by Medora Sale
“It sounds as though he was expecting someone to turn up with a huge amount of money, and then he was planning to take off. Somewhere pleasant. But not, thank God, with you.” He picked up her hands. “Grainne, let me ask this one thing—and then, I swear, I’ll never mention it again. Just tell me why you got involved with him. If you know.”
“You really want to know?”
He nodded.
“And you’d never mention it again?” Her voice was heavy with scorn. “It wouldn’t be your favourite subject every time you’re angry or irritated?”
“I’m positive,” he said calmly.
“Well,” she said, an edge of doubt creeping into her voice, “if you want me to talk about it, I suppose I’d better get it over with.” She turned her head away from his gaze and then grabbed a blanket to pull defensively over her. “I certainly know why I did it,” she said flatly. “I was broke, I owed two months’ rent, and my father had died. As far as I could see, I was facing stark poverty, and there was no one, basically, to ask for help.”
“That’s not true,” said Lucas. “You weren’t thinking clearly. There are an awful lot of people trying to help you.” He raised his hand to prevent her from commenting. “No, just listen to me for a minute. I have a whole lot of messages for you, and what with one thing and another, I forgot to pass them on. But Mrs. Dubchek wants you back at the Faculty—she swears that there are grants just waiting for you to pick up. Your singing coach is devastated that you’ve disappeared and wants you to come back and start working again and stop worrying. Mr. Hennessy sounded as if he and his wife wanted to adopt you. I have a helluva lot of competition from other people wanting to look for you.”
Tears welled up once more in Grainne’s eyes, and she shook her head. “I was scared. I was frightened that I’d end up waiting on tables or working in a store, too tired to practice or go to class, and I’d have thrown away years of work and hopes—everything. Anyway, Mrs. Neilson brought Carl to see a production of Lulu that I was in—”
“In which you sang the lead,” added Rob. “Brilliantly. I’ve been researching you.”
She blushed. “And there was a party afterward for the patrons—apparently Mrs. Neilson had donated a lot of money to the Faculty, and so they were invited, of course. I don’t suppose Carl liked music that much, but he really went batty over the Lulu costume, including that horrible hair color. He asked me out to lunch and made me this incredible offer. It was like something out of a nineteenth-century opera. I didn’t know things like that still happened. Anyway, it seemed to be the answer to all my problems. Lots of money—by my standards, if not by yours—and limited demands on my time. What I didn’t know,” she added bitterly, “was that Carl Neilson’s money poisoned everything it paid for. I couldn’t sing, not while I was dependent on him. I tried to explain that to him,” she added in an uncertain voice, “but he seemed to feel we had some sort of unbreakable contract, and he just kept sending Cassidy—the chauffeur—to get me.” She stopped and took a deep breath. “There’s one other thing I want to do.” She sat up, allowing the blanket to fall to her lap, and gestured impatiently over at a chair where Lucas had thrown her large leather purse. “Could you get me that?”
Lucas walked over, picked up the purse, and handed it to her. She unzipped the wide opening and took out a smaller purse. From it she pulled a roll of bills. “There it is,” she said. “I kept it because I was frightened, and I thought I might need it to get away again. But it paid for the motel room where I was almost caught, and for the groceries at the cabin, and look what happened there.” She looked intently at him. “Do you swear you won’t leave me up here? Because once I’m in the city I can look after myself. Swear?”
He nodded, speechless.
“Then throw it in the fire. It belongs with the hair. It’s cursed, that money, and if I gave it away, it would just wreck the person I gave it to. Please.”
“With or without the elastic band?” he asked, taking the roll as coolly as if he frequently kindled fires with hundred-dollar bills.
“Without. That was mine.” Her face cracked in a half smile. “Besides, it would smell.”
He took off the elastic band and tossed the money into the heart of the dying fire. It blazed up merrily for a moment or two and then died away. He reached for another log and covered the place where it had been.
