The last customer had been gone five minutes when the phone rang. It was Jillian.
“Liz, sorry it’s so late. It took me a few minutes to get everything together, and we’ve been rather busy today.”
“Not a problem, Jillian. I appreciate you doing that for me.”
She hung up after apologizing at least two more times. I disconnected the landline from our custom phone, which seemed to be staring at me woefully, and hooked it up to the fax machine. The machine answered a call moments later and, with a little technospeak, whirred into life and began to spit out paper.
I collected the documents, a large spreadsheet with cells that carried over onto other pages. I’d have to put these together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, in order to see all the information. So I set up a table and began doing just that. When I had the pieces in place, I rummaged through the drawer, found a glue stick with a little life left in it, and glued it all into one large sheet.
The document was longer than I’d been expecting because Peggy had created a line for each toy donated rather than for each donor. Each line also had pertinent information about the donor, including address and telephone number, which seemed a bit useless considering these particular people were all dead. Presumably their houses were occupied by others and their phone numbers out of service.
I found the cells I was looking for. A small column for an item number followed by an identification, manufacturer, and condition. This was Dad’s area of expertise, of course, but if he was still napping, I didn’t want to wake him, especially for what was probably going to end up being a wild goose chase. Everything here looked in order. There was nothing sloppy in Peggy Trent’s operation, not that I expected there to be. If Sully had any qualms about her management, one glance at this spreadsheet, in all its organizational glory, should have put them to rest. Every toy was chronicled and evaluated and its location tracked. A column even listed the JPEG name of a picture of the item that was evidently also kept on file.
Dead end.
I jumped when someone tapped their fingers on the glass window. Miles, being funny, pushed his face against the glass until he resembled a Dick Tracy villain and held that position until I smiled.
Moments later, he opened the door. “Man, you are jumpy. Is the old man around?”
“He went up to nap earlier. I’m afraid he might be asleep for the night.”
“You sure he didn’t sneak out again?”
I started to answer, but then I realized I didn’t know what that answer was. “The alarms should be on,” I said. “Maybe I’d better go check. Mind the store?”
“Sure.” He removed his coat.
I found Dad sleeping on the sofa with Othello curled up on the armrest next to him. Dad’s snores mingled with the cat’s loud purrs. “My two fellows.” I petted Othello’s head, then grabbed a throw blanket to put on Dad. He didn’t budge.
I locked the apartment door on the way down and checked the alarm on the back door leading to the alley before rejoining Miles in the shop.
“All tucked in,” I said. “I think this murder business keeps him up at night. I expect his body needs to catch up.”
Miles was leaning over the printout from the museum. “These aren’t ours.”
“Those toys have been donated to the museum.”
“Too bad. There’s a few things in here I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on.” He tapped one row. “This old tin rocket ship. Japanese. Some of the old Japanese tin is highly collectible. I’d have to fight buyers off with a stick.”
I followed his finger to the line. “That’s a lot of zeroes.” I scanned the whole entry. This item, in good condition, was currently on display in the museum. No surprises there.
“Too bad about the astronaut. That would have been a wicked set.” He pointed to the line below it. The tin astronaut was identified in the “Condition” column as a “Repro.”
“Someone is reproducing these?” I continued to scan the line. The value was listed at about twenty dollars, and the location of this one was the archives.
“Yeah, there’s quite a market in repros. Old tin toys. Even pull toys. Some antique dealers even buy a few to put in their shops. They rough them up to make them appear older.”
My eyebrows jumped up. “Fraud?”
“Not if they don’t make false claims. All they have to do is price them low and say that they don’t know a lot about toys. Unsuspecting buyers rarely ask a lot of questions. They think they’re being all shrewd and getting a steal, but they’re the ones getting ripped off. They find that out when they realize they’ve got nuts where they should have rivets. Or plastic feet when they should be wood. Or the parts don’t line up right. They never make these repros perfect.”
“Where did you learn all this?”
“Your dad.” Miles winced. “I, uh, might have gotten taken a time or two when I first started buying for the shop online. I felt bad about it. Offered to repay the difference. He reminded me that if things are too good to be true, they’re usually not.”
“One of my first life lessons.” I scanned the “Condition” column on the spreadsheet with my finger, stopping several places where the condition was listed as a “Repro.”
“Looks like the museum got taken for a ride a few times,” Miles said.
I massaged a knot in the back of my neck. “Not really swindled, since these are all donations.”
“Why would someone donate repros to the museum?” Miles asked. “You think they didn’t know?”
“These donors are all deceased. No way of finding out.” Well, at least short of asking Althena if we could set up another séance.
Miles shrugged his coat back on. “If your Dad is pulling a Sleeping Beauty, I guess what I had to tell him can wait until tomorrow.”
“Was it about your friends? Did you learn anything new?”
Miles paused. “I’m not going to call them my friends anymore. I did find one of them who was a little less tight-lipped than the others.”
