Shadows at the Spring Show

by Lea Wait

  “And the second reason isn’t for me. It’s for Jackson, and all the kids like him you placed with parents of different colors. You mess with ethnic purity. You condemn the future of America by creating families of mixed races. Those families can’t protect their kids from hatred. Those kids won’t fit in. And they’ll be blamed for everything done by anyone who looks like them. They’ll have no place to go.”

  Maggie looked over at Eric. He was listening carefully, and his eyes were no longer full of fear. They were angry.

  Hal paused for a moment. “Good. You’re hearing me. Adoption between the races is wrong. People can only become who they’re meant to be when they’re raised by people like them.”

  He paused again. He was close enough so Maggie could see the muscles in his face tense. “Listen! This is not a discussion! Listen carefully!” Hal looked down at his watch. “It is now approximately twelve forty. Two bombs are set to go off at one. One in each of the gyms. They’re the same kind that blew up Maggie Summer’s van. But no one paid attention to that bomb. No one took me seriously. Nobody stopped this show. I couldn’t let it earn more money so you could make victims of more innocent children like me!”

  He was quiet for a moment. What was Carole doing? What was she saying? What was happening in the rest of the building? Maggie looked for something that would cut the tape that was binding her.

  “I am in the building. I have Maggie Summer and Eric with me. Even if you evacuate the building, you won’t find us. The three of us will blow up with the show.”

  Carole was trying to find out something.

  “I’ve said all you need to know! Stop interrupting me! You have to close the show down! And stop placing children with parents who don’t understand them! If you promise to do that, then call me back. If you call me in time, I can locate the bombs and disengage them. If you don’t call, Whitcomb Gymnasium is going up, with everything and everyone in it. You now have”—Hal looked at his watch again—“sixteen minutes until one o’clock. But I’ll need time to disconnect the bombs. So you have ten minutes.” He put the cell phone down on the bench and walked over to where Eric lay.

  “I’m sorry about Jackson. I thought I was doing him a favor. After we met at one of those rah-rah-adoption picnics at your house, he told me what it felt like to be biracial. He hated it. He said he hated his mother; she was white, like his birth mother, and she thought she could take the place of a real mother. But a real mother would have cared enough about him to have made sure he had a father of the same heritage.”

  Hal looked over at Maggie. “Abdullah met Jackson here on campus. He told Jackson and me about that melting pot you talk about in your classes. He tried to tell us we were all Americans. Abdullah is mixed race, too. But Jackson and I knew better. You can’t mix rice and noodles and potatoes and couscous in a bowl and expect to end up with anything you can eat. It just doesn’t work. Jackson and I talked about it. He told me how when adoption agencies can’t find families with the same race as a child, they put them with anyone who’ll say yes. Jackson hated that. He told me he couldn’t stand his mother; he wished she were dead.

  “He told me his father had a gun, and he could get it. So I told him to do that; we’d find a way to make things better for him.” Hal looked down at Eric. “Only when I shot his mother—your mother—I messed up. She didn’t die. And then Jackson got all turned around. He said he didn’t mean to have her hurt. That he loved her! After all he’d said about her. When she was white! “He said he’d turn me in. He’d tell everyone. I couldn’t let him do that. He let me down. I was his friend, and doing him a favor, and he was letting me down. He’d promised to help me stop the show.”

  Hal’s voice was almost pleading.

  “You understand, I couldn’t let the show go on. I couldn’t let more kids be put in wrong families. I couldn’t let it happen again in my family. I couldn’t let it happen in anyone’s.”

  He looked at his watch. “They’re probably trying to get everyone out of the gyms. The walls are too thick to hear anything in here. Maybe I’ll be nice and take the duct tape off your mouths. Just your mouths. Then in case they call and want you to prove you’re here with me, you’ll be able to talk.

  “But don’t count on saying much. If they don’t call in another few minutes, I won’t have time to disconnect those bombs.”

