Bad News

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Oh, I don’t think we need wait, Mr. Welles,” the judge told him. “In fact, my main purpose in calling this session today is to order the DNA test to proceed at once, without delay.”

  Welles looked astonished. “But Your Honor! That’s the very issue before the appeals court!”

  “No, I don’t believe it is,” the judge corrected him. “You are not disputing DNA tests in your appeal. You are disputing the right of the Court to order the exhumation of the body of Joseph Redcorn. But that is now moot, Mr. Welles. Mr. Fox’s nephews, all full-blooded members of the Three Tribes, have already done the exhumation, presumably within the strictures of their native religion. The grave is open, Mr. Welles. The cat is out of the bag.”

  Judge Higbee smiled at the silent turmoil in front of him. Life among the stupid could be so sweet sometimes. “Marjorie,” he said, “arrange with your client for the taking of a sample for the test.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  Thock went the gavel.

  32

  * * *

  Everybody rose, including Marjorie. Everybody, including Marjorie, watched Judge Higbee stride from the room, smiling like a cat full of cream. But what Marjorie was thinking was, what’s wrong here?

  This was the second time she’d picked up a secret reaction from Little Feather Redcorn, and once again it had to do with DNA. When the prospect of a DNA test was first raised, in chambers, Marjorie had been the only one close enough to Little Feather to realize the idea wasn’t new to her. She’d been waiting for it, and she was relieved and pleased when it finally arose, but she didn’t want to admit it. Marjorie hadn’t been able to figure that out, and now, just as strongly, when Judge Higbee made that startling announcement that the DNA test could proceed right away, Little Feather’s reaction, no matter how much she tried to hide it, had been dismay.

  Was Marjorie imagining all this? How could Little Feather have been expectant and eager and already aware of DNA tests last Thursday, and then dismayed at the prospect today? I have to find out about this, she told herself.

  Across the aisle, Otis Welles and his associates packed their briefcases, Welles now like a broken Exercycle in a suit, Roger Fox and Frank Oglanda yattering away at the lawyers with demands, questions, outrage. On this side of the aisle, Max Schreck smiled like a coyote as he packed his briefcase and whispered an encouraging word to Little Feather, as though this morning’s outcome were his own work, cleverly and agilely accomplished.

  Marjorie stood silent beside Little Feather until Schreck turned away, and then she said, “Well, Little Feather, this is wonderful news, isn’t it?”

  “It sure is,” Little Feather agreed, but Marjorie could see the panic deep in Little Feather’s eyes and knew the woman could hardly wait to get alone somewhere by herself, so she could scream and stamp her feet and tear her hair.

  No, not yet. “Little Feather,” Marjorie said, “let me take you to lunch.”

  “Oh, that’s nice of you, Ms. Dawson,” Little Feather said, smiling to beat the band, “but I think I ought to just—”

  “I think,” Marjorie told her, “you should accept my invitation to lunch. I’m speaking as your attorney, Little Feather.”

  Little Feather frowned at her. Marjorie could see the calculations going by behind those shrewd eyes, and then, all at once, Little Feather switched on the sunny smile once more and said, “I think that would be really nice. Just us girls.”

  Traditionally, the lawyers had lunch at Chez Laurentian, half a block from the courthouse, so Marjorie took Little Feather the other way, a block and a half to the County Seat Diner, where the bailiffs and clerks and police ate. Over at Chez Laurentian, the smoking section was two tables at the back, by the kitchen, while here in the County Seat Diner, the nonsmoking section was two booths down at the left end, with windows on one side and the rest rooms on the other.

  Having their choice of booths, Marjorie and Little Feather took the one marginally farther from the rest rooms, and while they waited for the waitress to bring their menus, Little Feather said, “That Judge Higbee is quite a card.”

  “He doesn’t usually get to show what he can do,” Marjorie said. “I think he’s probably having fun.”

  Then the menus came, and they didn’t go on with their conversation until after they’d given in their orders. Then Marjorie said, “Little Feather, you know I’m your lawyer.”

