The Last Move

Elle was forty-two years old and her feet hurt. Six months of night shifts at the fabrication shop had done something to her back that a chiropractor would find noteworthy, but a chiropractor cost money and money was tight until the next pay cycle. So she did what she'd been doing most Fridays since she moved to town. She drove the ten minutes out to the Fairway Tap and sat at the bar until her shoulders unknotted.

The Fairway Tap was not much of a bar. It sat attached to a driving range out past the edge of town, a long low building with floodlit hitting bays behind it and a patio nobody used in winter. Inside it was dim and smelled like beer and carpet that had survived three decades. A jukebox in the corner played nothing because nobody had put money in it since Easter.

Nate was behind the bar. He'd been tending there five years, long enough to know everybody's order and everybody's business, and he had the good grace to look like he knew neither.

"Rough one?" he asked, already reaching for a glass.

"Rough month." Elle slid onto a stool. "Pale ale. Big one."

"Comin' up."

He pulled it while she peeled off her hi-vis jacket. Underneath was a black t-shirt with a scorch hole near the hem. Welding spatter. She'd have to remember to patch it or toss it. Right now she didn't care.

Beyond the windows, the range glowed. One lone figure in a bay, swinging away at nothing. Dusk was settling purple over the paddocks out back. Elle took a long pull of her beer and felt the first notch of tension come out of her neck.

The house she was renting was empty. Had been empty since she signed the lease, because the furniture she'd shipped from up north hadn't arrived until last Tuesday and even now most of it sat in boxes. Widow's furniture, she thought. Dead man's chairs. She hadn't unpacked the good dinner set. Couldn't bring herself to.

Here, at least, there were people. Noise. Nate humming off-key behind the taps. A TV in the corner playing rugby with the sound off.

She finished half the beer before she remembered the vending machine.

There was one near the restrooms, an old Coke machine with a half-dead fluorescent light and a keypad that worked about every third press. Last week it had eaten a two-dollar coin of hers and given her nothing, and she'd let it go. Tonight she wanted a bottle of water for the drive home and she had exactly one dollar coin left in her pocket after the beer.

"Don't do it," Nate said, watching her slide off the stool.

"It owes me from last week anyway."

"It owes everyone from last week. Babs keeps saying she'll get a guy out."

"A guy." Elle fished the coin from her jeans. "He'll be out Tuesday."

"That's what he said in November."

She walked the length of the room, past two tables of retirees arguing about a cricket match, past the dartboard with its chewed-up oches. The vending machine hummed at her, hopeful and lying. She fed the coin in. The machine thought about it. Clunked. Clicked. Swallowed.

Nothing came out.

"You're kidding me." She thumped the glass with her palm. "Oi. No!"

She pressed the water button. The machine made a sound reminiscent of a dying lawnmower and returned to its hum. Elle pressed it again. Nothing.

"That's my last dollar," she told the machine, in the tone she used on apprentices who ground their electrodes wrong. "That is my literal last dollar."

The machine did not care.

She was still glaring at it when a voice came from behind her.

"Maybe it's karma."

She turned. A man sat at the corner table nearest the restrooms, the one permanent fixture of the Fairway Tap that wasn't the bar itself. Ethan. Thirty-nine, copy editor at the regional paper, thin as a fence post, always in a collared shirt even at a bar attached to a driving range. He had a whiskey in front of him and a canvas satchel on the table beside it, and he was looking at her the way he'd been looking at her for the past week.

"Sorry?" Elle said.

"The machine. Maybe it knows something you don't." He took a sip of whiskey. "Or maybe it just doesn't like thieves."

The retirees at the cricket table went quiet. Even Nate stopped humming.

"Come again?" Elle set her hands on her hips.

"My chessboard." Ethan nodded at the satchel. "Vintage set. Walnut and boxwood, tournament weight, my father's. It was in this bag last Thursday when I came in. It wasn't in the bag when I got to my car. And you were the only other person in the room."

Elle blinked at him. Then she laughed, one short bark.

"You're joking."

"I don't joke about the set."

