Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  The back door slammed.

  "Wait!" Sherlock yelled.

  I froze, halfway up. He was right: a slamming door did not automatically mean the danger was past. Seemingly uncaring, Sherlock bounded down the stairs and leapt over the banister at the bottom, cutting off the turn and slamming into the far wall. I scrambled up and followed. He ricocheted out of the hall into the kitchen, .45 in front of him like a shield.

  The kitchen was empty. We sprinted together for the back door. This time Glendower had taken the time to lock it behind him and I scrambled for my kit. Finally I threw the door open. But the backyard, again, was empty.

  I ran to the fence on one side, Sherlock to the other. We both scrambled up. No need for cover; Glendower had nothing to gain, and his life to lose, by sticking around for a shootout.

  "There." Sherlock didn't yell.

  I swiveled on the fence in time to watch a dark sedan, not an Impala but still full-sized, slip quietly down the street. Even in the dark I could see that it leaned to the left side of the road.

  A moment later a green Taurus followed. It was Patricia's car. Theresa was driving.

  It was time to go on the offensive.

  Archive Thirteen

  eight years earlier

  I began drinking more heavily after Mum's death and finally turned my thoughts to the dim and depressing future. Father, although the holder of some minor title he'd received from his father, was not magnificently wealthy and anything I received upon his passing wasn't likely to support my current lifestyle at Boston waterfront prices. Besides, it was more a probability than a possibility he'd disinherited me entirely, although no one saw fit to make the specifics of that clear to me and I at least had the sense not to ask. And although Aunt Edith continued gifting me an allowance without comment, that was beginning to grate. I loved my aunt and my gratitude toward her was monumental, but finally, at the age of twenty, I realized I couldn't continue on this self-chosen and self-destructive path with her money, particularly as she didn't approve thereof.

  I'd always hated money and ignored it whenever possible. It took me twenty years to realize I could afford to hate it because I'd always had it.

  No matter how capable my skills, I was reluctant to actually steal for profit. There was within my admittedly still-juvenile mind a notion planted by Uncle Hubert during our brief two years together — the belief that stealing for gain was shameful, a Philistine thing to do, and I certainly did not consider my snobbish self one of the Great Unwashed. But, over the finest swill my aunt's allowance could buy, I admitted my options were minimal and not likely to expand. One: I could revamp my lifestyle to fit within my anticipated income, which I was loathe to do. Two: I could return to school and learn a mundane profession which I was willing to practice, which concept also did not thrill me. Three: I could practice the trade I already knew and supplement my allowance with the fruits of my own illegal labor, which option as a testament to Uncle Hubert enraptured me least of all.

  Next Tuesday I swallowed my arrogance, took my choices to Aunt Edith, and laid them out on the tea table before her. For half an hour she sat on the long white sofa and said nothing, simply sipped her tea and nibbled her cake and let me rattle on, as I lamented the horrors of the material world and the lack of dignity inherent in earning a living.

  She hadn't changed her china set. It was the same rosy cup and saucer with the gold rims she had held during our first tea together, when we had formed our pact behind Father's confused and helpless back. The cut roses that day were yellow and red, branches of privet with shiny green leaves and spikes of tiny white blooms scattered in the bouquet and adding a sweet, home-like scent to the roses' untamed power. The Wall Street Journal, folded open to the stocks section, rested between the silver vase and the cordless telephone, and it was that sight that reminded me Aunt Edith lived in the world of money and made it her own. I felt myself redden at the obviousness that had so eluded me, and prepared myself for one of her sly digs.

  But she looked down into her cup, as if reading the tea leaves. Her expression didn't change. "Are you certain you wish to hear my opinion?"

  I should have known she'd have something wise to suggest. I set my own saucer on the table and leaned back on the short white sofa, not bothering to hide the hope her quiet statement built within me. "You're leading me, Aunt Edith. Just out with it, all right?"

