The Road To Ruin d-11

by Donald E. Westlake

  Taking these routes, it was so long before he turned in at the driveway to Chester’s house that he was late for lunch, but that wasn’t the primary consideration. The small one-car garage was just to the left of the house; leaving the Buick in front of it, Dortmunder went over to ring the front doorbell, and after a minute the door was opened by Grace Fallon, who gave him a surprised look, then a kind of critical once-over: “Well, look at you.”

  Another distraction. “What about me?”

  “Well, you’re dressed nice,” she allowed, “but other than that you look like a bum. Not shaved, dirt all over you, you didn’t even comb your hair.”

  “I don’t have a comb.”

  “You’ve got fingers,” she pointed out.

  Enough. Dortmunder said, “My question is, is Chester here?”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “Because I wanna know if his car is here,” Dortmunder told her, realizing the only way to handle this was to make as open and full a case as he possibly could. “And the reason I wanna know that is, if his car isn’t here, I wanna put that Buick over there in the garage, and the reason I wanna do that is because I stole it. We up to speed now?”

  “Well, you don’t have to get huffy,” she said.

  “Is his car in there?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure he’d like you to put a stolen car inside there in its place.”

  “He’s gonna love it,” Dortmunder said.

  Chester’s garage was as messy as most garages, which was sort of a surprise. You’d think a driver would have a different attitude toward garages, but apparently not. Still, there was just enough room to squeeze the Buick in, open the door partway until it hit the snowblower and the wheelbarrow and the sack of fertilizer, and squeeze himself out. He shut the garage door, walked back to the house, and she was still standing there in the doorway, arms folded, frowning.

  He nodded to her, wanting to make nice. “I’ll move it when Chester gets back,” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “And you’re right, I’m very dirty. If I took a shower, what could I wear afterwards?”

  “A different house,” she said.

  “Come on,” he said.

  She thought about it, then sighed. “I’ll see what I can find,” she said. “But take those shoes off before you come in.”

  “I was gonna do that,” he lied.

  61

  SATURDAY WAS A VERY busy day for Kelp, but not a happy one. The aftershocks of the Monroe Hall kidnapping just kept coining. Friday he’d been plagued by those two plainclothes cops, who knew they were suspicious of something but couldn’t figure out exactly what. But then Saturday came along, and the cops became the least of his problems.

  The day started before eight o’clock, when he was rousted from sleep in his room in the little green house by Stan, who said, “The boss’s wife is on the phone. She wants you to talk to her and me to drive her somewhere.”

  He found his way to a phone—there were none in the bedrooms—took a few seconds to remember his name in this context, and then said into the receiver, “Morning, Mrs. Hall, Fred Blanchard here.”

  “Oh, Fred, they’ve found Mr. Hall.”

  “Well, that’s great,” he said, thinking, good, the heist is back on track.

  “I’m going to the hospital to see him,” she said.

  “Hospital? What, is he wounded?”

  “I don’t think so. I think it’s just observation. I’ll need you in the office to take care of things, and I’ll phone you later.”

  It wasn’t until after he’d hung up and was brushing his teeth that it occurred to him she hadn’t mentioned the butler. Was Dortmunder in the hospital, too?

  •

  No. It was a little after nine when she phoned again, Kelp cooling his heels in the office most of that time, wondering if they were going to get their original plan back on track or not. Tonight, was the concept. Tonight the cars go to Speedshop. Then the phone rang, and it was Mrs. Hall, and she said, “Fred, two people from my law firm are on their way. I know you’ll give them all the help you can.”

  “Mrs. Hall? Is Mr. Hall all right?”

  “Well… It’s complicated. Would you also speak to Mrs. Parsons?”

  Not willingly. “Sure,” Kelp said.

  “Tell her, please, to pack my summer things, and her own.”

  “Pack?”

  “Tell her we’ll be going home,” she said. “She’ll know what I mean: Maryland.”

  What the hell is going on here? Kelp thought. What he said was, “You’re going away for a while?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Call security, please, tell them to bring the Pierce-Arrow up to the house, put the luggage in it that Mrs. Parsons packs.”

