Requiem for Ashes

by David Crossman

  "Then they bring stuff back?"

  Albert hadn't thought of that. "Do they?"

  "Sure. They put it in museums, don't they?"

  "They do?"

  "l dunno," said Jeremy Ash. "I think that's what they do."

  "But not safety-posit boxes," said Albert.

  "No," said Jeremy, but before his lips had closed around the vowel, his possibility mechanism had produced another. "Unless it was gold."

  "Gold?"

  "Or diamonds."

  "Diamonds?" echoed Albert Canyon, conversing by rote.

  "Something like that," said Jeremy Ash. "I dunno. There must be a list."

  Albert was reminded of a quote from Shakespeare, but he couldn't remember it. "Would they?"

  "What?"

  "Would they keep a list? What kind of list?"

  "Wouldn’t they? I dunno," said Jeremy, then proceeded to demonstrate the contrary. "A list of all the things they dug up and brought home, I guess."

  "You mean the manifest?" said Tewksbury. He held a beer and cigarette in one hand as he opened a cardboard box labeledPrf. Tewks.-Misc. Papers-#1 which was followed by a long number, a date, and someone's initials. "Bloody thing's in here somewhere. I guess." Sigh, swear, sip, puff. "I need it, too. Every season we have to go over the previous year's manifest and account for everything - artifacts, tools, supplies. Have to satisfy both the Greek and Turkish governments. Very jot and tittle, you know, those folks. Especially when it comes to provenance. We get to find it, catalog it, clean it, and tell them what it is . . . do all the bloody work . . . and they get to keep it." Sip, puff, sip.

  "You mean, you have to take all the bones and things back to Crete?"

  "Bones?” Tewksbury made a sound that might have been a laugh. “That’s what you think, isn’t it Albert? You picture me walking around Crete digging up bones, tossing them over my shoulder and slogging them back to the States.”

  Not really, thought Albert. A big canvas bag figured into his imaginings somewhere.

  “Don’t answer that,” said Tewksbury, unnecessarily. “Most of what we find, we have to return. Yes. We get the glory, they get the gain."

  Neither struck a chord with Albert.

  "Administration, I hate it. Looks like they packed these boxes with a back-hoe. How am I supposed to know what's inProf. Tewks.-Misc. Papers-#1? f’r pity sakes?" Sigh. Puff. Puff. Sigh. "They just tossed things in after they got through tearing it all to pieces. Looking for evidence, I suppose."

  Tewksbury continued his halfhearted one-handed sift search through the partially opened box. Albert had seen part of a documentary showing a grizzly bear that, having gorged to its satisfaction, pawed disinterestedly at the internal organs of a half-eaten salmon. He didn't remember the bear having a can of beer and a cigarette in the other, but otherwise the comparison was uncanny.

  "This is just one carload. I'll be making weekend trips to New Hampshire for three months after I get back in the fall." Sigh. Stare. "Look at all this junk."

  Albert looked at all the junk.

  "Well, at least Good Mother Nuesbaum didn't lease my rooms. You can bet she would have if there'd been any takers. Tough time of year, I guess. Mind you, she still hasn't had them fix the radiators. Waiting to see if they come drag me away again before she makes the investment, I should imagine.

  “I'm having to use those little electric heaters . . . glorified toasters. Dangerous contraptions . . . Wait a second!" He snapped the cardboard lid closed. "It's not here. It's at school!"

  "The list?" Albert ventured.

  "Manifest. It's in my desk . . . with some other papers . . . my journal."

  "Can I see it?"

  "I don't understand. What do you want it for? It's just a list."

  "It might be important," said Albert, fighting to suppress the conviction that he wouldn’t know what was important if it bit him. A label would be nice.

  Tewksbury looked at Albert the way he looked at his simple-minded Uncle Edgar on his mother's side. He swilled the remainder of his beer and embedded the can in a boxtop. "May as well, Uncle Edgar. I'm not getting anything done here anyway."

  Within fifteen minutes they were at the school. Tewksbury stopped and drew a deep breath as the door closed behind them. "I love the smell of these halls. I didn't realize how much I miss it. Like the ocean." He opened the door to his office. "Surprise! They didn't change the locks."

