Now He Thinks He's Dead

by Goulart, Ron

"What forms did the other attempts take? They didn't keep trying to run him down with a car, did they?"

  "Actually there had only been one other try when I told you. But there was a second one." She eased the envelope three inches to the left. "Lloyd told me something about that today. Just before the third, and final, attempt."

  "What form did the other two take?"

  "First time somebody strung a wire across the stairs and he tripped over it in the dark and fell."

  "Maybe Eva?"

  "He wasn't coming out of his own bedroom at the time. Lloyd fooled around a lot, you know."

  "He told me that, but I never exactly believed him."

  "He did."

  "Which gives Eva another motive besides just not liking him"

  "He swore she had nothing to do with it and didn't know where he was that night."

  Shrugging, he asked, "'And the second try?"

  "He was cagier about all the details, at least as to exactly whom he was with. But at another of his women's places," she said, "someone drained his brake fluid, and he came close to having a serious auto accident."

  Ben got up and began pacing the wide kitchen. "Yep, those pretty much qualify as earlier attempts to knock him off," he said. "Did he tell you why he thought somebody was out to get him?"

  "He was pretty vague, but it had something to do with a discovery. A discovery he'd made within the past few weeks. I got the impression that there were people who didn't want what he knew to become public."

  "What sort of discovery are we talking about? A cure for the common cold, perpetual motion?"

  "It had to do with a major crime," she replied. "He was planning to write a book about it. He also mentioned there'd definitely be a television show, a docudrama."

  "Are we talking about organized crime?"

  H. J. shook her head. "I don't think so."

  "I'm a man of some means these days." He stopped pacing to frown at her. "This new Chumley deal, coupled with all the other commercial voice stuff I do, will bring in around half a million a year for a while. So there's no problem about your quitting the romance covers and concentrating on serious painting again. Therefore, there's no need to pursue this, as I suspect you're contemplating, in the hope that you'll figure out how Dobkin was planning to make big money and then make some for yourself. Keep in mind, Helen Joanne, the important fact that he didn't get rich, he just got dead."

  "I know, I know. He practically died in my arms."

  "Hold it. Dobkin didn't deliver some kind of dying message, did he?"

  "No, he only said, 'I told you they were trying to kill me.' And I'd just been kidding him about how he was probably imagining things."

  "That's like the old joke."

  "This isn't the proper time for jokes, old or otherwise."

  "Wife drags her husband to the doctor and says, 'My husband is terribly sick. You've got to do something to help him.' The doctor examines the guy, but he assures her there's nothing wrong with him at all. Since he's also something of a psychiatrist, he tells her, 'Ma'am, it's all in his mind. Your husband isn't actually sick. He only thinks he's sick.' Two weeks later on the street he sees her again and asks, 'How's your husband?' She answers, 'Now he thinks he's dead.'"

  "That must be another of those jokes you're always saying are profound rather than funny."

  "It fits the situation. Nobody apparently believed Dobkin was on the brink of being killed, but he was," said Ben. "He's dead and gone. And you could be, too, if you persist in poking into this."

  H. J. slid the envelope in front of her. "I know that since we'll be living together again, I really won't have any monetary worries, because you'll be there to bail me out if need be," she said. "It's important to me, though, that you won't have to finance me and that whatever I do and whatever our marital status, I can pay my own way."

  "Okay, but there are all sorts of other ways of making money. We don't know exactly what Dobkin was on to, but it's damn certain it's something that can get people killed and—"

  "There's more to this than money, Ben. Lloyd was a friend and I'd like to find out who killed him. The way he died does remind me of my father's death and—"

  "It isn't rational to compare a—"

  "I'm not claiming to be exactly rational. I'm only telling you how I feel and what I'd like to do," she said, opening the manila envelope. "Lloyd gave me this today. I didn't look at it at the time, just popped it into my portfolio. He told me to look after it, as a sort of hole card for him. In case someone found his files."

  "His files on what?"

