Improvisato Read online

  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 Collector is 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’s Secret of the Missing Grave is 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

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to Nunuku, the wise and gentle Mariori chieftain of Chatham Island, New Zealand; to Tommy Solomon, the last full-blooded Moriori of the island; and to the following boys and men who, on their way to a football match aboard the Te Aroha bound for Owenga on 17 July, 1931, were tragically lost at sea, and of whom no trace has ever been found.

  Ernest Mitchell, 14

  James Niven

  Joseph Paynter, 27

  William Paynter, 22

  Ririmu (Stone) Wiki, 52

  Maika Tamihana (Thompson), 17

  Waiti Tamihana (Thompson), 24

  Neri (Ned) Tamihana (Mahuki), 19

  Bishop Ashton, 21

  Hepi Para, 18

  Taka Ngaia, 23

  James (Jimmy Forty) Whaitiri, 46

  Te Ahuata (Bosun) Remi, 15

  Bernard James Reid, 23

  John David Roberts

  Improvisato

  Chapter One

  February, 1987

  Albert was struggling to make his face look like his ears were listening to whatever the too-much-woman in too-little-dress was saying but, try as he might, he couldn't detach his retinas from the cat on the windowsill that was retching up its insides. The exercise didn't seem to be causing it undue alarm which, to Albert, was alarming. He didn't imagine that, were he in similar circumstances, he'd take it so calmly.

  The curtains would probably be in shreds.

  Nobody seemed concerned; that was another strange thing. Some of them, at least, saw what was happening, even nodded their wine glasses in the direction of the afflicted quadruped and smiled or chuckled.

  Where were the animal rights people?

  Albert had just managed to stuff his natural reticence into a small, neat box labeled 'Do Not Open', and form a one-man Feline Aid Society (FAS), when something amazing happened: the cat's insides were no longer . . . inside . . . but sat in a moist, deflated ball upon the windowsill.

  The cat, licking its lips, cocked its head at the steaming, yarn-like mass, then, as if aware that he was being watched, looked(?) at Albert as if to say, 'Well, would you look at that?' then started to lick itself.

  "Hairball," said a man.

  "Albert," said Albert. He was always quick to give grace when names were forgotten or confused. He did it all the time.

  "Beg your pardon?"

  "I'm Albert."

  A crinkly kind of expression scrunched across the man's face. "Yes, Albert” he said, slowly. "I know. I'm Walter. Your press agent? Remember? Three years now."

  The light of recognition was not forthcoming. "Walter?"

  Albert considered him much the same way the cat had considered the hairball.

  "Franklin?"

  Now things were getting confused. Walter or Franklin? Albert looked quickly around to see if someone else had joined the conversation.

  "No, Albert. It's me. Walter Franklin, remember?" He took Albert paternally by the elbow and extracted him from the cloud of perfume surrounding the woman and whatever she was saying, and guided him toward the cat that now sat contentedly in the window as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  But there were its insides.

  "Weirdest thing in the world, to me, when a cat coughs up a hairball like that," said Franklin. "But look at him, already working away on another one."

  If a press agent could know so much about cats, why didn't Albert know about anything but music? Of course, he'd learned a lot in the last few years—most of which he wished he hadn't, but some people knew about things like cats and some people didn't. He fell in the latter category.

  He knew geography, though. And accents. Maybe that's the way it was with everyone. Maybe everybody knew a couple of things well and the rest of the world, outside those few things, was just as fuzzy to them as it was to him. Albert was excited by the thought. Maybe the only reason it seemed everyone but him knew everything was that, when they were all around him, each talking about the one or two things they knew, and those one or two things were different for each person, it just seemed as
though they all knew everything.

  On one of the walls in the vestry of the church where he'd gone to Sunday school as a very young child—before anyone knew what he was—there had been a painting of a man named Paul having an epiphany, which apparently had something to do with falling off a horse and holding up his arm to shield his eyes from a blinding light. He must have felt much the same way Albert was feeling now.

  What if, after all, he wasn't the misplaced freak he'd come to think himself to be? What if he was just another in a vast population of freaks? Wouldn't that make him perfectly normal?

