The Balloon Man (19 page)

“Has to be,” Brooks said. “This whole business began with the reappearance of the rubies. The only way one can explain the
presence of Jem's burglarious acquaintance is that he was after the jewels. He failed, and now he's safely tucked away in
jail, but that doesn't mean the people who hired him have given up. Breaking into this place would be dangerous and almost
certainly futile, so they decided to try another tack. I predict we will receive a ransom note offering to return Max in exchange
for the parure.”

It was the most hopeful theory anyone had yet proposed. “Makes sense,” Ira rumbled. His wife nodded vigorously.

Jem poured another martini from the pitcher at his
elbow. “Try to get some sleep, Sarah,” he suggested. “We'll hold the fort.”

“No, there's something else.” Sarah pressed her hands to her aching head. “Calpurnia. What have they done with her? I want
to tell Sergeant Jofferty what happened.”

“He said he'd take your statement in the morning,” Jem assured her. “We all saw what happened. Jesse was first among the foremost,
so he had a better view than Egbert and me. It was obvious that she fired in order to save you and Davy, and that's what we
told Jofferty. He had to take her in, of course, but there'll be a hearing tomorrow and I'm sure the judge won't set bail
too high when he hears the circumstances.”

“I don't care how much it is, I'll post it or sign it, or whatever is necessary. Miriam, can you get Uncle Jake to represent
her?”

“Sure, honey. We all feel the same. Don't worry, well take care of it. Now you just run along upstairs and get some rest.
Everything will look better in the morning.”

Egbert, the perfect manservant, had been pottering at the sink. Now he turned to Sarah with a glass filled to the brim with
a creamy liquid that smelled finely of freshly grated nutmeg.

“Just drink this down, Mrs. Sarah. There's nothing like fresh eggnog to settle the stomach and soothe the nerves. Mr. Jem
always sleeps like a baby after one of my eggnogs.”

Sarah didn't want the eggnog, but he seemed so anxious to do something for her, and she wouldn't have hurt his
feelings for the world. She still couldn't taste anything, so she choked the liquid down to the last drop while Egbert stood
over her like an amiable gnome. Theonia rose in all her majesty, black velvet billowing, and put a plump white arm around
Sarah. “Come along, dear,” she cooed, “I'll tuck you in.”

“Excuse me, folks, I want to make a few phone calls.” Brooks followed them out.

“I could use an eggnog myself about now,” Jem said complacently.

“What did you put in it, Egbert?” Ira asked with a grin.

“Just a little tot of brandy, sir. Well, perhaps more than a little. I made extra for Mr. Jem, and I can easily make more
if you and Mrs. Rivkin would care to indulge.”

“No thanks.” Miriam spoke for them both. “We may as well get home, since there's nothing more we can do tonight. Tell Sarah
I'll call first thing in the morning, and you be sure to call us the minute you hear anything, no matter what time it is.”

They took themselves off. Jem found himself with a small problem between his glass and its coaster but solved it easily enough
by the simple expedient of drinking the glass dry and dropping the coaster on the floor. “Shame to waste the rest of the eggnog,”
he remarked. “Finish it off, Egbert, why don't you?”

“Well, Mr. Jem, seeing as how you force it on me. One generally associates eggnog with Christmas, but my mother used to give
us eggnog sometimes, for medicinal purposes,
you know, when she had an egg to spare and the time to mix it. Sometimes we'd get sick on purpose.”

“Getting nostalgic, are you, Egbert?”

“Well, sir, one does tend to count one's blessings at times like this. We've got the little chap back safe, and I won't give
up on Mr. Max. He's got out of bad scrapes before, and Mr. Brooks's notion about ransom struck me as eminently logical and
on the whole eminently encouraging. As for me—well, Mr. Jem, I don't mind admitting it was a lucky break for me when you happened
to see me flipping dough in the window of that crummy pizza parlor and recognized your old army buddy fallen on hard times.
Jobs were darned tough to get then with so many being turned loose. Would you care for a small dividend?”

“No, you finish it off, old buddy. I don't want to get too healthy.”

It was Sarah who found them, still in their clothes, dozing peacefully in the two easy chairs that they'd staked out as their
own for the duration of the visit.

“What on earth are you two Champagne Charlies doing down here at six o'clock in the morning?”

“Good God, is that what time it is? I haven't been awake at this hour since the good old days when I stayed up all night.”
Jem stretched and groaned. “Egbert, why didn't you put me to bed? Why didn't I put you to bed?”

