Page 44 of The Furies

“According to the stories, he didn’t steal, or not exactly. A coin worth, say, ten thousand dollars might vanish from a collection, but he’d leave something else as a replacement. It might correspond to only a fraction of the value of what was taken, but it would be an unusual item—an old cross, say, or an ancient Greek arrowhead. It wasn’t a fair exchange, but it was an exchange nonetheless, and would only occur after any offers had been declined. We all find ways to ease our consciences. As for violence, that’s a different matter. The antiquities market has its dark corners, and he wasn’t above stealing from thieves and criminals, because they weren’t true collectors, not in his eyes.”

I had known a man like this once, a collector—no, the Collector. He, too, had operated by a code of his own, but he was gone now. I hoped.

“He was a legend in the trade,” Eleanor continued, “or a bogeyman. A lot of collectors just laughed off the stories about him. Those rumors had been circulating for decades, and some dealers could recall their fathers, and even their grandfathers, talking about the same guy, or a version of him. I mean, that would make him really, really old, beyond anything possible, and he often used aliases, so no one could be sure it was the same person they were talking about. He was a campfire tale for people who don’t like the outdoors. For a long time my brother, like so many of the rest, wasn’t willing to accept that he even existed, until Egon did some homework and became convinced he was real.”

“How?” I said.

“Because they shared some of the same interests, Egon and this guy—you know, the woo-woo stuff. Then someone else came forward, another collector. I don’t remember his name, but he lived in northern Pennsylvania: Sayre, South Waverly, someplace like that. He filled in the blanks for Egon, or a lot of them.”

“Why?”

“He wanted Egon to do his dirty work for him by stealing from the bogeyman, and Egon was willing to go along with it because the score promised to be big, and the mark wouldn’t be able to report the theft to the police because of his own activities. If it wasn’t the perfect crime, it was as close as Egon was likely to get.”

“Aided by Raum, right?” I said.

“Egon doesn’t like roughness. The gun that got him into all that trouble wasn’t even loaded. So the Pennsylvania collector—Athens, that’s where he’s from, but his name didn’t stick with me—provided the lure: an Indian coin, very old, which came with a provenance linking it directly to Alamelamma, the wife of an Indian ruler who threw herself from a cliff back in the seventeenth century, but not before cursing the Mysore kings.”

I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know,” said Eleanor. “After years of living with Egon, some of this shit had to rub off on me. They convinced a tame dealer up in Whitefield to list the Alamelamma coin, but selectively, and told him to keep it dangling until the right fish bit. He did, made the sale, and the delivery went to a PO box in Potsdam, New York, not far from the Canadian border. After that, they spent some cash to find out who was renting the box. It was a lot easier than Egon had anticipated, but perhaps this collector, who it turned out was based in Ontario, had become careless in his old age, although not so careless as to rent a box near his place of residence. By the time Raum got out, Egon had the plan in place. He and Raum hit the mark a week or so later, and that’s what they were celebrating the night we slept together. They’d taken down the bogeyman and stolen his treasure, just like in a fairy tale.”

“And does this bogeyman have a name?” I asked.

“Like I said, he uses aliases,” said Eleanor, “but one in particular.”

She was no longer smiling, and her gaze drifted past me to the gun on the console table.

“More often than not,” she said, “he calls himself Kepler.”

CHAPTER LII

Eleanor Towle poured away the cold coffee and washed the cups. I caught her glancing at my reflection in the glass of the kitchen window, regarding, assessing. If her brother was anything like her, regardless of his eccentricities, he could be a force to be reckoned with. She was an intriguing woman. Of course, she was also a liar, if only by omission, but nobody was perfect.

I was listening carefully while she worked at the sink. I’d been listening ever since I entered her home. It’s harder for a person to remain quiet and still than one might think, especially if they’re trying to monitor a conversation going on elsewhere in a house, but I’d picked up no indications of another occupant. I believed Eleanor Towle to be alone. Wherever her brother was hiding, it wasn’t here.

“What do you do for a living, Ms. Towle?”

“I’m a waitress at Phil’s,” she said. Phil’s was a grill house up on Route 16. I’d passed its billboard on the way to the Towle house. The sign read PHIL UP AT PHIL’S!, a gag so worn even Goodwill wouldn’t have accepted it.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“What do you think?”

“I’ve no idea. That’s why I asked.”

She set the cups upside down to drain, dried her hands on a dish towel, and turned to look at me.

“No, I don’t enjoy it,” she said, “but it’s a job, the tips are okay, and they were real understanding when my mom was sick.”

“Are you going to keep working there, now she’s gone?”

“I haven’t decided. Egon and I need to have that serious conversation about selling the house. I’d like to move away from here. Ossipee hasn’t brought me much luck in life, Egon neither, but he’s comfortable with the familiar. Given his druthers, he’d elect to be carried out of here feetfirst.”

If they sold the house and split the proceeds evenly, I guessed they might come out with $100,000 each, give or take. It wasn’t a lot, not if she was hoping to make a new start somewhere else, but there were also the proceeds of the robbery to consider.

“What exactly did your brother and Raum Buker take from this man Kepler?” I asked.

“Coins. I told you.”

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