The white-haired conductor called again, in their direction. He gave them the eye as he rolled by. Dorie waved at Wake.
“So long! Come again, Uncle Barney!”
They stood on the platform as the train pulled out with Barnaby Wake first in the doorway, then at the window. Thalia didn’t wave. Finally, the last car was gone and the hoot of the whistle faded into the night. The cold made a shudder go through the girl.
Dorie found a cabdriver willing to take them to Kansas City, promising him a fat fee at the other end. They didn’t have a dime between them. Thalia complained briefly about leaving her pocketbook and suitcase on the train, then fell asleep before they hit the countryside.
The road rose and fell along the bluffs of the Missouri. Thalia’s sleeping face shone in the streetlights of the small towns along the road. She looked peaceful, the face of an innocent child, without worries or cares. Dorie wondered what sort of a child she had been, singing through the house and dancing around the garden. Would Tillie have liked growing up in a fancy house like that, full of toys and pets and grass to roll in? Oh yes. How she would have loved it, the freedom, the beautiful things, attention from servants, parties and delectable treats.
Dorie laid her head back on the seat. The cabdriver was hunched over the steering wheel. “Armenian,” he said with a thick accent, “come over with six sisters and a maiden aunt.” What had happened to his parents, she wondered.
Would Dorie have loved growing up in that house? She didn’t think so. So stifling, full of off-kilter people and a bone-cold chill. And death.
She hoped for Thalia’s sake that it hadn’t always felt like death.
Close to daybreak, the taxi pulled to a stop in front of Amos Haddam’s apartment. A milkman carried bottles to the doors. The driver was too tired to argue when Dorie told him to make sure Thalia wouldn’t go anywhere; she was still asleep against the seat.
Amos came to the door in an undershirt, zipping up his trousers.
“What’ve you got yourself into this time?” He squinted at the curb, where the taxi idled.
“Have you got thirty bucks on you? I’ll explain.”
“Is that— “
“It’s her. Snatched back from the devil’s clutches.”
He left her on the stoop, returning with his wallet. He found a twenty and two fives. “Where’d you find her?” he called as she ran back to the cab.
Thalia was slow to wake up, blinking and stretching. “Come on, get out, Thalia. Let the man go home.”
Dorie draped the girl’s arm around her neck and maneuvered her up the walk to Haddam’s apartment. Amos held the door as they teetered into the warm living room. She deposited Thalia on the sofa, where she toppled against the arm, head on her hand, eyes closing again.
“Is she ill?” Gwendolyn had joined the two of them as they peered at the heiress. She scuttled off to make tea when no one replied.
“She was on the train to Chicago with Barnaby Wake. I had to disentangle her,” Dorie said, not without some pride.
“She doesn’t look bruised,” Amos said, walking closer to Thalia.
“Took some arm-twisting. Wake didn’t want to lose his lunch ticket.”
“Where’s he, then?”
“Left him on the train at St. Joe. Can’t say if he stayed.”
Amos nodded. “Let’s hope. All the way home to Yorkville.” He looked at Dorie appraisingly, eyes stopping briefly on the bulge in her trouser pocket, a sight he was all too familiar with. Their eyes met, hers defiant, his forgiving.
“Thought we’d never see the little brat again,” he said, clapping her on the back. “Well done.”
At 8:45 A.M., Gwendolyn steered the black Buick up the curved driveway to the Hines mansion and parked in a spot of sunshine.
The air in the car had been strained. Even Thalia had the grace to stay silent as they all contemplated the picture of Eveline Hines on her deathbed.
How bad would it be? She’d looked so far gone these last weeks, it shouldn’t be too difficult. But this was different; they all knew that.
A muscular young man in high boots, riding pants, and rolled white sleeves held a garden hose up to Thalia’s blue sports car. The day was warming, the sun bright in the cobalt sky, and he’d found a sunny spot to wash the car, rubbing it lovingly with a rag. The new chauffeur. May he live carefully, thought Dorie. He watched them, especially Thalia, as they walked to the door. A sense of roundabout fate— ironic déjà vu— made Dorie’s feet lift off the ground for a second.
Mildred opened the door. The stale, cold smell of the foyer enveloped them and the sunshine was gone.
