Grab Bag (6 page)

He proceeded to tell us how good it was while Ed and Fred ate more cake and Aunt Aggie grew restive. As soon as she could get a word in, she started dropping a few hints about her own family.

“Well, us Harrisons ain’t much on braggin’ about what we got. Let’s talk about somethin’ more int’restin’. What was that you was tellin’ me, Willie, about James flyin’ clear out to California because all them bigwigs out there wanted to hear about the research he’s doin’? Even paid ’is fare for ’im an’ put a big piece in the paper, didn’t they?”

“James, you never told us,” cried Lily Ann.

“Oh, one honor more or less doesn’t mean much to James,” I said. “He’s always winning some award or having some head of state or delegation of scholars drop in to offer him another research grant.”

That was true enough, Carter-Harrison’s activities being more inscrutable than anybody else’s and scholarly veneration for those great brains who are doing that which nobody else can figure out the whereof or whyfor being ever immense.

“Can’t be much money in it,” Abner snorted, “or he wouldn’t be drivin’ that rattletrap out there.”

“Oh, that’s mine,” I said. “My kid brother’s, I mean.” I felt I owed this to Aunt Aggie. “My Ferrari’s in the shop. James never drives himself. It wouldn’t be quite the thing, you know, for a man in his position.”

That was true enough, anyway. Carter-Harrison was too subject to sudden fits of cerebration to be allowed behind a wheel, but I didn’t explain that bit. I was enjoying the smug look on Aunt Aggie’s face. Lily Ann was impressed. Abner was interested. Ed and Fred said they had to go and practice.

“Practice what?” snapped their mother.

“Pistol shootin’. Volunteer police. You shoot, James?”

James said no, but he wouldn’t mind trying. Lily Ann said if there was any shooting she was going home and hide under the chesterfield because guns scared her silly.

“Let’s not even talk about horrid old guns. Let’s go look at the balloon again.”

So we all trooped out to look at the balloon, Ed and Fred strapping on their holsters in a what-the-heck sort of way as we went. As we stood goggling at James’s latest miracle of science, Abner Glutch expressed the opinion that it struck him as a mighty bothersome sort of way to hang out a few duds. Furthermore, he didn’t see why all that foolishness about letting out the helium was necessary. Why couldn’t they just pull it down?

“They did,” Aunt Aggie told him. “Ed an’ Fred got on one rope an’ Willie an’ James on the other—”

“Huh! Seems to me a man with a little beef to his bones could do it single-handed.”

“I’ll bet Abner could,” cried Lily Ann.

“He’s welcome to try,” snarled Carter-Harrison.

“Yep,” said Ed and Fred in unison.

So Abner took off his jacket, revealing a pair of lavender suspenders with baby-blue forget-me-nots on them, no doubt a gift from Lily Ann, and hauled. By George, he was a powerful cuss at that. In no time flat, he had Uncle Hector’s pantlegs dragging on the ground. Lily Ann applauded vociferously, then halted in mid-clap.

“Spotty, you bad boy! What are you—”

She got no farther. A shot rang out. Abner Glutch sprawled on the ground. Uncle Hector’s dress suit, released from his lifeless grasp, soared again skyward.

As doctors, Carter-Harrison and I dropped at once to our knees beside the fallen man. Diagnosis was no problem. There’s something all too obvious about a bullet through the back of the head.

“We’ll have to call the police, Aunt Aggie,” said Carter-Harrison.

“We’re the police,” said Ed, or Fred.

“Sort of, anyways,” said Fred, or Ed.

“Yes, well.” Carter-Harrison groped for words to explain tactfully that it wasn’t the done thing for suspects to arrest each other. Before he’d succeeded, Lily Ann screamed and fell into a swoon beside her dead bridegroom.

Aunt Aggie took over. “Pick ’er up, Fred. Bring ’er in the house. Step lively. Ed, you call the state troopers. Some dern fool hunter takin’ a pot shot at that balloon to be cute, I’ll be bound.”

If I were a mother who had two sons with revolvers strapped to their waists and a grudge against the man who’d married the object of their combined affections, I might have said the same thing. But why would the hunter have waited till the balloon was on the ground with a group of people clustered around it before he shot?

I was cursing myself for not having made Ed and Fred drop their guns before they took off when I noticed Spotty. Be cussed and be darned if that goat hadn’t rolled his oil drum up against the house, directly under the cleat from which Abner hadn’t bothered to cast off the guy ropes. He was up on top of it with his fore hooves braced against the clapboards and his neck stretched out like a camel’s, yanking down lengths of that new manila line and gobbling them as if they’d been spaghetti.

