A Cadgers Curse Read online

  "To the Tartan," she said solemnly, and we all managed tiny sips of the golden fire.

  Mother held up her glass and said, "May every day find you safe and well."

  Auntie said, "An' speaking of safe and well, oft and again I've wanted to buy a sturdy German car for you, DD. That is the safest. But stubborn you are, even as your grandmother. You'll ne'er let me help."

  "And you need to meet the right man and get out of that business you're in," Mother added, heading for the kitchen, Cavalier at her heels. She'd be happy if I were the kind of daughter who kept a clean house and used the oven timer. I admire those women who do, but a timer is useless since I don't cook too often, and I never know when I'll get home. Jung explains the unexplainable as a mother-daughter cosmic thing where the daughter never measures up. Still, after Frank's suicide, when the blackness held me down in its depths, Mother had come through. She'd coaxed me into eating enough to stay alive. Now she'd like to see me get on with life-at least life as she saw it.

  Before I could change the subject, Auntie put down her glass and said, "It's nigh time you peek at my wee Robert Burns surprise. Wait here." She headed for the guest bedroom Mother always keeps ready for her.

  Auntie was excited, and she was beginning to lapse into Pidgin Scots, as Mother terms it. A few wisps of hair had by now fallen from her usually elegant upsweep, and she was in overdrive. My hopes to forestall the Burns affair till after dinner were dashed. I suspected her wee surprise would be a no-win situation for me. Despite the baking aromas, I lost my appetite.

  She emerged carrying a red leather case the size of three or four volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary.

  "Attend," she announced and placed it with great care on the marquetry table Mother uses to play poker. Auntie has a flair for the dramatic.

  Even the most incompetent burglar could have popped the lock on the case in a nano-second. I decided not to mention this. Mother came in, and we both watched while Auntie fumbled with the pathetic lock.

  Finally I intervened. "I don't mean to point out the obvious Auntie, but this lock is broken." At a gentle touch from me, the lock popped.

  "T'wasn't locked; t'was stuck," Auntie said. "The key went agley, an' it had to be broke open."

  She lifted the lid. The box was lined in a deep red velvet, worn around the edges but nonetheless still beautiful. Inside was nestled an ornate Ormolu casket, inset with the initials "K. B."

  "Come help me with this, DD."

  "I thought you said you purchased a manuscript."

  "Well, I did and I didn't," she replied in her usual Scots manner.

  "What does the "K. B" stand for?" I asked.

  "I don't know yet. That's one of the things you must find out."

  We removed the resplendent casket. It too had a useless lock hanging by one hasp. As Cavalier pranced in, tail up and curious, Auntie ordered me to open it. I lifted the lid. The casket was lined in dark blue satin. Inside was a double sheet of letter paper, no envelope. Under the paper lay a leather pouch.

  I reached for the pouch. "What's in here?"

  Auntie grabbed my arm. "No," she yelled.

  I froze and Cavalier retreated under the Christmas tree, hiding among the presents.

  "Put these on." She handed me a pair of surgical gloves from her purse. "You canna touch these precious things with your bare hands. I thought you knew about such things. Take out the paper first."

  I obeyed instructions, put on the gloves, then gently removed the paper. A few grains of dark sand rattled in the crease. The paper was sturdy and had a crisp feel. The writing was penned in an old-fashioned flowing script, and it was with some difficulty that I read it.

  71~i7'fte~t ~1~1~iire r~/ arz urui~~ur as tact atl1'(// 1

  0it 7eei~~ t~e r~y~ ~ ~ ce ut ruutf.

  ~k, JtfQ/-f 'ice 1/1 trl~ur - reC911 1;

