Toucan Keep a Secret

by Donna Andrews

  I moved on to other pictures. Mug shots of the three bank robbers. Two looked rather furtive and unprepossessing, while the third—Bart Hempel, the ringleader—was striking, almost handsome in a thuggish way.

  The two so-called gentleman burglars. William Fitzgerald “Fitz” Marshall, the one who’d been killed. His face wasn’t unpleasant like Archie’s, though it wasn’t handsome, either. Regular features—I’d give him that. His face had a vague apologetic air—and an ever-so-slightly bloated look that reminded me of a few of my college classmates who’d majored in grain alcohol with a minor in weed. I felt the impulse to shake Fitz and tell him to shape up. That I’d seen where that path led, and it wouldn’t end well. And then I reminded myself that it had already ended rather badly for him, three decades ago. Dad had added in his obituary from the Caerphilly student newspaper. Considering that obituaries were usually written to show the deceased in the most favorable light, the student rag was remarkably restrained in its praise of Fitz. Son of a successful alumnus of Caerphilly law school—the article actually had almost as much information about Judge Marshall as about his son. Fitz had been a business major with a love for football and lacrosse, who took an active part in campus social life. I suspected this was obit-speak for a party animal who’d been admitted thanks to his father’s influence and would have been lucky if he managed to pass enough courses to graduate.

  And Paul Jefferson Blair. His picture surprised me. He didn’t seem to fit in with Archie and Fitz. He looked … well, normal. Clean cut. Good looking in an unassuming way. I flipped through the articles to see what they said about him. Not much. A political science major with a 3.5 average and plans to attend law school after he graduated. What had possessed him to go along with Archie’s crazy scheme? I had a feeling James Donovan might have been able to shed some light on that if he wanted to. But I felt a curious disinclination to pry.

  “He’s suffered enough,” I murmured, putting Blair’s photo back in the folder.

  Dad and Ragnar dashed back into the room, full of excitement. Three or four of Ragnar’s flock trailed in behind them.

  “The safe’s just as it was,” Dad exclaimed.

  “Go start rounding everyone up,” Ragnar said to one of his guests. “This is going to be awesome.”

  “Meg?” Dad was looking at me. “Are you all right?”

  “My head’s aching a little.”

  “I have aspirin,” Ragnar said. “And acetaminophen.”

  “I also have more interesting stuff,” one of the guests said.

  Ragnar gave him a withering stare.

  “Herbal stuff,” the guest added hastily.

  “I just need some fresh air and a little exercise.” And some time by myself, but it would be rude to say so. “I’m going to stroll down to the lake. Carry on without me.”

  I fled out the oversized double front doors and stood at the top of the stairs, surveying the landscape. The swans appeared to be savagely demolishing a stand of some kind of aquatic grass at the far end of the lake, so I decided it would be safe to head for the gazebo. Not that I necessarily wanted to hang out in the gazebo, but it gave me a destination.

  I hadn’t been lying about the headache—just exaggerating a little. But I felt the slight throbbing ease as I ambled along the gravel path toward the lake.

  I approached the gazebo itself with caution, remembering how foul it could get and how possessive the swans could be of it. Grandfather had once arranged for a rather melodramatic sign at his zoo, listing the top ten birds most likely to kill you. Mute swans had made the list at number five, following cassowaries, ostriches, Australian magpies, and the European herring gull. Toucans probably wouldn’t even have made the top hundred. I couldn’t remember offhand what magpies and herring gulls did that was particularly lethal, but in addition to having long powerful necks with sharp beaks, the swans would beat their victims with their wings. Ragnar’s black swans had a slightly smaller wingspan than mute swans—six feet rather than seven—but I wasn’t sure that would make much difference if they ganged up on you, and they had the same hair-trigger tempers.

  But the swans were absent, and as I got closer, I could tell the gazebo’s condition wasn’t that bad at the moment. Obviously the swans had been there, but either they didn’t spend as much time hanging out on the wrought-iron railings as they had on the wooden ones or whoever Ragnar had assigned to gazebo-cleaning duty was doing a good job.

