Rogues Gallery Read online

  Inside the restroom, I had him take off his Cincinnati Bengals jersey and his jeans. Except for his wallet, his pockets contained nothing but a Christmas tree ornament for which he had a receipt. “How tall are you, Billy?” I was just making conversation as I held up the pants to make sure nothing was taped inside.

  “Five-twelve.” I sensed a certain sensitivity on this subject.

  “And you don’t play basketball, huh?”

  “Hate it.”

  In five minutes of searching, I found nothing.

  Billy looked frustrated and angry at the end, a skinny kid stripped of his dignity and in his underwear. I didn’t blame him.

  “I’m sorry to have put you through this,” I said. “But at least we know you didn’t take the pearls.”

  He grabbed his jeans. “I already knew that.”

  Lynda, Triple M, and Serena Mason were waiting outside the restroom. I shook my head, not saying a word.

  “I hope Mac has another idea,” Lynda said.

  He always does, and sometimes it’s a good one.

  “Breakfast with Santa” was over, and the big man was enthroned on a chair listening to the three-year-old girl on his lap tell him she wanted an elephant for Christmas. On one side of him was a giant Christmas tree loaded down with ornaments, lights, popcorn, and garlands. Nicholas the Elf stood on the other side, his green elf hat cocked at a rakish angle.

  I approached Mac from the tree side. “We did the searches,” I said in a low voice while the girl climbed off his lap. “None of the suspects had the necklace.”

  “Aren’t you going to search me?” Nicholas asked. He didn’t look me in the eye exactly, but more like past me.

  I chuckled. “I don’t think that will be necessary, buddy.”

  “The result is exactly as I expected,” Mac said.

  “Oh, come on!”

  After a boy of about seven or eight put in his order for some death-dealing weapon, Mac turned his attention back to me. “I know who stole Serena Mason’s pearl necklace and where it is now. Come see me after Nicholas and I have finished our duties here.”

  Nicholas’s jaw fell open. Knowing my brother-in-law as I do, I was less impressed.

  “You’re bluffing,” I said. But I didn’t believe it. I was just goading his ego to see what I could get him to spill.

  “I assure you that I am not. You know, Jefferson, of all the many Christmas mysteries I have read, my favorite remains ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.’ Please bring Serena with you when you return.”

  Sebastian McCabe’s laundry list of faults does not include talking in non sequiturs. So he wasn’t just informing me about his preferences in crime literature by mentioning the Sherlock Holmes story; he was tossing me a clue. But what was it?

  My own mystery reading tends to hard-boiled private eyes like Mike Hammer and Spenser, but I also turn to my Complete Sherlock Holmes occasionally in self-defense. Mac has long been deeply involved in the world of Holmesmania, and now my bride had dipped a toe into it as well. At the latter’s urging, I’d recently re-read the blue carbuncle story. That’s the one where the gemstone of the title is hidden by the crook inside a Christmas goose.

  Hidden...

  So that was it! The body searches had come up dry because the thief had hidden the necklace somewhere, and Mac thought he knew where. I spent about ten minutes trying to figure out who and where before I gave up and decided to do some Christmas shopping. First I picked up a brightly painted wooden box for Popcorn. Then, looking around carefully to make sure that Lynda didn’t see me, I bought her a painting of Main Street in Erin. Neither of us had been born in the town, but it was our home now and always would be. The painting would fill that spot over our couch that Lynda always complained looked too bare.

  Shopping completed, I circled around to Serena Mason.

  “Mac says he knows who stole the necklace and where it is now,” I informed her.

  She smiled, her hazel eyes showing relief. “And Mac’s always right, isn’t he?”

  “That’s a bit of an exaggeration.” He has terrible taste in neckwear, for one thing. He likes bow ties. “But he does have a good track record as an amateur sleuth.”

  “I bet he couldn’t do it without you.”

  “That’s an even bigger exaggeration.” Actually, I’m just being modest. You’re quite perceptive, Serena, in addition to all of your other admirable qualities.

