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

Ten minutes later, Chief Inspector Fallowell was in a police car leading a convoy to an address that they had been given. When they reached their destination, they found the house in a quiet cul-de-sac. Standing on the drive was a blue Ford Mondeo with the correct registration plate. The inspector leapt out of the car and deployed his men around the property. He rang the bell, but got no response. When he pounded on the door with his fist, he still elicited no reply. Standing back, he nodded to a waiting police officer, who smashed down the door without ceremony. Armed detectives surged into the house to be met by a sight that made them stop in their tracks.

Chief Inspector Fallowell was as astonished as the rest of them. The man they wanted to interview could not have answered the door, even if he had wanted to do so. Sitting in an upright chair, he was bound and gagged. The look of desperation in his eyes was a confession of guilt in itself. He was untied, asked his name, then formally arrested on a charge of murder. Fallowell ordered his men to take the prisoner out. Others were told to search the premises.

One of the detectives sniffed the air. He wrinkled his nose.

“What’s that?” he asked. “Smells like aftershave lotion.”

“Funny,” said Fallowell with a knowing smile. “Can’t smell a thing.”

Douglas Pym soon got to hear how a brutal murder had been solved with the help of a tramp who was trespassing on council property. He was delighted to learn how Old Bag Dad had wrested a vital concession from the new head park keeper. The tramp had the freedom of the park once more. Pym caught his friend on his usual bench, finishing the last chapter of War and Peace. The old man let out a chuckle of satisfaction.

“I always wondered how the book ended,” he said.

“What’s it to be with Ken Latimer from now on — war or peace?”

“Peace with honor, Doug.”

“Be careful. He bears grudges.”

“I fancy that he’ll keep out of my way from now on.”

“Until the cold weather sets in,” noted Pym. “Even you won’t stay around the Memorial Park then. You’ll be up and away.”

“Following the sun.”

“But where to? I do wish you’d tell me that.”

“Then I’ll let you into the secret, Doug. I go to the Middle East.”

“The Middle East?”

“My spiritual home.”

“Are you pulling my leg?”

“Of course not. There’s only one place I could go.”

“Is there?”

“Yes,” said the tramp with a grin. “Old Baghdad.”

Just Kidding by David Bart

A resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, David Bart has placed nine stories with our sister magazine, AHMM, and two additional tales with the series of anthologies put out under the aegis of the Mystery Writers of America (see the volumes edited by Jeffery Deaver and Stuart M. Kaminsky). His first work for EQMM features a practical joker whose sense of humor takes a dangerous turn.

* * *

Arturo Zuniga — San Antonio, Texas.

Caller ID on Jack Hafner’s machine showed the same name, city, and a phone number recorded a bunch of times over the past three days when he and Leah’d been out of town. Separate trips, of course. He’d been in Vegas and who in hell knew where she’d gone.

Jack grinned — guy’s initials spanned the alphabet A to Z; how trite. Didn’t know anybody by that name; in fact, he didn’t know a soul in San Antonio or the whole damn state of Texas. Could be some old classmate from prep school or college had ended up in the Lone Star State, but Jack wasn’t a keeping-in-touch kind of a guy.

This Arturo Zuniga must have a wrong number. That had to be it. Yeah, the guy gets nobody when he calls, just an electronic voice telling him to leave a message, which he ignores; nobody to tell him he’d somehow scribbled down the wrong number, so Arturo just keeps on punching in the same number every night. God must love morons. He sure made a lot of them.

Eight o’clock now, if his Rolex can be believed — For eight grand it better damn well be right — and this Zuniga guy had called each of the last three nights, each night the first call coming in between eight-thirteen and eight-nineteen. No reason to think he wouldn’t call tonight somewhere in there.

“You better just leave it alone, Jack,” his wife Leah whined, peering through her blue-tinted contacts, watching him, confident he was hatching some kind of plan, some kind of joke. Well, for once she was right.