The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror - 2012 by Paula Guran

Author:Paula Guran [Guran, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781607013686
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

Her words were from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter”—spoken by the Walrus just before he and the Carpenter began devouring the gullible oysters . . .

A Journey of Only Two Paces

Tim Powers

She had ordered steak tartare and Hennessey XO brandy, which would, he reflected, look extravagant when he submitted his expenses to the court. And God knew what parking would cost here.

He took another frugal sip of his beer and said, trying not to sound sour, “I could have mailed you a check.”

They were at one of the glass-topped tables on the outdoor veranda at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, just a couple of feet above the sidewalk beyond the railing, looking out from under the table’s umbrella down the sunlit lanes of Rodeo Drive. The diesel-scented air was hot even in the shade.

“But you were his old friend,” she said. “He always told me that you’re entertaining.” She smiled at him expectantly.

She had been a widow for about ten years, Kohler recalled—and she must have married young. In her sunglasses and broad Panama hat she only seemed to be about twenty now.

Kohler, though, felt far older than his thirty-five years.

“He was easily entertained, Mrs. Halloway,” he said slowly. “I’m pretty . . . lackluster, really.” A young man on the other side of the railing overheard him and glanced his way in amusement as he strode past on the sidewalk.

“Call me Campion. But a dealer in rare books must have some fascinating stories.”

Her full name was Elizabeth St. Campion Halloway. She signed her paintings “Campion.” Kohler had looked her up online before driving out here to deliver the thousand dollars, and had decided that all her artwork was morbid and clumsy.

“He found you attractive,” she went on, tapping the ash off her cigarette into the scraped remains of her steak tartare. He noticed that the filter was smeared with her red lipstick. “Did he ever tell you?”

“Really. No.” For all Kohler knew, Jack Ranald might have been gay. The two of them had only got together about once a year since college, and then only when Kohler had already begged off on two or three e-mail invitations. Kohler’s wife had always thought Jack was inwardly mocking her—He forgets me when he’s not looking right at me, she’d said—and she wouldn’t have been pleased with these involvements in the dead man’s estate.

Kohler’s wife had looked nothing like Campion.

Campion was staring at him now over the coal of her cigarette—he couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark lenses, but her pale, narrow face swung carefully down and left and right. “I can already see him in you. You have the Letters Testamentary?”

“Uh.” The shift in conversational gear left him momentarily blank. “Oh, yes—would you like to see them? and I’ll want a receipt—”

“Not the one from the court clerk. The one Jack arranged.”

Kohler bent down to get his black vinyl briefcase, and he pushed his chair back from the table to unzip it on his lap. Inside were all the

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