Death of a Toy Soldier (19 page)

But what about the repros?

I found the lines for the expensive Japanese spaceship that was on display in the museum. The reproduction robot had
come from the same donor. Had the owner bought the reproduction so that he’d have a set? Possibly.

Then why donate the reproduction to the museum? He would have realized its negligible worth. Unless the owner didn’t know he was buying a repro. Perhaps he had bought the other toy at an antique shop and didn’t realize he was being taken.

The uneasy feeling grew. The donors weren’t collectors. These were elderly people who had toys from their childhood secreted away somewhere. I recalled the dusty cardboard box that Sullivan O’Grady had brought in. Dad had handled all those toys. If a repro was among them, I’m sure he would have noticed, like Peggy had identified the repros from these earlier donations.

But how did those modern repros end up in those old collections?

I immediately thought of Miles’s former associates. Had they been hired to break into other places and switch old toys for new reproductions by some sadistic, opportunistic toy collector?

What kind of money were we talking about here? I pulled a few of Dad’s price guides from the shelf behind the register and started to spot-check the list. If some of these reproductions had been the real deal, they would have been worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The spaceman alone was worth about two thousand. Pretty pricey for a toy, but nothing to kill over.

Only . . .

I retrieved my laptop and fired it up. I rummaged through the toy sales on eBay and Etsy, to discover if any originals had
recently sold. Price guides are fine, but sometimes the market is more volatile than that.

I discovered that all of them had recently sold on eBay. All by the same seller: Knitwit6709.

“Very shrewd, Peggy,” I said as the final piece snapped into place, tighter than new Legos. Peggy took in donations, which were all scrupulously cataloged, photographed, and evaluated. That process took time. Time that Peggy used to locate reproductions for some of the toys, which she then substituted for the originals. Nobody living had studied those toys enough to notice the difference, and the original owners who knew their history and provenance were all dead. Nobody was around to complain about the switch.

She then was free to sell the originals to collectors. Each payday wasn’t exactly a jackpot. One sale netted her a few hundred or perhaps a thousand or two. She played at fraud like she played Monopoly. Not a big haul all at once, but a bunch of regular payoffs, accumulated patiently over a long period. Maybe decades. Why, that could add up to be . . .

Motive for murder?

Sullivan O’Grady had seen a few of these toys before they were donated to the museum. He might even have been the one to discover them in a dusty attic. He wasn’t expert enough to know their values, but it would be hard to convince him that the toy he discovered in a box of old ones, in a decayed cardboard box covered with a layer of dust, was made in China a few months earlier.

“Go directly to jail, Peggy Trent. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.”

I needed to call Ken. I got up and walked to the glaring telephone and picked up the receiver.

Dead.

Knucklehead
, I chided myself. The fax machine was still hooked up. I bent down to unhook the landline from the old piece of office equipment, and the bell over the door rang.

“Be right with you!” I called out.

“No problem.”

I froze. The voice was Peggy’s.

My heart rate kicked into overdrive. “Peggy, what are you doing here?” Then I paused to take in what had become a normal picture: Peggy standing in the shop with a plate covered with foil.

“Is your father around?” She glanced around the shop.

“Napping, I’m afraid.”

My mind raced, playing various scenarios. Did she know about the information that Jillian had faxed over? I hurried to put myself in front of the table, hopefully looking casual and nonchalant. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I clenched them to keep my fingers from shaking. I forced a smile. “What brings you over?”

She took two steps toward me. “I baked more cookies.”

Was it my imagination, or had she tried to look over my shoulder to see the spreadsheets on the table? I stepped toward her. “We’ve barely had time to make a dent in the ones you brought over last night.”

“You know me. I love baking.” This time there was no mistaking it. She was clearly rubbernecking the table. “I . . . hope I didn’t disturb your work.”

“Oh,” I said airily, “just taking a break during the slow time to go over some figures.”

She whipped around to face the other direction, her hand on her bowed head as if to stave off a sudden pain. “You don’t know how sorry I am to hear that.”

“I beg your pardon?” At this point, I wondered where I’d left my cell phone. Probably charging upstairs. Although I’d bet I could outrun her to the shop phone if needed. I inched back in that direction.

She whirled around and withdrew a scary looking kitchen knife from her coat.

“Peggy, what is this all about?”

She gestured toward the spreadsheet. “You know exactly what this is about, don’t you? Jillian told me what she sent you.”

“Spreadsheets from the museum. Professional curiosity. I must admit, you do a fine job. Everything neat and in order.”

She shook her head. “If you were sure everything was neat and in order, you wouldn’t have tried so hard to hide it from me when I came in.”

Wouldn’t you know my plans to avoid a confrontation had led to one. “I . . . was embarrassed you caught me checking up on you. But I didn’t find anything.” I forced a blank face and tried not to flinch.

She tilted her head, and her eyes bore through me. I hazarded a glance to the telephone, which now seemed so far away. “You’re lying.” She followed my eyes to the phone. Holding the knife in front of her, she backed over to the phone, yanked out the landline, threw the modular connector on the floor, and crushed it under her boot. She then backed
to the door and flipped the sign to “closed” before securing the lock. “I’m sure neither of us wants more people involved in this situation.”

