Thunder Bay

FORTY

Several red maples had been planted in the clearing long ago, probably to provide shade for the mansion. They were magnificent things that in the fall would be on fire. Now they were thick with dark green summer leaves, and their wet branches flailed in the wind.

Schanno and Meloux followed me to the nearest tree.

“I need to cut a limb,” I said, pointing up at the wealth of branches above us. “Give me a boost, Wally.”

“Give you a boost?”

“You know.” I intertwined my fingers and made a stirrup.

“How about you do the boosting for me?” he suggested.

Meloux said, “You could both lift me. A sparrow weighs more.”

“You sure you’d be okay climbing this tree, Henry?”

He looked at me as if I was a hopeless idiot. “I am old, not feeble. You treat me like thin ice that will break. I will not break, Corcoran O’Connor.”

“All right, Henry.”

I took the sheathed knife from the knapsack and handed it to him.

“We need a branch strong enough to break a window. And it can’t look as if it’s been cut from the tree. It needs to look like the wind tore it loose.”

“I understand,” the old man said.

We stirruped our hands, Schanno and I, and lifted Meloux so that he could grasp the lower branches and pull himself into the maple. He spent a few minutes lost in the foliage, then a good stout branch, thick as my wrist, dropped to the ground.

“Will that do?” he called.

“Great, Henry. Come on down.”

We helped him from the tree. He handed me the knife. I put it in the knapsack and gave the little pack to Schanno.

“You two get back to the cover of the pines,” I told them. “I’ll join you in a minute.”

They slipped out of the clearing and I turned to the house. I knew the window I wanted: ground floor, above the patio in back, out of sight of the guesthouse. It was odd that the security on the estate was so lax, but I couldn’t believe that there wouldn’t be some sort of security system for the house itself. We’d see.

The patio was large and edged with a knee-high stone wall. There were stone benches and a couple of flower beds of irregular shape. The beds had been long in need of tending. I stepped over the wall and came at the window quickly with the “broken” end of the branch aimed at the center of the frame. The glass shattered and an alarm sounded inside. I left the branch stuck in the window among the shards of glass that jutted out from the frame and I leaped over the wall. As I hightailed it toward the pines, floodlights kicked on, illuminating the outside of the house in a blaze of white. Inside the mansion, all the lights seemed to come on, too, as if the whole household had been roused by the intrusion. From the direction of the guesthouse came the vicious barking of a pack of dogs.

I stood in the trees with Meloux and Schanno. I hoped Schanno’s speculation about the virtual nature of the guard dogs was right, and we weren’t simply waiting for them to attack and tear us apart.

In a couple of minutes, Benning and Dougherty appeared, nosing around the house. Each held a handgun and a flashlight whose feeble beams were consumed by the blaze of the floodlights. They were alone. No dogs. They found the offending branch and stood a few minutes in discussion. Benning looked around. His gaze settled on the nearest maple. He pointed toward it and said something to his partner. They studied the window some more. Finally Dougherty reached up and pulled the branch out of the window frame. Some of the remaining glass must have come with it because they both danced back. Dougherty stayed while Benning went back to the guesthouse.

After his partner had gone, Dougherty began examining the branch. He took a close look at the white wood where the “break” had occurred. He studied the patio under the window, crossed the wall, and walked to the maple tree, which was outside the glare of the lights. He shined his flashlight up among the branches, then dropped the beam and scanned the wet ground. Finally he shot the light toward the woods. Schanno, Meloux, and I each cozied up to the nearest tree trunk.

“Hey!”

I held my breath and wondered if Dougherty would actually use his firearm, and if he did, whether he would be any good.

“Hey, get back here, give me a hand with this window. I’m getting soaked, damn it.”

The light swung away. A few moments later I risked a peek. Dougherty was walking back to the patio where Benning waited with a roll of opaque sheet plastic, a red toolbox, and an aluminum stepladder. The men spent a few minutes cutting a piece of the plastic and fitting it over the window. They used a staple gun to affix it to the frame. When they were finished, they gathered up their tools and materials and hurried back toward the guesthouse.

Schanno, Meloux, and I joined forces and waited a bit before approaching the house again.

