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

An evil thing had happened in Middle Field, but Mooney was determined to treat it as just a strip of land like any other. Personally, he had no worries about working the soil. He put the whole morbid incident to the back of his mind.

Until one evening in September.

He’d drilled the new sowing of oilseed, and was using the roller, working late to try and get the job finished before the light went altogether. A huge harvest moon appeared while he was still at work. He was thinking of supper, driving the tractor in near darkness along the last length beside the footpath, when a movement close to the hedge caught his eye.

If the figure had kept still, he would have driven straight past. The face turned and was picked out by his headlights. A woman. Features he’d seen before.

He braked and got down.

She was already walking on. He ran after her and shouted, “Hey!”

She turned, and he knew he wasn’t mistaken. She was the woman in the photograph the police had shown him, Sue White, the killer, the wife of the dead man.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he asked.

“Walking the footpath. It’s allowed, isn’t it?” She was calm for an escaped convict.

Mooney’s heart pumped faster. He peered through the fading light to be certain he wasn’t mistaken. “Who are you?”

“My name is Sue White. Are you all right?”

Mooney wasn’t all right. He’d just had a severe shock. His ears were ringing and his vision was going misty. He reached out towards the hedge to support himself. His hand clutched at nothing and he fell.

The paramedics attended to him by flashlight in the field where he’d fallen. “You’ll need to be checked,” one of them said, “but I don’t think this is a heart attack. More of a shock reaction. The blood pressure falls and you faint. Have you had anything like it before?”

Mooney shook his head. “But it were a shock, all right, seeing that woman. How did she escape?”

“Escape? Just take it easy, Mr. Mooney.”

“She’s on the run from prison. She could be dangerous.”

“Listen, Mr. Mooney. It’s only thanks to Mrs. White that we got here at all. She used her mobile.”

“Maybe, but she’s still a killer.”

“Come off it. You’re talking about the man who was shot in your own field, and you don’t know who did it? It was all over the papers. Don’t you read them?”

“I don’t have time for the papers.”

“It was his mistress that killed him. She’s serving life now.”

“His mistress? But the wife caught them at it.”

“Yes, and that’s how the mistress found out for certain that he had a wife. She’d got her suspicions already and was carrying the gun in her bag to get the truth out of him, or so she claimed at the trial. She saw red and shot him after Mrs. White showed up.”

His voice shook. “So Mrs. White is innocent?”

“Totally. We’ve been talking to her. She came down today to look at those cottages. She’s the owner now. She’ll sell them if she’s got any sense. I mean, who’d want a home looking out over the Killing Field?”

They helped Mooney to the gate and into the ambulance. Below the surface of Middle Field, the moist soil pressed against the seeds.

The Gin Mill by Doug Allyn

If there’s one thing six-time Readers Award winner Doug Allyn knows how to do, it’s to create characters readers want to see again. Though the phenomenal storyteller says he doesn’t like the idea of creating ongoing series, he often ends up doing so due to the popularity of his creations. The cast of the following story’s a good example: We saw them last year in the Readers Award-winning “Palace in the Pines.” Mr. Allyn’s new novel is The Burning of Rachel Hayes (Five Star).

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Sunday morning in Malverne, a quaint little resort town dreaming on the shores of Lake Michigan. Autumn in the air, maples and elm trees streaked with auburn and burnished gold, the sweet scent of burning leaves perfuming the breeze. Lawns trimmed, sidewalks swept. Older homes faithfully maintained. The kind of town where people walk to church of a Sunday morning.

Not me. I was here strictly for the money. Scrounging for work on my day off.

Driving slowly, I threaded my pickup through the downtown business district. What there was of it. Like many western Michigan towns, Malverne was on hard times. I knew the feeling.

My computer map was perfect. Took us straight to the Belknap Building.