Dead in D Minor

by David Crossman

  The cat interjected another impatient comment. Maylene, who was just crawling out from under the bed, stopped and focused her attention. “Closet!” she said, clambering to her feet and darting across the room.

  “There’s no kitty in the closet, Maylene,” Albert said as she flung the door open. Jebby strolled out regally, with his tail curled in a perfect question mark, like that at the end of the query: ‘So, what took you so long?’ Maylene enfolded him in her arms and picked him up. Already he was purring loudly.

  “Jebby,” Maylene pronounced. In her eyes, Albert perceived joy mingled with doubt. And there was no question at whom the doubt was directed. She cradled the contented feline under her neck, strode to the door and, with one more worried glance over her shoulder, stumped down the hall.

  Had Norman Rockwell been a.) alive and b.) present at the moment, Albert’s pose would have inspired a painting.

  The closet door swung slowly shut on its ancient hinges. Albert opened it and stepped inside to search for further cats.

  There were none.

  There was, however, the distinct smell of garlic.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Did you ever seeThe King and IProfessor?” Cindy asked as her wide blue eyes disappeared behind her juice glass.

  Albert had met a number of kings, and was about to ask which one she was referring to - not that it would have made much difference; they were sort of blended together in Albert’s mind - when Sarah chimed in. “Oh, I love that Yul Brynner!” She set a steaming platter of grits on the table and sliced a square of fresh butter into the little volcano crater she’d created for the purpose. It melted quickly and began dripping down the sides, like golden lava. “I think bald men are sexy. Don’t you, Alice?”

  Alice pinched the top buttons of her collar together and cleared her throat as if there was something caught there. “Why, Sarah!”

  Sarah laughed. She knew Alice was probably the only person on earth more prudish than she, and it amused her. “You shouldn’t be such a prude,” she said.

  Alice smoothed down the napkin in her lap. “And why not?” she asked softly. “Prudishness doesn’t spread disease, does it? Or hurt feelings? Or break hearts? Or destroy families. I can’t see much to be said against it, frankly.”

  “Oh, come now,” Sarah chided, uncomfortable in the role of devil’s advocate. “Prudery is not one of the virtues.”

  “Neither,” said Alice with gentlewomanly composure, “is it one of the vices.”

  “Anyway,” Cindy continued through marmalade and English muffin, “you remember how that King of Siam kept saying ‘tis a puzzlement’?”

  Sarah remembered. So did Alice.

  Albert did not. But he knew where Siam was . . . or had been . . . and he knew what a puzzlement was, though he’d never heard it called that.

  “Well, that’s the word that keeps coming back to me ever since Maylene woke me up this morning with that cat.”

  “You’re speaking with your mouth full,” Sarah said.

  Cindy swallowed. “How in blazes name did Jebby end up in your closet, Professor?”

  Albert shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” said Cindy with sausage, “that’s just what I mean. A puzzlement.”

  The porch door slammed.

  “Angela!” Sarah cried, racing to the front hall. “Angela Marie . . . don’t you go off without breakfast again, child!”

  Angela made some response from the distance.

  “Late for school, my left foot,” said Sarah, returning to the dining room. “Honestly, I swear I feel like a thief taking good money from her daddy for room and board when she don’t . . . “

  “Doesn’t!” Cindy corrected triumphantly.

  “Nothing worse than a reformed drunk,” Sarah retaliated. “Doesn’t – eat half the meals I prepare for her.”

  “You prepare them,” said Alice. “That’s the end of your responsibility. She’s old enough to take care of herself.”

  “Good morning, everyone!”

  “Good morning, dear,” said Sarah. “How did you sleep?”

  “Beautifully,” Heather replied, taking her seat at the table across from Albert. She was, as Sarah had often remarked, ‘emancipated from the waist up.’ ‘Meaning,’ Alice had explained, ‘her feminine attributes are unencumbered.’ ‘Meaning,’ the Commander had observed with a wink, ‘she wears the minimum and nothing else!’ ‘Though usually she has the good sense to wear coveralls,’ Sarah said, to complete the cycle.

