“I was going to ask you,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean this whole thing smells of revenge. It smells of harassment. It just doesn’t feel right as a kidnapping. The time between the disappearance and the ransom demand. The peculiar note. The peculiar phone call. The trick with the coffin—someone put a lotta work into that. Now the threatening phone call—if it’s not just a crank. Someone doesn’t like you or your wife or both.”
“But who the hell …” Marge Bartlett came in carrying the highball glass. Her lipstick was fresh and her hair was combed and her eye shadow looked newly applied. She poked the glass at her husband. “Fill ’er up,” she said and giggled. “Fill ’er up. Or is there a fuel shortage?”
“Why don’t you slow down, Marge?” Bartlett said. He took the glass.
“Slow down. Slow down. That’s all you can say. Slow down. Well I’m not going to slow down. Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse. That’s my motto.” She did a pirouette and bumped against the counter “Everything is slow down with you, Roger. Old slow-down-Roger, that’s you.”
Bartlett gave her a new drink.
“You want mayonnaise?” He asked me.
“Please,” I said. He put a plate of sliced turkey, a jar of mayonnaise, some bread-and-butter pickles, and a loaf of oatmeal bread on the table. “Help yourself,” he said.
“My God, Roger,” Marge Bartlett said. “Is that how you’re going to feed him? No plate? No napkins? Can’t you even make a salad? We have those nice mugs for beer that Dolly and I bought you.”
“It’s a lot better than the way you’re feeding him,” Bartlett answered. “Or me.”
“Oh, certainly. I should be cooking a big meal when my very life has been threatened. I should be keeping your supper warm in the oven when you won’t even come home from work to protect me.”
“Christ! Trask was here and Paul Marsh and Earl. I was way the hell and gone out past Worcester on a job.”
“Well, why don’t you work closer to home, anyway? You’re never around when I need you.”
“I can’t find enough work close to home to pay for all the goddamned scotch you drink.”
“You bastard,” she said and threw her drink at him. A little scotch spattered on my turkey sandwich. Not a bad combination.
“Oh, stop showing off for Spenser,” Bartlett said. He got a paper towel and wiped up the moisture on the table. She made a new drink.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Spenser. It’s just that I’m under great strain, as you might imagine. I’m an artist. I’m volatile; I’m quick to anger.”
“Yeah,” I said, “both those things. You got a lousy arm, though. You got scotch on my sandwich.”
She drank half her drink. Not only her face but her whole body seemed to get progressively slacker as she drank. Her voice got harsher, while her language got more affected. I wondered if the progress continued until she sank to the floor screaming nonsense. I didn’t think I’d find out. I was pretty sure I’d crack first.
“Can you think of any connection between this death threat and Kevin’s disappearance?” Slick how smoothly I changed the subject.
“I think someone is out to get us,” she said. Oddly, I agreed with her. It made me nervous.
“Who the hell would be out to get us?” Bartlett said. “We haven’t got any enemies.”
“How about in business? Got anyone mad at you there? Fire anyone? Out-shrewd someone?”
He shook his head. His wife said, “Not good old Rog. Everybody likes good old Rog. Everyone thinks he’s so terrific. Everyone feels sorry for him married to a bitch. But I know him. The bastard.”
“How about you?” I said to her “Anyone you can think of that has reason to hate you? Or hates you without reason?” She looked at me blankly. The booze was weaving its magic spell. “Any old boyfriends, disappointed lovers?”
“No”—she shook her head angrily—“of course not.”
“Can either of you think of anyone at all who hates you enough to give you this kind of trouble?” Blank stares. “There must be someone. Maybe hate is too strong a word. Who dislikes you the most of anyone you know?”
In a voice thick and furry with booze she said, “Kevin.”
Bartlett said, “Marge, for God’s sake.”
“It’s true,” she said. “The little sonova bitch hates us.”
“Marge, goddamn you. You leave my kid alone. He didn’t kidnap himself.”
“The little sonova bitch.” She was mumbling now.
