by Loretta Ross
off to their parents were running up and down the sidewalk, burning off the day’s pent-up energy.
Sam and Roy came out and locked the club behind them, then Roy waved for everyone to gather around.
“Okay, folks, looks like we’re ready ahead of schedule. Good job, everybody. I just want to go over the fire evacuation plan one more time.”
“You know,” Robin said, “you guys have spent so much time worrying about a fire and planning for a fire that I’m kinda gonna be disappointed if there isn’t a fire.”
“I could arrange a fire,” Matthew offered. Leona gave him a look and he bit his lip and faded into the background.
“If the comedy act is finished,” Sam said drily, “everyone take one of these sheets.” He passed around a stack of papers. “This is a blueprint of the club with all exits marked. All doors will be unlocked and any that open in will be propped open. Yes, it will be cold if the weather is cold. Pray for a warm snap.”
“I have flashlights for everyone,” Roy said, waving one over his head. “They all have fresh batteries, but when I hand them out Sunday morning I want you each to test yours and make sure it works. Sam and I will be out tomorrow to mark exit routes on the walls and carpets with reflective tape. We’ve assigned people in each room and hallway to keep an eye on things. Look at the paper and if you see your name, come find me Sunday morning to get a bullhorn. No, Matthew, you cannot have a bullhorn.”
“Obviously,” Sam said, “we don’t anticipate trouble. Not a fire, nor anything else out of the ordinary. But a building designed very much like this building cost a great many people their lives because no one anticipated trouble. We’re not going to let that happen here.” He looked around. “Okay, so for the first weekend since last spring, we have a Friday night with no sale scheduled on Saturday. Everyone go enjoy yourself and we’ll see you all here bright and early Sunday morning.”
As Wren walked to her truck, her gaze drifted over to the gathering next door. There were about a dozen vehicles in the lot and fifteen or twenty people had emerged from them. She picked out Neils Larsen again, with a woman she decided was probably his wife. He saw Wren watching him and waved, and she took it as an invitation to go over and say hello.
“Mr. Larsen, hi! It’s good to see you. It looks like you guys are planning quite a weekend.”
“Hi!” His smile faltered. “I’m sorry, dear. I know we met a few days ago but I can’t remember your name.”
“That’s okay. It’s Wren. I’m Wren Morgan. I work with the Keystone auction company.”
“Right. Yes. That I knew. Oh, this is my wife.”
The older woman gave her a warm smile and offered her hand. “Call me Maggie.”
“Maggie. Pleased to meet you. Looks like you’ve got a lot of people out here for the festival?”
Neils answered her. “There should be a good crowd here. There’ll be more for the feast on Sunday. This is just the core group today. We like to spend the whole weekend, sleep here. Make the most of it.” He nodded toward the vehicles leaving the club parking lot. “I hope you’re not leaving on our account?”
“Oh, no. We’ve just finished for the time being. We’re done with our preparations, but we’ll be back early Sunday morning to conduct the sale. That’s apt to draw a huge crowd,” she reminded him.
“Great. Maybe we can recruit some of them to join our village.” Neils took a long wooden horn from the trunk of his car and handed it to his wife, then reached back in for a stringed instrument of a type Wren had never seen before.
“Is that—I’m sorry—is that like a guitar? Or some kind of harp?”
The instrument in question was a long board with rounded ends. There was a large hole at one end and strings running across a bridge from end to end. It was almost like a rectangular guitar without a neck or a sound box.
“You’re close,” Larsen said. “It’s a lyre. It can be strummed like a guitar, plucked like a harp, or played with a bow like a violin.”
“Is it an authentic Viking instrument?” she asked. “And the horn,” she added, nodding toward his wife.
“The lyre is a pretty widespread instrument from the period. We find evidence of them all over the Old World. The horn is called a lur. It was definitely a Viking instrument. There was one in the Oseberg ship burial.”
Maggie put the horn to her lips and played a few notes.
“It sounds like an oboe,” Wren said.
“It’s similar,” she agreed. “And, after all, they’re both woodwinds. Though there’s more wood to my lur than to your average modern oboe.”
“So you play the lur,” Wren said, “and do you”—she turned to Neils—“play the lyre?”
“Oh, my dear. I play everything. I’m a skald, you know?”
“No, not really. Is that like a minstrel?”
“Pretty much, yeah. In Viking society there were two types of minstrels, if you will. Jesters were looked down on. Reviled, even.”
“Like mimes?”
“Worse. It wasn’t illegal to kill a jester.”
“Wow! Talk about your harsh critics. It was against the law to kill a skald, I hope?”
“Oh, yes. Unlike jesters, skalds were highly respected poets and musicians. They performed at important ceremonies and before the courts of kings and warlords.”
“That sounds fascinating. I’d love to hear you both perform sometime.”
“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
“Gosh. I don’t know. I’d have to talk to my fiancé and see if he’s made any plans.”
“Well, if he hasn’t, come on out. Bring him with you. We’d love to have you.”
“We don’t have any costumes to wear,” Wren said.
“That’s okay. We’ll just pretend we’ve kidnapped you from the twenty-first century.”
seventeen
“I can’t go in there.”
