The Odd Job (10 page)

“Sorry, Charles, that man shoved me on purpose. You don’t suppose he was a bag-snatcher?”

It was perhaps not the thing for a butler to smile, but Charles smiled anyway. The handbag Sarah carried was one that Max had had custom-made for her; a modern version of the sturdy old Boston bag, with a formidable brass catch, leather straps that wrapped around and fastened with brass buckles, and handles strong enough to hold a rearing mustang.

“I should venture to say, moddom, that anybody who tried to snatch that suitcase you’re carrying would need either an acetylene torch or a chain saw. He didn’t hurt you?”

“No, but he startled me. Charles, I think we ought to get on the subway.”

“But it’s only one stop from Boylston to Park. And we’d still have to walk down Beacon to Tulip.”

“I know that. Humor me, can’t you? Have you any tokens for the turnstile?”

“Oodles. Would it be presumptuous of me to ask where we’re going?”

“I don’t care where, I just think we ought to go. We’ll take whichever train comes along first.”

Sarah was not at all sure why she was behaving so eccentrically, but that hand-delivered hatpin and the hole drilled through the office wall into one of Brooks’s telephone books so soon after Dolores Tawne’s unexplained death were quite enough for one day. She was not about to take a chance that the person who’d just lurched into her was planning to follow her and Charles home.

Getting hold of the Bittersohn Detective Agency’s business address was no problem. Anybody could pick up a Boston phone book and open it to the right page. Anybody could read the company name on the directory in the lobby. Anybody could have been standing around the front desk when she got back from lunch, seen her picking up the envelope with the hatpin inside, and heard the receptionist address her by name. She and Charles could have been trailed to the police station. That alleged messenger could very likely be tailing them right now, in the hope of finding out where they lived.

On the other hand, maybe he—or she—wasn’t. What was the sense of putting herself and Charles through this smoke-and-mirrors routine? They were just two more raincoats in the crowd. The last thing Sarah wanted to do was cram herself into a packed train among a human logjam and fight her way out when the train stopped someplace where she didn’t want to be. Just getting down those iron steps was a test of endurance, being shoved through the turnstile by the weight of others behind her almost landed her on the tracks.

By some miracle, however, a Riverside car pulled up at precisely the right spot and spilled out enough bodies so that Charles was able to practice some deft swordplay with the furled umbrella, maneuver Sarah into one of the few empty seats, and anchor himself like a limpet to the handgrip behind her. She gave up trying to think and let the waves of fatigue wash over her. She didn’t snap out of it until the woman in the window seat crammed her Danielle Steele paperback into an already brimming tote bag and tried to worm her way past.

“Excuse me, I’m getting out here.”

“Oh, sorry.” Sarah stood up to let the woman by, noting as she did so that they were out of the tunnel and coming to a stop at Brookline Village. She’d meant to change cars at Kenmore to muddy the trail further. So much for trying to be clever.

At least she knew where they were; it was as good a place as any. Max and she had come here one night back when all those things were happening at Madam Wilkins’s palace. They’d ridden in a taxi following another that held Lydia Ouspenska and a drunken piano player named Bernie. That had been the first time in her life she’d ever been kissed passionately in a taxicab.

Or anywhere else, for that matter. Her elderly first husband’s caresses, on the rare occasions when he’d bestowed them, had been so chaste that she might as well have been a novice in a nunnery rather than a lawfully wedded wife. Poor Alexander, what a time to be thinking of him. She took the arm that her butler offered, not for auld lang syne but because it was a long step down and she still felt unsteady on her feet.

Once he’d assisted her safely off the train, Charles asked quite reasonably, “Now what shall we do?” He’d forgotten to add “moddom,” he must have wearied of playing the faithful servitor. Sarah didn’t blame him a bit.

“You know the Village, Charles. Where can we get a drink and some decent food? Preferably quiet, not too adventurously ethnic, and close by.”

“Gotcha. This way to the peaceful.”

On the relatively few occasions when she’d been there, Brookline Village had struck Sarah as an agreeable place to be. Charles knew exactly what she was hoping for. A few minutes later they were shedding their raincoats in a cheerful bistro where Charles appeared to be on amicable terms with all three waitresses and most of the patrons. The question of drinks came up. Sarah was not much in the habit of drinking anything stronger than white wine or a little of the sherry that used to be a dinnertime ritual at the boardinghouse back when Charles would buy it in gallon jugs at bedrock prices and decant it into Waterford crystal in order to improve the aura, since not much could be done about the taste. Sarah still kept sherry in the house, but not in gallon jugs and not at bedrock prices. Tonight, however, she ordered Scotch and water.

