“Are you guys okay?” Tina asked.
“Nobody hurt.”
“What happened?”
“We woke up to find the house being burgled. The suspect fired one round at me when I tried to detain him and then he bailed. He was last seen turning westbound onto Cupp Road, driving a SUV with the lights off. It was too dark to see the plates.”
“Did you shoot back?”
“No, but I wish I had. Look what the son of a bitch did.” I nodded downward in the direction of the vandalized teddy bears.
“That’s just vile. Where’s Ash?”
“Upstairs, getting dressed.”
Tina gave me a slow once-over and for the first time seemed to realize that I was attired in nothing more than a thin cotton nightshirt that only came down to mid-thigh.
I raised my index finger in warning. “Not a word. I’m a crime victim tonight.”
“I couldn’t say anything even if I wanted to…and believe me, I do.” Tina gave me a wicked grin. “But it’ll take me a couple of days just to process this sight. After that we’ll have some fun.”
“How Gandhi-esque of you.”
A male deputy came into the house and Tina excused herself for a moment to brief the cop on what had happened and then send him back out on the road to look for the suspect vehicle. Meanwhile, Ash came downstairs, dressed in khaki shorts and a purple T-shirt. She and Tina exchanged hugs and then Tina turned to me.
“So, where were you when he shot at you?”
“There on the stairs.” I pointed to the place. “And the bullet has to be someplace nearby because I heard it hit the wall.”
The three of us went over to examine the wall near the stairs and Ash was the first one to spot the round bullet hole a couple of inches beneath the crown molding. It wasn’t much more than a half-foot from where my face had been at the time of the shooting but, not wanting to further frighten Ash, I said nothing. However, I noticed my wife’s gaze as it flicked back and forth between the bullet hole and the stairs, measuring the distance. She turned to give my hand a squeeze, knowing how close I’d been to death.
Tina shined her flashlight at the cavity. “Pretty big. What do you think, a forty cal?”
I squinted at the hole. “Maybe bigger. A forty-five, I think. We won’t know for certain until we dig it out of the wall when you process the crime scene.”
“Whatever the caliber, I’ll give the suspect this: He was brave.”
Ash and I gaped in disbelief at Tina. At last, I said, “What the hell are you talking about, Tina?”
Tina chuckled dryly. “You don’t hunt Lyons with a handgun—even a Lyon wearing a pretty turquoise night-shirt. That’s just suicidal.”
Two
Nearly two weeks passed and the investigation into the break-in was as stalled as the 101 Freeway during rush hour. It wasn’t for lack of effort on Tina’s part. She’d done a fine job processing the crime scene, but the intruder had worn gloves, so there weren’t any fingerprints to work with and if anybody in Massanutten County knew anything about the attack, they weren’t saying anything. This was a little surprising, because we strongly suspected the burglar was a local resident and there is no such thing as a secret in a small town. Indeed, almost everyone in Remmelkemp Mill now knew that I wore a turquoise nightshirt to bed.
The only new and slightly useful thing we learned about the crime was that Tina and I were both wrong about the size of the bullet that made the hole in our wall. It was a .41 caliber magnum hollow-point and was fired from the sort of large-bore revolver popular with police agencies back in the 1970s. Since it was a seldom-used type of ammunition, Tina followed up on the clue, checking gun and hunting shops throughout Massanutten and adjoining Rockingham County to see if anyone had recently bought a box of mini-artillery shells, but she came up dry.
Worst of all, there was no sign of the stolen Farnell Alpha Bear. Tina sent crime bulletins to law enforcement agencies throughout Virginia containing a digital photograph of the bear that we’d taken when it was insured. At the same time, I searched the online auction websites daily to see if it would show up for sale and contacted teddy bear shops all over the Mid-Atlantic region, asking the merchants to be on the lookout for a hot stuffed animal. I also posted messages on several Internet communities catering to teddy bear enthusiasts, telling of how we’d been burglarized and asking collectors to be on the lookout for a Farnell offered for sale by anyone who seemed especially vague as to how it came into their possession. Yet our work didn’t produce a single useful lead.
