Nothing Good Happens After Midnight: A Suspense Magazine Anthology

The Sixth Decoy Paul Kemprecos

Elmer Crowell had a sharp eye and a sharper blade. He could take a block of wood and cut away everything that didn’t look like a bird, creating a masterpiece that looked as if it could quack, waddle or take flight. Some people say he was the best bird carver in the world.

Ol’ Elmer was an authentic American genius, no doubt about it. He was also a humble man from what I’ve heard. He would have dropped his whittling knife if someone told him the carvings he turned out in his ramshackle shed would bring millions of dollars at auction. And his gentle soul would have been burdened if he knew the desire to possess the things of beauty that sprang from his mind and his hands could lead to bloodshed.

Crowell had been dead more than a half century before the golden, late fall day when I crossed paths with his ghost.

I had spent the morning scrubbing down the deck and cleaning out the galley of my charter fishing boat Thalassa. The rods and reels were stowed in the back of my pickup truck. I’d scheduled a forklift to raise the boat out of the water and lower it onto a wooden cradle to be tucked under a plastic blanket for a long winter’s nap.

The fishing season had been as good as it gets. Nantucket Sound teemed with schools of hungry striped bass, and every one of them had a death wish. The skies were sunny, the seas gentle and the tips generous.

Hooking fish wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing for a living, but as the ancient poet Homer once said, our destiny lies on the knees of the gods.

The Immortal in charge of my fate must have had restless leg syndrome, because I fell off his knee, cutting short my college education in philosophy for a lesson in life, and death, paid for by the U.S. Government in Vietnam.

After mustering out of the Marines, I became a cop and worked my way up to detective in the Boston Police Department. I was engaged to be married to a beautiful and intelligent woman whose only blemish was her judgment in men.

I might have weathered a corruption scandal at the BPD if I kept true to the code of silence, but I lost my will when my fiancé died in a car accident.

After the funeral I got in my car and headed south from Boston with a bottle of vodka, driving until the road ended at a deserted Cape Cod beach. After a few slugs from the bottle, I fell asleep in the lee of a dune. I woke up to the cries of hovering gulls and the rustle of breaking waves. I staggered off the beach and was sobering up in a coffee shop when I met an old fisherman named Sam. He was looking for a crewman. I said I might be interested in the job.

Either Sam had been desperate, or he’d seen the desperation in my face, because he simply nodded and said, “Finestkind, Cap.”

Fishing was tough, but cheaper than stretching out on a headshrinker’s couch. More effective, too. Rolling out of bed at three in the morning to catch the tide, commuting twenty miles into the Atlantic Ocean and working a twelve-hour day forces your mind to ignore the little demons of regret tap-dancing in a corner of your brain.

The wind, and sun reflecting off the glassy sea had burned most of the sadness from my face and darkened my skin, hiding the lines of bitterness lurking at the corners of my mouth, even though they were still there. Sam accused me of going native when I went for the pirate look, with a gold earring, and a droopy mustache that decorated my upper lip.

More often than not my mouth was set in a grin as Sam gossiped about townspeople, fish, and the cooking prowess of his wife Mildred. When Sam retired I took over his boat, but couldn’t cut it on my own. I cleaned up my act, mostly, and bought a charter fishing boat with a loan from my family.

Every day was an adventure. I had to make sure my clients didn’t fall overboard or hook themselves instead of a fish — a state of alertness that had called for a higher degree of sobriety than I was used to. I’d been busy from sunup to sundown, subsisting on Mountain Dew and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

In the off-season I’ll earn a few bucks with an occasional commercial diving job. There’s not much demand to go underwater during the winter. I’ve held onto the private detective license I got after leaving the Boston PD, but there’s even less call for a PI.

With my boat coming out of the water, and no jobs in the works, money would soon be tight. I set a course across the marina parking lot for a waterfront bistro named Trader Ed’s. I was thinking that a frosty beer might help me come up with an idea how to keep the boat loan payments to my family flowing during the lean months. I was about halfway to my bar stool when a silver Mercedes convertible pulled up beside me and braked to a stop. A woman wearing a dark gray pinstripe suit got out from behind the steering wheel.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m looking for a boat captain named Aristotle Socarides. The harbor master pointed you out.”

“That’s me,” I said. “How can I help you?”

“I’d like to retain your services.”

“Sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m done fishing for the year. My boat will be out of the water in the next day or so.”

“That’s not a problem.” She removed her sunglasses to reveal coral-colored eyes under arching brows. “My name is Bridget Callahan. I’m an attorney. I know that you’re a retired police officer and that in addition to running a charter boat, you sometimes take on cases as a private detective.”

“Word gets around.”

“Thanks to modern communications technology.”

She held up a cellphone. On the small screen was the face I see in the mirror during the morning shave. The earring and mustache of my pirate days were gone. I was now a serious businessman. The photo of me at the wheel of the Thalassa was from the business section of the Cape Cod Times. The headline was: “Former Cop, Charter Captain Moonlights as Private Eye.”

“I mentioned the private eye thing to the reporter as an aside,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of clients.”

“All the better. You’ll have time to take a case for a client of mine.”

“Depends, Ms. Callahan. I don’t do divorce investigations. They’re too dangerous.”

“Nothing like that. My client would like to recover some valuable property.”

She tucked the phone in her pocketbook and handed me a business card. The words embossed on the card in gold told me that Bridget Callahan was a partner in a Boston law firm that had more ethnic names than the United Nations.

