Rogues Gallery (10 page)

All eyes turned to bald Bob Tucker. He took his lollipop out of his mouth. “I guess as principal of Cotton High I shouldn't have gone to the funeral because of what he did. But I couldn't do that to Pete. We were friends from the time we both started teaching. His relationship with that student was totally unprofessional and immoral, as well as illegal. It was right that he paid the price. But he was still a human being, and he was still my friend.”

“How did he die?” Mac asked.

“Stabbed,” Hawes said curtly.

“Prison is a terrible place,” Tucker said. “I visited him three or four times a year at first. I hadn't seen him in a while. I feel badly about that.”

“You should,” Fred Gaffe said coldly. “He asked about you all the time.”

“You were also a friend of Duffy's?” Lynda asked. When she'd been news editor of
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, before she'd moved up the corporate ladder at Grier Ohio NewsGroup, Lynda had edited Gaffe's nostalgic column.

“Pete was my nephew - my late wife's actually. I can't believe this had anything at all to do with him.”

“There has to be some kind of connection,” I pointed out. “The combination to the lock that Lynda was tied up with was his name.”

“
Eh, bien
, this must indeed be the deed of someone close to Monsieur Peter Duffy,” Beth Bennet said, staying in character with a passable Poirot voice. She didn't seem to understand that the party was over and it was time to get serious. “It is to avenge his untimely death that this terrible thing has been done. Use the little grey cells,
mon ami.
”

“Indeed.” Mac regarded her shrewdly.

“Maybe the combination on the lock was a red herring, a false clue,” Gaffe said.

“That's not very likely,” Oscar said, “given that the lock was supposed to blow up along with Lynda and Jeff.” Oscar has a built-in bias against solutions that he considers “too cute” or overly complicated, the kind that show up in Mac's mystery novels. This time I thought his skepticism was well placed.

“If all of this is about revenge,” Mo said, “why not kill Kathy's ex-boyfriend who presumably exposed the affair?”

“His family left town years ago, the summer after all that happened,” Tucker said. “I remember because the boy was in my history class at the time. So maybe the would-be killer couldn't find him, or maybe he's next, or maybe he's already been done in. How would we know?” He sounded very depressed for a guy with a lollypop in his mouth.

“Let us not neglect the obvious,” Mac said. “Sherlock Holmes never did. Lynda and Jefferson, think back on the costumed hitchhiker you picked up. How tall?”

“About average height,” Lynda said. I concurred. Not much help there.

“Male or female?”

Lynda and I looked at each other. We'd been assuming male, but the costume covered almost everything and there was nothing telling in his or her movements.

“We don't know,” I admitted.

Mac stroked his beard. “The androgynous costume was most likely no accident. That is in itself indicative. So is the fact that the assailant flagged you down on your way to this party. Surely it is a reasonable assumption that she knew about this party, and only slightly more adventurous to posit that she is here among us now?”

“Pfui,” Lafcadio Figg retorted, using Nero Wolfe's favorite word. “She? You're grand-standing, Mac.”

It wouldn't be the first time.

“There's nobody here in a costume like that,” Mo pointed out. “That would mean this fruitcake changed clothes. Why do that when she - to use your pronoun - didn't expect Lynda and Jeff to be alive to make an identification based on the costume?”

Where others see a door, Mac sees a window - and climbs through it. “Because the perpetrator could hardly guarantee that no one else would see her near the scene. Surely Oscar's men would make inquiries. Someone wearing green scrubs and a mask a mile or two away from the house where Jeff and Lynda were held might not go unnoticed even this close to Halloween.”

“But why wear such a distinctive and easily remembered costume to begin with?” Lynda asked. “Most of us are dressed pretty simply with just a prop or two.”
I'd certainly remember your costume, Lyn!

“That, my dear Lynda, was the most crucial clue of all,” Mac said. “Why wear a concealing costume unless the person behind that mask was afraid that if you saw her you might be either wary or so surprised that you would be fully engaged in talking to her, and therefore no easy victim?”

Oscar, a fat cigar between his first two fingers, scratched his wig. “Where is all this going, Mac?” He wasn't the only one who wondered.

