The Mournful Teddy
The
Mournful
Teddy
John J. Lamb
c
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK
One Hot Teddy
Uncle Dorsey was vague about how he’d obtained the Mourning Bear, saying he’d “found” it while on duty somewhere in Germany. Call me suspicious, but I can’t tell you the number of thieves I met during my police career that, when arrested for possession of stolen property, claimed that they’d
“found” the hot goods.
Once Ashleigh was free to talk, I asked, “Hey sweetheart, do you know who owns the Mourning Bear they’re auctioning today? Elizabeth Ewell. Recognize the name?”
Ash’s lips tightened slightly. “I know of her. Liz Ewell is very wealthy, so she didn’t come into town very much to associate with us rabble. Thinks she can get whatever she wants.”
Ash’s voice became increasingly surly. “Back in 1972, she decided that she wanted some land my daddy owned but didn’t want to sell, so she got a Richmond lawyer and went to court.
She won only because she had so much money that she could have bankrupted us just by keeping it in the courts.”
There was an unholy light in Ash’s eyes and a dormant Virginia mountain accent emerged in her voice. “She called my daddy an ignorant hillbilly and said she hoped he’d learned his lesson not to cross his betters.”
“Maybe she’s changed. After all, she’s donating the auction proceeds to charity.”
“More likely trying to buy her way into heaven.”
“Want to hear something else interesting?” I lowered my voice. “As of about an hour ago, the Mourning Bear wasn’t here yet . . .”
Praise for John J. Lamb’s
Echoes of the Lost Order
“Mystery fans, meet John Lamb, a former Southern California homicide detective turned author . . . you’re in for a real treat . . .
Full of suspense, plot twists, well-crafted characters, and fun.”
—Martha C. Lawrence
“[A] compelling mystery by a dazzling new talent.” —P. B. Ryan
“Intriguing . . . a rip-roaring, rebel yell of a read.”
—Tracy Dunham
The
Mournful
Teddy
John J. Lamb
c
BERKLEY PRIME CRIME, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business es
tablishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE MOURNFUL TEDDY
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author Copyright © 2006 by John J. Lamb.
Interior text design by Stacy Irwin.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 1-101-00848-2
BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME
Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
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Dedicated with love, to our dear friend
Frankie Uchimura.
We treasure her unfailing friendship and
support, are inspired by her strength and
cheerfulness in the face of adversity,
and thank her for bringing sweet Bear into our lives.
Chapter 1
It was just before dawn on Saturday morning, the first day of October, and I again awoke to find myself in a strange bedroom . . . only this time my wife, Ashleigh, was gone.
The background racket of Bay Area suburbia was also conspicuously missing: no omnipresent hum of vehicle traffic, no clatter of police or air ambulance helicopters, no sirens, and no popping sounds that left you wondering whether they were a backfiring truck or someone resolving a thorny personal problem with a gun. Instead, I heard a meadowlark trilling “hello–good-bye” and the robust rushing hiss of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River as it flowed past the front of our new home. The serenity was more than a little disturbing. Even though we’d lived in Remmelkemp Mill, Virginia for three-and-a-half months, the house and the region still felt alien to me, which I suppose, was to be expected since I’d spent the bulk of my life in San Francisco—the world’s largest unfenced lunatic asylum.
2
John J. Lamb
I wasn’t surprised that Ash had gotten up so early. Today was a big day for her because in a few hours we’d be driving halfway across the valley to the Rockingham County fairgrounds in Harrisonburg to exhibit her menagerie of stuffed bears, tigers, and lions at the Shenandoah Valley Teddy Bear Extravaganza. And, by this afternoon, we’d know whether her Miss Susannah S. Seraphim—a twenty-four-inch-tall pink German Schulte–mohair bear wearing a handsewn Victorian dress, straw hat, and wire-framed glasses—would be awarded the first prize in the artisan bear category.
Ash had collected and made teddy bears for years, but it wasn’t until we moved from California that she’d grown confident enough in her work to exhibit them for sale and enter them in a professional competition. I’m beginning to become somewhat of an expert on teddy bears myself and I think hers are appealing. More important, I’m damn proud of her for being brave enough to submit her work for critical inspection. Most people go through their entire lives fearfully dodging that sort of opportunity. It’s just one of the nine hundred or so reasons I’m madly in love with her.
I rolled over onto my back and considered trying to catch another hour of sleep, but then I smelled the delicious aroma of hot chocolate and my left shin began to throb as if someone was playing the
boom-boom-boom
rhythm that opens Queen’s “We Are the Champions” on my rebuilt bones with a ball-peen hammer. Half a dozen doctors have assured me that—after over a year—the pain is psychosomatic. Maybe they’re right, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Considering that Ashleigh and I have been married twenty-six years—and she knows me better than I know myself—I think I’ve done an excellent job of keeping my painful reaction to the scent of all things cocoa a secret from her. She loves her morning hot The Mournful Teddy
3
chocolate and I won’t be the one to take that pleasure away from her.
