The Odd Job (25 page)

Miriam got down to business, her touch was far gentler than her tongue. How lovely it was to be cosseted, to feel a sure hand applying an ice pack to one’s bruised shin, dabbing fizzy, cleansing, healing peroxide on one’s lacerated kneecap, drying off the trickles, smoothing on a healing salve, laying on a fresh dressing with a touch no harsher than the brush of a moth’s wing.

Then Miriam gathered up her scissors, her medicaments, her first-aid kit, carried them out of the room, and came back a few minutes later with something in a mug that smelled odd but not at all unpleasant. “Here, Sarah, you’d better drink this, it’s supposed to help you relax. What you need right now is rest. I was going to add ‘and peace of mind,’ but that won’t come till the bad guys are rounded up and Max comes home, so you might as well get some sleep while you have a chance. I’d better warn you that we’re not wholly immune from droppers-in, though we do our best to discourage them from coming.”

Miriam’s matter-of-fact common sense was the best medicine of all. Sarah even managed to smile. “I’ll keep them off. I’ll paint my face dead white from some of the ghastly makeup Charles left and wander around in a bedsheet moaning ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ You can say I’m on compassionate leave from the leprosarium if you think sterner tactics would help.”

“No, the makeup would probably do it. Get some sleep. Davy will be waking up soon and I’ll take him down with me for a swim; I haven’t had mine yet today. We usually take some whole wheat biscuits or a little fruit for after he comes out of the water. He carries it down in his lunch bucket and has a picnic on the beach with his friend the heron. Actually the heron keeps a pretty good distance between them, which is just as well. Ira told Davy that herons are like airplanes, they need a long runway so they can work up enough speed to lift them out of the water. He may be right, for all I know. Sweet dreams.”

“Thanks, Miriam, I can use some.”

Oddly enough, that herb potion Miriam had given her to drink seemed to be having an effect. Sarah closed her eyes as an experiment, and didn’t open them again until she heard a child’s voice beside her saying, “Are you awake yet, Mummy? I caught you a minnow.”

S
ARAH WOULD HAVE ENJOYED
a swim in that warm, calm water but she didn’t want to give Miriam the bother of bandaging her knee again. Besides, she hadn’t brought what most of her Kelling aunts would still refer to as a bathing suit. Miriam’s would be too big for her and Sarah was definitely not about to borrow those barely visible scraps of cloth and bits of string that Mike’s girlfriend had left at the cottage. She’d had her nap wearing Ira’s T-shirt, she kept it on and padded barefoot with Davy down to the water’s edge, where he poured the minnow carefully out of his pail and told it to swim straight home like a good fish because its mother was waiting.

Whether the minnow obeyed Davy’s instruction they didn’t get to find out; the blue heron chose that moment to take off. That was a sight to see, the great bird with its long neck bent into a flattened S-curve, its long legs trailing out behind like a pair of ski poles, its enormous wings dipping and rising with a ponderous, unhurried beat as it made its leisurely way out over the lake toward whatever it might find on the other side.

“He waved good-bye to me!”

Davy waved back until the heron’s gray-blue color merged with the mist that had begun to gather and Ira came down to tell Sarah that Jem Kelling was on the phone and did she want to talk to him or not?

“Thanks, Ira. I’d better see what he’s calling about.”

Sarah did wish that Uncle Jem could have waited another hour or two, it was a shame to go indoors at this magical time. But she went.

“Yes, Uncle Jem. What’s up?”

“Lieutenant Harris phoned just before he went off duty. He wants to know when you’ll be back, he has some new bee in his bonnet about the Wicked Widows. He also mentioned that Melanson, the guard who was arrested yesterday, tried to commit suicide this afternoon. I suppose that proves he’s guilty of killing your friend Mrs. Tawne.”

“Then you suppose quite wrongly,” Sarah snapped back. “All right, Uncle Jem, did he mention what time tomorrow morning he’d be available?”

“No, he left a number for you to call him tonight. He seems to be hot on the trail.”

“He seems to have his head stuffed with peach fuzz.” Sarah was furious. “What’s the number?”

Jem gave it to her, then revved up to tell her a number of other things that had no relevance to the matter at hand. She did the only sensible thing and lied. “I’ll have to get back to you later, Uncle Jem. Ira’s making faces at me, I think he’s trying to tell me that Miriam wants us to come to the table.”

