Mystery. Part 20

"Well, things are reaching a certain pitch," von Heilitz said. "You may stir up something just by being there. At the very least, you have to expect that Jerry Hasek and his friends might recognize you. They'll certainly recognize your name-they must have thought they killed you. If they were helping Wendell Hasek hide something seven years ago, it or its traces may still be hidden."

"The money?"

"When I watched his house from the top floor of my place on Calle Burleigh, twice I saw a car pull up in front of Hasek's. A man carrying a briefcase got out and was let into the house. The second time it was a different car, and a different man. Hasek went out his back door, unlocked a shed in his back garden, and came back with small packages in his hands. His visitors left, still carrying their briefcases."

"Why did he give the money away?"

"Payoffs." Von Heilitz raised his shoulders, as if to say: What else? "Certainly the police got some of that money, but who else did is a matter we can't answer yet."

"He was protecting stolen money," Tom said.

"The payroll money." And here again was the flavor of the unspoken subject. The old man lowered his head and seemed to examine his gloved hands, which rested on the curved back of the chair. "One thing you told me is very sinister, and another puts several crucial pieces into the whole puzzle of Eagle Lake. And do you know what I realized tonight? What only my vanity kept me from seeing before this?"

Too agitated to remain seated, von Heilitz had jumped to his feet in the middle of this surprising announcement, and was now pacing behind the chair again.

"What?" Tom said, alarmed.

"That I need you more than you need me!" He stopped, whirled to face Tom, and threw out his arms. His handsome old face blazed with so many contradictory feelings-astonishment, outrage, self-conscious despair, also a sort of goofy pleasure-that Tom smiled at this display. "It's true! It's absolutely true!" He lowered his arms theatrically. "All of this-this immense case case, absolutely depends on you, Tom. It's probably the last, and certainly the most important, thing like it that I'll ever work on, it's the culmination of my life, and here it is the first real thing you've ever done, and without you I'd still be pasting clippings in my journals, wondering when I'd get what I needed to show my hand. I'm upstaged at my own final bow!" He laughed, and turned to the room, asking it to witness his comeuppance. He laughed again, with real happiness.

Von Heilitz put his hands in the small of his back and arched himself backwards. He sighed, and his hair dripped over his collar. "Ah, what's to become of us?"

He moved slowly around the chair and the table and sat beside Tom on the couch. He patted him on the back, twice. "Well, if we knew that, there'd be no sense in going on, would there?"

Von Heilitz propped his feet on the edge of the table, and Tom did the same. For a moment they sat in the identical posture, as relaxed as a pair of twins.

"Can I ask you something?" Tom finally said.

"Anything at all."

"What did I tell you that put another piece of the puzzle in place?"

"That your grandfather took your mother to a house owned by Barbara Deane for a few days, immediately after Jeanine Thielman's death. And that your mother saw a man running into the woods."

"She didn't recognize him."

"No. Or she did, but didn't want to, and told herself she didn't. There would have been few men up there that your mother didn't know."

"And what was the sinister thing I told you?"

"That Ralph Redwing paid a flattering call on your father." Von Heilitz lowered his legs and sat up straight. "I find that distressing, all things considered." He stood up decisively, and Tom did the same, wondering what was coming next. Von Heilitz looked at him in a way that was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with unspoken speech: but unlike Victor Pasmore, he did not utter the words that had come to him.

"You'd better be off," von Heilitz said instead. "It's getting late, and we don't want you to have to answer any awkward questions."

They began to move through the files and other clutter to the door. For a moment, two months seemed almost dangerously long, and Tom wondered if he would ever see this room again.

"What should I look for, up north?" he asked. "What should I do?"

"Ask around about Jeanine Thielman. See if anyone else saw that man running into the woods." Von Heilitz opened the door. "I want you to stir things up a little. See if you can make things happen, without actually putting yourself in danger. Be careful, Tom. Please."