“Thalia dear,” Mildred said. “Thank God. We were all so worried.”
The girl headed for the stairs. “Is Beulah upstairs? I need a bath.”
Mildred’s mouth dropped. Gwendolyn and Dorie looked at Amos.
“Young lady. Miss Hines,” he said awkwardly. It was as if he’d never met her. “Thalia.”
She turned on the first stair. “What is it now?”
“Your mother, dear. We need to see her first.”
“Can’t I take a bath? I’ve worn this same suit for days! My hair is a mess,” she pleaded, looking at them for confirmation. But a lack of sympathy greeted her. “Oh, all right. I don’t see the rush, but—”
Amos took her elbow, guiding her down the hall to the sickroom. Thalia babbled, saying her mother always liked her to look the lady, how she wouldn’t want Thalia to run around filthy and unpressed, how she had left her pocketbook and her case on the train and she would probably never get them back. On and on she went, a million miles an hour, irritating everyone who didn’t feel gratitude that their own dark thoughts were blotted for a moment.
Mildred pushed open the door. Thalia fell silent, blocking the doorway. Mother Ruth sat bedside, knitting something pink. On the bed, the tiny figure of the Commander floated, lost in a sea of white linens. The old nurse rose, took Thalia’s hand, and walked her to the chair. Thalia sat down by the bed. The others hung back near the door.
“Close the door, would you, Mildred?” Ruth said. “The drafts are wicked down that hall.”
The door shut behind Dorie. Because they’d called earlier that morning, she knew that there had been no change in Mrs. Hines’s condition. She was being given morphine in high doses to keep her comfortable. She hadn’t awakened since Saturday night.
Gwendolyn squeezed Dorie’s hand tightly. Her first impulse was to pull away, but she let the Englishwoman hold her hand. It was comforting.
Mrs. Hines looked the same now as she had the afternoon of her confession to Dorie: sleeping peacefully in a sea of white. But that day, Eveline had felt she couldn’t sleep the big sleep without telling someone about Thalia’s parentage. What spurred that confession, she would never know. Dorie felt the secret heavy on her heart as she looked at Thalia.
The girl stared at her hands in her lap. How hard it was to face death, at any age. It shouldn’t be required at twenty-one. How often it was.
“Let’s leave them alone,” Dorie whispered to the others.
Mildred opened the door. She looked older than ever, sadness in her eyes. Amos held Gwen’s hand as she trailed behind him. Dorie shuffled behind them, so she didn’t hear the footsteps in the corridor until Julian Hines was pushing them aside.
“Where is she?” he shouted. “Thalia? Where have you been?”
His voice blew up the sickroom quiet like a torpedo. He looked wild, his face red, his clothes haphazard— a shirt half-buttoned, cuffs flapping, trousers with no belt, socks without shoes. His thin dark hair stood up as if he’d just rolled out of bed. He flailed his arms madly, as if they were trying to hold him back.
“Get away, let me see her! Thalia! Thalia! Get away!”
Then Amos did have his arm. “Calm down, man. She’s visiting now. Let’s go outside.”
“Visiting? She lives here, you moron.” Julian pulled away from Amos and ran to the end of the bed, his knuckles
white as he grasped the footboard. “Thalia!”
The girl looked up, her face placid and cold. Mother Ruth stepped next to Julian. “Try to keep calm, Julian, sir. Your mother’s sleeping.”
Julian gave a mad bark. “My mother’s been sleeping for thirty years, you old bat.” He shoved her aside roughly and moved next to his sister. “Thalia, I thought you were gone. You came back. You came back!”
Gwendolyn’s lip was curled in disgust. Amos frowned, moving behind the mad stepbrother. Dorie had never seen Julian in this kind of state. She had seen few people this dramatic and overwrought. The room seemed to fill up with his desperation, like a breath straining to be released.
Thalia turned her face toward her mother’s, reaching up to take the old woman’s small hand. But Julian wouldn’t go away.
“I’ve missed you so much. Where did you go? Talk to me.” He lurched forward and threw his face into her lap. His shoulders shook with sobs. He looked up at her pathetically. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
Thalia pushed him away, her fingers wide, as if trying not to catch germs from him. He fell back.
