The Gold Pawn

by L. A. Chandlar

  I said with a mighty laugh, “Ha! You’re all dead!” I got great loads of snow into my hands and, being an expert snowball thrower, started to slaughter them. They cheered and yelled happily as I ran around plastering them all, including Tucker, with snowballs. I may not sled with grace, but I can throw a good snowball. Tucker was laughing harder than I’d ever seen him laugh.

  “All right,” I declared after we had all fallen down exhausted in the snow. “Now hand over the toboggan and no one gets hurt.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Tucker with a chuckle.

  Then we all happily sledded, not one of them continuing to try to convince me of the merits of the runner sled. After all our feet were cold and our chests were heaving with the exertion of sledding and climbing the hill over and over again, we said we’d see them tomorrow and departed. On the way back to my house, Tucker and I talked about the sledding and he no longer made fun of my hat. He had far more significant material with which to jest.

  He and I said good-bye, making plans for more sledding the next day. That afternoon I wanted to be by myself again. I had some reading to do.

  The fresh air and sledding had been a release. It was fun and it wasn’t wrapped in mystery and intrigue. But the isolation and anger from the night before was still coursing through my system. The thought of my tree being forever altered, never being quite the same, had been the last straw. I swallowed a lump in my throat. I hated the thought that maybe I had a false sense of security with Finn. I’d been duped by my parents; who’s to say that Finn hadn’t duped me, too? It stung my ego, that I could be played. Other than the two scanty telegrams, I hadn’t heard from Finn in weeks.

  Well? The quicker I figured out the ties my parents had with the Red Scroll Network and any clues about the gold pawn and their ultimate plans, the quicker I could get back to my job and to New York.

  I had brought my journal from my parents with me from New York. It was now dawning on me that my parents put that album together to keep their memories, but it was also for me. They meant it for my eyes; they’d taken me through that album countless times when I was a kid, pointing out significant places and moments. It made me wonder what else they had taken me through countless times. Is that why I had memories of the silver gun and the gold pawn? Had they worked to make sure that I would recall certain crucial clues? Was that what my dad meant when he wrote Follow what we pointed out to you, then asked if I remembered those lessons?

  In front of the fireplace once again, I ate more of the rice and chicken for an early dinner. Tabitha’s mom had also brought over some fresh salad ingredients, bread, and oatmeal cookies. But with raisins. I had to pick out all the raisins. I still found it a worthwhile endeavor, though; I hated to waste a good cookie.

  I flipped through the journal, looking at the photographs from my parents’ life before I came along, trying to find patterns, anything that might point me in the right direction or rekindle memories of those lessons they taught. But nothing. I finally dozed off, snuggled up in my blanket. The davenport was sublimely comfortable and for some reason I felt the safest and the happiest there instead of in one of the bedrooms. That night I dreamed again of the twirling pawn, the silver gun, and the ghostly white hand that was pointing to something.

  I awoke in the early morning with a feeling of the right timing, that things were coming together somehow. And, for some reason, I was certain that I would discover the meaning of that mysterious hand today.

  CHAPTER 29

  “. . . I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.”

  I was just about ready for more sledding. I had a cup of coffee, I put on an extra pair of socks, ate a Skippy peanut butter sandwich, and was ready to go. I was rinsing out my cup at the sink, looking out to the front yard, but over to the right, avoiding my tree. I could hardly bear to think about it. With determined and calculated anger, I tamped it all down, using it to fuel my need for vengeance. I reveled in that solitary feeling. I didn’t need anyone. I could figure it out on my own.

  As I pondered all this, I went to the laundry room in the back and looked out the small window toward the rear of the Baxters’ house and saw Tucker talking to Tabitha. He had his sled in his hands, about to come over and pick me up. His back was to me and he raised his right hand to sweep a lock of her shiny black hair off her face in a very friendly gesture.

  After a bit, he came over to my door and I was all set, ready to go.

  I opened the door and he greeted me, “Morning, Lane!” His gaze instantly went up over my eyes.