But instead of moving ahead, Mac shifted into reverse. “Jefferson was right a while ago when he said the combination proves a connection to Pete Duffy, but it is not the kind of connection most of us would think of. The combination was PETER. Who called him Peter? None of his friends did - not Bob Tucker, not his Uncle Fred Gaffe. You heard them refer to him as ‘Pete' tonight. So far as we know, only Kathy Bell referred to him by his proper name - Kathy Bell and you, Miss Bennet.”

She was standing right beside his wheelchair. Her eyebrows shot up. I half expected her to say “
Alors
!” as Poirot often did. But she didn't say anything. Neither did anybody else for ten or fifteen seconds, which can seem like an eternity in a situation like that.

“So I don't use nicknames for people I don't know,” she said finally, skipping the accent this time. “What's your point?”

“My point is that I am rather sure you did know him, and that is the reason you called him by what has been described as a ‘pet name.' I find names quite interesting. You prefer to be called Beth, invariably a shortened form of Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bennet is a rather famous name from the classic novel
Pride and Prejudice
, one well known to devotees of Jane Austen - such as Kathy Bell.”

In one fluid movement, he stood from his wheelchair and pulled off both her hat and her pointed mustache.

“Kathy!” Bob Tucker cried. He almost swallowed his lollipop.

“Yes,” Lynda said slowly. “She hasn't changed much. I saw her on the streets a few times back then, although her parents would never let me talk to her. I probably wouldn't have recognized her if I hadn't known that's who she was, but she couldn't know that for sure. That's why the scrubs when she flagged us down.”

“There's nothing illegal about changing my name before I came back to this narrow-minded town,” Kathy/Beth said. “And you can't prove I did anything else.”

“We'll see about that,” Oscar said. “There may be some physical evidence at what's left of the crime scene. I'd like you to come with me to answer a few questions.”

I had my eye on the Poirot walking stick leaned against a wall behind Kathy Bell, alert for any quick movement in that direction. But she just crossed her arms over her flattened chest. “I'm not going anywhere or saying anything until I get a lawyer.”

“May I recommend Erica Slade?” Mac said. “She revels in difficult cases.”

“Well, we sure know how to throw a party, don't we, sweetie?” Mo Russert raised a glass of red wine to Jonathan Hawes and downed it.

It was past midnight. The McCabes, the Codys, and the lovebirds were the last holdouts, sitting around a coffee table. Lynda had removed her wig, giving free rein to her honey-blond curls. Mac was ready to do what he does best - quaff beer and fill in the blanks. But this time there wasn't much left to tell.

“The whole town, certainly including her parents, considered Kathy Bell a victim,” he said. “But she didn't. She romanticized her relationship with Pete Duffy into a forbidden but genuine love, a perspective that apparently only grew through the years. And as it did, so did her bitterness at those involved in putting Duffy in jail. Perhaps she especially hated you for the stories you wrote, Lynda, because you were a woman.”

Lynda wisely avoided commentary on Mac's amateur psychoanalysis and stuck to the facts. “I remember several widely reported cases around the country in recent years of female teachers who were convicted of having sex with a minor student, then resumed the relationship after serving prison time.”

Instead of noting that I'd never been that fond of any of
my
female teachers, I said, “So after Pete Duffy died, she went totally round the bend and came back here hell-bent on revenge. And Lynda was her number one target. She adopted a phony name and avoided people that she thought might recognize her.”

Mac had beer in his mouth, so he just nodded.

“I must have told her that Lynda and Jeff were coming to the party, although I don't remember that,” Mo said. “I do remember that she told me she was a nurse. That explains where she got the scrubs and the anesthesia or whatever sleep-inducing drug she used. But how could she become a nurse under an assumed name?”

“I think it more likely that she was a student nurse somewhere far from here under her real name,” Mac said.

“And how and where did she get the explosives?” I wondered.

Mac shrugged. “We may never know, old boy.”

“I'm worried about that old boyfriend who blew the whistle on Kathy and Duffy,” Kate said, “but I'm sure Oscar will get on that.”

“Poor Oscar,” Hawes said. “He never got to say, ‘Just one more thing, ma'am' like Columbo.”

