Death Through the Looking Glass (21 page)

“NOT THE WINDOW, WENTWORTH!” Bea yelled as she threw herself into his arms.

“Your face is going to be a mess,” Robin said as she tied the last knot in the extension cord binding Damon Snow's arms.

16

The six-foot Wobbly doll perched on the edge of the patio parapet balanced Lyon's drink between its paws. Summer night shrouded the house as a dim lantern cast faint illumination over the semicircle of lawn chairs. Lyon Wentworth, awkward in his neck brace, splinted arm, and cut face covered with small bandages, tried to smile.

Rocco lumbered out the kitchen door, supported by a cane in one hand and balancing a tray of drinks in the other. “Here they come.”

“How come Rocco gets shot twice, but Lyon is the one who ends up looking like that?” Bea asked.

“Some of us go through doors rather than closed windows,” Rocco replied as he passed the drinks.

“Tell Kim to join us,” Lyon said.

“I did, but she's in your study writing out her resignation.”

“I asked her to make it detailed,” Bea said tiredly, “and the last time I looked she was on page thirty-two and still going. With luck, the project might carry us through until the next election.”

“I don't understand who tried to burn the house down,” Martha Herbert said.

“Damon Snow's attempt to implicate Dr. Blossom. The arrest of Karen Giles was convenient, and he tried to assure her conviction by planting the murder weapon in Gary's house, but in order to be the final member of the tontine, he had to get rid of Blossom.”

“Then he stole the unbleached muslin from the mansion?”

“No.” Lyon turned painfully to pick up his drink from between the Wobbly paws. “Look at the Wobbly's face. It's made of unbleached muslin.”

“All right,” Bea said. “I believe you and Rocco when you tell me you saw a toy airplane that looked like a real airplane because of perspective—but why didn't we see it take off from the beach house?”

“They're really more than toys; quite sophisticated, in fact. Damon had experience with a similar drone from his hitch in the artillery. They're used, or at least used to be, for antiaircraft gunnery practice. He had the controls in the boathouse, but the plane itself was launched from Sand's Point, across the cove.” Lyon decided it was the final somersault through the window that had sprained his neck.

“And you were positive it was Tom Giles's plane.”

“I expected to see what I saw.”

“But if Giles was still alive when the radio plane went down, Damon was taking quite a risk,” Rocco said.

“Not really. He talked with Giles before killing him, and he thought he had established that Tom had been alone all that day at the lake house and that he hadn't contacted anyone. I think the reason Tom called me was to have a witness in front of Damon, but Damon didn't know that.”

“Then Giles knew Snow was coming to the lake house?”

“Yes. And if Tom had been with friends or had gone to town that Sunday, Damon would have called the whole plan off—made a practical joke out of the airplane business.”

“His insurance,” Rocco said and drained his drink and turned away from his wife's withering look.

“Right. He had insurance all along the way. If the weather had been bad that morning and the balloon hadn't gone up—any number of exigencies—he wouldn't have killed Giles—then.”

“He has that factory. He didn't need money that badly.”

“By your standards, Bea. For Damon it wasn't enough. He had full control of the company, wanted it that way, and refused to sell stock to outside investors for his expansion. Murder seemed a convenient solution.”

“And I thought all along it was Blossom,” Rocco said. “What turned you toward Damon?”

“Little things at first. The Carol Dodgson bit; the fact that he was a flyer, and the manufacturer of those airplanes. That night here at the party, he went far out of his way to establish his alibi. Since I was Damon's witness, the solution depended on how he did it, how he made me see things that weren't so.”

“I'm glad it's over,” Bea said. “No more cases. Fine. The end.”

“Hey, Went. I'm leaving,” the voice behind Lyon said cheerfully.

Lyon stood quickly and painfully. No one had called him Went since Tom Giles … and now that debt was repaid. He slowly turned.

“I came to say good-bye, Went,” Robin said from the edge of the patio.

“And I came to say thank you again,” Gary Middleton said as he followed her out and shook Lyon's hand.

“I'm not in very good shape to take you to the airport.”

“I'm flying down south,” Gary said. “We'll go together. After my sojourn in jail, I'm due for a vacation. It also might take the finance company longer to find me down there.”

“Where's Karen Giles?”

“Oh, she's too old for Gary,” Robin said as she bent to kiss Lyon. “I want to tell you how significant these past weeks have been. You have done something for me that no other man ever could.”

“We'll miss you, Robin,” Lyon said, and worried that Gary might have an automatic pilot on his plane.

As Middleton's car went down the drive, Bea sucked on an ice cube. “Since she saved my life, I can't really dislike her … much. But I want to know one thing, Wentworth. EXACTLY WHAT DID YOU DO FOR HER?”

Turn the page to continue reading from the Lyon and Bea Wentworth Mysteries

1

The Wobblies didn't care for the Times Square area. In protective phalanx they flanked Lyon Wentworth as he walked Forty-second Street toward the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Two barbed tails switched in disapproval while long snouts pointed disdainfully from adult book store to X-rated movie.

Lyon blinked into the dying sun as he stopped at the corner of Eighth Avenue to wait for the light to change. He felt the unseen presence of his benign monster creations on either side and knew they would glare at the passing menagerie with fire-red eyes as if screening potential assassins from some archaic potentate.

The Port Authority squats nearly in the geographical center of Manhattan, its refurbished facade a hulking contrast to the immediate surroundings. Looking south he could see the tip of the Minnesota Strip where young Nordic girls, enticed from small farming communities, ambled in slow gait like neophyte sirens along nonexistent rocks with eyes turned dull above smiles that fooled only the most blindly lecherous. Further along Forty-second Street, young men bobbed heads on high steps, another increment of this group that pretended they were alive.

