Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993, page 7
part #618 of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Series
“Two hundred thousand dollars, yes.”
The other man leaned back on the sofa, grinned. “How about that?”
“You’ve got yourself quite a bargain, Mr. Luft; two hundred thousand dollars for a house worth three quarters of a million. Considering the neighborhood you’re in, you’ll probably get more than enough from the sale of this house to buy the one in Cairn outright.”
“Yeah, well, Linda and I have been pretty lucky with our real-estate investments. We got this house at a good price, but for a very good reason. We were ready to go into hock up to our eyebrows to buy it, and then our building inspector discovered not only that the well on the property is polluted with toxic waste, but that there was a big termite infestation — lots of structural damage. There were other major problems as well. The owner was so disgusted that he just wanted out. He accepted our second offer. We’ve put a lot of money into fixing up this house.”
“I’ll bet you have.”
“Had to take out a huge home-equity loan to pay for the repairs. That’s why we couldn’t afford to offer Elsie any more than we did. But then, I figure we’re doing her a favor. What with what happened with the court case and all, she’s really in a jam. Nobody else wants to buy it, and she needs to go to a nursing home.”
“Aren’t you a little nervous about moving into a haunted house?”
Luft laughed — a kind of high-pitched giggle. “Are you putting me on? Don’t tell me you believe in ghosts.”
“Elsie’s willing to sell you the house, for the price you offered — but there’s one condition. If it’s not met, there’s no sale.”
Luft’s eyes narrowed. “What condition?”
“You and I may not believe in ghosts, but Elsie does. And she feels responsible for the ghosts in that house. You might say she wants to clean up her home before she sells it to anybody — especially a nice young couple like you and your wife. You and I know it’s crazy, but she insists on it. She wants to exorcise the ghosts, and she intends to do it with a séance. You and your wife must agree to be a part of it, since you’re the ones who’ll be moving into the house.”
Luft’s dark eyes shone with amusement. “She wants us to meet her ghosts?!”
“She insists on it. The séance will be tomorrow night, eleven o’clock. I hope you and your wife can be there.”
“Can we be there?!” Luft threw back his head and laughed, held his stomach. “God, we wouldn’t miss it for the world! Wait until I tell Linda we’re going to a séance tomorrow night in order to clean the ghosts out of our new home. She’ll love it!”
“I hope so,” Garth replied evenly, and wondered now, as he held the woman’s hand in the restored circle at the candlelit table, if Linda Luft and her husband were enjoying the experience as much as the man had believed they would. The woman’s hand was clammy, trembling, slick with sweat.
“I feel them coming closer, Mary,” Madame Bellarossa whispered.
“Yes,” Mary said in a soft, dreamy voice. “I feel them too... very close. They’re so angry — but not with Elsie. And they’re not the ones who’ve been doing the terrible things to her. There are others... undead. Not dead. Greed; it’s all about greed, incredible selfishness, a young couple who think they’re entitled to anything they want just because they want it, no matter who’s hurt. I see money, pieces of paper... stocks! Yes! The man used to be a stockbroker, but he was fired for churning accounts, and suspicion of embezzlement. He stole... Wait! I see something...”
Garth looked up as a light began to glow in the darkness near the ceiling. The light resolved into a rectangle, and then became two figures in hooded robes, bathed in moonlight, approaching the house from the beach, opening a basement window. Linda Luft snatched her sweat-soaked hand from Garth’s grip.
“That’s enough!” John Luft shouted at almost the exact moment when the giant frog sailed out of the darkness and landed in the center of the table, knocking over half the candles, then hopped away toward the living room.
Garth rose from his chair, reached for the light switch on the wall behind him. The lights in the dining room came on. John and Linda Luft, their faces the color of old parchment, were standing back a pace from their overturned chairs, almost directly beneath the suspended screen with its mounted, remote-controlled rear projector, gaping at the people around the table who stared back at them now with undisguised hostility and contempt.
“I guess this is the part where we find out if the butler did it,” Mary said in a low, steely voice.
