The Bilbao Looking Glass (6 page)

Alexander had known all the birds by their calls, while Sarah couldn’t tell them apart unless she managed to sort them out from the foliage and observe the markings on their feathers. She ought to be missing him more out here, but somehow it was working the other way around.

She’d thought of him often enough during these past weeks when she’d been coming out here on the train to spend a day with Mr. Lomax, deciding where to plant the lettuce and the cucumbers, rearranging what was left of the furniture to make a few rooms livable, sneaking an hour off to roam the beach and the headlands.

Even looking out into the ocean from which divers had brought up his mangled body, though, she couldn’t feel sad. Alexander had loved the sea. His last day had been perhaps the happiest one of his life, right until the Milburn’s brakes had failed and sent him crashing to the rocks below the seawall, with his mother beside him.

Death for the pair of them had been inevitable in any case. Sarah knew that now. She couldn’t have done anything to avert the so-called accident because she hadn’t known until later why someone had thought it necessary to kill them. Maybe having to stay alive and face what he’d have had to know would have been worse than quick oblivion. Anyway, Alexander was gone and missing him wouldn’t bring him back. And here was she and where was Max Bittersohn? She thumped at the upstairs door.

“Max, it’s Sarah. Are you there?”

She heard a grunt, then a thud, then the door was open and she was being clasped to a baby-blue pajama front.

“How come you didn’t bring the
mishpocheh?
” Max growled into her hair. “Look, you’re not sore about last night?”

“Because you ran off and abandoned me to Aunt Appie and the family album?”

“You should talk. I got stuck playing cribbage with my Uncle Jake until half-past two.”

“I hope he licked the pants off you.”

“Took me for seven dollars and forty-two cents. It’s all your fault. To what do I owe the honor?”

“I’m here on business, so don’t get ideas. Aunt Appie needs a ride over to Miffy Tergoyne’s.”

“I’ve been to Miffy’s, thanks.”

“You don’t have to stay. Just drop her off and flee.”

“But I’ll have to go back and get her?”

“No, she’ll be moving in. I don’t know for how long.” Sarah twisted one of his pajama buttons. “It’s another nasty, I’m afraid.”

“How nasty?”

“Pretty bad. From what I can gather, a burglar got in last night and killed Alice B. with an axe from their woodpile. Miffy’s in a state, as you can well imagine. She needs somebody with her and Aunt Appie needs to be needed so she’s anxious to get there before some other angel of mercy beats her to the job. Could you hurry, please?”

“Go tell her to pack her merit badges. I’ll be along as soon as I can get my pants on.”

Sarah ran back to the house and found, as she might have expected that Appie was talking on the phone to Pussy Beaxitt. She tapped her on the shoulder.

“Max is on his way. Tell Pussy you’ll call her from Miffy’s.”

Appie, used to peremptory commands from her late husband, obeyed at once. “I’ve got to go now, Pussy. Sarah’s young man is driving me over. Why don’t you—oh, you were? Later, then.”

She hung up. “Pussy has to go over to the yacht chandler’s for some toggle bolts. I think she said toggle bolts. Anyway, she’s coming over to Miffy’s afterward. Oh Sarah, when I think of poor, dear Alice B.—”

“Do you have everything you need ready to take with you? And did you eat your breakfast?” Sarah was not about to let Appie get started on poor, dear Alice B. again.

“Yes, dear. All packed and rarin’ to go. That prune cake was delicious. I thought you might like to send the rest to Miffy.”

“Miffy wouldn’t eat it and Max hasn’t had his breakfast yet. Nor have I, come to think of it. Anyway, there’s sure to be tons of food over there.”

Furthermore, Miffy Tergoyne had a lot more money for groceries than Sarah Kelling did, and Aunt Appie was not about to play Lady Bountiful with Cousin Theonia’s love-offering. “Make her an eggnog, the way you used to do for Uncle Samuel.”

“Oh, how right you are! Dear old Sam always said my eggnogs were the best.”

What Uncle Samuel had been wont to say was that Appie’s eggnogs were less god-awful than the rest of the slop she fed him, mainly because her generous heart wouldn’t allow her to stint on the brandy. Memories, notably Appie Kelling’s, could be mercifully deceiving.

“Now Sarah, you mustn’t worry. I’ll be back in plenty of time so that you won’t have to sleep alone here tonight,” was Appie’s parting shot as she climbed into Max’s car. “Aren’t you coming with us, just to give Miffy a word of cheer?”

