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

But she was already heading for her spare bedroom. I heard her kneel down and slide out one of the storage boxes she keeps under the bed. I’d taken this morning’s nap right over the damned tape she now brought out. She inserted it in her player and fast-forwarded through five hours and fifteen minutes. Then at three eighteen by the timer Victor had set, a panel truck pulled into the back lot of the Ace. Two guys in dark jackets got out as Tiago opened his back door and waited there while they carried in a dozen large cardboard containers. Then he handed one of them an envelope and they got back into their truck and drove away. Any halfway decent technician could get good blowups of the two men’s faces, bring up the license plate on their truck, and help build a case for a warrant. Shouldn’t be a problem with fruit of the poisoned tree, either, since the video had been taken by a private detective working on a totally separate case. But that had been a few days ago. Once Tiago D. Costa saw the tape my grandmother sent him, he sure as hell wouldn’t be keeping the goods stored in the back room of the Ace.

“This tape can’t prove anything now, Vo,” I said. From her shrug, I realized I wasn’t giving her new information.

“Will Victor be all right with Tiago D.?” she said.

“Yeah, though I should give Tiago your copy of the tape too. Tell him there aren’t others. And that there won’t be any others from Victor.”

She nodded, ejected the tape, and handed it to me.

“I didn’t want to get Victor in any trouble, Gilbert. I just... didn’t think that far ahead.”

“But why did you do it? Why send the tape to Tiago in the first place?”

It was the one thing I wanted to know, and I knew she wasn’t about to answer. Her lips were a thin firm line even before she began shaking her head. No way would I want to get that lady in an interrogation room.

We had a cup of coffee together, and I had another square.

“Take the rest, Gilbert,” she said, wrapping them carefully in wax paper even while I was telling her no. “Your Ashley and Jason like them, no?”

She knew Sondra didn’t approve of anything that sweet for the kids. Maybe I’d just keep the squares in my car, snack my way through them in a day or two.

“And you gonna come down and see me with the family soon?” she said at the door as she put the videotapes carefully on top of the package of squares. “Bring my great-grandchildren here to see me?”

“You’re not gonna make Jason dress up in that costume for the shrine, are you?”

She shook her head and laughed as she said, “You made such a handsome shepherd boy, Gilbert. There was such, I don’t know, such holiness shining in your eyes. Y’know, I still got a lot of copies of that picture around. Maybe I’ll send one to your family, if I don’t get to see them soon.”

“We’ll come down this weekend, Vo. And I’ve got to tell you, blackmail is against the law.”

“Blackmail, Gilbert? Showing my great-grandchildren a picture of their father is blackmail?”

“We’ll be down, Vo. I’ll call first, but, please, no pictures. Huh?”

“Okay, Gilbert,” she said, rising on tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek, her small, strong fingers digging into my arms. “Thank you for squaring it about Victor and Tiago D.”

I nodded and started down the stairs when it hit me. Of course, it was the same thing she’d just done to me!

Still nobody in the Ace, though it was a little after noon and they advertised a lunch special.

The tall, pale shadow came out of the back room again, but this time just waved me in there. Tiago looked as if he hadn’t moved an inch since I’d last spoken to him.

“Here’s the only other copy of the tape my grandmother had,” I said, dropping it on his desk. “And Victor had nothing to do with sending the first one to you.”

Tiago was hard to read, but he didn’t seem surprised.

“It’s okay, with you and Victor then, right? If there’s no more taping?”

His nod was almost imperceptible, but it was there.

“One question,” I said. “Just out of curiosity. What’d she want? Money for the church, for Our Lady of Fatima?”

Tiago didn’t exactly smile. He was the kind of guy you probably never wanted to see smile anyway. But there was a twitch at the corners of his lips as he said, “She’s a tough old woman, that grandmother of yours. Smart too.”

“Didn’t give you much time before she said she’d go to the cops with her copy?”

“She’s a smart woman,” he said again, but I already knew that anyway.

“Well, if she ever asks you to come pose for a picture at her shrine,” I said as I turned to leave his office, “tell her no.”

Death at the Theatre

by Marianne Wilski Strong

The winter storms had ended and two days before the beginning of the Great Dionysian Theatre Festival, Tysander, in his barbershop in the agora near the law court, was doing a brisk business.