The Burglar Who Counted the Spoons (Bernie Rhodenbarr) (30 page)

“And he said no, all four spoons were in the living room cabinet where they belong. And I said the last time I polished them I noticed there were only three, and I meant to mention it to him, but I kept forgetting. So we went in and checked, and Button Gwinnett was missing, and he said that was funny, he could have sworn they were all there the other night, and I said no, it must have been a good week since I noticed one wasn’t there, and I really meant to mention it, but I wasn’t really worried because I took it for granted he’d let his buddy at the Historical Society borrow it, or the other museum up the block, or there’s a lady in Philadelphia at Independence Hall who’s always bugging us about stuff related to the signers. By the time I left for my class, we’d pretty much agreed that he must have let somebody borrow it, and it was a matter of figuring out who it was. Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I’m in awe.”

“Yeah? I don’t know how stuff like this is supposed to work, but I thought I better be the one who notices it’s missing. If he spots it first, who’s the first person he looks at?”

“It makes perfect sense.”

“Plus I didn’t want him thinking it was you that took it, even if he doesn’t know who you are. ‘There was a fellow here the other night, a Mr. Lederman.’
He
said Lederman, but that wasn’t quite right, was it?”

“Lederer.”

“So he remembered it wrong, which is even better. ‘A nice fellow, brought me the Culloden book. But I made sure he was never out of my sight.’ ”

“All that coffee,” I remembered, “and he never once went to the bathroom. His back teeth must have been floating by the time I got out of there.”

“So he knew you couldn’t have taken it, but now he knows it went missing before you came over. So you’re clear, and so’s Lederer, and Lederman, too, as far as that goes.”

“I’ll let them both know,” I said. “It’ll be a load off their minds.”

“He’ll have me write letters,” she said, “to a couple of museums. And then something else’ll go missing, and when it turns up he’ll realize he misplaced it, and he’ll decide that must have been what happened to the spoon. And he’ll wait for it to turn up.”

“But without any great sense of urgency.”

“No, because it’s not like he needs it to stir his oatmeal.” She took a deep breath. “Well,” she said. “I guess you’d like to see the spoon.”

“That would be good.”

“And I’d just as soon get it out of my purse.”

She passed it to me, swathed in tissue paper. I unswathed it, and it wasn’t Ben Franklin with his key or Caesar Rodney with his horse. I wrapped it up again, slipped it in a pocket.

“Um,” she said.

“Oh, right.” I fetched envelopes from my cash box. “You’ll want to count these. It’ll be more private in back.”

She disappeared into my back room. I took one more look at the spoon, ran my thumb over the refined features of the gentleman from Georgia and his eponymous Button.

Then, the spoon back in my pocket, I went to the window and looked outside. No white van, no van of any sort.

Not that I expected one. But you can’t be too paranoid, can you?

“Twenty thousand dollars,” she said.

“I gather it was all there?”

She nodded. She seemed perfectly calm, but there was excitement in her eyes. “Plus the five thousand you already gave me.”

“Yes, we don’t want to forget that.”

“I’ll say. It’s as much as I earn in a year.”

“Twenty-five thousand?”

“
Five
thousand,” she said. “Well, fifty-two hundred, to be exact. I get a hundred a week.”

I found myself computing the average cost of a Happy Ending, and some of that may have shown on my face.

“It’s not much money,” she said, “but I’ve got a better deal than a whole lot of people. I have my own room in an amazing Upper Fifth Avenue apartment, and I have my meals, and my hours are very flexible. But it’s hard to put any money aside, you know?”

“I can imagine.”

“What I want to do,” she said, “is go to Europe. I had it worked out that ten thousand dollars would give me a year in Europe. You don’t think so? I couldn’t have a real job over there, but I don’t have a real job here, do I? I could find ways to make money. I could teach ESL. You know, English as a Second Language? Which never made sense to me, calling it that, because if English is your first language, nobody has to teach it to you. You just pick it up from your parents.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Or something else’ll turn up. Something always does, and it’s always an education, you know? I mean, I didn’t know anything about silver until I started working for Mr. L. And now look at all I’ve learned about silver, and about American history.”

“And now you can learn all about European history.”

“I was going to take a course in the fall.
Europe Since 1815.
In other words, after Napoleon. Then later on I guess I’d have to go back and learn something about Napoleon.”

“Before you know it,” I said, “you’ll be back in ancient Rome.”

“That’s on my list of places to go. Rome, I mean. Ancient Rome, I’d need a time machine. But for modern Rome, I could go tomorrow.”

“I don’t think—”

“Oh, I know! I’ll stay right where I am, at the very least until the end of August.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“And I won’t spend one dime of this money, and if I see something in a shop window that I’ll just die if I don’t buy it, I’ll do what I do now.”

“What’s that?”

“I won’t buy it,” she said, “and I won’t die, either.” She patted her handbag. “I’ll keep this until it’s time to go. I’m not stupid.”

“I can see that.”

“Except I am, in a way, because until yesterday it never occurred to me that I could make money this way.”

“By stealing,” I said, partly to see if she recoiled at the word.

“Right. I mean, I had the thought that this stuff was worth money, and it wouldn’t be hard to get out the door with it. But then what? So that’s as far as the thought ever went, until you came along.”

“In shining armor.”

“Yeah. Um, this works out to be a good deal for both of us, right? You’ll make money, too, won’t you?”

“About the same amount as you. And without the risk.”

“What about the risk that I’d chicken out and go whining to the police? No, you took a chance. We both did, and we both get a payoff, and I think that’s really neat. I owe you a lot, really. You opened up a whole world for me.”

“Well—”

“I wish there was something I could do, and do you know what? There is.” She walked to the door, threw the bolt, and turned the sign in the window from
OPEN
to
CLOSED.
“You’re not exactly packed with customers,” she said, “and I saw you’ve got a couch in the back room, and I’m a trained masseuse. So why don’t you let me give you the best massage you ever had in your life?”

∗    ∗    ∗

A good deal more than I’d known a month ago. Back then all I knew was what most people know—he’d been one of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, and he’d written his name infrequently enough to make his signature far and away the rarest of the lot. The signers have always been a popular topic for autograph collectors, and it’s not hard to understand why; signing their names, after all, was the source of fame for these men, and if you could manage to get all fifty-six—

Well, see, you couldn’t. Not without Button Gwinnett, and that’s what made his signature hugely expensive.

That’s about all I knew. Since then I’d learned, from my client and from my good buddies Google and Wikipedia, a fair amount more. For one thing, I learned that he’d come by his first name honestly. He’d been born in 1735 in England to Welsh parents, and his mother’s maiden name was Button. He went to school in Gloucester, where his name may have gotten him teased by the other boys, but maybe not. Maybe the kids were nicer there than the ones I knew in Ohio.

He set up as a merchant, got married, emigrated to the colonies, and moved from Charleston to Georgia, where he bought land and started a plantation. He was politically active, and became the bitter rival of another Georgian, one Lachlan McIntosh.

John Hancock of Massachusetts was the first man to sign the Declaration of Independence, and we all learned how he wielded his quill pen with a bold flourish while announcing that King George wouldn’t need his spectacles to read it. And everybody recognizes that signature, although the man himself has about as much connection to the insurance company as Ethan Allen has to the furniture. What you don’t know (or at least I didn’t) is that Button Gwinnett was the second person to put his name on the Declaration.

Remember Lachlan McIntosh? Gwinnett was in line for the command of the First Regiment of the Continental Army, but McIntosh beat him out. This didn’t sit well with Gwinnett, and the possibility exists that he didn’t handle disappointment well. And, on the 16
th
of May in 1777, less than a year after he’d made himself immortal by signing his name, he proved his mortality on the physical plane by losing a duel to that same Lachlan McIntosh. He died of his wounds three days later, on the 19
th
of May.

Or it may have been eleven days later, on the 27
th
of May. Sources, as they say, differ.

“Whenever the man died,” I told my client, “he lingered for a minimum of three days.”

“Not uncommon at the time, you know. A wound we’d nowadays regard as superficial would lead as often as not to an untreatable infection.”

“But he’d have been conscious in the days before he died, wouldn’t he?”

“For the most part, I’d think. Why?”

“Well, it’s too late now,” I said, “but it occurred to me that someone with a little foresight could have handed him a pen and a stack of index cards.”

There was a long pause. “I suppose that’s an interesting area for speculation.” His tone was the careful sort one uses when speaking with someone who’s off his meds. “Was there anything else?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact.” My bell jingled, and my cat perked up his ears, and I looked up at my visitor and shifted conversational gears abruptly. “Some good news, Mrs. Hawkins. I’ve got a lead on a nice copy of his first novel. Let me check and get back to you.”