“She’s drunk as a goddamned skunk, Spenser. I’m putting her to bed. Drunk as a skunk.” He took her arm, and she sagged protestingly away from him. “Sonova bitch.” She began to giggle. “He’s the little sonova bitch, and you’re the big sonova bitch.” She sat down on the floor still giggling. I got up.
“You need any help?” I said.
He shook his head. “I’ve done this before.”
“Okay, then I’ll go to bed. Thanks for supper.” As I went out of the kitchen I saw Dolly Bartlett scuttle up the stairs ahead of me and into her room. Pleasant dreams, kid.
13
The next morning, Saturday, Kevin’s guinea pig turned up. I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the Globe when I heard Marge Bartlett scream in the front hall. A short startled scream and then a long steady one. When I got there the front door was ajar, and she was holding an open package about the size of a shoe box. I took it from her. Inside was a dead guinea pig on its back, its short legs sticking stiffly up. I looked out the door. A young Smithfield cop I didn’t know came busting around the corner of the house with a shotgun at high port.
“It’s okay,” I said. Marge Bartlett continued to scream steadily. Now that I was holding the package her hands were free, and she put both of them over her face. The cop came in holding the shotgun down along the side of his leg, the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked in the box and made a face. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“It came in the mail,” I said. “I suppose it’s the same one the kid took with him when he disappeared.”
Marge Bartlett stopped screaming. She nodded without taking her hands from her face. The cop said, “I’ll call Trask,” and headed back for the cruiser in the driveway. I took the box and wrapping paper and dead guinea pig into the kitchen and sat down at the table and looked at them. There was nothing to suggest what killed the guinea pig. The box said Thom McAn on the cover, and the brown paper in which it had been wrapped looked like all the other brown paper wrapping in the world. The box had been mailed in Boston, addressed to Mrs. Margery Bartlett. There was no return address. They’re too smart for me, I thought.
“What does it mean, Spenser?” Marge Bartlett asked.
“I don’t know. Just more of the same. I’d guess the guinea pig died, and someone thought it would be a good idea to send it to you. It doesn’t look as if it’s been killed. That might suggest that Kevin is well.”
“Why?”
“Well, a kidnapper or a murderer is not likely to bother keeping a guinea pig, right?”
She nodded. I heard a car spin gravel into the driveway and slam to a stop. I bet myself it was Trask. I won. He came in without knocking.
“Oh, George,” Marge Bartlett said, “I can’t stand much more.”
He crossed to where she was standing and put an arm around her shoulder. “Marge, we’re doing what we can. We’re working on it around the clock.” He looked at me. “Where’s the evidence?”
I nodded at the box on the table.
“You been messing with it?” Trask said. Tough as nails.
“Not me, Chief. I’ve been keeping it under close surveillance. I think the guinea pig is faking.”
“Move aside,” he said and picked up the box. He looked at the guinea pig and shook his head. “Sick,” he said. “Sickest goddamned thing I ever been involved in. Hey, Silveria.” The young cop appeared at the back door. He had a round moon face and bushy black hair. His uniform cap seem
ed too small for his head.
“Take this stuff down to the station and hold it for me. I’ll be down in a while to examine it. Send Marsh back here to relieve you.”
Silveria departed. Trask took a ball-point pen and a notebook out of his shirt pocket. “Okay, Marge,” he said, “let’s have it all. When did the package arrive?” I didn’t need to dance that circle with them. “Excuse me,” I said and went out the back door. The day was new and sunny. All it needed to be September Morn was a nude bathing in the pool. I looked, just to be sure, but there wasn’t any. A scarlet tanager flashed across the lawn from the crab apple tree to the barn and disappeared into an open loft where the fake post for a hay hoist that never existed jutted out over the door.