  “Morning, Tucker,” I said, smiling.

  “Ah. You have a new hat.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “All right then, let’s go!”

  We walked to the right again. I was surprised to feel that my legs and back were not tired or stiff. I had been wondering if all that climbing yesterday, not to mention my graceful tumble down the hill, would leave some uncomfortable reminders.

  “Hey, what’s in the bag, Lane?”

  “Oh, a little something I cooked up for our friends,” I said, a wicked smile creeping over my face.

  He laughed, “I can only imagine.”

  After a little while of enjoying the bright day, our boots making great clomping noises as we proceeded down the sidewalk and the sun sending rainbow-colored glitter all over the white snow, I nonchalantly said, “So Tucker, did you know Tabitha before this visit?”

  “No, why do you ask?” he responded quickly, casually.

  “Oh, no reason,” I lied. “I knew you said you’d been to Rochester on several occasions, the town is so small, you know . . .”

  “Nope, she seems like a nice girl,” he said in a friendly manner. So. We were both lying. But why?

  We came up to our hill and our little friends were ready and waiting for us. I waved a hearty hello and greeted them all by name.

  They were waving merrily until they saw my hat. They put their hands down at their sides and gazed in wonder at my head. They all murmured several things like, “Wow, that’s the biggest puff ball I’ve ever seen . . . Nice, very blue hat.” More or less . . .

  I ran up the hill as fast as I could to beat the boys to the top. I took the toboggan out of Tucker’s hands and he jumped on behind me. With our combined weight, we raced down the hill at breakneck speed to the cheers of all the boys. I wondered why there weren’t any other adults out. Finn would be here with me.

  My heart felt a swift pang of emptiness. I shook my head, shuffling off that emotion. I made my way back up the hill.

  After we all went down the hill a dozen times, I declared a little breathlessly, “Okay, guys, I have something for us to play with.”

  They were delighted, but a little dubious. I went to my bag that I brought and unzipped it. With a great flourish, I pulled out a leggy bunch of thin, rubbery tubes with a connected square of canvas.

  “What the—” said the biggest boy, Jack.

  “Trust me, gentlemen,” I purred.

  I took Jack and gave him the makeshift handle on one end of the tubing. I took the next biggest kid, LJ, walked him over about five feet away, and gave him the other handle. Now the tubing wasn’t so coiled and knotted; it was making one long, stretched-out loop with a kid at each end. In the middle was the canvas square that made a sort of pouch.

  “Aha!” said Tucker.

  “Yep,” I said with relish. “It’s a giant slingshot.”

  All the boys’ eyes opened wide with anticipation and they practically drooled, instantly dreaming of blasting enemies and friends alike with all sorts of things like snow, rotten apples, mud . . . The possibilities were endless.

  I loaded up the center with a giant snowball, telling the two end boys to hold steady and strong. Then I took the handle that I had sewn to the back of the canvas pouch, pulled it back, and yelled, “Ready! Set! Go!” To many oohs and ahs, the snowball arced high in the sky and landed with a momentous poof a couple hundred feet away. All of us cheer
ed. I figured I might have some explaining to do with the parents in the neighborhood, but what the heck. If they wanted in on the fun, they could play, too.

  We launched about twenty huge snowballs, seeing how far we could get them. Then one of the kids thought we should have target practice with some of us out in the field. The snowballs weren’t icy, so it was all right with me. I got pelted a few times as well as Tucker. I think they were aiming for my hat.

  I had also thrown some of Mrs. Baxter’s cookies into my bag of tricks. After we all dined on those, we decided we were cold enough and everyone headed for home. Tucker and I were starving, so we went to Knapp’s opting to just lug the toboggan with us instead of backtracking.

  We didn’t talk much, just about the sledding, the boys . . . and we ate our extra-wide, thin hamburgers and fries. I was in a thoughtful mood, putting together and taking apart several things that I’d come across lately; several hunches, thoughts, ideas. None of it made sense yet, but I knew that some of them would turn out to be valuable clues. So as I sipped my chocolate malt, I kept sliding them together, putting them in a different order, testing them out this way and that.