  As I was about to step into the gazebo, a sudden flurry of motion at its far side startled me, and I stopped where I was, in case I’d stirred up a territorial swan. But it was a human figure, scuttling away through the rushes in much the same way Hosmer had fled the library. In fact, for a moment, I wondered if it was Hosmer, but Hosmer had been slight and with wispy pale blond hair. This was a stocky, bearded man with a disheveled mane of light brown hair.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” I called after the fleeing figure. But I wasn’t sure he heard.

  “Why are so many of Ragnar’s guests so … eccentric?” I muttered to myself. “And why does Dad fit in so perfectly?” I felt guilty almost immediately. Ragnar had a good heart. Some of the strays he took in would never survive on their own in the outside world, but here they had a home, and could usually find ways to make themselves useful. I had probably flushed out the guest who was responsible for the gazebo’s much-improved condition. Perhaps I should make a point of telling Ragnar how much I appreciated the change. And he could pass it along to the guest.

  And as for Dad—most of the time I enjoyed his energy and enthusiasm. Clearly I was a little overtired today.

  I strolled across to the far side of the gazebo and stood looking out over the lake. The view in that direction was very calm and peaceful, not only because the lake was so beautiful but also because I couldn’t see even a corner of the house in which all the chaos was happening. And from a practical standpoint, gazing over the lake was the prudent thing to do, in case the swans tired of their grass demolition activities and tried to sneak up on me.

  I saw motion to my right. I pretended to be totally focused on the distant swans while using my peripheral vision to check out what was happening closer at hand. A wizened, bearded face was peering out of the reeds by the water’s edge.

  So much for finding peace and quiet in the gazebo. I was about to give up and head back to the house when I heard a crunch of gravel behind me.

  Chapter 31

  I whirled around to see who was coming. Clearly I was still a little more easily startled than usual—probably an aftereffect of the shooting. But it was only Ragnar lumbering toward the gazebo.

  “You are psychic!” he said, beaming. “Just the other day, I said to myself that I must tell Meg that the gazebo needs repair. And here you are!”

  He was pointing toward one of the metal railings. Yes, it needed repair. It looked as if something heavy had landed on the railing and even done a little damage to the stone floor.

  “I don’t have my tools with me at the moment,” I said. “But I’ll put it on my list. By the way, someone’s been keeping the gazebo in very good condition.”

  “Buddy.” He nodded and peered around. “He puts a great deal of work into it. He hangs out here a lot—I’m surprised he’s not here.”

  “I suspect I scared him away.”

  “Yes—he’s very shy. Almost antisocial—he never joins in any of the group activities.” Ragnar, who hated to do anything alone, shook his head in bewilderment. “I suppose he still has much healing to do. He is one of the walking wounded, I think.”

  I found myself wondering if Buddy was another former bandmate, one of the many who hadn’t kept his feet on the ground as well as Ragnar during the heady and probably drug-and-alcohol-filled days of their success. I knew better than to ask, though. Ragnar respected his guest’s privacy. And from what I’d seen of Buddy’s face, he looked a little too old to be Ragnar’s contemporary. Perhaps a mentor? Some ancient drumming guru? He looked vaguely familiar, so ma
ybe I’d seen him in some of the many onstage and backstage pictures Ragnar had used to decorate the music room.

  Not that it mattered. He was one of Ragnar’s flock now. So I changed the subject.

  “Look,” I said. “I have an idea. What if I added some fretwork to the top of the railing to make it less appealing for the swans to sit there? A miniature version of the Mordor–style wall topping.”

  “Awesome!” Ragnar said.

  Then he narrowed his eyes and stared at the railings.

  “Yes, I can almost see it,” he announced. “This visualization thing goes much better with wrought iron.”

  For Ragnar, almost anything went better with wrought iron.

  Just then my phone buzzed. I pulled it out and looked at the screen.

  “Mother just texted me,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she needs me to do something—look, can you hold down the fort here? Help Dad figure out what he needs to do for his reenactment? And if I don’t get back by the time he’s ready to go home, just call me.”