  "That's another of the things he didn't confide in me." From the envelope she drew an eight-by-ten color photograph. "I didn't look at this until after I got clear of the Dahlman Building. Doesn't convey much to me, but maybe you can figure something."

  Ben took the photo from her. "I'll be jinged," he muttered in his New England rustic voice.

  He found himself holding a blow-up of a photo of a young woman's backside. On her left buttock was a small birthmark that looked exactly like a tiny black butterfly. He turned the picture over, but there was nothing written on the reverse.

  "She's got a cute ass, whoever she is," he said finally. "But I haven't any notion what this means or why Dobkin gave it to you."

  Chapter 4

  Thunder rumbled. The windows of the master bedroom rattled, and heavy rain commenced hitting against the panes.

  Ben sat suddenly upright, half awake. "They stole the butterfly!" he shouted as the last of his nightmare faded away.

  Gradually he became fully awake. He shook his head a few times, took a slow careful breath in and out. Reaching over, he gave H. J. a reassuring pat on her backside. Her rear end felt oddly saggy and insubstantial.

  Lightning crackled outside, and the big room was filled for a few seconds with silky blue light. Ben discovered that he'd been consoling a wadded-up tangle of blankets. H. J. wasn't in bed.

  After switching on the bedside lamp, he stumbled out of bed and stood for a moment on the carpet. "There's something I have to tell her," he said, trying to remember exactly what it was. "'About the butterfly birthmark, wasn't it?"

  He wandered over to the open doorway. As always he'd been sleeping in a pajama top and shorts.

  Moving out into the long dark upstairs hall, he called out, "H. J.?"

  There was no response.

  The night rain thumped on the skylights.

  Ben ventured farther along the hall, heading for the stairway. "Hey! Helen Joanne?"

  "Down here. Quit yowling."

  "I happen to be master of this manse." He clicked on the stair lights and went trotting down to the living room. "So I have full yowling privileges."

  He found his erstwhile wife sitting on the sofa, legs tucked under her, studying the photo Dobkin had entrusted to her. H. J. was wearing one of his old blue button-down shirts and nothing else. "Couldn't sleep," she explained, holding the picture at arm's length and squinting at it.

  "Just before I dozed off, I think something crossed my mind." He ambled over and sat close beside her. "Then I must've dreamt about it."

  "Is that what you were hollering about just now?"

  Ben pointed at the birthmark on the mystery woman's left buttock. "I was dreaming about people stealing butterflies," he recalled, frowning. "Wait a minute, wait."

  "Are you on the verge of having a vision?"

  "They stole the butterfly. Sure, right. That's it." Standing up, bouncing a couple times on the balls of his feet, he began pacing.

  She nodded at his legs. "Were you that shaggy back when we were married?"

  "Sure. Macho men are always hairy."

  "From the waist down you look like the Wolfman."

  "You ought to see me during the full moon," he said in his Lon Chaney, Jr. voice. Then he stopped still, nodding with satisfaction. "What I've been trying to remember is a kidnapping."

  "Whose?"

  "Her. The girl with the butterfly on her backside. They kidnapp
ed her."

  "Feminists would prefer that you call her a young woman."

  "No, no. This was twenty years or more ago. She was a little girl, no more than two or three. It's a famous case."

  "What's her name?"

  "I can't remember."

  "So much for fame."

  "Yeah, but it's one of the cases Dobkin wrote up in that book of his, the one he gave you a copy of. Great American Kidnappings," he told her. "'As I was falling asleep, I must've remembered the picture of that little girl's rear end in Dobkin's book. Where'd you put it?"

  She got up, forehead furrowing. "You're saying that's who this is?" She waved the photograph back and forth, as though she were drying it off. "This is the kidnap victim grown up?"

  "We can compare the two birthmarks, soon as you locate the book. He gave it to you only a few weeks ago."

  She sat. "Shit," she said. "I don't know where it is, Ben."

  He crossed over to his wall-high bookcases. "I remember browsing through it right after Dobkin presented it to you. I left it sitting on that end table."

