by M. E. Kerr
“I thought you were supposed to pay for your own analysis or it wouldn’t work,” said Lenny.
“You are,” Laura said.
“Psychoanalysis is just the care of the id by the odd,” said Nels.
“Oh, Gawd, I’ve got to write that down!” Laura laughed.
“That’s all it is,” said Nels. “The care of the id by the odd.”
“We heard you the first time,” Lenny said.
Laura said, “Lenny? What’s bugging you?”
“Tra La doesn’t have my golden tongue,” said Nels. “It’s hard to be average when your best buddy is superior.”
• • •
But both boys knew what was bugging Lenny.
It was Nels’s crazy idea to kidnap Celeste and ask for a $50,000 ransom.
Lenny could have the money. The money didn’t matter to Nels. What he wanted was to destroy Celeste.
He said what he wanted was to have his sister back. “How do you know she won’t just get another dummy?”
“She won’t. There isn’t another Celeste — and she’d never settle for less. No. Without her, she’ll retire.”
“Is that what you want? You want her home with you?”
“Home. Back. Yes.”
“Does she have that much money, Nels?”
“Don’t worry about my sister. She’s still got every cent she inherited from my father, and she’s my heir, too. Fifty thousand is peanuts to Annette!”
“But what if she won’t pay it?”
“She will.”
“She could go to the police!”
“The ransom note will warn her that going to the police means the end of Celeste.”
“But Nels, how are you going to — ”
Nels would cut him off. “Let me take care of the details, Lenny. I’ll come to you when I’m ready.”
• • •
Both boys knew how much $50,000 would mean to Lenny at that point in his life.
He could marry Laura and put her through medical school, the one thing she wanted most.
Otherwise she’d be shipped off to Oral Roberts’s new university. Since she was a pastor’s daughter as well as an A student, she’d been offered a scholarship there.
Lenny would be stuck in New York City, trying to get a job doing anything, waiting for the lucky break that’d head him toward Broadway. Some actors never got there.
Nels was planning to take some courses at Columbia, nothing strenuous, and live at home. He’d be around to remind Lenny he’d had his chance once and he’d let it slip through his fingers. Too bad, hmmm?
The scheme made Lenny nervous, angry, hopeful, afraid, and not too sure Nels’s love for his older sister was all that brotherly…. Was that any business of Lenny’s?
• • •
Lenny had crawled into the backseat of the Cadillac while Laura sat in front with Nels. Even though Nels never drove a car, he liked to be in the driver’s seat.
Nels snapped on the radio, and the Drifters came through it singing “Ruby Baby.”
“Ruby is my birthstone,” said Laura. “Someday I want a real ruby…. Do they cost much, Nels?”
Notice who she asked.
She knew Lenny wouldn’t have a clue.
“They’re not as expensive as diamonds,” said Nels. “You should have both.”
Laura laughed. “Hear that, Lenny? When your rich Aunt Martha dies, I want a ruby and a diamond!”
Months ago, Lenny had started mentioning an Aunt Martha, saying he hoped she’d live through her heart bypass, that the money she’d leave him would never be worth the loss.
Nels had told him he couldn’t just wake up one morning $50,000 richer without some explanation to Laura.
• • •
Next to Lenny on the backseat were three boxes, wrapped in white paper and tied with gold ribbons.
“After tomorrow,” said Nels, “we have to stop wearing things with Sevens on them. School’s out.”
Laura covered the gold 7 around her neck protectively. “I’ll never stop wearing this. It’ll always remind me of the first time I ever came to The Hill.”
“Laura, take off your cap,” Nels said. “Tra La? Would you pass around those packages on the backseat?”
“I hope these aren’t graduation presents,” Laura said. “I don’t have anything for you, Nels.” “You’re not rich and I am.”
Lenny was taking Laura to her school prom and the party after, in a Philadelphia hotel suite. He had saved enough to pay for the satin gown she had wanted and her father had told her was “the devil’s creation.”
Lenny was renting a tux for himself and buying a white-orchid corsage for Laura.
Already his expenses were close to $500.
When he had told Nels that, Nels had answered, “Chicken feed for someone like Laura, Tra La.”