"Honey, I've been in this bar a couple of dozen Fridays and I have never once touched a chessboard. I don't play chess. I don't know the first thing about chess." She ticked it off on her fingers. "Bishops go sideways. Horses go in that little L. That's the full extent of my education."

"Knights," he said. "They're called knights."

"See, already out of my depth."

"And the set's missing its black knight now, which is interesting, isn't it." He leaned back. "Whoever took it lost the knight. Probably dropped it somewhere between here and wherever they stashed the board."

Ethan had been coming to the Fairway Tap for a decade, Elle had learned. He sat in the same seat every Friday, drank two whiskeys, and once, she'd been told by the retirees, had lost a bet worth a hundred dollars to a man named Titus over whether the All Blacks would beat Australia by more than twelve. Titus only came through on Thursdays now. The bet had not been forgotten. Ethan held grudges the way other men held pensions.

"Listen." Elle walked back toward the bar, and he turned his chair to keep her in view, which she found annoying and a little funny. "I'm a welder. I weld. Forty-two years old, been in this town six months, and the only thing I've taken off anyone is a shift nobody else wanted. I did not take your chessboard."

"Then who did?"

"How should I know? Maybe you left it on the bar and Nate bussed it."

"Didn't leave it on the bar," Nate called over, wiping a glass. "He had it out. Him and Titus played a game that Thursday before Titus's ride came. Then it went back in the bag, I saw it."

"There," Elle spread her hands. "An eyewitness. Case closed, detective."

"Then it went missing from the bag," Ethan said, "between the bag and my car, in a car park with exactly one camera, which Babs says hasn't worked since the flooding."

Behind the bar, Nate winced. Babs owned the place, twenty years running it, and her answer to every broken thing was "I'll get a guy out." The guy never came. The camera stared blind at a car park that had never been robbed, until now.

"So sue the camera," Elle said. "Or the car park. Not me."

Ethan was quiet for a moment. He turned his whiskey glass a quarter turn on the table, studying the ring it left. This was a habit of his, Elle had noticed. Everything measured. Everything considered.

"Alright," he said finally. "Say I believe you."

"Do you?"

"I'm considering it." He held up a finger before she could answer. "Here's my problem. Somebody in this room took my board. This room has maybe eleven people in it on a Friday, and six of them are the cricket table, and those six haven't moved from that table since before I learned your face. That leaves you, me, Nate, and Babs. I know I didn't take it."

"You're not seriously doing an elimination round."

"I'm a copy editor. I do elimination rounds for a living." He finished the whiskey and set the glass down with a click. "So here's an offer. A straight one, no strings."

Elle crossed her arms. "I'm listening."

"One game. Chess. You and me, right here, tonight. If you win, I drop the whole thing, buy your drinks for a month, and apologize in front of the whole bar."

"And if I lose?"

"Then you help me find the board. Door-knocking, car parks, wherever the trail goes. An extra set of eyes with a motive to clear her own name."

She looked at him for a while. He didn't look away. Under the dim light his face was unreadable, but his hands were still on the table, folded like he was a man waiting for a court verdict.

"I told you," she said. "I know nothing about chess."

"Then you've got nothing to lose." A small shrug. "And I've got the board we'd play on, so we'd need..."

He stopped. Looked at the satchel. Unzipped it.

Pulled out the board. Walnut and boxwood, worn smooth at the corners, gorgeous even in the bad light. He laid it out and opened the piece pouch and counted.

His face changed.

"Problem?" Elle asked.

"Twenty-nine pieces," Ethan said. "Somebody's had the black queen this whole time, too."

Babs came out of the back office wiping her hands on a towel. She was fifty-five and had run the Fairway Tap for twenty years, and she had a way of standing that ended arguments. She planted herself between the bar and the high table and looked at both of them over her reading glasses.

"Right. What's the actual problem here?"

"Someone stole my chess set," Ethan said. "Thursday night. It's my father's. Walnut and boxwood, tournament weight. And now it's missing the black knight and the black queen."

"And you think it's her?" Babs nodded at Elle.

"I think it's the pool of available people, and the pool is small."

