An Unfolding Trap

by Jo A. Hiestand

  McLaren muttered that the Ropers seemed to be adept at avoiding the law.

  “George Roper’s buried in Edinburgh.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Nothing to joke about, Mike. You probably passed close to him several times.”

  “Why Edinburgh and not Manchester?”

  “He was there and happened to die there. His wife didn’t want him back, even in his less lively form, so she opted to leave him up there.”

  “They about to be divorced?”

  Jamie shrugged. “From what I could find out, yes.”

  “It would tend to change your mind about going into the hereafter side by side.”

  “Young son King couldn’t bring dad home to roost, as it were.”

  “What was George Roper doing in Edinburgh?”

  “On holiday, I assume. It was May. I’ve heard rumors that he and the other war buddy had one of their reunions, but I can’t verify it.”

  “Did you learn who this third chap is?”

  “You are inquisitive. Yes. Tam Innes. He was born in Killin, but came back to Callander after the war and settled down there. Innes was born in 1922 and died in January 1974.”

  “What the hell’s going on, Jamie? Two men, wartime friends, dying so young has got to be odd. They didn’t die of something associated with the war, did they?”

  “Like some disease or shrapnel or something? No. Roper died of a fall down a flight of stairs. Innes was hit by a bus in Edinburgh and died the next day in hospital.”

  McLaren exhaled heavily. “Isn’t this too coincidental?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Two mates of Frank Papadakis, both in Scotland, both die by accident and only months apart.”

  “You think Papadakis had a hand in the deaths?”

  “I have no proof, but it screams to me that he did. Frank moved to Balquhidder in 1964. Roper dies in 1973 and Innes dies in 1974. Papadakis had time to plan their deaths, especially if they got together a few times during those intervening years. Frank died in 2008. That’s over thirty years after his two buddies’ demise. A long time to do something without them spying on him.”

  “I’m certain you have an idea what that something is too, Mike.”

  “My first thought is absconding with some of the money from Corregidor when the Japanese invasion was imminent, but they weren’t in the same army.”

  “Not even in the same branch, Mike. Papadakis was U.S. Army, remember?”

  “Yeah. And Innes and Roper served in Burma with their British regiment.”

  “So, how’d they get so chummy? Did they know each other before the war?”

  McLaren said that was something he hoped to find out. “Or you, if you’re bored at work.”

  “But all three men were in the same general area, Mike. Frank Papadakis in the Philippines and on Corregidor, and Innes and Roper in Burma. Maybe they met by accident. Not literally, but maybe they were all on leave at the same time, frequented the same bar or something.” He waited for McLaren to agree, but when no response came, he continued. “It’s happened. Not so far fetched.”

  “Well, perhaps that’s not a crucial part of the story. They knew each other, so that’s where we start. Do you know for certain that the Yank was on the detail either to burn the Corregidor currency or load the silver and gold onto the ship?”

  “Wait a minute. It’s in my notebook…Yeah. He was. It was a hectic time, as you can imagine, so I think that’s how he got his hands on some of the wealth.”

  “Frank smuggled it back to the States, or directly to Scotland with someone’s help, then he took up residence later. But why’d he contact Innes and Roper, and why tell them about the money? The British weren’t involved with the evacuation of the wealth on Corregidor. It was strictly American and Philippine personnel. Why even tell Innes and Roper about the money he had stashed? He didn’t need them after the fact.”

  Jamie cleared his throat. “Did he have to tell Innes and Roper?”

  McLaren nearly choked. “I-I guess not, no. I just assumed, since they were mates…” He broke off, something nagging in the back of his mind. Finally, he snapped his fingers. “Of course George Roper knew about the money. It’s in his diary entry of 1962.”

  “Right. You told me.”

