Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  He seemed to understand. "We'll let the nice detective do his job, okay?" He turned to Patricia, ignoring Bonnie and leaving her cover unblown. "Would you call one of my team, have them call the Kraut?"

  Her eyebrows skyrocketed, probably at the derogatory term.

  Sherlock popped his eyebrows and grinned. It still looked lopsided. But then, he'd just killed a man, and that knocked any photo off-kilter.

  Patricia dug her cell phone from her purse. Across the street, Bonnie already spoke into hers.

  "Sherlock?"

  "Yeah, Robbie?"

  I looked up. His little smile was gentle. Like my father's.

  "I remembered."

  He understood me immediately, of course. "Did you now?"

  Wingate glanced from one to the other of us, openly eavesdropping. I didn't care. Neither would Sherlock.

  "Yes. I remembered." I opened my mouth to say what I ought to say to this man who'd helped me more than any other—

  —I very nearly said it—

  —then Sherlock's gentle smile morphed into an evil grin. And I came to my senses. In time, thankfully.

  "Yeah, Robbie? You got something to say, Robbie? What you gonna say, Robbie?"

  I started to laugh, even if it did hurt. "Go directly to jail. Do not pass go."

  Sherlock snorted. "And do not get paid for this week."

  In the middle of the street, Father's smile broadened. It lit his face like a lamp.

  Wingate, it seemed, had had enough. He tugged on Sherlock's biceps and guided him toward the nearest police car.

  William withdrew his arms from the ladies and stepped forward. "Colonel Holmes, may I be of service until a proper attorney arrives?"

  Wingate's perfect shoulders sagged.

  An ambulance, emergency lights strobing, wove through the fence of squad cars and eased to a stop nearby.

  Caren ducked down. My attention followed her motion.

  There was the spot where Aunt Edith had died. I wondered how she'd felt, knowing she'd killed a man. We had more in common than I'd realized.

  For a moment I saw the glitter of jewels in the depths of Caren's little black bag, repeatedly washed with blood then wiped clean. Then she snapped the bag closed.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  current time

  Serious or not, I checked myself out of the hospital the next morning and hitched a ride home with Caren, Patricia, and Father. The police held Sherlock a few hours longer, but the preliminary ballistics report on the slug removed from my shoulder exactly matched the one from the bullets that had killed Aunt Edith and injured Trés and the security guard. Even Wingate couldn't justify holding him after that.

  Because my right arm was in a sling and useless, Lindsay researched the jewelry online and issued directions, a role that seemed much to her liking. Across the dining room table, Caren addressed the self-stick labels from Aunt Edith's maroon leather address book. William and Patty packaged the priceless jewelry in taped layers of cotton swabbing and mountains of shipping peanuts. Father, still smiling, sat beside me and watched.

  Bonnie had taken the first flight back to West Texas, where she could go to ground on her mountain and indefinitely avoid the training camp no one wanted to attend. Theresa, finally, was asleep, sated with making things go boom in the night. And Sherlock was frankly hiding. After all, it was only Saturday; the training camp had barely begun; and if he left now he could still get there in reasonable time and take over from Wings Cadal.

  Of course, no one who knew the man expected such responsible, rational behavior.

  "No return address?" The look William gave me was keen.

  "That's right."

  "They'll try to trace these packages, you know."

  "I told you to be careful and wipe off any fingerprints. I've followed Aunt Edith's instructions, I'm finishing what she started, and I refuse to be held responsible for these damned things any longer."

  The phone rang.

  "I'm not here," Sherlock said.

  "Why not?" Lindsay asked. Aunt Edith's emerald ring, the love gift from Uncle Hubert of the forgiving and adventurous heart, glowed on her right hand, and she angled it toward the light often.

  It rang again

  "Because my anatomy is too valuable to let that man find me until he's had several months to cool off." He paused. "To me, at least."

  And again.

  "I'm not here, either," I said. "I've given the police a statement, sort of, and I'm not talking with anyone else."

