Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 92, No. 3. Whole No. 547, September 1988

How Dangerous Is Your Brother? by William Bankier

© 1988 by William Bankier.

Over drinks at the Coronet Hotel, Mary said to Jessie, “Harry came up to show me how fast the kitten’s growing. We were talking and he told me about his military service in Vietnam. He isn’t old enough, surely?”

“Harry fantasizes,” said his sister. “But he’s under the care of a good doctor and it’s going to be all right.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” That sounded glib. Why, Mary asked herself, was she trying so hard to alienate the owner of the apartment she lived in?

“As for dangerous,” Jessie said, gathering up her cigarettes and her lighter and her change, “I’m the one you have to worry about. I’m ten times more dangerous than Harry...”

Mary Lawrence heard a kitten crying as she locked the back door of the radio station after midnight. She found it under a shrub between two parked cars. “Come out of there!” She managed to grasp and lift the fragile creature, exposing china-blue eyes, pink mouth, needle teeth. Its pounding heart overflowed her hand.

“Are you lost? I can’t leave you here and I can’t go knocking on doors.”

Mary headed home on foot, carrying the animal. The apartment she rented was an easy walk from the studios of CBAY. Arriving in Baytown three weeks ago, she had lucked out with her accommodation. There might be a problem if Jessie Hay downstairs objected to a cat in her house. But it wouldn’t be a major difficulty since Mary didn’t intend to keep it.

Watching it lap milk from a saucer, Mary wondered if it could become the station cat. Clement Foy, the chief announcer, would have to give his permission. She had done Clem a favor by working tonight, allowing him to play a gig at The Cedars with his dance-band. They could set up a litterbox in the newsroom. Plates of food and milk could be left in a corner. The cat would probably enjoy being fussed over by the staff.

“Were you abandoned?” Mary asked as the kitten finished feeding and began to explore the apartment, looking for a hiding place. Observing its brave helplessness, Mary experienced a protective urge. Be careful, she warned herself. You just finished with a lame duck up north. A clear image of Tim Melton’s handsome, drunken face surfaced in her mind. He was one reason she had left the radio station in Pitfall and moved down here to CBAY. But not the only reason. Her aim was eventually to land a job at one of the big stations in Montreal. Baytown was a step closer.

Mary woke early. The kitten was on the bed. Playing with it and then feeding it was more than satisfying. Her emotional deadline for getting rid of it, she figured, was probably sundown of that day.

Shopping at the market on Front Street, she found herself picking up tins of special food for kittens. And a litter tray and a sack of litter. Interesting implements hung on hooks — flea combs, brushes, flea collars, catnip toys. A trip to the vet for a round of shots would soon be on. Followed, eventually, by the neutering operation. Money going out, diversion of energy and concentration — Tim Melton all over again. Tim oozed charm so that most women wanted to grab him and hold him. But he did exactly as he wished — he was a lot like a cat.

Lining up at a checkout counter, Mary found herself looking at a familiar back. It was Jessie Hay, her landlady, who had a job at the local high school. She was with a young man Mary had never seen before. Jessie turned and saw Mary. Her sharp eyes did an inventory of Mary’s shopping cart before she said, “This is my brother. Harry, meet Mary Lawrence, the girl upstairs.”

Harry Hay had the family freckles, but fewer of them than his sister. With her ginger hair locked in an excruciating perm, Jessie peered out from behind a screen of the tiny spots. Harry wore his like a spattering of mud on the face of a child. He was a head taller than his sister, with darker hair and eyes. His mood was solemn, mouth held slack.

Mary decided to air the situation. “I found a stray kitten last night. I don’t intend to keep it. Do you know anybody wants to give a kitten a home?”

Harry clasped his hands and turned to Jessie. “May I have it, Jess? Please?”

“A kitten needs looking after.”

“I’ll take care of it, you won’t have to do a thing. Please, Jess?” Sounding like a schoolboy, Harry seemed to grow in size. He loomed over his sister, who peered up at him with peevish amusement.

“You may as well, if she wants to give it to you.”

