Deadly Anniversaries

by Marcia Muller

  Forest sighed, defeated. “Buy us a sandwich and let’s talk.”

  They took the sandwiches to the river for an impromptu picnic in Woldenberg Park, where no one could overhear, or if they did, they’d either be tourists or too drunk to remember, or both.

  Forest slammed her with it: “What’s your game, babycakes? You look real nice in black, by the way.”

  “You’re not so bad yourself.”

  Just like her. Deflect, flatter, reduce him to a puddle...

  Finally she said, “I’m just interested in history.”

  “So are we gonna have to talk to the museum about your history—Hey, come to think about it, one gig even involved a museum. That little thing over in Biloxi?”

  “You know about that?”

  “We were your patsies, I seem to remember. Us and that guy with the weird hair.”

  “Sol. Poor guy, someone snitched on him.”

  “Heidi. Or whoever you are...”

  “Listen, let’s team up. I’ve already cased this job, and I was just about to call you anyhow.” Woo-hoo! Just like he hoped. No need to have The Heidi Talk with Roy.

  “Sure you were,” Forest said, but Roy pretty much drowned him out with a heartfelt, “No way, Jose!”

  “Guys, it’s a three-person job. Too many cameras in there. But if we could create a distraction...”

  “Uh-uh,” Roy said. “Negative. Red light. Over my dead body.”

  Forest spoke softly. “Let’s just hear what the lady has to say. We’ve already got a pretty decent plan and she’s got...”

  “An inside track,” Heidi said, looking smug. Like she knew she’d won. “You want to know the name of the museum’s security company?” And then she laughed, that silvery, melodious, seductive laugh filling up every inch of Woldenberg Park.

  The next day she quit her docent job, saying that, as a professor at Nicholls State, she needed to devote more time to the book she was writing.

  Now she could come and go as she wished, to all appearances “doing research” without being tied to any schedule, and she could put to use her good relationships with the guard and other employees. (According to her, there was a daytime guard, though none at night, but he tended to roam all over the museum.)

  That same day Roy scouted bars near the offices of Castletower, Inc., which provided security for the museum. He was going to be hanging out there a lot the next few weeks, making friends with any Castletower guys he could. Women, better yet.

  Forest, meanwhile, went shopping. Although first he established a few new email addresses and opened accounts that would make his purchases difficult to trace. Not that anyone would ever get that far.

  Among items he needed: one convincing-looking NOPD uniform, with all the accoutrements—gun, radio, and badge; a foldable art portfolio, about forty by thirty inches; more Saints gear; black and gold glitter; and a truckload of good luck charms. (After all, the team still had to get through the play-offs.)

  The Play-offs, January 27

  None of the charms worked. As history has shown, although the Saints easily dive-bombed the Eagles, they were robbed, raped, pillaged, injured, insulted, royally screwed, and scarred for life in the Rams game. The now-famous pass-interference no-call that cost them the game elicited howls heard round the world, some of the loudest from Roy: “Fuuuuuuuuck! Fuuuuuuck! Fuckety-fuck-fuck! That wasn’t just pass interference, it was helmet-to-helmet contact. Double goddamn insult!”

  On and on like that, for about five minutes.

  Forest was almost as loud. The heist of the century, blown—just like that.

  Of course Roy had to rub it in: “I told you it was a long shot.”

  But Forest just couldn’t give it up. They had such beautiful plans.

  He was seriously regretting the fortune they’d blown on Super Bowl tickets for key employees at the security company. Damn! Sure would like to have that back.

  He had no idea in hell where Heidi lived, but at least he had her phone number.

  “You okay?” he said, and was rewarded with silvery chimes. That made it almost worth the loss.

  “Forest, Forest, Forest! Thinking of little me at a time like this. Really, I’d marry you if I had time. And inclination.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  “Okay what?”

  “Let’s get married.”

