told me this-my sons went to prep school in the mid-seventies-it was too
late to do anything about Kline himself. He died in the early fifties.
By then he'd retired from Grollier and had a place here in Boston. My
father said that one of the happiest days of his life was when he read
Kline's obituary. Believe me, my father had very few happy days."
Meecham finished his martini and frowned toward the pitcher as if he
could use another drink. "I don't know what you've set out to prove,
but if there were other instructors like Kline at Grollier and if their
counterparts still teach there and if your book exposes them, we've both
done some good.
Suspecting something, Pittman asked, "Would you be willing to be
quoted?"
Meecham reacted sharply. "Of course not. Do you think I'd want that
kind of public attention? I told you before, this conversation is
stricly off the record. I'm just pointing you in the right direction.
Surely someone else would be willing to substantiate what I've told you.
Ask the grand counselors. " Meecham looked bitterly amused. "See how
willing they'd be to go on record. "
"When Jonathan Millgate was in intensive care, he told his nurse,
'Duncan. The snow. Grollier.' What do you suppose he meant by the
reference to snow?"
"I have no idea. Certainly my father never mentioned anything that
linked Duncan Kline with snow."
"It's a slang expression for- Could it be a reference to cocaine?"
"Again, I have no idea. Was that expression even used back in the early
thirties? Would someone as distinguished as Jonathan Millgate reduce
himself to that type of language?"
Pittman shrugged in discouragement, then turned, hearing a knock on the
door.
Frederick stepped in. "Mr. Meecham, two policemen are at the door."
Pittman felt a hot rush of adrenaline.
Meecham looked surprised. "Policemen?"
"Detectives," Frederick said. "They want to know if You've had any
contact with someone named Matthew Pittman. He's traveling with a woman
and Frederick's gaze settled on Pittman and Jill.
Meecham frowned.
"Where does that door lead?" Pittman stood unexpectedly and crossed the
room toward a door in a wall that faced the rear of the house. The door
was the only other wayout of the room, and since Pittman had no
intention of using the door through which Frederick had come, of going
out to the corridor where the detectives might see him, he had to take
this route. He heard Jill's footsteps behind him.
"What do You think you're doing?" Meecham demanded. By then, Pittman
had pulled the door open and was lunging into a narrow hallway, Jill
hurrying to follow. Pittman's steps quickened.
"Stop!" Meecham said.
On the left, Pittman passed the entrance to the mansion's kitchen. He
had a glimpse of a male cook in a white uniform, who opened his mouth in
surprise. Then Pittman, flanked rapidly by Jill, was out of sight,
running farther down the hallway, reaching a door, the window of which
revealed a cobblestone courtyard.
Pittman jerked the door open and felt pressure in his chest as he
realized that the dusky courtyard was bordered by a high barred gate, an
even higher wall, and a carriage house turned into a garage. We'll
never get out of here!
Dismayed, he swung to look behind him. Frederick appeared at the
opposite end of the hallway. The cook appeared at the entrance to the
kitchen. Heavy footsteps pounded toward the hallway from the front of
the house. To the right of the door, stairs led upward. Pittman
suddenly thought of a way to escape and charged up, tugging Jill behind
him. At a landing, the stairs veered up on another angle, and Pittman
bounded higher, reaching a hallway on an upper level of the house.
Closed doors lined the hallway. Meecham was making indignant demands to
someone downstairs. He flinched as a door came open across from him.
Meecham's elderly mother appeared, deceptively frail. "So much noise. I
can barely hear the television."
Pittman made a soothing gesture. "Mrs. Meecham, does your bedroom have
a lock?"
"of course it has a lock. Doesn't every bedroom have a lock? Do you
think I want people barging in on me? What are you doing up here?"
"Thanks." Pittman hurried with Jill, who didn't understand what Pittman
was doing.
"You can't go in there," Mrs. Meecham said.
Pittman slammed and locked the door- From a television in the corner of
the well-appointed lace-curtained room, complete with a four-poster bed,
the opening theme music for a nature program almost obscured Mrs.
Meecham's feeble pounding on the door. Jill swung toward Pittman. "What
are we doing in here?" A look of sudden understanding crossed her face
as Pittman rushed toward a window. It faced the back of the house,
above the peaked roof of the garage. Pittman opened it. "Come on.
Inexplicably Jill seemed frozen. "What's wrong?" Jill stared toward
the door. She turned her head and stared at Pittman. "Come on!"