The Hays drove while Mary walked home, thanking Jessie for her offer of a lift. With all their starting and parking, she was at the house ahead of them. They were loading their groceries in through the kitchen door when Mary came down the back stairs carrying the kitten in her arms.

Harry received it with moans of solicitude, shouldering it against his cheek, murmuring as he bore the animal away, “Little Annabella — little Annabella.”

Mary said the obvious. “It’s the first I’ve seen your brother.”

“He’s been away.” Jessie grabbed the last plastic bag from the car and slammed the door.

“In school?”

“Sort of.”

That afternoon, Mary ran into Clement Foy in the record library. She was getting together the music for her program, Town Topics. Clem was searching out a few disks for his jazz program. “Thanks for covering for me last night,” the chief announcer said. Broad-shouldered, in an expensive but ancient suit, and slick-haired, Foy had a kind of silent-screen charm. Not at all bad, was Mary’s reaction on first meeting her boss. But he treated her as a valued colleague instead of as dating material. And wasn’t that worth a lot more than dinner and dancing?

“You almost got a kitten out of it.” She told him about her discovery.

“If you find a stray announcer out there,” Foy said, “send him to me. I don’t intend to go on handling the night shift.”

Mary did her show, fielding some interesting telephone calls, extending the feature on single-parenting, putting together yet another edition of the best magazine program CBAY had ever produced. After work, she wandered home, picking up some tonic water to dilute the remains of her long-standing bottle of gin.

She was watching the news on one of the U.S. channels from across Lake Ontario when she heard footsteps on the stairs. She got up and opened the door. It was Harry Hay with Annabella clinging to his Viyella shirt. “Look how she’s grown,” he crowed.

Mary couldn’t detect any change in size, although the animal was obviously thriving. “Come in. I was going to make myself a drink. Have one with me.”

Harry sipped his gin and hardly took his eyes off the kitten. He was the most soft-spoken, courteous young man Mary had ever run across. It was as if the gods had warned him he would die if he raised his voice. Yes, he told her, he had been away. In Southern California, spending a lot of Jessie’s hard-earned money. Los Angeles was a fine place, but to succeed there you needed more energy and talent than he could muster.

Mary asked him why he wanted to work in the United States, anyway — there was all that hassle with Immigration and work permits.

“Because they owe me. Because I volunteered for their Army.”

“You were in the American Army?”

“In Vietnam. I lost a lot of friends there.” He lowered a finger. Annabella savaged it with four sets of claws. “I still dream about the blood.”

Mary was doing some mental arithmetic. The Vietnam conflict had been over for years. “How old are you, Harry?” When he said he was twenty-four, she knew something was wrong. No way he could have been in that war. “You have dreams?”

“Recurring nightmares.” He produced his sheepish smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t describe them. I save all that stuff for my shrink.”

To change the subject, Mary asked if Jessie enjoyed her work at the high school.

“She hates it,” Harry said calmly. “When you’re a student, you can goof off. And you get summer vacations. The principal’s secretary is a permanent slave.”

Mary contracted cabin-fever around nine o’clock. It was a short walk down Front Street to the Coronet Hotel. The blind pianist was playing jazz in the back lounge, which prompted Mary to look around for Clem Foy. He wasn’t there, but Jessie Hay was by herself at the end of the bar, pouring a beer.

Mary slid onto the next stool and bought a round. They listened to an airy rendition of “Fools Rush In” that brought them to the brink of tears. Then the piano-man was gone behind the dog with the handle on its back, and they were left with nothing to talk about but life.

Mary led off with ten minutes on her adventures at the radio station. Jessie ate it up and responded with a point-by-point assessment of the high-school principal’s incompetence. By this time, Mary was finishing her second G&T, and the bartender seemed to be pouring doubles. During a lull in the conversation, the question just came rolling out.

“How dangerous is your brother?”

Jessie turned her head. She looked at the woman on the next stool for three full beats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He came up to show me how fast the kitten’s growing. We were talking and he told me about his military service in Vietnam. He isn’t old enough, surely?”

“Harry fantasizes. But he’s under the care of a good doctor and it’s going to be all right.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” That sounded glib. Why, Mary asked herself, was she trying so hard to alienate the owner of the apartment she lived in?