  “Your sister wants to see you,” said the press agent, whose name Albert had already forgotten, but he was torn. On the one hand, there was the press agent, on the other, Abigail Grace.

  His sister used to play the saxophone. Not very well but, of course; she was female. She had always been older than he. Not chronologically, but in every other way. She was, to Albert, the embodiment of efficiency. Not only did she seem to know everything that eluded him, she had always reminded him of the fact, which compounded the impression.

  Jeremy Ash knew everything, too, even though he had no legs. No, don't go there. That would just bring up a lot of other thoughts that wouldn't be about what he was thinking about.

  Which was? Oh, yes. Abigail Grace.

  Their mother had always told him that, when in doubt, “Do what Abigail Grace says.” That stopped, for the most part, when The School took charge of Albert and Abigail Grace moved to Florida when Mother moved there from Maine upon reaching the age when the move was, apparently, mandated.

  He wondered if he still had to comply with the command now that she was dead. Mother, not Abigail Grace. In the parlor. In a casket with the top opened.

  That struck Albert as odd. Why did people want the top open on a casket? Dead people weren't very pleasant to look at, after all. At least, he didn't think so. And he'd seen a lot of them lately. Too many.

  Why, then? Was it to assure the living that the deceased wasn’t just pretending to be?

  Or maybe it was to give the dead person one last chance to sit up and shout: “Let me out of here!” in case they weren't. Dead.

  Abigail Grace was in the kitchen, which was at the opposite end of the hall where Albert and his press agent—Smiley? Heathcliff?—stood. Albert, taking his leave, decided to take the long way, through the parlor.

  At his approach, the little knot of black-clad people, presided over by his Uncle Albert that had been milling about the coffin—drinking wine and reassuring themselves that the deceased really was—de(?)parted, forming a sort of human funnel that drew him toward the casket. He looked down at his mother's face.

  Her mouth wasn't moving. That was a phenomenon. Even so, he could hear what she was saying; what she always said: “I'm doing this for your own good, Albert. If you only knew.”

  This usually meant that something unpleasant was about to happen. The first time he recalled hearing those words, they had been the last thing she said as she closed the door to the waiting room and left him alone with the dentist.

  Albert had read a book, or seen a movie, or was once told, or maybe had a dream about someone who worked for Hitler and enjoyed doing terrible things to human beings.

  The analogy made his teeth hurt.

  He wondered if those poor people had been abandoned by their mothers, trying desperately to derive some slim comfort from the echo of those words: “I'm doing this for your own good, (insert name here).”

  Someone put their hand on his shoulder and patted it. “We're so sorry, Maestro,” said the patter.

  “Emily was a wonderful woman. She will be greatly missed. So sorry.” Albert looked up to see a man with misty eyes and instantly three questions sprang to mind. First of all, as the man was apparently alone, who was the “we” in “we”? Secondly, what was he—or were they—sorry for? Had he/they somehow brought about Emily’s death? Third, who was Emily? He’d seen the name somewhere recently.

  Oh, yes. On the little bronze plaque on his mother’s coffin.

  Albert knew, from painful experience, that it happened all the time; person A would bring about the death of person B. Sometimes intentionally. Sometimes by accident. Sometimes not intentionally, but not necessarily by accident. All of which were, he suspected, irrelevant to the person whose death had been brought about.

  He’d heard that Indians used every part of an animal they’d killed and then did a dance, or sang a chant or something, as if that would somehow make the animal feel better that it had been killed for its parts.

  He stared at his mother's face as people murmured around him. But it wasn't her face that formed, at first, in the fluid of his sight: it was that of Tewksbury, who had died in a fire; it was Judge Antrim, who had been stabbed in the chest; it was Esperanza, who had jumped from a castle tower and become a ghost who slept with him sometimes; it was Harvest Lossberg, painter of cows, killed by a hatpin thrust through his neck; it was Welf the Potter’s son who had been buried alive, surrounded by a king’s ransom in treasure.

  Most of all, though, it was Melissa Bjork, who had died in his arms, with his name on her lips, and his heart in—wherever people put other people’s hearts.

  The coffin was a horizontal doorway to the grave, and they were all in there.