  “One of my lawyers,” Little Feather said.

  “Your first lawyer.”

  “Court-appointed lawyer.”

  “Little Feather,” Marjorie said, beginning to be exasperated, “I’m your lawyer, all right? Will you at least accept that?”

  Little Feather shrugged. “Sure.”

  “And as your lawyer,” Marjorie went on, “I am required to keep in confidence anything you tell me. The lawyer-client privilege, have you heard of that?”

  Another shrug. “Sure.”

  “Unless you tell me you’re going to commit a crime,” Marjorie explained, “which I don’t expect you to do—”

  A crooked grin from Little Feather. “You can pretty well count on it.”

  “Well, barring that,” Marjorie said, “which, as your attorney, I wouldn’t, in fact, be bound by law to report, but, barring that, everything you say to me is strictly private between us and will go no further.”

  A nod. “Good.”

  “So tell me what the problem is,” Marjorie said.

  Little Feather cocked her head, like a bird deciding if that thing in front of her is a twig or a worm. She said, “What problem? Everything’s great.”

  “I’ve been watching you,” Marjorie told her. “I know you don’t think much of me—”

  “Hey!” Little Feather cried, showing surprise and anger. “What gives you that idea?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Marjorie said, “nobody thinks much of me. But I can see, and last Thursday, when Judge Higbee first mentioned DNA, you already knew all about it.”

  “I thought it was terrific,” Little Feather said. “I was happy.”

  “You were relieved,” Marjorie told her. “You’d been thinking about DNA, and waiting for somebody to mention it, but you didn’t want to be the one who brought it up yourself. I suppose that’s because you don’t want people to think you planned this all out beforehand.”

  Little Feather shrugged. “You got that wrong,” she said, “but I guess it doesn’t matter.”

  “Well, my question is,” Marjorie said, “why did it upset you today, when Judge Higbee said the test could go ahead?”

  Little Feather’s frown got deeper and deeper. “Upset me? I thought it was great, we’re finally gonna get moving on this.”

  “I could tell, Little Feather,” Marjorie said. “Something happened between last Thursday and today. Then you thought a DNA test would solve all your problems. Today, the DNA test is the problem.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong, lady,” Little Feather said.

  The food came then, and they both waited. When the waitress left, Marjorie leaned over her BLT and said, “Little Feather, you’re in some kind of trouble. You can lie to me if you want, and you can go back to Whispering Pines and cry your heart out all by yourself if you want to, but I’m telling you I’m on your side.”

  “Court-appointed.”

  “To be your representative.” Marjorie shook her head. “Little Feather, I know we got off to a bad start last week, but you know I’ve been on your side ever since, really on your side. And it would be against the law if I told anybody anything you confided in me. You’re in some kind of trouble. Can I help? How do I know, if you won’t tell me what the trouble is?”

  Little Feather chomped into her cheeseburger as though she intended never to speak again, but there was a vertical worry line on her brow, and her eyes were thoughtful, so Marjorie said nothing more, just went to work on her BLT.

  Little Feather drank some of her diet Coke. “Nobody can help me,” she said.

  Marjori
e put down the BLT, sipped some seltzer, and said, “Try me.”

  Little Feather seemed to be figuring out how to organize her story. At last, she shrugged and said, “You know how I got my lawyer. My other lawyer.”

  “Somebody you know out west recommended him,” Marjorie said. “That’s what you said, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s it, only a little more complicated. The guy’s one of the owners at a place in Vegas where I was a dealer. We never had anything like that, you know, between us, you know what I mean—”

  “I know what you mean,” Marjorie agreed.

  “He’s just a nice guy,” Little Feather said, “so when I needed help, I called him, and he told me to see this other guy who’s in the East, named Fitzroy Guilderpost, so I called him, and he’s the one put me together with Mr. Schreck.”

  “Fitzroy Guilderpost.”

