The Resurrection Man (18 page)

Miriam was sending food over, of course. Sarah recognized a Tupperware cake plate with half a cinnamon ring under its clear plastic cover. Jesse was eyeing the pastry with undisguised lust. She took a carton of milk from the fridge and poured him a glass.

“You’d better eat some of this coffee cake before we go, Jesse. We’re running behind schedule and shan’t be able to stop for food on the way. We’d better just leave a note for Mike, you can phone him this evening from Boston if you like.”

The shellfishing and berry picking must not have been all that productive this morning. Jesse finished every crumb of the cinnamon ring and would probably have licked the plate if Sarah hadn’t been in the kitchen. He didn’t exactly fall on his knees with gratitude over the plain blue knitted polo shirt Max foraged from the bedroom that Mike and Carrie were sharing in accordance with the mores of their peers; but he took it.

“I’ll go change and meet you down at the bottom of the driveway.”

“At least he’s not conspicuously dirty,” Sarah remarked as the boy ran off and she picked up the grocery pad to write Mike a note. He and Carrie wouldn’t be heartbroken over losing Jesse, she surmised, though they might be rather hard-hit about the coffee cake. “I suppose he’s been swimming a lot for want of anything else to do, and sluicing off under the outdoor shower. I shouldn’t have minded a swim myself, but there’ll be other times.”

She finished her note and took out her car keys. “Well, I suppose we’d better go. It’s curious, your having mentioned Jesse on the way here and our finding him all moved in. Or is it?”

“Not really,” Max confessed. “Mike phoned the other day while you were out with Davy and told me the kid had shown up. I didn’t tell you because I know how you feel about Lionel’s wrecking crew, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little bastard. So I told Mike to keep Jesse out of the house and let me know if he caused any trouble. I figured he wouldn’t stay long, I didn’t realize that screwball mother of his had shoved him out with no money or clothes. Vare ought to be locked up.”

“Many have thought so, dear, myself included. There’s your little wanderer now, he must have run all the way. Just understand one thing, Max Bittersohn, this kid’s all yours. I took you for better or worse, but not for Jesse Kelling. Oh dear, it’s just occurred to me, we’ll have to take him with us to the funeral tomorrow. I wouldn’t dare leave him in the house by himself.”

“God, you’re a hard woman.”

“You just bet I am. Furthermore, he can’t go in dungarees and a borrowed shirt, Anora would be insulted. Charles will have to take him shopping when we get back, and you, my love, will have to shell out the money. Don’t think Lionel will reimburse you, either. Aunt Appie might, if Lionel wasn’t around to stop her. How long are you planning to keep Jesse?”

“Who knows? He can have one of the third-floor bedrooms, can’t he?”

“On the condition that he doesn’t set fire to it.”

“You’re not really sore, are you?” Max was beginning to sound worried.

“Not yet,” Sarah answered, “but time will tell. All right, this is the moment of truth.”

She hit the brakes, Jesse climbed in with his rolled-up sleeping bag, almost respectable in his borrowed shirt. He’d even remembered to put on his sneakers. Sarah had been expecting Max to get in a little missionary work during the ride, but he didn’t say much to either Jesse or herself. He didn’t even use the car telephone, she became anxious that he might have overtired himself and started his leg hurting again.

Jesse wasn’t talking either, perhaps they were both taking naps. She pushed the little car along as fast as she could without risking a speeding ticket. It rode better with Jesse’s extra weight, though he couldn’t be adding much over another hundred pounds. He looked like a famine victim; aside from a bath and a haircut and something to wear, that boy’s greatest need right now was to get a few decent meals inside him.

“I’ll let you two out at the house, Max, and put the car away while you’re getting Jesse settled in,” she remarked as they were heading down Storrow Drive.

Her husband wasn’t having that. “Couldn’t you turn off at Arlington and drop me at the corner of Charles and Boylston so that I can walk over to the office? Jesse may as well go on into the garage with you so he’ll know where we keep the cars. Do you drive, Jess?”

“When I get the chance. Lionel keeps saying he’ll get me a car when my grades pick up, but they’re never good enough to suit him. He makes me sick. I’m not going back to school this fall. I’m never going back.” Jesse shrugged in self-pity. “So I’ll be a dropout and spend the rest of my life doing manual labor and sleeping under bridges. Who cares?”