“Big legal powerhouse, as I recall,” I said. “Making partner couldn’t have been easy.”

“It wasn’t. It took talent, hard work and a willingness to deal with difficult clients.”

“Congratulations. Does this case involve one of those difficult clients?”

She nodded.

“Why come to me? My last big case had to do with oyster poachers. Your firm must have staff investigators.”

“We do. One of them gave us your name. He said you’d be perfect for this job. That you take unusual cases.”

She mentioned a retired detective I knew from the BPD.

“He’s a good cop,” I said. “What makes this so unusual he can’t handle it?”

“The client is a bit eccentric.”

“In what way?”

“He’s a collector,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“Does this eccentric collector have a name?”

“His name is Merriwhether Ruskin the 3rd. He wants to meet you.”

“Send him over. I’ll be here for at least another hour.”

She brushed a curl of silver and auburn hair back from her face as she collected her thoughts. “Mr. Ruskin doesn’t get out much. He has, um, peculiar health issues. It’s hard to describe. He’d like to talk to you in person.”

I glanced up at the clear blue autumn sky. The raw north winds and slag gray clouds of winter seemed far away, but it would be spring before I earned another paycheck. Meanwhile, the boat loan statements would arrive with the regularity of waves breaking on the shore. A job for a rich client would get me through a few months, maybe longer.

Trader Ed’s would have to wait. “I’m ready when you are,” I said.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Bridget’s client lived twenty minutes from the marina on the shores of Nantucket Sound, in a gated community of sprawling silver-shingled houses hidden behind tall hedges that protected their owners’ privacy as effectively as castle ramparts. The only things missing were moats and drawbridges. A long gravel driveway led to a two-story mansion surrounded by manicured lawns of impossible green. A white-trimmed porch bordered with hydrangeas ran along the full length of the house.

On the drive over, Bridget talked about growing up in the gritty working class enclave of South Boston, making her Harvard law degree even more impressive. I talked about my roots in the former factory city of Lowell and my stint in the Marines. We were chatting like old friends by the time we got to the house. She snapped the switch into business mode as soon as she parked behind a black Cadillac sedan in the circular driveway.

“This is it,” she said.

This was a mega mansion that looked to be at least ten-thousand square feet in size. I had to crane my neck to take in the whole length of the front porch and the three-story height.

“Nice little shack. What does Mr. Ruskin do to pay the lighting and heating bills in this place?”

“He doesn’t have to do anything. He comes from an old New England family that made its fortune years ago in labor procurement, energy and pharmaceuticals.”

Bridget answered the question with a straight face, but the airy lilt in her voice sent me a different message. “I get it. The skeletons in the closet of many a respectable Yankee family. Slavery, whale butchery and the opium trade, in other words.”

“Yes. In other words. Mr. Ruskin currently dabbles in nation-building.”

I had to think about that. “Gun running?”

“Guns, missiles and bombs. And people to use them.” She cocked her head. “I think I like you, Mr. Socarides.”

“Soc. My friends call me Soc.”

“Very well, Soc. I answer to Bridge. Shall we?”

The slightly stooped man who answered the front doorbell looked like the greeter in a funeral parlor. Gray hair, grayer face and matching four-button suit, all the color of fog. Speaking softly in an undertaker’s voice, he said, “Follow me to the visitation room.”

He led the way down a long hallway, opened a door and ushered us into a rectangular space around twenty feet square. Three walls were plain. The fourth was covered by a hanging tapestry that showed a medieval hunting scene of sharp-toothed dogs taking down a unicorn. The fact that the victim was an animal that never existed did little to ease its pain at being ripped apart.

The gray man pressed a wall button. The tapestry slid silently aside to reveal a glass window. He pointed to a leather sofa facing the window, then left us alone.

The lights on the other side of the window went on seconds after we had taken our seats. We were looking into a big room. Directly in front of us was a metal and plastic desk and chair.

The room was a zoo of the dead. Animal heads of every kind festooned the walls. Their eyes were glassy and their expressions far from happy. Antelope, mountain goats, bear, some big cats.

Bridget was silent.

“You’ve seen this before?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “I think it’s kind of creepy.”

“Ever wondered what hunters do with the rest of the animal?”

“That’s even creepier.”

“What is this place?” I asked.

Before she could answer, a door swung open between a pair of tusked boar heads at the far end of the room. A ghost-like apparition entered the room, made its way in our direction, and stopped next to the desk. It wore a hooded white suit, like the kind worn to protect against hazardous materials. A white gauze mask covered the lower part of the face. The feet were encased in fabric pull-ons.

“You’re right; Ruskin is eccentric,” I murmured.

“That’s not him,” Bridget said. “That’s his valet.” She put her finger to her lips, then glanced at a red plastic globe on the wall above the window. “That’s a camera and a microphone that is very, very sensitive.”

The door opened again. Another man entered, leisurely walked the length of the room, and stood next to the figure in white.

“Ruskin?” I whispered.

Bridget nodded.

I’d pictured Ruskin as a raw-boned flinty-eyed Yankee with a mouth full of horse teeth, mop of unruly hair and a profile that looked as if it had been carved from a granite quarry. Bad call. Ruskin was as bald as a bullet, had a neck that belonged on a cartoon bully and looked as if he chewed steroids as candy. He was wearing a snug T-shirt and shorts that showed off a buff physique. His hands looked as if they could hurt someone.

