Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
RED, RED ROBIN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
BYE, BYE, BLACKBIRD
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
RICHARD JURY NOVELS
The Man with a Load of Mischief
The Old Fox Deceived
The Anodyne Necklace
The Dirty Duck
Jerusalem Inn
Help the Poor Struggler
The Deer Leap
I Am the Only Running Footman
The Five Bells and the Bladebone
The Old Silent
The Old Contemptibles
The Horse You Came In On
Rainbow’s End
The Case Has Altered
The Stargazey
The Lamorna Wink
The Blue Last
The Grave Maurice
The Winds of Change
The Old Wine Shades
Dust
The Black Cat
OTHER WORKS BY MARTHA GRIMES
The End of the Pier
Hotel Paradise
Biting the Moon
The Train Now Departing
Cold Flat Junction
Foul Matter
Belle Ruin
Dakota
POETRY
Send Bygraves
VIKING
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in 2011 by Viking Penguin,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Martha Grimes, 2011 All rights reserved
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:
“Imagination,” words by Johnny Burke, music by James (Jimmy) Van Heusen. © Copyright 1939 (renewed) Marke-Music Publishing Co., Inc., Reganesque Music Company, Pocketful of Dreams Music Publishing, My Dad’s Songs, Inc. and Bourne Co. All rights for Marke-Music Publishing Co., Inc. administered by WB Music Corp. United States rights for My Dad’s Songs, Reganesque Music Company and Pocketful of Dreams Music controlled and administered by Spirit Two Music, Inc. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. International copyright secured. Used by permission.
“Tonight You Belong to Me,” words and music by Billy Rose and Lee David. © 1926 (renewed) Chappell & Co., Inc. and C & J David Music Co. © 1926, Published by C & J David Music (ASCAP) and Anne Rachel Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“When the Red, Red, Robin (Comes Bob, Bob Bobbin’ Along),” by Harry M. Woods. © Copyright 1926 by Bourne Co. (copyright renewed). All rights outside the United States of America controlled by Bourne Co. © 1926, Published by Callicoon Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grimes, Martha.
Fadeaway girl : a novel / Martha Grimes.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Belle Ruin.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47563-8
1. Graham, Emma (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Missing children—Fiction. 3. Cold cases
(Criminal investigation)—Fiction. 4. Summer resorts—Fiction. 5. Hotels—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.R48998F34 2011
813’.54—dc22 2010035332
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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To the memory of two of my favorite writers,
Gary Devon
and
Stuart M. Kaminsky
So long, Lew.
This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm.
I wish I could promise to lie in the night
And think of an orchard’s arboreal plight
When slowly (and nobody comes with a light)
Its heart sinks lower under the sod.
But something has to be left to God.
—ROBERT FROST,
“GOOD-BY AND KEEP COLD”
RED, RED ROBIN
1
We were talking about the kidnapped baby.
Me, Emma Graham, age twelve, standing in my great-aunt’s room with a tray under my arm; her, Aurora
Paradise, who never left the fourth floor, probably wouldn’t even if someone shouted “FIRE!”
The fourth floor of the Hotel Paradise is made up of only four rooms. These are her domain. One is her bedroom, but I’ve never actually seen her in it. Maybe she never goes to bed; maybe she sleeps in her chair; or maybe she doesn’t sleep. She’s so stubborn.
Aurora Paradise stirred the straw around in what remained of her Rumba, a drink I had fashioned from rum and banana. It was five o’clock, the cocktail hour, a time that was held in as high esteem as Sunday communion with wine and wafers, only here it was rum, gin, and whiskey. I was the chief drink maker.
“What baby?” She clicked her fingernail against her nearly empty glass. That was to let me know she was due another drink before she’d talk, but I wasn’t having it.
“You know what baby. The Slade baby, Baby Fay. The one kidnapped from the Belle Ruin twenty years ago.” Then I added, cleverly, “When you were around fifty.” My great-aunt Aurora was ninety if she was a day. Back then, she would have been seventy.
