by M. K. Wren
“I mean that to-the-manor-born air she puts on. The only people she’ll deign to associate with around here is the local chapter of the DAR, and how she got into that I’ll never know. Probably a forged family tree.” Miss Dobie frowned thoughtfully, then shrugged. “Maybe not. Some of those founding fathers did a lot of fathering. But if any of her ancestors were born to any manors, it was quite a few generations back.”
She had Conan’s full attention now. He was remembering Beryl in her miniature mansion pouring coffee from a silver pot and sighing over her “only heritage from a more gracious time.…”
“How do you know she wasn’t to the manor born?”
“Well…I have a second cousin—actually, a cousin by marriage—or maybe she’s a third cousin. Her husband was my mother’s brother’s nephew, or something. Winifred Toller. Well, you met her once—remember? Anyway, Winnie was born and lived all her life in Sweet Home.”
Conan was already thoroughly confused, but he let Miss Dobie run her course, confident that all would be made clear eventually, and part of it was with her next words.
“Beryl comes from Sweet Home, too, you know. Anyway, Winnie runs a secondhand bookstore, and we get together now and then to see if we can fill out each other’s wanted lists. The last time she was here…let’s see, that was in April. Or maybe it was May. No, it was April. You were gone. That was the time you took that trip to London and ended up in Bangkok. Well, Winnie came over for the day, and we had lunch at the Surf House, and while we were there, Beryl came into the dining room. She didn’t seem to want to recognize Winnie, but—well, she’s hard to snub. Anyway, afterward, Winnie had quite a lot to say about Mrs. Randall.”
She stopped to take out a cigarette, and Conan obliged her by lighting it and asking, “What did she have to say?” He lit a cigarette for himself while Miss Dobie elucidated.
“Well, Winnie remembered Beryl Randall when she was still Beryl Henty. It seems her father—oh, what was his name? Jake. That was it. He was a logger when he was sober, which I guess wasn’t too often. The Henty family was—well, if you’ll pardon the expression, the poor white trash of Sweet Home, and Beryl was the oldest of seven children. When the seventh was born, it was too much for Jake; he vanished without a trace, leaving Mrs. Henty to raise the brood, and that wasn’t easy, since she only had a sixth-grade education. She managed by taking in laundry and doing housecleaning, and of course the children had to help, and that included Beryl.” Miss Dobie paused to catch her breath and deliver a weighty sigh. “I’d really admire Beryl, you know, if she wasn’t such an unmitigated snob. I mean, when someone pulls themselves up by their bootstraps—and an advantageous marriage in this case—you have to admire that. But I really can’t admire pretension. Not at all.”
Conan took a long drag on his cigarette, then when Meg stirred restlessly, resumed her massage. He didn’t admire pretension, either, but he was more concerned with a pragmatic consideration: Beryl’s heritage, that incredible collection of museum quality bric-a-brac, wasn’t a heritage at all if Winnie Toller’s story was true, and he had no reason to doubt it. The pretension Miss Dobie found so objectionable in itself inclined him to accept Winnie’s veracity. But that collection—however dubious he was about Victoriana, the collection was one of impressive monetary value, and no matter how frugally Beryl lived otherwise, her bookkeeper’s salary wouldn’t stretch far enough to buy that heritage.
“Miss Dobie, what did Winnie tell you about this advantageous marriage of Beryl’s?”
“Well, when Beryl was still a teen-ager helping feed Jake Henty’s deserted brood, she worked as a housekeeper for the Randalls. Now, they’re the upper crust of Sweet Home; they own about two thousand acres of prime farmland and filbert orchards and live in a beautiful old mansion on top of a hill. Well, Winnie said Vanessa Randall—she’s Theo’s sister, and he’s the one Beryl finally married—took Beryl under her wing and helped her finish high school and go on to business school. Let’s see, Theo’s first wife must’ve died before Beryl started working at the Randall house. He had two children, a boy and a girl. They were only a few years younger than Beryl. Anyway, she went to business school and worked in Portland for a while as a secretary and bookkeeper, then eventually met Theo again. He hired her as his private secretary and about a year later married her.”