He said, “Thank you for coming, Mr. Socarides. Please pardon the unusual meeting arrangements. This is a protected environment. I suffer from a number of acute allergies, all potentially life-threatening. It’s a rare, progressive affliction particular to the Ruskin family. This gentleman is an employee of mine. The suit he has on is to protect me from outside allergens that would cause a severe reaction.”

Despite his mauler looks, Ruskin spoke with a cultured accent that carried echoes of an English boarding school.

“No different than talking over the phone,” I said, although it was a lot different. “Ms. Callahan said you need a private detective to recover some valuable property.”

“Correct. Tell me, are you familiar with the work of Elmer Crowell?”

“The bird-carver?”

“That’s right, although he was much more than that. Allen Elmer Crowell is considered the Father of American Bird Carving. He was the master of a unique form of American art who has been called the Cezanne of waterfowl carvers. Another question. Have you heard of Viktor Orloff?”

I would have to have been stuck in a cave not to know about Orloff. His face had been in all the papers and on TV. “Sure. Orloff was the financial guy who conned his clients out of millions of dollars. Were you one of them?”

Ruskin’s lips twitched in an almost-smile.

“I knew better than to invest money with that slimy old grifter. We had a business arrangement. He had agreed to sell me a preening merganser.”

“Come again?”

“It was a carving, part of a set of six half-scale models that Crowell had carved for special friends. I own the other five. I paid Orloff for the decoy, but before I could pick it up he was arrested and put in jail. The judge denied bail because Orloff was a flight risk. His house was sealed with all its contents.”

“Including the bird?”

He nodded. “As you probably know, Orloff was convicted and went to prison. He had my money but I didn’t have the decoy.”

“No chance of getting your money back through legal channels?”

“Unlikely. Even if I could dig it out of whatever black hole Orloff had hidden it in.”

“I see the problem. There must have been a long line of people trying to get their investments back.”

“I wasn’t an investor. I could prove that I owned the bird. I didn’t want my money. I wanted the decoy to complete the set. An intact set of Crowell decoys would be worth millions, but the bird was desirable to me as a collector.”

“Any chance you could get the house unsealed?”

“Yes, under ordinary circumstances, but the house burned down before my lawyers could file a claim. Cause of the fire is still unknown. Then Orloff died in prison of a heart attack, which surprised many people who didn’t think he had a heart.”

“The decoy?”

“It supposedly went up in flames.”

“You sound like you have doubts.”

Ruskin whispered to the man in the white suit, who went to a wall cabinet and slid open a glass door. He reached inside and came out with a large plastic cube. He carried it back to Ruskin who set the container on the desk, flipped the lid back, took something out and held it above his head like an offering to the gods.

The carved bird in his hands was around half the size of a real one. Its copper-colored head was turned back in a graceful curve with the long, sharp beak pointed at the tail. The gray and white feathers painted on the wooden wings looked so real they could have riffled in the breeze.

“The preening merganser has everything Crowell was famous for,” Ruskin said, lowering his arms. “Attention to detail, accuracy, and beauty.”

“You’re confusing me, Mr. Ruskin. You said the merganser is missing, presumably burned.”

“It is.”

He turned the bird over and brought it to the window, close enough for me to see the black oval sticker on the bottom. Printed on the sticker in silver letters were the words: “Copy of A. E. Crowell Preening Merganser. Product of China.”

“A Chinese rip-off?” I said.

“Yes. A well-done fake, but still a fake.”

“What does it have to do with the missing bird?”

“Everything, Mr. Socarides. Only someone with access to the Crowell carving could have made a reproduction that is so accurate in every respect to the original.”

“Not sure I understand.”

“Ms. Callahan?” Ruskin said.

Bridget explained.

“The reproduction was advertised for sale in a collectors’ publication. It was purchased for a hundred and fifty dollars. My firm’s investigators traced the bird to a manufacturer in Hunan province, China, which specializes in making wooden reproductions of all kinds. The original piece is scanned digitally and the data fed into computer-guided laser carving machines. Skilled craftsmen do the final detailing.”

“That would mean the Chinese had access to the original?”

“Indirectly,” she said. “A company in upstate New York does the scanning and transmits the data to China.”

Ruskin rejoined the discussion. “And I believe the American and Chinese companies used the real decoy to manufacture the fake.”

“Do you know who contracted for the work?”

“No. Someone dropped the carving off, waited while it was scanned and picked it up. Payment was in cash.”

“Could they have copied it from a photo?”

“Yes. But not as accurately as this,” Ruskin answered. “Crowell knew bird anatomy from years as a professional hunter, and his birds were accurate in every detail. Moreover, he imbued his models with life. This is good for a fake, but without the hand of the master it is just a prettied up piece of wood.”

“Have you been able to run a trace on the magazine ad?”

He put the carving back into the case, closed the cover, and handed the container to his valet, who carried it from the room. Ruskin lowered his athletic body into the swivel chair, leaned his elbows on the desktop and tented his fingers.

“The ad was placed by something called Elmer’s Workshop. No email address. Orders went through PayPal. The ad listed a post office box in the town of Harwich, Massachusetts where, coincidentally, Crowell lived and worked.”

“Any idea who rents the P.O. Box?”

“No. It’s since been closed.”

“Any chance the reproduction was made before the fire?”