  "That's always been a problem with you, leaving stuff lying around."

  "You must've stuck it on a shelf someplace. You have a compulsion about tidying up."

  H. J. thought. "I remember," she said finally, brightening. "I took it over to my place and stuck it on a shell in my studio."

  "Why?"

  "In case Lloyd visited me there while I was batting out a godawful Gossamer Library job," she replied. "I've been trying to get him to raise the price per cover by at least another five hundred dollars."

  "That might've done it. If I were an author, I'd give out five hundred to anybody who had one of my books prominently displayed."

  "We've got to get hold of that book."

  "Sure, first thing in the morning."

  "No. Right now, tonight."

  "You want to go out in the middle of the night, during a violent thunderstorm?"

  She nodded emphatically before running toward the staircase. "This is going to help us solve Lloyd's murder," she said, starting up the stairs to dress. "'And there's also probably a lot of money to be made out of all this."

  The night rain came rushing toward the car, slamming the windshield.

  H. J., who was sitting up very straight in the passenger seat, asked, "What's that odd muttering noise the engine's making?"

  "That's not the car." Ben clutched the steering wheel more tightly as he guided the car along the rainswept lane. "That's me."

  "Oh, so?"

  "I was cursing my fate."

  "A favorite hobby of yours, as I recall."

  He slowed the car as he noticed a large tree branch had fallen across the road ahead. There was just enough room to skirt it. "Trees are being felled by the powerful forces of nature," he said in his plummy documentary voice, "yet our intrepid wayfarers press on. There are those who'd call them foolhardy . . . and they'd be absolutely right."

  "Don't be such a grump. This is fun. C'mon, admit it."

  "Nope. Shooting the rapids in a canoe might be fun, going over Niagara Falls in a keg might be fun. But driving through a monsoon in the wee hours of the morning is not fun."

  She shrugged her left shoulder. "I've been thinking about what must have happened," she said. "Somebody, purely by chance, sent in some pictures of this young lady to Bare. I'd guess that it was to their 'My Best Girl' section, which is, you know, open to amateur models and photographers."

  "And Lloyd recognized the birthmark."

  "If you're right about their being similar, yes."

  "Then what would he have done?"

  "I'm not certain. Myself, after getting very excited, I'd try to contact the young woman or the person who took her picture and submitted them. I wouldn't let on I thought she was a missing heiress, but I'd find out all I could about her."

  "We don't know she's a missing heiress. She could be a missing pauper."

  "Lloyd hinted there was a lot of money tied up with what he was involved in," she said. "I wish you could remember more about that chapter in his darn book."

  "I never really read it. I just skimmed through the book, looking mostly at the pictures."

  "I'm pretty sure that what we've got here, Ben, is one of those situations where the kidnapping victim never showed up again," she said. "But she wasn't killed, and now, probably unaware of who she really is, she turns up. There was a movie on TV a while back with that plot."

  "There often is, Helen Joanne. I wouldn't, though, set my heart on finding a long-lost heiress or a missing princess."

  "But she's got to be somebody important. Otherwise Lloyd wouldn't have become so enthusiastic."

  "The guy had an unlimited capacity for enthusiasm."

  "You're just being critical of him because he was an optimist and you aren't."

  "I am, too, an optimist. Would a pessimist risk his life on these rustic byways at the height of a typhoon?"

  "You just," she observed, "drove past my turn."

  H. J. caught hold of his arm. "Don't get out of the car yet," she cautioned quietly.

  He'd just parked in the driveway in front of her cottage and turned off the motor. "Something wrong?"

  She was slightly hunched, staring out through the hard-falling rain at her house. "I always leave a night-light on in my studio to make burglars think I'm home when I'm really not."

  "You'd have to be an exceptionally dumb burglar to—"

  "The light isn't on now."

  He was looking out toward the small shingled house. "Yeah, the place is as dark as a tomb . . . and other spooky locations I wouldn't care to enter."

  "Could be just that the bulb burned out."

