The Crafty Teddy

by John J. Lamb

  “Whoa, honey! Let’s hang on here for a second until we can be certain the guy is in the wind,” I said as we came to a stop a couple of steps short of the ground floor.

  “Are you all right?” Ash demanded as her hand found my face in the darkness.

  “Fine. He missed me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. For God’s sake, why didn’t you stay upstairs?”

  “If you think I’m going to hide in our bedroom while someone tries to kill you, you’re completely fifty-one fifty,” Ash said indignantly, using a California police expression she picked up from me to describe acute mental illness. “So I told the dispatcher what was happening and grabbed your cane.”

  “And then you came to the rescue. Thanks.” I kissed her on the forehead.

  “Where did the suspect go?”

  “Out the front door.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Wait for the cops.” Descending the final two steps to the ground floor, I added, “Stay here while I lock the front door.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Is there any point in arguing about this?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I figured. Then stay behind me.”

  I held the gun pointed in the direction of the front door and we slowly crossed the living room. As we got to the front door, we heard a vehicle engine fire up somewhere down the long gravel driveway leading to our house. I pushed the screen door open to get a better look and saw the boxy silhouette of some sort of SUV—it could have been anything from an older model Jeep Cherokee to a newer Land Rover—back up into the lane. As the truck skidded to a stop, there was a momentary flicker of rectangular-shaped brake lamps and I noticed a small hole in the left-side light cover that showed bright white against the ruby background.

  For a moment I considered firing at the SUV’s rear tires to disable it, but just as quickly rejected the idea. It was so dark that I couldn’t even see the wheels and the vehicle was perhaps fifty yards away, too great a distance to ensure I wouldn’t accidentally send a round into the passenger compartment. Not that I had any objections to smoking the gun-toting burglar, but there might be another occupant in the truck and I couldn’t accept the risk of shooting a relatively innocent person. The SUV took off down the driveway and turned right onto Cupp Road, where we lost sight of it. Somewhere in the distance to the north, a sheriff cruiser’s siren was yelping.

  After closing the door and locking it, I switched on the entryway light and a second later Ash gasped in shock. I turned and my jaw tightened with rage. Suddenly, I regretted my decision not to shoot.

  The curio cabinet doors stood open and the floor around the display case was littered with the brutally torn arms, legs, torsos, and heads of three of our favorite teddy bears. Among the casualties was a sweet little girl bear made by Joanne Mitchell, that was attired in a maroon velvet dress; a large pink mohair bear made by Serieta Harrell that we’d gotten at a San Diego teddy bear show years before; and a café au lait–colored bear we’d purchased from Barbara Burke while attending the Har-Bear Expo in Baltimore two months previously. Each piece had cost several hundred dollars, yet the damage couldn’t be measured in terms of money. Ash stooped to pick up a mohair leg.

  I said, “Honey, please don’t touch anything until the sheriff gets here.”

  “Why would anyone do this?” Her eyes were moist and red.

  “To hurt us. This wasn’t a run-of-the-mill burglary.” I hooked a thumb in the direction of the DVD player. “The suspect wasn’t interested in regular loot, because nothing else has been touched.”

  “But who could hate us that much?”

  “Pick a name from the list of ‘public servants’ who either lost their jobs or went to prison because of us.” I was referring to the events of the previous October when Ash and I solved a murder and recovered a stolen and very valuable Steiff teddy bear.

  The siren was growing closer now and I said, “Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you go upstairs and put some real clothes on? Call me old-fashioned, but I’m the only one who gets to see you dressed like that.”

  “I will in a sec—Oh God, the Farnell is gone.”

  “Damn it, you’re right,” I said, peering into the curio cabinet.

  Ash began to cry and I gathered her into my arms, not quite certain how to hold her with the pistol still in my hand. The Farnell Alpha teddy bear—one of the most celebrated mass-produced stuffed animals in history—had been my gift to her on our twentieth wedding anniversary. Standing approximately two-feet tall with embroidered webbed paws, and made from golden-brown Yorkshire mohair, the bear was created by English toy manufacturer J. K. Farnell. Its fame derived from the fact that back in 1921, Allen and Dorothy Milne purchased an Alpha bear from Harrod’s Department Store in London as a first birthday present for their son, Christopher Robin. Yes, that Christopher Robin. And that teddy bear, christened Edward, was the inspiration for A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books.

