“Found something!” Bernie cried a few minutes later, holding up an appointment card for a haircut at the Industry Salon on Friday, November tenth, at three p.m. Penelope’s name was written in cursive on the first line. “Guess she won’t be needing this,” Bernie observed as she handed the card to her dad and went back to looking. Five minutes after that, she found some coins and picked them up. “Interesting,” she said, getting off her knees and pointing to the misshapen silver coin about the size of a quarter that sat in the palm of her hand, next to five pennies.
Libby, who had also gotten up, picked up the coin and held it up to the light. “This looks like the one the crow dropped by Darius’s body,” she observed.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Bernie agreed.
“May I see it?” Sean asked.
Libby handed the coin to him.
He pointed to the markings on the coin. “I could be wrong, but I think this is part of what Darius was looking for,” Sean replied. “I think it’s danegeld.”
Libby cocked her head. “Danegeld?”
“Viking money,” Sean explained.
“I didn’t think the Vikings came up around here,” Bernie said.
“They weren’t supposed to have,” Sean said, thinking of the maps and the story his mother had told him. “That’s why finding this would be a very big deal. Basically, it would mean rewriting history. Until now archeologists have found two settlements in Canada. Not to mention the cache’s value.”
“I’m guessing it would be worth a lot,” Bernie said.
Sean handed the coin back to her. “Quite a bit.”
“Then where’s the rest of the treasure?” Bernie asked.
“With the person who killed Penelope,” Libby said, hypothesizing.
Sean stifled a sneeze. “That’s what I’m guessing, too.”
“It has to have been buried around here,” Bernie said, thinking back to the crow dropping the coin on Darius’s body.
Sean nodded. He thought about The Atlas of Implausibility and the map of the Hudson River and the settlement on there named Langkeld, which was sited right below where Longely was now. When he’d seen the name Langkeld, Norse for “building on a spring,” he’d thought it was a joke—but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that was why Darius had had the atlas in the first place. Ironic, Sean thought. The one time Darius had been correct, he hadn’t lived to enjoy it.
Sean flipped the silver coin into the air with his thumb and caught it. “I’m going to show this to my old neighbor Frank. See what he says,” he told his daughters as he slipped the coin into his jacket pocket.
Frank was an avid coin collector. If he couldn’t identify it, he would know who could. Then, after Sean was positive he knew what he had—no point making a fool of himself if he didn’t have to—he’d show it to Clyde, who would then show it to Lucy.
Sean opened his thermos and took a sip of hot chocolate. “You done good,” he said to Bernie and Libby. “You done real good. I’d have you on my team anytime.”
Bernie and Libby grinned. They already knew it, but it was still nice to hear.
Chapter 51
Later that evening, after their dad had gone to bed, Bernie showed Libby what she’d found on her laptop.
“He’s the one we’re looking for,” Bernie said, pointing to the article on the screen. “I’m positive.”
The moment she read the article, Libby knew that her sister was correct. She wanted to kick herself. He’d been here all along, but she hadn’t thought of him in connection with the two murders. For all intents and purposes, he’d been invisible.
“How’d you figure it out?” Libby asked. “What gave you the idea?”
“Being introduced to the cousin.”
Libby stared at her blankly.
“The cousin at the Roadhouse.” Bernie provided another clue. “He had a hyphenated last name.”
Libby slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Of course. And Manny was just using the first part. That’s why we didn’t get the connection.”
“Exactly,” Bernie said.
“Okay. I understand how we could miss the whole name thing, but how could Darius? How could he not have recognized his name?” Libby asked. “For that matter, how could he not have recognized him?”
Bernie took a last sip of her tea before answering. “He didn’t recognize the name for the same reason I didn’t—it just never occurred to him. And as for your second question, I’m betting he wasn’t on-site when the accident happened, so he never saw him.”
Libby stared at the article on the screen. It was like she was seeing vengeance made literal. “You think Manny tracked Darius here? You think he and Moran were partners?”
Bernie shook her head. “No and no. I think it was just bad luck for Darius Witherspoon. Or karma, if you believe in that sort of thing. I think our guy recognized Darius’s name, and everything went from there.”
“And Penelope?”
Bernie shrugged. “I think when she decided not to go to the police, she became part of the mix, so to speak.”
Libby reread the article for the third time. “I think you’re right. I think we should show this to Lucy.”
Bernie shook her head. “Not a good idea. We’ll need more than this to get Lucy to act.”
“We have the coins.”
“You can’t tie those to the murders. We need actual proof.”
“But we have no proof,” Libby replied.
“Exactly,” Bernie said. “But I have an idea.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Libby replied.
Bernie told her, anyway. “Think about it, Libby,” she urged when she was done. “That’s all I’m asking.”
Libby frowned. Bernie’s plan seemed reasonable, but then, they usually did.
“Please,” Bernie said, taking Libby’s hands in hers.
“Fine,” Libby said, caving. “But I’m not promising anything.”
“I’m not asking you to,” Bernie told her, even though she was. “But whatever you decide, please don’t tell Dad.”
