Bad News

42

I’d like a cab like this,” Murch’s Mom said.

“Be tough for the customers to get in,” Murch suggested.

“I wasn’t thinking about the customers,” Murch’s Mom said.

The two of them were warm and cosy in the cab of Cleveland’s top sand spreader, plowing the twisty, steep road up to Thurstead. Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny were undergoing who knows what agonies behind them in the open bed of the truck, but that was them, and anyway, they’d be making a bunch of money out of this trip.

The snow was heavy and wet, which, from their point of view, was good. The sand spreader didn’t care how heavy anything was, but a lot of ice on this steep road might have given it pause.

There was nothing out there so far on this mountain but the snow-piled road, the snow-laden wind, and the snow-burdened trees all around them; beyond the multicolored lights of the truck, there was only darkness. But then, far upslope, Murch’s Mom saw a faint glow, like a dim light left on in an empty attic, seen up the long and creaky stairs. “I guess that’s it,” she said.

Her son was concentrating on the road; mostly on finding it, under all this snow. “You guess what’s what?” he asked, turning the big wheel this way, then turning it that way, goosing the gas, easing up, goosing the gas.

“There’s a light up there,” Murch’s Mom said. “What you call your ghostly little light.”

“Good,” Murch said. “I’m glad they got a light, because that’s what we’re gonna say we saw.”

The trio in the back of the sand spreader couldn’t see anything at all, and they weren’t even trying. They’d all huddled as close as possible to the cab of the truck, to be in its lee, where the wind was maybe one mile an hour less vicious and the snowflakes maybe seven per minute less frequent. They’d brought hotel blankets to wrap precious items in, but they had started by wrapping themselves inside the blankets, so that they now looked like snow-covered bags of laundry that the driver from the cleaners had forgotten. Every time the truck jolted, which it did all the time, it made them bump into one another and the metal cab wall behind them.

“Dortmunder,” Tiny growled through his blanket, “when this is all over, we’re gonna have a little discussion about this plan of yours.”

Fortunately, given the wind and all, Dortmunder didn’t hear that.

“The light’s moving,” said Murch, who had also spotted it by now.

“That is spooky,” his Mom said.

They could almost make out the house now, as they neared it, though mostly they were remembering what they’d seen on the Thurstead Web page. Up there on the second floor of the house, that one spot of light had started to move, shifting past windows, some of which had panes of glass of all different colors, as though the light were semaphoring to some ship long since lost at sea. During a storm like this.

“They saw us is what it is,” Murch said. “They’re coming down.”

“Good.”

Their study of the Thurstead Web page had showed them that a door at the right side of the building, toward the rear, led to a kind of foyer and then the stairs going up to the family’s living quarters. Farther forward in that wall was an entrance to the lower floor; not the main entrance, but a secondary one, to the old original kitchen. Now Murch drove and plowed and steered his way up to the house and along the right side, losing sight of that illumination up above, and stopped with the cab near the family’s entrance and the rear of the vehicle near that other entrance.

No sooner had Murch shifted the big floor-mounted gear lever into Park than the family’s door over there opened, and out came a guy in a big dark wool hat and a bulky dark pea jacket, pointing a flashlight ahead of himself in the general direction of the truck. Somebody behind him, still in the house, had a lantern of some kind, in which the guy could be more or less seen, and to Murch, he looked like a cop. Ex-cop. Retired cop.

His Mom said, “They got a cop.”

“I see that,” Murch said. “Well, here goes nothing,” he said, and opened his door.

Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny came out from inside their blankets, slowly, cautiously, something like butterflies emerging from their cocoons, but not a lot like that. They shook themselves, and kept the blankets around their shoulders, and duck-walked back to the rear of the truck, where the hinges on the doors had been recently drenched in the lubricant called WD-40.

Dortmunder cautiously opened the left-hand door, which would open away from the house and would not be seen by anybody standing over by the family entrance. Stiff, aching all over, he let himself down onto the blacktop, which was already covered with snow, even though Murch had just this minute plowed it. Then he waited to hear conversation.

Murch climbed down out of the cab and waved at the ex-cop.

“Harya,” he yelled.

“Come on in here,” the ex-cop yelled back, more order than invitation, and led Murch through the doorway into the warm foyer, where the other people stood. As he crossed the threshold, Murch took a quick look to his left, where he saw the dark figure of Dortmunder hobble stiffly, like Frankenstein’s monster, toward that other door, whose lock he would now pick.

There was a mother in the foyer, carrying a Coleman lantern, and there were three girl children. There was supposed to be a father, too, which couldn’t possibly be the ex-cop, who was obviously the guy from the security company. Maybe the father was stuck in town or something. “Evening,” Murch said to everybody.

The mother looked bewildered, maybe even anxious. She said, “I don’t understand. You highway people never plow this road.”

“And I go along with us,” Murch assured her. “But I got this lady in the truck,” he explained, “and I saw your light.”

