Ransom Game (17 page)

“There's not much to say. Gloria and Russ stood apart from the rest of the clan.”

“How did the clan take to you?”

“I heard that there were some monumental rows about me. I can see why now, though at the time I didn't see anything wrong with a grown man living in sin with an intelligent teenager. After the accident, however, Gloria looked me up and asked me to come to work for her.”

“To keep things quiet?”

“Maybe initially. I can admit that now without it hurting. But we liked one another from the start and we both so loved Russ that there's never been any problem.”

“Had you started work when the kidnapping occurred?”

“I'd started at the beginning of August, a month and a half after Russ was killed.”

“It was a car accident wasn't it?”

“Yes. He loved speed and drink. They killed him.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So am I/ I hate waste, and I think he was wasted.”

“Sorry. I'm rambling in my questioning. I should be a regular machine-gun of short direct questions.”

“‘Where was I on the night of December 16th?'”

“That's the sort of thing. How about the Labour Day weekend?”

“I was here that weekend. I never went to the lake when I could avoid it. It's an allergy I have; something in the sand or water. I come out in hives or at least a running nose and watery eyes. Also I burn easily in the sun. So I was at the house when Bob Jarman called from the lake. I answered and ran to get Mr. Warren. He was tinkering with something in his shop. That was his special kind of joy. He loved machinery of all kinds. I guess after the abstractions of his business interests all week, it was the perfect relaxation for him.”

“Did Jarman tell you what had happened?”

“Yes, he told me to stay calm, that Gloria had been abducted, and that he had the ransom note.”

“Did he and Warren talk long on the phone?”

“Just a few minutes. Mr. Warren said that he would contact the police at a high level and that Bob, I mean Mr. Jarman, should drive down from the lake as soon as he felt well enough. He left about half an hour after he phoned.”

“How do you know that?”

“It's an hour's drive. He arrived here at three-thirty, an hour and a half after he called.”

“Was he calm? Did he look badly beaten?”

“He had a goose-egg on the back of his head that looked very tender. I put a cold compress on it, but there wasn't much I could do about it. He and Mr. Warren met with the chief and a inspector for about another hour. I didn't hear any of that.”

“But you don't miss much, do you?”

“Information is power. I want to survive.” Both of us had done with our drinks by this time. I'd eaten the piece of orange that came with my drink, and Helen Blackwood was leaning across the table in a very friendly way, The impish, or gamine, quality I'd recognized in her face kept darting out at me from behind her gray eyes. I had a strong desire to reach across the table and touch her, just to make sure that she was real.

“What sort of place did you come from? Where were you going when you bumped into Johnny Rosa?” She sighed, as if reluctant to go back into the past again. I couldn't blame her. It was her free night.

“I was born here in Grantham. My father was a writer, whom I didn't see much. My brother and I were brought up in my grandfather's house by my mother who looked after all of us. I was very close to my grandfather, didn't like my mother much, and idealized my absent father. I can see how unfair that was now, but as a teenager I could see no future in washing dishes and ironing dimity blouses. My dad was Edward Blackwood. Did you ever read …? I'm sorry, I'm embarrassing you. I'm always doing it.”

“No, no, really. I'm not much at reading novels, but what sort did he do?”

“Oh, he didn't do novels. His closest to a big success was with
Algonquin Rambles,
a history of lumbermills and canoe tripping in northern Ontario. As well as books, he did magazine articles, and once went to Hollywood for a year. He was staying in Guatemala when he died. The woman he was living with wrote a very kind letter. My mother still has it. As far as I was concerned, I took two years of university at Secord before I finally gave it up. The Warrens paid for it. I guess I'm almost one of the family now: Russ's young unofficial widow.” She smiled, but there was no joy behind it.

“Did you ever meet a woman named Muriel Falkirk?”

“She was a friend of Johnny's, wasn't she? No, I didn't see Johnny after he came out of prison.”

