The Map in the Attic

by Jolyn Sharp

  Stunned, David could only manage a surprised, “My car?”

  “Yeah, listen, I’ll swap with you, man. No worries, you’ll have wheels. You’ll have the van. I just wanna trade …” But even as he was saying this, he finally was looking up and around the apartment. Annie saw him look through the door into the dining room and register the people at the table. “Oh, hi, Laura,” he said distractedly, “just a little business with our boy, here. Sorry to interrupt your dinner.” But then he did a dramatic double-take as he registered the presence of Annie at the table.

  For a few seconds, he stared hard at her; then he tried to recover himself and turned back to David. “So, whaddya say, man? Will you swap with me?”

  By this time, Laura was up from the table and moving into the living room, and all the others followed her. David, however, merely gazed at his cousin for a bit and then asked simply, “Why?”

  “Oh … well, …” Lionel stammered ineffectually. His nervous eyes glanced from David to the others to the door and back to David again. “Uh, you know, just for a change? Variety is the spice, right? And … and just for a while, if you want. We can switch back, but who knows, man, you might find a van useful. I sure do.” This was accompanied by an unconvincing laugh. “But seriously, bro’, it’s gotta be, like, right now. Whaddya say?” He made a hideous attempt to smile ingratiatingly.

  David stood stock-still and continued to gaze levelly at his cousin. Finally, he said, “Lionel, is it true that you were the one who broke into Annie Dawson’s house?” He nodded his head in her direction.

  Lionel turned to face her directly, and anger flared in his eyes. His pretence of conciliating his cousin vanished. Lunging at Annie, he snarled, “You lie!”

  David was quicker, and shoved him across the room so that he landed half-sprawling on the couch. “So it’s true,” he demanded, advancing on Lionel. “And you were also the one who stole that piece of embroidery? That map?”

  Lionel jumped to his feet again and edged away from his cousin. “Davey, Davey,” he said, making placating gestures with his hands. “Be cool, man. It’s our map, anyway.”

  But just at that moment, there came more pounding on the apartment door, followed by shouts of “Police! Open up!” David cast a disgusted look at his cousin and turned toward the door. Before he could take a step, however, he was halted by a shrieked, “Stop!” from Lionel. Something in the tone of his voice made everyone turn toward him.

  From somewhere under his shirt, Lionel had produced a bowie knife, and crouching defensively, he now flashed it like a sword at the semicircle of people around him.

  “Don’t make me use it, man,” he said in a soft, pleading voice. David instantly raised his hands and stepped back from the door. In the meantime, the police were pounding once again. “Lionel Burke! We know you’re in there! Open up!”

  “Go away!” Lionel screamed at the door. “I’ve got hostages!” Though, in fact, he merely waved the knife at each of them in turn, there was immediately silence on the far side of the door.

  “Bucky,” David said calmly. “Don’t make this worse than it is.” He edged slowly toward his cousin. Bucky flashed the knife in David’s direction and then back in the direction of Mary Beth and the others.

  In a voice with the slightest of tremors, David called out so the police could hear, “He’s holding a knife.”

  After a moment, Chief Edwards’s voice came through the door, much quieter and less demanding than before. “Is everyone OK in there? Is anyone hurt?”

  “No,” David called. “Not yet.”

  “Mr. Burke,” called the chief, “there’s no need to do anything rash. We can work this out. If we’ll all just remain calm, I’m sure we can come to an understanding.” He paused as if inviting a response from Lionel, but the desperate man said nothing and simply stared at the door. The others in the room stood stock-still.

  Laura had the kids huddled up close to her. The two youngsters stared wide-eyed at their frantic cousin, more curious and wary, Annie thought, than actually afraid. ”Ah, Lionel?” Laura said softly. “Why don’t I take the kids to the bedroom?”

  Lionel stared for a moment, blinking rapidly, and Annie wondered if he had understood. But then he nodded assent, and Laura hurried the kids down the hall. As soon as his children were out of the room, David began to take cautious steps toward his cousin.

