GUNKEL’S MOTH
A Short Story by Phil Roberts
Copyright 1988
Dr. Amadeus Gunkel, the distinguished retired botany professor and world-famous moth collector, just completed a satisfying day. His unanimous election to the presidency of the International Moth Fanciers’ Society came as no surprise to him nor to any informed lepidopterist worldwide. Many well-known scientists attended the lectures he chaired at the university that afternoon and most came for the convention’s finale, his annual barbecue capped by the showing of the Bieber moth, the rarest moth in the world. Gunkel swelled with pride whenever he grasped the clear plastic specimen box. But even to strangers in the festive crowd sampling hors d’oeuvres and sipping Chardonnay in his comfortable, well-lighted dining room, the graying, Colonel Sanders-looking scientist looked worried.
Sam Whipple, the middle-aged emaciated local newspaper reporter, knew something was bothering Dr. Gunkel. Sam, paid to be observant, was proud to be the only member of the press invited to this exclusive event. One of the sports writers tipped him off that the good doctor would pull out the freeze-dried corpse of the world’s rarest moth. How Johnny Curtis found out anything was always a mystery to Sam. He looked like an aging high school football coach with calluses on his fingers from flipping TV channels at the commercials all football season. Who told Johnny? Of course, everyone present had known since the convention started on Wednesday. The 25 or so scientists (or, at least, moth experts) spoke with excitement about actually seeing the specimen. Perhaps, Gunkel might let a few lucky ones shoot macro lens color slides while the specimen reposed outside the case on the table, only the pin distinguishing it from some wild variety in search of a wool-suited closet.
Gunkel’s comfortable country estate close to the Wheatland River, was an ideal backdrop for interviewing the great moth hunters or idly listening to their thrilling adventures with nets, pins and freezing compartments. But what was so great about that gray, furry insect? So far, the story here made televised golf seem positively inspiring. Sam yawned.
Yes, the fight. There might be a connection, Sam mused as he helped himself to more cognac and gnawed on his third barbecued chicken leg. He was the only person still eating but he wasn’t embarrassed. Privilege of the press, paid for in lousy hours and worse pay, he rationalized. He always ate like this when he got a soft assignment, one which he defined as any that would include free food.
He remembered watching Amadeus Gunkel, earlier that night, standing at the other side of the room, between the floor-to-ceiling bookcase and the intricately carved desk. It hadn’t been difficult for the old naturalist to get everyone’s notice.
He clapped his hands, cleared his throat and pronounced in academic stentorian tones, “Ladies and gentlemen, now for the moment you have been waiting for.” He stepped to the side of the small secretarie and held out something in his cupped hands.
“Don’t push. I’ll give all of you a chance to see,” he announced as he produced for the breathless crowd the world’s rarest moth, a fragile little insect no larger than the kind one may find frantically trying to escape through a backdoor screen.
At the time he never bothered to look for himself, but Sam could feel the electricity in the room. The fortunate half dozen or so people in front could not have been more than six inches from the pinned bug and, despite Gunkel’s assurances, people in the back were anxious for a closer look. The scene was rather like Oscar night when a large limo pulls up and someone important-looking starts to get out.
They craned their necks and shoved forward for a better view. The gray-bearded man wearing the khaki shirt and white cotton trousers moved his hand toward it as if he might touch the insect.
“No, no,” he shook his head, “I’m not touching it, but can’t you turn it over so we can see its under markings?”
Sam helped himself to another chicken leg, bemused by the scene of two score adults crowding in to observe a mere bug. “Am I the only one here who would rather eat than look at some moth?” he thought to himself, savoring the tender juices of the barbecued bird.
Suddenly, from the attached garage, accessible through the kitchen door behind Sam, came a bloodcurdling scream followed by what sounded like 10 dogs yelping and barking. Sam barely had time to turn around before a nondescript well-dressed plump woman leaped out of the bug-viewing swarm and ran to the kitchen door. Mrs. Thurmond…Cleveland matron, schoolteacher, perhaps, or maybe a librarian?
“Oh, my Tiki, my Tiki! A wolf’s killing my Tiki!” she screamed.
For the moment the rare moth lost its hold over the mass and several surged past Sam out into the garage. There, Terri, a scantily attired entomology graduate student wearing a too-tight t-shirt with “bug-lover” on the front, clutched an open bottle of burgundy. She was still screaming even though the canines were no longer near her.