  I’d found our Alpha bear in an antique shop in the California wine country town of Sonoma. The blue and white label sewn to the left foot marked it as being made sometime between 1926 and 1945, yet it was pretty much in pristine condition, with only a little wear on the embroidered black nose. It had cost almost two thousand dollars at the time, so there was no telling what it was worth now. Yeah, it was insured, but at the moment that was scant consolation.

  Murmuring what I knew were useless words of comfort, I looked out the window and saw the sheriff’s cruiser slue into our driveway. With its rapidly flashing blue overhead emergency lights, spotlight flicking to and fro, and wigwagging headlights, the patrol car was lit up like a Las Vegas marquee.

  I said, “Honey, the deputy is here. Why don’t you go upstairs and get dressed? Once you come back down, then I’ll go up and throw some clothes on too.”

  “Okay,” Ash sniffled.

  “And please take this with you.” I handed her the pistol.

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  Ash padded up the stairs as the cop car slid to a halt on the gravel in front of our house. A few seconds later, there was a series of sharp raps on the door, as if delivered with a heavy-duty police flashlight, followed by the shouted announcement that it was the sheriff’s department. I recognized the voice. It was our friend, Massanutten County Sheriff Tina Barron, who’d responded from her home in town and beaten her deputy to the call. I turned the porch light on and opened the door.

  Tina had a large black flashlight in one hand and a stainless steel 9-mil pistol in the other. She’d taken over the reins of the sheriff’s department in the wake of the Holcombe scandal and was elected by a landslide the following month. Since then, she’d labored ceaselessly to redeem her agency’s tarnished reputation and had even won over some of the local Neanderthals who thought that women had no place in law enforcement. Tina was maybe an inch taller than me and in her late thirties, with curly brunette hair, kind brown eyes, and a cherubic face. Having left home in a rush, she wasn’t dressed in her brown and tan sheriff’s uniform. Instead, she wore a gray-colored McGaheysville Volunteer Fire Department T-shirt, blue jeans, a gun belt, and tennis shoes. As she came into the house, I saw another sheriff’s unit turn into our driveway.

  “Are you guys okay?” Tina asked.

  “Nobody hurt.”

  “What happened?”

  “We woke up to find the house being burgled. The suspect fired one round at me when I tried to detain him and then he bailed. He was last seen turning westbound onto Cupp Road, driving a SUV with the lights off. It was too dark to see the plates.”

  “Did you shoot back?”

  “No, but I wish I had. Look what the son of a bitch did.” I nodded downward in the direction of the vandalized teddy bears.

  “That’s just vile. Where’s Ash?”

  “Upstairs, getting dressed.”

  Tina gave me a slow once-over and for the first time seemed to realize that I was atti
red in nothing more than a thin cotton nightshirt that only came down to mid-thigh.

  I raised my index finger in warning. “Not a word. I’m a crime victim tonight.”

  “I couldn’t say anything even if I wanted to…and believe me, I do.” Tina gave me a wicked grin. “But it’ll take me a couple of days just to process this sight. After that we’ll have some fun.”

  “How Gandhi-esque of you.”

  A male deputy came into the house and Tina excused herself for a moment to brief the cop on what had happened and then send him back out on the road to look for the suspect vehicle. Meanwhile, Ash came downstairs, dressed in khaki shorts and a purple T-shirt. She and Tina exchanged hugs and then Tina turned to me.

  “So, where were you when he shot at you?”

  “There on the stairs.” I pointed to the place. “And the bullet has to be someplace nearby because I heard it hit the wall.”

  The three of us went over to examine the wall near the stairs and Ash was the first one to spot the round bullet hole a couple of inches beneath the crown molding. It wasn’t much more than a half-foot from where my face had been at the time of the shooting but, not wanting to further frighten Ash, I said nothing. However, I noticed my wife’s gaze as it flicked back and forth between the bullet hole and the stairs, measuring the distance. She turned to give my hand a squeeze, knowing how close I’d been to death.