“A modern Cinderella,” Conan observed. “So, she became mistress of the manor then.”
“With a vengeance.” Miss Dobie’s eyebrows flicked up meaningfully. “From what Winnie said, she didn’t make herself popular with Theo’s children, or his sister, or the people of Sweet Home, and I guess she spent money like she was trying to go through the whole Randall fortune single-handedly, but luckily there was a lot of fortune. Winnie said somewhere around five million.”
Conan’s eyebrows flicked up at that. “How much of it went to his widow?”
“Winnie didn’t know. He willed most of it to his kids, but she was sure Beryl got her share—one way or another.”
And that would account for a very valuable heritage.
“I wonder why she didn’t stay in Sweet Home as mistress of the manor.”
“Because with Theo gone, the children and Vanessa didn’t hesitate to let her know they didn’t want her. I guess there was quite a family row. That’s when Beryl moved down here.”
“I suppose she chose to work as a bookkeeper simply out of boredom.”
“Yes. I suppose so.” Then the avid glint rekindled in her eyes. “Is Beryl one of your suspects?”
He laughed. “She’d be more of a suspect if you hadn’t provided her a visible means of support other than her salary as a bookkeeper.”
“Oh.” Miss Dobie seemed both perplexed and disappointed. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Does pretension rankle with you that much?”
Her face turned pink. “That’s not what I meant. I wasn’t sorry for her sake—I mean, I was sorry for your—oh, never mind. Who else is on your list?”
She’d worked around to the direct question, Conan noted, and he gave her a direct answer.
“Conny Van Roon.” Then while she puzzled over that, he asked, “What does the grapevine have to offer on him lately?”
“Well, let’s see, there was something.… Oh, yes—Mrs. Higgins was in today looking for that new Victoria Holt. For heaven’s sake, the advance copies have just gone out to the reviewers; I don’t know how she expects us to have it already. Anyway, she lives next door to the Van Roons, and she said they’re moving. Sold their house, and this morning Mavis was packing the china.”
Conan’s eyes went to black ellipses. “Moving?”
“Yes. Mrs. Higgins was just dumbfounded, it was so sudden. Of course, it’s no secret that Conny’s business has been going downhill for years, but—well, where would he get the money for a fresh start? The sale of the house, maybe, if the buyer paid cash, but that doesn’t happen very often.”
“Did Mrs. Higgins know where they’re going?”
“Well…she was a little vague. Something about south and the desert and some big housing development. Maybe Conny got a job as a salesman.”
South and the desert. Nevada. And perhaps Conny did get a job; a reward for another job well done, or so close to done, his benefactors were acting on the assumption of its completion.
Conan gently shifted Meg to the desk and rose.
“Well, maybe the desert will be good for Conny.”
“Dry him out, you mean?” Miss Dobie asked archly.
He couldn’t bring himself to laugh at that.
“One way or another, I suppose.”
Chapter 23
As Conan drove to the police station, the pallid dusk faded prematurely with the gusting onset of a violent squall that seemed to drive the villagers into hiding; the rain-veiled streetlights shone on highway and sidewalks as lonely as midnight.
When he reached the station, he found Kleber in conference behind his closed door with Steve. He interrupted them only
long enough to learn that Steve’s inquiries at the Tillamook bus depot had garnered nothing but a description of the woman who had checked Hancock’s suitcase that would fit half the female Caucasians over sixty-five in the country.
He limited his questions to that, reading the clear warning in the set of Kleber’s jaw, closed the door quietly, and went directly to jail.
The guard saved himself a trip when he took Conan to Brian’s cell by carrying the prisoner’s supper with him. It made for slack security—both his hands were occupied with the tray when he entered the cell—but the risk of this prisoner attempting an escape was something less than minimal.
Brian lay on the bunk, his face to the wall; he didn’t stir when the guard announced the arrival of supper and a visitor. Perhaps he’d been playing solitaire earlier; cards were scattered negligently around the bunk with some magazines and newspapers. The guard left the tray on the floor and locked the door as he departed.