“As for dangerous,” Jessie said, gathering up her cigarettes and her lighter and her change, “I’m the one you have to worry about. I’m ten times more dangerous than Harry.”

As the Baytown summer sauntered on, Mary worked her shifts and wished she was back home in Montreal. Maybe someday. That year’s course in broadcasting at Tennyson Institute in Toronto had promised much, but the reality — working for low wages at the radio station in Pitfall — soon became tedious. Baytown seemed better, but that might be the season.

Harry Hay brought the kitten upstairs every day for a visit. Mary provided drinks after dark, or coffee and biscuits if the sun had not yet reached the yardarm. The young man didn’t seem to have a job. One evening when she asked him about work, he said he was starting on a new project, then ran downstairs and returned with three watercolor paintings — explosions of red and orange.

Harry was hanging around another evening when Tim Melton showed up unexpectedly. The Pitfall broadcaster arrived with rucksack and bedroll, saying not to worry, he would crash on the living-room carpet. Mary was both annoyed by his brassy intrusion and pleased to see him. Now there would be hours of gossip about the station up north. As for Harry, he responded not only to Melton but to the visitor’s effect on Mary. It was as if the disturbed young man’s parents had been separated and now they were back together. Their embrace when Tim appeared at the top of the stairs left Harry beaming, his eyes moist.

“Who’s your lapdog?” Melton asked when Harry excused himself and took Annabella away.

“I won’t have you insulting him. He’s my landlady’s brother. Tell me about Pitfall.”

“I did the entire morning show drunk.” Melton’s square face carried a few days’ worth of dark beard. Unwashed, untrimmed, he had the presence of the scruffy twin who is cleaned up and becomes king. “I adlibbed all the commercials. Duffy’s Used Cars was on the telephone, screaming. I read ‘Casey at the Bat’ with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony as background music. I called the station manager at half past five — woke him up and put him on the air without telling him.”

“It sounds self-destructive to me, Timothy.”

“Absolutely. I obviously need somebody to take care of me.”

“I wish you luck.”

“I was hoping you might get me in at CBAY.”

“They don’t need anybody.” If she told Tim there was an opening, he would clean himself up and get the job. She might find herself slipping back into the relationship she had been so wise to abandon. “You can crash here for three nights. This is the law.” She fended off his kiss — feeling none of the old electricity, thank goodness. “Then you have to move on.”

“Who’s your house guest?” Jessie asked.

Mary was collecting her mail from the box by the front gate. “A former colleague of mine from another station.”

“I never allow tenants to bring men into my house.” Jessie had been edgy since Mary’s unthinking question at the Coronet.

“You didn’t say that when I rented the apartment,” Mary said. “Come on, Jessie. This isn’t Victorian England.”

“When is he leaving?”

“None of your business, really. But I’ve told him he can stay three nights.”

As she headed upstairs, Mary saw Harry watching from the kitchen window. Ten minutes later, he was knocking on her door. “I heard what Jessie said. I want you to know I’m on your side.”

“It’s a tempest in a teacup, Harry. But thanks.”

“My sister can be a monster. She’s capable of terrible things. I could tell you stories you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’m sure you could.”

“But I won’t let her do anything to you, Mary. I’ll stop her if she tries.”

Tim Melton did one of his pub crawls through the fleshpots of Baytown and came home after midnight, singing as he fumbled with the gate, falling on the front lawn, and lying there blinking at the moon. By the time Mary got some clothes on and ran down to bring him inside, Jessie was on the scene.

“This is how your colleague comes home?” She was down on one knee, staring down into his jubilant face.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Melton crooned. “It’s the face of an angel.”

“Get up, Tim,” Mary snapped. “It isn’t funny.”

The drunken announcer used Jessie as a crutch, dragging his weight up and leaning on her as he staggered to the house. “Make my bed soon,” his throaty baritone rumbled in her ear, “for I’m weary wi’ hunting—”

Jessie relinquished him to Mary at the foot of the stairs. “Three nights, you told me.”

“Or less,” Mary said grimly.