  McLaren reiterated about finding Donald MacLaren’s cottage and the hidden silver coins and diary. “That would explain,” McLaren said, picking up the current scenario, “why George Roper hid the diary and a few coins. He stole Frank’s hoard from Corregidor and didn’t want Frank getting his hands on the diary because it gave a cryptic clue to the money’s location. Also, if George Roper stole Frank’s hoard…which I’m sure he did, for how else would a Brit get his hands on Yankee money…he’d want to secrete it somewhere fairly close by. It’d have to be fairly easy to access, easy to remember, yet hidden enough so the casual passerby wouldn’t discover it.”

  “Where is this location, or haven’t you had time to unearth it yet?”

  “I did. About…” McLaren glanced at his watch. “An hour ago,”

  “That have any connection with your head injury?” Jamie’s voice sounded worried.

  “I don’t know.” He touched his arm again. It still throbbed. “My head connected with a rock, that’s all I know. Damn.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. My arm hurts like blazes.”

  “Mike, I’m serious. Get to a hospital—”

  “It’ll be fine in the morning. I have my suspicion that this recent encounter came about from that hit-and-run encounter I had in Edinburgh.”

  “Where that man was killed?”

  “Yeah. When I came up to the shieling, I overheard the rock thrower talking to the driver of the vehicle used in the hit-and-run.”

  “You’re not serious, Mike.”

  “They didn’t come right out with the name, but I suspect my friend Charlie Harvester is behind that assault and my current attack. After all, I know he, Lanny Clack, Fowler Ritchie, and Jean MacNab are all chums.”

  “Who’s this Ritchie fellow? Another of Harvester’s hit men?”

  “Yeah. Fowler Ritchie and Lanny Clack. A warmer, more caring pair you’d be hard pressed to meet.” He gritted his teeth as pain shot down his arm. He hadn’t intended to move it.

  “Why would Harvester do this? You two may not be drinking mates but you’ve existed for nearly eighteen months in a tense truce. Longer, if you count your time together in Staffordshire Constabulary. So, why now, and why would he choose Scotland to…dispose…of you?”

  “I considered that the other day, Jamie. Scotland’s far enough from Harvester’s patch in Derbyshire so he won’t be suspected.”

  “A lot of trouble for an alibi.”

  “As to why now…maybe he just got fed up with running into me. We all have our tolerance level, our breaking point. Something could’ve tipped him over the edge, too. I don’t know.”

  “You’ve solved a few cold cases lately, Mike. Harvester’s nose gets out of joint rather quickly, especially when he feels the limelight’s diverted from his own genius. Could be that. You know—one too many newspaper articles. You’re scoring where he isn’t.”

  “Jealousy? Maybe. Anyway, he chose Scotland. Could be nothing more than he knew Lanny Clack, maybe he did Lanny a good deed once and is now calling in the favor.”

  “Harvester never did a good deed for anyone except Charlie Harvester.”

  “Well, I’m not going to analyze the bloke. I know he hired Lanny and Fowler. I heard the two of them talking in the shieling. Plus, I read those emails of Jean MacNab’s. I don’t especially care why Harvester’s bent on ending my days. It’s enough to know he tried.”

  “Devotion and single-mindedness can be carried too far.”

  “So it’s logical to suspect Harvester conked me on the head.”

  Jamie let a few choice words about Harvester slip out. “Did you see him?”

  “I was focused on Fowler and
his bit of daring-do with the knife. But I saw someone grab a rock or a bough before the lights went out.”

  “And you’re naming Harvester as the head pounder.”

  “It fits, Jamie. Look at the email communication with Jean. Look at how he used George Roper’s actual diary and map to get me to lead him to the money.”

  “You two are strange bed fellows, Mike. Harvester leads you on this treasure hunt and you’re leading him to the site. Why wouldn’t he make it simple and have one of King Roper’s gang decipher the cache location, leaving you out of it?”

  “He probably doesn’t trust them. He might be nervous stepping into a den of thieves.”

  “Hi, I’m a cop. Respect me and don’t kill me. Yeah. I accept that.”

  “Also, Harvester likes to control everything. He’s a megalomaniac. The fewer people involved—namely, me—the fewer people he has to keep track of, has to direct, and has to worry about wandering away with the loot if they find the money on the sly. With just one guy to keep surveillance on, he’s feeling bloody confident.”