“Goodbye forever, Carl Neilson, you slimy, vicious bastard,” said Grainne, staring into the blaze. Sitting there, unselfconsciously naked to the waist, she looked like a bizarrely ripe ten-year-old, performing some childish, solemn rite, and his heart ached in sympathy. She turned to Lucas, her face grave and composed. “And now you’ll never know whether I made that beautiful and heartrending gesture because I really am a wonderful woman who doesn’t give a damn about money, or whether I was just trying to impress the hell out of you because I found out you were rich.”
“Mercenary little bitch,” he said, kneeling beside her and catching her in his arms. “Now that you are penniless and at my mercy, I shall take you to my castle in the country and lock you up with my other wives.” He smothered her giggles with his lips. “I think,” he said, as he came up for air, “that I’ll close the shutters, raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, and shut out the world. We don’t want to be disturbed, do we?”
“No,” she murmured. “We don’t.”
By ten o’clock Monday morning, Lucas had been up for four hours, trying to restore the cottage to the state of cleanliness and order that Susie would expect. At nine he had awakened Grainne, who showed signs of possessing an unlimited capacity for sleep, now that she was recovering, and they had eaten the last of the bacon and frozen waffles from the Buchanans’ freezer. He had given Susie’s list one last check in reverse, torn a page from his notebook, and written quite simply, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan. Someday I will thank you in a better fashion. I hope this will reimburse you for everything we used. R.L.” He had slipped it with five hundred dollars into an envelope he had found in a drawer.
While he had been looking around for a place to set the envelope, Grainne had limped in from the bedroom, cautiously allowing her weight to settle on the heel of her injured foot. She had stopped in front of him, fully dressed, a hiking boot on one foot, heavy sock on the other, her cane clutched in her hand, and tears in her eyes. “I’m ready,” she had said, in tones of one standing under the guillotine.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to leave. I’ve been so happy these last few days. I never knew I could—” The tears threatened to spill over. “Why do we have to go back now?”
“Sit down,” he had said quickly, afraid that the wave of sentimentality generated by her words would engulf him completely. “We have to. And that’s why. So we can be happy. Everywhere. Not just here.” He knelt on the floor to bring himself to her level and placed his hands on her knees. “Grainne, I’ll go mad if I have to live with the thought that someone is— No. Let me say it this way. I want you to be able to stand on a stage anywhere without worrying that someone wants to kill you. If I don’t succeed, then so be it—I’ll hide you as well as anyone was ever hidden. But I have to try. God, that sounds melodramatic,” he said bitterly. “But dammit, that’s what it is.” He stood up again. “I’ll get the car started and then come and get you.” And he rushed out. Once the car was warm, he came back in, gathered her up in his arms, and carried her out, just as he had carried her in so many ages before.
And now he was looking for the least conspicuous route back to the city. The car and its license plates were bound to be on everyone’s wish list; any passing local or provincial patrol car might notice them and have some dim memory that they were of interest. Grainne sat silent beside him, taut and apprehensive, staring out over the brown, muddy landscape of early spring.
They crested a rise; there was a tiny hamlet in front of them with a shabby store and an outside te
lephone. “I think I had better make some phone calls,” said Lucas.
“Who to?” She looked ready to run at any moment.
“I’m looking for another quiet, pleasant, and very safe place to stash you, my love,” he said, as he slowed down and pulled over onto the concrete in front of the store. “So I don’t have to worry about you.” He smiled and dropped a kiss on her forehead before getting out. In two minutes he was back. “There,” he said. “Easier than I expected.”
“Where are you taking me?” she asked fearfully.
“Into the bosom of my family, so to speak. Than which there is no place safer, I assure you.”
“In Toronto?”
“Where else?”
“We’ll never get that far. They’ll be looking for us.”
“Very true. Which is why in an hour or so we will pick up another car which will discreetly transport us into the city. Don’t worry.”