“The little dog kept snapping at the big one’s ear and, then, they fought,” Terri said, still quivering from her brush with danger. From the kitchen doorway, Sam saw the tired, old bloodhound slinking under the shop table, looking ashamed that he had lost his temper over such infantile poodle tricks.
A few seconds later, the plump woman, still screaming about the attempted murder of her Tiki, found her trembling dog under the chaise lounge on the sidewalk next to the garage.
“Blood! She’s bleeding to death!” the plump woman shrieked and half of the moth lovers offered revenge on the bloodhound while the rest sought bandages from the host who owned the guilty animal. The short-haired man in the Hawaiian shirt examined the dog carefully. “Ma’am, she’s not dead. She’s not even hurt. That’s wine, not blood.”
Presently, the fetching graduate student regained her senses sufficiently to confirm it was wine. “I threw it on them to try to keep them from fighting,” Terri explained to the astonishment of Sam, who regarded even the waste of screw-cap wine a crime against viniculture.
A few people chuckled at the plump woman’s relieved incantations and everyone moved back inside. Gunkel returned to where he had laid the rare moth. He didn’t notice the moth switch for more than a half an hour.
Few of the assembled moth fans sought encore views of the Bieber moth and when one of them, Mrs. Newman, the brassy bug collector from Denver, looked closely at it, she asked Gunkel to point out again its distinguishing marks. Well-schooled in butterflies, this was her first excursion into moth-collecting. He looked for the white spots on the dorsal and just as he leaned over to point at them, he recognized the switch. “Ma’am, it’s the legs…see there?…the legs.” He then pointed to the Scotch bottle on the counter. “Can I refill your glass?” he asked politely, not wanting to believe what he’d seen.
Many others accepted the offer for more wine and a few even rejoined Sam at the buffet table. Gunkel’s dimpled wife produced another platter of fresh trout, cooked over a mesquite fire.
“The culprit must be in this room. Someone eating my food and drinking my liquor,” Gunkel finally blurted out.
“Culprit? What’s that you say, doctor?”
“Well, thief is a better word for it…” Gunkel’s voice trailed off.
“The moth?” Sam knew something big had happened. He instinctively reached in his back pants pocket for his notebook.
“Not the world’s rarest winged insect? The one worth $35,000 on the Paris black market?”
Tears came to the old man’s eyes. “Of course, of course. You must have heard my lecture this afternoon…the first official announcement…”
Lecture? Johnny told Sam about it a week ago, but he hadn’t gone to any of the sessions. Sam shrugged. “Who would steal a moth?” Sam asked, casting a hungry eye at the table groaning under the weight of fried chicken, barbecued trout and home-made biscuits.
“I don’t know. All I can say is that it was there an hour ago, right on that table. It was switched with a pale imitation…”
“You mean, that little gray thing pinned to the cardboard?” Sam hadn’t given it much of a look before even though he had slipped his dirty paper plate down next to it, maybe 20 minutes earlier. “That’s not it?” the short, balding newspaper reporter pointed, his index finger two inches from the moth. “I suppose you’re certain?”
Gunkel scowled.
“But, of course,” Sam sighed, “you caught that thing, didn’t you? You must know what the real McCoy looks like.” Sam decided Gunkel was too upset for frivolity. The old man knew his bugs. Clearly, someone must have switched his find with a phony.
“In all my moth-catching years, no one has as much as borrowed a choice specimen,” he murmured to Sam, inexplicably the old man’s only confidante. He told Sam about the pride, the envy others had. Any lepidopterist would give his net to have been in on the capture. But what self-respecting moth lover would forego the excitement of netting a winged nocturnal insect, so rare it hardly had been named? Who would rather steal a mounted one right from under the nose of the international society’s president? What had happened to honor among lepidopterists?
“And you’re certain that no one has left this house since the theft?” Sam repeated, still not sure himself that any sane person would steal a bug.
“Of course. We are 11 miles from Wheat Ridge. The dogs outside always bark when an engine starts and they’ve been silent since…well, since the fight.”
It didn’t take Sam long to surmise that the thief had to be in the very room. Gunkel was sure of it. Except for Sam from the Post who didn’t know a moth from skipper, everyone here knew how very extraordinary the moth was. Every moth expert at the lectures this afternoon saw the color slides of it. Maybe it was a mistake to mention publicly how much unscrupulous Parisian dealers would be willing to pay for such a rarity. Just a dried and pinned specimen but since its netting three months before on a field trip to an undisclosed location nearby, it had stirred up unprecedented comment in the lepidopterist press.