Pittman said. At once Jill became animated, taking off her pumps. "Of
all the times to be wearing a skirt." out the
The hem tore as she raised her legs and climbed louder. window. The
pounding on the bedroom door became
Angry male voices were on the other side. The door shuddered as if
shoulders were being heaved against it.
Wincing from pain in his injured ribs, Pittman squirmed out the open
window after Jill. The garage roof sloped down on each side, and
Pittman tried to stay balanced while running along the peak. Behind
him, something crashed in the bedroom. Jill reached the end of the roof
and jumped down onto something, appearing to run on the shadowy air as
she disappeared around the corner of another house.
When Pittman came to the end of the garage, he saw that what Jill had
jumped down onto was the foot-wide top of the high wall that enclosed
the courtyard. That wall continued to the left, bordering the
courtyards of other houses, bisecting the block. Hearing a shout behind
him, Pittman climbed down as well and followed her, breathing so deeply
and quickly that his lungs felt on fire.
Then he, too, was out of sight from the window. He concentrated not to
topple from the wall as he hurried after Jill, who clutched her shoes in
one hand, her purse in the other, and scrambled in bare feet across the
Peak Of another carriage house turned into a garage A shingle gave way
beneath Jill, skittering off the roof, clattering onto cobblestones. She
fell on her shoulder, beginning to roll . Pittman grabbed her arm. She
dropped her shoes, which hit the cobblestones next to the shingle
Pittman charged ahead with Jill and halted unexpectedly. The wall
didn't continue beyond the garage. The courtyard was framed only by
buildings. Below them, a red Jaguar was parked outside the garage.
Pittman jumped down onto the car, feeling the roof protest but hold.
Jill didn't need encouragement; she leapt down after him, the metal so
smoothly waxed that her bare feet ne
arly slid out from under her.
Pittman clutched her, kept her from her arms, lowered her toward the
cobblestones, falling, held then jumped down next to her.
The Jaguar Is owner must have been planning to leave soon. The gate to
the street was open. Racing along the driveway, they reached a narrow,
quiet, tree-lined, twilit street around the corner from Meecham's
address.
Their gray Duster was parked three spaces to their left.
"Drive." Jill threw him the keys, then climbed into the backseat,
ducking below the windows.
As Pittman sped away from the curb, he heard her rummaging in the back.
"What are you doing?"
She was scrunched down out of sight, fumbling with some thing.
"Jill, what are you-""
This
"Getting out of this damned skirt and into my jeans. skirt is ripped up
to my backside. if I'm going to be arrested, there's no way it's going
to be with myunderwear showing.
Pittman couldn't help it. He was frightened, and he couldn't catch his
breath, but she sounded so embarrassed, he started laughing.
"I've had it with skirts. And those useless pumps," she said. "I don't
care who I have to make an impression on. All this running. From now
on, it's sneakers, a sweater, and jeans. And how the hell did the
police know we were at Meecham's? Who could have .
Pittman stared grimly ahead. "Yes. That's really been bothering me."
He concentrated. "Who?"
"Wait a minute. I think I- There's only one person who had that
information. The man I phoned."
"At the alumni association?"
"Yes. This evening, he must have called my father to suck up to him by
bragging how he'd done me a favor."
"That's got to be it. Your father knows that the police are looking for
you. As soon as he heard from the alumni association, he phoned the
police and sent them to the address the man gave you.
"We've got to be more careful."
Pittman steered onto Charles Street, trying to keep his speed down, not
to be conspicuous. As other cars switched on their headlights, so did
he.
"Exactly," Pittman said. "More careful. What were you doing back
there?"
"I told you, putting on my jeans."
"No. I mean back at the house. In the bedroom. It looked as if you
weren't going to leave with me."
Jill didn't respond.
"Don't tell me that's true," Pittman said. "You actually thought about
staying behind?"
"For a second Jill hesitated. "I told myself, I can't "keep running
forever. The police don't want me. It's Mill gate's people who want to
kill me. I thought I could end it right there. I could stay behind and
give myself up, explain to the police why I've been running, make them
understand you're innocent."
"Yeah, sure. I bet that would have been good for a few laughs at the
precinct." Although Pittman could understand Jill's motives, the
thought that she would have left him caused his stomach to harden. "So
what made you keep going? Why didn't you stay?"