“The records at the New York and Chinese operations show that the reproduction was made after the fire, indicating that the original survived the blaze.”

“What would you like me to do, Mr. Ruskin?”

“I believe finding the source of the fake will lead you to my property. You may have some contacts locally. Having city detectives poking around would attract unwanted attention. You understand the need to be discreet, of course.”

The job seemed like an uncomplicated one, except for the Orloff angle. The charming old bandit had left suicides, divorces, and bankruptcies in the wake of his stealing spree. And his greedy fingers were still reaching from the grave. Ruskin was unsavory, but he wouldn’t be the first client of dubious character that I’d worked for. Any doubts I might have entertained went up in smoke when Bridget handed me a check made out in an amount triple what I would have charged.

I rubbed the check lightly between my thumb and forefinger. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good,” Ruskin said. “Let me know as soon as you hear something.”

He rose from his chair and, without another word, headed for the door.

Hiring interview was over.

Seconds after Ruskin left the room, the old gray man showed up and pushed the wall button. As the unicorn tapestry slid across the window, he handed me a cardboard box.

“Mr. Ruskin thought this might assist you in your work,” he said. “He wants it returned when you are through. It is not to be taken from its protective container.”

He led us back the way we came. We stepped onto the porch and the door clicked shut behind us.

“Was that for real?” I asked, taking a breath of fresh air. “That stuff with the allergies?”

“Mr. Ruskin could be a hypochondriac, I suppose, but he’s gone through a lot of unnecessary trouble and expense modifying this house if he’s simply imagining his allergies. All his food is prepared in accordance with his allergy issues. The butler is a bit of a gossip. He told me Ruskin is allergic to everything you can think of.”

“Does he ever leave the house?”

“Not very often, the butler says; only for urgent matters, and when he does he wears a hazmat suit. He usually goes out only at night.”

I set the cardboard box down on the porch and peeled off the sealing tape. Then I lifted out the transparent plastic container that held the reproduction decoy Ruskin had shown me. The lid was secured with a padlock.

I jiggled the lock. “Ruskin is very protective of his property.”

“Mr. Ruskin is deathly afraid of contaminated things or people coming into the main house. When it comes back this box will go through a clean room where it will be wiped down and sterilized. Anyone coming into the living quarters from the outside has to wear a throw-away suit.”

“Like the valet?”

“Yes. His name is Dudley. That’s all I know.”

I put the bird container into the cardboard box and Bridget gave me a ride back to the marina.

There wasn’t much small talk. I was thinking about Ruskin’s strange request. She was probably mind-counting her retainer. She dropped me off in the parking lot. When I got out of the car, she handed me a brown, eight-by-ten envelope.

“This report was prepared by our staff investigators. I’ll call you at some point to see how things are going. Mr. Ruskin’s phone number is inside. He has asked that you contact him directly as the investigation moves along. I’ll be in touch.”

She put the car into gear and left me standing at about the same spot she stopped my trek to Trader Ed’s. This time I made it all the way to a bar stool. My personal alcohol meter was on empty, but I decided to stay sober. Sipping on a club soda with cranberry juice and lime, I went through the papers inside the envelope Bridget had given me.

I skimmed a history of the Crowell decoys and read that his workshop was still standing. It had been moved from the original site to the property of the Harwich Historical Society at Brooks Academy, which was a short drive from where I was sitting.

Seemed like a logical place to start. I tucked the papers back into the envelope, slid off the bar stool and headed for my pickup truck with the cardboard box tucked under my arm.

If you looked at a map of Cape Cod you’d see that the town of Harwich is near where the elbow would be on the peninsula, which curls out into the Atlantic like a bent arm. Harwich is an old seafaring town with Nantucket Sound at its doorstep, so it’s no surprise that it once had a school of navigation.

The school was housed in a graceful, 19th century Greek-revival building named Brooks Academy that had been turned into a museum run by the Harwich Historical Society. I parked behind the academy and walked across the parking lot to a low shingled building.

Hanging over a sliding barn door was a black quarter board with the words “A. E. Crowell, Bird Carvings” in white letters. On a shelf above the door to the shop was a carving of a Canada goose. The workshop was closed, but a pleasant, middle-aged woman working in the museum opened it up for me. She accidentally set off an alarm and had to shut it off. I stepped through the entrance to the workshop and into a room with wall displays that told about Crowell and his work.

I tossed a couple of bills into the donation box and said I carved birds for a hobby. I jokingly asked if the Canada goose was a Crowell. She laughed. “It wouldn’t be out there if it were.”

The museum had a few Crowell decoys in its collection, she said, but nothing like the carvings that were bringing a million dollars.

The shop contained a workbench, wood-working tools, a pot-bellied stove, and what looked like an antique sander and band saw. A half-dozen miniature bird models with minimalist details sat on a shelf.

A carving on a work bench caught my eye. It looked identical to the fake bird sitting in the box on the front seat of my truck. I asked where it came from.

“A bird carver named Mike Murphy donated the reproduction. We had it in the museum where it would be more secure, but since it’s only a reproduction someone suggested we put it out here. As you may have noticed, we have a burglar alarm in the barn, but there’s nothing in the workshop that’s really valuable. Even the tools are borrowed.”

I thanked her, put another couple of bills in the donation box and walked back to my truck. I leafed through the folder Bridget had given me and re-read the investigation report where they interviewed someone named Mike Murphy.

