Treasure Box (16 page)

"Sorry, Quentin, but he must have seen our surveillance team," said Wayne. "Doubled back twice and we lost him."

"Him?" That was something, Quentin figured, to know it was a man.

"A guy in a messenger service uniform. So you were right, she
didn't
just use a stamp."

"Guys from messenger services don't double back to avoid surveillance."

"Yeah, well, they assumed he
was
a messenger and the real quarry was whoever he brought the message to. And then he pulled his maneuver and he was gone."

"Well, the message arrived," said Quentin.

"You got a call?"

"A visit."

"And?"

"I learned nothing," said Quentin bitterly.

"How can you learn nothing? Who came?"

"Madeleine."

"So she's not dead?"

"Wayne, it wasn't the Madeleine you believe in, the flesh and blood one. It was the Madeleine who doesn't leave footprints."

"Quentin, how can I help you when you won't help me back?"

"Keep on believing I'm crazy if you want, Wayne. But don't let up on the investigation."

"Quentin, really. I'm trying to believe you. And you know me, I'm a lawyer, I can
act
like I believe my client whether I do or not. I learned that from watching the O. J. trial."

"OK, Wayne. It's cool."

"What is?"

"Madeleine visiting me. You not believing me no matter how hard you try. The investigators losing the messenger. Even if they don't find anything, I need them to keep going after everything."

"By the way, the deed to that house is in the name of a certain Anna Laurent Tyler. Seems she inherited from her mother, Delia Forrest Laurent, who got it from her late husband's will. It was originally built by a Laurent, though, back in the early 1800s."

"Any address for Anna Laurent Tyler?" Quentin was writing down the names. He remembered that in the graveyard there had been a Delia Forrest Laurent, Devoted Wife, sharing a headstone with Theodore Aurelius Laurent, Beloved Husband.

"Sure," said Wayne, "but it's the address of the house in the deed."

"Anna Laurent Tyler. That's something. The police chief in Mixinack said that she had a married daughter. Probably she didn't really marry a Duncan, but maybe we can get the true name out of the local papers. From the wedding announcement. A Tyler being given away by her mother, Anna Laurent Tyler."

"When?"

"I'd start about three years ago and work backward. How would I know? If I find out more from Chief Bolt today, I'll let you know."

"Today?" asked Wayne.

"I'm going back up to New York. To Mixinack."

"Why? Hair of the dog?"

"Yeah, well, this dog follows me around anyway, I might as well head for the doghouse."

"So you aren't missing the little woman as much as you thought."

"Let's say that last night's interview was painful."

"You have my sympathy, Quentin."

Chief Bolt's police department was in a graceful old city building, the kind made of huge stones with classical-looking pillars and lions in front. There were two police cars parked in back, in reserved stalls. Quentin pulled his rented Taurus into one of the Visitor spaces, went inside, and began wandering around in search of the police department. Apparently this was one of those small towns that lived by the principle that if you didn't know where something was, you had no business finding it. He would have asked for directions, but the place was deserted. Somewhere, though, somebody was typing. He finally found the source of the sound in the basement, behind an unmarked door. He knocked.

"Come in," said a woman.

He stuck his head in the room. "Just looking for the police department, ma'am."

"You found it."

"This? Right here?"

"Said so, didn't I?"

"I have an appointment with Chief Bolt."

She pointed toward a closed door behind her, then went back to her typing. Quentin hadn't realized that New York manners extended so far north.

Quentin knocked on the chief's door—which also had no sign. This time a man's voice told him to come in.

Bolt was a burly man with military-short hair, but he didn't have the air of rigidity about him that Quentin had always associated with that look. His uniform was a little tight on him, a little rumpled. And his face looked to have some warmth, as if he might just have a sense of humor. Not usually a cop thing.

"Hi, I'm Quentin Fears."

Bolt nodded, but didn't look up from the form he was filling out. So much for the warmth.

After a moment, Quentin realized that it wasn't a form at all, it was a crossword puzzle.

"Five-letter word for anxiety, has a G in the middle," said Bolt.