  Panting, Lionel backed away from David’s advances until he found himself against the wall. “I just wanted the car, Davey,” he said softly, almost to himself. “You let me down. You’re family. You’re supposed to help me.”

  “That’s right, Bucky,” David said. “We are your family, and we want what’s best for you. Now, why don’t you hand me the knife before you hurt yourself?”

  Lionel didn’t answer, but unable to keep backing up, he raised the knife and held it out in front of him, grasping it tightly. David stopped moving and spread his hands slowly.

  After a moment, the chief tried again. “We can work this out, Lionel. But I need to know what it is you want. Can you tell me what you want, Lionel?”

  Lionel wet his lips, his face frozen in an unreadable mask. He opened his mouth and stuttered, “I … I …,” but so softly that the chief could not have heard it.

  After a pause, the chief continued in a coaxing tone, “It’s OK, Lionel. Take your time. Just tell me what it is you want. I’m listening.”

  Finally, Lionel managed to force out a strangled, “Go away! I want you to go away.”

  There was a beat, and then the chief said, “OK, Lionel, I hear you. Here’s what we’re going to do. Me and my men, we’re going to go outside, down into the parking lot. Got it? We’re going to go away like you said, and you’ll be able to see us down there from the window, so you’ll know we’ve done it. And then once we’ve done that, I’m going to call you on the phone in there, so we can keep talking, and you can tell me what else you want.”

  There was a sound of feet moving away from the door and down the stairs, but Annie wasn’t sure Lionel had even understood what the chief said. Although standing still, David was straining forward as though he wanted to tackle Lionel and grab the knife. But he appeared more worried that Lionel was going to hurt himself than that he would hurt anyone else.

  Annie was standing beside Mary Beth, and she could hear her friend’s breath coming in quick and shallow gasps. Annie’s own heart was thumping in her chest. In the time Lionel had held the dinner party hostage, the night had deepened, but no one turned on the light. Blue and red lights from the cars outside streaked the walls.

  But for all the tense anticipation, she nearly jumped out of her skin when the phone rang. And it kept ringing for some time, sounding ominously loud in the silent apartment. Finally, Lionel pointed at Annie with the knife. “Answer it,” he said.

  Annie took care to move slowly and deliberately to the phone, watching Lionel’s face as she picked up the receiver. “Coyne residence,” she said in the calmest voice she could muster. “This is Annie Dawson.”

  There was the slightest hesitation on the other end, and then Chief Edwards said, “Mrs. Dawson, is anyone hurt up there?”

  “No, Chief,” she said. “Nobody’s hurt.” She could see Lionel’s eyes flashing dangerously, and she was afraid that if she just answered “yes” or “no” he might get paranoid.

  “Does he have a weapon?”

  “Yes, Chief. He’s got a knife.”

  “Ask him if he’ll get on the line.”

  She held the receiver away slightly and spoke to Lionel. “The chief asks if you’ll get on the line.”

  Lionel slid along the wall and looked out the window, taking in the commotion below. He wavered for a bit, looking back and forth between Annie and the police down in the parking lot. Finally, he shook his head at her. “He doesn’t wish to come to the phone, Chief Edwards,” Annie reported.

  “OK, Mrs. Dawson, you’re doing great. Ask him if he can tell us what he wants.” She repeated the question
to Lionel, but he just stood there looking from one of them to the next, in turn. So much time passed that the chief finally said, “Mrs. Dawson, are you still there?”

  “Still here, Chief. He, uh, seems to be considering the question.” Then, holding the receiver out slightly, she said to Lionel, “Are you sure you won’t speak to him yourself?”

  But Lionel now seemed to be completely paralyzed by indecision, not moving except to wave his knife to remind everyone that he still had a serious weapon in his hand. Breathing quickly, he seemed unable to speak.

  The receiver in Annie’s outstretched hand began to bark. “Mrs. Dawson? What’s going on?”

  “It’s OK, Chief,” she said, quickly pulling back the receiver. “Mr. Burke seems to be considering his options.”