  Once again, water crackled merrily over warm rocks. Forest was flat-out enjoying this conversation, but, delightful as it was, he took the laugh as a no. “What do we do now?” he said.

  “Do now? It’s over, babe. We fold our tents like the Arabs.”

  He loved the way she talked. How in hell did she come up with that one? Arabs! “It can’t be over.”

  “I gotta think.” She hung up, leaving him to brood about their beautiful blown plans.

  They’d known they couldn’t disable the alarm, due to backup systems, so the next best thing was to disable the company that had to deal with it. Roy, by now, had fulfilled his job admirably: befriended the two people, Alice and Tony, who, to their utter consternation, were going to be working at Castletower Security on Super Bowl Sunday.

  They were the ones who’d been surreptitiously gifted with Super Bowl tickets that arrived in mysterious ways.

  The gang was betting that nobody, but nobody was going to want to work that night, no matter how much overtime it paid. And that whoever ended up stuck with night duty was going to be fuming, inattentive, and watching on their phone or laptop anyhow. Maybe drinking. And with any luck, not having any idea in hell how to handle a real alarm. Maybe that would get them five minutes, which was all they needed.

  The museum’s Sunday hours were 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and the plan was for Heidi to enter around noon and stay until the game was over, when she’d walk out with the first volume of Birds of America tucked away in her foldable portfolio. (She could only handle one of the huge books—they’d worked that out—but even one was at least a million-dollar score, probably more like three.)

  Her part was by far the trickiest, and was hugely shored up by the inside track she’d cultivated. If she pulled it off, she’d have really earned her cut, Roy and Forest decided. They even made a pact not to rip her off once they had the book. Although they knew they couldn’t trust her for a millisecond. Still, they felt it was only honorable.

  It was a masterpiece, the way they’d set it up! Maybe they should do it, anyhow—maybe drunk fans would riot, and that could be the distraction.

  But in his heart, Forest knew New Orleans wasn’t that kind of city. It was the kind of city that held hurricane parties with a Category 5 on the way.

  Three days before Super Bowl Sunday, Roy and Forest were drinking at Shaggy’s in Pass Christian when Heidi called. “Hey, looks like the Boycott Bowl is going to be big.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s an impromptu music festival, right in the middle of town on Super Bowl Sunday. How’s that for a distraction?”

  “Game on!” Forest said.

  Super Bowl Sunday, 2019

  Heidi walked into the museum as scheduled, promptly at noon, dressed as Professor Sasha Orloff and carrying a Saks shopping bag heavily lined in tissue paper. What happened after that Forest had to wait to find out. Soon after 2:00 p.m., she texted, Feet down. Finally.

  That meant she’d checked the bag with the nice lady behind the desk, said hi to her buddy the wandering guard, read for a while in the Louisiana History room, and waited for the guard to go to the bathroom. When he did, she first signed herself out, then reentered the museum, and used her insider privilege to retrieve the bag herself, rather than asking for it. Then, instead of leaving, she went to the ladies’ room, where she locked herself in a stall and took out of the bag her burglary outfit, a hammer, and the folded portfolio, which she unfolded and used to hold the hammer and the Saks bag. Then she changed
, a chore that had to be done now to avoid setting off a motion detector. After that, she sat down and waited, feet up in case someone came in.

  “Feet down” told Forest that all had gone according to plan and everyone was gone, including her buddy the guard. Instead of human beings, the museum relied solely on their alarm system at night. Which Roy and Forest had disabled—the human component anyway.

  During her tenure as Sasha, Heidi had worked out where the cameras and motion detectors were, so she knew the only immediate problem she had was a motion detector in the ladies’ room, which would set off an alarm too soon if it found her. But if she sat on the floor until time to pull the job, and commando crawled to the door, she could stay under it.

