“Mr. Pembroke,” Benedetti said, “if there were a formula for that, a technique for finding strength in oneself, what a better world this would be, eh?” He showed a little smile. “In your case, I can only offer suggestions. Would you care to hear them?”
Pembroke said, “Anything.” Ron noticed that Jackson nodded, too.
“Very well,” the Professor said. “I suggest you use your anger.”
“My anger?”
“Of course. Your brother, and through him, you, have been the victims of a cowardly and sadistic act. Now your son is in peril—I would call it moderate danger, but even that is too much—because of his desire to help. Surely, your fury must equal your fear. Hold on to it. Cherish it. Promise to devote your life and fortune to tracking down whoever did this, however it turns out. Look forward to the day when you will be calling the shots, and the kidnappers will live in fear of you.”
“They will, too, damn it,” Henry said. His angry gaze went right past them, into the future, where it was designed to fry the perpetrator with just his eyes.
“I am glad to hear it. Later times may call for different responses, but for now, hold on to your anger. I remember—”
But the Professor never got to tell the story.
Chip’s voice burst from the speakers. “There’s something! Chief, somebody in black popped out of the woods. He’s got a sign. It says, ‘PEMBROKE, STOP HERE.’ I’m stopping.”
“Be careful,” his father intoned to the air. Whether he remembered that in deference to Chip’s wishes, the chief hadn’t hooked up the sending apparatus for this phone or not wasn’t clear.
The motor came to a stop. A heavy car door opened and closed. Minutes of silence.
Then the door opened and closed again, and Chip’s voice came back, breathless.
“Okay. I didn’t get a good look at him. He was all covered up, scarf or ski mask or something, and he wore a hat. I thought of chasing him, but like you all said, I’m no hero. There was a note on a twig about five yards in from the road. It says ‘PUNCHY’S PHONE BOOTH COIN RETURN SLOT, NO COPS, BE ALONE.’ Says I’ve got five minutes. I think I can make it.”
“He can make it,” Viretsky said. “Even in what he’s driving. Gentry, Punchy’s was a roadhouse on Route Sixty-three, about two miles past the junction of Route Six.”
Ron made marks on the map. “I’ve got it,” he said. “I can see why they’d want to use a place like a roadhouse—it’s crowded and easy to keep Chip under surveillance. But the coin slot seems a little amateurish. What if somebody uses the phone in the meantime? Sixty-eight point seven percent of the people in this country check the coin return after they make a phone call. Anybody can find that note.”
Sandy spoke up. Of all people. “No,” she said. “The phone booth is in the parking lot, the one he must be talking about. Because you couldn’t get to the one inside. Punchy’s burned down about three months ago. I saw the flames. My girlfriend Wanda and I were heading out there, you know, we didn’t know what was going on, and then we saw the lights from the fire trucks, and the flames in the sky, and one of the state troopers told us to go back. Lucky nobody was hurt. It said in the papers later it was a grease fire, but I think it was the mob. You know, the M-A-F-I-A. Because there was a lot of gambling going on at Punchy’s, football slips and like that, and the mob wanted their cut. I don’t want to tell the chief his job, because I certainly wouldn’t want him telling me how to file an invoice, but I bet the mob is behind this, too. They want the money they can’t get from Punchy’s now that they burned it down. That’s why I think Mr. Pembroke shouldn’t worry too much. The mob are terrible people, and all that, but if they get their money, they’re happy.”
She fluffed her hair and sat back again. “At least, that’s what I think.”
A little silence followed.
“Well,” the Professor said pleasantly. “Now we know what you did all day locked up in that little room.”
“I was thinking,” Sandy said. “I think a lot.”
“A rare pastime in these sorry days. We are grateful to you.”
“It was bubbling in me,” she told him. “I had to let it out or explode.”
“Explosions are so messy,” the Professor agreed, and Sandy subsided, pleased with herself.
