"Marks, Jeffrey - Dead Man's Chest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marks Jeffrey)

He walked over to where Stacker and I stood. "Have either of you seen this before?"

He held up a pocketwatch, Civil War era, replete with a small bullet mark where the owner had been saved from death by its existence. I didn't know all this from a glance as a phenomenal appraiser; the watch was a family heirloom.

I'd thought the watch safely tucked inside my truck. Such possessions didn't get put out at setup of an outdoor show. I only brought family items on the off chance that I sold everything on the table. Since the watch had remained in the family over one hundred years, people could guess my business wasn't that good.

I swallowed hard and owned up, putting the final nail in my own hope chest. The policeman took more notes while I tried to explain my marketing strategy. His eyes held a gleam that said the case was solved from his viewpoint. Stacker tried to examine the watch, but the officer brushed him away from potential evidence. Stacker stepped back and disappeared into the crowd. Faces of strangers nearly ringed me. Any one of them could be responsible for this crime.

Desperate to find another suspect, I asked, "Excuse me, but where is the woman who found the body?" The cop looked up from his notes and pulled his sunglasses down his nose. I could see the gray eyes behind them as he squinted trying to locate the woman with the healthy lungs. Based on her screams, she could run a marathon without breaking a sweat.

He shrugged. "We'll get by without her. Now do you recognize this plastic bag?"

"You could be letting the murderer off the hook while you decide paper or plastic? We have to find her." He pushed the glasses back up with his thumb. "We don't need to do anything. I need to get all this down. Now have you seen this bag before?"

The back of my truck abutted my selling space. I pointed to the boxes stacked against the back wall of the mini-mover. "One of those is filled with bags." He stepped inside the truck and on the first try, opened a box full of similar bags. Newspaper and little plastic grocery bags remain the staples of packaging antiques at a show. My hands come home from a show black with news ink.

Margaret strode towards us. "Satan takes his own. I saw that one this morning." She pointed an accusing finger down at the chest.

The officer sighed. "What was he doing?"

"Coveting the property of another. He came out of a neighbor's truck, carrying something."

"So he was alive this morning?" My mind reeled. I had wondered when Marcus had been killed. I knew that the heavy chest had been empty when I had loaded the truck. The lid had fallen open and nicked my garage wall. That meant he'd been killed since I'd arrived. "Was he set up here today?"

Stacker leaned against the truck wall. "His spot was empty when I came in, but that doesn't mean anything. He could have been in anyone else's booth, trying to hawk their goods while they were -- occupied." My mind clicked. "Margaret, the only time I left my truck this morning was when I asked you to watch my goods while I went to the restroom. Someone must have killed Marcus then."

The woman had the decency to redden. "I had a customer interested in two of my oil paintings. High dollar items." The cop looked through another of my boxes. "So you didn't see anyone around his truck?"

She shook her head. "As I said, that Redmon was sniffing around the trucks, but he was the only one." I surveyed my truck again and then searched the crowd. "Weren't the security guards around? Aren't they supposed to be watching our merchandise?"

The cop looked up at me, eyes blinking rapidly. "What are you trying to say?"

"If you'd have caught Marcus going through my truck, you would have arrested him. But what if he found you rifling my boxes?"

"That's absurd."

"You had a good eye for what box held the plastic bags just now. Almost like you already knew what was in the boxes. Lucky guess? What if Marcus had seen you pulling something out of my back-up stock and confronted you?" Stacker stepped forward again like a Greek chorus. "Several pieces of mine have turned up missing lately." The cop shot him an angry glance and Stacker's mouth snapped shut.

"I thought that robbery was too weak a motive for murder, but it wouldn't have been just robbery with you. You'd have lost your job, your pension, maybe even have gone to jail. So you hit him on the head, wrapped the bag over his head, and dumped him in the chest along with the goods you'd been trying to take. No one pays attention to the security guards looking in the merchandise."

The stubby pencil stopped as the wail of sirens began as a whisper over the rolling hills. The cop turned and began to run towards the rear exit of the show. Stacker smiled softly. "Men just can't wait to get away from you, can they, Brett?"

***

Jeffrey Marks, Cincinnati, OH, [email protected]