Tom held out his hand, but von Heilitz surprised him again, and hugged him.

PART SEVEN.

EAGLE LAKE.

At seven-thirty in the morning, two days later, an unshaven Victor Pasmore set down one of Tom's suitcases just outside the main entrance of David Redwing Field. Victor's rumpled clothes smelled of perspiration, tobacco, and bourbon. Even his eyebrows were rumpled.

"Thanks for getting up to drive me here." Tom wished that he could hug his father, or say something affectionate to him, but Victor was irritated and hung over.

His father took a step away, and glanced anxiously at his car, parked across the sidewalk in a no-parking zone. Beyond the airport's access road, the nearly empty lot already radiated heat in the morning sun.

"You got everything you need? Everything okay?"

"Sure," Tom said.

"I, ah, I better get my car outa here. They move you along, at airports." Victor squinted at him. His eyes looked rumpled too. "Better not say anything to anybody about, you know, what I told you. It's still top secret. Details and that."

"Okay."

Victor nodded. A sour odor washed toward Tom. "So. Take it easy."

"Okay."

Victor got into his car and closed the door. He waved at Tom through the pa.s.senger window. Tom waved back, and his father jerked the car forward into the access road. Tom saw him peering from side to side, looking for other drivers to get angry with. When the car was out of sight, he picked up his bags and went into the terminal.

This was a long concrete block building with two airline counters, a car rental desk, a souvenir stand, and a magazine rack stocked with The Lady, Harpers Queen, Vogue, Life The Lady, Harpers Queen, Vogue, Life, and the American news magazines. At one end was the baggage area-a moving belt and twenty square yards of stained linoleum with a permanent pool of watery yellow liquid against the far wall-and at the other end, a bar called Hurricane Harry's with wicker stools, a thatched roof, and a vending machine that dispensed sandwiches.

Tom had tried to call Lamont von Heilitz three times on Sat.u.r.day, but the Shadow had not answered his telephone. Curious about Barbara Deane, he had taken the grey metal box where his parents kept their important papers from its shelf in the study, and looked through the t.i.tle to the house and the car, their marriage license, many legal doc.u.ments and stock certificates, until he found his birth certificate. Dr. Bonaventure Milton had signed his birth certificate, Barbara Deane and Glendenning Upshaw had witnessed it, and a man named Winston Shaw, Registrar of the Island of Mill Walk, had testified to the correctness of the proceedings.

Tom flipped back to the marriage license and removed it from the box. This, too, had been witnessed by Glendenning Upshaw and Barbara Deane. Winston Shaw had again performed his office. Gloria Ross Upshaw of Mill Walk had married Victor Laurence Pasmore of Miami, Florida, United States of America, on February fifteenth, 1946.

First Tom noticed the oddity of his midwife having witnessed his parents' marriage; then something about the date made him wrinkle his forehead. His parents had been married in February: he had been born on October twentieth. He counted on his fingers, and saw that February and October were exactly nine months apart.

And that, Tom thought, was how an employee of Mill Walk Construction married the boss's daughter. There had been a romance: and when Glendenning Upshaw learned his daughter was pregnant, he flew her and her boyfriend back home to Mill Walk and ordered up a civil ceremony in the way he would order up room service in a hotel.

He had placed the metal box back on the shelf and gone into the kitchen, where his mother sat at the table in front of the lunch dishes, holding the brown plastic pill bottle in one hand and looking dully at the refrigerator. When she saw him she smiled like someone remembering how to do it, and slowly put his plate on top of hers. "I'll do it," he said, and took the plates from her and put them in the dishwasher. She handed him the gla.s.ses. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"I guess I'm a little weak," she said.

"Can I help you upstairs? Or do you want to go into another room?"

She shook her head. "Don't worry about me."

He sat down beside her. He knew that if he put his arm around her, she would push it off. "I was wondering about this Barbara Deane," he said.

Her eyes flicked toward him, then away, and a vertical line appeared between her eyebrows.