Once we accepted the bitter fact that the bear was probably gone for good, our life slowly returned to normal. Ash did an amazing job repairing the damaged teddy bears and, unless you knew where to look, you couldn’t see where she’d whipstitched the pieces back together. Meanwhile, I put in a claim to our insurance company, patched the bullet hole in the wall, and resumed work on my newest stuffed animal.
It’s still a little hard for me to believe that after all those years of investigating murders I now spend my days making teddy bears with my wife. Some of my old friends from the PD think I’ve lost my marbles, but I have a great life. Creating teddy bears is a lot more fun than homicide work and there’s the added bonus that nobody calls at two-thirty in the morning to have me come look at a corpse.
I officially unveiled the new bear for Ash one Saturday morning in mid-June. Marginally dressed in a gauzy white cotton nightgown, Ash was curled up on the quilt-covered sofa. She held her morning mug of hot cocoa and was faced toward the window, watching the birds gathered around the hanging feeder in our front yard. Kitch lay sprawled at her feet, which provided me with an excuse to keep my distance, because I really didn’t want to breathe in any of the tendrils of steam rising from Ash’s mug. I don’t usually keep secrets from my wife, but I’ve never told her that the smell of chocolate invariably causes a teeth-gritting jolt of pain through the bone and titanium hardware of my left shin.
The pain is a psychosomatic effect of my having been shot in front of the chocolate factory and shop in Ghirardelli Square a couple of years ago. My old partner, Gregg Mauel, and I had been in foot pursuit of a murder suspect when he opened fire on us. I went down and Gregg smoked the guy. Now, my mind automatically links the agony of the crippling wound with the aroma of chocolate and although I understand it’s a Pavlovian response, I can’t control it. However, I’m not going to let my malfunctioning brain interfere with Ash’s morning cup of cocoa.
Limping down the stairs and into our tiny living room, I lowered my voice a half octave and solemnly announced, “The bear you’re about to see is new. Only the name has been changed to protect myself from a copyright infringement lawsuit.” Then I whistled the famous nine-note fanfare that opened the old cop television program,
Dragnet.
She looked up and gave me an excited smile. “He’s done?”
“I finished him last night. That’s why I was so late getting into bed.” I held up the twenty-inch-tall teddy bear I’d been slaving over for nearly two months. Doing my best Jack Webb impression, I then began a variation on the prologue that preceded most
Dragnet
episodes. I jiggled the bear slightly pretending it was the one actually speaking. “This is the city, Remmelkemp Mill—”
“Actually it’s a village, sweetheart.”
“Excuse me, but nobody ever corrected Sergeant Joe Friday.”
Ash’s eyes were bright with merriment. “That’s because he was a stickler for facts. He wouldn’t have called Remmelkemp Mill a city.”
“Okay…this is the
village
, Remmelkemp Mill, Virginia. It’s a quiet community, full of hardworking people, but some are deeply disturbed at the idea of a grown man making teddy bears. When they call the bear artist’s manhood into question, that’s when I go to work. My name is Joe Fur-day and I carry a tiny badge.”
“He’s wonderful. Let me see him.”
“Hang on a sec. I’m not done yet.” I resumed channeling the spirit of Jack Webb. “Saturday, June seventeenth. It was sunny and warm in Remmelkemp Mill. I was working the Day Watch out of the Rob-bear-y-Homicide Division.”
Ash winced at the bad pun. You’d think she’d be accustomed to my wretched one-liners by now. I handed Joe to her and sat down on the couch.
Back when I embarked on my new vocation of making stuffed animals, I’d struck on the idea of making bears that honored the fictional cops from television and film. My first effort was Dirty Beary, a mohair tribute to Clint Eastwood, and it had won an honorable mention at the Har-Bear Expo in Baltimore. I’d since given the bear to Tina as an inadequate token of gratitude for saving Ash’s life and mine last October. With Joe Fur-day finally finished, I had to decide which bear I was going to make next, Steve McBear-ett, from
Hawaii Five-O
, or Inspector Ursa-kin from the old Quinn Martin
F.B.I.
series.
