The Pied Piper of Death (20 page)

“Gondola,” Lyon corrected.

“Whatever. At least in a regular balloon I have the faint illusion that I'm standing on something substantial. In that thing there is nothing at all beneath you.”

“The harness is safe enough.” Lyon stopped adjusting the flame on the propane burner of the Cloudhopper balloon and looked across the yard at his alarmed wife. She seemed more frightened now than when she faced down the pickup truck on the narrow logging road.

He looked up at the thirty-foot-wide 21,000 cubic foot balloon. It was bobbing a few feet above his head, straining against its tether, which was fastened to an iron stake buried in the ground. “It's perfectly safe. I've been hot-air ballooning for years and this is just a slightly different model. It's a tad smaller than usual and with a harness instead of a gondola.”

“Not being able to land properly in any balloon is bad enough, but that thing is dangerous. And if you're so damned experienced, how about the time you landed on the golf course and those men tried to kill you with their putters?”

“They were five irons actually. Those guys had a lot of money riding on that particular hole.”

“Or the day you dropped in on a nudist camp?”

“I've always liked volleyball.”

“Can you be tempted not to go?”

“Nope. Care to come with me? I can rig it for two.”

“Everyone has a price.” Bea closed the distance between them and slipped her arms around his neck. Her foot kicked the rucksacklike frame containing the propane burner under a bush. “How about a matinee?”

Lyon kissed her. The Cloudhopper began to dip toward the ground as its interior air cooled. “I'll inflate the big balloon and we can go up together and do interesting things.”

She broke away and retreated toward the house. “No way. I'm not into airborne performances.”

He retrieved the propane burner and centered it under the balloon's envelope. A ten-second flash of flame was sufficient to reheat the interior air and restore balance to the balloon. He slipped into the parachute-type harness and adjusted the rucksack containing the propane burner. After the mooring line was released, he pulled the short lanyard to give the burner another five seconds of fire. The last burn changed the balloon's equilibrium and he was snatched aloft as the balloon bobbed quickly above the trees.

The balloon rose slowly after its initial surge for altitude. He nursed it slightly higher and stabilized at eight hundred feet. A light wind from the northeast carried him away from Nutmeg Hill along the westerly bank of the river.

Lyon hung suspended from the harness as the wind carried the balloon slowly forward. As the noiseless journey continued he began to feel the rush of freedom and release that balloon flight always created. He rocked gently in the harness and occasionally shattered the silence with the barking whoosh of an additional propane burn to maintain level flight.

He remembered a free-fall parachute jump he made years ago. Before the canopy opened there were fleeting moments of this exhilaration. Balloon flight was an extension of such feelings. He often imagined that his view of the slowly moving panorama below was the same as that of a large bird whose sweeping glides banked at the whim of warm air currents.

These trips were a time for reflection. The scenery of the flights was so far removed from ordinary surroundings that the mind seemed to view the world and its problems from a different perspective. It was a time when the subconscious could chew on a seemingly unsolvable problem like a silent terrier dog. If a solution or even the hint of an answer were reached, the thought might be fed to the conscious mind.

He looked down with interest as wind currents carried him over Bridgeway. The balloon's trajectory pushed him past the Piper Pie dominated by the tall monument. These were the graves whose silent headstones held the secrets of an anguished family sacrificing their youth to an early death. The firstborn in each generation was seemingly murdered by some ancient cabal.

The balloon was nearly out of its hour-long supply of propane before the answer came. He knew what his dream of Paula in the minefield had been trying to tell him. She had called the name of Rebecca—the Piper woman in the 1930s who had mysteriously disappeared. Rebecca, the young mother who had so callously deserted her young baby. The young woman who had last been seen walking on the Piper Pie near the mausoleum.

He had a good idea what had happened to the young mother; a certainty that she had met the same fate as other firstborns in the Piper clan.