  Tucker didn’t seem to mind; he seemed to be deep in thought, too. On the walk back to the house, we decided to go a different route so I could see the Chapman House. It was a lovely home just a couple of streets away from mine. It was the biggest and grandest house in town with beautiful creamy gray stone walls, large curved windows, and columns in the front. Very pleasing to the eye. I wondered what it looked like inside. It used to have a small pool in the back, a neat little thing. But I heard that one of the children of the house had tragically drowned in it, so the family had it filled in with cement. Such a lovely home, but such sadness.

  The house had the look of being closed up for the winter. They were probably somewhere south. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw the branches of a fir tree rustle. I thought it could have been a squirrel, but Tucker tensed. My eyes darted to him and then back toward the tree by the corner of the house.

  Three large men came around the corner with menacing grins on their faces—two of them were the same guys from Carl’s Chop House who had chased us off the dance floor. The block was eerily quiet like everyone was indoors taking a winter’s nap. The men had beefy arms accentuated by their thick wool coats, which reminded me of the thugs that Roarke and I ran into in Central Park. All eyes were on us and they were not friendly.

  “You there, with the weird hat!” said the leader, pointing at me.

  “Hey! Whattaya mean weird hat?” I said indignantly.

  I could feel Tucker tense even more, taking in the situation.

  The big guy growled a laugh. “You sound tough, but are you really? Let’s just see about that. You’ve got something we want and when we want something, we get it,” he said, starting to come closer. In this heavy snow, running was going to be slow going. I wasn’t sure we could make a break for it. I might usually be able to outrun them, but my legs were a bit rubbery after the long hours of sledding, and I had on heavy snow boots.

  I was wondering if Tucker was ever going to do anything when he finally said, “All right, guys, we don’t want any trouble.” Not the wittiest remark.

  As the men kept advancing, we took tentative steps backward. The biggest guy stepped onto a patch of ice and slipped a little. Tucker murmured confidently, “I got it, Lane, don’t worry.” He took the toboggan and swung it sideways, walloping the big guy. The man put up his arms to block the blow, and as the toboggan made contact, the momentum mixed with the ice made his feet go right out from under him. He came down hard, all three hundred pounds of him. It stunned them all and I yelled, “Run!”

  We ran down the sidewalk. The big guy was still prone on the ice—his hulking form obviously difficult to pick up. One of the smaller guys made a leap and grabbed me from behind, giving me a breath-whooshing bear hug. The third one grappled with Tucker.

  My arms were pinned, crossed in front of my chest. I took a big breath and with a mighty thrust, I pushed my arms down—palms to the ground—and bent over as hard as I could at the same time. Kirkland’s self-defense maneuver broke the guy’s grip and the way I bent over so suddenly, my rear end gave him quite a big punch to the gut. Actually, it was probably a bit lower than his gut, I thought happily to myself.

  I could see that the guy Tucker was grappling with was the meanest and the cleverest and he was not going down easily. I watched as Tucker punched him with a mighty blow to his jaw, allowing him to break away from him and we ran like gangbusters. I wanted to shout for help, but my lungs just couldn’t do it.

  We ran around the side of a large, white building that looked like a rambling house with black shutters. Then I saw the sign; it was a funeral home. As far as omens go, it didn’t seem like things were boding well for us. We found a small shed that was attached to the side of the building and we stepped inside. We had been on a cleared part of the sidewalk for a while, so we didn’t leave any telltale footprints behind.

  We got in, both of us panting, trying to do so as quietly as possible. Tucker turned to me, his eyes dark and inviting. He walked me backward until my back came up against the wall. Taking my hat off and placing his warms hands on either side of my head, he whispered intensely, “Are you okay, Lane?”

  I liked this danger, even though I knew I shouldn’t. It was simple. It made me despise the complex and heavy cloak of mystery and obligation even more.