Elle put her hands flat on the bar. "I've been here exactly long enough to lose a dollar to that vending machine. That's my whole criminal record in this town."

Babs glanced at the vending machine down by the restrooms, the one that had eaten Elle's two-dollar coin last week and her last dollar tonight. It hummed to itself, swallowing coins and giving nothing back, like half the men Babs had known.

"Here's what I know," Babs said. "Nobody's robbed this car park since the flood. Nobody's robbed this bar since 2009. And Ethan's been sittin' in that seat for ten years without so much as a parking ticket." She hung the towel over her shoulder. "But the set's gone and the knight's gone and that's a fact. So somebody settles it."

"The game," Ethan said. "I already offered it."

"A chess game." Babs said it flat, like she was reading a menu item she didn't believe in. "You want to settle an accusation with chess."

"With respect, Babs, it's the only thing I'm qualified to referee."

Elle looked at the board on the high table. She looked at the clock over the bar. Night shift started Monday at six. It was Friday. She had nowhere to be until then, which was the whole problem with her life lately.

"If I lose, I help hunt for a board I never touched," she said. "If I win, you apologize and buy my drinks for a month."

"Month of drinks, public apology, and I never raise it again," Ethan said.

"One flaw in your plan, detective. I don't know how to play chess."

"Then this should be a short night for both of us."

Babs held up a hand before Elle could answer. "One condition. Nobody's guilty of anything over a board game. This settles the accusation, not the theft. Whoever wins, the matter's done and everybody shakes hands or pretends to."

"Fine," Ethan said.

"Fine," Elle said, mostly because it was easier than arguing.

"Attaboy," Babs said, and went back to the office like she'd fixed a wobbly table.

* * *

Ethan set up the board with the care of a jeweler. Each piece went down in rank, white on his side, black on hers. Even short two pieces, the thing looked expensive. The pieces were heavy enough that they clicked on the wood like coins.

Elle pulled up a stool and studied the layout. Pawns across the front, big pieces behind. Two gaps in the black ranks like missing teeth.

"So which one's missing?"

"Second row, between the bishop and the king. And the queen. The tall one with the crown."

"So I'm down a queen and a horse before we start."

"Knight. And yes. You're down material!" He adjusted one of his pawns a millimeter. "I'll spot you a full fair game anyway. I don't need the handicap."

"Generous."

"I'm a generous man. Ask anyone. Actually don't, they'll tell you the opposite."

He put out his hand. "Ethan. Properly, this time. Since we're about to spend an evening together."

"Elle." She shook it. His grip was dry and careful, like he'd rehearsed it. "You know I'm going to lose, right? You realize that. This whole thing is theater."

"Probably. But it's the principle."

"What principle?"

"That things get settled. Properly. In order." He moved a pawn forward one square. "Your turn."

Elle moved a pawn forward two squares, because it was the move she'd seen on television once. Ethan went quiet. He tilted his head. Then he moved a different pawn and said nothing at all, which she understood immediately was worse than saying something.

The first ten moves went slow. He took small sips of water, Nate having cut him off after the two whiskeys with a look that said the high table was not the place to find out. Elle learned the pieces by grabbing them. Every time she reached for one he'd murmur the name, bishop, rook, knight, patient as a driving instructor, and she'd move it somewhere and he'd go quiet again.

"That quiet thing you do," she said, on move twelve. "I hate it."

"What quiet thing?"

"The thinking quiet. You sit there like a crossword."

"I am thinking. That's the game. You're supposed to think."

"I'm welding, mostly. In my head. The moves just happen."

One of his pawns took one of hers with a little click. She hadn't even seen the threat coming. "That's a pawn," he said. "You'll miss it."

"I already miss it. What did it even do?"

"Controlled a square. Made room. Pawns are the whole game, actually. People think they're nothing and they're everything." He said it looking at the board, but it didn't quite sound like he was talking about the board.

"You're one of those blokes who has opinions about pawns."

"I'm one of those blokes who lives alone and has opinions about pawns, yes."

It came out so flat and quick that she laughed before she could stop herself, and then felt bad about it, and then saw he was smiling slightly at the board, so maybe it was allowed.