“Whatever you’re implying is none of your business.” Linda stood and began a diatribe about nosy people as she rushed me out the door.
I’d overplayed my hand. I’d have to abandon the search for any extracurricular partner of Linda’s for now, but she’d given me a legitimate reason to visit Stoddard and Weiss. And who knows what I might find once I got there?
On the subway ride downtown, I rehearsed a number of ways I could introduce questions about the mysterious jewelry that had Casey so upset.
THREE fifty Park Avenue turned out to be one of those multitiered glass buildings. According to the directory on the lobby wall, Stoddard and Weiss occupied the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth floors. I mentioned Linda Rheingold’s name and handed my business card to the receptionist on the Administration floor. She pushed a few buttons on her telephone console and spoke into her headset. In a flash the elevator door opened, and Jeremy was trotting toward me with an outstretched hand, saying how nice it was to meet a friend of Linda’s. He continued nonstop with consoling words about Casey’s tragic death. Once I pushed “hello” into the conversation, I never had the opportunity to say another word until we were in his mahogany and leather office on the twenty-seventh floor.
Jeremy was far more poised than when he’d gotten out of the cab with Linda the day before. Perhaps he could exude confidence as long as there wasn’t a Rheingold in sight. He ushered me into a comfortable guest chair.
“Now, what can I do for you?”
I went through my genealogy spiel, not varying far from what I had told Mrs. Rheingold.
Jeremy tilted back his swivel chair and steepled his fingers, a look of total concentration plastered on his face. When I finished talking, he dropped his chair forward and rested his elbows on the desktop.
“I never heard Casey mention his family, much less a genealogy chart. If you are looking for family records, I doubt they’re in his office files, but I’ll have someone look and let Linda know.”
“Actually, if you would let me know directly, I could relieve Linda of the burden and pick up the files. She’s still so stressed about the work issues that took up so much of Mr. Rheingold’s time recently.”
“Why on earth ... ? Oh, who’s to say what will strike a bereaved spouse as important? I shouldn’t be telling you this, but if it will comfort Linda ... Casey was concerned about survivor rights, trying to make sure Linda would be well provided for in case, well, you know. As if she isn’t well provided for now.”
I raised an inquiring eyebrow.
“No partner’s surviving spouse will ever have to seek food stamps, that’s for sure. Linda will never have to worry about money. Casey saw to that, but he persistently tried to make her future more secure. Just last week, he had, shall we say, ‘words’ with the managing partner over the partner shares. Nothing serious. Just a small conversation.”
Linda had mentioned Mrs. Managing Partner, so I knew that Mr. Managing Partner’s name was Cranepool. If he and Casey crossed swords, he was another potential suspect. I filed that away and continued on the one authentic lead I had.
“It’s a relief to know that Linda won’t have to worry. However, she is under the impression that her husband was deeply concerned about some problem involving expensive jewelry, and she’s wondering if it was resolved.”
His eyes darted from side to side as if looking for the truth.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Besides, if it has to do with a client ... confidentiality and all that.”
He stood and offered to give my card to someone named Naomi, who would check for family records in Mr. Rheingold’s files and be in touch. Then he escorted me to the elevator bank as if to make certain I got on an elevator heading straight down. Whether I landed in the lobby or hell was of no concern to Jeremy Lycroft. Of that I was sure.
I was crossing the lobby when I heard the security guard say, “Hey, Mr. Cranepool, how was the trip? Rope in any new clients?”
A dapper dresser in a well-cut charcoal gray suit set off by a bright red and yellow striped tie answered. ‘Just shoring up some old ones. Changing planes at O’Hare is usually a nightmare, but not this time, so it was a good trip.”
When I spoke his name, Cranepool turned automatically. As soon as he saw a young woman, albeit one with wild red curls, his eyes awarded me a completely inappropriate up-and-down body survey. Then he offered his hand.
“Yes, Miss . . .”
“Bannon.” I supplied. “I’m Casey Rheingold’s genealogist.”
I could practically see his mind speculating whether genealogist was the new code word for mistress.
“Mrs. Rheingold sent me here to check for family records.”
