Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

Murder at the Butt End of Nowhere by Meredith Anthony

Meredith Anthony, a humorist whose articles have appeared in MAD magazine and Hysteria, is co-author of the humor book 101 Reasons Why We’re Doomed. Her well-trained satirical eye comes into play in this (her first) venture into fiction writing. Ms. Anthony lives in New York City with her husband, who is also a writer. She has recently completed a novel which she describes as a thriller.

Hunched and ugly, the little coal town squatted sullenly in the weak morning sun like a frog on a urinal, contemplating its few dreary options. In this part of the Appalachian foot-hills, the Rust Belt had just about rusted through.

Nevertheless, Helen Goode slept soundly, secure in her place in the world. She was the queen of her town and she slept the dreamless sleep of the righteous or the sociopathic.

Her husband, Chief of Police Beauregarde Goode, plump and arrogant, woke up pleased with himself. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he scratched himself vigorously. In his uniquely high-pitched, wheedling voice he asked his wife to make him pancakes. “I believe,” he intoned slowly in the untraceable accent that was built up in layers from his Appalachian childhood and his wartime service in the Marines Corps, “I believe that a substantial breakfast is necessary to begin a productive and successful day.” The self-satisfied delivery was attributable to his many years of being the most important man in a small town.

“Get away, Beau,” his wife muttered, not unkindly, but trying without hope to ignore his mosquito whine for a few more minutes of slumber.

“Well,” he said, drawing the word out into several high-pitched syllables, “we could always start the day in another fashion.” His wheedling falsetto was equal parts Mike Tyson and Divine. He knew he wasn’t going to get any sex, not on a weekday morning, but he liked to tease his wife. “You’re going to be late anyway, so what’s a few more minutes?”

Helen’s eyes flew open. “Goddamn it, Beau. I’m going to quit my job. I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t. I hate it.”

Beau ignored the long morning litany of her complaints. She had always hated waking up. By the time he came out of the bathroom and patted her behind with an affectionate murmur of, “precious thing,” she already had on queen-size pantyhose and an industrial-strength brassiere and was heading past him for the bathroom to remove a nightmarish effluvia from her teeth.

“I’m just going in long enough to quit,” she gargled, her mouth full of Crest. The blue foam made her look like a cartoon mad dog and her hair stuck up in unlikely peaks from yesterday’s hairspray. At fifty, her torso thickened from too much fatty food and too little exercise, her skin coarse, her hair damaged from years of bad red dye, Helen was still one of those inexplicably compelling women who make a certain kind of man breathless and sweaty-palmed with lust. Every time — and there had been three — every time she divorced a husband, her driveway immediately filled up with the Chevys and Fords of hopeful suitors.

Beau Goode, her fourth true love, was one of those men who found her irresistible. “You go right in there and quit, pumpkin. You’ll have more time to play with me.”

He leaned into the bathroom and tweaked what he thought was her nipple, but was actually a small air pocket in the pointed business end of the big, stiff bra. She hadn’t adjusted her large, blue-veined breasts yet. But she appreciated the thought and squealed with feigned pleasure.

“Get away from me, you crazy old bastard.” She swatted his hand, spraying blue flecks on the bathroom mirror.

“Now don’t you go looking for me today, sugar. I’ve got to go over to the state capital to talk to the judge about changing the venue on that three-time B&E artist we got locked up. I want very badly for them to try him right here.”

Helen was shimmying into a tight red wool skirt and he stopped to admire her efforts on his way to the kitchen. “Goddammit, Beau. I’m going to be late.”

She grabbed a silk-blend blouse with an op-art print that could stimulate an epileptic into a full-blown seizure. It had a collar that tied into a bow. She fished high heels out of the welter of shoes in the bottom of the closet, finding two navy-and-white spectators that matched on the third try. She tugged them on, ran a brush through the worst of her hair, swiped on bright, orangey-red color from a lipstick that had been tortured into concavity from heavy-handed use. She grabbed the jacket that matched the skirt from the closet, sending the hanger crashing to the floor.

“What do you care if you’re late?” Beau said slyly. “You’re just going in long enough to quit.”