  Albert stayed in the hall. He looked up and down the corridor. Sunlight flooded the corner where Daphne Knowlton had stood that fateful night. He remembered the smell of her perfume, and the pain in his head.

  "It's gone!" Tewksbury was trashing his desk.

  "The manifest?" said Albert. He wanted to be sure.

  "Yes, the manifest. It's not here." Tewksbury leaned on the desk with one hand and reopened the top drawer with the other. "I don't understand. I put it right here, under my journal. I know I did."

  "But it's gone?"

  Tewksbury looked at Albert as if to say, "Yes, the manifest is gone, stupid."

  "And the journal is still there?"

  Tewksbury held up a blue-covered notebook. "Here."

  Albert would be the first to admit he was no detective. He couldn't deduce. In fact, repeated blows about the head and temples with weighty clods of evidence most often failed to strike a spark. Instead, things just sometimes occurred to him. Something occurred to him now.

  "Daphne Knowlton took it."

  Tewksbury stopped his search and looked at Albert. "What do you mean Daphne Knowlton took it?"

  "That night," said Albert, rubbing his head. "That's why she was here. She said so . . . "

  "Said what?" said Tewksbury.

  "She had some papers."

  "My manifest?"

  Albert shrugged. "Papers. She said papers. If that's what's missing."

  "But . . . what wouldshe want with my manifest?" Tewksbury was now in the doorway, his eyebrows wedged in the crags at the summit of his forehead.

  "For Strickland," said Albert.

  The eyebrows fell. Such a fall for lesser brows would have been fatal. "Stricks? What is this thing you've got about Strickland? Granted, he's no prince among men . . . he’s got his own copy."

  "Of the list?"

  "The manifest. Of course."

  "I want to see it," Albert demanded flatly. Tewksbury glared at Albert. Even Uncle Edgar had never been glared at like this. "I've never seen you like this, Albert," he said when his glare had returned to him void. "What's so important about that list?"

  "Manifest," Albert amended. "Yours was stolen. There must be something."

  Tewksbury slammed the drawers. "Maybe you're forgetting she was crazy. She killed Glenly." Tewksbury stepped into the hall and locked the door behind him. “She wasn’t behaving rationally.” They started down the hall.

  "For a reason," Albert added.

  "What?"

  "She killed him for a reason."

  "So?"

  "If she stole the papers, the manifest, it was for a reason."

  "What reason does a crazy person need? I mean, what seems perfectly logical to her may make no sense whatever to the rational mind. Here's Strickland's office."

  And there was Strickland, with his feet up on his desk, engrossed in the study of a piece of paper with a magnifying glass. He started when they entered.

  "Hello, Stricks," said Tewksbury.

  "Tewks!" Strickland stood abruptly and placed the paper facedown on the table with the magnifying glass on top of it. "Professor," he said, rounding the desk and extending his hand to each of his visitors in turn. The shock had worn off, the mask through which sharp eyes stared too long at everything, except Albert, was securely in place. "Am I glad to see you, old fella," he continued on tiptoe. "I hear you'll soon be back in harness, what next week? Not a minute too soon, either, believe me." He was working his way back behind his desk.

  Tewksbury had picked up a recent copy ofBiblical Archaeology Review and was warming hims
elf in the glow of its pages. Albert watched.

  "I could handle the classes pretty well. Lectures, too, but . . . all that and prepping for the dig, well. My waters are a little too shallow. You're a sight for sore eyes."

  Tewksbury hadn't heard from Strickland while he was in jail, or the hospital. He hadn't heard from anyone. He wanted them all to twist slowly, slowly in the wind a while—suspended at awkward angles on the threads of their threadbare words of welcome. When he spoke, he didn't look up from the magazine. "Can you lay hands on your copy of the manifest?"

  Albert watched keenly as the mask dissolved briefly, then reformed itself, a little tighter at the lips, a little sharper at the eyes. He began leafing through the papers on his desk.