  Mac’s tour of duty as Santa ended at one o’clock, although the craft show continued until four. I rounded up Triple M, Kate, and Lynda on the stroke of one.

  “This should be interesting,” Serena said.

  “I’ll be glad when it’s over,” Triple M said glumly. She must have been thinking something along the lines of “nothing good can come of this.”

  We filed into the back of the room where Santa was holding forth, with Nicholas at his side, just as my nephew climbed onto his father’s lap. His siblings were too old for this. Rebecca, thirteen and a half, was out caroling with a boy. Amanda, two years younger, was probably pouring over college catalogues or inventing time travel.

  “I want a BB gun,” Brian announced.

  This struck me as a poor opening gambit for such a good chess player. Most Santas would have responded by telling him he’d shoot his eye out with such a present.

  “Handgun or rifle?” Mac asked. I was too wrapped up in looking at my sister to hear the answer. From the look on her face, father and son were both in trouble.

  Brian wasn’t the last supplicant, although we were already past the official closing time for “Breakfast with Santa.” Mac stayed to hear three more kids while I became increasingly impatient to hear his solution to our little mystery. Lynda, sensing my angst, took my hand and squeezed it.

  Finally, with a wave and a parting “ho ho ho,” Santa made it clear that he was finished until the next Holiday Fest. Parents and children exited. Kate said she would take Brian home. I suspected that he was in for a lecture on the way.

  “Hello, Serena,” Mac said as the other three of us gathered around him next to the Christmas tree.

  Serena shook his hand. “Hello, Mac. You were a wonderful Santa, and I know you’re a great detective, too.”

  Wasn’t it a work of art the way she delivered the compliment and the prod in a single sentence? No wonder she’s the town sweetheart.

  “I asked Jefferson to bring you here because I wanted to deliver your necklace to you from its place of concealment myself,” Mac said. “Consider it a Christmas present.”

  “Thanks. So ... where is it?”

  Mac turned to the Christmas tree. Or, to be more precise, he turned to Nicholas, who was standing in front of the Christmas tree. “Excuse me, Nicholas.”

  The lad moved over, his freckled face turning red.

  Mac reached his hand into the branches of the tree and pulled out a rope of pearls. At a casual glance, all that anyone would have given, they blended in with the popcorn. “It’s been here ever since I suggested that you search your suspects, Jefferson.”

  Call me dumb, but I didn’t get it. “How could any of the three come in here and put the necklace in the tree without being seen?”

  “None of them did. Nicholas did.”

  The twelve-year-old’s face went through a range of emotions before settling on panic. “Did not!” he yelled. “Why are you picking on me?”

  Lynda and Triple M were crestfallen. Nicholas didn’t do injured innocence with any conviction at all. For myself, I was too stunned to be disappointed. His mother was dead and he had said he had no girlfriend. Who would he have given the necklace to? Or was he under the illusion that he could sell it?

  “When I asked Nicholas whether he stole the pearl necklace, his affirmation of innocence was totally unconvincing,” Mac sai
d. “I only asked the question pro forma, but his reaction screamed guilt. Having a son and two daughters of my own, I know the signs.

  “When you went away to search the suspects, Jefferson, Nicholas - consumed by the guilt feelings natural to most first-time thieves - assumed that we would eventually suspect him after that proved fruitless. So he had to get rid of the necklace. As I turned my attention to my duties as Santa, I must confess that I did not see him place the necklace on the tree. However, I noticed that when you made your report, Nicholas never looked at you. He looked past you - at the Christmas tree.”

  “You can’t prove it!” Nicholas cried.

  Mac shrugged. “I suppose that is not necessary. Serena primarily wanted her necklace back, which she has. She was not so interested in assigning guilt or prosecuting the offender. However, I will note that the necklace was placed just on a level with your arms, Nicholas.”

  “Oh, Nicholas,” Lynda said. “Why?”

  He bit his lip, eyes downcast. “I wanted it for you. I didn’t have enough money to give you a present.”