A guy with the same name had been the caretaker of the Orloff mansion. He told the investigators he had seen the merganser in Orloff’s study. The bird was there when the marshals sealed the place. He assumed it had been burned in the fire. He couldn’t say for sure because he got to the fire after the house had burned down. Someone at the fire department had called him.

The investigators left it at that. I might have done the same thing, except for Murphy’s donation to the historical society. It suggested that he had more than a casual interest in the preening merganser, fake or not. And I wanted to know why.

Murphy lived in a one-story ranch house in a working-class neighborhood that was probably never fashionable, nor ever would be. I parked in the driveway behind a beige Toyota Camry and knocked on the front door. The stocky man who answered the door stared at me with inquisitive blue eyes.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“My name is Socarides.” I pointed to the Thalassa logo on my blue polo shirt. “I run a charter boat out of Hyannis. I’m also an ex-Boston cop and I pick up a few bucks on the side as a private investigator for insurance companies. I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about Viktor Orloff.”

He gave a weary shake of his head. “Orloff is the gift that keeps on giving. Wish I never heard of the guy.”

“From what I know of Orloff, you have a lot of company.”

Murphy grinned. He had a wide jaw cradling a mouth filled with white even teeth.

“Come on in,” he said with a sigh.

Before I accepted his invitation I went to the truck and got the cardboard box. He gave the carton a curious glance, then ushered me into a living room paneled in knotty pine. He shooed away a long gray-haired cat from a wood-framed chair and told me to take a seat.

He sat on a sofa, picked the cat up and stroked its head.

“This is Gus,” he said. “Gotta keep him inside because coyotes come through the yard once in a while, but he doesn’t seem to mind being a house cat.”

Gus looked as if he didn’t mind anything. I glanced around the living room. There was art on every wall, most of it prints of waterfowl. Wooden decoys were scattered on shelves and tables around the room.

“Quite the collection,” I said.

“Thanks,” Murphy said. Then he crossed his arms and gazed at me. “How can I help you?”

“My client is a rich guy named Ruskin. He bought a Crowell decoy called the preening merganser from Orloff, and paid a lot of money for it, but the law took your former boss off to the clink before he could make good. Then Orloff died in prison and his house burned down, along with the decoy.”

Murphy nodded. “I already talked to the cops. What does your client want to know that isn’t in the record?”

“He thinks maybe the merganser didn’t burn up.”

Murphy scoffed. “That’s because he didn’t see the fire.”

“You did?” I remembered from the file that Murphy told the interviewer he lost his job when Orloff was arrested and hadn’t been back to the house since it was sealed.

“I didn’t see the actual fire,” he said, catching himself. “I saw the TV stuff and came by the house later. It went up quick, like it had been set.”

“The investigation didn’t say anything about arson.”

“A guy like Orloff would know people who could do a smart job. Everything had been reduced to cinders. Everything. I don’t know where Ruskin would get the idea that the bird wasn’t burned up.”

“From this.” I opened the carton, extracted the plastic case, and set it on the coffee table. “Made in China. Ruskin saw an ad in a magazine and ordered this Crowell reproduction.”

“Chinese are pretty clever at copying stuff,” he said.

“Ruskin says a copy this good could only have been made from the original. Which means the authentic Crowell didn’t burn up.”

“Orloff could have had the fake made before the real bird got burned.”

“That’s not what the record shows. The repro was made after the house fire.”

He shrugged. “Can I take a look?”

I handed him the encased bird model. He ran his fingers over the plastic surface of the box.

“Where did you get this?”

“Probably the same place you got the one you gave to the museum.”

“You stopped by the museum?”

I pointed to a photo of the Crowell workshop that hung over the fireplace mantle.

“They moved the decoy to the woodworking barn,” I said.

His hand stopped stroking the box. “No kidding. Why did they do that?” He sounded almost startled.

“Thought it would add to the workshop’s authenticity. The lady at the museum said you were a bird carver.”

“I carved most of the birds in the house, but I’m no Elmer Crowell. I’ve taken a few courses and have the tools.”

“That makes you an expert compared to me. How does the mail order repro stack up against the original?”

“Technically, it’s very good, but it doesn’t have the soul you’d see in a Crowell. I figured I’d never own a real one, so I bought the reproduction. I must have seen the same ad as Ruskin. I ordered one just to see what they’d done.”

He put the box down on the coffee table, which is when I noticed the blurry blue tattoo on his forearm. I could still make out the eagle, globe, and anchor of the Marine insignia. That explained the military buzz cut of his white hair.

“Semper fi,” I said, and pushed my sleeve up to show him a smaller version of the EGA on the top of my arm near the shoulder.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Where’d you serve?”

“Up by the border mostly. You?”

“I spent a lot of time around Pleiku. Got a Purple Heart. What about you?”

I shook my head. “Only wounds I got were psychological. Worst one was when a village got shelled after I told everyone they were safe. Now I think real hard before I make a promise.”

A knowing smile came to his lips. “Sometimes you don’t see the forest for the trees.”

Murphy seemed more relaxed. He told me that after the Marines he had married and gone into the postal service like a lot of vets, retired early after his wife got a bad disease that eventually killed her, and started a small company keeping an eye on summer houses when their owners weren’t around. That’s how he met Orloff, and went to work for him as a full-time caretaker until the time his boss got arrested.

“Did he cheat you?” I asked.