I walked over to the barn. Inside was a collection of power mowers, hedge trimmers, electric clippers, rollers, lawn sweepers, barrels, paint cans, posthole diggers, shovels, rakes, bicycle parts, several kegs of eight-penny nails, some folding lawn chairs, a hose, snow tires, and a beach umbrella. To the right a set of stairs ascended to the loft. On the first step Dolly Bartlett was sitting listening to a portable radio through an earplug. She was eating Fritos from a plastic bag. The dog sat on the floor beside her with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, panting.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hi.” She offered the bag of Fritos to me. I took one and ate it. It wasn’t as bad as some things I’d eaten. The Nutter Butter cookies, for instance.
“Had breakfast?” I really know how to talk to kids. After that I could ask her how she was doing in school, or maybe her age. Really get her on my side.
She shook her head and nodded at the Fritos.
“You’d be better off eating the bag,” I said.
She giggled. “I bet I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Bags aren’t nourishing anymore Now when I was a boy …”
She made a face and stuck out her tongue. “Oh,” I said, “you heard that line before?”
She nodded. I was competing with the top forty sounds in Boston playing loud in her earphone, and she was only half-listening to me. That was okay because I was only half-saying anything.
“You want to see Kevin’s hideout?” she said, one ear still fastened to the radio.
“Yes,” I said.
“Come on.” She got up carrying the radio and headed up the stairs. Punkin and I scrambled for second position. I won. Still got the old reflexes.
The second floor of the barn was unfinished. Exposed beams, subflooring. At one end a small room had been studded off and Sheetrock nailed up. Some carpenter tools lay on the floor near it, and a box of blue lathing nails had spilled on the floor It looked like a project Roger Bartlett was going to do in his spare time, and he didn’t have any spare time. There was scrap lumber and Sheetrock trimmings in a pile as if someone had swept them up and gone for a trash barrel and been waylaid. A number of four-by-eight plywood panels in a simulated wood-plank texture were leaning against a wall.
“In here,” Dolly said. And disappeared into the studded-off room. I followed. It was probably going to be a bathroom from the size and the rough openings that looked to be for plumbing. A makeshift partition had been constructed out of some paneling and two sawhorses. Behind it was a steamer trunk and a low canvas lawn chair. The steamer trunk was locked with a padlock. The floor was covered with a rug that appeared to be a remnant of wall-to-wall carpeting. The window looked out over the pool and the back of the house. The wiring was in, and a bare light bulb was screwed into a porcelain receptacle. A string hung from it.
“What’s in the trunk?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Kevin always kept it locked up. He never let me in here.”
“Do your mother and father know about this place?”
“I doubt it. My father hasn’t worked up here since last summer, and my mother’s never been up here. She says it should be fixed up so she can have it for a studio. But she hasn’t ever come up. Just me and Kevin, and Kevin always kicked me out when he came up here. He didn’t want anyone to know about his place.”
“How come you’re telling me?”
She shrugged. “You’re a detective.”
I nodded. I was glad she said that because I was beginning to have my doubts.
“You get along with Kevin?” I asked.
“He’s creepy,” she said, “but he’s okay sometimes.” She shrugged again. “He’s my brother. I’ve known him all my life.”
“Okay, Dolly, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to break into that trunk. Maybe it won’t have anything that will help, but maybe it will, and the only way to know is to look. I know it’s not mine, but maybe it will help us find Kevin, all right?”
“Kevin will be mad.”
“I won’t tell him about your being here.”
“Okay.”
I found a pinch bar among the tools on the floor and pried the hasp off the trunk. Inside the cover of the trunk an eight-by-ten glossy was attached with adhesive tape, a publicity still of Vic Harroway in a body-building pose. In the trunk itself was a collection of body-building magazines, a scrapbook, a pair of handsprings that you squeezed to build up your grip, and two thirty-pound dumbbells.
Dolly did an exaggerated shudder. “Gross,” she said.
“What?” I said.
“The guy in the picture. Ugh!”
“Do you know him?” I asked.
“No.”
I sat down in the lawn chair and picked up the first magazine in the pile. Dolly said, “Are you going to read that?”
I said, “I’m going to read them all.”
“Sick,” she said.
