Mystery

Tom pushed a panel that yielded under his hand. He ran his fingers down the seam of the panel until they slid into an indentation. He pulled, and a square door opened in the wall. Six inches inside the wall was another door. A simple hook held it shut. Tom lifted the hook out of its catch, and opened the second door. He was looking into a deep empty recess.

“Well, your friend is dead,” Natchez said. “The boy found his body this morning.”

Tom walked to the couch that faced the terrace and fell into it.

“Spychalla thought what? … Well, if you were waiting for this urgent call from Marinette, why weren’t you present to take it?”

“He was on a flying job,” Tom said.

“A flying job?” Natchez shouted into the phone. He listened a moment, then said, “Yes, I am blaming you … Well, I’m glad you’re blaming yourself too, but that doesn’t do me much good, Chief Truehart … Okay, take care of whatever you can, and I’ll get back in touch with you.”

He slammed down the phone. His face was blazing. “Your grandfather called the Eagle Lake police twice yesterday, concerned to know how the investigation into the fire was coming along, and today when this clown Spychalla learned that the police in Marinette had arrested the guy who actually set the fire, he thought he’d be the first to let him know the good news.” He swiveled the chair around to look at the wall. “Tell me all those papers are still in there.”

“It’s empty,” Tom said.

Natchez lowered his gaze to Tom. “Do you realize how bad this situation actually is?”

Tom nodded. “I think so.”

Natchez just looked at him for a moment. He opened his mouth, then closed it.

“He still thinks I’m dead, doesn’t he?”

“That won’t do us any good if he gets on a plane.”

“He needs a place to wait. He needs a place to store those records.”

Mrs. Kingsley came a single step into the room. “Get out,” Natchez said.

She ignored him. “You should be defending your grandfather,” she said. “Shouldn’t be helping this man—you’re only doing it because you’re weak, like he always said.” Tom looked up in astonishment, and saw that she was furious. “He was going to give you a college education and a career, and how do you repay him? You come here with this renegade policeman. He was a great man, and you’re helping his enemies destroy him.”

Kingsley fussed in the entrance of the study, trying to shut her up.

“You should be ashamed to draw breath,” she said. “I heard you, I heard you defending that nurse against Dr. Milton, when you came here for lunch.”

“Do you know where he went?” Tom asked her.

“No,” Kingsley said.

“Raised on Eastern Shore Road,” said Mrs. Kingsley. “What you deserved was—” Her eyes skidded off him, and she turned the full force of her rage and disdain toward Natchez.

“Eastern Shore Road,” Tom said. “I see. You think I deserve something else. What do I deserve, Mrs. Kingsley?”

“I don’t know where Mr. Upshaw went,” she said quickly. “But you’ll never find him.”

“You’re lying,” Tom said. Barbara Deane and Nancy Vetiver spoke within him, and a sweet conviction caused him to smile at her.

Mrs. Kingsley stopped trying to murder Natchez with a look, and pushed past her husband. All three men heard her stamping down the hall. A bedroom door slammed.

“He never told us where he was going,” Kingsley said. “She’s very upset—afraid of what could happen. Master Tom, she didn’t really mean—” He shook his head.

Tom said, “I know he didn’t tell you anything. But I know where he went.”

Natchez was already on his feet, and Tom stood up. “Don’t bother packing any more of his clothes, Kingsley.”

The old man wobbled out into the hall, and Tom and the detective followed him. “We’ll let ourselves out,” Tom said.

Kingsley turned away as if he had already forgotten they were in the bungalow.

Tom and Natchez went down the hallway and walked outside into the heat and light on the other side of the courtyard.

“All right,” Natchez said. “Where did the old bastard go?”

“Eastern Shore Road,” Tom said. They went quickly down the steps to the black car. Natchez looked questioningly at Tom as he walked around the front of the car, and Tom grinned at him as he got into the baking interior. Natchez let himself in behind the wheel. “The other Eastern Shore Road,” Tom said.

“His sister?” Natchez said. “I didn’t even know he had a sister.”

Past the St. Alwyn Hotel they drove, past the pawnshop and The Home Plate.

“Carmen Bishop is the reason my grandfather singled out Fulton Bishop—Barbara Deane told me about her one night when we were having dinner at her house. She used to be a nurse’s aide, back when Shady Mount first opened. She was about seventeen or eighteen, and my grandfather used to take her out. He did the same thing with Barbara Deane. Both of them must have been very pretty, but they didn’t have anything else in common.”

“Your grandfather was in his thirties—his late thirties—and he had affairs with teenage girls?”