Death Under the Lilacs (8 page)

Lyon wondered how many of the grim-faced men on the wall had engaged in the lucrative slave trade. He knew that many venerable Northeast fortunes had been started that way and then converted to respectability through the emergence of nineteenth-century textile plants. These fortunes were now snugly harbored in stocks and bonds and managed by very conservative trust officers.

The pale man appeared at the far end of the hall and gestured to Lyon to follow him.

Robert Trainor Traxis was dressed in a gray sweat suit and was on his back doing leg exercises within the maze of a Universal gym. Lyon stood ten feet behind him as Traxis finished his set and let his feet fall to the floor. A large sweat V stained the front of his sweat shirt.

“What in the hell do you want, Wentworth?”

“I want to talk to you about my wife.”

Traxis flipped over and did rapid push-ups and then scrambled lightly to his feet in a lithe movement that belied his fifty years. He was a chunky man with a completely bald head and a physical vitality that seemed to permeate his body. His facial features were flat and expressionless, and his eyes were cold. “I don't play the hypocrite, Wentworth. I know your wife is missing, and that's too bad, but don't ask me to bleed for her.”

Lyon felt a well of anger rise into his dry mouth. He fought to retain his composure. “I would hardly come here for any sympathy, Traxis.”

“Then why are you here? I run a tight schedule, and I have to shower, change, and be back at the plant within the hour.”

Lyon mentally reviewed what information concerning Bea's disappearance had been released to the media. He knew the fact that the ransom payment was in stamps had been withheld, as had the London drop-off. “I understand you make frequent trips to England?”

“Very frequent.” Traxis snapped a towel around his shoulders and walked briskly from the room, with Lyon following. The man who answered the front door stayed behind to straighten up the small gym. “I have a factory in England. If you want a travel guide, the local library is well equipped to answer your questions.”

They walked down the hall to a sunroom where a silver pot of coffee waited on a glass-topped table.

“I'm interested in how many stamps you might have purchased in London,” Lyon said.

“Coffee?” Lyon shook his head. Traxis poured some into a bone china cup and added cream. “A good part of my collection has come from London. What in the hell is this, Wentworth? What devious little scheme is in the back of your teeny liberal mind?”

“Do you own an inverted American airmail?”

“I do not. And I'd give my right arm for one. I specialize in early airmails, you know. This conversation seems built on non sequiturs. What in the world would an inverted airmail have to do with your wife's …” He stopped with his cup poised in midair. “She's being held for ransom and they're asking for stamps.”

“Four 24-cent inverted airmails, a Hawaiian 2-cent of 1851, a Confederate Mount Lebanon—you are familiar with those stamps?”

“Hell, any serious collector in the world is. They are some of the most valuable in existence.”

“And they are to be delivered in London,” Lyon continued.

There was a pause from the man at the glass-topped table. “I don't like it one goddamn bit, Wentworth. I know what you're thinking.”

“Your name is the only one I recognize that appears on the subscription list of the
American Philatelic Journal
and certain plane manifests.”

A small muscle throbbed in Traxis' left cheek as he stared at Lyon. “I can guess the scenario,” he finally said. “I, due to my all-consuming hatred of Bea Wentworth combined with a desire to accumulate certain valuable stamps … You are full of it. You are as full of it as your wife.”

Lyon felt a flush of anger so strong that his legs and knees felt weak, and he had a desire to hold on to something for support. He fought for control. “When are you going back to England?”

“None of your damn business.”

“Tomorrow? The day after?”

“As a matter of fact, I wouldn't be in Wessex today if it wasn't required for the annual board meeting. I am returning to England in the very near future.” He placed his coffee cup firmly in its saucer and stood. “When was your wife taken?”

Lyon told him.

“If it will get you off my back, it so happens that on that particular evening I was at a town meeting. As usual, I made my views known. I estimate that I was seen and heard by over a hundred people.”

“That's easily verifiable.”

“Yes, isn't it?” He called out, “Reuven!” Almost immediately the younger man appeared in the doorway. “Please show my friend here to the door. Our business is concluded.”

Reuven looked at Lyon, who rose and followed him down the hallway.

Lyon stopped with his hand on the front door. “By the way, Reuven, where were you last Thursday?”

“Right here. I polished silver that night.”

“All alone?”

“All alone.”

Lyon sat in the car and wished Rocco were with him. He was certain that the large police chief, because of his experience, would have conducted a more productive interview. This one had accomplished nothing. Traxis collected stamps and periodically went to England. Both enterprises were perfectly legitimate. He had probably collected stamps since he was a boy, and he apparently had an airtight alibi for the night Bea was taken.

On the other hand, Traxis did dislike Bea with a nearly unreasonable passion, seeing her as representative of a whole political spectrum that he not only hated, but considered a threat to his interests. Moreover, Traxis had money, and nearly any service could be obtained for a price.

Lyon drove the two short blocks to the town hall, where he quickly scanned the minutes of the last town meeting. Traxis had indeed been present, and his remarks at the meeting were noted.

That left the man with the gray eyes.

6

Lyon's hands perspired as he snicked the phone from its wall bracket. “Wentworth,” he said flatly.

“He got away.”

“Rocco?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you?”

“At an infirmary somewhere in London.”

“Are you all right?”

“A few cuts from flying glass, nothing major. Might even improve my looks.”

“What happened?”

“As you know, the letter was addressed to Willingham at the Hotel Dalton on Raven Street. I had all sorts of cooperation from the Yard and they had men staked out in the street, and one of their guys posed as the room clerk. We had a crew, including me, in a room across the street. Willingham, whoever he is, had reserved a room in the hotel by mail. The letter with your stamps was put in that room's mailbox and we waited.”

“He never showed?”