Cursing and snarling, Helen Goode drove the thirty congested, potholed miles to her job. She exited the highway, throwing a last vile oath at the rushing traffic, and swooped into the parking lot, sliding expertly into a space near the door. As she braked, she bumped the handicapped sign. The uniformed guard, a slightly spastic young man adorned with virulent acne, gave her a tentative wave as she slammed the car door. She gave him a dazzling smile as she breezed past, late as usual. He blushed hotly, causing his pustules to flare to cherry color. He was deeply in love with her.

Inside, Helen was greeted warmly by several men and women who had all been at their jobs for half an hour. Strangely, no one glanced pointedly at the wall clock, tapped their wrist watch accusingly, or shook their heads with an ironic smile. Helen could do no wrong at her workplace; she was universally and inexplicably adored by men and women, old and young, from the management to the janitors, the engineers to the typists. Everyone she passed expressed various heartfelt versions of how good it was to see her.

By the time she reached her office, her anger had eased considerably. Her fat, homely secretary, Carole, struggled to her feet and poured the first of many mugs of bad coffee. Handing Helen the World’s Best Boss mug filled with a scalding brew of burned coffee, artificial sweetener, and petrochemical cream, Carole began her ritualized morning offering of compliments, information, and lies.

“Carole, stop pouring warm syrup all over me,” Helen purred, an honest appraisal that neither stemmed the tide of warm syrup nor inhibited its soothing effect.

Helen began to genuinely relax under the ministrations of her assistant, a cunning, ambitious, manipulative woman who would stab her mother in the heart if it would lead to advancement, but who wisely saw that her own career was tied inexorably to Helen’s. Carole had pushed her boss relentlessly up the corporate ladder, each time climbing to the next vacated rung. Now Helen was a vice-president and Carole had the title of associate vice-president. Helen liked Carole. Carole was smart, funny, and devoted. Helen had always chosen perfect protégés. They worked like sled dogs for her and she saw to it that they were rewarded. Carole was one of the best. She could curse like a sailor and lie like a priest and as long as her career progressed, she was perfectly reliable.

Forgetting, as she did every morning, her plan to quit immediately upon arriving at work, Helen got busy.

Helen worked the way she performed sexual acts — reluctantly, only after much preliminary bitching, and with astonishing expertise. Her superiors, a dimwitted crew of Caucasian men, most of whom were smitten with her anyway, put up with her irreverent attitude, her constant complaining, her chronic lateness, and a host of other employee no-nos because she was smart, talented, hard-working, imaginative, and attentive to details. She was much too good for their pathetic little company and they knew it. They tolerated her parking in the handicapped spot, smoking in her office, and taking massively long lunch hours. They allowed her to hire crazed sycophants as assistants. She worked hard all morning.

Just before noon, Carole appeared in Helen’s doorway. She had an unreadable expression on her face. “There’s a Mr. Wilson here to see you,” she announced in a bland voice but with a nearly imperceptible hesitation that put Helen on alert. Carole, who knew nearly everything about Helen’s professional life, didn’t know what to make of this visitor.

Helen was intrigued, but perplexed. “Who?” She sped through her considerable mental Rolodex for Wilsons.

“Mr. Louis Wilson,” Carole clarified carefully, waiting for an indication that she should deny the visitor admission altogether. “He says it’s personal.” Her look expressed her scepticism.

Helen suddenly made the connection. “Oh, Louie.” She was up and past Carole in a flash. “Louie, come in. Nice to see you. What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

She escorted the small, ageing black gentleman into her office, past the baffled Carole. She gave Carole a smile and a wink, to show her that this was unexpected but okay. Carole could live with that for the time being. Helen gently but firmly closed the door.

She gestured Louie to a seat. Louie Wilson was a wizened, old-fashioned man — the type who always wore a fedora outdoors and took it off inside and in the presence of a lady. He had worked for Beau since Beau’s first appointment as police chief and had spent the better part of his adult life in the station house. Beau had had his choice, according to the measly budget provided by the county clerks, of a paralegal or an assistant, but not both. A paralegal could write reports, keep track of evidence, and generally assist with the professional nature of Beau’s job. An assistant was a go-fer with a title. An assistant would pick up your dry cleaning, shop for your wife’s anniversary present, and take your car in to the shop. Beau unhesitatingly chose the assistant. He reasoned that he’d gone to college and could write his own reports. He’d rather have somebody get his shirts from the laundry. He hired Louie Wilson. Louie Wilson was more a wife to Beau than Helen was, when it came right down to it. Outside of conversation and sex, Louie was a damn good wife and both Beau and Helen knew it.

