The Pied Piper of Death (4 page)

“I promised I'd talk with you about those mines,” Bea said.

“You could never imagine the corporate battles we had over the Tommy, Beatrice. Let me tell you a little story. When I was first elected to the board of directors, the colonel still ran this company with an iron fist. At that time the Terrible Tommy was set to detonate at three feet. Army ordnance people felt that men couldn't hunch lower than that unless they were flat in the dirt. Well, I went to the mat for a four-foot explosive height in order to protect the children who might wander on the field. The colonel, my own father, opposed me, but I won that battle, kids. And to this day the Terrible Tommy detonates at four feet.”

“It only maims taller children,” Bea said.

Peyton shook his head. “No wonder you two are married. You think alike. Isn't that Congressman Candlin in the doorway? Excuse me. I'll go net him for our little chat.”

Peyton began working the crowd back toward the room's entrance, where the tall congressman stood cataloging the party participants with mild interest.

“It's been a long time, Lyon.” The woman's voice was low and intense.

Lyon was startled at the change in Katherine Piper during the two years since he had last seen her. Peyton's wife was a thin woman who now wore heavy base makeup to disguise a chalk-white complexion and dark hollows around her eyes. Her other attempts to restore a past haunting beauty had succeeded only in making her appear slightly grotesque. Her carefully articulated movements and speech were the deliberate actions of the near inebriated.

“Katherine, I would like you to meet my wife, Bea.”

The woman took Bea's hand with a limp grip that conveyed limited interest. “Yes, I have heard of you, Bernice.”

“Bea.”

“Of course, Lee. I hear you're one of those superactive women who manages a career, puts down men, and still bakes cakes.”

Lyon could sense his wife's antennae quivering. “Only on Mondays and Wednesdays,” Bea answered. “On the other days I sell my body.”

“Really, is there much of a market for it?” Katherine Piper said as the diminutive butler served her a tall glass containing what appeared to be orange juice.

“Ixnay,” the butler said to her. “Ocknay offnay.”

“Keep your place, you little troll,” Katherine Piper replied in a stage whisper.

Lyon stepped into the breach. “Did you know that Katherine was in grad school at our university when Peyton and I were undergraduates?”

“I noticed that my husband trotted out his ‘going to the mat with the colonel' anecdote. That little fable is designed to prove that he's not as bloodthirsty as his annual report would lead you to believe. Actually, his father was quite a man.”

“Granddaddy was a malicious warlord.” A young woman with glowing blond hair that fell past her shoulders appeared at their side. Her hand gripped Lyon's. “Remember me, Mr. Wentworth? Paula Piper.”

Lyon took her hand and felt the same firm pressure her father transmitted during his greetings. “Of course, Paula. I haven't seen you since I don't know when. But I see that the braces are off.”

“Other things have come out too,” Katherine Piper said.

Lyon found it difficult to ignore the taut body of the athletic young woman in a tight green sheath with a plunging neckline. “Yes,” he agreed and felt Bea's toe press painfully into his ankle.

“Paula is my step-daughter,” Katherine Piper said. “The unlamented first Mrs. Piper didn't seem to understand that children should be drowned at birth like unwanted kittens.”

Bea was taken aback.

“Mums always joshes when she's had too much vodka,” Paula said. “That's why the Garden Club struck Bridgeway from their spring house tour. They didn't think it was funny when she fell in the goldfish pond and swallowed a small frog.”

Lyon and Bea exchanged a private glance that signaled their discomfort over the treacherous warfare which had just been exposed between these two women.

“How would you know what I swallowed, Snookums? You were away at college,” Katherine said with what was meant to be a smile, but which came out as a lopsided grimace. “She's majoring in sexual conquests,” she announced to Bea and Lyon.

“Mums already has an advanced degree in wicked step-mothering with a minor in alcoholism,” Paula retaliated.

“I think that you both have crossed any semblance of a line and that's unfortunate,” Bea said with the candor that often burst through normal constraints. The two women looked startled.

“I think you are probably right,” Katherine Piper said after an awkward pause, her voice strikingly different in tone.