  “That’s it. There’s something funny about him, Ms. Dawson. I’m not sure, but maybe he’s some kind of crook. I’d like to keep away from him, and the people he’s with, but I don’t know, then I’m gonna be alone again. And now we’ve got this mess.”

  “What mess?”

  “Well, it wasn’t Fitzroy thought of this,” Little Feather said. “He’s got these friends of his he hangs out with, and they all knew what was happening up here with me, and one of the others, he said the tribes were gonna do what they did, switch bodies so the DNA won’t match.”

  Marjorie, surprised, said, “This person guessed that? In advance?”

  “I think that’s the way they think themselves,” Little Feather said, and shrugged, then added, “Anyway, they thought they’d help me out.”

  “Oh dear,” Marjorie said. “They did something.”

  “They switched tombstones,” Little Feather said.

  Which was about the last thing Marjorie had expected. She said, “What did they do?”

  “They went out there to the cemetery,” Little Feather explained, “and they switched the tombstones over two graves, and they figured to go back out the night before the DNA test and switch them back. They didn’t figure on the tribes getting caught.”

  Marjorie said, “So, as of right now, Joseph Redcorn’s headstone is on some other grave.”

  “And it’s got a guard on it,” Little Feather said.

  Marjorie sat there, BLT forgotten. Little Feather grinned crookedly at her and said, “That’s the way I’ve been feeling, Ms. Dawson, exactly like you look. And we figured, we figured the tribes were gonna go on stalling, so we had time to work this out, and maybe somebody could come up with a solution before the test, but now the test is gonna be immediately.”

  “Oh my God,” Marjorie said.

  Little Feather nodded. “So that’s it, Ms. Dawson,” she said. “You got any good advice for me?”

  33

  * * *

  No more Tea Cosy. Gregory was very sorry, but the skiers had arrived, so the Tea Cosy was full. No more comfortable living room, no more huge breakfasts put out by the cheery Gregory and Tom, no more Odille singing “Frère Jacques” while she changed the beds.

  Dortmunder hadn’t realized he’d miss the Tea Cosy, hadn’t realized he’d miss anything in the North Country, but there you are. Stay at the Four Winds motel in December, on the icy shores of Lake Champlain, and you, too, will miss the Tea Cosy.

  The Four Winds was also full of skiers, or at least people dressed for the part. Every time Dortmunder opened his motel room door, somebody was going by through the snowy wind with skis on their shoulder and great clomping boots on their feet and huge goggles on their faces and thick wool caps on their heads. Their bodies were dressed mostly in what looked like shiny vinyl duffel bags. Probably some of them were men and some were women, but from anything Dortmunder could tell they might all have been kodiak bears.

  Since either someone had stolen the Grand Cherokee Jeep Laredo or some police person had spotted its potential for a good career mark, Kelp had found them instead a Subaru Outback, which, in addition to the standard M.D. plates, also had four-wheel drive, a good thing in the frozen wastes north of New York City. Kelp was happy with it, but apparently the official owner of this vehicle was a woman doctor, with children; Tiny kept complaining that the backseat was sticky.

  The only thing about the Subaru that bothered Dortmunder was the fact that it was the only vehicle within a hundred miles without a ski rack on the roof, which made it very recognizable. “We oughta steal a ski rack from one of these people,” he suggested. “Blend in, like.”

  Kelp said, “Nah, we won’t be here that long. Besides, next you’ll want skis.”

  “No, I won’t,” Dortmunder said.

  They’d driven up here this morning, the day after Fitzroy’s call about the Indians getting caught in the cemetery, to see what they could do, even though everybody knew they couldn’t do anything. The wrong body was being guarded, and the wrong body would be tested against Little Feather, who had about one chance in a billion to turn out to be related to Burwick Moody, so that was that, right?

  Except apparently not. After his first call to Kelp, Guilderpost had decided he and Irwin would not go down to New York. Since then, he and Kelp had been E-mailing back and forth enough to get carpal tunnel syndrome, and what they’d finally decided on was a meet, a get-together, all six of them, back up in the North Country.