"She's taking care of your old lodge, or something like that. Do you know her?"

"She's a friend of Daddy's."

"Was she his girlfriend, or anything like that?"

The vertical line disappeared, and she smiled. "She was never anybody's girlfriend. Especially not Daddy's!" And added, "Barbara Deane worked at the hospital," as if that were all that had to be said. Then she looked straight at him. "Stay out of her way. She's funny." funny."

"What makes her funny?"

"Oh, I don't know," Gloria sighed. "I don't want to talk about Barbara Deane." Deane."

But when he went up to pack, she came into his room and made sure he was bringing a bathing suit, boat shoes, sweaters, ties, a jacket. He was taking his place in the world, and he had to be dressed for the cold nights.

At eight o'clock a big potbellied man in sungla.s.ses and a cowboy hat carried an enormous suitcase through the revolving doors, followed by a blond woman with a Jackie Kennedy hairdo who wore huge sungla.s.ses and a black miniskirt. She pulled a middle-sized suitcase behind her on rollers. The potbellied man squinted at the darkened bar, frowned at Tom, and shook his head at the women at the airline desks, who wilted back on their stools. Then Sarah Spence came through the electronic door, carrying a small suitcase like Baby Bear. She was dressed in a blue b.u.t.ton-down shirt with rolled-up sleeves and khaki shorts. "Tom!" she cried. "Bingo was so unhappy! I think his heart broke! I wish we could give him Percy's-" Here she sketched a large ap.r.o.n before her with her free hand.

"Percy's what?" her mother said, lowering her sungla.s.ses on her nose and giving Tom a clinical look.

Mr. Spence dropped his suitcase and examined Tom through his sungla.s.ses. "So you're hitching a ride up north with us, are you?"

"Yes, sir," Tom said.

"Who's this Percy?" her mother said. "Give Bingo what?"

"Special dog food," Sarah said. "A friend of a friend of Tom's."

Mrs. Spence shoved her sungla.s.ses back up her nose. She was a good-looking woman who obviously knew the names of every member of the Founders Club, and her legs were almost young enough for her miniskirt. "Are both those suitcases yours?"

Tom nodded, and Mrs. Spence looked at his suitcases through her dark gla.s.ses.

"Pilot ought to be here waiting," said Mr. Spence. "That was the deal. I guess I better go look for the guy." He cast another look at the bar, and set off toward the baggage area and the yellow puddle.

"Well, I don't see the reason for last-minute changes," said Mrs. Spence, speaking to the air. Then she fixed Tom with a smile that went all the way to the corners of her sungla.s.ses. "And your mother is Gloria Upshaw, isn't she?"

"She was Gloria Upshaw," Tom said. "Before she got married."

"Such a dear," said Mrs. Spence.

"Okay, we got it straightened out," said Mr. Spence. "The pilot's waiting for us in the Redwing lounge."

"Of course he is," said Mrs. Spence.

Mr. Spence lifted his enormous suitcase and began moving toward a door next to the thatch of the bar, and Mrs. Spence muttered something and followed after with her medium-sized suitcase rolling after her handsome legs, and Sarah hugged him while their backs were turned and hit him in the back with her tiny suitcase and whispered, "Don't mind them too much, please, and don't pay any attention to anything they say." don't pay any attention to anything they say."

On the other side of the door, black leather couches and chairs had been arranged around marble coffee tables on a thick grey carpet. A waiter in a white coat stood behind a bar on which stood a pitcher of orange juice, a silver coffeepot, and trays of breakfast rolls covered in Saran Wrap.

"Oh, my!" said Mrs. Spence. "Well, I knew knew it!" it!"

A tall, well-tanned man in a dark blue uniform set down his coffee cup and stood up before one of the couches. "Spence family?"

"And a person named Tom Pasmore," said Mrs. Spence. "Did you know he was coming too?" a person named Tom Pasmore," said Mrs. Spence. "Did you know he was coming too?"

