Toucan Keep a Secret

by Donna Andrews

  “You might warn him not to hold his breath,” I said with a chuckle. “I should go—I want to catch the chief. See you soon.”

  I drove back to town and dropped by the police station. I found Vern Shiffley sitting behind the front desk.

  “Is the chief in?” I asked. “I wanted to share what I learned from Dr. Womble.”

  “He’s in,” Vern said. “And in a pretty cheerful mood for a change. Guess who our John Doe is probably going to turn out to be?”

  I shook my head.

  “Aaron Hempel,” he said. “Younger brother of Bart Hempel, who in case you don’t recognize the name was the ringleader of the jewel thieves.”

  “The one who’s still in prison for the murder of Fitz Marshall?”

  “He got out about six weeks ago,” Vern said. “There’s a statewide BOLO out on him. In fact, weirdly enough, we’d already put out a BOLO on Bart before we knew the John Doe was his brother.”

  “Because he got out of prison just before Mr. Hagley was murdered?” I asked.

  “No, although we were kind of interested in talking to him for that reason. But we got really interested after Horace entered one of the bullets he recovered from your van into IBIS. The Integrated Ballistic Identification System,” he added, remembering that I was a civilian.

  “He got a match?”

  “To a bullet recovered from a 1977 drug case down in Richmond,” Vern said. “A case in which Bart Hempel was one of the major suspects.”

  He beamed as if he’d shared some fabulous news. Yeah, right. Was it supposed to cheer me, knowing that the person who’d taken a potshot at me was a convicted murderer, a known drug dealer, and a hardened ex-con?

  “Fascinating,” I managed to say aloud.

  “I’ll let the chief know you’re here,” Vern said.

  The chief was indeed in a good mood, and my account of my conversation with Dr. Womble only seemed to improve it.

  “It’s coming together,” he said. “In no small part thanks to the information you’ve shared. I’ve already been in contact with the Lee County Sheriff’s Department. This Inchness place may be prohibited by HIPAA from talking about their patients, but if Archie’s an employee, the door’s wide open. I wish Dr. Womble had been more forthcoming at the time about Archie’s encounter with his assailant in the graveyard, but I can understand his reluctance. Because yes, from what I know of how the department functioned in 1994, Archie might not have gotten a very fair hearing.”

  “Then again, if they’d known Archie was involved, they might have thought to show the John Doe’s picture to Bart Hempel.”

  “Actually, according to the case file, they made a special trip up to Culpeper to do just that, because the part of the churchyard where they found the body was right outside the columbarium that contained Mrs. Van der Lynden’s ashes, and they were still gung ho to solve the jewel robbery,” the chief said. “And the picture they’d have shown him looked almost identical to his brother’s mug shot picture from a DUI arrest a few months earlier, so I’ll be interested in hearing why Mr. Hempel failed to recognize it.”

  “Maybe Bart Hempel was behind the attack on Archie,” I suggested. “And was afraid if he identified his brother they’d realize he was involved.”

  “Although he was in no particular danger, as it turns out, since neither Archie nor Dr. Womble ever reported the attack.”

  “Well, keep me posted if it looks as if I’ll have a chance to talk to Archie or Bart Hempel about their relatives’ ashes,” I said. “Meanwhile I’m going to see if I can keep Dad’s latest project from interfering in your investigation.”

  “His latest project?” The chief’s face had taken on a wary look.

  “He wants to do a reenactment of the 1987 robbery,” I said. “He thinks it will provide valuable clues to what really happened to the jewelry.”

  “Is he serious? After thirty years, the possibility of substantial renovations by one or both of the two owners who followed Mrs. Van der Lynden, and Heaven knows how many freelance treasure hunters combing the grounds? Because Lacey wasn’t the only one, just the most obsessive. And do you really want to get involved?”

  “I don’t want to get involved, but I figure he’s going to do it whether I help him or not, so I want to keep an eye on the whole thing. And try to prevent it from interfering in your murder investigation. If I can get him and Ragnar so involved in planning the reenactment that they don’t get around to having it for however many days it takes for you to wrap up your case, I figure that would be useful.”

  “Very.”

  “Also, I’m going to try to convince them that if you heard about their plan you would take a dim view of it.”

