Family Vault (7 page)

“Look here, young woman, if you’ve come trying to drag me to Fred’s funeral—”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Uncle Jem. You two always did hate each other’s guts.”

“Hunh. Nice talk from a young lady, I don’t think.”

Sarah sat down at the table without being invited and helped herself to a piece of toast. Her own father was one of the few Kellings who’d been able to stay on speaking terms with Jeremy, and she’d been in and out of this flat all her life.

“At least he’s going to be in lively company,” she remarked. “What do you think of this Ruby Redd thing?”

Jeremy Kelling told her what he thought in sulphurous detail. Sarah sipped Egbert’s coffee, which was pure nectar compared to Edith’s, and waited until he’d run out of swear words. Then she said, “Really? I took it for granted you’d put her there yourself, although of course I didn’t say so to the police.”

Her uncle took the sally as a compliment, as she’d known he would, and regaled her with several too-familiar anecdotes. Finally, she managed to get in the question she’d come to ask.

“By the way, here’s a little nugget the reporters didn’t get hold of. There was an old man in the cemetery with me while I was waiting for Dolph. We got to talking—I get my bad habit of picking up odd characters from you, you know—and by the maddest coincidence he turned out to have been the bartender in a place Ruby Redd used to frequent, called Danny Rate’s Pub. Would you happen to know him?”

“Ah, sweet memory! Many’s the libation I’ve lifted to the buxom beauties of the burleycue over that sudsy oaken timber. Gad, the nights I spent in Danny Rate’s Pub! I could tell you stories—”

Sarah knew better than to let him get started again. “All I want is for you to tell me that bartender’s name,” she interrupted firmly. “He was actually the first one to identify the body, though Dolph hogged the credit, and he was such a dear to me, lending me money for the telephone which I forgot to give back. He simply faded out of the picture before I had a chance even to thank him. I thought I’d like to return his dime and write a little note of appreciation. He was so—oh, old and seedy-looking and probably living in some poky room—”

“At the taxpayers’ expense,” snorted Uncle Jem, who had never done a tap of honest work in his life. “What did he look like?”

“Short and thinnish, and I’d say he may have been fair-haired when he was younger. He had pale blue eyes, I know, unusually pale, with something odd about them.”

“One eyelid drooped, and the other didn’t?”

“Yes, that was it!”

“Funny sort of crack in his voice?”

“Yes, I thought it was just old age.”

“No, he always talked that way. Well, well! Imagine his turning up like that. I remember one night—”

“Never mind,” Sarah broke in relentlessly. She couldn’t spend the whole morning here. “What’s his name? You must remember that, you never forget anything.”

“Wait, don’t rush me. Let me think. It was a funny sort of name. Not peculiar, amusing. We had a standing joke around the bar. ‘Oh, gee, Tim,’ we’d say. That was it, Tim O’Ghee, with an h. Some corruption of Magee, I daresay, unless his mother made it up, which is not without the realm of possibility. Speaking of names—”

“Edith will be calling me names,” said his niece, “if I don’t get back and do Edith’s work for her. The hordes are descending on us after the funeral. Sorry you won’t be among them, but I shouldn’t be, either, if I didn’t have to. It’ll only be sherry and cheese, anyway. Thanks for the lovely coffee and the help. I’ll drop over in a day or so and tell you all the nasty things Cousin Mabel says about you.”

She kissed him good-bye. She’d never minded kissing Uncle Jem because he was plump instead of craggy like the rest of the uncles, didn’t have whiskers, and smelled pleasantly of Bay Rum. Besides, he’d given her what she came for.

Now that she knew Timothy O’Ghee’s name, she must surely be able to track him down. Sarah hastened over to the pay phones on the Common, found a phone book that hadn’t yet been vandalized, and hunted among the Os. No O’Ghee was listed, which didn’t surprise her. That would be too easy.

The voting lists would be a likelier place to find him. Sarah knew all about voting lists, she’d plowed through enough of them addressing postcards in the interests of one or another of Aunt Caroline’s causes. She was at City Hall within five minutes.

Behind its ultra-modern façade, the new City Hall had taken on much the same homey atmosphere as the old. A friendly clerk, who must have been somebody’s favorite aunt, was delighted to leave her typewriter and assist in the search. They found one lone O’Ghee on the list, at an address which was more or less where Sarah had thought it might be. She copied down the information, thanked the clerk profusely, and made a beeline for the subway.

