Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

An hour after he’d arrived, just as twilight was claiming the city, Barbara came around the house and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Even in the dusk, he could see her eyes widen as she looked up at him. Still in her work clothes, she came up slowly. By the time she was a few feet away, he could see her eyes were wet.

“We have to talk,” Beau said, standing and brushing off his pants.

She fumbled with her keys. He could see her breathing heavily now. She led the way in and flipped on the light.

“Let’s sit,” Beau suggested, sitting across from her at the Formica table.

Barbara brushed her hair away from her face and said in a jittery voice, “I was at the funeral parlor. You want some coffee?”

“No. But you need to pay attention to what I’m about to say.”

She folded her arms in a typical defensive position.

“Whatever you tell me right now is off the record. I’m not advising you of your right to remain silent, so I can’t use anything you say against you.” He paused a moment to see if his words were registering. Barbara blinked twice and wiped her eyes.

“I know what happened,” Beau went on. “You couldn’t just throw the gun away again, he’d get another, so you brought it to work. To the M.R.I. Unit. Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”

Barbara took in a deep breath, her blue eyes boring into Beau’s. Her lower lip quivered, her voice a scratchy whisper. “I couldn’t live with myself if he shot someone.”

Beau felt the Plains warrior rising inside, and he spoke carefully, his voice void of emotion. “You knew he was up to no good. Knew he was using the gun for criminal endeavors. You didn’t believe it was for his protection. Otherwise...”

“I wouldn’t have incapacitated the gun.” Her voice was firmer.

“Exactly. The gun was completely magnetized. Wouldn’t fire, but you know that.”

The war drums echoed in some racial memory in the back of Beau’s mind as he said, “The other insurance policy.”

“What other...” Barbara looked away.

“The one you put back when you brought out the burial policy.”

She looked at him for a long moment, got up slowly, and went back to the dresser and the folder. She pulled out papers and came back, placing them in front of Beau on the table.

There were two policies. Life insurance on John Clay for twenty thousand dollars, Barbara Clay beneficiary. The second policy was on Barbara with Cristina Crockett as beneficiary. Beau pointed to the name and Barbara said it was her mother. He checked the dates on the policies. Both were dated shortly after the burial policy was taken out. He noted that John Clay had signed the policy on him, acknowledging the coverage. She didn’t take it out behind his back. No need to get John Clay’s signature on the burial policy. She’d taken it out directly with the funeral parlor.

Looking back at the blue eyes, he could see her struggling to keep from crying again. Her voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t do it to kill him.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t want him to hurt anyone,” she repeated.

“Even you?” He pointed to her bruises and for an instant felt his father’s touch inside. His father would have been more than sympathetic with this woman; he would have soothed her with his Cajun compassion, probably joking to make her feel better.

But a moment later the warrior rose again in Beau. “You’re a smart woman, Barbara. Don’t get too smart. We’re pretty smart too.”

Beau stood up and stretched.

She looked up and asked, “What happens now?”

“Go back home. You’ve got a second chance at life. Use it well.” He looked around the tiny apartment. “Don’t carry this around for the rest of your life.” He smiled sadly, letting his Cajun side through. “I’m here to tell you it’s all right. You didn’t put the gun in his hand. You took it out.”

He nodded and turned toward the door.

She said, “What about the officer who shot him? Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Beau said as he reached for the knob. “It was a good shooting.”

Edwin the Confessor

by Brian Richmond

If he were one of the superstitious herd he so despised, he’d have called it fate that he, who never watched television, should have it turned on just when they announced the discovery of his wife’s body.

He was mounting specimens from a recent trip to Mexico and had the damn thing turned on to the local news station. He planned to go into town later to buy some new hiking boots and wanted to catch the traffic report.

Instead, there it was, the dusty, deserted streets of the Cimmarron Movie Ranch in the desert, south of town. Only this time it was filled with men in hard hats and heavy machinery. The newsreader said, “Highway construction workers at the site of an old movie ranch made a macabre discovery today when digging revealed the remains of a woman...”

He picked up the remote control, turned the TV off.

“Shelley, you bitch, you got me in the end...”