by Loretta Ross
The elevator had landed in a short, paved passage that led to an old, wooden door emblazoned with the Einstadt logo. Andrew recognized it because it was on bookplates in all the books in the first floor library and he’d asked about it. It seemed to him that something so intimately connected to his family should feel more familiar than it did, but there it was. A second, simpler door stood ajar on his left. As he passed it, he noted that age and humidity had warped the wood so that it no longer sat firmly in its frame.
He tried the Einstadt door first, but it was locked and solid so he turned to the second door. It led to a typical basement room, with a furnace and A/C unit squatting in the far corner and the rest of the space crammed with broken and cast-off belongings from the house upstairs. One of the windows was almost unblocked and the light was stronger here than out in the passage.
Andrew’s nose caught the scent of smoke. Mindful of his earlier observations about the house being a fire trap, he went looking for the source. Like a bloodhound, he followed his sense of smell to a battered metal footlocker shoved against the wall to his right. He felt the sides for heat first, but it was cool to the touch. It was also unlocked. He popped it open and knelt next to it, pulling out the contents so he could examine them.
It was a heavy set of clothing. There was a bulky coat and a pair of pants, boots and a firefighter’s helmet. The name “Bogart” was stenciled on the back of the coat and on the helmet was a leather badge, number 4103.
_____
Death’s cough, even as he tried to stifle it, echoed like thunder in the quiet library. Wren, sitting beside him, pressed her arm up against his. “You’re starting to get a fever,” she said, without looking up. “That damp cave wasn’t good for you.”
“It’s just a cold,” he said dismissively. His attempt to play it off was undermined by another cough. He could feel Wren’s eyes on him and, when he looked over to meet her stare, he shuddered. “Jeez. Don’t do that. That’s the same look Gran used to give when she was in District Attorney mode.”
“Do you have a doctor in the city you can see?”
“It’s just a cold,” he tried again.
“And what would your grandmother say to that?”
He found himself imagining the cross-examination he’d get from Gran if she were still alive. A bittersweet pang of nostalgia joined the ache in his chest. Wren’s stern face softened and she gave him the gentle, loving, doe-eyed expression he could never refuse anything. “Gah! Don’t look at me like that! You know I can never resist when you look at me like that! If you looked at me like that and asked for a pet grizzly bear, I swear, I’d go out grizzly bear shopping!”
“Grizzlies are pretty high maintenance,” she said. “A koala would be adorable, though. What are we going to do about that cold?”
Death glowered, then brightened as a thought struck him. “Maybe use it to our advantage?”
“How so?”
“Andrew Grey’s brother-in-law, you remember I told you I met him outside the Greys’ house? He’s a doctor. If I can get an appointment with him, it’ll give me a chance to ask him about his sister’s husband. He’s close to the family; maybe he can give me some inside information.”
“You think the Greys are involved?” Wren’s voice was doubtful. “The passage that must have led to their house was blocked a long time ago. Anyone could have found the opening into the octagonal room.”
Death glanced around quickly before answering. They were in a library; he expected someone to shush them, or at least give them a dirty look. There was no one there, though. They were at the University of Missouri-St. Louis library, sitting at a table by a window in the stacks—the 800s. It was a Saturday afternoon during summer semester and they might well have been the only people in the building.
“Anyone could have found the passage, yes, but think it through. Someone had to get into the brewery before the fire to take the nails out of the plywood so it could be opened, and someone had to get back in afterward, to nail it down again. I looked at the windows when I went there alone and later when you and I went in with Barrows. There are some broken windows, but they’re pretty high. There are shards of glass still in the frames. If someone entered the brewery before the fire last year, chances are it was someone with a key.”
He fiddled with the heavy local-history book that lay open before him. “Besides, finding the passage and the staircase wouldn’t tell someone where it led. The Einstadt Brewery sign on the wall is so faded, you almost have to know what it says in order to read it.”
“You argue a compelling case,” Wren conceded. “But it’s Saturday. His office will be closed. And even when you can call, it can take weeks to get a doctor to see a new patient. What are you going to do in the meantime?”
Death gave her a worried, sideways look and wondered if she really was, somehow, channeling his grandmother. “I can hold out until Monday morning. I’ll try to talk him into fitting me in. I can pay cash, I’ve found that’s very persuasive. If I can’t get in to see him Monday, and if I’m still coughing, I’ll go find a walk-in clinic. Happy?”
“Delirious.”
“I know that,” he teased. “But are you happy?”
She punched him lightly in the arm and he made a show of pretending to be hurt before they settled back down to their reading.
“Got it!” Wren said finally, a note of triumph in her voice. She slid the book she was looking at closer to him and they bent their heads together. It was a compilation of old newspaper articles, put together sometime in the 1940s. “That gully was part of a water ride. There was a water channel running through there and around the park, with swan-shaped boats. It wasn’t a service entrance. The steps led down to a landing for the swan boats and a gate into the underground attractions.”
“Huh,” Death said. “I’ll be damned.”