  And again. Patty leaned over and snagged the cordless.

  "Ellandun residence. Hello, Detective Wingate. No, he says he's not here."

  I buried my face in Father's shoulder. Painkillers, after all, make one act in strange and unaccountable ways.

  "Oh. No, I haven't seen that yet."

  I looked up. Her gaze slid my way, eyes twinkling.

  "Six o'clock Friday night, then."

  I restrained myself until she rang off. "You are not going out with that man."

  "And why not?" She glanced at Sherlock, suddenly hesitant. But he grinned as if appreciating the joke. She smiled back and ripped another strip of packaging tape from the roll.

  "He tried to pin a murder on me. Where's he taking you, anyway?" It really wasn't my business — and her glare reminded me of that fact — but being protective of Patty was something of a habit by now.

  "To the opera." She wrapped cotton wadding about the earrings of topaz and green garnet, and taped it down. "He's not singing Friday night, so—"

  "Why should he be singing?" He would do it perfectly, of course.

  She stared, her eyebrows arch. "Stover Wingate? The new baritone for the Boston Opera? The brilliant amateur who burst onto the scene this season? Surely you remember when we saw Aida and Don Giovanni, and you raved over how good he was?"

  Of course: the framed opera posters on the walls of Wingate's office; that was where I'd seen the man before. I reddened and refused to answer.

  She blew out her cheeks at me and wiped down the outside of another package. Caren, wearing surgical gloves, slapped a label on it and put it in the plastic bag with the growing pile. I prayed Lindsay was concentrating and they were putting the correct labels on each package — that the Earl of Bedford wasn't going to get Lady Meara Montgomery's Stone Waterfall, or something similar — and left it to them. I meant what I'd said: my part in this adventure was over and no one's trophies held any more fascination for me.

  "Daddy, I don't want to be an attorney." She angled the emerald ring to the light; the Easter-morning colors flashed. "I want to go to Sandhurst instead."

  "You want to join the Army?" His face slackened.

  I eased my chair away from his, toward Father.

  "Stop it, Daddy. Uncle Robbie has nothing to do with this. It's my decision."

  "So you say." William crossed his arms. "You know, Charles, if you post these from around Boston, the police will figure it out sooner or later. After all, Glendower was a suspected jewel thief and he was killed here."

  He had a point. "I suppose the bright barrister has a suggestion?"

  "I'll take them with me on the plane tomorrow and post them from Britain somewhere. Perhaps Belfast, hm?"

  Causing an international incident, after all, was one thing; risking the family honor something else entirely. "William!"

  About the Author

  J. Gunnar Grey has never wanted to be anything except a novelist, so of course she's been everything else — proofreader, typesetter, editor, nonfiction writer, photographer, secretary, data entry clerk, legal assistant, Starfleet lieutenant commander, stable manager, dancer — and no, not that kind of dancer. Her long-suffering husband is just excited she's actually using her two degrees, one from the University of Houston Downtown and the MA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. Gunnar writes novels that are mysterious, adventurous, and historical, but all sorts of other stuff can leap out of that keyboard without warning.

&nb
sp; She lives in Humble, Texas, just north of Houston, with two parakeets, the aforementioned husband (who's more entertaining than the birds), a fig tree, a vegetable garden, the lawn from the bad place, three armloads of potted plants, and a coffee maker that's likely the most important item she owns.

  An excerpt from

  Deal

  with the

  Devil

  Chapter One

  late evening, Saturday, 24 August 1940

  over the village of Patchbourne, England

  Something soft and annoying whooshed past his face. Faust brushed at it, but it was already gone and he was too fragging sleepy to care. He dropped his arm to the bed.

  There was no bed.

  There wasn't anything. His arm was dangling out in space. So was the rest of him. Faust snapped his eyes open. A strong wind pummeled him, tumbled him head over turkey. The ground was a long way down. He was falling and it was real, not some stupid nightmare.