Lyon impatiently pulled the ripping panel line. This emergency cord released a large section of the balloon's envelope and allowed large gulps of hot air to escape. The massive loss of air immediately changed the temperature of the balloon's interior and caused the craft to begin a rapid descent. He was now committed to a landing pattern. He would be unable to make course changes or regain vertical control.

Lyon estimated that if he continued on his present course he was going to land on the Murphysville town green. This seemed far preferable to snagging the steeple of the Congregational Church.

He had vented the balloon too early!

During his descent the wind had shifted toward the edge of the town green. This reversal changed his horizontal drift and swept him toward the buildings lining the green's north border. He had planned a stepped approach, with a gradual loss of altitude, until he hovered over the lawn near the gazebo. At that point he intended to touch down gently for a stand-up landing. This was not to be. He would be lucky to survive.

The wind carried him at treetop level toward the classical New England Congregational Church situated at the edge of the green. He frantically pulled the lanyard for a propane burn, but before the burner could heat air within the partly open balloon envelope the fuel was exhausted and the burner sputtered to a halt.

When the sagging envelope cleared the pointed steeple he had renewed hopes of a safe but jarring landing in the empty parking lot behind the church. Then the suspension harness snagged on the steeple point. The abrupt halt spilled the remaining hot air from the bag and slammed him against the side of the building, where he hung against the belfry.

He was never sure whether the cause was the shock of his body hitting the belfry or an irate custodian, but the church clarion began blaring a version of “Onward Christian Soldiers” from a gigantic speaker aimed directly at him.

The church's minister, working in his study in the rectory next door, looked up from his desk and gave a puzzled scowl at Lyon hanging from the steeple.

“Call the Fire Department!”
Lyon yelled loudly, half-deafened by Christian Soldiers.

Within two minutes Lyon heard separate sets of approaching sirens and then the deep-throated whistle blast from the volunteer firehouse.

A patrol car swerved to a stop in front of the church and Rocco catapulted from the driver's seat and rushed toward the building with a bullhorn in his hand. “You know what this means, Wentworth?” Rocco Herbert's voice echoed over the green. “The volunteer fire department is going to have to bring out the hook and ladder. They are going to be pissed.”

It was another five minutes before the extension ladder slowly began to rise from its fire truck bed and swing toward the steeple.

“Crimminy nicket, Wentworth,” Volunteer Fire Chief Terry Randall said as he hooked his safety harness to the rail. “You've got to stop this.” He perched near the top of the ladder as it hovered over the church. “We voted last year no more kittens. This year you head the list,” the volunteer fireman said as he maneuvered the ladder closer to Lyon. “You know, I got a guy waiting in my barber chair. When he finishes leafing through my
Playboy
he's going to get restless. That's when he starts thinkin' about the new unisex shop on Essex Street with them young women stylists wearing them tight pants.”

“Sorry about that, Chief.”

“If I didn't think so much of Senator Wentworth, you'd stay up here until they replaced you with the Star of Bethlehem at Christmastime.”

When Lyon was able to shift his weight to the ladder, he released the harness. The balloon envelope fell free and plunged into the parking lot. With Rocco's help he rolled up the deflated balloon and stuffed it into the back of the patrol car. By the time the balloon was secure, the fire engine had pulled away.

“I know where one of the missing bodies is,” Lyon said.

“We'll celebrate that fact at Sarge's Bar as I write up your summons,” Rocco said.

“Exhume whom!”

Lyon's prior assessments of Peyton Piper's cool social aplomb were destroyed as the CEO of the Piper Corporation exploded in rage. His face reddened. His body shook. He seemed to have difficulty in holding a fork in his trembling hand.

“We need you to make a formal request with my department,” Rocco said in an officious monotone as he looked past Peyton's shoulder to the panoramic river valley outside the Piper dining room. “That will simplify the paperwork and allow us to proceed.”

“You actually want to open my family crypt?” Peyton Piper asked incredulously.