“Of course.” He took my arm and started steering me toward the elevator.
Last place I wanted to be. In an elevator. With him. I stood firm and surrounded myself with a confused air.
“Mr. Lycroft is helping me with all that, but there is one other thing . . .”
He squeezed my arm while pledging he would do anything, anything at all, to assist me. I had no doubt that, although Mr. Cranepool hardly ever missed dinner at home, he surely had reserved some play-time during the workday.
I widened the physical space between us by a few more inches and pulled a hint of Irish lilt into my voice.
“It’s the relatives, you see. The Galway relatives. Within this very week, Mr. Rheingold was on the telephone with cousins who live in the old Claddagh, in Galway City. Mr. Rheingold was most upset about some business venture. The cousins are all hoping the issue was settled and that Casey Rheingold died with peace in his heart. They don’t want to disturb poor Mrs. Rheingold by asking. So can you tell me, have Mr. Rheingold’s recent business problems been settled?”
Cranepool looked surprised. “Galway? He has family in Galway, Ireland? That explains so much. Recently, Casey was stressed to an extraordinary degree over a trivial matter. He was brokering a contract for a client to loan some jewelry to the Galway Museum. He worked on it constantly, to the detriment of business that was more important to the firm. We actually argued. It was such an inconsequential transaction, but now I understand. He wanted to be sure everything was perfect so he could shine in front of his family. Please assure the relatives. Casey was overanxious. Nothing more.”
Then the gleam of lechery slid back into his eye. “Perhaps I could check more thoroughly. If we have lunch later in the week, I could let you know what I discover.” He definitely oozed that last sentence.
“Thank you kindly, but no.”
I dipped a half curtsey, effectively slipping my arm from the old fool’s grasp.
I walked over to Madison Avenue and boarded the Ml bus home. All the while, I was wondering. Linda knew Casey was stressed about a work project that had something to do with jewelry. Cranepool didn’t understand why Casey was so beleaguered about the jewelry. Yet his assistant Jeremy had feigned complete ignorance about the matter. How could that be?
MY tried-and-true recipe of a drop of Yahoo, a dash of Google, with a soupçon of Ask.com, produced Casey Rheingold’s client in no time at all. Mrs. Anna Curry was a world-famous collector of Claddagh rings. Not the kind you buy in an Irish import shop, but the heavy, hand-crafted rings made in Claddagh village centuries ago. In one picture, Mrs. Curry is holding a velvet-lined jeweler’s tray filled with hefty gold Claddagh rings crafted by Richard Joyce, who, it’s been said, originated the design in the late-seventeenth century. I’d seen many such rings when I was a child in Galway.
The article alongside told of the other rings in Mrs. Curry’s collection. Some bore the jeweler marks of both George and Andrew Robinson, and any number were crafted by all three Dillons. Her entire collection was in the trusting care of her longtime attorney, Casey Rheingold, who stood smiling with his arm around Mrs. Curry in a series of snapshots from her ninetieth birthday celebration. In one of the pictures I caught sight of both Linda and Jeremy in the background. Neither seemed to be having as fin
e a time as Mrs. Curry.
I leaned back in my chair. This was a job for the crone. She could easily pass for Anna Curry. I typed up a cheat sheet of information and attached some pictures that would help.
I called anyone who might be looking for me over the next day or so and said I’d be out of town on family business. Then I took a shower and went to bed.
I ate my yogurt and granola, while an egg boiled on the stove. The crone values high-quality protein as a start to the day. When the egg was done, I looked around, and satisfied that all was ready, I summoned her.
Fingertips poised on the opposite shoulders, I called for the wise auld one, and in an instant, the crone was sitting in my chair, and the young maid was gone. My wild, curly hair was still long, but the red had turned to gray.
I cracked the soft-boiled egg and went over the plan for the day while I ate.
I studied the pictures. I’d have to do something to hide all my hair. Finally I put on a blue serge dress, white knit jacket, sturdy walking shoes, and I was ready to make the telephone call.
The young lady who answered the phone put me through immediately.