Ed Dubinsky picked up the telephone and identified himself with a yawn. “Yeah, that’s right,” he said and paused. “How long have they been there?” he asked. A certain alertness was beginning to creep into his voice. “No,” he said after a while, “leave them. We’ll pick them up.” He dropped the phone down again and turned to John Sanders. “That was Mr. Sigurdson from the hotel,” he said. “He wants to know what to do with Carl Neilson’s suitcases. They’ve been sitting there since the day he was murdered.”
“Jesus,” muttered Sanders. “And no one mentioned them?”
“Apparently not. Didn’t think they were interesting enough, I guess. The chauffeur dropped them off with the deskman, and they’re still there.”
“For chrissake, didn’t someone interview the chauffeur?”
“Must have,” said Dubinsky. “All the help was interviewed first off. Just a minute—I’ll get it.”
“Okay,” said Dubinsky five minutes later. “The chauffeur was interviewed the day after Neilson was killed—”
“Who by?”
“Pat Kelleher. Here it is: ‘I drove Mr. Neilson to the office at ten-thirty, and we got there at eleven-fifteen. At twelve-thirty I drove him to lunch and picked him up again when he called. That was at one forty-five. I drove him to the Karlsbad Hotel. He didn’t need me to come get him. I was supposed to pick up the kid from school instead. I often did this when Mrs. Neilson was busy.’ And that’s all there is. Not very informative, is it? And no mention of any suitcases.”
“I want to talk to that chauffeur. And send someone over to the hotel to find out what’s in those damned suitcases.”
Sanders walked into the interview room and was met by a lazy stare from the tall man lounging by the table. “Joe Cassidy, Neilson’s driver,” said the constable tersely. “You want me here?”
“Don’t bother. Ed’s on his way. Okay, Mr. Cassidy. What else happened the day Neilson died that you didn’t bother putting in your statement?” He dropped the offending document on the table. “Besides the carful of suitcases.”
“Suitcases?” His voice quivered with contemptuous wonder. “What about them? Mrs. Howard packed the suitcases, like she always does—”
“So Mr. Neilson did take luggage with him when he went to Florida?” asked Sanders with a touch of muted triumph. So much for Miss Cavanaugh. “Those were his suitcases?”
“Huh? Yeah. Of course. And the kid’s. He was going, too.”
“Did Mrs. Neilson know about that?”
He shrugged. “How should I know? She wasn’t around when Liz—Mrs. Howard—was doing the packing. But she sure didn’t act like he was going away for a week. So maybe she didn’t. What the hell, she never knew what was going on. Talk about out of it.” His gesture indicated just how far off the planet his boss’s wife was, in his estimation. “Anyway, I put them in the car and gave them to Len—he was on the desk—after I dropped Mr. Neilson off. He was going to take a limo to the airport and I was supposed to bring the kid. From school.”
“So how come you never took the kid to the airport?” said Dubinsky.
“They called me and told me not to.”
“Who called you?” asked Sanders.
“I dunno. Someone from the office called on the car phone.”
“And you didn’t check?”
“Why the hell should I? Mr. Neilson was always changing his mind. And the call had to come from the office. No one else knew the car phone number. Mr. Neilson never gave it out to people. So I just went and got Mark at three-thirty and took him home. I never thought about those suitcases, though. I should’ve gone back and gotten them.”
“And why in hell didn’t you admit all this to the officer who interviewed you?” asked Sanders, irritated. “It might have helped.”
“Why should I? He never asked.”
That hour was one of the most nerve-racking of Lucas’s life. Twice they passed a patrol car and were unable to tell whether they had been noticed or not. Anxiety pressed at him to speed; fear nagged at him to slow down. Either course would draw attention to them, and he drove at a steady hundred kilometers an hour through the countryside, easing back to fifty without fail for every village. At last he came to the crossroad he was looking for. There she sat, in her new red Jaguar, a scarf over her head, buffing her nails with the air of one who has all the time in the world. He pulled up behind her. “Wait here,” he said to Grainne, jumped out, and began to pull their luggage from the backseat.