  "The manifest? Pause. Smile nervously. “Sure. I mean . . . I'm sure it's here somewhere, old man." Albert half expected to see Tewksbury age before his eyes. "I had it out last week, went to the warehouse. Ah, here it is!" He handed the stapled pages to Tewksbury who didn't see the smile that came with it. Albert did. "Be good to be back in Crete, won't it?" ‘Old man’ wasn't spoken, but Albert heard it anyway. "Safe in the past. away from everything."

  Tewksbury scanned the pages. "Where's the original?"

  "What?"

  "This isn't the copy I gave you. Mine was done in the field, on a typewriter. This was printed on a dot matrix printer."

  "Oh," said Strickland. Albert wondered if it was possible for a mask to blush. "Of course. I forgot. I spilled coffee on it, so I keyed it into my word processor." Something like a laugh issued almost involuntarily. "I'd forgotten. Happened months ago." He flashed a quick smile at Albert, then back at Tewksbury. "It's all there, though." Smile. "I don't think I missed anything."

  "There'll be hell to pay when we get to Crete," said Tewksbury, handing the manifest to Albert. Strickland's eyes followed with question marks in them. "The customs seal was on that copy, and my original's missing."

  "Really?" said Strickland. "Well, so much has happened. Easy for people to misplace things, I should imagine."

  "I didn't misplace anything." Tewksbury said sharply. "I know exactly where I left it, and it's gone!"

  Albert was pretending to read the manifest but was, in fact, watching the little drama through the narrow space between the top of his glasses and the overgrowth of his eyebrows. He saw Strickland, when Tewksbury had returned to a cold study of the journal, take the paper from beneath the magnifying glass and tuck it quietly among some other papers. In that split second Albert saw it was a photograph.

  "Anyway," said Strickland. "As you can see," he nodded toward Albert, "I've already checked everything; had help from some of the kids. It all checks out, except for a couple of hammers, chisels. The usual." He sat down again. It seemed to Albert that he was much more relaxed since he'd shuffled the photo out of sight. "I think the native help take them. Things always go missing, don’t they, Tewks. We even budget for it."

  "Mmm," said Tewksbury, vastly overestimating the chill factor of his cold shoulder. He looked at Albert. "Ready?"

  "What did you do with the first copy?" Albert inquired softly.

  "Do with it? I guess I threw it away." Strickland was unable to comprehend Albert's presence in his office or why Tewksbury had handed him the manifest, or why he was asking questions about it. "I really don't remember, Professor. Why?" He turned to Tewksbury. "I can give you all the copies you need, Tewks. But, as I said, I've already checked. I know just where everything is."

  Holmes would have said, "I've no doubt you do, Professor Strickland." Albert didn't say anything, but he thought it.

  “I'll leave one on your desk, first of the week," Strickland continued. "Now, I've got to go home and grade these papers."

  He picked up the papers among which he'd shuffled the photograph. Tewksbury turned to go.

  "Good to have you back, Andrew," said Strickland. The voice was hollow and distant, coming, as it did, from behind a mask. But the eyes were bright as ever.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The academic duo kept silence as they walked across the common, until they got to the parking lot.

  "Stickland's car!" Albert cried on the downbeat. An instant later he was on his hands and knees inspecting the tires and tread marks on the little red sports car.

  "What on earth do you think you're doing?" Tewksbury said. He ran a furtive glance around the campus, as if he had some objection to being seen with Albert at the moment. "Stand up, will you!"

  Albert appeared opposite him, holding a two inch-long piece of green glass. "From G to D."

  "Oh, come on, Albert. Strickland didn't kill anybody. That's just a coincidence. You're getting carried away by this theory of yours," said Tewksbury. "Whatever it is."

  "What about the safety-posit box?"

  "What safe-deposit box?" Albert told him about Strickland's visits to the bank, the safe-deposit box, and the camera. The telling had the dual effect of putting things in order for Albert while striking a tiny spark of disquiet in the comfortable miasma of Tewksbury's brain.

  Some people feel silly when the obvious takes a while to crystallize. Not Albert. He was freshly amazed - triumphant - every time two or more pieces of information collided, purely by chance, in a bright, shiny Rockefeller's dime of reason. "That's what he was looking at in his office . . . with the magnifying glass! A picture he'd taken in the bank!"

  "A picture of the . . . thing in his safe-deposit box?"

