Bloodlines

10

T HE NASH FISHTAILED ON THE SLICK STREET, BUT HE MANAGED TO BRING it back under control and stop without hitting either of the grim-faced officers who were now shining flashlights through the windshield. They wore slickers, but the wind was gusting, and no ducking or turning of their heads prevented the rain from pelting into their faces. When one of them moved to the driver’s side, O’Connor rolled his window down a little more and showed his press pass. Even as the officer took it, O’Connor’s attention was drawn to the Ducanes’ home. The circular drive held a strange combination of vehicles: a battered black Hudson, which O’Connor took to be Todd’s old heap, a dove gray and black Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, and the coroner’s wagon.

O’Connor felt his stomach lurch.

Along the street there were patrol cars as well, and a T-Bird that O’Connor had seen many times before. The T-Bird belonged to an old friend-Detective Dan Norton.

“It don’t take you creeps any time at all, does it?” the patrolman said, handing the pass back.

“What’s going on, Officer?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“Who is it, Joe?” the other cop asked, walking over to the window. To O’Connor’s relief, it was someone he had met before, an officer named Matt Arden.

“A reporter,” the man called Joe said. “Only there is no such thing as ‘a’ reporter. It’s like one ant or one cockroach. They just don’t come in singles.”

“Officer Arden, we’ve met before,” O’Connor said.

Arden peered in and said, “Oh, it’s you.” He turned to the other officer. “He’s okay, Joe.”

“He’s waiting right here until I get the word. Go up and ask at the house.”

“Matt-what’s happened here?” O’Connor asked.

“Woman got herself killed,” Joe answered, before Matt could reply.

“A woman…my God…”

“Hey, Conn,” Matt said, “you all right?”

“Arden, why are you still here?” Joe said. “I thought I told you to get up to the house.”

Matt gave O’Connor a helpless look and hurried away.

“Now, be a good boy,” Joe said, “and move this jalopy over to the side of the road, so you can wait out of the way. Go on, move it.”

In a daze, O’Connor moved the car, parking beneath a large tree.

Between disbelief and sadness, one thought returned to him again and again:

What am I going to tell Jack?

Jack was in no condition to receive news like this. What might it do to him?

As cool as Lillian had been toward Jack over the years since the accident, she had never prevented Katy from becoming attached to him. That had happened because both Jack and Lillian were friends of Helen Swan.

O’Connor remembered those days. Helen had become angry at Old Man Wrigley not long after Jack’s accident, and she left the paper. To Wrigley’s chagrin, she went to work for his goddaughter, Lillian Vanderveer Linworth, who did everything she could to keep Helen from caving in to his efforts to recruit her back. Lillian even moved to her ski lodge in Arrowhead for a time and took Helen with her.

Eventually, Lillian returned to Las Piernas. Helen went back to work at the newspaper, but by then she was attached to Katy and would often baby-sit her. Jack got to know Katy through his close friendship with Helen. Even as a toddler, Katy took to Jack.

O’Connor recalled, with a mixture of amusement and shame, that he had felt jealous of Katy when he was a young boy. Maureen had helped him get over it, talking to him about Jack being the sort of person who would only stay attached to those who didn’t try to lay claim to him. “Grab on to him too tightly, Conn, and he’ll let go of you.”

When he saw the truth of this, he asked his sister how she had figured that out about Jack, since she had only met him once or twice. She said, “When you told me what happened that night at the diner, when Lillian Vanderveer complained that Jack was spending too much time with you? She was jealous of you. Showing it was her mistake.”

That had sounded like nonsense at the time. It had been many years before he could figure out how Lillian Vanderveer could possibly be jealous of him. But he trusted Maureen and took her advice: he hid his feelings.

Eventually he hid the jealousy of Katy so well it disappeared, perhaps because as he grew a little older he realized he had nothing to fear from her. In time she won him over, as she did almost everyone, and he began to think of her as a lively, if spoiled, younger sister.