The truck cab’s windows were opaque at the moment, but everybody stared in that direction anyway as the ex-cop said, “You got a lady in the cab?”

“Her car went off the road,” Murch explained, “and I come across her, and she’s gonna die in there, you know? So I took her along, but I still got another hour out here before my shift is over, and that truck is no place for this lady. I wondered, you know, you look like you got things okay here, could I leave her with you for an hour?”

The ex-cop said, “You want to leave her with us?”

“Yeah, just for an hour, then I’ll come back up and get her and drive her to Port Jervis. But I can’t do that now, I got my route I gotta do. And everything else is dark, it’s cold, there’s nothing around here but you people.”

The mother said, “Of course she can stay here. That was wonderful of you, to rescue her.”

“Well, she wasn’t gonna make it,” Murch said. “Wait, I’ll get her.”

Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny made their way through the downstairs to the living room, where windows showed them the many lights of the sand spreader. Here they sat down in nice antique chairs and caught their breath a little. There was nothing to do now until the sand spreader went away.

The downstairs heat was on, but not very high, since nobody lived down here. The family kept the temperature in this part of the house at fifty, warm enough so the pipes wouldn’t burst. Normally, Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny might have found that a little chilly. After their ride up the mountain in the back of the open truck, this dark living room was toasty. Toasty.

“I really wanna thank you,” Murch’s Mom told the people who gathered her into the house, all clustered together at the foot of these stairs. “And I really wanna thank you, too, young man,” she told her son, who was standing at the closed door, his hand on the knob.

“All in a day’s work, ma’am,” Murch assured her. “Well, I gotta get back on the job.” He waved to everybody and went out to drive the truck back down the mountain, park it just off the road down there, and nap for an hour. Then the alarm on his wristwatch would wake him, for the return trip.

Dortmunder awoke, to see the lights of the sand spreader recede down the mountain. He nodded at it, closed his eyes, then jolted upright. Asleep!

Man, that had been close. He’d no sooner sat down here on this comfortable chair in this comfortable living room in the dark than he’d fallen asleep. What if he’d slept the whole time until Murch came back, and even went on sleeping then? Huh? What if that had happened?

Well, Kelp or Tiny would have woken him. Everything would have been okay.

Tiny snored. It was a low sound, but powerful, a sound you might hear from deep inside the cave where the virgins are sacrificed.

The truck was gone now and the room was very dark. Dortmunder stood and peered around at his companions, as best he could in all this darkness, and they were both asleep, Kelp just a little more quietly.

Dortmunder went to Kelp first, shook his shoulder, and whispered, “Andy! Wake up!”

“Oh, sure,” Kelp said.

Tiny snored.

“No,” Dortmunder said, “I mean really awake.”

“You got it,” Kelp said.

“I mean awake with your eyes open and maybe even standing up,” Dortmunder said.

Tiny snored.

“Absolutely,” Kelp said.

So Dortmunder gave up and went to Tiny and said, “Tiny, we gotta wake up now and steal a lot of stuff.”

Tiny opened his eyes. He looked around and said, “It’s nighttime.”

“In Thurstead,” Dortmunder reminded him. “We’re here to burgle the place.”

“Or rob,” Tiny suggested, and heaved himself to his feet. “When is it, do you happen to know, Dortmunder? When is it you burgle, and when is it you rob?”

“When I get the chance,” Dortmunder said.

Tiny looked around. “I can’t see in here,” he complained. “Hold on.”

A second later, light appeared. They had all brought flashlights along, which they’d adapted for the night’s work by covering most of the lens with black electric tape, so that only a narrow band of light could emerge. Tiny had switched his on, and now he waved it around at all the treasures in the room. He said, “Where’s Kelp?”

“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 dunno,” Kelp said. “You’re the planner. I’m just giving you the big picture.”

“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.”

“Oh, no, it’s not like that,” Viveca said. “He sees the children all the time, they spend weekends at his apartment in the city.”

“New York City?”

“Yes.”

“He’s got a big place there, big enough for the kids?”

“Yes.”

Margaret shook her head. “So whadaya doing here?”

“Well,” Viveca said, “the family’s always lived here, ever since my great-grandfather built the place.”

“Yeah? What happens if you leave?”

“Leave? Oh, I couldn’t possibly leave.”

Margaret nodded. “Why not?” she said.

“Well . . . I was brought up to live here.”

“So, if you leave, does the house fall down?”

“No, there’s a nonprofit corporation that takes care of everything.”

Margaret said, “So you’re just like, here’s the famous painter’s family on display. Do you have to wear like Colonial costumes?”

“He wasn’t from that long ago,” Viveca said.

“Okay, flapper skirts,” Margaret suggested. “Is that what you wear?”

“No, we don’t wear costumes or do things like that. We don’t even see the visitors, they’re just downstairs and we’re up—Oh, did you hear that?”

Margaret looked very open-eyed and blank. “Hear? Hear what?”

