The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries Part 51

Marley leaned forward and his shackles clanked. "My best pal-a detective-didn't think I was worth a measly murder investigation. Where I come from, a man who can't inspire any more loyalty than that outta his best pal is one lost soul."

Stone shrugged. "It was nothin' personal."

"Oh, I take gettin' murdered real personal! And you didn't give a rat's a.s.s who killed me! And that's why you're as good as d.a.m.ned."

"Baloney!" Stone touched his stomach. "... or maybe salami ..."

Marley s.h.i.+fted in his seat and his shackles rattled. "You knew I always looked after my little brother, Eddie-he's a louse and weakling, but he was the only brother I had ... and what have you done for Eddie? Tossed him in some garbage cans! Left 'im for the Boys to measure for cement overshoes!"

"He's a weasel."

"He's your dead best pal's brother! Cut him some slack!"

"I did cut him some slack! I didn't kill him when he tried to blackmail me."

"Over you sleeping with his dead brother's wife, you mean?"

Stone batted the air dismissively. "The h.e.l.l with you, Marley! You're not real! You're some meat that went bad. Some mustard that didn't agree with me. I'm goin' to bed."

"You were right the first time," Marley said. "You're goin' to h.e.l.l ... or anyway, h.e.l.l's waitin' room. Like me." Marley's voice softened into a plea. "Stoney-help me outa this, pal. Help yourself."

"How?"

"Solve my murder."

Stone blew a smoke ring. "Is that all?"

Marley stood and a howling wind seemed to blow through the apartment, drapes waving like ghosts. "It means something to me!"

Now Stone was sweating; this was happening.

"One year ago," Marley said in a deep rumbling voice, "they found me in the alley behind the Bismarck Hotel, my back to the wall, one bullet in the pump, two in the stomach, and one in between ... remember?"

And Marley removed the bullet-scorched trenchcoat to reveal the four wounds-beams of red neon light from the window behind him cut through Marley like swords through a magician's box.

"Remember?"

Stone was backing up, patting the air with his palms. "Okay, okay ... why don't you just tell me who b.u.mped you off, and I'll settle up for you. Then we'll be square."

"It's not that easy ... I'm not ... allowed to tell you."

"Who made these G.o.dd.a.m.n rules?"

Marley raised an eyebrow, lifted a finger, pointed up. "Right again. To save us both, you gotta act like a detective ... you gotta look for clues ... and you must do this yourself ... though you will be aided."

"How?"

"You're gonna have three more visitors."

"Swell! Who's first? Karloff, or Lugosi?"

Marley moved away from the couch, toward the door, shackles clanking. "Don't blow it for the both of us, keed," he said, and left through the door-through the door.

Stone stood staring at where his late partner had literally disappeared, and shook his head. Then he went to the bar and poured himself a drink. Soon he was questioning the reality of what had just happened; and, a drink later, he stumbled into his bedroom and flopped onto his bed, fully clothed.

He was sleeping the sound sleep of the dead-drunk when his bed got jostled.

Somebody was kicking it.

Waking to semi-darkness, Stone said, "Who in h.e.l.l ..."

Looming over him was a roughly handsome, Clark Gablemustached figure in a straw hat and a white double-breasted seersucker.

Stone dove for Sadie, his .38 in its shoulder holster slung over his nightstand, but then, in an eyeblink, the guy was gone.

"Over here, boyo."

Stone turned and the guy in the jauntily c.o.c.ked straw hat was standing there, picking his teeth with a toothpick.

"Save yourself the ammo," the guy said. "They already got me."

And he unb.u.t.toned his jacket and displayed several ugly gaping exit wounds.

"In the back," the guy said, "the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

The guy looked oddly familiar. "Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Let's put it this way. If a bunch of trigger-happy feds are chasin' ya, don't duck down that alley by the Biograph-it's a dead-end, brother."

"John Dillinger!"

"Right-only it's a hard 'g,' like in gun: Dillin-ger. Okay, sonny? Pet peeve o' mine." Dillinger was b.u.t.toning up his jacket.

"You ... you must not have been killed wearing that suit."

"Naw-it's new. Christmas present from the Boss. I got a pretty good racket goin' here-helpin' chumps like you make good. Another five hundred years, and I get sprung."

"How exactly is a cheap crook like you gonna help me make good?"

Dillinger grabbed Stone by the s.h.i.+rt front. Stone took a swing at the ghost, but his hand only pa.s.sed through.

"There ain't nothin' cheap about John Dillinger! I didn't rob n.o.body but banks, and times was hard, then, banks was the bad guys ... and I never shot n.o.body. Otherwise, I'da got the big heat."

"The big heat?"