Aurora shut her eyes as if she were pondering the kidnapped baby, which she wasn’t. She was probably remembering herself at the Belle Ruin balls.
I moved my small round tray from under one arm to the other. She never invited me to sit down, even though I was the chief rum supplier. Her drink was one-third Myers’s rum.
“I’m not making another Rumba till you tell me why you said Miss Isabel Barnett was lying about seeing the baby.”
For a moment she pouted and adjusted her black crocheted mittens with the pearl buttons. Aurora was dressed for a ball a lot of the time, a ball of fifty years ago. Behind her was her steamer trunk spilling out gorgeous gowns. It was a stand-up trunk with drawers and everything, the sort people used to take on ocean voyages.
When she saw I wasn’t budging, she sighed and said, “Isabel Barnett is about as dependable as a firecracker in the snow. She’d say anything to get herself noticed. You seem to forget she’s a klep-tomaniac.” Aurora smirked as if this disorder pleased her.
It was true Miss Isabel took little items from McCrory’s Five-and-Dime, but she always paid them back. Since Miss Isabel was very well-off, no one could figure out why she stole twenty-five-cent Tangee lipsticks. “That’s got nothing to do with the baby.”
“I’m saying Isabel Barnett is barmy. You can’t depend on anything she says or does. She’s lived all by herself for so long she probably talks to the walls. I know she’s got a parrot and they probably sit up half the night jawin’.” She stiff-armed her glass at me. “It happened over twenty years ago; why would she remember what this infant looked like even if it had solid gold teeth? Now get me another Rumba, if you please!”
I knew I couldn’t make her say more, and maybe she’d said all that she could, anyway. “It’ll have to be something else. The rum’s down to a ghost of itself.”
“Just something sweet. Make up one of your Count of Monte Cristo at Miami Beach drinks.”
I set the glass on my tray, deciding there was nothing more to be gained by further drink blackmail. So I left, still wondering about Miss Isabel Barnett. The trouble was that one of my theories about this baby that disappeared from the Belle Ruin years ago was that there never had been a baby at the hotel, for no one had actually seen one, not even the babysitter, Gloria Spiker. I figured maybe the baby had sickened and died and for some reason Imogen and Morris Slade, the mother and father, didn’t want anyone to know. It probably had to do with a big inheritance or something. I also had a theory that the Slades had arranged the kidnapping so they could collect the ransom. But no ransom demand had been made.
Then Miss Isabel Barnett claimed to have looked into the carriage when the Slades were in La Porte, getting medicine for the baby. She had seen the baby, she said.
Now Aurora Paradise was claiming Miss Isabel had always been a liar.
I walked heavily down the stairs with my serving tray and Aurora’s glass, thinking truth was hard bought.
2
Behind the hotel are several buildings: a cottage where we used to live when we were little, now set aside for guests who preferred the privacy of separate rooms; and two garages, one big and one small, the small one now filled with cast-off furniture, empty paint cans, and spare timber. The Big Garage was once used for guests’ cars and it could hold at least twenty of them. Now it was used as a theater, housing Will and Mill’s productions.
Mill is Brownmiller Conroy. His first name passed down through his family. No parent could be so mean as to make up such a name. We shortened it to Mill.
As usual, there was a lot of commotion inside the Big Garage. And, as usual, at my knock, silence fell like a blanket dropped over the clamor. I don’t know how they did this, I mean, silenced everything like flipping a switch. Will and Mill demanded total secrecy. They did not want anyone to know anything in advance of the production. I wondered why and decided that they wanted to burst onto the scene with all of it so new it looked like the opening of the world. As if none of us had really lived until the moment the curtain went up; as if the sun and moon had sailed around with blinkers on.
It was no good trying to bang on the door. I just sighed and waited. Finally, the side door opened reluctantly, and Will appeared—that is, half of his face appeared through the opening.
“What?”
“Paul’s mother’s looking for him.” That was a lie and Will probably knew it, as Paul’s mother was hardly ever looking for him except when it was time to go home. “What’ve you got him doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Listen, let me in.”
