“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.
43
Little Feather didn’t know what to do. Here it was Monday morning, almost noon, and everything was going according to plan, and yet nothing was going according to plan.
The part that was Marjorie Dawson’s plan had ticked along like a charm. Her lapse in failing to send the announcement of appeal on to Max Schreck’s office in New York had created exactly the delay it was supposed to create, stalling the DNA test over the weekend, so that Fitzroy or John or somebody could come up with the solution to the open Burwick Moody grave. But that left the part of the plan that included the solution to the open grave, and so far Little Feather didn’t see any solution forthcoming.
It was true that John, when he and the others had left here last Thursday, had seemed almost cheerful, and certainly self-confident, saying this, at last, was a job for him, exactly the way Clark Kent says, “This is a job for Superman.” And it was also true that Andy had E-mailed Fitzroy on Friday evening that everything would soon be okay, and had E-mailed Fitzroy again yesterday that somebody would be coming up from the city today, but since then, Fitzroy hadn’t been able to reach Andy or anybody else—it was never possible to reach John—so what did this mean? Was somebody coming up from the city today? Who? And what difference would it make?
Little Feather and Marjorie and Fitzroy and Irwin were all gathered in the motor home this morning, hunched over Marjorie’s cell phone like a group of early settlers over a campfire. Max Schreck, still miffed over Marjorie’s “error,” had phoned from Albany at twenty minutes past ten to say the Three Tribes’ appeal had been denied, so the DNA test could go forward forthwith, and an investigator from the local DA’s office would be coming to the motor home between twelve and one today to collect the hair sample. And here it was 11:30, and now what?
Little Feather asked Marjorie the question direct: “Now what?”
“We can only hope,” Marjorie answered, “that someone, John or Andy or whoever, actually does come up here this morning, and that he or they actually do have some solution to offer to our problem.”
Irwin said, “What if Little Feather were kidnapped?”
They all looked at him. Sounding wary, Marjorie said, “I don’t follow, Irwin.” Ever since their shared pizza the other night, they were all on first-name basis.
“Well,” Irwin said, “here you’ve got this heiress, gonna be worth millions any minute now, so maybe somebody came in here last night and kidnapped her and left a ransom note—we can use those magazines there, cut out words for the ransom note—and now she’s disappeared and it’s not our fault, but we just can’t do the DNA.”
“One,” Marjorie said, “we’d have to call the police, and once they discovered the fraud, which they would, we’d all go to jail.”
“Two,” Little Feather said, “where am I gonna hide around this neck of the woods that they wouldn’t find me in twenty minutes?”
“Three,” Fitzroy said, “to whom is this ransom note directed?”
“Well,” Irwin said, “the tribes.”
They all hoorawed at that. “The tribes!” Fitzroy exclaimed. “Irwin, that’s ‘The Ransom Of Red Chief’! The tribes would pay the kidnappers to keep Little Feather!”
“Well,” Irwin said, “it was just an idea.”
“No, it wasn’t, Irwin,” Marjorie told him, but in a kindly way.
“So what I’d still like to know is,” Little Feather said, “what am I gonna do when the DA’s person gets here? Maybe I should just run away right now.”
“Oh no, Little Feather,” Marjorie said, “don’t do that.”
“Never give up, Little Feather,” Fitzroy said.
Little Feather said, “Why not? I can’t give any investigator my own hair, cause Judge Higbee will put me in jail if the DNA doesn’t match. So what do I—”
A knock at the door.
They all leaped like startled fawns, except Fitzroy, who leaped like a startled yak.
“Oh no!” cried Little Feather. “He’s early!”
“Maybe,” Marjorie said, “it’s Andy, or someone like that.”
“We shouldn’t,” Fitzroy said, “be in this room, if indeed the investigator is who that is.”
“We’ll be in the bedroom, Little Feather,” Irwin said, as they all faded from view.
“And I’ll be in the bathroom,” Little Feather muttered, “as soon as I can.”
The knock at the door was repeated.
“All right, all right,” Little Feather complained.
What was she going to do? What was she going to do? Trying to think of a way out, fretting, frightened, furious with herself for getting into this mess in the first place, she went over to open the bus-type door and look out at a guy she’d never seen before in her life. A blunt-featured, stocky-bodied guy with carroty hair and a calmly indifferent manner that suggested he was nothing to do with her at all, but had knocked on the wrong motor home.
“Who,” she said, “are you?”
“You’re Little Feather, right?” this fellow said. “I’m Stan. Andy sent me.”
“Andy! Come in, come in.”
Stan came in, and Little Feather shut the door behind him as she called to the others, “It’s okay! He’s one of us!”