“Julian,” Amos said, putting his hands on the man’s shoulders. “Come away now, son. Let Thalia be with her mother.”
With a grace he probably showed only on the golf course, Julian rose, spun, and swung in one fluid motion. He landed a fist on Amos’s cheekbone, sending the older man reeling. Amos sat hard on the floor at Gwendolyn’s feet. She cried out and stooped next to him.
Dorie stepped forward, fists balled at her sides. “Look, mister. That was uncalled for. I don’t know what is going on here, but—”
Thalia rose to her feet. “Get away from me, Julian.”
Julian glowed at her attention. “Thalia!” He tried to take her hands, but she stepped back in disgust. “Darling!”
“Don’t ‘darling’ me. If you touch me, I’ll kill you, do you hear?” Her voice was very low, and full of menace. “I’ve told you that often enough, and you never listen. I’ve had enough of you. Do you understand? I will kill you.”
“Thalia darling, how can you say that? I love you.”
The room compressed, then decompressed. The air shifted. Mildred let out a squeak, then fainted, hitting the floor with a sickening thump. Thalia’s face reddened as her eyes blazed with— what, anger, hatred, embarrassment?
Dorie reached out for Julian’s arm. “I’m sure you love her. She is your sister. Now come with me. We’ll talk outside.”
But Thalia was wound up now. “Sister?” she spat. “Don’t be stupid. As much as she— ” She scowled at the figure of her mother. “As much as she wanted a daughter. Which wasn’t a heckuva lot, was it? No, none of you— “
Thalia bit her lip and stopped. She turned her back to them.
Julian’s voice was broken and teary. “Darling, I always cared for you. Even when she didn’t. She hurt you, but I was there, I held you when you cried. I love you!”
“Stop it!” Thalia spun back and glared at him. “Don’t ever say that again. I hate you. Will you never understand? I hate what you did to me. I never loved you. Don’t you know that, you stupid, stupid sot? Never.”
Julian fell to his knees. “Darling. Please. Don’t say that.”
“I told you a hundred times. But you are so dull— so … so infected with your own needs, your own desires, you never thought about me, what I felt, what I wanted.”
“How can you say that? I always think about you. I think about you every minute of every day. I—”
“Oh, I’m sure you do. You think about me in a most unbrotherly way.” Thalia seemed strangely calm. She looked back at her mother for a moment. “And she never stopped you. Never lifted a finger. Never noticed. At least never cared.”
His voice was hoarse. “Please forgive me, darling. I love you. I’ll take care of you always.”
Thalia stepped closer to him, just out of reach of his outstretched arms. “Over my dead body.” She spit on his face. “That’s the last piece of me you’ll ever have.”
Thalia stepped around the wretched figure and out the door. Amos jumped up and followed her, Gwendolyn at his heels. Mother Ruth sat stunned on the floor, Mildred’s head in her lap.
Dorie shook herself. She looked over at Mrs. Hines. Could she hear? She looked just the same, her thin chest rising and falling, her face a waxy mask. The Commander, who had told detectives very clearly how much her daughter meant to her but could never make Thalia feel it.
Julian was bent over, kneeling on the rug. His face was crushed in pain; tears streamed down his cheeks. Ruined by Thalia’s words, and his own misdeeds. Dorie hated to see men cry. She felt sorry for him, despite herself. He was weak, and crazy. Disgusting, too. He had used and abused his sister.
Dorie looked back at the Commander. Her revulsion of Julian was blunted by the secret Eveline Hines had told her. The one that made their deed a little less hideous.
On the stand by the bed, a flash of gold: the locket, its chain curled in a heap, the hinged door shut, as if the secret was safe. Was it safe now?
She slipped it into her pocket. Someday, Thalia should know. For her own peace of mind, to forgive herself. Even, perhaps, to forgive a mother and know a father.
Chapter TWENTY
THE NUMBNESS THAT CARRIED DORIE out of the Hines mansion and across the driveway lay like a wet blanket in the Buick.
Thalia and Amos sat in the backseat, dull eyes staring out opposite windows. Gwendolyn fiddled with the steering wheel, rubbing her finger back and forth over the bumps. Dorie slid in beside her and looked at the copy of the morning paper on the seat. The headline was about London, another attack by the Luftwaffe, women and children buried in rubble. A photograph of a small child standing alone in a pile of bricks, clutching a teddy bear, weeping.