  “I do take a dim view of it,” the chief said. “That doesn’t mean there’s anything I can do to stop them.”

  “Yes, but if I imply that there is, it will be much easier to keep them out of your hair. Do you really want them to show up asking to see the case file?”

  “Good point,” he said. “Although if it came to that, I’d refer them to Fred Singer, who should still have the complete copy of the case file we gave him when he wrote that article in December.”

  “Duly noted.” I stood up and slung my tote over my shoulder. “And since Dad’s already in touch with Fred, he may already have it. So if you need me for anything, I’ll probably be out at Ragnar’s farm, trying to inject some small note of sanity into the reenactment plans.”

  “Better you than me,” the chief said.

  I paused at the door and turned around.

  “Look, I gather you’re thinking it was probably Bart Hempel who took a shot at me last night,” I said. “Any chance you could let me know when you’ve got him in custody? I think I’ll feel more secure.”

  “Absolutely,” the chief said. “In fact, check with Vern on the way out—we’re expecting news momentarily.”

  When I reached the front desk, Vern was on the phone—with a police officer in another jurisdiction, I deduced. I tried to look as if I was merely waiting rather than actively eavesdropping.

  “We appreciate it, Fred,” he was saying. “And if there’s ever anything we can do for you, just say the word. Well, no, we don’t get that many fugitives up here, but the ones we do get stick out like a sore thumb, so it’s pretty easy to catch ’em. You bet. Bye.”

  “On the trail of Hempel?” I asked.

  “Yup.” Vern beamed. “We asked the police down in Hampton and Newport News and nearby jurisdictions to check out his old haunts and known associates. We weren’t optimistic—after all, if you get yourself sent to prison for twenty-five or thirty years, when you come out you’re gonna find that your favorite haunts have fallen to the wrecking ball, and most of your known associates have either died or gone to prison themselves. But we lucked out—Virginia Beach just confirmed that they’ve picked him up.”

  “Good news, then.”

  “Yup.” Vern leaned back in his chair and let a broad grin cross his face. “Let’s hope it’s all over but the interrogating.”

  “Congratulations.”

  I went back to my car. And when I got there, I texted Dad.

  “So when would you like to go to Ragnar’s?”

  I slipped the phone into the compartment in the center console, hoping Dad was off doing something so absorbing that he wouldn’t even look at his phone for a few hours. Or that he’d lost interest in the idea of holding his reenactment. Or—

  My phone buzzed.

  “Can you pick me up now?”

  Chapter 28

  The fact that Dad had texted back almost immediately wasn’t a good sign. He’d probably been hunched over his phone waiting to hear from me. Which meant his obsession with the idea of reenacting the jewel robbery was pretty intense.

  I sighed, texted back, “OK,” and started the car.

  “I’m at Trinity,” he added.

  When I got to the church I found Mother and several other ladies from the Altar Guild getting the sanctuary
ready for the next morning’s services. They seemed delighted to see me arrive to collect Dad, which probably meant he’d been trying too hard to make himself useful.

  “I only wish we knew for sure the supply priest will actually show up,” Mother fretted, as she frowned at a vase of lilies that seemed determined to droop more than she considered suitable.

  “Why wouldn’t he?” I asked. Was Dr. Womble apt to lead Father Shakespeare astray, taking him fishing on Sunday morning?

  “Mr. Hagley was the one arranging the supply priests this quarter,” she said. “And we can’t exactly ask him if he booked one before getting himself knocked off, can we? I think the diocese frowns on séances.”

  She sounded positively testy.

  “If it will make you feel any better, a Father Shakespeare arrived at the Wombles while I was there,” I said. “And Mrs. Womble said he was tomorrow’s supply priest.”

  “Thank you, dear,” Mother said. “That puts my mind at ease.”

  “It doesn’t entirely put mine at ease,” one of the other ladies said. “That name sounds familiar—haven’t we had him before?”

  “I think you’re right,” Mother said. “I wonder if he’s the cheerful one with the lovely Australian accent.”

  “If Junius Hagley booked him, it’s probably the one who always sounds as if he has a bad head cold,” the other lady said. “The officious one.”

  “He’s a friend of Dr. Womble’s,” I said. “So my money’s on the cheerful Aussie. Come on, Dad. Let’s go see Ragnar.”