Ron was pretty pleased with himself, too. Just look at what Sandy had managed to spin out of the fact that she’d once driven in the relative direction of a grease fire. If he’d given her access to a phone earlier, she could have produced a whopper that would put Burger King to shame.
Anyway, it passed the time.
Chip’s voice snapped from the loudspeaker. “Okay, here I am.” Again, the in-and-out with the car door. “They’re sending me to a hollow tree one point six miles up Route Six. That’s got to be another note.”
And so it went, for a good hour, reports from hollow trees and mailboxes to abandoned houses, jumping Chip around, but never letting him get far away.
“They must know by now he’s not being followed,” Pembroke said irritably
“They set the paper chase up in advance, Mr. Pembroke,” the chief told him impassively. “Nothing to do but play it out.”
Ron studied at the route he’d traced out on the map. It made a sort of ragged red rectangle, punctuated by stars where Chip had made his stops.
“Look at this,” he said quietly to Janet. “See this big square in the middle?”
“Yes.”
“This is us. This is the Pembroke estate. I think—Maestro,” he said, raising his voice slightly, “I’m beginning to get a hunch.”
“I’m sure you are, amico. I can see your pattern from here. Most interesting.”
“But if I’m right?”
“If you are right, what are we to do about it now? Without adding to the danger?”
“What are you talking about?” Viretsky demanded.
“Show him, amico.”
Ron handed over the map; the chief looked at it.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Henry Pembroke demanded. He was practically shrieking. “I insist on knowing what you’re talking about!”
Before they could answer (or refuse to: Ron never knew how the Professor would react to a situation like this), the loudspeaker broke into the conversation.
It was Chip, and he was excited.
“They’re sending me back to the estate!” the voice said. “To the old main gate, around back. I’m supposed to leave the money in the old gatehouse and pick up a note.”
“Bet I know what that last note says,” Ron offered.
“Sure,” Viretsky said. “It’s simple now.”
Henry Pembroke was trembling with rage. “Not to me, goddammit! What are you talking about?”
“Your brother is somewhere on the estate,” Ron told him. “Wanna go surprise them?” he asked the chief.
“Want to? You bet your ass. But we’re not going to do it—too much risk.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You know damned well I’m right. The nerve of the bastards.”
“We can at least get ready.”
That they did. Ron helped the professor into his coat and reached for his own. Janet was getting ready to go out as well.
“You stay here,” he said.
“Ron, I love you, but never say that to me again.”
“Oops.”
“ ‘Oops’ is right. Tell me if you think something is dangerous. I have no desire to rush into danger for no reason. But something’s bothering me tonight, and I think I ought to be in at the end.”
“All right.”
“Do you think it is going to be too dangerous?”
“Probably not,” Ron conceded.
“Then I’m going.”
“I love you even when you push my nose in,” he told her. “I must be sick.”
“Me, too. I love you even when it deserves to be pushed.”
Viretsky horned
in. “Can we break this up before the kiss, please?”
Chip’s voice blasted from the loudspeaker. “I’ve dropped off the money. The last note says Uncle Clyde is in the old barn. I’m heading there now!”
Viretsky turned to Henry Pembroke and snapped, “How do we get to this old barn?”
“I’ll show you,” Pembroke said. He tried to get up but his legs didn’t work. His eyes looked glassy
Mr. Jackson bounced to his feet. “I’ll show them, Mr. Pembroke.” He grabbed a jacket from the coatrack. “Come along, gentlemen,” he said. “I understand there’s no time to waste.”
Jackson and Benedetti were both old, and both about the same age, but they were the first to clamber into the chief’s car in front of Omega House. Viretsky hopped in, put the red light on top, and was reaching for the siren.
“I don’t think that will be necessary, Chief,” Benedetti said. “I doubt there will be much traffic to clear away on the way.”
“Good point.”