  v t1 !`Zral7~r lcmt71 f weal m lai~z 1;

  ~~~ut it~~a u~tr~m~~ ty~elraCace fta~l~~l~

  ~tr~(Y 1-e ~~7 it trmE r~a~tr)li

  `x4lle~t l~tr)c'c'(li alt r) frlc Cart

  7) utt Irnve( it rc/ ~' J to et err

  ~/ f~ «tiu/r r)JtuarF LLCL~te arc' Iarte, c/

  e T I~ee ~utlgnl) jtle~rrMle;

  (it l r)! t ra ce, to ~rlt ~r~

  GtJ~. it~k tfcnr l(J d(J 1JC~ q 1 //1( .

  "Auntie" I faced her. "How much did you pay for this?"

  "Well..."

  Mother interjected. "Tell her Elizabeth."

  "It was a verra special deal. Only one hundred thousand pounds."

  "About a hundred fifty thousand dollars, " I translated. "You are aware, Auntie, that this is probably a fake."

  "Balderdash," Aunt Elizabeth said angrily. "How can you conclude that a'fore you even investigate?"

  "Auntie..."

  "Daffy, I ken it's real. Your job is to prove it," Auntie pronounced as she fingered the diamond pin. "I'm counting on you, as aye.

  "Don't call me Daffy. And who sold this to you? Did you get any sort of provenance?"

  Pulling another pair of gloves from her purse, Auntie drew them on and gently lifted the ancient looking leather pouch from the casket.

  "Canna this be considered provenance?" One by one she removed five parcels from the worn pouch, each wrapped in yellowed, coarse fabric. Gently I unraveled the decaying fabric from each parcel and found myself staring at five pieces of thick glass with a greenish tint. The biggest piece caught my attention, and I held it up to the light. On it was etched the words:

  ~~ea e f'~tuRrtf rIZce t/1 tr tu~ir

  C 4it C"Q~J r X JcmtlQ~1~

  V,ut i(L/S ui(i

  LJ

  asz tut.

  "Oh this can't be," I said aloud as I examined the other pieces. Two of them had cracks along one end. When I placed all five pieces flat on the table and rearranged them around like puzzle pieces, they fit roughly together, resembling a rectangular jigsaw puzzle.

  "Be careful," Auntie cautioned. "Dinna break any."

  With the pieces together, the entire poem was now clearly readable. My heart jumped. I caught my breath and read the lines again. I have a vivid imagination, but was this possible? I swallowed hard and looked at Auntie. She raised her eyebrows but said nothing. That alone was earthshaking.

  Her silence continued while I fetched mother's magnifying glass and examined the handwriting more closely. I was no Burns scholar, but Auntie's obsession had exposed me to a fair amount of his work. He was a fabulous poet who'd lived fast and hard and had died early. He was a lothario who'd had twelve children by three or four women, and he'd become an overnight celebrity, a rock star of the times, with the publication of his first book of poems. I knew he was a Jacobite, passionately in favor of a deposed Stuart king and passionately opposed to the Hanovers who'd taken over the throne-just like Auntie. And the incident where he scratched out this verse with a diamond-tipped pen on the window of an inn on a tour of Scotland was well documented.

  "Auntie, is this supposed to be the glass from the Inn at Stirling?"

  She nodded. "Aye. The Golden Lion Inn. Is it not thrilling?" she asked reverentially. "Something Rabbie himself touched. Look. It gives me the goose bumps."

  "Auntie, if this were that same window pane, it would fetch a king's ransom." As I said it, goose bumps ran down my spine, and I could see the Inn, the window, and handsome Rabbie Burns thinking treason.

  I braced Auntie. "Who sold this to you?"

  Auntie looked stubborn and stayed silent.

  "How can I investigate whether it's authentic if I don't know where you got it?"

  "Elizabeth, if you want her to help, tell her," my mother insisted.

  Aunt Elizabeth was my father's sister. She loved him dearly and used to take his advice. Since his death, she listens to no one. Except, occasionally, my mother.

  "If I tell you," she said, relenting, "you must promise you'll not tell another soul." "

  I promise," I said.

  "All right," she yielded. "It all began with a phone call from Geor
ge."

  "George who?"

  "You know. George Murray, my attorney. Of Murray and McSweeny in Edinburgh. He asked to come and see me. Verra important, he said, and also verra hush-hush confidential."

  "He came to see you?" I asked.

  "You don't understand, girl. Remember I told you how the moderns are pulling down all the beautiful old buildings in the city to erect high-rises? It's getting to be exactly like America. His firm has been in the selfsame building for almost three hundred years, but now the old grande dame is under the wrecking ball. It really makes me burn to see so much auld architecture demolished. It's akin to the usurpers come back to set the country to wrack and ruin again.

  "Get on with it, Auntie."

  "Aye. Well, George knew I dinna like their new glass high rise, so he offered to come to me. And so he did, the very afternoon."

