“Wow,” Ron said. “I’m touched. Thank you, Maestro.”
“It is a mark of the corruption of our society and our language,” the Professor said, “that one man should feel moved to thank another for telling the truth. We will say no more about it. Come with me. I will smoke in my room.”
The Professor got his cigar lit the instant he was over the threshold. He went and put a canvas on the blackboard. It was early stages yet, but what there was, was a kind of circle with lines in it, a blotchy orange-red takeoff on the peace symbol of the sixties.
“I will work on this today,” he announced. “You will occupy yourself with work likewise; it will help you keep your mind off your worries.”
“As you say, Maestro. See you later.”
As he left, however, Ron already had something to keep his mind off his worries. He couldn’t make head or tail of what the Professor’s canvas was supposed to represent—neither could the old man, yet, probably. But that wasn’t the important part. The important part was that on each case, Benedetti’s work began representational, and, as the case progressed, got more and more abstract. What Ron had seen looked very abstract indeed. That meant the old man was a lot further along than he was.
He’s supposed to be teaching me his technique, Ron thought, but I still have a long way to go.
It was the second consecutive day of sunshine, there was a nice fall crispness to the air, and Ron decided to stroll over to Omega House, which was his first port of call for the afternoon. It was much easier going than it had been that first evening. Less spooky, too. There was nothing in the air but the smoky smell of fall (Chip must be using some tamer flavor than grape at the factory today), and he had birdcalls, melodic or comically raucous, to keep him company all the way through the woods.
Ron stopped, with Omega House in sight.
Birdcalls.
All the way through the woods.
Ron ran back into the former dead zone and listened. And looked. No doubt about it, birds were back. He saw plenty of them, and heard even more. He ran on to Omega House.
When Jackson opened the door, Ron asked to use a phone. He immediately called the Professor and told him what he’d discovered.
“Excellent, amico. As I said, all anyone could desire. It was a wise thing to check the woods, but I did not think to tell you to do so. So you did.”
“I didn’t think of it. I just did it.”
“Even better. You have so internalized my needs that fulfilling them has become a species of instinct with you.”
“Very funny. The point is, what does it mean?”
“I do not know. I do not think the reappearance can be of any less significance than their disappearance was.”
“But we don’t know what that was all about, either, do we?”
“No, we don’t. On that point, I am absolutely baffled.”
“Just on that one point?” Ron wanted to know. “On the other points, you’re not baffled?”
“Thank you for calling, Ronald.”
“Professor—”
“Good-bye.”
The connection broke. Ron looked at the receiver for a few seconds, as though it might tell him something on its own, then hung up. The old man was turning coy. Maddeningly coy.
This is good, Ron thought. This is more like the old, pain-in-the-ass him.
He went to look up Mr. Jackson.
Ron roamed Omega House. The sci-fi atmosphere of the place was so strong, he felt as if he ought to be wearing a space suit. He finally followed a whirring noise to a basement workshop, where he found Jackson holding what looked at first to Ron like a free-form chrome sculpture, but that he soon recognized as the frame for one of those godforsaken ultramodern lamp tables that dotted the house above. With grim determination (he was probably sick of the things, too, Ron reflected), Jackson bent over the object with safety-goggled eyes and buffed away at it with an electric buffing wheel, whose motor made the whirring Ron had heard.
“Mr. Jackson?” Ron said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Why me?” Jackson demanded. He pushed his goggles to the top of his head.
“We’ve been ignoring you,” Ron said. “Or you’ve been eluding us. The FBI and the cops had only the most superficial discussion with you, and you’ve managed to elude the press completely.”
“Maybe I like it that way.”
“Maybe so. But you’re a resource I can’t afford to waste. You’re right here, you’ve been right here through all of it, before the Professor and me, before Miss Ackerman, even. You’re a smart man, and you’re obviously much more than a servant.”
“You hesitated before you said the word ‘servant,’ ” Jackson pointed out. “Do I make you uncomfortable, Mr. Gentry? The old black family retainer and all that?”
