Rogues Gallery Read online

  Scrappy jumped up. “I don’t know what half those words mean, but I know my rights. There wasn’t any damned fight - I was just defending my rights and nobody told me to do it.”

  Life, liberty, and a free glass of wine...

  Mac sighed. “Well, it was a thought.”

  “I’ve got my own thought on this caper,” Scrappy said, sitting down again.

  “Like what?” Oscar’s broad face was full of skepticism.

  “I think the murder was what they call performance art. Somebody was making a statement. Maybe it was a feminist thing. ‘Art in the Blood’ was an all-woman show, you know.”

  I didn’t want to think about that, so I found my mind wandering instead to the first time I saw Scrappy that night at the gallery. He was talking to somebody ... the man I later learned was Thurston Calder.

  “What did you and Calder talk about at the opening?” I asked.

  “Oh, he was raving about some paintings of flowers. He was full of crap, though. They were okay, but not the hot stuff he claimed. I spend enough time at the Shinkle to know better.”

  “Those are Lillian Peacock’s paintings,” Mac said. “Jeff and I saw Calder later talking to Mrs. Peacock about them. He was commenting on the brushstrokes ... the brushstrokes! Hell and damnation, I have been a fool! Scrappy, are you absolutely sure his comments about those paintings were so admiring?”

  “I heard what I heard! He was gaga over them. What difference does it make?”

  “All the difference in the world, I am sorry to say.” Mac stood up. “I know who killed Thurston Calder and why.”

  XII

  Mac was in a grumpy mood, hardly saying a word to Oscar and me, all the way to the house on Lindner Street. He muttered something about “perspective,” but I didn’t catch it and he wouldn’t repeat it.

  Evening had closed in and the front porch light of the Peacock house was on. Mac rang the bell. I had a moment of déjà vu as Beryl Peacock opened the door and Mac said we were there to see her grandmother.

  “She went to bed early,” Beryl said with a hint of exasperation. “Can’t this wait until tomorrow?”

  “I am afraid not,” Mac said. “We are concerned about Mrs. Peacock. Please wake her up.”

  Beryl went upstairs, something in Mac’s tone prompting her to take the steps two at a time. Two minutes later, she was back, a frantic look on her face.

  “Something’s wrong! I can’t wake her.”

  While Oscar and Mac charged up the stairs, I whipped out my phone and called 911.

  “You expected this, didn’t you?” I said to Mac as we sat at St. Hildegard of Bingen Hospital waiting for word on Lillian Peacock’s condition. The early betting was that she had taken an overdose of sleeping pills.

  “I expected something.”

  “You don’t mean that Beryl - ”

  He looked at me as if I had three heads. “Certainly not. Mrs. Peacock tried to kill herself - just as surely as she stabbed Thurston Calder to death.”

  Maybe you saw that coming, but I was a mile behind. Even now I didn’t get it, and neither did Oscar. “She killed Calder?” the chief said. “How do you figure that?”

  “It all came together for me when Scrappy insisted that Calder was so enthusiastic about her paintings. You will recall that she had told us exactly the opposite. She lied, and it was a lie too small to be insignificant.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s all you’ve got? That wasn’t a real lie; she was just being modest.”

  “No, Jefferson. She was quite adamant, well beyond the traditional protestations of modesty. She did not want us to know that the normally negative Calder was quite taken by her paintings. And no, that is not all I have.”

  “Wait a minute,” Oscar protested. “Are you saying she killed the man because he liked her paintings? Hell’s bells!”

  “Not because he liked them Oscar, but because he recognized them. Jefferson and I overheard Calder saying the brushstrokes reminded him of something. I am quite sure they reminded him of her earlier work.”

  Before he could say more, an even paler than usual Beryl Peacock came into the waiting room.

  “Grandma’s conscious,” she said. “I told her that you were here and she asked me to send you in. But she wants me to stay out here. What the hell is going on?”

  “I am sorry, Beryl,” Mac said. “That is not for us to say. I assume that your grandmother will want to speak with you in a few minutes.”

  Lillian Peacock’s face was almost as white as her hair and the sheets of the hospital bed. Her blue eyes looked about a hundred years old, and sad. She didn’t waste time.

