The Wizard of Death (23 page)

“Do you always wear that?”

“What?”

“The bathing suit.”

She laughed. “In the summertime. It's almost like not having anything on.”

Lyon agreed and pointedly looked toward the police boat as it turned in the direction of the dock. “Won't your father be wondering about you?”

“Oh, no. I called last night, and he said for me to stay as long as I'm welcome. I hope I still am.”

“Of course you are, Robin. We love having you with us.”

She sat next to him and let her legs dangle over the edge of the dock. He felt the pressure of her hip against his, turned that over in his mind a moment, and decided it was accidental. The gentle bumping of her toes against his was not accidental. He inched to the side. The depression that had surrounded him as he moped alone at the dock had disappeared, to be replaced by feelings he preferred not to deal with. The situation had become ludicrous. He was years older than this near child.

He evoked an image of Bea at the house, standing on the long front porch, looking toward the water and dock, her eyes filled with hurt. He realized that he was trying to conjure up guilt for things not done, in order to cope with a nebulous situation. He laughed.

She cocked her head toward him. “What's so funny?”

“Nothing, really. I was thinking about how I almost made a fool of myself.”

“Over the airplane?”

“That's as good a thing as any.”

“I think you're a wonderful person, Lyon. In fact, I think you're one of the most marvelous men I've ever met.”

“I don't often kick sleeping dogs.”

“I'm serious. It shows in your books. Take
The Wobblies' Revenge
. It's more than a children's story. It's an allegory for the whole human condition.”

“Don't try to read too much into them, Robin. They're entertainment for children.”

“You're belittling yourself again. You're always doing that. You shouldn't do it, and she shouldn't do it, either.”

“She?”

“Beatrice.”

He thought of Bea, their years of marriage, the tragedies and triumphs, the accomplishments … how she had supported him while he was finishing college. Then he had gone on to teaching and, later, the first children's book; only then had she begun her own career—first her election to the State House of Representatives, then to the Senate, and last year to secretary of the state. He loved her and knew that she loved him.

“I love you, Lyon.”

“I love you, too.”

“I knew you did.”

“My God, Robin! I was thinking of someone else!” He saw the pain cloud her eyes. “I mean, it's not the same. Bea and I both care for you. We consider you almost as a replacement for the daughter we lost.”

“That wasn't how I meant it.”

“You need someone your own age. Someone with talent, a zest for life that will allow both of you to …”

“You have what I want.”

At full throttle the police boat turned toward the dock, throwing a sheet of foamy spray to each side of the prow. Chief Barnes stood in the cockpit and waved to Lyon. “I think we have company,” Lyon observed.

As the launch cut speed and pulled to the side of the dock, Lyon grasped the mooring line and cleated it around a stanchion. Will Barnes jumped to the dock from the still-rocking boat. “We can't find it, Wentworth.”

“I'm sure it's out there.”

“I know you are,” the police officer said, with a dubious quality to his voice. “But I've been out there all day, and the only thing I've gotten is a hell of a sunburn.”

“Damn it all, Barnes, I know what I saw!”

“Yeah, well … we've got to give it up for now. If it's out there, eventually something will surface.” He stepped back into the boat as Lyon cast off the line. The launch reversed engines, slid back from the dock, and made a tight turn toward the town dock.

“We had better go back to the house,” Lyon said.

Robin stared at him for a long moment; then her shoulders gave an almost imperceptible shrug. As he turned, her hand slid into his, and they walked back to the house, where Bea sat in a rocker on the porch, looking toward them with opaque eyes.

The day's events cast a pall over the dinner table that even Damon's sly witticisms over Lyon's ballooning failed to break. By mid-evening, excuses were being made and subdued farewells spoken, and the house party broke up.

Robin volunteered to drive the pickup carrying the balloon, while Bea drove Lyon in the Datsun. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye as she drove toward Murphysville with a concentrated effort, her lips pursed. “I accidentally said a silly thing today.”