“Well, to be frank, yeah. Though I think enough of myself to believe that ‘black’ is the smallest part of that.”
Jackson chuckled. “I believe you, Mr. Gentry. Rest assured, I like what I’m doing. For one thing, I don’t see myself as serving Mr. Henry Pembroke. I manage a vast estate. I arrange for the landscaping, the maintenance, the vehicles. I hire the rest of the staff—if I did this for a country club or something, I’d be in the newspapers as a pioneer. Because I do it for a private individual, I’m some kind of embarrassment. All I really am is a man doing a job. That’s all I’ve ever been.”
“I don’t even know your first name.”
“Lewis. Lewis James Jackson. Born Easter Sunday, 1926. Went to work for the Pembroke brothers in 1946, after I got out of the army. I was the loading dock foreman from 1955 to 1963, and there was some mess about that when it started. Some of the men didn’t want to take orders from a Negro (we were Negroes then, if you were being polite), but Mr. Pembroke, both of them, stuck by me, and I won the boys over, even if I had to whup them, which I did once or twice.”
“What happened in 1963?”
“Got knocked off the dock by a crane, you know. Landed funny and broke my back. Pembrokes paid for everything. Fortunately, I got the use of all my limbs back. But I couldn’t lift anything. You’re no use around a loading dock if you can’t lift anything. They gave me a good pension, which I still get, then Mr. Henry Pembroke said if I wanted to, I could come and be foreman of the family estate. That’s how he put it, and that’s how I think of it. And I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“Good bosses.”
“Good men.”
“What was Mrs. Pembroke like?”
Jackson’s face set like a mask, and his voice went cold.
“I don’t choose to talk about Mrs. Pembroke.”
“That bad, huh?”
“It’s not my place to talk about Mrs. Pembroke.”
“Your place? You sure slipped the servant’s livery on quick there, when you wanted to.”
The mask slipped off, and Jackson smiled patiently at him. “You’re not going to bait me, Mr. Gentry. I won’t talk about the woman. Anything you ask, you should ask Mr. Pembroke.”
“How about Chip?”
“I can’t stop you. And I don’t mean to tell you your business, but don’t you think it’d be a little silly asking a man about his own mother?”
“Nonono, I’ve given up on her. I meant, ‘How about Chip?’ Is he a good man like his uncles? He’s the heir apparent, isn’t he? How’s the town going to fare with Chip in the patriarch’s seat? How are you going to do?”
“I will do fine under any circumstances. I am old enough to retire, and I have enough money put by to last me as long as God lets me live.”
“Come on, Mr. Jackson. I’m not trying to get a story for the Enquirer, I’m trying to find a way to the truth of a vicious crime.”
Jackson looked suspicious. “What kind of way? All these questions seem sort of sneaky, like you’re looking for dirt.”
“Well, I’ll admit they’re sneaky. It happens to private detectives; we get suspicious and we get sneaky. Here’s what I’m driving at. As far
as I can tell, the Pembroke brothers are paragons of capitalism. I haven’t been able to find anyone outside the family who’ll say a word against them. I mean, Harville doesn’t even have a town radical in it.”
Jackson chuckled. “Oh, there were a few. Weekly paper they sold to the young folks, just trying to stir up trouble. Outsiders published it. Called it Starchild or some such nonsense. Said the Pembrokes were paternalistic plutocrats, or something like that, ran the town like feudal lords. Called me an Uncle Tom and their house nigger. Didn’t ask me a thing about it, first, though. You know something? I’ve been black a long time now, and when I was growing up in Tennessee, I heard lots of names. But since I left the army and came to work in Harville, that underground rag was the only thing or person that called me a nigger and got away with it.”
Jackson sat back in his seat. “So, as I say, there used to be. They sort of drifted away when the recession came on hard, and a lot of companies moved their factories overseas. Paternalistic plutocrats look pretty good to a man who’s working when his friend in the next town’s about spent his last unemployment check.”