“I haven't the foggiest, Mr. Jem. Maybe we decided to sit here and listen for the telephone. Could that have been it? I'm
sorry, Mrs. Sarah, but there hasn't been any news. Yet.”

“I know. Brooks was up half the night, too, in Max's office. Why didn't you tell me he and Theonia were staying? I'd have
made the bed and tidied the room.”

“That's why nobody told you. You do too damned much for too many people.” Jem cautiously turned his head, yelped, and groaned.
“I knew I shouldn't have had that eggnog, it's left me with a headache. I never get headaches from gin. Where's Davy?”

“Right behind you. Come on, Davy, let's make breakfast for Uncle Egbert and Uncle Jem and you and me.”

“I don't want breakfast. I feel funny.”

“How funny, dear? Funny in your tummy?”

“I don't know. I just want to go back to bed, and I want Daddy to come. Mummy, you take me?”

“Of course, dear. Shall I carry you up?”

“Daddy carry me.”

Davy was trying not to sniffle and not succeeding very well.

Neither was Sarah. She put her hand on Davy's forehead. He didn't feel warm, but who knew what kind of germ he might have
picked up in that horrible house. “I tell you what, you can dress up in Daddy's baseball cap and his Red Sox shirt, and you
can be Daddy until Big Daddy comes home. Uncle Jem can be you, and Jesse will drive us to Dr. Colly's office, and he'll give
us all something to make our tummies feel better.”

“You hold me?”

“If you want me to.”

“You hold me?” Davy didn't usually ask the same question twice in a row.

“Yes, I could do that. It's really, really early, though, too early for Dr. Colly to be in his office. Perhaps we ought to
try eating something soft and squishy and see how it makes our tummies feel.”

“Egbert would be glad to fix you something,” said Jem.

“Not eggnog,” Sarah said, smiling at Egbert. “How about scrambling a few, or soft boiling them?”

Theonia entered, trailing clouds of mauve chiffon and ecru lace, while Sarah was breaking eggs. Gently but firmly she took
the bowl away. “Sit down and drink your juice, I'll do that.”

“Not in that gorgeous negligee,” Sarah protested.

“There's plenty more where that came from,” Theonia said not so enigmatically. She'd been remodeling Caroline Kelling's costly,
exquisite lingerie for years, with extravagant success, and hadn't exhausted the supply yet. “Does it bother you to see me
wearing her things, Sarah?”

“Quite the contrary.” Sarah managed a feeble laugh. “I suppose it could be regarded as a form of revenge, couldn't it? She
always had the most wonderful clothes, from the skin out, while I went around in my mother's old hand-me-downs or cobbled-together
clothes made out of blankets. Being blind, she couldn't see how awful I looked, but she must have known. How she'd swear if
she knew some other woman was wearing her precious silk de chine step-ins.”

“Especially a woman she'd never let in her house except
to scrub floors.” said Theonia with perfect truth and perfect equanimity. Deftly she spooned the creamy golden eggs onto heated
plates and distributed them around the table. “Why, my goodness, Davy, why are you looking so glum?”

“Don't want eggs.” Davy drooped.

“You'll hurt my feelings if you don't eat them. I'll cry.”

Her face puckered up into a grimace as horrifying as Theonia's perfect features were capable of producing. Davy looked impressed.
“I can make a worse face than that.”

“As soon as you finish your eggs we'll have a contest.”

They had the contest, and Davy won. He and Egbert went upstairs so that Davy could help his old friend pick out clean clothes
for the day, and the others put their heads together over a last cup of coffee.

“Thanks, Theonia,” Sarah said. “He said his tummy felt odd, but he got those eggs down all right. I think I'll take him to
see Dr. Colly, though, just to be on the safe side. You should have seen that filthy place! I hope he didn't eat or drink
anything. The well is probably polluted.”

“Has he told you why he went there?” Theonia tipped another spoonful of sugar in her coffee. She kept her voluptuous contours
from becoming too voluptuous by periods of exercise and diet, but this was no time to worry about calories.

“I haven't dared talk to him about it yet. He was exhausted last night, and he really did look a little out of sorts this
morning. It could be he's upset about something
that happened over there, and if I press him, I might do more damage. I simply cannot for the life of me understand why he
would take it into his head to cross the road, which he's been strictly forbidden to do, and sneak into someone else's house,
which is also against the rules, and scare me half to death! I could almost be glad Max wasn't here. He'd have been frantic.”