  “Will do.”

  “The two people from the law firm,” she said, “are named Julie Cavanaugh and Robert Wills.”

  “That’s a funny name for a lawyer, Wills.”

  “Is it? Please tell the gate to let them in.”

  “Sure,” he said. Having written the two lawyer names down, he looked at them and still thought Wills was a funny name for a lawyer. Cavanaugh wasn’t, though. “Mrs. Hall.” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “How’s, uh…” Could not remember the name. “How’s the butler?”

  “Rumsey?”

  “Rumsey. John Rumsey. Is he in the hospital, too?”

  “No one knows where Rumsey is, Fred. Monroe was found wandering around in the woods, but he was alone, and he doesn’t know where the kidnappers held him, and Rumsey hasn’t appeared anywhere.”

  This is worse than I thought, he told himself. There’s more to this story, and none of it is good. “I’ll take care of everything,” he promised, and did.

  •

  The lawyers were young bird dogs, skinny and focused. They looked like brother and sister, both tall and thin with very sharp features and thick black hair swept straight back as though they used a wind tunnel for haircare. They were announced from the gate, so Kelp went to the front door to watch the black BMW drive up the road and stop where the horse transporter had stopped, just yesterday. A lot had happened since.

  “I’m Blanchard,” he told them when they marched together up to the door, the boy lawyer in black suit, white shirt, dark blue tie, the girl lawyer in knee-length black skirt, high-neck white blouse, open black jacket with discreet shoulder pads.

  “Cavanaugh.”

  “Wills.”

  Nobody offered to shake hands. I am, after all, Kelp reminded himself, a servant. He said, “The office is this way.”

  Entering the office, Cavanaugh said, “Oh, good, a partners desk. Robert? Do you have a preference?”

  “I like daylight to my right.”

  So they seated themselves facing each other at the partners desk, as though this had been their office for a hundred years, and Cavanaugh said to Kelp, “We’ll need the list of staff at the compound. And I understand some actually live here?”

  “Including me,” Kelp said.

  “I’ll need a separate list of indwellers,” she told him. “We have a lot of notifications to give out.”

  “Notifications?”

  Wills took over the story. “Mrs. Hall is closing the compound, in prospect of marketing the property and its contents.”

  “Marketing? You mean, put all this up for sale?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Kelp said, “But if Hall is back, so there’s no ransom to pay or anything like that, what’s going on?”

  The lawyers looked at each other. Cavanaugh shrugged, looked at Kelp, and said, “This will be common knowledge soon enough. Mr. Hall has amnesia. His memory is gone.”

  Kelp said, “Like the soap operas?”

  Wills said, “It was the result of blunt trauma to the head, or multiples thereof. The doctors believe it’s irreversible.”

  So that’s what Mrs. Hall had meant when she’d said her husband’s condition was “complicated.” And sh
e’d described him as having been found wandering in the woods. But, in that case, what had happened to John?

  Cavanaugh was going on: “Those resident here will be given until Monday to find housing elsewhere. All staff will be given two weeks’ salary, to be mailed to their home address or whatever address they leave with us.”

  “Only security stays on,” Wills said.

  “So,” Cavanaugh said, “we’ll need to interview staff, one at a time. Would you arrange that?”

  “Except for security,” Kelp said.

  “And Mrs. Parsons,” Cavanaugh said.

  Kelp turned away, to go over to his own desk and start making the calls, but then he turned back to say, “I have to tell you, I still don’t get it. Why all of a sudden sell this place?”

  Again the lawyers looked at each other, and this time Wills was the one who shrugged, then turned to say to Kelp, “This is speculation on our part, and we would prefer you not to pass it on.”

  “We’ll tell you our speculation,” Cavanaugh explained, “because you are being impacted by what’s happening here.”

  “Mr. Hall’s assets are controlled by the courts,” Wills said, “and yet, he lived here beyond what means he should have had. There is a theory he had additional assets in offshore accounts.”

  Cavanaugh said, “No one knows that for sure.”

  “But,” Wills said, “if those accounts exist, Monroe Hall would be the only one who could access them. Who would know the numbers, the passwords.”

