Rogues Gallery (9 page)

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I loathe thee freely, as men strive for Right;

I loathe thee purely, as they turn from Praise.

I loathe thee with a passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

I loathe thee with a loathe I seemed to lose

With my lost saints, - I loathe thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God choose,

I shall but loathe thee better after death.

“That doesn't tell us much,” I said. “We already knew that somebody doesn't like you - which I find hard to believe, by the way.”

“Thanks, but it also tells me that our nutball is not very creative. That's a straight rip-off from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous poem, ‘How do I love thee,' with ‘love' changed to ‘loathe' throughout.”

“I thought it sounded familiar.”

“Who do I know - oh!”

“What?”

“Do you remember Pete Duffy?”

“Refresh my memory.”

“All of this happened shortly before you and I met, so it must have been about seven years ago. It was a story that I covered for the
Observer & News-Ledger
as a reporter. Pete Duffy was an eleventh-grade English teacher at Malcolm C. Cotton High School. He was having an affair with one of his students, a girl named Kathleen Bell. I remember that she was a pretty girl and smart, but very romantic. She was into Jane Austen novels. Pete used to send her love poems that were recycled from Mrs. Browning's
Sonnets from the Portuguese
. Somebody - I always suspected it was the football player that Kathy dumped for Pete - found out what was going on and told her parents. They went to the police.”

This was sounding vaguely familiar. “There wasn't a trial, was there?”

“No, Pete copped a plea so Kathy wouldn't have to testify. I forget the length of the sentence, but the prosecutor made it clear in public statements that he drove a hard bargain because Pete showed no remorse at all in interviews with me. I wrote a whole series - three stories, I think. He was obviously still obsessed with the poor kid, and full of himself to boot. His attorney thought it would be a good idea to talk with me to show that he wasn't a pervert, just a guy who happened to fall in love with and seduce an underage student. The attorney was way wrong.

“The Bell family left town to put all this behind them, even though Pete went to prison.”

“I bet he isn't there anymore.” I picked up the combination lock. Just like mine, it had letters instead of numbers. I started spinning them. “He's out and looking for revenge on you. And he left this little love letter so you'd know who's behind it before the bomb goes off.”

“What are you doing?”

“The combination to this lock is five letters. Given the unimaginative nature of our friend, I'm sure that it's the name of his young lady love.” I clicked in the Y of KATHY and tugged. The lock didn't give. I said a bad word.

“Pete called her Kate in his letters,” Lynda said. “It was a pet name kind of thing.” That kind of creeped me out because Kate is my sister's name, but I gave it a try.

KATEB

BKATE

KATIE

KBELL

BELLK

No dice.

Damn! I'd been so sure. Despair settled on me. I was afraid to look at my watch. How would Mac solve this? He'd probably remember some Sherlock Holmes story that would provide a big clue. That was no help.

“
His
name!” Lynda shouted. “Try the name of his true love - himself.”

I quickly moved the letters on the combination lock to PETED.
Nothing.
DPETE.
Nothing.

“What was her pet name for him?”

“Peter.”

“How original.”

PETER

Click.

The lock opened. I shouted something inarticulate. Despite trembling hands - chalk it up to fear and excitement both - I had the other two locks off within seconds. Lynda stood up awkwardly, wobbling a bit on her stiff legs.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed her hand and we started running. The house was set well back from the road. When we finally reached the pavement, we looked back. Lynda's Mustang was parked in the driveway on the side of the house. We stood in silence for a while, breathing a little hard and holding on to each other. Did we dare go back for the car? I didn't think so.

I looked at my watch: ten o'clock.

After another couple of minutes, I ventured, “Maybe after all that it was just a - ”

The boom sounded more like a firecracker from where we were standing. It didn't take down the house and it didn't even shake the Mustang, but it was a real explosion. The bank would need to have at least a few rooms remodeled before they could sell the place. If we'd still been inside at the time we'd have been killed.

“No,” Lynda said, “it wasn't just a joke.”

