Death of a Toy Soldier (3 page)

“Hmpf,” Peggy said, more through her nose than her mouth.

“We’re
not
concerned?” Lori turned to her, raising one incredibly sculptured eyebrow.

“I didn’t say anything.” Peggy clicked away. “Of course the whole town is concerned. Go on.”

“He’s not back on the force,” I said. “This was an isolated incident.”

“You mean he’s not a deputy?” Lori asked.

“Technically he is, but—”

“Took a lot of guts for that nice new police chief to offer him a place,” Lori said. “I do hope you plan on thanking him. He didn’t have to do that, you know. Especially after so many . . . isolated incidents.”

“That
nice
new police chief?” Peggy said. “Apparently he hasn’t towed your Volvo yet. I’ve noticed you’ve taken to parking in the tow-away zone in front of city hall again.”

Lori flipped her hair back. “Perhaps Chief Young thinks the family of the mayor should be granted some special consideration.”

“Or maybe it’s all that flirting at the last Chamber of Commerce social,” Peggy said, with an innocent air I suspected was feigned.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lori said with that same nonchalant tone. “I’m a happily married woman.” She set her tiles on the board, spelling out
viper
. Fitting. The
i
sat below an empty triple letter space. Hmm.

“I love small towns,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“Ken had only the nicest things to say about Dad.”
Today, that is
. I shifted my letters, then rubbed my temples, trying to think. I’d been holding onto the
x
for several turns now.

“Ken?” Jack said, and then quickly glanced down and studied his letters. “I didn’t know you knew him that well.”

“I, for one, am happy you two are getting better acquainted,” Lori said. “You’re single. He’s single.” She directed a smile toward Peggy, as if this proved she hadn’t flirted with the new chief. “It would be nice to give that man some roots in the community. Now that he’s gained more experience here, we wouldn’t want
to lose him back to the South the next time he gets a hankering for grits.”

Jack blew out a forceful sigh and continued to shuffle his letters. Either he was stuck with a rack of vowels or he found this conversation as uncomfortable as I did.

“Thanks, Lori,” I said, “but dating is not a priority right now. I have my father’s business to focus on.” Especially since his own focus tended to wander.

The clicking stopped. “Speaking of your father,” Peggy said, “maybe I should run up and check on Hank. Do you think he’s up for a visit?”

Oh, boy
. Peggy had started hovering around my father at Mom’s wake, sending not one but
three
casseroles and her signature apple fritters to the house. After allowing him a brief mourning period, she somehow finagled my father into asking her out. Once. Despite their common interest in toys—Peggy curated a small toy museum—they just didn’t hit it off. Well, not according to Dad, at least. Still, Peggy continued to hover, harder to shake, as Dad would say, than a Yahtzee with only four dice.

“That’s so kind of you, Peggy,” I struggled to say with a straight face. “But Dad is resting tonight. Some other time, maybe.”

Actually, Dad was probably still poring over his toy guides, but for him, that was restful. Peggy might be able to help identify the toy he had difficulty with, but that would be the opposite of restful, so I didn’t mention it.

“Well, look who’s flirting now,” Lori said, but before Peggy could respond, she turned back to me. “You are too young to
be cooped up in this shop all day and night. You should be getting out more. Seeing people. I’m sure there are places that would take your father.”

“Places?” I could feel my cheeks coloring while I repeated the mantra
The customer’s always right
.

“That new senior complex just outside of town, for example. Everything on ground level. I heard it’s very nice.”

“That, and her brother owns the place.” Peggy peeked up from her knitting. “Well, it’s a fact.” She gestured with her knitting needles. She could poke an eye out with those things, if she were so inclined. And if she were so inclined, it would probably be in defense of my father.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jack looking down quickly in a failed attempt to hide his smirk.

“Just keep an open mind,” Lori added, still shuffling her tiles. “They have regular apartments, assisted living, and a nursing home. You could even start him in the day program. Crafts and such. Always good to keep busy. Once he’s in their system, it’s easier to get into the nursing facility.”

“Who said he needs a nursing home?” I asked, perhaps a little too loudly.

“Well, one must plan for the future.”

“He’s barely sixty,” Peggy said, shoving her knitting back into her PBS tote bag. “And pretty virile if you ask me, even if he doesn’t play to everyone’s demographic.”

“I didn’t mean . . .” Lori looked up and finally saw half the eyes of the room on her.

Jack put his hand over mine but shifted to face Lori. “Hank McCall is a hero and an asset to this community.” He leaned closer to me. “I mean it.” He squeezed my hand.

