Bad News

“Right there, asleep,” Dortmunder said.

Tiny tapped Kelp on the side of the head. “Up,” he said.

Kelp got up.

“I love Uno,” Murch’s Mom said. She’d told these people her name was Margaret Crabtree, so the mother, Viveca, called her Margaret, and the three children, very polite and well brought up, called her Mrs. Crabtree. Hughie, the ex-cop, hadn’t figured out yet what to call her.

“Margaret,” Viveca said, “it’s so late for the girls.”

“But it’s a special night, isn’t it?” Murch’s Mom said. “With the storm and everything.” She wanted everybody talking and involved in one place together, not off alone and silent in their individual rooms, listening to unusual noises from downstairs.

“Oh, Mom, please,” or variations on “Oh, Mom, please,” said the three girls, and Viveca said, “Well, just for a little while.”

“Yeah,” Hughie the ex-cop said. “Just for a little while.”

Everywhere you go these days, if there’s a group that’s sponsoring where it is you are, the group gives you a tote bag. The tote bag has something written on it that is supposed to make you remember the group and the occasion every time later on that you use the tote bag, but when will you ever use all those tote bags? The only real use for your fourteenth tote bag is to hold the other thirteen tote bags, which is what most people do and why most people say they don’t have enough closet space. However, if you happen to be a burglar by profession—or maybe a robber—tote bags are very handy.

The public rooms of Thurstead were full of many valuable items, both large and small, but, given the circumstances, the three robbers now shining their muted flashlight beams this way and that way in those rooms were interested only in items that were both valuable and small; thus the two tote bags that each of them carried.

The paintings on the walls in here might be worth two or three fortunes in money, but they would never survive a trip down the mountain through this storm in the back of an open truck, so unfortunately they had to be left where they were. But gold would survive, in a tote bag. Jewels would survive, jade would survive, marble would survive, scrimshaw would survive.

Tiny’s left-hand tote bag said National Scrabble Championship 1994 and his right-hand tote bag said, many, many times all over it, Holland America Line. Kelp, somehow a more literary type, carried in his left hand a tote bag that said LARC—Library Association of Rockland County and in his right hand one bearing a stylized giant W and the name Warner Books. And Dortmunder’s two tote bags read Temporis Vitae Libri and Saratoga.

They didn’t rush to fill these bags. They had an hour, and each of them wanted to be carrying only really very valuable items when the job was done. They used their experience from previous dealings with resalable merchandise, they occasionally consulted together over an item such as a dagger with a ruby-encrusted hilt, and slowly they made their way through the treasures of Thurstead, leaving many of them, but not all, behind.

Murch’s Mom said, “Could I, uh, could I be excused?”

“Of course,” Viveca said.

Rising, Murch’s Mom said quietly to Viveca, “Where’s the, uh, you know, facilities?”

“Oh, use my bathroom,” Viveca told her. “It’s just to the left, and then the first door on the right, and through the bedroom.”

“Here, take my flashlight,” Hughie said.

“Thanks,” Murch’s Mom said, and went away, followed directions, and in the bedroom went straight to the hairbrush on the vanity table. From her pocket, she removed a small Ziploc bag, and into it went all the stray hair from the brush. Then back into the pocket went the Ziploc bag and, after a quick visit to the bathroom, back to the Uno game went Murch’s Mom.

The tote bags were full, and lined up in a row near the door. They had time to kill, so they wandered the rooms some more, this time acting like regular visitors, eyeballing the paintings, the furniture, the fur throws. “We oughta come back here sometime,” Tiny said, “with a semi.”

“I think the family would notice,” Dortmunder said.

“Helicopter,” Kelp suggested. “Stan knows how to fly a helicopter, remember?”

Dortmunder said, “I think the family would notice a helicopter even more than a semi.”

“You can fit more in a semi,” Tiny said.

Kelp said, “We pretend we’re a movie company, shooting on location. Use one of the big trucks they use. Borrow Little Feather’s motor home to be the star’s dressing room, steal a camera and some lights somewhere.”

Dortmunder said, “And do what?”

“I du

“Thank you,” Dortmunder said.

“You girls are yawning,” Vickie said. In fact, so was Hughie, but Viveca didn’t think it would be right to mention that.

“Oh, Mom, please.”

“Well, now, young ladies,” Margaret Crabtree said, “you look to me as though you could sleep. It’s quarter to one, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Hughie said, and hugely yawned.

“There you go,” Margaret said, “I bet you’ll all be asleep the minute your head hits the pillow.”

“I won’t take that bet,” Hughie said. “Miz Crabtree, Miz Quinlan, I think I gotta say good night.”

“Don’t let me keep you all up,” Margaret said. “I’ll wait here for that nice young man to come back, and I’ll turn that lantern off when I go.”

Viveca, who didn’t feel at all like sleeping, said, “Oh, no, I’ll stay up with you. We can chat. Hughie, you know where the guest room is.”

“Rrrr,” Hughie said, which would have been yes if he hadn’t been yawning.

The girls, too, were actually very sleepy, and did only a little more pro forma pleading before finally marching off, Hughie among them, to bed. Viveca left the Coleman lamp hanging where it was, but she and Margaret went over to sit in comfortable chairs where they could see the snowplow when it came back up the mountain.

“Quite an adventure for you,” Viveca said once they were settled.

“More than I had in mind,” Margaret said. “I hope your husband isn’t stuck out someplace in all this.”

To her astonishment and embarrassment, Viveca abruptly began to cry. “He isn’t here,” she said, and turned her face away, wishing she had a tissue, hoping Margaret wouldn’t notice these tears in the dim light.

But she did. Sounding very concerned, she said, “Viveca? What is it? He isn’t hurt or anything, is he? In the hospital?”

“We’re . . .” Viveca swallowed, wiped her eyes with her fingers, and said, “We’re separated.”

“He left you?”

“It’s a separation,” Viveca said.

“Then he separated,” Margaret insisted. “How come he left you?”

“Well, the truth is,” Viveca said, “Frank left this house more than he left me.”

“I don’t get it,” Margaret admitted.

Viveca had kept all this bottled up for so long, it was a relief to suddenly be able to unburden herself, to a stranger, someone she didn’t really know and would never see again, who would be leaving here forever any minute in a snowplow. “My great-grandfather built this house,” she explained. “He was a famous painter, and the house is a national monument, open to the public from April to November, just the downstairs, and the family lives here and takes care of everything.”

“Why you?” Margaret asked. “Why not somebody else in the family?”

“I’m an only child.”

Margaret nodded. “And your husband decided he doesn’t like the house.”

“He grew to hate it,” Viveca said. “It was boring and confining and he felt he was wasting his life here, and I had to agree with him.”

“So he waltzes off and leaves you and the kids. That’s nice.”