“He's probably saying it right now,” I pointed out. “Besides, he'll get something even better - an arrest.”

“Thanks to Ironsides here,” my sister said.

Oh, puh-leeze.

Mac, still on wheels, attempted to look humble. That's not one of his best tricks. “There is in fiction the grand tradition of what is called the armchair detective. Perhaps it would not be going too far to say that I solved this case from a wheelchair.”

Santa Crime

No one should be surprised that Sebastian McCabe was tapped to play Santa Claus for the Christmas party at Serenity House, Erin's premier social service agency. My brother-in-law weighs in at a few dozen pounds north of healthy and hides his triple chins under a beard, albeit an almost black one rather than white. Plus, he's just a big kid himself.

But I just couldn't see myself as one of his elves.

“I'm six-one,” I reminded my wife unnecessarily. “You should do it.”

And what a fetching elf she would make!

“I'm almost as tall as you are, Jeff.”
Only when you're wearing heels, my beloved, like those three-inch Italian beauties you bought on our honeymoon.
Which I like a lot!
“Besides, size doesn't matter,” she went on. “Think of that movie. You know, the one about the tall elf. I forget the title. Listen, you only have to wear a hat. I'm not asking you to put on green tights. I know that would be too much for you.”

Damned right!

Lynda reached across the table and took my hand. “Oh, come on,
tesoro mio
. Humor me.”

It was hard not to, considering that it was December 1 and we were in the middle of celebrating the tenth anniversary of Lynda's twenty-first birthday. I'd brought her to dinner at Ricoletti's Ristorante, Erin's finest eatery and Lynda's favorite.

“Well, I know you're going to be busy helping Triple M that day,” I conceded. “In the Christmas spirit, I'll do my part. How bad can it be?”

Remind me never to ask that question again.

Serenity House isn't really a house. It's a network of social services located in a number of different buildings. But one of those buildings is a house - a former mansion, in fact - located on Front Street. That's where the agency's annual Holiday Fest is held two Saturdays before Christmas. The craft show is a fundraiser where many clients of the agency sell their work while musicians and singers perform in the background. “Breakfast with Santa,” served in a separate room, draws in families with kids. Harvey Duncan had played the Big Guy for years, but he was spending his winters in Florida now that he had retired from teaching. Mac, when asked, didn't even feign reluctance to don the red suit and pointy hat.

The place was in a happy uproar when I showed up about ten o'clock in the morning. Dozens of patrons in the holiday spirit talked loudly over the Christmas singers. Tables displaying locally produced crafts, from jewelry and Christmas ornaments to needlepoint and paintings, lined the sides of the mansion's former ballroom and ran down the middle as well.

“Hi, Jeff,” yelled Triple M in her usual cheerful manner. Sister Mary Margaret Malone - Sister Polly to most people, just plain Polly to Lynda, and Triple M to me - had a
Star Trek
coffee mug in one hand and a scarf in the other, which she was waving. She also had two males and a female gathered around her, ranging in age from juvenile to old enough to know better. I sized them up immediately as lawbreakers assigned to do community service with Triple M in her capacity as Erin's volunteer jail chaplain.

One of the miscreants was an African-American teenager who looked like he should have been on a basketball court, one a young woman whose attitude problem could be spotted a mile away, and one a thirty-something guy in need of a shave. Dubbing them in my mind the Three Wise Guys, I wondered whether they wouldn't be more trouble than they were worth. I had no idea. Nevertheless, I knew that Triple M could handle them. Standing about five-six and wearing a denim skirt, chin-length dark hair parted in the middle, she hardly looked threatening. But she possessed both an air of authority and a black belt in taekwondo.

“Ho, ho, ho,” I replied grumpily to her merry greeting.

“Why don't you just say ‘Bah, humbug,' while you're at it?” said a familiar husky voice behind me.

“Okay. Bah, humbug.”

This quick accession to Lynda's request did not meet with the approval that I had expected. She shoved a hat down over my eyes. I removed it quickly. This was just horseplay, of course. She couldn't possibly have been upset with me. I'd been tending to laundry and vacuuming back at our apartment like a good househusband for the past two hours while she'd been here helping Triple M and my sister Kate get the crafters set up. I must say she looked especially comely in that red turtleneck sweater with her dark honey curls sticking out of the Santa hat.