“He owed me a month’s salary. They say he only went after big accounts. But he stiffed little guys like me. He even cheated a fund for handicapped kids that didn’t know he was handling its money. He was like somebody’s uncle, people trusted him right to the end.”

“Speaking of the end, this looks like a dead one,” I said. I gave him my business card. “Let me know if you remember anything else.”

“I’ll keep my eyes and ears open. Come by to see me anytime. I don’t go out much and stay up late. Maybe I’ll hear something from the bird carver crowd. You never know.”

“That’s right,” I said, getting up from the couch to shake hands. “You never do.”

The investigative report said the fake decoys had been mailed from Harwich. I stopped by the post office, went up to the desk and asked the postal clerk what the cheapest rate would be for sending out a box like the one in my hands.

“Depends on weight, of course. Parcel post is the cheapest, but it’s also the slowest,” she said.

“I was talking to a friend named Mike Murphy. He’s got a P.O. Box here and sends out a lot of packages, but I don’t remember what rate he used.”

“We’ve got a few Murphys. I don’t recall anyone doing a lot of shipping.”

“I’ll talk to him and get back to you.”

I remembered that there was more than one post office in town. I got back in my truck and drove a few miles to the pint-sized West Harwich post office. I went through the same routine with the postmistress, and this time I struck gold.

“Mike uses straight parcel post to send boxes that look just like that,” she said. “Haven’t seen him for a while, though. Not since he closed his box.”

“I’ll tell Mike you miss seeing him,” I said.

Twenty minutes later I drove down the pot-holed dirt driveway that leads to the converted boathouse I call home. Chez Socarides was part of an old estate when I bought it and rebuilt it into a year-round residence. The place is still just short of ramshackle, but it’s got a million dollar water view of a big bay and distant barrier beach.

My cat Kojak ambushed me as soon as I stepped inside. I poured him some dry food, grabbed the phone, went out on the deck, and tucked the box with the fake bird under a chair. Then I dialed the number for Ruskin. He answered right away.

I told him about my talk with Mike Murphy, his connection with Orloff, and the visit to the post office.

“Do you suspect Murphy knows more about my decoy than what he’s saying?”

“Yes, I do, which is why I want to go back to talk to him again.”

“When you do, tell him he’d better say where it is, or else.”

“Or else what, Mr. Ruskin?”

“I’ll leave that to your imagination.”

I didn’t like what I was imagining. Ruskin was suggesting that I threaten Murphy.

“I don’t work that way, Mr. Ruskin.”

“Well, I do,” he said. “And I have found my methods extremely persuasive.”

“I can tear up your check or send it back to you, Mr. Ruskin. Your call.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, then Ruskin laughed.

“No need to do either. You don’t think I’m serious. I’ve decided to offer a reward.”

I should have been suspicious at Ruskin’s fast turnaround. But I was put off by his conciliatory change of tone.

“It’s worth a try. How much of a reward?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How about ten thousand dollars?”

“That will definitely get his interest. I’ll go see Murphy tomorrow and make the offer.”

“Yes,” Ruskin said, after a pause. “That should work.”

He hung up. I went back into the house and came out onto the deck with a can of Cape Cod Red beer. I popped the top and took a slurp, thinking about my conversation with Ruskin. He said his rash suggestion to lean on Murphy was a joke, but I wasn’t so sure. I sipped my beer, letting my mind zone out as the late afternoon sun painted the bay and beach in autumn pastels.

After the beer can went dry, I went back into the house. I pulled together a Greek salad for dinner, then worked a few hours on some paperwork for the charter operation. The figures looked so good that I decided to call my family in the morning to tell them about my accounting.

My eyes were tired from looking at numbers. I had another beer, then I stretched out on the couch and fell asleep. The chirp of my phone woke me up. I groped for the phone, stuck it in my ear and came out with a groggy “hello.” I heard a wet gargle on the other end and a second later the phone went dead. The caller ID said Mike Murphy had called. I hit the redial button and got a busy signal.

The phone’s time display said it was after midnight.

I splashed cold water on my face and headed for the door.

Murphy’s house was in darkness. I parked in the driveway behind the Toyota Camry, went up to the front door and knocked. No answer. I knocked again, louder this time. No one came to the door. I rang the doorbell. No one answered the ring, but something brushed up against my leg.

I looked down at Murphy’s cat, Gus. Funny. Murphy said Gus stayed indoors because of the danger from coyotes.

I tried the knob. The door was unlocked. As I opened the door Gus scuttled past me into the darkness. I stepped inside and called Murphy’s name. No answer. I tried again. This time I heard a low moan. I felt for the wall switch and flicked on the lights.

Murphy was stretched out on the couch, one arm dangling limply toward the floor. The lower part of his face looked as if it had been smeared with ketchup.

I snatched a phone from the floor next to the couch and called 911. I said I was Mike’s neighbor and that he needed medical help. Then I knelt next to Murphy. I put my face close to his, and said, “You’re going to be okay, Mike. Rescue squad is on its way.”

He opened his mouth and I got a knot in the pit of my stomach when I saw that his beautiful Irish smile had been ruined. Something or someone had hit him in the jaw with a force powerful enough to knock out his front teeth. There were bruises on his left cheek. I guessed he’d been worked over with a blackjack.

Anger welled in my chest.

“Who did this to you, Mike?”

