Time Out of Mind (74 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
Look.” Corbin turned to the passenger seat as if Tilden
were sitting there, then realized what he was doing and
slapped himself on the head. He closed his eyes. “Look,
Tilden,” he said quietly, “Gould's house is maybe twenty
minutes from here if the roads are decent. It's over on the Hudson.” Which you know damn well, but we're not even
going to think about how I know it. “You know it's a
museum now, right? There aren't any Goulds there.” In
reply, Corbin felt only a distant feeling of profound relief.
“All I'm going to do is a flyby because I want to get back
before Gwen worries more than she has already. If that gets
you off the dime, fine. But whether it does or not, I have to tell you”—Corbin depressed his clutch and put the car
in first—“I'm out of here and headed south. If I were you I'd head for Chicago, which you should have done in the first place.”
You called it real good, Miss Beckwith.” Tom Burke
reentered the shambles of Ella Beckwith’s oversized study. Snow crystals clung to his hair and shoulders, and his trousers were stained white on one side with pulverized plaster.
He held out a blue spiral notebook in his hand. “It was
stuck behind the backseat in his car.”
Ella tilted her head distractedly, but her eyes remained
locked on the crumpled pile that was Raymond Lesko. She knew the notebook would be close by, if not on his person
then in his car. He'd as much as said so when she men
tioned the fifteen thousand dollars he'd already been paid and his hand went involuntarily to his breast pocket. He would have left the money in a safe place if he'd had the chance. And if he'd thought to conceal anything at all, it
would have been his notes. If he still carried one, he carried
the other.
Lawrence Ballanchine limped forward and snatched the
notebook from Tom Burke's hand. “You still took a ter
rible risk,” he muttered toward Ella. “You can't be sure
he didn't have this photocopied.” The little man still man
aged to sound peevish, although his clothing was limp with
perspiration and his right leg was bloodied below the knee
where one of Lesko's wild shots had grazed it.
He didn't copy it.” Burke walked to Lesko's side and
kicked it. There was no response. “If he made a copy”—
he looked up at Ella as if for approval—“that's what he
would have brought. You stash the original, not the copy.
Miss Beckwith knew that right away.”
“
He is ruining my carpet.” Ella's voice was small and
distant.
Ballanchine leaned over with difficulty and picked up a
copy of
Architectural Digest
that lay amid the shattered
glass of a collapsed coffee table. He slid it under Lesko's
head, then wiped his hands against his lapels. ”I don't
know what we're going to do about this mess,” he said,
scanning the room. He counted seven ragged holes in the plaster walls, including the two Lesko had aimed at Burke
earlier when Burke tried to force the door. One shot had
also smashed a banjo clock and another tore the stuffing
from an upholstered chair. And one, he noticed with a shud
der, was accented by a tiny spray of his own flesh and
blood. Ballanchine was afraid to think of what the adjoining
rooms might look like.
“
Is he dead?” Ella asked.
”
I don't think so,” Burke told her. “Not yet, anyway.”
“
Well, what are we supposed to do with him?” Ballan
chine asked with distaste.
Tom Burke rubbed his hands. ”I figure we load him in
his trunk. We leave him there until he's stiff. Then tonight
we drive him down to Rye or some other hick Westchester town and we dump him one place and the car in another. Maybe we pour some vodka into him so the cops figure he
got drunk and took a fall before he could remember where
he parked.” Burke waited for Ella Beckwith’s approval, but
she did not seem to be listening. Ballanchine had turned
pale, appalled at the prospect of touching Lesko's body at least two more times and keeping him refrigerated in be
tween. “Unless,” Tom Burke spoke the alternative, “you want to just give him another good rap on the head for
insurance and then call the local cops. You tell him he came
in here and threatened you; you can say he claimed he had
something on your brother, maybe, then you show them
how he shot up the place, and we say it's me or Mr. Bal
lanchine here who whacked him first chance we got.”
“
No.” Ella blinked. “No police.”
“
You're better off,’
7
Burke agreed, it pleased him that she saw him and not Ballanchine to be in control of the
situation. “You probably have some paint and plaster down in the basement. Me and Mr. Ballanchine can clean up this
place before any of the help sees it.”
“
Paint and plaster?” Ella's head jerked.
“
There's usually some left over. The same color. I've done this before.”
Paint and plaster,” she repeated aloud. The absurdity
of discussing cosmetic repairs while this possibly dying detective lay at their feet hastened her recovery from whatever
had seized her thoughts. “Does either of you recall that my
brother has left this house in a drunken state, carrying a rifle?”
”
I was going to go look for him,” Tom Burke said
lamely. In fact, like nearly everyone else, Burke had become accustomed to ignoring Tillie Beckwith.
Ella's expression turned wistful as she looked down once
more at the blood-caked head of Raymond Lesko, a part of
her wishing that an accommodation might have been pos
sible. You were so right, sir, she thought. The man is an
ass.
“
Lawrence”—she closed her eyes—“tell Mr. Burke where my brother can be found.”
“
At Corbin's house,” Ballanchine replied.
“
Tell him why he went there, please.”
“
With the gun? He went to try to shoot a ghost.”
“
That being established, would you both kindly go and
retrieve him? Do so at once, please.”
where Lesko had dropped it.
