Stolen Away

“I know New Haven well,” Breckinridge said. “I’ve never heard of Cordova. Can you tell us through what channels Scharten Street might be located?”

“By going to the street! If the name’s on it, that’s a right good mark!”

Breckinridge looked at me with wide eyes and I shrugged.

“Follow my instructions and you will find the child. We are through.”

“Where…” Breckinridge began, but Mrs. Cayce gently moved between him and Cayce. She was shaking her head, no, raising a palm to us both, in a stop motion.

She bent forward over her husband and murmured something, to bring him out of it.

A few moments later, Cayce drew a long, deep breath and his eyes popped open. He sat up. He yawned, stretching his arms.

“Did you get everything down?” he asked his secretary.

Miss Davis bobbled her pretty blonde head.

He stood. With utter certainty, he said to Breckinridge, “Follow what you heard—whatever it was I said—and you’ll get that child back.”

Dazed, Breckinridge said, “Well…thank you. We’ll follow up on everything we heard here, today.”

Cayce beamed, patted Breckinridge on the shoulder. “Splendid. My secretary will send you a carbon of the transcription. Do let me know how it comes out. We like to follow up on these things.”

He might have been talking about some kid’s cough he prescribed a poultice for.

“What do we owe you, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge said.

Here it comes, I thought. Here it finally comes.

“We normally charge twenty dollars for a reading,” he said. “I wish it weren’t necessary to charge at all.”

Twenty bucks? That was chicken feed for a racket like this.

“But in this case,” Cayce said somberly, “I will make an exception.”

Ah! Now comes the sting—he knows he’s dealing with dough—Lindbergh and Breckinridge and Anne Lindbergh’s wealthy family, the Morrows….

“Pay me nothing,” he said. “And please, as to the press…”

That was it, then—he wanted the publicity.

He waggled a finger, like a schoolteacher. “Not a word to them. I don’t want the notoriety. I don’t want to be involved in criminal cases again. Much too unpleasant.”

I felt like I’d been whacked by a psychic two-by-four. With a mystic nail in it.

Mrs. Cayce served us supper in her cozy kitchen, before we left; it was pot roast and potatoes and carrots, much like the meal at the Lindberghs—only the meat was tender and the side dishes delicious, in the best country manner.

“Some day you gentlemen will have to have life readings,” Cayce said, helping himself to a heaping portion of mashed potatoes. “Would you be interested in who and what you were in a former life?”

“Reincarnation, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge smiled. “I thought you were a Christian.”

“There is nothing in the Bible to refute reincarnation,” he said. “Although I can do a reading on Mr. Heller without going to sleep.”

“Oh, really?” I said, lifting a fork of food. “What was I in my previous life?”

“An idealist,” he said, blue-gray eyes sparkling. “All cynics were idealists, once. More pot roast, Mr. Heller?”

In the Dusenberg, I asked Breckinridge what he’d made of all that.

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he admitted. “And you?”

“I’ll be damned if I know, either. I won’t say I’m convinced, but I will say I want to track everything he gave us.”

“A street map of New Haven would be a start. We might be able to get one of those at a gas station, on the way back.”

“Good idea. You know, the first of the two Italian names he mentioned—Maglio—is the name of one of Capone’s top lieutenants.”

Breckinridge gave me a sharp look. “Interesting. And he indicated Red Johnson was involved.”

Betty Gow’s sailor.

“Aren’t we supposed to get a shot at questioning that guy?” I asked.

Breckinridge nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“Do you think he’s a good suspect?”

“Colonel Lindbergh doesn’t like to think his servants might be involved, even indirectly…but after what the Hartford police found in Johnson’s car, I’d say he’s an excellent suspect.”

“What did they find in his car?”

Breckinridge turned his attention from the road to show me a raised eyebrow.

“An empty milk bottle,” he said.

7

It was almost ten o’clock, the next morning, when I stumbled downstairs. The little fox terrier looked up from its perch on the living room couch and began barking hysterically at me. Next to the mutt was Anne Lindbergh, wearing a prim blue sweater-suit, sitting across from her mother, Mrs. Dwight Morrow; the latter was doing needlepoint, the former reading a small leather-bound book.

They began to get up and I asked them please not to.

Mrs. Morrow was a small woman in her late ffties, with her daughter’s delicate features; she wore a blue dress with white lace trim and pearls and a crucifix. Her hair was more brown than gray, though I would imagine it would be getting grayer as the days progressed.

“Wahgoosh!” Anne said sharply. “Be still.”

The dog stopped barking, but he continued to growl and give me his best evil eye.