The Bilbao Looking Glass (21 page)

“Maybe she killed herself on a sudden impulse,” Mike suggested.

“How could she? I don’t know anything about nicotine except that people used to put it on plants to kill bugs instead of that stuff in the squirt cans they have now. Maybe they still do, but it hardly seems like stuff one would leave lying around the living room. Furthermore, Max would have seen her fussing around with the bottle or whatever it came out of. Miffy couldn’t do anything without making a big to-do about it.”

“What about this drink?” said Uncle Jake. “Who poured it for her?”

“They had a guy there tending bar,” Max told him, “and a couple of women passing things. As far as I can remember, one of the waitresses brought over a trayful of drinks and Miss Tergoyne took one.”

“It wasn’t the last one on the tray?”

“I don’t think so. About fourteen people were grabbing at once. I’m inclined to rule out the possibility that the drink was poisoned while it was still on the tray, unless whoever had the nicotine didn’t give a damn who drank it. You know, if it hadn’t been the Tergoyne woman herself who got killed, I’d say she might have staged her strip act for the purpose of attracting everyone’s attention and giving an accomplice the chance to poison the drink I was holding.”

“Could that have been done without your noticing?”

“Why not? Hell, I was gawking with the rest of them. If someone had the stuff palmed, as Chief Wilson suggested, it wouldn’t take you a second to slop in a slug. If any happened to drip on my hand, I’d have thought I was spilling her drink, that’s all. Or somebody was spilling one on me. You know how it is, you put fifty people in a room big enough to hold an army and the next thing you know, forty-seven of them are clustered together in one tight little knot. It’s the herd instinct.”

“So you herded?”

“Uncle Jake, I was what they were herding around. Miss Tergoyne was pumping me about my sex life, and the rest were trying to hear what I said.”

“What did you say?”

Sarah giggled. “Max is pulling your leg, Uncle Jake. Miffy could be awfully rude, though, and I must say I’d never seen her quite so dreadful as she was today. Of course before this she’d always had Alice B. to handle the grilling. Alice was somewhat less blatant and a good deal more clever about extracting information. She’d have made a good Gestapo agent, I always thought. Pussy Beaxitt’s no slouch, either. She was right there panting to get at you, but Miffy never gave her a chance. You know Max, that idea of yours about Miffy’s cooking up some scheme that backfired might be something to work on. Maybe she thought if she handed you a martini you’d automatically start to drink it. She would.”

“But if there’d been poison put into it, why would she drink it herself after I handed it back to her?”

“Reflex action, maybe.”

“Horsefeathers, my love. All she’d have to do would be to spill it accidentally and get another.”

“Hey,” Mike called over his shoulder. “I hate to interrupt this interesting discussion, but where are we supposed to be going?”

“You’d better drop me off before you go home,” Sarah told him. “I think Miriam’s seen as much of me as she cares to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Max demanded.

“What would you expect? Miriam feels that if it hadn’t been for me you’d never have got into this situation and she’s absolutely right. I’m sure your uncle is thinking the same thing, only he’s too polite to say so.”

“No I’m not,” said Jacob Bittersohn. “I know damn well it’s not your fault. I also know if Maxie weren’t in this
schemozzle,
he’d be in another. You think this is the first time I’ve had to bail him out? Look, Miriam will understand. Ira will understand. Isaac will understand. As for my sister-in-law Bayla—oi! You happen to have a spare bedroom at your place?”

“Five, and you’re welcome to them all,” Sarah told him.

“That’s good,” said Mike, “because if Uncle Jake has to fly the coop, I’m coming with him. Hey, what’s this?”

He’d started swinging into Sarah’s drive, only to be confronted by a barricade of sawhorses, a huge “No Trespassing” sign, and a vigilante with a well-sharpened scythe.

“Mr. Lomax,” Sarah gasped. “What’s this for?”

“To keep people out.” The self-appointed sentry brought his scythe to ground-rest.

“What people, for goodness’ sake?”

“Ev’rybody an’ his brother, just about.”

“But why? Oh, good heavens! I suppose it’s been on the news about that axe turning up in the carriage house?”

“Manner o’ speakin’. That lowdown nephew o’ mine,” Lomax bent his head so low that the long beak of his cap hid his entire face. “I’m ashamed to own ’im,” he muttered.

“What’s he done? Gone around telling his friends we’ve had the police up here?”

