Reid looked around, taking in the spring growth of the Connecticut woods, the ferns and mountain laurel, the wild honeysuckle and the layers of white dogwood blossoms overhead. His friends called him Kentucky. He still had relatives there, but he didn’t visit often.

He remembered a woods like this when he was a kid. The thought held him for a while, but then he glanced back down at the wet ground, to where the body lay.

“Well, I suppose you couldn’t ask for a more peaceful place to die,” he said, wanting to break the silence.

Beside him Charlie Player turned. His face was pale. Kentucky had never noticed the young man’s freckles before, but he saw them now, like spatters of chocolate across his nose and cheeks. Kentucky waited, giving him time to pull it together. He was betting Player hadn’t seen many bodies.

“There was no peace in the way this guy went,” Player finally said.

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“I didn’t know a body had that much blood.”

Kentucky had thought that himself at first, but then he remembered last night’s rain. With the layers of leaves on the ground acting like an oiled cloth, holding the rain, it looked like the man was lying in a deep pool of blood.

Kentucky didn’t want to make anything big of it, but it wouldn’t be fair not to point it out. “Head wounds bleed a lot,” he said matter-of-factly, “but some of what’s here is rain water.”

Player nodded.

They looked around, careful not to disturb the scene. The medical examiner and his crew were on the way.

Then, for the experience, and to help him collect his thoughts, Kentucky had Player make some notes.

Detectives Kenneth Reid and Charlie Player respond to call from patrol car two. Possible murder victim, male, found in woods behind West Hills Golf Club.

Kentucky figured the man had been dead about twenty-four hours, which meant the murder took place sometime Sunday afternoon, maybe early evening. If it was murder, there was no mystery about the weapon. It was there right alongside the body, a golf club. It looked like a number two iron.

This was Cranford’s second murder in a year. If things kept up, they’d have to add more than a detective unit. They might even get around to getting us an unmarked car, Kentucky thought. He and Player had been on the job three months. Cranford hadn’t had an investigative unit before.

Two men from the medical examiner’s office arrived, but not the M.E. himself. He was away for a long weekend. Kentucky and Player hung around awhile, to hear the initial reactions and wait for the body to be identified.

The dead man’s car was parked in a pull-off a hundred yards back, on the dirt road. An insurance card in the glove compartment and a driver’s license in his wallet identified him as James Fullerton, 122 Oak Lane, Cranford.

Kentucky looked at Player. “He’s been here all night. It’s a wonder someone didn’t report him missing. Let’s go over to the Fullerton house and see what we find there.”

Player drove. Kentucky was still learning his way around Cranford, having just moved over from Hartford. Player had gone to Cranford High and knew a shortcut behind the football field that would get them to Oak Street. “I used to have a girl that lived on Oak. I looked her up as soon as I got back here, but she’s moved away.”

Sarah Fullerton locked up her shop at five-thirty and headed for home, making a quick stop at the supermarket for some lemons. She’d decided to make the sponge cake tonight for her book-club meeting tomorrow evening. If Valerie was still sick tomorrow, she wouldn’t get home in time.

It was awhile since Valerie’d had one of those headaches. Sarah wondered what had brought it on, but she hadn’t asked. With as much time as they spent together in the shop, it would have been easy to get too intimate and too involved in each other’s lives. Neither one of them wanted that.