The Hotspur Affair: A Richard & Morgana MacKenzie Mystery

by Jack Flanagan

  Then out of the blue came the unmistakable—POP—of a single gunshot which seemed to have originated just a few yards away, around the bend in the road.

  “That was a shot!” yelled Kyle as he instantly crouched down on one knee. Taking out his side-arm, he looked intensely down the road.

  “Who is shooting at us now?” I angrily quipped to my fellow companions, who, by this time, had astutely taken to the ground.

  “Rich, get down!” ordered Kyle as he grabbed the front of my windbreaker and yanked me to the gravel road. “You, of all people, should have been the first to taste dust,” he said under his breath.

  He was right. Why was I standing? Maybe I had gotten used to being shot at. Or maybe, I had just lost it. My survival wits had finally deserted me. I had become the classic old geezer, who was too busy complaining while oblivious to the real dangers around him.

  POP!

  A second shot pierced the still autumn air, and my old self returned. I quickly tucked myself behind Kyle as he peered down the road, past the ursine mailbox.

  “What’s up?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know. But we’ll soon find out.” Kyle started to pull himself to his feet with one hand, using the mailbox in his ascent. With his other hand, he aimed his gun in the direction of approaching voices.

  Coming around the bend in the road, Peterson and some guy in a dark suit slowly walked into view. The stalwart deputy kept several paces behind the stranger who came toward us with his hands in the air and his head slightly bowed. “Get a move on,” barked Peterson as he waved a pistol from side to side.

  “Who’s our friend?” called Kyle, holstering his gun.

  “Not, sure,” answered Peterson. “I found him spying on us from the bushes on the side of the road a few yards back. He’s a foreigner. He says his name is—”

  “Firmino Baldewin,” said Joe with a tone of disbelief.

  “You know him?” I asked in surprise.

  Joe didn’t answer but walked up to our new arrival. “Firmino, what are you doing here?”

  “You really know this guy?” asked Peterson.

  “I do.”

  “And Father, did you know that he had this?” said Peterson flashing the gun that he had in hand.

  “I would be very surprised if he didn’t,” said my friend looking very perplexed.

  Taking Joe’s comment as a cue to speak, Baldewin added, “As I tried to explain to this troublesome constable—”

  “Deputy Sheriff,” said Peterson.

  “To this eh, Deputy Sheriff—” continued Baldewin, in his foreign accent—“I am a captain in the Gendarmerie Corps of the Vatican.”

  “Sounded like a lot of jibber-jabber to me, Sheriff.”

  “I assure that it isn’t jibber-jabber, Deputy,” said Joe.

  “What were the two shots?” asked Kyle.

  “The deputy,” replied Baldewin,“ eh, tripped—I think that is the word—when he surprised me at the side of the road.”

  “Tripped!” Kyle blurted.

  “Twice,” Baldewin flatly added.

  “Sheriff, I—”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Kyle said, forebodingly. My brother pushed up the brim of his campaign hat and took a step toward the newcomer. “Now, Mr. Baldewin, what brings you to Starkshire County?”

  With bewilderment written on his face, Baldewin hesitantly answered, “An automobile. I rented it at the airport?”

  “Hey, don’t get wise, buddy, or I’ll—”

  “Why are you here, Firmino?” intervened Joe for the sake of clarity.

  “Ah . . . yes . . . that is an embarrassment. The truth is, Father, that I was asked to watch out for you.”

  “Watch out for me? What do you mean? . . .Oh!” Then a flash of revelation streaked across Joe’s face. “Excuse me for a second.” Without explanation, my friend darted down the road, crossed over to the other side, and peered around the bend. He then faced us and pointed at something that wasn’t readily in my field of vision.

  “That’s the black car!” Joe shouted. “It was you!” declared Joe walking back to us. “You were the one in the diner parking lot. You were the one who scared off the thugs who attacked me.”

  “Si, Padré, that was me.”

  “Why did you—”

  “You appeared to have needed some assistance.”