  Panic leapt like a predator through his veins. He twisted, fighting against gravity. An icicle of light from the distant ground stabbed at his eyes, swept past him, and several red flashes popped in quick succession. A rumbling vibrated the air, something sounding like an artillery round exploded nearby, and sharp chemical smoke scoured his nostrils.

  Tight cords wrapped about his body, between his legs, jerking him upright and throwing him higher, dangling him across the light-slashed night sky. The rumbling intensified. His head snapped back. Above him, a parachute canopy blazed white in the spotlight from below. Beyond it loomed a huge dark beast, moving past in impossible slow motion. It towered over him. The parachute danced closer, second by drawn-out second; then it bowed, canted, and slid away, laying Faust on his back as it hauled him aside.

  He gripped the harness shroud lines, chest and belly flinching. It was the bomber, the one he'd been riding in. The belly hatch framed Erhard's laughing face, lit from below by a spotlight. With one hand, Erhard clutched the rubber coaming, cupping the other about his mouth. He yelled something—something short—which was overwhelmed by the racket and growing distance.

  Maybe the plane was having mechanical problems—but they and the mechanics had tuned the Heinkel's twin engines all afternoon. No one else was bailing out.

  Erhard had thrown him overboard.

  It didn't matter how much schnapps he'd slugged nor how drunk he remained. When Faust hit the ground, Erhard was toast.

  The spotlight's cone slid from the front half of the bomber to the tail fin, the glare flashing across the metal and leaving a dark, mysterious line at the rudder's hinge. The line and the glare slid across the matte metal, twisting and writhing, finally falling off the back edge. The bomber was turning from the light. It pirouetted in a slow, graceful curtsy like a prancing warhorse and plowed into the side of the neighboring plane. Metal screeched and crumpled. The two bombers hung motionless, pinned to the night sky by the fingers of light from below. Then Erhard's plane rolled the other one over. Flames spiraled from the mass of cartwheeling metal.

  From between the bombers fell a squirming, thrashing human. Another white canopy blossomed above it. But within moments the parachute silk convulsed in scarlet flames, melted to flaring sparks of gold and orange, and crumpled to nothing-ness. In a clear, bizarre second, Faust again glimpsed Erhard's face, no longer laughing but mouth open in a scream not drowned by the clamor as he fell beyond the reach of the spot-lights.

  The entwined bombers exploded. Faust twisted, wrapping his elbows about his face, hands clutching the shroud lines. Something sharp and hot punched his right shoulder. Heat flared across his back. But when he twisted back around, the night sky was empty. The droning engines ebbed away and the searchlights vanished one by one. A final, embarrassingly late flak round exploded well behind the departing squadron and black smoke drifted through the remaining searchlight finger.

  The light fastened onto him and his slaloming parachute, tracking his descent. He exhaled with one relieved whoosh. He'd been trained on parachutes before the invasion of Norway, months ago, but this was his first real jump. Okay, it wasn't so bad. But he couldn't wait for the ground crews to find him so he could scramble back to Paris, and if he never flew again, it would be too soon.

  His breath caught. German ground-fire had no reason to shoot at German planes.

  Where the heck was he?

  The spotlight vanished, leaving him blind upon his stage. He glanced down just as his feet slammed into something solid. His knees buckled, tumbling him backward into stubbly stalks. The scent of fresh-mown grass was overlaid with the acrid tang of burning metal. Clouds lowered the night sky until he could reach up and grab a handful. Shoot, he didn't want to deal with Erhard's mess tonight, no matter where he was. Faust lay on his back and closed his eyes, letting the alcohol fuzz take over again. The klaxon of the air-raid alarm seemed to fade, not to silence but to an incomprehensible distance, like waves cream-ing over a remote Dover beach. Matthew Arnold wrote that one, about pebbles being drawn back then flung ashore by waves on the Sea of Faith. Ah, love, let us be true to one another...

  But the unpoetical parachute harness tugged at his torso and groin, jerking him awake and dragging him prone across the field. The canopy billowed about. Sharp stubble poked his shoulders and back. He grunted, eyes jolting open.