T
HOUGH SARAH HAD BEEN
born and reared in Boston, the regions out beyond Andrew Square might have been Timbuctoo, for all she knew of their geography. She and the lady at City Hall had picked out O’Ghee’s address on a street map; nevertheless she had to search for the place, and when she did at last find it she could hardly believe she’d got it right. This wasn’t even a street, merely a sort of cul-de-sac that appeared to be one solid block of disused-looking warehouses.

At last she noticed a few yards of chain-link fence spanning what she first thought must be a driveway. Behind it, cramped between the massive warehouses, stood a sliver of a house three stories high but not more than fifteen feet wide, covered in green asphalt shingles that had begun to curl and break at the edges. The front yard was about five feet deep, grown up to crab-grass and ragweed, the door badly in need of paint. However, lace curtains at the one front window framed a card that read, “Room for Rent,” and a wire shopping cart leaned against the railing of the minuscule porch. This had to be the place, after all.

It looked like, and probably was, the sole remaining unit of what was once a row of wooden town houses. Some diehard householder must have fought to the end against creeping industrialism and won what was surely a hollow victory. The chain-link fence suggested a watchdog so Sarah approached with caution. However, nothing happened when she opened the gate. She ventured up the two steps and knocked at the door.

The woman who answered was another surprise. These tacky surroundings would have prepared Sarah for birdsnest hair and a filthy apron, but Tim O’Ghee’s landlady, if such she was, clearly spent a good deal more effort on herself than she did on her house. Her hair was an architectural marvel, her face a work of art. Her rigorously girdled form was encased in a tight nylon jersey dress of exuberant pattern and her nether extremities in imitation snake-skin boots with high heels and inch-thick soles.

“Yes?” she said doubtfully with an up-and-down glance at Sarah’s once-good tweed coat and sensible shoes.

“I’m looking for Mr. Timothy O’Ghee,” Sarah stammered. “Do I have the right address?”

“What do you want him for?”

“Well, I—I borrowed some money from him yesterday and wanted to pay it back.”

“That’s a hot one. I never knew he had any to lend.”

“It’s a very small amount, just change for the phone, actually, but he was so kind to offer it, and slipped away before I could even thank him properly. Later I described him to my uncle and he said it must have been Mr. O’Ghee, so I thought I’d run over and see him. I live not too far from here.”

“Oh, yeah? Whereabouts?”

“Toward the West End,” Sarah hedged. “Is Mr. O’Ghee in now?”

“I dunno. I been over to the Avenue, grocery shopping. Tim don’t generally come downstairs till late. I don’t serve no meals, see, but I gave him coffee and maybe a piece of toast or something. What the heck, he’s an old man. It wouldn’t seem right making him walk all the way to the Avenue for a cup of coffee.”

She turned her head and screamed, “Tim! Tim, you up yet? Somebody’s here to see you.”

She got no reply.

“He don’t hear so good no more. Prob’ly laying in bed reading the racing forms. Why don’t you go on up? He won’t mind.”

Sarah hesitated. “Couldn’t you?”

“I don’t climb them stairs no more’n I have to. Doctor’s orders.”

Sarah didn’t believe that for a moment. Any woman who could tramp around the stores in those murderous boots must be rugged enough for anything. However, she wasn’t about to start an argument.

“Where would I find him?”

“Straight upstairs and turn to your right. Tell him I got coffee on the stove.”

The woman stepped back and disappeared into the murky recesses of the house. The stairway was directly inside the front door, steep and dark and covered in a runner that ought to have been replaced ages ago. Praying she wouldn’t catch her toe in a worn spot and break her neck, Sarah picked her way to the top.

The old man’s door was shut. She knocked and called, “Mr. O’Ghee,” but he didn’t answer. Perhaps he’d got up and left the house while his landlady was shopping. Now that she’d come this far, she might as well make sure.

Barging into strange people’s bedrooms was not the sort of thing Sarah had been brought up to face with equanimity. She had to fight with herself to turn the knob and push the door open.

Tim O’Ghee was in. He lay sprawled half out of a narrow iron bed, his eyes and mouth half open, his face shrunken and still. He would not be wanting coffee, then or ever.