I swallowed hard, then let out a cleansing breath. “Thanks.”

While he returned to his game, I blinked to clear the tears forming in my eyes—not over Lori’s comment, which I’d already put behind me, but because I was touched by Jack’s sentiment. We didn’t talk about it, ever, but if anyone had a right to hold a grudge against Dad, Jack did. Dad had arrested Jack’s brother, who had never returned to the village after serving his time. So Jack’s support meant a lot.

I focused on my letters, then played
xu
, above the
ip
in
viper
, putting the
x
on the triple word score. I scored a cool fifty-eight points for
xu
,
xi
, and
up
. Then I sent a warm, if not completely heartfelt, grin to Lori.

###

Crisp, clear days allowed the sidewalks to dry to bare pavement, and the blue skies and rare sunlight lured happy streams of shoppers to Main Street. Internet sales were also up, and customers called to check if we had some sought-after items in our inventory.

Dad, good as his word, was visibly present in the shop during the busy hours. In the lulls, he went upstairs to try to figure out the value of the antique toys left for evaluation.

When I laid my head on the pillow after a few exhausting days of robust pre-Christmas sales, no sugar plums but rather visions of black ink and a balanced spreadsheet danced in my head.

The crash woke me up out of a sound sleep. At first I thought that Othello had gotten down into the shop and knocked over one of our displays. He’d done it before, once sending a vintage Charlie Brown lunchbox crashing to the
ground and denting it. I remembered waiting for my dad to yell at the cat. Instead, all he said was “Good grief!” Dad must be mellowing in his old age. If Parker or I had done the same thing growing up, we would have been grounded for a week.

I sat bolt still, listening in the dark. Well, not really the dark. Between the moon and the streetlights and their reflections on the snow—even through the slats of my blinds—that whole luster-of-midday line from “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was true in that respect.

No sound at all. I began to think I’d dreamed the crash. Othello was certainly not to be blamed, as he was still on my bed. But he was listening too, on high alert, his ears perked to catch any sound. Moments later, he bolted into the closet. The phrase “scaredy cat” comes from somewhere.

I tugged on my robe and stuck my feet into my slippers. I hoped Dad wasn’t mucking about in the shop in the middle of the night. Or worse, trying to sneak out. As I passed his room, I listened for the reassuring sound of his snores but was met with nothing but silence. I pushed open his door. His covers were thrown back and his bed empty. Now I hoped it
was
him in the shop. Better that than carding the customers at Jack’s place—again.

Or perhaps he’d beaten me down the stairs to investigate the crash. I paused at the top of the steps, straining to listen for more noises. Maybe a minute passed, but I heard nothing more.

I crept silently down the steps, skipping the squeaky ones. I reached the bottom before I heard another noise, more of a sliding sound.

“Dad?” I called.

No one answered. Suddenly my adrenaline started pumping. If Dad made the noise, why were the lights off and why didn’t he answer? The burglar alarm hadn’t gone off, so if someone else had visited the shop in the middle of the night, they must have the code. Someone like Parker or Cathy. But they would have answered me. Unless Parker was playing one of his practical jokes again.

Something seemed off. I flipped the switch to turn on the shop lights. Nothing. Maybe a breaker had blown in the middle of the night and Dad went down to check on it.

A chill ran up my spine, and although I couldn’t see them, I suspected goose bumps were erupting all over my arms and legs. The only light in the shop came through the storefront window, but as soon as I rounded the corner, I noticed that the front door was ajar. Next to it, the toy soldier shifted in the breeze, then leaned, and finally bent at the middle. It was collapsing quickly, with that frozen smile still on its face.

More scuffling sounds followed. This time, they came from one of the aisles.

“Dad?” I called again.

The noise stopped.

I froze in place and listened, wishing I had supersonic hearing. My eyes were now fully adjusted to the dimness, but the crazy reflected light from the snow bounced through the shop, highlighting every white surface.

A maniacal tin toy rabbit crouched in one cabinet. A suspicious windup skier tried to look innocent. Meanwhile, a Marx Pinocchio lithograph openly leered at me, daring me to move forward. But the tin robot—I swore it blinked.
I willed myself not to even glance in the direction of the windup stuffed monkey with the cymbals, the toy consistently voted number one in the category of most likely to be possessed by a horde of demons. This was why I didn’t work in the doll room.

