Murder on the Toy Town Express

by Barbara Early

  “Like appraisers?”

  “Sort of. It’s more of an evaluation of the condition of a book. We send them the physical books, and they give each an impartial grade out of ten, based on everything from how vibrant the ink is to color of the staples.” She rolled her eyes. “All very picky. They seal the books up and put the grade right on the cover. It works great because there’s no squabbling over multiple inspections—all of which can damage a comic book. And it’s independent, so it protects buyer and seller alike.”

  “But you don’t do it with every comic.”

  She shook her head. “Too expensive. It doesn’t make sense to spend thirty or forty bucks to have a comic book graded unless its value is at least in the hundreds. Otherwise, there’s no way of getting that money back. But once we have the grade, we can then look up the value of a particular book with that grade in the pricing guides, so it makes life a lot easier. Of course, the market goes up and down, so you still end up haggling a bit, but overall, the system works.”

  “And it was the graded comics that went missing this morning?”

  “I need to find those.” Maxine’s posture stiffened. “You don’t think someone could’ve walked off with them, do you?”

  I shrugged. “I’d like to think not.” I refrained from mentioning the suspected mobsters and ex-con walking around the show.

  “I’ll search through everything again before I leave, but I don’t know where they could have gone. Unless Craig . . .” She screwed up her face. “I’m going to have to ask him.”

  “That sounds unpleasant.”

  “I’m hoping”—she crossed her fingers and looked up—“he did something with them, because if they’ve gone missing, he’s not going to be happy. Especially with him in the hospital and all. Even with everything that’s going on, I suppose he needs to know. They’re worth a chunk of change, and they’d have to be officially reported stolen before insurance would do anything.”

  “So they were insured?”

  “Absolutely! We won’t take a loss on the missing books. Craig might be upset that I left the booth unattended for a bit. But you can back me up. You know the books went missing before that point!”

  “That’s right,” I said. “You’d asked me if I had seen them.”

  She nodded. “I just hate to have to tell him. And I hate hospitals. It’s bad enough visiting—I always feel like I’m at a pet store or something. Same smells, and all the people are scared and hurting. I never know what to say.”

  “I’m no pro, but it helps to have someone to go with. Would you like me to come along?”

  She jumped at the chance, and we made plans to go after the show closed for the day. But when she started rambling on and on about how kind and unselfish I was, I began to feel guilty. My offer was spurred on more by curiosity than kindness—I wanted to hear straight from Craig the reasons behind his swan dive.

  I changed the subject. “Where do you get your vintage comics?”

  “Same places you get your vintage toys, I’d imagine,” she said. “Mostly folks clearing out garages and attics and wondering if they have anything of value. Also, the occasional Craigslist or garage sale listing.” She sniffled. “Sorry, but I was just thinking . . . Craig always likes to joke about buying comics on Craigslist. He calls it ‘My List,’ like the whole thing was made for him.”

  “I do a lot of buying for the shop that way too. It’s tough, though. I think a lot of people want to be told that the broken toy that’s been in their basement is worth tens of thousands of dollars, and that’s not usually the case.”

  “We tell sellers up front we don’t do appraisals, but we’ll take a look through what they have and offer them a set amount for everything. Usually after that, it’s just a matter of checking the price guides and dividing them up into the one-, three-, and five-dollar bins. Every now and then, though, we get lucky and find one that’s rare—and in good enough condition—to send off for grading.”

  “Do you ever get folks who come back in looking to see how you’ve priced their comic books?” It was one of the harder parts about being a reseller. No matter how lean the operation, no business could survive by paying what an object was truly worth and then selling it for the same price. Still, it can strike some folks the wrong way when the doll we bought from them for forty bucks is on our shelf marked up to eighty.

  “Oh, yeah. In fact, it’s funny you should ask, because those comic books that went missing this morning? The woman who sold them to Craig has been in the shop a couple times, asking to buy them back. Even before they came back from grading, she was offering double and triple what Craig paid for them.”