He was proud, damn proud and he invited every one of the conventioneers to his place for dinner, a night of drinking, maybe some bug catching, and a firsthand look at the Bieber moth. Forty-seven years of netting and this was the first moth that just one other person, three generations ago and a hemisphere away, had ever caught before. The doctor’s eyes darted from face to laughing face. One of them dreamed up a foolproof heist–damn near foolproof. Even Sam considered the showing the highlight of the night. When the professor told Sam how much the moth would bring in dollars, Sam chuckled, but he looked again. Gunkel showed him how he kept the special specimen box locked somewhere in special German-designed “bug safe,” a huge drawer of his oak secretarie standing against the living room wall.
Sam Whipple finished the glass of cognac and stared at the suspects. For 11 years he had written obituaries, chased fire trucks and watched beat cops take measurements at fender-benders. What a scoop! All he expected was a short feature, with photos, for the Sunday magazine insert–something to break the tedium of recipes for summer hash and interchangeable black tie and lace smiles of brides and grooms.
Sam surveyed the potential culprits. Over there, in the teal sport coat was Dr. Alfredo Martinez, chief of surgery at Mexico City Federal Hospital and a moth collector since his nocturnal prowls as a medical student on the campus of Johns Hopkins three decades before.
He didn’t remember the name of the man in brown slacks and a white pullover sweater even though he posed for one of Sam’s pictures just before dinner. Sam knew he wrote it on a piece of paper lodged somewhere in his jacket pocket. Sam was amazed to hear that despite the man’s youthful appearance, his book was the only moth guide sold at the gift shop in the Natural History Museum in Washington, D. C.
The silver-haired spinster from Cleveland managed to conceal most of her coarse belches. At first, Sam thought the beer gave her the problem but, maybe it was congenital. She did seem pear-shaped. And so was her poodle, but Sam now recalled that as soon as she knew it wasn’t about to bleed to death on the floor of Gunkel’s garage, she grabbed the animal and flung it into her motor home parked outside. Sam thought he could still hear it whining out there from the fright.
The small dark-skinned man next to her was the one who correctly diagnosed the wine spills on the dog’s coat. A Jamaican with worldwide recognition in the bug world, this was his 17th straight international meeting. He had a winning laugh and Sam would have picked him out as the lady killer, if such suave good looks meant anything to a female bug catcher.
Gracefully floating between knots of moth enthusiasts on the patio was the “Grande dame” of mothing–Lady Helene Zilkor, whose gray cotton gowns and the diaphanous swirling imitation-fur scarves mimicked the colors and movements of the missing moth. Sam could almost picture her pinned to a giant board, her outfit fluttering reflexively like a pair of wings.
The two men in the far corner, engaged in animated conversation about fruit flies, were university professors from two Ivy League colleges. Neither was the kind of man a person would recognize after less than two or three meetings. Next to them, sampling some pecans from the moth-shaped glass bowl, was Dr. Peter Peducah, until last year, a bird enthusiast but attracted to moths when he discovered them gnawing on his mounted birds.
Gunkel had just told Sam how the Natural History Museum in London gratefully accepted Peducah’s gift of the largest stuffed collection of sparrows in the world and their outside appraiser didn’t even reduce the value because of the moth holes. It was rumored that his jay collection would go there next, partly because he had lost interest in birds and partly because he needed the storage room for his hundreds of new moth specimens.
“Sir, everyone here looks guilty,” Sam muttered. “This is no ordinary murder case or anything. This will take some time….” But, seriously, Sam doubted he could be of any help.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please, won’t you stay right here for a few minutes? I must ask you to stay,” Gunkel shouted over the din of lepidopterist debate and guffaws over bad puns featuring Latin names for certain moths. No one appeared to have any intention of leaving. The liquor bottles were nowhere close to empty.
He put his arm on the reporter’s shoulder and whispered, “Mr. Whipple, I suppose I should explain why I’m telling you this. I don’t want it in the papers. And as far as I can tell, you’re the only one here who wouldn’t know a Bieber moth from a housefly.”
Sam wasn’t sure how to respond to the “compliment.” Gunkel added, “Anyone of them could be guilty.” Rudolph Shalhollow, the entomologist at the Melbourne museum, might have overheard even though he was four feet away visiting with Mugs Melton, the bug columnist for the Smithsonian who claimed particular expertise in rare Appalachian varieties. It was common knowledge that both of them coveted one-of-a-kind moths although neither had ever owned one. Sam lowered his voice, relieved that neither man appeared to have heard his earlier pronouncements about guilty looks.
