Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #8 Read online

  Lily Hope climbed up into the stone room next. She had a sticking plaster on her right cheek, a dark bruise under her right eye. “There’s no need to question Jennie Barr,” she remarked. “As soon as this old fool provides the information we want, Danvers, we can shoot her.” She moved closer to the bound reporter. “My associate, Tortuga, enjoys handling such chores, but this time I’ll dispatch you myself.”

  “There’s no need for that, Lily,” put in Harry. “Once you swipe the information you want, you can—”

  “Damn, man,” shouted Barksdale. “We aren’t here to bloody bargain. Both you meddlers will be shot and left here afterwards. Nobody ever comes near this old Barksdale family tomb. You can both rot away here in peace and quiet.”

  Lily moved closer to Jennie, easing into the space between her chair and Harry’s. “I have never, I must admit, been able to understand why poor Harry finds you attractive. I’ve seen skinny, ragged urchins begging on the streets of London who’re better looking than you.” She lunged, slapped the auburn-haired reporter across the face and stepped back, nearly bumping into the seated detective.

  Harry, who’d managed to, unnoticed, undo the ropes that held him jumped to his feet and grabbed the singer by both her arms. He spun her around to face the muttering Barksdale, using her as a shield.

  “A most cowardly act, sir,” accused Sir Danvers, “hiding behind a woman’s skirts. Put her aside, you bounder.”

  “Skirt. Thanks for reminding me,” said Harry as he let go of the spy’s arms and slipped his left arm Gad, firmly around her waist. With his now free right hand, he reached down, lifted the hem of Lily Hope’s long skirt. “Good, you’re still wearing it strapped to your leg.” His hand emerged hold a pearl-handled .22 pistol.

  “Throw that bally weapon away,” ordered Barksdale, swinging the barrel of his shotgun so that it was aimed directly at Harry and Lily. “I am, I assure you, deucedly fond of Lily—a damned handsome woman for her age, a top-hole spy, and a passable soprano. But I’ll shoot through her to get at you.”

  “What do you mean for my age, you old halfwit?” demanded Lily, scowling. “I won’t be thirty-five until next March.”

  “Abandon the gun, Challenge. I usually only count to three in situations like this, but since Lily is involved I’ll count to ten before firing.”

  At that moment the heavy iron door of the ancient family crypt gave out a sudden resounding clang. Then it was torn off its rusty hinges and tossed away into the rain-swept dusk outside.

  The Great Lorenzo, huh?” Jennie asked Harry.

  “None other, I’d say.”

  Through the smoke came flying the Somerset Wonder. He landed, wide-legged, in front of Sir Danvers, yanking the shotgun from his grasp. He bent the barrel in half before flinging it aside.

  The flung gun landed atop one of the stone coffins.

  “So it is unfortunately true,” said the Wonder forlornly. “I did not so much as suspect until Mr. Lorenzo shared his vision with me. Then I realized that my own father was involved in a foul scheme to steal Dr. Donne’s secret in order to sell it to a foreign power.”

  “How dare you call me father, you long-haired blond buffoon?” asked the angry Barksdale.

  The Somerset Wonder yanked off his wig, then his mask. “It is I, father,” he said in a cold level voice. “I am the one known as the Somerset Wonder.”

  His father’s face grew more crimson. “All I can say, young sir, is that you have disappointed me yet again,” he told him. “You know blessed well that I wanted you to join me in the munitions trade eventually.”

  Harry, who’d just completed untying Jennie, suggested, “What say we fetch Constable Mulliner?”

  “I fear we must,” said young Barksdale.

  The Great Lorenzo, hands clasped behind his broad back, was surveying the empty Town Hall stage. “A most fortunate turn of events, my boy,” he remarked to Harry. “Since Lily Hope is now in the clutches of the constabulary and won’t be able to stage her evenings of caterwauling here, this quaint old edifice is available. I’ll be able to present my internationally renowned and respected magical extravaganza here instead of at the Barksdale Mansion.”

  Harry nodded. “Since Sir Danvers paid you in advance, you can hold on to that dough as well.”

  “All perfectly fair and legal.” The portly magician commenced a slow circuit of the late night stage. “When one’s employer is carted off by the minions of the law, one is not required to return any fees. If you’ll consult a volume of Blackstone, Harry, you’ll learn that that is a well-established point of British law.”