Viretsky didn’t drive any slower for lack of the siren, however. The car sped from one poorly maintained, narrow road after another as they made it through the thick woods. He and his passengers were tossed around like peas in a bladder. Janet held on to Ron for dear life.
“Turn—turn here,” Jackson said. It was a nightmare ride, with branches reaching like skeletal fingers into the headlight beams, and the shifting mist taking on the shapes of ghosts.
Then they came to a clearing. There was a big barn, weathered gray with time and neglect, looking lonely for the now-destroyed house it had been built to go with.
The white Samurai nearby looked incongruous next to the massive old structure. The door of the vehicle stood open, and in its headlights, they could see Chip running across the lawn.
It didn’t seem possible, but the chief drove even faster across the clearing. Ron was sure he was going to flip the car; he was half-convinced Viretsky wanted to take the thing airborne and fly the rest of the way.
Despite the speed, it seemed to take forever to get there. Finally, the chief spun his wheels to a stop about ten feet from the Samurai.
Ron opened the car door just in time to hear a scream.
He froze, as did the chief.
Ron looked at his wife, and said quietly. “That sounded like Chip. I think there may be danger, now. Would you consent to kindly stay in the car, please?”
“I will. But—”
“You, too, Professor.”
“Prudence would dictate so.”
“You, too, Gentry” Viretsky said. “You’re no cop. And I know you don’t have a gun.”
“Well—” Ron began.
But the chief cut him off. “No arguments.”
“I wasn’t going to argue. I was going to tell you I would, but that I am moving to the driver’s seat, in case anybody has to go anywhere in a hurry.”
“Good thinking. You know how to work the radio?”
“Yeah.”
“Call headquarters, tell them I want all available units.”
“Be careful, Chief.”
“Yeah.” He pulled his gun and went toward the barn, sticking to the shadows.
Ron made the call, persuaded the dispatcher he really was talking for the chief, and that the chief really did want all available units.
Then he turned to the Professor. “I hate this.”
“A man who liked it would not be normal,” the Professor told him. “What has happened to Mr. Jackson?”
Janet was talking earnestly to the old man, making him follow her finger with his eyes, shining her pencil flash into them to see pupil reactions.
“He bumped his head during the last rush,” Janet said. “He’s a little woozy. I want to make sure he doesn’t have a concussion.”
“Well, hang on to his head if we have to take off out of here. I probably won’t be any gentler than the chief.”
“I hope Mr. Pembroke is all right,” Jackson murmured.
“Here is Chief Viretsky now,” Benedetti said, and there he was. Waving his arm in a beckoning motion, Viretsky gestured for them to come.
Ron got there first. “What is it?” he asked.
“A mess. I wanted your wife, but I knew I couldn’t get her without the rest of you, could I?”
“I doubt it.”
“Yeah. So I’m going to do something incredibly stupid and let the three of you go in there.”
“Without you?”
“Yeah, without me. I’m going to stay out here with Jackson. He’s a nice old man, and I don’t want him to see this.”
“Bad?”
“Weird. Also, Chip—Ah, I’d rather let you see for yourself.”
“All right.”
The Professor and Janet had joined Ron. He told them what the chief had said.
“Andiamo,” said the Professor.
“Don’t touch anything,” said the chief.
The small door on the side of the building was creaky on its hinges, but it opened readily enough. Ron pulled it open and went in.
He’d been ready for a scene of gore and carnage, but there wasn’t any. What was there was possibly worse.
The barn was one huge room, illuminated by a single kerosene lamp set on a bucket in the corner. It cast monstrous shadows on the walls and ceiling.
In almost the exact center of the room, Chip Pembroke knelt on a dirt floor, drawing abstract figures in the soil with his fingers. His face was blank. He seemed to be drooling a little.
Janet crowded in behind Ron. “Do you hear a baby crying?”
“Sort of,” Ron said. He pointed.