“He never spoke of her when you knew Johnny first?”

“He may have, but I didn't retain it. I'm sorry, is it important?” Her beautifully arched eyebrows were up, adding poignancy to an ordinary question.

“Right now, I don't know what's important and what's the bag the potato chips came in. Half of what I was asking was just trying to get to know you better. You're not at all like that grim voice on the telephone.”

“I acquired that voice with the job. It saves time in the long run. You have no idea the number of people who have been trying to push Gloria into one scheme or another since her father's death. ‘Is she having weekend guests? May the paper know their names? Is she going to Europe this summer? Will she be staying with Princess Grace in Monaco? Will she be attending the Royal Winter Fair? Will she and her husband be going to the opera gala?'”

“Anyway, I like your real voice. Though now that I think of it, even your Mrs. Danvers voice didn't stop me.”

“My what?”

“Never saw
Rebecca?”

“Or read it.”

“Mrs. Jarman told me that you found her father in the pool. That can't have been much fun.”

“No, not much. If I'd been there five minutes earlier, I might have been able to do something. As it was, I pulled him out and called for help, but even then I could tell it was too late. I tried mouth-to-mouth but there was no response. They told me that when the ambulance crew came they couldn't pull me away from him. I don't remember that part. I just remember how little he looked, sort of half-kneeling on the bottom, when I came in with his paper and coffee. I guess I've burned that image into my brain.”

I shrugged and didn't say anything. She sent a sad smile past the empty glasses. I found a necessary to take a deep breath.

“I don't have any more questions, Miss Blackwood. You have been a great help. I don't know exactly how right now, but I'll let you know.” I grabbed the waiter's eye, wrestled it to the ground and forced him to take my money. We came out of the hotel and into the parking lot together. She had put on a dark fur coat, one of Gloria's minks of a few seasons back, I guessed, and on her it looked good. I was walking close to her, close enough to still be aware of the perfume she was wearing.

We were standing close to my car, she was just about to say something, her head was turned toward me and a smile was working up behind her eyes again, when I heard the first slug tear into the door of my car. The hollow echo of metal was still just getting started when a second bullet creased my shoulder and went into the right back window of the Olds. I didn't think any more. I grabbed Helen by the arm and we tumbled into the slush and, where lucky, on the asphalt of the lot. I could hear her breathing in my ear, and remember seeing some mussed hair and frightened eyes. “Keep your head down!” was all I can remember saying as I tried to pull myself ahead of the next car. The loud thumping I heard was the sound of my own heart, the other was the sudden gunning of a motor. I looked up and saw the back end of a car pulling rapidly away from the curb. It could have been a blue Mustang, but in that light it could equally well have been a turquoise compact with a hatchback.

TWENTY

Helen Blackwood was still hugging the ground when I got back to her. She turned her head, looking up at me as though she thought I was the man with the gun. Her face seemed set for the finish. When she saw that it was me, she was comparatively glad. She got up and tried to brush herself off, but the pair of us were work for the cleaners. I was happy to see that she could get up. I honestly hadn't thought too much about her when the fireworks started; now, somewhat guilty, I was concern itself. I asked her the normal questions under the circumstances, and she asked me who was doing the shooting and why. I shrugged that one off, saying it could be an angry former husband from any number of dead and dying files. But I knew that the bullets had come from closer to current business than that.

“Can we take your car? I don't think that it would be very smart to take mine. I can come back for it later. Are you really okay? Would you like a shot of something?”

“No. I'm fine, honestly. Just a little wobbly that's all. I'll be all right. Were you hit?” Her eyes were wide with the excitement of a woman who has just been shot at. I tried not to take her interest too much to heart.

“One came close to my shoulder, but it's just a crease.” She tried to laugh, as though I'd just been cracking wise or something, and then she leaned over toward me and practically fell into my arms. She didn't faint, she just wanted to feel that there was somebody who wasn't shooting at her for a second.

