Flanagans dolls, p.1
Flanagan's Dolls, page 1
Praise for Warren Adler
“Warren Adler writes with skill and a sense of scene.”—The New York Times Book Review on The War of the Roses
“Engrossing, gripping, absorbing… written by a superb storyteller. Adler’s pen uses brisk, descriptive strokes that are enviable and masterful.” —West Coast Review of Books on Trans-Siberian Express
“A fast-paced suspense story… only a seasoned newspaperman could have written with such inside skills.”—The Washington Star on The Henderson Equation
“High-tension political intrigue with excellent dramatization of the worlds of good and evil.”—Calgary Herald on The Casanova Embrace
“A man who willingly rips the veil from political intrigue.”—Bethesda Tribune on Undertow
Warren Adler’s political thrillers are…: “Ingenious.”—Publishers Weekly
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Flanagan’s Strings
About the Author
Also by Warren Adler
Chapter One
“Chaos reigns,” Joshua Flanagan thought, “and all’s well with the world.” It was his repetitive homily, rarely spoken, more often whispered, especially now as he arrived from his morning jog with Caesar, his Rottweiler companion, friend and nudnik at the front entrance of Flanagan’s Antique Emporium on 7 North Pratt Street.
“I declare thee open for business,” he muttered, unhitching Caesar’s umbilical cord and by a jiggle and twist of an oversized key opening the shop’s front door.
Not that this act made much of an impression on the already stirring morning world of Lakeland Falls, which, according to Flanagan’s personal gospel, was ground zero for the dotty, the eccentric and the whimsical and therefore the perfect place to nest for the latter fourth of his life. Or so he hoped.
Flanagan, buffeted impolitely by Caesar, entered into the eclectic clutter of the large front room of the shop. The room housed his seven tall clocks as guardians of Emily’s hodgepodge of Victorian furniture, their oval backs and faded floral patterns set in helter-skelter disarray, much to the stoic disapproval of a trio of solid oak Dutch armoires. They, in turn, could take some satisfaction in their obstruction of the view of early American primitives, mostly of stiff-faced somber children posed with absurd looking animals.
Before entering into the living quarters in the rear where he and Emily nested, Flanagan scrupulously followed the ritual of the lighting of the lamps, twenty-two in all, including peacock lamps, brass-carriage side lamps, an opalescent Gone with the Wind lamp and an assortment of Art Deco bronze lamps of young ladies with hands raised to the shades, Flanagan was certain, begging to be released from this prison of wacky antiquity.
The tall clocks, now known as Flanagan’s folly, hadn’t attracted a single buyer in a year. So much for his marketing skills. Emily was far better. She knew what merchandize moved. Her latest exhibit contained three full sets of dining tables and chairs, one a valuable Victorian walnut loo table. The tables supported a forest of silver candlesticks, epergnes, vegetable dishes, pedestal dessert stands, vases, vinaigrettes, trays, salvers, toast racks, teapots and tureens presided over by dark varnished floral paintings.
Emily had given Flanagan license to create a dark paneled library in a corner of the store, which, he thought, offered a private lesson in logical clutter, with neatly standing leather-bound sets of English and American authors, most his favorites, on the high shelves and with the lowers set aside for smaller objects like paperweights, scent bottles, glass goblets and drinking sets, Staffordshire figures, Ralph Wood Toby jugs, terra-cotta busts, cane handles, car mascots, carved wood, small bronzes and a couple of china dolls.
Lamps lit, he proceeded to walk the long hall to the so-called living part of the house deliberately done by Emily in minimalist modern, mostly with built-ins and lots of shiny chrome. The back part of the house had been extended and redone with a glass facade that looked out on Emily’s garden, half formal English, halfvegetable, and a screened-in bandstand gazebo where she did her pottery and breeze block carving.
From the front, the modern rehabbed rear could not be seen and a screen of evergreens, bought already tall, protected the sides and rear from nosy tourists who roamed Lakeside Falls spring, summer and fall seeking country serenity far enough from big city life to recognize the purity of oxygen that swept in over the giant lakes from Canada. According to Flanagan’s self-created rumor, a scientist who had turned to real estate for a living had once suggested, based on a genuine research project, that Lakeside Falls was the least polluted spot in the United States, which brought an end to tranquility and hoards of tourists seeking life extension through better breathing.
Small hotels and clutters of bed-and-breakfasts had proliferated at Lakeside Falls and were spotted throughout the town. When the tourists descended in the summer months, one realized, from the display of broad beams, thick thighs and distended stomachs, that the obesity pandemic was still in flood stage.
Flanagan’s steaming coffee was waiting on the glass table in the children’s mug, exclusively his own, with the inscription: “Keep Thy Shop and Thy Shop Will Keep Thee.” Emily was already dipping her unfrozen water bagels in her Queen Victoria Commemoration mug, an anomaly if ever there was one, but he had long ceased to offer any puns or sallies on this point. In the background the ever present polishing tumbler tumbled. Emily was polishing stones for the jewel tree she was crafting, one of many that she had created.
