Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  The tote bags were full, and lined up in a row near the door. They had time to kill, so they wandered the rooms some more, this time acting like regular visitors, eyeballing the paintings, the furniture, the fur throws. “We oughta come back here sometime,” Tiny said, “with a semi.”

  “I think the family would notice,” Dortmunder said.

  “Helicopter,” Kelp suggested. “Stan knows how to fly a helicopter, remember?”

  Dortmunder said, “I think the family would notice a helicopter even more than a semi.”

  “You can fit more in a semi,” Tiny said.

  Kelp said, “We pretend we’re a movie company, shooting on location. Use one of the big trucks they use. Borrow Little Feather’s motor home to be the star’s dressing room, steal a camera and some lights somewhere.”

  Dortmunder said, “And do what?”

  “I dunno,” Kelp said. “You’re the planner. I’m just giving you the big picture.”

  “Thank you,” Dortmunder said.

  “You girls are yawning,” Vickie said. In fact, so was Hughie, but Viveca didn’t think it would be right to mention that.

  “Oh, Mom, please.”

  “Well, now, young ladies,” Margaret Crabtree said, “you look to me as though you could sleep. It’s quarter to one, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” Hughie said, and hugely yawned.

  “There you go,” Margaret said, “I bet you’ll all be asleep the minute your head hits the pillow.”

  “I won’t take that bet,” Hughie said. “Miz Crabtree, Miz Quinlan, I think I gotta say good night.”

  “Don’t let me keep you all up,” Margaret said. “I’ll wait here for that nice young man to come back, and I’ll turn that lantern off when I go.”

  Viveca, who didn’t feel at all like sleeping, said, “Oh, no, I’ll stay up with you. We can chat. Hughie, you know where the guest room is.”

  “Rrrr,” Hughie said, which would have been yes if he hadn’t been yawning.

  The girls, too, were actually very sleepy, and did only a little more pro forma pleading before finally marching off, Hughie among them, to bed. Viveca left the Coleman lamp hanging where it was, but she and Margaret went over to sit in comfortable chairs where they could see the snowplow when it came back up the mountain.

  “Quite an adventure for you,” Viveca said once they were settled.

  “More than I had in mind,” Margaret said. “I hope your husband isn’t stuck out someplace in all this.”

  To her astonishment and embarrassment, Viveca abruptly began to cry. “He isn’t here,” she said, and turned her face away, wishing she had a tissue, hoping Margaret wouldn’t notice these tears in the dim light.

  But she did. Sounding very concerned, she said, “Viveca? What is it? He isn’t hurt or anything, is he? In the hospital?”

  “We’re . . .” Viveca swallowed, wiped her eyes with her fingers, and said, “We’re separated.”

  “He left you?”

  “It’s a separation,” Viveca said.

  “Then he separated,” Margaret insisted. “How come he left you?”

  “Well, the truth is,” Viveca said, “Frank left this house more than he left me.”

  “I don’t get it,” Margaret admitted.

  Viveca had kept all this bottled up for so long, it was a relief to suddenly be able to unburden herself, to a stranger, someone she didn’t really know and would never see again, who would be leaving here forever any minute in a snowplow. “My great-grandfather built this house,” she explained. “He was a famous painter, and the house is a national monument, open to the public from April to November, just the downstairs, and the family lives here and takes care of everything.”

  “Why you?” Margaret asked. “Why not somebody else in the family?”

  “I’m an only child.”

  Margaret nodded. “And your husband decided he doesn’t like the house.”

  “He grew to hate it,” Viveca said. “It was boring and confining and he felt he was wasting his life here, and I had to agree with him.”

  “So he waltzes off and leaves you and the kids. That’s nice.”

  “Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Viveca said. “He sees the children all the time, they spend weekends at his apartment in the city.”

  “New York City?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s got a big place there, big enough for the kids?”

  “Yes.”

  Margaret shook her head. “So whadaya doing here?”

  “Well,” Viveca said, “the family’s always lived here, ever since my great-grandfather built the place.”

  “Yeah? What happens if you leave?”