She didn't answer for a count of four. “Do I have a choice from column A or column B?”

“It was to Robin.”

“That's column A.”

“She told me how much she liked us, and I replied that we liked her also.”

“Is that the editorial or the regal we?”

“Me.”

“I wonder if we could put her in a cage and mail her back down south.”

“You don't mean that?”

“DAMN IT ALL, LYON! A couple of more birthdays and you'll qualify as a dirty old man. Right now, I think you're in that confused in-between state.”

The pickup passed them doing seventy. Its horn honked, and they saw Robin waving until she sped around a distant curve.

It was nearly ten when they pulled into the drive at Nutmeg Hill. Robin had arrived before them and was already in bed. Bea yawned, looked at him inquiringly, and then went silently upstairs.

Unable to sleep, he debated having a glass of sherry or attempting to get some work done on the new book. He went into the study to sit at the desk that overlooked the river below the promontory. His partially completed
Danny Dolphin
lay at the right of the typewriter, and he absently riffled through the yellow pages.

Any creativity concerning the playful but wise dolphin seemed far removed from his present state of mind. He poured a pony of sherry. When the phone rang he frowned and reached for the receiver. He knew the content of the call. It would be either Rocco or Chief Barnes confirming Giles's death. He mumbled an acknowledgment into the phone.

“What's the matter, Went? You squiffed?”

Lyon's hand shook and he had to clench the phone to still the tremors. “Giles? Tom Giles? Is that you?”

“Hell, what did we used to say? No, it's Yehudi. Of course it's me.”

“I saw your plane go down. Your Piper with the crazy color scheme. I saw it go down in the sound earlier today.”

“Right now, Went, the damn plane is the least of my worries. If it's gone, I get the insurance money. Got a problem just a little more important.” The voice on the other end of the line tried to laugh, but the result was hollow and tinged with fear. When Tom continued, his tone was somber and distant. “I'm in trouble, Went. I need help, and I need it desperately.”

“What is it?” Lyon fought to sort out his confusion.

“I have good reason to believe someone is trying to kill me.”

“Come over to the house—now.”

“No. I need someone here. A witness I can trust. Will you come?”

“Of course. Your house?”

“No, I'm at the lake cottage. Make it fast, Went. Like the old cross shot … faster than that.”

“I'll get Rocco Herbert to come with me.”

“Jesus, not the police! At least not yet. The cottage on Crystal Lake, Went. North side, sixth from the junction. I need to talk with you alone first.”

The receiver went dead, and Lyon slowly replaced it on the cradle. He felt tired and bewildered. An airplane had crashed and couldn't be found; its owner called at midnight and said he was going to be killed.… The day wasn't the shambles he had thought; it had turned into an inscrutable puzzle.

3

In order to not disturb Bea, he slipped quietly from the house. He released the emergency brake of the Datsun and let the small car roll partly down the drive before turning the ignition key and switching on the lights. At the highway he turned east, toward the outskirts of town.

At one time the hills surrounding Crystal Lake had been forested, and logs had been rolled into the lake to be floated to a sawmill. After cutting the desirable timber, the company had sold off the building lots in a haphazard manner. Second-growth timber now bracketed a hodgepodge of contemporary split-levels near the head of the lake and fishermen's shacks and summer cottages along the far sides.

Lyon turned off at the north junction and began to count to the sixth house. He pulled into a narrow, rutted drive between two pines and parked. The small house, nestled at the edge of the lake, was dark and desolate-looking. He stepped from the car and called out, “Tom! Tom Giles. You here?”

His voice faded into the pines. The front door was locked; as he walked along the side of the house, he found steps that entered onto a redwood deck that protruded out over the water. The double glass door leading off the deck was also locked.

The discovery of a securely locked house as the final event of the last eighteen hours made him consider the possibility that he was the victim of a massive practical joke. The probability that Tom Giles would go to this extreme seemed remote, just as the near-hysterical phone call seemed out of character for the boisterous attorney. He began to try windows along the edge of the house, and on the third attempt he found one unlatched. He slid it open on its aluminum runners and stepped over the sill.