"Angst," said Quentin instantly.

"Spelled?"

"A-N-G-S-T."

"Oh, angst," said Bolt, pronouncing the
A
to rhyme with the vowel in
rang
.

"Need help with any others?" said Quentin.

"I would've got it eventually." He looked up at Quentin. "Younger than you sounded on the phone."

"No, I sounded like a guy my age," said Quentin. Once again, as he had on the phone, Quentin picked up Bolt's offhand manner, his bantering style.

Bolt grinned. The warmth Quentin had seen wasn't an illusion. "I figured I'd never see you, we got off to such a good start on the phone."

"Yeah, well, once you visit Mixinack, you keep on coming back."

"We ought to have that as a slogan. Put it on a sign out at the city limits."

"I got a million of 'em."

"Sit down, Mr. Fears." His tone was friendly now. Quentin's instinct had been right. Bolt liked a man who gave as good as he got.

Quentin sat down and looked around a little. The office was meticulously clean, despite the tattiness of it. And contrary to what Bolt had said on the phone, his desk had only a few papers on it.

"Looks like you're all caught up with your work," Quentin said.

"We're doing OK for the middle of a crime wave."

"Chief Bolt, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions."

"Really? Just a couple? Couldn't you phone?"

"I figured fair was fair, and you'd have some questions to ask me."

"Still, there's a phone. Why are you here?"

"Because when I get the answers to my questions, I want to be able to act on them immediately."

Bolt nodded. "I always feel that way, too. Found your wife yet?"

"As a matter of fact, I saw her last night. She's not missing anymore."

Bolt nodded more slowly. "Well, good. Why didn't she come along?"

"I didn't say she was back with me. Just that she wasn't missing."

Bolt sighed and recited:

The ways of love are strange and hard:

The love you want is always barred;

The love you have you want to change.

The ways of love are hard and strange.

"I didn't want to change my love," said Quentin.

"Did you like the poem? I wrote it."

"Did you? I thought I'd heard it before."

"Yeah, well, that's why I'm working in a police department in Mixinack instead of being lionized in the New York literary scene."

"You want to hear my questions?"

"I'm all ears."

"Where is Anna Laurent Tyler?"

"In a rest home."

"And where is that rest home?"

Bolt nodded slowly. "Well, now, what are you going to do when you locate it?

"Go see her."

"Won't do you any good," said Bolt.

"You don't know what I want to say to her."

"I don't care if you want to sing her the 'Anvil Chorus'."

"I hope you know the tenor part," said Quentin.

"She's pretty much a vegetable, son," said Bolt. "So you can talk to her all you want, but I don't see how it'll do you much good."

Quentin felt as if the air had been knocked out of his chest. "Can't be," he said.

"Can so," said the chief. "Well, look at that. The word that crosses
angst
at the
N
is
anvil
. And I just said
anvil
a minute ago. Can you believe that?"

"Just one of the many marvels of an afternoon in Mixinack."

"You still want to see her?"

"I can find out where she is eventually, but instead of making me have my investigators call every licensed rest home in the state, why not just tell me?"

"Better than that. I'll take you."

"In a police car? Will you flash the lights and run the siren?"

"In your car. You think I'm going to use up part of my monthly mileage on giving a rich man a free ride?"

"When can you go?"

"Now," said Bolt, pushing back from his desk. "I haven't had lunch. You like chili?"

"No." Quentin followed him out into the hall.

"That's cause you haven't had Bella's chili. Is that really the coat you came in?"

"Yes."

"Nobody told you it was winter?"

"I don't plan to hike around outside a lot."

"In the north, in the winter, you should always dress as if you were going to have to walk home ten miles in a blizzard from a car stuck in a drift."

"That's how my driver should dress. I should dress for sitting in the limo drinking champagne while I wait for him to get back with help."

By now they were outside. Quentin led the way to his Taurus.

"Oh, I see," said Bolt. "That was a joke. You don't have a driver."

"You don't have a coat, either."

"Man, I must be stupid," said Bolt.