As the light changed and the crowd propelled him across the street, the Wobblies began to fade, to reappear at another time and place. He felt the reassurance of the slender briefcase tucked under his arm that contained the contract from his publisher for his next children's book,
The Wobblies Find A Clue
.

It had been a good and satisfying day. The conference with his editor had gone well, his work had been appreciated, plans had been formulated, and he'd even received a passing smile from the editor in chief. The terminal entrance immediately expunged the glare of the sun and the macabre dance of the undead outside.

A scan of the departure board told him that he had time to spare before the bus to Middleburg, Connecticut. He walked to a small bar tucked in a corner of the terminal, slid onto a stool between two other men, and ordered a Dry Sack sherry.

“Sherry?” the bartender replied with a blink of rheumy eyes.

“Please.”

“I got some muscatel that won't blind you.”

“Harvey's Bristol Cream will do.”

“A shot with a beer chaser's been popular today.”

“Chivas Regal with a dash of soda.”

“How about some all-purpose brandy that we can cut with something?”

Lyon nodded. Another loss in life's battles, but his good feelings were still strong enough to enable him to ignore it. He sipped the drink with a pretense it was something else and thought about Wobblies.

The three men sitting at the bar were of divergent natures and origins, brought to this place by coincidental destination with a departing bus; their only similarity was that two of them carried guns.

Willie Shep, the youngest, occupied the stool near the wall to Lyon's left. He wore Levi's, boots with high heels, and a multicolored shirt that fell loosely over his waist and successfully hid the flat .32 Walther PPK automatic tucked in the waistband of his trousers.

Willie sucked on a draft beer served in a large frosted glass. Within moments only a thin line of foam curled along his lip, and he stared angrily at the glass, as if fate had once again conspired to complicate his life. He jammed an impatient hand into his pocket, plunked a handful of change on the bar, and pushed three quarters, four nickels, and seven pennies toward the bartender.

The bartender looked at the assortment of change with a lethargy born of long wisdom in such matters and scooped it from the counter, ostentatiously leaving two pennies. He refilled Willie's glass, letting foam dribble down the side, and slid it across the bar. Willie wiped it with his index finger, and using the remaining pennies as eyes, drew a face, extended the finger in pistol fashion toward the center of the caricature, and made a
poo
sound from the corner of his mouth.

He gulped half the beer and glanced down at his wrist toward a watch no longer there. His eyes jerkily scanned the small room until they found a clock above the cash register and noted the time.

He had an intense, pointed face with a chin that jutted forward as if daring life to deal another blow. His medium build appeared slight due to a concave chest that he tried to hide by constantly hunching his shoulders forward. He seemed to writhe on the stool. His fingers played incessant nervous games, constantly becoming more agitated until he slid from the stool in an abrupt motion and took the few steps to the men's room.

The facility was empty and he threw the bolt on the door, urinated, zippered his pants, and slid the Walther from his waistband. Extracting the clip, he slammed it back in the gun and briefly considered activating the slide to pump a live round into the chamber. He decided otherwise; the gun's precarious position in his pants needed an extra safety factor. He replaced the gun and patted his rear pocket, which held two extra clips.

The door handle turned and he whirled, instinctively reaching for the gun. He dropped his hand back to his side, forced his body to relax, and nonchalantly slid back the door bolt and stepped out.

He stood next to the bar stool and let his fingers drum a tattoo on the bar. There were only minutes left—and then it would start.

The man on Lyon's right carried a .44 Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver in a long holster strapped to his left side and hidden from view by a light poplin jacket. He wore a heavy dark beard that covered half his face and a cap pulled low over his forehead, but his eyes were a sharp sky blue that impassively watched the bartender mix his martini. The bartending was contrary to his explicit directions, but he chose not to correct it as he turned his head slightly to observe Willie out of the corner of his eye.

The man's obvious nervousness ticked a warning bell. His eyes switched from Willie's pointed face down the sport shirt to the slight bulge at the waist. He knew what was under the shirt, and he rapidly considered the possibilities: undercover cop, hotgun, or denizen of the area carrying a piece for protection. The man's agitation ruled out cop, but increased the possibility that he intended to hold up the bar. It would be an insane action that even the most inexperienced hood would discard. There were half a dozen cops in the terminal corridor, some of them within yards of the bar. No, it was something else … but what?

He considered the possibility of immediately leaving the bar and putting distance between himself and the nervous man with the gun, and then decided that leaving a full drink on the counter would be more conspicuous. He paid for the drink, looked fixedly ahead, and sipped the martini without comment.

He was a careful man who kept his actions quietly unobtrusive, and although he had discarded the impulse to reject the lousy martini and leave, he shelved the feeling in a far compartment of his mind where it crouched unforgotten, but was held in check by the close control he always maintained. His body, which had momentarily tensed, began to relax. At the same time he automatically appraised the third man at the bar who clutched a thin briefcase as if it held something valuable. He reached across the counter for a pretzel with a glance that assimilated Lyon: tall, with sandy hair turning brown, and the eye lines of a smiling man. He wore a casual but expensive sport coat and slacks with scuffed shoes and mismatched socks. The man's invisible sensors retreated with a harmless verdict.

A rasping voice over the loudspeaker forced a long enunciation of vowels as it announced, “New England Express for Middleburg, Hartford, Springfield, and Bennington now loading at Gate Twenty-nine.”