  For Lynda? You little home-wrecker!

  Lynda bent down, held his shoulders, and looked him in the eye. “No girl worthy of a gift would want one that’s stolen, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas looked up. “Am I going to be arrested?”

  “You should be so lucky,” Serena said. “You’re a ward of the court, if I remember correctly.” She glanced at Lynda, who nodded. “I think I can arrange it so that you and I are going to spend a lot of time together. You may wish you were in jail.”

  Somehow I doubted that.

  That night Lynda and I decorated the tree in our apartment, accompanied by Frank Sinatra singing Christmas carols. It was a real tree, at Lynda’s insistence. My cost-benefit analysis of buying an artificial tree and amortizing the cost over ten years as compared to buying a new one every Christmas had made no headway at all.

  It was our first Christmas as a married couple, and would turn out to be my last in the apartment where I had lived alone for so long before we married. The ornaments that we had acquired as single people over the years would join forces on the tree, along with new ones that we had bought as a couple.

  “The ironic thing,” Lynda said, adding an ornament of a goose with a blue gem around its neck as Frank urged us to have ourselves a merry little Christmas, “is that Serena would have given him the necklace if he’d asked. Or, if he insisted, Nicholas could have bought it from her for what you paid him. The pearls weren’t real. She just bought the necklace today at the craft show.”

  I shook my head. “The poor little guy wasn’t exactly Raffles, was he?” Maybe it’s because Nicholas was a redhead like me, but I was in a bit of a “there but for the grace of God” mood.

  “Mac said the fact that he’s such a terrible liar means that he doesn’t have much practice at it. He’s lucky that he picked Serena to steal from. She’ll give him so much love and discipline that he won’t go wrong again.”

  “I guess I should be jealous of my rival for your affection,” I said lightly.

  “In that regard you have no rival, Jeff Cody.”

  That called for a non-verbal response on my part. I moved toward Lynda, but she was looking around distractedly. By this time the small tree was laden down with ornaments and we had moved on to the rest of the apartment. Empty boxes were all around us on the floor. “I can’t find the mistletoe,” Lynda said.

  I wrapped my arms around her womanly form and whispered in her ear. “Who needs mistletoe?”

  A Cold Case

  I

  “And this is the kitchen.”

  That explains the refrigerator, the stove, the microwave ... Why do real estate agents always feel they have to point out the obvious? I made a mental note to ask my father.

  Cecily Almond, a tall, willowy woman with café-au-lait skin and golden hair done up in a Cleopatra hairdo, ignored my unspoken sarcasm. “All the appliances are staying. The owners have already moved into a condo. That’s why they’re so motivated to sell. I’m also the listing agent on this one, so I know the situation very well.”

  “I love the island,” Lynda said.

  This was looking promising. It’s not often you find a beautifully preserved arts and crafts house in Erin, Ohio, with a state-of-the-art kitchen. In fact, this was the twenty-seventh house we’d looked at since getting serious about finding a home of our own. And it was conveniently located on Campion Lane, only about a ten-minute bike ride to my office at St. Benignus College and an even faster drive for Lynda to get to her workplace downtown.

  Lynda and I had agreed early on in our engagement to live in my carriage house apartment on Sebastian McCabe’s property for a transition period, and then buy a place. Now it was late April, we’d been married almost eleven months, and we were looking for a house big enough to hold the children who so far had stubbornly refused to make their requested appearance. This one had four bedrooms and two baths.

  Call it superstition, but I had a nagging feeling that our first kid was waiting for us to get a house before showing up. So that was a strong incentive to buy sooner rather than later. Besides, the housing market was starting to pick up a little bit, and prices with it. If we waited too long, we might miss that sweet spot of low prices and low interest rates that homebuyers had been enjoying over the past few years. So we called Happy Homes Realty, the biggest locally owned real estate brokerage in Erin, and started spending a lot of evenings and weekends house hunting with the energetic Cecily Almond. We were already pre-approved for a mortgage loan at Gamble Bank.