“There was a rustling sound downstairs,” Viveca said.

“Didn’t hear it,” Margaret said.

Viveca leaned close and dropped her voice. “It’s mice,” she confided.

Margaret looked interested. “Oh yeah?”

“In the winter,” Viveca said, “there’s just no way to keep them out, since there’s nobody ever down there.”

“Huh,” Margaret said. “Tell me about this husband of yours.”

“Frank.”

“Be as frank as you want,” Margaret said, but then she shook her head and patted the air and said, “No, just a joke, I get it, the name is Frank. And Frank said he was leaving the house, not you.”

“Yes. And I know it’s true.”

“You want him back, you feel like shit, you—whoops, sorry, you feel really terrible all the time, and you can’t control your daughters because you don’t feel good enough about yourself, and you don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Have I got the story here?”

“Yes,” Viveca said. She felt humble in the presence of this wise older woman.

“Okay,” the wise older woman said, “I tell you what you do. Tomorrow, when you get your phone back, you call this Frank. You tell him, ‘Honey, rent a truck and come get us, all of us, we’re blowin this mausoleum.’”

“Oh dear,” Viveca said. “I don’t know, Margaret.”

“What you tell him is,” Margaret insisted, “this separation is over. Come on, Frank, rent a truck or hire a lawyer, because we’re either gettin together or we’re gettin a divorce. And if it’s a divorce—”

“Neither of us wants a divorce,” Viveca said. “I’m sure of that.”

“Great,” Margaret said. “But if he wants one anyway—He isn’t alone there in that apartment in New York, is he?”

“No,” Viveca whispered.

“Men,” Margaret concluded. “So if it is a divorce—This guy’s pretty well-off, am I right?”

“Yes,” Viveca whispered. “He’s an executive with a chemical company.”

“So if it is divorce,” Margaret told her, “you rent the truck yourself and move the hell outta here. Take the girls and go where you want and meet a guy and never even tell him about this place.”

Viveca laughed, surprising herself as thoroughly as when she’d cried before. “I shouldn’t have told Frank about it, that’s for sure,” she said.

Looking out the window, Margaret said, “Here comes my ride.”

Yes, here came all those lights, back up the mountain. Both women rose, and Viveca said, “Thank you, Margaret.”

“Anytime,” Margaret said. “Remember, soon as you get your phone back, call Frank.”

“I will.” Viveca smiled. “And I’ll tell him I was a fool to let a house get between us.”

“Well, don’t give him all the marbles,” Margaret said. “Negotiate a little. Come on, I gotta go.”

Viveca carried the Coleman lamp, and they made their way through the house to the kitchen. “I can find my way down the stairs,” Margaret said.

“Margaret,” Viveca said, “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

“Nah,” Margaret said, “it was just me and my big mouth.”

“God bless it,” Viveca said, and kissed the wise older woman on the cheek.

“Oh, come on,” Margaret said, and turned hurriedly to the door.

Viveca said, “I’ll never forget what you did here tonight, Margaret.”

Margaret gave her an odd look. “Good,” she said.

Murch saw the downstairs door just beginning to open as he drove past it to stop at the family’s entrance to Thurstead. He climbed down out of the cab, and off to his left he saw three huddled figures swathed in motel blankets and toting tote bags hotfoot it across the snow to the rear of the truck.

The family door opened before Murch got to it, and his Mom stepped out, waving to her son, then turning back to shout up the stairs, “You be sure to make that phone call!”

The only interior light source had stayed upstairs, and now it swayed like the signalman’s lantern in movies about nineteenth-century train rides. Murch’s Mom waved up the stairs, then came out and slammed the door, and hurried around to her side of the cab.

They both climbed up and in, away from the storm, slamming their doors. Murch said, “What was that all about?”

“Just a conversation we were having.”

“Oh.”

They waited about another ten seconds, and then a quick rat-tat-tat sounded on the metal wall behind their seats. Then Murch put the monster in gear and drove it around in a great circle to head down the mountain once more.

“Well,” Murch’s Mom said, “I think maybe I did some good in there tonight.”

“I think we all did,” Murch said.

“That, too,” his Mom said.

Two days later, Viveca and Mrs. Bunnion and Vanessa and Virginia and Victoria all piled into Mrs. Bunnion’s red Ford Explorer and drove to New York City, where every trace of Rachel had been expunged from Frank’s apartment. The following month, January, the Thurstead Foundation hired a couple—Hughie, the ex-cop, in fact, and his wife, Helen—to live in the upstairs rooms and take care of the place. In April, when the downstairs was opened to the public, some of the docents, the nice lady volunteers who would lead the tours through Russell Thurbush’s mansion, noticed some items missing, but no one commented. Some of the docents assumed that Viveca had taken a few small pieces with her, and why not, while others assumed the Thurstead Foundation was merely quietly selling off a few less important knickknacks to help with expenses, and why not. No one ever noticed the burglary—or robbery.

At last, the perfect crime.