“And?”
He shuffled on his feet.
“I am working with Dad on this,” I said. “I promise, nothing you tell me goes past the walls of this shop.”
“I didn’t learn anything much. Just that they were being paid to retrieve something from the house. Only whoever wanted them to do it wouldn’t pay enough to make it worth the risk.”
“That’s not much more than we already knew. No ID on who made them the offer?”
“Well, no name. But I did learn that negotiations are ongoing.”
“So someone still wants something from inside the house. And wants it badly enough to try to hire a gang of kids to break in.”
“They almost got caught last time. If they were smart, they’d take it as a sign to go straight. Apparently they’ve taken it as a sign to ask for more cash up front.”
“No idea what this item is?”
“Nor am I likely to find out. Asking questions is making me look suspicious. I told them I wasn’t working with the cops. Not sure I convinced them.”
“Even though it’s true?”
“I’m sure they still consider your father a cop, despite his retirement. I have the feeling they have more regard for him, anyway.”
“No love for the new chief?”
“They’re pretty silent on the subject.”
“I wonder why.”
Miles snorted. “I struggled through Psych 101 in school, so I’m not sure I can help in that area. But I’ll keep poking around.” He pushed on the door to leave.
“Miles?” I called after him. “Be careful.”
“Always.” He waved and was out into the December night.
The wind drifted in from the door, giving me a brief chill that I hoped was temperature related and not some sense of foreboding. Dad would never forgive himself if something happened to Miles, especially if the young man was acting as an informant. I rubbed the goose bumps down on my arms and sneaked off to the back room for a cup of coffee. I cha
nged my mind and went for the hot chocolate. With marshmallows.
By the time I’d carried my steaming mug back into the shop, I was frustrated and a little spooked. The chills remained and reminded me of Kimmie and her ghost hunters. They claimed a sudden chill was a response to spirits in the room. But who would be haunting the shop? We had no claim to Millard Fillmore, at least not that I knew of. But Sullivan O’Grady immediately popped into mind. Not that I thought his spirit lingered in the shop. At the same time, could any of us really be at rest until the killer was caught? At any moment, Ken might decide that the circumstantial evidence he had against my father was enough to hold him. Then my whole life would come tumbling down like the blocks in a poorly played game of Jenga.
I slid back into my chair, cradled the warm cup in my hands, and stared at the spreadsheet. Its precise rows and full accounting of every object was complete and irrefutable. Why had I wanted this so-called evidence? My own dislike for Peggy had made her a target of my investigation, maybe because she was convenient. Like my dad was convenient in Ken’s investigation and the Wallaces were convenient in Cathy’s estimation. But choosing convenient scapegoats wasn’t what police work was supposed to be. It was supposed to be about truth, evidence, and justice.
The evidence I’d collected only proved that Peggy was organized and efficient. Still, all was not lost. I could probably replicate this spreadsheet to keep track of our own inventory at the shop.
I glanced at it again as I sipped my hot chocolate. Peggy was sharp, I had to give her that. Not only for her organization, but she had to really know her toys if she recognized all these repros among this donated lot.
Then I think I inhaled a minimarshmallow, because I started coughing and my eyes teared up. I rubbed them with my sleeve and tried to wash down the tickle with more hot chocolate, even as I stared at the spreadsheet through the teary blur.
Why would someone donate repros?
The question was not as simple as it appeared at first blush.
These donors had all been patients of Sullivan O’Grady. They had all been terminally ill. Sully had presumably found these toys while cleaning their attics or basements. At his request, they donated the toys to the museum, toys that had probably been forgotten and left in storage for years or decades. Treasure in the attic.
But what about the repros?
I found the lines for the expensive Japanese spaceship that was on display in the museum. The reproduction robot had come from the same donor. Had the owner bought the reproduction so that he’d have a set? Possibly.
Then why donate the reproduction to the museum? He would have realized its negligible worth. Unless the owner didn’t know he was buying a repro. Perhaps he had bought the other toy at an antique shop and didn’t realize he was being taken.
The uneasy feeling grew. The donors weren’t collectors. These were elderly people who had toys from their childhood secreted away somewhere. I recalled the dusty cardboard box that Sullivan O’Grady had brought in. Dad had handled all those toys. If a repro was among them, I’m sure he would have noticed, like Peggy had identified the repros from these earlier donations.
But how did those modern repros end up in those old collections?
I immediately thought of Miles’s former associates. Had they been hired to break into other places and switch old toys for new reproductions by some sadistic, opportunistic toy collector?
What kind of money were we talking about here? I pulled a few of Dad’s price guides from the shelf behind the register and started to spot-check the list. If some of these reproductions had been the real deal, they would have been worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The spaceman alone was worth about two thousand. Pretty pricey for a toy, but nothing to kill over.
Only . . .