“I have to wait for Mr. Lomax,” Sarah lied, “and you mustn’t concern yourself for one second about me. There’s nothing here a burglar would take as a gift, and Max is handy by. I’m not the least bit nervous, so stay as long as Miffy needs you. Call if you want a change of clothes. Or the family album,” she added after the car had started to drive away, and went to pour herself a cup of coffee.

She cast a longing look at Cousin Theonia’s coffee cake, but decided it would be cozier to wait and have breakfast with Max. She compromised by cutting herself the merest sliver and carrying that with her coffee out to the side porch, where Mr. Lomax had set out a couple of Adirondack chairs badly in need of paint. Alexander had been intending to scrape and refinish them this summer. He’d enjoyed that sort of fussy job. She’d get around to doing them herself sometime, maybe.

One might ask Pete Lomax, she supposed. Pete was a professional house painter, or alleged to be. He mustn’t be overwhelmed with work, since he had so much time to give to his uncle. That was odd, now Sarah thought of it. June was the time of year when homeowners around here were clamoring for painters. Lomaxes were good workers, everybody knew that. Pete seemed able enough, from what little Sarah had seen of him.

Maybe he was helping the elderly caretaker out of the goodness of his heart, but Sarah wasn’t inclined to think so. Pete didn’t strike her as the sort to go in for self-sacrifice, and there couldn’t be anywhere near the money in being assistant to an odd-job man that there was in painting. But then, maybe other people didn’t like Pete Lomax any better than she did, so he had trouble getting jobs on his own. Sarah decided she didn’t care to think about Pete Lomax right now. She didn’t much want to think about anything. She must be in the grip of what an erudite visitor had once referred to as the thalassal regression: that delightful vacuity which takes possession of mind and body during those first few days at the seashore, where nothing registers except the sun on one’s face, the salt air in one’s nostrils, and the pounding of surf in one’s ears. She couldn’t have said whether she’d been sitting on the porch five minutes or an hour when she heard a car taking the drive in low gear.

“Oh, there’s Max.”

Now she could have another slice of prune cake. It occurred to Sarah that she was hungry. Max must be, too, but what had gone wrong with his car? That sumptuous machine, so lovingly cared for by his brother-in-law’s mechanics, had been purring like a kitten when he drove off. A tiger kitten, anyway. Why this chugging and clanking all of a sudden? Because, unfortunately, this wasn’t Max’s car but Cousin Lionel’s old van with his expensively educated troop of juvenile delinquents hanging out the windows and drumming on the sides.

“Where’s Mother?” was Lionel’s cordial greeting.

“She’s gone to take care of Miffy Tergoyne,” Sarah snapped back. “They had a robbery last night. Didn’t you hear it on the news?”

“I never listen to the news,” he replied coldly. “Why can’t Alice B. take care of Miffy?”

“Because the robber killed her.”

“Yay,” shouted his four sons as one voice. “We want to see the body.”

“Now see what you’ve done, Sarah. You know my views on exposing innocent young minds to senseless violence.”

Since the innocents were still chanting in unison, “We want to see the body,” he had a problem making himself heard.

“When’s Mother coming back?”

“Shut up, you little monsters,” Sarah shrieked. “Lionel, I have no idea when or whether your mother will be back. She just left. If you want to see her, why don’t you go on over to Miffy’s? I expect the police have taken the body away by now, but there may be a few bloodstains,” she added helpfully.

Lionel got out of the van and slammed the door, perhaps entertaining the fantasy that he’d thereby suppress some of the racket. “Thank you, Sarah. I hope I can do as much for you sometime. I wanted Mother to keep an eye on the boys while I go to see about renting surfboards. Since she isn’t here, you’ll have to watch them.”

“Not on your life. Lionel, if you think I’m going to baby-sit that pack of hyenas now or ever, you’ve got another thing coming. I gave permission for you to camp on my property only because Aunt Appie buttonholed me about it at your fathers funeral and I didn’t have the heart to refuse her. Please bear in mind, however, that I don’t want you and am not about to tolerate you if you create too much of a nuisance. Now move that heap down the path to the boathouse because I won’t have it blocking the drive. You can set up your camp there.”

“I prefer to select my own campground, thank you.”