  “Seller’s remorse?”

  “From what I overheard, they actually belonged to her husband, who wasn’t in the picture at the moment.”

  “Now he wants them back?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But we’d already sent them off, you see. And Craig wasn’t about to let them go without making a tidy profit. But I’ll tell you something else interesting. I saw her here, at the show, this morning.”

  The hairs on my neck stood up. Our quaint little train show was beginning to resemble Grand Central Station. “Do you have her name and contact information by any chance?”

  “Why?”

  “My dad’s now working security. If it turns out that the comics were stolen, she might be a person of interest.”

  “I don’t want to report them stolen yet—not until I’ve had a chance to look through the rest of the inventory and talk to Craig. I’d hate to accuse anyone and then discover it was a terrible misunderstanding.”

  I held my hands up. “Noted. No accusations. Still, I wouldn’t mind having that contact information. Might come in handy.”

  Maxine stretched her neck. “I can look it up for you, if you give me a minute.”

  “Thanks, Maxine. Might be nothing, but couldn’t hurt to look into it.”

  While she walked over to the laptop, I drained the last bit of Coke and went to place my cup in the trash can I’d noticed peeking underneath the display table. Inside were two foam cups, presumably from this morning’s coffee. What drew my attention was a big waxy H scrawled on the side of one of the cups. Last I checked my alphabet, there wasn’t an H to be had in either Maxine’s or Craig’s names. I pulled it out of the trash. This cup said “Hank.”

  This was the coffee I’d bought for my dad this morning. And if I was right . . .

  Without saying anything to Maxine, I squeezed between the tables on the way to our booth. Miles was talking to a customer, so I ducked down, found the trash can under our table skirt, and rummaged through it. Sure enough, there was a cup in our trash marked “Craig.”

  What did it all mean? Had someone switched the cups? Or could they have switched the trash cans?

  Then I recalled my father’s suggestion that someone run a toxicology test on Craig. Could he have been drugged, and might that have accounted for the erratic behavior that sent him diving from the rafters?

  A shiver ran through me. If Craig was drugged, was the drug even meant for him?

  Or was my father the target?

  Chapter 7

  The security office was small, somewhere between the size of a typical child’s bedroom and a walk-in closet that you see on HGTV. Only this room was painted and furnished in greens and grays that some might find masculine but to me just felt drab. A bulletin board along one wall held charts, graphs, and notices, some in plastic protective sleeves, others yellowed and curled and waving in the air currents created by a nearby vent. Several flat-screen monitors showed the convention floor in grainy real time, and one of the cameras was trained on the comic booth.

  “Come on in, Liz,” Dad said without budging from his seat in front of the monitors.

  “That’s no fair,” I said. “You could see me coming.”

  Dad wriggled his fingers toward the screen. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

  I gave him the require
d chuckle, then turned to Ken, who was leaning against the wall. “How’s Craig doing? Did you learn anything about why he was up on the catwalks?”

  “As I was telling your dad here, that’s going to be hard to sort through. According to the hospital staff, Craig had a number of hallucinations, especially right after he regained consciousness. They said he’s quieted down, but I’m not sure they’re over yet because he’s not making complete sense.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  Ken sent a pained look to my father, and Dad nodded. Parental consent to talk to me about the case? Seriously?

  “Look,” I said, checking the pique rising in my voice, “I’m out there working on the floor. If there’s something going on, I want to know about it. You’re not protecting me by allowing me to walk headlong into a dangerous situation.”

  Ken put his hands up. “That’s not what I was trying to do,” he said. “Look, this is an official ongoing investigation. I need to be careful what information I share and with whom.”

  “So you ask my dad?”

  Ken scrubbed his face with his hands.

  “Lizzie, give the man a break,” Dad said, tilting back in his chair. “He’s walking some pretty fine lines. You’re not in law enforcement. You were a witness to the events. You know Craig . . .”