“Brian?”
He wasn’t asleep. Still, Conan had to repeat his name before he finally moved. He turned over as if it were an exhausting effort and lay staring at him, then at length made a further effort and sat up on the side of the bunk.
“Conan. I didn’t know it was you.” And perhaps didn’t care. There was nothing personal in that; he seemed past caring about anything. The blue of his lifeless eyes had faded to lusterless gray, and his face had already assumed the pallor of long confinement.
“Your dinner is served,” Conan said lightly. “Potato château, beets julienne à l’Anglaise, coq au vin…”
Brian focused on the tray and tried to smile, then fumbled a package of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket. It was empty. Conan offered one of his, lit it, then sat down on the wooden stool near the bunk to light his own. Percy Dent was back in his accustomed cell rendering “You Made Me What I Am Today” in a frail, faded tenor.
“Well, live entertainment with dinner,” Conan quipped.
Brian successfully presented a smile, even if it was short-lived.
“And with lunch and breakfast. That’s his favorite song. That’s his only song.”
For a while they both listened to Percy’s song, neither moving except for occasional puffs at their cigarettes, but even when the song lapsed into soft snores melding with the rush of rain on the window, Brian maintained his listening pose, and Conan maintained his silence, watching him, wondering where he wandered in his thoughts—to the past or to the future.
Finally, Brian looked at his watch and frowned.
“What time is it? I guess I forgot to wind my watch.”
Conan checked his. “Five-forty.”
“No, I didn’t forget. Just seems…later. Damn, I hate winter. All my life I’ve lived where winter only gives you half a day and leaves you a night and a half.”
“Where did you live before Oregon?” It struck him as strange, sad somehow, that he didn’t already know that.
“Oh, California for a while. I did part of my Army hitch at Fort Ord and just never got around to going back east again. But I grew up in Minnesota.” His eyes clouded with memory, an equivocal mix of regret and pleasure. “My dad ran a dairy farm. I mean a real dairy farm. Made the ones up in Tillamook County look like 4-H projects.”
Conan hesitated before asking, “Is your father retired?” He was afraid he might be dead.
“Yes. Sold the farm and he and Mom moved into one of those retirement complexes near Rochester.” He leaned back against the wall with a sigh that seemed forced out of him by the very weight of the atmosphere. “I was thinking about Dad today, and I wanted so damn much to talk to him.”
“That could probably be arranged.”
“No, I—well, not yet. I don’t want him to know I’m…here. Or Mom. They’ll have to know sooner or later, but it won’t hurt if it’s later. Anyway…” He shrugged listlessly. “Well, I don’t really know what I’d say to him.”
Conan didn’t know what to say to that, but Brian didn’t seem to notice his silence, nor its length. The rain was coming harder, drowning Percy’s soft snores.
At length, Brian leaned forward to grind out his cigarette in the plastic ashtray among the debris on the floor, then propped his elbows on his knees; it seemed too much of an effort to reach the support of the wall.
He asked, “How…how’s Tilda?”
It was the first time since his incarceration that he’d asked about her, yet there was no hope in it; none of the special kind of hope that lives in love even when it dies in everything else.
Conan called up a smile with his reply.
“The show goes on, and Tilda’s a good trouper. She’s confused and frightened for you, but she’s keeping her chin up and her upper lip stiff.”
Brian assayed a short laugh. “That’s too pretty an upper lip to keep stiff.” The laugh slipped away from him, and he frowned as if he’d forgotten something he meant to say. Then he dismissed it with another listless shrug and asked, “Have you been down to the restaurant lately?”
“Lately? Well, yes. I’ve become sort of a fixture there. My last visit was this afternoon. Business wasn’t booming today, but then it’s February.”
He nodded, his rueful smile a little steadier.
“Tell me about February. I opened that place in February, and for a solid month the cook and I sat around playing poker till…” Again, he seemed to lose track of what he was saying, but after a moment apparently recalled the general subject. “How’s Bea taking everything?”