“That’s understood,” Libby said, annoyed that that thought had even crossed Bernie’s mind. She spent the rest of the night tossing and turning. Bernie, on the other hand, spent the rest of her night with Brandon.
* * *
“So what do you think about what I said?” Bernie asked Libby the next morning, as she was putting the cinnamon-raisin bread in the oven.
“How do we know where he’s living?” Libby demanded as she closed the oven door and set the timer.
“He’s got an apartment in the basement,” Bernie told her. “I saw him going down there.”
“Great.” Libby straightened up. Not only were they going to do something illegal, but they were going to do it in one of her least favorite places in the world.
“We’ll be out of there really quickly,” Bernie coaxed, divining her sister’s thoughts. “Either it’s there or it isn’t.”
“And if we don’t find it?” Libby asked.
“Then we’re gone,” Bernie promised. She raised her hand. “I swear.”
“How do we get in?”
Bernie went in her bag, took out the set of picks she’d “borrowed” from Brandon last night, and jingled them in Libby’s face. “With these.”
“Does Brandon know you have them?”
Bernie laughed. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s going to be really pissed when he finds out.”
“He’s not going to.”
Libby switched to another topic. “So you knew I was going to say yes?”
“Let’s say I was hoping you would.” Then Bernie showed her sister the burner phone she’d acquired last night from the Mini Mart over by Route 92 and told her what she was planning on doing.
“You should get Brandon to make the call,” Libby objected.
“No,” Bernie said. “If I did that, he’d be involved.”
“So?”
“Would you want Mar
vin involved on the off chance that something goes awry?”
“I thought you said nothing would,” Libby said.
Bernie crossed her arms over her chest. “And it most likely won’t. Don’t be such a chicken.”
“You win,” Libby said grudgingly. She figured she really didn’t have too much of a choice. If she didn’t go with Bernie, Bernie would go on her own.
Chapter 52
Libby watched Bernie as she went outside, sat in the van and, disguising her voice, called Manny and told him she knew what he’d done, and demanded half of the Viking cache for her silence.
Bernie had half expected Manny to hang up on her, but he didn’t. She could hear him breathing on the phone. After a couple of minutes, he asked her where and when, and she set up the meet for two in the afternoon at the Ez-Top Diner—which was a good fifty-minute drive from the Berkshire Arms.
At 12:45 p.m. she and her sister left A Little Taste of Heaven and drove over to the strip mall on Ash Street and tucked themselves away at the far end of the parking lot. Their position afforded them an unobstructed view of both the road coming down from the Berkshire Arms and the road Manny would have to take to get to the diner.
“What happens if he has his passport on him?” Libby asked Bernie while they waited for Manny to pass by.
“Then we go home. But he won’t. Why would he?” Bernie replied. “He’s not going anywhere he’d need it.”
“I guess,” Libby said. She was busy thinking about all the things that could go wrong when she saw Manny’s vehicle roar by them.
“And there he goes,” Bernie observed, lightly punching Libby in the arm for emphasis.
Then she turned on Mathilda, exited the parking lot, and headed up to the Berkshire Arms. Bernie figured they had two hours, what with the drive and Manny waiting for them to show up. By the time Manny started back, they should . . . No, they would be back at the shop.
Twenty minutes later, the sisters were walking toward the main entrance of the Berkshire Arms. The parking lot was practically deserted, as it had been the last time they were there. Bernie parked in the same place as before, and as before the crows came flying down. Once again she scattered bread crumbs, only this time the bread crumbs were from the store and she tossed them away from her. Then she and Libby walked to the Berkshire Arms and went inside. No one was in the lobby. The place seemed as if it was already abandoned.
“Here goes nothing,” Bernie said as she walked down the hallway. When they got to the end, Bernie opened the door marked BASEMENT and went down the steps. Libby followed.
She didn’t like basements in general and this one in particular. It was, as most of them were, chilly and badly lit. She and Bernie walked by the furnace room, the residents’ storage area, and the room where the electricity was monitored. Manny’s room came next.
“I wouldn’t want to live down here,” Libby commented as they stopped in front of it.
“Me either,” Bernie agreed as she got Brandon’s lock picks out and began fiddling with the lock on the door. A couple of minutes later she had the door open, a fact that greatly pleased her, because the place was creeping her out, as well—not that she’d admit that to Libby—and she stepped inside.
The adjective that came to Bernie’s mind as she looked around the studio apartment was plain. Except for the walls, everything was strictly utilitarian. Manny had decorated the walls with posters of Paraguay, charts of the Atlantic Ocean and the Hudson River, and a large framed print of a Viking ship, but then he seemed to have lost interest in the endeavor. His bed, a three-quarter, was made up with white sheets, two pillows, and a large navy quilt.
Had Penelope stayed here? It was certainly possible, Bernie thought. She probably hadn’t been too happy, Bernie decided, since it was definitely not up to her usual standards. Outside of the bed, there was a braided rug on the floor, a nightstand with an office lamp sitting on it, a moderate-size TV mounted on the wall, and an old armchair with the stuffing coming out of the bottom by the window.
Libby went over and opened the closet door. She found five pairs of jeans, a pair of khakis, several button-down shirts, five ties, and a winter jacket hanging from the closet rod. She went through the pockets. The passport wasn’t in any of them. Libby turned to the large laundry bag sitting on the floor and dumped it out.
