The Case of the Confirmed Bachelor

He scowled, looking toward the banister of the staircase that led up to the three bedrooms on the second floor. His long fingers touched the antique wood and fondled it absently. Selling the furnished house had seemed the thing to do. Now, he wasn’t sure about it.

As the day wore on, he became less sure. The power had been turned on earlier in the week, and the refrigerator and stove were in good working order. He found a coffeemaker stashed under the sink. He went shopping for supplies, arriving home just as a small blue car pulled in next door.

He paused on the steps, two grocery bags in one powerful arm, watching as a woman stepped out of the car. She didn’t look toward him, not once. Her carriage very correct, almost regal, she walked to the front door of her house, inserted the key she held ready in her hand, and disappeared out of sight.

Tabby. He stared after her without moving for a minute. She hadn’t changed. He hadn’t expected her to. But it felt different to look at her now, and it puzzled him. He couldn’t quite determine what the difference was.

He went inside and started a pot of coffee before he fried a steak and made a salad for his supper. While he was eating it, he pondered on Tabby’s lack of interest in his presence. She had to have seen the car in the driveway, seen him go to the door. But she hadn’t looked his way, hadn’t spoken.

He felt depressed suddenly, and regretted even more the wall he’d built between them at New Year’s. They were old friends. Almost family. It would have been nice to sit down with Tabby and talk about the old days when they’d all played together as children. He didn’t suppose Tabby would want to talk to him now.

After he’d finished his meal and washed up the dishes, he sat down in the living room with a detective novel. The television wasn’t working. He didn’t really mind. It was like entertainment overkill these days, with channels that never shut down and dozens of programs to choose from. The constant bombardment sometimes got on his nerves, so he shut it off and read instead. Nothing like a good book, he thought, to cultivate what Agatha Christie’s hero Hercule Poirot called the “little gray cells.”

He was knee-deep in the mystery novel when the front door knocker sounded.

Curious, he went to open the door.

Tabby stood there, unsmiling, her hair in a neat bun, her glasses low on her nose, her expression one of strain and worry. She was wearing a neat suit with a white blouse, and she obviously had worn it all day. It was nine in the evening and she hadn’t changed into casual clothes.

“Hello,” he said. His heart felt lighter and he smiled.

Tabby didn’t return the smile. Her hands were folded very tightly at her waist. “I wouldn’t have bothered you,” she said stiffly, “but I don’t really know any other detectives. It seemed almost providential that you came home today.”

“Did it? Why?” he asked.

She swallowed. “I’m under suspicion of theft,” she said. Her lower lip trembled, but only for an instant until she got it under control. Her head lifted even higher with stung pride. “I haven’t taken anything, and I haven’t been formally charged, but only I had access to the artifact that’s disappeared. It’s a small vase with cuneiform writing that dates to the Sumerian empire, and they think I stole it.”

Chapter Two

Nick’s dark blond eyebrows rose curiously. “You, a thief? My God, you walked two blocks to return a dollar old man Forbes lost when you were just sixteen. People don’t change that much in nine years.”

She seemed to relax. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I need proof that I didn’t do it. If you’re going to be in town for a few days, I want to employ you to clear me.”

“Employ for pete’s sake!” he growled. “Honest to God, Tabby, you don’t have to hire me to do you a favor!”

“It’s business,” she said firmly. “And I’m not a pauper. I don’t need to impose on our old friendship.”

“You can’t imagine how prissy you sound,” he mused, his dark eyes twinkling as they searched hers. “Come in here and talk to me about it.”

“I, uh, I can’t do that,” she said, glancing uneasily around her as if there were eyes behind every curtain. “Why not?”

“It’s quite late, and you’re alone in the house,” she reminded him.

He gaped at her. “Are you for real?” He scowled and leaned closer, making a sniffing sound. “Tipsy, are we?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“I am not!” she said stiffly, flushing. “And I wish you’d forget that. I was drunk!”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “I’ve never seen you with a snootful. Your mask slipped.”

“It won’t ever slip again like that,” she told him. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

“Not really. Why can’t you come inside? I almost never have sex with women in suits.”

The color in her cheeks got worse. “Now cut that out!”