After I ran the gauntlet of staring toys, I paused, listening for any sound that could be heard above my heart pounding. Fiddlesticks. I was a cop’s daughter; I should have more sense than to put myself in a vulnerable position. I should have called the police from upstairs. Like most people, I have twenty-twenty hindsight, but that couldn’t help me now. Nor could I stay frozen to this spot for the rest of my life.

I was, however, standing in front of the toy gun case. I hit the catch—we don’t tell the kids this, but we only pretend it locks—and armed myself with the most realistic toy gun in the collection, a Marx target pistol. I made sure it didn’t have a suction cup dart sticking out of it. That would spoil the effect I was going for. Then I straightened up and put on my best female cop voice, more
Cagney & Lacey
than
Charlie’s Angels
. “Who’s there? I’m armed and the police are on their way.” Okay, maybe I went too deep. I sounded more like Papa Bear when the librarian read
Goldilocks
to the preschoolers. I brandished the gun in front of me anyhow.

“Betsy?” Dad came around the corner, hunched over. His arm trailed the shelf, knocking over several Fisher-Price pull toys, which fell to the floor and started playing music. Then he collapsed to his knees.

I rushed over to him. “Dad, are you okay?”

“I think we have a problem.”

I rubbed my hand against his face and felt blood. “Dad, you’re bleeding. What happened? Did you fall?”

He shook his head and pointed to the aisle from where he had just come. I picked up the gun and headed in that direction. If anyone had messed with my father, he was going to have to deal with me.

When I turned down the aisle, however, there was no menacing figure. I focused on the parka first, lying there in the aisle next to a shimmer of broken glass. But it wasn’t empty. Below it was a pair of legs. I inched closer and recognized the man who had visited the shop earlier in the week with a box of toys. Only difference was, then he didn’t have a lawn dart jutting from his chest.

And he’d been alive.

I squirmed in the folding chair the police had set up for me in the little back room behind the shop. Perhaps calling it a room overstated its status. It was merely the landing for the stairway, with a few cubby spaces where we’d stashed our coffeepot and a minifridge that was always on the fritz. Somehow, our contractor had shoehorned in a bathroom. While the sign said the restroom was reserved for staff and paying customers, we weren’t all that strict about it, and more than one tourist had left much relieved and singing our praises.

I couldn’t distinguish the muffled voices coming from the apartment upstairs where Chief Young was interrogating my father. The chief had been demoted from first-name basis as soon as he arrived, all official, and started barking questions at my father. Dad was bleeding, and he really needed to see a doctor but had refused. Nor was he very forthcoming, to either me or the police, about how the pockmarked man ended up dead on our shop floor. Now I felt betrayed, isolated, and worried beyond belief. A crash came from the
shop—something knocked over by one of the crime scene investigators—and I nearly startled from my chair.

I got up, paced to the coffee maker, and lifted the carafe, but the thought of coffee made my stomach churn more acid. I scrounged in the cabinet underneath and scored a can of ginger ale and a half-stale box of Wheat Thins but abandoned both after a few sips of the ginger ale.

What were the chief and my father talking about for so long?

I pushed open the back door to let some air in. The alarm chirped, letting me know I had maybe thirty seconds or so to disarm it. Or what? The monitoring company would call the police? Too late for that. The place was swarming with them. Still, after I used my chair to prop the door open, I dutifully entered the code.

The alarm. That thought niggled in my mind and wouldn’t stop niggling, like some alien parasite. My mind had been on spin cycle, powered by pure adrenaline, ever since I discovered a dead body in the aisle of the shop. Why hadn’t the alarm sounded when the intruder entered?

I rubbed my temples, trying to play the scene in my head. The intruder had broken in. Maybe he had only come to the shop earlier in the week to “case the joint,” as they say in old movies. Only, in his attempt to steal from us, he made some noise and woke my father. Dad must have confronted him. They struggled, and Dad grabbed the lawn dart and struck in self-defense?

Stop. Rewind. If the intruder had broken in, the alarm would have gone off. I recalled the light switch not working,
and I glanced up at the alarm panel. When the power is cut to the alarm, the alarm company calls. If nobody responds, they notify the police.

I fished my cell phone out of my pocket—I’d put it there when Chief Young reluctantly let me leave the scene to change out of my Tweety Bird pajamas—and dialed the number on the decal attached to the alarm panel. After being shuffled to about half a dozen different people and holding during the slowest and dreariest rendition of “Away in the Manger” I’ve ever heard, someone on the other end of the line confirmed that the power-loss signal had been registered during the night and that a call was attempted.

“I never talked to anyone,” I said. “We had a break-in during the outage.”

