The Star of Denmark

            by Jessie Moritz

 

“Table 23 wants more bread,” said Margaret as she whirled past with arms full of empty dishes.

            Rick nodded and dropped off an order of fresh Atlantic salmon in lemon butter sauce before taking two thick loaves of bread and rushing into Banquet Hall #2.  Spenger’s was crowded as it usually is on Saturday nights and it was difficult to work his way between the green leather booths and tables.  When he first arrived here, only seven weeks ago, he was amazed to see how much each of the three banquet halls were decorated like the inside of a 1960’s ship.  The light came from old lanterns hanging from salvaged ship’s steering wheels and cast long shadows on the stuffed deer, birds and turtles that lined the upper part of the walls.  The lower walls were covered with mahogany wood spaced every six feet or so with antique portholes.  Even more fantastic was the collection of more than 500 antique and modern guns displayed in cases around the restaurant.  He had once asked Qin, a fellow waiter, why a seafood restaurant—even one as quirky as Spenger’s—needed so many weapons, and Qin just smiled vaguely at him and moved on.  It was another two days before Rick learned that Qin didn’t speak any English other than, “May I take your order, sir?” and, “This fish is very fresh, straight from the delta.”

            Rick passed Harry Coal’s little table as he fetched water for a party of Japanese tourists.  Harry motioned him over with a flick of his gnarled fingers and croaked, “You got any of the ling cod left for me?”

            Two weeks ago, Rick had made the mistake of asking Harry Coal to pay the bill and he’d simply glared at him with deep-set grey eyes.  Margaret had quickly guided Rick away from the table and explained that Mr. Coal was a close friend of the Spenger family and was never asked to pay for his meal.  Harry Coal’s grandfather, Captain Kenneth coal, had lent Johan Spenger the capital to finance his fishing fleet and restaurant and Johan had in return offered the Coal’s free seafood anytime they should want it.  Harry had been eating at Spenger’s for nearly 87 years and was as much a part of the scenery as the various ship’s riggings and pictures mounted on the walls.

            “Harry wants the cod,” Rick told Margaret.

            She grinned and replied, “Of course he does; he knows it’s the freshest tonight.  Listen, could you take care of table 47?  They’re some official group from Hawaii that keeps demanding to see Jack Spenger.  He said he didn’t want to have any meetings tonight but they won’t believe me when I tell them he isn’t here.”

            “Got it,” he said and walked briskly to Banquet Hall #1, by far the largest and most elaborate of the three halls.  Here a collection of diving equipment and more than a hundred model ships deepened the sense that you were actually at sea.  Sometimes he felt like the restaurant was swaying with the tide.  So, apparently, did the families, socialites, celebrities and dockworkers that filled the long tables, laughing, clinking cutlery and chatting amiably between themselves.

            In this hall was the restaurant’s prize possession—a 34-carat diamond ring called the Star of Denmark.  It was given to Hawaii’s Queen Kapiolani in the late 1800’s by the Princess of Denmark, and somehow had ended up in a shop in San Francisco.  Johan Spenger bought it in 1899 and it passed down through his family to Jack Spenger, who loved it more than his own children, according to Margaret.

            In one of the more private areas of banquet hall #1, Rick found Margaret’s Hawaiian party.  There were only four men, dressed in expensive suits and dining on the Ahi Tuna from Honolulu.  One of them stood when he arrived and shook his hand, his grip crushing Rick’s fingers.

            “I am Ikaika,” he announced, his powerful voice making my eardrums dizzy with volume, “these gentlemen are Makaha, Kapa’a and Pono.  We are representatives from CRHM.”

            “I’m sorry, from Crumb?” Rick raised his eyebrows.  Margaret told him yesterday that if a customer says something rude or extremely odd, he was to raise his eyebrows.  This way, he could both convey my meaning—that the customer is an idiot—without being impolite.  It didn’t work on Ikaika though; he looked insulted, but possibly more because Rick hadn’t heard of their committee.

            “The Committee for the Reinstatement of a Hawaiian Monarchy.  C-R-H-M,” said Makaha impatiently.  His glare was almost as fierce as Harry Coal’s, but Rick didn’t falter under it.

“We must speak with Mr. Jack Spenger,” insisted Kapa'a, “as soon as possible.”

            “I apologize,” Rick said, keeping his voice quiet and firm, “Jack Spenger isn’t here tonight.  He is in…Albuquerque, organizing a delivery of…swordfish…”

            Pono and Ikaika narrowed their eyes and Makaha pursed his wide lips.  Kapa’a reached into his very shiny briefcase and pulled out a folded note.

            “At the very least,” he said, handing it to Rick, “give him this.  We’re leaving town tomorrow, but hopefully he’ll want to meet us after reading that.”

            “I will deliver your message immediately,” Rick said.

“Then we would like the check,” said Pono, “We are leaving tomorrow, but our contact information is on the bottom of the paper and he can call as late as he wishes.  We know that Mr. Coal is a regular customer, so we just felt, when we discovered this information, that Mr. Spenger had a right to know.”