  “No doubt.”

  Jennie, who’d been perched on a wardrobe trunk in the wings, came walking across to them. “As I recall, Harry, you invited me to dinner.” She tapped the small watch pinned to the bosom of her checkered traveling suit.

  Lorenzo rubbed at his ample side whiskers with a gloved hand. “My fault entirely, my dear,” he apologized. “I’ve dawdled here far too long investigating the possibilities of this change of venue for my justly revered evening of amazing illusions and overwhelming feats of magic. You two go along to dinner.”

  “I promised Roger Barksdale that I’d keep his identity secret,” said the pretty reporter. “So my series of stories for the New York Inquirer will be somewhat vague on details. Still, I’m curious to know how you and the Wonder located us this evening.”

  Harry put an arm around her slim waist. “No doubt Lorenzo had another of his visions.”

  “Exactly, dear Jennie.” The magician plucked a bouquet of a half dozen yellow roses out of the air, bowed, handed them to her. “Through a series of clever deductions, I surmised that young Barksdale was indeed the Somerset Wonder.” He straightened up, reached a chocolate éclair out of the air.

  “And?” she inquired, holding the bouquet close to her face.

  “I decided to call on him at the cozy cottage he resides in on the Barksdale estate,” Lorenzo continued. “Before I had a chance to do little more than tell him I knew his secret, I was visited with a particularly vivid vision. I saw you, Harry, and a fellow I assumed was the missing Dr. Donne imprisoned in a gloomy vault. You were tied up there in the midst of corpses, as well being threatened by Lily Hope and Sir Danvers, who looked especially menacing. As soon as I outlined my vision to young Barksdale, he exclaimed, “By Jove, old man, I’ve been an absolute Charlie. Gad, sir, my very own father is involved and yet I never suspected him. He’s in cahoots with that notorious spy and he’s kidnapped not only my mentor but your two American friends. That vault you described must be the old Barksdale Family tomb. You’re a very gifted man, not only perhaps the world’s greatest illusionist but also possessed of very impressive psychic—”

  “My curiosity is satisfied,” cut in Jennie.

  “He had a few more things to say about my abilities before he admitted he was the Somerset Wonder and invited me to accompany him on his rescue mission. If you’d care to—”

  “I won’t be able to use most of what you’ve already told me in my stories. So there’s no need for more.”

  “We’ll dine now,” said Harry as he took hold of the young woman’s hand. “Thanks for getting us rescued, Lorenzo. And I’ve always been fond of your green smoke.” He guided Jennie toward the wings.

  “You can mention in one of your articles, without betraying any secrets,” called the magician, “that the Great Lorenzo, who’ll be touring the Eastern United States next month with his fabled evening of world-famous tricks, illusions, and mysteries, had a hand in the apprehension of a gang of international spies.”

  Jennie stopped, looked back, smiling. “You really ought to emulate the Somerset Wonder and do your good deeds anonymously.”

  “Anonymity,” said the Great Lorenzo, “does not appeal to me.”

  THE HOUNDS OF BASKETBALLVILLE, By Hal Charles

  I

  Kelly Locke brushed her Katie Couric-styled auburn hair out of her eyes and glanced down at her iPhone again. M
atthew Locke was usually late for their infrequent breakfasts, but this time he was very late. As they had checked in to his hometown Basketville Inn around midnight the night before, she told herself that her Chief of Detectives father was probably just tired out from yesterday’s all-day meeting with the mayor back in the city where they worked, the two-legged flight to Lexington, and the rental-car drive into the mountains. Inhaling the country air tinged with the smell of grits and bacon, Kelly was happy she had accompanied her dad, a center on the state championship basketball team that was being recognized that night in a 50th-Anniversary celebration. Across the dining room, four loud-talking people sitting around a hand-carved table vied for attention with her cell, so while she was waiting, she was trying to figure why the three shaggy-haired men and tall, flannel-shirted woman looked familiar.