Sarah wasn’t frightened, only sorry. She had seen plenty of dead old men, grandfathers, great-uncles, cousins twice and thrice removed. They had died in their own comfortable beds, most of them, or in hospitals with trained nurses in attendance and relatives around to make sure they got decently buried. Moved by pity, she reached out and touched one of the stiff, yellow hands. It felt like wax that had been kept in a refrigerator. The cold drove her back to the head of the stairs.

“Mrs.—oh, what is your name? Please come up! Something’s happened to Mr. O’Ghee.”

“What’s the matter?” The blonde wig gleamed in the dusk below. “What happened?”

“I’m afraid he’s dead.”

“What do you mean, you’re afraid?” The strident voice grew harsher. “Either he is or he ain’t. You sure he ain’t in a coma? Tim’s a diabetic. You better stay with him while I get the doctor.”

Sarah knew the old man was beyond any earthly need of her company, yet common humanity demanded that she not run out at a time like this. She started to pull the spread over him, then decided she’d better not touch anything until somebody came.

At least she didn’t have to stand right over him. She went to the one narrow window and stood looking out, but there was nothing to see except brick walls, and these were too unpleasant a reminder of that other brick wall which she and Tim O’Ghee had seen together.

A prickling began at the back of her neck and inched its way down her spine. Surely it could be no more than a tragic coincidence that this little man who’d appeared so chipper less than twenty-four hours ago, this man who’d known Ruby Redd and the men who bought her drinks, should so suddenly be lying here dead?

Sarah had surprisingly little time to wonder. Hardly five minutes later, she heard voices on the stairs.

“Caught me on the bleeper,” the doctor was explaining. “I was in the car on my way to the hospital. Checked back on the CB and my office told me to come here. Lucky you caught me when you did. Where is he?”

“Right in here.”

The landlady ushered a man with a leather satchel into the room, flipped her head at Sarah, then at the door. “Okay, miss. Thanks for staying.”

It was a clear invitation to leave but Sarah didn’t budge. The doctor, obviously in a rush to do what he must and get on, hardly seemed to notice she was there, although the room was so small they were almost on top of one another. He bent over the body, tried to lift an arm and found it stiff with rigor, made a perfunctory gesture at rolling back the eyelids, then straightened up.

“That’s the story, Mrs. Wandelowski. Too bad, but the poor old guy’s been living on borrowed time as you know. At least it was quick and peaceful. You might as well go ahead and call the undertaker. Tell whoever you get to call my office, and I’ll have my secretary send over the death certificate.”

“What are you going to put on it?” Sarah asked.

“Heart failure, what else?”

The doctor turned around and gaped as though he had, in fact, been unaware there was somebody behind him. “Who are you?”

“A friend,” she snapped, “and I must say I don’t think much of your examination. Mr. O’Ghee was perfectly hale and hearty yesterday afternoon.”

“If you’re such a pal of his, miss, you ought to know better than that. Tim was in rough shape and had been for years. Mrs. Wandelowski, had he been taking his insulin on schedule?”

“How’m I supposed to know? I gave him the vials regular out of the icebox like you told me to. I didn’t watch him take no shots. What do you think I am? Them needles turn my stomach.”

“Um.”

The doctor looked around the tiny, bare room. There was a wastebasket beside the dresser. He looked into it, finding nothing but the front section of the previous night’s newspaper. Sarah noticed with dismay that her own face appeared on the first page in a group shot with Dolph and some policemen. The caption read, “Stripper’s Body Found in Historic Tomb.”

He held up the paper. “Anything in here to upset him, I wonder?”

“Oh, God, yes,” cried Mrs. Wandelowski. “I should have thought of that in the first place. Tim was right there watching when they dug her up, can you believe it? Came home white as a sheet, shaking so hard he could barely get his coat off. I sat him down in the kitchen and gave him hot coffee with a little whiskey in it, not enough to hurt a fly. I know what he can have and what he can’t. Couldn’t, I mean. Poor old Tim, I’m going to miss him.”

She sniffled, not very convincingly, Sarah thought. “He said he knew who it was the minute he laid eyes on her. Between you and me, I think they had something going for a while, ’way back when. Tim wasn’t a bad-looking guy when he was young. I seen pictures. You know how old people are always dragging out snapshots they want you to look at. Same old lies over and over about how great they used to be.”