‘“Notably missing from the auction items was George Washington’s personal map of the Battle of Yorktown. Long thought to be in the possession of a Lear family member, the map has never been produced since Washington’s death. Were it to surface at auction, it would likely set new records once again.’”
I felt suddenly lightheaded. I grabbed Sweet Pea’s counter for support. “I think I’ve seen that map.”
Twenty-six
I was going to head back to Nadel’s shop by myself, but Sweet Pea wouldn’t let me leave until I called Carlyle. The sleepy cop seemed annoyed and only half-interested, until I told him I was going inside the store whether he was there or not.
“That’s breaking and entering, Seth,” Carlyle drowsed into the phone. “Felony charge.”
“I’m not breaking in. I have a key. See you there.”
I parked the truck on a side street and entered the shop through the back door, turning on the workshop light. The workshop was still the same turned-over mess it had been when I’d found Nadel’s body. It was a place of metal and wood—not paper. Veneers, gears, springs, wire, pliers, diodes, solenoids, motors, chains, stains, and paint were thrown crazily around the floor. I gave the room a quick onceover, looking for the yellowed, crumpled piece of paper I’d seen for only a few seconds, back when this whole thing began.
I searched for fifteen minutes without finding a thing, then went out into the showroom. In the relative silence of the evening the room was an eerie space of ticks and tocks. Where would Nadel hide a map, if he hid it here at all?
The map was originally inside a clock, and now it could be inside any of the hundred or so clocks on the walls and floor. Each one had a cabinet of some sort. But which one would it be? I could start at one end and work my way around the showroom, but that would take all night.
Then I remembered that the map had originally been the reason the Lears’ clock hadn’t run, so I started scanning the room for a clock whose pendulum wasn’t swinging. It took me a minute, but I spotted one—an Americana-styled regulator that looked like it came from a small-town general store about a hundred years ago. Nadel had shown it to me before. It was a beat-up old Hermle. Wasn’t worth much, but Nadel had said it was the first clock he’d ever been paid to fix. When he had it running, he offered to buy it from that initial customer. He’d paid only fifty bucks for it, but it had stayed in his shop, ticking and Westminster-chiming ever since. Today, it wasn’t ticking. The pendulum hung still.
I was about to lift it from the wall when I heard the back door of the shop open and close.
“I’m in the showroom, Carlyle,” I called.
“That you, my man?” It was a deep voice. One I hoped I didn’t recognize.
“Who’s there?”
“Walt Disney.” King George stepped through the shop door and smiled. “Welcome to Disneyland.”
“Hey, George,” I said, trying to hide the shake in my throat. “I figured I’d see you again one of these days.”
“You just can’t keep your nose out of other people’s business,” he said, moving out from behind the counter.
“It is my business,” I said. “It was my mom that was murdered.” I stayed square with him, just as if I was in a boxing ring. He moved toward me and I circled around the showroom, out of his way. The clocks were ticking in the background.
“I just might kill you, but I didn’t kill your mom. Nadel did. You should thank me for avenging you. I should send you a bill.”
“So why you want me?” I just needed to keep King George talking until Carlyle arrived and I needed to keep his hands from closing around my neck.
“You in the way. You between me and that map.”
“That’s what this is about for you, too?”
“It’s what it’s been about for everyone. That’s why your mom’s dead.”
“That’s what I figured.” My eyes darted toward the front windows, hoping to see Carlyle’s car roll up to the curb. “Nadel took the map out of the Lears’ clock, thinking it was a piece of trash. I’m guessing that my mom found the map while she was cleaning. Nadel must have been working late. I can picture my mom teasing him for throwing the map away. Mom would have known the map was valuable. She was no saint, but for something like that, she would have told Nadel they needed to return it.
“That right there’s what got her killed,” said George.
“Maybe so,” I said, “because Nadel loved his money. Even more than I thought. And knowing the map came from inside a Lear family clock—Nadel recognized that it was worth a fortune. He wanted to steal the map and Mom was the only one who could point a finger at him. So he poisoned her with the cyanide he used for gold- and silver-plating—how, I’m not sure—then drove her body back to ChooChoo’s and left her in her car. That about right?”
“Not bad, Sherlock. He made her a cup of tea. She didn’t need to drink much.”
