Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Eleanor opened the door. Her mother peered at her suspiciously above the basket of dirty laundry she held. For two long seconds Eleanor wondered if there was something she had forgotten, something in her hair or on her face that undid all her careful efforts at concealment.

Her mother pushed the laundry basket into Eleanor’s arms. “Make sure the machine’s set on cold.”

Eleanor had just added the last of her own socks and underwear to the washer when her mother loomed up behind her again.

“I called Tiffany Waddingham’s last night, Eleanor. You didn’t tell me her parents were in Europe.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I called twice for you and Tiffany said you weren’t there.”

Eleanor felt like a rabbit staring up into the wolf eyes of her mother. She felt like the cop on the take in The Wire when his sergeant catches him hanging with the bad guys. She felt like bolting.

Eleanor’s mother narrowed her eyes even further. They were so far beyond narrow it was amazing she could even see Eleanor out of them. “Tiffany promised me you’d return my call when you came up from the pool. Why didn’t you? What was I supposed to think? Did Tiffany even give you the message?”

Eleanor would owe Tiffany forever, as many homework assignments as Tiffany wanted. “She probably wrote it down on the memo pad by the phone and then forgot to tell me.”

“Well, I can tell you, missy, you won’t be going back there for any sleepovers without my establishing that the Waddinghams will be there.” Eleanor’s mother reached out and pinched Eleanor’s chin, tilting her daughter’s head up towards the overhead fluorescent light. “And you look too tired, you probably stayed up half the night watching television.”

Eleanor was slogging through math homework at the kitchen table when the front doorbell rang. She heard her mother’s voice and a lower voice, a man’s. The Kordas rarely had visitors, and on a Sunday you wouldn’t expect salespeople. Mrs. Korda was not on good terms with any of the neighbors, so if it was one of them it would only be a complaint, though complaints usually ran the other direction. Eleanor heard the voices entering the living room. She tilted her chair back, peeked into the living room, and nearly fell over backwards. Two police officers stood on her mother’s Oriental carpet.

They had found Leonard Green’s body washed up on the riverbank a half-mile downstream from here and they had a search warrant. Lenny was such a jerk that even dead he was causing trouble.

“In his pocket we found diagrams to the jewelry store where you work, Mrs. Korda. Can you explain that?” the big cop with the face like the grumpy store detective at the mall asked.

“Of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So you don’t know anything about the robbery that happened at Zamphir’s last night?”

“What?!”

Uh-oh. Eleanor bent lower over her math text. How long would it take twelve fruit vendors to sell sixteen bushels of apples each if they sold one apple every five minutes?

“Where were you last night, Mrs. Korda?”

“I was here, at home.”

“Alone?” The big cop managed to pack a lot into that one word.

“Yes. My daughter was at a friend’s. At the Waddinghams’ summer place.”

Eleanor almost shook her head at her mother’s snooty tone. The cops wouldn’t like that. Most people didn’t.

“It must be difficult for you to keep up financially with the likes of the Waddinghams, hmm?” The skinny cop could out-snot Eleanor’s mother with both hands cuffed behind his back. His dark hair looked oily where it stuck out the back of his hat. Eleanor’s mother would not be impressed that he had left his hat on inside her house.

“You had financial worries, Mrs. Korda, since your husband left?”

“How dare you? It is none of your business—”

The door from the garage into the kitchen opened at this moment and another police officer entered. This one was a woman, with a ton of freckles, and she smiled at Eleanor as though to reassure her. The cop had a plastic bag with a pair of rubber boots in it which she carried through to the living room. Eleanor could see the woman was losing the fight with the donut devil; if she knew what those cop pants looked like from the back, she might consider another line of work.

“Are these your boots, Mrs. Korda?” The big grump had the bag now and he held it up.

“Yes.”

Eleanor was beginning to get a bad feeling. Worse than when her mother’s eyes got skinny, almost as bad as the time she ate a whole ice cream cake and then smoked three cigarettes in a row. The universe was not unfolding as it should.

“So you were out last night?”

“Well, I walked along the river.”

“Ahh, so you admit you were down by the river.”

“Of course I admit it, I walk there every day, rain or shine.”

The big cop looked as satisfied as a scratch-and-winner who’s just lined up three matching fruit. He handed the bag back to the female cop with a nod of his head. She seemed to know what this meant and headed back out to the garage.

“Mrs. Korda, how many people have keys to Zamphir’s Jewelry?”