  She examined me in that level disconcerting way of hers, without compassion but also without judgment. I waited in vain for her usual smile. Her hair had greyed since we first sat down to tea together, but its overall color was still black and her facial skin remained smooth and wrinkle-free. The light from the big bay windows behind her haloed her chignon and fell between us like a barrier, and I wasn't certain what mode of transport could cross it.

  "You've been very quiet since your mother's death." Her voice was gentler than before. "You've never spoken of it."

  I froze, astonished. There were some subjects Aunt Edith and I simply never discussed, or hadn't until that moment, and heading that list was my family. We had ignored their very existence since the day I'd told her I never wanted to see them again, and this violation of our treaty seemed an unforgivable invasion of my privacy, a betrayal of a significant trust. For the first time in years I wondered what really was in her garret.

  I admit I had to swallow a spot of tea and temper prior to attempting an answer. "I didn't realize there was anything to discuss."

  The skin about her eyes tightened and her lips thinned. But she said nothing, merely nibbled a bite of carrot cake. It was all so terribly civilized. I wanted to laugh aloud and for some reason I couldn't in the slightest understand, I suddenly wanted to weep.

  Into this charged silence she said, "Perhaps a few years in the Army might give you time to think."

  I took her broadside without flinching. After all, it was a possibility I hadn't considered. Admittedly, my immediate reaction to the notion of rigid discipline was closer to mal de mer than relief. But at least the outrage fractured the lump that had grown in my throat.

  To give myself a bit of time to think, I rose and crossed to the far wall, beyond the sideboard, where their wedding photograph hung askew. It often did, but for some reason I couldn't stand for that photo to be off kilter. I straightened it just to be doing something, and that's when an evil little plan hit me. She'd broached our agreement; I determined her mistake would not be repeated.

  "You never did tell me of him, you know."

  My back was to her, so I suppose her mistake was natural.

  "Dear old Hubert?" Her voice was as astonished as I'd felt earlier, as if I'd inquired about living on the moon. "What do you wish to know?"

  I turned from the photo. She'd slewed about on the sofa to follow my progress across the parlor, and the light from the south-facing bay windows fell across her face. Her confusion was mirrored in her eyes. Her head tilted above her tea cup and a single vertical line split her high forehead.

  "Not Uncle Hubert," I said. "The friend who gave you those picks so many years ago."

  The silence between us was deeper this time, the anger no longer merely my own. She set down her saucer, cup trembling within.

  "What shall you do with yourself, Charles?"

  I ignored the question and persisted. "What was his name, that old friend? It was an odd gift, you know, not the sort of thing normally passed around at Christmas."

  For a minute longer she paused. Something haunted touched her face but vanished before I could identify the root emotion, or even determine whether it was positive or otherwise. She tucked her legs in a graceful elegant gesture that never failed to catch even her offended nephew's attention and looked past me toward the windows, to the blowing roses and hawthorns beyond, as if something wild and forbidden awaited her somewhere out there. For just a moment the magic again touched her face, and only then did I realize how heavy she had seemed before.

  "Basil Glendower." Her face softened as she said the n
ame. "I'm uncertain where he was truly from or even if he has truly died, as he was an habitual liar." She cocked her head slightly. "Perhaps, if you return to the islands, you might find out for me."

  It was unspoken that she herself would not return, that possibly she could not. That concept we did not bother to broach. And suddenly I felt overwhelming shame at bullying this tiny, graceful, private woman who had been more to me than my own mother ever wished to be. In that moment, I knew Aunt Edith was as trapped in Cambridge as if she was locked into a cage, and the only way she'd ever be free was if I flew for her.

  And she had answered my question. I bullied her, although I swore to myself years ago I'd not follow in the footsteps of the class bullies, promised myself I'd be nothing like William or Father. She looked beyond my hypocrisy and saw into the needs of my heart, just as she'd looked beyond me to the window and seen something wild that wasn't truly there, that for her would never be there again.

  I suppose my shame showed in my expression.

  "What shall you do, Charles." This time, it was not a question.

