H.J. Gaudreau - Betrayal in the Louvre (28 page)

Chapter 59

Jim’s new combine rolled steadily across the nearly frozen ground.  The big red machine cut the corn stalks off at their knees while picking and shucking the cobs.  It then sprayed the mast out behind.  He loved this combine.  It had a good cabin heater, it started up on the first turn of the key, it was easy to use and didn’t take a lot of maintenance; what more could a man ask for? 

He thought about Paul Marcil.  The man had been stealing art from France for the past ten years.  He’d headed a group of killers, art thieves and blackmailers with tentacles all across the country.  It seemed impossible, but the French
Police Nationale
had solved more than two dozen crimes after questioning him.  They had faced two professional killers and a madman.  It was a miracle they had both survived.  The French government had been grateful, extremely grateful.  That, combined with the gratitude of the Louvre and he and Eve would not need to worry about the price of corn anytime soon. 

In short order the last rows of standing corn were down.  He unloaded the crop into a grain wagon.  Hopping into the seat of his tractor, he pulled it to a small silo next to the barn.  The corn wouldn’t stay there too long, the market seemed to be moving in his direction, and he’d sell within a month. 

He put the combine and the wagon in the equipment shed.  The tractor went to the barn.  Returning to the combine he spent the next hour cleaning, changing filters, greasing bearings and the other general work required to put the machine up for the winter.  Then, for the next forty-five minutes he did the same with his tractor.  He was certain he wouldn’t be running these machines until the spring.

Stuffing his hands deep into his pockets and hunching his shoulders against the wind Jim left the barn.  The snow wasn’t deep, only an inch or two lay on the nearly frozen ground.  He walked across the backyard to the house, knocked the snow off his boots on the bottom step then climbed the five steps to the porch.  There, he turned and looked at his fields.  With the corn down he could see the woods behind the house and the neighbor’s fields on both sides of his.  He preferred the summer when all he could see was his own fields and pasture.  It was dusk, the wind was cold and the sky a metal gray.  He opened the door and went inside. 

“Are you done?” Eve called.

“Yup, everything is cleaned up and ready for the winter.  That new combine is great, and nothing beats a heated cab.” 

She brought him a cup of coffee as he took off his boots.  “Got the tickets…” she said, “…plane leaves next Friday.”

“You know hon; at first I didn’t like the idea, but a winter house in Key West.  You’re brilliant.” 

Postscript

Philippe Louis Palatine, Chairman and CEO of Perpétuel Energy, Duke of Orleans, Prince du Sang, and rightful King of France walked slowly along the sidewalk on the east side of the
Musée du Louvre
.  In his hand he held a small package.  Inside the package, a solid gold replica of the Sword of Charlemagne.  The box was nearly a foot long and weighed over a pound.  He stopped and stared at the museum for a long moment. 

“Merci beaucoup,” he whispered.

After a short walk he finally stepped to his limousine.  A middle aged man, with salt and pepper hair held the door.  “Have this delivered for me if you would Henri.” 

The man glanced at the package.  “Sir, there is no address.” 

“Ah, yes, mail it to Jim and Eve Crenshaw, someplace in the United States.  Michigan, I believe.”

END

About the Author

HJ Gaudreau is a retired Air Force Colonel.  Originally from Michigan, he currently lives with his wife Eve and beagle, Molly, in Oklahoma.  They have one son, living very near to his Uncle Gerry and Aunt Sherrie.

The house is for sale and they hope to soon move home to northern Michigan.

SAMPLE HJ GAUDREAU’S NEXT NOVEL

THE

COLLINGWOOD

LEGACY

Only the treasure in an old smuggler’s boat can save a business empire

Madness turns to murder

Follow Jim as he races to save his wife from a killer

Please enjoy the first seven chapters of H J Gaudreau’s next thriller

THE

COLLINGWOOD LEGACY

THE

COLLINGWOOD LEGACY

AVAILABLE  NOW!

Chapter 1

Detroit, September 1931

Anna Lademan ran an iron along the length of a man’s long sleeve shirt.  Not satisfied with the result she sat the iron on its end and picked up a tall glass bottle with a yellow Vernor’s label and a cork sprinkler head.  She gave the bottle a shake and scattered small droplets of water along the sleeve.  Again taking up her iron she finished the sleeve, placed the shirt on a hanger, and hung it next to a dozen similar shirts.  After a quick glance at the remaining baskets of laundry she placed her hands on her hips, bent backward, chin to the ceiling and sighed.  At five cents a shirt she could not afford to rest, but she had earned a quick stretch. 

Anna then took a woman’s floral dress from her basket and began to spread it on her ironing board.  She did this with a bit of nostalgia.  Her wedding dress had been a pretty flowered dress like this one.  They had met in late winter, 1916.  Her husband Abell had been a big man, with a full head of red hair and a broad back.  He was also a romantic; he loved flowers and the spring.  He had insisted they marry when the earth was new, crops were in the ground, and flowers were blooming.  So, in the spring of 1918, two weeks after Anna turned nineteen they married.  He died the next November.

She always thought that ironic, so many people were celebrating the end of the Great War, and her husband, who had fought in it hadn’t been there.  Abell had gone off to war in January 1917.  By the February of 1918 he was home, one leg left behind in France, but home.  She had her man and they would be all right.  Then came the Spanish flu.  Abell left in the morning for his job at the post office, that night he came home with a cough, by evening he couldn’t stand, and he died before morning.  The speed of his death had always troubled Anna.  She hadn’t had time to tell him how much he meant to her, about their unborn child, to make plans.  He hadn’t seen his boy, didn’t know how much his son looked like him; never tussled his hair.  Anna’s eyes began to tear.