He shrugged. “If you say so.” He folded his arms across his broad chest. His shirt was unfastened at the collar, where a thick golden thatch was just visible. It seemed to disturb Tabby, because her eyes quickly averted from it.

“I thought, if you had time, we might meet for lunch tomorrow and I’ll fill you in.”

He sighed with mock resignation. “There’s not really any need for that.” He reached beside him and turned the porch light on. Then he escorted her down the steps and neatly seated her on the middle step, lowering himself beside her. “Here we are, in the light, so that everyone in the neighborhood can see that we aren’t naked. Is that better?”

“Nick!” she raged.

“Don’t be so stuffy,” he murmured. “You’re living in the dark ages.”

“A few of us need to or civilization as we know it may cease to exist,” she returned hotly. “Haven’t you noticed how things are going in our social structure?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Drugs, killer sexual diseases, streets full of homeless people, serial killers.” She shook her head. “Anything goes may sound great, but it brings down civilizations.”

“Most people don’t know about ancient Rome,” he reminded her. “You might start wearing a toga to get their attention.”

She glowered at him. “You never change.”

“Sure I do. I’d smell terrible wearing the same clothes over and over again.”

She threw up her hands. It was just like old times, with Nick cracking jokes while her heart broke in two. Except that now it wasn’t just her heart, it was her integrity and perhaps her professional future.

He touched her chin and turned her to face his eyes. The mockery was gone out of them as he asked, “Tell me about it, Tabby.”

She drew back from the touch of his hands, so disturbing to her peace of mind. “There was an old piece of Sumerian pottery that I was using to show my students while I lectured on the Sumerian Empire. It was a very unique piece with cuneiform writing on it.”

“You’ve lost me. It’s been years since I took Western Civilization in college.”

“Cuneiform was an improvement in the Sumerian culture, one step above pictographic writing,” she explained. “In cuneiform, each wedge-shaped sign stands for a syllable. There are thousands of pieces of Sumerian writings contained on baked clay tablets. But this writing,” she continued, “wasn’t on a tablet, it was on a small vase, perfectly preserved and over five thousand years old.” She leaned forward. “Nick, the college paid a small fortune for it. It was the most perfect little find I’ve ever seen, rare and utterly irreplaceable. I was allowed to use it for a visual aid in that one class. None of us dreamed that it would be lost. It cost thousands of dollars…!”

“Only the one artifact?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was on my desk. I had to tutor a student in the classroom and I was going to put it back under lock and key afterward. I wasn’t gone more than five minutes, but when I came back, it was missing. There was no one around, and I can’t prove that I didn’t take it.”

“Can’t the student vouch for you?”

“Of course, but not about the artifact. She never saw it.”

He whistled. “No witnesses?”

She shook her head. “Not a one.”

“Anyone with a motive for stealing it?”

“A find like that would be worth a fortune, but only to a collector,” she admitted. “Most students simply see it as a minor curiosity. Only a few members of the faculty knew its actual value. Daniel, for one.”

“Daniel?”

“He’s a colleague of mine. Daniel Myers. We…go out together. He’s honest,” she added quickly. “He has too much integrity to steal anything.”

“Most people who steal have integrity,” he said cynically, “but their greed overrides it.”

“That’s not fair, Nick,” she protested. “You don’t even know Daniel.”

“I guess not,” he said, angered by her defense of the man. Who was this colleague, anyway? His dark eyes whipped down to catch hers. “Tell me about Daniel.”

“He’s very nice. Divorced, one son who’s almost in his teens. He lives downtown in Washington and he’s on staff at the college where I work.”

“I didn’t ask for his history. I said tell me about him.”

“He’s tall and slender and very intelligent.”

“Does he love you?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think you need to know anything about my personal life. Only my professional one.”

He sighed. “Well, you don’t have anyone to look out for you,” he reminded her. “I always used to when you were in your teens.”

“That was then. I’m twenty-five now. I don’t need looking after. Besides, you’re only five years older than I am.”

“Six, almost.”

“Daniel wants to marry me.”

“What do you get out of it if Daniel doesn’t love you?”

“Will you take the case?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

“Of course. But Daniel had better not get in the way.”