“You might, some day,” said Max. “I’ll see you in a while, then, Sarah. Call me at the office if anything comes up.”

N
OTHING CAME UP. SARAH
led Jesse to the top floor of the high narrow town house, showed him where to park his sleeping bag and perform his ablutions. Then she herded him downstairs and turned him over to Charles, with strict orders about a suit and a haircut.

Mariposa had taken the afternoon off to visit some of her countless relatives. Theonia was out having her fortune told at a tea shop that she suspected of running a sideline in fencing stolen jewelry, some of which she and Brooks had been trying to track down. Sarah found to her astonishment that she had the house to herself.

She caught up on some correspondence, made herself a glass of iced tea, and took it out to Brooks’s midget garden along with a book she’d been trying to read for the past two months. She read a few chapters, decided the book wasn’t worth finishing, went back inside and telephoned Miriam to make sure Davy was still intact and not missing his parents. He wasn’t. A trifle letdown, she got dinner started, then went upstairs to shower off the day’s accumulations. Feeling a little better, she put on a gauzy caftan and a pair of golden slippers, and swished downstairs to greet her housemates as they straggled in.

Max and Brooks were first. Brooks was chirpy, Max was tired. Sarah administered a therapeutic kiss, made her husband put his leg up on a hassock, and brought him a mild Scotch and water. Theonia came home not long after the men, mildly triumphant. She’d done a little fortune-telling of her own, with the happy result that the proprietor had been scared into forking over the stolen emerald, sapphire, pearl, diamond, and ruby earrings alleged to have been created for Catherine the Great of Russia.

“I’ve got them right here in my handbag, wrapped in a couple of tea-shop napkins,” Theonia crowed. “I thought I’d wait till after the funeral to return them to Mrs. Upscale, I want to be fresh and rested when we start haggling over the fee. She’ll lose, needless to say. Want to see?”

With justifiable pride, she unwrapped the ponderous baubles from the tea-shop napkins and held them up. Her husband snorted.

“Preposterous! The empress must have had remarkably sturdy earlobes.”

“So have I, my love. I’m going to wear them to dinner. Excuse me while I titivate.”

Theonia came back downstairs in her trusty black dinner gown and the empress’s earrings, sent Charles into ecstasies, and totally benumbed the newest member of the party. Jesse was looking pretty spiffy himself when it came to wardrobe, Charles C. Charles was not a man to do the job by halves. In a Brooks Brothers suit, Florsheim shoes, and a Prince Charles haircut. Cousin Lionel’s eldest son was a different kettle of clams from the skinny waif in the tattered cutoffs.

Of course Charles hadn’t been able to do anything about the Kelling nose. Jesse had inherited his grandmother’s looks; Sarah had once observed that Aunt Appie always reminded her of Cyrus Dallin’s “Appeal to the Great Spirit.” Cousin Mabel had riposted, “Which half, the Indian or the horse?” The question was not unreasonable.

Jesse would grow up to his nose in time, he might even look rather distinguished if he ever got that furtive look out of his eye. All the expensive education Appie was paying for appeared to have left some kind of impression; away from his family Jesse hadn’t exactly bloomed but he was giving a pretty fair portrayal of a rational human being. About halfway through the meal, Sarah quit expecting the boy to pocket the silver salt cellars with an eye to clandestine resale or slip a live lizard into the salad bowl out of general nastiness.

Perhaps Jesse hadn’t thought to bring a lizard, or perhaps his first genuine meal in what must have seemed a very long time was absorbing his full attention. He ate with enthusiasm but not ferocity, didn’t talk with his mouth full or interrupt when someone else was speaking. He asked one or two intelligent questions, particularly of Theonia with regard to the method she’d employed in getting back the empress’s earrings. He was not too appalled to learn that he’d have to attend George Protheroe’s funeral in the morning, at least not after he’d learned that the decedent was a victim of murder by spearing.

Except for those two pizza parties with Mike and Carrie, Jesse had had no contact with the outside world during his stay at Ireson’s Landing: no radio, no newspapers, no television. He’d stayed clear of the caretaker for reasons associated with certain past incidents. He could hardly be blamed now for craving details of George’s melodramatic demise.

“Are you guys working on the case?” he asked avidly.