Louie knew how much he was valued and appreciated. Louie Wilson was devoted to Beau. In fact, there was only one person on earth who had more of Louie’s loyalty than Beau Goode. And that was Helen. Helen had discovered Louie, nurtured him, and fostered his fine qualities. She had recommended him for the job and seen to it that Beau hired him. Louie knew everything there was to know about both Helen and Beau, and they both trusted him implicitly. He had keys to their house, both their cars, and their safe-deposit box. He knew their birthdays and their passwords at the bank. He knew what prescription drugs they took and which heartburn medicine they preferred. None of the three of them had ever regretted the arrangement for a single minute.

Louie sat where Helen indicated and looked nervous. “What’s going on, Louie? What is it?” Helen asked. She kept her tone light, but she was slightly worried. Louie had never come to Helen’s office before.

“Helen,” Louie began haltingly, “there’s something I think you better know.” He seemed to gather strength and she waited quietly. “I think Beau’s having an affair with Emily Watson.”

Helen gasped a little air and then broke out with a belly laugh that scooted her rolling office chair back a foot. “Emily Watson? Little Emily Watson? Louie, that’s ridiculous. Have you plum lost your mind?”

“No, ma’am. I wouldn’t come here if I wasn’t pretty sure. And I’m not the only one thinks so, either. There’s talk.”

This gave Helen pause and she took a minute to regroup. “But Louie, you must be wrong. Emily Watson works for Beau.” As if no man had ever slept with one of his own office staff. She felt silly the minute she said it. “And anyway, she’s a pathetic little thing, always coming to Beau for advice and encouragement. She’s thinking of going back to school and trying to get a degree as a paralegal. Beau’s been trying to help her. There’s nothing to it. Trust me. I know Beau.”

But Louie stood his ground and shook his head stubbornly. “I know about all that, Helen. That’s what I said at first. But sometimes, after work, after they’ve both left, people been seeing the chief’s big old yellow Buick parked near Emily Watson’s house. Up on Wheeling. By the Greek deli.”

Helen took this in. If a small, dark seed of doubt was planted it wouldn’t do to have Louie Wilson see it. She stood up and came around the desk. “Louie, you just put it right out of your mind. Beau’s no saint, but I don’t leave him any energy for catting around. Hear me?” She gave him one of her most dazzling smiles and he rose, clutching his hat to his chest.

“Yes, ma’am. I thought you should know about the talk, is all.”

“Louie, you know I always want to know about the talk. I want to know every damn thing there is to know. Don’t worry about that.” Helen meant it. She had no intention of scaring off a good source of information, even if it wasn’t always correct. “And I thank you for it.” She gave him a warm hug to show there weren’t any hard feelings. Louie still looked worried, but he nodded his agreement. “Now, what say we go out to Piggy’s and have some pulled-pork sandwiches? What do you say? It’s right around the corner.”

Louie demurred as she knew he would. Helen opened the door and hugged him again so Carole could see. “Next time, we go to Piggy’s. Right, Louie? Promise?”

Back in her office, Helen mulled it over for about thirty seconds. She decided that, one, Louie was probably wrong; two, there was nothing she could do about it anyway; and three, she didn’t want to risk making a fuss to find out. For a moment, she was overwhelmed with an unaccustomed wave of pure love for her husband. Helen was not a sentimental woman and rarely gave way to emotional transports. Her level of affection was usually tempered by her moods, her hormonal state, her socioeconomic needs, and her blood-sugar level.

Helen made the decision to put the whole mess out of her mind. Which didn’t mean she would forget about it.

In small towns in this state, police chiefs were frequently the highest-ranking officials and de facto kings of the area. Although they were supposed to be apolitical, among other things they were usually the heads of their party and generally held the power and patronage that made them kings of their feudal realms.

Beau held his scepter lightly. He wielded his power always with the good of his community in view, even if he skirted the law to accomplish it. In return, his town gave him its affection with unabashed enthusiasm. There was no diner, bar, or Legion hall in the town or even the entire county, however remote and down at the heel, where he could go unnoticed or pay for a drink. “Evening, Chief,” some grease-smeared gas jockey or fertilizer-redolent farmer would murmur as soon as he walked in the door. “Buy you a drink?”