“Hey,” I yelled, but too late. The balloon was free, traveling low and fast over the treetops on an offshore breeze, carrying with it the clothes reel and Uncle Hector’s dress suit. Carter-Harrison leaped to his feet.

“Williams, got your car keys?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. Come on.”

“The police will think we’re running away,” I protested as he hustled me into the Chevy.

He didn’t bother to answer, just licked his finger and held it out the car window to see how the wind was blowing. “South-southeast by a half east. She can’t be making more than three knots. Full speed ahead to the harbor.”

“But if it’s blowing out to sea—”

“Step on it.”

I could see why he wanted me out of the way. I’d seen gunshot wounds enough during my internship in the emergency room. Abner had been shot from only a short distance, obviously by either Ed or Fred. It didn’t matter which. The twins would ditch both their guns before the state troopers arrived, get hold of two others—it wouldn’t be hard in hunting country—and swear those were the ones they’d been carrying. Aunt Aggie would back them up. Lily Ann wouldn’t know the difference. The bullet would never be traced. Aunt Aggie’s yarn of somebody taking a wild pot shot at the balloon would hold. I was abetting a murder.

I knew it, and I kept going. I gunned that old can for all she was worth, praying the tires wouldn’t pop or the engine fall out. We hurtled over rock and sand, through potholes and ditches, finally made it over the rise, and spied the balloon.

“Thar she blows!” cried Carter-Harrison. “Faster, Williams.”

There was nothing ahead of us but a sharp slope and a lot of water. I whizzed downhill with my foot on the gas and my heart in my brakes, skidded out onto a wooden dock, and managed somehow to stop two feet from the end. Dead ahead of us, Uncle Hector’s clawhammer coat was skimming the wavetops. Beside us, a lone lobsterman was standing in his boat with his mouth wide open and his eyes bulging. Again, Carter-Harrison grabbed my arm and hurled me aboard.

“Follow that clothes reel,” he barked.

The lobsterman stared at Carter-Harrison, at the balloon, and at the twenty-dollar bill which I, with a flash of psychological insight, was waving under his nose. I added a second twenty. He nodded once, and cast off.

Out we pounded, into the chop. The clothes reel skipped along in front of us. Sometimes it was almost within our reach, then a ruffle of wind would send it skimming on ahead.

“Great-uncle Hector always was an exasperating old devil,” muttered Carter-Harrison.

“I think I’m getting seasick,” I said.

“Comin’ on to blow,” said the lobsterman.

With that, Carter-Harrison grabbed a boathook, poised it like a harpoon, and let fly. There came a giant pop, then a tangle of canvas and clothesline lay sprawled on the water.

“Oh, jolly good shot,” I yelled.

“She’s goin’ down,” grunted the lobsterman.

“Pole’s too well ballasted,” groaned Carter-Harrison. Waiting not to repine, he tore off his wind-breaker, kicked off his boots, and dived. Seconds later, his hand popped up among the wreckage, waving Uncle Hector’s clawhammer coat like a soggy banner.

“Catch, Williams,” he shouted. “I’m going down for the pants.”

I retrieved the coat, laid it over a lobster trap, and stood by to help him aboard. As he reappeared, dripping and triumphant, I held out my hands.

“Take these first,” he spluttered.

I grabbed the pinstriped bundle, tossed it behind me on the floorboards, and hauled him over the gunwale. “Got a blanket or something?” I asked the lobsterman.

He didn’t speak or move, just stood there gaping down at Uncle Hector’s trousers.

“Great balls of fire, they’re alive!” Carter-Harrison bent and snatched up the writhing garment. Out of the left leg slithered a six-pound haddock.

“Don’t s’pose you’d care to set ’em again?” suggested the lobsterman.

“No,” said Carter-Harrison through chattering teeth. “I think we’ve caught what we’re after.”

He shook the pants again. Out of the hip pocket dropped a gun, one like Ed’s or Fred’s. But it wasn’t Ed’s or Fred’s. On the butt were carved in fancy letters the initials
C.H.

“C.H.,” I gasped. “Not—not Carter—”

“No, not Carter. Claude. Claude Harrison.”

“You don’t mean Lily Ann—”

“Oh yes.” Carter-Harrison had got his wind-breaker around him now, and taken a medicinal snort out of a flat bottle the lobsterman produced from behind the bait tub. “It was obvious from the start. Lily Ann, as you must have noticed, is a remarkably attractive woman. I asked myself what somebody like her could see in an oaf like Claude.”

“You asked Ed and Fred, too,” I reminded him.