For all the wealth of the Linworths, he thought, she might have been better off if she had been part of the O’Connor family. His own mother had never been as reserved as Lillian, and although Kieran had been difficult to live with, O’Connor never doubted his father’s love. Harold Linworth was as much an absentee father as he was an absentee husband.

Linworth had kept his distance, but he was one of the few. Katy was beautiful and young and spirited, and if she wasn’t rich yet, she was destined to inherit a fortune. So was Todd, although hers would be the larger. O’Connor hadn’t seen much of Katy in recent years, and not at all since she had married Todd, a fact that now ladened him with guilt.

A woman got herself killed, the cop said. How? O’Connor knew that the only way he’d find out anything tonight was if Dan Norton would talk to him.

He thought about seeing Todd’s battered Hudson parked next to Dan’s shiny T-Bird. Was Todd home, then? Was he the one who killed Katy? Had she threatened to divorce him over the mistress?

The wind gusted and the rain drummed against the roof of the car, then subsided back to tapping.

He saw Matt Arden return with a figure who hunched into his raincoat and carried a big umbrella. Dan Norton. O’Connor felt something ease in his shoulders-a tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying. Whatever else was going wrong tonight, the best of the best had been assigned to this case. O’Connor put on his hat. He picked up an old newspaper from the seat next to him and sheltered under it as he got out of the car.

Norton smiled and said, “Jesus, O’Connor, they don’t even pay you news-hounds enough to buy umbrellas?”

“Mine’s warm and dry at home, Dan. Haven’t been there in almost a day, so…”

Dan immediately sobered. “How’s Jack?” he asked, moving his umbrella so that O’Connor was a little drier, and he a little more wet.

“He regained consciousness, at least. Too early to say much, but he seems to have his sense of humor.”

“Good sign. I guess you’ve heard what happened here? Although how you did, I’d love to know.”

“Jack asked me to check on Katy-Kathleen. Just a feeling he had, I guess. I didn’t come here knowing she had been murdered.”

“Kathleen? No-Jesus, Conn, who told you that?”

O’Connor stared at him. “But…”

Matt Arden said, “I believe he misunderstood something Joe said, sir.” He explained what had been said when O’Connor arrived.

“Hell, it’s not Kathleen,” Norton said. “It’s one of the maids. The one that looks after the baby. Nursemaid, I guess they call them… Conn, listen, this is a hell of a mess. Are you here to cover this for the Express?”

“No, but-”

“But nothing. If you are, I can’t say another word to you.”

“Ever?”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean. If I know something went on here and I don’t let the paper know about it, Mr. Wrigley would have every reason to fire me.”

“He won’t. Not if you mean the old man. He knows what’s going on himself and swore he’d cooperate. But I have to make sure-he didn’t send you out here to cover it?”

“No. I’m here for the reason I told you.”

“All right. Wait here, and as soon as the lab guys finish up, I’ll come back and tell you more. Right now I’m a little busy.”

“Dan-what’s going on?”

He hesitated, then said, “The baby’s missing. Little Maxwell Ducane. Kidnapped, looks like. But we don’t know where the Ducanes are-any of them.”

“What?”

“They went out on the Ducanes’ new boat, but haven’t come back-they were only supposed to be gone for a couple of hours, but there was fog late last night and this storm came in right behind it, so who knows what they ended up doing? Could be over on Catalina Island, waiting it out. Tried to get them by radio, but no luck. The Coast Guard will look for them, but in this weather-anyway, that’s it in a nutshell. Now sit tight, and I’ll tell you more when I can.”

So O’Connor waited, listening to the rain. He had felt so relieved to learn that it wasn’t Katy who was murdered, but hearing the rest of Norton’s news so soon after that had brought an end to that relief. Mixed with his anxiety for the child was his frustration at only having bits and pieces of information.

The coroner’s van left. Who was she, he wondered, that poor soul who’d been killed just because she worked here?

He caught a glimpse of movement in his rearview mirror, someone coming up the sidewalk. He waited, watching, but no one passed the car. He looked back, but the rear window was fogging up, and between that and the rain, he wondered if he had seen anything more than shadows.