He tried to talk. The best he could manage was a wet gurgle similar to the one I had heard over the phone. I asked him again. This time he said what sounded like goats. I tried again. The same answer. His dazed eyes looked past my shoulder. I turned and saw he had fixed his gaze on the fireplace photo of the Crowell barn. Then, mercifully, he passed out.

I had done all I could for Mike. I didn’t want to explain to the police who I was and why I was there. I went outside, got in the pickup, drove half a block and parked where I could see the house. Minutes later, I saw the flashing lights of an ambulance coming down the street.

It was clear to me who’d worked Mike over. Ruskin made no secret that he would crack heads if necessary to get his hands on the decoy. Thanks to my big fat Greek mouth, he knew Murphy held the key to its whereabouts. I had handed Mike on a platter to a dangerous man.

Maybe I should tell the cops what I knew. Lousy idea. Ruskin had the money to hire a team of lawyers who would say that there was no evidence. And Ruskin had the perfect alibi. He never left the house because of his acute allergies, poor guy.

I watched the rescue squad bring Mike out on a stretcher and put him in the ambulance. I followed the ambulance to the hospital emergency entrance. I waited outside a few minutes, but there was nothing I could do while Mike was in the ER, so I drove home.

When I drove up to my house I saw I had company. A black Cadillac was parked in front. I pulled up next to the car and got out of the truck. The caddy’s door opened and a tall man emerged from the car. His silver hair was combed back from a broad forehead. He had a sharp-jawed face with a chin like a shelf. He stood there with his arms folded.

“Ruskin sent me,” he said. He had an accent that was neither English nor Irish. I figured him for Australian.

The black running suit didn’t hide his broad-shouldered physique any better than the white coverall did when I first saw him in the trophy room. “You’re his valet. Dudley.”

If he was surprised I knew his name he didn’t show it. His expression looked as if it had been carved in ice.

“Yeah, that’s me. How’d you know my name?”

“Ruskin’s butler.”

“He talks to much.”

“I almost didn’t recognize you without your hazmat outfit.”

“What? Oh yeah. The spook suit. I put it on after I’ve been out of the house. Ruskin worries about bringing in bad stuff.”

“I’d ask you in for a cup of tea, Dudley, but the place is a mess. What brings you by this time of night?”

“Mr. Ruskin wanted me to tell you you’re off the case. He doesn’t need you anymore.”

“Funny, he didn’t say anything about firing me when I talked to him a few hours ago. He suggested I offer a reward to a source who might be able to lead him to the decoy.”

“Save your energy. You’re done.”

“Does that mean he’s found the decoy?”

“He knows where it is. You’re out of the picture.”

“He paid me a lot of money to snoop around.”

He sneered. “Don’t bother cashing the check. He’s going to put a stop payment on it.”

“Mr. Ruskin is stiffing me?”

“You didn’t find the bird. That was the deal. He had to take matters into his own hands. I’m here to pick up the fake bird.”

“It’s a fake. What’s the hurry?”

“Mr. Ruskin doesn’t like other people to have his property.”

“People like Mike Murphy?”

“Whaddya talking about?”

“I told Ruskin that Murphy might know where the decoy was. A few hours later someone put him in the hospital.”

Dudley smiled. “So?”

“So maybe the police might like to know the connection between your boss and Murphy getting beat up.”

“That would be stupid on your part.”

“Tell Ruskin I’ll drop the duck off tomorrow. Maybe we can talk about my paycheck then. Thanks for coming by, Dud.”

Calling him Dud was my first mistake. Turning away from a violent thug was my second. He moved in, and I saw him unfold his arms from across his chest a second before something hard slammed into the side of my head. My legs turned to rubber and I went over like a fallen oak.

I didn’t even have the chance to yell, “Timber!”

A groan woke me up, which wasn’t surprising because it was coming from my throat.

I pushed myself onto my elbows, then onto my knees, got my legs under me and staggered into the boathouse. The right side of my head was on fire. I had trouble focusing, but I saw that the inside of the house looked as if a bulldozer had gone through it. Only not as neat.

I called Kojak’s name and sighed with relief when he sauntered out of the bedroom. I splashed cold water on my face for the second time that night, put ice in a dish towel and held it tenderly against my head where it helped numb the pain.

I went out on the deck. The box was where I left it, behind the chair. The bird container was still inside.

Dudley said his boss knew where to find the Crowell decoy. I stood on the deck and recalled my conversation with Murphy, and the startled look on his face when I told him his gift to the museum had been moved to the barn.

I remembered, too, the way he had stared at the Crowell barn photo when I found him with his teeth smashed in. It was a deliberate gesture that must have caused him some pain but he did it anyhow.

Sometimes you don’t see the forest for the trees.

You can get so involved in the details, you can’t see the whole picture.

Whether he intended to or not, Mike’s wry comment told me he had found a safe place for the original Crowell. Right in the open, where no one would suspect it to be.

It was a short drive from my house to Brooks Academy. The black Cadillac was parked on a side road in the shadow of some trees.

I dug a filleting knife out of its case, snuck over to the car and stuck the blade into all four tires. The car slowly slumped onto its rims. About then, I heard the sound of an alarm from the workshop. Dudley was making his move. I got back in my truck and drove to the police station around a half mile away. I went in the front door and hurried up to the dispatcher’s desk.

“I just went by Brooks Academy and heard an alarm going off,” I said. “There’s a car parked nearby. Looked kinda suspicious.”