  Suddenly, Lionel barked, “Hang up the phone!” Annie repeated the instructions to Chief Edwards and then did as she was told.

  “Bucky, what do you think is going to happen here?” David now adopted a sterner tone. “Even if you did steal the map, so what? Or break into Annie’s house? Those are nothing compared with stabbing someone. Put the knife down and stop this now, and we can work something out. Do you need money?” He paused. When his cousin didn’t answer, he asked, “Is it true you’re looking for the Burke Hoard?” There were notes of both concern and mockery in his voice.

  This was the first thing that seemed to penetrate Lionel’s confusion. He started and stared at his cousin. “How did you know that?” he demanded.

  David hesitated and then said, “Annie told me.”

  Lionel once again turned his fury on her. He took a few steps into the center of the room. “You! What business is it of yours? That blasted map didn’t belong to you anyway.” His movement brought him closer to David, though the latter remained still.

  “But Mr. Burke,” Annie said in her most reasonable tone, “I always said I would return the map to a legitimate owner if one were to come forward.” She instantly regretted this; she had hoped she could defuse the situation by being rational, but she realized she had only emphasized the fact that Lionel himself was not a “legitimate owner.” His expression took on a sullen, even angrier, cast. Desperately, she tried to redirect his thinking. “Is there really a Burke Hoard?” she asked. “And no one’s found it after all this time?”

  “Of course there isn’t,” David said in a quiet, contemptuous tone, taking a small step forward at the same time.

  Lionel was instantly pointing the knife at his cousin, who was almost within reach of its point. “You lie!” he screamed. “Grandpa told me there was. He said it was hidden where no one but a Burke could find it.”

  “Bucky, don’t be ridiculous,” David said, inching another step forward. “Grandpa Burke liked to tell stories, just like Great-Grandpa before him. Grandma always said that. You remember.” He took another small step as Lionel’s arm sagged.

  “Then why is there a map?” Lionel demanded. “At first I thought it was somewhere else. But then this map turned up. What else could it be for?”

  A cold suspicion crept into Annie’s heart. “Mr. Burke,” she said quietly. “Before the map came to light, where did you think the money was hidden?”

  “Shut up!” He flashed the knife at Annie again. “You shut up now!”

  But David had caught the edge in his voice. “Bucky? Where did you think it was?”

  Suddenly Lionel looked down at the floor, and the arm holding the knife dropped to his side. “Your house,” he muttered.

  “At the house?” David repeated. “You were looking for the Burke Hoard at the house? Bucky—” David’s voice grew very cold and cutting, “—does this have anything to do with the fire?”

  “That was an accident!” Lionel wailed. “I swear it was an accident. And I warned you. I called you on the phone. I saved your lives!” But he could no longer look in David’s direction. With his free hand he pulled up his T-shirt to wipe the sweat from his brow, the hand with the knife still dangling at his side.

  In the space of a heartbeat, David rushed forward and grappled with Lionel.

  David grabbed Lionel’s knife arm in one hand to control it, and with the other hand, he grabbed Lionel’s shirtfront in his fist. He swept his right leg around and knocked Lionel’s out from under him. In moments, he had Lionel pinned on the floor on his back, his right arm stretched out to the side. For a moment, David’s expression was one of unconstrained fury, but he mastered himself, glanced toward Lionel’s right hand, and said, “Let go of the knife, Bucky.”

  When Lionel let the knife slip from his fingers, Annie quickly picked it up and stepped back again, out of reach. Then she circled the figures on the floor to approach the window and gestured to the police below that they should come on up. They charged up the stairs with their guns drawn, but they found the situation in the apartment fully contained, with David pinning his cousin to the floor, Annie awkwardly holding the knife out butt first, Laura sobbing with relief and being comforted by Mary Beth, and the two children peeking out of the bedroom door.

  24

  “But hadn’t this Lionel already left the Coynes’ before the fire?” asked Kate Stevens as her crochet needle darted in and out of the project before her.