And she expected me to wear the goofy green elf headgear that she'd pulled over my eyes. I held it in front of her. “This doesn't fit.”

“It fits perfectly, doesn't it, Nicholas?”

I hadn't noticed the boy next to Lynda. He was about twelve years old, but I only learned that later. He looked younger. His hair was about the same shade of red as mine. The other thing he had in common with me was the way he looked at Lynda adoringly. Now I remembered hearing about him. Nicholas Brandt was one of the Serenity House kids that Lynda had become chummy with in her volunteer work there. With his father in prison and his mother dead, his story was a particularly heart-tugging one. Lynda had described him as a sweet boy.

“I guess so,” he said hesitantly.

It would fit you better
, I thought.
In fact, you look like an elf.
And that's when an idea began to form in the Cody brain. But before I got very far with it I heard -

“Lynda, my dear, look what I found!”

All eyes turned to Serena Mason, because that's what eyes did when Serena Mason was around. Every male in Erin is half in love with her, not exempting infants and old men, but she doesn't play favorites. Now in her mid-sixties, she's been a widow for more than thirty years. As the chair of the Mason Foundation, she's a major supporter of Serenity House and dozens of other good works around town. Her late husband's great-grandfather, or maybe I'm one “great” off, had been a railroad baron.

Serena held out a long box, the kind that jewelry comes in, and slowly opened it. Nicholas's eyes opened wide. Triple M, who belonged to a science fiction and fantasy book club with Serena, ambled our way for a better look. The Three Wise Guys followed. We were all bunched up near a corner of the room. If we'd been in the dead center we couldn't have attracted more attention.

“How beautiful!” Lynda said.

Serena was holding out a strand of pearls for everyone to see. “Yes, aren't they?” She put them around her neck. By their very simplicity they looked stunning next to Serena's short salt-and-pepper hair and hazel eyes. But then, everything looked good on Serena Mason. She didn't have to dress like an heiress, and she didn't. Today, for example, she was wearing a colorful Christmas sweater over gray slacks. She was probably about thirty pounds overweight according to the insurance company charts, but I bet I'm the only man who's ever noticed. And that's only because I'm kind of focused on health issues.

“I think I'll put this away for now.” Serena carefully put the necklace back in the box.

Just then the Bernardin High School band struck up “Here Comes Santa Claus.” With a sinking feeling, I knew that the moment of my doom was approaching unless I could implement my plan quickly.

“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas to all!”

You'd think a guy who's written more novels than I've written Christmas cards could come up with a better entrance line than that. But that's what Santa McCabe was booming as he made his scheduled ten-thirty appearance coming down Front Street.

Afterwards I tried to remember who, besides me, went outside to watch Santa make his dramatic entrance in a horse-drawn carriage, but it was useless. I know that Lynda, Serena, and Kate were with me, and there must have been others. But I was too busy watching the ham of all hams playing the part he was made for.

“Ho, ho, ho!”

“Hey, that's my line,” I whispered to Lynda. She poked me in the ribs with an elbow.

I pulled out my smartphone and sent a tweet on my St. Benignus College account:
Santa Claus, AKA Professor Sebastian McCabe, has arrived at Serenity House.
It never hurts to boost the faculty. Then I took a photo for Facebook and the website. About an inch of snow lay on the ground and flakes were falling. Perfect!

Mac waved, he smiled, he held up little babies and posed for pictures. This went on for several minutes as he made his way through the crowd to the big dining room for “Breakfast with Santa.” After large amounts of sugary juice and fat-laden donuts were consumed, he would listen to requests and give each child a small gift. At some point I became aware that Nicholas was standing next to me.

“You!” I said.

“Me?” He looked terrified, if not guilty.

“Yes you, Nicholas. You're just the young man I wanted to see. How'd you like to earn some money to buy your girlfriend a Christmas present?”

“I don't have a girlfriend, not really.”

“Well, I'm sure you could use five dollars.”

“I could use ten even more.”

