Jimmy the Stick (7 page)

No one moved until Mrs. Conway tapped the old man's arm. Startled, he looked up from his wineglass. “Mr. Mears, it's Mr. Spencer for you.” The old fellow stood, clearing his throat and pulling at his shirtfront before he shuffled out.

Mrs. Conway looked at the clock by the bell grid and frowned. “It's late for the master to ring. Oliver, did he say anything about going out tonight?”

“Yeah,” Oh Boy said, and got up.

“Then you'd best see that the big car is ready.”

Another bell sounded and the number-two light came on, then a third bell with the number-one light.

“Aye, that's it then.” Mrs. Conway stood up too. “Nix, see to Mrs. Spencer and the baby. You, gunman, make yourself useful. Check on the baby.”

The brindle cat stayed where it was.

Back in the library, Catherine Pennyweight was on the telephone. She said, “Yes . . . Fine . . . I'll take care of it,” and hung up.

“There you are. Our pilot called about rough weather coming our way; he wants to leave as soon as possible.”

Ten minutes later Oh Boy brought the Duesenberg around and loaded Spence's leather bags into the trunk. Flora, in a fur-trimmed jacket, fussed over the baby that Connie Nix carried. She wore a light coat over her uniform but didn't seem to mind the cold night air. Spence and his mother-in-law were in deep conversation. I sat in front with Oh Boy.

We drove for twenty minutes along dark country roads. I thought we were going to Newark until we came out of the trees to an open, foggy field, with the road leading to a small collection of buildings and a runway lined with lights. Oh Boy steered past the first place to a tall hangar behind it. A large monoplane with three engines rolled out onto the tarmac. It had a shiny, squarish aluminum body beneath the wide wing. The nose pointed skyward but the belly was low, barely clearing the ground. Even idling, the sound of engines hammered the air. Three guys in Pennyweight Petroleum coveralls busied themselves around it. I stared in absolute wonderment. I'd never seen a plane that close on the ground before, and I had no idea they were so damn big. When I got out of the car, I could smell gasoline, exhaust fumes, and motor oil, and I felt the engines' vibrations through the soles of my shoes.

A Cadillac with New York plates was parked nearby. Oh Boy opened the back doors and the trunk of the Duesenberg and carried Spence's bags to an open door in the side of the plane. Two men, who had to be lawyers in their expensive overcoats, got out of the Caddy and huddled with Spence before they climbed aboard. Another chauffeur lugged their bags. Spence returned to his car to embrace Flora. He briefly took his son from Connie Nix and kissed him.

Then he grabbed my shoulder. “Keep my family safe, Jimmy. That's all I ask.” He was yelling against the noise of the engines, and his voice sounded different. I saw that he blinked back tears before he turned and hurried to the plane.

The big plane lumbered into the darkness at the far end of the runway so slowly I couldn't believe it would ever leave the ground. But then the throb of the engines became much louder, and we watched as the glittering silvery thing turned around and rumbled back down the runway. The tail lifted slowly and the plane floated up into the night.

I was about to get into the front seat of the Duesenberg again when Mrs. Pennyweight gestured for me to sit in the back. I took the jump seat beside a polished wooden cabinet, facing the three women and the little boy. Flora fished a cigarette out of her purse. For a moment she seemed to be waiting for me to offer a light. Then her mother pinched her arm and demanded, “Give.”

Flora winced, handed over a smoke, and they both fired up. Connie Nix shifted farther into the corner.

“Walter will be gone for at least five days, probably more. I believe that we're safe enough during daylight in our home,” Mrs. Pennyweight told me.

“But at night . . .”

“Precisely.”

“I'm used to night work. Flora, can you handle a gun?”

Her eyes widened in alarm, and her mother shook her head.

“Miss Nix?”

She cut her eyes to Mrs. Pennyweight, who nodded.

“Yes, a rifle. I'm not as familiar with pistols.”

Mrs. Pennyweight said, “We have guns. Walter refurbished the shooting gallery.”

I almost smiled. Of course. Spence would.