“Homicide is always handled by the police,” Max evaded. “We just happened to become slightly involved because Sarah phoned Mrs. Protheroe and learned that her husband was dead. The Protheroes were old friends of the family, I expect your father would know them, too.”

“Oh, were they the people who lived in that big mudflat-colored house with all the junk in it? Don’t tell me the guy who got lanced was that fat old drunk who was always trying to tell stories nobody wanted to hear?”

This was the Jesse whom Sarah had known and loathed, she leaped straight down his throat. “George Protheroe was not a fat old drunk. When he was a young man in the Orient, he caught some terrible disease. He almost died, and it left him with serious problems, including a kind of chronic sleeping sickness. Mrs. Protheroe was devoted to her husband and many people, myself included, loved him very much. Kindly bear that in mind tomorrow at the funeral.”

“I’m sorry,” Jesse mumbled.

“All right, Jesse. But if you’re going to be a detective, you’d better learn to get the facts before you start running off at the mouth.”

“A detective? Me?”

“Well, possibly. Depending. Max, I seem to have put my foot in it here. Can you help me out?”

Max didn’t mind Sarah’s having jumped the gun. He knew what a strain she’d been under all summer long, and what she must be feeling now. “Sure, Sarah, no problem. It’s just that I’ve been watching you a little, Jesse, and wondering whether you might sometime be interested in helping us out at the agency. Since you’re at loose ends till school starts, this might be a time to get in a spot of apprenticing.”

“Me? Well, sure. But what would I have to do?”

“Sweep out the office, answer the phone, wander around the art museums and antique shops, go out on a few assignments with whichever of us can use you. Generally get the feel for what we do.”

“Do I carry a gun?”

“Not if you’re going to work for us. Lethal weapons only invite trouble. Our protection comes from using our heads all the time and our feet when necessary.”

“I’m a brown belt in judo.”

“Bully for you.” Max shifted in his chair and winced as his mending ribs gave him a stab of pain. “I wish I’d been. Does anyone mind if we go and sit where it’s softer? Anyway, Jesse, you might start by keeping your eyes open tomorrow at the funeral.”

“What am I supposed to look for?”

“That’s where the detective instinct comes in. You just have to develop a nose for smelling rats.”

Jesse was quite taken with the idea. “So that’s what this honker of mine was designed for. I’ve often wondered.”

Jesse’s quip against himself gave them all a chuckle, Sarah began to feel that Max might have been more perspicacious than anyone else about the boy’s potentialities. That wasn’t to say she didn’t intend to keep a sharp eye on him for whatever length of time he might remain in the house. Today had gone better than she’d anticipated. Nevertheless, she went to bed warning herself to beware of getting too cozy too soon with any child of Lionel’s.

During the night an east wind came up, as east winds often do in Boston. The weather that had been hot and fair all week was damp and chilly in the morning. Sarah and Theonia both came to the breakfast table in their robes, asking each other what they ought to wear to the funeral. Not that it mattered particularly. Few people bothered about mourning these days, least of all the Old Guard. Theonia did decide on black because it suited her and because the outfit she had in mind included a matching jacket that could be left on or taken off, depending on the weather. Since it looked like rain, she was going to carry her lovely black-and-white umbrella with the goose-head handle that Brooks had carved for her, and hoped to goodness she wouldn’t forget and leave it somewhere.

Sarah said then she’d wear her gray silk suit and carry her summer raincoat, just in case. Max and Brooks couldn’t help being appropriately dressed since neither of them went in for bright-colored shirts or flashy ties. Jesse got the full treatment and emerged, if not a thing of beauty, at least a credit to Charles’s valeting. Charles himself was splendid in his butler outfit, Mariposa had remembered to put on the black uniform and take off the orange ribbons. The two of them looked snappy enough to be raising the curtain at the Wilbur on a British drawing-room comedy.

Seven in one car would have been a squeeze. It was decided that Charles and Mariposa would go in the bug and the rest in the big car, which they’d need for the sad procession to the cemetery after the service. They all walked over to the garage together; Sarah stayed next to Jesse, feeling a slight urge to make up for the heavy-handed way she’d been forced to deal with him in the past.

“What a pity your grandmother has to miss the funeral.” Sarah thought she wouldn’t mention that Apollonia Kelling liked nothing better than a good cry over a casket. “She and your grandfather were always so fond of George Protheroe.”