“Mrs. Curry, so nice to hear from you. So sad about Mr. Rheingold. Naturally, I’m assisting Mrs. Rheingold. Do you need to know the arrangements? We haven’t . . .”
If I let him, he’d go on forever.
“Mr. Lycroft, Mr. Rheingold called and left a message for me just yesterday. He said it was urgent we speak about my collection. Is there a problem? Are my rings safe?”
Jeremy squeaked as if his tie were a thick rope tightening around his neck.
“Safe? Of course they’re safe. The vault here at Stoddard and Weiss is impenetrable.”
“Fine. I’ll just come down there and see them for myself.”
“I’d be glad to show them to you, but I have meetings outside the office all day. We’ll get to it as soon as possible.”
I tightened the thumbscrews. “Tomorrow, then. We must meet tomorrow. I won’t stand for further delay. I want you to send my Claddagh collection to the Galway City Museum immediately.”
Jeremy tried to postpone, but I was adamant.
“Mr. Lycroft, let’s not argue. It’s time for my exercise. The doctor says if I spend half an hour a day walking by the Pond in Central Park, I’ll live well past one hundred. And I intend to do just that. I’ll see you tomorrow. Your office. Ten o’clock.”
I twisted my long gray hair into a bun, topped it with a hat that matched my jacket, slipped on a pair of overlarge sunglasses, and left the house.
I leaned heavily on my father’s blackthorn shillelagh as I climbed down from the M1 bus on Fifth Avenue near Central Park South.
I avoided the crowded park entrance near the statue of General Sherman, and shuffled along to Sixtieth Street, where I followed the descending path to the comma-shaped Pond that was tucked well below street level.
Two joggers, pushing oddly shaped baby strollers, waved as they sped past me.
I’d just reached the monstrous boulder that sits at a bend in the pathway and was eyeing the empty side lane to my left, when Jeremy Lycroft materialized before me.
I stopped walking and planted my shillelagh in front of me, resting both hands on the solid, knobby top.
“Mrs. Curry, how nice to see you.”
He grabbed my arm and propelled me off the path.
“You sounded so eager to learn about your rings, I decided to meet you here. Let’s move closer to the Pond, so we can speak without interruption.”
His forceful grip was impossible to shake off. He dragged me behind the boulder, in the direction of the Pond.
“Really, Mr. Lycroft, this conversation would serve us both far better in your office. And I could review my collection.”
He kept advancing us to the Pond’s edge. When we were inches from the water, he spoke.
“I’m afraid, Mrs. Curry, that reviewing your collection is exactly what you cannot do. There have been some changes. Many of your rings are not what they were.”
And with a sudden push, he thrust me into the water, which lapped at my shins. My shoes were sinking into the muddy Pond floor. Only my father’s shillelagh kept me from falling.
I raised the shillelagh and smacked Jeremy smartly across his hip. He pulled a gun from his pocket and held it a few inches from my face. Then he ordered me to move deeper into the Pond.
“I planned to drown you. I love the headline. ‘Decrepit old lady, walks by the Pond every day, finally falls in.’ But I’ll shoot you if I must.”
I moved my forehead until it rested against the gun barrel and said, “If that’s the same gun that killed Casey Rheingold, then go right ahead, sonny.”
“It’s the same gun, for all that matters. Casey left me no choice. He kept arguing that you had the right to send the collection to Ireland. I kept stalling. Casey got suspicious. When he insisted on having the collection authenticated, he signed his death warrant and yours, too, since you continue to insist on sending rings you no longer own to Ireland.”
“You stole the ancient Claddagh rings.”
“I borrowed a half dozen and replaced them with excellent copies. I gambled on your dying before anyone looked at the rings again, and then who would know what you really had in the collection. But the thought of an examination by a curator from the Galway City Museum made me nervous. Don’t resist. Walk into the Pond. The end will come quickly.”
He wanted the end. So be it.
“You’ll have to shoot me, sonny.”
And I rapped his chest with the knob of my shillelagh.
His knee-jerk reaction was to pull the trigger twice. The sound of the shots bounced through the bushes and trees. The bullets went right through my skull.
Jeremy froze, unbelieving.