  This morning, Albert observed, Heather – whoever she really was – wore the minimum, and a lot of it. A sort of loose, floaty lacy kind of thing. The same kind of material that hung beside the windows in his room, except it was yellow.

  He felt it incumbent upon him to offer her his jacket.

  Eventually.

  “Looks lovely, Sarah,” she said, spreading her napkin in her lap. “All you need is kippers.”

  “Bacon smells the place up enough, don’t you think?” Sarah replied with a smile.

  Heather smiled back. “Where’s Kitty and the Commander? They haven’t shipped off together somewhere, have they?”

  “Heather!” said Alice. “I’m surprised at you!”

  “Just teasing,” said Heather. The shouting match with Marchant DuShane must have been as good as medicine, given the improvement in her spirits.

  “Kitty’s helping me in the kitchen,” Sarah explained. “I nearly broke her arms trying to make her sit still and let me wait on her.”

  “Oh, she’d have none of it,” Heather remarked. “She’d die first.”

  “The Commander’s in the drawing room doing his crossword ...”

  “Nearly completed!” the Commander called from the distance. “How long, Sarah?”

  Sarah glanced at the clock on the mantle. “Twenty seven minutes!” she called, then lowered her voice. “He and Basil have a bet on who can break thirty minutes first. I haven’t seen Mr. Standish, have you Alice?”

  “He goes down to Rudy’s,” said Cindy. She wiped her mouth and stood up. “He likes talking to the boys, you know.”

  “Well,” Sarah said, “he’s no better than Angela. He didn’t take supper last night, either. Honestly. I don’t know why I bother! I have to change his sheets today.”

  “He comes and goes,” said Alice in Standish’s defense. “It’s his job, you know.”

  “Have you listened to the news this morning?” Cindy asked, as she removed a crumpled apron from her purse. “Daggone, Sarah. I forgot to give you my apron . . . did you do a load of whites last night?”

  “Afraid so,” said Sarah. “Though, I fail to see how your aprons qualify for that category.”

  “Ha, ha,” Cindy replied mockingly, but her eyes were dancing. “Well, I’ll take the spare.”

  “Too late,” said Sarah. “Maylene wrapped the cat in it when she took him back to Maudanne early on.”

  Cindy put her hands on her hips. “That’s just great. Well . . . ” she started toward the door, “I guess I’ll be alright if I stay three or four feet from the chili and Clarence Beaufort.”

  “What were you saying about the news?” said Sarah.

  “Oh, I was just wondering if anyone heard anything about what ‘come of Tanjore.”

  “Just that they’re looking for him,” said Alice, who had listened to the news inadvertently while waiting for the weather. “Police from three states are in on it. I fear he doesn’t have much of a chance.”

  “Fear?” said Cindy, who had come to rest against the doorframe.

  “Well,” Alice replied, “Tanjore had a rough time coming up.”

  “How do you mean?” Cindy asked.

  “He was orphaned, you know, very early on . . . and, since he had no relatives, the state ended up raising him. And they did as good a job of it as they do of everything, so of course he ended up in jail. But I’ll tell you something,” she added, straightening up and leaning forward. “He was always good as gold around
the library. Even that night he locked Mr. Cuthbertson and me in together, he was quiet as a mouse.”

  “Well, I got the impression you were all set to bolt the door when you heard he was out of prison,” said Sarah.

  “Upon reflection,” Alice replied with a slight upturn of the chin, “I realize that some children cannot fail but to be what their environment has made them.

  “I never had to tell Tanjore to be still. And, to me, that’s a sign there’s something good at the root of him. Something even the state couldn’t dig out.” She resumed her matronly posture. “I’d just hate to think that boy – having lost the first third of his life – was going to lose the rest of it as well. Awful waste. Shame.”

  “Shame,” Sarah agreed.