“Worse’n that.”

Lomax straightened up and faced them as squarely as another Jed Lomax had faced the Redcoats at Bunker Hill. “Pete’s been runnin’ around with a strumpet that works for the caterin’ service. After the caterer finished at Miss Tergoyne’s, Pete snuck off to help eat up the leavin’s. She told ’im what happened over there, so the pair of ’em hightailed it back here. They was spyin’ through the bushes when Wilson an’ his boys was searchin’ the carriage house. They seen the axe an’ the pitcher, an’ they seen Max gettin’ carted off in the cruiser. They decided they could make a buck on it, so they started callin’ the newspapers an’ teevee stations.”

“Then that is the absolute last time—” Sarah began, but Mr. Lomax held up his hand.

“You needn’t tell me to fire Pete, ’cause I already done it. I’d o’ fired myself for bein’ fool enough to trust ’im in the first place, only I figured somebody’d better stay an’ hold the fort till you got back here or there’d be nothin’ left o’ the place.”

“Mr. Lomax, you must never dream of quitting. Whatever would I do without you? Name me one family that doesn’t have a rotten apple on the tree. I’m just grateful you were around and had the presence of mind to block off the drive. I’d better get out here and walk up.”

“The hell you will,” said Max. “We’re sticking together. Mike, hop out and move those sawhorses, will you? Jed, you know my nephew Mike, Ira’s son? And this is my Uncle Jake.”

“Known Mike since he was knee-high to a gas pump.”

Lomax shifted his scythe to the left hand and struck his right through the open car window. “You must be Isaac’s brother the lawyer. Pleased to meet you, sir. You been down gettin’ Max off the hook in time for the weddin’, I s’pose.”

“Mr. Lomax,” cried Sarah, “how did you know that? Don’t tell me Pete—”

“Nobody told me nothin’. I got eyes in my head, ain’t I? Tarnation! Here comes another o’ them mobile camera units. You folks hightail it on up to the house. I’ll stay here an’ stave ’em off.”

“I’ll help,” said Mike. “Got a tire iron, Max?”

“No bodily assault,” his great-uncle warned him.

“Don’t worry, Uncle Jake. I know all about lawsuits. I’ll just hurl myself in front of the truck and let them run over me. Then Ma and Pa can sue the television station instead.”

“A
goldene kind.
Move it, Maxie.”

Max had taken his usual place at the wheel. He gunned the big car up the drive, out of sight of the cameras.

“A good man, Lomax,” Jake commented, “but what can he do just guarding the driveway? Can’t they sneak in across the fields?”

“Not unless they want to get torn apart,” Sarah told him. “We’ve allowed brambles to grow up around the edges of the property for years, in order to keep trespassers out and provide shelter for wildlife. By now they’re twenty feet high and forty feet thick. On, the beach side there’s a high, sandy cliff that’s next to impossible to climb except by the stairs. We’ll have to think of some way to guard those. Max, turn down the boathouse path, will you? If Lionel and the boy bandits are still around, a spot of guerilla warfare ought to be right up their alley.”

“L
IONEL,” SAID SARAH, “YOU
do have the most magnificent sense of timing.”

Who else would have got the bright notion of repairing the collapsed boathouse jetty at precisely the hour when letting any outsider land here could set off the ultimate calamity? Worse yet, Lionel and his crew had made a first-rate job of it.

“Thank you, Sarah.” As usual, Lionel was disgustingly pleased with himself.

“As you observe, we are employing the selfsame principle of sled and rollers that was doubtless used to move the blocks of stone for the pyramids of Egypt, the megaliths of Stonehenge, and other so-called wonders of the world. The boys scoured the beach and the woods for boulders of suitable size while I busied myself constructing a ramp and cutting poles to serve as rollers. These poles will later become part of the raft we plan to build tomorrow. We had hoped to construct a canoe according to the precepts set down by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his epic poem
Hiawatha,
but your woods appear to be sadly lacking in paper birches, not to mention the fibrous roots of the tamarack, or larch tree.”

“Lionel,” said Sarah, “forget the larch trees. We’re under siege.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You see those two motorboats out there?”

“Certainly I see them. They appear to be headed this way. Splendid. Now we shall be able to test the efficacy of our reconstruction.”

“Lionel, if you let those boats land, I’ll slaughter you.”

“Sarah, are you quite well?”