“Oh, he won’t,” she said, but with unvoiced reservations. Daniel tended to be just the least bit superior. He wouldn’t like Nick, she decided. Worse, Nick already didn’t like him. It was going to be a touchy situation, but she was sick with worry. She had to have someone in her corner, and who better than Nick, who was one of the best detectives in the world according to his sister Helen.

“I’d like to come around to the college tomorrow and get a look at where you work.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she stammered.

“Classes won’t be in session,” he reminded her.

“Daniel was going to take me shopping…”

“Daniel can buy his clothes some other time.”

“Not for clothes, for an engagement ring!”

His eyes narrowed. He hated that idea. Hated it, for reasons he couldn’t put a finger on. “That will have to wait. I’m only going to be in town until next Friday.”

“I’ll phone him tonight.”

“Good.”

She got up, smoothing her skirt, and Nick rose with her, his face solemn, concerned. “Don’t they know you at all, these colleagues?”

“Of course. But it does look bad. My office was locked at the time. Nobody else has a key.”

Nails in her coffin, he was thinking, but he didn’t say it. “Try not to worry. We’ll muddle through.”

“Okay. Thanks, Nick,” she said without looking at him.

“No need for that. I’ll call for you about eight in the morning. That too early?”

She shook her head. “I’m always up at dawn.”

“Just like old times,” he recalled. “I hope you don’t have plans to climb the drain pipe, just like old times, and climb in a bedroom window.”

She caught her breath. “It was only once or twice, and it was Helen’s room I climbed into!”

“You were such a tomboy,” he mused. “Hell with a bat in sandlot baseball, the most formidable tackle we had in football, and not a bad tree climber. You don’t look much different today.”

She grimaced. “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “No matter what I eat, I can’t put on a pound.”

“Wait until you hit middle age.”

“That’s a few years away,” she said with a faint smile.

“Yes. Quite a few. Get some sleep.”

“You, too. Good night.”

He returned the sentiment and watched her walk to her front door. Old times. He thought back to warm summer evenings when he’d bring his dates home and they’d all sit on chairs on the lawn and watch Helen and Tabby, who were a few years younger, chase fireflies on the lush lawn. He supposed Tabby would watch her own children do that very thing one day.

He didn’t want to think about that. He went back inside and tried to pick up his mystery novel again, but he’d lost his taste for it. He put it down and went to bed, hours and hours before usual.

Tabby was dressed in a floral skirt and white knit blouse when he called for her the next morning just at eight. He wasn’t much more dressed up than she was, comfortable in slacks and a red knit shirt. He scowled down at her.

“Must you always screw your hair up like that? I haven’t seen it long in quite a while.”

“It’s hot around my neck,” she said evasively. “I only let it down at night.”

“For Daniel?” he asked sarcastically.

“Do we go in your car or mine?” she asked, ignoring the question.

“Mine, definitely,” he said with a disparaging glance at hers. “I like having room for my head.”

“The seat lets down.”

“I can’t drive lying on my back.”

“Nick!”

“Come on.” He led her to the big sedan he’d rented and helped her inside. “Direct me. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven here.”

“Not so long,” she replied. “You didn’t leave until you quit the FBI. That’s only been about four years ago.”

“It seems like forever sometimes.”

“I guess Houston is a lot different.”

“Only when it floods. Otherwise, it’s a lot of concrete and steel and pavement. Just like every other city. It’s Washington with a drawl.”

She laughed softly. “I suppose most cities are alike. I haven’t traveled much. And when I do, it’s to places that seem pretty primitive by modern standards.”

“To digs, I gather?”

“That’s right. I went out to the Custer battlefield in Montana a few years ago to help archaeologists and other anthropologists identify some remains. Then I had a stint in Arizona with some Hohokam ruins and once I flew down to Georgia where they were excavating an eighteenth-century cabin.”

“How exciting.”

“Not to you,” she conceded. “But it’s life and breath to me. I want to investigate aboriginal sites in Australia and explore some of the Greek and Roman ruins they’re just beginning to excavate. I want to go to Machu Picchu in Peru and to the Maya and Toltec and Olmec ruins in Mexico and Central America.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “I want to go to Africa and to China… Oh, Nick, there’s a world of mysteries out there just waiting to be solved!”