  I returned to the sofa and lifted my cup. The tea was cold but still quite good. "I shall go into the Army for a few years, I suppose."

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  current time

  Theresa telephoned at five that morning with the whereabouts of Glendower's lair in the North End. She was fairly certain she hadn't been spotted tailing him.

  "Or if he did see me," she said, through the speaker phone and into the kitchen, "then he's a cool customer, 'cause he didn't let on at all."

  Sherlock slugged coffee wholesale; after the previous night's shootout, we all did. "He is a cool customer. Hang tight, Theresa, and don't let him slip away. Sooner or later he'll go out. When he does, call us." He glanced at me. "We want to search his flat, too."

  "Perhaps a bit more politely than he searched mine," I said.

  "Right," Lindsay said.

  After we hung up, Lindsay and Patricia returned to sorting banking records in the dining room; Patty seemed obsessed with discovering the limits of Aunt Edith's perfidy. Caren turned to Sherlock and me, leaning side by side over the butcher block table with coffee cups raised. Her eyes were somber, even embarrassed when she looked at me, and she played with her own mug rather than drink from it.

  "You know," she said, "in Edith's financial records we've found payment details from six different people so far, but none from Glendower. What on earth made you two think he was the killer and not, say, Professor Rainwater? After all, any blackmail victim would have motive to kill Edith."

  I waited for Sherlock to field her question. But he just kept sipping coffee, giving me the game. Well, I suppose I owed him that much, at least, after he took point in the firefight — although, of course, I'd never admit it.

  "Mostly it was the Browning."

  She tilted her head. "Which one: the one we found in the garret, or the one mentioned in the police ballistics report?"

  "That fact, actually." When she only tilted her head further — as clear a cue as Wingate's raised eyebrows — I elaborated. "Although Browning's an American company, those pistols were made in Belgium. They just weren't popular in this country, not with such a small bore as seven point six five. This is Dirty Harry country, where three fifty-sevens and Colt forty-fives reign, and even a nine millimeter is considered rather sissy. Finding two small-bore Belgian Brownings in the same place, well, that just screamed out a connection between what's in Aunt Edith's garret and the gun that killed her."

  Her eyes crinkled. "Perhaps to someone who knows guns."

  I shrugged. "And the scrapbook about Glendower and the burglaries was found with the Browning in the steamer trunk. Although we have no evidence the two pistols are a matched set, it's a possibility. We do know both were manufactured in 1929, between the two World Wars. That means the killer's a collector or he's owned it for so long, it wasn't old when he purchased it."

  Sherlock finally stirred. "Something else to consider is that a blackmail victim doesn't have all that much cash to spare. If he's going to buy a pistol to kill someone, he ain't gonna bother getting something with historical value because he's going to toss it in the river afterwards. He's gonna buy a cheap Saturday Night Special and be done with it." He reached again for the urn. "So we knew it wasn't one of the blackmail victims, which is why I haven't bothered looking any of them up. We knew it wasn't any of the family, because then Trés would have been finished off, not left alive to finger the person who shot him." He topped up my cup, too, and glanced at Caren. "You done?"

  She covered her mug with one hand. "So the only person left—"

  "—is Glendower or someone whose name we hadn't come across yet. And with only rumors of his suicide, rather than real facts, I got suspicious." Sherlock closed his eyes over his mug and inhaled. "Damn, it's gonna be a long day. I am getting too old for this nonsense."

  I stared at him in shock, then grabbed my mug and left. He needed time with the psychiatrist more than I did. Besides, I wanted to sort through more mental baggage. So I took my fresh cup and my backpack to the garret: it seemed an appropriate place for trawling one's subconscious.

  Back at my condo, I'd thrown my old trophies into the backpack along with the pistols and ammunition without a glance. Now I sat cross-legged on the garret floor, pulled them out one by one, and stared at each for a long time before setting it aside and reaching for the next.