“Cup of tea? She would have loved that. So he actually did it. Snuffed out Mom’s life for a piece of old paper.”
“I told him he was a dumbass for killing her. He could’ve given her a share to shut her up—like you said, she was no saint. He said he didn’t want to take any chances. But that map—old dude figured it was his free and clear except for your mom.
“She died for no good reason?”
“Reason is that he panicked. People do that when there’s a million dollars on the line.”
“A million dollars. So that’s how much Mom was worth to him.”
“You done yet?”
“No. I figure Nadel got nervous when the police questioned him and when I started poking around. So he paid you to throw the blame onto Miss Irene and to chase me off. That’s what you two were talking about when I saw you at Shotgun Shack. Then you brought a bottle of Nadel’s cyanide and hid it in the pantry at Shotgun Shack, in a place where you knew Checker Cab would find it. And you beat me up to scare me away. Now I’m done.”
“Nadel didn’t come to me, boy. I came to him. He practically ran me over with your mom’s Jeep the night he killed her. Dumb luck that I was there. But I was. I saw him driving your mom’s Jeep. And that is what we were talking about at Shotgun Shack. That I knew he killed her. That I wanted to know why he did it. That I wanted payment. But he wouldn’t pay me cash. He’s too much of a cheap ass.”
George flexed the fingers of his hands. “Old man took some convincing. But with a little friendly conversation, he finally told me about the map. With a little more convincing, he told me how much he might get for it. He said he’d pay me five percent—fifty thou if he sold it for a million, which he thought he could get. He’s connected. Antiques collectors and all.” King George took two slow steps my direction.
“But you’re not connected—not to those kinds of buyers,” I said, dancing away from him. “You don’t exactly seem like an antiques kind of guy. And now that you killed Nadel, how are you gonna sell the map?”
“I ain’t a fool like you,” he said, his voice rumbling even lower. “I made sure that he gave me his connection before I beat the life out of him. Dumb old man thought he could control me, because I’m a kid. But no one controls me. I’m the king.”
“So you’ve said.”
King George took a step toward me. I moved back and to my right, still facing him. “What I can’t figure is how you can sell it. That map is famous. Soon as the sale becomes public, you get caught.”
“Not all sales become public,” he said, moving a few inches toward me. “Some people just like to own stuff.”
“So now all you got to do is find the map. You didn’t find it here last time you looked.”
“How you know that?”
“Because you came back.”
“You know where it is?”
“I might.”
“You smart, you’ll tell me now. You dumb, you’ll tell me soon enough.�
�� King took another step toward me. He was so close I could see the pulsing of the veins in his massive neck.
“Look, man, either way, you’re gonna kill me, right? If that’s so, I’m gonna keep the secret to myself.”
“Naw. You won’t. I’ll squeeze it out of you. Like toothpaste from a tube.”
I’m a fool. But I figured if I was going to die, I wanted to at least leave a mark, so I stepped in close to George and swung my good hand at his face with all my might. A long, curving roundhouse of a punch that caught him right on the side of his nose. “That was for ChooChoo,” I said.
King George’s tongue came out and tasted the blood flowing out of his nose and over his lips. He let it flow, doing nothing to wipe it off. He crouched lower and began backing me into a corner of the shop. I looked around for a weapon. There was nothing but clocks. I grabbed a small, heavy mantle clock off a shelf and threw it at King George. He batted it away with his hand and took another step my direction. I grabbed at a six-foot grandfather clock and tipped it toward him. It crashed at his feet, the sound of shattering glass and clanging gongs breaking through the night.
I pulled another clock from the wall and was about to throw it at George, when I realized it was the Hermle. I raised it above my head.
“This doing you no good, Seth,” growled George. “I’m-a kill you just the same.”
I smashed the Hermle at my own feet. The glass shattered. The wood case broke open. Laying among the pieces was a familiar square of crumpled, yellowed paper. The map. My hand darted down and picked it up.
“You didn’t think to look inside the clocks.”
He froze. The only part of George that moved was his eyes. They followed every movement of my hand.
“I swear to you,” I said, “I will tear this thing in pieces if you take another step toward me. I will tear it to shreds.”
“And I’ll tear you to shreds.” He called me a twelve-letter name.
“Kill me. But you’ll get nothing for it. Or next to nothing.”