In what seemed like the Almighty’s ploy to drag her from the depths of depression a crash sounded from the small living room behind her.  An instant later Anna’s pride and joy, her son Ezra, exploded into the kitchen. 

“David told me he needs help selling newspapers today,” the boy announced. 

There had been another murder; one of the Licavoli Squad had been gunned down by the Purple Gang.  The Times had run an ‘extra’ edition.

“He said I’d get two cents for every paper I sold.” 

“How much does David get?”  Anna asked with a knowing smile. 

“He keeps three cents.  He said it’s because he’s the official representative of the Times and he’s responsible.  Come on Ma, I can get us a half bushel of apples if I sell twenty-five papers.”

Anna smiled a mother’s smile and nodded at her boy.  “Give me a kiss,” she said and Ezra was out the door.

The fall of 1931 was cold and rainy.  Today was no exception.  David Puginwitz stood outside the Collingwood Manor apartment building and called to the pedestrians on either side of the street.  In the last hour he had sold only five newspapers, and the day was turning old.  David pulled his collar up and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets.  It worked for a moment but the strap of his newspaper bag slid off his small shoulder and the bag fell to the wet sidewalk. 

Worried the newspapers would be ruined, David uttered a curse he’d learned from his father, removed his hands from his coat pockets and hiked the strap back to his shoulder.  He then blew on his clenched fists and jammed them back into his pockets.  If he hunched his shoulder the bag held its position.  Sadly, to David’s never ending annoyance, the moment he relaxed his shoulder it fell to the sidewalk and the process was repeated.

As David pulled the newspaper bag to his shoulder for what seemed the fiftieth time he heard his friend Ezra’s voice.  The two boys greeted each other and immediately fell into a detailed discussion of their mutual obsession, the Detroit Tigers.  David was a master of recalling the details of each of the summer’s games.  And, what he didn’t remember he could invent.  Ezra was a walking almanac of baseball statistics.  Today, the conversation quickly turned to how bad this season had been and which players their team needed to replace.  After a few minutes of baseball David pulled the newspaper bag from his shoulder and handed it to Ezra. 

“I’m going inside to get warm.  Don’t let the bag get wet.  I can’t sell a wet newspaper.” 

David got all of two steps when Ezra suddenly exclaimed, “I almost forgot!  Look what I’ve got!” 

With that, Ezra pulled a tin from his coat pocket and opened it.  Inside lay a small stack of baseball trading cards; several packs of cigarettes lay on top of the cards, candy wrapped in foil peeked from between cards.  Ezra put the newspaper bag on the sidewalk, causing David to grimace and handed one of the cigarette packs to David. 

David examined the pack of Sweet Caporal cigarettes.  “What do I want with these?  I don’t smoke.  And I ain’t startin’ now.  Ma says it makes your teeth fall out.” 

“Geeze, I know that.  But, turn it over,” Ezra said with a proud grin.

David did as he was told.  To his delight on the back of the package was the prettiest Ty Cobb trading card he’d ever seen.  “Holy smokes!  This is great!” he explained.  All thoughts of a warm stove disappeared.  Immediately David began offering combinations of his cards in trade for one of the new Ty Cobb cards.  A brief argument over the value of various cards, new cards versus old cards, gum cards versus dry goods cards, a round of potential deals in which both boys tried to dump hated Yankee players on the other and soon a deal was struck.  A few minutes later David was examining his new card when the possibility that Ezra had stolen the cigarettes crossed his mind.   

“Where’d you get the cigarette packs Ezra?” David said with newly found suspicion.  “If you lifted them and my Ma finds out…”

“I didn’t steal nothin’!”  Ezra then began to explain how Mr. Kacrozowski left two cartons of cigarettes and four shirts at his house.  He was coming to the part about how a drunken Mr. Kaczorowski tried to grab his mother, and what she had called Mr. Kacrozowski when she hit him on the head with a frying pan, when a new, black four-door Chrysler coasted to a stop in front of the building.  Instinctively, both boys ceased their chatter.

The front passenger door opened and a man with a dark gray tweed overcoat stepped to the curb.  He took a moment to study the street.  His glance passed over the boys, then both sides of the street in each direction.  Finally, he studied the windows of the nearby buildings.  Satisfied, he nodded in the direction of the car.  Two men climbed out of the back seat.  One reflexively skimmed his hand over his hip and said, “I didn’t bring my gun.”

The other glanced at him, “I told ya, ya don’t bring guns to a meeting like this.”  Walking around to the trunk of the car he removed a brown briefcase.  The three men gathered on the curb.  The driver shut off the engine, got out and walked around the front of the car.  As if on command the three men, in matching strides, approached the steps to the building.  Their shoes making a rhythmic ‘smack…smack…smack’ on the wet concrete as they approached the boys.  The driver hurried around the car and ran to catch up.

Ezra knew something about the street.  These guys were going to take his baseball cards and maybe shake down David for his paper money.  Realizing it was too late to slip the tin back in his pocket he pushed it to the bottom of the newspaper bag.  Then he stepped behind David. 

The three men swept past the two boys without looking at them.  The driver, now only a step or two behind, turned and flipped a silver dollar in their direction.  “You kids!  Keep an eye on my car,” he snarled.   Ezra tried to catch the coin and missed.  The man stopped.  The coin rang off the step and rolled to the sidewalk.  

“C’mon Sol!” one barked, and the men entered the apartment building.