  Hal reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pocketknife. Maggie saw the handle as it went by her face. Boy Scouts of America. Always prepared. She winced as Hal sliced the duct tape and then pulled. Skin and hair came away with the tape. He then went to Eric. “I like you, man. Even though you didn’t see things as clearly as your brother did.”

  Before he had a chance to cut Eric’s duct tape, the phone rang.

  “Right on time,” Hal said. “Very good. Very organized.” He picked up the phone and sat on the bench between Maggie and Eric, his feet between their bodies.

  “Yes?”

  Maggie reached out with both her arms and legs, angling so they hit the top of the bench. Eric watched and immediately did the same. Hal, concentrating on the phone, slipped backward off onto the floor as the bench tumbled, putting it between him and Maggie and Eric. “The girls’ locker room!” Maggie screamed, hoping whoever was on the other end of the phone would hear. “We’re in the girls’ locker room!”

  Hal threw the phone across the room. “You think that’s going to help? They were going to let me out. And both of you. I’m going to die anyway. I killed that idiot brother of yours who didn’t know what he wanted. But you might have survived. Before you started doing crazy things. Before you started thinking you were in control.

  “You both saw the van, right? Blew pretty high. And I put more stuff in these bombs. I’m not as dumb as everybody thought. I know about fires and bombs. I can put things together. I read all about how to do it on the Internet. That idiot Carole and her husband never paid attention to what I was doing. They were just happy I was being quiet and not bothering their kids. But now you two aren’t going to get to see all the excitement. Because you’re going to die before the fireworks.”

  When the bench had overturned, the gun had slipped onto the floor near where Hal had fallen. Just the bench was between Hal and his prey. As he reached for the weapon, Maggie kicked the bench again, pushing it and the gun farther away. Hal slipped as he reached again, and this time Eric and Maggie kicked the bench together and the bench moved on top of the gun. Pain streaked through Maggie’s bare toes.

  As Hal reached to move the bench, the locker door opened.

  The light of a torch blinded all of them. A policewoman was there, with two other cops in back of her. She held her gun on Hal as one of the other officers pulled him up and handcuffed him. Then she reached down and pulled the gun from under the bench.

  “You think after that sort of treatment I’m going to tell you where the bombs are?” said Hal. “You think I’m not brave enough to die?”

  “I don’t know how brave you are. But you’re plenty crazy. And we’ve already found the bombs.”

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “We figured if anyone was going to set off another bomb, they’d set it up yesterday. Maggie said anything could be brought in and hidden under table covers while the dealers were bringing in boxes and packages. So late last night, after everyone but Al had left, we brought in a bomb-sniffing dog. You were pretty smart. The bombs were on twenty-four-hour clocks. Not bad. But not good enough.”

  The cop pushed Hal through the door. Another policeman knelt and cut the duct tape holding Maggie and Eric. “Eric, can you get these lights back on?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Eric, stumbling a bit as he regained his balance. “The master key is somewhere on the floor. George left it with me, in case of emergency. Hal followed me when I was turning on the air-conditioning and took it. That’s how he turned off the lights and got into the locker room.” One flashlight survey of the floor and the keys were in Eric’s hands.

 
“Sorry, Maggie. I didn’t think it was anything important when he followed me to turn on the air-conditioning. He was being really friendly. I . . . I liked him.”

  A few minutes later the lights and the air-conditioning came on. Maggie limped out into the hallway. Will was standing there. She hobbled into his arms. “Thank God you’re all right,” he said, holding her tightly.

  Then he let her go and looked down at her. Her face was bleeding in patches from the duct tape. And she had left a trail of blood from the locker room. “I think I may have broken a toe. Or two,” she said. “Is the show still open?”

  “It will be as soon as we know all the lights are on and no one’s in danger,” said the officer.

  “That’s good,” said Maggie, leaning on Will’s arm and limping toward the lobby. “The show must go on.”