  There was a quick release snap somewhere. He fumbled with the harness, found something, and pressed it. It clicked and the pressure about his chest released, letting him twist from the harness. Any possibility of carefully gathering the miles of cloth into a manageable bundle was swept away when the rousing breeze yanked the 'chute right out of his hands. Crouched on his knees, he watched the white silk sail away, like some demented specter, toward a distant stand of dark waving trees, and tried to decide if it mattered a whit. Parachutes were reusable, weren't they? Should he try to chase the thing down? He closed his eyes and rubbed his face. Nope, he was still drunk, worrying about a frigging parachute when he should be worrying about himself.

  A quivering voice blew with the breeze across the dark void surrounding him. "Jake, you sure he came down out here? I thought he was heading nearer town."

  Faust's eyes flew open. The wind gusting over his exposed skin, face and hands, was suddenly chill. He shivered and hugged himself. The twisting in the pit of his stomach was more than just alcohol coming back to haunt him. Some deep part of his soul, something as primeval as the night itself, quaked beneath his skin. But his conscious mind hadn't yet figured out why.

  A second voice spoke, more quietly than the first, and steadier. "Be quiet, you daft bugger."

  Another gust of cold air splashed across his face, reaching through his skin into his heart and brain and being. Faust heard his breath rasping in the night's quiet and tried to still it. But the beating of his heart was just as loud and would not be calmed.

  They spoke in English.

  He wanted to be still so his unseen visitors wouldn't detect his presence, but he had to admit he froze because he was too scared to move. It took long moments before he could convince his body to curl over and duck his head down between his shoulders to hide his face. And no matter what he did, his lungs demanded oxygen and sounded like a bellows working it.

  "Jake, there's something moving over by the trees."

  He was beginning to sympathize with poor Jake. The daft bugger wouldn't shut up.

  "Yeah, I see it. Let's work our way over there, quietly, now."

  Faust tensed every muscle he possessed, ready to run or fight for it. But he wasn't near any trees. His nerves quivered as the wind danced over his skin. It might be a small animal, shaking the branches at the far end of the field—then he remembered how his parachute had billowed about like a live thing and blown away toward those trees. He stuffed his hand into his mouth to stifle a giggle.

  He held himself still, breathing more easily, until the discreet footfalls waned in the night. Then he scrambled up, balanced a moment to make certain he'd stay that way, and staggered
in the opposite direction. A hedgerow bordered the field at the foot of a small hill, and a white-painted gate partway along glowed like a beacon. He scuttled toward it. There had to be somewhere he could hide.

  "I didn't want to stop reading." ~Blue Crab Books

  "[A] remarkable surprise." ~Five Alarm Book Reviews

  "J. Gunnar Grey stole my afternoon!" ~Sandra Nachlinger "Author"

  Wehrmacht Major Faust has a dangerous secret: he likes England. But it's May 1940 and his Panzers are blasting the British Army off Dunkirk's beach, so he keeps his mouth shut even though it hurts. When the Waffen SS try to murder their English prisoners of war, Faust helps the POWs escape. Now it's treason, with his neck on the line.

  Then a friend gets him drunk, straps him into a parachute, and throws him out over Oxford during a bombing run. He's quickly caught. Because he helped type the battle plan for the invasion of England, Faust cannot allow himself to be broken in interrogation. Two German armies depend on it. But every time he escapes, someone rapes and murders a woman and the English are looking for someone to hang. He's risking disaster if he stays, someone else's life if he runs, and execution by the Gestapo if he makes it home.

  Major Stoner, Oxford don turned British intelligence officer, sees three possibilities. Faust perhaps was joyriding in that bomber, as he claims. Or he's on a reconnaissance mission for the German invasion. Or he's a spy. Stoner must break Faust to learn the truth, no matter how it strains his old heart. He must save England, and his granddaughter.

  Their battlefield is confined to a desktop. Only one of them can win. Someone must break. Someone must make a