  Meanwhile, Forest and Roy were holed up in the hotel room they’d rented a block from the museum. They were following the action, a lot of which they could see from their own window. It was way better than they’d imagined—the Blackout and Gold Second Line Parade was jamming Jackson Square, the Boycott Bowl was raging, and just about every bar in town—on the ninth anniversary of the one great Saints’ Super Bowl victory—was running video of that game instead of the Stoopid Bowl. The streets were teeming.

  Even for a cop, getting from one place to another was going to be tough. Forest loved that.

  Everything had been rehearsed and re-rehearsed. All they had to do now was get dressed.

  Forest put on the cop outfit, with all its attendant gear. Roy’s goal was to look like every peckerwood out on the street. He wore a pair of tired-looking jeans, a #9 Saints jersey with quarterback Drew Brees’s name on it, half his face painted black, the other half gold, with glitter applied on top, and the whole thing topped by a black ball cap, with this fleur-de-lis thing Heidi’d made attached to it. The fleur-de-lis stood up on his head like antlers. The idea, she explained, was that people would look at that instead of his face.

  The Quarter was so jammed Forest had to move like someone chained to a cement block. Reaching the front of the museum, he started his crowd control act. But he wasn’t controlling anything; he was just messing around—the whole idea was to have a large unruly crowd on hand.

  Meanwhile, Roy texted Heidi: Now or never! That meant she was about to commando crawl, portfolio and all, to the large gallery where the book lay open in a glass display case.

  In his mind’s eye, Forest could see her doing that and everything else they’d practiced: she removed the hammer from the portfolio and broke the glass, no doubt setting off the alarm. But no matter, so long as the cops didn’t get there before she was gone. Because all the cameras would catch was a somewhat overweight guard wearing a Drew Brees mask bought from the NFL’s own website.

  The guard outfit had been easy to find, complete with a cop hat that completely hid her hair. They’d bought the shirt in a men’s medium, so she could bundle her loose-fitting Sasha Orloff dress under it, tied in place with an old black scarf to give her a believable paunch. A pair of gloves completed the ensemble.

  Once she was outside, she’d look like any other off-duty guard going home, wearing a festive mask like half the other fools on the street. Forest knew if it was him, he’d definitely flip off a few cameras on the way out, but Heidi was a pro. She’d just keep her head down and get where she was going.

  She texted that she was at the door.

  Showtime!

  Roy shouted, “Whodat!” like the kind of drunken birdbrain who’d fire a gun in a crowd, and he shot out the museum’s camera.

  Everybody shut up and got real still.

  “Hey,” Forest responded. “Give me that gun.”

  The crowd gasped and fell back, some people bolting, some staying to catch the drama. Forest held out his hand for the gun, and Roy pointed both hands in the air, kind of in surrender mode, but still holding the gun. At that exact moment, the museum door opened and—from the point of view of onlookers—a guard in a Drew Brees mask stepped out, assessed the situation, and stuck a gun (or maybe just a finger) in the shooter’s back, yelling, “Drop it!”

  Terrified, the guy dropped the gun, and the cop handcuffed him. Those close enough heard him thank the guard and say something like, “Mind coming in? We gotta fill out a report.” Then the cop hauled the handcuffed guy away, with the guard trailing along. The most observant might even have noticed the guard was lugging an art portfolio.

  At least, that’s what should have happened. They’d planned it that way on the theory that if Heidi tried to make a run for it, they could take her down easy—there were two of them, one in very good shape (Roy, of course), and neither was carrying a heavy object.

  But it all went south the minute Heidi stuck her finger in Roy’s back.

  Instead of dropping the gun and letting Forest arrest him, Roy collapsed on the sidewalk. Instinctively, Forest ran to him, realizing the Satan spawn had probably shot him, very likely killed him. But no, Roy could speak. “Tased me,” he said. “Damn, that hurts.”

  Forest didn’t even wait to help him up, just jumped the hell up and started asking people where the guard went. Not a single person knew. All eyes had been on Forest and Roy enacting their drama.