My name is Bradley Lyon and I spent twenty-five years with the San Francisco Police Department, the last fourteen as an Inspector in Robbery/Homicide. I’ll be forty-eight years old in July and, considering I had one of the most stressful careers in the world and we’ve just undergone one of the toughest years of our lives, I look about as well as can be expected. I’m a shade under six-feet tall, could lose about twenty pounds, and up until recently my hair was auburn. Now it’s mostly silvery gray—so much so that I’m often asked if I want the senior discount when Ash and I go shopping. I suspect the person who originated the myth that gray hair on men looks distinguished was a middle-aged guy whistling in the dark.
As I mentioned a moment ago, Ashleigh and I have been married for over a quarter century. That’s a geological epoch by today’s standards of matrimonial duration.
We met back in 1977 in Northern Virginia. She was a student at George Mason University in Fairfax, and I was finishing up my three-year army enlistment as a battlefield intelligence analyst at Fort Belvoir. We fell in love, and although she’s smarter than almost anyone I know, she left school and followed me to the West Coast when I began to pursue my lifelong dream of being a San Francisco cop.
Our marriage produced two children, both now grown and doing well. Christopher got his degree in viticulture and enology from UC Davis and works at a winery, in of all places, Missouri. Our daughter, Heather, continued the family tradition and is a patrol officer with SFPD, assigned to the Mission district.
The story behind why the odor of chocolate makes my leg ache is brief: Back in the early spring of 2003 my partner, Gregg Mauel, and I chased a murder suspect into 4
John J. Lamb
Ghirardelli Square, a reasonably pleasant tourist trap featuring a large ice cream parlor and candy shop operated by the chocolate conglomerate. The plaza was crowded and we didn’t dare risk taking a shot at the guy, but he wasn’t real worried about where his bullets were going.
His second shot pretty much obliterated an inch of my fibula and tibia as it tore through my left calf. I crashed to the pavement and Gregg did the right thing—he kept chasing the crook and eventually ten-ringed him. Meanwhile, I waited for the paramedics and writhed in agony while sucking down huge gulps of obscenely rich chocolate-laced air.
From that instant forward, I couldn’t endure the aroma of chocolate. I don’t care whether it’s a stale Hershey’s Kiss left over from last Halloween or a four-dollar Go-diva truffle—one whiff of the stuff and I’m transported back in time to that moment when a bullet shattered my shinbones like pretzel sticks. The ironic postscript is that the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company feels so bad about my being shot and crippled in front of their store that they send me a five-pound sampler box of their merchandise every month. Ash loves the hot cocoa mix.
Realizing that I’d never go back to sleep now, I climbed out of bed and got dressed in sweatpants, a plaid flannel shirt that Ash repeatedly threatens to throw away because it’s so threadbare, and tennis shoes. I glanced at my Irish blackthorn cane leaning against the wall in the corner of the bedroom and decided I’d leave it there for now. Then I stumped toward the stairway and began a slow descent down the steps.
Our new home was built in 1899, but it’s in excellent shape. It used to belong to Ash’s paternal great-grandparents and it stands about twenty yards west of the river at the bottom of a wooded ridge. The house is constructed of brick painted white, is two-storied, and has a The Mournful Teddy
5
tin roof that, when it rains hard, makes a sound like the tap dance recital from hell. Upstairs, there’s our bedroom, bathroom, a sewing room, and what someday may be a guest room once we clear it of the boxes that we still haven’t unpacked. Downstairs is composed of a snug kitchen, dining nook, and living room. The house sits on the east edge of a 700-acre expanse of farm and pastureland jointly owned and worked by various elements of the Remmelkemp family, who’ve occupied this portion of the Shenandoah Valley since shortly after the Revolutionary War. And, as you’ll have deduced by now, the town is named after my wife’s family.
Our home looks like a teddy bear museum—not that I’m complaining, because I think it creates an atmosphere of warmth and welcome. Maybe I appreciate those things more than most men since twenty-five years of police work had taken me inside some pretty dreadful homes.
Anyway, we own about 500 bears and at any given time about 300 are on display throughout the house.
Ash was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t hear me clump downstairs. She was wearing my flannel robe and sitting at the dinner table fiddling with a knotted blue fabric bow that adorned a brown bear togged out in an old-fashioned sailor’s uniform. As I scanned the living room, I could see she’d been busy. When we’d gone to bed last night, the thirty or so bears we were taking to the show were carefully packed in plastic crates, but now they were scattered on every horizontal surface in the living room and dining nook, evidence that Ashleigh had taken each stuffed animal out for yet another final inspection.
Even after being with Ash all these years, she’s still so lovely that sometimes the mere sight of her is enough to make me catch my breath. Yeah, I know that sounds like overripe dialogue from a romantic movie that ought to be 6