Rogues Gallery Read online

  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

  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 tr
ench 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.