“No.”
I smiled. “Okay, then I’ll tell everybody about your airplane set.” They’d been working on this set ever since Medea, the Musical had closed a week ago to thunderous applause. Will and Mill had made scads of money on that production; they had even extended its “run” (one of the many Broadway show-terms Will liked to use). But they seemed to spend all their money on Orange Crush and Moon Pies and the pinball machines over across the highway at Greg’s Restaurant.
My seeing the new set had been by chance, when they’d had Paul strapped into the plane’s cockpit.
Will was disgusted. “My God! You’re nothing but a blackmailer.” At the same time he opened the door and then walked away from me. He had traded his pilot’s cap for a top hat, I noticed.
The plane was even more refined by now. It was the inside of an airliner, one side shaved away so that you were looking into the interior. They had moved this craft up to the stage.
Mill, sitting at the piano, said “Hi.” He was never as hostile as Will. But then he wasn’t my brother. He started trilling away at “When the Red, Red Robin,” singing in his nasal voice.
“Why are you wearing a top hat?” I asked Will, over the “bob, bob bobbin’ ” of Mill and the piano.
“For my number.” He began to tap-dance, which was an irresistible cue to join Mill:There’ll be no more sobbin’
When he starts throbbin’
His oooold sweet SONG!
The piano pinged, the shoes tapped, and I yelled:
“What’s all this got to do with Murder in the Sky?” That was the title of the new production.
Will stopped dancing and said, as if this were an answer, “I’m the pilot.” But incapable of stilling himself, he raised and dropped his top hat to the rhythm of Mill’s piano, and went to tapping again.
“The pilot’s a tap dancer?”
“Why not? Hey, Paul!” He shouted up to the rafters. “Come on down; your ma wants you.”
This order was barked to the dishwasher’s son, Paul, a boy of eight, more or less. No one knew his age. Paul clambered down one of the posts like a monkey and came over to where we were standing. “Hello, missus,” he said to me. It was all he ever said.
“Did you finish the clouds?” said Will.
Paul shook his head.
“Well, finish ’em before you go to the kitchen.” To me, Will
said, “It won’t take long, you can tell his mom.”
I was going to ask what he was doing with clouds, but I knew the question would be asked in vain.
Paul, in the meantime, had sat down on one of the big stones left over from Medea, the Musical, and was dozing off. This didn’t surprise me; Will and Mill were afraid to let him sleep up in the rafters in case he fell off.
Mill rippled the keys and sang,Wake up! Wake up! You sleepy head!
Will joined him withGet up! Get up! Get outta bed!
Cheer up! Cheer up! The sun is red!
Piano keys tinkling, feet tapping, as if the world were just waiting for a duet.
I wasn’t, so I went bob bob bobbin’ along.
Feeling put upon, I walked the gravel drive and then the path to the back door of the kitchen. I saw a robin along the way, maybe a refugee from the Big Garage. Grumpily, I stood and watched it pulling a worm from the wet grass. Its breast was nowhere near red; it was a dusty shade of orange. And it certainly didn’t “bob.”
In other words, it was nothing like the song, but then I guess things seldom are.
3
Rather than take the chance of running into Ree-Jane Davidow, whom I’d last seen in the hotel lobby, I went down the back stairs and down the hall to the front office, where I could call Axel’s Taxis.
There was a poet named Emily Dickinson, who I was told was called the Belle of Amherst. Ree-Jane Davidow thought she was the Belle of Everywhere—Spirit Lake, and La Porte, and Lake Noir. Anyplace roughly in a twenty-five-mile radius, Ree-Jane was the Belle of.
She was sixteen, going on seventeen. Her name was really Regina Jane, but one day she decided she wanted it pronounced in the manner of a famous French actress, Réjane. She kept after me to pronounce it throatily, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t. What I came out with was “Ree-Jane,” which of course made her furious. I have called her that ever since, and so are a lot of people now, thinking that’s her real name. I don’t correct them.
Fadeaway Girl Page 1