  There were the first items I ever stole, the penlight, Swiss Army knife, and spyglass that were once the proud property of Darrow and Cartier. I can't say I felt much sorrow over those two; they were bullies of the worst sort and deserved being sent down and shamed before the entire school; but their behavior had nothing to do with mine. I set the items aside.

  There were others: Bannister's sketch pad and Dorinne's lipstick case from my Harvard days; Tamara's journal, Daphne's half-completed essay on Tennyson's "Ulysses," and Price's coon-skin cap, all from Cambridge; and Jeremy's hip flask from my days in Boston before Aunt Edith convinced me to join the Army. Around that time my jaded conscience finally caught up with my behavior and the trophy collecting thankfully came to an end.

  Each of these items symbolized something for me, a bloodless strike against the proper owner, somewhere between a tennis score and aiming for the center of mass with the Mauser rifle. I willingly acknowledged the stuff wasn't mine. But I never considered returning them. They were too close to my heart, no matter how much their presence currently shamed me. I looked at each one, set it aside, reached into the backpack for the next, and wondered at my own lack of ability to simply throw this rubbish away.

  Near the bottom was the dark blue, gold-embossed case containing the Bronze Star. In a sense it was the most shameful of the entire collection: instead of symbolizing my underdeveloped juvenile morality, it spoke of my failure as an adult to complete the assignment given to me. It had been a fair fight. The spotter won and I lost, and that shame burned more deeply than all the others in my life combined. I couldn't wear the decoration and I couldn't throw it away. I didn't open the presentation case, but set it aside with all the rest.

  Lastly I pulled out Langstrom's family photo. When I first arrived in Boston, I purchased — yes, purchased — a sturdy mahogany frame to protect it, my championship trophy. For years I displayed it proudly on the writing desk in my bedroom, before guilt overwhelmed the pride and I hid it, first in the desk drawer, then in the bottom of my sock drawer, and finally in a false bottom beneath the ammunition in my gun case.

  But hiding it didn't hide the fact that I stole it in the first place, the same way Aunt Edith stole and seduced me from my father. Finally it occurred to me to wonder if she had considered me her trophy. And finally I wondered what else she might have stolen.

  I truly was a lot like Aunt Edith. Only now I didn't want to be.

  "Robbie my Robber?"

  I glanced up. Sherlock stood just inside the garret door, beside the stack of Uncle Hubert's tom
es propping it open.

  Without thinking I blurted out my uppermost thought. "I'm a thief."

  "If you are," he said without pausing, "you're the most honest thief I know."

  I blinked and had no idea how to respond.

  He strolled into the garret, brushing one big scarred hand across the armoire's carving in passing. "You know, there's nothing really wrong with this room. Spruce it up a bit, a coat of paint, maybe some carpet," he glanced up at the bare bulb dangling over the desk, "a light fixture with a ceiling fan, maybe even a skylight to open it up some," he glanced at the trunk that had concealed the death clothing, "a recliner in that corner, a radio with the Astros game on—"

  Even then I couldn't let him get away with that. "The Red Sox."

  "—a ball game in any case. This would be a great room for getting away from it all." His roving glance touched on the pile of trophies beside me, swept across my face, moved on to the desk. He paused beside it and played with the rolltop, then let it down with a gentle touch. "This sort of room doesn't have to be dark, you know."

  I stared at the bare wooden floor beneath my crossed legs, almost afraid to breathe, and let his words soak in.

  His step, light even in combat boots, paused at the door. "Theresa just called. Glendower's gone out."

  I found air. "Right. Let's finish this."

  Glendower had taken an efficiency apartment in the North End, reasonably near the Carr Gallery and less than ten minutes from my condo, but a long drive from the house for someone not familiar with the city. But the apartment had other considerations to recommend it. It was in a colorful neighborhood where a stranger could come and go at all hours without being noticed and without attracting questions. It was above a pawn shop, rather like Goldberg's old shop where Uncle Hubert purchased my lockpicking kit, and on a busy corner, backed onto an alley with a rear entrance and stairway. For unnoticed comings and goings it was built to order.

  And that worked as much to our advantage as to his.