Time Out of Mind (69 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
Bigelow tried to raise his head. “Howie? Howie's not
dead, is he?”
“
We're going to see to his family very handsomely,
George. And you yourself are going to be in quite comfortable circumstances once you get well. I'll take care of everything here, of course. A few months,” he lied, “you're
going to be better than new.''
“‘
Sure.'' Bigelow closed his eyes.
“‘
The police will want to question you,'' Ella said softly.
“‘
Don 't worry.''
“
Of course not, George.” Her father patted his arm.
“
'I want a priest.''
“‘
You don 't need one, George. Truly.''
“‘
Look. I want a priest. A priest can't tell no one what I
say ”
“
Of course, George. Of course.”
In the hallway outside, out of her brother's hearing,
Huntington Beckwith asked Ella to stay with George Bigelow until the end. It came that night, hastened by the drain
in his chest that had unaccountably become pinched. A
priest came at sunset. Ella managed to persuade him that a g
eneral confession before last rites would be sufficient,
given Mr. Bigelow's weakened state. The,priest, one Father
Desmond O' Conner, unknowingly prolonged his own life
by accepting Ella's suggestion.
Ella returned to Greenwich, where she spent the next
year peering into every young male face she encountered.
Her visits beyond her front gate, which she'd quickly had
installed, became increasingly infrequent, then rare, then
not at all. Her brother, Tilden II, took up residence on his
yacht, rarely setting foot ashore until his father's death in
1965. Tilden, by this time, lived in an almost constant haze
of alcohol and barbiturates. His wife, Elvira, moved with
the children to the Palm Beach house, where she discovered that
vodka and orange juice was a balm to her loneliness. On
Huntington Beckwith's death, Ella sold Tilden’ s yacht from under him, effectively forcing him to accept the titular lead
ership of Beckwith Enterprises in the office of chairman.
With the job came a very large and well-guarded suite on
the penthouse floor of the Beckwith Regency Hotel. In the more than twenty years since George Bigelow had drowned
in his own fluids, Ella and Tilden’s predawn thoughts were
haunted gradually less by the vision of the ghost who
mouthed the words
Margaret
and
Jonathan
with each adv
ancing step. The part of Ella's brain into which that image
was etched had almost healed over. Then came the day
when she looked down across her sloping lawn to Round
Hill Road and saw the long-dead face of Tilden Beckwith
staring up at her.
.
be Tom Burke, trying to kick in the other door for a shot
at his blind side. He yanked Dancer's squirming body toward the sound and heard a rustle of fabric behind him as
Ella Beckwith scurried out of the line of fire.
There goes fifty grand a year, was his first thought. The
foot against the bolted door had instantly multiplied his
doubts about any good-faith bargaining with old
Ella. The
question now was how to get out of here. But then, there was also a question of professional pride.
“
Hey, lady,” he said over his shoulder. He beckoned h
closer with the Beretta, which he waggled over the
mussed-up top of Dancer's head.
Ella hesitated, but she took two steps nearer.
”
I mean”—Lesko showed her the pained expression on
his face—“if this guy is the best you got, don't you get a little embarrassed sometimes?”
Lesko's patient self-possession seemed to slow her heart
beat.
“
Counting letting your shit-faced brother drive off, that's
at least three times today old Tom out there fucked up, excuse the expression.”
The door slammed once more.
Look at this.” He gestured toward it with the blue au
tomatic. “The guy thinks maybe I didn't notice the first
kick. Right now he's ducked back away from the door be
cause he also thinks bullets don't go through plaster.”
Lesko dropped his sights to the right of the door, about
where he judged Burke's buttocks to be, and fired twice.
Dancer shrieked and flailed like a puppet at muzzle blasts that sounded like thunderclaps in the confined room. Beyond the fist-sized holes that appeared in the wall, Lesko
heard a frantic tattoo of feet but no sound of a falling body. He'd missed, he knew, but not by much. Burke might be
picking lath and plaster out of his ass for the rest of the after
noon.
“
Ah, Mr. Lesko”—he heard Ella's voiee behind him—
“you do know how to drive home a point.”
Yeah.” He scowled. “Well, Dancer and me are going
to take a walk down to my car now. Sorry we can't do
business.”
“
Truth be told, Mr. Lesko, so am I,” Ella said wearily.
“Indeed, sir, so am I.”
Lesko heard her inflection changing on the last three words she spoke. Their sound was strained in the manner
of a person lifting a heavy weight as he spoke. Or swinging
an ax. Or a cane. It is amazing, he'd often thought, how
much faster the brain works than the body. He knew that
it was a cane. And that it was whistling toward his head. He had time to curse himself for being stupid, for leaving her behind him, for playing games. But his body had no time to even wince. The room exploded into light. Then
more light, then darkness. And through the darkness there
were smaller silent flashes of light coming from where his
right hand should be. He heard shrieks and screams, but
they were more distant. Then the flashes from his right hand
stopped as his body fell upon it, dousing them.