  Ragnar’s farm—an estate, really, though Ragnar always referred to it as “the farm”—was a few miles out of town. I started off the journey telling Dad about Dr. Womble’s newfound fascination with the Bounty, in hopes of distracting him from the reenactment project, but it didn’t work. He sat on the edge of his seat, peering ahead, until Ragnar’s front gates came in sight.

  “Here we are,” Dad exclaimed. “Start visualizing. It’s New Year’s Eve, and we’re going to a masked ball.”

  He sat up straight and half closed his eyes, the better to superimpose 1987 over the present day.

  I kept my eyes wide open, which tended to improve my driving.

  Two large brick pillars flanked the asphalt driveway leading into what was now Ragnar’s house. I had no idea if the pillars had even existed in 1987, but in Mrs. Winkleson’s day, they’d been painted white. One of Ragnar’s first improvements—to his mind, at least—had been to paint them an inky matte black. He’d also replaced the round white concrete balls that had previously topped the pillars with large, menacing gray gargoyles. The black wrought-iron gate was a holdover from Mrs. Winkleson’s reign, allowed to stay because it was, after all, black and made of wrought iron, one of Ragnar’s favorite things in the universe. But unbeknownst to the gate, its days were numbered. Ragnar wanted it replaced with a larger and much more elaborate gate. With dragons. So far I’d done forty-seven trial designs for the dragon gates, and Ragnar had pronounced my latest effort almost perfect. I was guardedly optimistic about achieving perfection with sketch forty-eight or forty-nine, but lately helping Robyn had taken up most the time I’d have usually spent either at my anvil or with my sketch pad.

  The gates stood wide open—another change from Mrs. Winkleson’s day. She’d have made us wait at the gate until one of her overworked staff finally noticed the buzzer. According to the newspaper reports, Mrs. Van der Lynden had stationed James Washington here for security on the night of the New Year’s ball. So did that mean the wrought-iron gates had been here at the time of the robbery? Even if they had, they wouldn’t have been much of a barrier. A moderately active jewel thief could have climbed them easily. And that was assuming it was dark and he failed to notice that to the right and left of the pillars only an ordinary barbed wire fence barred the way. I suspected Dad probably had a romantic vision of our local jewel robbers scuttling over the red tile roofs of a Mediterranean villa, like Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief. So far I couldn’t see that the crime would have challenged the physical abilities of the most sedentary crook.

  I paused in the gateway and contemplated the gates for a moment.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I’m just studying the gates.”

  “We can get out if you like, so you can get a closer look.”

  “I don’t need a closer look,” I said. “I’ve repaired them several times. For what it’s worth, I think they’re old enough to have been here in Mrs. Van der Lynden’s time.”

  “Progress!” Dad beamed at the gates as if they’d done something useful and important.

  I hoped he wasn’t going to attempt anything truly annoying, like trying to talk Ragnar into painting the brick columns white and restoring the concrete balls.

  “We should find out what Mrs. Van der Lynden called the place.” I pointed to the black-and-gray plaque that proclaimed RAGNARSHEIM. Mrs. Winkleson had had a small black-and-white sign calling it RAVEN HILL.

  “I’m not sure she called it anything.” Dad frowned down at the pile of clippings in his lap. “All the newspapers just call it the stately mansion of the Van der Lynden family.”

  “Doesn’t make for a very catchy sign. And the letters would be so small you’d have trouble reading them,” I added, remembering the tiny type they’d had to use to fit Beatrice Helen Falkenhausen van der Lynden on the plaque that had covered her niche.

  “Archie van der Lynden would know,” Dad said. “You could ask him when you talk to him about his mother’s ashes.”

  “If the chief is ever able to put us in touch, I will.”

  We were following the asphalt driveway now as it curved gently to the left through lines of flowering cherry trees on either side. White cherry blossoms drifted down onto the windshield and eventually fell off as we made our slow way along the lane. Beyond the cherry trees I could see fields of white daffodils, white daisies, white flowers whose names escaped me—Mrs. Winkleson had imposed a rigid black-and-white color scheme on the whole estate, so all the flowers were white. Ragnar had largely left this aspect of the landscaping alone, initially because Mother Nature didn’t make many flowers in black and gray, his favorite colors. Nearer the house he’d added in a few blood-red roses and poppies, and he’d set aside one part of the formal gardens for experimentation with black flowers. But he’d become reconciled to the white flowers after noticing how eerie they looked by moonlight.