  “Probably counting his pile of loot in his dreams. All right. As I said, it makes sense. But what about Fowler Ritchie? He tried to kill you.”

  “That’s just a by-product of Harvester’s Great Plan, I think. Fowler might be acting on his own, now that Lanny’s dead, thinks he can watch me and get the money before Harvester legs it up the hill. They may have had a falling out, for all I know.”

  “Fowler will go up a notch in my estimation if he’s parted from ole Charlie.”

  “Mine, too, I’m reluctant to admit.”

  “I, uh, told my boss about this, Mike.”

  “Why the hell’d you do that?”

  “You know. To keep them up to date. Your case is getting more dangerous by the day.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” He winced as he moved his arm.

  “I thought you needed to have documentation for all this. You know. Like when you were in the job.”

  “Cover my back, you mean. Especially if anything serious happens to me, then it won’t reflect on you.”

  “That’s not even funny—the slur on my character or the suggestion that you’ll be hurt. Anyway, it seems the thing to do with Harvester, doesn’t it?”

  McLaren let out his breath, his mind taking him back to June of last year. Harvester sprawling in the rose bush, the constables and crime scene investigators standing in shock, unsure if they should go to Harvester’s aid or pretend they hadn’t seen the assault, fearing for their careers if they were called to testify. And McLaren’s own hermit-like existence during the ensuing twelve months, his anger and mistrust, his near loss of his family, friends, and fiancée. He got up, the ground suddenly hard and cold. “Those dates, Jamie…”

  “Which ones?”

  “Roper and Innes’ deaths.”

  “What about them?

  “I wonder if Frank Papadakis killed George Roper to keep him quiet about the Corregidor money, insurance if he found out and was tempted to talk about it.”

  “To keep the loot for himself, you mean?”

  “As good a motive as I’ve heard in a while. Georgie Roper meets with an untimely accident the next time he returns.”

  “Courtesy of Frank Papadakis’ push down the stairs.”

  McLaren shook his head, interrupting Jamie. “We’re on the wrong tack. Doesn’t pan out. George’s diary states he knew about Frank’s loot. He wrote that he was about to get the lion’s share. Doesn’t that imply George had the money, that he stole it from Frank?”

  Jamie picked up the story. “Okay. George Roper discovers where Frank hid the money. He steals it and hides it somewhere else. Roper then leaves a clue to the money’s location in his diary, not wanting to forget.”

  “Can’t believe he’d forget a thing like that.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t sure when he could get back, so he needed to make certain he knew where it was. That’s a hell of a lot of money to lose.”

  “Point taken.”

  “And being a greedy little bastard, George doesn’t tell Innes, believing dividing a treasure two ways dilutes his portion.”

  McLaren’s words tumbled out in a rush. “And Frank never finds out his money is gone. He pushes George down the stairs and pushes Innes in front of the bus to eliminate them, to stop them from blabbing about the Corregidor loot at a later date. He hadn’t gone back to the spot where he’d buried the money so he didn’t know George had found it and dug it up and hid it elsewhere.” He smiled, satisfied with the plot.

  “But if Frank realized the money was gone, he’d not have killed George and Innes. He’d have needed them around to tell them where it was hidden.”

  “Which is why,” McLaren agreed, “the diary was still in Donald MacLaren’s cottage these forty plus years later. Roper had secreted it there. He was dead. He hadn’t had time to collect the money from where he had hidden it before Frank killed him. George and his wife were estranged, so he might’ve felt he couldn’t tell her about the money and where the diary was hidden.”

  “And son King was hardly old enough to comprehend the secret.”

  “George Roper had no inkling that he was a marked man. If he had known, he might’ve told someone else. But Frank got to him first and stopped that threat to his money.”

  “Too late, as it worked out.”

