As the two men got the colonel, unresisting, to his feet and sat him in a chair, Marian, still shrieking, ran out. She came back in, dancing in a frenzied rage, towing Beatty behind her.
“Shoot him! Shoot that mad dog. He’ll kill us all. Look what he’s done to my husband. Shoot him! Shoot him!”
Beatty did go for his gun. I threw myself on Merlin, keeping my body between the officer and the dog.
“That’ll be enough, Beatty,” Regan snapped.
“Shoot him! Shoot him!” Marian Warren kept screaming.
DeLord strode over to her and, muttering an apology, slapped her quickly and smartly on both cheeks. It effectively calmed her.
“If you have a radio in that police car of yours, Beatty, call an ambulance. The colonel’s had a shock. And keep that gun bolstered in my house!”
There was an authoritative knock on the front door.
“Come in,” Regan shouted, without taking his eyes from Beatty’s face.
“Colonel Calderone,” DeLord said, waving in a wiry, Italianate man.
“Thank God you came, Colonel,” Marian Warren babbled. “Everyone here’s mad. That dog is, too. They’ve been mistreating me and just look at Donnie.” Then she stopped, her hand going to her mouth as she absorbed the look of cold contempt on Colonel Calderone’s face.
“You were right about the truck, DeLord,” he said turning his back deliberately on the woman. “There were three slugs in the gas tank. We’ve picked up the men.” He turned back to Marian Warren. “There are a few questions I would like to put to you and Colonel Warren.” He looked at the passive figure in the chair. “Colonel?” he said, his face puzzled by the lack of response.
“Warren has gone into shock, Colonel,” Regan said. “No doubt,” and he swung towards Beatty, “due to the untenable position in which he finds himself.”
Beatty was the first to drop his eyes. When he did, as if sensing she no longer had a single champion, Marian Warren began to cry softly. Beatty glanced contemptuously at her.
“I came here to recover stolen goods,” he said stubbornly.
“Yes, where is that footlocker?” Regan asked, looking at DeLord questioningly.
A shadow of a smile touched the lieutenant’s mouth. “Under the woodpile, of course!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“She said nothing to me about any jewels,” was Beatty’s angry comment later when Colonel Calderone took official charge of the illegal shipment.
“Of course she didn’t,” DeLord answered. “They could righteously turn all this over to the authorities,” and he waved at the array of treasures on the kitchen table. “I imagine Warren would have innocently suggested he take charge of the service Colt and the ammo and return them to Edwards. And neatly retrieve what he was really after.”
Beatty snorted, shuffling his feet. Neither he nor Regan looked near each other and he avoided my glances studiously.
“What’ll happen to that colonel?” he asked.
“If he recovers,” Colonel Calderone answered him, “he’ll stand a court-martial.”
“And her?”
“She’s been an accomplice in armed robbery. The civil courts will handle her. After,” and the colonel grinned mirthlessly, “we find out how much more of this sort of stuff is still unrecovered from grieving relatives.” He held up one of the ruby-jeweled crosses, the stones catching fire from the sunlight. “I heard a part of the list one burglar was giving the sheriff. Quite a racket they had. Well, I’ll take this, Miss Murdock, and be on my way. Coming, De-Lord?”
The lieutenant glanced expectantly towards Regan who nodded.
“I’ll be along later, Colonel, if you’ve no objections.”
“Colonel,” I blurted out. “About Turtle?”
“Yes, Miss Murdock?”
“He had such a fine record. He didn’t mean to kill my father. They had been together since 1917. I even lived with his family after my mother died. Does do you .” I couldn’t continue. I whirled appealingly to Regan, towards Robert DeLord.
Regan came around the table and held me tightly, looking towards the colonel. The man sighed, shaking his head slowly.
“The family will be told he died in line of duty. In a way, I guess that’s the truth after what you all have told me. And considering what Warren and his wife were doing I expect I don’t begrudge the sergeant that potshot at Aachen.” He gave me a one-sided grin of reassurance. “Look, I’ll do what I can.”
“He was a murderer,” Beatty growled, his eyes darting around the room suspiciously.
“I’d watch that talk, Beatty, if I were you,” Calderone said in a quick, harsh voice. The man was not tall but there was a confidence and subtle strength about him that was more impressive than mere size. “Your nose isn’t too clean in this affair. An officer of the law involved in receiving stolen property?”
“Receiving?” Beatty gagged.
“That would be my testimony if one word of the circumstances around Bailey’s death ever gets mentioned in this county!” Calderone’s words had the crispness of deadly earnest. “Good afternoon, Constable Beatty!”
And Beatty left.
Calderone turned to me, his face reflecting sympathy.
“That’ll settle his hash. Now, Miss Murdock, if Warren recovers there will have to be an investigation but courts-martial, thank God, are not public. That’s all I can do for you and Bailey.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
He raised his hand to his cap in an informal salute, gathered up the treasure, and left.
I leaned weakly against Regan, so terribly grateful there was someone to lean on. I didn’t have to be the brave little soldier anymore. I could be a grieving, tired, weeping girl.
But, oddly enough, though the double tragedy of Turtle and my father was leaden in my heart, I was dry-eyed.
“It seems like such a terrible, terrible error,” I said slowly. “It has to be corrected. It has to come out fair.”
“Here, honey, drink this,” DeLord suggested.
I looked at the cup of coffee he was offering me.
“So help me,” he vowed, “there’s nothing but bourbon in it.”
Regan gently seated me. I had felt him go tense at DeLord’s endearment and it penetrated my numb mind that he was jealous.
“Yes, it was a terrible, tragic set of errors,” Regan said quietly, thanking DeLord for the coffee the lieutenant handed him. “Doubly terrible for you, Carla. Now take a good drink. It’s cool enough to swallow. You look transparent.” His brisk command was leavened by a tone rough with suppressed feeling. “If your father hadn’t been such an honorable fool, trying to protect a worthless brother officer simply because they were classmates, maybe this whole fiasco wouldn’t have happened. The colonel would sure as hell have transferred any other incompetent replacement so fast the man wouldn’t have known his sergeant’s name. But that goddamned Pointer tradition, honor and duty. I stared at Regan, astonished and dismayed at the scornful vehemence in his voice.
“What’s the matter with honor and tradition and duty?” I demanded, stung and hurt.
“There,” and Regan smiled broadly at me, “that’s better. I can’t stand you looking like a woebegone elf.” He encircled my shoulders and drew me as close to him as our chairs would allow. “Your father’s dead, Carlysle, and don’t ever for a moment think I haven’t mourned him and missed him. He was a great man, a real soldier and a patriot. There are very few of his mold in any century. Bailey’s dead, too, but he courted death. Killing Warren was one way to achieve it and revenge his error about your dad.”
“What bothered Bailey most,” the lieutenant put in quietly, “was what you would think when you found out what had actually happened. He was a broken man tired and old and bitter.”