Chapter 5 #2
“Hold it against you?” Mrs. Chrysler said.
“Listen. We planned for weeks to lift that stuff. Your smash-and-grab cost us”—she counted the claims on her fingers to underscore the point—“a broken contract with a very well-respected client, lost payment for a job unfinished, a very dissatisfying way to enter retirement—er, hiatus—and, worst of all, the Disappointment of nuns.”
“Yes, you said that back at… back there,” Ruben said, looking genuinely puzzled. “About the nun thing. But I really don’t understand. I mean, I beat you fair and square. The only thing my win should have cost you is maybe a bit of injured pride.”
“What?!”
“Well, it was a competition, wasn’t it? And I won!
Against my own hero! Er, heroes.” He took a sip of the drink Mrs. Chrysler had brought him, and his face, already shining now with excitement, broke into an enormous smile.
“Mead? I haven’t had mead in ages! No alcohol allowed at the…
place. This is a bit weak, mind. You know, it reminds me of the time me and my best mate came in here, sloshed out of our minds, and—”
Mrs. Chrysler, clearly sensing the impending derailment, snapped her fingers near his face. “What were you saying,” she redirected, “about a competition?”
“Oh, yes… Well, you know, the competition. The competition. It was all downhill for me after that, though, let me tell you. I didn’t get to meet you afterward like Mr. Splint promised.
And no one would believe I’d beaten you.
The reward was… you know, decent, but it didn’t last. And you—you utterly disappeared.
Never found you after. Never even got your autographs.
I didn’t know you’d changed your names… You, uh, married? ” He took a deep swig of his drink.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Chrysler.
“No,” said Katherine.
Ruben’s furrowed brows eased and he set down his drink with a slight smile. “That day was the highlight of my short-lived robbery career,” he continued. “Wasn’t the fast track to fame and fortune I’d hoped for, had to go back to forgery and all, but it sure gave my ego a lift.”
He brought his mead to his lips again as the two women stared, then set it down and asked slowly, “So, how did you find me? All these years later? How did you know where I was?”
By now Katherine was feeling quite cross. All of the mystique her imagination had woven around this stranger was quickly slipping away. “We didn’t know where you were, Ruben Hoode,” she said. “We didn’t even know who you were.”
“You weren’t looking for me?” He looked genuinely confused.
Mrs. Chrysler interrupted. “You seem to be under the impression,” she said slowly, “that we knew we were in competition with you that night.” She steepled her fingers in front of her and waited, a humorless smile plastered on her face.
Katherine was reminded of the look and tone her friend used to use while attempting to reason with Pip, aged five.
“Y-e-s-s,” Ruben answered slowly, looking from one woman’s face to the other.
“When, in fact,” Mrs. Chrysler went on, “that is not the case at all.” She took a sip of her drink, and Ruben’s eyes narrowed, bringing his shaggy white eyebrows closer together.
Mrs. Chrysler drained her mug and continued.
“I am sorry to break it to you, Ruben Hoode, and ruin another fantasy”—she flickered her eyes meaningfully at his hair, and his hand flew to his head—“but your version of events is complete manure. We”—she waggled a finger between herself and Katherine—“were under contract, over forty years ago, with the Sisters of Saint Percival’s Convent to re-acquire,” she enunciated, “certain documents, and a sizeable sum of gold, that they’d been bamboozled into signing and bestowing upon one Edward G. Splint, Esquire.”
“Of the Eagle Heights Development Cooperative,” Katherine added.
Ruben’s face was impassive for a moment, then what color it had gained from his enthusiasm drained away. “Mr. Splint didn’t recruit you for the Great Burnt Umberland Heist-Off?”
“No.”
The what? Tilly crinkled her nose in disgust.
“To see who could be the first to break into that building in Merchants Lane?”
“No.”
What kind of third-rate sap engages in a heist-off? asked Tilly.
This kind, apparently, Ember clucked pitifully.
Sad, Mr. Scruffles said. Ember nodded in agreement.
“And crack the safe inside?”
“You used explosives, Ruben.”
“Well, I couldn’t crack it.”
“Ruben,” Katherine began, as calmly as she could manage.
“Still got the reward, though!” he said, thumping the table. “Still got past you with the loot!”
“Ruben,” Katherine tried again, this time with a bit more acidity. “I don’t know how you knew Mr. Splint, but it sounds to me like he recruited you to break into his own office, predicting—rightly, I might add—that you would make an ungodly scene and keep us from doing our job.”
“He must have caught wind that they’d engaged us,” Mrs. Chrysler said quietly, almost to herself.