He felt along the wall of the darkened interior until his hand passed over a switch that turned on two table lamps. He was in a long and comfortable room that ran the length of the house and was oriented toward the side of the building that fronted on the water. The furniture was old but serviceable. Built-in bookcases lined the far wall, and a cursory glance informed him that most of the volumes concerned colonial and Revolutionary War history.

Another wall was lined with photographs arranged in chronological order, the later ones showing Giles beside the multicolored plane. Then there were a few conspicuously blank places on the wall. Lyon imagined the missing pictures were from Tom's Washington years and had probably consisted of signed photographs of Nixon and Mitchell. Toward the end were the pictures from his Greenfield days, including the photograph of their senior lacrosse team—Tom in the center as captain and Lyon relegated to the rear of the group, which was reserved for the subs. Lyon paused beside the last photograph. It showed the steps of the Greenfield Library in their last year of school. Lyon's butterfly collection, neatly mounted in cases, was aligned along the library steps. Lyon and Tom, arm in arm, were smiling in the foreground.

In the far corner, next to the telephone table, a chair had been overturned next to a reddish-brown spot on the floor.

The beds in the two empty bedrooms were neatly made. He picked up the phone to call Rocco and found the line dead. It took only minutes to discover the severed phone line dangling from an outside corner of the house.

Martha Herbert held a novel across the front of her long housecoat and squinted up at Lyon from under a mass of oversize plastic hair curlers. “He's asleep. The last thing he said was something about an early-morning speed trap on Route 90.”

“It's important that I wake him, Martha.”

She shrugged and stepped aside. “I only hope you two aren't getting involved in something again.”

As he walked through the living room, toward the rear hall, he felt surrounded by the dozens of porcelain figurines perched on every available surface. He wondered, as he often had, how the massive Rocco existed in this suburban china shop.

The sleeping police chief's arms were flung outward as he lightly snored. One eye opened as Lyon shook his shoulder. “Something has happened to Tom Giles.”

“You said that earlier.”

“He called me from his lake house and said his life was in danger.”

“I hope you haven't been into the sherry again.” The policeman's eyes blinked open as he swung his legs from the bed and pulled pants over his pajamas. “Tell me about it on the way.”

As they drove to the lake house, Lyon told Rocco about Giles's phone call. Rocco looked pensive for a moment. “Then you didn't see his plane go down?”

“Maybe he wasn't in it.”

“Are you sure it was Giles who called?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then what in hell's going on?” Rocco lapsed into silence as Lyon thought back over their relationship. Although both he and Herbert were from Connecticut, they hadn't met until Korea, where Lyon had served as a divisional intelligence officer and Rocco had been commander of the ranger company. The information obtained by Rocco's probing reconnaissance patrols had brought them into continual contact, and their friendship had deepened after their discharge. The much-decorated Rocco had been offered the job of chief of the Murphysville police force, which sometimes numbered twelve men.

As the car pulled into the cottage drive, Lyon pointed to the dangling phone line swaying before the car's headlights. They entered through the front door, which Lyon had unlocked from inside. Rocco went immediately toward the overturned chair and knelt by the spot on the floor.

“It could be blood.”

“You'll get a lab crew out here?”

“For what? We don't know that a crime has been committed.”

“Tom has disappeared.”

“Has he? We don't know that for sure. You received a phone call, and he wasn't where he said he would be. Hell, he could have been drunk, run off with a girl friend, gone back home … anything.”

“I think you're wrong,” Lyon said, as he began a tour through the house. A book on the Salem witch trials lay open, face down, on a coffee table. In an ashtray next to it was a pipe with ashes still in the bowl. In the small kitchen, separated from the living room by a bar, he noted a used frying pan on the stove and a plate with silverware in the sink.