“They’re clues. That’s what I’m supposed to do—study clues and after studying enough of them I’m supposed to solve a mystery and …”
“Are you going to tell?” she said.
I knew what she meant. Kevin had hidden this stuff from his parents, for whatever reason.
“No,” I said. “Are you?”
“No.”
I opened a copy of Strength and Health. On the inside cover and spilling over onto page 1, there was an ad for high-protein health food and pictures of hugely muscled people who apparently ate it. There were badly laid-out ads for strength-training booklets, weight-lifting equipment, and choker bathing suits; and pictures of weight lifters and Mr. America contestants. On page 39 was a sepia-tone picture of Vic Harroway. He had on a white bikini and was posed on a beach in front of a low shelf of rock that kicked spray up as the sea hit it. His right arm was flexed to show the biceps. His left hand was clamped behind his neck, and he was flexed forward with his right knee bent and the toes of his left leg barely touching the ground. The sun glistened on his features, and his narrowed eyes were fixed on something high and distant and doubtless grand behind the camera. Beauty is its own excuse for being. The caption said, “Vic Harroway, Mr. Northeastern America, Combines Weight Lifting and Yoga.” I read the story. It said the same thing in supermasculine prose that made me want to run out and uproot a tree.
While I read, Dolly Bartlett sat down against the wall with her knees drawn up to her chest and listened to her radio.
I went through all the strength magazines. They dated back five years, and each of them had a story on Vic Harroway. I learned how Vic trained down for “that polished look.” I learned Vic’s diet-supplement secrets for gaining “ten to fifteen pounds of solid muscles.” I learned Vic’s technique for developing “sinewy and shapely underpinnings.” I didn’t learn much about Vic’s theories on kidnapping and harassment or if he might know where Kevin Bartlett was.
I looked at the scrapbook. It was what I thought it would be. Clippings of Vic Harroway’s triumphs in body-building contests. Ads announcing the opening of a new health spa where Vic Harroway would be the supervisor of physical conditioning. Fifteen-year-old newspaper clippings of Vic Harroway as a high school football hero in Everett. Snapshots of Vic and one of Vic and Kevin with Vic’s arm around Ke
vin’s shoulder. Harroway was smiling. Kevin looked very serious.
“Did Kevin lift weights?” I asked Dolly.
“No. I remember he wanted to buy a set once, but my mother wouldn’t let him.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. She said it would make him big and beefy and stuff, you know?”
I nodded.
“They had a big fight about it.”
I nodded again.
“Would it?”
“Would it what?”
“Would it make him big and beefy?”
“Not if he did it right,” I said. I took the publicity shot of Harroway, put the magazines and the scrapbook back in the trunk, and closed it. Dolly and the dog and I went downstairs. The dog edged me out on the way down, and I was last. In the driveway Marge Bartlett was standing looking impatiently into the open barn. She had on a pale violet pants suit with huge cuffed bell-bottoms and blunt-nosed black shoes poking out underneath. A big burlap purse with a crocheted design hung from her shoulder. She wore white lipstick, and her nails were polished in a pale lavender.
“Come on, Dolly, time to go to Aunt Betty’s. Hop in the car.”
“Aw, Ma, I don’t want to go over there again.”
“Come on now, no arguing. Hop in the car I’ve got a lot of shopping to do. The party is tonight, and I don’t want you in the way. You know how nervous I get when I’m having a big party. And while I’m at the shopping center I don’t want you here alone. It’s too dangerous.”
I went to my car and put the photo in the glove compartment.
“Well, lemme stay with Mr. Spenser.”
Marge Bartlett shook her head firmly. “Not on your life. Mr. Spenser is my bodyguard, and he’ll have to go with me to the shopping center.” She clapped her hands once, sharply. “In the car.”
Dolly climbed into the backseat of the red Mustang. Marge Bartlett got in behind the wheel, and I sat beside her. The dog stood in front of the car with his ears back and stared at us.
“Can I bring Punkin?” Dolly asked.
Five Classic Spenser Mysteries Page 48