“
Use this man's car,” she said, pointing to Lesko. “Be
good enough to take him with you.”
Burke caught Ballanchine's eye and indicated with a ges
ture that Lesko's feet would be his portion of the load.
Ballanchine looked ill, but he hobbled forward.
Mr. Burke”—Ella raised a hand after they'd lifted
Lesko—”I want this ended. If you fail to intercept my
brother before he speaks to any of those people, I want it
ended tonight. Do nothing, however, without Mr. Ballan
chine' s expressed approval.''
“
Yes, ma'am.”
“
Lawrence?”
“
Yes, Ella.”
My brother has been a great source of worry and em
barrassment all my life.”
”
I know.”
“
End that as well, Lawrence.”
Greenwich “if the roads are decent,” there is a spectacular
stretch of rolling hills which so reminded the early Dutch traders of the upper Rhine Valley that they began building
great manor houses there as they prospered in the fur trade.
Stone castles, many with keeps and turrets, rose on commanding sweeps of land that resembled Old World baronies. Jay Gould, it was said, chose this place to build what
he hoped would become an ancestral home because New
port had been closed to him. But it was also argued that
the choice was Gould's. The lonely grandeur of the place was much more suited to a solitary man who'd shown not
the slightest interest in the lavish ritual entertainments and
the stultifying dinner conversations that were a way of life
in the colonies of the very rich. Lyndhurst—the patrician
name he gave to the brooding Gothic castle he commis
sioned—had other advantages. It was private. Once the
pine forest closed around Gould upon entering his estate,
he could as well have been in Europe, yet he was always
only an hour from New York by steam launch. Should the
sudden need to cross a state line arise, he was an even
shorter time away from the friendly protection of the New Jersey authorities.
Corbin remembered how he'd known of Lyndhurst. Photographs of it as it looked when it was built and as it looked
today, which were virtually the same, appeared in several
of the picture books Gwen had found in Barnes & Noble's.
Was that only yesterday? And did it explain how, as he
drew nearer the Hudson River, he began to see the plan of
Gould's landscape in his mind, and the interiors of certain
rooms, and to hear the sounds of one of those ghostly
brawls, the one with so much smashing of glass.
were not decent. Fifteen minutes had passed and he hadn't even reached White Plains. It was stupid. Worse, it was
dangerous. He was beginning to see things. If he allowed
his attention to wander, if he did not concentrate fully on
who and where he was and on keeping the Datsun under
tight control, he would begin to imagine that he saw the
rhythmic jouncing of a horse's head and rump just beyond
his hood. Twice he blinked that image away and twice it
returned. When it appeared the second time he also felt that
the steering wheel he held was softening into a pair of
leather reins.
This is all I need.” He raised his voice. “All I need is
to have to hit my brakes because I see a truck up ahead
and all I get is you pulling on some goddamned straps that
aren't there.”
The bobbing horse faded. Corbin heard the word
sorry.
He grimaced on realizing that his own lips had formed it.
A few minutes later, Corbin wasn't all that sure he was better off without the horse. At least it wasn't snowing so
hard when the horse was there. It was hardly snowing at
all. And the grass along the side of the road was green and
tall, not matted and dead under a foot of wet snow, and
there were apple trees hanging heavy with fruit. But the
gentler season brought no gentler thoughts. There was only
worry, and anger, and the determination to look into the
eye of the man who was at its source, to finish with him, and then get back to Margaret and be able to tell her she was safe, that she had nothing more to fear, to be there
waiting for her when she came home from the meeting
she'd so dreaded attending and to take her in his arms
...
“
Cut that out,” Corbin snapped.
Sorry. Yes.
·
I also have to keep this car on the road. I can only do
one thing at a time.”
Yes.
“
What meeting, by the way?”
No answer came. Only a jumble of impressions and im
ages. There was the Temperance Union. And Comstock
with his dumb camera. That must have been it. Comstock's taking pictures of whole groups now. And there was Laura Hemmings saying something about smiling sweetly and
looking righteous. And Tilden wondering what Margaret
and her friend, whom he knew perfectly well was not al
ways named Laura but he would go along with the game
if that is what she wished, seemed to be whispering about
all the time. And wishing Laura would leave so that he
could sit Margaret down and tell her what a blockhead he'd
been for not asking her with the greatest of pride to be his
wife and to show her the papers he'd already drawn up, not
just the letter acknowledging Jonathan as his son, and the free and clear deed to the Greenwich house, but see, an
affidavit affirming that Jonathan is in fact my only son, and
the names of witnesses who have sworn to hearing Ansel Carling boast that it was he who fathered Ella's child, and
here, a statement of your account at the bank in Green
wich—you'll see that a handsome sum has been deposited
so that you need never feel bound to me. Do not answer
now, dear Margaret, but later. Go to your meeting with your
head held high while I do one errand that is required of
me. We will talk later. We'll open one of your forbidden
bottles and plan the day. Who should be my best man?
Teddy, do you think, or should I ask John Flood? John
Flood in stripes and swallowtail—wouldn't that be a sight?
Or the wedding can be small if you prefer, small and pri
vate, though for myself I'd want the whole world watching.
Oh, Margaret, Margaret, please be there.