Never an “investigative reporter” like some of the younger kids on the daily, Sam didn’t feel too confident about handling such a sensitive investigation. But, like the only man near a lifeboat as a ship is sinking, he recognized duty calling. Sam used to watch Mannix on television and, last summer, he read a John LeCarre spy novel. “I’m qualified,” he reasoned as he grinned at his own pathetic pun about the case: “We’ll find the thief if it takes all moth.” The Smithsonian man looked at Sam and chuckled.
Amadeus Gunkel wasn’t laughing. But would anyone who envisioned ruin to the world’s best privately owned moth collection, built up in a lifetime of nettings on all continents except Antarctica? But regardless of its sheer volume, the feature marking the collection’s world-class status had been the Bieber moth.
No other private collection had one. In fact, only two other specimens were known in public museums–the one he donated to the Smithsonian late last year (which brought him mention on “Wide World of Animals”) and the one rumored to be somewhere in the Kremlin, gathering dust since the 1920’s. Johann Vladimir Bieber, the moth’s discoverer for whom it was named, is said to have sealed the Russian one in clear wax and presented it to Trotsky who turned out to be a poor choice both for the moth and for Bieber who died in Stalin’s mothless Siberia about 1940.
Somewhere, in this room of lepidopterists, was a thief who was concealing the prized specimen in a pocket, a purse, under a shirt or up a pant leg. The investigation would have to be discrete but he knew it had to be exhaustive. How many years would it be before he ever found another one? He was too old and, besides, nothing before or ever again could canonize his reputation like that Bieber moth had. He was convinced even the President would want to see it, once the networks got wind of it after reading about the rare moth in Sam’s newspaper. That was the way to immortality, he’d guessed. That was the essence of collecting.
“What do you plan to do, Doctor?” Sam whispered, drumming his fingers on the table next to the imposter moth.
“We can’t search them,” Gunkel muttered. “The thief might destroy the moth remains with one squeeze of the fingers. There has to be a clever way to do it…unobtrusively.”
Both men gazed at the imitation and Sam’s eyes wandered to the window. “If I may ask, what is that big bed sheet doing outside hanging next to that photo flood light?” Sam asked. It looked like something the news camera crews set up in the courthouse hall during the semi-annual “trial of the century.”
“Oh, that’s for later when we all go outside and catch moths. They’ll be attracted by the light and fly right into that sheet,” Gunkel explained.
Sam sat down his liquor glass and hitched up his trousers.
“Can you keep this group from going out there for a while?” He could feel the rush of excitement like the time he watched a long-haired youth snag an elderly delegate’s purse right in front of him while he was covering Spiro Agnew’s speech at the Republican state convention. That time, if it had been baseball, Sam would have been thrown out at first base by half a step. That little bastard leaped that chair just at the right moment, just as Sam felt the swish of cloth…
“Then you are going to help!” Gunkel spoke loudly, but everyone seemed too preoccupied to hear.
“I have a plan,” Sam reluctantly admitted, unsure whether it was much more than a wild gamble. He watched a thin woman snap up the last chicken leg. “You stay inside and act like nothing has happened,” he instructed the professor. Deliberately, he sidestepped to the door and slipped outside to the bed sheet, hanging limply in the windless summer night.
Inside the house, Gunkel pulled the living room drapes, explaining to everyone that moonlight could damage the fabric on his couch. When Sam snapped on the floodlights, the people inside must have assumed it was the full moon or a set of car lights winding up the dirt road from the highway. Maybe just an extra-large security light….
Nearly 45 minutes passed and Gunkel, still inside with the guests, was getting edgy. Does that reporter really know what he’s doing or is he just burning bug specimens up needlessly out there? What’s he doing anyway? Reading a spy novel? He was about to retrieve the volunteer sleuth from the front yard when Sam reappeared. In tow was a swirling mass of moths wrapped carefully in what looked like torn cotton boxer shorts. Sam winked and stuffed the mess into his coat pocket.
“What on earth…?”
Suddenly, without consulting the host, Sam clapped his hands for attention. “Everyone! Listen up! We’re about to play a little game. Yes, a moth game. Everyone is going to play and the winner, well, we’re going to crown him Moth King for 1983!” he began, glancing at the mystified Mr. Gunkel standing next to him.
“Your president, Mr. Gunkel here, decided to surprise you with this contest tonight. The prize for the winner is extra special and he will tell you about it later.”