Joe Friday was a retro cop, so I’d made Joe Fur-day as a retro teddy bear. He was created from gunmetal gray mohair, had an old-fashioned seam running up the center of his head from his black nose, hockey stick arms with charcoal-colored felt paw pads, and a slight hump at the top of his back. His face and muzzle were shaved, which accentuated the stern appearance of the black glass eyes and grimacing embroidered mouth. In my commitment to authenticity, I’d even considered putting a tiny Chesterfield cigarette in the corner of Joe’s mouth, but eventually decided against it, because these days, where there’s smoke there’s ire.
The bear was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, tie, and a gray fedora—the clothing Jack Webb wore in the 1950s version of the show, which in my opinion was far superior to the 1960s incarnation of
Dragnet
, when Joe Friday was less a hard-nosed cop than a grouchy soapbox orator. There was even a leather holster on the bear’s right hip that contained an inch-long replica of a Smith & Wesson snub-nose revolver that I’d carefully carved from balsa wood and painted metallic black.
“God, I love him,” said Ash as she examined the bear.
“Really?”
“Of course, really. Look at how your work has improved since October.”
“Only because I had a great teacher.”
“Thank you. Can I pour you some coffee?”
“That’d be nice.”
She placed the bear on the end table and went into the kitchen. Returning, she handed me a mug of coffee and said, “So, are you going to show him to the guild this morning?”
Ash was referring to the new club she’d organized back in April, the Massanutten Teddy Bear Artist Guild. There were about eleven local women in the group, including Tina, and they met monthly at our house to socialize over coffee, discuss bear-making techniques, and work on stuffed animals. The club was an instant success and, if you didn’t factor my creations into the judging pool, the quality of the bears being produced was nothing short of amazing. Although, in fairness to me, most of the members had been sewing since childhood.
For instance, Tina had already begun to experiment with giving her bears articulated limbs so that they could be posed. Then there was our neighbor, Missy Hendrix, who made whimsical large-eyed bears in bold and unorthodox colors, such as magenta and orange. Another artist showing great promise was fortysomething single mom Holly Reuss, who had never created a stuffed animal in her life. Up until she’d joined the guild, her forte was making hand-sewn quilts. Yet under Ash’s tutelage, the quiet and reserved Holly had recently produced a superb cream-colored mohair teddy that was evocative of a Steiff bear from the 1920s. I’ll admit I was a little envious. It had taken me nearly half a year to make something that could be identified as a teddy bear at a distance of over ten yards and, in a few months, a number of the women were producing masterpieces.
The other problem was that, after a few guild meetings, I was beginning to feel as if I needed a major testosterone transfusion. The Civil Defense siren-quality warning sign was when I found myself offering informed opinions on mineral-based facial foundation powder and four-hundred-thread-count sheets during discussions at last month’s meeting. Afterwards, I worried if I was on the log flume ride to becoming a SNAG—a Sensitive New Age Guy—and wondered what the next manifestation would be. What if it was a craving to watch
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
? The notion was enough to chill my blood.
I cleared my throat. “Actually, I was thinking of passing on the meeting today.”
“Suffering from an overdose of girl cooties?” Ash gave me a gentle smile that told me she wasn’t surprised by my announcement.
“Not yours. Never yours. But…”
“You’re the only man there.”
“Yeah, and I’m really dreading another Saturday morning listening to Rita Olmsted talk about how hard it is to find an underwire bra that fits properly.”
“That
was
a little over the top.” Ash saw my lips twitch and showed me her palm, signaling me to remain silent. “And don’t say it, because I can see the thought bubble over your head.”
“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh? Tell me that you weren’t going to say that Rita is always over the top…of both cups.”
I assumed a look of injured innocence. “I’m stung that you think I’d pay the slightest attention to another woman’s bust.”
“Sweetheart, I love you more than life and trust you implicitly, but you’re also one-hundred percent heterosexual male, which means you’re genetically-coded to look. The first time we met, I could have drawn a dotted line from your eyes to my cleavage.”
“As a matter of fact, you could do that right now.”
“You have a one-track mind.” Ash smiled and shook her head in mock disbelief, yet made no effort to obstruct my view. “But getting back to the guild meeting. The fact that the women discuss those things in your presence is really a compliment. It means they’re comfortable saying almost anything around you.”
“I know and I like them and I’m not quitting the guild. I just need a month’s sabbatical from the ladies.”
“I understand and, by all means, take a break.”
“Thanks, my love.”