Dillinger raised an eyebrow and angled a thumb, downward. "Which is where you're headed, sonny, if you don't get your lousy head screwed on right. Come with me."

"Where are we goin'?"

"Into your past. Maybe that's why I got picked for this caper-see, I was a Midwest farm kid like you. Come on! Don't make me drag ya ..."

Reluctantly, Stone followed the spirit into the next room ...

... where Stone found himself not in the living room of his apartment, but in the snowy yard out in front of a small farmhouse. Snowflakes fell lazily upon an idyllic rural winter landscape; an eight-year-old boy was building a snowman.

"I know this place," Stone said.

"You know the kid, too," Dillinger said. "It's you. You live in that house."

"Why aren't I cold? It's gotta be freezing, but I feel like I'm still in my apartment."

"You're a shadow here, just like me," Dillinger said.

"d.i.c.kie!" a voice called from the porch. "Come inside-you'll catch your death!"

"Ma!" Stone said, and moved toward her. He studied her serene, beautiful face in the doorway. "Ma ..."

He tried to touch her and his hand pa.s.sed through.

Behind him, Dillinger said, "I told ya, boyo-you're a shadow. Just lean back and watch ... maybe you'll learn somethin'."

Then eight-year-old d.i.c.kie Stone ran right through the shadow of his future self, and inside the house, closing the door behind him, leaving Stone and Dillinger on the porch.

"Now what?" Stone asked.

"Since when were you shy about breaking and entering?" Dillinger said.

And walked through the door....

"Look who's talking," Stone said. He took a breath and followed.

Stone found himself in the cozy farmhouse, warmed by a wood-burning stove, which, surprisingly, he could feel. In one corner of the modestly furnished living room stood a pine tree, almost too tall for the room to contain, decorated with tinsel and a star, wrapped gifts scattered under it. A spinet piano hugged a wall. Stone watched his eight-year-old self strip out of an aviator cap and woolen coat and boots and sit at a little table where he began working on a puzzle.

"Five hundred pieces," Stone said. "It's a picture of Tom Mix and his horse what's-his-name."

"Tony," said Dillinger.

"G.o.d, will ya smell that pine tree! And my mother's cooking! If I'm a shadow, how come I can smell her cooking?"

"Hey, pal-don't ask me. I'm just the tour guide. Maybe somebody upstairs wants your memory jogged."

Stone moved into the kitchen, where his mother was at the stove, stirring gravy.

"G.o.d, that gravy smells good ... can you smell it?"

"No," said Dillinger.

"She's baking mincemeat pie, too ... you're lucky you can't smell that. Garbage! But Pa always liked it...."

"My ma made a mean plum pudding at Christmas," Dillinger said.

"Mine, too! It's bubbling on the stove! Can't you smell it?"

"No! This is your past, pal, not mine...."

The back door opened and a man in a blue denim coat and woolen knit cap entered, stomping the snow off his workboots.

"That mincemeat pie must be what heaven smells like," the man said. Sky-blue eyes were an incongruously gentle presence in his hard, weathered face.

"Pa," Stone said.

Taking off his jacket, the man walked right through the shadow of his grown son. "Roads are still snowed in," his father told his mother.

"Oh dear! I was so counting on Bob and Helen for Christmas supper!"

"That's my uncle and aunt," Stone told Dillinger. "Bob was mom's brother."

"They'll be here," Pa Stone said, with a thin smile. "Davey took the horse and buggy into town after them."

"My brother Davey," Stone explained to Dillinger.

"Oh dear," his mother was saying. "He's so frail ... oh how could you ..."

"Send a boy to do a man's job? Sarah, Davey's sixteen. Proud as I am of the boy for his school marks, he's got to learn to be a man. Anyway, he wanted to do it. He likes to help."

Stone's ma could only say, "Oh dear," again and again.

"Now, Sarah-I'll not have these boys babied!"

"Well, the old S. O. B. sure didn't baby me,"

Stone said to Dillinger.

"Davey just doesn't have d.i.c.kie's spirit," said Pa. "d.i.c.kie's always getting in sc.r.a.pes, and he sure don't make the grades Davey does, but the boy's got gumption and guts."

Stone had never known his pa felt that way about him.

"Then why are you so hard on the child, Jess?" his mother was asking. "Last time he got caught playing hookey from school, you gave him the waling of his life."

"How else is the boy to learn? That's how my pa taught me the straight and narrow path."

"Straight and narrow razor strap's more like it," Stone said.

Ma was stroking Pa's rough face. "You love both your boys. It's Christmas, Jess. Why don't you tell 'em how you feel?"

"They know," he said gruffly.

Emotions churned in Stone, and he didn't like it. "Tour guide-I've had about all of this I can take...."