That wasn’t a real lie, hardly a fib. If Miriam wasn’t ready to serve, she soon would be. At the moment, she was putting the finishing touches on a low-fat, vitamin-rich, delectable-looking meal that would strike a neat balance between Ira’s need to lose some weight and Miriam’s need to nourish her man. Sarah broke the connection with Jem but kept the phone in her hand.

“Do you mind if I make a call to Boston? Lieutenant Harris wants to talk with me, and I want to speak my piece to him. The halfwit’s gone and arrested that nice Mr. Melanson. And Melanson’s tried to commit suicide, don’t ask me how. Something futile, no doubt, like holding his breath and trying to turn blue.”

“Jem told me Melanson’s confessed to killing Mrs. Tawne.” Ira was digging green olives out of a skinny glass jar; they were supposed to be for Miriam’s salad but he was absentmindedly eating most of them himself. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It certainly does,” Sarah snapped back. “It tells me that the great Elwyn Fleesom Turbot was determined to hang Dolores’s murder on somebody or other to show what a hotshot administrator he is, and picked on Melanson because he was the easiest target. Anybody with even the vestige of a brain should have known that Melanson would have confessed to anything from arson to witchcraft after an hour or so of Turbot’s bellowing. That Turbot is absolutely the most obnoxious bully I’ve ever come across, even counting Great-Uncle Frederick. I don’t know why I’m railing at you when I could be screaming at Harris instead.”

Ira swallowed the last olive. “Need the phone book?”

“No, thanks. Uncle Jem gave me Harris’s number.”

Sarah dialed, and spoke to the woman who answered. “I hope this isn’t a bad time to call. My name is Sarah Bittersohn, I had a message that Lieutenant Harris wanted me to get in touch with him.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bittersohn, John’s expecting your call. Just a second, he’s out in the yard throwing sticks for the dog.”

Oh, rats! How was one supposed to maintain a suitably belligerent posture against an off-duty policeman who threw sticks for his dog? Sarah waited, trying to picture the lieutenant as a householder and wondering what breed of dog it was. Either a doberman or a bloodhound, she. surmised until she heard a high-pitched yapping that sounded more like a sheltie or a peke. When Harris came on the line, she couldn’t help asking.

“What sort of dog is it?”

“Oh, hi, Mrs. Bittersohn. He’s a toy poodle. Our kids named him Looie for Lieutenant, but I renamed him Captain. I figured one of us ought to get a promotion, and it probably won’t be me. Thanks for calling back, how’s the undercover act playing?”

“All right so far, thank you. I’m still alive, as you’ve no doubt deduced. What’s this nonsense about arresting one of the Wilkins guards?”

“Um, Mr. Turbot, the chairman of trustees, presented evidence—”

“That he’d browbeaten poor old Melanson into confessing to the murder of Dolores Tawne, which wouldn’t have taken very long because Melanson has no more spine than a boiled noodle, right?”

“Um—”

“Didn’t Vieuxchamp have the decency to stand up for his partner? They’ve worked together for years and years.”

“Um—”

“No, I didn’t expect he would. Vieuxchamp wants to keep on Turbot’s good side, if there is one. Melanson doesn’t play politics. He takes his job seriously, never puts a foot wrong, but is always in a panic for fear that some day he might.”

“Might kill somebody, you mean? In case you haven’t heard, Melanson signed a confession.”

“Does that surprise you? A loud voice is fully as effective as a rubber hose on a middle-aged neurotic who’s been staggering all his life under a burden of free-floating guilt. I don’t care what Turbot bullied Melanson into confessing, Lieutenant Harris; you ought to have known better. Turbot’s been head of trustees for less than a week, this was only his second visit to the museum, as far as I know. My husband and I have been closely associated with the place for seven years, and my cousin Brooks Kelling worked there for some time before that. Brooks knows Melanson inside out, I wish he were here. He’d tell you that if you’ve booked Milky Melanson on a charge of murder you’ve made a mistake which will lead to a suit for false arrest, assuming that your victim lives to bring it.”

“Milky? Is that what you call him?”

“It’s what Vieuxchamp calls him. I believe it’s from an old comic strip called
The Timid Soul,
about a man named Caspar Milquetoast. One can’t help using the nickname because it fits Melanson so aptly.”

“So you really think he’s getting a raw deal?” Harris was beginning to sound less sure of himself.

“Of course I do,” Sarah fumed, “or I wouldn’t be talking like this. I’m worried about Melanson, he’s just not built for this sort of treatment. Turbot’s an interfering old poop. He knows nothing about the museum or the people who work there. He just wanted to stage a melodrama with himself as the star, and you—”

“I’ve booked Melanson as a material witness. Does that make you feel any better?”