She was lying, and she knew it, and she couldn't keep the smile plastered on her face much longer. She excused herself and
fled to the deck. Gripping the rail with both hands, she stared out across the colorful drift of chrysanthemums Anne had created.

“Oh, Max,” she whispered. “I miss you so much. Where are you, darling? Where are you?”

Max knew where he was. Sitting on a bare rock completely surrounded by water, that was where. What he didn't know was where
the damned rock was.

Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, at a guess. There was no land visible except for a few other rocks. They were just as barren
as his, so there didn't seem to be any point in swimming over to them. The coast must be west of him. He knew which way west
was, he'd seen the sun rise once or twice, or maybe it was three times. His memory wasn't working too well. He couldn't remember
a damned thing between the time he'd left Ireson's Landing and the unpleasant moment when he had found himself over his head
in water and sinking fast. He had grown up not far from the ocean and had learned to swim at Revere Beach and along a fair
stretch of the North Shore. That skill and his well-developed survival instinct had helped him fight his way to the surface
and stay there, sometimes floating,
sometimes paddling, until the sun rose and showed land close by.

Some land, Max thought. He'd been almost at the end of his strength when he'd seen it, and it had been a struggle to climb
out of the water, even with the help of a handy ledge. At some point during the night he'd lost his shoes. Maybe he'd managed
to take them off, though he couldn't remember doing it. Maybe a kindly mermaid had done it for him.

He was still not thinking very straight. The bump on his head might have something to do with that. Max fingered it gingerly.
It was an impressive lump, as lumps went, and he wished it would. He wished he would, too. They must be looking for him by
now, but how would they know where to look?

Time to think positively, Max told himself. He could have been worse off, though not much. His head was beginning to clear,
and flashes of memory were coming back. Some of them had to be hallucinations, like seeing Louie Maltravers bending over him.
Louie was in the clink and unlikely to leave the safety of his cell unless he was forcibly evicted. There'd been something
about the Fourth of July, too. Fireworks and rockets going off.

One memory was almost certainly accurate—coming back to consciousness to find himself tied hand and foot, with a gummy gag
filling his mouth and a blindfold over his eyes. He'd heard voices but couldn't make out what they
were talking about. Then there'd been another stab of pain in his aching head; and blackness.

The marks of the ropes still showed on his wrists, so that part hadn't been a bad dream. He couldn't understand why they had
freed him before they'd tossed him overboard. Dying of starvation or exposure was just as final as drowning, or being chewed
to meatballs by some monster of the deep, but if they'd meant to kill him, why not do a thorough job of it?

Then there was the plastic bag. He'd run across it during his first feeble attempt at dog paddling, and he'd wrestled with
it for a while before he'd realized it wasn't a shark or a whale. He'd hung on to it, for no good reason, and he was glad
he had. That bag and its contents might save his life.

That and the seaweed. Too bad Max's old scoutmaster wasn't here to join the party. He'd taught Max all he knew about seaweed,
which was more than Max had wanted to know at the time, but thank God he had. Food was all around him, even if it wasn't the
sort Max Bittersohn or any member of his family would ever have eaten unless there was nothing else available. Just now there
wasn't, but there was plenty of seaweed. Those leaflike forms that Max could see drifting in the water at his feet, too close
to his feet, were among the most digestible and easily obtainable edibles in the ocean.

Small silvery fish slid through the weeds, but they weren't so easily attainable. Why hadn't his kindly old mentor
taught him how to catch fish with his bare hands? Davy wouldn't like it, though, if Davy's father ate the fish instead of
sending them home to their mothers and fathers. He'd better stick to seaweed.

Those fantastically long ribbons of kelp must go all the way down to the ocean floor; Max hoped he himself wouldn't follow
them. He saw Irish moss, which was good in desserts and many other foods when treated right in the cooking; Sarah always made
blanc-mange when she expected Aunt Boadicea to lunch. He saw the dark purple dulse, so full of iodine that inlanders cursed
with goiters would have begged their friends and relatives to send it to them as a remedy for the unsightly and sometimes
even deadly ailment, back when no other remedy was available. His old Boy Scout leader would know them all, those that were
palatable just as they came, others that would have been the better for warming up if a castaway had had anything to put them
in or the means of lighting a fire.