  “I can definitely hold down the fort! Give my greetings to your mother.”

  Ragnar strode back to the house as if he expected to repel boarders from the ramparts. I pulled out my phone and called Mother.

  “Please tell me that you have an urgent errand for me to do, so I didn’t just tell a whopper of a lie,” I said.

  “Well, it’s not that urgent,” she said. “And I’d do it myself, but Viola and I are helping Robyn with more organizing, and I hate to interrupt the momentum. So if you have the time today—Lettice Forsythe found a ginger jar that would be perfect for Mrs. Van der Lynden. Could you drop by her shop? And then take the jar to Maudie?”

  “Can do.” I started walking toward my car.

  “And if you happen to be anywhere near Trinity…”

  “Which you know to be highly likely, since Morton’s is only three blocks away.”

  “… I left my umbrella and rain hat there.”

  “Not that you’ll need them before tomorrow’s service.”

  “It’s a very nice hat and the umbrella your brother brought me from Paris,” she said. “I’d hate to see them go missing overnight.”

  “One umbrella and rain hat rescue coming up.”

  As I passed by the front of the house, I heard cheering coming from inside. I was almost tempted to trot up the marble steps to find out what was going on.

  Almost.

  On my way back to the front gate, I noticed that the various guests and employees were no longer at work on the grounds—though I did see Hosmer, sitting under a cherry tree, reading a book. Clearly, with the exception of a few shy souls like Hosmer and Buddy, the entire population of Ragnarsheim was getting sucked into the reenactment.

  But not me! Not for the moment, anyway. And then I contemplated, briefly, the curious experience of being delighted to have Mother delegate her errands to me. Over the years, I’d gotten much better at weaseling out of doing chores for Mother when I wanted to. But right now, I was perfectly content to fetch and carry umbrellas and ginger jars.

  I might even find a chance to drop by the police station or Randall Shiffley’s office to find out how the chief’s investigation was going.

  Lettice Forsythe’s shop was in a well-preserved white gingerbread Victorian on a side street, about a block and a half from the town square. A sign hanging from a white wooden post by the sidewalk spelled out the name of the shop, which I think was Forsythe’s—but the letters were so small and flowery that I’d never been able to confirm this theory. Locals called it “Lettice’s shop” and tourists tended to enthuse about “that wonderful little shop with the sheep on the porch.” Not a real sheep, of course, but a life-sized wooden sheep covered with woolen curls, sporting a wry ceramic face. One of these days I’d ask Lettice if there was a story behind the sheep.

  But not today, unfortunately. The shop was closed.

  Odd. Most of the shops in town had already gone on their summer schedules, staying open seven days a week from ten A.M. until ten P.M. It was only two in the afternoon.

  I went up to the door and peered inside, in case Lettice had accidentally forgotten to flip her sign from closed to open this morning. No. No one inside, and the lights were off. Although the posted hours on the door did, indeed, promise that they’d be open today.

  Well, I could pick up the ginger jar tomorrow. Maybe Lettice would bring it to Trinity for tomorrow’s service and save me the trip. Then—

  “Meg?”

  Lettice’s voice. I looked around but saw no one.

  “You can’t see me,” she said. “I spotted you on my security system. Just a minute; I’ll come down and let you in.”

  So I waited on the porch until Lettice appeared behind the door, unlocked it, and let me in, to the tinkling accompaniment of the door chime. Clearly she’d already retired to the second floor apartment where she lived, as her diminutive frame was clad in jeans and a Caerphilly Days t-shirt. Since I thought of her as one of Mother’s cronies—they shared a passion for Wedgwood and Chinese porcelain—I was surprised to realize that she was probably only forty-five or fifty. The sedate and conservative clothes she wore in the shop made her seem much older. Probably deliberate.

  “Your mother mentioned you’d be dropping by for the jar,” she said. “After what happened to you last night, I decided to close down early. What if the shooter is still lurking in town?”