  Tina shined her flashlight at the cavity. “Pretty big. What do you think, a forty cal?”

  I squinted at the hole. “Maybe bigger. A forty-five, I think. We won’t know for certain until we dig it out of the wall when you process the crime scene.”

  “Whatever the caliber, I’ll give the suspect this: He was brave.”

  Ash and I gaped in disbelief at Tina. At last, I said, “What the hell are you talking about, Tina?”

  Tina chuckled dryly. “You don’t hunt Lyons with a handgun—even a Lyon wearing a pretty turquoise night-shirt. That’s just suicidal.”

  Two

  Nearly two weeks passed and the investigation into the break-in was as stalled as the 101 Freeway during rush hour. It wasn’t for lack of effort on Tina’s part. She’d done a fine job processing the crime scene, but the intruder had worn gloves, so there weren’t any fingerprints to work with and if anybody in Massanutten County knew anything about the attack, they weren’t saying anything. This was a little surprising, because we strongly suspected the burglar was a local resident and there is no such thing as a secret in a small town. Indeed, almost everyone in Remmelkemp Mill now knew that I wore a turquoise nightshirt to bed.

  The only new and slightly useful thing we learned about the crime was that Tina and I were both wrong about the size of the bullet that made the hole in our wall. It was a .41 caliber magnum hollow-point and was fired from the sort of large-bore revolver popular with police agencies back in the 1970s. Since it was a seldom-used type of ammunition, Tina followed up on the clue, checking gun and hunting shops throughout Massanutten and adjoining Rockingham County to see if anyone had recently bought a box of mini-artillery shells, but she came up dry.

  Worst of all, there was no sign of the stolen Farnell Alpha Bear. Tina sent crime bulletins to law enforcement agencies throughout Virginia containing a digital photograph of the bear that we’d taken when it was insured. At the same time, I searched the online auction websites daily to see if it would show up for sale and contacted teddy bear shops all over the Mid-Atlantic region, asking the merchants to be on the lookout for a hot stuffed animal. I also posted messages on several Internet communities catering to teddy bear enthusiasts, telling of how we’d been burglarized and asking collectors to be on the lookout for a Farnell offered for sale by anyone who seemed especially vague as to how it came into their possession. Yet our work didn’t produce a single useful lead.

  Once we accepted the bitter fact that the bear was probably gone for good, our life slowly returned to normal. Ash did an amazing job repairing the damaged teddy bears and, unless you knew where to look, you couldn’t see where she’d whipstitched the pieces back together. Meanwhile, I put in a claim to our insurance company, patched the bullet hole in the wall, and resumed work on my newest stuffed animal.

  It’s still a little hard for me to believe that after all those years of investigating murders I now spend my days making teddy bears with my wife. Some of my old friends from the PD think I’ve lost my marbles, but I have a great life. Creating teddy bears is a lot more fun than homicide work and there’s the added bonus that nobody calls at two-thirty in the morning to have me come look at a corpse.

  I officially unveiled the new bear for Ash one Saturday morning in mid-June. Marginally dressed in a gauzy white cotton nightgown, Ash was curled up on the quilt-covered sofa. She held her morning mug of hot cocoa and was faced toward the window, watching the birds gathered around the hanging feeder in our front yard. Kitch lay sprawled at her feet, which provided me with an excuse to keep my distance, because I really didn’t want to breathe in any of the tendrils of steam rising from Ash’s mug. I don’t usually keep secrets from my wife, but I’ve never told her that the smell of chocolate invariably causes a teeth-gritting jolt of pain through the bone and titanium hardware of my left shin.

  The pain is a psychosomatic effect of my having been shot in front of the chocolate factory and shop in Ghirardelli Square a couple of years ago. My old partner, Gregg Mauel, and I had been in foot pursuit of a murder suspect when he opened fire on us. I went down and Gregg smoked the guy. Now, my mind automatically links the agony of the crippling wound with the aroma of chocolate and although I understand it’s a Pavlovian response, I can’t control it. However, I’m not going to let my malfunctioning brain interfere with Ash’s morning cup of cocoa.

