Death Through the Looking Glass (6 page)

“There are always irregularities in Waterburg.”

“You want to go back to organizing the welfare mothers?”

“How'd you guess?”

“Don't you think you can accomplish more by working within the system?”

“That's what you told me last week.”

“Before you leave, we have a problem to solve.” Bea pulled a sheet of notes from her pocket and spread it on the desk. Kim moved to a side chair and bent over the paper.

“Who's Carol Dodgson?”

“That's what we're going to find out,” Bea answered.

“Aren't you awfully hot in that thing?” Lyon asked.

Robin looked up from her sketch pad and felt the neck of the granny dress with one hand. “I could put the bikini back on,” she said with a demure smile.

“That's all right,” he replied and leaned over the sketch pad. He heard the airline ticket crinkle in his back pocket and reminded himself that he must tell her, perhaps after lunch. The drawing had begun to take shape, and Danny Dolphin's home had become a viable entity. “I like it.”

“It's not as good as Dad can do, but I think it captures the flavor of the book. It's a wonderful book, Lyon. It will make every child in America think twice before eating another tuna-fish sandwich.”

“Well, now, in Chapter Six, Danny is caught in the tuna nets and …” As he continued outlining the book, he felt the pressure of her knee against the side of his leg. He must tell her about the ticket.

“All one hundred and sixty-nine towns?” Kim asked incredulously.

“Every one,” Bea replied.

“Suppose this Dodgson woman never voted?”

“Then she never voted. We'll also find out if she was born in Connecticut; went to high school or college here; ever had a telephone, electrical services or a credit rating.”

Kim whistled. “That's some job.”

“You've got sixty people.”

“If the commission on government efficiency catches us doing this, we're all sunk.”

“That's what you wanted anyway, isn't it?”

Kim smiled and went to the office door. “All one hundred and sixty-nine towns?”

“And the utilities, and the credit bureaus, and the school systems.” When Kim left, Bea reached for the phone and dialed the number of the regional Social Security office.

“Well, that wraps it up,” Lyon said as he put the manuscript away in the desk. “You can go back to your dad and begin work on the preliminary drawings, and we might even beat our deadline for once. In fact”—his voice quickened—“why don't you go home tonight? I just happen to have a plane ticket in my pocket.”

“She's too old for you,” Robin said.

“Bea's a year younger than I am.”

“I love you, Lyon. I think you are the most wonderful person I have ever met. I am prepared to dedicate the rest of my life to making you happy. We can be a team; you'll write the books and I'll illustrate them, and we'll keep everything right in the family. After
Danny Dolphin
, we can do the next one together.”

“
The Wobblies Win.
”

“Yes, and after that, we can …”

He put his finger over her lips, and then his hands on her shoulders. He looked directly at her. “Robin, you know how much I care for you. I think you're a fine person; you have a great deal of talent as an artist, and a whole life ahead of you. But—and this is a very big ‘but'—I love my wife. In fact, if I'd been a little precocious, I'm old enough to be your father.”

“I don't think of you as a father, Lyon. I don't think of you that way at all.”

“Can you tell me when the number 047-66-1979 was issued, to whom, and so forth?” Bea doodled on the pad at her desk as she waited for the Social Security Administration supervisor to pull the file.

“That's a recent issue,” the studious voice related. “That series was issued out of this office and sent to a Carol Dodgson less than a month ago.”

Bea's confidence sank. The supposition she'd been working on all day faded away. “I see. Can you give me the address where the card was sent?”

“A post-office box in Hartford.”

“I see. But wouldn't Miss Dodgson have to go by one of your offices to apply for a card?”

“Not necessarily. It can all be done by mail. There's a form we send out on request, and it takes about six weeks to process a new number.”

“Thank you very much.” She severed the connection. It was too apparent. A form requested by phone and sent to a box number. Well, there were other contacts to be made. She placed a call to the deputy director of the Motor Vehicle Department, a competent older man who had solicited her support for his appointment. He gave her the information almost immediately.