  “Why can’t those three come down here?” Dortmunder had complained, and Kelp had said, “Because Little Feather can’t leave until the game is over.”

  “The game is over,” Dortmunder had announced, but here they were anyway.

  The Four Winds motel was also full. Guilderpost had made their reservations and managed to find all three of them rooms, but they weren’t together. They didn’t feel they should hold conversations on motel room phones, which went through the motel office, so every time one of them thought of something to say to another one, he had to get completely dressed for the wintry outdoors and tramp over through the wind and the snow to the other one’s room, and then tramp back again. Dortmunder really missed the living room at the Tea Cosy.

  What they were waiting for was Guilderpost and Irwin, who were supposedly off finding some safe, quiet, unnoticeable location for them all to meet, and a way to get in touch with Little Feather that wouldn’t queer the deal even further than it already was, which wasn’t possible, but they would try anyway. In the meantime, Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny had settled more or less into their rooms, and visited one another anytime they had something to say, and otherwise watched the ski-toters plod around in the snowy wind. And what Dortmunder missed even more than the Tea Cosy was home.

  A little before three, his phone rang in his room, where he was alone at the moment, looking out the window at the ski-haulers. He crossed to the phone and demanded, “Hello.”

  It was Guilderpost, who said, “Hello, John. Does your room face the front of the motel?”

  Dortmunder frowned at the window. “I got wind with snow in it, and cars with ski racks, and a road, and way over there is a frozen lake. Everything is gray.”

  “That’s the front,” Guilderpost said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have Andy come wait with you in your room, because his is at the back.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Little Feather. She’s coming over, in the motor home.”

  “That sounds real secure,” Dortmunder said.

  “Apparently,” Guilderpost said, “the situation has changed. We can all come out of hiding now.”

  “Because it’s all over,” Dortmunder said.

  “I don’t think that’s why,” Guilderpost said. “She should be here in fifteen minutes or so.”

  She was. The motor home made a big sweep around the parking lot, so everybody in the group would get a chance to see it, and then it parked way over in the far corner of the lot, away from the other vehicles and as close as possible to the frozen lake.

  Dortmunder and Kelp put on a lot of outdoor clothes and headed out over the parking lo
t, the wind with the snow in it rushing at them from across the lake, trying to push them back into the room, and Dortmunder was almost ready to go along with that idea. But from the right, here came Guilderpost and Irwin, and from the left, here came Tiny, so Dortmunder, too, kept slogging forward.

  The motor home was rocking slightly in the wind. It didn’t like being out here in all this weather any more than Dortmunder did. As they all arrived, Little Feather opened the door and stood hugging her arms, saying, “Come on in. Come in, come in, it’s freezing out there.”

  “You’re right,” Dortmunder said.

  As they all climbed into the motor home, Little Feather said, low voiced, to each of them, “We got a guest. Follow my lead.”

  A guest? They trooped into the living room, peeling off their coats, dropping them on the floor, and a woman stood there, tension in her face as though she’d agreed to sit in a poker game with a bunch of people she’d just met and only now remembered she didn’t know how to play poker. She stared at each of them in turn but didn’t say anything, nor did any of them. Dortmunder didn’t know about the others, but the reason he kept quiet was, he figured that if anybody said anything to this woman right now, she was likely to explode all over the room, like Tiny’s hand grenade.

  Little Feather followed them into the living room, which was more crowded than ever, and with a bright smile she said, “This is Marjorie Dawson. My lawyer. My first lawyer.”

  Her lawyer? Dortmunder tried very hard not to stare at Little Feather, but what was going on here? She was showing her coconspirators, every last one of them, to a local lawyer?

  This lawyer looked to be in her thirties, but just as Little Feather embraced a kind of flashy beauty, this woman obviously recoiled from any concept of beauty at all. Her black hair was pulled back into a tight bun, her face was pale and plain, and her clothing was all bulky and shapeless, sort of the indoor version of what the ski-carriers wore outside.