  She could have escaped in any of four directions, all of them affording plenty of crowds and cover, so Forest picked one, and started elbowing people aside. Roy did the same, but neither of them found a trace.

  Later, changing direction, Forest did find a fireplug that someone had playfully decorated with a cop-type hat and a Drew Brees mask. Encouraged, he forged ahead, finally spying an incoherent gutterpunk wearing gloves and a too-big guard’s shirt, but he was too stoned to say anything other than “Fuck the N-Fuckin’-L!”

  Forest walked for hours, it seemed like, all elbows and anxiety, but finally had to concede that once again, the Dutch Treat had worked her evil magic. He half loved her for it—she was so damn good at her job!

  He wasn’t bad either, he thought. But somehow, in the excitement and the crush of people, he never even glanced at a Muslim woman with a black hijab covering her hair. Those who did noted with approval that she wore a modestly fitting dress and a fleur-de-lis pendant proudly proclaiming her loyalty to the Whodat Nation. Not a single soul even thought to wonder why she was hauling around a humongous art portfolio.

  * * *

  “Told you it wouldn’t work,” Roy fumed in the rehash, from his favorite bar stool at Checkpoint Charlie’s. “It shoulda been the tenth anniversary.”

  “To next year,” Forest said, hoisting his beer. “Did you know they got Napoleon’s Death Mask in one of these museums? Gotta be worth somethin’.”

  * * *

  BLUE MOON

  BY WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER

  Once again, they met for the last time and, as always, it was under a blue moon.

  They walked toward each other, he from the north, she from the south. The bridge was wooden, the planking sturdy under their feet. Far below, the river was a thread of silver in the moonlight. Mountains rose sharply on either side, blacker than the velvet of the night sky against which they pressed. Her gown was green satin with white lace at her throat. He wore riding breeches and high leather boots, polished and gleaming in the moonglow. When they met, he took her hands.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” he said.

  “You always say that, yet here I am, always.”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry. You’re so beautiful. The most beautiful woman in the entire county.”

  “And you the handsomest man.”

  He kissed her, his lips like firebrands against her own. She yielded for a long moment, then drew away.

  “A blue moon,” she said. “Are they always this bright and beautiful?”

  Her face was upturned, and he saw how soft and pale her skin was, like sweet cream.

  “I expect,” he said. “But even more so, just for us. It’s so quiet and peaceful here.”

&nbs
p; “And isolated. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

  “A love like ours was never meant to be. Footloose gambler, wealthy married woman.”

  “I married him long before I met you.” She gazed into his eyes and her own eyes shone. “But oh, I remember the first time we saw each other across the dance floor.”

  “You wore a dress the color of a summer sky and a red bow in your hair, a flame amid all those lovely tresses. You were radiant, as if the sun itself burned inside you.”

  “Even across that filled dance floor, I saw you eyeing me. It sent chills down my spine to be looked at so frankly.”

  “So lovingly.”

  “So lasciviously.”

  “I was on fire,” he said. “I thought if I didn’t kiss you that very night, I might as well be dead.”

  “It was that very night. And you did a good deal more than just kiss me.” She took his hand and placed it on her breast.

  “Dear God,” he said. “I want you. Right here, right now.”

  “I don’t know if this bridge will hold up under our passion.”

  “Then let’s go somewhere more comfortable.”

  “What did you have in mind? I’m tired of barns and haylofts and sneaking into your rooming house. I want...”

  “Yes?”

  “You’ve asked me a dozen times to run away with you.”

  “And a dozen times you’ve said no.”

  “Ask me again.”

  There was something different in her eyes, a look of resolution he hadn’t seen before.

  “Why?” he said cautiously.

  “Maybe I know something now that I didn’t before.”

  His hand, which had been softly kneading her breast, paused. “And what would that be?”

  The color of her face in the moonlight changed, became instantly like snow, soft still but cold. “Annabelle,” she said.

  “Annabelle?”