About ten feet from were Chip knelt, Clyde Pembroke sat, tied to a chair. Even at this distance, it was easy to see he was dead. He’d been strangled; the old piece of rope was still around his neck. His face was nearly black, and his swollen tongue stuck out of his mouth. His clothes were twisted as if he’d struggled frequently and unsuccessfully with his bonds. His gray head was thrown back.
On his forehead, mewing pitifully, sat a small, red Manx kitten.
Part Two
One
RON GENTRY ROLLED OVER in his sleep, and sixteen needle-sharp claws dug into his shoulder.
“Auggh,” he said.
Beside him, Janet woke up and asked in a sleepy voice what the matter was.
“Will you kindly disengage this creature from my flesh? Why the hell does it have to pick on me?”
“It likes you,” Janet said, gently and not too quickly removing paws from her husband. “He likes you. You’re warm.”
“Yeah, that’s my best quality, my body heat. I don’t mind his sleeping on me so much, it’s his refusal to go along with it when I move. Besides which, you’re going to get us thrown out of the inn with this thing.”
Ron didn’t really believe that. He thought he’d learned all about his wife’s passions in the years they’d been married, but he’d never suspected her passionate desire to own a cat. Since she’d first laid eyes on this one, she’d somehow beguiled Chief Viretsky into letting her “look after the cat,” bribed the maid at the hotel, spent a hundred bucks on various cat stuff, including a special cat bed the critter never used, and vamped Ron into going along with it all.
They’d even named it, too, for its tendency to pounce on things, like shoes, with or without feet inside, and attempt to eat them. He was Nimrod, mighty hunter.
He was also, Ron hastened to admit, a welcome distraction from the gloom of the past couple of days. Today was Clyde Pembroke’s funeral. It had been decided that the least they could do for the poor bastard was hang around for the funeral.
It had not been, Ron reflected, one of their triumphs.
Viretsky’s cops, rushing to the scene, had found nothing and noticed no one on their way. The barn yielded no clues. The body told nothing except that the murder had occurred somewhere between a half-hour and forty-five minutes before they’d seen Chip run into the barn.
It made an intriguing little mystery.
“I don’t get it,” Ron had said. He, Janet, Professor Benedetti, and Chief Viretsky were sitting in the chief’s office downtown as they awaited autopsy results. Now they’d come, and they made things worse than ever.
“I don’t get it,” he said again. “Chip followed every instruction to the letter; he was literally on his way with the money, and then they decided they’re going to waste Clyde Pembroke. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe they decided he’d be too big a threat if they let him live,” Janet suggested.
“I’d buy that, if they killed him sooner. The way they did it, it almost made things more dangerous. A little heavier foot on the gas pedal, and Chip might have walked in on them right when they were tying the knot.”
Viretsky grunted. “Lucky for him they didn’t. They probably would have done him, too.”
“How is he?” Janet asked.
“Shook up, but fine. Apparently, his shock wore off even before they got him to the hospital. They’ll hold him overnight for observation, but nobody seems to be worried.”
“There is one thing we have to worry about,” Benedetti said. His voice surprised them. He had been sitting back in the office’s one armchair with his eyes closed; they had supposed he was asleep. Ron told himself he should have known better—the old man missed nothing.
“What is that, Maestro?”
“The fact that whoever did this thing is still out there.”
“Maestro, I suspect they’re halfway to Brazil by now. If I had just taken hold of a suitcase with a hot million in it, I wouldn’t let any grass grow under me. And I’d want to get on the other side of any potential roadblocks, too.”
“They don’t have any million,” Viretsky said. He turned to the Professor. “Didn’t you tell them?”
“You seemed sufficiently put out that your man mentioned it in front of me. I assumed you would share the information in due time.”
Viretsky gave a kind of puzzled shrug, then turned back to Ron. “They don’t have any million,” he said again.
“Funny money in the suitcase? That was a pretty big chance to take with Clyde’s life, wasn’t it? I mean, at the time, nobody knew what the setup was supposed to be.”
The Manx Murders Page 11