“Okay,” Ron conceded. “The Pembroke brothers are popular, even loved. So maybe nobody did this thing to hurt them. Maybe it was done to hurt Chip.”
“What do you mean?” Jackson’s eyes were suddenly narrow and wary.
“I mean, does Chip Pembroke have any enemies? Was he wild as a kid, maybe with girls? You raised him, as far as I can tell. Could he have made somebody, possibly a crazy somebody, hate him enough to hurt his family this way?”
“Seems like it would be more to the point to kill Chip, then. Or his daddy.” He shook his head. “God forgive me for talking this way.”
“There’s a big difference between talking about something and doing it, Mr. Jackson. As for Clyde being the one who was kidnapped, maybe the kidnapper couldn’t tell which was which. It’s probably difficult to see that birthmark in the dark.”
Ron didn’t add that the kidnapper got Clyde outside the cattery, a place at which bird lover Henry wouldn’t be caught dead. Oops. Poor choice of words. Ron winced internally, and went on.
“So you see what I’m driving at. Can you help me?”
“I don’t know.” It occurred to Ron that if Jackson didn’t have such enormous natural self-possession, he’d be jumping around and cursing just now. The old man hated something about this conversation, just hated it, and wanted Ron to stop.
But a good private eye can’t stop. “You’d know if anybody would,” Ron said.
“That’s just it. I don’t think anybody would. Since he’s grown up, Chip’s spent most of his time ... oh, treading water. I know he’s forty years old, but it’s like he’s still not grown up yet. He’s never really been encouraged to grow up, except by—” Jackson bit his lip, then went on. “Oh, he’s shown signs of it, with his ice-cream business and all. That’s a good product, by the way.”
“I’ve heard,” Ron said. “Except by whom?”
“Pardon me?”
“Who was it who encouraged Chip to grow up? Was it you?”
Jackson was defiant. “As a matter of fact, it was. What of it?”
“Nothing. I’m all for growing up. Like the ice-cream business?”
“Yes. Well, until he started that, he never did much of anything, just fooled around. You asked me about him as a kid. I assume you mean as a teenager, and those times.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, he wasn’t wild. Used to make me worry, sometimes. A teenage boy wants to get into devilment; it’s not natural for him to hold it all in. I guess he figured his mother was—”
Jackson’s lips snapped shut with an audible click.
Ron prompted, “Using up the family’s devilment allotment all by herself.”
Jackson shook his head. “I won’t talk about that woman. You talk to Mr. Henry Pembroke. He’s the one to tell you, if he chooses to.”
“I’ll do that. Anyway, it looks like Chip will have his swings in the big leagues soon enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“For all the exercise, his father doesn’t seem very well, especially over the last couple of days.”
“The man’s twin brother has been murdered.”
“I know,” Ron said. “And I don’t deny it’s a factor. But it’s more than that.”
Jackson let out a breath, but said nothing.
“Isn’t it?”
Jackson stared at Ron for a good fifteen seconds, a hard, angry stare.
Ron had gotten a lot of them over the years, but this one gave him an itch in the small of his back. He thought of several things to say to defend himself, but he let them pass, choosing instead to meet the stare.
At last, Jackson said, “That’s something else you better ask Mr. Pembroke.”
“Yeah. Thank you for your time, Mr. Jackson.”
“Mr. Gentry, I wouldn’t have your job for all the money in the world.” Jackson pulled the glasses down over his eyes, and applied the buffer so hard Ron could smell the fabric of the spinning head begin to burn.
Ron said good-bye and walked away, but Jackson ignored him.
As he climbed the narrow basement stairs, Ron sucked his lower lip and thought. Somebody with a low-down, dirty, suspicious mind could construct a motive out of the conversation he’d just had with Jackson.
Suppose the old man, raised poor, now surrounded by enormous wealth he can see and touch but never own, identifies with Chip Pembroke, the heir to all this money, power, and (at least on a local level) near-feudal majesty. Suppose further, he’s decided that Chip has come of age to run the show. Wouldn’t it make sense, then, to clear out the Pembroke brothers? Not only would that bring Chip into his glory, it would leave Jackson as Chip’s only trusted adviser. Jackson could be the power behind the throne, and laugh at everybody. And he’d have a secret million dollars—or a share of it—squirreled away for a rainy day.