Eric Farrington froze in the coffee shop doorway like a deer in the headlights.
Madeline, following close behind, ran into him. She was carrying her toddler son, Benji, and he was getting heavy. She poked Eric in the ribs with her finger. “What are you talking about? Of course you can. Move.”
“No. I, uh, I got a, um, I got an appointment.”
“What kind of appointment?”
“A dog. I mean a man. A dog man. A man about a dog. I gotta see a man about a dog.”
“Oh for heaven’s sake. If you have to go to the bathroom, just go to the bathroom.”
“No, a dog. I’m gonna get a dog.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Dogs hate you. They bark at you and growl at you and pee on your leg. Seriously, Eric. You need to move now. I haven’t had my coffee yet and I am in no mood for this.”
She put her shoulder into his ribs and he stumbled, finally, into the coffee shop. Madeline ducked in behind him and looked for a seat. Three tables from the door, in the row of booths along the window, there sat an older man of massive proportions. Their awkward entry had caught his attention and he regarded them mildly.
Eric was staring at him and swallowing repeatedly, like he was trying not to throw up.
The man nodded and spoke calmly, his voice deep and resonant.
“Eric.”
Eric cringed, and when he replied his own voice had climbed half an octave.
“Hello, Mr. Morgan, sir.”
Mr. Morgan raised one eyebrow, but otherwise his expression betrayed nothing. “I trust you’re not doing any more bow hunting.”
“No, sir! No bows! I’m not … I don’t … I gotta go to work.” Eric broke suddenly, turned, and ran back out the way he’d come, nearly bowling over Madeline in the process.
“Brilliant,” she muttered bitterly. “Now I’m going to have to buy my own coffee.” She turned to the older man. “Do I want to know what that was all about?
”
He took a sip of his coffee, watching her from under half-lowered lids. “Probably not,” he said.
She regarded him thoughtfully. “Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Are you any relation to Wren Morgan?”
“Some.” He allowed himself a faint smile. “She’s my daughter.”
“Oh!” Madeline smiled and helped herself to a seat on the other side of his table. “So is it true that she and Death are engaged now?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
Benji looked around and chirped, “Deese?”
Madeline shushed him. She sighed and plastered a concerned look on her face. “I just hope she realizes what she’s letting herself in for.”
Mr. Morgan raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“Death is my ex-husband,” she confided. “And he’s a good guy, sure. But he just has so many problems …”
Wren filled the left-hand sink with soapy water and lowered half a dozen already-clean pans into it. She washed them gently, rinsed them in clear, hot water in the right-hand sink, and set them in the drainer to air-dry. She had the oven turned on, but very low, and it was filled with pans she’d already put through this procedure. She took them out one by one, made certain they were entirely dry, and wrapped them in newspaper before setting them in the big open carton in the middle of the kitchen table.
Her mother came in and stood and watched her for several seconds.
“What are you doing, exactly?”
“I’m packing all my pots and pans,” she said, thinking it was an odd question. Surely it was obvious what she was doing. “I wanted to make sure they were clean and dry, so they wouldn’t rust or anything between now and when I unpack them in the new house.”
“Mmm. I see. Don’t you think you’re rushing things just a tiny little bit?”
“I’m just trying to get a jump on it. I haven’t moved anywhere since I moved here, and with all my stuff, plus Death’s apartment to move, it’s going to take a lot of work.”
“Won’t you have Death to help you?” her mother asked. “Or does he only cook?”
“He’ll help,” Wren said. “I don’t want him to do too much, though. I told you about his lungs, remember?”
“I remember. It’s not at all convenient, having an invisible injury that keeps him from doing physical labor.”
Wren glared at her mother.
“I’m just saying …” Emily opened a nearby cupboard. “Where are all your dishes? They’re not sitting around on the floor in the living room any more.”
“I know. I got tired of tripping over them and I was afraid I was going to break something.”
“You could have put them back in the cupboard.”
“But then it would have felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything.”
“So where are they?”
“I went ahead and packed them up, and all the knickknacks and doodads and such, and stored them out in the garage until we’re ready to move. That wide shelf along the back of the garage didn’t have anything on it but junk. I mean actual junk, like boxes things came in that I bought years ago and saved the boxes in case I had to return them but I never did. So I threw them away and put the cases of dishes and such out there. It’s just about the same height as the back of a truck, so all I’ll have to do is back up and it’ll be easy to load.”
“Brilliant,” Emily said. She didn’t sound particularly sincere. “And now you’re going to put all your pots and pans out there too?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Ah. I see.”
“Would you like some coffee?” Wren asked. “I’ve got some ugly plastic cups that I bought at an auction once when no one would bid on them. I figure we can use them until we move and then just donate them to the thrift shop. I also found a huge package with about a hundred paper plates left over from Fourth of July three or four years ago. Now’s as good a time to use them up as any. It’s not fancy, but I don’t think it’ll kill us to rough it just a little for a few weeks.”
“No, probably not,” her mother agreed. “Although it is a little sad.”
“What is?”
“Setting such a poor table for your first holiday dinner with your future husband.”
Wren sat down suddenly and her face fell.
