Scare Tactics (32 page)

Dore Guthrie didn’t look up from the piano at the other end of the bedroom. Her hair was hanging in her eyes and her tongue was clenched between her teeth in concentration as she brought her hands down again and again on the keyboard. She was wearing red silk stockings and a short nightgown and one leg was tucked under her on the piano bench. There was a reek of whiskey in the room despite the air coming in through smashed French doors leading to the balcony.

“Oh, Dore,” Lucy murmured, and Dore looked up slowly, her hands poised over the keyboard.

The room had been smashed to pieces. Drapes were pulled down, covers were torn from the bed, pictures hung in tatters from crooked frames, lamps were overturned, and furniture was slashed so that gobs of upholstering oozed from the wounds. The whiskey odor came from broken bottles beneath the overturned liquor cabinet.

“Hi,” Dore said, and a shy, sticky, lopsided smile appeared on her face. She seemed about to topple from the piano bench, but put out a hand to steady herself; then she beat her stiff fingers methodically and unmelodically against the keys. “Chopin,” she explained giddily, and reached for a glass on top of the piano. She hit it with the side of her hand and it fell to the rug.

Practice crossed to the balcony doors and went outside to look over the railing. From a nearby oak a man who could jump and who had little to fear might reach the railing and pull himself up. Most of the glass was scattered inside, on the carpet. He shut the remains of the doors and stepped over the dragging draperies.

Lucy was trying to put the robe around Dore’s shoulders as Dore flailed at her.

“You jes let me alone!”

“Dore, don’t be that way.”

“I’m gonna sit right here on his highenmighty panno stool ’til he gets home ’n’ gonna have it out with ’im.”

“Did you do all this, Dore?” Practice said sharply. She looked up at him, then guiltily at the wrecked room. She shook her head, her eyes widening in a protestation of innocence.

“Thass way it was when I came in.”

“Did you see anybody in here, Dore? Anybody at all?” Her eyelids fell and she gave a little shrug and almost collapsed. Lucy held Dore up and helped her put on the robe.

“Iss all over,” Dore sobbed. “All over.” She struggled up suddenly and lurched to the middle of the room, looking around as if she were just becoming aware of the damage.

“Oh, God!” she wailed. “God! Gonna think it was me!” She stumbled again, and Practice put out a hand to hold her. She clutched at the front of his coat, tears running from her eyes. “Gotta help me, Jim. I didn’t do it. Gotta believe me. Only came in five, ten minutes ago.”

“I believe you, Dore. Somebody climbed up to the balcony and smashed his way in. Didn’t you hear anything?”

She shook her head again, several times, her eyes on his face, her legs buckling. Lucy put a hand gently on Dore’s shoulder and Dore turned quickly, her teeth bared. She pointed a shaking finger at Lucy.

“You did it!”

“Dore ...”

“Sure, make me look bad! Bad with Chris, bad with John, bad, bad! Chris doesn’t want me, John—do you come up here an’ get in his bed, Lucy? Is he sleeping with you?” Nothing happened in Lucy’s face except that she turned a little paler. She didn’t take her eyes from Dore’s face, and Dore couldn’t tolerate the condemnation she saw there.

She covered her own face with her hands and sobbed, “Well, who is he sleeping with? It isn’t me!”

“Go to bed, Dore,” Lucy said in a voice like a lash. Obediently, Dore stumbled off, peeking from between her lingers, and Lucy walked stiffly after her.

Practice called downstairs on the intercom, and presently Captain Liles entered the Governor’s room. Practice showed him the balcony doors, and they went out on the balcony with a flashlight. There were traces of mud on the fresh paint of the railing and half a footprint on the floor.

“A size thirteen, maybe fourteen,” Liles muttered, examining the mark. “Let’s say he came in over the wall from the bluff side, ambushed the one dog, climbed the tree, and look a jump for the balcony. He must have arms like a gorilla. Then he popped out the glass, came inside, and—what’s missing? Maybe the wreckage is a cover.”

“The Governor will have to tell you that,” Practice said. “Offhand I’d say he only has about five hundred dollars’ worth of personal jewelry. No papers here that would be valuable to anyone.”

“Well,” the Captain said, “much as I hate to, I’m going to have to interrupt his politickin’ and get him over here.”