“They just want to peek a little, dear,” Katherine Piper said. She took a sip from her goblet of spiked orange juice. “The whole thing seems perfectly harmless to me. I doubt that Chief Herbert is stealing bodies for Yale Medical School.”

Peyton glared across the table at his wife.

Rabbit scowled at the whole proceeding as he cleared away the remains of the meal. He balanced a serving tray over his head with one hand as he pushed through the swinging door into the pantry. Rocco and Lyon stood awkwardly by the doorway to the large dining room. Lyon felt like a poacher brought before the country squire for punishment, rather than a classmate trying to solve a serious family problem. They were pointedly not invited to the table for coffee.

“Why in God's name would you want to desecrate a century-old grave?”

“I think there's an extra body buried in the crypt,” Lyon said.

Piper pointed the tines of his fork at Lyon. “You know, Wentworth, the reason you were never a Thumper was because of this type of radical reasoning. What in the hell makes you believe there's someone else in my relative's grave? How could you know if they were? Finally, who the hell cares?”

“I believe that your great-aunt, Rebecca, is also in that grave. I would think that you would want to find out how she disappeared.”

“Admittedly the Pipers have a vivid family history, but this is nonsense!”

“The guy's hardly ever wrong,” Rocco said in Lyon's defense.

“The man is not logical,” Peyton said. He shook his fork again. “You know, Wentworth, you were the one who convinced me to hire Markham Swan in the first place. That bastard made a play for every woman at Bridgeway, and got himself killed for his efforts. All my troubles began when that Romeo slithered through our front gate.”

“Oh, let them dig up the graves,” Katherine Piper said after another sip of orange juice. It was obvious that she was taking great delight in her husband's discomfort. “I think it would be rather fun. We might make a charming social event out of it. Perhaps we'll invite some of your good friends from the Thumpers. What do you call an exhumation? Would it be an ‘opening' or ‘a coming out party'?”

Peyton's look across the table made it apparent who he wished as the additional occupant of the crypt. “Will you keep your comments out of this discussion?”

She ignored him. “Tell me, Chief Herbert, how would Peyton's cooperation help you?”

“The Piper Pie is a private gravesite,” Rocco said. “The town ordinances are rather vague on how to handle the opening of an enclosed above-ground grave for the purposes of a cursory examination. We might not actually have to go inside the coffin itself, so in that sense it would not be a true exhumation. We might simplify matters by calling the investigation a preventative maintenance check on the physical integrity of the mausoleum. Under those circumstances, a simple verbal request by Peyton to me will be adequate.”

“But we'd still be able to determine whether my theory is correct,” Lyon added.

“That seems perfectly reasonable to me,” Katherine Piper said. “Don't you agree, Peyton?”

“It's not your family crypt,” her husband said petulantly.

“No, but all of this is tied into the murder of Swan and the danger that Paula may be in.”

“You don't give a damn about Paula.”

“I do, more than you realize. Oh, we may go on with each other, but it's an odd kind of sparring relationship that we have. You might be surprised at how concerned I am for her.”

The discussion concerning his daughter seemed to remind Peyton that he was unsure of her whereabouts. He flipped a small phone from a mounting attached to the underside of the table and punched in a series of numbers. “Where's Paula?” he demanded over the phone. “What do you mean you don't know? That's why I pay you clowns.”

“We have her,” Lyon said.

“Forget it,” Peyton snapped into the phone before he jammed it back in its place. “Explain that, Wentworth.”

“Bea is making arrangements for her temporary safety,” Lyon said. “She'll fill you in when everything is complete.”

Piper looked taken back, as if unused to another's assumption of authority. “When you two go into people's business you go all the way, don't you?” He seemed on the verge of protesting further but then stopped. “Well, at least she's not with that professional student.”

“We will probably have assault charges against two of your men over an incident they had with Chuck Fraxer, Mr. Piper,” Rocco said. “There may also be a conspiracy charge against you.”

“Fraxer's a liar. I am certain my men were not implicated in any events he concocts.”

“Lyon and Bea saw the results.”