Fifteen
e
Harry Sturdevant checked his watch at the strike of Cor
bin's mantel clock; Half past two. Jonathan had been gone
for nearly an hour. Sturdevant didn't like this at all. Not a
bit of it.
He couldn't have missed Jonathan by much more than
ten minutes. And at that, he should have passed him on the
Post Road, unless Jonathan crossed it and took the back
streets down to the railway station. If Cora was right, if
they were being followed by that wrestler type who was so
helpful in the library, Jonathan could be very easy pickings
walking alone through a heavy snow that darkened the day
into twilight.
Nor was Sturdevant entirely pleased that Jonathan's fear
of the snow seemed to have left him. It did not necessarily
mean, as Gwen seemed to think, that his snowstorm hal
lucinations would leave him as well. It might mean only
that he was becoming comfortable with them. Worse yet,
that he was beginning to accept them as his reality. All this business he'd told Gwen about being a child here, and play
ing ball with Laura Hemmings, a name, by the way, that
he should not have known, and his anger at Gwen when
he seemed to think she was threatening some sort of fairy
land existence, and new memories, conscious this time, of
a continuing friendship with Teddy Roosevelt, and a mys
terious but obviously related enmity toward a man named
Bigelow—these hardly add up to a man who should have
been allowed to walk off into a snowstorm by himself.
“
How do I look?” He heard his niece's voice on the
stairway behind him. Sturdevant turned from the window
where he'd been waiting.
He watched, one eyebrow raised, as she paused at the
foot of the stairs to smooth the heavy velvet skirt she'd
been holding during her descent. It was a full-length white dress with braided trim across the bodice and at her wrists.
Its high collar made her neck look twice its length and all
the more graceful. Her honey blond hair was piled high and
held in place with black and yellow tortoiseshell combs.
“
Where on earth did you get that?” he asked.
“
Upstairs in Jonathan's bedroom closet,” she answered
offhandedly. “It doesn't really fit right without a corset.
And Jonathan doesn't have any underthings up there.”
“
Thank heaven for small favors.” Sturdevant didn't like
this, either. “Why do we suppose Jonathan is stocking his
closets with nineteenth-century women's clothing?”
“
It's not that at all.” She smiled. ”I went to an auction
with him last November, and these came as part of a lot he
was bidding on. Jonathan didn't even want them, but I said
it would be a crime to throw them out.”
Sturdevant softened only a shade. “Does he ask you to
dress up like this when you spend time with him here?”
“
Will you please relax?” She crossed to him and
reached to kiss his cheek, then turned her back to him. ”I
can't get those buttons.”
Does he, Gwen?” He started awkwardly at the lowest
one, wishing he had one of those hooks his mother had
used.
Nope.” She shook her head. “He bought me one gown
last Christmas because it was beautiful and I loved it. Stop
looking for new ways for Jonathan to be crazy, Uncle
Harry.”
Her back was bare beneath the dress. She wore no halter or foundation garment, not even the petticoats that would
have given the dress its proper fullness below the hips. That bothered him. Harry would admit that he was sufficiently
old-fashioned to dislike thinking of his best friend's daugh
ter in any state approximating nudity. If that was
overprotectiveness, or a reluctance to accept that Gwen was
a grown-up woman, so be it. But there was also a certain
vulnerability to an improperly clothed woman which, es
pecially today, made him all the more anxious for her in
view of all the hostility that seemed to be bubbling up in
this supposedly idyllic community of Jonathan's. Antago
nistic librarians. Thugs with guns if Cora was correct. And
Jonathan himself practically threatening Gwen, even though
she makes light of it and says he was merely confused
about who she was, as if that explanation even began to be
adequate. Sorry I shot my wife, your honor; I thought she
was a girl who turned me down for a date once. Or, He
didn't mean to throttle me, officer; he just thought I was
another one of his ghosts. Which reminds me
...
Gwen, dearest.'' He turned her to face him. “May I
ask, by the way, why you are in this dress?” He'd allowed
himself to assume that it was only some girlish puttering
to pass the time.
She smiled prettily. ”I just wanted to see how it looks
on me.”
“
Hmmph!” She looked entirely too innocent. “Well,
now that we know it's lovely, why don't you change back
into your own things.”
”
I will.” She patted his chest. “After I show Jonathan.”
Sturdevant raised his eyebrow again and held it there
until she had to look away. He folded his arms. “All right.
What do you think you're doing?”