“For medicinal purposes,” she explained, kicking her wet shoes off under the table and hoping she’d be able to squeeze them back on when it came time to leave. “I’m still not sure why I dragged us both into this, Charles. There was just something about that man—I’m sure it was a man, don’t ask me why—darting at me the way he did. He reminded me of somebody, I can’t think who. I wish I’d got a look at that messenger who left the hatpin.”

“It’s probably a good thing you didn’t.”

Their drinks came, the waitress hovered. Charles ordered the special, whatever that might be, without bothering to look at the menu. Sarah decided that plain broiled scrod would be safest after her recent upset, and took a careful sip of her watered-down Scotch.

“I suppose I’m reacting to—oh, the whole situation. Dolores Tawne dying the way she did. Myself being named her executrix. By the way, please remind me to phone Mr. Redfern at ten tomorrow morning; that’s when he gets in. I do wish I hadn’t made that dreadful scene in front of poor Lieutenant Harris. Perhaps I let my nerves run away with my head, but I just didn’t dare go straight back to the house.”

Sarah and Charles had both been keeping their voices low. As their waitress approached with salads and hot rolls, they changed the subject and turned up the volume to normal pitch.

“Have you heard from Mariposa yet, Charles?”

“Yes, she called around noontime. It’s different there, of course, I think they’re ahead of us. Anyway, the aunt’s died and left her something, I couldn’t make out whether it’s a goat or a coat or what. You know Mariposa when she gets excited and starts mixing her languages, I caught about one word in six. I understand ‘hasta la vista’ well enough, though, and I sure hope she meant it. By the way, she wants you to phone her.”

“Did she say when?”

“Mañana, which could mean either tonight or tomorrow or sometime when you happen to be in the mood. She gave me the number, I’ll copy it out for you when we get back to the house.”

A lone diner at the next table was exhibiting signs of interest; Charles winked at Sarah and began to improvise.

“Do you still want to fly over to Bimini tonight, or should we try the puppet theater?”

“Let’s think about it,” Sarah replied. “Did you know George Junior is planning a huge birthday party for Anora? He’ll be tapping you about the catering, I expect.”

“Sounds like fun. When’s it going to happen?”

“When George gets around to it, I suppose. You know him, he takes after his father. Don’t look now, Charles, but that luscious blond over there is trying to catch your eye.”

“Oh, her. She’s been trying for quite a while.” Charles shook his own blond curls and bestowed a sickeningly sweet smile at his admirer. “I’ll tell her you’re my rich aunt from Brazil, where the nuts come from.”

“Tell her anything you please. Just don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when Mariposa finds out what you’ve been up to.”

They kept up their inconsequential banter, dropping a false clue now and then just in case one of the other diners was Sarah’s nemesis in disguise. It got to be plain silly, the Scotch was helping, but Sarah decided she’d better not have another. Perfectly broiled scrod with rice and buttered squash was the best medicine for a diner who’d lost her lunch. The restaurant was as satisfactory as the food; quaint but not cute, clean and cozy, with real flowers in the vases and real candles dripping real wax into the saucers under the candlesticks. They took their time and enjoyed their meal.

As a smashing grand finale, Charles ordered a whopping dessert, something fudgy topped with whipped cream, nuts, cherries, and various other bedizenments that Sarah tried not to look at while she toyed with a modest scoop of lime sherbet. Charles took coffee, Sarah took tea. Charles put on a dapper blond mustache and a dapper Vandyke beard to match. Sarah put on her still-damp but not quite so squidgy shoes. They held an amiable squabble over the bill for the benefit of Charles’s audience; in fact the meal would go on the office-expense sheet no matter which of them paid. They flipped a coin and Charles magnanimously let Sarah do the honors.

At fairly long last, they put their raincoats back on and ventured forth again into the teeming night, wondering at the tops of their voices whether to take a taxi to George’s or ride the T out to Chestnut Hill and pay Mary a surprise visit so that she could admire Charles’s beautiful new beard. By this time Sarah was past caring what they did. She let Charles assist her into the Red Cab that the cashier had kindly ordered for them and tell the cabbie where to go.