She was wrong. I wanted the whole town involved in this situation. I took several steps toward the back of the store. Dad was still upstairs. He could help. And if I couldn’t get there, if I made it to the back door, the alarm would sound and help would come.

As if sensing my thoughts, Peggy said, “Don’t think about calling for your father. I’d hate to hurt him, too.”

“I don’t understand hurting anyone. Peggy, there must be some kind of misunderstanding here. I admit, I did see how you profited from the museum.”

“Stole from them, you mean.”

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“But it’s what you meant. Look, you have no idea what it takes to live from grant to grant. If the museum is underfunded, I don’t get paid. Meanwhile, the gas and electric companies want their share.”

“See, that could hardly be called stealing when you’re just trying to recover your salary, right?”

“That’s what I said. For a lot of years, that’s what I said. Then it became a habit. A given. A modus operandi, as the cop shows like to say. I couldn’t let that information get out.”

“A good lawyer could get you off, maybe with a plan for repayment.”

“I’m afraid it’s gotten well past that.”

“I don’t see why . . .” Why it had led to murder. I didn’t want to voice it.

“Don’t you? Repayment plans, probation, and community service. Even if I’d gotten off with a slap on the wrist, can’t you see how that would have ended my life right there? What would
he
have thought?”

“He?”

“Your father, of course.” Her forehead pinched with emotion.

“I don’t understand. How did Dad get involved in this?”

She shivered. “That disagreeable man.”

“Dad?”

“No, whatever his name was. Sullivan O’Grady. I followed him here. Why couldn’t he stay out of it?”

“O’Grady had been to the museum in the past. His wife said he took their kids there often.”

“I thought he was coming to the museum so often because he liked to show his kids the toys. I had no idea at the time that he was looking for
specific
toys.”

“Toys he knew had been donated to the museum.”

She nodded, then stopped to dry a tear. “He was so proud. Like he wanted a plaque or something. Said he’d been instrumental in encouraging his employers to donate to us. I was on red alert right away. I had been so careful. Almost all the donors I’d drawn from were ignored by family and had outlived their friends. I didn’t think anyone would question what had happened to the donations. No one cared.”

“But Sully cared.”

“Do-gooder. I explained to him that we only had room for the best of the collections. That seemed to satisfy him.
At least I thought it had. Then that whole business with Sy DuPont came up.”

“Sy was going to donate his toys to the museum.”

“He didn’t even know what he had until Sullivan O’Grady found them while cleaning out the attic. I guess Sully suggested that he donate them. For that I should be grateful.” The last part was clearly sarcastic.

“Only Sully got suspicious.”

“Right about that time, Sy called me. Said that he’d rather give his toys to the museum while he was still alive. Something about making sure nobody took what wasn’t theirs.”

“Like his family or Kimmie Kaminski.”

“Exactly. I went to the house to pick them up. Only Sy was livid. He told me the toys were missing. That someone who worked for him had absconded with them. He didn’t mince words. Sullivan O’Grady was right there in the room. But Sy said he was going to have them back or certain people would be charged with theft in addition to being let go.”

“Sy thought the toys were stolen.”

“They were missing. He drew his own conclusions.”

“That must have been when Sully brought the toys here for Dad to evaluate.” I bit my lower lip. “He was testing you. He wanted an independent evaluation of them before they were donated.”

“I didn’t know where the toys were at the time. I figured O’Grady had a lot of nerve to practically accuse me of theft when he did the same thing. So I stayed parked in front of the house until he left. I started following him.”

“He must have made plans to meet with Dad.” Secretive plans that didn’t include me.

“I couldn’t have your father finding out.”

“You might have gone to jail.”

“Jail?” More tears streamed down her face. “You still don’t get it. Jail wasn’t what I was afraid of.” She slowly shook her head and then looked up. “I couldn’t have
him
knowing. Thinking that of me. It’s important to me that you understand the reason.”

“But to kill a man . . .”

“It wasn’t like that!” She stepped toward me with the knife, and I took another step back.

She obviously wanted to explain this to me. Could I talk my way out of this situation by pretending to understand her? “Why don’t you tell me what it was like. I want to understand.”

She froze in place, nothing moving but her shaking arm. I couldn’t tell if it was from emotion or the stress of holding the knife.

“You followed Sully here . . .” I began.

“Your father must have been expecting him. The lights were on, and when Sully knocked on the windowpane, your father answered and waved him to the back alley. Then all the lights went off. I got out of my car and followed on foot. I just wanted to hear what they were saying. I waited for a few minutes after Sully had gone inside, then I tried the back door. It was unlocked.”

“What did you hear?”

“Footsteps at the top of the stairs. I looked up just in time to see your father go back into the apartment. Alone. So I sneaked into the shop.”

Dad must have gone back to the apartment to gather the box of toys. “What were you planning?”