“There’s a call for you, Mr. Practice,” one of the troopers said, and Practice went inside. He took the call on the bathroom telephone, where he could shut the door and not be distracted.

“Jim? Bill Dylan. What’s all the excitement up on the hill?”

“Looks like a simple breaking and entering,” Practice said, wondering to himself exactly what it did look like. “Any news for me?”

“You’re in luck; the prints were on file here. I’ve got a dossier, and I’ll send it over by messenger. The prints belong to Billie Charmian, black, female, age about forty-two. Occupation listed as ‘singer.’ Her last known address was Fort Frontenac.”

“Criminal record?”

“No. Cabaret entertainers are required to be fingerprinted in this state. That’s why she’s on file.”

“Billie Charmian, huh?”

“That’s it. Ever hear of her?”

“No, I haven’t. But Guthrie might know who she is.” He thanked the FBI man and hung up.

Liles’s troopers had taken over the bedroom, and there was nothing more he could do there.

Lucy was coming out of Dore’s bedroom as he left, and she elevated an eyebrow and lifted her hands in a gesture of resignation and amusement. They went downstairs together.

“I’ve got to see about poor Trudy,” she said. “I wonder if the vet has come?”

“Dore calmed down?”

“Yes, she apologized for—for certain things. After that, she was good and sick to her stomach.” Lucy’s lip8 quirked sardonically. Then she became serious. “Jim, who could it have been? Someone with a long-standing grudge? The Governor’s bedroom is a complete wreck.”

He shook his head. “Hard to say, Lucy. Listen, from now on, I want you to keep an even tighter check on Chris. Lock his door after he’s in bed, if you have to.”

She nodded ruefully. “I’ve already started.”

“And have a talk with the principal of his school tomorrow. Make sure that someone has an eye on him every minute he’s there. I know they watch the kids pretty carefully, but ...”

Her eyes flashed with sudden alarm. “Jim? What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. But there’s been a lot of violence around here tonight. Only a dog was killed, so maybe most people won’t find it as shocking as I do. I’m going to be damned sure, though, that nobody gets within a block of this place from now on without an airtight reason.”

John Guthrie came in the front door of the mansion, a mixed coterie of lawmen with him. He shed his coat and dropped it on a convenient chair. He looked as if he had just fought to the limit against a more experienced man, and was Hulking because someone had cheated him out of his victory celebration.

“Jim! What the hell is this? I’ve got troopers coming out my behind.”

“A prowler knifed Josh and Trudy, and broke into your room by way of the balcony. Better have a look.”

Guthrie walked quickly to the steps, then stopped and glanced back at Practice.

“Dore ...?”

“She’s all right. A little frightened, that’s all.”

“Who saw him?”

“I did. Just a glimpse.”

“Liles, your men pick him up yet?”

“No, sir.”

“My God. What did he want?”

Captain Liles was getting red in the face from his trips up and down the stairs.

“Sir, could you check your valuables? We’d like to know what’s missing.”

Guthrie nodded. He went to a high walnut bureau; Practice and a trooper helped him set it upright. A strongbox had fallen from a bottom drawer, but the lock was intact. The Governor recovered his jewelry box from beneath a pile of shirts, and opened it.

“Nothing missing,” he said, looking around again. “I wonder if I have any whiskey left?”

“There’s a bottle in the kitchen.”

Practice and Captain Liles followed him to the kitchen, where he poured a stiff shot of whiskey over ice and sat in the corner on a stool, next to the refrigerator, his tie loosened and his socks falling down around his ankles.

“I wonder if you’ll get him,” he said vaguely.

“We may,” Liles said. “I’ve got twenty men out, and Chief Robards has called in all off-duty detectives. Do you have any ideas, Governor?”

Guthrie shrugged. “Most men have enemies. I have more than my share. It’s human nature to want to do in your enemy, but because we’re civilized, we tell ourselves that it’s not really possible, that violence is an oddity, a freak, rather than a way of life.”

“According to Jim,” Liles said, “the prowler may be hurt. One or both of the dogs got him. I’ve stationed a man at both hospitals. Now I’d like to know if we can let the press have the full story.”

“No,” Guthrie said, scowling.

“It might make the difference between getting this man and not getting him.”