  Chapter 40

  Gloucester Harbor. Winslow Homer wood engraving, 1873. One of Homer’s well-known “Gloucester Series,” among the finest of his wood engravings from Harper’s Weekly. Seven children lounging in two dories in the harbor, looking out at vessels in full sail. H.W. signature in water, lower left. 11 x 15 inches. Price: $360.

  The rest of Maggie’s Saturday went by in a haze. The show stayed open. Claudia and Carole and Al answered questions; Josie and Sam kept track of admissions; Ann supplied food to everyone, whose appetites increased as soon as they knew any danger was past. Al called George, who came in and took over the maintenance job.

  Gussie insisted that with Ben’s help she could watch Will’s booth as well as the one she was sharing with Maggie, so Will went to the emergency room with Maggie and Eric. Rob Sloane met them there, looking pale, but grateful when his son was pronounced fine except for some bruises and scraped skin. Rob had already lost one son that week.

  Maggie had fared worse. Besides the bleeding scrapes on her face (and the pain from the hair that had been pulled out), she had, indeed, broken three of her toes. She left the emergency room with a green cast on her right foot.

  As soon as Will had driven her home, Maggie called Al to check on how the show had gone and invite him for a Chinese dinner, delivered. She told him to bring Claudia. Al readily agreed. “But I won’t stay long. I’m already looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.”

  Will contributed the bottles of wine Maggie had requested he stop for in New York State, although he made sure Maggie stuck with Diet Pepsi. Wine and painkillers were not a good combination.

  By the time Gussie and Ben had gotten home and reported that even in their absence Will and Maggie had each totaled several hundred dollars in sales, the Chinese food was on plates, the wine and Pepsi cooled, and Maggie was happy to stretch out on the lounge chair in her study with her foot up, per doctor’s orders.

  “Maggie, did you know it was Hal?” asked Gussie. “He seemed so polite, and enthusiastic, and helpful. Just a nice young man.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” admitted Maggie. “But I kept eliminating other possibilities. At one point I was even suspecting Ann, because she has a major problem with Our World Our Children. But I didn’t think she’d set a bomb. I knew Abdullah was sad, and troubled. And I knew he questioned the ‘America as melting pot’ myth; he wrote a paper on it this spring. So for a while I thought he was the one responsible. Especially after what you told me about his mother, Al.”

  Al nodded. “I remember. I told you I’d met Abdullah’s mother, and she was blonde.”

  “I realized that, like Jackson, Abdullah had parents who represented two different cultures. Not races, but cultures. And Eric had said Jackson’s new friend was ‘like him.’ It all came together when I was setting up the booth yesterday and noticed an engraving of skulls that were supposed to represent different racial groups. They included a Caucasian skull, a Negroid, a Turkish, a Chinese, and so forth . . . and I realized that, of course, the word race means different things to different people. Do you know,” Maggie continued, putting on her professor’s hat, “in New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century some Protestant families refused to adopt children of Irish parents? They said they were of another, lower race.” She shook her head. “Perspectives change.”

  “But it wasn’t Abdullah who was responsible. It was Hal!” said Gussie.

  “That was the hard part,” Maggie agreed. “Eric said he thought his brother Jackson had found a couple of new friends. Friends who understood him. Hal had moved home about six months ago and would have met all of the Sloanes at adoptive-parent activities. When Abdullah brought Hal to the show a couple of days ago, I realized they knew each other. Then I found out Hal had a history of mental illness and violence.”

  “Then was Abdullah involved at all?”

  “I don’t think he had anything to do with it. From what Hal said in the locker room, Abdullah might even have argued with Jackson and Hal about their anger at their parents and the agency. I don’t think he knew anything about Hal’s shooting Holly, or killing Jackson, and he certainly didn’t know about the bombs. He was really scared when my van blew up. After all, his brother died as the result of a terrorist attack.” Maggie took another sip of Pepsi. “Basically, it was a process of elimination. I wasn’t absolutely sure, but Hal was the most likely suspect.”