“I don’t have a butler,” Elsie said, her voice quavering with rage as she glared at the couple across the table from her.
“That wasn’t us!” John Luft shouted, pointing a trembling finger at the screen above his head. “We didn’t put the robes on un—!”
“Shut up!” Linda Luft screamed at her husband, punching him in the chest with her fist. “You idiot!”
John Luft grew even paler, took another step backward, then looked over at Harry Parker, who seemed to have lost interest in the proceedings now that the illusion he had helped create had been played out. He had taken off his shirt and was removing an apparatus of tubes and blood-filled capsules from around his lower waist. “Actually, I kind of like this house,” the big man mumbled to no one in particular. “It has atmosphere. If the frog’s part of the deal, I may buy it myself.”
Elsie slowly rose from her chair, pointed a finger at the Lufts. Her entire body was trembling with rage. “How could you?!” she said. “How could you be so mean?”
Now it was Linda Luft’s turn to lose control. Her face turned crimson as she stepped toward Elsie and screamed, “You shut up too, you old bitch! What do you want with the house or the money? You’re going to die soon, you hag! Why can’t you let somebody else enjoy it?”
John Luft gripped his wife’s shoulders, pulled her back from the table as he glared at Garth. “You set us up, Frederickson!” he said, his voice shimmering with both anger and fear.
“Set you up?” Garth replied mildly. “You’re damned lucky Elsie didn’t have a heart attack; you’d be facing manslaughter charges.” He paused, nodded toward Jeffrey Bond, who had a deep frown on his face as he stared at the young couple. “I introduced you to Jeff, but I don’t think I mentioned that he’s the Cairn Chief of Police. Madame Bellarossa is his wife, and her real name is Carol. She’s quite a well-known actress. Without her wig and makeup, I’m sure you’d recognize her.”
“You can’t prove a thing!” the man shouted at Jeffrey Bond.
“That remains to be seen,” the police chief replied evenly. “We have a videotape of these proceedings, for what that’s worth. Also, my friend Garth found the fellow you paid to mess up that guy’s house that you’re living in now, and then pose as a building inspector to give him the bad news. It seems he kept the sales slips for the acid you had him buy and inject into the wood joints to make it look like he had termite damage. The police across the river have a warrant out for your arrest. In addition to that, there’ll be a process server around to see you in the morning. You’re looking at a whopping lawsuit, in addition to any criminal penalties. I think I’ll let Westchester have you for now, and that will give me time to ponder all the charges I’m going to hit you with when they’re done.”
The lights in the living room came on. John and Linda Luft started, then wheeled around to see two uniformed policemen and the two young stagehands, friends of Carol Bond, who had handled the special effects for the evening’s performance standing in the archway between the two rooms. The giant frog was over in a comer contentedly munching on what appeared to be a cockroach, a survivor from the exterminator’s visit earlier in the day.
“The charges won’t stick!” John Luft screamed at Garth as he and his wife were handcuffed. “They can’t prove anything! You’re going to be sorry! I swear I’ll get you!”
“Boo,” Garth said.
Spy at Sea
by Edward D. Hoch
© 1993 by Edward D. Hoch
A new Rand story by Edward D. Hoch
One of the things we can always depend on in a story from veteran Edward D. Hoch is careful research. Whether his tale concerns the history of the Old West or conditions on a freighter bound for Istanbul, he’s sure to have come up with interesting facts that we won’t soon forget...
❖
“She sails at midnight on the Happy Moon,” the man in the striped robe told Rand. “It’s a small coastal freighter bound for Istanbul.”
They were seated in a dingy sailors’ café along the waterfront in Karachi, Pakistan, a city Rand had never dreamed of visiting even in his nightmares. He had come there on a mission for an old friend, a Turkish diplomat who had once done him a great favor. A few days earlier, the diplomat had phoned him at home in England and said simply, “My daughter is in trouble, somehow involving drugs.” Rand had known it was time to pay back his debt.