  “Leave? Oh, I couldn’t possibly leave.”

  Margaret nodded. “Why not?” she said.

  “Well . . . I was brought up to live here.”

  “So, if you leave, does the house fall down?”

  “No, there’s a nonprofit corporation that takes care of everything.”

  Margaret said, “So you’re just like, here’s the famous painter’s family on display. Do you have to wear like Colonial costumes?”

  “He wasn’t from that long ago,” Viveca said.

  “Okay, flapper skirts,” Margaret suggested. “Is that what you wear?”

  “No, we don’t wear costumes or do things like that. We don’t even see the visitors, they’re just downstairs and we’re up—Oh, did you hear that?”

  Margaret looked very open-eyed and blank. “Hear? Hear what?”

  “There was a rustling sound downstairs,” Viveca said.

  “Didn’t hear it,” Margaret said.

  Viveca leaned close and dropped her voice. “It’s mice,” she confided.

  Margaret looked interested. “Oh yeah?”

  “In the winter,” Viveca said, “there’s just no way to keep them out, since there’s nobody ever down there.”

  “Huh,” Margaret said. “Tell me about this husband of yours.”

  “Frank.”

  “Be as frank as you want,” Margaret said, but then she shook her head and patted the air and said, “No, just a joke, I get it, the name is Frank. And Frank said he was leaving the house, not you.”

  “Yes. And I know it’s true.”

  “You want him back, you feel like shit, you—whoops, sorry, you feel really terrible all the time, and you can’t control your daughters because you don’t feel good enough about yourself, and you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Have I got the story here?”

  “Yes,” Viveca said. She felt humble in the presence of this wise older woman.

  “Okay,” the wise older woman said, “I tell you what you do. Tomorrow, when you get your phone back, you call this Frank. You tell him, ‘Honey, rent a truck and come get us, all of us, we’re blowin this mausoleum.’”

  “Oh dear,” Viveca said. “I don’t know, Margaret.”

  “What you tell him is,” Margaret insisted, “this separation is over. Come on, Frank, rent a truck or hire a lawyer, because we’re either gettin together or we’re gettin a divorce. And if it’s a divorce—”

  “Neither of us wants a divorce,” Viveca said. “I’m sure of that.”

  “Great,” Margaret said. “But if he wants one anyway—He isn’t alone there in that apartment in New York, is he?”

  “No,” Viveca whispered.

  “Men,” Margaret concluded. “So if it is a divorce—This guy’s pretty well-off, am I right?”

  “Yes,” Viveca whispered. “He’s an executive with a chemical company.”

  “So if it is divorce,” Margaret told her, “you rent the truck yourself and move the hell outta here. Take the girls and go where you want and meet a guy and never even tell him about this place.”

  Viveca laughed, surprising herself as thoroughly as when she’d cried before. “I shouldn’t have told Frank about it, that’s for sure,” she said.

  Looking out the window, Margaret said, “Here comes my ride.”

  Ye
s, here came all those lights, back up the mountain. Both women rose, and Viveca said, “Thank you, Margaret.”

  “Anytime,” Margaret said. “Remember, soon as you get your phone back, call Frank.”

  “I will.” Viveca smiled. “And I’ll tell him I was a fool to let a house get between us.”

  “Well, don’t give him all the marbles,” Margaret said. “Negotiate a little. Come on, I gotta go.”

  Viveca carried the Coleman lamp, and they made their way through the house to the kitchen. “I can find my way down the stairs,” Margaret said.

  “Margaret,” Viveca said, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “Nah,” Margaret said, “it was just me and my big mouth.”

  “God bless it,” Viveca said, and kissed the wise older woman on the cheek.

  “Oh, come on,” Margaret said, and turned hurriedly to the door.

  Viveca said, “I’ll never forget what you did here tonight, Margaret.”

  Margaret gave her an odd look. “Good,” she said.

  Murch saw the downstairs door just beginning to open as he drove past it to stop at the family’s entrance to Thurstead. He climbed down out of the cab, and off to his left he saw three huddled figures swathed in motel blankets and toting tote bags hotfoot it across the snow to the rear of the truck.