“We have a record that the call was made and answered,” said the woman. “Please hold and I’ll confirm.”

I held for what seemed like forever. Police officers wandered about the shop and voices hummed from upstairs. My stomach gave another lurch.

“I listened to the conversation myself,” she said. “The responder didn’t remember the alarm code but did correctly answer both security questions.”

“You have the call recorded? Can you play it for me?”

Soon I heard my father’s voice try the old alarm code, and when that didn’t work, he answered both security questions, calmly adding that there had been a power outage on the street but that everything was fine.

That blew my first theory. No intruder had disabled the alarm.

I closed my eyes and reset the mental images. No intruder awakened Dad. He was already awake. Maybe he had been in the shop when the power went out. He’d assumed it was an outage and answered the call when it came in. That made sense. Then he’d encountered the intruder. They fought . . .

Before I could get too relieved, I recalled that police had restored electricity by popping the breaker. So unless the victim was a ninja, or one of those
Mission Impossible
–style intruders with a backpack of thin cable, lasers, and assorted high-tech whatchamacallits and doodads, the breaker was pulled from inside the shop, and the alarm company appeased before the victim entered.

Dad had pulled the breaker. Why? My mind fished for other explanations. I gave up when I got to “the intruder climbed in through a secret tunnel dating back to the Underground Railroad.” While the Underground Railroad did convey a number of escaped slaves through Western New York on their way to Canada, it was too Scooby-Doo to be truly plausible.

There was no intruder. The only explanation that fit was that Dad had pulled the breaker and then fielded a call from the alarm company, all while I slept.

I allowed my gaze to trail up the stairs to the closed door.
Dad, what were you up to?

###

Eventually the apartment door opened. To my relief, my father wasn’t being led away in handcuffs.

While Dad walked down the stairs, Chief Young called to me. “I can take your statement now.”

Dad put his hand on my upper arm. “Just a formality, Lizzie. Tell him the truth, and you’ll be fine.”

My feet were lead when I climbed the steps. Chief Young waited at the top, stifling a yawn.

“Are we boring you?” I wasn’t sure if I was trying to be funny or sarcastic. I hadn’t had enough sleep to make the distinction.

He let his shoulders droop. “Middle-of-the-night call.” Then he gestured over to our kitchen table. Dad’s guides were still stacked in several piles, one propped open with his magnifying glass holding his place. The old toys, however, were nowhere in sight.

I sat, then Chief Young sat. Then I sat up a little straighter, as did he. He shuffled through several papers, then looked up at me. “How about we start by you telling me exactly what happened, in your own words.”

I almost said, “Who else’s words would I use?” Instead, I recounted everything that had happened from the moment I awoke back to how I’d met the man in the shop earlier in the week.

“Did you know the man’s name?” he asked.

“Don’t you know it?” I spared a moment to push my glasses up. In my brief opportunity to dress, I hadn’t taken the time to put my contacts in.

Ken shook his head. I’d cooled down a little bit, so his name reverted to Ken in my mind. “He had no ID on him, and your father claims not to remember his name.”

“No, I . . . Wait! He handed me his business card.”

“Where is this card?”

I reached into my pocket. “I put it in the pocket. Of my other sweater.”

He nodded, and I ran to my bedroom to retrieve my black cardigan. After a brief search, I found it on a chair, topped off by a sleeping cat. I gave Othello a brief scratch behind the ears before settling him on the bed. He squeaked in protest but soon began circling my pillow. While he curled up to continue his snooze, I brushed a little fur off the sweater. That’s the bad thing about tuxedo cats. If the black fur blends in, the white fur shows, and vice versa. Meaning I was covered in enough animal fur at any given moment that I was in danger of being targeted by PETA.

I fished the business card out of the pocket. I knew Ken would take the card, so I handled it only by the edges in case he wanted to check for prints. I’m not sure what sparked the idea, but before I left the bedroom, I took a picture of the card with my cell phone.

He took the card without caring about fingerprints and slipped it into the clipboard portion of his notebook.

My jaw must have dropped.

“If you’re wondering about prints, I’m sure yours are already on it,” he offered by way of explanation.

I scooted my chair to the table and held my tongue. I suspected that most of the ire I felt had to do with the lack of sleep and Ken taking up court at our kitchen table. A fleeting thought made me wish I had loaded the dishwasher before I’d gone to bed. That was replaced by the cool voice of reason, which reminded me that Ken had to be there. Someone had died in our shop, and we needed to cooperate fully with the
authorities. I attempted a cooperative smile. Then that cool voice of reason was drowned out by the voices that wanted to panic. I’m sure that smile grew scary. “Would you like some tea?” I asked.