Having no access to a cell phone and not knowing how many doors we'd have to knock on to find somebody home, we decided to go to Mo and Jonathan's party to report our near-death experience. Oscar Hummel, Erin's police chief, would be among the guests. And so would Mac. The GPS gizmo plugged into the Mustang, which has spoken with an English accent ever since shortly after we returned from London, got us there in about five minutes.

The old mansion that in a few weeks would become a funeral home was lit up and alive with noise. I felt warmer as we approached the front door.

Jonathan Hawes, the friendly undertaker, answered the door. Tall and lean, he looked right in the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape. Still, I thought it was a bit of a copout to wear his costume from the play
1895
in which he had starred as Sherlock Holmes. The deerstalker had been a big bone of contention between Lafcadio Figg, the director of the drama, and Sebastian McCabe, who wrote the play and co-starred as the smarter and lazier Holmes brother, Mycroft. Mac resisted the headgear because it was never mentioned in any story, but Figg insisted because it had been good enough for the actor William Gillette. Figg won.

“Where the hell have you been?” Hawes roared. His first drink of some adult beverage clearly had not been his last.

“Hell is exactly where we've been,” Lynda said grimly.

She looked like it, with her wig askew and the catsuit somewhat the worse for all the wriggling she'd done in an attempt to slip her bonds. I didn't look like the cover of
GQ
myself, mind you. I'd found my bowler hat and umbrella in Lynda's car, but I was in no mood to dress for a party.

“What have you done with her, you beast?” Triple M yelled. But her perennially cheerful face fell when she saw us. I'm sure we didn't look like the jaunty Steed and Peel she'd been expecting for some time. Instead, our appearance must have reflected what our bodies and minds had been through over the past couple of hours.

Hawes got it. “Come on in.”

Joining the party was like falling through a TV screen into The Mystery Channel, that cable network with all the old detective shows from the past sixty years. Some of the costumed guests were in the huge hallway, some in one of the rooms on either side of it. I'm sure there were also a few partiers in the kitchen where I couldn't see them.

Figg, as promised, was dressed as Nero Wolfe, with a yellow shirt and an orchid in his lapel. He had the figure for it, and he'd sacrificed his muttonchops for the sake of authenticity. My sister Kate's scarlet hair was teased like one of Charlie's Angels, but I'd never learned their names. Bob Tucker, the bald-headed principal of Malcolm C. Cotton High School, sucked on a lollipop as Kojak. Beth Bennet, a newcomer to town whom I'd run into a few times at Pages Gone By, wore a three-piece suit, a bow tie, a homburg, and a pointed mustache. She made a cute Hercule Poirot in the manner of the BBC productions with David Suchet, not the Peter Ustinov rendition.

Don't get the idea that I consciously made this inventory as soon as I stepped into the house. That didn't happen. Once in the door I looked around for Mac and Oscar. To my astonishment, Mac wheeled himself our way.

“There you are at last!” he thundered. “I was about to suggest a search party.”

Lynda and I both stared at the wheelchair.

Mac, following our line of sight, answered our unasked question. “I am Robert T. Ironsides, Chief of Detectives, Retired, NBC, 1967 to 1975, television's most famous sleuth on wheels, not counting the car in
Knight Rider
.” Mac spoke with some impatience, it seemed to me.
How was I supposed to know this trivia?
“I am quite certain he would have grown a beard eventually. Raymond Burr, the actor who played the part, did. And why, may I ask, are you two so late?”

“We've been tasered, drugged, kidnapped, and almost blown up,” I snapped. “So I'm sorry we're late for the party.” Mac is my best friend - has been for about twenty years - but once in a while I have to assert myself.

“Excellent!” he said. “You are obviously the Avengers, disheveled by your ordeal, and you have brought us a mystery suitable for a house full of detectives.”

Sebastian McCabe's a genius, I'll admit that, but he was way behind everybody else on this one. Lynda had to spell it out for him.

“We're not just role-playing, dammit. Jeff just saved both our lives.”

Hey, I guess I did at that.