O’Connor stepped out of the car. He tried to see if someone had moved behind the bushes that bordered the walk, tried to peer through the rain, but the wind drove it hard against him. He hurriedly got back inside.

He divided his attention between watching the street and glancing in the rearview mirror, but other than shifting shadows from the windblown branches of the trees, he saw nothing.

Suddenly there was a change in the pattern of the patrolmen’s movements. One of the wooden barricades was moved aside as Lillian Vanderveer Linworth’s chauffeured Rolls pulled up to it.

The Silver Cloud moved slowly past O’Connor’s car, then stopped and backed up, pulling alongside the Nash. He wondered if the police had asked her to come to the house, or if she had decided to see the crime scene for herself. Knowing Lillian, probably the latter-Lillian was never one to be passive. O’Connor didn’t blame her for coming here. He had spent a lot of time standing on the corner where Maureen had last been seen.

The chauffeur stepped out of the car, holding a large umbrella. The wind didn’t make it of much use to him. He was a young man, younger than O’Connor. He made his way miserably over to the driver’s side window of the Nash and waited politely. O’Connor took pity on him and rolled down the window, figuring no one enjoyed standing out in a cold rain.

“Mr. O’Connor? Mrs. Linworth would like a word with you, sir.”

“I’m waiting for someone. May I come by the house later on instead?”

The chauffeur hurried back to ask. O’Connor saw one of the windows of the Rolls open a fraction of an inch. He heard Lillian’s voice, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.

The chauffeur hurried back.

“Yes, sir, she would appreciate that very much. She said not to regard the hour, sir-to come at any time, day or night. I’m to impress upon you-”

“You have,” O’Connor said. “Please tell her that I’ll try not to make her wait up too late. And that…well, tell her I’m sorry to hear of her troubles.” He saw that the chauffeur was getting soaked, umbrella or no. “Why don’t you go back to the car and try to dry off a bit, now?”

He saw a look of determination on the man’s face and wondered at it, until he heard him say, “Mrs. Linworth asks if you have need of an umbrella.”

“Is she offering yours to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah, Lily…” He shook his head. “You may tell her, with my compliments, thanks all the same, but I only use umbrellas when it’s raining.”

“But, sir, it is raining.”

O’Connor smiled. “I’m Irish-I don’t even see it falling. Go on. Tell her thanks, but I’ve got my own with me.”

“Thank you, sir.” He hesitated, then added, “If I may say so, sir-she meant well.”

“Not a doubt of it.”

A few minutes later he saw Norton motioning to him. He reached for the slightly soggy copy of the Express again and held it over his hat as he hurried toward the barricade.

Norton again shared his umbrella. “Mind your manners in there,” he said. “Not everyone loves the fourth estate as much as I do.”

They walked quickly toward the sheltered entryway of the house.

“I saw the T-Bird,” O’Connor said. “You don’t usually drive it out to a job.”

“The department sedan’s in the shop. Should have it back tomorrow. Listen…about Jack, I’m damned sorry, O’Connor. Might as well tell you, they haven’t been able to learn a thing about it. Jack have anything to say?”

“Not really. He seems-a little mixed up.”

“Strange how that works. Some son of a bitch tries to crack your head open, you feel confused for a time. Don’t let it worry you, Conn. Memories may come back to him after he’s had a little time to recover.” Dan closed the umbrella, shook it, and leaned it up against a wall. He turned to an officer who stood at the door and said, “Anyone tries to take that, shoot him.”

The officer smiled. “Sure thing, Detective Norton-if you’ll do the paperwork on it.”

Dan turned to O’Connor. “These days, they give ’em a wise-ass test before they let them on the force.”

O’Connor followed Dan inside. Two other detectives stood in the marble entryway. They nodded at Norton, then frowned at O’Connor, but said nothing as he passed them. O’Connor glanced around but could see no signs of violence.

“You’ve been here before?” Dan asked, looking back at him.

“Yes,” O’Connor said. “I’ve only been inside once. A party, not long after Katy and Todd were married-a little more than a year ago.”