  “All this would have been dark when the guests were arriving,” Dad announced. He was frowning, apparently at the landscape’s rebellious inability to conform to the picture in his mind’s eye. “Look! There’s Ragnar’s gardener. One of his gardeners, anyway. He must need several.” He pointed to a man standing on a ladder, pruning one of the cherry trees. “I don’t suppose there’s any real reason to interrogate Ragnar’s staff.” He looked wistful, as if he thought interrogating the gardener might be rather fun.

  I took my eyes off the road long enough to glance over at the pruner.

  “That’s not a gardener,” I said. “That’s Fred something-or-other. Former bandmate of Ragnar’s—I forget which band. Bass player. Ragnar takes in strays, as he puts it. Human strays.”

  “He has a lot of needy friends, then?”

  “Friends, friends of friends, random acquaintances he picks up at concerts or in the bookstore or the coffeehouse. I’m not even sure he knows where some of them came from. I’ve never been out here when Ragnar didn’t have at least a dozen people staying with him for however long it takes them to get back on their feet.”

  “Back on their feet?” Dad twisted in his seat to keep his eyes on the pruner we’d just passed. “Not physically, I hope.”

  “Sometimes. I remember one guest who’d broken his leg, and since he lived in a fifth-floor walkup in Brooklyn he stayed here until he was back in action. Quite a lot of them are down-on-their-luck musicians or actors between gigs. Artists who can’t afford studio space. Guys whose wives or girlfriend
s have thrown them out. The occasional drunk or addict trying to clean up his act—if Ragnar ever needed work, he’d make an awesome sober companion. And of course he usually does have employees, although their numbers vary greatly for no apparent reason, but it’s hard to tell them from the guests, which can be disconcerting.”

  “Why?” Dad frowned. “It all sounds wonderful.”

  “It is,” I said. “But all the same, if I’m asking someone to hold the ladder while I install a wrought-iron chandelier, I want to know if he’s on salary or in withdrawal.”

  “Oh, dear,” Dad murmured. “I can understand.”

  “Still, they’re mostly harmless. He doesn’t get many bad apples—just people who, as he puts it, need a little more time to find themselves.” Of course, some of his guests had been looking—not all that diligently, from what I could see—for years. But since Ragnar required them to perform at least a small amount of useful work, the complete deadbeats tended to depart rather quickly. And Ragnar, who was a sociable creature, could always be assured of finding someone—usually at least half-a-dozen someones—to keep him company whenever he wanted it, and help out with whatever new project had caught his fancy.

  “He’s a good egg,” I said aloud.

  Dad nodded, and returned to squinting at the scenery.

  I wondered if I could manage to leave Dad here to plot his reenactment with Ragnar’s help. And immediately felt guilty. Dad got such a lot of pleasure out of things like this, and if I hadn’t been busy, I’d have really enjoyed helping him. But I was busy. And—

  “Oh, look!”

  Chapter 29

  “Look at what?” I had slammed on the brakes in case Dad was pointing out something in the road ahead of us.

  “Oh, dear—I didn’t mean to startle you,” Dad said. “It’s just that the swans and the gazebo look so beautiful in the sunlight.”

  “Yes, they do.” I set the car in motion again.

  Dad was craning his neck to get a better view to our left where, beyond the cherry trees, was a lake presided over by a small flock of beautiful and evil-tempered black swans. Some of them were swimming serenely over the surface of the lake, while the rest perched on the black wrought-iron railings of the glossy black gazebo. I nodded at the nice effect I’d achieved with the railings. I’d have felt guilty replacing all the intricate white wooden fretwork that used to grace the gazebo with wrought iron if not for the fact that the swans liked to sit on the wooden railings while using the gazebo as their privy—which meant the only time the fretwork had looked nice was for a couple of hours after one of Mrs. Winkleson’s long-suffering maids had scrubbed it. From what I could remember, there seemed to have been a staff member whose full-time job was cleaning up after the swans. Ragnar took a more laissez-faire approach to the gazebo, which meant we all mostly enjoyed it from afar.