Tim packed his gear and moved out the next afternoon. “Very cold here in the deep freeze,” he said. “You could hang turkeys in this place.” He left on foot, heading for the highway and a lift to anywhere.

Jessie knew he was gone before Mary could tell her. She had a way of pronouncing the word ‘colleague’. “Your colleague left me a note. He said he’s going back to where he came from. Where did you say that is?”

“Pitfall. Up near Thunder Bay.”

“I can’t see that man apologizing and getting his old job hack, can you?”

“I’m not concerned.”

It was going to be difficult to repair the relationship between herself and Jessie. Mary was half inclined to let it end. There were other apartments for rent in Baytown. But this one was comfortable, damn it. And she could walk to work in less than ten minutes.

“When in doubt, do nothing” was one of Mary’s axioms and she obeyed it when it suited her. For the next week, she came and went, avoiding Jessie. Harry paid his daily visit with Annabella, who had become a small cat. Then, on a Friday evening, Jessie launched her rocket.

“You’ll have to go,” she said. “I’m going to need this apartment. Harry will be living up here.”

“You can’t do that.”

“There’s no lease. You pay by the week.” Jessie avoided Mary’s eyes. “I’ll give you till next weekend and then I want you gone.”

Mary ran downstairs after Jessie to pursue the argument and got the kitchen door slammed in her face. Harry’s head was in the window, his eyes disturbed.

At the station on Monday, Mary asked Clement Foy if the landlady could get away with putting her out. He thought she could. “Anyway, since things are unpleasant, why not move?”

“I hate to give in to her, she isn’t being fair — but I suppose I’ll have to.”

But it was Jessie Hay who disappeared from the house on Station Street. And Harry began keeping to himself. For three days, there was none of the normal sound from downstairs. Finally, late on Thursday morning, Mary went to the kitchen door and knocked. It took Harry a while to answer.

“Oh, hi,” he said. His eyes were shifting.

“Is everything all right?”

“You bet.”

“I haven’t seen Jessie in a while.”

“That’s right.” It was as if he was concentrating on saying what Mary wanted to hear.

“She told me to leave. But I don’t want to.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry said.

“What do you mean?”

“You won’t have to leave. I’ve taken care of it.”

“Did Jessie change her mind?”

“Forget about Jessie. I had some trouble with her.” Harry seemed to be sorting himself out. “I’ve put her in her place.”

As Mary concluded her program that afternoon, Clem Foy watched her through the studio window. When she signed off, he came in and said, “What’s on your mind?”

“Does it show?” She described Jessie’s disappearance and her brother’s cryptic comments. “He’s so spooky. He’s gentle with the kitten, but he has a mind full of violence. He sees a psychiatrist and he’s been institutionalized.”

“You think he’s killed her?”

“There’s a big garden behind the house. He loves the kitten I gave him. He wants to help me. Yes, I think he’s killed her.”

“Are you going to tell the police?”

“What’s your advice?”

“Tell the police.”

Chief Greb’s wife listened to Town Topics and had raved to her husband about the new broadcaster. Greb took it upon himself to hear Mary’s story. He was impressed. “Harry Hay gave us some trouble when he came back from California. He was off his medication. His sister called us in and we ended up driving him down to the Ontario Hospital in Kingston.”

“Do you think he may have done something with her?”

The chief came out from behind his desk. “Let’s go and find out.”

Harry must have seen the police car pull up and park outside. He was in the front doorway as Greb approached with Mary at his heels. “Where’s your sister, Harry?”

Harry’s eyes darted back and forth between the visitors. “She isn’t here.”

Mary said, “Are you trying to help me?”

“She shouldn’t have ordered you to move out.”

Greb said, “I want the truth from you, Harry.”

Annabella, rangy now and fast, darted between Harry’s legs and out onto the lawn. Harry ran after her. Then, when he was within reach of her, he changed direction. Before the policeman could react, Harry was through the gate and behind the wheel of a battered sedan parked in front of the cruiser. He switched on, pulled out, and raced away up Station Street.

“Stay here,” Greb ordered. He left Mary watching as he got into the police car and drove off in pursuit.

