by James Brady
“But the Fed. You’ve screwed all that up, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“Yes, and it’s a shame. I would have been pretty good at it. Hell of a lot better than Greenspan with his fixation on tight money. But you don’t swap your own child for a job. Took me a long time to learn that but eventually it sunk in. Ask your daddy, Beecher. He’ll tell you.”
Now it was Alix’s turn.
“Then who did kill them? If you didn’t—we know that—and if Claire didn’t, we have only your word and hers.”
“What do you Brits say? ‘I haven’t the foggiest.’”
She chewed that over for all of a second or two and then got to the gravamen, at least to her.
“Mr. Warrender, may I have your authorization yet again to trespass on your property, enter your house, and take with me the floppy disk onto which you downloaded Hannah Cutting’s autobiography for which my employer, Mr. Evans of Random House, has paid an awful lot of money?”
Warrender looked into her face, not giving a hint. Then, briefly, at me. Then back to her.
“And if I give you the okay, will you share it with our reporter friend, Beecher Stowe, who also seems to have both a professional and a personal interest?”
Alix looked at him, looked at me, looked back at him. And then with a cool, professional crispness, she said:
“Mr. Stowe is a journalist after a story; my employer has already paid for and owns this literary property. And I am here in my capacity as Random House’s agent.”
Sick as he was, and as wasted, Royal summoned a grin, enjoying seeing me get screwed. He never had liked reporters very much.
“I hoped you’d say that,” he said. “Shows sand.”
“Sand?”
“Grit. Guts. Determination. All the good things.”
“Oh, I do like that.”
“Come closer, Alix, so I can whisper.”
She knelt by the bed as he told her where the disk was stowed and which door was unlocked so she could get into the house. If any of the servants had returned, they were to phone him for an okay. I could hear some of it and considered arguing with both of them but didn’t. You don’t win such arguments. Instead, I said:
“Take care of yourself, Royal.” Then, to Alix:
“Come on.”
As she hurried along to the car she said, “He hid the disk inside a book in his library. He told me he arranges all his books alphabetically by author.”
“Who’s the author? Your man Buchan?”
“No.” She thought for a moment. “I don’t know why he whispered. You can be trusted.”
“Sure, I possess all the Boy Scout virtues,” I said mockingly.
“Well, you do, you know. Or most of them. No, it’s not John Buchan. A writer I never heard of. John P. Marquand. A book called The Late George Something or other.…”
I laughed.
“The Late George Apley. All about a stuffy old Harvard man years ago. Kind of novel nobody reads anymore.”
“But that’s just what Mr. Warrender whispered. ‘A book nobody reads so no one would ever find something hidden there.’”
So much for a Yale man’s sense of humor.
“Come on,” I said, “I want to stop at the East Hampton Star.”
“What’s that, the East Hampton Star?”
“Local newspaper. I just want to look up something. And then we’ve got a killer to find.”
She sounded uncharacteristically subdued, as if it was starting to sink in that she was finally going to get what she’d been dispatched here to find. “Yes, Beecher, I’m coming.”
“Good. That’s the spirit.”
THIRTY-THREE
Hitler did his worst and couldn’t defeat them …
I got what I needed from the newspaper office. At least I thought I did. There was one more stop.
“Hannah’s house. Middlefield.”
“What’s there?”
“Some old junk. A roomful of stuff Hannah collected through the years. Claire told me about it once. Where she may have kept the maguffin. Old tennis racquets, seashells, stuff that didn’t mean anything to anyone else but her. And whoever killed her, maybe.”
She looked puzzled. “What’s the maguffin this time?”
“It’s whatever Hitchcock says the bad guys are after and the hero finds. It could be a map or a kidnaped child or a…”
“Don’t lecture me about maguffins. I knew my Hitchcock perfectly well. I want to know precisely what particular maguffin you’re after.”
“Dunno, exactly. That’s why we’re going there.”
“Can we get in?”
“We’ll get in. Claire’s in jail. I think I can handle the Kroepkes if you help out, do a little tank job.”
“What tank?”
“The vapors. Instead of the cool, competent, and highly efficient book editor and certified Tony Godwin Award-winning genius you really are, I want your best impression of a Victorian damsel in distress, right out of Jane Austen.”