Near the top of the stairs, Ron asked himself if he really believed it.
No, he didn’t believe it. But he knew he couldn’t forget it, either. Ron decided he’d have to make sure Viretsky wasn’t neglecting to find out if there was anybody around Jackson knew who’d go for kidnapping and/or murder for a million bucks or a share thereof. Just in case.
Ron was shaking his head as he left the basement and returned to the sunlight flooding the windows of Omega House.
Sometimes he didn’t care much for his job, either.
Six
SURPRISE, SURPRISE, JANET THOUGHT, the Pembrokes do not own the local paper. Still, they swung enough weight in the town that their name was the magic word that gave her the freedom of the morgue, and for the last hour and a half, the assistance of a local intern named Diane. Diane, a junior at Harville High School, was assistant editor of the school paper, and she saw journalism as something not far short of a Divine Calling.
“It’s so thrilling,” she’d said, “to make sure people know the truth.” The teenager was so serious and so enthralled with the idea of it all (and so much like Janet herself at the same age, being tall, bespectacled, and gawky), that Janet couldn’t help liking her. She just hoped Diane’s career actually did get some Truth across and not, like most of the media these days, just the opinion that happened to be the Flavor of the Month.
Anyway, Janet looked at miles of microfilm and acres of newsprint that hadn’t been microfilmed yet.
“I understand next year everything is going on laser disk,” Diane told her.
“I’d better be done with this by next year,” Janet said.
At times, though, it didn’t seem as if she would be. The Pembrokes got mentioned in the Harville paper more often than the president got mentioned in the New York Times. She saw everything—PEMBROKES DEDICATE MUNICIPAL POOL; PEMBROKES KICK OFF MARCH OF DIMES; PEMBROKES BUY INDIANA WASHER FACTORY; MRS. HENRY PEMBROKE DIES IN CAR CRASH. That from about eleven years ago. Janet pursued it, but Sophie’s death was plain reckless driving, as far as
anyone could tell at the time.
Looking at the photos of Sophie’s crumpled car, Janet reflected on the strange turn her own life had taken. She had found love because of murder. Her marriage had grown and strengthened because she and her husband shared the investigation of murder. They were celebrating the news of their impending child in the middle of murder.
A year from now, would she be nursing a child while looking through documents, trying to get into the mind of a killer? What kind of childhood were they planning here?
She shook her head. The thing to remember was that she—and Ron and, of course, the Professor—were the good guys. Her child would learn the difference between good guys and bad. And if the kid might be exposed to the knowledge of some terrible things at a young age, he or she would also know there were things you could do. You didn’t have to just shrug and walk away and be glad it happened to somebody else. You could do something about evil.
She stuck with it, and she got to the end of the clips. She had a lot of details, but no new insights on the Pembroke family, except that in all the publicity over the years, Chip was virtually absent. Possibly through his own choice. It has to be tough being the child of anybody famous.
But then you didn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to tell you that.
You also didn’t need any advanced degrees to know that if the Pembroke brothers had been in the movie business instead of heavy industry, the tabloids would have had a party with the late Mrs. Henry, despite the Harville Record’s consistent tiptoeing around potential scandal.
Janet wondered if she ought to urge Diane to read this stuff, just to see how much journalism has changed.
Anyway, she really hadn’t learned anything new. That was a shame, but not a catastrophe. As she had hinted to Ron, she had something else in mind. Something that might actually have a bearing on the case. Something that she had thought of first.
Janet had, in recent years, formed the ambition to beat—just once—the Professor and Ron to the solution of a case. Just to prove something, probably to herself. This wouldn’t do that, of course, but it would be a step in the right direction. A conscious contribution to a case, instead of the unconscious ones she usually made.
The Manx Murders Page 15