  The family door opened before Murch got to it, and his Mom stepped out, waving to her son, then turning back to shout up the stairs, “You be sure to make that phone call!”

  The only interior light source had stayed upstairs, and now it swayed like the signalman’s lantern in movies about nineteenth-century train rides. Murch’s Mom waved up the stairs, then came out and slammed the door, and hurried around to her side of the cab.

  They both climbed up and in, away from the storm, slamming their doors. Murch said, “What was that all about?”

  “Just a conversation we were having.”

  “Oh.”

  They waited about another ten seconds, and then a quick rat-tat-tat sounded on the metal wall behind their seats. Then Murch put the monster in gear and drove it around in a great circle to head down the mountain once more.

  “Well,” Murch’s Mom said, “I think maybe I did some good in there tonight.”

  “I think we all did,” Murch said.

  “That, too,” his Mom said.

  Two days later, Viveca and Mrs. Bunnion and Vanessa and Virginia and Victoria all piled into Mrs. Bunnion’s red Ford Explorer and drove to New York City, where every trace of Rachel had been expunged from Frank’s apartment. The following month, January, the Thurstead Foundation hired a couple—Hughie, the ex-cop, in fact, and his wife, Helen—to live in the upstairs rooms and take care of the place. In April, when the downstairs was opened to the public, some of the docents, the nice lady volunteers who would lead the tours through Russell Thurbush’s mansion, noticed some items missing, but no one commented. Some of the docents assumed that Viveca had taken a few small pieces with her, and why not, while others assumed the Thurstead Foundation was merely quietly selling off a few less important knickknacks to help with expenses, and why not. No one ever noticed the burglary—or robbery.

  At last, the perfect crime.

  43

  * * *

  Little Feather didn’t know what to do. Here it was Monday morning, almost noon, and everything was going according to plan, and yet nothing was going according to plan.

  The part that was Marjorie Dawson’s plan had ticked along like a charm. Her lapse in failing to send the announcement of appeal on to Max Schreck’s office in New York had created exactly the delay it was supposed to create, stalling the DNA test over the weekend, so that Fitzroy or John or somebody could come up with the solution to the open Burwick Moody grave. But that left the part of the plan that included the solution to the open grave, and so far Little Feather didn’t see any solution forthcoming.

  It was true that John, when he and the others had left here last Thursday, had seemed almost cheerful, and certainly self-confident, saying this, at last, was a job for him, exactly the way Clark Kent says, “This is a job for Superman.” And it was also true that Andy had E-mailed Fitzroy on Friday evening that everything would soon be okay, and had E-mailed Fitzroy again yesterday that somebody would be coming up from the city today, but since then, Fitzroy hadn’t been able to reach Andy or anybody else—it was never possible to reach John—so what did this mean? Was somebody coming up from the city today? Who? And what difference would it make?

  Little Feather and Marjorie and Fitzroy and Irwin were all gathered in the motor home this morning, hunched over Marjorie’s cell phone like a group of early settlers over a campfire. Max Schreck, still miffed over Marjorie’s “error,” had phoned from Albany at twenty minutes past ten to say the Three Tribes’ appeal had been denied, so the DNA test could go forward forthwith, and an investigator from the local DA’s office would be coming to the motor home between twelve and one today to collect the hair sample. And here it was 11:30, and now what?

  Little Feather asked Marjorie the question direct: “Now what?”

  “We can only hope,” Marjorie answered, “that someone, John or Andy or whoever, actually does come up here this morning, and that he or they actually do have some solution to offer to our problem.”

  Irwin said, “What if Little Feather were kidnapped?”

  They all looked at him. Sounding wary, Marjorie said, “I don’t follow, Irwin.” Ever since their shared pizza the other night, they were all on first-name basis.

  “Well,” Irwin said, “here you’ve got this heiress, gonna be worth millions any minute now, so maybe somebody came in here last night and kidnapped her and left a ransom note—we can use those magazines there, cut out words for the ransom note—and now she’s disappeared and it’s not our fault, but we just can’t do the DNA.”