“You mean batting my eyes, calling for smelling salts, and falling into a swoon?”
That Alix, she grasped a concept pretty swiftly. “Yeah,” I said, “going into the tank. The way boxers do.”
“You are the clever one,” she admitted.
“Subterfuge and stratagems, that’s me.”
“Richard Hannay and Sandy Arbuthnot would both be proud.”
There were a lot of limbs down and a couple of trees and the lawn didn’t look manicured as it had, but other than that, Hannah’s place didn’t seem to have been badly hurt by the storm. Mrs. Kroepke came out when she heard my tires on the gravel. Her husband was up at the shopping center in Bridgehampton, she said. He’d be back soon.
“Just wanted to check that you were both okay,” I said.
“Well, isn’t that nice. No damage to speak of. Though we’re upset about Miss Claire, of course.”
“She’ll be fine,” I told the housekeeper. “We saw her at Southampton Hospital before she was … well, you know. I’m sure she’ll be out soon. All really just a silly mistake…”
That got us an invitation to the kitchen and tea.
“Oh, that’ll be lovely,” Alix enthused. “I’ve had a touch of something ever since the hurricane.”
“I don’t wonder, Your Ladyship. Gentlefolks like yourself aren’t accustomed to such hard times, I’m sure. Now you just sit down at the table and relax and I’ll put the tea on.”
Alix mopped her face with a Kleenex.
“Sorry to be such a bother. Do you have any quinine?” She pronounced in the English way, not with a long “i.”
“No, I don’t believe so. Not something I’ve ever kept in medicine chests.…”
“Naturally not. Years ago as a child in India, a touch of malaria … recurs from time to time…”
“Oh, dear. Perhaps I can send to White’s Pharmacy. I’m sure they’ll…”
India! Malaria! Talk about stratagems and subterfuge.
“Fever,” Alix muttered. I swore her face had reddened and she seemed slick with perspiration. Was she overdoing this thing?
Mrs. Kroepke was on her feet. “We ought to get you to a hospital, dear.”
“No, just if I could use the bathroom. Bathe my forehead and wrists with a damp towel…”
When she and the housekeeper had vanished down a hallway from the kitchen, poor Alix leaning heavily on Mrs. Kroepke’s arm, I raced for the stairs. From what Claire told me that evening at my house when she spoke of the Hannah few of us know, the little girl who collected seashells and dreamt of one day being rich, of the things she saved (“a pack rat,” she said, “a roomful of junk”), but which room? Had Claire said downstairs or upstairs? A room upstairs? I ran up a second flight and then down the broad hallway, throwing open room doors as I went. Bedrooms, all bedrooms. How long could Alix keep Mrs. Kroepke occupied? When would her husband be back? Where the hell was Hannah’s room?
Then I remembered. She’d been writ
ing the book out in the pool house. The pool house where the laptop was downloaded of its 180,000 characters. A logical place for her little “treasures,” her roomful of junk. But would it be open? Could I get in?
I sped down stairs and out the door and across the lawn to the swimming pool and the house. Blessedly, a door swung easily open.
On the far wall, mounted with some care, a small and not very distinguished collection of … seashells.
A Slazenger wooden tennis racquet …
Some photos that meant nothing to me but clearly had to Hannah Cutting.
A length of rope …
* * *
I was back at the kitchen table, waiting patiently for my tea, when Mrs. Kroepke reappeared.
“That darling girl. What courage, a bout of malaria and still on her feet, insisting she can soldier on, and the torments of her childhood in the fever jungles of India and Ceylon. It’s a wonder she’s alive at all, and when the fever isn’t on her, usually so frisky. The English. Got to take your hat off, Mr. Stowe. Hitler did his worst and couldn’t defeat them and no wonder, with even their young people displaying such courage in the face of Lord knows what. And the stories she has, all about the East India Company. Did you know, Mr. Stowe, that the man who founded Yale University made his money selling pepper and spices?”
I said as a Harvard alumnus I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
When Alix came out she looked remarkably composed. Especially in view of those “torments” of a childhood spent “in the fever jungles.” Mrs. K., who understood the proprieties, bounced to her feet.
