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

The house was another piling structure. She climbed the stairs and opened the door without knocking. The gray-painted, rough-cut wood exterior belied the sumptuous interior. She could see the money, though the place was empty of furniture. Across the gymnasium-sized great room, two men banged away at their knee kickers to secure rich gold carpeting along the sliding-door access to a huge deck beyond.

“Woody and Tiny?”

On their knees, they both whirled around at the sound of her voice.

“Detective Curtci, Malabar Police.”

They crouched motionless.

“Which one of you is Woody?”

“That’ll be me.” The man on the left stood clumsily, no doubt having been on his knees most of the day. “Ed Woodworth.” He was a skinny whip of a fellow. In his late thirties, she judged. Dark hair beginning to thin. A face as narrow as Fred Astaire’s had been.

“And you must be Tiny.” The other rug mechanic was only fifty pounds shy of Sumo requirements, she thought as he struggled to his feet.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he rumbled through his dense beard. “Charles Birch. What’s the beef?”

Kat walked to the counter that divided the open kitchen area from the rest of the room and placed her open handbag in easy reach. Her seventeen-shot, 9mm Glock was the top item in there. She leaned against the counter with her right hand resting lightly on the handbag.

“Well, gentlemen, maybe you can clear up something that’s bugging me. On the Oliphant job. I’m told there were three of you at the start and just two at the finish. What happened to the third man?”

She caught their furtive glances at each other. Paydirt!

“He cut out around noon,” Woody said. “When we broke for lunch. Asked him would he want to go to the Beachwalk Cafe with us, he said no, and when we came back maybe thirty, forty minutes later, he was gone.”

Through that, Woody’s eyes were all over the room, and his blink rate quadrupled. Throw in his bouncing Adam’s apple, she thought, and you’ve got yourself a liar here.

“Does that square with your version?” she asked Tiny.

“Huh? What ver— Oh yeah. Sure does.”

“What was the man’s name?”

“Ganelli,” Woody offered, “or Gianelli... something like that.”

“You didn’t know him?”

“He came from one of those labor pool places. We picked him up in town. No, we didn’t know him. He was a temp. Lotta them are drifters. They come and go.”

Kat let that simmer for a long silent moment. Then she said, “If the three of you came in the truck I saw parked outside, and this Gianelli disappeared around noon, how did he get back to the mainland?”

Another silence. Then Woody said, “Hitched a ride, maybe?”

It came out as a question. These two were simply atrocious liars. She gave them another long, silent stare. It produced a lot of shifting footwork and throat clearings on the other side of the room.

Then she offered what she hoped came off as a warm and friendly grin. “Oh, come on, you two, you just aren’t very good at the cover-up game. What really happened that day at the Oliphants’ house?”

Woody stared at her like a man about to bolt. Tiny hunched his hairy face down between his huge shoulders like a man about to charge. Kat’s fingers slid down for a reassuring touch of the chubby Glock.

“This Gianelli,” she said, “was he a white man, medium build, black hair?”

“That’s about right.” Woody’s voice sounded as if he were strangling.

“He floated into a canal yesterday. With a bash in the head that looks exactly like the working face of those knee kickers there. When I take them in for testing, I wouldn’t be surprised to find traces of blood on one of them.”

Tiny’s glittery little eyes held hers for a long moment, then he astounded her. His huge legs gave way and he sank to the floor with a moan, his hands thrust out palms-up in a really weird supplicating gesture

“Jeez, Woody; I tol’ you—”

“A nightmare,” Woody blurted. “That’s what it was. Still is.”

Kat’s heart pumped furiously. “What happened?”

“Gianelli was a goddamn thief,” Woody burst out. “That’s what happened. Som’ bitch took labor jobs to case houses, or if he could, swipe stuff while he was on a legit job. That’s what he did there soon’s the old lady left.”

“That’s the God’s truth,” Tiny boomed. “I caught him about to lift stuff in the bedroom. Outta a jewelry box half an hour after the missus left.”

“Then?” Kat prompted.

“Then,” Woody said with a little shudder, “he pulled a gun on us. Said to back off and let him get out of there with what he’d grabbed, or he’d plug us both. I kid you not, it was a real bad situation. Him in the bedroom with a gun on Tiny. Me in the great room with only a knee kicker in my hand. So I—”

Kat shot out her arm, hand up in a stop signal. “Hold it right there. We’re going to make this nice and clean. ‘You have the right to remain silent...’ ” She recited the Miranda warning.