  It was a beautiful spring day, just made for cold drinks on the porch and baseball on the radio. Lynda was dressed in a bright yellow blouse and short white culottes. The effect against her dark skin and honey-blonde curls pulled back in a ponytail was stunning. I also looked rather cute in my “SARCASM - Just Another Service I Offer” T-shirt and shorts, if I do say so myself.

  As the son of a Realtor - my dad owns his own firm in Virginia - I’ve always been interested in old houses. Lynda doesn’t care much, so long as the insides are new. So this looked like it could be the perfect domicile for Jeff Cody, Lynda Teal (Cody), and To Be Announced.

  “There’s even a big freezer chest in the utility room,” Cecily said, with a “surely that seals the deal” attitude.

  “You should like that,” Lynda to me. “You always want to save money by buying in bulk.”

  Don’t act so enthusiastic! That pumps up the price! I tried to look skeptical.

  “Here, take a look,” Cecily pressed.

  She marched into the little utility room, just off of the kitchen. We followed. We were standing right behind her as she opened the freezer chest ... and screamed at the top of her lungs.

  The body of a woman lay crammed within, on her side, in a fetal position.

  II

  “Her name was Olivia Wanamaker,” I said, “and she was another Happy Homes Realty agent.”

  “That name sounds familiar somehow,” Sebastian McCabe rumbled.

  “She was also a member of the Erin City Council,” Lynda informed my notoriously apolitical brother-in-law, “and not the most shy. Where Olivia went, controversy was sure to follow. And men, too.”

  Meow.

  We had assembled late Sunday afternoon for cocktail hour, along with my sister Kate, in Mac’s study. I’ve spent a lot of time in that man-cave over the years, some of the happiest moments of my bachelorhood, and wedding bells haven’t changed that.

  “Oscar said there’s not much doubt she was bludgeoned to death with a frozen fish,” I said. Lynda and I had only looked at the body long enough to see that she was petite, well dressed, and a bloody mess before we phoned 911. We’d stayed at the house another hour or so after Erin’s chief of police arrived on the scene, and then we’d made a beeline for the Mc
Cabe house.

  Mac, his bulky frame settled into his favorite wingback chair, apparently found this thirsty work. He took a pull on his mug of dark ale before he spoke again. “What kind of fish?”

  You’re just showing off! I refused to ask why he wanted to know.

  “Salmon,” Lynda supplied. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I like fish. I have even gone fishing.” I know. I was with you. It wasn’t a pretty sight. “The murder weapon suggests an unpremeditated act, of course. The murderer apparently struck with whatever happened to be handy - ‘apparently’ being the key word.”

  Kate got up to get dinner started, but paused in the doorway. “Didn’t the Observer have a string of front page stories a while back about Wanamaker tweeting jibes at the mayor and other City Council members during their meetings?”

  Lynda set down her Manhattan. “Yeah. It was about a three-day wonder - at least, as far as the paper goes. I doubt if the mayor ever forgot, though. For all her perfect coiffure, she’s not a ‘forgive and forget’ type.”

  Mac, knowing Her Honor quite well, raised an eyebrow as if he had just been given a five-course meal for thought. But he didn’t comment on that. Instead, he asked, “Who owned the murder house?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “Cecily just said it was ‘a motivated seller,’ which means somebody who needs to sell in a hurry and is willing to let the house go at a good price.” I brightened. “Hey, Lyn, maybe we can get an even better price because of the murder.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Well, at least this is one murder where you three don’t have to get involved,” Kate said. She disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Yes.” Mac stroked his beard. “We don’t have to get involved. What a relief.”

  I would have bet my 403(b) and my IRA that he was trying to think of a way to get involved. But as it turned out, that was no trick at all.

  We were just inside the door of our apartment after a dinner of overcooked spaghetti and turkey meatballs when Lynda’s smartphone rang, a very no-nonsense ringtone that sounded like a telephone. She looked at it before answering. “It’s Rawls.”