Bad News

The serving table, he could see, when he got there, was for wimps. Orange juice was about the most manly thing on display there, among the bowls of kiwi fruit and containers of yogurt and tiny packages of sugar substitute. He found his cornflakes in little weeny boxes and took two. He found little weeny glasses for his orange juice and filled two. He found a small pitcher of milk and took it along. Back at the table, he found Irwin in his former seat, drinking coffee, so he sat at the end and started opening boxes and drinking out of glasses.

The others were talking about the problem in vague terms. Dortmunder was thinking about the problem while clawing his way into the cornflakes boxes, but the others were all talking about it.

“The problem with twenty-four-hour guards,” Irwin said, “is that there’s never any time when they’re not there.”

“I believe that’s the point,” Guilderpost told him.

“But,” Kelp said, “there’s nothing else we can do except get in there. We got to get in there, sometime between now and Monday, and get that tombstone back over Little Feather’s grandpa, where it belongs.”

Tiny said, “You got more than that, you know. You got your hole.”

“That’s right,” Irwin said. “The wrong grave is open. Somehow, we’d also have to get in there and fill up the wrong grave and make it look right, and then dig up the right grave, and then switch the tombstones.”

“Take an hour,” Tiny decided. “All of us together. Maybe a little more.”

“One hour out of twenty-four,” Kelp said, “and every one of those twenty-four hours guarded.”

Dortmunder sighed. Although this yakking all around him was something of a distraction, it was also helpful, because it was defining what the job was not. The job was not sneaking in past guards in order to neaten up. It was too late to neaten up. So, if that wasn’t the job, what was the job?

Irwin said, “Who are these guards, anyway? Are they rent-a-cops?”

“New York City police,” Tiny told him. “Two of them, in their blue suits, in a prowl car, parked next to the grave. I went and looked.”

Kelp said, “So did I. I didn’t know you went there, Tiny.”

“Neither did they,” Tiny said.

To Irwin, Kelp said, “I can tell you also, they got a generator and a floodlight, for after dark. You could play night baseball at that grave.”

Irwin said, “Could we create a distraction? Some other crime happening, someplace nearby. If they’re police, don’t they have to respond?”

“They call it in,” Kelp told him. “A hundred thousand other cops come, and roll your distraction up into a ball, and take it off to a cell.”

“This is a serious situation,” Guilderpost said. “If the comment weren’t beneath me, I would say it was a grave situation.”

“Oh, go ahead and say it, Fitzroy,” Kelp advised him. “Let yourself go.”

What if the job was from the other end? Was that possible? They were still talking, but Dortmunder wasn’t listening, and so he didn’t know or care who he interrupted when he said, “Fitzroy, this Internet thing of yours.”

Everybody stopped yakking to look at Dortmunder, not knowing what he was on about. Guilderpost said, “Yes, John?”

“You told me once,” Dortmunder reminded him, “you checked the Redcorn family out west with old phone books, you could do that on the Internet.”

“Lists, John,” Guilderpost told him. “If a topic is compiled, you can find it on the Internet.”

“Can you find out,” Dortmunder asked him, “if Burwick Moody had any descendants?”

The waitress brought waffles, sausage, hash browns, and eggs over easy while the looks of awe and either understanding or confusion slowly spread across the faces at the table. She distributed the food, along with one or two hons, a couple fellas, and departed.

Dortmunder said to Guilderpost, “Well? Can you do it?”

Guilderpost said, “If Moody left issue, I don’t see why I can’t trace it.”

Irwin, one of those whose expression had showed and still showed confusion, said, “John? What are you thinking here? Burwick Moody’s descendants demand something? Stay away from our ancestor’s grave?”

“Hair,” Dortmunder said. This was suddenly absolutely clear in his mind. “We find a descendant with black hair, we figure out a way to get a little buncha that hair, we give it to Little Feather, and when they come to take hair for the test, she gives them Moody hair.”

Kelp said, “John, I knew you’d do it. The Moody hair matches the Moody body, and Little Feather’s in.”

“If we can find an heir,” Dortmunder said.

Irwin laughed. “This is wonderful,” he said. “The absolute accuracy of DNA testing! First, we put in a wrong body to match our wrong heiress, then we get a wrong wrong body, and now we’re go

Kelp said, “Irwin, that’s the kind of test we like.”

Guilderpost said, “If there’s Moody issue.”

“That’s up to you to find out,” Dortmunder told him.

“I know it is, I know it is,” Guilderpost agreed. Looking at the food on his plate, brow furrowed, he said, “I can’t eat. I have to know. I have to go to my room and start the search.” Looking at Dortmunder, he said, “That was brilliant, John. Here, you have my breakfast, I can’t wait. Good-bye.” And he was up and out of there.

Dortmunder had by now drunk his coffee and both his orange juices and finished one little box of cornflakes. Tiny pushed Guilderpost’s plate toward him and said, “You don’t eat enough, Dibble.”

“John,” Dortmunder said. He looked at Guilderpost’s hash browns and eggs over easy, untouched. “What the hell,” he said, and dug in.

The waitress came by a minute later to give them all more coffee, whether they liked it or not, and she paused to frown at the plate in front of Dortmunder. “I could of brought you that, hon, if you’d asked me,” she said.

Dortmunder pointed the business end of his fork at where Guilderpost had lately sat. “He got a sudden attack a the runs.”

“Oh, that can be tough, hon,” the waitress said. “Believe me, I know. You won’t be seeing him for a while.”

An hour and five minutes, actually, before Guilderpost returned. He seemed to be smiling and frowning at the same time, as though he wasn’t sure what he thought about what he’d learned.

At this point, their breakfasts had all been cleared away, and the four had only coffee cups in front of them, from which they didn’t dare take even one sip, or the waitress would come back and fill the cup again. So everybody looked up from all that cooling coffee to try to read Guilderpost’s face, and Irwin said, “Well, Fitzroy? Did you find it?”

“It isn’t,” Guilderpost answered, “that I have good news and bad news. It’s that my good news is my bad news. Yes, I found her. No, you’ll never get close to her or her hair.”

Dortmunder, brow furrowing, said, “Why not?”

“Because she’s the Thurbush heiress,” Guilderpost told him. “She lives at Thurstead.”

Dortmunder and Kelp looked at each other. Kelp said, “I think Fitzroy thinks he just said something.”

Guilderpost said, “You never—” and the waitress appeared beside him, solicitous, to say, “You feeling any better, hon?”

“In a way,” he said, not understanding the question.

She said, “Would you like a glass of milk, hon?”

“As a matter of fact,” he told her, “I would like another order of hash browns and eggs over easy. I find I’m famished.”

She looked dazed. “Hash browns? And eggs over easy?”

“And coffee. Thank you, dear.”

She nodded, forgot to call him hon, and left.

Guilderpost started his sentence again: “You never heard of Russell Thurbush.”

“Never,” Dortmunder agreed.