Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

I turned and threw the snowball I was holding, watched it strike the top of a tall pine tree down in the valley below, and saw the tree explode with snow. “The thing is, I’ve got no big desire to see you behind bars, Mac.”

He cocked his head slightly.

“I mean, what’s the point?”

He frowned, suddenly very interested.

“Doan is dead, Mac, and only the living matter.” I shrugged. “Prison seems a waste in this case, don’t you think?”

He half nodded, half started to say something, but I stopped him by putting a finger on his chest and telling him, “But you’ve got to make it right.”

He swallowed and stared.

“I mean — justice has to come into this business at some point,” I told him reasonably. “You can’t get away with this.

“You know that,” I said.

He didn’t say so, but he knew.

“He left a wife and five kids, Mac. He was their sole support.” I waited a moment until his eyes met mine. “Now you’re their sole support.”

He blinked.

“That’s simple enough, isn’t it?” I asked. “You just step into his shoes. Assume his responsibilities.” I smiled. “Like a blood stripe.”

He said nothing, his eyes drifting away from me.

“So?” I said.

He looked back at me.

“Are we connecting here, or what?”

We were.

So, we talked a bit more — negotiated, I suppose — and came to terms and conditions we could both live with — at least I could, and I hoped he would — and when we were done, I had him drive me into town for groceries, then back up to the lodge.

Back in my cabin an hour later, with Loretta still sound asleep, I started the breakfast I’d promised her. By then it was nearly eight and I decided to make the call then. It was Friday and he might be away for the weekend, and I wanted the ball rolling as soon as possible. After the phone rang twice a boy — eight or nine, using the voice-deepened tones of a boy ten or eleven — answered, saying, “Springer residence.”

I asked to speak with his father, who came on the line directly, and I told him who I was, adding, “How’re you doing, David?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he told me. “How about yourself?”

“Same as always,” I told him. “Marie and the kids?”

“Fine,” he replied in a mildly curious way, and we chatted a bit more about nothing in particular until I got to the point, saying, “Um, David — are you still with First Western?”

“Senior VP,” he told me.

“And how’s the commercial savings and loan business?” I asked.

“Middling,” he replied. “Why?”

“Well,” I told him, “the fact is, David, your name came up today in connection with this little money problem I have.”

“How much do you need?” he asked in a say-no-more way.

I laughed. “No. I don’t need a loan...”

“However much it is,” he said quickly, “I’ll work it out. You know I owe you...”

“This isn’t about me, David,” I told him. “It’s about this woman and her children. She’s recently widowed, and she’ll be coming into some money in a few days. A lump sum payment of seventy-five thousand dollars and a monthly amount as well. The donor wishes to remain anonymous.”

“I see,” he said, in an I-don’t-see-at-all-but-whatever-you-say-is-fine-with-me way.

“The woman will need help,” I went on, “managing things. She has some relatives down there in San Diego, but she’s Vietnamese and speaks no English. She’s expressed interest in opening a restaurant.”

He laughed. “Just what San Diego needs — another Vietnamese restaurant.”

I laughed back at him, then said, “Can you help?”

He sighed. “No problem,” he told me.

“I can have the donor contact you, then?”

“Certainly.”

“Great. I really appreciate this, David.”

“My pleasure.”

“And,” I added lightly, “you can call us even.”

“No,” he told me flatly, after a slight hesitation. “No, I can’t.”

The Day That Crenshaw Burned

by Bobby Lee

Forever after the day he burned the town of Crenshaw to the ground, the sheriff would maintain that what he had done had been motivated solely by the sense of moral outrage he’d felt at the scandalous use he had believed was being made of Miss Petula’s vacant house while she was away on her annual summer travels in Europe. But lest you too hastily anoint as a hero the conquering moral crusader, there are perhaps a few things of which you should be made aware.

To begin with, and to give credit where credit is due, it should be acknowledged that the sheriff’s initial involvement in this episode was motivated by a legitimate, albeit a totally misdirected, desire to obtain incriminating evidence against a suspect in the wave of counterfeiting activities that at the time was threatening to rock the financial foundation of the entire county. As true as that may be, however, it is equally true that in most circumstances nothing the sheriff says or does can be properly interpreted without giving due consideration to the extremely tempestuous, not to mention extraordinarily longstanding, relationship that for so many years now has existed between the sheriff and Miss Petula.