Mary went looking for Annabella — with no luck. She started up the back stairs, then changed her mind. She was too nervous to go inside. What made Harry run? It looked suspicious for him to take off when the chief began questioning him. There was no way he could escape in such a wreck of a car.

The garden behind the house was not well tended. Halfway up the stairs, Mary noticed a clear patch in the tangle of weeds. Somebody had been working there.

The hair stood erect on the back of her neck as she walked through deep grass and stood looking at obvious signs of digging. Fresh earth lay in a mound beside rose bushes run riot. Her heart pounding, she fled to her apartment.

The telephone rang. It was Chief Greb. “I’m at the General Hospital. He’s asking for you.”

“What happened?”

“I think the kid is suicidal. He drove that wreck faster than it went when it was new. I chased him down 401, almost as far as Napanee. He lost control and went into a concrete overpass. Or maybe he did it on purpose. Can you get here?”

It was too far to walk. Mary called a taxi and arrived at the hospital on Dundas Street within the half hour. Greb was waiting outside Intensive Care. He spoke to a nurse and obtained permission for Mary to go to Harry’s bedside.

Harry’s head was bandaged and i.v. tubes were taped to both arms. His eyes were closed.

“Harry?”

He recognized her. He smiled. “A whole platoon got through the perimeter in the night,” he whispered. “There was a hell of a firelight. Did you get a body count?”

“Not yet.” She squeezed his hand. “You sleep now.”

Outside in the corridor, she said, “He believes he’s been wounded in Vietnam. He’s told me stories before.”

“Believe it or not, they say he should pull through.” Greb said he’d drive Mary home. On the way out of the building, he said, “Having Harry in this condition delays my investigation into his sister’s disappearance.”

“Lord, I forgot,” Mary said. She described the recent digging in the back garden.

The chief said nothing, but on the way to Station Street, he radioed for another car to meet him at the address.

A younger officer with a shovel made short work of the excavation behind Jessie’s house. It wasn’t a grave at all — but it did contain some of Jessie’s dresses, some costume jewelry, articles of makeup, and a framed photograph of Jessie and Harry taken years ago, all of it buried in a shallow hole.

Mary shivered. “This freaks me more than if Jessie was in there.”

“Where the hell is she?” Greb wondered.

Several days went by. The disappearance of Jessie Hay was now a topic of conversation around town. Greb told Mary he was convinced Harry had killed his sister. When he became lucid enough to respond to questioning, he would tell what he had done with her. Mary wasn’t so sure. “I think her clothing in the ground is symbolic,” she said.

Greb blinked at that and soon made his goodbyes.

Clem Foy asked again about possible candidates to fill the vacancy on CBAY’s announcer staff. Mary felt guilty about not recommending Tim Melton, but the feeling lasted only a few moments. She had trouble enough in her life without importing more. And she grieved for Annabella, who seemed to have run off for good.

The house at night was quiet as the grave. When she turned off the television before bed, or popped Berlioz or Dvorak out of the cassette player, there was nothing to be heard except the occasional car passing on Station Street. With her head on the pillow, she could listen to her own heartbeat. The old frame building creaked and settled as the temperature changed. Sleep would come eventually, she would be patient.

The door slammed downstairs. People were moving around. Mary sat up in the dark. She could hear muffled voices. Somebody had got in! There was the scrape of something heavy on the floor — what was that, burglars shifting the stereo? And how long before they decided to come up here?

Mary quietly lifted the bedside telephone, dialed the operator, and asked for the police. She told the answering officer what was happening, adding that Chief Greb was investigating a possible murder up here. The policeman on the line knew all about Jessie Hay’s disappearance, and where her home was. He said he’d have a car there fast.

Mary hurried into a sweater and jeans and waited at the top of the back stairs with the door open. An occasional sound from below indicated the intruders were still there. When headlights swept the road, Mary crept down the steps and moved around the side of the house to meet the uniformed officer as he got out of the car.

“They’ve put a light on,” she said. “I could still hear them.”

“Stay back here.” The cop unsnapped the cover on his holster and rested a hand on the butt of his gun as he approached the door and knocked.