He stepped toward me, but when I motioned to tear the map, he backed away. He frowned at me, then his shoulders slumped. “How much you want in on it? I’ll give you five percent. A finder’s fee. Fifty thou go a long way for a kid like you.”
“You’re a kid, too, George. And you’d never pay me a dime.”
“Just tell me what you want. We can work something out.”
While he was talking I saw Carlyle’s car pull up outside. George saw it, too. I watched the truth of it form in his eyes. “I’ll tell you what I want,” I said, “just as soon as I figure it out.”
George turned to face the front door. He reached inside his jacket. Carlyle kicked open the door and shot King George in the chest.
Twenty-seven
Once I found out about the map, I had this idea that I’d recover it and personally take it to Azura’s house. Two possible scenarios would happen from there. The first was that the Lears would offer me half a million dollars for recovering their heirloom. I’d take it. I could use the money. Who couldn’t use an extra half a mil?
The second scenario was that Mr. Lear would offer me a bunch of money and I’d turn it down. I could never figure a really good reason why I would do this, other than some artificial logic about being a white knight—being clean in a dirty world. But nobody’s clean. I’m not. The point may be more about trying than succeeding. That’s all I can figure.
Neither of these scenarios played out. Carlyle’s shot just missed King George’s heart. George lived. He’ll go to trial eventually. Carlyle said they’d probably try George as an adult. The map was taken by the cops as evidence. Someday they’ll give it back to Lear. Like he needs more valuables.
Around noon the next day, I returned to Nadel’s shop. The front and back entrances were covered in police tape, but the only real barrier to the back door was a lock and I still had a key. I let myself in and found the Lear clock. It worked perfectly now. It was never broken. I packed it up in its original cardboard box and left.
I figured this clock was my best chance to gain access to Azura. Back in her hospital room, I’d told her it was better if we stayed apart until this whole mess was cleaned up, but she’d been weighing heavy on my heart the whole time. Now that Nadel was dead and George was arrested, I could get back to what mattered.
While I drove Mom’s Jeep toward her home, I thought about our chance for a future together. So what if we were from different neighborhoods? We were still from the same city. We both felt pain. We both felt joy. Just maybe we were both in love.
I was strangely nervous when I parked in the Lear driveway. I checked my face in the mirror, then carried the clock onto the porch. The Latino maid answered. She looked kinder than the last time I saw her. “Yes?”
“Your clock. Remember?”
“Si. Yes. Gracias. Do we owe you anything?”
I smirked. I can’t help smirking. “Probably not. Is Azura home?”
“Yes. She went home.”
I frowned.
“To California. She went home to California. To her momma.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Is good, no?”
I stood there without speaking, then finally nodded and left.
I went to Guinevere’s and ordered a cappuccino to go from a male barista, speaking as few words as possible. Nikki came up behind me, with a dishrag in her hand. “’Sup, studly?”
“Nothing much.”
“When you coming back to school?”
“Supposedly Monday. Or never.”
“You sad again? The only time I’ve seen you come in here with a smile on your face was when you were with your rich girlfriend.”
“She’s gone.”
Nikki said nothing, but I guess the look on her face had some sympathy in it. At least a little.
I said, “I just found out she went to live with her broke mom in California.”
“Really? Dang. Too bad Mom didn’t live in Tacoma. Take the money away and that rich girl could have been just what you needed.”
She could have been. She probably was. “I thought you were just what I needed,” I said.
“I am what you need, Seth.” Nikki twisted her dishrag in her hands. “But I’m not sure you’re what I need.” She stood on her tiptoes, brushed my cheek with her perfect lips, then disappeared behind the counter.
I delivered the cappuccino to the hospital, but ChooChoo was asleep when I got there. I set the drink on the table next to his bed, knowing that by the time he awoke, the foam would be dead and the coffee would be cold.
I drove the few blocks between the hospital and Shotgun Shack. Shantay wrote down the details of my meal with a smile—fried chicken, red beans, dirty rice. She seemed like a decent waitress, after all.
“That Seth?” shouted Miss Irene from the kitchen, when she heard my voice. “Slugger, come on back here and help me fill an order or two.”
I walked into the kitchen, into the spatters of hot oil, the spills of flour. I washed my hands and set to work.
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