He glanced at her. “You sound like a detective.”

“I am, sort of,” she argued. “I look for clues in the past, and you look for them in the present. It’s still all investigation, you know.”

He turned his attention back to the road. “I suppose. It depends on your point of view.”

She studied him briefly. “You aren’t smoking. Helen said you’d quit.”

“Five weeks now,” he replied. “I only had the jitters once Lassiter asked us all to give it up, to help him. Tess made him quit,” he said with a grin. “Imagine, old Nail Eater being led around by a woman.”

“I doubt she’s leading him around. He probably loves her and wants to make her happy. He’ll live longer if he doesn’t smoke.”

“We’re all going to die eventually,” he reminded her. “Some of us might do it a little quicker, but we don’t have much choice.”

“The law of entropy.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what scientists call it—the law of entropy. It means that everything grows old and dies.”

“As long as we’re scientific about it,” he said mockingly.

She adjusted her glasses, pushing them back up on her nose. “No need to be sarcastic. Turn here.” She pointed.

He drove into the parking lot and pulled into a space marked Visitors. “Why here?”

“You don’t have a sticker that permits you to park here,” she reminded him. “If you park in a student’s spot, you’ll be towed. I know you wouldn’t like that.”

“It’s not my car,” he reminded her.

“You rented it. You’d have to liberate it.”

“I love the way you use words,” he chuckled as he got out of the car and helped her out.

“Nice manners,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

“You opened the door for me back when I broke my leg in your senior year of school. Drove me back and forth to work every day, too, on your way.”

“Wasn’t I sweet?” she asked wistfully. “Ah, those good old days.”

“You were less irritating then.”

“So were you,” she tossed back. She cocked her head and studied him. “Footloose Nick,” she murmured. “I suppose you’ll end up in a shoot-out with spies somewhere and they’ll mount you on a wall or something.”

He grinned. “Lovely thought. How kind of you.”

She gave up. “My office is on the second floor.”

She led him into the big brick building, past the admissions office and up the staircase that led to the history and sociology departments.

“I’m down the hall. The historians have this wing. The sociology department here is rather small, although we offer some interesting courses.”

“Anthropology is sociology,” he remarked. “I took one course of it in college myself. Sociology and law go hand in hand, did you know?”

“Sure!” she said, unlocking her office. “That’s the biology lab down the hall. They’re only up here temporarily while their facilities are being remodeled. They have snakes in there,” she said with a shiver.

A primal scream echoed down the hall with its high ceilings. “Is that one of them?” he asked.

“Snakes don’t scream,” she muttered. “No, that’s Pal.”

“Who? Or should I say what?”

“Pal’s a what, all right. He’s the missing link. That’s what we call him up here. Australopithecus insidious.”

“Greek.”

“Latin,” she corrected. “Pidgin Latin. What I mean, is that Pal is too smart to be a monkey. We have to lock him up. He likes to rip up textbooks. And if you ever leave your keys lying around when he’s on the loose, you’ll never see them again.”

“Isn’t he caged?”

“Usually. He picks the lock.” She laughed. “The last time he got out, the administrator and several members of the board of trustees were having a catered meeting in the conference room. Pal got in there and started pelting everybody with melon balls and rolls.”

“I’ll bet that went over well with the guests.”

“Guest,” she corrected. “It was a senator from Maryland. We never did get that funding we needed for a new research project.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Out of idle curiosity, what were you going to research?”

Her eyes brightened. “Primate social behavior.”

He burst out laughing. “It seems to me that you’re doing enough of that without funding.”

“That’s exactly what our president said. Here.” She opened the door to a Spartan office with a desk, a chair, and a bookcase jammed full of reference books. On her desk were stacks of paper and a college handbook. “Like most everyone else here, I’m a faculty advisor. In my spare time, I teach anthropology.”

He stood looking down at her with open curiosity. “You were always a brain. I used to feel threatened by you sometimes. No matter what I knew, you seemed to know more.”

“Brains can be a curse when you’re a young girl,” she replied with faint bitterness. “But they last a lot longer than a voluptuous figure and a pretty face,” she added.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he mused. “Except that you need feeding up.”