“So I did. They didn’t know, either. Therefore, there could be only one reasonable answer.”

“Fifty acres of prime seaweed,” I cried.

“Precisely. Claude then died under circumstances which would have been considered mysterious if Claude hadn’t been such a clumsy lout and Lily Ann such a persuasive weeper. The widow was free to reopen negotiations with Abner Glutch, which she now believes herself, no doubt, to have concluded satisfactorily. She probably didn’t intend quite such a brief honeymoon, but the chance came up and she took it. We needn’t waste any blame on ourselves for providing the opportunity, Williams. If the fortuitous combination of the clothes rack, the balloon, and Great-uncle Hector’s dress suit hadn’t provided her with a way to get rid of the murder weapon, she’d have thought of something else.

“I don’t doubt it,” I agreed. “Lily Ann must be a pretty darn smart operator, to have hauled out that gun and shot Abner, then ditch it in the old man’s suit and kick the oil drum over to where the goat could reach the ropes, all without anybody’s noticing.

“I expect she already had the gun in her hand,” said Carter-Harrison. “I noticed she had her hands tucked up inside the sleeves of that loose, fluffy coat she was wearing when we went outside. It’s a natural thing for a woman to do on a chilly day, so why should anyone have thought anything of it? Then she yelled at the goat, and we all automatically turned our heads to look at him. That gave her a chance to shoot Abner. Of course he became the center of interest while she did her other little chores and pulled a faint so we wouldn’t find her lacking in proper wifely concern. Well, we’d better get back to the house before she marries Ed or Fred.”

I shook my head. “It won’t be Ed or Fred. If you ask me, Lily Ann’s looking forward to marrying a rich and famous doctor from Boston. Maybe I laid it on a bit too thick.”

“Good God!” Carter-Harrison picked up the haddock, wrapped it thoughtfully in Uncle Hector’s coat, laid it back with the pants, and took another swig from the lobsterman’s bottle. “Well,” he sighed, “some day perhaps I’ll meet a woman who loves me for myself alone.”

He was moody all the way home, sitting there with the haddock, the pistol, and Uncle Hector’s suit in his lap. When we got there, Aunt Aggie was still doctoring Lily Ann for hysterics while the state troopers stood around looking helpless. When we showed them the revolver that had come out of Uncle Hector’s hip pocket and explained the modus operandi by which we believed it to have got there, though, Lily Ann recovered fast and demanded to be allowed to call her lawyer. They said she could do it from the station. She began to cry again, but it didn’t seem to be helping her much. State troopers are smarter than men like Claude and Abner Glutch.

As they departed, Aunt Aggie faced her nephew, tight-lipped. “Well, James, you’ve really done it this time.”

“But Aunt Aggie,” he protested, “what else could I do? That woman would have wiped out half of Beagleport and never batted an eyelash, if somebody hadn’t stopped her.”

“I ain’t sayin’ you was wrong. I’m just remindin’ you of how Claude’s father’s will was wrote. When he died, the farm went to Claude. When Claude died, it went to Lily Ann. But a murderer ain’t allowed to profit from ’er crime, which means Lily Ann never inherited at all. An’ that means it comes back to us. An’ that means the whole shebang, includin’ that goldern goat.”

“Oh gosh, Aunt Aggie,” cried Carter-Harrison, as well he might. “Well, never mind. I’ll think of something.”

“Do me a favor,” said his aunt. “Quit thinkin’. Now git on upstairs an’ take off them wet clothes.”

So that was that and there we were: Ed and Fred out in the back yard building a goat house for Spotty, James crouched beside the stove wearing an old flannel nightshirt of his Cousin Raymond’s and soaking his feet in a pail of hot water and mustard, Aunt Aggie boning the haddock for chowder. Nobody was saying anything. I felt uncomfortable.

Finally I broke the silence. “Say, James, you know those things they have at the laundromat, that you put a quarter in and—”

He was alive again, his eyes flashing, his flannel-clad arms flailing, his feet spraying mustard water all over the carpet. “That’s it! Aunt Aggie, have you a mail order catalogue in the house?”

“I expect likely.” She rubbed the fish smell off her hands with a hunk of cut lemon and went to get it. “Goin’ to order yourself a new brain, James?”

“No, by thunder, I’m going to order you an automatic clothes dryer.”

“A clothes dryer? Why, I never … well, now, that just might … you know, James, I always did suspicion there might be a speck o’ common sense under all that intellect o’ yours. Willie, go call in the twins an’ tell ’em to get cleaned up for supper. I think it’s about time we cooked you city folks a decent lobster.”