Any chance he got, Nels had begun reminding Lenny how much $50,000 could change his life. And hers, too. Mostly hers, he’d admitted. Laura had more dreams.
“Besides,” he’d added, “the best schools are in the East. I’d have my two best buddies close by. That way I don’t have to go to college myself. I’ll get my education through you guys, vicariously.”
The three of them unwrapped the packages.
Inside each was a white cap and a white sweatshirt.
Written across them in red: THE TRIP TO NOWHERE.
There were tickets inside the caps, and announcements of the sailing, on the Seastar, five months away.
PASSENGERS LEAVE FROM NEW YORK AT MIDNIGHT ON NOVEMBER 21ST, AND TRAVEL WITH NO SIGHT OF LAND AND NO DESTINATION UNTIL THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 24TH, WHEN THEY FIND THEMSELVES BACK IN NEW YORK CITY.
EAT, DRINK, AND BE MYSTERIOUS.
BE PREPARED TO ATTEND A COSTUME BALL ON THE LAST NIGHT OUT. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OUR THIRTY-FOOT LAP POOL WITH A SWIM-UP BAR…. FOR GOLF BUFFS A NINE-HOLE PUTTING GREEN, AND ON BRIDGE DECK A SIX-WICKET CROQUET COURT.
ASK THE SHIP’S MASSEUSE TO RELAX YOU AND THE SHIP’S ASTROLOGER TO TELL YOU WHAT’S AHEAD FOR YOU. PLAY BACKGAMMON WITH THE SHIP’S CHAMPION, AND LEARN THE LATEST DANCE STEPS WITH THE SHIP’S INSTRUCTOR.
DANCING NIGHTLY IN THE BALLROOM TO PETER PORTER’S ORCHESTRA.
IN THE LOUNGE, CELESTE — WITH ANNETTE, OF COURSE.
EACH DELUXE STATEROOM HAS A PRIVATE VERANDA.
— THE SEASTAR, MARTIN STIRMAN, CAPTAIN.
“It’s something to really look forward to!” Laura said. “Now I don’t feel so badly about going away with Daddy this summer!”
In July she was bound for Africa, part of a missionary conference her father’d arranged for her to attend.
Reverend Delacourt had his eye on Lenny. He was on his knees nightly praying against him, and in his study a good part of every day plotting for ways to get Laura out of reach.
“We’ll have one bang-up reunion!” said Nels. He glanced back at Lenny and gave him a wink. “And you’ll get to meet Celeste, at last! … Celeste, my sister, and Captain Stir-Crazy. Of course we’ll be in deluxe staterooms. Tra La and me in one and you in the other, Laura: muy proper.”
After Lenny’d put Laura on the bus back to Philadelphia, he went to Nels’s suite in Sevens House.
“I don’t know if I can do this to your sister,” he said.
“You don’t have to do very much at all, Tra La.”
“But it’s major tsuris for her,” he said, suddenly remembering his mother’s Yiddish for woe. The Yiddish always came back when anything troubled Lenny deeply. “Why should I do it to her?”
“I’m doing it to her. I’m doing it for her…. Tra La, she’s playing some tacky lounge on a ship with all these guys tossing back drinks, you can imagine the crapola she takes!”
He was packing.
He was piling his Brooks Brothers suits on the bed, and his Turnbull & Asser shirts on the dresser.
Two large steamer trunks were open on the floor, waiting to receive his wardrobe.
Lenny sat down in the big, soft leathe
r Eames chair Nels had ordered for himself and was now leaving behind for the next occupant of his suite in Sevens.
“You’re the only person I’ve ever trusted, Lenny.”
“I trust you, too. But this is different.”
“Yes. It’s different. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Tra La … and it’ll be the easiest fifty thousand dollars you’ll make.”
“If we can pull it off.”
“Oh, we will.”
“Not many kidnappers get away with it.”
“But we’re dummynapping, Tra La,” said Nels. “And our little victim can’t tell on us or die. She’ll just disappear into the deep blue sea. Deep-sixed.”
Lenny stretched his long legs out in front of him and stared at his old, scuffed Thom McAn loafers.