Beau walked through the door often. A gregarious man by nature, with big appetites for food, beer, and praise, he made it a policy to keep in touch with all the outlying areas of his domain, using invitations to a constant stream of parties, anniversaries, birthdays, christenings, funerals, and weddings to shape his social life. Helen, a full and willing partner in this lifestyle, never walked into a room she didn’t own within five minutes. Her nature gave her what his position gave him, an unassailable sense of entitlement and a conviction of her own worth.

On Friday night, having groused through a half-hour of getting dressed and made-up, having bitched from the house to the car, having griped through most of the twenty-minute drive, Helen finally settled down. Impatient in many of life’s situations, Beau always found Helen worth the wait.

Helen was quiet all the way up the gravel walk to the surprisingly modern multilevel house on a wooded hill in the south of the county. At the door, Helen straightened her back, took a calming breath, and knocked.

The door swung open and Helen strode through with her dazzling smile, her gaze sweeping the room for dignitaries and interesting gossip.

“Congressman,” she smiled, wiggling out of the smelly embrace of the crusty old lecher who had been elected more times than she could count, despite an official censure for misuse of federal money. “Where you been, you old rattlesnake? We never see you anymore.”

The people’s representative simpered and smirked, keeping one liver-spotted hand on Helen’s waist. “I can’t see enough of you, Helen, my angel,” he leered with meaning. Helen instinctively covered her considerable cleavage. The congressman had a full complement of hands and no part of a woman’s anatomy was safe while one of them was unoccupied. She leaned in to give him a buss on the cheek. As she moved on, his eager old claw descended smoothly to cup her butt.

In the meantime, their hostess swooped on Helen, simultaneously removing the congressman’s hand from her friend’s derriere with a practiced gesture and putting a protective arm around her, kissing her and steering her toward the bar set up at the end of the long room.

“Thanks, Samantha,” Helen said. “I’d have fingerprints on my ass if I talked to that old goat another minute.”

“Thank God you’re here,” Sam whispered. “Veda Macavoy brought her New York cousin and he’s flirting with everyone — female and male.”

“I’ve got to meet this guy,” Helen purred enthusiastically. “I’m a complete fag hag. I love them. I do.”

She didn’t look back at Beau. She didn’t need to. She knew he was sweet-talking the congressman about local issues that could profit from attention at the national level. She also knew without looking that some helpful soul had already put a cold beer bottle into Beau’s pudgy hand. She and Beau had a rule about parties. They ignored each other, worked the room in their own way and at their own pace, then reconnoitered at the end and told each other everything. They had developed this technique early in Beau’s tenure as chief and it stuck. They were able to cover twice the ground, shake twice the hands, and get twice the gossip as they would if they stuck together like an ordinary couple. Say what you want, Beau and Helen were never ordinary.

Helen had worked her way through a dozen people, two daiquiris, three dirty stories and one interesting-if-true secret when her radar issued a quiet warning. She smiled at the woman who was boring her to sobs with a real-time description of her husband’s prostate surgery and turned slightly to put her drink down on a table, catching a glimpse of Beau giving Emily Watson a big hug and a wet, smacking kiss right on her mean little mouth, the bitch.

Beau was surrounded by his usual troop of fans, all of them soaking up Beau’s wisdom, fetching him beers, and laughing at his jokes, even when they didn’t understand them. One of the throng was the state highway commissioner and Helen knew Beau was using the opportunity to advance his plan to get new signage on the three exits that led to town. Although he was forbidden to play politics, Beau took every opportunity to upgrade the town’s image. He had been instrumental in several recent efforts, most notably in bringing in a new light-manufacturing plant that would employ several hundred. Most of the town didn’t even know that Beau labored tirelessly and successfully on their behalf.

To Helen’s practiced eye, Beau was just giving Emily the usual warm greeting, always reciprocated by slavish adoration. She didn’t detect anything in Beau’s big wet kiss or Emily’s bearing that would signal any guilty complicity.

Still nodding at the prostate horror story, Helen let herself watch Beau for just a second longer. He glanced up across the room and caught her and winked. Helen reddened slightly under her pancake foundation. Beau bent his head back to Emily Watson, who was on tiptoe whispering something to him. It could be anything, and Helen turned her attention back to the medical nightmare.

“And the doctor said he never saw anything like it. Hard as a walnut. Don’t that beat all, Helen? Hard as a walnut.”