“Katy. I like that better than Kathleen. She owned the house before she married Todd?”

“Far as I know, her mother-Lillian Linworth-still owns it.” O’Connor looked around as he spoke. “Katy has lived here for about three years, so yes, she was living here before she married Todd.”

“Would have thought they could have afforded a place of their own.”

“Together they’re in line to inherit something like three fortunes,” O’Connor said, “but I don’t know that they have any money they could truly call their own-either one of them. Jack has always said that no good could come of that.”

“Parents foot all the bills?”

“The Linworths pay most of them.”

Dan said, “Why the Linworths and not the Ducanes-the older Ducanes, I mean-Todd’s parents?”

“Rumor has it the Ducanes haven’t given a penny to either of their children.”

“Well, why should they, right? Last I looked, nobody gave you or me a nickel we didn’t earn.”

Someone gave me a silver dollar once, O’Connor thought.

He recalled comments he had heard others make here and there about the coldness of the Ducanes toward their sons. More than just a matter of withholding money. Even the other swells thought the Ducanes were lousy parents. “You talked to Warren Ducane-Todd’s brother?”

“Hasn’t returned home yet this evening.” He gave O’Connor a speculative look. “But you might know where to find him?”

“Sure, I’ve a few ideas. I’d like to know what happened to the child first, though.”

“Wouldn’t we all. But okay, fair is fair. Come upstairs with me,” Norton said. “Most of the place appears to be untouched. A back door leading to the kitchen was damaged, that’s all. Point of entry, it seems. Fingerprint men are working on all of that area, just in case these assholes got careless. I wouldn’t lay any bets on that, though.”

“More than one murderer, then?”

“Maybe not. Come and have a look. Don’t touch the handrail.”

O’Connor followed him up the long, curving marble staircase to the right. As they climbed the stairs, Dan said, “Let’s start in the nursery.”

The coroner had taken the body of the nursemaid from the house, but O’Connor still found it disturbing to view the room. He could easily imagine the room as it must have been moments before the woman was killed: a white bassinet-stripped of its bedding-with a mobile of stars and a moon hanging near it, colorful Mother Goose figures on the walls. A changing table, diapers folded below. A wooden playpen, soft blue blankets folded over one rail. Everything neat and tidy.

Just as it was now. Except for the blood. Sprayed everywhere, it seemed, in long streaks across the one wall and most of the floor. He could see long, heavy smears where the woman had obviously slipped and fallen in her own blood, bloody handprints on the floor near the bassinet, as if she had tried to crawl to it as she died. There was blood on the bassinet itself, but not much. A dark, wide pool of blood had spread and dried on the floorboards beneath it.

“What was her name?” O’Connor asked quietly.

“Rose Hannon. Thirty-four, widowed, lived in. Pleasant and easygoing, by all accounts. Loved the baby as if it were her own. No family anybody seems to know about.” Dan paused, then added, “I think whoever killed her enjoyed watching her die.”

O’Connor looked at him.

“Cut her throat, then watched her crawl.”

“The baby was in the bassinet?”

“Mrs. Hannon was crawling toward it… so yes, I think so.”

“The blood-”

“We don’t know yet. The lab took the bedding to test it.”

“So little Max might not be alive.”

“That’s a possibility. Especially when infants are taken.”

They stood silently for a moment, then O’Connor said, “A living baby would be worth more in ransom than a dead one.”

“I only hope they’re as smart as you are.”

“This happened last night?”

“We think it happened Saturday night, maybe early Sunday.”

“Saturday night? While Katy was at her birthday party?”

“Coroner said he’ll get back to me on a time of death, but as you know, those time-of-death guesses are never all that accurate. Except on Perry Mason. You watch that show?”

O’Connor shook his head. He was still trying to absorb the idea that an infant could have been missing for so long without anyone knowing of it.

“Well, I guess if you’ve got Corrigan to entertain you, who needs television, right?”

“Last night, and no ransom note yet? No calls?” He felt his hopes sinking.

