Rehearsal for Murder (Maggie Ryan) (28 page)

“God! And the passport!” He snatched them from his pocket.

Maggie took them. “Good.”

“But I can’t keep you out of it,” he whimpered. “The police had telephoto lenses.”

“I’ll tell them it was Jaymie’s project to pick up that bear. She’s the kidnapper, remember? Anything else?”

“Mr. Bradford?” Lugano’s voice. Cautious, still far below.

“I—no, nothing else, but—I don’t understand,” he whispered urgently. “How can I trust you? How do I know you won’t tell the police?”

She was picking up her briefcase and edging toward the window. “You trust me because you’ve got no choice. This passport plus explanatory notes will be in my bank safe. But you can trust me not to tell, for two reasons. First, Muffin. She needs a dad. Not a prick who uses her to skip the country with his bimbo.” She looked down at the body and brusquely swiped at her own streaked cheek. “A little girl shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

Steve gazed out the window. Somewhere out there Susan was winging her way across blue waters to a new life.

But for him—well, Maggie was right, there was no choice. His prints were on the gun, Lugano was approaching the door. And she had the tickets and passport now. “And for Muffin you’ll keep quiet?” he asked unbelievingly.

“Yeah. For Muffin, and for half a million bucks.”

Impossible! Steve’s eyes squeezed shut. But his reeling mind thudded again and again into the same closed doors. He whispered, “Okay.”

When he opened his eyes, Maggie was gone.

Only the body remained.

“Mr. Bradford?”

“In here, Lugano,” called Steve shakily.

It all depends on who you are.

XVIII

Friday, 5:35 PM

March 9, 1973

Mr. Merrypebble, his rantipoling wife, and his dozing baby had slipped quietly through Anna Maria’s kitchen and out to the street. They were strolling casually toward Canal Street, past the policemen hurrying into the loft building they had just left. But despite her convincing saunter Maggie was shaken. “God, Nick! What a goddamn mess!”

He didn’t feel all that steady himself. “Yeah. Accidental judgments, casual slaughters, purposes mistook and fallen on the inventors’ heads—”

“Yeah. And I’m the idiot inventor!” She slapped her chest in disgust.

“Hey, no!”

“Look, a minute ago I was preaching to Steve because he’d tried to live out his silly teen-male fantasy. Tried to force me to take a role in it. And Jaymie was in that strange destructive scene of her own. Casual slaughters—” She shuddered. “But God, I’m no different! Trying to get Jaymie to play a little girl instead. And now I’m forcing Steve to stick with his kid. To play my script instead of his.”

“Or instead of the cops’ script,” Nick pointed out. “If he got what the law prescribes, he’d be ruined.”

“More to the point, the family would suffer. But even so ... I don’t know, it just sickens me.” She glared unseeing at a pink plastic bag blowing across the sidewalk. “I was feeding Jaymie’s fantasy too—”

“It was the only way we could get through to her, Maggie. We had to control her.”

“Okay, but controlling her is the point! What right do I have? And look at what happened!” A quick inhale to block fresh tears. “Some control!”

“Yeah, I feel rotten about it too,” Nick admitted. “Morally grubby. But she’d killed two people. She was troubled far beyond any help we two could have given her.”

“Maybe. But … oh, hell, Nick, I saw a suicide once. You know how that haunts me. And we’d calmed her down once. I was hoping—”

“Maggie, she had a gun. Whatever scene was in her head, or yours, that gun was real. That had to be the priority.”

She mulled that over a moment, then viciously kicked a Bud can into the gutter. “Yeah. I guess so. But I still feel like shit.” Her grieving eyes met his. “Sunday I may not be much of a date, Nick. Only thing I’ll be up for is an uninterrupted cry.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll probably join you. The main point is to do it together.”

She reached up and patted the hand on her shoulder, comforted. “Yeah. I think we’re beginning to learn how. And we’ll have other times.”

They were nearing Canal Street. He glanced down at Sarah, slumbering in the carrier, then back at Maggie. “Well. We’ve got a hell of a lot to tell the cops.”

“And a hell of a lot not to tell them.”

“You ready to face them?”

“They’ll be pretty busy for a few minutes. And before we go back I have to get rid of some stuff.” She paused by a mailbox, pulled a stamped envelope from her briefcase, scribbled her office address on it, and sent Steve’s ticket and passport on their way. Then she cocked an eyebrow at Nick. “Also, we’ve got other problems.” She fumbled inside her trench coat and pulled out a plastic bag.

Nick whistled. It was stuffed with bundles of bills. “You hit the lottery!”

“Half a million, Rachel said.”

He poked the bag curiously with one finger. “Do you think they’re marked?”

She pursed her lips and shrugged. “Steve worked in finance. I’d bet it’s clean.”

He watched her slip it back into her coat. “What do we do with it? Obviously it’s not Steve’s.”

“No. The police will probably want to give it back to old Busby.”

“Who needs it like a third ball.”

“Right. And at the moment I can’t get real enthusiastic about his favorite cause,” she said grimly.

Nick nodded. “Well, we could say Jaymie handed it to a tweedy Brit named Merrypebble. Then we could send it to Elaine. Or Muffin.”

“Yeah. Except that it’s not exactly theirs. And they don’t need it either. And how could we slip it to them without Steve and Busby finding out?”

They turned into Canal Street, bright and bustling in the late afternoon sun. Nick said, “Us?”

A slow grin. “Best idea yet. We could buy up Fisher-Price for Sarah.”

“And hire a cleaning service.”

“And buy a bigger computer. And a Lear jet.”

“And commission a musical about the life of Gladstone.”

They walked on a few steps, awed at the possibilities, yet dissatisfied. Nick groped for something in his pocket and pulled it out. A grungy card.

“Actually,” said Maggie, glancing at it and then running her finger thoughtfully along the drowsy Sarah’s cheek, “I’ve got everything in the world that I need.”

“Just what I was thinking. Maybe it’s time to put people back together instead of blowing them apart.”

She nodded, stopped at a tiny variety shop for a large manila mailer, printed the address on the back and “In memory of Ramona” across the flap, and sealed the money inside. Then they went into the Canal Street post office and mailed it.

“Think she’ll be surprised?” asked Maggie.

“Not very,” said Nick. “She knows God is weird.”

They strolled back toward the waiting police, hands linked in the slanting sunlight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

P.M. Carlson taught psychology and statistics at Cornell University before deciding that mystery writing was more fun.  She has published twelve mystery novels and over a dozen short stories. Her novels have been nominated for an Edgar Award, a Macavity Award, and twice for Anthony Awards. Two short stories were finalists for Agatha Awards. She edited th
e
Mystery Writers Annua
l
for Mystery Writers of America for several years, and served as president of Sisters in Crime.

Books by P.M. Carlson:

Audition for Murde
r
: Maggie Ryan, 1967 (1985)

Murder Is Academi
c
: Maggie Ryan, 1968 (1985)

Murder Is Pathologica
l
: Maggie Ryan, 1969 (1986)

Murder Unrenovate
d
: Maggie Ryan, 1972 (1988)

Rehearsal for Murde
r
: Maggie Ryan, 1973 (1988)

Murder in the Dog Day
s
: Maggie Ryan, 1975 (1991)

Murder Misrea
d
: Maggie Ryan, 1977 (1990)

Bad Bloo
d
: Maggie Ryan, 1979 (1991)

The Marty Hopkins Series

Graveston
e
(1993)

Bloodstrea
m
(1995)

Deathwin
d
(2004)

Crossfir
e
(2006)

Short fiction

Renowned Be Thy Grave, or The Murderous Miss Moone
y
(1998)