  My heart started beating out a rumba in my ears. “Am I a suspect or something?”

  “Well,” Ken started, “your dad can vouch for your whereabouts . . .”

  He stopped when I glared at him. Just a few days ago, I was pressed to decide between Jack and Ken. Now I was this close to being shed of both of them in one day. In one very bad day.

  Ken rallied. “What I meant to say is that, no, of course you’re not a suspect.”

  “Ken needs protection too,” Dad said. “If someone comes along down the line and examines his records, it needs to be very clear that he didn’t show any partiality or favoritism toward you by not establishing your whereabouts. It’s a paper trail, really, for the protection of you both. And to protect any potential criminal case, if one ever goes to trial.”

  “But now that my alibi has been established,” I said, “and permission has been obtained from Hank, the great and powerful, you can tell me what Craig said?”

  “Brace yourself,” Ken said. “It’s a little anticlimactic. He claimed he was trying to reach the balloon.”

  “Why did he want to reach the balloon?” I asked.

  “To get it for the little girl,” Ken said. “I asked him twice. He was insistent on that point.”

  I pulled a strand of hair from my face and digested those words for a moment. “Craig’s not the kind to risk his life to retrieve a child’s balloon. He’s not even the kind to go out of his way. Now, if he’d said he was trying to pop the balloon with a pin and laugh in the child’s face, that I might believe, but this?”

  “Bitter much, Lizzie?” Dad asked.

  I let out a slow breath. Maybe I was. Craig wasn’t that same kid who’d tormented me in school. “It’s a bit of an exaggeration. Did Craig say anything about the publicity stunt?”

  “Oddly enough, no, and then he went off on a random tangent about coffee.”

  I winced at the word and shifted the bag in my hands. My dad gave me an odd look.

  Apparently Ken didn’t notice. He went on: “But we did find a stack of leaflets up on the catwalk, promoting some new comic book series. I’m thinking he’d intended to shower them down over the convention floor.”

  “Mr. Inferno. Captain Inferno. Something like that,” Dad said.

  I forced my attention back to the subject at hand. “Maxine told me that was the new series he was trying to launch. It’s why he wore that ridiculous costume.”

  “I couldn’t get any more out of him. Maybe later when he’s more coherent. Or if.”

  “If?” Dad asked.

  “Right now his doctors aren’t sure if it’s some kind of drug in his system or the pain meds that are making him loopy. They’re not ruling out brain injury.”

  I tried to push away the stray thought that it might just as easily have been Dad lying in that hospital bed. “Maxine was talking about going to see him after we close down for the day. I volunteered to go with her.”

  Ken was about to protest, but I headed him off.

  “Don’t worry. With permission of the mighty wizard here”—I genuflected in Dad’s direction—“I’ll gladly share anything I learn that will help the investigation.”

  Ken’s jaw tightened, but he nodded.

  “Meanwhile, there are a couple of other things you both oughta know.” I shared with them what I learned about the woman who had sold the missing comics to Craig—and that Maxine had spotted her at the show. Not sure why I led with that. Was it because I really thought everything that happened was all about Craig and not my father? Or maybe I just wanted it that way.

  Ken took the paper that Maxine had copied for me. (Unbeknownst to him, I had already taken a picture of it with my phone.) “Jenna Duncan,” he read, then addressed my dad. “Mean anything to you?”

  Dad hoisted himself out of the rolling chair, the springs painfully squeaking. He craned his neck to read the page in Ken’s hand. “Not familiar. Nice part of town, though.”

  Ken crammed it into his pocket. “Not sure there’s a lot I can do, especially since those comics haven’t officially been reported stolen.”

  “Maxine wants to search the booth again, then she’ll probably report it,” I said. “But from what I gather, those comics were worth a boatload of money. The previous owner wanted them back, which gives her motive to steal them.”

  “I guess I can run her for priors, if nothing else,” Ken said.