  “Mm,” said Cindy thoughtfully. “Well, Rudy’ll take the next third of my life if I ain’t – aren’t – if I’m not down there two minutes ago. See you all tonight. Sarah, you gonna be okay with Maylene?”

  “Of course I am,” said Sarah. Cindy said ‘thank-you’ and left. “She always says that,” Sarah continued, ‘Sarah, you gonna be okay with Maylene?’ Between you, me and the lamp post, I don’t know what I’d do without those two.”

  Alice looked from Heather to Albert and nodded.

  So much had happened in such a short time, that when Albert settled into his nest at the top of the hill, he almost forgot to smoke. Too many thoughts with nowhere to go. If only he could talk to Standish.

  “I knew you’d turn up sooner or later, Professor.”

  Albert spun around, something he would never make the mistake of doing again from a sitting position, but could see no one.

  “Tanjore?” he said. It was Tanjore’s voice.

  The thick canopy of leaves rustled overhead, and Tanjore dropped noiselessly to the ground. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Then he was going about it the wrong way. People could drop on Albert from trees all day long and the last would be no less startling that the first. He tried to reply, but the necessary apparatus was busy trying to shove his internal organs back in place.

  “Sorry,” Tanjore added, sensing Albert’s apoplexy. “Catch your breath.”

  Not easy with lungs full of smoke and eyes full of tears. Albert waved his arms in reply. He had to do something until he could speak. “Tanjore?” he coughed, finally.

  It was a welcome word. For a moment, Tanjore had been wishing he’d listened more carefully during First Aid training. He couldn’t remember exactly where CPR left off and the Heimlich Maneuver began. “You okay?”

  Albert nodded emphatically, as if to reassure himself, and took a couple of deep, if uneven, breaths. At the same time, his eyes darted around nervously. “You shouldn’t be here!” he whispered hoarsely. “They’ll find you.” It suddenly occurred to him that might not be such a bad thing.

  “They’ve never found you up here, have they?” Tanjore said with a smile.

  “They’ve never looked for me,” Albert said.

  Tanjore’s smile faded. “I had nowhere else to go,” he said. “I struck off over the hills and was halfway to Saluda when I realized that’s the same way I ran seven years ago. They caught me then. That’s when I thought of you.”

  “Me?” said Albert. If it had been him escaping, he’d have thought of someone else. “Why?”

  Tanjore shrugged. “You were the only one who came to see me in jail,” he said. “I knew you’d be coming up here eventually.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  Tanjore raised his eyebrows and twitched is lips. “I’m not sure. I guess you can listen.” He looked at Albert. “I need to think; talk this out. I just want someone to listen to me. Nobody’ll sit still long enough to listen.”

  Albert could understand that. He gestured at a nearby stump and Tanjore took a seat.

  “I didn’t kill the Judge,” he said.

  “They found your fingerprints at the house.”

  “Atthe house,” said Tanjore, “that’s right!Outside. Not inside. Not in the room.

  “I did go there the night I got back to town. The night before I first saw you here. I wanted to put the fear of God into the old man. I admit it. I wanted him to think he was going to die. But all the way I was telling myself revenge wasn’t worth another stretch inside . . . in prison. Besides,” he added reflectively, “it’s wrong.

  “That argument finally won out – at the last minute. My hand was on the door latch.”

  “Where they found your fingerprints.”

  “Right. My good sense has always kicked in a little late. If it had just won out five seconds sooner, they’d have nothing on me but that threat I made seven years ago.

  “‘Course, they dusted the whole place for fingerprints, but didn’t bother tracing them ‘til Maudanne sprung DuShane.”

  “Why won’t you tell them where you were those days after you got out of prison,” said Albert a little hesitantly, remembering Tanjore’s reaction the last time he’d asked that question.

  Tanjore hung his head and rubbed his fingers. “Because of the Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “I don’t know him,” said Albert. There was a lot of Tryon he hadn’t visited yet.

  Tanjore looked up and smiled, but confronted with Albert’s humorless gaze, became more serious. “It’s a book, Professor,” he explained.

  “Oh,” said Albert.