  McLaren fell silent, thinking through the scenario. “I wonder if George Roper or Innes knew a father or friend of King Roper’s present gang.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “We’re missing the link between these two generations, Jamie. If we agree George Roper stole Frank Papadakis’ money, hid it, and secreted the clues to guide the lucky treasurer hunter to the loot, and if we agree Mr. Personality Charlie Harvester got a hold of the diary and other clues in order to prod me into leading him to it—”

  “How did Charlie Harvester get the diary and other clues?”

  McLaren moved his feet and stretched. He was feeling the cold. “I can’t see King Roper handing over everything to him with his blessing, and encouraging him to seek and find.”

  “King’s greed makes Harvester look like a philanthropist in comparison.”

  “So, how did the diary et al fall into Harvester’s possession, Jamie? Am I overlooking something obvious?”

  Jamie moaned that he was mentally exhausted from digging up the three war buddies’ past.

  McLaren flexed his arm gently, hoping to keep it from stiffening. The wound didn’t hurt as much now, but his muscle ached, as if it had been kicked. “I just thought of something.”

  “Yeah?” Jamie yawned. “What?”

  “What if George, being a thoughtful dad, wills or somehow passes on the diary and other Corregidor items to son King? Maybe Innes got it after George’s death and saw that King got it. Doesn’t really matter, but King ends up with the diary and map. Souvenirs of dad’s military adventures. Maybe Innes wrote out the whole story. Maybe the wife knew the story and told it to King. However King came by it, he had his father’s diary.”

  “Plausible. Lots of kids have their parents’ old military things.”

  “So, we’ve got two factions in this story. George Roper, Innes, and Papadakis, the blokes who stole the money and know where its buried, and we’ve got the later group of Charlie Harvester, Lanny Clack, and Fowler Ritchie, who want to know where that money is.”

  “How do you connect them?”

  “Through the one person common to both. At least, one that I know of. Lanny Clack.”

  “Lanny?”

  “Sure. Think about it, Jamie. Lanny’s a member of King Roper’s gang. Lanny’s also a mate of Harvester’s. What if Harvester approaches Lanny with this sob story about me, how he hates my guts, wants to get rid of me, and so on? What if Lanny, as a friendly helper, gets the diary and like items from King, strictly as a loan?”

  “King would’ve done that. Probably said something like ‘One less cop in the world,’ or some such warm s
entiment.”

  “Lanny then loans the diary and map to Harvester so he can set up the scheme, lure me here, nudge me into finding those items, and eventually lead him to the buried money.” McLaren waited for Jamie to find the hole in the plot, to remind him of the crucial fact he’d forgotten, but only breathing came over the phone connection. “Well?” McLaren asked, unable to bear the silence any longer. “Where have I gone astray?”

  “Nowhere, as far as I can see.”

  “Anything else suggest itself? Is there another way for George Roper’s diary to get into Harvester’s hands?”

  “Could do, but it’s stretching the limits of believability.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, estate sale, church jumble sale. You know.”

  “Harvester or Lanny just happen to buy this interesting albeit important bit of World War Two memorabilia, just happen to know George Roper through their personal acquaintance or knowledge of King Roper. I see what you mean.”

  “A little too coincidental to happen like that. No, Mike, I think you’ve figured it out. Lanny Clack has to be the hub in all this. He knows King Roper and he knows Charlie Harvester. No one else, at least no one whom we know, could’ve produced the diary. So now what happens?”

  “I need to get back to my room and clean up a bit before I answer that. Damn, I’m stiff.” McLaren got to his feet, grimacing at the effort. Every muscle seemed to complain at once.

  “Ring me up when you’ve decided what’s next.”

  “You going to come here?”

  “No, but I like to be part of the story. Something to lull my grandkids asleep to in my dotage.”

  “First you need a kid of your own, Jamie.”

  “Always the nitpicker, aren’t you?” He rang off after getting McLaren’s promise to keep him informed.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The rucksack was nowhere in sight. McLaren walked around the small clearing, poked among the tall grass near the trail, thinking it might’ve been moved accidentally in the fight. He returned to the spot where he’d set the pack. No scuffed earth or trail through the snow indicated it had been kicked aside. It had simply vanished.