“That license series comes from a group stolen from the department some months ago. They've been turning up all over the country, usually in the hands of paperhangers.”

“Paperhangers?”

“Check forgers. Whoever had that license bought it somewhere. There are a dozen sleazy bars in the state where you can purchase IDs like that.”

“Thanks, Harry. 'Preciate it.”

“Anytime, Bea. For you, anytime.”

Her hands went over his. “I want to go to bed with you.”

“You don't mean that. There must be a dozen boys in Round Rock who would be …”

“None.”

“In fact, speaking of Round Rock, I have a ticket right here.”

“I want to make love to you.”

Kim stood in the office doorway with a sheaf of papers clutched in each hand. “She's not from this state.”

Bea looked up. “Are you sure?”

“Your Miss Dodgson never voted, never had a phone, never had electricity, never went to school and wasn't born here.”

“Thanks, Kim. Let's go home.”

Her hands left his and went around his neck. He should step back, turn, run. He felt a slight trembling in his legs.

“Will you?” she asked.

“Robin, please …”

Her face came closer to his and his arms unconsciously went around her. “Kiss me.”

He did.

“Carol Dodgson doesn't exist,” Bea said excitedly from the doorway, and then her voice died into silence.

Lyon whirled to face his wife and saw the widening pools of hurt radiating across her face. “Bea, we're working on the book.”

“I HOPE THAT WAS THE INTRODUCTION AND NOT THE CONCLUSION!” Bea said, and slammed the door.

5

Bea raced the Datsun's engine and honked the horn impatiently. Lyon leaned against the open car door and stared out over the pines that bracketed the westerly side of the house. He winced as Bea blared the horn in another series of short, staccato blasts.

Robin came out the front door and hitched the backpack over her right shoulder. She wore paint-splattered jeans, a large man's shirt, and sandals. She brushed her hair back from her face and walked slowly to the car.

Before the doors were completely shut, gravel spewed from under the moving car's wheels as it rocked down the drive toward the highway. “How far to Bradley airport?” Robin asked.

“Not far,” Bea answered and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Is that your usual traveling outfit?”

“I'm sorry, Beatrice. My crinoline is wrinkled, and the white gloves are dusty.”

“Oh, boy,” Lyon said under his breath.

“I suppose Lyon and I are of a different generation,” Bea said.

“I think some people age faster than others, don't you?”

Lyon cringed back against the headrest as Bea accelerated the car to over seventy.

At the airport security gate, Robin threw her arms around Lyon and kissed him. She formally shook hands with Bea before turning to pass through the arched metal detector and down the ramp toward her flight.

Bea took Lyon's arm and turned him away from the gate. “Come on, lover. There's a murder to investigate—and right now there's nothing I'd like more than a murder investigation.”

“Do I detect an emphasis on a particular word?”

The Giles home was a large white colonial with black shutters, off the Murphysville green. On the right-hand side of the second story was a small plaque which read “Circa 1760.” As they started up the walk, the front door opened and Cannon Braemer Long bustled out.

He nodded at Bea and Lyon in passing. “Terrible thing. Terrible,” he muttered as he turned down the street toward the Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.

Before the chimes had faded away, the front door was opened by a small black woman in a dark uniform and white apron. “Miz Wentworth, Mista' Wentworth.”

“Good evening, Hattie. Can we speak with Mrs. Giles?”

“She's in the bed. I'll fetch her. Y'all go in the living room.”

“That's the best act since Butterfly McQueen,” Lyon said as they walked into the living room.

“Who?”

“The actress who played the hysterical maid in
Gone with the Wind
.”

The room was as Lyon had expected. The beamed ceiling, wide hearth with nearby spinning wheel, and the clean functional lines of colonial period furniture created the obvious effect, and yet he had the inchoate feeling that it didn't fit.

The maid stood in the doorway with a handkerchief held to her mouth, which muffled her words. “Miz Giles be down soon.”