Oh Boy stopped in front of the house. Flora and her mother got out first and Flora immediately let out a shriek so loud it hurt my ears. Connie Nix held the baby close and sat tight. I hustled out and saw what had Flora so upset. It was a ladder, a tall ladder leaning against the side of the house and reaching up to an open second-story window. A white curtain was fluttering through it. I guess I should have stayed there, but I told Oh Boy and Connie Nix to lock the doors, and then followed Mrs. Pennyweight into the house. Flora kept screaming.

The older woman detoured into the library for the Purdey. I went straight upstairs. On the second floor I turned away from the hallway that led to my room and gimped to the balcony that overlooked the main room. There were more rooms on the other side. I thought that the closed door straight ahead led to the room with the open window. I had the little Mauser in my mitt when I threw open the door. It was dark and something smelled god-awful bad. Mrs. Pennyweight shoved me aside and hit the light switch.

In that first second when the light came on, I saw all the blood and what I thought was a dead baby. Gorge rose in my throat and I fought it back. The room was a nursery with a bed and an open cabinet with stacks of diapers, blankets, baby clothes, and more cardboard boxes of the baby food I'd seen in the kitchen. There was a waist-high table next to the open window. Sticky blackish red blood had soaked through a white blanket on the table and pooled on the floor beneath it. It also covered a doll, a headless doll that was pinned to the table with a knife through its belly. Bloody handprints were smeared on the wall, the windowsill, and the gauzy curtain.

Even across the room, I could see that the knife was a cheap piece of work with a fake mother-of-pearl handle. It folded down to about five inches long, easy to hide and easy to throw away. Just about every cheap mug who couldn't afford a piece carried something like it. At one time, so had I.

The doll and the blood and the slaughterhouse smell got to Mrs. Pennyweight the same way they got to me. I heard her sharp gasp when she saw it too. She recovered quickly and her expression settled into a hard, angry frown.

Sheriff Kittner and Deputy Parker showed up a few minutes after she called them. We were waiting outside. The sheriff looked like he'd been rousted from his bed or a barstool. He was boozy and bleary in a rumpled blue suit. Parker was still in his spiffy uniform. The sheriff wandered around with a flashlight at the foot of the ladder, pointing out things to Parker. Mrs. Pennyweight and I got bored watching them and went inside for a drink.

The lawmen found us in the library later.

The sheriff cleared his throat and held his hat in his hands as he made his report. By then he'd pulled himself together and tried to sound like he knew exactly what he was talking about. “I make out two sets of footprints outside. One of them goes out into the woods. The way I see it, they abandoned the ladder and took off when they saw your car approaching. They went down the service road around back to the driveway. There are fresh tire tracks there and we found something—a bloody steel pail.

“We talked to the staff. They were downstairs and didn't hear anything. According to Mrs. Conway, the doll isn't one of the boy's toys, and Dietz says the ladder doesn't belong here either.

“Now, you say that you were gone for an hour. Where were you—”

“That's right, about an hour,” Catherine Pennyweight said before he could go on, and he knew not to ask where she'd been.

Deputy Parker took over, sounding embarrassed and unsure. “Mrs. Pennyweight, I've taken a look at the pail we found and I'm pretty sure it came from Bartham's Butcher Shop. He uses it for slop.”

She gave him a sharp look.

“I hear talk in town,” he continued. “Some of the merchants are unhappy. Well, they're more than unhappy, some of them, about payment. When they've had enough to drink, they talk about coming out here and getting what they're owed. Have any of them bothered you?”

She stared hard at both of them, letting them stew for a long moment before she snapped back, “I will not hear this kind of talk in my own home. Yes, it is true that the household finances have been a bit disorganized since my husband's death, but everyone knows that the Pennyweights pay their bills. We have been the best customers that many of these men have ever had and if they are displeased in any way, I will be happy to take my business elsewhere. But I refuse to believe that any of them would do something this vicious, particularly Mr. Bartham.”

The sheriff said, “We'll see what the state police think.”

“No,” she interrupted. “I will not have them trampling around my property. That's simply out of the question.”

“But Mrs. Pennyweight,” the sheriff protested, “we have to let them know about this. It's part of the Lindbergh investigation, I'm certain.”

“No,” she repeated, more firmly. By then, she'd lost patience with the man. “There's nothing more to be done here tonight. You may go now.”