  “Oh,” Kelp said, “and he’s lost his memory.”

  •

  Kelp sat at his desk across the room from the lawyers and fielded phone calls and arranged for staff to come in for their farewell interviews, which several of them took badly, pointing out years of faithful service, sacrifices made, the decision to stay on with Hall even after the world had turned against him, but what was anybody to do? This party was over. Those few human beings in the world not yet shafted by Monroe Hall were now getting their turn.

  Including, Kelp realized, the wife. It was Hall’s bone-deep selfishness that would have kept him from protecting Mrs. Hall, providing for her, writing down those secret account numbers and passwords and leaving them somewhere for her to find. But what would he care what happened, if he wasn’t around? In Kelp’s mind’s eye, a whole lot of hundred-dollar bills with wings attached flew across a blue sky and disappeared over a black mountain in the distance. No, thousand-dollar bills. Gone. Forever.

  •

  It was eleven-thirty, and the lawyers were just finishing the last of the staff interviews when the phone rang and Kelp answered, as usual, “Hall residence.”

  “Robert Wills, please.”

  “Who’s calling?”

  “Frank Simmons of Automotive Heritage Museum.”

  What? What can this mean? Nothing good. Bland as ever, Kelp turned in his chair and said to Wills across the room, “For you. Frank Simmons of Automotive Heritage Museum.”

  “Yes, got it, thank you.”

  It was very hard for Kelp to hang up, not listen to this conversation, but he managed. Wills spoke briefly, then hung up and said to Kelp, “Blanchard, call the gate, will you? There’ll be some flatbed trucks arriving, in about half an hour.”

  Worse and worse. Reaching for the phone, Kelp said, “Sure. Uh, what are they for?”

  “The antique cars,” Wills said. “You know about the antique cars stored on the property here?”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Kelp acknowledged.

  “Technically, since the bankruptcy proceedings,” Wills said, “they’ve belonged to the Automotive Heritage Museum. With the changed situation here, the museum wants to move them to their own property, for safekeeping.”

  “Their own property.”

  “Yes, in Florida. I understand it’s a beautiful place, glass-walled buildings, views of the Gulf, all completely climate-controlled.”

  “They’ve been wanting to get their hands on these cars for years,” Cavanaugh said. “Hall always managed to fend them off, but that’s over now.”

  “I guess it is,” Kelp agreed.

  “It’s a better place for them, really,” Cavanaugh said. “They have thousands of visitors a year. Here, no one ever got to see the cars.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Kelp said, and turned away to call the gate, while the lawyers finished their final interview, with a raspy-voiced housemaid who now announced this firing was the best thing ever happened to her, she was going to her own climate-controlled glass-walled building in Florida and live on her sister for a while.

  Who did this? Kelp silently demanded of the world, as he made the call to the gate. What clown had to go and kidnap Monroe Hall and louse up what was going to be a very beautiful piece of work? May he suffer, the louse.

  62

  IT WAS THE BEST day’s sleep Mark had had in a good long time, maybe ever. Partly it was the hospital bed, infinitely adjustable, beautifully comforting, but mostly it was because, at long last, his conscience was clear.

  When Os had driven Mark down the mountain from that lodge, Mark had known he was in deep trouble, both physically and legally. Physically, as it turned out in the hospital’s emergency room, that chair had given him a broken jaw, broken nose, and torn ear. But legally, as he was painfully aware, he was in even worse shape.

  Monroe Hall and the butler were both gone, escaped from the lodge. Both could identify the lodge, which would mean the authorities would soon find Os, a relative of the lodge’s owner and a sworn enemy of Hall. Even if Os didn’t immediately give them Mark—and why wouldn’t he? Mark knew game theory as well as Os, and the first to turn gets the best deal—but even if Os did the unlikely and even selfless thing and kept his mouth shut, sooner or later the authorities would come to Mark, as Os’s closest associate, and insist he speak out loud in Monroe Hall’s presence. “That’s him! That’s the voice I heard!”