“You notice anything strange?” I said.

Schanno kept his eyes on the corner of the mansion where Benning and Dougherty had disappeared. “Like what?”

“Wellington didn’t come down to check the damage.”

“That’s what he has security for. Besides, he’s an odd one. Rabid about germs. Probably doesn’t want all that dirty fresh air and rain getting on him. Could be he’s hiding in a safe room somewhere.”

A safe room. I hadn’t thought about that. Terrific. Just terrific. The floodlights died. The dogs fell silent. The dark and the quiet that followed were a great relief. Inside the house, the lights that had blazed on with the alarm shut off all at the same time, but the rooms upstairs and down that had been lit before stayed lit. On the second floor, the slow progression of lights resumed.

Wellington was out and about again, restless as ever. So much for a safe room.

“Once more, dear friends, into the breach,” Schanno said.

“You do that just to impress us?” I asked.

Schanno smiled sheepishly. “It’s what happens when you live your whole life with a smart schoolteacher.”

“Ready, Henry?” I said.

The old man nodded and we left the woods. On the patio, I took the knife from my knapsack and handed it to Henry.

“We’re going to boost you up again and I want you to cut the plastic over the window so we can get inside. When that’s done, if you can, clear the glass that’s still in the frame so we don’t cut ourselves climbing in.”

“What if they have motion sensors inside?” Schanno said.

“With Wellington wandering around like that? I’m betting they don’t. We’ve been lucky so far.”

Luck. There was that word again. My first visit to the island had been plagued by its opposite. I’d been stonewalled by Wellington, sucker-punched by Morrissey, and had come away without accomplishing anything worthwhile. Meloux’s presence made a difference. This expedition had been marked by good fortune. The sympathetic customs official. Trinky Pollard’s offer of help. The storm that had covered our approach. Relaxed security on the island. I’d known Meloux all my life, and one of the things I’d observed about the old Mide was that circumstance seemed to favor him. Luck? When I’d used that word before, he’d laughed at me. Not many candles shy of a hundred years, yet he was still powerful in ways beyond my understanding.

We lifted him and he cut through the plastic, which began to flap in the wind. I looked up from where I provided one of the stirrups for his feet and saw him set the knife on the windowsill and begin carefully to remove the fragments of glass remaining in the frame.

“It is done,” he said.

“Crawl inside, Henry. We’ll join you,” I told him.

Schanno went next, with a little help from me. Once inside, he reached down and gave me a hand up.

We found ourselves in a small, dark study that smelled musty even with the air drafting through from outside. I went to the door and opened it. The hallway beyond was dimly lit at the far end. I signaled and the others followed me. We crept toward the light, which turned out to be from the chandelier in the dining room. We turned left and went through a large room with a beautiful stone fireplace, a grand piano, stuffed leather chairs, and a long leather sofa. In one corner a standing lamp gave off a dim, cheerless light. Everything was neat and tidy. The top of the piano was propped open, as if ready to be played. The place had an airless, stuffy feel to it, however. Though sheets hadn’t been draped over the furniture here, the room felt more than just empty. It seemed abandoned. It made me think of a church deserted not only by its congregation but by its god. Given what I knew of Wellington, I suspected the man seldom haunted this part of his mansion.

We entered the stacks of newspapers and followed the maze of corridors that ran through them until we reached the staircase, where we paused. Upstairs, a light blinked out in the hallway. We waited. Another came on, dimmer, farther away.

I started up. Schanno and Meloux came after me. I looked for security cameras, but didn’t see any. I listened for some sound-a cough, a grumble, the squeak of a floorboard as he paced-but the man was like a ghost. All I heard was the hollow hammer of rain driven against the windowpanes.

Upstairs I stepped carefully into the hallway and looked in the direction the hall lights had indicated Wellington was moving. The hallway was empty. He’d probably gone into one of the many rooms, but which one? Had he finally retired for the night?

“He’s been wandering around upstairs all evening,” Schanno whispered. “He’ll be out again in a minute. Do we surprise him?”

“We don’t want to give him a heart attack,” I said. “But we also don’t want him locking himself away somewhere.”

“Why don’t we just slip into a room, crack the door, and wait for him to pass. Then we corner him before he can slip away.”