  “If you do that,” Dad said, “see if you can’t come up with a picture, and we can look for her on the security footage anywhere near the comic booth, or near Craig. Probably stretching it, but if she was that upset about Craig cheating her, maybe she had motive to drug him.”

  “About that . . .” And then I froze, unable to get more words out, as if showing them the switched cups and putting the idea out there that my father might have been the target somehow made it more real. Maybe if I said nothing, it would melt away.

  “What’s wrong, Liz?” Dad said. “You’re white as a ghost.”

  I lifted up the Wegmans bag I’d stuffed the foam cups into, which both brilliant detectives had failed to notice. I pulled out the cup with Craig’s name first.

  Ken pointed at it. “Nice work. If Craig was drugged, there’s a chance someone might have put it in his coffee. There could be residue in the cup. Only what did we say about fingerprints?”

  I ignored the patronizing tone. “Here’s the thing,” I said, finally finding my voice. “This isn’t Craig’s cup. Not the one he drank from, anyway. I pulled this out of our trash. And the cup I pulled out of Craig’s trash?” I opened the bag to reveal the one with Dad’s name on it.

  Dad fell back into his chair. “Well, that puts a new wrinkle on it.”

  Ken waited a moment, took the bag with both cups from my hand, then pulled out a chair and sat facing my father. He pitched forward, forearms resting on his thighs. “Hank? You got any enemies?”

  Dad looked up and met his gaze, just the hint of a sheepish grin on his otherwise stone-serious face. “How much time’ve you got?”

  # # #

  We each left that meeting with homework. Ken had the cups to send for forensics. Since results might take a while to come back, they had agreed that it made sense to assume the cup was drugged until it was proven otherwise, so my father was tasked with making a list of potential suspects who might want him dead.

  I knew, of course, at least hypothetically speaking, that Dad must have made enemies during a lifetime in law enforcement, but the reality of names being etched onto paper made that much too real. The possibility that someone might now be targeting my father left me literally sick to my stomach, so instead of heading right back to help Maxine finish for the day, I ma
de another trip to the concession stand for a ginger ale—and also to ask around to see if anyone saw anything peculiar when I picked up those coffees this morning.

  “Look, if you didn’t get what you ordered, you should have come back sooner,” the server said. She was the same woman who I’d bought coffee from earlier, but then I had hardly noticed her. Now I took in every detail I could.

  She was probably middle-aged, depending on how one defined the term. The older I got, the older middle age became. She carried a few extra pounds but not enough to hide the veins in her hands. Her face was flushed and shiny, and her reddish hair a bit frizzy, probably from the heat of the kitchen equipment. Her nametag was crooked but identified her as Janet.

  “No, everything was fine,” I said. “I just wanted to know if you saw anyone lingering around. Maybe switching coffee cups.” I pointed to the table. “We were standing right there.”

  Janet shook her head. “We were swamped this morning. I take the orders, take the money, deliver the orders. I really don’t have time to watch what goes on out there. Sorry.”

  “Thanks,” I said, then took a gulp of the cold ginger ale, hoping it would clear the lump of worry in my throat. But as I was turning to leave, I noticed the security camera focused on the concession stand. Maybe there was a way to figure out how the cups got switched.

  My father wasn’t in the security office when I passed by, but I made a mental note to mention the camera to him before we left for the day.

  Parker showed up just an hour before the show closed at six. At least he could help Miles pack everything away.

  That last hour seemed excruciatingly normal. Old collectors trying to beef up their retirement accounts sold off their treasured prizes to younger collectors. Parker, working the toy booth, had an almost boyish gleam to his eyes, reminding me of the hours we’d spent playing together, possibly more than most siblings, since Dad worked late and Mom was often “not feeling well.” In other words, sloshed out of her gourd. But Parker had grown to carry more responsibility than he should have, even while maintaining a playful spirit. He was going to make an excellent father, even if he didn’t yet know it.