  "What happened?"

  "He brought that box along with him. That's the whole story," she said as she looked at me sidewise.

  "Where did he get it from, Elizabeth?" Mother prodded. Even she wasn't satisfied with Auntie's bare-bones explanation.

  "George told me the workers had found it during the demolition. He said it was found in a container wedged in a niche in one of the cellars of the old building. Only the name of the firm was on it. Nothing else."

  "And who did it belong to?" I asked.

  "They couldna trace an owner. According to George, the box had never been inventoried. He said there were no company files on it either. He assured me they looked into all their auld records."

  "So why did George contact you about this, Auntie? Did he realize what it could be?"

  "Oh, he ken it was Robert Burns. And o' course he knows my interest. He's accompanied me to the Immortal Memory Readings at the St. Andrew's Society and so forth, just as you have here in America. So it was only natural I'd be the first person he thought of."

  "And he didn't offer it to anyone else? He came straight to you, and you bought it on sight. Auntie, had you been drinking any whiskys that day?"

  "I already told you, DD, that I could not but buy it. You must see that now. As soon ever as I saw it, I recognized Rabbie's hand." She regarded me with the full force of her piercing blue eyes.

  "An' by your leave, I had only a drop," she added defiantly.

  "Auntie, I don't understand why your attorney wouldn't put this on the open market. It would have sold for a million dollars, if not more."

  "All I know is George told me the firm was nay about to get itself embroiled in a lengthy dispute. Without proper records, they'd not be able to authenticate provenance. And George worried about lawsuits getting filed cock o'heap alleging the box and its contents belonged to every Jack 'n Jill that happened to be a client. They'd all say that the firm of Murray and McSweeney was ..."

  "Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial, to paraphrase Perry Mason." I finished the sentence.

  "To say nothing of negligent," Mother added. "The firm would go bankrupt quicker than George could sing a chorus of `For Auld Lang Syne."'

  "An' that's the whole kit 'n kaboodle," Auntie said. "And George explained I'm now established as the true legal owner. Besides, had I not agreed to the purchase, he was going to contact two American collectors of Burns memorabilia. They would have had a knock 'em down bidding war."

  "Once again, Auntie, let me point out that George would have made a lot more money from them than he made selling it to you. So the question is, why would he sell it to you?"

  Aunt Elizabeth was silent.

  "What's the answer, Auntie?"

  "Tell her Elizabeth," Mother ordered.

  "All right. But you must never, never repeat this. George and I ... we ... how shall I put this, we are verra good friends."

  "You're very good friends, and this is why he sold it to you?"

  Mother glared at me and said, "DD, don't give your aunt a hard time. She's doing her best."

  "All right, maybe more than verra good friends," Auntie admitted, studying the rug.

  "Maybe what you mean is that you two are currently having a flaming affair. Ohmygod. That settles it. It's a sure bet that all this stuff is fake."

  "You can't really think that, DD," Auntie protested. "The poem, the pieces of glass ... they all seem so ... so authentic. They make my heart race. Truth to say, doesn't yours race too, my girl?"

  It had for a minute there, but I certainly wasn't going to admit anything to the Dragon.

  "You must do the investigation for me," she pleaded.

  "I can't, Auntie. I'm on a rush job with HI-Data. That's why I couldn't pick you up yesterday. I don't have any time for this right now. I'll give you the name of somebody who's an expert in..."

  "But this is for family. This is for Scotland. Nothing else could be more important. Here. You take these precious objects and get on with the investigation." She replaced everything in the casket and handed it to me.

  I was about to hand it back to her and tell her in no uncertain terms that I could not investigate anything, when I remembered seeing a similar casket on TV a few weeks ago on the "Antiques Roadshow." That casket had held some surprises for the owner. Curious, I turned Auntie's box every which way and poked and prodded along the edges, just like I'd seen the dealer do on TV. I'd almost given up when all of a sudden a tiny drawer sprang open in the back.

  "Look," Mother pointed.

  "A secret compartment." Auntie clapped her hands. "Good gal" She patted my shoulder.

  A folded paper was tucked in the small drawer. I used my fingernail to work it out, then carefully opened it. On it was the same "KB" crest that was on the front of the Ormolu casket.