He shook a Kent out of a pack and lit it. He’d been smoking cigarettes ever since January, when Nels had finally convinced him he was serious about this thing.
“Your sister must like being on the Seastar, though. Maybe she doesn’t think she takes crapola.”
“I purposely never introduced you to Annette,” said Nels. “I didn’t want you to get fond of her, or you’d never want to do this…. So put her out of your mind. My sister is too complicated. Our relationship is too unusual to explain.”
Lenny grinned finally. “You’ll have to shell out for your own analysis after it’s done, Nels.”
“No. Because then I won’t need it. Celeste has always been my only problem.”
chapter 10
I made Keats go back and start the journal from the beginning. I’d long since finished the corn, and I was sitting opposite her on a stool, fascinated.
When the front-door chimes rang, I wished we could just ignore them so she could keep reading. But Gras flew off the chaise outside and came running in, barking nonstop, dachshund style.
“Whoever that is, tell him we don’t want any,” said Keats.
I headed down the long hall as Gras raced ahead of me.
Fen spoke first, introducing himself, starting to say something about wanting to see where he’d be working that night.
“I like to check the acoustics, the space, and — ”
Then Plum spoke up. “Oh, shut up! Just zip it!” and perched on Fen’s arm like a big bird, he turned to face me. “And who are you?”
“John Fell,” I said. “I brought your clothes with me from Pennsylvania.”
“You can take those clothes and shove — ”
“Plum! Is that any way to talk to someone who did you a favor?”
“Then tell him Finders keepers, losers weepers.”
“Finders keepers,” said Fen. “We don’t want anything from Plum’s past. You’ll see why tonight.”
THE MOUTH
Tick tock tickers! Where’s my Snickers? Tick tock tickers! Where’s my Snickers?”
Celeste’s voice was drowned out by the shriek of the Seastar’s whistle, and the moan from its horn.
Midnight. Time to sail off into the dark, friends.
“Tick tock tickers! Where’s my Snickers?” A white gardenia was pinned to her red wig.
Annette smiled at Lenny and Laura. “No matter how many times we’ve sailed, it still makes Celeste a little nervous to leave land, and she needs her Snickers.”
“At your service,” said Nels, putting one of the candy bars into the dummy’s coat pocket.
“No, no, Big Guy. Put it in my evening purse!”
Annette said, “Put it in my evening purse, please!”
“He knows where he can put it!”
“Celeste!” Annette said.
She looked embarrassed for the dummy and she said to the others, “I have to apologize for Celeste.
Don’t judge her by this performance.”
“No, please don’t,” the dummy agreed. “This performance is a little wooden, wouldn’t you say?”
The five of them were on deck. Behind them an oompah band had just finished playing “76 Trombones.”
There was a full moon. The big ship pulled out while visitors from bon-voyage parties waved and blew kisses.
Laura spotted her brother, Carl, in the crowd and called out to him, “Don’t tell Daddy!”
Lenny tried not to stare at Celeste. Nels had told him not to show any interest in ventriloquism, so he would not be suspect when the dummy was taken.
Lenny tried hard not to stare at Annette, too. She was not at all what he’d expected. Lenny wouldn’t describe her as “fat.” Big, yes, nearly six foot. Overweight and quite handsome, dark eyed, swarthy, short black hair she slicked back. She was clearly no relation to Nels. With her Amazon build, she looked like Wonder Woman in a Dior gown and high-heeled slippers.
Around her neck was a purple silk scarf, and a small nosegay of violets was pinned to her ankle-length mink coat.
The flowers were from Captain Stirman, she’d explained. She’d bought herself the mink. She’d bought one for Celeste, too. Of course. What did you think?
Lenny was racking his brain for an excuse for what he was going to help Nels do to her. The minks would do it! He’d never liked women who wore furs. What kind of a person lets little animals be killed so she can parade around in their skins? His mother’d taught him to think about that. She could always turn their inability to afford luxuries into something noble.
A ventriloquist’s dummy in mink! Oy! His mother would have held her head in pain. Oy vay iz mir!
Annette and Celeste were having late supper in Captain Stirman’s cabin shortly. Lenny had met the Captain only briefly, but he had recognized the possessive gestures: the hand at her elbow, on her back, up on her shoulder … the eyes waiting for hers, the mouth soft, the face besotted.