  Limping down the stairs and into our tiny living room, I lowered my voice a half octave and solemnly announced, “The bear you’re about to see is new. Only the name has been changed to protect myself from a copyright infringement lawsuit.” Then I whistled the famous nine-note fanfare that opened the old cop television program, Dragnet.

  She looked up and gave me an excited smile. “He’s done?”

  “I finished him last night. That’s why I was so late getting into bed.” I held up the twenty-inch-tall teddy bear I’d been slaving over for nearly two months. Doing my best Jack Webb impression, I then began a variation on the prologue that preceded most Dragnet episodes. I jiggled the bear slightly pretending it was the one actually speaking. “This is the city, Remmelkemp Mill—”

  “Actually it’s a village, sweetheart.”

  “Excuse me, but nobody ever corrected Sergeant Joe Friday.”

  Ash’s eyes were bright with merriment. “That’s because he was a stickler for facts. He wouldn’t have called Remmelkemp Mill a city.”

  “Okay…this is the village, Remmelkemp Mill, Virginia. It’s a quiet community, full of hardworking people, but some are deeply disturbed at the idea of a grown man making teddy bears. When they call the bear artist’s manhood into question, that’s when I go to work. My name is Joe Fur-day and I carry a tiny badge.”

  “He’s wonderful. Let me see him.”

  “Hang on a sec. I’m not done yet.” I resumed channeling the spirit of Jack Webb. “Saturday, June seventeenth. It was sunny and warm in Remmelkemp Mill. I was working the Day Watch out of the Rob-bear-y-Homicide Division.”

  Ash winced at the bad pun. You’d think she’d be accustomed to my wretched one-liners by now. I handed Joe to her and sat down on the couch.

  Back when I embarked on my new vocation of making stuffed animals, I’d struck on the idea of making bears that honored the fictional cops from television and film. My first effort was Dirty Beary, a mohair tribute to Clint Eastwood, and it had won an honorable mention at the Har-Bear Expo in Baltimore. I’d since given the bear to Tina as an inadequate token of gratitude for saving Ash’s life and mine last October. With Joe Fur-day finally finished, I had to decide which bear I was going to make next, Steve McBear-et
t, from Hawaii Five-O, or Inspector Ursa-kin from the old Quinn Martin F.B.I. series.

  Joe Friday was a retro cop, so I’d made Joe Fur-day as a retro teddy bear. He was created from gunmetal gray mohair, had an old-fashioned seam running up the center of his head from his black nose, hockey stick arms with charcoal-colored felt paw pads, and a slight hump at the top of his back. His face and muzzle were shaved, which accentuated the stern appearance of the black glass eyes and grimacing embroidered mouth. In my commitment to authenticity, I’d even considered putting a tiny Chesterfield cigarette in the corner of Joe’s mouth, but eventually decided against it, because these days, where there’s smoke there’s ire.

  The bear was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, tie, and a gray fedora—the clothing Jack Webb wore in the 1950s version of the show, which in my opinion was far superior to the 1960s incarnation of Dragnet, when Joe Friday was less a hard-nosed cop than a grouchy soapbox orator. There was even a leather holster on the bear’s right hip that contained an inch-long replica of a Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver that I’d carefully carved from balsa wood and painted metallic black.

  “God, I love him,” said Ash as she examined the bear.

  “Really?”

  “Of course, really. Look at how your work has improved since October.”

  “Only because I had a great teacher.”

  “Thank you. Can I pour you some coffee?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  She placed the bear on the end table and went into the kitchen. Returning, she handed me a mug of coffee and said, “So, are you going to show him to the guild this morning?”

  Ash was referring to the new club she’d organized back in April, the Massanutten Teddy Bear Artist Guild. There were about eleven local women in the group, including Tina, and they met monthly at our house to socialize over coffee, discuss bear-making techniques, and work on stuffed animals. The club was an instant success and, if you didn’t factor my creations into the judging pool, the quality of the bears being produced was nothing short of amazing. Although, in fairness to me, most of the members had been sewing since childhood.