The shop, which they had opened two years ago, represented a life change of sorts since they had chosen to reverse the pattern of full-time Manhattan life in a West Side apartment with a second home in Lakeside Falls, where they both had grown up by making the town their full-time residence and Manhattan an increasingly part-time sojourn, especially now that their twenty-something offspring had absconded with most of the space.
Joshua still continued to consult as a freelance insurance adjuster and Emily, who had worked full time at Christie’s where she diligently applied her degree in decorative arts as an appraiser, was often called by her ex-employer to eyeball various entries to the auction world of antiques and collectibles.
Now in their late forties, they had chosen this less frenetic life to concentrate on Emily’s lifetime dream of operating an antique store. They had done all the traditional preliminaries, raising their children in the Big Apple. Both of their offspring, who visited infrequently, characterized Lakeside Falls as a place for one’s last lap after a disorderly and dissolute life, when better breathing was an absolute necessity.
Joshua, his name a compromise moniker agreed to by his Irish dad and Jewish mother, parlayed his degree in criminology into a lucrative freelance practice as an insurance investigator, a legacy of his father, an insurance agent whose stories of fraud and duplicity at the dinner table had turned him on to the profession. For years his father trudged up and down the streets of Lakeside Falls and all its rural appendages selling insurance on the installment plan, mostly at a dollar or two a week, which he collected and recorded in his long black insurance book.
Emily was the descendent of storekeepers who ran what was once the only general store in town. Her own father was still a storekeeper of sorts, running the only family-run pharmacy in town. It was hard to believe, but growing up there was a hierarchy of so-called class in Lakeside Falls and although Josh had watched Emily from afar throughout his early life, he had never felt a return of interest, which he had attributed to his own father’s humble profession.
“I loved you from the moment I saw you,” Josh had once confessed.
“When was that?”
“I saw your mother dry your little naked tush at the beach on the lake. That did it for me.”
“How old was I?”
“Five, give or take.”
“You were a pervert, even then.”
The miracle was that they passed each other in Lakeside Falls with nary a blink of recognition until they met again in Manhattan at the Metropolitan Museum. His opening line was the cliché of clichés.
“Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“I have never been somewhere,” she had responded.
Then as they say, fate intervened.
“I’m Josh Flanagan.”
“Flanagan, Flanagan. Flanagan.” Then came the oh my Gods. “The gawky string bean with pimples.”
“The flaming redhead nose-in-the-air snob.”
That was it, as they both recalled. Josh dubbed it “the moment of the joining of the hips.”
The fact was that both Josh and Emily truly loved their childhood home and Josh and she summered there for most of their married life. Emily had early on discovered in herself an esthetic sensibility which brought her a scholarship to Yale. There she excelled in history and enhanced her knowledge of old objects and the decorative arts. His work dovetailed with hers, another
As he began the ritual of breakfast with Emily, Caesar laid his heavy head on his right Nike.
“Rottweiler, will you remove your heavy-heartedness?” he said, trying to extract his foot.
“Can’t you call him by his name?” Emily mumbled, flipping a well-soaked clump of bagel between her lips, and dripping dark stains on The Lakeside Falls Herald which lay open on the table.
“That is his name.”
“That’s his breed. His name is Caesar.”
“Another Roman dog,” Flanagan muttered.
“But he loves you. He’s entitled to your respect.”
“He is entitled only to my services, which include such items as maintaining my life according to his erratic schedule of waste disposal.”
“You should have paid more attention to the way he was housebroken.”
“It’s him who’s breaking me. I’m now on his schedule. Last night he had the urge before dawn. I didn’t see you stirring.”
“He sleeps on your side.”
“Bedding with him is not an inducement to sexual congress.”
“It doesn’t seem to interfere with frequency.”
“It is sinful,” he smirked, “for him to watch with those doleful brown eyes. He is learning bad habits. He is, after all, only nine.”
“Sixty-three in man years,” Emily said.
“Mighty Caesar continues to stand fast.”
“A bit too frequently.”
“His ancestors are legion.”
“A bit too legion. The vet wants him fixed.”
“What is not broken must not be fixed.”
She nodded, at times more adamant than he, a great supporter of the natural.
He took his Swiss chronograph from his flannel shirt’s vest pocket and peered at its enamel dial. “Dawn of a new error,” he said.
Emily smiled and shook her head in mock exasperation as they waited out the ten seconds until the tall clocks struck. They both listened, obviously counting off the strikes as the familiar cacophony vibrated through the house like the knell of church bells calling the faithful of diverse persuasions. Then suddenly only one clock was striking.
“Accept it,” Emily said. “It will only drive you mad.”
“It has already,” Flanagan said. They had tried the best craftsman in the country. None dared to even try to eliminate the extra strike.
“The clock is accurate. It’s only the beats that are screwed up.”
“We could always ship it to Holland,” Flanagan sighed. It was an eighteenth century Dutch marquetry longcase built by the great Rotterdam clockmaker, Steven Hoogendyk.