The dispatcher thanked me, and while she got on the phone I slipped out of the police station. I sat in my truck and saw a cruiser drive away from the station toward the museum. A minute later another patrol car raced past, going in the same direction.

I waited ten minutes, then drove by the museum. Four cruisers with roof lights flashing were parked near the museum. Some police officers were talking to a tall man. He had his back to me so I couldn’t see his face, but his hair looked even more silvery in the harsh beam of headlights.

On the way home I stopped by the bank ATM and deposited the check from Ruskin. The transaction went through, thanks to the warning from Dudley.

I was still thinking about Dudley when I stepped into the boathouse. He’d probably say he got drunk and broke into the workshop by mistake. Ruskin would spring him from jail before the arresting officers got off their shifts.

A guy like Dudley doesn’t make his way through life without leaving tracks. I called the best tracker I knew. If John Flagg was surprised to hear from me at three o’clock in the morning, he didn’t show it. He simply said, “Hello, Soc. Been a while. What’s up?”

Flagg seems to function without sleep. Which may have something to do with his job as a troubleshooter for an ultra-secret government unit. We’d met in Vietnam and bonded over our New England heritage. He was a Wampanoag Indian from Martha’s Vineyard whose ancestors had been around for thousands of years. My parents came to Massachusetts from the ancient land of Greece.

“Ever heard of a guy named Merriwhether Ruskin the 3rd?”

“Sure. He runs one of the biggest mercenary ops in the world. Bigger than the armies of lots of countries. Why do you ask?”

“He hired me for a job.”

“Never figured you for a soldier of fortune, Soc.”

“Me neither. That’s why I’m no longer on his payroll. Ruskin has another guy working for him. First name is Dudley. Maybe Australian. I know that isn’t much.”

“Give me a minute. I’ll look in the bad guy database.” He hung up. I could imagine him tapping into the vast intelligence network he had at his fingertips. He called back after three minutes. “He’s an Aussie named Dudley Wormsley, AKA ‘The Worm.’ Interpol has a pile of warrants out for him.”

“I thought as much. Wonder if there is any way to let the FBI know that ‘The Worm’ is sitting in the Harwich, Massachusetts police station, under arrest for breaking and entering.”

“I’ll take care of it. When we going fishing?”

“Charter boat’s coming out of the water, but there’s my dinghy. As you know, I don’t bait my hooks.”

“Suits me,” Flagg said.

I hung up and thought about Mike. He said he’d been attacked by goats. Dudley had referred to the hazmat suit as a spook suit. Spooks equal ghosts. Which meant plural. Which meant he wasn’t alone. Which meant the second ghost was Ruskin.

With Dudley out of the way, Ruskin was an open target, if I could get to him, although that was unlikely given the air-tight fortress he lived in. When I got home I retrieved the box from the deck and brought it inside. I took out the plastic case protecting the merganser, put it on the kitchen table and stared at it, taking in the graceful lines of the bird’s body and neck.

“Talk to me,” I said.

Early the next morning I got up, poured some coffee into a travel mug, and called Ruskin’s number. The butler answered the phone and said his boss was busy. I said that was all right. I merely wanted to drop off Mr. Ruskin’s decoy. He said to leave it at the gatehouse.

After hanging up, I got a small leather case out of a duffle bag I keep in my bedroom closet. Inside the case was a full range of lock picks. After a few tries, I popped the padlock and lifted the box lid back on its hinges. I remembered how Ruskin had reached into the box for the carving and lifted it above his head.

Then I took the decoy out of the box, put it in the sink and got a jar of peanut butter out of the refrigerator. I spooned some butter out of the jar onto the bird carving and smeared it all over the wooden feathers with my hands. Then I nestled the glistening fake bird back into its fake nest. I padlocked the box again and carried it out to the truck.

As I drove away from the gatehouse after dropping the box off for Mr. Ruskin, I thought what I’d done was rather sneaky and not very nice. Maybe Ruskin was allergic to peanuts. Maybe not. But I didn’t like being played for a patsy, especially when innocent people are hurt. It happened at a village in Vietnam, and with Murphy. It wasn’t going to happen again.

I stopped by the hospital on the way home. Mike was out of the ICU and sleeping. The nurse in charge said he was doing fine.

Bridget called me that night to say that she had been trying to reach Ruskin, but his butler said he wasn’t available. She said she would keep me posted. I didn’t know what Ruskin was allergic to when I returned his decoy. Maybe I just got lucky.

Mike got out of the hospital a few days later. I drove him home and checked in on him while he healed and popped painkillers. When I asked why he had called me instead of 911, he said it was because Marines stick together.

Once he was able to talk at length we discussed what to do about the Crowell decoy.

He confessed that he’d taken it from the Orloff mansion for payment of back wages. When he found out the bird was worth maybe a million dollars, he knew he couldn’t sell it. He read about Chinese reproductions somewhere and went into the fake decoy business for himself. He had the original scanned in New York and made in China. He sold out the first batch except for the one he kept. But he started to get nervous about attracting attention to himself and wanted the Crowell bird out of the house. He hid it in plain sight at the historical society museum, never figuring they’d put it in the Crowell barn.

“Legally speaking, the bird belongs to Ruskin,” I said. “He told me that he paid Orloff for the merganser, but I have only his word for that. It’s quite possible no money exchanged hands, which means that the sale never went through. In that case, Orloff was still the owner. Did he have any heirs?”

“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.”