“I’m livid. We’ve got a television unit trying to get up the drive and God knows what’s happening at the cliff stairs. I’d thought this area was safe from invasion because the jetty’d fallen down and blocked the cove; now I find it’s the most vulnerable spot of all. Lionel, I will not have any outsider on this property. You will not allow anybody—not excluding your pals from the yacht club, your wife, or most particularly her girl friend—to set foot on that jetty without official permission from either myself or the police. Do you understand?”

“Sarah, you exhibit symptoms of paranoia.”

“I’ll exhibit symptoms of homicide if you don’t keep them off. Lionel, you owe me this.”

“But why?”

“Because the axe that killed Alice B. has been found in our carriage house and the reporters are going crazy.”

“Wow! Let’s see it.”

The boys, who’d been distracted from their rock-hounding by their elders’ talk, gathered around and began to clamor.

“Shut up, all of you,” Sarah shouted. “No, you can’t see the axe. It’s at the police station and that’s where you’ll be, Woody, if I catch you peddling tickets to sightseers. Jesse and James, get in the car with Mr. Bittersohn. We need you to guard the cliff stairs. The rest of you stand by here to repel boarders.”

“You might have explained sooner,” Lionel fussed. “To provide ourselves with ordnance is hardly feasible at this juncture. Had I known in time, I could have constructed a simple
ballista,
or at least a
catapulta
.”

“I didn’t know myself until two minutes ago. Can’t you just yell and throw rocks at the boats?”

“Pikes, that’s it! Equip yourselves, lads.”

Sarah left her cousin issuing pointed staves to Woody and little Frank, who was prattling in childish glee about what fun it would be to run somebody through the guts. Max drove the other two to the top of the cliff and gave them their orders.

“Stay right here and don’t budge. If anybody tries to come up, yell your heads off.”

“How about if we roll down boulders on top of ’em?” James offered helpfully.

“Don’t you dare. You could kill somebody that way.”

“I know,” cried Sarah. “Fish heads.”

“What?” said Max.

“Come with me.”

She grabbed a shovel and a couple of Alexander’s fire-fighting buckets out of the carriage house and ran down to the compost heap where excess orts from the fish factory simmered and reeked in the June sun.

“Shoo, gulls.” She scared off a gaggle of feeding birds, and started filling her pails.

“My God,” gasped Max from behind his handkerchief. “That stuff stinks to high heaven.”

“I know. A glob of secondhand entrails straight in the face ought to discourage almost anybody, wouldn’t you think? Here, carry this pailful up to the boys, quick. Don’t get it near your clothes.”

“Sarah, I’ve had a rough day.”

Nevertheless, Max picked up the noisome load and lugged it back up over the knoll. Craven that he was, he sent Jesse back for the second bucket. Unlike Max, Jesse was all enthusiasm.

“Neat-oh! How about if we plaster this stuff all over the stairs? That’ll draw the sea gulls and they can bomb the bad guys.”

“Good thinking. If you run out, there’s plenty more right here. Just don’t both leave the stairs at the same time. Have fun.”

Molly Pitcher might have handled the situation with more finesse, but Sarah had done the best she could. She handed over the shovel to Jesse, and went to take a bath. When she came downstairs, showered and changed, she found Max having a rough time on the telephone.

“Too bad you feel that way, Ma. Maybe you’ll change your mind when you meet her.”

He hung up so gently that it was clear he’d much rather have ripped the phone out of the wall. Sarah went over and put her arms around him.

“Max, I’m sorry.”

“She’ll get over it. And if she doesn’t, what the hell?”

He rubbed his face against her hair. “How about a glass tea for me and Uncle Jake?”

“You poor love, I’ll bet you never got a bite of lunch.”

“They gave me some lousy coffee and a stale doughnut down at the station.”

“Police brutality! I’ll fix you a sandwich right this minute. Would your uncle like a whiskey?”

“Let’s skip the booze, if you don’t mind. I’m feeling sort of teetotal.”

“I don’t wonder. Just a second till I put the kettle on.”

While the water was heating, Sarah put together some chicken sandwiches and cut slices from a particularly luscious dark chocolate cake that had been one of Cousin Theonia’s contributions. When she carried the tray into the living room, she found Max and his uncle sprawled in two dilapidated easy chairs before the fireplace, which held only gray ashes and a few crumpled papers. She threw on some driftwood and touched a match.