  "Yes," said Albert, not stopping to breathe for fear the gusher of thoughts would collapse in dust before they made their way into the open, where he could make sense of them. "The thing that was on the original manifest . . . but not on the new one. Something Strickland wants for himself. He had Daphne Knowlton steal the original manifest from your desk . . . so no one would know what was missing! She would have done something like that . . . for him. Lane said so."

  "You mean, he smuggled something out of Crete, the legitimate artifacts, and tools?"

  "That's what Jeremy Ash would say."

  "Who?"

  Albert ignore the question.

  "Why take pictures of it?" said Tewksbury. "I mean, money has it's attractions, gold, jewels, what have you, but you don't take pictures of it."

  "He wasn't just looking at that picture, he was studying it . . . with a magnifying glass."

  Tewksbury's floundering reason blubbered to the surface for one last grab at the tree limb. "You're mad. How do you know it was a picture?"

  "I saw it."

  "You did?" The branch broke, the only thing left to grasp was the chalky white hand of the music teacher. "What could it be?"

  "There's only one way to find out." Albert was thinking like Jeremy; simply and pragmatically. It was exhilarating.

  "What?"

  "We have to look at it."

  "And how do you propose to do that? If what you say is true, which, I have no doubt, it is not, Strickland is hardly going to invite us to have a look at the whatever-it-is." He read the response in Albert's eyes. "Break into his office?! What's the matter with you, Albert? You think just because you've learned to pick a lock the world is yours to plunder? There are laws against that type of thing."

  "It's not in his office," said Albert at last. "It's in with the papers he took home to correct."

  Tewksbury broke in. "Oh, so all we have to do is break into his house again. Wonderful! And Miss bloody Glenly will scream and call the police, and Strickland can shoot us with his two hundred-year-old musket."

  "We've got to make a plan," Pooh-Bear conceded.

  "I don't believe this," said Tewksbury. He knelt to inspect the mark in the tire tread. "G to D," he said to himself.

  "He's coming!" Albert was alarmed.

  They hunkered in scholarly little balls and hastened toward the hedges at hood-top height and watched as Strickland approached.

  His movements were quick and sure; he knew exactly which pocket his keys were in and which key fit the door. And, although his restless eyes intimat
ed an uncustomary nervous tension, he was impeccably dressed. He must have someone taking care of him; Mrs. Gibson would know. He wedged his black leather valise between the bucket seats and contorted himself into the car.

  "So, what's the plan, for lack of a better word?" said Tewksbury.

  He pulled Miss Bjork's car to the curb half a block from Strickland's house where the early shoots of a maple tree tried to conceal them from the glare of a streetlight. Strickland's sports car was in the driveway.

  "We have to go in and get the photograph."

  "That's not a plan, Albert. That's the objective.Howdo we get in?Howdo we find out where he put the picture?How do we get out without getting shot? Answer those few trifles and you've got a plan."

  "I don't know," Albert said. He got out of the car and closed the door.

  Tewksbury got out halfway. "What are you doing?"

  "I'm going to look in the windows to find where he put the papers."

  “You think they’re lying on the coffee table?” Tewksbury got out the rest of the way. The sarcastic tone in which the statement had been delivered was meant to bring Albert to his senses; at least give him pause. It didn’t. "What if somebody sees us? You see that sign over there?"

  "Where?"

  "On that telephone pole by the driveway. That's a neighborhood watch sign. It means people take turns sitting by their windows . . . watching for people like us . . . " said Tewksbury, immediately amending: “likeyou. Probably all card-carrying members of the NRA."

  Albert cast a weary eye over the neighborhood. In most houses one, in some cases two, windows were illuminated by the ubiquitous bright blue light. "They're all watching TV."

  In defiance of all the watching neighbors, he plunged into the pool of streetlight at its deepest point and waded across the street. Tewksbury kept to its banks, so by the time he reached the lawn, Albert already had his nose pressed against a large picture window. The blinds were imperfectly drawn leaving slots of elongated triangles through which they could see without being seen.

  Strickland was standing at the bottom of the stairs yelling something that couldn't be heard at someone who couldn't be seen. He was angry, gesturing imperiously with one hand while the other rested at an indignant angle on his hip.