They left.

So, what did it mean? The first moment when I'd seen that damn doll and thought it was a real baby still churned my stomach. I didn't believe that the Lindbergh kidnappers had come out to Spence's place to steal little Ethan. Maybe, I thought, the deputy was right and somebody had bloodied up the room and the doll to scare Mrs. Pennyweight. But if that were so, all he'd done was make her really mad. Seemed more likely to me that it was just a threat, a damn nasty threat that I had to take seriously. But who'd done it and why?

For the moment, I didn't really care. I went downstairs to the kitchen, where I found Mr. Mears and asked him to take me around and show me all of the doors that gave access to the house.

Back up in the main room were the big double front doors. They were always kept locked unless visitors were expected. Smaller single doors off the conservatory and dining room opened onto porches and were always locked. Another set of wide double doors led to a ballroom. He opened them and I saw a wide, dim cold room with several sets of French doors on the far wall. The wind whistled through them, making the ballroom colder than the rest of the place.

He led me upstairs to the second floor. There was a porch off of Mrs. Pennyweight's rooms but other than that, no outside doors. Mears had already closed and locked the shutters of the nursery and the empty guest rooms. Servants' quarters were on the third floor. They had no outside access and small windows.

Downstairs in the kitchen, there was only one door. Oh Boy was sitting at the table. I asked him to show me the guns.

The gun room was at the far end of the basement, behind a wooden door thick enough to muffle the sound of gunshots. Like the kitchen, it had whitewashed walls. They were covered with mounted animal heads along with photographs, mostly of a smiling Mr. Pennyweight, his guns, and the dead trophies he'd shot with them. There were also pictures of a girl about twelve years old with a long, ruddy face. I guessed this was the older sister, Mandelina. She wore hunting clothes and posed with a deer or elk with a wide rack of antlers. She held a lever-action Winchester rifle, her father beaming proudly beside her. I studied the picture more closely. The resemblance to Flora was strong. But Mandelina seemed much more confident, almost cocky. You could tell that she was only a few years away from becoming a real looker.

Oh Boy took a key from a peg and unlocked the doors of a glass-fronted gun case. The racks inside held a collection of expensive shotguns and rifles. A second case held muzzle-loaders and older military pieces. Beside them was a workbench for cleaning the weapons and reloading ammunition.

Oh Boy opened a drawer and said, “Here's the pistols.”

The drawer was lined with green felt, with spaces cut out for a dozen or so handguns. These were the familiar guns of my youth: Police Positive, Browning Hi-Power, and my own favorite, the Detective Special snub-nose .38. Another Mauser, the big broom-handle model, was in the center of the drawer. The largest cutout was empty. It was a simple angled shape meant for a Colt .45 automatic. I guessed that Spence had taken it on his trip.

I walked to the dark shooting range and hit one of two switches on the wall by the counter. Lights came down the narrow passageway. At the far end, a spotlight was aimed at a paper target already peppered with holes, suspended from an electric pulley-and-chain system. I snapped on the other switch. A motor whirred and the target glided back to me. I started counting the holes and stopped at thirty. There was a coffee can on the counter with a dozen or so .45 shell casings at the bottom. More littered the floor of the range. Spence had been practicing.“Oh Boy, what do you know about this trip?”

“Jeez, Walter's been working on it for almost a year now. We've been going into the city to meet with the company lawyers two, three times a week. Sometimes Saturday, too. Leave first thing in the morning, don't get back until after dark. Oh boy, do I hate those days. And the shysters have been coming out here, too. I talk to the other drivers, who say this is quite the big deal. I'll be glad when it's over, that's for sure.”

I went back to the pistol drawer and found the cutout for the little Abercrombie & Fitch Mauser. Before I put it away, I offered it to Oh Boy.

He shook his head and frowned. “No, I don't like guns no more. You know that.”

Some guys go a little nuts over guns. They've got to have the biggest, shiniest, loudest piece, wearing fancy shoulder holsters and such, making sure everybody sees what they're carrying, particularly women. You've got to watch out for guys like that. Oh Boy was just the opposite. Had been for years and he hadn't changed.