Rogues Gallery (8 page)

“You look skeptical, Jefferson. Well, I don't insist upon it. In fact, there is another possibility that I find even more satisfying. Sherlock Holmes at the dawn of his career talked about the science of deduction. In later years, he referred to the art of detection. Perhaps my ability to create fictional crimes and solve real ones is simply another case of art in the blood taking the strangest forms. My mother was once a rather well known soap opera actress, you know.”

The Revengers

“Mrs. Peel, we're needed.”

My feeble attempt at a suave British accent sounded lame even to me.

Undaunted, I considered myself in the hallway mirror of our apartment: Bowler hat, rakishly cocked.
Check.
Edwardian suit.
Check.
Black umbrella, full-size, not the kind that fits in a pocket.
Check
.

I was ready for an “Avengers” night, all right. I just had no idea then what that would involve. By the end of the evening my beloved wife and I would be nearly blown up, but it was almost worth it to see Sebastian McCabe pull off one of the neatest bits of deduction in his sleuthing career. Almost.

Enigmatic smile.
Check.

Okay, I didn't actually look like the debonair John Steed, what with my red hair and all. But at least most of the other guests at the party would know who I was supposed to be, especially since I would be accompanied by -

The bathroom door flew open, propelled by the kick of a long, well-formed leg. Lynda Teal - known as Mrs. Cody here at home and in several other places - burst into the hallway flinging body parts with the skill of the taekwondo master that she is.

She was wearing a shoulder-length auburn wig over her curly honey-blond hair and a black leather catsuit over her shapely body. The suit was the sort of tight-fitting garment with lots of pockets and zippers that I always associate with Mrs. Peel, although she sometimes wore much softer outfits on the late 1960s TV show.

When Lynda paused to catch her breath, I moved in for a husbandly kiss.

“Very nice outfit,” I murmured appreciatively. “I'm glad you talked me into the Steed and Mrs. Peel gig.”

Originally, when Maureen Russert invited us to the party, I'd thought of dressing in an outfit more reflective of my own tastes. That had been about two weeks earlier as I was prowling the mystery shelves of Pages Gone By, the used bookstore on High Street where Mo works as a clerk and dreams of starting her own shop devoted to mysteries.

“Hey, Jeff, I want you and Lynda to come to my Halloween costume party.” Mo has a few years on me, putting her north of forty, but she doesn't look it with her freckles and dark bangs. She also dresses young, on this particular day wearing a pumpkin-colored blouse, black slacks, high-heeled boots, and a chocolate scarf.

“I'm too handsome to be a vampire,” I objected.

“You don't need to be,” she said, totally ignoring the opportunity to agree with me. “The theme is TV detectives. You'd be perfect as Monk.”

What do you mean by that?
I had no idea what she meant by that.

“And you'll know most of the people there - Mac, Chief Hummel, Serena Mason, Fred Gaffe, Sister Polly...” This laundry list went on until she got to my sister and my administrative assistant.

“Am I the last to be invited?”

“Actually, you're one of the first. I've only mentioned it so far to friends and customers I happened to see. The invitations go out today. But I'm sure most of them will come.”

That Sebastian McCabe would go I had no doubt. The chance to hold forth as a Great Detective would be too perfect an opportunity for my brother-in-law - professor, magician, mystery writer, and amateur sleuth of some experience - to pass up. But which detective? Mac was too rotund and too bearded to credibly assume the iconic deerstalker and pipe of his hero, Sherlock Holmes. He'd once shaved to portray Mycroft Holmes in a play, but he couldn't diet himself down to Sherlockian proportions by Halloween - if ever.

“Isn't your apartment kind of small for a party of that size, Mo?”
Or even for Mac by himself?

“Yeah, but it isn't going to be at my apartment. We're having it at Jonathan's new place, a great atmosphere for Halloween.” I was fast enough to pick up that she meant Jonathan Hawes, of Hawes & Holder Funeral Home on Market Street, which had just acquired a big old river captain's house outside of town for a second location. But my face must have shown that I didn't get the connection to Mo, because she quickly added, “We're dating.”