A tall, mink-coated vision in dark glasses and green boots stepped out of the Jag. She waved cheerfully in their direction and opened the trunk. Rob Lucas slung his bag and Grainne’s duffel bag in and slammed it shut, turning back to fetch her. He lifted her, protesting, out of the front seat. “Tricia, I’d like you to meet Grainne Hunter,” he said, gravely presenting her. “Grainne, my stepmother. And I don’t think we’d better hang around here much longer.”
“This is so exciting,” said Tricia, as she put the car in gear and skidded off the shoulder at a ferocious pace. “I’ve never helped fugitives from justice before. What did you do?” she asked, glancing over at Grainne, who was sitting beside her in the front seat.
“She didn’t do anything,” said Rob, leaning forward between them. “She’s just a witness. And if you don’t slow down, we’ll be stopped for speeding, and that’ll be it as far as both of us are concerned.” He slouched back down in the rear seat.
“Well, all right. And someday you’ll have to explain to me in words of one syllable why it is that a policeman and someone who is just a witness are hiding from the police. Because I really don’t see it. But if you say so, sweetheart, it must be true. Robin,” she said, turning to Grainne again, “never tells lies. It’s one of his most disagreeable characteristics. If you’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, I suppose you’ve discovered that already. He’s like what’s-his-name, with the ax and the cherry tree. You ask him what he thinks of a dress, and he tells you it makes you look like a scarecrow that died last week sometime. And of course, he’s always right. That’s what’s so awful. Anyway, I’m so glad he called me—I really am, you know,” she called back to the rear seat, “because Bertie—that’s my husband, Robin’s father—well, Bertie’s gone off to Switzerland to ski or count his money or something and left me here, and I was getting bored. What do you do?” she asked Grainne suddenly, just as she was making a rapid left turn and then a right in order to swoop onto the expressway.
Grainne shut her eyes as the car darted into a tiny space between a truck and a van, to the accompaniment of loud horn-honking. In the momentary silence, Lucas filled in, “She’s a—”
“I’m a graduate student,” she said firmly. “At the Faculty of Music. Opera school. I should have finished this spring, but I took a year off. I’ll be going back in the fall.”
“How exciting,” said Tricia. “A singer. I love opera. The only trouble with it is that Bertie keeps falling asleep—especially during Wag
ner. It goes on for so long, you know. And if I poke him to wake him up, then he jumps and starts applauding and everyone glares at him. Very embarrassing. Maybe you’d like to come with me instead. What a brilliant idea. Let’s do it. I promise I don’t hum, and I’m very careful not to applaud in the wrong places, and we have absolutely wonderful seats.”
“Tricia,” said Lucas. It was a warning growl, a grimness in his voice that Grainne hadn’t heard before. “Shut up and stop harassing Grainne. She’s been through enough already.”
“She’s not harassing me,” said Grainne. “Offering me a ticket to the opera hardly constitutes harassment.”
“That just proves how innocent you are. Survive that, and she’ll start asking you to family parties—”
“And knitting? Are you the person who knits?”
“That’s me,” said Tricia, changing lanes to pass a truck on the left, two cars on the right, and then another truck on the left. “I love knitting, and Bertie hates thick wool sweaters. They make him itch, he says. And they’re too hot. So I knit for Robin. I keep hoping my little sister will get married and have some children—then I can shower them with booties and little sweaters with bears on them. And, Robin, speaking of sweaters, there’s a sweatshirt back there. Fold it up and put it under Grainne’s head. She might as well take a little nap while we’re getting there.”
“Are you sure?” asked Harriet, looking up at the stuccoed front and blinking neon sign that announced the restaurant La Celestina. “I didn’t realize they actually served food here. Isn’t it one of those places where you rent a plastic hamburger to leave on your table in case the dive gets raided?”
“You’re hopelessly out of it, Harriet. No one does that anymore. I can guarantee that there really is lunch, cooked by a real live chef, and served by real waitresses with sore feet and at least three kids each. Anyway, we have no choice. I told Dubinsky to meet us here.”