“None that I know of. He left lots of folks holding the bag. Including me. But if I admit I took it from the house, I could get into trouble.”
Mike was right. He’d removed the bird without permission. His sticky fingers saved the carving, but it was still grand larceny. If the debtors heard about the bird, they’d want it put up for auction so they could get a cut, no matter how small.
I thought about it for a minute. “You mentioned a fund for handicapped children that Orloff cheated,” I said.
“Big time. They’ll never recover.”
“They might,” I said. “Suppose we contact their lawyers and say we have the bird. Tell them that Orloff felt remorse over cheating the fund, and he wanted to donate proceeds from the sale of the Crowell at auction.”
“Great, but how does that explain me having the bird?”
“You’re a bird carver. Orloff let you take the bird so you could prepare a prospectus at auction. When he went to jail and the house was sealed, you didn’t know what to do. Orloff called and told you he wanted to move ahead with the sale, then he died.”
“That old bastard never said that. Never would.”
“Maybe, but that’s the way you understood it. It makes him look good, and helps a bunch of kids who need it. Splitting it among the debtors would only make the lawyers rich. Look at it this way: the Marines have landed and the situation is well in hand. Semper fi.”
Mike shook my hand with a lobster grip.
“Semper fi.”
Mike’s new implants look like the real thing. They should. I used Ruskin’s check to help pay for them. It was the least I could do, but left me with nothing for the boat loan. I was drowning my sorrows in a beer at Trader Ed’s one night when another boat captain offered me a job crewing on a charter boat in the Florida Keys. I said I’d take it. The timing was good. Bridget called the other day to let me know the Ruskin job was permanently off.
Sometimes I wonder what Crowell would have made of the whole affair. He’d be puzzled at all the fuss over one of his birds, but I think he’d be pleased how things turned out with the preening merganser.
The knees of the gods, as Homer said.
Or my partner Sam used to say after a good day of fishing: “Finestkind, Cap.”
A Creative Defense
Jeffery Deaver
She hadn’t wanted to go.
Though she was an academic at a school with a “fine fine-arts program,” as she joked, classical music wasn’t really Beth Tollner’s thing.
Pop, sure. Jazz. Even soft rap, a phrase she coined herself.
Musicals, of course.
Wicked, In the Heights, Hamilton...
She and Robert were, after all, only in their late twenties. Wasn’t classical for fogies?
Then she’d reflected: That wasn’t fair to those of middling age. Most classical was just boring.
But Robert had been given a couple of tickets from one of the partners at the firm where he was a young associate, and he thought it would be political to attend and report back to his boss how much they liked the performance.
Beth had thought: What the hell? Why not get a little culture?
And nothing wrong with dressing up a bit more than you would to see Van Halen or Lady Gaga. She pinned her blonde hair up and picked a black pant suit — Robert wore navy, lawyer attire sans tie. Quite the handsome couple, she thought, catching a glimpse of themselves in the mirror.
The venue was an old monastery on the edge of their small town, Westfield, Connecticut. The place had been renovated but maintained much of the gothic atmosphere it would have had when it housed a functioning religious order. Much of the chill, too; the November cold seeped in through a dozen crevices. Beth supposed that the music she and Robert were about to listen to had echoed around these stone walls long, long ago; the Salem Chamber Players, out of Massachusetts, would be playing music from the 18th and 19th centuries tonight.
The half dozen musicians were dressed in dark slacks or skirts and white shirts, and were led by a lean, balding conductor in a black suit. The concert began at eight and they worked through some pieces that were vaguely familiar and some that were not. Having had a glass of wine before they left, and another at intermission, she struggled to stay awake. (Robert made the wise choice of going with coffee.)
But there was no risk of nodding off during the last piece on the program.
The Midnight Sonatina, the notes reported, was rarely performed, the Salem Players being perhaps the only group in the country that had the piece in its repertoire.
Beth was curious why.
She soon learned.
The conductor gestured to the lead violinist, an attractive young woman with a tangle of red hair, which sported a distinctive white streak. She rose and, with understated accompaniment from the others, launched into the lightning fast piece. It was wildly complicated, richly melodic at times, eerily discordant at others. Beth, Robert — the whole audience — sat frozen in place, mesmerized during the five or six minute performance.
“My,” she found herself whispering. Robert’s handsome face was frozen, his mouth agape. No wonder it wasn’t played much; few would have the technical skill to master it.
When they finished, the sultry violinist, her narrow face dotted with sweat, strands of hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks, stood with her eyes closed, breathing hard from the effort.
The audience rose to their feet and applauded hard and cheered and fired off dozens of “Bravas!”
As they drove home, on the dark hilly country roads, twice their Acura sedan strayed onto the shoulder. The night was windy but that didn’t seem to be the problem for the low-slung vehicle. The third time the car lurched to the side Beth glanced at her husband. He seemed lost in thought.
“Honey?” she asked.
At first he didn’t appear to hear her. He kept staring straight ahead, at the wisps of ghostly fog which the car sped through.
Beth repeated, “Honey? Something wrong?”
He blinked. “Fine. Maybe a little tired is all.” Robert’s firm was miles from their home and he had to be awake at 5:30 or so to beat rush-hour traffic.
“I’ll drive.”
“No, I’m fine. Really.”
But farther down the road he nearly missed a turn.
“Robert!”
He blinked, gasped and skidded the car to a stop. They’d narrowly missed slamming into a road sign.
“What happened?” she asked urgently. “You fall asleep?”
“I... No... I don’t know. It’s too foggy. And... I zoned out, or something.”
“Zoned out?”
He shrugged, nodded at the wheel. “Maybe you better.”
They swapped places and in twenty uneventful minutes they were home.
Beth parked in the driveway and they walked into the house. Robert almost seemed to be sleepwalking.
“Are you sick?” she asked.
He looked at her with a blank expression.
“Robert. Are you sick?”
“I’m going to bed.”
He didn’t shower or brush his teeth. He just changed into his pajamas and lay down on the bed, not even climbing under the blankets. He stared at the ceiling. His body, Beth noted, didn’t seem relaxed.
“The flu?” she asked.
“What?”
“You have a bug or something?” She felt his forehead. He was chill to the touch.
But then suddenly he grew relaxed. He squinted and seemed to notice his wife sitting on the bedside. “Weird dream,” he said, then smiled, rolled over and fell asleep in seconds.