Sticky Fingers

by Nancy Martin

  “He must be a thrill a minute.”

  “Actually, they both do fascinating work. But that’s not why you’re here. What do you want to know about Clarice?”

  “Just—I don’t know exactly. What’s megafauna?”

  “Shall I show you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s leave Nooch here. Our insurance is paid up, but I’m thinking we should do everything possible to protect world culture.”

  With Nooch content to sniff the contents of his teacup, Tito took me back into another part of the huge warehouse, a section cordoned off with a chain-link fence and padlocks.

  As we walked, I asked, “Do you know Clarice personally?”

  “Not well. I met her a few times—at large functions. At those things, all academic types brag about their prestigious awards and their important speeches. She was right in the scrum of battling egos. Otherwise, though, she was very cool.”

  “She was cool?”

  “In the standoffish sense. I’ve observed that characteristic in many wealthy people. They keep their distance. They’re afraid, perhaps, that everybody’s after their money.”

  “Clarice is wealthy?”

  “I believe her husband came from an important family. And, of course, there must be money in Professor Crabtree’s account, right?”

  Money was enough to explain why somebody might want to kidnap Clarice.

  “Unfortunately,” Tito continued, “her father has lost his marbles, I hear. Clarice packed him off to an Alzheimer’s facility a few weeks ago. We heard all about it, through the grapevine. Are you going to the house sale? That’s your line of work, right? Buying and selling junk from houses?”

  “Not junk. Architectural salvage,” I corrected.

  “Sorry. I heard Clarice was selling off things from her father’s estate. Furniture and whatnot. Probably things from his collection. Could be worth a fortune.”

  Anything worth a fortune interested me.

  Tito stopped in front of some large items heaped untidily behind the chain-link fence. I peered at the dim shapes and finally realized I was looking at bones. Very large bones.

  Tito said, “Andrew Carnegie started this museum with dinosaur bones, did you know that? Dinosaur bones were very exciting back then—a surefire way to draw the public into a museum. Later, this was the first dinosaur Leeford Crabtree ever dug up. He named all his finds, by the way. This one is Trixie. We usually cast the bones in plaster and display the casts in the museum, not the originals. The real things are too heavy, so we keep them here.”

  “Wow. Those bones are huge.”

  “Early paleontologists often couldn’t find the smaller parts of skeletons. The right technology didn’t exist back then, which is why there isn’t enough of Trixie to make a good display. Her skull was missing—probably washed away or carried off by scavenging carnivores, and skulls are what give dinosaur displays their personality.”

  “But you keep Trixie anyway?”

  “We could have sold her parts, I suppose. But selling to collectors is very bad form in our world.” Tito blew some dust off a label. “Professor Crabtree eventually left dinosaurs for later species, of course. Some of us have the opinion that he surrendered the field because other, younger scientists were more successful. In the middle part of his career, he found a full saber-toothed tiger in Siberia. You’ve probably seen that one at the museum. He called that specimen Fred. Fred makes a very good display.”

  If I had seen Crabtree’s tiger, it hadn’t made much of an impression on me.

  I said, “You mentioned Clarice is into something called megafauna. What’s that?”

  “Technically, it’s an animal weighing more than a hundred pounds, anything from deer and kangaroos to humans or elephants. But Clarice specializes in Pleistocene megafauna—those giant animals from the last ice age. You know—aurochs and the Elasmotherium and so forth.”

  “The Elas—what?”

  “A kind of giant rhinoceros.” Tito strolled further along the chain-link enclosure, gesturing at the dusty lumps on the other side. “And, of course, the granddaddy of the Pleistocene era—the woolly mammoth. Here are some mastodon bones.” He consulted a plain index card stuck on the chain link, lettered by hand in blue ink. “Shirley, I believe. Yes, it’s Shirley.”

  “Can you make a lot of money stuyding megafauna?”

  “Perhaps. Why don’t you ask Clarice? I’m sure she’d be forthcoming.”

  “Hm.”