Some of the academic lepidopterists seemed to be feigning disinterest. Sam pointed at one of them. “Did you say, sir, that no one else here can identify rare moths as well as you can?”
The forgettable-looking man looked irritated. “I’d actually bet money on my intimate knowledge of moths, if it were ethical, and there were any challengers.”
His companion shook his head. “No. I know more about moths than anyone alive,” he sniffed, his tweed coat blending into the light oak paneling behind him.
“You don’t say?” Peducah, the new moth collector, interrupted.
The Mexican surgeon laid claim to the title and then others joined in the debate. Sam had to regain their attention by clapping and whistling.
“In the next room, I will lay out nine different moths. I needn’t even say that one will be the fabulous, didn’t you say it was the Bieber moth, professor?” He cleared his throat. “Now listen carefully. Each person wanting to claim the Moth King title will have to prove he can identify the Bieber moth and all of the others. But, well, that might take some time.”
He paused stroking his chin. “No. Just the Bieber moth. I’ll lead each of you in the room, one at a time, and then you will have precisely one minute to write down on a piece of paper which one is the Bieber moth. Now, I know you only had a few seconds earlier to look at one, so this is going to be a fair test for everybody. The professor, of course, can’t compete.” The crowd seemed to chuckle softly together. Sam continued, looking like the ring announcer at a heavyweight title fight. “After everyone is done, your international president–Professor Gunkel, of course–will announce the name of the person or persons who made the correct identification. In case of ties, we’ll have a special moth-off.”
Sam watched the assembled audience carefully as he slowly spoke the last sentence. “I don’t suppose I need to tell you that you must keep your answer a secret until everyone who enters our little contest has a chance to answer.”
Who looked surprised when he lied by saying the Bieber moth would be one of the specimens? The thief knew it couldn’t possibly be true. The only Bieber moth west of the Smithsonian castle was in the thief’s hands.
Did the Mexican doctor look shocked or was it just stomach gas? Did Lady Zilkor or any of the college professors fidget? How about Peducah or the Jamaican? Did the graduate student scratch at her halter top as a sign of guilt? Sam failed to notice beyond her…
“You stay here and make sure no one leaves, Dr. Gunkel, while I set up the contest,” Sam whispered. “Leave this to me.” He slapped at his vest pocket. “Do you have a few extra pins I can borrow?”
The moth expert pointed to a nearby butterfly-shaped pie cushion. “My wife’s gift to me on the anniversary of my moth degree,” he announced. “Be careful with it. Oh, and if you’re doing any pinning, you can use the fiberboard on the table in there.”
He pulled the news reporter aside. “How are you ever going to find out this way?” he said, half aloud. He was perplexed at what stroke of brilliance the newsman had seen in such a dubious contest. “Everyone will see that it is some kind of a mean joke. These people can’t possibly be fooled into believing any ordinary moth is the fabulous Bieber moth…except some amateur like Mrs. Newman,” he coughed.
“If my guess is correct, the thief will be the only person who will try to sneak a look at the stolen specimen before he goes in to examine the ones inside. You see, he’ll think you might have been displaying a phony and his booty is worthless. You can catch the thief with the goods out here.”
Sam smiled, but the professor was unmoved.
“What if the thief is too clever for us and goes along with the game?” Dr. Gunkel asked, squinting and stroking his chin.
“In that case, it will be easy. The thief will be the person who tries to fool us by calling one moth the Bieber moth even though he will know for sure it isn’t,” Sam rubbed his hands with delight. “The innocent people will correctly recognize that the Bieber moth isn’t there. My ‘moth-off’ will decide the contest if we still aren’t sure,” he assured the scowling, old lepidopterist.
“Ingenious, Mr. Whipple. You’re smarter than Sherlock Holmes or even the CIA! I don’t know how to thank you….” Privately, Gunkel doubted the plan would work, not knowing that Sam was giving it not much better than 5-1 odds himself.
Sam, still carrying the swirl of moths in the handkerchief tucked in the pocket of his sport coat, tiptoed into the next room and carefully locked the door behind him. Gunkel stayed with the guests, joking with them about moths, butterflies, booze and barbecued trout.
The whole experience was new to Sam. Here were moths, moths, moths. All of them looked identical except for their size. Once he looked closely, he noticed different colorations, odd markings on their heads or peculiarly shaped antennae. He promised himself to look more closely the next time he slapped one against the screen door at home with his newspaper.
The insects stayed relatively motionless as he opened the handkerchief, but just as he pinned the first specimen, they all rose as one and landed all along the front of his wool sport coat.