She looked over her shoulder at Thalia. The girl looked drained. The bottled-up hatred for her brother— and everyone else in the family— had been released. She looked hollow and fragile, a feather lying in wait of a strong wind to blow it far from the nest. Would the wind be her own strong will? Or would it be Barnaby Wake’s?
Dorie felt a sigh rise in her chest. Perhaps Thalia’s will would set her on a new course. Perhaps not. She didn’t really care who took Thalia away. She just hoped it was for the best. A bit of luck for the road, then. May it rise up and greet you, honey. God help her, she would need some luck.
Gwendolyn rolled down her window. The cool morning air hung with mist. The sunshine was gone behind a bank of low clouds, turning the day a soft gray. Dorie shivered in the damp breeze, but Gwen stuck her face outside and took a breath. Thinking of England probably. Dorie caught Amos’s eye, a solemn glance that gave little away. She frowned at him, trying to decipher his sphinx-like stare, but turned away without getting an answer. She slumped in the seat and stared out the windshield at the dark stain of water on the concrete.
A minute later, little groans and grunts broke the silence. Thalia’s face twisted with panic; she pawed madly at her suit jacket and skirt. Amos put out a hand, but she shrank from it.
“It’s all right now, dearie,” he said softly. “We’ll take care of everything.”
Thalia wiped her palms down her chest, eyes wide. “A bath— have to take a bath.”
“You can do that at my house,” Amos said. “You don’t want to go back inside. Not just yet. Gwen dear, start the car.”
Suddenly, Thalia was out the car door, running with her head down toward the house. Amos and Dorie both jumped out. Amos was quicker, giving his partner a wave to stay. She paused halfway to the house. Perhaps it was better to let him handle it alone. Her distaste for the Hines mansion had never been stronger.
In the front yard, yellowing grass was raked clean of fallen leaves, the shrubs pruned to within an inch of their lives. The chauffeur and the sports car had disappeared. On the outside, things were so orderly. The outside of people, too: often neat, orderly, clean. But the insides, where the turmoil and knots and pain
ate you up— the insides were often a wreck.
She put her hands in her trouser pockets. The switchblade was still there, warm and at the ready. Gwendolyn sat behind the wheel, her fingers playing a tune again.
A minute passed, maybe three. The mist fell lower, until the tops of the trees disappeared into the gray.
Then the shot rang out from the house with a force that turned Dorie’s stomach.
The door was still ajar. She pushed it open. Whoever had the gun might not be finished. Her breath stopped. Was Amos carrying his gun?
The foyer was empty. She looked up the staircase. Empty. The door to the parlor was open, and a shaft of lamplight yellowed the stone floor. She sidled along the wall to the opening and peered around the door.
Standing behind the sofa was Amos Haddam, still alive. Dorie let her breath out. In his arms was Thalia Hines, sobbing. Amos saw Dorie and glanced to the corner, by the marble fireplace.
Next to the window, slumped by the hearth, was the body of Julian Hines. His hand still held a pistol, used on his temple with unfortunate accuracy. And blood. Lots of blood.
“Pack her a case, would you, ducks?”
Amos might have said it several times, but finally the words penetrated the ocean wave crashing inside Dorie’s skull. She pulled her eyes away from the maimed corpse and backed away. Gwendolyn stood frozen on the stoop.
“Go back to the car, Gwen. He’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll be out in a minute.”
When Dorie saw Gwen leaving, she turned to the staircase. In the back hallway stood Mildred Miller, very pale but upright. She had one hand on the wall, as if her legs wouldn’t support her. Her other hand covered her mouth. She looked toward the parlor. Dorie put both her hands on the secretary’s shoulders.
“Mildred, look at me.”
The secretary turned reluctantly, as if in a trance.
“Go back to your office. Call the operator. Do you hear me?” Mildred nodded. “Good. Call the operator. Right now. Tell them to send the police. Tell them there has been a shooting. Can you do that?”
Mildred lowered the hand from her mouth and swallowed. “A shooting. Police.”
Swing Town Mysteries Dorie Lennox Box Set Page 52