  After the jaw and the nose had been set and the ear sewed up, Mark had been moved from the emergency room to this plain-to-barren single room, where he’d had nothing to do but think about the position he was in. A television set hung from the wall opposite the bed, reminding him unhappily of the butler’s chair jutting from the wall at the lodge, but it wouldn’t function until his credit card cleared, which, a self-satisfied nurse informed him, would be in twenty-four hours. You can buy a Cartier watch and only have to wait thirty seconds after the card has been swiped along the doohickey, but in a hospital it takes twenty-four hours. And they talk about advances in medicine.

  Well, it was just as well he didn’t have television to distract him, or so he thought. It gave him time to consider his position, and his options. Not that he needed a whole lot of time, nor did he have, on reflection, a whole lot of options. Fifteen minutes after he was left alone in the room he reached for the telephone on his bedside table, grateful that at least this appliance didn’t need twenty-four hours to be activated, and phoned his lawyer.

  “Iss is Ark,” he told the receptionist, which is what the jaw would now permit him to say. “Ark Sterling.”

  The ensuing conversation was slow and difficult, but he did at last convince Dan Richards, his family attorney, that he needed a lawyer by his bedside, Saturday or no Saturday, before the cops arrived, as inevitably they would. Dan promised to send someone good from a firm closer at hand, but no lawyer had yet appeared when the plainclothes cop came in, unmistakable even without the badge on its leather carrier dangling from his shirt pocket. A bored, slender guy with black hair, short for a cop, grinned at Mark and said, “I’m Detective Cohan, Quentin Cohan.”

  “I’ll talk,” Mark said, not entirely accurately, “en ny lawyer gets ere.”

  “Oh, really.” Detective Cohan was both surprised and pleased, not having expected juice from this interview. No longer bored, he said, “Fine by me, Mr. Sterling. I got nothing but time.”

  Seating himself in one of the two visitors’ chairs, Detective Cohan pulled a crossword puzzle maga
zine from his casual jacket pocket and amused himself for half an hour until a man who looked like central casting’s idea of a lawyer walked in. Bald head on top, black gorse around the ears. Pinstripe suit, white shirt, patterned red-and-yellow tie. Black briefcase dangling from left hand. Skinny black-framed eyeglasses that reflected the light. Watch on left wrist big enough and shiny enough to be the entire control panel on a Star Trek ship. Looking from Mark to Detective Cohan, apparently unable to sort them out, he said, “Mark Sterling?”

  “Ere,” Mark said, and raised a hand.

  “Eldron Gold,” the lawyer said. “The Richards firm sent me. Is this police officer arresting you?”

  “Not yet,” Detective Cohan said, with a happy smile, as he stood and put away his crossword puzzles.

  Eldron Gold said to Mark, “Would you like to speak to me privately before you answer the officer’s questions?”

  “No,” Mark said. “I just ant to get it other ith.”

  Detective Cohan stepped closer, still smiling, opening a small notebook. “Good idea,” he said.

  Mark took a deep breath. “Thor other theothle and I kidnathed Nonroe Hall,” he said.

  “Wait!” shouted Eldron, over some pleased exclamation of Cohan’s. “Are you sure we shouldn’t talk first?”

  “No, it’s all right,” Mark assured him. “You’ll see.” To Detective Cohan he said, “Thigh oth us kidnathed Nonroe Hall.”

  “This is completely unacceptable,” Eldron interrupted. “In a hospital setting, my client is sedated, he’s not responsible for his statements, absolutely none of this would be acceptable in a court of law.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Mark told his mouthpiece, patting the bed to calm the lawyer down.

  “Objections noted, Counselor,” Detective Cohan said. He didn’t seem troubled.

  Mark said to Eldron, “I hath to get this out. This isn’t easy thor ne to say.”

  Detective Cohan smiled upon him. “We know that,” he assured him. “Go on, Mark.”

  “All right.” Mark took a deep breath as his lawyer hopped around like the boy on the burning deck, and went on. “We kett Hall at my thriend’s thanily lodge uh-state thon ere. We also took the utt-ler, utt that was an accident. They oath got away. The utt-ler hit ne with a chair.”