Wren leaned against him, eyes distant and hands clasped under her chin. “It must have been so romantic! The gentlemen in their top hats and tails and the ladies in their summer frocks, gliding through the park on a summer night, like riding on the back of a giant swan. And then they’d go down into the caves. They must have looked fantastic, all lit up, with jazz and laughter and voices echoing through the passages.”
“Would you like to go dancing?” he asked suddenly. “I’ve never taken you anywhere really nice. This is a big city. We could find someplace fancy, get dressed up, and make a night of it.”
Wren put her arms around him and rubbed a palm against his chest. “Someday,” she said, “that’d be nice. But not when you sound like you’re trying to breathe through mud and gravel.”
_____
When they returned to Randy’s house they found Captain Cairn, dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, just getting ready to drive away. “I thought I’d missed you,” he said. “Though I could see you were still in the city.” He nodded toward Wren’s truck parked in the driveway. “I was wondering if you’d done anything toward getting your brother’s estate settled? You know, I can give you any help you need with that.”
Death gestured toward the house, unlocked the front door, and ushered Cap and Wren inside before answering. “Honestly, I’ve been more focused on trying to figure out what’s going on with Randy’s badge than anything.”
“Who wants what to drink?” Wren asked. “I can make coffee or there’s a pitcher of iced tea in the fridge.”
“How about a beer?” Death suggested.
She gave him a long, appraising look. “Are you taking over-the-counter cold medicine?” His chagrined look answered for him.
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. How about coffee or iced tea? Or soda pop? Lemonade?”
“Tea will be fine. See?” he complained to Cap. “She doesn’t let me get away with anything.”
“Yeah, I’m a real dominatrix,” Wren agreed, straight-faced. “You can have a beer if you’d like, Cap. Provided you’re not on medication, of course.”
“Thanks,” the firefighter laughed, “bu
t it would be cruel to drink in front of him when he can’t. Tea would be great, thanks.”
Wren brought in the tea and a plate of sugar cookies and the three of them settled down around the coffee table. Cap sipped his tea and looked around the room, pensive and sad. “Place looks bare without all Bogie’s crap all over the walls,” he said. “Rowdy tells me you’re planning to sell. You could do a good business as a P.I. in the city, you know?”
“I know,” Death agreed. “I’ve already made a fresh start in East Bledsoe Ferry, though. And that’s home to Wren. I wouldn’t want to try to drag her away.”
“I can understand that. This city’s going to miss you, though.”
“This city won’t even know I’m gone.”
“It might not know it misses you, but it’ll miss you just the same. The Bogarts have done a lot of good for this place.”
“That was more the rest of my family than me,” Death said, “but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“So have you figured anything out about that badge, then?” Death and Wren exchanged a glance.
“We’ve done a little digging around,” Death admitted. “Put together a few things. I swear, the more we learn, the less any of it makes sense.”
“How so?”
With Wren chiming in from time to time, Death outlined for the captain everything they’d learned. Cap’s eyes narrowed when the former Marine admitted to going down into the caves, but he let them finish without comment.
“So you’re thinking … what? That someone used the fire as cover to sneak into the brewery through the old tunnel and climb into the room just as your brother suddenly and unexpectedly died of natural causes, just so they could switch his helmet and pin a counterfeit badge on him? And did so before the bookcase collapsed? And then got away before we reached the room?”
“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds farfetched.”
“Say it so it doesn’t sound farfetched.”
Death grimaced. “Yeah. That’s the hard part.”
“Could it have been smuggling of some kind?” Wren suggested hesitantly.
“Helmet smuggling?” Cap asked. “Badge smuggling?”
“How about something hidden in the helmet? In the lining, maybe? Drugs or, I don’t know, top-secret, spy-type information? Microfilm or microdots, perhaps?”
“Microfilm is pretty outdated, spy-wise, don’t you think?” Death asked gently.
“That might make it a better method for passing secret information than ever. Who’d look for microfilm nowadays?”
Death glanced to Cap. “She’s got a point. And, weird as it is, it’s better than any theory I’ve come up with.”
“This is true. But how would Bogie have gotten microfilm or microdots on his badge or helmet?”
“Maybe he rescued a spy,” Wren said.
Death raised his eyebrows, thought about it. “Keep going.”
“Okay, so, he rescued a spy. And as he’s carrying him—or her—out of the fire or car wreck or whatever, the spy sticks a microdot to his badge without him noticing. Then, they tell their contact or their enemy finds out or something, that the microdot is on Fireman Bogart’s badge. Now the new spy has to come up with a way to get it back.”
“Why not the original spy?”
“Because whoever was trying to get it didn’t know which badge it was on. That’s why they had a regular badge and a helmet badge made.”
“Go on.”
“Well, they had the new badges made, but they got their information for the badge number from the newspaper picture of Randy from the school fire safety day. Because of the photographer’s error, the number was wrong, but they didn’t realize that until it was too late. Maybe they didn’t realize it at all. They set the fire—you did say it was arson, right?”
Cap nodded.
“They set the fire and waited for Randy to come into range. Probably they were planning to knock him out or something. Obviously, whatever they were doing they didn’t want anyone to notice.”