“Whether Katherine and I are polite to each other doesn't matter,” Paula said. “Markham Swan says I'll be dead before the month is out and that someday Bridgeway will return to dust.” She abruptly moved away from them and left the room.

“She's in that love of death adolescent stage,” Katherine said. “Paula has unbounded admiration for a Valhalla of dead poets presided over by Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.”

“If she's overly obsessed by suicidal poets, perhaps she needs professional help—immediately,” Lyon said.

“Oh, she's not talking about killing herself,” Katherine Piper said. “This isn't any adolescent cry for help. She's referring to her own demise as forecast by that philanderer Swan, who is probably using that ploy to seduce her. Excuse me, I have to find out where that nasty little man has hidden my vodka.” Before they could respond she began weaving a course through the crowd.

“Speaking of murder warnings, I haven't noticed Markham Swan in this group, have you?” Lyon asked.

“He's always easy to spot,” Bea said. “Just check out clumps of women surrounding a lone man. No. I haven't seen him.”

Lyon recalled the cryptic phone call he'd received from Swan earlier in the day. He had been working at the computer on the newest Wobbly book,
They Take to the Air
, when the call came in on the answering machine.

“I know you can hear this, Wentworth,” Swan had said when the machine answered the phone. “Drop the damn nursery school story that you're writing and pick up the phone because I'm talking murder here.”

Lyon knew that Swan was aware of his phone system and would stay on the line until he answered personally. He reluctantly reached over to the machine and snicked the phone from its cradle. “Yes, Markham?”

“I know Bea is coming out to Bridgeway tonight to endorse Peyton's latest rotten scheme, and I'd like you to come.”

“I wasn't invited, Markham. I would also like to point out that I do not work for Mr. Piper. You do.”

“Forget the invite bit. You were a Thumper in college. That gives you the right to visit a fellow Thump at any time.”

“I am not a Thumper, Markham. As I recall, you blackballed me.”

“You always were a little bit of a dork, Wentworth. I've never figured out if those two years in Nam as an intelligence officer or your buddying up to our gargantuan police chief warped your mind, but something sure did. I know you get your jollies from murder investigations and boy do I have one for you.”

“I've sworn off that stuff,” Lyon said tiredly.

“You haven't heard what I've got. I've turned up something in my work that's screaming murder to me. The cutest member of the Piper family is going to get whacked.”

“And the whacker told you in advance?”

“No. I figured it out.”

“I thought you were writing a history of the Piper family,” Lyon said.

“Exactly. And I have come across a piece of pie that tells me that the kid Paula is going to get it—soon.”

“I can only take so much of Peyton Piper, Markham. And I'm not in that mood today.”

“How about me? I'm living out here in this fiefdom.”

“You're well paid,” Lyon said.

Swan seemed to sigh, an unusual gesture for the usually self-confident man. “Come on, Wentworth. I think I'm on to something, but I need a reality check with someone I can trust and you best fill that ticket.” There was another long pause. “Please.”

The please was a first for Markham Swan. It was Lyon's turn to sigh. “Okay. I'll drive Bea out there.”

“Look me up at the cottage at nine,” Markham had said and then the phone buzzed a disconnect.

Rocco Herbert laid a large hand on Lyon's shoulder. “I want you to know that I have orders from Daddy Warbucks to execute any protesters swilling his free booze.”

“I thought you were busy arresting outside agitators?” Lyon asked the police chief.

“That's no fun without being able to toss Bea into a lineup.”

“Question,” Lyon said. “You have a coed daughter on the cusp of leaving teenagehood. Does she often speak of death lurking around the corner?”

“Only if she tries to sneak off for weekends with her latest boyfriend. Then she knows death lurks in the form of one large, angry police chief.”

“You aren't up with the times, Rocco. That's not the way things are anymore.”

“I know how they are, Lyon. I just don't want to know about it when it comes to my own daughter.” He refused a flute of champagne with a small deprecating wave of his hand. “To further answer your question, teenagers do get fixations on death.”

“So I seem to remember from my teaching days and the countless submissions of morbid poetry. I wonder if Swan is playing up to Paula with this type of thing.”