Mac looked as if my bride had socked him in his considerable gut. “Indeed? That is most distressing!” Behind the beard, his broad face registered a combination of shock and concern, and maybe a measure of chagrin at misreading the situation. I hadn't seen Mac look so unnerved since Kate was abducted in London earlier that year. I bet he really needed a cigar just then.

“What happened?” Oscar Hummel was right behind Mac. “I mean, besides everything you said.” He bit down on an unlit stogie. The thirty-year-old tan trench coat alone was enough to signal that Erin's top cop was Detective Lieutenant Columbo of the Los Angeles Police, never mind that Oscar was maybe fifty pounds too heavy for the part. He also wore a three-dollar wig of curly dark hair to cover his bald head.

Lynda put her arm around me. Now that the crisis was over and we were safe among friends, her body was trembling. “Can a girl get a drink first?” she asked Hawes. Her throaty voice was shaky.

“Bourbon if you've got it,” I specified.

“I've got it.” He left, cape flapping, before I could tell him to make it two, on the rocks. I don't drink alcohol very often, but tonight I needed something stronger than my usual Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.

“You'd better sit,” Kate said, leading Lynda over to a sofa in what must have originally been a living room or parlor. By now partiers were drifting in from other rooms, murmuring quietly as if they were, well, at a funeral home.

Aneliese Pokorny (AKA Popcorn), my dyed-blond administrative assistant at St. Benignus College, had a look of concern that fit well with her role as Jessica Fletcher of
Murder, She Wrote
. Serena Mason, heiress and philanthropist, made an attractive Miss Marple - although she's a bit young, her hair still having a few dark streaks. Fred Gaffe, the white-haired author of the “Old Gaffer” column in
The Erin Observer & News-Ledger
, was just the right age for the septuagenarian (at least) private detective Barnaby Jones.

What I didn't see was anybody dressed in green scrubs.

“You have obviously had quite a shock, my dear Lynda,” Mac said.
Oh, now it's obvious!
“If you are not ready to talk about it - ”

Lynda shook her head. “No, we're ready. Oscar has to hear this.”

“Damn right,” the chief muttered.

With a considerable track record as an amateur sleuth, Mac occasionally needs reminding that Oscar represents official law enforcement in Erin.

Hawes came into the room with two glasses of brown liquid floating in ice. He gave one to Lynda and one to me, even though I hadn't asked for it.
You're a good man, Hawes. Remind me to see you for all my funeral needs.

Lynda grabbed the glass as if it were a lifeline. She drank about half in a swallow. She didn't even ask what brand, a mark of just how shook up she was. “On our way here there was a hitchhiker dressed like a doctor in green scrubs. We figured it was somebody coming to this party.”

With a journalist's eye for detail and the training to tell a story concisely, Lynda recounted our adventures of the evening. Before she even finished, Oscar called 9-1-1 to get the Fire Department to the house in the country. We'd had the presence of mind to get the address on our way out. By the time Lynda finished, Mac and everybody else knew just as much as I did. Even those who hadn't lived in Erin seven years ago were up to speed now on the backstory of the wayward English teacher.

“So there was a crime, but not exactly a mystery for you, Mac,” Lynda said. “It had to be Pete Duffy.”

If Mac was disappointed that he wouldn't be called on to play detective, that didn't last long. Hawes shook his head, looking professionally mournful. “That's not possible, Lynda.”

“Parole boards - ” I began.

“That's not what I mean. Pete died in prison about, oh, four months ago.”

Silence.

I don't know what our friends were thinking, but I was getting ready to look around for Rod Serling. I mean, it was a
Twilight Zone
moment. Finally, Sebastian McCabe, bless him, stirred in his wheelchair to ask, “How do you know that, Jonathan?”

“Hawes & Holder handled the services,” Hawes said. “The funeral was private with no public visitation. We didn't even place a death notice in the
Observer
. The family wanted to avoid any media attention at all.” He ignored the darts Lynda shot him with her eyes over the bourbon glass. “Only family and a few close friends like Bob were there.”