I retrieved my laptop and fired it up. I rummaged through the toy sales on eBay and Etsy, to discover if any originals had recently sold. Price guides are fine, but sometimes the market is more volatile than that.
I discovered that all of them had recently sold on eBay. All by the same seller: Knitwit6709.
“Very shrewd, Peggy,” I said as the final piece snapped into place, tighter than new Legos. Peggy took in donations, which were all scrupulously cataloged, photographed, and evaluated. That process took time. Time that Peggy used to locate reproductions for some of the toys, which she then substituted for the originals. Nobody living had studied those toys enough to notice the difference, and the original owners who knew their history and provenance were all dead. Nobody was around to complain about the switch.
She then was free to sell the originals to collectors. Each payday wasn’t exactly a jackpot. One sale netted her a few hundred or perhaps a thousand or two. She played at fraud like she played Monopoly. Not a big haul all at once, but a bunch of regular payoffs, accumulated patiently over a long period. Maybe decades. Why, that could add up to be . . .
Motive for murder?
Sullivan O’Grady had seen a few of these toys before they were donated to the museum. He might even have been the one to discover them in a dusty attic. He wasn’t expert enough to know their values, but it would be hard to convince him that the toy he discovered in a box of old ones, in a decayed cardboard box covered with a layer of dust, was made in China a few months earlier.
“Go directly to jail, Peggy Trent. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”
I needed to call Ken. I got up and walked to the glaring telephone and picked up the receiver.
Dead.
Knucklehead, I chided myself. The fax machine was still hooked up. I bent down to unhook the landline from the old piece of office equipment, and the bell over the door rang.
“Be right with you!” I called out.
“No problem.”
I froze. The voice was Peggy’s.
Chapter 21
My heart rate kicked into overdrive. “Peggy, what are you doing here?” Then I paused to take in what had become a normal picture: Peggy standing in the shop with a plate covered with foil.
“Is your father around?” She glanced around the shop.
“Napping, I’m afraid.”
My mind raced, playing various scenarios. Did she know about the information that Jillian had faxed over? I hurried to put myself in front of the table, hopefully looking casual and nonchalant. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I clenched them to keep my fingers from shaking. I forced a smile. “What brings you over?”
She took two steps toward me. “I baked more cookies.”
Was it my imagination, or had she tried to look over my shoulder to see the spreadsheets on the table? I stepped toward her. “We’ve barely had time to make a dent in the ones you brought over last night.”
“You know me. I love baking.” This time there was no mistaking it. She was clearly rubbernecking the table. “I . . . hope I didn’t disturb your work.”
“Oh,” I said airily, “just taking a break during the slow time to go over some figures.”
She whipped around to face the other direction, her hand on her bowed head as if to stave off a sudden pain. “You don’t know how sorry I am to hear that.”
“I beg your pardon?” At this point, I wondered where I’d left my cell phone. Probably charging upstairs. Although I’d bet I could outrun her to the shop phone if needed. I inched back in that direction.
She whirled around and withdrew a scary looking kitchen knife from her coat.
“Peggy, what is this all about?”
She gestured toward the spreadsheet. “You know exactly what this is about, don’t you? Jillian told me what she sent you.”
“Spreadsheets from the museum. Professional curiosity. I must admit, you do a fine job. Everything neat and in order.”
She shook her head. “If you were sure everything was neat and in order, you wouldn’t have tried so hard to hide it from me when I came in.”
Wouldn’t you know my plans to avoid a confrontation had led to one. “I . . . was e
mbarrassed you caught me checking up on you. But I didn’t find anything.” I forced a blank face and tried not to flinch.
She tilted her head, and her eyes bore through me. I hazarded a glance to the telephone, which now seemed so far away. “You’re lying.” She followed my eyes to the phone. Holding the knife in front of her, she backed over to the phone, yanked out the landline, threw the modular connector on the floor, and crushed it under her boot. She then backed to the door and flipped the sign to “closed” before securing the lock. “I’m sure neither of us wants more people involved in this situation.”
She was wrong. I wanted the whole town involved in this situation. I took several steps toward the back of the store. Dad was still upstairs. He could help. And if I couldn’t get there, if I made it to the back door, the alarm would sound and help would come.
As if sensing my thoughts, Peggy said, “Don’t think about calling for your father. I’d hate to hurt him, too.”
“I don’t understand hurting anyone. Peggy, there must be some kind of misunderstanding here. I admit, I did see how you profited from the museum.”
“Stole from them, you mean.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“But it’s what you meant. Look, you have no idea what it takes to live from grant to grant. If the museum is underfunded, I don’t get paid. Meanwhile, the gas and electric companies want their share.”
“See, that could hardly be called stealing when you’re just trying to recover your salary, right?”
“That’s what I said. For a lot of years, that’s what I said. Then it became a habit. A given. A modus operandi, as the cop shows like to say. I couldn’t let that information get out.”
Death of a Toy Soldier Page 21