“No, it does not. If he isn’t out of jail by eight o’clock this evening, I’ll meet you there with a lawyer. If bail is needed, I’ll see that it’s provided, but you really must turn Melanson loose before he tries again to kill himself. What Turbot’s done to that man is unconscionable; it’s a wonder Melanson didn’t drop dead from the shock of being accused. Where is he now?”

“Charles Street jail.”

“I’ll see you there at eight on the dot.”

Sarah cupped a hand over the mouthpiece and turned to Miriam. “Where’s Uncle Jake?”

“In Boston, luckily. There’s some kind of lawyers’ dinner at the Copley; I’ll call the hotel about seven o’clock and have him paged. He’ll be glad of an excuse to miss the speeches. Supper’s just about ready; you are going to stay, I hope.”

“If there’s time. Did you find me a car, Ira?”

“Yes, but I’ll be driving it. You’re not prowling around Cambridge Circle alone after dark, not after what you’ve been telling us. Let me talk to Harris.”

Sarah relinquished the phone to Ira and put her arms around Miriam. “I was so hoping we’d have a nice, peaceful evening together, but there’s no telling what may happen to Melanson if the pressure isn’t relieved very soon. I know perfectly well that he had nothing to do with Dolores’s death except to find her body in the courtyard and telephone to Tulip Street, hoping Brooks would be there to tell him and Vieuxchamp what to do. Actually Vieuxchamp should have done the calling and it should have been to the police instead of Brooks, but Melanson didn’t have the gumption for that and Vieuxchamp never does anything at all if he can palm it off on somebody else.”

“Then why didn’t Turbot go after Vieuxchamp instead of Melanson?” Miriam wanted to know.

“Because Vieuxchamp’s a big, robust fellow with a cocksure manner and a ready tongue,” Sarah told her. “He looks too much like the type who’d fight back, which I’m sure he would if his own neck was in danger. In some ways he’s like Turbot, except that Vieuxchamp smarms where Turbot would bellow.”

“You seem to know a lot about this Turbot, considering that you only met him Sunday.”

“That was enough, believe me. I cannot for the life of me understand why the other trustees were foolish enough to vote him in, though I’ll grant you that half of them are too deaf to hear what’s going on and the rest too gaga to run an ant farm, let alone an art museum. If those two are planning to gab all night, I may as well go and change.”

Ira and Lieutenant Harris had arrived at some kind of gentlemen’s agreement about Melanson and gone on to the funny noise in Mrs. Harris’s transmission. Sarah went and changed back into her revolting silk blouse and the flannel skirt that she’d absentmindedly put on a hanger instead of leaving it in a heap, the result being that the damp lakeside air had eased out most of the wrinkles Jem and Egbert had put in. With Noah’s beard and a scarf of Miriam’s covering her hair and a light film of Charles’s makeup doing odd things to her by now slightly sunburned complexion, she could have been any middle-aged woman who’d rushed up from the beach on a humanitarian mission, forgetting to change out of her holey sneakers; not that anybody bothered much about such trifles nowadays.

Just as Miriam had set out a platter of steaming corn on the cob, and was beginning to steam herself, Ira hung up the phone and charged over to the table. “So where’s the grub?”

“Right in front of you, Sherlock. I didn’t want to interrupt what might have been the start of something beautiful. Pass Sarah the corn and cut her some chicken. Davy, do you want to eat your corn on the cob like Uncle Ira, or shall I cut it off for you?”

“Here’s a tender little ear that’s just your size, Davy. You can nibble it like a mouse.” Sarah was feeling contrary twinges, one of gratitude for the exquisite care Miriam was taking of her son and the other a pang of what might possibly be resentment that Miriam was doing it so well.

A fine homemaker Sarah Kelling Bittersohn had turned out to be. There was Miriam here raising Sarah’s child, Anne over at Sarah’s house landscaping her grounds, Davy’s father off in Argentina and Davy’s mother not even home to take Max’s phone call, if it ever came, because she was about to tear off to jail on behalf of an elderly basket case whom, when one came down to it, she hardly even knew.

What a crazy life for a not quite three-year-old! Yet what a happy little boy Davy was, ready to be friends with a minnow or a heron or anybody who really wanted to be friends with him. Already he could sniff out the ones who were only pretending. He wouldn’t need a silly old mother to show him the ropes, and then what could a mother do? Sarah hoped to heaven she wouldn’t wind up like Great-Uncle Frederick, running drives to put diapers on the Boston Common pigeons in the interests of a cleaner environment.