“Sorry, Captain. I don’t want any headlines. Just give out a statement to the effect that there was a prowler; he got away; and there’s no evidence he was inside the mansion at all.”

“Yes, sir,” Liles agreed reluctantly, and excused himself. “Well?” Practice demanded, after Liles had left.

Guthrie smiled wryly. “Well, what?”

“Did you see A.B. Sharp?”

“He came in ten minutes before the dessert was served, wearing a moldy old tuxedo with lapels that pointed up past his shoulders, and took his seat. He sat there smiling all through the speeches with his hearing aid turned down, and afterward there was a great milling around, with Sharp in the middle. He put one hand on me and a hand on the Major, and said, ‘Well, gentlemen, don’t you think it’s time you started considering the party instead of yourselves?’ Then he invited myself, the Major, our immediate families, and any friends whom we considered indispensable to his farm next weekend. And there the Major and I are going to cut for high card.”

“That’s all Sharp had to say?”

Guthrie nodded. “Word for word. The next instant, so help me, he vanished. The whole evening reminded me of the tea party in
Alice in Wonderland.
The Major, the white rabbit, who looked just like A.B. Sharp, and little old Alice, that’s me.”

Guthrie’s glass slipped from his hand and smashed on the floor. He looked at it wearily.

“It’s all over, Jim. If the Major were going to win, there wouldn’t be any conference at Whitestone Farm next weekend. The Major knew. I watched his eyes while Sharp tendered his invitation. Terrible eyes, aren’t they? I never realized it before. The old, yellow eyes of a proud and brutal man, whom I happened to love once. He forced the knife into my hands and now he’s too proud to ask me to pull it out from between his ribs. My God, if I were half of that man! You don’t see it, I suppose; you never knew him. Should have seen him, Jim, after the war, in his full-dress uniform. Tall and straight, by God, not a line of that uniform wrong, brass and gold and gleaming boots. He carried a sword that Marshal Pétain himself gave him, beautiful damned thing, Swedish steel and razor sharp, with a hilt of gold that flashed in the sun. I suppose I had the Major in my mind’s eye the day I headed for Canada to join the Air Force ...”

“Where did you know Billie Charmian, John?” Practice nuked casually.

“Billie?” He frowned. “Where did you hear that name? She called herself that. She was Wilma, Wilma Croft ...”

“Ted Croft’s sister?”

“Yes. She joined the band the winter of ’38 in Chicago. Sang with us for a while.” Guthrie swallowed, rubbing his forehead. “I’m having a letdown here. Suppose I ought to get to bed. Billie—she was only seventeen, but she had the voice. Could have been one of the great ones. Ted never encouraged her, though. He was far gone, that winter. T.B. Died late in the spring. I couldn’t get to his funeral.” He lifted his head abruptly. “What about her, Jim?”

“Bill Dylan called a few minutes ago. Those were her fingerprints on the crank letter.”

Guthrie stared at him.

“Billie? She sent that thing?”

“I only know that her fingerprints were on the drawing. What can you tell me about Billie, John?”

He was still staring at Practice blankly. Then he closed his eyes and put his hands over his face.

“Tell? I haven’t seen her, or heard from her, in almost twenty-five years. I haven’t heard anything
about
her.”

“Her last known address was Fort Frontenac. She’s been licensed to sing in nightclubs in this state since 1945.”

“Fort Frontenac? That’s where Ted lived. I was part of a combo playing in a dive down on the riverfront when he was putting his last band together. Nineteen thirty-seven or thereabouts.”

“How well did you know Billie?”

There was an irritable edge to his voice. “We played together, lived apart. The original group had Ted on clarinet, Darby Post on drums, and Liberty Leeds playing bass. Later on Ted added Phil Petigo, a tenor sax, and somebody named Kelvin on trombone—he never amounted to much. Darby and I were white, the others black. Billie probably hadn’t been with us more than three months before I quit to join the RCAF. I didn’t know her well”—he lifted his head and stared at Practice—“but I knew her well enough. She would never send anything like that damned picture. Billie was a shy, quiet girl, and she read a lot. Ted took care of her, good care. He wouldn’t have let her travel with the group, but there was no one in Fort Frontenac whom he trusted to look after her. Even knowing how good Billie was, Ted didn’t want her to sing, but she begged him for months until he gave in. She was only seventeen, as I said.”