Then he asked, “Why aren’t you dead?” and shot me in the head three more times.
Behind Jeremy, two mounted police officers were galloping past the boulder, riding toward the sound of gunfire.
Fingertips to shoulders, I vanished, leaving Jeremy to explain how he came to be shooting at ducks in the Central Park Pond with the gun that killed Casey Rheingold.
Tadesville
By JACK FREDRICKSON
If you’re reading this, you found my shiny box.
If it was lying on the ground, the hanging twine all rotted, it might mean that it’s over.
But if you found it hanging in the tree, the twine tight like I checked it recent, best you run.
If you can.
Of all the things I’d done, the thing bit me to hell was being a musician. I’d marvel at that, if I had the stomach.
Thing is, most folks didn’t even consider the five-string banjo an instrument of music. It’s not the tenor banjo strummed fast by fancies sporting striped vests and straw hats, doo-dah, doo-dah. The five-wire is redneck, Appalachian crude, favored by working folks in honest denim and sweat-stained caps. Back when I could get about, the five-string banjo was like a wart on a lady’s hand—it wasn’t much seen in society, except in television nonsense like The Beverly Hillbillies or on the lap of that smoky-eyed inbred in the movie Deliverance.
In road bands, when they suffered a five-string at all, it was the banjo man who drove the car and changed the oil. Onstage, he was to stand in the back and bounce the rhythm. And be joked at. Know how you tell the stage is level? The banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.
In April of 1954, I was twenty-two and had been knocking about with three other Korea vets. We was playing jug band music—an unusual-enough occupation for white guys—hauling around in a chalky blue ’37 Plymouth with bad springs, pulling a flatbed trailer with red spoke wheels that we used for a stage. We split five ways, with Arnie, the guitar player, getting two shares because it was his car.
We’d made our way west from the Catskills, playing in towns too small to hear better. The way it worked was this: We’d pull into some jerkwater in the middle of an afternoon, four slicks in prewar suits a
nd noticeable neckwear. First off, we’d strut around a bit, tipping our hats to the ladies, smiling at the kiddies, building interest. At 4:30, we’d throw the duffels off the trailer and climb up. Me and Arnie would start tuning, playing runs, but it was the washboard man and the jug blower that drew the people. Most folks had never heard washboard and jug, and they’d gather like bears to a dump. Up on the trailer, we’d be whooping and joking like we was having the absolute time of our lives, letting the crowd build.
At five we started singing: “If the river was whiskey, and I was a divin’ duck. I would dive to the bottom; I never would come up.”
That always got them laughing. Then Arnie would begin with the banjo jokes, and I’d shuffle forward, looking stupid, which truth be known, wasn’t a stretch. They’d laugh louder, and we’d slide into “Pig Ankle Strut.” By tune three, “Rooster Crowing Blues,” the folks was usually ripe, and that was when Billy, the jug blower, would jump down from the trailer and start scatting through the crowd. Billy blew a small jug so he could hold it one-handed, and with his other, he’d whip off his hat and start collecting. Billy wasn’t bashful; he’d shake that hat right in your chest until you was embarrassed enough to drop something in. And if it wasn’t enough—say all you’d loosed was some pennies or a nickel, he’d keep shaking that hat, all the while blowing his brown jug right under your ear, until he tapped a quarter out of you. Up on the trailer, playing, the rest of us watched his hat like hunters tracking dinner, which we were.
If it was a good-time crowd, Billy would be down off the trailer a half-dozen times. Even in Christian towns, we almost always got enough for a sandwich dinner and a quart of the local ferment, if they was selling any, and gas enough to get us to the next burg.
But Tadesville was like nothing we’d ever seen.
The previous town, fifty miles west of Detroit, had been a four-tuner, our name for any place with two churches visible from the main square. Their police chief had hawk’s eyes, and he’d kept them on us closer than stink on skunk. “Divin’ Duck” was a thud, so we went right to singing down the gospel. That didn’t work either; those folks was saving their money for the next life, and Billy only shook out two dimes. We were packed and rolling by 5:30, hoping it was still early enough to hit a new town.
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