Conan shrugged. “Another good trouper; business and balances as usual. At least, she’s back at her post today. I was beginning to wonder yesterday.”
“Yesterday? What happened?”
“She called in sick, and since she has a heart condition, I thought I should worry a little, but I guess it was just preventive recuperation.”
Brian gave an odd, knowing laugh that surprised Conan; it was so uncharacteristically cynical.
“Poor Bea,” he said, shaking his head. “The old heart condition. She could just ask for a day off now and then; she works so much overtime, she deserves it. But every time she wants an extra day off, I get that heart business.”
Conan stared at him, feeling a chill sensation at the back of his neck.
“What do you mean—that heart business?” His tone must have been sharper than he realized; it erased the smile from Brian’s face.
“Well, I just mean you don’t need to take her heart condition seriously. But I shouldn’t laugh about it because she does take it seriously.”
“You mean she doesn’t have a heart condition?”
“No. I guess her blood pressure’s a little high, but it’s not bad, and there’s nothing else wrong with her.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
Brian hesitated, a little intimidated by Conan’s insistence. “Look, what difference does it make? So she needs an excuse to coddle herself once in a while. So what?”
Conan pulled in a deep breath and got his impatience under control.
“So…well, it could make a big difference. I just need to know if you’re sure about the state of her heart.”
Brian was still frowning, as if he felt himself somehow out of his depth and wasn’t sure how he got there.
“Bea doctors with Nicky Heideger, and so do I. A couple of years ago I asked Nicky about Bea. It wasn’t really any of my business, except I was wondering what the hell I should do for her if she keeled over with a heart attack at the restaurant. Well, Nicky and I trust each other, and she knew I’d keep it to myself, and I have till now. She said Bea’s heart is as good as mine, but she likes, or needs, to think she’s got a problem. It’s psychosomatic. But like Nicky said, it’s not hurting her; she’s not making an invalid of herself, and it’s not hurting anybody else. So, if an old lady wants to baby herself once in a while, what difference does it make?”
Answers to that question were clamoring in cacophonous confusion in Conan’s mind, tension as constricting as fear clamp
ed on his throat, and he had to make two tries to get a word out.
“What…you called her an old lady. How old is she?”
Brian seemed to absorb his taut doubt, but in him it translated into apprehensive bewilderment.
“Well, I…I’m not really sure, but I know she could be collecting Social Security if she wasn’t working.”
That meant she was over sixty-two. Yet she claimed—and looked, if one didn’t look too closely—forty-eight.
Old lady.
The words reverberated in his consciousness.
“Brian, doesn’t she have another source of income that would put her over the Social Security minimum?”
“What do you mean?”
“Her husband was a very wealthy man. Doesn’t she have any income from her inheritance?”
Brian shook his head. “No. He was wealthy, all right, but he didn’t leave much of his wealth to Bea. She told me about it one night when she had a few martinis too many. I guess the thrill went out of their marriage a long time before Theo died. She says his sister and kids poisoned him against her. I don’t know. Anyway, all he left her was the house she’s living in and ten thousand dollars; enough to get her moved with a little cushion for her to live on till she found herself a job.”
The confusion of answers was beginning to take coherent shape. Conan neither moved nor spoke, and the only thing in his surroundings he was aware of was the rain against the barred window.
Finally, Brian pleaded, “Conan, for God’s sake, what’s all this about Bea?”
Bea. It sounded exactly like the letter B.
“Have you ever been in her house, Brian?”
“What? Yes. Not very often, but I’ve been in it.”
“She has a collection of antiques in that little bungalow worth—god only knows how much. Tens of thousands of dollars.”
“Sure, she does. All that came from her family. I mean, it was hers before she got married.”
Conan finally brought his eyes into focus on Brian’s face, and perhaps it was only his own fearful surmise he saw reflected there.
“No. Beryl Henty’s family had a hard time feeding itself. There was no gracious heritage for Beryl, no heritage at all except avaricious shame.”