  Everything was so confusing. Damn, I missed Finn, and I hated myself for it. I looked at Tucker, his pleasing face. I wanted to surrender, to feel something that wasn’t complicated.

  His right hand slowly came down the side of my face and his thumb traced my lips, lingering on my lower lip as he bent slowly closer.

  A harsh voice came from outside, not too far away, freezing Tucker about two inches away from my lips. “Guys! I lost ’em! You see ’em?” We heard two others cuss in frustration. Then the same harsh voice: “Come on! We better get movin’, we’re gonna have some company soon.”

  Tucker never stopped looking at my eyes. “Tucker,” I whispered. “We have to go.”

  I looked at his lips. He took a ragged breath in. Just then, the door to our shed opened abruptly. In the bright light, I could just see a man’s shape. Tucker stepped in front me with his arm out.

  “You kids okay? I saw those guys coming after you—called the cops.” It was a middle-aged man with wispy strands of hair covering his balding head.

  “Yeah, we’re okay. Thanks,” I said as I walked around Tucker and out of the shed into the white sunshine.

  The man was the manager of the funeral home. We told him what happened. As we walked along the side of the building, I heard the swish of footsteps and turned back. The biggest guy that Tucker had clobbered came stealthily around the corner. He had a gun in his hand and it was pointed right at us. Tucker turned his head back at the same moment and dove to his left, directly at me.

  “Lane, get down!” The gun went off, the bullet zipping over our heads.

  Tucker landed right on top of me. He looked down at me, my face just inches from his own, and it might have been a dramatic and romantic moment—but he had knocked the wind right out of me. I struggled not to panic. It was awful. It felt like I was going to die and I was absolutely willing my lungs to kick in and start working again.

  “Oh, my God!” yelled Tucker. “Are you hit? Are you hit, Lane?” He started pawing at me, looking for a bullet wound.

  I croaked, “Stop it.”

  “Oh God, oh God, you’re okay?”

  I nodded and croaked again, “Get. Off me.”

  He did and I saw that the gunman had departed and at last more people started coming out to see what the fracas was all about. My body was in the euphoria of being able to breathe freely once again. I didn’t much care what else happened; I was just so happy to breathe in great gasps of air.

  All three of the attackers disappeared, slipping away unseen by anyone. We
gave a report to the sheriff who showed up, the events sounding ludicrous even to me. The look on his face spoke volumes about what he really thought: We clearly had been drinking too much. After everything, which took much, much longer than I thought necessary, we at last wearily headed home after we retrieved our toboggan and my bag of tricks, dropped during the pursuit.

  The darkness of night was beginning to close in on us even though it was only about four thirty. That whole afternoon, I had a feeling like I was just missing something. Like knowing a face in the crowd, but you just can’t remember where you’d seen them before. As we walked, I kept turning over those little pieces to the puzzle, trying to find the right places, the right angle where everything would fit perfectly. I was close.

  We arrived at my door and I thanked Tucker for the robust day. He chuckled.

  “Lane, maybe I should come in. Do you want me to make sure the house is locked up?”

  “No, no, I’m sure the house is fine. I checked all the locks this morning. Besides, I’m exhausted and I really want a nap.” He didn’t look at all like that was okay with him. But I desperately needed some time alone to sort out my thoughts.

  “Really, Tucker, I’m fine and I want to be alone,” I said.

  “Okay, Lane, I give up. Get some rest and I’ll . . . see you tomorrow. You sure you’re all right?”

  “Grrrr . . .”

  He put his hands up in a posture of defense. “Okay! Okay! I get it,” he chuckled.

  “Good night, Tucker.” I closed the door softly. And locked it.

  CHAPTER 30

  “And now,” said he, “to settle what remains. Will you be wise? Will you be guided?”

  I double-checked all the locks and windows in the house, as well as the closets, so I could be at peace, wishing the entire time that Ripley was with me. I stoked up the fire and was all at once so weary, I lay down on the couch and fell directly to sleep.