“Makes it easier,” he smiled to himself, disregarding the fear that their voracious appetites might wreak ruin on his flashy Penney’s blazer.
When he was finished choosing and pinning his nine choices, he opened the window and attempted to shoo the rest outside. Many would not budge. If only that gorgeous honey, Sally Hardy, back in the newsroom admired his taste in clothes as much as these moths…
“Hey, I could start liking these little buggers,” he smiled to himself, flattening three of them with one swat with Gunkel’s telephone book he found laying on the sill and scaring the rest outside into the summer night.
Lady Zilkor was the first person to look at the pinned moths. She glanced at the first two bugs and then swiftly jotted something on her sheet of paper. “That was easy,” she exclaimed. Sam couldn’t be sure, but he thought he might have the culprit. Lady Zilkor clutched her purse tightly to her side. Her modus operandi was clear–she had the bug securely bound and gagged in her huge imitation-diamond studded handbag. But why steal a moth? Just to be named “moth queen” in next month’s issue of Lepidopterist Lore? Sam admired her pluck, but she was pretty foolish. Poor old girl wasn’t the first woman who had failed to take Sam’s deductive mind seriously.
Should he declare the “contest” over and unmask the thief? Just for the fun of it, he thought, let’s make it a contest.
Dr. Alfredo Martinez, the Mexican surgeon, was next. His disgusting habit of wearing sunglasses, even at night, raised Sam’s suspicions almost from the start. Were it not for Lady Zilkor, Sam almost could imagine the moth taped securely inside one lens. He smirked at Sam and in precise English declared the contest “too simple,” adding that he doubted anyone in the crowd would be fooled. It gave Sam a start. Two thieves? Maybe they’re a team. She wants fame; his motive must be monetary. What a sneaky pair, Sam marveled, thankful he hadn’t stopped with Lady Zilkor. He suddenly recalled the ending of Murder on the Orient Express. The “contest” had better continue, he convinced himself.
The Jamaican was next in and he stared at several specimens, shook his head, scratched something on his slip of paper with a gold-plated pen and left, silently, athletically. Here was a man who needed money. With his suave haircut, modish clothes–he must have at least two ex-wives to support or at the very least a Miami mistress. But, how could it be? Three thieves? Then they were conspiring….
Next in was the first of the two Ivy League professors. Sam was astounded when the man appeared to recognize the Bieber moth immediately. “Of course,” Sam thought to himself, “he plans to sell the moth because he couldn’t get a fellowship for a summer’s study in Europe. How obvious! But, conspiring with the others? Divided four or five ways, the ransom would have to be sky high.”
Agatha Christie, step aside. What a startling real story this will make for the weekend edition. Every member of the International Moth Fanciers’ Society is guilty of conspiring to steal the world’s rarest moth from our hometown scientist! The tale had Pulitzer Prize written all over it. Of course, he would have his picture taken with Gunkel when the prize was announced….
His suspicions mounted as each of the rest of the moth experts came into the room. None refused to participate. And, outside, none seemed to be sneaking peeks inside cuffs or pockets, Gunkel whispered as Sam stepped out to escort Peducah into the room.
Peducah, well, he was easy to explain. An inveterate collector of his reputation probably wanted to own the specimen or at least rent it for a month each year. He had to have a masterpiece for his fresh collection if it were to match up to any respectably established one.
Perhaps that was what the amateur, Mrs. Newman, the Denver manicurist, was doing, too. She seemed excited when she looked at the nine moths. What an actress! She was almost as good as Mrs. Thurmond in the fight scene, he remembered now. It was all so cleverly staged to rip off poor old Dr. Gunkel! All of the scum should be imprisoned for life. Their conniving displays of pure innocence disgusted him and reminded him how happy he was not to be saddled with the police beat.
The last expert, Terri, the voluptuous graduate student, completed the viewing. Maybe she wasn’t a part of the conspiracy, Sam thought. Nonetheless, she was the one who screamed and threw wine on the fighting dogs. But those legs…and that body… Can young women like her can be reformed without resorting to imprisonment? Sam fantasized, if only I could supervise her rehabilitation….
Sam walked back into the dining room and slammed the oak-paneled door behind him. Everyone was watching with great anticipation. Dr. Gunkel was smiling and nodding.
“First a short conference, everyone, and then we’ll announce the winner,” and everyone applauded. Just trying to fool me into thinking they had won, Sam thought chuckling about their ineptitude. What a sickening ruse to cover up the conspiracy. They’d had better luck if they’d used a bazooka or a squad of punks.