  Like the news reporter she was, she had just caught a snippet of their conversation—“obviously what we thought it was”—when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Sorry I’m late, honey,” apologized the raspy voice of her father, “but I just got off the phone.” He sat down, putting a calico napkin in his lap. “Persuaded my old buddy Bev Dezarn to join us for breakfast. He was the 1-guard on the team—that was before people started calling them point guards—and now he’s sheriff of Clement County.”

  They had just started on their biscuits, gravy, and home fries when Kelly spotted a uniformed officer enter the Inn’s dining room. Her highly opinionated, not-too-subtle co-anchor on Channel 4’s The Six O’Clock Report, Chuck Mann, would have stereotyped the lawman as “Barney Fife escaped from the old-folks home.”

  “‘Walking Stick,’” the approaching man almost shouted, giving her rising father a bear hug.

  “‘Walking Stick’?” Kelly questioned, her eyes absorbing her father’s six-two, 240-pound frame.

  “I might have been a tad thinner back when I played for the Greyhounds,” Matthew Locke admitted, his mid-western accent seeming to magically transform into an Appalachian drawl. Then he introduced Kelly to his old friend.

  “You’re the spitting image of your maw,” said Sheriff Dezarn. “We all hated to hear she had passed, which is one reason I’m sure your dad didn’t want to come back too often to where he met her. Too many of those Bob Hope ‘thanks for the memories.’”

  Sheriff Dezarn had just started his second cup of the strongest coffee Kelly’d ever tasted when he broke from the nostalgic conversation they’d been having about who was still doing what to whom to nod at the quartet Kelly had observed earlier. “Those four gonna cause a passel of trouble before they leave.”

  Looking at their flannel shirts that seemed a little too warm for the first days of fall and the carefully styled unkempt hair, Kelly asserted, “They’re not from around here, are they?”

  “Long way between Clement County and Fantasy Land,” commented the Sheriff.

  “Of course,” said Kelly, realizing suddenly why they looked familiar. “They’re from that reality TV series Monster Trackers. They go all over the country trying to find the hogzillas and crocks in the sewers. What could they be doing in eastern Kentucky?”

  “Got an email from their producers saying they was coming,” said the Sheriff. “Claimed they had absolute proof that the lair of the Appalachian Ape was out there in the Daniel Boone National Forest.”

  With that, Sheriff Dezarn and her father began to laugh. It started like a few drops of rain, but then became a loud thunderstorm.

  “Am I missing something?” asked Kelly, nearly drowning in the raucous laughter.

  “The Appalachian Ape’s a local ritual round here,” said her father between guffaws. “Mostly kids, of course.”

  “Once a year about the time school is starting up,” chimed in the Sheriff, “local boys—usually the football team—go out in the Forest and pull a few pranks. They’ll leave some fur on the trees, make loud noises up on Banshee Ridge, and set some large tracks down by the Kentucky River. Even got old man Perkins’s goat one year … I mean, killed it dead.”

  “Nobody knows how the pranks all started,” said Matthew Locke, “but the kids like to terrorize the tourists and hikers by making them think we got our own version of one of the Himalayan abominable snowmen roaming these hills.”

  “And now those fools from Hollywood have fallen for it,” said the Sheriff.

  “Ah,” said Kelly, “the game’s a big-foot.”

  “You’ll have to excuse her, Bev,” said Kelly’s now-chuckling father, “but I guess when you’ve read every one of Sherlock’s adventures a dozen times, you can’t resist a little Holmesian humor.”

  Just then Sheriff Dezarn’s cellphone rang. He answered and just listened. Then he hung up. “Come on with me,” he said, his tone suddenly serious. “Might have to call off tonight’s celebration. Our starting five is down to four. They just found Billie Reynolds in the Daniel Boone National Forest looking like he’d been mauled by a bear.”

  II

  By the time Sheriff Dezarn’s patrol car reached the National Forest, the Kentucky State Police had already yellow-taped an area that was in danger of being trampled by a mob. A lone trooper was trying to prevent the scene from being contaminated.

  “Since social networking replaced scanners,” commented Matthew Locke, “crime scenes seem to draw twice as many people twice as fast.”

  “Amen, Walking Stick,” said Dezarn. “Looks like a parolee’s convention out here.”

  “Sorry, Sheriff,” said one of the onlookers, a tall man in a Woodhole Wackers T-shirt; “but since you was the last to run me and my brother in, this time we showed love for the flat-hats and gave them the call.”