Charles’s choice was a delicatessen over in Allston, where he stocked up on enough pastrami, salami, corned beef, chopped liver, rye bread, and kosher pickles to keep body and soul together for the rest of the week. Then it was back to Brookline, where they paid off their driver and ducked into a bakery for croissants and cheese Danish. The driver had seemed not to notice or perhaps not to care that Charles had switched in the cab from his smart Vandyke to a bushy black beard and donned an exotic black rain hat with a peak in front and a little curtain at the back reminiscent of those worn in the Foreign Legion.

Charles had also produced from his raincoat pocket a gaudy print head scarf of Mariposa’s. Sarah had tied it on and pulled it as far down over her forehead as was feasible. Her distinctive handbag was out of sight inside the plastic carrier that also held the Danish and the croissants. They stood by the car tracks under the umbrella, a train marked “North Station” came along three-quarters empty. They climbed aboard and sat down several seats apart on opposite sides of the aisle, not only for purposes of dissembling but because the smell of salami at close quarters in the cab had turned out to be more than Sarah’s stomach had bargained for.

Park Street Station felt like Mecca. They climbed the stairs, crossed Beacon, slipped behind the State House and through the back alleys until they’d worked their way to a sturdy green-painted wooden door that opened on Cousin Brooks’s tiny garden and led to the basement entrance of the Kelling brownstone. All in all, this had turned out to be quite a day.

T
O HER SURPRISE, SARAH
slept late and woke refreshed. Charles had coffee made and croissants warming by the time she entered the kitchen decently mantled from head to toe in a floor-length robe woven in many shades of red and pink with a hood attached and soft red leather bootees to match, which Max had picked out for her in a Moroccan bazaar. She allowed Charles to serve her with coffee, a croissant, butter, and apricot jam, then told him for goodness’ sake to sit down and eat.

“Yes, moddom. I was going to iron the morning paper for you, but I got sidetracked reading the funnies.”

“That’s quite all right, it’s yesterday’s paper and I haven’t time to read it anyway. I need to call Miriam and make sure Davy isn’t homesick, then get dressed and go over to see Mr. Redfern. I suppose there are papers one has to sign, I’ve never been an executor before. Poor Dolores! I wish I could stop saying that.”

“Have a Danish,” Charles suggested.

“I’ll think about it. Have you checked the answering tape this morning?”

“I have. Do we wish to purchase top-quality aluminum siding at reduced rates for a limited time only?”

“Not today, thank you. Is there more coffee?”

“Sí, señora. May I take your request as a tribute to my culinary efforts?”

“You may take it or leave it, just pour me about half a cup and drink the rest yourself. And for goodness’ sake, go to Fuzzleys’ sometime when you have nothing more pressing to do and have them make you a new beard. That ratty old bush you put on last night looks as if you’d been hatching sparrows in it.”

“You wound me. You might at least have said budgerigars, there’s some class to budgerigars. Then you want me to go to Fuzzleys’ this morning?”

“Of course not, I want you here to straighten up the kitchen and answer the telephone. Lieutenant Harris might call while I’m out and you’ll have to talk with him. I don’t know what the protocol is about getting Dolores’s stuff out of the studio, or whether they’ve managed to locate any heirs. I may need you to chauffeur later on.”

Sarah sliced a small piece off one of the Danish pastries and slid the rest over to Charles. “Here, you finish it. I really must find out what’s happening at the lake.”

Miriam had been waiting for Sarah’s call, or said she had. All was roses. Davy was developing into quite a fisherman, he’d succeeded in scooping a live minnow into his net, shown it to everybody, then carefully put it back in the water and waved bye-bye as it swam away. He told his mother that he was going to catch the minnow again today because it was nice and it liked him.

Sarah reminded her son that there were lots of nice minnows in the lake and perhaps a different one might like a turn at being caught today. Then Ira took Davy off to check out sites for possible sand castles and Sarah told Miriam about having been landed with the job of executing Dolores Tawne’s will and she wished to heaven Max would come home. She said not a word about the mysterious hatpin or the hole that somebody had drilled in the office wall while she was up there by herself. Why get them all upset when they were having such a lovely time?