  Al nodded. “But the best thing you did, Maggie, was to suggest getting the dog in before the show started. After your van had been blown up, bombs were on all of our minds, and the bomb squad agreed checking would be a good idea. Everyone knew I was planning to spend the night in the gym, so there would be lights on. The dog found the bombs right away. They were in cartons dealers had unpacked and left empty under their booths to use when they pack up tomorrow afternoon. The explosives weren’t very sophisticated.” He paused. “But they could have done a lot of damage.”

  “So at least I knew something Hal didn’t: I knew the bombs he’d left yesterday were gone. But I didn’t know whether he might have other explosives. And he had that gun.” Maggie winced slightly. Her foot hurt. “I never asked you, Al. What booths were the bombs in?”

  “Yours and Gussie’s,” he answered with a grimace. “And that crystal dealer’s in the other gym.”

  Maggie shivered. “Can you imagine the damage crystal would have done if it had blown up?”

  “I know I shouldn’t,” said Gussie, “but I keep thinking about all the young men involved. Hal had a traumatic childhood and even a caring family couldn’t help him. Jackson never felt accepted, even when he was. Abdullah lost his brother and his mother. All of them were trying to make sense of life in their own ways. I hope at least Eric and Abdullah are able to get through all of this and have good lives. They deserve them.”

  Al shook his head. “It is sad. Jackson Sloane didn’t get a chance. He may have just been starting to figure out who he was when he made the fatal mistake of choosing the wrong friend.”

  They were all silent for a few minutes.

  “What are you going to do, Maggie? You can’t drive anymore.” Ben pointed at her cast. “And your van blew up.”

  Maggie burst into laughter. “You’re right, Ben,” she agreed. “Those are real, immediate issues.”

  Then she burst into almost hysterical giggling. Maybe it was the pain pills. Maybe it was the relief of not having to worry about threatening letters and telephone calls. Maybe it was just that the semester was over and the antiques show was going on. Will reached out to touch her shoulder.

  Then she pointed to a corner of the room. Winslow had somehow dragged a small insulated bag of Chinese barbecued pork there and was carefully and neatly devouring it.

  “That is going to be one sick cat,” Will predicted, risking being scratched as he retrieved the pork from an indignant Winslow. “And, Ben, you don’t have to worry about Maggie. I’ve decided to stick around here for a couple of weeks, while she’s still limping. Most of my inventory is in the RV, so I can manage the next show without going back to Buffalo. Somehow we’ll get her prints into my RV for the Rensselaer County show, and while she’s heal
ing, we’ll investigate used vans.”

  “So you’re not going to change your plans for the summer, Maggie? You’re still planning to come to the Cape?” asked Gussie.

  “Absolutely. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m mobile again. I plan on spending the summer buying and selling prints, eating well, and”—Maggie smiled at Claudia—“drinking red wine. I don’t want to think about school, or antiques shows, or even about adoption, for at least the summer.”

  “And Aunt Nettie is looking forward to seeing you in Maine, Maggie,” Will reminded her. “You have friends Down East.”

  “Not as many as I have right here,” Maggie said, looking around the room. “And I’m so glad you’re all here. Because the show isn’t over. And I’m going to need all the help I can get to make sure it runs smoothly tomorrow.”

  “I suspect you’ll have a few extra customers,” Al added. “News of everything that happened today will hit the newspapers, and there will be people coming just to sightsee.”

  “As long as they pay admission and we make money for OWOC that will be just fine,” said Maggie. “But if they want another antiques show next spring—they’d better look for someone else to run it!”

  About the Author

  Lea Wait comes from a long line of antiques dealers, including her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandfather. She has owned her antique-print business for more than twenty-five years. She now lives in Edgecomb, Maine, where she runs the business and writes historical novels for young readers as well as the Maggie Summer series.