The Road To Ruin

Enough. Dortmunder said, “My question is, is Chester here?”

She frowned. “Why?”

“Because I wa

“Well, you don’t have to get huffy,” she said.

“Is his car in there?”

“No,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure he’d like you to put a stolen car inside there in its place.”

“He’s go

Chester’s garage was as messy as most garages, which was sort of a surprise. You’d think a driver would have a different attitude toward garages, but apparently not. Still, there was just enough room to squeeze the Buick in, open the door partway until it hit the snowblower and the wheelbarrow and the sack of fertilizer, and squeeze himself out. He shut the garage door, walked back to the house, and she was still standing there in the doorway, arms folded, frowning.

He nodded to her, wanting to make nice. “I’ll move it when Chester gets back,” he said.

“Fine.”

“And you’re right, I’m very dirty. If I took a shower, what could I wear afterwards?”

“A different house,” she said.

“Come on,” he said.

She thought about it, then sighed. “I’ll see what I can find,” she said. “But take those shoes off before you come in.”

“I was go

61

SATURDAY WAS A VERY busy day for Kelp, but not a happy one. The aftershocks of the Monroe Hall kidnapping just kept coining. Friday he’d been plagued by those two plainclothes cops, who knew they were suspicious of something but couldn’t figure out exactly what. But then Saturday came along, and the cops became the least of his problems.

The day started before eight o’clock, when he was rousted from sleep in his room in the little green house by Stan, who said, “The boss’s wife is on the phone. She wants you to talk to her and me to drive her somewhere.”

He found his way to a phone—there were none in the bedrooms—took a few seconds to remember his name in this context, and then said into the receiver, “Morning, Mrs. Hall, Fred Blanchard here.”

“Oh, Fred, they’ve found Mr. Hall.”

“Well, that’s great,” he said, thinking, good, the heist is back on track.

“I’m going to the hospital to see him,” she said.

“Hospital? What, is he wounded?”

“I don’t think so. I think it’s just observation. I’ll need you in the office to take care of things, and I’ll phone you later.”

It wasn’t until after he’d hung up and was brushing his teeth that it occurred to him she hadn’t mentioned the butler. Was Dortmunder in the hospital, too?

•

No. It was a little after nine when she phoned again, Kelp cooling his heels in the office most of that time, wondering if they were going to get their original plan back on track or not. Tonight, was the concept. Tonight the cars go to Speedshop. Then the phone rang, and it was Mrs. Hall, and she said, “Fred, two people from my law firm are on their way. I know you’ll give them all the help you can.”

“Mrs. Hall? Is Mr. Hall all right?”

“Well… It’s complicated. Would you also speak to Mrs. Parsons?”

Not willingly. “Sure,” Kelp said.

“Tell her, please, to pack my summer things, and her own.”

“Pack?”

“Tell her we’ll be going home,” she said. “She’ll know what I mean: Maryland.”

What the hell is going on here? Kelp thought. What he said was, “You’re going away for a while?”

“Yes, I suppose so. Call security, please, tell them to bring the Pierce-Arrow up to the house, put the luggage in it that Mrs. Parsons packs.”

“Will do.”

“The two people from the law firm,” she said, “are named Julie Cavanaugh and Robert Wills.”

“That’s a fu

“Is it? Please tell the gate to let them in.”

“Sure,” he said. Having written the two lawyer names down, he looked at them and still thought Wills was a fu

“Yes?”

“How’s, uh…” Could not remember the name. “How’s the butler?”

“Rumsey?”

“Rumsey. John Rumsey. Is he in the hospital, too?”

“No one knows where Rumsey is, Fred. Monroe was found wandering around in the woods, but he was alone, and he doesn’t know where the kidnappers held him, and Rumsey hasn’t appeared anywhere.”

This is worse than I thought, he told himself. There’s more to this story, and none of it is good. “I’ll take care of everything,” he promised, and did.

•

The lawyers were young bird dogs, ski

“I’m Blanchard,” he told them when they marched together up to the door, the boy lawyer in black suit, white shirt, dark blue tie, the girl lawyer in knee-length black skirt, high-neck white blouse, open black jacket with discreet shoulder pads.

“Cavanaugh.”

“Wills.”

Nobody offered to shake hands. I am, after all, Kelp reminded himself, a servant. He said, “The office is this way.”

Entering the office, Cavanaugh said, “Oh, good, a partners desk. Robert? Do you have a preference?”

“I like daylight to my right.”

So they seated themselves facing each other at the partners desk, as though this had been their office for a hundred years, and Cavanaugh said to Kelp, “We’ll need the list of staff at the compound. And I understand some actually live here?”

“Including me,” Kelp said.

“I’ll need a separate list of indwellers,” she told him. “We have a lot of notifications to give out.”

“Notifications?”

Wills took over the story. “Mrs. Hall is closing the compound, in prospect of marketing the property and its contents.”

“Marketing? You mean, put all this up for sale?”

“Yes, of course.”

Kelp said, “But if Hall is back, so there’s no ransom to pay or anything like that, what’s going on?”

The lawyers looked at each other. Cavanaugh shrugged, looked at Kelp, and said, “This will be common knowledge soon enough. Mr. Hall has amnesia. His memory is gone.”

Kelp said, “Like the soap operas?”

Wills said, “It was the result of blunt trauma to the head, or multiples thereof. The doctors believe it’s irreversible.”

So that’s what Mrs. Hall had meant when she’d said her husband’s condition was “complicated.” And she’d described him as having been found wandering in the woods. But, in that case, what had happened to John?

Cavanaugh was going on: “Those resident here will be given until Monday to find housing elsewhere. All staff will be given two weeks’ salary, to be mailed to their home address or whatever address they leave with us.”

“Only security stays on,” Wills said.

“So,” Cavanaugh said, “we’ll need to interview staff, one at a time. Would you arrange that?”

“Except for security,” Kelp said.

“And Mrs. Parsons,” Cavanaugh said.

Kelp turned away, to go over to his own desk and start making the calls, but then he turned back to say, “I have to tell you, I still don’t get it. Why all of a sudden sell this place?”

Again the lawyers looked at each other, and this time Wills was the one who shrugged, then turned to say to Kelp, “This is speculation on our part, and we would prefer you not to pass it on.”

“We’ll tell you our speculation,” Cavanaugh explained, “because you are being impacted by what’s happening here.”