“Look at this,” she called to Bernie.
Bernie walked over. Three coins, similar to the one Bernie had found on the bank of the Hudson, lay on top of a white T-shirt. Libby picked them up and handed them to Bernie. Then she picked up the folded-up T-shirt they’d been lying on top of. The T-shirt unrolled, and the dagger that had been wrapped up in it clattered to the floor. Libby stooped down and lifted it up.
“Viking?” she asked, handing it to Bernie.
“It sure looks old enough,” Bernie said, handing it back as she surveyed the clothes on the floor. They were women’s.
“You were right,” Libby said.
“Always am,” Bernie replied as she held up a pair of jeans, checked the label, dropped the jeans, picked up a long-sleeved T-shirt and sweater, checked the labels on those, and dropped them back on the pile.
“Not always,” Libby countered.
“Pretty much always,” Bernie threw back while she checked more labels. The clothes all came from Old Navy and were Penelope’s size. “I bet these are Penelope’s,” she said as she went to get her phone to photograph the clothes, the coins, and the dagger.
“He should have gotten rid of them,” Libby observed as she started going through the garments’ pockets. “Nothing here,” she announced when she was done.
“I’m not surprised,” Bernie said. She slipped her phone into her jacket pocket and went into the kitchen to look for a plastic bag to put a couple of the shirts in. If Lucy came around to their way of thinking, they’d be useful for DNA testing.
After she’d put the shirts in the plastic bag she discovered, she and Libby put everything back the way they’d found it. There was a brief discussion about keeping the coins and the dagger, but that was finally deemed unwise on the grounds that it would tip Manny off that someone had been there.
When the sisters were done with the closet, they went on to the dresser. There was one small framed picture sitting on top. It showed Manny with whom Bernie and Libby assumed was his family. The five of them were posed in a town square in what looked like a small town in Paraguay. Everyone was dressed in his or her Sunday best, and Bernie guessed that they had just come back from church. Manuel was standing in the back, with his arms around his mother and his father, while his two sisters crouched in front.
Libby pointed to Manny’s father. “That’s the man whose picture we saw in the paper.”
“It certainly is,” Bernie replied, getting out her cell and taking a couple of snaps. Then she checked the time. They had to get going soon.
She started going through Manny’s dresser drawers, while Libby searched under and around the mattress. When that didn’t yield results, Libby started on the chair. Fifteen minutes later, Libby found what she and Bernie had been looking for. Manny’s passport had been hidden inside the chair, between two springs. It was a good hiding place, Libby reflected as she leafed through the pages, and if there hadn’t been a piece of stuffing visible, she would never have thought to look there.
Libby pointed to a stamp on the fourth page. “Manny was in Paraguay a week after his dad was killed,” she noted. “Judging from the number of stamps, he’s been back and forth to Paraguay a lot. At least he’s been telling the truth about that.”
“Nice to know,” Bernie said as she took the passport from her sister, put it on the bed, and photographed all the pages, taking special care to make sure she got close-ups of Manny’s full name, Manuel Rico-Perez, as well as the relevant dates stamped on the pages. When Bernie was done, Libby put the passport back where she’d found it. Then she and Bernie looked around the studio apartment, checking to make sure that everything looked the way
they’d found it, after which they left, carefully closing the door behind them.
“You think Lucy will listen to us now?” Libby asked as they hurried to the van. She could hear the crows in the distance. They seemed louder than usual, more restless, too, as small flocks of them took off, wheeled about, then landed back where they’d taken off from.
“I don’t think he’s going to have much choice,” Bernie said, walking faster. She was anxious to get out of there.
“We did good,” Libby told her sister when they reached the van. They were just about to get in when Manny emerged from the bushes. He pointed a Glock 9mm at them.
“But not good enough,” Bernie observed.
Chapter 53
Manny smiled. Bernie decided he seemed perfectly relaxed. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.
“You should have left things alone,” he said. “Everything would have been fine if you had.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bernie replied. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the cawing of the crows. She watched as two alighted on Mathilda’s hood. A moment later, three more flew down.
Manny waved his Glock at them. “Don’t bother pretending. I saw you and your sister.”
“Doing what?” Bernie asked, keeping up her act.
“Looking through my things. Nanny cams,” Manny explained, even though neither Bernie nor Libby had asked. “I have an app on my phone, and speaking of phones”—he held out his hand—“I’ll take yours now, if you don’t mind.”
“Or you’ll do what? Shoot me?” Bernie asked.
“I wouldn’t push it if I were you,” Manny said, and the tone in his voice and the expression on his face left no doubt of his intentions. “Shooting you now or later makes no difference to me.”
“It does to us,” Libby said. “Give him the phone, Bernie.”
“I was going to,” Bernie told her sister as she handed her cell over to Manny. I just have to keep him talking, she thought. The more he talks, the more time elapses, the better chance that something will distract him, and either Libby or I will be able to get the gun. “I’m curious,” Bernie continued. “How did Penelope get in touch with you?”
A Catered Costume Party Page 25