Helen was expressing her amazement when she saw Beau, just for a second, put his hand on Emily Watson’s bony butt. Or did he?

Helen was at home Monday evening, waiting for Beau, when one of Beau’s officers came to the door.

“Is the chief here, Miz Goode?” he asked, hat in hand.

“Nope, I’m waiting on him now,” she said, standing aside so that he could come in. He shuffled back and forth in the doorway, wrinkled his forehead in thought, shrugged, and turned to go.

Helen reached out and took hold of his arm. “Come on in, now,” she said with a smile. She knew Beau’s boys were scared of her, particularly without Beau around. “Now what’s this all about?”

Ten minutes later she was driving on South Main heading toward Wheeling. She didn’t even remember getting into the car or starting the motor. Emily Watson was dead. Found beaten to death in her own house, although Beau’s boy said it looked like she was killed elsewhere and hauled home after.

And where was Beau anyway? Helen shook angry tears out of her eyes, trying not to think what she was thinking. Beau did it. She knew it in her heart but she pushed the thought back down. Helen’s heart was pounding like a rabbit. She stepped on the gas.

She was two blocks up Wheeling when she hit the brakes hard enough to snap her head forward, her pillowy bosom air-bagging into the steering wheel. She sat perfectly still as her body from head to toe turned dead cold then fiery hot. Up ahead, near the Greek deli, was Beau’s unmistakable big yellow Buick. Just where Louie said it would be.

Short of breath, Helen barely registered the timid honk from the car behind her. She drove forward and pulled over next to a fireplug. She turned off the key and shut her eyes. The evidence was irrefutable. There was no earthly reason for Beau to be in this neighborhood at this time of day. She remembered that he had mentioned that morning that he might be late. Another trip to the state capital, he’d said.

Helen leaned forward, resting her head against the steering wheel. She swallowed bile. Her eyes were hot. She began to shake all over. Beau had gone and killed Emily Watson. Beau. She couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t take it in. Her Beau. Ruining her life. Their lives. And for that filthy skank Emily Watson.

Her eyes flew open. She stared for a long minute at the dirty yellow steering wheel on which her head was resting, grimy for the most part. Shiny where the fingers gripped it. Yellow? Her head popped up. She was in Beau’s big yellow Buick. He had taken her car to the capital and was going to drive it back and give it to Louie to take in for inspection. He’d told her so this morning.

The heat, the cold, the shaking all instantly ceased. Helen’s head cleared and she started the engine and drove slowly past the parked yellow Buick toward the cluster of police cars up ahead. What were the odds? Poor little Emily Watson probably did have a gentleman caller with execrable taste in automobiles and a murderous bad temper, but it wasn’t Beau Goode.

And there was Beau up ahead, getting out of her car, holding his jacket. His boys must have found him. She pulled over quickly, the fender scraping the curb. She flung open the door.

Beau heard the metal grate on the concrete and turned as she hurled herself toward him. He was startled and seemed to try to ward her off, but she hit him like a train and flung her arms around him.

“Damn, precious thing,” Beau drawled, unwrapping her arms gently, peering into her face, streaked with mascara and pancake. “What’s all this, then?”

“Beau, I just love you to death, is all,” she panted, overcome by emotion, having lost him and got him back all in the space of a ten-block drive. She tried again to gather him close, but he held her at arm’s length.

“Well, I love you, too, precious, but I’ve got work to do. You go on home now. Hear?”

Helen nodded, her breathing slowing, her equanimity restored. Beginning to wonder what Beau’s boys must think of her grabbing at the chief in front of them. For what?

“Sure, darlin’,” she said lightly, a little loud for the benefit of the boys who were waiting on Beau. “See you later, then.”

Beau nodded, pulling on his jacket.

She threw them all a jaunty wave and piloted the big old car out around the cruisers. She was at the end of the block when she noticed that her fingers were sticky and had left wet marks where she held the wheel.

She pulled up at the stop sign under a streetlight and put the car in park. She peered at her hands. Red blotches. What had she gotten into that was red? The only thing she’d touched lately was when she’d hugged Beau.

Her stomach turned, gorge rising. She swallowed hard to keep from throwing up. Beau.

Somebody behind her tapped his horn. Helen carefully put the big yellow Buick into gear. The gritty little coal town jumped and whispered around her as she powered the big car back toward home.

Copyright © 2006 Meredith Anthony