“Now you sit right down, Your Ladyship, and have your tea.”
Alix shot me a look. I signaled with a nod that I’d gotten hold of the maguffin.
“Oh, but I’m feeling so much better, Mrs. Kroepke. Amazing what a damp towel can do. I recall one time at Darjeeling when the fever came and Ma, always clever about such matters, doused me with rose water and sat up the night at my bedside, fanning me through the mosquito netting.…”
“Mrs. Kroepke, your offer of tea…”
“Yes, it’s almost ready.”
“… you’ve done too much already, and Lady Alix and I have other calls to make along the Lane, checking in with others as to damage estimates and possible casualties.”
“Of course. You young people are extraordinary. It’s the spirit that won the Cold War. I voted for Jimmy Carter but I’ve got to admit that Reagan did something. And now you two, no matter what the crisis you pitch right in and handle…”
Out in the car Alix said, “Well?”
I hugged her.
“I got it. I found it!”
She shook her head.
“That isn’t what I meant. What about my performance? Did I go ‘into the tank’ to your satisfaction?”
“Super! You get the Oscar! A countryman of yours named Frank Bruno couldn’t have folded more impressively.”
“Frank Bruno, I know him. One of our finest heavyweight boxers. Splendid fellow. Always loses gallantly.”
That was the amazing thing about Alix Dunraven, she had it right, even about English heavyweights.
THIRTY-FOUR
She was forever on the cell phone or shaving her legs …
Neither of us talked very much on the way to Pam Phythian’s place. She wasn’t there.
“At the club, sir. She’s got a tennis lesson. Our own court suffered damage.”
“Thank you.”
I lusted after Alix’s Jag but right now, the job we were on, I wanted that Chevy Blazer under my legs. At some point, I might have to go off-road. The Jag was wonderful but it didn’t have that kind of clearance.
“Let’s go by my father’s place. For this, we may need two cars.”
“Right-o.”
When we each had a car and just before we started off for the club, Alix said, “Aren’t you forgetting something? I’ve got to stop off en route at Mr. Warrender’s and pick up the disk from that copy of, what was it again?”
“Marquand. The Late George Apley.” I could hardly blame her. We both wanted Hannah’s manuscript in any form but Warrender had given Her Ladyship his blessing. Hard cheese on me, as Alix enjoyed saying.
“Okay, just take Dunemere Lane to Main Street and then on James Lane, your first left. Says ‘Dead End’ but it takes you into the Maidstone courts.”
“I’ll be there,” she said.
The Maidstone Club grounds are spacious with the tennis courts off a distant fairway of the golf course and easily a mile from the main clubhouse. When I got to the tennis shop, where you could have a racquet strung or sign up for a game, there were only two cars parked, one a beat-up antique MG that belonged to Archer the pro. The other, Pam Phythian’s classic Bentley. From somewhere beyond the privet hedge I could hear the pock-pock of tennis balls. Pam and the pro must be having a hit. I walked around and through the canvases, thought I could see Pam in her tennis whites, no longer required by the Maidstone but clearly preferred. I got closer. It was Pam, all right, looking fine, those long racehorse legs slightly slick with sweat and that good, even tan WASPs do so well. Her tennis wasn’t bad either. But when I came all the way ’round the canvases and could see the entire court, she was alone. No pro, no opponent. Pock-pock, she hit against the Maidstone’s ball-tossing machine with a useful two-fisted backhand and a good, flat, powerful forehand that she slammed from the left side. Tom Knowles said that right from the first, that a lefty drove that stake of privet through Hannah. Well, the cops weren’t always wrong. A warning light went on and then, pock!, a ball came at Pam and she swung. A terrific return she had. Then, setting up for the next ball, she saw me.
“Oh, hi, Beecher. I didn’t think you played tennis.”
“Not much, Pam. Came over to see you.”
“So you’ve sniffed out my guilty secret?”
“What?”
“I’m as bad as the late but unlamented Hannah, playing against the ball-tossing machine. The Club’s SAM, adjusting the speed so I can’t just whack it back routinely every time. I like to be tested. So I go for that Steffi Graf hundred-and-five-mile-an-hour first serve. Even at my age, I like a nice hard ball.”