“Who’s that?” Jessie Hay’s voice sounded full of joy. She opened the door. She knew the policeman by sight. “Keith Miller! What’s up?”

“Hi, Jessie.” The young man was abashed. “We got a report somebody was messing around inside your house.”

“And you checked it out. Good for you. And you found it’s me.” She sounded a little tipsy. “You can be the first to congratulate me, Keith. I’m not Jessie Hay any longer. I’m Mrs. Melton. Meet my husband, Tim.”

The door of the police car was open. Mary sank onto the upholstered front seat. Tim was in the doorway, shaking hands with the officer. Miller was giving the bride a kiss, refusing a drink because he was on duty. Mary decided to sneak away upstairs before she could become further involved, but the front door closed and Keith Miller spotted her moving across the lawn as he headed back to the car.

“It wasn’t intruders,” he said. “Jessie’s got married and—”

“I know, I heard,” Mary cut him off. “Sorry I brought you out.” She went upstairs to bed.

She could have predicted what would happen next. Clem Foy didn’t have to come looking for Tim Melton. Since there was only one radio station in town, the newlywed announcer made his way there almost as soon as the confetti was washed out of his hair. With his experience in the business and his abundance of charm, he was hired on the spot.

Encountering Mary in the record library while he was being shown around, he whispered, “You should get more involved in what’s happening. You said there were no jobs going here. Clem just told me he’s been looking for somebody since April.”

On her way up the back stairs later in the week, Mary saw Jessie working in the garden with clippers and mower and rake. Mary got in the first shot.

“Concealing the evidence of Harry’s aberration?”

“My brother was stressed to the max when I told him I might be getting married. His imagination took over and he reacted. Big deal. Anyway, a neat garden will help when I sell the cottage. And you don’t have to bother moving. With Harry in the hospital, I don’t need the apartment.” She went on to say, “Tim tells me you consider him to be the worst thing that’s happened to Canadian broadcasting since rock-and-roll.”

“Tim’s okay.”

“He’s a diamond in the rough. All he ever needed was somebody to take care of him.” Jessie radiated triumph as she bent to her clipping.

She did sell up and move before the end of the year and Mary wasn’t affected. An old couple moved in downstairs, and they were delighted to have CBAY’s lady broadcaster living in their new house.

Mary didn’t see Harry again. He went from Baytown Hospital to a convalescent home for six months, and then to Jessie’s new residence on the south shore where there was plenty of room for him.

But she heard his voice. Getting ready for bed one night, she tuned in Melton’s Magic, the new late-night DJ show Foy had added to the schedule. The music was appealing, she gave Tim credit for that. There was often a guest in the studio. Tim had a flair for scouting out characters who had something to say. Mary propped herself against two pillows with a magazine and a cup of hot chocolate while Tim’s resonant voice rumbled out of the bedside radio.

“My guest tonight is a local lad who has been there and back. He admits to suffering long bouts of psychiatric illness. Good therapy and medication have left that in the past. Harry, you once believed you had fought in Vietnam, although you were too young for the war.”

“That’s true, Tim.” Harry’s voice sounded equally laid back. From his hospital bed, the little faker had risen to become a media person. “I dreamed of firefights, of being wounded, of losing my friends in battle.” Harry went on at length, dissecting his own case as if he were reading from a medical journal.

Mary’s eyes became heavy. She turned out the light and snuggled down. But, too fascinated to miss a word of the interview, she left the radio on.

It was much later, and perhaps she had dozed off, when something in Harry Hay’s voice caused her to sit bolt upright, awake and shaking.

“The sane world isn’t much better than the crazy one I used to inhabit,” he was saying. “Can you imagine a person sick enough to give somebody a kitten infected with rabies? The giver knowing it and not mentioning it?”

“That’s incredible.”

“But it’s true,” Harry said in a tone Mary recognized from before, only it was darker, much darker, than when he’d spoken to her of his sister. “I know a person who did this. Right here in Baytown.”

Within minutes, Tim had smoothly ended the interview and eased into some slumber-inducing music. But Mary didn’t sleep. Instead, she found herself wondering over and over and over how dangerous Harry Hay really was.