“Wouldn’t I love to know how,” Katherine said. She turned to Mrs. Chrysler with sudden realization. “The rumor that Splint was going to move the contents of the safe the very next morning… Splint himself must have started it. To be sure we would come to the office that night.”
Ruben watched their faces, his own now frozen in mortified disbelief.
“Facing us, Katty, or catching us in the act—that would have been out of the question for Splint. Not with ol’ Chauncey around. He’d need the guards to respond to an alarm, to keep his own hands clean… and still attached.”
Katherine gave another assenting nod, then rounded again on the old man in front of them. “I thought you were so clever,” she accused him bitterly. “That we’d been thwarted by some real rival. It haunted me, I won’t lie.”
He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but no words came out.
“You were used, Ruben,” Katherine told him flatly. “Did you ever mention your admiration for me—for us—to anyone?”
“But—well—I…”
“And your own aspirations, your own designs on being a proper thief like us, and all the glamour you thought it’d bring you?”
“Well, I—I mean, one mentions… in passing, maybe…” He moved his mug around on the tabletop nervously.
“There it is.” Mrs. Chrysler readjusted her yarn bag on her shoulder. “Now we know, Katty. We know why everything went sideways. We didn’t account for Mr. Splint orchestrating amateur hour.”
Ruben’s jaw dropped. “I—I do take umbrage with that, madam,” he managed.
“I admit I was less experienced than you, and a career in burglary didn’t work out, as such, but Mr. Splint saw promise in me.
I’d done a few small jobs for him. And he’d heard about my sleight of hand, that I could get into places quietly. ”
“But not out of them quietly, Ruben,” Katherine said. “You blew up the safe.”
“Like I said,” he muttered, “I couldn’t crack it.”
Mrs. Chrysler clicked her tongue. “It was a dual-lock, quad-bolted, fifth-generation Dunderflugen safe… as I recall. You really should have known better, Ruben.” She shook her head piteously.
“A heist-off? Really. And frankly…” She heaved a sigh, and Katherine watched her struggle to choose her words tactfully, then give up.
“Frankly, it seems rather tragic that you ended up in the very place we were employed to prevent from ever getting built. Mr. Splint got you coming and going. And tricked you into getting your heroes nearly killed in the process.” Mrs. Chrysler swept some invisible crumbs from the tabletop in front of her, and Katherine scrutinized Ruben’s face as this new reality landed.
The old man’s ashen cheeks flushed slowly to scarlet.
“He was so convincing, so charming. You’ve got to believe me,” he said earnestly.
“I thought those guards were just an act, there just to spice things up a bit for the competition. Never for one moment did I think they’d actually—” His breath caught and his hands darted across the table to take hold of Katherine’s, but she drew them away, grabbing her mug of cider and sliding it closer to herself.
“Oh, you must have hated me,” Ruben said.
He slumped back in the booth, his robe falling open in an unflattering way.
“And I had been so looking forward to meeting you afterward. Splint promised I would. To think instead that I might’ve been responsible for…
” Both of his hands returned to the bare patch on his head.
He shivered, and what were left of his teeth chattered together.
“I’m cold,” he said quietly. “I wish I had my blankets.”
Katherine and Mrs. Chrysler exchanged glances. With his robe and slippers in tatters, Ruben had barely any fabric separating his wrinkly skin from the rest of the world.
“You need new clothes.”
“Hmph. Right. Do I look like I have any money?”
Ember clambered down next to him on his bench, and he reached out a hand to her, stroking her warm, soft fur. Katherine’s grip on her mug softened.
“I do wish I hadn’t lost my battle poncho,” he said.
“Battle poncho?” Mrs. Chrysler looked nonplussed.
“That’s right. You know, you couldn’t go into places like this back in the day”—he waved his hand vaguely—“without a leather battle vest on. Blocked its fair share of stray darts and arrows—mine did, anyway. And when it got a bit too big for me”—he prodded his wasted torso, which clearly used to be more muscular—“I had it altered into a poncho.”
“Why in the—”
Katherine interrupted by clearing her throat. “I, uh…” She cleared it again, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. “After I retired, I turned my battle vest into a caftan.”
Ruben nodded appreciatively, his eyes expressing gratitude for her sympathy, while Mrs. Chrysler smacked her own forehead.
“You are a real piece of work, Katty.” She shifted her large bosom absently.
“I never had a battle vest. No arrows ever aimed themselves at me, if they knew what was good for ’em.
Now, you.” She turned on Ruben. “Cross your legs. I don’t want to have to tell you again. ”