  “One,” Marjorie said, “we’d have to call the police, and once they discovered the fraud, which they would, we’d all go to jail.”

  “Two,” Little Feather said, “where am I gonna hide around this neck of the woods that they wouldn’t find me in twenty minutes?”

  “Three,” Fitzroy said, “to whom is this ransom note directed?”

  “Well,” Irwin said, “the tribes.”

  They all hoorawed at that. “The tribes!” Fitzroy exclaimed. “Irwin, that’s ‘The Ransom Of Red Chief’! The tribes would pay the kidnappers to keep Little Feather!”

  “Well,” Irwin said, “it was just an idea.”

  “No, it wasn’t, Irwin,” Marjorie told him, but in a kindly way.

  “So what I’d still like to know is,” Little Feather said, “what am I gonna do when the DA’s person gets here? Maybe I should just run away right now.”

  “Oh no, Little Feather,” Marjorie said, “don’t do that.”

  “Never give up, Little Feather,” Fitzroy said.

  Little Feather said, “Why not? I can’t give any investigator my own hair, cause Judge Higbee will put me in jail if the DNA doesn’t match. So what do I—”

  A knock at the door.

  They all leaped like startled fawns, except Fitzroy, who leaped like a startled yak.

  “Oh no!” cried Little Feather. “He’s early!”

  “Maybe,” Marjorie said, “it’s Andy, or someone like that.”

  “We shouldn’t,” Fitzroy said, “be in this room, if indeed the investigator is who that is.”

  “We’ll be in the bedroom, Little Feather,” Irwin said, as they all faded from view.

  “And I’ll be in the bathroom,” Little Feather muttered, “as soon as I can.”

  The knock at the door was repeated.

  “All right, all right,” Little Feather complained.

  What was she going to do? What was she going to do? Trying to think of a way out, fretting, frightened, furious with herself for getting into this mess in the first place, she went over to open the bus-type door and look out at a guy she’d never seen before in her life. A blunt-f
eatured, stocky-bodied guy with carroty hair and a calmly indifferent manner that suggested he was nothing to do with her at all, but had knocked on the wrong motor home.

  “Who,” she said, “are you?”

  “You’re Little Feather, right?” this fellow said. “I’m Stan. Andy sent me.”

  “Andy! Come in, come in.”

  Stan came in, and Little Feather shut the door behind him as she called to the others, “It’s okay! He’s one of us!”

  The other three came out to look curiously at Stan. Fitzroy said, “One of us? Which one?”

  “Stan,” Stan said. “They asked me to come up because I’m the best driver, I’ll make the best time. I would of come yesterday except for the snow, and I didn’t have the plow anymore.”

  Marjorie said, “Do you have a message for us?”

  “Naw,” Stan said. “I got this.” And from his carcoat he pulled a Ziploc bag, which he extended toward Little Feather.

  Who looked at it with some revulsion. Inside the bag were some strands of black hair. Unwilling to touch it, she said, “What’s that?”

  “Your DNA,” Stan told her.

  “Did that—did it come from a grave?”

  Stan looked both astonished and disgusted. “A grave? No, whadawe wanna do with a grave? This come from a lady in New Jersey. Well, from her hairbrush.”

  Fitzroy, sounding awed, said, “You got into Thurstead?”

  “Sure,” Stan said. “Why not?”

  “But—” Fitzroy was having a lot of trouble here. “It’s so well guarded. There are many valuable works of art at Thurstead.”

  “There sure are,” Stan said. “We made out like bandits. Well, I guess we are bandits, so that’s how we made out.”

  Little Feather had unzipped the bag and taken out most of the hair. It was a little finer than hers, but black, and mostly straight like hers. She sorted it into a kind of swatch while the others continued to talk.

  Irwin said, “Do you mean you robbed the place? Thurstead?”

  “Well, we were there,” Stan said.

  “I’m not hearing this,” Marjorie stated.

  Fitzroy said, “But what if the police catch you? Isn’t it possible they’ll, they’ll find us?”