“I wasn’t planning anything!” Her voice betrayed a growing agitation. “If only I had time to think it through, things might have been different. I just wanted to listen. I crept around the back aisle, by the lunchboxes, thinking I could stay out of sight. But it was so dark and I was going mostly by memory. I hit a spot on the floor that creaked and gave me away.”

“I know the spot.” It was right by the lawn darts.

“I stumbled and my elbow went through some kind of cabinet. I grabbed the first thing I could find, then O’Grady attacked me.”

“He attacked you?”

“He grabbed me. Started to shout. To call your father. Instinct took over from that point.”

Instinct and a lawn dart.

“I didn’t even know where I’d hit him, but he fell to the ground, and I could feel the blood on my hands. When I realized what I had done, I knew I couldn’t be found there. Not by Hank. I heard his footsteps coming back down the stairs, so I hid.” She pointed to the doll room.

“You hit him on the head.” I backed up another step. “You hit my father on the head?”

“Stop!” she said.

I froze.

She gestured with the knife. “Over to the counter. This is going to have to pass for an attempted robbery. Open the cash register.”

Only my feet were made of lead. “You stupid woman!” For some reason, the knife was failing to register. “You hit him so hard you gave him a concussion. Don’t you know you could have killed him?”

“I wasn’t thinking at that point. I grabbed a croquet mallet and just swung. What would you rather I had done? Stab him with another lawn dart? I couldn’t do that to a man I loved.”

“You have no idea what that word means. And what do you expect to do now? Kill me and then be there to offer him comfort? And a casserole?”

She said nothing.

“You’re delusional.”

“Over to the counter.” She gestured with the knife.

I started walking but took my time. She’d been monologuing like a Scooby-Doo villain, but she wouldn’t keep it up forever. I suspected the knife would come into play as soon as she staged her robbery. So I made a grab for the nearest object, whirled around, and hurled it at her.

The monkey with the cymbals went flying right at her face. I don’t know if it hit the knife and knocked it out of her hand or if she’d let go of everything she was holding (she still had the plate of cookies in her left hand) to catch the monkey, but the knife and colorfully iced Christmas cookies went flying everywhere.

That gave me a few seconds to play with. When she bent over to pick up the knife, I upended the barrel of marbles and sent them rolling in her direction, then I rushed her. My force, combined with the slippery icing, cookie crumbs, and marbles, was enough to knock her to the floor. I’d like to say I landed on top of her on purpose, but credit for that should go to the marbles, inertia, and gravity. Once down, however, I managed to keep her there with a knee to her back.

The spring on the monkey toy must have slipped, because it sprang to life, lying on the floor surrounded by cookies and still-rolling marbles, and started to beat its cymbals together in an unearthly round of applause.

Now what?

“Dad?” I yelled. “Dad!”

He came rushing down the stairs into the shop, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long. I’m going to have trouble . . .” He stopped and gaped at the sight: Peggy trying to squirm out from underneath me like an earthworm, frosting covering her face and hair. “What in the world?”

“She killed Sullivan O’Grady.”

He tiptoed over. “Peggy Trent, you’re under arrest.” Then he froze, his gaze darting from her to the cookies and the marbles. I guessed his training had never prepared him for this scenario.

“Maybe you should call Chief Young,” I said. “For backup?”

“Right.” He made a couple of careful steps toward the phone, tiptoeing around the marbles, and picked up the smashed landline connector. “I guess I’ll call it in from upstairs.”

###

Fewer than five minutes passed before the police chief arrived, but it took much longer to fill Ken in on Peggy’s confession, especially since she clammed up and stopped talking. He was wide-eyed through the entire process. I couldn’t blame him. Both Peggy and I were smeared with icing and sprinkles. As
were the knife and the flying monkey. The floor was still a sea of marbles: aggies, cat’s eyes, swirlies, and steelies. They started rolling whenever any of the officers inadvertently hit one with their shoe. It probably would prove to be the most memorable arrest of the young chief’s career.

Somewhere in the process, I had begun to shake. I wasn’t sure if it was all the cold air let in as officers came and went through the front door, or some delayed form of shock. Either way, Ken had noticed and I ended up huddled under a blanket someone had retrieved from my bed upstairs.

After Peggy had been taken away and just Dad, Ken, and I remained, Ken raked a hand through his hair and stopped to stare at me. “You could have been killed. You know that, right?”

I shivered again and tugged the blanket closer. “For a few moments, the thought crossed my mind.”

Dad came up behind me and squeezed my shoulder. “Is there anything that can’t wait until tomorrow? My daughter has had a long day.”

Ken looked around. “I should make sure to get photos and prints from the shop, to process it as a crime scene. Again.” He put his hand on his hip. “Mrs. Trent didn’t go upstairs?”

“Never,” Dad said. I patted his hand.

“My guys should be out of here in an hour, tops. I don’t see any reason you can’t stay in your own place tonight.”

“Sounds good,” Dad said.

“Let us know when you’re ready to leave so we can lock up and set the alarm,” I said.