What a cute, enterprising kid! He reminded me of myself when I was younger. Or right now, for that matter. After haggling a little just to show that I was paying attention, I slipped Nicholas the ten-spot and the hat. Then I headed back to the crafts room. I still needed to buy a present for Popcorn. What would my secretary like? Maybe one of those scarves Triple M had been looking at before, or maybe a hand-made blanket with a colorful design.

I'd just stepped back into the former ballroom when I heard Serena Mason say, “Oh, no! I can't believe this.”

She was standing about where we'd been before Santa's arrival, a shocked look on her face. Curiosity being one of my favorite emotions, I was at her side in short order. Lynda and Kate were already there.

Serena held up the box with her pearls. Well, no, she held up the box
without
her pearls. “I was going to show Kate, but they're gone! I just put the box down for a second to see Santa Claus and somebody took the pearls out.”

“Where did you put the box down?” I asked.

She pointed. “On that empty table. The crafts person assigned there hasn't shown up yet.”

“You're sure you didn't just misplace the pearls?”

For the first time in my admittedly limited acquaintance with Serena Mason, I saw the steel beneath the velvet. “I do not misplace things.”

Okay, I believe you!

“Then you should call the police, Mrs. Mason.”

“What, and spoil the day for everyone else? I won't hear of it.”

Lynda suddenly took an interest in my presence. “Why aren't you in the other room elfing, anyway?”

“I subcontracted the job to Nicholas. He'll do a fine job and it'll boost his self-confidence.”

If she had a problem with that, she didn't say so. She took my arm and walked me away from Serena and Kate. “This is terrible, Jeff. Serena is the biggest supporter of Serenity House. We've got to get her necklace back. Maybe Mac can help.”

Why does everybody always think he's the only one who can solve a mystery? “I'm not sure this is a case for Sebastian McCabe. We probably don't have to look any farther than the Three Wise Guys.”

My beloved looked at me quizzically. “I mean those three characters helping Polly,” I explained. “They have community service written all over them.” I looked around. All three were still in the room. “What do you know about them?”

“Not as much as Polly does.”

“That's okay, I don't need complete biographies. And I don't want to talk to the good sister until I have to. She'll think I'm picking on them.”

“You are.”

“But not without reason. If I'm right, they're all petty criminals. Am I right?”

Lynda sighed. “The tall, skinny black kid wearing the Cincinnati Bengals jersey is Billy Major.” He was walking around with his hands behind his back, the picture of nonchalance. That seemed highly suspicious to me. “He took his principal's car for a joy ride. Apparently he was irked at repeated attempts to get him to join the high school basketball team. He's a sophomore and taller than you, but he prefers to play chess. Polly says he's bored.”

“Maybe he thought stealing a string of pearls from Serena Mason would be almost as much fun as grand theft auto. Who's the girl?”

At the moment she was sitting at a table with her hands folded in front of her. She had long brown hair gathered back in a ponytail that showed off a huge set of earrings shaped like peace symbols.

“That's Minnie Cooper. She's older than she looks, about twenty-two. This isn't the first time she's been in trouble. She's a repeat customer in Oscar's jail. This time around she was arrested for shoplifting jewelry at Looney Ladies Gallery.”

Bingo!

“Come on - one of the suspects has a history of stealing jewelry?” I said. “It can't be that easy!”

“Probably not. The dude in the lumberjack shirt walking behind Polly is Elvis Jones. I like the stubble effect, the two-day growth of beard. You ought to try that, Jeff.” I glared. Lynda went on: “He got arrested for Operating a Vehicle Under the Influence, not for the first time. Polly says his wife was furious. They're both trying to talk him into joining AA.”

“So he might have lifted the pearls as a peace offering to his wife.”

“All three make plausible suspects, all right.” I was glad I didn't have to point that out to Lynda. “Which one do you think did it? Assuming for the moment that it's one of them and not one of the other eighty people here.”

“Not everybody who was in this room a half-hour ago is a suspect,” I protested. “It has to be somebody who actually saw the pearls. The Three Wise Guys qualify.”

“So is this a
Murder on the Orient Express
deal?”

We'd been married long enough - seven months now - that the Cody sarcasm was rubbing off on Lynda.