The pilot smiled. "There won't be any problem, Mrs. Spence." He opened a door beside the bar, and they stepped out into the heat. A sleek grey jet with a heraldic letter R sat on the tarmac a short distance away. "I am Captain Mornay, by the way, but Mr. Redwing's guests usually call me Ted," said the pilot.

"Oh, Ted, thank you so much," said Mrs. Spence, and swept across the tarmac toward the staircase leading up to the open door of the jet.

The interior of the plane matched the Redwing lounge. Grey carpeting covered the floor and bulkheads, and black leather chairs stood around black marble tables. A bar with a steward in a white jacket stood next to a curtained-off galley. On the other side of the bar and galley Tom saw two compartments separated by smoked gla.s.s. A door in the rear of the plane opened, and a porter began handing in their suitcases to the Steward, who placed them on shelves at the rear end of the plane and secured them behind a carpeted door.

The steward asked them to choose their seats and fasten their seat belts, and slipped into the galley.

"Well, Tom, I think we'll sit in this nice little area right here," said Mrs. Spence, and smiled brightly. She took a seat in the second complement of chairs, looked at Sarah, and patted the chair beside hers. There were three chairs around the black table.

"Tom and I can sit here," Sarah said. "That way, we'll practically be at the same table." She sat in the chair of the first group nearest her mother's table, and swiveled it around to show how close they were.

Mr. Spence sat down, grunting, and put his cowboy hat on the table. Tom took the chair beside Sarah's. They all fastened their seat belts. Mrs. Spence pushed her sungla.s.ses up into her hair, and smiled ferociously.

"Only twenty men in America have jets like this," said Mrs. Spence. "Frank Sinatra has one. And Liberace, I think. Some of the others are showier, but Ralph's is the most tasteful. I'm sure I'm happier in this jet than I would ever be in Frank Sinatra's. Or Liberace's."

"Oh, I'd like to be Liberace's private jet," said Sarah. "I'm sure I'd be happy in a jet where everything was piano-shaped and covered in ermine. Don't you think that private jets shouldn't shouldn't be tasteful?" be tasteful?"

"I suggest that you learn to like this one." Her mother's voice could have shaved a peach. "You'll be seeing a lot of it." She swiveled her chair, hitching her skirt even farther up her thighs, and looked back at the rest of the cabin. "Aren't those little booths cute? I adore those little booths. I can just see Buddy sitting in one of those little booths. Or in the c.o.c.kpit. Buddy is sort of the pilot type, isn't he?"

"I can see Buddy piloting the bar," Sarah said.

"I don't understand you," her mother said. "You just say these things."

"Tom is very high-spirited, mother. He goes on wonderful excursions. He has interesting friends everywhere."

"Imagine that," said Mrs. Spence. "Do you think there is any champagne on this flight? I think champagne would be just right, don't you?"

Mr. Spence pulled in his belly, stood up, and went to the curtained galley.

When a bottle of beer, two gla.s.ses of orange juice, and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne sat on the table, Mrs. Spence raised her gla.s.s and said, "Here's to summer!" They all drank.

"Have you known Ralph Redwing long?" Tom asked.

"Of course," said Mrs. Spence, and "Not really," said Mr. Spence, more or less simultaneously. They looked at each other with differing degrees of irritation.

"Well, of course, we've moved in the same circles ever since Mr. Spence took over Corporate Accounting for Ralph," said Mrs. Spence. "But we've only really become close in the past two or three years. You'd have to say that Buddy and Sarah brought us together, and we're very happy about that. Very Very happy." happy."

"You do all the accounting work for the Redwing Holding Company?" Tom asked.

"Not by a long shot," Mr. Spence said. "I handle the work for the can company, the real estate holdings, the brewery, a few other odds and ends. Keeps me hopping. Above me, there's the General Accountant, the man I report to, and then the Vice-President for Accounting, above him."