  "Could be, but—"

  "Lately people seem to think they can trash my lodgings whenever they please," she said angrily. "Let's go in and confront the bastards."

  "Hold on," he advised, reaching across to open the glove compartment. "I've been carrying a flashlight, since we seem to do so much night work."

  "You can't shoot anybody with that."

  "Nevertheless. You stick here and I'll circle the house, peep in at the windows to determine if—"

  "I'm lighter on my feet than you are." She took the flash from his grasp.

  Ben grabbed it back and in so doing bumped against the horn with his elbow.

  Two loud blaring hoots shot out across the rainy night. H. J. sank bank. "Well, if anybody's still prowling in there, that'll surely send them scooting."

  "Yeah, it will." Grinning, Ben hit the horn twice again. "Since you don't have any near neighbors, this won't wake anybody. Although maybe nobody's asleep in Brimstone tonight anyway. They're probably all out looting, pillaging, or hunting for missing heirs."

  "No one has come out of the house." She opened her door and stepped out into the rainy darkness. "We can risk a look."

  Getting out, Ben joined her on the gravel drive. Hand in hand, they ran up to the front door of the dark cottage.

  H. J. lifted the keys out of her jacket pocket. "Can somebody be after that photo already?"

  "Seems like a good possibility."

  The door swung open. H. J. hesitated, then crossed into the house. She sneezed three times.

  "You okay?" Ben stepped ahead into the darkness.

  "Something in the air made me sneeze."

  "I don't smell anything. What?"

  She sniffed. "Not sure. It seems to be gone now I can't smell it anymore."

  "Well, let's look around." He moved a few feet over, located the light switch and flicked on the lights.

  "Damn," commented H. J. forlornly.

  Her living room had been very thoroughly and rapidly ransacked.

  Chapter 5

  Ben returned from the bedroom of the cottage. "Nobody lurking in there either," he announced. "The house is absolutely free of—"

  "Did you look under the bed?"

  "You've got a futon, remember? Only a very slim—"

  "Okay, let's find that book." H. J
. went striding toward her studio.

  "I don't know how much entertaining you did on that futon," he observed, following her. "It looks about three degrees less comfortable than a bed of nails. Your boyfriends must've been saying 'Ouch! Ow! Yikes!' from dusk till—"

  "Help me find Lloyd's book. It's got a red dust jacket." She halted before her bookcases. Most of the books had been pulled off the shelves and were strewn about on the floor.

  Ben crossed to the telephone on the taboret. "First we'll call the police." He reached for the receiver.

  She ran over to his side, slapping her hand over his. "I've had my minimum daily requirement of police for today, thanks," she informed her onetime spouse. "The last thing I want to do is explain to Detective Ryerson why thugs tossed my place."

  "We're probably dealing with the same folks who killed Dobkin," he reminded her "They must have been looking for that photo." He nodded at her shoulder bag.

  "Maybe." She kept her hand pressed down over his.

  "Or worse, H. J., they may think he also gave you his mysterious files. Since they didn't find anything here tonight, they'll—"

  "Suppose all that is absolutely true. What the heck is Ryerson going to do?"

  "Well, first off he'll note the fact that you've been burgled. Then he and his crew will sift the cottage for clues."

  She made a rude noise "'And find nothing," she said. "C'mon, Ben, burglars are smart. They wear gloves and they long ago quit dropping matchbooks from the Kit Kat Klub where gumshoes can find them."

  "Also, you're going to need protection."

  "Really? And is Ryerson going to move in with us and spend his nights camped outside the bedroom with a shotgun in his lap?"

  "Probably not, no. But what normal, rational people are supposed to do in a situation like this is follow a—"

  "What we, on the other hand, are going to do is exactly what we did last time."

  "Last time you ended up getting kidnapped, tortured, and nearly terminated."

  "You know what I mean. Quit being so negative. What we have to do is look out for ourselves."

  "Ourselves? Hellsfire, I always start out an innocent bystander and somehow—no doubt because I'm traveling under a curse—it always ends up that we are in trouble."