Dr. Gunkel whispered, “Sam, no one acted odd out here. I watched very closely.” Then he saw the reporter smile. “You found the one!” Gunkel slapped him on the back.
“Yes, sir, I have,” he murmured modestly, stroking his nails across what he imagined were moth holes in the front of his sport coat.
“Well?”
“It’s ALL of them!”
Dr. Gunkel grabbed for his handkerchief and patted the sweat from his forehead. “My God, Whipple! You mean a conspiracy to steal my Bieber moth?”
“Exactly, doctor. And now I intend to call the sheriff and while he is assembling a big enough fleet of squad cars to arrest all of these people, we’re going to have to play it cool.” Sam turned to the expectant audience. “Have some more drinks, folks. It was so close that we’ll have to take a while longer to decide the winner.” More applause. How tricky, he thought, a conspiracy of ingenuous clapping to go with the conspiracy of theft. Little did they know they were matching wits with the mind of such a skilled detective as Sam Whipple, veteran feature reporter.
Sam slipped into the specimen room again and dialed the sheriff. The lawman sounded unmoved at first. “Yes, I repeat. A massive conspiracy. Felony theft. Felony conspiracy. It’s really that serious, sir. Yes, at least 25 people. Uh huh. I did say a moth theft. All of them tried to rip off a moth. Serious stuff, sheriff. You might need national guard reinforcements.. fine as long as you could lock them all in the squad cars. These folks are potentially dangerous. I read on the AP wire once that bomb-throwing terrorists could get their start taking valuable stuff for ransom like…like moths.” Sam knew the sheriff was the kind of man who would be a believer when he saw it all in person.
He hung up the phone, opened the door and motioned Dr. Gunkel in. “It will be another 20 minutes or so while the sheriff rounds up every deputy, highway patrolman and police officer in the county. He’s excited, too. Primary election is next month. He knows it’s practically big enough to get a story in the Police Gazette.”
“What shall we do now?” Dr. Gunkel worried, wringing his hands, beads of sweat still rolling from his forehead.
“Just wait,” Sam smiled. “Relax, will you? Here, come over and take a look at the moths I caught. They deserve some of the credit, Dr. Gunkel. I never knew bugs would ever help me break a big story like this.”
Just then, there was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Gunkel asked, glancing up.
“Just me,” shouted the tallest of the two Ivy League professors. “I want to take a better look at those moths…and congratulate you, sir.”
The doctor looked at Sam and nodded. “May as well, huh? Sure, come on in.” All 25 moth society members pushed in behind him. Dr. Gunkel could tell they were excited and, momentarily, Sam feared they might be thinking of adding a double homicide to their respective criminal records.
“How did you do it?” Lady Zilkor smiled, grabbing Dr. Gunkel by one cuff and pinching at his chin.
“Do what?” he stammered.
Everyone laughed.
“Better get those back in the boxes,” the Jamaican said.
It was then that Dr. Gunkel glanced down at the nine specimen pinned to the board next to him. He rubbed his eye for a moment, stepped back, and looked again.
“The magnifying glass! At once!” the doctor responded.
Everyone was quiet as the doctor surveyed the specimens.
“Sam! Call the sheriff at once!” he yelled, frightening half of the onlookers, including the poodle lady from Cleveland who began screaming again, “Tiki, my Tiki.” Her damn dog.
“Now what?” Sam squawked, clapping both hands over his ears.
“This is unbelievable,” he finally declared and everyone broke into another round of applause. Weird how these people keep clapping, Sam thought.
“Uh huh,” Peducah said. “Which one of them are you going to sell tonight?”
Sam stopped short. “Which what?”
Dr. Gunkel looked at him. “Sam, you must be the only one here who doesn’t know what has just happened. See here?” He pointed to the moths. “Two of them. Yes, two are Bieber moths.” He whispered, “How did you manage to catch two Bieber moths?”
Peducah, calmer than the rest, leaned against the window frame. Suddenly, he shouted, “Come quick. Look at this! Another Bieber moth!” It was one that had been chewing on Sam’s sport coat that he had whacked senseless with the telephone book.
Just then, the crowd heard a voice over a bullhorn. “Come out with your hands up.” Flashing red lights were reflecting off all the walls. The sheriff, true to his word, must have awakened every law officer in the county. The moth conventioneers looked at each other incredulously. “Odd way to protect moths,” Gunkel heard one say.