“We don’t know about the calls-no one here to answer them. Got the phone company checking on that. But no notes, no.” He put a hand on O’Connor’s shoulder. “Don’t let that weigh too much with you yet-sometimes these guys want everyone to sweat, so that by the time you get their demands, you’re desperate.”

“Katy and Todd haven’t been seen since the night of the party?”

“That’s what we’re beginning to believe. The maid-Katy’s housemaid this is, not the victim-had the weekend off. She helped Katy get all set to go before the party, but she had to catch a bus, so when she left on Saturday, everyone was still here.”

“Where was she all this time?”

“She took off to visit her mother in San Diego. We have that verified. Took the bus back home today, got to the house at about five, and noticed the back door had been jimmied. Came into the house, nothing seemed to be wrong at first. Eventually, she came up the stairs and saw the mess in here.”

“She called you?”

“Naw. Went hysterical, the neighbors heard her, and they called us. She was out on the front lawn, with one of the neighbors trying to calm her down, when we got here. Took a while to get her to make any sense and even longer to get her to come back into the house with us.” He paused and said, “Let’s go down the hall.”

“Wait-can you tell me, did they take the things they’d need to care for the baby? Blankets and such?”

“I asked the same thing. No-the maid didn’t think so, except for one blanket. Probably the one they carried him out in.”

O’Connor followed him down the long hallway, moving in the opposite direction of the baby’s room, almost to the other end of the house. He couldn’t help but think about the distance of the parents’ room from the baby’s room.

He had a different sort of shock when Norton showed him into the large master bedroom. In contrast to the nursery, the bedroom was pristine. Nothing out of place.

“Did the maid straighten up in here before she walked down the hall?”

“She swears she didn’t.”

“Did they never come home, then?” O’Connor asked.

Dan smiled. “Anyone ever tell you how Irish you sound when you’re upset?”

“Dan…”

“No, it doesn’t look as if they did. I brought the maid in here, and she says the room looks just the way she left it last night.”

He walked over to a door at the other side of the room and beckoned O’Connor to follow. O’Connor did, and found himself in the biggest closet he had ever seen in his life. Two sides held women’s clothing, a third, men’s. The fourth was set with drawers-full of gloves, socks, shoes, and accessories, Dan said. There was another door on the other side of the closet.

“I live in a place smaller than this,” O’Connor said.

“I’m glad to know the force still pays better than the paper. Anyway, I checked the laundry hamper there-nothing in it. I asked the maid, and she says no dress or shirt or any other item of clothing that the Ducanes wore on the night of the party is hanging up in here.”

They continued across the closet to a connecting door. Dan opened it. “Now, here’s why you shouldn’t live in a big house if you want to be happily married. The wife can move out on you without moving out.”

O’Connor could smell Katy’s favorite perfume even before he saw that this room was more feminine than the other. It was clearly more lived-in than the other. A hi-fi stood in one corner, a television in another. The bed was an old-fashioned canopy bed, with ruffles and frills abounding. To one side of it was a nightstand with books piled high on it, and a second bassinet. O’Connor found himself relieved that little Max Ducane was sometimes allowed in here with his mother, might have even slept near her at night. On the other side of the big bed, he saw a dog’s bed-almost as frilly as Katy’s bed.

“Where’s the dog?” O’Connor asked.

“Well, that’s a good question. Presumably, with Mrs. Ducane.”

“On a boat? I can’t believe that.” He thought for a moment. “Where’s Katy’s car?”

“Katy’s little roadster is parked at her in-laws’ place.”

“And the Ducanes’ car?”

“At the marina. Apparently Todd and Katy followed his parents to their place, then took off for the marina in the Ducanes’ car. Unlike the Linworths, the Ducanes drive themselves.”

“Which is a shame, or someone might have noticed their absence before Katy’s maid came back from San Diego.”

“True. The Ducanes have fewer servants than the Linworths, though. The cook-housekeeper isn’t live-in, and she only comes in Monday through Friday.”