“Oh! I see. Well, I hope it works out. He's a nice guy.” How's that for a clever response? My etiquette book is missing the pages that explain how I was supposed to react to such news from a sort-of former flame. Mo is a divorcée, thanks to Arthur Bancroft Russert being a total jerk who traded her in for a younger model. A common interest in mysteries had brought Mo and me together for a few casual dates during a period when Lynda had given me my walking papers. But that was almost two years ago, and the walking papers had since been traded in for a marriage license. I barely remembered that Mo and I had dated, and I certainly never thought about it. But still -

“So are you,” Mo said, snapping my mind back to the present. A nice guy, she meant. It seems her taste in men is good. “The party is Saturday, October 27.”

“Unless my bride has something else planned for us, we'll be there.”

I brought up the subject the next morning as Lynda and I were working out at Nouveau Shape, the fitness center not far from my office. After a few chuckles and totally unwarranted comments about Mo's suggestion that I come as the obsessive-compulsive and multi-phobic TV sleuth Adrian Monk (“How will they tell that you're not just being you?”), she said a Halloween party sounded like fun. Then we got down to the serious business of discussing our costumes.

“I want to be Mike Hammer,” I said.

Lynda shook her blond curls as she lifted a barbell. “I don't think so.” Her husky voice showed no strain from the exercise. I was breaking out in a sweat watching her, but that had nothing to do with the shape I'm in. It had to do with the shape
she's
in.

“Why not?”

“Because I think we should be Steed and Mrs. Peel. We could call ourselves ‘The Revengers.' You'd make an adorable Steed.”

Adorable. Oh, well, sure. If you put it that way...

I was familiar with the old British TV series
The Avengers
, not to be confused with the Marvel Comics superheroes of the same name, because it was one of Lynda's favorites. She'd brought her boxed DVD set of all fifty-one episodes featuring Emma Peel to our marriage.

“But you're too curvy to be Mrs. Peel,” I objected, studying the evidence.

“I can fix that.”

“Don't!”

I don't really remember ever agreeing to Lynda's costume suggestion, but somehow I wound up buying an umbrella and a bowler hat at the St. Vincent de Paul store in downtown Erin. Lynda bought her catsuit online. Standing in the hallway of our apartment, I admired it again in some detail.

“We'd better go,” Lynda said.

“Are you sure we can't - ”

“Yes. I'm sure. We can't.” She punctuated the end of each sentence with a kiss. Talk about mixed messages!

“Mac still won't tell me who he's coming as,” I said as I slipped into the passenger's seat of Lynda's bright yellow Mustang. My sister, Kate, was teaming up with Sister Mary Margaret Malone (AKA Triple M or Sister Polly) and Mo Russert to be Charlie's Angels, so that was no clue as to what identity her husband would be assuming. He could hardly be Charlie, the disembodied voice, and he would never settle for being the second banana on the show, Bosley.

“I hear that Lafcadio Figg is coming as Nero Wolfe, so that's out,” Lynda said, buckling her seat belt.

Or maybe not
. I smiled at the thought of those two peacocks both showing up in yellow shirts as Nero Wolfe. The subtle fireworks would make quite a show.

The way out to the new Hawes & Holder Funeral Home location seemed a bit creepy to me that fall evening. Our car was the only one on the road most of the way. Houses were far apart, and most of them dark.

“Half of these old homes look abandoned,” Lynda commented.

“Probably not half, but there have been a lot of foreclosures out here in the country, just like in town. The good news for us is that home prices and interest rates are a real bargain right now.”

We'd already decided to buy a home, but hadn't moved into the shopping phase yet. I was still mapping out our strategy for that.

“Look!” Lynda pointed down the road about a hundred yards on the right. A figure in green scrubs and a surgical mask was waving to us like mad. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. The effect was a little eerie in the gathering gloom. “I bet it's somebody going to our party. Who do you think he's supposed to be - Quincy? House?”

She put on her turn signal and slowed the car.

“You're going to stop?”

“Of course I am. It has to be somebody we know.”

“Yeah, like maybe the Grim Reaper.”