  “Yes, but—”

  It was at that moment that my brother’s cell phone rang. Well, it really didn’t ring, exactly. It played The William Tell Overture—the Lone Ranger part. It was his special ringtone for his HQ.

  “Hello,” answered Kyle as he put up free his hand to stop the discourse between Joe and Signor Baldewin—who willingly complied. Without any of his usual interruptions, my brother listened intently to the caller. I watched his face changed from one of displaying annoyance, then of concern, and finally of gratitude.

  “My office called,” Kyle announced. “There is some bad news and some good news.”

  “Isn’t, ‘There’s some good news and some bad news?’” corrected Trooper Cobourne.

  “The sheriff likes to save the best for last,” said Peterson, still looking at Baldewin with suspicion.

  “The bad news is that one of the toilets is still backed up at HQ. For some reason, the plumbers will be working on it for a couple of more hours.”

  “Is it the one by your office?” innocently asked Peterson.

  “Yes,” quickly replied Kyle. “But the good news, Trooper Cobourne, is that your boss has been delayed in Manchester. Yes, regretfully, Detective Thomas won’t be able to attend our meeting today. And so,” continued Kyle with a smile, “I won’t have to deal with him until after Uncle Raymond’s funeral.”

  “Well, this makes my day easier,” blurted the state trooper.

  “That’s great news, I suppose,” I said. “But back to the point, what about our new friend here?”

  “Well, I think all of us should go to your house, Rich, and hold an inquiry—”

  “Say that again.” I suddenly wondered if my hearing was failing.

  “We will all trot over to your house and—”

  “How did my place get involved in this?”

  “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” apologized Cobourne, “but I have to stick around here. In fact, if you don’t need me, I’ll be going back to your Uncle’s house and do my report.”

  “Good idea,” said Kyle. “Peterson will keep you updated.”

  As Cobourne started walking back to the house, my brother hailed him. “Eh, Jimmy, when you are writing about the Mapledale incident—”

  The trooper quickly turned in our direction and, with a grin, said, “Say no more. I’ll leave the details of Mapledale’s misunderstanding to you and Peterson.”

  “Good man, thanks,” said Kyle, waving the goodbye. When Cobourne was out of earshot, my brother set the agenda. “Right, now the rest of us will proceed to my brother’s place if there are no objections. We will question Mr. Bald-one there.”

  “My house? Wait, wait, wait . . . I have an objection. Why are we all going to my house?”

  “It’s nearby.”

  “So is the sheriff’s office.”

  “Ah, but if we go to the sheriff’s department, everything becomes official. There’s paperwork, and filing, and maybe some dealing with state and federal agencies because Mr. Bald-one is a foreigner—”

  “Baldewin, ” said our new companion. “It’s Bal-de-win, Sheriff. Not bald one!”

  “Ayup, Baldewin. Got it. Anyway, if we go to my office, there will be witnesses to conversations. Conversations that will demand contact with government agencies, a situation which I am sure . . . Mr. Baldewin . . . would like to avoid if possible. I know that I would. I hate dealing with the government, state or federal . . . So much paperwork.”

  “Yes, there is no need to drag others into our private business,” remarked our guest. “Your brother’s home is very satisfactory to me, Sheriff.”

  “You see even Ba
ld-one . . .ah, sorry . . . Baldewin agrees with me,” added Kyle.

  “Sheriff?” said Peterson, looking a little troubled about my brother’s plan. “No disrespected intended, but do you want to take this Italian—”

  “I am a Swiss by birth,” interjected Baldewin.

  “What?”

  “I am a Swiss national, and I work for the Vatican. It’s all there in my papers which I gave you.”

  Peterson took out some official-looking papers from his inside coat pocket, gazed at them, passed the little bundle over to my brother. “In any case,” continued the deputy, “do you think bringing the suspect to your brother’s home is a good idea?”

  Still being a little miffed with Kyle’s idea for an interrogation venue, I jumped in, saying, “I am not sure that I want a suspect in my house.”

  “Suspect of what? Parking on a country road?” replied Kyle, sarcastically. “Or is it hiking through the weeds on county property?”

  My mind went blank.