“Hoogendyk is a bit on the dead side.”
“May he turn in his grave at every extra strike,” Flanagan murmured.
“Why can’t someone fix it?”
“That word again. You are fixated on fix. Some things are beyond such mundane chores. It is Hoogendyk’s voice from the grave.”
The clock had just been shipped back by still another craftsman. None of them wanted to take the chance of ruining the mechanism. The result was a ten thousand dollar white elephant. Still, the workmanship was miraculous. But no one wanted a tall clock with an extra strike. It made people crazy. Besides, it was a giant, one hundred and ten inches, too tall for most ceiling heights. And more than a foot higher than its nearest brother, a George III mahogany longcase by Lawson.
“Accept it, Flanagan,” Emily said. “It’s a white elephant.”
“Not at all,” he replied defensively. “It’s a one-of-kind. Like a stamp printed upside down.”
“It needs a special customer, someone one beat off.”
“In that case, it should be a best seller. Everybody in Lakeside Falls is one beat off.”
She looked up at him pointedly.
“I’m not one beat off.” He lifted her hand with the bagel and bit off a piece. “I’m two.”
“Hosannas for a man who knows himself.”
“It will sell. I will not be daunted,” he protested.
“Even the others are laggards. Problem is, Flanagan, you go for the big guys. They’re all well over eight feet. Most ceilings are that size. I wish you hadn’t….”
“None of that. You promised. Besides, I’m over my tall period.”
“Let’s hope.” She emphasized an air of finality by pinching his cheek.
“I still say they’re all gorgeous. People have lost their taste. Especially the summer people.”
Since it was the beginning of October, most had left. Perhaps they might sell to the winter people due to arrive in a few weeks to ski the nearby slopes. Or the smattering of tourists who will come by to breathe better in the thin air of icy winters.
“They’ll move,” he mumbled. “Time marches on.”
“Like my armoires,” Emily snickered. As she talked, she had been taking a cursory interest in the newspaper. She was squinting, having trouble with the smaller print.
“Face it. You need specs.”
“I’m only 43.”
“Seven.”
“That’s what I said. Four and three is seven.”
Josh snickered.
He watched her sly smile, which showed her double dimples and ocean green eyes peering under her reddish bangs, still radiant even as her once-flaming red curly hair was somewhat tempered with age. Seeing her like this every morning was a special treat, a celebration of the dumb luck of the mating game. He knew, too, that when he appeared for morning inspection, he felt certain that she exhibited the same thrill of recognition. Of course, such emotional content could never be insulted with words. Some things do not require verbalization.
To keep this illusion verdant, he took great care with his own physical grooming. Workouts kept his stomach flat and his muscles firm. He had turned gray prematurely and thanks to his late mother’s genes he had not lost his hair, and the little wrinkles that had popped up beside his hazel eyes were giving him an air of gravitas, or so he believed. He was tall and enjoyed his height advantage, especially in viewing spectacles like parades and pageants. People always remarked that they were an attractive couple. He believed implicitly in such observation.
Suddenly, Emily’s eyebrows rose. “Looks like our hopes for more winter people are down the tubes. They’ve stopped work on that new ski slope and condo project. The one that Jessie Shanks has been building.” She read snippets from the story. “Apparently they’ve run out of money.”
“Those fellows don’t run out of money. The banks just stop throwing it at them.”
She shrugged and continued to read, but with effort.
“Eyes,” she said, conscious of his observation. “My eyes no longer see the glory,” she said, aping his pun pretensions. It sparked in him a tiny tug of alarm. He was not very good dealing with her pain or defects, or, for that matter, any hint of her unhappiness. She knew it, too. “I think I need eye aid. I’ve already made an appointment with that new Dr. Blandings. Here three months and making quite a stir. He’s a specialist in contacts.”
“Blandings? What’s wrong with Dr. Grant?”
“Dr. Blandings is younger, probably more progressive. Grant is way behind, especially on contacts. Besides, Audrey knows what’s good.”
“Case closed,” Flanagan sighed. “The guru has spoken.”
Audrey Hazeltine was more than Emily’s best friend, confidante, and all-around advisor. They had been friends since first grade. She had married Sam Hazeltine, who had become county sheriff, a post he had acquired, by Flanagan’s reckoning, through some inherent flaw in the system.
The two men, thrown together by the irrevocable sisterhood of their wives, were pugilists locked in a life-and-death competitive struggle for—Flanagan always faltered at an all-encompassing definition—ascendancy, ego satisfaction, stubborn pride.
Neither could resist the opportunity to taunt the other, although it all took place just beneath the surface of civilized respectability. The arena, naturally, was criminology, in which they had each spent a great deal of time, Sam as a cop, Flanagan as an insurance investigator.
Thrown together at closer proximity since the Flanagan’s full-time return to Lakeside Falls, both had, by mutual and silent consent, resumed the taunt and torment, the play and counterplay, the warp and woof of their relationship. For them it was the spice of life, as necessary for their well-being as water and oxygen.