“Oh, no! I completely forgot about Thanksgiving!”
When Death had furnished his little apartment, he’d only been worried about utility. It was an efficiency apartment, one room with a kitchenette in the corner and a tiny bathroom, and he’d been satisfied with a twin bed, a second-hand sofa, and a desk and chair. Since Randy had come to stay with him, they’d added a second bed and a couple
of armchairs and that was that. It wasn’t fancy, but it worked fine most of the time.
The drawback was that when one of them had to wake up early, both of them woke up early.
Randy was covering a half-shift for another paramedic who’d promised to make his daughter’s basketball game, so he set his alarm for six a.m. After he’d left, Death lay awake for another hour or so, but his mind was working overtime and he finally gave up, threw on a robe, and went in to his desk. He opened the blinds to let the morning sun in, started a pot of coffee, booted up his computer, and pulled out his notebook.
He had an idea what was going on with the stolen painting and the other missing items, but at this point it was just a hunch and he had no idea how he was going to prove it even if he was right. He opened the file with Frank Appelbaum’s family tree, went to the top where the diagrams outlined the original immigrants from 1893, and laid a blank sheet of paper on his desk. Sooner or later he was going to have to explain this to someone. It would help to have it all clear in his own mind.
The document only tracked the Applebaums, but there were references to two other families, or parts of families, that had left Prussia for America with the Applebaums at the end of the nineteenth century. The three families had left, according to the notes provided by Frank’s second cousin twice removed, for economic reasons. Life in Prussia had promised scarce jobs and scant fortunes, and the Warner siblings’ father had already come over decades before, when they were small, and made a name for himself as a tinker on the westward trails.
Miriam Appelbaum, aka Mimi Blossom, the subject of the Ring Portrait, was already a young widow with a child. She joined her two sisters in the move. They traveled on a ship called the Nordstern with two brothers with the last name Bender, Chance Warner’s great-great-grandparents, and his great-great-grandfather’s sister. This sister was Claudia Warner, known in family legend as Crazy Aunt Cici and remembered still for her resourcefulness, quick temper, and occasional homicidal tendencies.
Cici had married the eldest Bender brother, Henry, who had made a fortune in the railroad industry. She bore him six children before she caught him cheating on her and went after him with a meat cleaver. Only three of the children survived to adulthood, two daughters and one son, Henry Jr., who eventually married Miriam Appelbaum’s niece, Rose Derkin.
Henry Jr. and Rose Bender had one child, a son. They named him Claudio, presumably in honor of his ferocious grandmother. He, in turn, also had a single son. His name was Henry.
Death was 99.9 percent certain that this was the same Claudio Bender who had, in the early 1970s, built the Ozark Hills Supper Club.
This was not where he’d expected the case to lead, but it made a certain sort of sense if you looked at it in the right light. Bender was wealthy. He’d grown up that way, and seemed to be used to people catering to his every whim as a result. Dr. Bailey, the professor Death had talked to in Columbia, said that Bender was infatuated with his own history and loved anything that was related to his past. According to Wren, Neils Larsen had described him as “grabby.”
Death surmised that if Bender wanted something he couldn’t have, his first instinct would probably be to copy it. Af
ter all, what was the Ozark Hills Supper Club but a copy of a popular nightclub? At some point, Death reasoned, Bender had found an opportunity to swap his copy for the real thing. He’d gotten away with it the first time he tried, and so he’d kept it up. The swaps he’d pulled off, at least for a time, were of things that didn’t draw a lot of attention. No one had noticed the fakes, even though they weren’t very good copies, simply because no one had looked closely.
Made bold by his success, he’d gotten ambitious with the Volkmer portrait. If Death could prove his theory, that was the heist that would be Bender’s downfall. The circumstantial evidence was there. Bender owned a large share in Eiler Labs, whose employees had facilitated the swap.
And Death was willing to bet that Bender had gone even further to get access to the Ring Portrait. Funding for the film class project that had led to the painting being removed from the museum had come from the Nordstern Foundation—a charity that bore the same name as the ship that had carried Bender’s ancestors to America.
But Claudio Bender was a wealthy man. Fair or not, that gave him a certain amount of power and an advantage in the court of public opinion. If Death was going to accuse him of being a thief, he was going to need more than a hunch to go on.
Death sighed, shuffled his papers together, and decided to walk over to the coffee shop and pick up some donuts to take to Wren’s house.
“… And someone told me that Wren’s going to sell her house so they can buy a bigger house together? I mean, that just doesn’t seem fair to me. She’s putting her whole house into it and what’s he got? He doesn’t have a house, that’s for sure. He let me keep that. He was living in his car when he and Wren first met. Did she tell you that? He said he wanted to be sure that Benji would have a safe place to grow up in.” Madeline laughed unpleasantly. “Really? Who does that? Benji isn’t even his kid. I think we all know what he’s really thinking.”
Madeline was pretty, Edgar would give her that, and she probably had a capacity for charm. She had invited herself to join him, got a waitress to bring over a high chair for her baby, and ordered a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee that Edgar suspected he was going to wind up paying for. He supposed he didn’t mind. It was proving to be an enlightening morning. She was telling him more than she realized.