  “How much do you know?” she asked Mac.

  “I know the following,” he said. “Your real name is LaDonna McQueen. You were once an urban terrorist. You have been a fugitive from justice for more than forty years. And five days ago you murdered Thurston Calder to keep that secret.”

  She turned her head away from Mac and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not LaDonna McQueen, but I used to be. She was a woman who fell in love with the wrong man and the wrong cause. She died a long time ago, when I came here with Beryl’s father and got the job in the flower shop. Who would look for LaDonna McQueen in Erin, Ohio? I told people I was a widow, and that was close enough. My lover was caught, went to prison. Maybe he was the lucky one. He did his time and moved on while I was still looking behind me all the time. Last I heard he owned a health food store in Kansas.”

  Her voice faded away.

  “Eventually, however, you forgot about being on the run,” Mac said. “You became comfortable in Erin.”

  “That’s right. Oh, I got really scared a few years back when Calder’s book came out - scared and proud both. But when nobody outside of an elite artsy crowd paid it any attention, I thought I was really home free, that nobody cared any more. And then Calder came to Erin. If I’d known that was going to happen I never would have let Beryl talk me into exhibiting the oils and watercolors I’d been doing for my own enjoyment.

  “Calder recognized my technique. He didn’t think right then in the gallery that it was actually my work, just a similar style. I knew he would figure it out someday, though. I panicked. I picked up that corkscrew when I saw that nobody was looking. And as soon as Calder wasn’t talking to someone, I asked him to come with me to that little alcove.”

  She closed her eyes. “Then I did what I’d learned how to do years ago, in a manual, but I’d never done before. I did it for Beryl, you know. I mean, I didn’t want her to ever know who I had been, before I became who I am.”

  XIII

  “I honestly think she was more upset about facing Beryl than about being arrested,” I told Kate and Lynda later that night in Mac’s study. “That’s why she tried to kill herself.”

  Beryl had turned out to be more resilient than her grandmother expected, however. She’d already hired Erica Slade to mount Lillian’s defense. Erin’s most prominent criminal defense lawyer, who is also not coincidentally the county prosecutor’s ex-wife, was probably in Oscar’s face right now despite the lateness of the hour.

  Mac, standing at his bar, tapped himself a beer. “Doubtless you have realized that one of Thurston Calder’s books held the solution to his murder after all - that one.” He nodded toward LaDonna McQueen: Her Violent Life and Vigorous Art, still sitting on the coffee table where Kate had left it on Sunday. “It was right there when Lillian came earlier this evening. I believe that was the impetus for her suicide attempt: She saw the book and became convinced that someone else would eventually expose her identity.”

  Lynda sipped her Manhattan. “Did you really figure out the whole thing just from Calder admiring Lillian’s painting and from knowing about his LaDonna McQueen book?”

  “There were a few other indications,” Mac said. “For
example, Lillian told another lie. She said that she had never been trained as an artist. In fact, in an effort to distance herself as far as possible from her background as an art teacher, she overreached and claimed that she had never so much as watched an art instruction program on television. And yet, in describing her own deficiencies she talked in terms of perspective and composition. Those may not necessarily be art-school graduate terms, but they do indicate a level of knowledge she earnestly wished us to believe she did not have.”

  “She also ‘found’ the body,” I pointed out, “and Mac and I saw her near the bar when Calder was looking at her paintings, which wasn’t long before Scrappy threw his temper tantrum because the corkscrew was missing.” No flies on me ... now.

  “It still seems like quite a stretch to me,” Kate said with a yawn. “I think you just got lucky.”

  Mac quaffed the last of his second mug of beer. “Let us say, rather, that I made an intuitive leap that took me to the correct solution on what may seem to be thin evidence. I make such leaps all the time when I am writing a mystery novel, connecting characters and incidents in ways that I never foresaw in the plotting stages. I never know where it comes from. Perhaps intuition involved in the solution of a mystery is actually deduction carried on at the subconscious level. For example, my subconscious may have taken a cue from the story of Scrappy Smith, another person who came to our community under false colors.

  “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.”

  * See The 1895 Murder, MX Publishing, 2012.

  ** See The Disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore, MX Publishing, 2013.

  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 fam
iliar 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.”