“Let's get out of here,” I suggested. “I'll drive if you like.”

She nodded like a waif being told for the third night running that there would be no supper. She slipped me the keys which were lying near the top of her handbag, and led me to the two-door Volvo. The instrument panel lit up like a Boeing jet when I found a place to bury the key. She rested her head back against the leather headrest with her chin thrust forward: another victim of the guillotine. By the time I'd cleared what remained of the cars in the lot, she was looking a little calmer. But when I put on the brakes near the place where the shots had come from, her big eyes were questioning me again. “I'll just be a moment,” I said, and held her arm for a moment. Then I reached for my pocket flashlight and hoped that the batteries were still alive after a year of nearly constant neglect. They were, but barely. I found what I was looking for without very much difficulty. The brass shell casings were shining under the street lights where they had been ejected by a powerful rifle. I put them in my pocket and returned to the car.

“Why did you stop?” Helen asked, a little healthy annoyance displacing shock.

“Just looking for something on the road.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes. I'll have you home in ten minutes. Try to relax a little.” She let her head fall backwards against the rest again.

A man of my word, I drove for the second time that day along the curved drive leading to the Warren mansion. Helen kept her eyes tight shut until I pulled up under the
porte cochère
. It took her a few seconds to realize where she was.

“Keep on driving and take the driveway that goes around to the right. I have my own way in. You will see where I usually leave the car.” I did what I was told, wondering whether she came in the back way because she was, even in her position of private secretary, still the help, or because of its convenience. We left the car on the edge of a parking lot the size of a tennis court and Helen began rummaging in her bag like an obstetrician. She found keys, and opened the dark door under the drab wooden porch. A stairway which looked as though it had been painted in old coffee, led up to her private apartment. I muttered something about using the phone, while she nodded and slipped her coat off her shoulders so that it fell half on a couch and half on the oriental rug. I dialed the Regional Police and asked for either Savas or Staziak. They were both off. What I got was Sergeant Harrow, who hated the guts of all private investigators in general and mine in particular. I didn't have the heart to play games with him, so in a falsetto I said that I was sorry but that his party hadn't waited and hung up. I started dialing again, but when Helen heard that I was calling a taxi, she pushed one of the two little buttons and the phone went dead.

“Have another drink first. I need one, and I hate to drink by myself. I fear that once I get started, I'll have begun another long chapter. You don't have to go quite yet, do you?” She went to a tea trolley stocked with bottles and lifted a bottle of Canadian Club. “Will you stay with rye or would you like to move on to something else? Would you like some cognac?” She replaced the rye and found a dusty textured bottle and a couple of wine glasses. While she poured, I pulled my coat off. The bullet had scorched the shoulder only slightly. Helen was sitting next to me. Her hand was shaking as she handed one of the amber-filled glasses to me. She sloughed her shoes without touching them and let them sit on the rug where they fell. She drank deeply of the cognac, letting her head fall back, until a shudder brought her head back and her slender shoulders together when the alcohol hit her stomach. That put some colour back in her face. “You're not drinking. Go on. It will help.” I did what I was told.

The cognac burned the way it was supposed to, and I felt as though my feet were in a tub of hot water. I tried to smile, to say something, but nothing came out. I looked down and my wide tie was looking luridly up at me in all of its various colours. She took another long sip, and urged me in the same direction. I scorched my esophagus again to please the lady, who was looking very pretty sitting next to me. I blinked and she had my feet up on the couch. I blinked again, my head was in her lap and she was bending down to kiss me. I don't know where my hands were, but they did nothing to stop her. She kissed me long and urgently. Her perfume was all around me. I felt my hand on the back of her head. Her clothes made a whispering sound as she stretched out beside me. Wherever I touched her it felt good. We held one another and kissed, until the sound of the two high-powered bullets disappeared into other sounds, and the smell of the cordite of the shells was eased by that of perfume and freshly washed hair.