That sounded as good as anything. We went to the nearest door- it was unlocked-and we slipped inside. In the moment while light came in from the hallway with us, I saw that it was a large bedroom with a canopy four-poster. We closed the door, leaving it open just a crack, and waited.

A long two minutes passed. I thought about Henry, finally on the verge of meeting his son, and I wished I were happier for him, wished that the man he was about to meet would make him happy and proud. But Henry knew he was not here for that reason. He was here to heal his son.

The light at the end of the hallway went out. I hadn’t heard a door open or close. I leaned to the crack. The hallway was dark now. I listened for the sound of shuffling on carpet, breathing, anything that would tell me where Wellington was.

The light directly outside the room where we hid came on suddenly. I opened the door. The hallway was deserted. Wellington, it seemed, was truly a ghost after all.

Meloux said, “I do not understand.”

“A timer, Henry,” Schanno guessed. “The lights go on and off automatically. It’s a way of making it appear someone is here when they really aren’t.”

“My son is not here?” Meloux looked confused and disappointed.

Schanno said, “When you saw him before, where was he, Cork?”

I led them to the other end of the hallway, to the anteroom where I’d been given my mask, then I opened the door to Wellington’s sanitized inner sanctum. The bedroom was still glaring white, but Wellington wasn’t there. I opened one of the doors leading off the bedroom. A bathroom with a sunken tub, a shower, and a pedestal sink, all tastefully done in white and sea green marble tile with modern stainless-steel fixtures. There was a vanity as well, the mirror outlined with bright bulbs, the sort of thing I associated with wealthy women who spent a lot of time on their makeup.

Behind me, Schanno said, “Take a look at this.”

He came into the bathroom holding a white robe, the kind Wellington had been wearing when I saw him.

“Where’d you get that?”

“In the closet. Along with this.” He held up a pair of black silk pajamas on a wooden hanger. “About as night and day as you can get.” He looked around the bathroom. “Very nice. Anything interesting?”

“Check out the vanity.”

“Whoa,” Schanno said.

He was probably responding to the wig of long white hair draped over a wooden head-shaped stand on the vanity. I checked the drawers. Makeup, but not the kind most women wore. Theatrical stuff. Gum spirit, liquid latex, foundation, a creme color wheel, a contact lens case with brown-tinted lenses inside.

“Wellington’s, you think?” Schanno asked.

“If it is, he’s even stranger than I figured.”

Meloux stood in the bathroom doorway, looking lost. “What does it mean?”

“I’m not entirely sure, Henry. Let’s check the bedroom carefully.”

In the closet hung several of the white robes, but also dress shirts, a couple of Hawaiian numbers, and slacks. In a shoe rack were casual shoes, deck shoes, and three pairs of New Balance athletic shoes. The dresser held briefs, undershirts, socks, sweaters, sweat suits. In the drawer of the nightstand were a couple of paperback mystery novels and a wire-bound notebook. The notebook contained dialogue sketches, exchanges like those between characters in a play.

Edwina: You can’t mean that.

Gladstone: If you’d been paying attention, you’d have seen this coming.

(Edwina crumples in a faint.)

Gladstone: Your dramatics will do you no good, my dear.

I read a couple of pages; it didn’t get any better. Behind the last page of the notebook was a flyer, folded in half. I opened it and discovered an advertisement for a production at the Loghouse Theatre, a melodrama titled The Nightcap, written and directed by Preston Ellsworth and starring the same. The production ran from June 1 until August 31, at eight P.M. every night except Monday.

Henry breathed deeply, almost a sigh of relief, I thought. “It was not my son you saw here.”

“That’s a good guess, Henry.”

“But why this pretending?”

“The question of the day.”

“What now?” Schanno asked.

I looked at my watch. A few minutes before nine.

“How long does a play last?” I asked. “Couple of hours?”

“About that.”

“Takes the actors a while to change, get their makeup off?”

“I’d guess.”

“So if we hurry, we might have a shot at catching Ellsworth before he leaves the Loghouse Theatre.”

“A shot,” Schanno agreed. “A long one.” He glanced at Meloux. “Unless we get lucky.”