            What did Harry Coal have to do with them? Rick wondered as he headed back to the kitchen.  Margaret intercepted him, asking, “Did you get rid of them?  I didn’t like the big one—Mr. Ikaika or whatever.  He shook the bajeezus out of my hand and it’s still cramping.”

            Rick flexed his fingers experimentally; they too, were cramped.  “Yeah, I didn’t go for him either,” he said, “but is Jack still here?  They gave me a message for him.”

            “Let me see that,” said Margaret and before he could protest, she had snatched the sheet out of his hand and began reading aloud.  Qin stopped on his way to deliver some coconut shrimp and steamed Manila clams and leaned in close to hear.

            “Mr. Jack Spenger, it is our sad duty to inform you,” She began, “that the Star of Denmark is under a serious threat.  As you know, the diamond was a gift from the Princess of Denmark to Queen Kapiolani at Queen Elizabeth of England’s grand jubilee celebration.  What you probably don’t know is that in 1896, Prince Hokuikekai, grandson of Queen Kapiolani, stole this great national treasure hoping to escape the beautiful islands of Hawaii and travel to mainland America.  He traded the priceless artifact in return for passage, with one Captain Kenneth Coal.”

            “Coal?” exclaimed Qin.  Margaret and Rick immediately shushed him, glancing at the busy chefs behind them.  Orders were slowly piling up on the serving table, but they could deal with them shortly.

            “This Captain Kenneth Coal was an extremely unstable man.  After taking the diamond and leaving Hokuikekai without a penny to his name, Coal was eventually relocated to a mental facility, where he died in 1942.  When doctors asked where the Star of Denmark was, he would laugh bitterly and say he lent it to the Spenger’s.  The diamond was Coal’s obsession and to the end of his days, he wrote letters demanding its return.  Mr. Spenger, we implore you to beware of Mr. Harry Coal, Captain Coal’s only living son, as he has quite likely been deeply affected by his troubling childhood and could be certifiably insane.  The danger, of course, will only pass when the Star of Denmark is removed from harms way, so we kindly offer to house it in the Museum of Honolulu.  Our Committee…”  Margaret trailed off, “now it’s just a bunch of stuff about the greatness of their cause and how they would be honored to have their Queen’s diamond returned to them for safekeeping.  But, gosh.  What has Jack got himself into?  I was always sort of fond of Harry Coal, but this…”

            “Lot of trouble, I am thinking,” said Qin, and Rick turned him in astonishment.

            “I take classes of England wording,” Qin explained.

            “We should…I guess I’ll tell him,” Rick said, reaching for the letter, but Margaret jerked it out of his reach.

            “No, you just worry about the food.  I’ll do it.  I want to be sure he actually reads it.  You know how he is,” she looked at Rick’s nonplussed face, “or I guess you don’t.  Jack grew up with Harry; they’re from the same generation and Jack isn’t going to listen to a word of this letter without a lot of convincing.”

            Rick returned to waiting tables, but for the rest of the night he kept glancing over at Harry Coal’s table where the hunched figure sat, puffing away on a pipe.  The smoke drifted up to the ‘this is a smoke free zone’ sign and tangled itself around the stuffed elk above.  He was so confident that Rick had almost begun to like him for his forthright manner and complete disregard of what others thought of him.  When Rick first met him though, he thought Harry was the most terrifying person he’d ever met.  Weird how first impressions can be right sometimes.

 

            At two in the morning, when the lanterns were dimmed and the fog was rolling in, Spenger’s seemed almost ghostly, a floating whiteness between the rich boutiques of 4^th street, the grimy railroad where rusting freight trains trundled past in the dead of night, and the dark waters of the bay.  Jack Spenger liked that there was never any end to movement here; there was always a wave crashing or a lost gull calling to its flock.  It kept him there late at night, far past when his waiters and chefs had finished cleaning and returned home.  He was therefore surprised to hear a stern knock on the front door and he stopped his accounting for a moment to glance up curiously.

            “Who’s there?” he said loudly through the door, peering through the glass porthole.

            Upon hearing the answer, he partly opened the front door, and said wearily, “Can’t this wait until morning?”

            Apparently, it couldn’t, as Jack was shouldered aside, apologized to, then offered three million dollars.

“Look, I don’t mind you eating here, but you have to stop asking about this,” he said.

“This is more than a fair price,” snarled a voice, somewhere in the shadows of the doorway.

            “I already told you, it’s not for sale.  It’s been in my family for years and I won’t be the one responsible for selling it.”

            “It was stolen!  You should be honored to be able to return it to the proper owner!”

            “I will not do it!” exclaimed Jack.

 

            The smash of glass was clearly heard across the block by a meddlesome Mrs. Figg.  She stretched out a veined, wrinkled arm and closed her book.  She thought at first only to call and complain about that clumsy new waiter at Spenger’s, obviously dropping things in the middle of the night.  Perhaps he was trying to put in a few extra hours; a lot of good that would do, shocking an elderly lady in the middle of the night.  It simply wouldn’t do!  She was reaching for the phone she kept on her bedside table when she heard four unmistakable gunshots, all in a row.  “Heavens to Betsy!” she exclaimed and dialed 911.