  Then it was his mother again.

  He felt like he should feel something. Everyone seemed to be expecting him to make a speech, or burst out crying, or fall to his knees, shake his fists and say, “Why! Why, Lord!” He’d seen that on the television news once; a little group of foreign-looking women were doing all these things at once because someone had set off a bomb that blew up their children.

  He had thought of putting the images to music at the time, but couldn’t think of anything sad enough. That was years ago. He’d lived a lot since then. He’d loved. He’d lost. Now he could write a requiem in his sleep.

  He often did.

  He stared into the casket and whispered: “What am I supposed to do, Mother; Emily?”

  She didn’t answer. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

  The cavalry arrived, in the form of Jeremy Ash, who rolled through the crowd—not being overly careful about running his wheelchair over people’s feet, which made progress easier. “You okay?”

  Albert nodded mechanically. “Abigail Grace wants to talk to me.”

  “Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No. I want to go.”

  “Grab hold and wheel me to the front door.”

  Albert did as he was told and, contrary to his expectations, no one tried to stop them. Within seconds he was at the front door. Another second or two, on the front porch. “Where to now?” Jeremy asked, though why she should, Albert couldn’t fathom. After all, it was he, Jeremy, who had contrived so smoothly to extricate them from what, to Albert, had seemed an inescapable situation. “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

  Jeremy Ash answered as if he’d be contemplating that very question. “New Zealand.”

  Albert knew where New Zealand was. He knew they spoke a form of English. He knew Angela McLauren’s older sister, Hester, lived there, in Christchurch, with her husband, what’s-his-name, who worked for the government. “Can Angela come?”

  “Sure,” said Jeremy. “She can grab the passports and meet us at the airport.”

  “Okay.”

  Jeremy gestured for their driver who, in short order, settled the legless boy beside Albert in the back seat of the limousine and drove them to Logan—the nearest airport with connecting flights to New Zealand. “Call Mrs. Bridges and have her make the arrangements.” The driver got on the car radio, called the formidable woman with the day-dated bras who had become Albert’s financial manager, and relayed the instructions.

  At the back of his mind, Albert wondered why the people who put other people in charge of things didn’t put Jeremy Ash and Mrs. Bridges in charge of everything. Just . . . everything.

  Albert watched the familiar countryside—
dressed in snow, ice, and slush—slip by as they drove southeast toward I-95, every turn of the wheel putting that much distance between him and the scenes of his childhood: the farm where his sister, by now, was stomping and fuming without actually stomping and fuming—it was a trick she did with her jaw and her eyes—and his press agent was doing whatever press agents do when the one they’re agenting isn’t near enough to press.

  The place where Melissa Bjork and his heart were buried.

  Albert took no notice of the VIP treatment he received at the airport. People did whatever needed to be done to make sure what he wanted to happen—or, more specifically, Jeremy Ash wanted to happen—happened. That’s just the way it was. The way it had always been. Nothing special. Nothing different. So it came as no surprise when he found himself—and Jeremy, and Angela—sitting in first-class seats on a flight to New Zealand, via Los Angeles and Tahiti, that just happened to be leaving within an hour of their arrival at the airport. Had he thought about it, which he didn’t, he would have assumed that Jeremy Ash had arranged it that way, and he wouldn’t have been surprised.

  For her part, Angela had found it surprisingly easy to adjust to a life in which she could have anything she wanted, whenever she wanted it. The other thing that had surprised her was that, now that she could have whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, she didn’t really want much. Perhaps it was that she didn’t want to take advantage of Albert—even though he had more money than Midas. Perhaps it was that, since coming to live with him and Jeremy Ash, and Mrs. Gibson—a formidable lady from a different planet than Angela had ever occupied, even in Tryon, North Carolina—she had come to appreciate other things.

  That, and prison, of course. That changes people, one way or the other.

  She knew, in accepting Jeremy’s invitation to come live with them, that she was surrendering herself—for the time being—to life in Albert’s slipstream. He occupied a rarified atmosphere, one in which the world accommodated itself to his needs, often before they were spoken. She had become one of those little fish that attach itself to a bigger fish and feast from the leftovers.