“They keep to themselves and they hate to pay anyone a decent wage. Ask the people who work at Ducane Industries. If it hadn’t been for the war…”

“Cheap, huh?”

“You wouldn’t want to wait on their table. Cheap when it comes to labor, yes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t live well themselves. They’ll buy anything that pleases them.”

“Like a yacht.”

“Exactly.”

O’Connor looked around the room again. “Jack tells me Todd has a mistress.”

Norton’s brows went up. “Oh yeah? Well, I didn’t think they had this arrangement of bedroom furniture because he snores. Got a name for the mistress?”

“No. But Jack might be able to tell you more.”

“Knowing Handsome Jack, he was there before Todd.”

“Not so handsome now. He may need a new nickname.”

Norton shook his head. “He’ll charm them, no matter what condition that mug of his is in when the bandages come off.”

“Maybe so. So nothing else taken from the house? Just little Max?”

“Besides a woman’s life? No, nothing, as far as we can tell. Oh-I should probably mention, on the night of the party, Katy’s mother gave her some diamonds, a necklace, I guess, a family heirloom of the Vanderveers. No sign of that, either.”

“Where would she have put them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is there a safe in the house? I just can’t picture her mother giving her diamonds without being sure that she had a secure place to keep them.”

“You know why I like you, Conn? You think of questions most of my fellow detectives don’t think of. Fortunately, I thought of that one. There’s one in the closet.”

“Behind some of the clothes?”

“Right. We got the combination to it from Lillian Linworth herself. She says only she and her daughter knew the combination. Said that Katy had it changed just this week. He smiled. “Mrs. Linworth is something else. Warned me she’d be changing it again.”

“So why are you looking in a safe at a private residence? When Katy comes back…”

“Her mother can tell her she was curious to see if the diamonds were put away before Katy got aboard the yacht. When Mrs. Linworth opened the safe and the diamonds weren’t in there, she said she was sure her daughter did not return to the house after leaving the party-that Katy would have put the diamonds away as soon as she came home.”

“And did she discover anything else in it?”

“Papers. A deed to the only property Katy owned-a place up in Arrowhead that Lillian gave her when she turned eighteen.”

“Ah, yes. That’s where Katy was born. So even if she didn’t own this place, she had that one.”

“There was also a will. Made out on Friday afternoon.”

“A will? On Friday, you say? She spent the day before her twenty-first birthday getting a will made?”

“Interesting, isn’t it? Not many people who are that young think to make wills. And guess who she leaves all her worldly possessions to?”

“Her son-Maxwell.”

“Surprisingly, no. To one Jack Corrigan.”

“Jack?”

“So he never said anything to you about this?”

“No. Not a word. I don’t think he knows about it, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“So why would she leave everything to him? By the way, that’s including, should the need arise, guardianship of her son.”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. Only that he’s been something like an uncle to her over the years. She calls him ‘Uncle Jack,’ in fact. She’s fond of him.”

“Nothing romantic?”

“Good God, no.”

“Hey, I gotta ask, right?”

“What did Lillian say?”

“Exactly what you did-he’s Uncle Jack. Seemed shaken up by it, though. I’m actually sorry we allowed Mrs. Linworth to open the safe, because now her daughter’s likely to be a little unhappy with me for letting her snoop through her papers.”

“Nothing less than you deserve,” O’Connor said absently.

“What’s on your mind?”

“Just worrying about the child, and Katy and the others. Wondering what I’ll tell Jack. And-Dan, why wouldn’t they have come back to shore as soon as the weather looked a little rough?”

“I can think of all sorts of reasons. Boats can’t always make it to shore right away for one reason or another. Fog early this morning, remember? They set out at midnight, fog started rolling in around two or so. Then this storm got here faster than the weatherman said it would. Maybe they were closer to the harbor at Avalon than the one here. Mrs. Linworth assures me the Ducanes are excellent sailors, but who can really say how well they know how to handle a new boat or navigate?”

O’Connor said nothing.

“Yeah,” Dan said, “worries me, too. Hell of a night. Why don’t you take me to see Warren Ducane?”