Ken was looking down at his notes, which he’d perched against the table’s edge. “I bet you mean hot tea, don’t you? No, but if you’d like some, go right ahead.”

I got up to put the kettle on. “I could run some over ice if you’d like. A little lemon?”

“That sounds amazing,” he said. “Whenever it’s on the menu here, it’s either hot or that prebottled stuff.” Ken flipped through a few pages and then eyed me with an almost pained expression. “Can I be candid with you?”

“I wish you would. I want to help.” I put the kettle on to heat. “My father always instilled in me the need to be open and honest with the police.”

“Your father’s statement. It’s a little confused.”

“He
was
hit on the head.”

“The EMT checked him out. Said it was a superficial injury. Frankly, I’m wondering if he’s deliberately withholding information.”

“Oh, come on! Do you seriously believe he murdered that man?”

“I didn’t say I believed he murdered him.” Ken kept his tone calm. “I’m not accusing him of anything at this point. I just don’t think he’s telling me everything he knows. Liz, this is difficult because he’s your father. Maybe you could explain some of the discrepancies.”

At this point?
“I don’t know how I can help. I was asleep until I heard a noise in the shop.”

“Did your father know the victim? Enough to let him in the shop in the middle of the night?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “I’d never seen him before this week. Dad claims he didn’t even know the man’s name.”

“But your father did have an appointment with the victim.”

“That’s what the man claimed. I didn’t know anything about it until he showed up.”

“Does your father keep an appointment book?”

“Scraps of paper. Scrawls on the calendar. Post-it notes.” I pointed my head in the direction of the bulletin board, then got up to answer the teakettle. When I glanced back, Ken was studying the bulletin board mounted on the wall near the phone.

He tapped the calendar. “There’s a time circled here. No name, no description.”

I squinted. “That’s when he came by the shop. Dad must have made the appointment and forgot.”

“But he didn’t write down the man’s name or the reason for the appointment. Is he in the habit of doing that?”

“All his life,” I said.

“Hard to imagine how he managed a whole police department.”

“He had a remarkable secretary, if you must know,” I said, then occupied myself by retrieving a lemon from the fridge. I’d been after Dad for months to write down all appointment information fully.

“And you said he didn’t tell you about the appointment?”

I shook my head and made a clean slice through the lemon. I realized at that moment that I clearly hadn’t merited
a spot on Ken’s suspect list if he allowed me to handle a sharp knife during our discussion.

“Do you think he might have been shielding it from you in some way?” he asked.

I set down the knife and whirled to face him. “You mean
hiding
it from me, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer, confirming that’s exactly what he’d meant.

I paused to think. I’d intended to cooperate fully, but the direction his questions were taking challenged that resolve. “Look,” I said, “Dad didn’t include me in every aspect of the business.”

“So this wasn’t unusual?”

“It was atypical, but not unheard of.” I struggled to keep focus on the tea preparation. Only my hands must have been shaking, because several cubes missed the Mason jar and ended up skittering across the linoleum. I bent down to retrieve them. “Evaluating old toys is something he’s had more experience with. Especially toys as old as these.”

“But he wasn’t here when the man showed for the appointment.”

I set Ken’s tea in front of him and retook my seat at the table. “Exactly what are you getting at?”

“Has your father always been open and honest with you?”

“You’re a cop. Are you always open and honest with your family?”

“I don’t have much of a family.”

I shrugged. “Dad didn’t often bring his work home with him. Not that he was secretive. When he was home, he liked to focus on being at home, being a father.”

“But now that you’re an adult . . .”

“I think he’s developed the habit of being guarded in what he says. Not that he’d lie to me. If he said he didn’t know the . . . victim, then he didn’t.”

Ken pulled out the card. “The name Carson Suffern doesn’t mean anything to you?”

I took a sip of my tea to stall. “It sounds familiar. I don’t ever recall Dad mentioning him, but I’ve heard that name before. I don’t recall in what context.”

“If it comes to you, you’ll let me know?”

I nodded, then blew on my tea to cool it, steaming my eyeglasses in the process. I removed them and set them on the table.

“You’re thinking about something,” he said.

When I glanced up, I realized that he’d been studying my face. “I have some concerns about the . . . chronology of events,” I said. “The alarm system. The power outage. How exactly that man . . . Carson Suffern . . . got in.”

“It’s pretty evident, isn’t it?” He kept up that piercing eye contact. “Your father let him in.”