“Oh, I’ll spread out one day. This is where the artifact was lying when it vanished.”

She pointed to a central spot on the desk.

“How long ago did it walk off?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

He nodded and pulled a small leather-bound kit out of his pocket. “Go and read a book or make a telephone call for a few minutes while I do a little investigating.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Dust your desk for fingerprints and look for clues, of course. Has anyone been at this desk except you since the artifact was taken?”

She shook her head.

“Good. That narrows it down a bit.”

She started to ask him more questions, but he was knee-deep in thought and investigation. She shrugged and left him there.

Minutes later, he straightened, irritated by the lack of fingerprints. The desk had a rough surface, which made it hard to find a full print. But a tiny piece of what looked like hair lay on a white sheet of paper, and that he took with him, securing it with a pair of tweezers and sticking it in a tiny plastic bag that he then sealed. It wasn’t much, but if it was human hair, the lab over at the FBI could tell them plenty about it. It was amazing how much data one strand of hair could provide. It was strangely coarse. He dismissed it instantly when Tabby came in the door, his eyes watchful as they skimmed over her. She made him feel as if he’d only just come back from a long journey. It was a very pleasant sensation. When he was with her, his restlessness seemed to go momentarily into eclipse.

“Anything?” Tabby asked hopefully.

Her question diverted him. “Not much,” he said. “I couldn’t get a full print….”

He stopped as a tall, unsmiling man appeared in the doorway behind Tabby.

“This is Dr. Daniel Myers,” she introduced the new comer, who was wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and conventional tie. On a Saturday, he was dressed like a preacher, which gave Nick a pretty accurate picture of his meticulous personality.

“Nick Reed,” Nick said, introducing himself. He didn’t offer his hand. Nor did Daniel, he noticed with some amusement.

“You must be discreet,” he cautioned Nick. “I’m sure you understand what a theft like this could do to the image of Thorn College.”

“Certainly,” he agreed. “As aware as I am of what it could do to Tabby’s future.”

“Tabby?”

“Her family and mine have been close all our lives,” Nick told the man.

“It sounds like something one would call a cat, don’t you think, darling?” he asked Tabby, and slid a long arm over her thin shoulders.

Nick just stopped himself from leaping forward. Incredible, he thought, how his mind reacted to the sight. Tabby was like a sister to him. Perhaps he only felt protective. That had to be it.

He pocketed the sealed plastic envelope. “I’ll run this over to the lab. I have a friend there.”

“Will he be at work on Saturday?”

“Since I phoned him at home last night and asked him to meet me there, I do hope so,” he replied.

“That was kind of him,” she said.

“I’ll drop you off on my way to FBI headquarters,” he offered.

Daniel seemed to grow two feet. “That’s hardly necessary,” he said stiffly, and his arm drew Tabby closer. “Tabitha must have told you that we’re to shop for an engagement ring today.”

“Yes, I hear you’re planning to be married,” Nick said.

“A very sensible move, too,” Daniel said carelessly. “I live alone and so does Tabitha. She had that huge house and lot, where we can live, and her car is paid for.” He hugged her close. “She likes keeping house and cooking, so I’ll have plenty of time to work on my book.”

Nick was going to explode. He knew he was. “Book?”

“Our book,” Tabby inserted with a glare at Daniel. “It’s a new perspective on what I found at the Custer battlefield after the fire.”

“And includes information I dug out about its history,” Daniel added quickly. “Tabitha could hardly do it without my help on the grammar and punctuation.”

Nick’s eyebrows jerked up. “You think Tabby needs help with those? Are we talking about the girl who was school spelling champion in seventh grade and won a scholarship to Thorn College?”

Daniel shifted on his feet. “I have a master’s degree in English.” His watery blue eyes made mincemeat of Nick. “What was your field of study, Mr. Reed?” he asked with pleasant sarcasm, as if he considered that a detective probably had less than a high school education. In fact, an FBI agent was preferred to have a bachelor’s degree in accounting or a law degree. Nick had a law degree. It wasn’t something he’d ever boasted about. He wasn’t going to now, either, if that careless, mocking smile he gave Daniel was any indication.