  I considered suggesting that she stop worrying, since I seemed to have been his target, but I decided it would only make her more nervous, now that she’d brought the target into her shop.

  “There it is!” She pointed to a blue-and-white porcelain jar standing on the counter at the back of the room, next to her antique brass cash register.

  “Very nice,” I said. “Almost a pity to see such a beautiful antique disappear forever into the crypt.”

  “I’d agree with you if it was an antique, but this one’s only a reproduction,” she said. “Let me find a box for it.” She darted through a door behind the sales desk, into the back of the shop.

  “Was the broken one—?”

  “A very valuable antique.” Lettice emerged with a box and a handful of old newspapers in which she began wrapping the jar. “If Mrs. Van der Lynden had donated it to a museum, that lovely thing would still be intact. We don’t want any more nonsense like that in town. So your mother and I decided we’d rebury her in a reproduction. Perfectly nice, but of no interest whatsoever to any sinister grave robbers.”

  “Sensible,” I said.

  “By the way,” she asked. “Do you know if the ring they found in the crypt was Mrs. Van der Lynden’s?”

  “I haven’t heard.”

  She finished wrapping the jar. But instead of starting to wrap the top, she set it down and went into the back of the shop again. She returned and handed me a file folder.

  I opened the folder and found myself staring at a larger-than-life photo of the ruby ring.

  “Either that’s the ring I saw in the crypt or an exact duplicate,” I said. “Not that I could tell one ruby from another—assuming it’s a ruby—but the setting’s pretty unusual.”

  “Precisely.” She nodded and began wrapping the ginger jar’s top in more newspaper. “Art deco style. Made by Van Cleef and Arpels in the 1920s. Evidently the Van der Lyndens had some real money in the family back then.”

  “The necklace isn’t too shabby, either.” I was leafing through the rest of the photos in the folder. Right behind the photo of the ring was one of a necklace with dozens of glittering diamonds. “How do you happen to have these photos?”

  “Right after the robbery, the police sent around photos to all the jewelry stores, antique stores, and pawn shops within miles. My dad owned the shop back then, and when I took over and cleaned out the files, I found this. Maybe I should have thrown it out with the rest of the paper clutter, but I thought it was interesting.”

  “And besides, the case is still unsolved,” I pointed out. “So it�
�s turned out to be useful.”

  “Very true.” She smiled as she tucked the newspaper-wrapped lid in with the jar and stood up. “The idea was to make sure we’d recognize the jewelry so we could notify the police if anyone tried to sell us any of it. Of course they’d have had to be pretty stupid to try to sell any of it here in town.”

  “But criminals aren’t rocket scientists.”

  “Quite right.” She nodded, and reached out to take the photo of the ring. “I think it’s interesting that you found the ring. That and the necklace were probably the most valuable of the collection. But the necklace would be relatively easy to dispose of—a lot of carats there, but none of the individual stones are that recognizable in and of themselves. A savvy thief could easily break it up to sell the stones, individually or in matched pairs, without sacrificing much if any of the value. The ring, though—only so many rubies that size and quality around, and the setting’s not only distinctive but quite valuable in its own right.”

  Curious how much Lettice knew about how criminals fence stolen jewels. Was this something antique dealers picked up if they dealt in estate jewelry? Or was she, like Dad, a mystery buff?

  “So the ring would be hard to sell discreetly?” I asked aloud.

  “Impossible, unless you had the kind of contacts that would let you offer it privately to the sort of customer who wouldn’t care about its provenance. In fact, except for the necklace, that would be the same for most of the more valuable pieces. Too distinctive to sell that easily.”

  “So you’re suggesting if someone did get their hands on Mrs. Van der Lynden’s jewelry, they wouldn’t suddenly find themselves rolling in dough.”

  “Yes.” She nodded absently, still looking at the photo. “Unless they were experienced jewel thieves with the right kind of contacts. The criminals Archie tried to hire were not professional jewel thieves. They wouldn’t have had the slightest idea how to liquidate a haul like this. Neither would Archie van der Lynden and his frat house gang.”