Part 11 (2/2)
”I'm glad you stopped by,” she said, extending her hand and shaking mine. ”I knew you'd enjoy yourself here. There's so much to see.”
”And learn.” I gestured toward the poster I hadn't had time to read. ”You weren't kidding when you told me about the pirate at the wake. There really were pirates. In Illinois!”
Susan laughed. ”Well, not too many of them. In fact, we like to think of old Thunderin' Ben as the one and only. That's what makes him so fascinating. He was born in Ardent, you know. Did you have a chance to look at the exhibit?”
I told her I hadn't and she waited until the senior citizens had moved on to the next room and ushered me closer so that I could get a good look at the grainy black-and-white photograph of an old lake schooner, sails unfurled, cutting through the water.
”That was Thunderin' Ben's s.h.i.+p,” Susan explained. ”The Annie Darling. He captained that s.h.i.+p for nearly fifty years, and wreaked havoc up and down the sh.o.r.eline of Lake Michigan.” She smiled. ”These days, it all sounds like something out of a screwball comedy, but I suppose back in the early 1920s-that's when Ben was at his thunderin' best-well, it was serious business.”
Inside the gla.s.s display case in front of the picture was a replica of a buoy bobbing in the southern end of a painted Lake Michigan, and Susan pointed to it. ”One of the things Ben was famous for is what's called mooncussing,” she said. ”Don't ask me where the word comes from! I only know what it means and that was that pirates like Ben would move the buoy markers and that would cause s.h.i.+ps to go aground. Then once the crew abandoned s.h.i.+p, Ben and his crew of bandits would board the vessels and steal everything they could. They used to do the same sort of thing with the Annie Darling, sneak into a port at night when no one was around, and dock the s.h.i.+p long enough to steal anything that wasn't nailed down.”
I couldn't help it. In my own imagination, I wondered if someday there would be a display about Marci Steiner in the Big Museum.
”Of course, what Ben is really famous for around here...” Susan snapped me out of the thought with a wave toward a book with a tattered brown cover inside the display case. ”His diary,” she said, her eyes lighting. ”And though I've read it cover to cover and never found a thing, there are supposedly clues inside. You know, about the treasure.”
Aha! Now all the interest in Thunderin' Ben was starting to make sense.
”Let me guess,” I said, ”Caribbean islands, sandy beaches.”
”No such thing.” Susan laughed. ”The legend says that the treasure is buried nearby.” Still smiling, she turned from the display. ”Every once in a while, someone gets it into their head to try and find it, but so far, no one's had any luck. Personally, I think old Thunderin' Ben made it all up. He was as big a storyteller as he was a pirate.”
”You mean no pieces of eight and gold doubloons?”
Susan's shrug said it didn't matter. ”Never that,” she said. ”The story says that on one of those midnight raids of his, Ben ended up with the chest full of money that was headed up to the mining camps along Lake Superior. Thousands and thousands of dollars. Who knows if that's true! All I know is that the more interest there is in Ben and his treasure, the more people come to visit the museum. And really, that's all I care about.”
”Which is exactly why you were so happy to get the charm string, right?”
It seemed the most natural question in the world to me, yet something about it must have signaled to Susan that the topic of our conversation had s.h.i.+fted. Just a tad. She gave me a quick, sidelong look. ”Would you like to see the spot we had picked out for it?” she asked, and without waiting for me to answer, she led the way.
We crossed the wide entranceway to the other side of the building and a room that reminded me a whole lot of the parlor at the Little Museum. Victorian bric-a-brac, flamboyant furniture, elaborate paintings. Like the Little Museum but not. Susan's palatial to Marci's homespun. If she was trying to compete, I could understand why Marci had turned to a life of crime.
”There.” Susan waved her hand toward a wide-and very bare-expanse of wall. ”We were going to install it starting there.” She swung around to her left, then did a slow arc in the other direction. ”All the way to there. One thousand b.u.t.tons. The charm string was going to take up a lot of room.”
”It would have looked great. And to think, you almost didn't get the charm string at all.”
Have I mentioned that I'm getting really good at sounding casual when I'm actually digging for information?
Maybe not as good as I thought, though, because Susan glared at me, her eyes narrowed. ”What are you talking about?”
”Angela,” I said, still oh so casual. ”You know, she originally offered the charm string to Marci.”
Susan flinched. ”You're kidding me, right?”
”Heard it from Marci.”
”Well, consider the source.”
”Let's pretend she is telling the truth.” I dangled the possibility in front of Susan. ”That would leave us with two questions. Number one, why would Angela offer the charm string to Marci in the first place? And number two, why would she change her mind within just a couple days and call you?”
”Is that what happened? Who knows why? I told you before, Angela was crazy.”
”That actually might explain it,” I conceded, but I didn't add that it wasn't likely. In my experience, there were far more complicated and sinister reasons for murder than simple craziness. ”But what if it wasn't because she was crazy? Why would Angela want the charm string to go to the Little Museum?”
”Well, that seems like a no-brainer, doesn't it?” As if the thought sat uncomfortably, Susan twitched her shoulders. ”Angela and I weren't exactly best friends.”
”Because of Larry.”
I wasn't imagining it-a small smile touched the corners of her mouth.
”But if that's true, why would Angela change her mind?” I ask.
That smile froze in place and Susan's shoulders shot back. ”Maybe Angela realized Marci was just as nuts as she was. Imagine, anyone taking that tacky little museum of hers seriously! And the woman is so enamored of herself, she's even had a state-of-the-art security system installed. Honestly, Marci Steiner's ego could float a boat.”
”So Angela withdrew her offer because of Marci's ego?”
”Well, Angela had something of an ego of her own, you know. She's the one who insisted we put on that tea party in her honor. You know, as a thank-you to her for donating the b.u.t.tons. We've never done anything like that for any other donor. But Angela said, no party, no charm string.”
”And you caved.”
”I cooperated.” Susan stepped away from me and I knew what it meant. Marci might be uppity and think more of herself than any museum curator should, but Susan was important and had things to do. ”I did what was good for my museum,” she pointed out. ”In the end, that was all that mattered anyway.”
”So you're willing to believe that Angela simply changed her mind. Kind of like Larry changed his mind when he dumped you for her.”
Her chin came up a fraction of an inch, and that tiny smile was back.
”Ancient history,” Susan said. ”And it doesn't matter now, anyway. Larry realizes he made a mistake. He freely admits it. And in case you don't know what I'm getting at here, Ms. Giancola, let me be perfectly clear: it doesn't matter what Angela did or said. Angela is dead. And Larry and I? We're a couple again.”
Chapter Twelve.
AS FASCINATING AS ALL THIS WAS-MARCI BEING A Thief, Susan and Larry together again, motives piling up for Angela's murder like the slush piles along Chicago's curbs in January-I did have a real life to live. And a real business to run.
I intended to do both the next day.
As soon as I made one quick stop.
A note here, and it's an important one: It wasn't like I was missing Kaz. Honest. But when it came to Kaz, something strange was going on, no doubt about that. There had been a major change in the routine he'd followed in all the time we'd been divorced, the one that had Kaz coming around to see me at least once a week to ask for money.
Which, naturally, meant there had been a change in my routine, too-the one where I roll my eyes when he shows up and firmly tell him no.
I didn't have to be pining for my ex to be curious. And believe me, I wasn't pining for my ex.
But I was plenty curious.
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