  Both Annie and Mary Beth nodded. Since they’d been among the hostages, they had felt free to press Chief Edwards for more information about the case, and they were now generously sharing their knowledge with their fellow members of the Hook and Needle Club. “Yes,” Annie confirmed, “but they’d given him a key to the house in case of emergencies. He was using it to sneak back in at night and poke around in the basement.”

  “But why did he think this so-called Burke Hoard was even in the house?” asked Gwendolyn. She held her hat project close to her eyes to examine the decreases at the crown.

  Mary Beth shrugged. “Process of elimination? Wishful thinking? When he came back to the area, he’d already decided that the treasure had to be in the Coyne house. Apparently as a boy he had looked everyplace else. But it wasn’t an unreasonable guess: David’s house had been in the Burke family for generations. His grandmother was a Burke, of course, and the house came to David through her.”

  “How did he manage to start the fire?” asked Peggy.

  “That house had only a partial basement,” Mary Beth explained, “and even that was unfinished. Lionel’s search had taken him into the crawl space under the rest of the house. Apparently he was deep in there when the bulb burned out in his droplight, leaving him in absolute darkness.

  “He had some matches in his pocket, and he was using those to try to find his way out when he somehow managed to set something ablaze. Probably dropped his match, but he says he doesn’t know how it happened. Anyway, it seems he panicked. If he’d acted right away, he could have put it out, but he was trapped in a confined space with a fire starting to burn. He managed to scramble out of the crawl space and into the basement, but from there he couldn’t reach in effectively to get at the fire.

  “In just a few moments, the fire was spreading rapidly. He says he ran up into the house and tried to find an extinguisher or something to carry down water, but I doubt he looked very hard. And soon he decided he needed to get out of there. Once he was out and down the street a ways, he did take out his cell phone and call the house to make sure they were awake and aware of the fire.”

  “And even after the fire,” Annie added, “he was still coming around, trying to see if he could dig in the ruins and keep looking for his lost treasure.”

  The women in the circle all shook their heads.

  “And then he heard about the map,” said Stella, rolling her eyes at the absurdity of it all.

  “Yes,” Annie sighed. “He heard about the map and saw that reproduction of it in the paper. And he apparently came to look at it in person, though the volunteer at the Historical Society didn’t know him. He recognized—or thought he did—his great-aunt’s initials in the corner, and he may even have seen the map when he was a child. He’s been a lit
tle cagey about this. He thinks ‘maybe’ his grandfather may have shown it to him, though neither Gus nor David had ever seen it before, and they all grew up together. We’ll probably never know how it came to be in that cookie jar, and Lionel may just be trying to make his actions seem more plausible. The chief thinks so, at any rate.”

  “He may have been going a little ’round the bend,” Mary Beth added. “There are signs that he did some digging at his sister’s cabin, too, again looking for the treasure. And that makes no sense, because that’s not an old family property. Agnes bought that herself about fifteen years ago.”

  “But for whatever reason,” Annie said, “he became convinced that the map was going to show him the location of the treasure.”

  “And did he really have permission to use his sister’s cabin?” asked Alice.

  “Not specifically,” Annie said, “but she’d told him in the past that he was welcome to use it whenever he liked. And even though they weren’t that close, he did have his own key.”

  “Didn’t the workers at the marina suspect something was up?”

  “They’d seen him before with his sister,” said Mary Beth. “Plus the hatches on the boat were all locked with padlocks, and he had the keys. That was because the keys were kept in the lake cabin, but to the people at the marina, everything looked fine.”

  Just then the bell over the door sounded, and Megan and Laura walked in. Megan was holding two large sheets of poster board folded in half. The ladies of the Hook and Needle Club urged the two to join them in the circle, but Laura stood by while Megan unfolded what turned out to be an oversized thank-you card that she had made with her mother.

  “I want to thank you all for the wonderful things you made for us,” Laura said to the group. “The day Mary Beth and Annie brought them over was a turning point for us—in so many ways.” As her mother spoke, Megan set down the card and opened up the next folded piece of poster board, which this time was an oversized party invitation; it announced a celebration in honor of the Hook and Needle Club members to be held in Mary Beth’s shop after hours.