  "What does it say?" Auntie asked.

  "It reads, `Present'd Octob'r 1787 by the author."'

  "Wow," I said. "That would be the right time frame for the incident at the Golden Lion Inn. I wonder what that 'KB' crest means?"

  "See. I was right to trust only you, DD. No one else. I'm relying on you." She walked away and poured another wee dram. "Hooi Uncdos," Auntie toasted and took a sip.

  Mother and I eyed each other.

  "She's into the auld toasts," Mother sighed. "I think that's the one meant to drive away strangers."

  "I know what that one means, Mother. The Stuart-loving Jacobites used it as a toast to drive out the Hanoverians."

  "Aye," Auntie said.

  "If we don't soon eat," Mother interjected, " the manglewurzels she brought with her will be ruined."

  I lit the candles, put on the recording of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony, Auntie's favorite, and helped serve dinner. Usually we don't see manglewurzels until January 25th as part of the Burns Supper to honor him on his birthdate, but tonight the Scottish vegetable was on the menu along with a sherry trifle dessert called Typsy Laird. I stifled myself from making any comment whatsoever about the Tipsy Laird.

  After dinner, the three of us settled around Mother's Christmas tree with Cavalier for the ritual opening of presents. Mother and I each had a small glass of port while Auntie finished her dram of Glenlivet. Of course we had to pass our drinks over a glass of water as Auntie made the Loyal Toast, "To the King Over the Water," a symbolic Jacobite toast drunk even to this day in honor of the ex fled Stuarts across the water. Often when I'm with Auntie I wonder in what century I'm living. Existential differences aside, it turned out to be a nice holiday. Mother was pleased with the pink bathrobe and slippers I'd chosen, and I thanked her for the top drawer Borghese makeup case she gave me. I didn't tell her how handy it would be on domestic stakeouts.

  Auntie handed me a beautifully wrapped parcel. Inside was a sterling silver pin engraved with the Buchanan crest and clan motto, Clarior Hinc Honos, which translates "I help the brave." The design was familiar. I remembered my father explaining that our crest contained a ducal cap held aloft which represented Sir Alexander Buchanan's killing of the Duke of Clarence and taking his coronet as a trophy at the Battle of Beauge in Normandy in March 1421.

  "Auntie, this is.
.."

  "'Tis one of a kind," she nodded. "And quite expensive, girl. Dinna lose it."

  I looked down at the pin. What I saw instead was the ring on Ken's dead hand, and I heard echoes of Frank telling me his family ring was "one of a kind and quite expensive."

  I looked up. Mother had unwrapped a bottle of exotic perfume Auntie brought her from Paris, and thoughts of the ring got submerged in holiday spirit. We all tried a smidge of the perfume, just like girls-night-out. Meanwhile Cavalier gleefully unwrapped and played with a catnip mouse Mother had chosen specially for him. I kind of felt sorry for the mouse, but Cavvy adored being the center of attention.

  "By the by, Auntie, Phil mentioned he thought you were being followed on the way back from the airport. Did you notice anything?"

  "When the Herons leave the tree, The Laird of Gight will landless be." Auntie recited the lines from the Scottish legend with verve. "Let's toast Scotland, the Stuarts, and Rabbie Burns," she said. "Where's the piper? Scots awa."

  "She'll never admit to looking behind her at anything, you know," Mother whispered to me. "You might as well give up the questions and enjoy yourself."

  Later that evening Scotty phoned from London in spite of the inconvenient time difference to say how much he missed me. I thanked him again for the big box of Godiva chocolates he'd sent. I like my men to give me chocolate-good chocolate and lots of it. Then when he asked if I liked those new Michelin tires he'd given me for the Miata, I restrained myself from telling him what had happened to me and one of his tires today on the way home from HI-Data.

  FOURTEEN

  EARLY NEXT MORNING, I drove from Mother's to my apartment building to pick up Glendy and Lucille, my twin-sister neighbors. They traditionally spend Christmas Day with us and adore Mother's Christmas goose with apple stuffing. But mostly they enjoy the after-dinner card-playing orgy where everyone gambles and gossips and cooks up crazy schemes to get me married and living happily ever after. I love them dearly, but I wish they'd mind their own collective business. And one day I'm going to say that-out loudto their faces. I'm the lippyest person I know, but where my mother, my aunt, and the nosy twins are concerned, I'm hopeless.