“Sorry, but it’s the boathouse or nowhere. That’s the only place you’ll be able to get fresh water without pestering me. You may use the toilet there, and the outdoor shower. You’ll have to pump up the water by hand and be darned careful of that pump because it’s on its last legs and Alexander’s not around any more to fix it. If any of your brats—”

“Sarah, I protest!”

“Yeah, Lionel protests,” came the
a capella
chorus from the van.

“Protest all you like, but that’s the way it’s going to be or you can find yourselves another place to camp. As I started to say, if any of your brats stuffs anything down the john the way they did last time we made the mistake of letting you near the place, you’ll have to pay the plumber. You may not, any of you, under any circumstances, come up to the main house.”

“Sarah, this is outrageous,” Lionel spluttered.

“No it’s not. I don’t yet know whether this property belongs to me or to the High Street Bank. I can’t allow it to be damaged for fear they’ll slap another lawsuit on me. Furthermore, you’re all to stay well away from the carriage house because I’ve rented it for the season and I won’t have my tenant bothered.”

“Who’s your tenant?” yelled Jesse, oldest and loudest of the tribe.

“That’s none of your concern since with any luck at all, he’ll never get to meet you. Where’s Vare? Why on earth didn’t you bring her with you if you knew you had errands to do?”

“Vare’s not coming,” shouted Woodson, the nine-year-old who was next in line to Jesse. They all had the detestable habit of calling their parents by their first names. “She’s gone to be a dyke.”

“Don’t you mean lesbian, Woody?” his father corrected with the calm detachment required by his advanced views on education. “Vare has decided to explore her homosexual inclinations and has gone to live with Tigger.”

“That may be the wisest decision she’s ever made,” said Sarah.

Marrying Lionel and bearing him four sons in a little under four years in order to gain a richer experience of parenting had undoubtedly been the stupidest, but Vare was like that. Sarah vaguely remembered Tigger as a former college roommate of some cousin or other. She’d lurked on the outskirts at family gatherings sometimes, glaring at anybody who spoke to her and never uttering a word in reply. No wonder Vare was attracted to Tigger.

Sarah couldn’t help experiencing some compassion for these four young horrors, but she knew from frightful experience how dangerous it could be to indulge one’s higher feelings among this crowd.

“Go back down the drive,” she told Lionel as firmly as she possibly could. “Turn left where you see the ruts and follow them along to the boathouse. Mr. Lomax gets in there with his truck all right, so you shouldn’t have any trouble with the van. If you get stuck, you’re welcome to borrow some shovels and mend the road. That will give you a richer experience of what’s involved in keeping up a place like this for the benefit of one’s cadging relatives.”

Lionel started to say something, evidently decided he hadn’t better, and churned off in a belch of blue smoke. Sarah, feeling that she’d won a battle but most likely lost the war, was going back into the house for more coffee when Max at last, drove up.

“What the hell did I meet back there?” he asked her.

“Lionel Kelling and his traveling zoo,” Sarah answered bitterly. “Aunt Appie’s only son, thank God, and his beastly begats. Their mother’s gone to be a lesbian.”

“Shouldn’t she have thought of it sooner? Are they staying here?”

“The idea is that they’re to camp down by the boathouse. I’ve threatened them with everything I could think of if they come up here bothering us, but I don’t expect they’ll pay any attention.”

“Oh well, I don’t mind kids.”

“You’ll mind these,” Sarah assured him. “They’ve been brought up on freedom of expression. Translated, that means Lionel hasn’t the guts to be as vicious as he’d like to be, so he’s trained the boys to act out his hostilities for him.”

“My God. How long are they going to stay?”

“Until I can make them miserable enough to clear out, I suppose. Come on and get something to eat. You must be starved. Did you deliver Aunt Appie all right?”

“Without a hitch. Jofferty was on duty. He sends you his regards.”

“I trust you gave him mine in return. Coffee?”

“Please. I can use it.”

“Pretty bad over there, was it?”

“More bad than pretty, from what Jofferty told me. They wouldn’t let me inside. They’d already taken away the body and sealed off the room where she was found. I was glad of that, for your aunt’s sake. Jofferty thinks the killer must have had a personal grudge against the Beaxitt woman, judging from the way she was hacked up.”

“Beaxitt? I thought it was Alice B. who got killed.”

“Miss Tergoyne’s companion, right? Her last name was Beaxitt.”