Even the slim guidebook he read on the plane could hardly prepare Rand for Karachi, a sprawling metropolitan area where finance and commerce mingled with an illegal trade in everything from women and drugs to weapons of war. More than five million people moved through its crowded streets, many of them Muslim refugees fleeing oppression and violence in India. Rand had not found Sishane Kemal, the young woman he sought, but after a day of tracking down leads he’d ended up at the sailors’ café, across the table from a man of indeterminate nationality known as Grantor.
“They say you know everyone in the city,” Rand told him, slipping a few British pound notes across the table.
“The Happy Moon,” the slender man in the robe repeated. “I do not know Sishane Kemal, but the ship carries a few passengers. Her name is on the list. Here along the waterfront we keep track of such things. I’ll give you the dock number.”
“What cargo does the Happy Moon carry?” Rand wanted to know.
Grantor shrugged. “Heavy equipment for oil drilling. Who knows what else? Russian weapons abandoned in Afghanistan?”
“Drugs?”
“They say with the new European free trade the borders are quite open. Heroin is already pouring in through Turkey.”
Rand nodded. “And the Happy Moon is bound for Istanbul.”
The bartender came over to see if they wanted another bottle of the cheap Malaysian beer they’d been drinking. “I have to be going,” Rand said, standing up. He offered Grantor a few more bills. “This is for the beer. I appreciate your help.”
The man nodded, closing his long fingers over the money. It was not until Rand had pushed his way out of the crowded café into the afternoon heat that he remembered Grantor had forgotten to give him the dock number. He went back inside and made for the dim comer where the man in the striped robe still sat over his beer.
“What’s the dock number?” he asked, and when the man didn’t respond Rand placed a hand on his shoulder.
It wasn’t until the head lolled to one side that he saw the blood and the deep gash where Grantor’s throat had been only minutes earlier.
The captain of the Happy Moon was a dark-skinned man named Rodriguez whose weathered face bore testimony to many years’ exposure to burning sun and wind-swept salt air. He stood at the bottom of the ship’s gangplank, hands on either railing as if barring the way to Rand and anyone else with the temerity to venture aboard. “We’re a small coastal freighter,” he said. “Don’t have much room for passengers.”
It was past sundown, only a few hours before sailing, and Rand had finally located the ship at an auxiliary dock down beyond the main loading area. The Happy Moon was a 200-foot freighter whose rusty hull shouted neglect. Captain Rodriguez seemed truly surprised that Rand or anyone else would want to sail with him on such a vessel.
“I want to go to Istanbul,” Rand explained.
“You can fly there in a few hours. You’ll be days aboard this tub.”
“I like the sea air, and I don’t need to be there for a week. Tell me, how much is a one-way passage?”
The captain sighed and told him the facts. “We’re a Panamanian-registered ship with a crew of nine. There are four spare cabins for passengers and two are presently occupied. You’ll find there are no frills on this vessel. You’ll take your meals with the crew and pretty much shift for yourself.” He mentioned a sum in British pounds for one-way passage. It seemed high but Rand wasn’t in a position to dicker.
“I’ll take it.”
“Cash. I don’t take credit cards.”
“I’ll cash some traveler’s checks and get my bag. I’ll be back in a half-hour.”
“We’ll sail at midnight,” Rodriguez reminded him. “High tide. I don’t wait for stragglers.”
Rand returned in plenty of time and handed over his money to the captain. A young Pakistani crewman who spoke little English showed him to his cabin. Earlier in the evening, when he first arrived at dockside, Rand had observed a young woman boarding the ship. From what Grantor had told him, and what subsequently happened to the man, Rand was convinced he was telling the truth about Sishane Kemal’s whereabouts. Her motives for the voyage were another matter, but Rand wasn’t concerned with that at the moment. He was on the ship with her, and perhaps during the days of the cruise to Istanbul he’d gain her confidence enough to learn what trouble she was involved in. Certainly her father back in Istanbul hadn’t known.
He went out to the railing at midnight to watch the ship cast off its lines and move slowly away from the dock. There was no sign of Sishane Kemal or the other passenger. Presently, when the ship was in the open channel to the Arabian Sea, Rand went topside and found Captain Rodriguez relaxing with a foul-smelling cigar, talking with another of the crew members.