  Tito had been observing me while he spoke. “You seem reluctant to communicate directly with Clarice.”

  “A little. We have some history.”

  Tito’s brows rose.

  “Just a high school thing.”

  “Ah,” said Tito. “High school. The great leveler. I hated high school.”

  “Who didn’t?”

  “Cheerleaders, probably.”

  I laughed. “You’re right.”

  “I think we should be getting back to Nooch, in case he’s destroyed something priceless. Is there anything else you’d like to know, Roxy?”

  “Just this,” I said. “Do you know anybody who might have a beef with Clarice Crabtree?”

  “That’s quite a loaded question, isn’t it? Is she in some kind of trouble?”

  Yes, I thought. Clarice is in big trouble. I decided I better warn her.

  6

  But after visiting Tito, I took a phone call from a demolition guy who wanted me to take a look at a staircase in an old house he was tearing down in Millvale. Since business was so bad, I figured I’d better check it out. In my line of work, you never know when you might hit the jackpot. The staircase turned out to be junk, but at the home next door was a punk who wanted rid of his dead grandmother’s household stuff. In the heap of rubble he’d piled in the backyard I found what looked like a Russian icon.

  It was a painting on a big splintered board, depicting a hollow-cheeked Christ figure with spaniel eyes and a starburst crown. I hauled the heavy painting out of the pile and sat down on the back steps to admire it. Things don’t often take my breath away, but this was a masterpiece. And, judging by its size, it might once have adorned one of the local Russian Orthodox churches.

  A lot of immigrants had come to Pittsburgh a century ago to work in the mills, and some of them brought priceless heirlooms from their countries of origin. Especially religious stuff. The old folks were still the keepers of their ethnic traditions, but their offspring were often impatient with the old ways.

  “Ugly, isn’t it?” The punk blew a lungful of cigarette smoke at the painting. “Gram collected all kinds of crap. Is this worth anything?”

  “It’s not in great condition.” I balanced it awkwardly to point out the faded gold paint and the big scrawl of Crayola crayon across Jesus’s face.

  “Give me fifty bucks and it’s yours,” the kid said, dropping his cigarette and grinding it out on the porch floor. “If I don’t have to do any work, that is. Your moron can carry it out of here.”

  Most of the time, I try to do the right thing by people who are scraping by. But I talked Prince Charming down to thirty bucks.

  I drove the icon over to a gallery owner, who fell to his knees when he saw it. Later, he brewed us some espresso, and we talked over the wisdom of getting someone to restore it or just send the icon to an art auction house and hope for the best. He warned that it would take months—maybe a year or more—to get any definitive answers. I trusted the gallery owner. With luck, it might help start Sage’s college fund. Or not. I was out just thirty bucks. Not a bad bet.

  After that pleasant interlude, I had to go back to my office to return some calls from people looking for architectural stuff for their houses. While I did that, Nooch moved stuff in the warehouse. I did my best to drum up some good business, but nothing panned out. I decided to take the advice from Nooch’s book, though, and think positively. Tomorrow was another day.

  So it was a few hours later when we piled into the truck. The cold ra
in had finally let up, and evening was just starting to gather. I’d looked the Crabtree name up in the property tax rolls and found Professor Crabtree’s address, but not Clarice’s. I drove up to the neighborhood and parked in front of the Crabtree house.

  Why? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t owe Clarice a damn thing. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to warn her that something was up.

  Nooch and Rooney and I sat in front of a dark, sagging house in a once-respected part of town. Old age was getting its claws into the sidewalks and the homes. The location—near enough to the universities—had caused their value as single-family residences to drop like a block of yellow ice from an airplane.

  I’d expected Professor Leeford Crabtree to live in grandeur. I mean, if he was such a big deal in the dinosaur game, he ought to have a few bucks, right? But instead, the house was practically a pile of sticks. Most of the Victorian houses in his neighborhood had been broken up into apartments for students. A few mildewed sofas sat on porches with beer cans scattered around—sure signs of student living. The brick street was nothing but bumps and potholes, and piles of wet leaves hugged the curbs. Half the trees were dead, just waiting to fall on a car and make some insurance agent miserable.