  Kyle shook his head and then turned to Joe. “You know this guy?”

  “Yes,” answered Joe sheepishly.

  “Is he dangerous?”

  “No. But I didn’t think that I would see Firmino in Vermont either. Joe took a step to the foreigner. “So, why are you here?”

  “It is, how you say in English, a very long story.”

  Kyle looked at Baldewin’s papers. “You work for the Vatican?”

  “Sì . . . yes. I am a captain in the Gendarme Corps of the Vatican.”

  “And you stopped the mugging of our friend Joe.”

  “Mooging?”

  “Mugging . . . eh, you stopped the attack on Father Joe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Any other concerns, Rich. He seems to be on our side. Shall we go to your house and have a chat and clear this all up? I don’t think a county roadside is an appropriate place to conduct such an inquiry.”

  I was about to protest again, but Kyle leaned next to me and whispered into my ear, “And I would really like to use your bathroom.”

  Considering what Kyle had eaten that morning, I wasn’t surprised. But I wasn’t going to let Kyle get his way again without protest.

  “There’s Uncle Raymond’s house just a few yards away,” I whispered.

  “Do we really want Cobourne listening in when we talk to our new friend? You know he’ll go blabbing to Thomas.”

  “Just use the bathroom at the house and leave.”

  “I don’t use the bathroom at crime scenes.”

  “It’s our uncle’s house,” I growled in annoyance.

  “It’s not right, Rich. It’s just not done.”

  “There’s the Sheriff’s Department.”

  “As I said, that would make our conversations official and on the record. I think we should keep our meeting . . . informal right now. Besides, the toilet overflowed, remember.”

  “But there’s more than one toilet at the Sheriff’s—”

  “Your house is closer.”

  Kyle’s face started to contort. I could only guess his discomfort. So with no more being said, all of us packed ourselves into three cars. Joe and I traveled in Baldewin’s black car—I drove. Our unexpected guest, Agent Baldewin, rode with Kyle in the sheriff’s car, and Peterson followed up in his patrol car. With Kyle leading our three-car motorcade, we all high-tailed back to my place. Luckily for Kyle, we got there just in time.

  #

  CHAPTER 12

  On our way to my place, Joe filled me in about what he knew of Baldewin. He said that he was acquainted with Baldewin for about five years. It was true that Baldewin was a member of The Vatican’s Gendarmerie Corps, and he was attached to its external security section. Joe said that they first met at an international conference held in Rome.

  At the time, Joe was on one of the sub-committees, and Baldewin was the head man on the security detail. The two of them struck up a conversation and found that they had shared interests in architecture and cinema. Since then, Joe and Baldewin have met in passing several times at the Vatican and even had an occasional lunch together. As for the personal data on our guest, Joe said that Baldewin was thirty-eight years old and single. He liked sports, particularly soccer. He had one sibling—a younger sister living in Zurich who lives with his mother. Baldewin’s father, now deceased, was a captain in the Swiss army. His dad’s brother, Baldewin’s uncle, was a member of the Swiss Guards. It was this uncle who helped Baldwin to secure his position in the Gendarmerie Corps. In short, according to Joe, Captain Baldewin seemed to be, “ A decent sort of chap whom you wouldn’t mind marrying your sister.”

  “So the question is,” I said as we came to my house, “why is he here in Vermont, of all places?” My friend paused a second as I drove the black sedan up my driveway leading the two patrol cars trailing behind me.

  “You heard him, Rich. He’s here to protect me.”

  “Protect you from whom?”

  “I don’t know,” Joe said as we stopped. “But I definitely would like to find out.”

  As did I.

  As I unlocked my back door, Kyle rushed past me and made a mad dash to the necessary; the rest of us assembled in the kitchen. Since we were a chair short, I grabbed one from the study. “I’d like to see Kyle flatten this one,” I said to myself as I carried the old teacher’s desk chair to the group. I remembered the thrill I had when I purchased the chair at an auction two years prior. It was just like the one I had in the classroom when I first started teaching. Made from sturdy oak, this seat of authority could endure all sorts of physical abuses and survive handsomely. In short, it was Kyle-proof.