“Mr. Rand, this is my first mate, Gunther Sallis.”
The man was thin and pale, though his handshake was vigorous. “Pleased to have you aboard,” he said with an accent that might have been German. “It is a clear, starry night.”
Indeed the sky above them seemed clustered with stars, more than he’d ever remembered seeing back in England where the city lights often washed out the beauty of the heavens. “Are the seas calm this time of year?” Rand asked.
The cigar tip glowed as Rodriguez took a puff. “The rainy season comes later in the summer. Right now all is tranquil.”
Gunther Sallis excused himself and returned to the wheelhouse. “Your crew is a mixture of nationalities,” Rand observed.
“Gunther and I are the only Europeans. The other seven are all Pakistani or Afghan. Afghanistan is a landlocked country and virtually all of its trade passes through Karachi. Its people are drawn here to the sea.”
“When the sea is calm it must be a pleasant voyage.”
The captain shrugged. “There are always problems. The Gulf War was very close. We were stopped and boarded by the Americans many times. Now that the war is over I must think about getting a new first mate. Gunther has told me he is sick. He has the early stages of AIDS, and will not be with me on many more trips.”
“It’s a terrible illness,” Rand agreed. He was pleased that the captain was warming to him after their first encounter at the gangplank earlier in the evening. “Tell me about my fellow passengers. I haven’t seen either of them yet.”
Rodriguez shrugged. “I know nothing about them. A young Turkish woman and a Frenchman. You’ll probably see them at breakfast.” He tossed the butt of his cigar into the sea. “Passengers are a nuisance, but Gunther looks after their needs, sees that a crew member makes their beds and cleans their cabins. That’s all we can do, besides feed them.” He went back to the wheelhouse.
Rand was up early, unaccustomed to the motion of even a relatively calm sea voyage. The young Pakistani who’d shown him to his cabin the previous evening, Multan, was mopping the deck outside the cabins when he poked his head out.
“Is breakfast being served yet?”
The young man gave him a white-toothed grin. “Soon. Seven o’clock.”
“Hello, there,” someone said. “English, aren’t you?”
Rand turned to see a middle-aged man with graying hair carrying a pair of binoculars and a book. He introduced himself and the man responded, “Pierre Claquer. Is this your first voyage on the Happy Moon?”
“It is,” Rand acknowledged. “What do you see with the binoculars?”
“Shore birds.” He held up the book and Rand could see it was a guide to birds, printed in French. “The ship remains within sight of the coast during much of its journey, especially through the Red Sea. It’s a perfect opportunity to study the shore birds.”
He offered the glasses to Rand, who put them to his eyes and adjusted them to see the circling white birds off the distant shoreline. “What are those, gulls?”
“Terns. Gulls are rarely found in tropic areas like this. The two are related, however.” He slipped the binoculars into their leather case. “Are you going down to breakfast?”
“Multan said they served at seven.”
“It’s just about that now.”
The ship’s mess was a stateroom barely large enough to accommodate a long table with six chairs on each side. Captain Rodriguez was already there, along with a couple of the crewmen. An Afghan cook served them bacon and eggs with some unidentifiable side dish that Rand chose not to investigate. The coffee was a bit weak but passable.
He was halfway through breakfast when the door opened to admit a handsome young woman of dark complexion and piercing blue eyes. She wore a long gossamer scarf, almost a sari, over more casual attire. “Miss Sishane Kemal,” the captain intoned, “these are our other passengers — Mr. Claquer from Marseilles, France, and Mr. Rand from Reading, England.”
Both of them stood and shook hands with her. “Please be seated,” she insisted, speaking good English. “I didn’t mean to disrupt breakfast with my appearance.”
Rand knew she was twenty-six years old, and she looked about that age. Though he hadn’t seen her father in years, he could make out some resemblance to the elder Kemal. Relieved at this confirmation, he allowed himself the luxury of wondering what he would have done if the woman on board the Happy Moon had been someone entirely different.