"The story you told me about how you'd been arrested when you were
trying to get an interview with Millgate seven years ago."
"That's right. Two prisoners, probably working for Millgate, beat me up
while I was in a holding cell."
"The police weren't quick enough to help you," Jill said.
"Or maybe the guards were bribed to take a long coffee break." Pittman
continued to feel bitter that she might have left him. "There's no way
the authorities could guarantee your safety . So that's why you came
with me? Your common sense took over? You listened to your survival
instincts?"
"No," Jill said.
"Self-preservation.
"No. That's not why I came with you. It had nothing to do with
worrying whether the police could protect me."
"Then ... ?"
"I was worried about you. I couldn't imagine what you'd be like on your
own."
"Hey, I could have managed."
"You don't realize how vulnerable you are."
"No kidding, every time somebody shoots at me, I get the idea.
,Emotionally vulnerable. Last Wednesday, you were going to do the
shooting."
"I don't need to be reminded. It would have saved a lot of people a lot
of trouble."
Jill squirmed from the back into the passenger seat. "You just proved
my point. I think the only reason you've managed to get this far is you
had somebody cheering for you. I've never met anybody more lonely. Why
would you want to keep going if you didn't have anything to live for,
anybody to care?" Pittman felt as if ice had been placed on his chest.
Unable to speak, he drove through the shadows of Boston Common, reaching
Columbus Avenue, using the reverse of the route Jill had taken.
"The reason I decided to stay with you," Jill said, "is that I didn't
want to be apart from you.", Pittman had trouble speaking. "You sure
did a lot of thinking in a couple of seconds."
"I've been thinking about this for a while," Jill said. "I want to see
how we get along when life gets normal.
"If," Pittman said. "If it ever does get normal. If we can ever get
through this."
"This is a new feeling for me," Jill said. "It kind of snuck up on me.
When you introduced me as your wife .
"What?"
"I liked it." Pittman was so amazed that he couldn't react for a
moment. He reached over, touching her hand.
A car horn blared behind him as he steered from traffic and stopped at
the curb. His throat feeling tighter, he studied Jill, her beguiling
oval face, her long corn-silk hair, her sapphire eyes glinting from the
reflection of passing headlights.
He leaned close and gently kissed her, the softness of her lips making
him tingle. When she put her arms around his neck, he felt ripples of
sensation. The kiss went on and on. She parted her lips. He tasted
her.
He felt a swirling sensation and slowly leaned back, pleasantly out of
breath, studying her more intensely. "I didn't think I'd ever feel this
way again."
"You've got a lot of good feelings to catch up on," Jill said.
Pittman kissed her again, this time with a hunger that startled him.
Shaking, he had to stop. "My hart's beating so fast.
"I know," Jill said. "I feel light-headed."
Another car horn blared, passing them. Pittman turned to look out his
side window. Where he'd stopped was in a no parking zone - "The last
thing we need is a traffic ticket."
He pulled from the curb.
Immediately he noticed a police car at the corner of the next street. He
tried to keep his speed constant, to peer straight ahead. It seemed to
take him forever to pass the cruiser. In his rearview mirror, he saw
the police car move forward not in his direction, but along the
continuation of the side street.
He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel. His brow felt clammy.
He was more afraid than usual.
"Where are we going?"
Pittman shook his head, squinting at the painful glare of headlights on
&
nbsp; the crowded Massachusetts Turnpike. For several minutes, he'd been
pensively quiet, trying to adjust-as he assumed Jill was-to the powerful
change in their relationship. "We're heading out of Boston. But where
we're going, I have no idea. I don't know what to do next, We've
learned a lot. But we really haven't learned anything. I can't believe
that Millgate's people would want to kill us because we'd found out what
happened to him in prep school. "Suppose he wasn't molested."
"The circumstantial evidence indicates-"
"No, what I mean is, suppose he'd been willing," Jill said. "Maybe
Millgate's people believe that the old man's reputation would have been
ruined if-"
"You think that's what his people were afraid of?"
"Well, he confessed something to you about Grollier, and they killed him
for it. Then you had to be stopped. And me because they have to
believe you've told me what you know.
"Killed him to protect his reputation? I just can't There's something
more," Pittman said. "I don't think we've learned the whole truth yet.
Maybe the other grand counselors are trying to protect their reputations
. They don't want anyone to know what happened to them at Grollier. "
David Morrell - Desperate Measures Page 28