  I had several questions for the mysterious Baldewin, but I thought it best to wait for my brother’s return. I took a tally for teas and coffees, and then we worked on the seating arrangements. Peterson wanted the chair at the end of the table, the one closest to the back door. I wanted Kyle to sit at the other end of the table on the oak desk chair. Joe sat himself down next to Baldewin at one side of the table. I sat across from them, with a good view out the window.

  There was a very prolonged, awkward silence in the room while Kyle finished answering nature’s call. We all felt it. The minutes seemed like days. Many furtive glances were exchanged, and finger tapping rhythms were performed to fill the void. Fortunately, my window seat offered me an amusing scene of a squirrel scampering up the maple tree by the driveway. Eventually, Joe caved under pressure and asked Baldewin, “When did you get to The States?”

  “Ah, six days ago.”

  “Did you have a good flight?”

  “Si. Very good flight, Padré. I sleep much of the trip,” timidly responded our guest.

  “Me too,” said Joe and then proceeded to read the ingredients on a sugar substitute packet. “I arrived just the other day.”

  “I know.”

  “Right.” Joe gently shook his head in self-admonishment. Then he asked, “Why are you in The States?”

  After a second or two, Baldewin replied, “I am a member of a special delegation that the Holy See sent to New York.”

  “Oh . . . then the rumors are true.” Joe gave our guest that disarming, trust-me smile that always had me lending him my car in our college days.

  “What rumors, Padré?”

  “The ones about His Holiness visiting The States, sometime in the near future,” said Joe, leading a witness. “And you are over here to advise on his security. Am I correct?”

  Baldewin didn’t reply. He didn’t have to. His silence spoke volumes.

  We all continued to nurse our beverages and waited for another short eternity. The lull allowed me to noticed a small chip on the rim of my coffee mug, which caused me to speculate if Morgana knew about it—and, more importantly, would she blame me for it.

  “Well!” said Kyle, bursting into the kitchen. “Let’s get acquainted, shall we?” His smiling face showed me that his mission was accomplished, and all was right with his bowels and the world.

  “Mr. Baldewin—”
began my brother as he pointed to the empty oak chair.

  “It’s all yours, Kyle,” I said. “It’s old but strong. It can bear the weight of all your questioning.”

  “Funny,” said Kyle. “Now, let’s get to the bottom of this, shall we.”

  A poorly timed cough suddenly erupted from Joe. “Excuse me, Kyle,” apologized my friend. “My coffee had gone down ”—Joe coughed again—“the wrong way.” He cleared his throat again. “My apologies for interrupting, but I’m fine. Go on, please.”

  The curtain of tension that hung in the room had finally been rent. We all had a quiet chuckle—that is everyone, except for Kyle.

  As my brother made himself comfortable in his chair, Joe and I quickly brought him up to speed about Baldewin.

  “So, Mr. Baldewin,” said Kyle, officially beginning his ‘off the record’ inquiry, “what are you doing in Vermont? And why are you following our friend, Father Joseph.”

  “I am in this country doing security work for the Vatican. And as I said before, I am in Vermont to watch over the Padré.”

  “Why?” interrupted Joe.

  “Old Padré Mason told my superiors that you, Padré, could be in some danger during your visit to the States.”

  Kyle leaned back in his seat, putting his great weight on the chair’s two hind legs. “This Father Mason asked you to—”

  “—No, he did not ask me. He spoke to my superiors, and they assigned me to watch over the Padré on his trip to the States without him knowing. To keep it hush, hush.”

  “And who are your . . . eh, superiors?”

  “The Security Committee of the State of the Vatican.”

  “They wanted you,” said Joe in disbelief, “to shadow me without me knowing about it?”

  “Shadow you? I don’t know what that means. I was told to follow and protect you.”

  “Why? From whom? Who wants to hurt me?”

  “Yes, who wants to hurt Father Joe,” asked Kyle, retaking the reins of the conversation.

  “Bad people.”

  “What do you mean by ‘bad people?’” My brother leaned forward, having the front two legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump.