Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3)

  What critics say:

  The Albert Mysteries

  “Albert is one of my all-time favorite sleuths.”New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen“

  (The Albert Mysteries)…shine with comic brilliance. Crossman has a gift for creating characters…who should show up in further adventures of Albert. And there should be more.”Chicago Sun-Times

  “If you have ever aspired to be a private detective, here is some hilarious inspiration. Crossman’s delightfully offbeat tale of wacky academic politics contains a host of bizarre characters and an inexplicable homicide. Albert is indeed a unique, likable operative. I certainly look forward to an encore.”St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “The (novels are) an exercise in the comic style, defying disbelief. To his credit, Crossman brings it off nicely. Albert is clearly a survivor, likely to be heard from again.”Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Crossman…creates an offbeat, sympathetic sleuth who meanders innocently through this tale like a lamb through a pack of wolves. Bravo. Encore!Publishers Weekly

  The Winston Crisp Mysteries

  “Crossman is a skilled mystery writer with a knack for suspense, clues, local color, and a flowing story. His creation, venerable Winston Crisp, is a compelling and likable old fellow whose reappearance in future stories will be warmly received.”Times Record

  “The writing is fast-paced and full of enough twists and turns to engage the most avid of mystery readers. Crisp is a delightful, plausible sleuth. I look forward to more Crisp books.”Maine Sunday Telegram

  “As clever as (this) premise is, as satisfactory as the complex plot may be to the mystery buff…it is the peripheral characters that make this book shine. Let’s hope Mr. Crisp and his pals survive the mayhem and entertain us again.”Ellsworth Weekly

  The Shroud Collector (formerly Dead of Winter)

  “Crossman has created a delightfully unique detective in Winston Crisp, who uses his brains, not his brawn. With the help of a charming cast of supporting characters, both author and sleuth triumph with panache.” Tess Gerritsen,New York Times best-selling author.

  “It is the author’s intimate portraits of life on a Maine island that pull this book together and give it character. Neither Nero Wolfe, nor Columbo, nor most of the rest of the thousands of storybook sleuths ever came close.”Brunswick Sun Journal

  “David Crossman is a wizard.The Shroud Collectoris a charmingly crafted, magically airy book, not to be mistaken for a lightweight.”Kennebec Sunday Journal

  The Bean and Ab Mysteries

  “These well-structured tales never loses momentum. Bean and Ab are likable characters who move through the stories, unearthing clues that take them closer to solving mysteries past and present. Their youthful enthusiasm, investigative prowess, and endearing friendship make for interesting characterization. The carefully orchestrated chapters and the fast pace will hold children’s attention throughout.”School Library Journal

  “Impossible-to-put-down Maine mystery. Suspense builds neatly from chapter to chapter, and the ending is richly satisfying.”Bangor Daily News, Sunday

  “Crossman’sSecret of the Missing Graveis a gripping and well-imagined adventure mystery.”The Horn Book (Boston Globe)

  “Be warned…you’ll find this suspenseful volume as fascinating as your youngster will.”Portland Press Herald

  Copyright 2017 David Crossman

  Published by Alibi Folio Publishers

  24 Blakeport Lane

  Palm Coast, FL 32137

  Printed in the United States of America

  Third edition

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918592

  All rights reserved. With the exception of brief quotations for the purpose of review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN 978-1-4800-3539-3

  Other than those individuals familiar to history, the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to folks living or dead is entirely coincidental, but not surprising, given that their characteristics are common to us all.

  Cover Design: CiA

  Coda

  by

  David Crossman

  Alibi-Folio Publishers

  Palm Coast, FL, U.S.A.

  Dedication

  To W.C. for the spark

  And Anne Sampson for the right word.

  CODA

  The Third Albert Mystery

  Chapter One

  The Courtauld Gallery, London—1986

  The distinction between a mausoleum and a museum was too fine for Albert to grasp. To him, they were both places for storing dead things. Yet the people in charge of his life—those who picked him up at airports in limousines and took him to hotels, and made him meet people he didn’t want to meet, and talk to reporters he didn’t want to talk to, and gave him medals and ribbons for which he had no room in his life—always seemed to assume he had an insatiable need to see whatever museum was the pride and joy of their particular city. Albert knew what to do; stand in front of whatever work of art they were trying to get him excited about and tilt his head this way and that, and nod at it. Smile. Nod some more and say something like, ‘oh,’ or ‘ah’, to make it seem like he got it.

  But Albert didn’t get it. In fact, apart from music, he didn’t get much of anything. The horrible events of recent memory had only made him realize howmuch he didn’t get. His ignorance of people—their motivations, the things that compelled them to do what, to him, were extraordinary things—turned out to be far more profound than he’d ever imagined; mostly because he’d never thought about it, but partly because, when events finally forced themselves upon his consciousness, they were completely alien to him.

  Alien. From another planet, like Clark Kent—living in constant anxiety lest the Earthlings find him out. That was Albert. Of course, that was stretching the comparison. If push came to shove, Clark Kent could always turn into Superman and fly away, or melt something with his eyes.

  At least he knew what planet he was from.

  Albert didn’t.

  His mother and sister were from Maine. He probably was, too. Maybe Maine was another planet. That would explain a lot.

  Maybe he shouldn’t tell people where he was from.

  “This is my favorite,” said the lady with hoops hanging from her ears who had been escorting him since lunch. Why she was escorting him, he didn’t know. Maybe there had been a drawing and she’d lost.

  That was probably it.

  No one had told him to follow her after the media event that afternoon at the BBC, everyone seemed to assume that he would, so he did.

  They were very big hoops. Albert had seen something similar in a birdcage once, and wondered what the lady would look like with a parakeet hanging from each ear. That would make her more interesting to look at. She was holding a purse in both hands and kind of shaking it in the direction of a painting. “Jackson Pollack.”

  Albert looked at the thing in the frame, beside which was a little black card that said, in white print, ‘Yellow Island.’ This time, he tilted his head in earnest, but tilt as he might he couldn’t find the naked lady, which is what most of the art in that particular museum was about. Nor, apart from obvious little mistakes in yellow, could he see an island.

  A Pollock was a fish. Maybe there was a fish in all that mess somewhere.

  He tilted the other way. No. No fish.

  “One of your own, of course,” said the lady.

  Why did people say things like that? She seemed to think he should k
now what she was talking about. What did it mean? One of his ownwhat? Whatever it was, he didn’t have one, at least not as far as he knew.

  Especially if it was a naked lady.

  He thought of Miss Bjork, the only real-live female—apart from his sister—he’d ever seen naked. Well, he hadn’t actuallyseen her. He’d been in her apartment once when she was naked—in the shower—while he was in the living room. But he could hear the water running, and he imagined what she must look like. What he imagined, actually, was the Venus de Milo in the rain, but with arms. That’s about as far as his experience of naked ladies extended. Not that there weren’t examples all around him; magazines and things, you know. He’d just never been interested. Naked ladies weren’t music.

  Until Miss Bjork. He tingled unexpectedly.

  She was dead now.

  Albert stopped tingling and squinted at the picture. Once upon a time, before Mrs. Gibson arrived to take over housekeeping chores in his apartment, hemight have had something like this—under a carpet, or lost among his laundry or wrapping something that was giving off an offensive odor—but he didn’t think so. In any case, if Mrs. Gibson had unearthed such a thing in her excavations, it wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  “American,” said the lady, who’s name was Lady something-or-other. That made it easy to remember. She was accompanied by a man who seemed to be dressed in something too tight whose name, like that of a lot of Englishmen, was Sir. That, too, was convenient. Albert had been called ‘sir’ during his recent sojourn in Tryon, North Carolina. He’d also been called ‘honey’, ‘sweetheart,’ ‘sugar,’ and ‘pissant,’ but he didn’t think any of those would apply to this man, who seemed happy with just the one name. Sir.

  Sir didn’t say much. He nodded at paintings, too. And quite often looked at the silver watch that hung from a chain on his vest pocket.

  Albert liked that watch and chain. If someone gave him one, he’d have to go to the vest store so he’d have something to hang it from.

  “Yes,” said Albert, recalling that Lady had asked if he was American. “From Maine.” He hadn’t meant to say that, now she’d know.

  “Maine?” said Lady. “Wyoming, surely.”

  Who was she talking about? Albert didn’t know anyone from Wyoming, though he knew where it was, and that the capitol of Wyoming was Cheyenne. He’d never thought about the people who lived there. Someone must, else they wouldn’t need a capitol. Let her think what she wanted, he was off the hook. “Okay.”

  Lady looked at him much the same way he’d looked at the picture and tilted her head.

  It was a Familiar Look.

  Albert squirmed a little and pretended to study the painting. His sister had gotten into the cans of paints on the handyman’s workbench and done something similar on the floor of the barn once and Mother had sent her to her room. He suspected a similar fate had befallen the person who did this. How it got into a frame and how the frame got into a museum, and why people would stop and look at it were all part of Life’s Great Mystery.

  Like everything else.

  Unless it was a Morality Tale. A kind of visual nursery rhyme. Albert could imagine mothers dragging their children to the Museum and—planting them in front of this painting—threatening them with whatever fate befell the perpetrator of this particular crime. Perhaps his had been a Famous Consequence that everyone but Albert knew about.

  “It almost makes me want to weep,” said Lady.

  “Yes,” said Albert, pleased, at last, to find something they could agree on. “Me, too.”

  Sir—seeming to read something into Albert’s reply that escaped Lady—looked at him sideways and, making a kind of constricted giggle at the back of his throat, if a man of such Imposing Dignity could be said to giggle, and smiled. It was a nice smile. Albert liked him.

  “Did you say something, Lawrence?” said Lady, though her attention seemed fixed on whatever it was about the painting that made her want to weep.

  “Lawrence,” Albert said aloud. He couldn’t recall ever having said the word before.

  “Yes?” said Sir. Maybe that was his last name. Sir Lawrence.

  Albert shook his head dismissively. “I was just listening to it.”

  It was Sir’s turn to tilt his head. “Listening? To what?”

  “Lawrence,” said Albert, whose attention was drawn to an adjacent room by the sound of a man saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, the museum will close in five minutes.”

  To Albert it was as if Satan had said,ladies and gentlemen, Hell is closing. You may make your way to the exit.

  “Please make your way to the entrance hall and be sure to collect your belongings,” said the disembodied voice.

  Albert should have brought some belongings to collect. Nobody told him.

  “We have to go,” he said, hopefully, wondering why they were being directed to the entrance hall if they were supposed to be exiting, and wishing he’d brought Jeremy Ash with him to explain things like that.

  Jeremy Ash knew everything Albert didn’t, primarily, as far as Albert could ascertain, from having spent much of his life locked in a closet under the stairs and watching television through a crack in the door. But Jeremy had had a bad afternoon and had to stay at the hotel. They’d had to amputate his other leg, too, and what was left hurt. He never said as much, but he made faces that made Albert think it probably did.

  As far as Albert was concerned, the Good and Evil of legs pretty much balanced one another out; they were the Twin Judases who had brought him here, they were the Angels of Deliverance that would carry him away.

  “Oh, that’s not for us,” said Lady. “Lawrence is on the Board.”

  Albert looked at Lawrence but couldn’t see a board. Maybe it was on his back, under his jacket, which would explain the way he was standing—and why his clothes seemed so tight.

  “For someone of Your Stature, the Museum is always open.”

  Always open. Like hell. Albert felt the urge to run for the exit, but what if he got there and the doors were nailed shut, or had disappeared altogether? He imagined eternity in the Museum, wandering from room to room while Sir cleared his throat and Lady wept and made Albert look at the paintings that seemed to scream “Don’t tell Mother I did this!” He choked back the panic that rose to his throat.

  He looked toward the adjoining room. There were pictures of people in there. Real people with one eye on either side of their nose, and buttons, and hats and fluffy white collars. “What’s in there?” he said, trying to sound casual, but wishing desperately to escape the vortex of swirls in Lady’s Favorite Painting that seemed to be trying to suck him in to that haunted dimension in which such swirls made sense.

  “Ah!” said Lady, detaching her retinas from the vortex. “The Masters!” She chortled, but the subject of the chortle was, apparently, personal and secret. Sir didn’t ask. Neither did Albert.

  Albert had recently heard, or read, or seen the phrase “she swept from the room.” The image that came to mind at the time was, quite naturally, of a woman, broom in hand, sweeping her way toward the door. But, for some reason, the term applied to what Lady was doing at the moment, and it had nothing to do with a broom. Probably it was a metaphor, which was another thing Albert never got, unless this was one, in which case he did. Lady was sweeping from the Room of Meaningless Dribbles, toward the Room of Discernible Faces and he and Sir were being dragged along like puppies on invisible leashes.

  Albert was glad to go. He cast a quick backward glance to make sure the Vortex wasn’t following. In Hell, you could never be sure. That’s why they called it Hell.

  Lady was speaking. “That’s Reubens on the far wall. So is that,” she said, pointing to the portrait of a lady whose head seemed to be trying to escape from a giant cupcake wrapper.

  They werebothReuben’s? Did that mean they were brother and sister? One was clearly a man—though he seemed to have been dressed by someone who wasn’t sure; he had a beard anyway—and the cupcake picture was cl
early a lady; all the bumps and things. Or did they bothbelong to Reubens? Or did they possess some inner quality that made them Reubens? Like a ham sandwich which, whatever kind of bread it was made with, was always a ham sandwich.

  Which reminded Albert that he was hungry.

  “And this portrait will, of course, be of especial interest to you.”

  Why ‘of course?’ People were always saying that. What did it mean? Albert flushed. He hated flushing. He hated not knowing what everyone else knew—even if what they knew had nothing to do with music or Miss Bjork and, therefore, didn’t really matter.

  Why ‘of course?’

  Was looking at this painting of a man, apparently in his pajamas—blue pajamas—supposed to remind him of something? Was he supposed to know something about him? Recognize him? Albert didn’t know any Englishmen that he could recall. That is, he’d shaken hands with a few thousand English men and women who stood in line in the rain—which was the only weather they had in England—for the purpose of looking at him in that strange way people looked at him, perhaps guessing that he was an alien, and telling them how much they’d loved his music.

  That’s what the Queen said when she’d given him that pointy coaster that made him a KBE, whatever that was. He didn’t feel any different. He’d met her husband then, and wondered why he was only a Prince and not a King.

  He must have done something wrong. You never knew with Queens, sometimes they turned people into frogs.

  He’d met Princelings, and Princelettes and Lords and Dames, but he didn’tknow them like he’d know a picture of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, and looking at the picture, none came to mind.