  “Very famous. A classic.”

  “I see,” said Albert. Specifically, he saw that it was a book. He still didn’t understand what it had to do with anything.

  “Well, in the book there’s this man in prison – in France – and he meets this old monk, and they decide to break out together. So, they start tunneling.”

  “Is that how you got out?”

  “No,” said Tanjore. “I got out through the bathroom window.”

  Albert’s expression said ‘huh?’

  “When I heard they found my fingerprints at the Judge’s, I knew they’d be after me, so I slipped by the jail that night and jimmied the bathroom window from the outside. There’s just this heavy-duty screen. That way, I figured if I got arrested I’d have a way out.”

  “Why didn’t you run then?” Albert asked. He would have.

  “Because running just makes you look guilty. I figured I wouldn’t run unless things got real bad.”

  “They look bad now?”

  “They sure do. Did you read the paper this morning?”

  Why not just poke sharp objects in his eyes and save fifteen cents?

  “Well, they’re hanging me already.”

  “I don’t know what that means,” said Albert. It was clear no one was hanging him at the moment.

  Tanjore was peeling the bark from a dry twig, revealing satiny white wood beneath. “You know how the law says a man’s innocent until proven guilty?”

  That was in the law? They should tell people; it was important. Albert repeated it aloud.

  “That’s right,” said Tanjore. “But it’s just the other way around with the press. They hang you first, and ask questions later. They make themselves judge, jury, and executioner.”

  “They thought Marchant DuShane was guilty,” Albert reminded. Sarah and Alice often read aloud from the paper at breakfast. Terrible for the digestion.

  “Case in point,” Tanjore replied. “They had him hung, too, until Maudanne showed up and verified his story.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t have any Maudanne to tell the world I’m innocent.”

  “You have that Count,” said Albert innocently. He’d already forgotten the Count’s last name. “What about him?”

  “That’s a story,” said Tanjore. “Remember?”

  So it was. “A classic,” said Albert.

  “What happened to me is like what happened to the Count, up to a point. You see, I met this old guy in jail. Not that old, really. He just looked it. He was dying of cancer. Nate Brooks was his name.

  “I’d visit him in the infirmary now and then. Get things for him, you know? B
ooks and things. Candy bars. You know. No big deal.

  “I just figured, well, he was alone, like me. No family. Dying. In prison. I thought that would be a terrible way to go, you know?” Tanjore had denuded the branch. He tossed it to the ground and began another. “Anyway, long story short, just before he died, he told me about this money. He had this plan, see? Simple, really.

  “He figured the average stretch for bank robbery – not the sentence, but the time actually served – was about three to seven years. That’s all!

  “Well, he figured he’d rob a bank, hide the money, and then turn himself in. Once he got paroled for good behavior – say five years, tops – he’d go get the stash and it would be his free and clear.”

  “He would have been arrested again . . . when they found he had the money,” said Albert. “They’d take it away and put him back in prison.”

  “Oh, no! That’s the beauty of it!” Trelawney replied. “Double Jeopardy.”

  Albert’s head was swimming. “I don’t do well with that.”

  “With what?”

  “Jeopardy!,” said Albert. “Mr. Carmody does, though. He knows all the questions. Except opera. He hates opera. He likes Potent Potables.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder,” said Trelawny. “But I’m not talking about the TV show,” Trelawney said. “Double Jeopardy is a legal term. It means people can’t be tried twice for the same crime once a verdict’s been arrived at.”

  Albert didn’t understand, but he didn’t have to say so.

  “You see, once someone’s been found innocent, he can’t be tried again for the same crime, even if it’s proved later on that he was guilty.”

  That seemed, to Albert, to make the law an accomplice to the crime, but he thought that to say so would just confuse the conversation, which was already taxing him to the limit.

  “As far as Nate was concerned – the law, too, for that matter – that money was just there for the taking. Finders keepers.”

  “Double Jeopardy,” said Albert.

  “He was right, too. As far as it went. Turns out he was going to get his parole. Three more months.