Since snow was falling steadily now, he had a point.

They came out of the parking lot and Bolt directed him until he was heading south on the two-lane road that led past the Laurent house. Quentin realized at once that they weren't heading for the rest home at all. Sure enough, when they got to the half-hidden driveway Bolt directed him to turn left and go on in.

"I see quite a few new tire tracks since I was here last," said Quentin.

"Yeah, they're all mine," said Bolt. "Had to come here and take pictures of the footprints before they got covered."

"Oh," said Quentin. "Evidence?"

"Definitely. I just don't know what it's evidence
of
. Now that your wife is back in the land of the living."

"If you can call it living," said Quentin. "A joke."

"I got it. First time I heard that, it was Andy Devine in some cavalry movie. Or maybe it was
Rin Tin Tin
on TV when I was a kid. Was he in that?"

"Before my time," said Quentin.

They got out of the car and Quentin dutifully tagged along up to the front door.

"Hope you don't mind the detour," said Bolt.

"I kind of expected it," said Quentin.

"Just wanted you to walk me through what you did the night you spent here."

"Do I need an attorney?"

"Don't you have one?"

"I meant with me."

"I'm not going to arrest you for trespass, Mr. Fears. Therefore you have no need for an attorney."

"Am I really that stupid-looking?"

"Humor me, Mr. Fears."

They were standing in the middle of the entry hall. Quentin looked at the fireplace but didn't see any talking rats. The door to the parlor had no writing on it. And the chief was a strong man with a pistol. All of this made Quentin feel much better about being in this room again.

"I never saw this room till I came to see Mrs. Tyler off to the rest home," said Bolt.

"Bet it was cleaner then."

"Much. The glaziers are supposed to have come this morning to fix the window in the library. It was broken, you know."

"I know."

"I used to come to the back door all the time. Downstairs. There's a ramp going down to the kitchen. Toolrooms are down there, too."

"You used to work here?"

"As a kid. Started helping out with weeding when I was little. That was before chemicals, so keeping the dandelions out of the lawns kept about a dozen of us kids in movie money all summer. But I kept hanging around, ended up mowing lawns and then I made gardener's assistant. That's how I put myself through college. Shoveled snow off that front porch out there so many times I hate to remember."

"So this house is more than just a neighbor's place to you."

"Had my first kiss here," said Bolt, sighing. "Come on downstairs, I'm curious about what you did in the kitchen."

Quentin followed him. Bolt flipped on lightswitches as he went.

"Lights are on now?" Quentin asked.

"Guess so," said Bolt. "I had them turned on yesterday. I wanted to see more than a flashlight could show me."

With the lights on, the stairs and hall looked to Quentin just as they had the night Madeleine led him down for a midnight snack. But the kitchen didn't. Quentin had distinctly remembered a table. Instead, there was a spot on the floor where someone had apparently sat down on the filthy linoleum.

"You walked in here—in the dark, or with a flashlight," said Bolt. "You went to the fridge, to those cupboards. But the fridge is locked shut, as you might notice, and nobody's opened it. So why walk there? Twice—see? Twice."

Quentin remembered getting out mustard, mayo, a couple of sliced meats, and a head of lettuce. Then going back for pickles when Mad asked for one.

"They used to keep bread in this cupboard," said Bolt. "And sure enough, here's where you walked. To the bread cupboard, and then to the silverware drawer. See? Only... no bread, no silverware."

He opened the empty drawer, the empty cupboard.

"Bummer," said Quentin.

"Then you sit down on the floor. But... right where the kitchen table used to be. Right where the chair at the head of the table used to be. Butler used to have the undisputed right to sit in that chair. The cook made damn sure nobody else—least of all a sweaty gardener's assistant—sat in it."

"Got to keep that furniture clean."

"Why did you sit on this floor, Mr. Fears? And what did you find in those cupboards?"

Quentin shrugged.

"Now, see, there we are," said Bolt. "You want me to answer
your
questions, but you won't give me tit for tat."

"Why give you answers you won't believe?"