Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

“Excuse me?”

Pekach had been distracted by the sight of Miss Martha Peebles’s rear end as she went up the stairs ahead of him. The thin material of her skirt was drawn tight over her rump. She was apparently not wearing a half slip, for the outline of her underpants was clearly visible. And the kind of underpants she was wearing were…

Pekach searched his limited vocabulary in the area and as much in triumph as surprise came up with “bikinis.”

Or the lower half of bikinis, whatever the hell they were called. Little tiny goddamned things, which, what there was of them, rode damned low.

Nice ass, too.

“Swords, halberds, some Arabian daggers, that sort of thing,” Martha Peebles said, “but they were difficult and time consuming to care for, and Colonel Mawson—do you know Colonel Mawson, Captain?”

“I know who he is, Miss Peebles,” Pekach said as she stopped at the head of the stairs and waited for him to catch up with her.

“Colonel Mawson worked out some sort of tax arrangement with the government for me, and I gave them to the Smithsonian Institution,” she concluded.

“I see.”

She led him down a carpeted corridor, and then stopped so suddenly David Pekach bumped into her.

“Sorry,” he said.

She gave him a wan smile, and nodded upward, toward the wall behind him.

“That’s Daddy,” she said.

It was an oil painting of a tall, mean-looking stout man with a large mustache. He was in hunting clothes, one hand resting on the rack of an elk.

It was a lousy picture, Pekach decided. It looked more like a snapshot.

“I had that done after Daddy passed away,” Martha Peebles said. “The artist had to work from a photograph.”

“I see,” Pekach said. “Very nice.”

“The photo had Stephen in it, but I told the artist to leave him out. Stephen hated hunting, and Daddy knew it. I think he probably made him go along to…you know, expose him to masculine pursuits. Anyway, I didn’t think Stephen belonged in Daddy’s picture, so I had the artist leave him out.”

“I understand.”

Martha Peebles then put her arm deep into a vase sitting on the floor and came out with two keys on a ring. She put one and then the other into locks on a door beside the portrait of her father, and then opened the door, and reached inside to snap a switch. Fluorescent lights flickered to life.

The room, about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, was lined with glass-fronted gun racks, except for the bar end, which was a bookcase above a felt-covered table. There were two large, wide, glass-enclosed display cases in the center of the room, plus a leather armchair and matching footstool, and a table on which an old Zenith Trans-Oceanic portable radio sat.

“This is pretty much as it was the day Daddy passed away,” Martha Peebles said. “Except that I took out his whiskey.”

“How long has your father been dead, Miss Peebles?” Pekach asked, as he walked toward the first display case.

“Daddy passed over three years, two months, and nine days ago,” she said, without faltering.

Pekach bent over the display case.

Jesus H. Christ! That’s an 1819 J. H. Hall breech action! Mint!

“Do you know anything about these guns, Miss Peebles?” Pekach asked.

She came to him.

“Which one?” she asked and he pointed and she leaned over to look at it, which action caused her blouse to strain over her bosom, giving David Pekach a quick and unintentional glimpse of her undergarments.

Even though Captain Pekach was genuinely interested in having his identification of the weapon he had pointed out as a U.S. Rifle, Model 1819, with a J. H. Hall pivoted chamber breech action confirmed, a certain portion of his attention was diverted to that which he had inadvertently and in absolute innocence glimpsed.