“Wait,” Cap interrupted. “How do you figure that?”
“If they’d just wanted the badges and didn’t care who knew they had them, they’d have just stolen them at gunpoint or something. They had to take them without anyone finding out.”
Death drank some tea, rattled the ice in his glass. “Cap, would whoever set the fire at the brewery have known that 41’s was going to show up?”
“It’s a reasonable assumption. They could have even figured out, with a little research, that we’d likely be the ones sending a search team through the building. That’s a job for truckies, and we have truckies. But how would they know Bogie’d be on the truck and not the box? And how could they be sure that he’d be the one to go into the room with the tunnel and not Rowdy?”
“Rowdy always goes left,” Wren said triumphantly. The two men looked at her.
“What?” Death asked.
“Rowdy always goes left,” she repeated. “It was in the fire safety day article. Randy gave a talk to some of the kids and the writer quoted him. Hang on.” She went to rummage through a box stacked in the corner with half a dozen other packed cartons, and came back with the fire safety day story. Settling cross-legged on the sofa next to Death, she paused to take a sip of tea, then read from the paper.
“He said, ‘the best thing you can do to help yourself and your friends in an emergency is have a plan ready in advance. Think about things that could happen and figure out ahead of time how you could best respond. For example, my friend Rowdy and I are responsible for searching for victims in burning buildings. We try to always stay together, but if we have to split up—say, if there are two victims in two different rooms—Rowdy always goes left and I go right. Because we know in advance who’s going which way, we don’t have to stop and talk about it. Also, it makes it easier to keep from getting lost in the smoke and confusion.’”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Cap said. “Rowdy always went left. Bogie went right. They made a great team.”
“You said they thought they heard a noise but they couldn’t decide where it came from, right?” Death said. “The spy, or whoever, could have hidden something that would make noise in both rooms, to get them to separate.”
Cap considered. “It’s possible, I suppose. But if that’s it, how are we supposed to ever find out what happened or who’s responsible?”
“Well, if it was on his hat badge, they’ve got it and are probably gone by now. But we’ve got Randy’s badge. We could always search it for microdots.”
“I’ll get it,” Wren said. “You stay put.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She went to get the badge, still in its frame beside Death’s bed, and Cap drained his tea and rattled the ice thoughtfully. “If whatever it was wasn’t on his hat badge, why haven’t they, whoever they are, tried to get his other one back from you? It’s been almost a year now.”
“Maybe they don’t know what happened to it.”
“That’s reasonable, I suppose.”
Wren came back and the three of them bent over the little object. “What does a microdot look like, do you suppose?” Cap asked.
“Like a dot,” Wren offered, “only … micro.”
Death pinched her and she yelped.
They looked closely at every millimeter of the badge and checked the frame in case something had fallen off, but nothing presented itself.
“You’d think,” Cap said, “that if all they wanted was Bogie’s badges, they’d have just broken into the fire station while we were off and one of the other shifts was out and taken them then. It would have been a hell of a lot simpler.”
“Yeah, I know,” Wren agreed. “The spy theory is farfetched, at best. But the whole situation is farfetched, and right now that’s the only explanation I can think of.”
thirteen
On Saturday evening a car pulled up and parked on the street in front of Randy’s house. Death was lounging on the sofa, feeling rough and trying to play it off
. Wren, returning from the kitchen, stepped over and pulled back the curtain to look out. Her eyes grew wide and she clapped a hand over her own mouth.
Death frowned. “Who is it?”
Wren shook her head and held up one finger. Her face was red and her eyes danced. A knock sounded at the door and she went to open it, pulling it wide and stepping back so he could see out.
Madeline stood on the porch, dressed in a seductive little black dress. She wore spiked heels, her hair was swept up off her neck in an elegant French twist, and the rubies on her ears accentuated her dark-red lipstick. She wasn’t alone. She had one arm possessively around …
Eric Farrington?
Death bit the inside of his cheek and resisted the urge to check the alcohol content of his cough medicine. He recognized this game, of course. He’d known Madeline too long not to. She’d done this before they were married. Any time they had a minor disagreement or she didn’t feel he was paying her enough attention she’d pick up the first guy she met and flaunt him in Death’s face to make him jealous.
Back then there’d been a couple of differences. One was that Death had cared who she dated. The other difference was …
Eric Farrington?
Death pulled himself up into a sitting position. “Come on in. Pull up a chair.”
Eric dropped into the nearest recliner and tugged on Madeline’s hand so, off balance, she half fell into his lap.
Wren closed the door and came over to perch next to Death on the sofa. “So,” she said brightly, “you two are a couple now?”
“I wouldn’t say a ‘couple’,” Madeline hedged.
“You betcha,” Eric spoke over her. “I got my saddle on this little filly now and I’m going to ride her all night long!”
Madeline looked horrified.
Wren’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. Death put his arm around her, tucking her in close beside him. “And what brings you to St. Louis?”
“Business, actually,” Madeline hastened to answer. “Eric has a seminar to attend next week and, since he offered me a ride, I thought it would be nice to visit my mother and let her see the baby.”