“That’s a laugh, at ‘your age.’ Come on.”
“Very gallant, Beech. Thanks. But calendars don’t lie.”
I was fencing, offering a small compliment rather than telling her why I was here. I wished now I’d waited for Alix. It would be easier to start talking. Not about her tennis but whether she’d killed two people. I was a reporter accustomed to asking questions and trying to get answers. But I’d never asked a question anything close to that direct, not even of a stranger. Never mind the rich neighbor who lived down the lane …
“Well…” she said, mopping her face and forearms with a crisp white towel pulled from her smart-looking nylon tote bag, smiling easily at me as if to say, yes, I know it’s indulgent of me, but I do sweat. And now, Beecher Stowe, why are you here to see me?
“Are you up to speed on the contradictory ‘confessions’ by Royal Warrender and Claire Cutting?”
“Only that I heard about it on the car radio and the police don’t seem to be taking them seriously. Why?”
“Because the cops don’t believe either is the killer. Because it leaves us still asking, then who is?”
“And?” she said, as always, very cool.
“And that brings us to you.”
“Me? Me? Are you serious, Beecher? This isn’t at all amusing.”
“Not meant to be,” I said, deciding to plunge right ahead. Too late now to fret about injured feelings or never again being invited to the annual garden party. I told her that everyone knew she despised Hannah. No argument about that she said, not coolly anymore but decidedly icy. And now we know you were involved with Leo Brass. How do you know that? she demanded. It’s all the talk of Boaters, I said, figuring that was vague enough to protect the gossipy waitress from retribution. And insulting enough to get under her hide. It did.
“Me, the talk of Boaters? What would they know about people from Further Lane at a place like Boaters?”
“That you and Leo first came together on some environmental issue. And it heated up from there. So much so that Hannah Cutting heard the talk. Started riding you. Sniggering up her sleeve about Pam Phythian the Ice Queen and Brass the Bayman. Hinted, or at least suggested, maybe even told you outright it was going into her precious book. She threatened to turn you into a local laughingstock. Tell everyone all about your love affair with a common redneck like…”
Pam erupted now, slinging her tennis racquet at me so accurately that if I hadn’t ducked …
“You bastard! What do you know of men like Leo? We had things in common you couldn’t possibly even imagine. Hannah wasn’t our sort at all. Never was. For her to threaten me was so pathetic. A cheap little social climber from Polish Town. Leo saw right through her. They had a fling once, you know. He slept with her, he slept with her daughter. It was delicious, really, the way he played with them. Then I came along. Leo understood the difference. He was a cut above the usual roughneck Bonacker, the kind of man who could go on, win elections, go to Washington. He and I…”
Pam was really chewing the scenery now. Real Bette Davis stuff. Just what I wanted. Get her sore, get her talking. Now I needed backup. Moral support. Where the hell was Her Ladyship?
“Then why kill Leo, why bump off a future senator?” I asked. She made a vaguely dismissive gesture with one of those capable pale hands. So I tried to answer for her, hoping again to goad her into an explosion.
“I think it must have been because he went back to Claire. He’d had his fun with you, the great lady falling for the redneck Bayman, and he thought he could do even better. Now that Hannah was dead, not there dominating her daughter and whomever she married, Leo was looking at Claire a lot differently. Claire wasn’t only rich; she was suddenly a lot more attractive. Leo was a maverick and the idea of Hannah playing mother-in-law-from-hell didn’t appeal one bit. But now Hannah was out of the way. You’d done Leo a big favor, Pam. You’d cleared the way for a much younger woman to take him away from you, twenty years younger, and one about to become even richer than you. You couldn’t accept that. There was something else. When Hannah was killed Leo knew he didn’t do it and neither did Claire. Because they were in bed making love at the time. Nor was he sure you did it but he had his suspicions. That’s motivation enough, even without the jealousy factor. He was starting to consider going to the police. Or you feared he might. He’d dumped you for a rich, sexy young girl and now he might finger you as a murderer. People kill for a lot less. And when the hurricane came it gave you the opportunity. You knew Leo’s passion for the wetlands and all that, knew he’d absolutely have to go down to check The Gut. Great ecological minds work in the same way.”