• • •
The next morning Lenny put his greatcoat over his pajamas and stepped out on the private veranda.
It was nine thirty. In four hours he would be in the service room behind the dining hall. After lunch Annette performed. At the finish she came behind the curtains to set Celeste down in a chair.
Then, as Annette took a bow alone, received a bouquet from the Captain, and spoke briefly to her fans, Lenny would pounce.
He would grab Celeste, put her into a garment bag, and go into the ship’s health spa, a door away.
Through the spa to the other entrance, out the door, and up a flight of stairs to this cabin.
The garment bag would be hung in the closet until nightfall.
Then bricks would be added to its bottom, and Lenny would step out on the veranda again. So long, Celeste.
• • •
There were contingency plans, of course. But that was the main one. Quick and simple.
• • •
Lenny went back inside the cabin, his cheeks wet with sea spray.
Nels said, “You want to hear the ransom note?”
He was sitting on his bed in white silk pajamas, shivering from the blast of cold air Lenny’d just sent his way. He was sipping coffee and finishing toast.
Lenny said, “I ought to check on Laura.”
“Don’t you know by now she likes to sleep in?”
Lenny felt like punching him.
It was nerves, not Nels, he reasoned with himself. Nels was always telling him what Laura liked, what Laura was like. Lenny and Laura had even joked about it together, calling Nels “The Big L.A.” secretly. The Big Laura Authority.
“Listen, Tra La!” Nels said.
The note read as follows:
Celeste will be all right if you follow directions.
If you don’t, Celeste will be destroyed.
1. See to it that your butler has $50,000 in cash, in a pillowcase, in $100 bills.
2. He drops it from your back bathroom window into the alley at 11:00 A.M. Sunday morning.
3. He answers the phone at 11:15 A.M. He will be told where Celeste is on the Seastar.
4. He will call the Seastar no later than 11:20 A.M. to tell Miss Plummer where Celeste is.
ANY ATTEMPT TO MARK BILLS, TR
AP RETRIEVER, SEARCH SHIP, OR IN ANY WAY HINDER THIS OPERATION WILL BE MET BY DESTRUCTION OF DUMMY.
DO NOT FOOL WITH US AND YOU WILL NOT BE SORRY.
FOLLOW DIRECTIONS FAITHFULLY.
“I hope we can trust Lark,” said Lenny.
“Lark loves me like a son,” Nels said, “and he doesn’t have to do very much. Annette will call our lawyer and the cash will be sent over to Lark. He keeps a thousand for himself — that makes him more than an accessory — and then he claims he lowered the rest from the window…. He says he waited for the call saying where Celeste was and it never came.”
“Won’t they want to know where Celeste is before they hand over the fifty thousand dollars?”
“If it was a kid, they might. But they’ll figure no one would gain anything by destroying a dummy … and a dummy can’t tell on the dummynapper. They’ll go along with it. After you hang Celeste up and leave here, you slip the ransom note under Annette’s door, right?”
“Right. Then I come looking for you.”
“And Lenny, if you’re going to miss lunch because you feel slightly seasick, start acting sick.”
“I plan to.”
“But before you do …” Nels reached under the pillow on his bed and took out a small blue box. He was grinning.
“This isn’t for you, Tra La. It’s for Laura. It’s a premature wedding gift.”
“I haven’t even proposed to her.”
“You’re going to tell her your aunt died, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Tonight. Right?”
“Shouldn’t we wait until we have the cash in hand?”
“Tonight is the time,” said Nels. “And this is from Uncle Nels.”
He handed the box to Lenny.
“Remember I said she should have diamonds and a ruby?”
Inside the Tiffany box was a small Seven of Diamonds.
Where the horizontal bar joined the vertical, there was a ruby instead of another diamond.
“The ruby’s for her birthstone, remember?” Nels said. “I can’t wait to see her face!”
He gestured for Lenny to return it, and while Lenny was saying whatever it was he said at that point (Lenny could never remember), Nels put it in the inside pocket of his tweed sports coat, next to him on the bed.