“Knowing Swan's reputation, I wouldn't doubt it,” Rocco answered.

“What doesn't fit is that he called and wanted me out here for some reason.”

Rocco held up his hands in mock protest. “Come on, Lyon, when it comes to Swan and women anything goes. Don't take it seriously.”

“Protests have been known to get out of hand.”

Rocco laughed. “Did that group outside look like they were plotting a bloody revolution?”

“Well, no, but I'm no expert on revolutions.”

The remarkably short waiter appeared at Rocco's side. He carried a silver serving tray holding a tall glass of vodka and tonic. “Your drink, Chief,” he said in his bass voice.

Rocco took the drink and sipped on it with approval. “Thank you, Rabbit. You make a remarkably good vodka and tonic.”

“I let the tonic bottle's shadow fall across the vodka, Chief. And I thought we had a deal on the ‘Rabbit' bit? I prefer to be known as Mr. R. Welch.”

“Of course, Mister R. I'll call you anything you want as long as you're clean.”

“Chief, I don't even drive by a filling station if I can avoid it. When our car needs servicing, Frieda does the honors.”

“Glad to hear it Rab … Mister R.,” Rocco said. “Try not to get fired by Mister Piper again, and if you are, stay away from establishments that maintain long hours and cash registers.”

“You keep up the condescension crap and I'll punch you out,” the butler replied.

“You know I have a bad football knee, Rabbit,” Rocco said and immediately regretted the cruel remark.

Rabbit glared at them. “Big people always have to take the cheap shots, don't they? I'm going to go water your vodka.” He turned away and returned to the pantry.

Lyon cocked an eyebrow at Rocco. “What's all this about gas stations and cheap shots?”

“I didn't mean to come off as a smart ass,” Rocco replied. “But I swear to God, sometimes Rabbit, or Mister R. as he prefers, leads you right to the trough of cheap comebacks and requires you to drink.”

“And the gas stations?”

“The Welch Rabbit, as we have come to know him in the police trade, has a weakness for gas stations. Therefore, he and I have formed a team. He holds them up and I bust him. He hasn't done time yet, but he got a suspended sentence in January and I have somehow been appointed his unofficial support group.

“Periodically they fire him here and he gets these irresistible urges to hit an Exxon. That's when he calls me. Anytime, day or night, and we meet for coffee until the urge leaves him.”

“Like AA?”

“Same principle. But he's gotten much better since he met Frieda, another little person, and they married.”

“Exactly what are you doing at this soiree besides bellying up to the bar, Rocco?”

“I am here at the specific request of the noble lord of the manor,” Rocco replied. “After that display outside, and some threats the family seems to have gotten, he wants me to discuss house security with his top rent-a-cop.”

The Welch Rabbit reappeared with a replenished tray and replaced the vodka. “Well, I'm off to check out the premises,” Rocco said as he clutched his fresh drink in a massive hand. “I'm thinking of checking out the new Sunoco on Route Eighty,” Rabbit said in a stage whisper to Rocco as they wound their way through the party back to the pantry.

Across the room Peyton Piper stood in a partly open doorway. When he established eye contact with Lyon he made a small beckoning hand gesture.

“I think it's our turn to have an audience with the lord of the manor,” Lyon said. They made their way through clumps of guests and were ushered into a room in the far corner behind the west stairwell. As soon as they were inside Peyton firmly closed the heavy door.

A large stained-glass window in the outside wall depicted a life-size heroic pose of a Civil War union officer mounted on a rearing white charger. The soldier appeared to be leading an army as he waved a naked saber overhead. In the background, a vaulted stone bridge arched toward infinity.

Reaching up the right wall were two-story-high shelves containing bound volumes of family and business documents carefully preserved for more than a century. Glass cabinets on the floor and walls of the left side of the room displayed museum-quality Civil War memorabilia.

“I believe you both know Roger Candlin,” Peyton said.

The congressman was a tall, balding, cadaverous man. His few surviving strands of hair were brushed across his head, while opaque dark eyes increased the sense of distance about him. Somber clothes were in keeping with his personality. He gave a dour smile as his long tapering fingers quickly brushed Bea and Lyon's hands.