“He arrived, all right. With a bang. The bastard set off a car bomb right in front of the hotel, and in the excitement someone grabbed the letter from the box and got out through the back. He outsmarted us, Lyon.” There was a pause. “I did my best. I'm sorry.”

“I know you did everything you could,” Lyon said.

“Got to sign off. They want to do something else to my face.”

Lyon held the phone with the humming dial tone in his hand for long moments before he finally replaced it on its mount.

He awoke on the couch after a fitful sleep. He blinked open his eyes to stare painfully at the bright morning sun streaming through the window. He felt a momentary lift at the color of the day, but then the memories of recent events flicked back into his consciousness and flooded him with depression.

She was gone, very possibly dead. Their only slender lead had disappeared when the man in London had taken the stamps.

He could deal with grief; it was this unknown limbo that tore at him. She could be alive, in pain, in need of medical help.… He tried not to think of the horror of all the possibilities.

Rocco had failed, and although Lyon did not know all the details of that failure, he was certain his friend had tried everything within his powers to capture the kidnapper or his accomplice.

Lilacs. She had spoken of lilacs on the short tape recording they had received. It was a clue, if only he could think objectively and decipher what she had tried to tell him.

He had slept in his clothes and felt dingy.

He took a longer-than-usual shower, lathering himself twice and alternating hot and cold water. He dressed slowly and went back down to the kitchen to make coffee.

Bea hated lilacs. She hated them so much that last summer she had expunged the last ancient bushes from her garden with the ferocity that she usually employed with her weeding.

It was imperative that he address himself to the problem. He had let his anxiety over her well-being block coherent thought.

Lilacs were a clue. It was either the name or location of something that would lead him to her.

Lyon ran from the breakfast nook and down the stairs into what had once been a recreation room. Years ago Bea had appropriated it as her political office, and it now contained file cabinets, thousands of coded index cards on her constituents, and other political paraphernalia. The room included a complete set of Connecticut phone directories.

He began to leaf through their pages. There was a Lilac Garden and Shrub Service on the Boston Post Road in Old Saybrook. There were several listings of “Lilac” as a proper name, and a Lilac Dry Cleaners in West Hartford. He scrambled for a yellow legal pad and began to make notes.

He would visit each and every Lilac listing in the hope that …

No! It was a wasted effort. He tore up the notes, wadded them, and threw them across the room. If the lilac clue were a direct reference, her kidnapper would not have allowed it on the tape.

It had to be something more oblique. But what?

He took the stairs two at a time as he hurried to his book-lined study. He read the brief entry for lilacs in Volume 14 of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
several times. Lilacs came from Persia. An interesting fact, but he could not make it connect with anything. Persia was now Iran, the Middle East … No. Too vague. He slammed the heavy volume shut and threw it on the desk.

He stood before the desk and found that he was hyperventilating. He seemed to rise above himself, and the room, the most familiar of his life, took on an unreal aura. His heart began to pound and he felt a deep, unreasoning fear.

He was having an anxiety attack, a panic reaction, he thought to himself angrily.

He sat down in the deep leather chair and leaned back. He consciously forced his breathing level to return to normal. The room gradually returned to its usual state, and the attack was over.

Their life had been torn asunder, and he wondered if it would ever return to normal. He was exhausted—tired physically and drained emotionally. He longed for the quiet hours they had spent together, and realized that in three days it would be Sunday, normally their most relaxed of days. Under ordinary circumstances they would follow their years-old routine: breakfast of plump western omelets, steaming mugs of coffee, probably freshly ground Kilimanjaro, along with rounds of English muffins. The massive editions of
The New York Times
and the
Hartford Courant
would be spilled over the breakfast-nook table.

He would grab for the funnies from the
Courant
and then read the Sunday
Times
Book Review section. Bea would take the
Times Magazine
section and immediately turn to the crossword puzzle.

She was the only person he knew personally who did the Sunday crossword in ink without the aid of a dictionary.

Every third Sunday or so, the
Times
would print a puns and anagrams puzzle in addition to the crossword, and Bea's eyes would light up with a special animation.

Anagrams!

He careened off the chair and hurried to the desk where he tore a fresh piece of paper from the stack by the side of the typewriter.

Lilacs.

He began to write variations of the word: lailcs, caills, scilla. There didn't seem to be any anagram that made any sense at all, or much less gave him a clue.

He examined the words again and then reached for a nearby dictionary. Scilla—he turned pages rapidly until he came to the proper entry.

“… Old World bulbous herbs of the lily family with narrow basal leaves and pink, blue or white racemose flowers.”

He stared down at the entry. It didn't seem to help either. What were racemose flowers? Back to the dictionary.

Racemose,
Webster's Collegiate
told him, was “… having or growing in the form of a raceme.”

A raceme,
Webster's
further informed him, was a form “… in which flowers are borne on short stalks of about equal length and equal distance.…”

He slammed the dictionary shut.

Bea had composed a message under the most difficult circumstances. Could she have been confused about racemose and meant for him to read it as “racehorse” or even “racetrack”?

There weren't any horse tracks in Connecticut, but there were car and dog tracks.

Was she held prisoner in some isolated and seldom-used track? He shook his head. Too far afield. He was reaching and would have to approach the problem from a different angle.

He inserted fresh paper into the typewriter and began to peck out the exact words Bea had spoken on the tape.

“He picked me up at the shopping center parking lot, Lyon, but I suppose you know that by now. I have not been hurt, and he tells me that he will let me eat after this tape is complete. It would seem prudent for you to do exactly as he says. Please do, Lyon, because I love you and I want to come home to take care of my lilacs.”

He read the words again and again. Most of them were expected, mundane, and right for the circumstances. The only thing he was sure of was that for all the reasons Bea might want to return home, it was not because of the lilacs.