 

            Even with four bullets in him, Jack was still crawling, stumbling toward the kitchen and the back exit.  His shoulder hit the doorframe, twisting his upper body around, and he tripped and knocked a bundle of pots and pans all over the floor.  The humongous crash stirred all the dogs and cats in the neighborhood and lights began to flick on.  A siren was getting closer, the police only a couple blocks away.

            The gunman swore, and looked nervously toward the front door.  Jack managed to pull himself up with the aid of the table, and as the police car came screaming up to the curb outside, he leapt on his assailant, taking him crashing to the floor.  The gunman pushed him off with considerably difficultly and scrambled to his feet, looking in horror at the mess of saucepans, blood, and kitchen utensils.

            “Where’d it go?” he swore again furiously as the front door was smashed open and policemen began pouring into the entrance hall.  He grabbed the pistol, and sprinted for the back exit, leaving Jack contorting for breath on the tiled floor.

 

            Margaret had started on her third box of tissues by the time Rick arrived.  The whirling lights of the police cars jarred with the pale dawn glow and a freight train chugged slowly by.  Rick shivered.  It was freezing and he’d barely had time to pull on a jacket and jeans as he rushed to Spenger’s after the police called him.  He’d been lucky to find his wallet in the pocket of his jacket but he only had one sock, which made him feel curiously imbalanced.  He shifted uncomfortably as Margaret bawled wildly.  Rick hadn’t known Jack Spenger well enough to cry, but he had been shocked when he saw Jack’s face, pallid and unmoving.  It was a terribly creepy sensation, looking into the face of a dead man.

            Detective Platt, an overweight, middle-aged officer with a perfectly trimmed moustache and bulging eyes, forced Rick and the other employees to stand in the cold as they were being interviewed.  Platt didn’t seem to mind the chill of the dawn, nor the mutinous glares of the other police officers who were shivering uncontrollably in their Berkeley PD issued shorts.  He guarded the crime scene almost obsessively, snapping at Margaret when she tried to answer the phone.

            “But it could be one of our suppliers,” she protested.

            “No touching of the fingerprints!” Platt barked, and ordered her back behind the yellow caution tape.

            “Why would the murderer use the phone?” Rick asked and Platt swiveled his bulbous red face to glare at him.

            “You wouldn’t believe what some of what goes on in this city,” he answered darkly.

 

            It wasn’t until nine in the morning that Platt let the employees of Spenger’s go home for breakfast, and even then only because one of the chefs called his lawyer, who threatened to sue Platt for holding witnesses without their consent.

            Rick spent the remainder of the morning defrosting his fingers by his little kitchen stove then returned to Spenger’s.  Platt was still there, as well as the rest of the police force, picking their way through the mess in the kitchen, the smashed gun cases and the general disarray of the restaurant.  Margaret was still snuffling in the entrance hall, and every time she caught sight of “Jack’s favorite picture,” or the chair “where he always did his accounts,” she’d break into a fit of hysterical gasps.  Qin instead was dealing with the phone calls to contractor and suppliers, canceling the week’s orders.

            “We will not be having fish from you!” he enunciated loudly down the phone, “Yes, sir, you have fresh fish, straight from the delta, but we have death sir, and will not have fish tomorrow.”

            Harry Coal turned up early for dinner and sauntered in past the caution tape and the officers, some of whom had now managed to find longer pants.  He was poking about banquet hall #1 by the time the police realized he wasn’t supposed to be there.  Margaret took one look at him and backed into a piece of netting, her mouth opening and closing with either fear, or possibly fury. 

            “Harry,” Rick said, venturing forward nervously, “You-“

            “I came to see Jack,” Harry Coal announced, cutting Rick short, “some fight there must’ve been here.”

            Margaret shrieked with outrage at this and began hurling tissues at Harry, rasping between hysterical breaths, “HOW…COULD YOU…PRETEND NOT TO…KNOW!”

            Harry simply stared at her, his face inscrutable.  He might have answered her, but Detective Platt interrupted.

            “I must ask you to leave,” he informed Harry, “this is an official crime scene and I, as chief detective am-“

            “I came to see Jack,” Harry repeated, ignoring Detective Platt.  Margaret had run out of tissues to hurl and instead was leaning on the oak table for support, coming dangerously close to hyperventilating.

            “Mr. Spenger is dead, sir,” said Platt, “and seeing as you know him, I’ve got some questions for you.”

            I stood transfixed as Harry Coal’s harsh features turned pale with shock.

            “What the hell do you mean, dead?” he grunted, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it before.

 

 

 

Note to reader: Many of the characters and objects in this story are real—Johan Spenger, the Star of Denmark, Queen Kapiolani, the collection of antique guns and even the food mentioned.  However, Spenger’s is no longer owned by the Spenger family, a fact that I don’t include because it would destroy my plotline.  Also, while researching for this, I read that the “Star of Denmark” is a complete fake, but how would it sound if I ended with “AND IN THE END THE DIAMOND WAS MADE OF PLASTIC”?