“Sam, you and I have to tell the sheriff that everything’s OK,” Dr. Gunkel motioned to everyone to remain calm. Sam stood in the window and cautiously waved at the dark figure crouched behind the closest squad car.
“It’s OK to come in Sheriff and have we got a job for you! I’ve asked you here to protect some priceless items.”
Guarding? Hadn’t Sam reported a big theft? Guard duty for a stupid bunch of moths won’t gain any votes, the sheriff groused.
“It may seem extraordinary, Sheriff, but inside here are the world’s rarest moths, three of them I found tonight,” Sam gloated. “Do this job right and you’ll get a campaign contribution along with an endorsement,” Sam promised.
The sheriff handed the bull horn to his chief deputy. He guessed he’d have to settle for a paragraph in Security Watch Times.
By the time Sam and Dr. Gunkel returned to the study, the moth fanciers were departing. “Thanks for the good time and the surprise,” one said, and others expressed similar sentiments. “Best convention party we’ve ever had,” another added.
“How could you have found those moths?” the doctor was saying to Sam, amazed that such an ill-informed amateur had stumbled on something it had taken him a lifetime to find.
“No big deal, professor…. But I’m still wondering about YOUR moth, the missing one. Who could have made that sneaky switch?” He couldn’t conceal his delight that what the mishap had wrought.
“You mean to say you are claiming these moths and you don’t know anything about them?” Gunkel asked, suddenly irritated by Sam’s smugness.
“Didn’t I find them?” Sam grinned. “Besides, yours might have fallen under the table or got blown into the barbecued chicken when we opened the kitchen door. They’re real light, you know.” Now Sam was a moth expert, too.
Gunkel was thinking Sam might have been involved in the earlier moth disappearance. Should he confront the reporter now or wait? He wasn’t sure how to proceed so he followed the reporter back into the dining room. “Let’s go take a look,” Gunkel said, shaking his head. Sam, the one person he didn’t suspect…
Just as the men were moving toward the door, Dr. Gunkel looked down at the table on which the pinned Bieber moths had been attached to the board. “Oh, Sam, look at that,” he suddenly yelled. “Look! All three of YOUR moths are gone! They’ve stolen every one of YOUR Bieber moths and replaced them with ordinary ones.”
Sam, who barely could tell the difference between a monarch butterfly and the Queen of England, wasn’t sure whether he should believe Gunkel or not. “But aren’t those the same ones I pinned there earlier?” he asked.
“Bieber moths? Those? Certainly not. They’re just old coat-eating moths from my back yard,” Gunkel smiled.
The other moth experts had left. How can I find out whether or not those are Bieber moths, Sam asked himself. Or has the professor fooled me, and everyone else, all along? Maybe the moth he was showing was just ordinary and he staged the dogfight somehow to distract attention from his supposed rare find so no one would discover the forgery. Sam laughed at his own naivete–his old friend Gunkel was quite a con man…With a mind like that, he would have made a pretty fair editor….
“How about some more food?” Sam asked. Maybe, he had lost the Pulitzer and, maybe, a fortune in rare moths. Nevertheless, it had been one hell of a party and there was no reason to go home hungry.
“Now, if I can find a clean fork…”
* * *
Even after a dozen visits, Gunkel always enjoyed walking the Tuileries Gardens, but now particularly after the stresses of making big money on the black market. Four of the moths to four collectors each willing to pay $25,000, even when he divulged the truth that there was more than one. Each wanted to complete his collection and money was no object. Gunkel smiled as he sat down on a bench, waiting for his wife to return from the Louvre.
He remembered reading about Benjamin Franklin’s love of Paris and it came to mind again, the five Franklins he peeled off that night for Sam, along with those two bottles of fine whiskey. Now, six months later, it seemed a small price for newspaper silence about the odd caper that not even the sheriff ended up believing. With the moth money, proceeds from the ranchette sale, the auction of his 8,000-book library, and his pension, he knew they could live in the south of France for a very long time. His place in moth history, along with his new home far from the university, were secure.
He watched his wife walking briskly back to where they had agreed to rendezvous, her straw sunhat perched jauntily on her graying hair. “We will be happy over here,” he mused, sipping the cappuccino she brought for him and feeling the gentle Parisian breeze ripple through his own receding gray hair.
This short story was written in 1988 when Phil was living in Seattle and working toward his Ph.D. in history at the University of Washington. The work is purely fiction. All similarities to any person, living or dead, is only coincidental.
Watch this space for other works of fiction and humor columns Phil has written over the years.