  “Pretty house.” Nooch looked at the tilted porch and the broken stairs, but even he saw the obvious signs of past glory—the Victorian trim, the elegant proportions and scale the architect had put to use. “At least, it used to be. Who lives here?”

  “Professor Crabtree.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “An old guy. He’s gone to a hospital.”

  Nooch’s eyes bugged out. “He get hurt or something?”

  Nooch might have been the size of a sumo wrestler, and he could scare the shit out of most petty criminals, but he had the personality of a lamb. Okay, maybe a lamb with a learning disability.

  “His brain got hurt gradually.” I shut off the truck’s engine. “He couldn’t take care of himself anymore, so his family found a safe place for him.”

  “You mean the old-folks home. Man, that stinks.”

  In our final moments together, Tito had mentioned that Clarice decided it was time to do something about her father when Professor Crabtree took to spending most of his days and nights sitting on his front porch with a sawed-off Holland & Holland elephant gun. Neighbors became alarmed for their children. So his daughter, Tito said, finally clapped him into a nursing home.

  Tonight, a gray Volvo station wagon sat parked in the driveway. The vehicle of university professors, arty types, and liberal ministers. A university parking sticker glowed on the back bumper. A dry-cleaning bag hung on a hook inside the back window. Good chance this was Clarice’s car.

  The house looked as if it was being emptied out, all right. On the porch, somebody had left some sad-looking furniture–a rump-sprung armchair and an end table missing a leg. The front door was propped open with a brick. A dim light shone from inside the house, and I could see a ladder standing in the front hallway. Boxes were stacked by the door.

  “Look,” I said to Nooch, “how about we play it this way? I go inside for a minute while you stay here and keep an eye on things.”

  “What are you going to do inside?”

  “Talk to somebody. Crabtree’s daughter, if I’m lucky.”

  “How come you want to talk to her?”

  “Because maybe she needs some help.”

  Nooch said, “Looks like the house needs help.”

  “Yeah. So you stay here and watch out for things.”

  “What things? You mean cops?”

  Nooch hadn’t been in trouble with the law for ten years, but he was still spooked about the police. I said, “Anybody. And don’t start visualizing. I don’t want you falling asleep.”

  “Right.” Nooch nodded firmly, as if accepting a very difficult task.

  I bailed out of the Monster Truck. Before I could stop him, Rooney jumped out too. The dog had been cooped up for most of the day, so he made a beeline for the picket fence, where he lifted his leg and peed for about a minute. When he finished, he nosed open the gate, ran across the small, overgrown yard, and disappeared around the bushes into the darkness at the side of the old house. I called him, but he didn’t return. But he’d come back eventually, so I wasn’t worried.

  I knocked on the jamb. When I didn’t get an answer, I leaned into the foyer and called, “Anybody home?”

  It was a big, gloomy house. Some doctor or college professor had probably built it back in the heydey of steel mills. But not a lick of maintenance had been done since then. When I stepped inside, the wooden floor creaked, and it slanted downhill at a fun-house angle. An oak staircase marched up crookedly to the second floor. The oak paneling’s veneer was peeling.

  I poked my head into the parlor, where the remaining furniture had once been kinda froufrou. But now the upholstery was stained and patched with duct tape. Tall bookshelves were so stuffed with books and archive boxes that they seemed to lean into the room.

  I checked out the clutter on the big desk. More books and lots of papers. The drawers hung open and overflowed. A lot more papers were scattered on the floor. Some were filled with numbers, but most of them were printed with long paragraphs. I picked up one page and scanned it. Lots of big words.

  Glancing around, I decided somebody had ransacked the desk looking for something.

  From deep in the house, a voice called, “Back here!”

  I followed it, my boots grinding grit into the floorboards, and found Clarice Crabtree standing with a clipboard in the middle of kitchen.

  “You’re not the electrician,” she said at once.