“Thank you.”

As Hattie crossed conspiratorially toward Bea, the handkerchief disappeared somewhere up a sleeve. “Bea, will you be seeing Kim?”

“Yes.”

“Please inform her that the literature has arrived from New York and the meeting has been rescheduled for tomorrow evening.”

Lyon stared at his wife as the black woman left the room. “What's all that about?”

“I have the feeling that Kim is in the process of organizing a union of domestic workers. I had better see whether she's in violation of the state's little Hatch Act.”

“You've begun to turn into a bureaucrat since you got that job.” He walked toward the mantelpiece to admire an excellent scale replica of the
Mayflower
. As he did so, one hand brushed against the wall, and he turned to tap lightly against the wallboard. He looked down at his feet, on the edge of a throw rug on the highly waxed flooring.

Several years before, the Wentworths had purchased the decrepit house on the promontory and named it Nutmeg Hill. Room by room, as their finances allowed, they had restored the structure. Each peg, each section of plaster, had become as familiar to Lyon as his own face in the morning mirror.

This house was not of that ilk. In fact, nothing in the house was as it seemed: from a caricature of a maid who dropped her obsequiousness at will, to plasterboard walls and floor planking laid closer to 1960 than to 1760. He ran his fingers along the under edge of the cobbler's bench coffee table and felt machine-milled nails and belt-sanded wood. Not only the house but also the furniture and probably the plaque on the outside wall were reproductions … the ultimate compromise between a sense of history and old Yankee frugality.

“Beatrice,” the soft voice said from the doorway. “How good of you to come.” Karen Giles extended both hands as she moved across the room toward Bea.

She was a tall woman, dressed in black, with her blond hair pulled back in a severe bun. The simplicity of the hair style seemed to accentuate her perfectly proportioned facial features. She moved with a flowing, athletic stride, with just the proper hint of sexuality to her hips. The early thirties would be her approximate age, Lyon thought.

“We were sorry to hear of your loss,” Bea said.

“Thank you for your thoughts.” She turned to Lyon and held out a hand, her voice small and lilting. “Thank you also, Lyon.”

The dampness of her palm belied her apparent composure. “If there's anything we can do?”

“Thank you, nothing. The services will be in a few days, but I can't really make any definite announcement until the police release the …” Her hands went to her face as her shoulders momentarily shook; then her composure returned. “Perhaps some sherry?”

“That would be nice.”

Karen poured small measures of sherry from a cut-glass decanter on a sideboard and handed the glasses to the Wentworths. “Have you heard anything about that woman? The one who killed Tom? Have they caught her yet?”

“There isn't any such person as Carol Dodgson,” Bea said.

“I don't understand.”

“The handbag in the airplane was a plant. Every attempt I made to trace the Dodgson woman turned up absolutely nothing.”

“Then someone else murdered Tom?”

“Exactly,” Lyon said.

Karen Giles sat back on the sofa, crossed her legs, sipped her sherry quickly, and then laughed. “I should have known. Tom would never play around. It didn't fit his image.”

“The police have assumed that Tom went to the lake house to be alone with the Dodgson woman, there was an argument, and she killed him. But that doesn't seem to be the case now.”

Karen went to the sideboard and poured another sherry. “No, it doesn't.”

“Why
was
he out there?” Lyon asked.

She shrugged. “Tom liked to get away once in a while, to work on briefs or just to be alone.”

Lyon had first recognized the impulse as an intelligence officer during the Korean War, when bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated information had been channeled across his field desk. He had learned to follow the instinctual, almost subliminal leaps of logic from random parts to a logical whole. “Have the divorce papers been filed yet?”

Karen Giles turned toward him with a blank stare, and he noticed how blue her eyes were. “I don't know.”

The jump had been made, and he'd have to press it home. “The file will turn up at court, or there'll be copies of the documents at his office.”

She continued staring at him for long moments before speaking. “I suppose they will.”