Even in the limited light I could see Lynda roll her eyes. “This is Erin, Jeff, not New York City. You aren't afraid to pick up somebody in trouble, are you?”

Now that you mention it ...
“No, I'm not afraid. I'm just cautious. And that's not a bad thing.”

“No, it's not, but for a guy who's been through a lot of adventures, you're not very adventurous.”

That's
because
I've been through a lot of adventures
.

By this time Lynda had stopped the car. Dr. Whoever wordlessly climbed into the back seat. I was just about to turn around and see whom we had here when I felt something press against my neck, followed by a strange feeling that went through my whole body. My muscles seized up. I couldn't move and I tingled all over, not a fun tingle but more like what you'd expect if you stuck a wet finger into an electric socket. Then I felt a needle in my neck. Then nothing.

I woke up on the floor of a dark, empty house, my brains replaced with cobwebs. Disoriented, it took me a while to remember the first part of the evening - assuming it was the same day. Judging by the darkness outside the dirty windows, I was pretty sure that it was.

Lynda! My panic lasted only about two seconds. Looking around, I quickly saw that she was right next to me on a wicker couch, the only furniture in the room. But she was tied up. At first I thought she was bound in place with rope. On closer inspection, I realized that wrapped around her were several plastic-covered cables with a combination lock on the end, similar to what I use to secure my bicycle when I park in town. Why was she shackled like that? And since she was, why wasn't I?

“Welcome back,” Lynda said, stretching her neck to peer down at me. “Thank God you're okay. I was afraid you were - ”

“I'm fine. How about you?”

“Slightly embarrassed and very pissed.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Dr. Grim Reaper tasered us, then injected us with something to put us to sleep.”

“Tasered!”

“Absolutely. I was tasered once for a story when I was a reporter, so I know what it feels like.”

I won't say I warned you not to pick that guy up.

“You warned me, Jeff. This is all my fault.”

“No it isn't. It's the fault of the whack job who did this.” I looked around the empty room. “I bet this house is in foreclosure. Our masked doctor must have broken into the place.”

Lynda shook her bewigged head in puzzlement, a very limited range of motion because of the chains around her. “We know some crazy people, but we don't know anybody crazy enough to pull a stupid joke like this. Do we?”

“I don't think it's a joke, Lyn.” While we had been talking, I'd noticed two things: An envelope lying on her stomach, tucked under a cable, and something attached to the wicker couch behind Lynda's head. I rolled over to get a closer look.

“I don't believe this,” I muttered. But my body believed it, because I was starting to get warm and I was shaking. I breathed deeply to steady myself.

“What? What is it? What's wrong?”

“I've never seen a stick of dynamite in person, but I think there's one locked to the couch. It's wired to a small electronic alarm clock and a battery.” I stuck my face up close.
Oh, crap.
“We've been out a couple of hours, Lyn. It's about nine-forty. And it looks like the alarm is set for ten o'clock.”

“Thank God your hands are free to turn the alarm off.”

How to put this delicately?
“I don't think that should be our first option. Defusing a bomb is not something I want to try to learn on the job.”

“Call 9-1-1.”

I reached into my pocket. It was empty. “My iPhone's gone.”
Now I'm really mad.

“Run and get help.”

I shook my head. “I'm not leaving you. Besides, I presume we're still in the country. We could be quite a distance from the nearest house. I don't know where your car is and I don't think I should waste time looking.”

Lynda doesn't usually use the kind of language that came out of her pretty mouth at that point, but I can't say I blamed her.

She started wriggling her body, which in normal circumstances would have been fun to watch, but didn't do much good. “This is ... just so ... bizarre.”

“Like an
Avengers
plot,” I agreed. Looking back now, I can see the blessing of that. The total unreality of the situation staved off total panic. I removed the envelope tucked between Lynda's stomach and the cable binding her to the couch. “I suspect that this will tell us what's going on here.”

Later, I realized I should have held the envelope with a handkerchief and slit it open with my Swiss Army Knife to preserve any fingerprints. Instead, I ripped open the envelope and quickly scanned the typed message, unsigned.

It was a poem:

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

I loathe thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

I loathe thee to the level of everyday's