  I put my hands into the front pockets of my jeans to look as unthreatening as possible. “Sorry, no. I do architectural salvage. I’m Roxy Abruzzo.”

  Clarice hadn’t changed much since high school. Thin as an icicle, she still had blond hair that stayed perfectly combed no matter what, and a certain curl to her upper lip—like Elvis, only not sexy.

  “Roxy,” she said slowly, trying to remember. “Roxy Abruzzo.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I heard you might be breaking up the house.”

  I don’t know why I didn’t come clean immediately and just warn her that somebody was looking to kidnap her. I guess it’s just not my nature to be honest right away.

  She skewered me with a look, still not sure why she recognized my name. I was a little insulted. But she said, “Who did you hear that from?”

  “In my business, word gets around. Plumbers, carpenters, you know. This is a beautiful place. I mean, it was beautiful once. Shame about the current condition. You the homeowner?”

  She said, “I’m in charge of the estate. It’s my father’s house, but he won’t be coming back. I’m Dr. Crabtree. Clarice Crabtree.”

  I put on my good manners and shook her hand firmly.

  “Architectural salvage,” she said, wiping her hand on her pants. “What’s that, exactly?”

  “I strip stuff out of fancy houses and resell it. Woodwork. Fireplaces. Staircases. That kind of thing. Here’s my card. I only deal in quality goods, though. Has anyone else been here yet?”

  Clarice accepted my somewhat grubby card, read it carefully, and then gave me a more complete once-over, an inspection I let happen even though I felt the old sensation of dislike and resentment rising up inside. My uncombed hair and the layers of jeans and sweatshirts that passed for my fashion statement didn’t seem to impress her. My sartorial choices hadn’t changed in … well, not ever.

  “You’re the first,” she replied.

  By contrast, Clarice wore a trim silver pantsuit with gold cuff links on her sleeves. The cuff links might have been old coins. I thought, What kind of woman wears cuff links? Her earrings matched, only the coins were smaller. Her face had always been kind of snooty, but it was patrician now—short nose, pointed jaw. Her shoes had straps and very high heels, as if she were one of those desert birds that try to make themselves as big as possible. She still looked like the
kind of person who’d laugh if you couldn’t fake reading stupid Ethan Frome.

  She had two cell phones clipped to her belt, both of them blinking with messages. What kind of person carries two cell phones?

  In a different tone, Clarice suddenly said, “Roxy Abruzzo.”

  “Yeah.” I smiled. “Remember me now, Clarice?”

  “Vaguely.” But her face said she recalled every unfortunate second we’d ever spent in each other’s company.

  Like Tito had said, high school was the great leveler—the last time in life that everybody’s almost on equal footing. We were all subject to the same pressures and humiliations. Some of us emerged smarter and stronger for all the tortures, though, while others simply walked out of the hallowed halls the same jerks they had been from the beginning.

  Clarice said, “I never liked you.”

  “Sorry to say, I didn’t care much for you, either.”

  “It’s odd,” she said. “Because you were the only person with whom I had anything in common.”

  “Let’s not get insulting here, Clarice.”

  She ignored that, but fixed me with a stare, tapping her pencil on her clipboard. Finally, she said, “Our mothers were both murdered.”

  For once, I couldn’t make a comeback.

  “You’d think that might draw us together,” she said, “but actually it made me want to avoid you even more.”

  As teenagers, you really don’t care much about why people act the way they do. You’re too busy trying to survive yourself, I guess. It never occurred to me that Clarice might have some baggage, too.

  When I could breathe again, I said, “I didn’t know your mom was killed.”

  “Yes. She was mugged outside a bank when I was fourteen. Yours?”

  “I was thirteen,” I said stiffly.

  “How did she die?”

  Normally, I wouldn’t have answered. But I said, “Beaten. Strangled.”

  “At random? By a stranger?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I see.” Her smile returned. “Well, at least I have that to hang on to. Nobody in my family is a murderer.”

  A delicious white heat of rage promptly seethed in my veins, and I felt almost happy again. “Still the same humanitarian, huh, Clarice?”