  “KSP,” translated Dezarn. “This here is Houston, oldest of the Bowser brothers. He has become a real connoisseur of license plate-making, while his brother, Bennie Lee, over there is a sometime associate at our local Walmart.”

  “Found the body, we did surely,” said Bennie Lee, pulling a cigarette wrapping paper out of his t-shirt pocket.

  “Good work, Yoda,” said the Sheriff. “I suppose you two weren’t up here cutting your left-handed tobacco?”

  “Didn’t I read that marijuana is now Kentucky’s number one cash crop?” said Kelly.

  “That’s only because no one’s created a meth plant yet,” said Dezarn.

  “We’d have the vic covered by now,” said Kelly’s father to nobody in particular.

  “People round here don’t say ‘vic,’” commented Sheriff Dezarn as he stooped down over the body. “Crime’s more personal than in the big city. That’s Billie … or was.”

  Kelly noticed that a black van had just pulled up and the four Monster Trackers were striding toward them followed by a film crew.

  “Obviously the victim got too close to its lair,” said the flannel-shirted woman. As though it were nothing more than a limbo bar, she lifted up the yellow tape so the others could pass under it.

  “You’re right, Doc,” said a ducking, shaggy-haired male with a German accent. “Check out the facial marks.”

  “Heinrich’s right.” Another male knelt down over the body. “The blow, the claw marks obviously came from above.”

  “Obviously quite consistent with being struck by a seven-foot-tall creature,” said another male, turning an unlit cigar between his lips.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Celebrity,” said Sheriff Dezarn, grabbing the kneeling man by his flannel collar and yanking him up. “You may know your exotic bigfoot species and all, but I’m surprised you don’t recognize your basic All-American crime scene. And in case you’re one of the vision-challenged, allow me to read those strange marks on the yellow tape we call words—DO NOT CROSS.” With that, he ushered them all back under the tape.

  “And I’m surprised you don’t know me,” called the woman defiantly. “I am Dr. Zara Seigler, the eminent cryptozoologist, and my team,” she announced, gesturing for a camera and sound man, “are the famed Monster Trackers.”

  “And I am the eminent Beverly Dezarn, Sher
iff of Clement County, who, if you find your way into my crime scene again, will put your butts in the local pokey for the entirety of your next cable season.”

  As the four retreated toward a grove of locust trees, Kelly, who had also crossed into the crime scene, was starting to backpedal when she noticed something. “Sheriff, your victim has his right hand clenched into a fist. Rigor?”

  “Won’t know till the doc sticks a thermometer up his … let me take a look-see.” Dezarn bent down and slowly unclenched the victim’s hand. In it was what looked to Kelly like two Mexican pesos.

  Dezarn and Matthew Locke looked at each other in obvious shock. Finally, Kelly’s father blurted out, “How can that be?”

  III

  Kelly and her father were sitting at a wrought-iron table in front of the Sheriff’s office. Dezarn came outside with an old record player and a 33 and a 1/3 record. “Don’t know if this relic’ll still play, but let’s give it a whirl.”

  He plugged it in, set the needle in the groove, and a familiar theme from Kelly’s childhood began to play. Her dad had loved the old song, but she had never known why.

  “The Magnificent Seven,” she recognized.

  “Great song,” said her father, “till they started using it for those Marlboro commercials.”

  “Still,” said Dezarn, “it’ll always be our song.”

  “Who’s the ‘we’?” probed Kelly. Her dad had always been the strong, silent, John Wayne type who never liked to talk about himself.

  “The Magnificent Seven,” said Matthew Locke. “Not those cowboys, but us.”

  Dezarn sat down, put his cowboy-booted feet on the table, and began to hum along with the Elmer Bernstein song. “Me and Walking Stick and the other guys knew we had something special back before our championship year. I remember it like yesterday … 1960, our sophomore year, Billie ‘BB’ Reynolds, Rosey Rosenberg, “Pistol” Pete Remaley, Jack “B. Quick” Culross, and Dell “Boom Boom” Cannon, we all went up to Lexington to see that movie. Only it wasn’t a Mexican town we were gonna save—it was our own Basketville.”