The Balloon Man (3 page)

The bride's bouquet was Anne's masterpiece, its creams and whites mingled as subtly as the highlights and shadows that Miriam
had created out of the lace and tulle and creamy satin, emphasizing the tiny waist and sneaking a little extra padding into
the bodice, as many a young bride had done before her.

The wedding ceremony was neither too short nor too long, but it seemed long to Max, stewing over the necklace, and to the
guests who wondered how soon the bar would be open and the food served. As soon as the inevitable photographers began taking
the inevitable scads of pictures on the side lawn overlooking the sea, Max looked guiltily around to make sure Miriam wasn't
planning to grab him for some reason or other and made a dash for the house.

With all that joyful noise outside, the library felt almost too quiet when Max unlocked the door. He made sure that the Kelling
jewels were still hiding behind Thackeray and stood pondering. The more he thought about it, the more peculiar the situation
appeared. How had the rubies got there? Those velvet cases hadn't been there when he'd first entered the library. He couldn't
have missed seeing the necklace; its baroque extravagance stood out among the sleek modern shapes of plastic arid silver like
an alligator in an aviary. One of the guests must have slipped the parure onto the table while he wasn't looking, shoving
aside the surrounding appliances and bibelots to make room for it.
If another guest had seen the anonymous donor, he or she would have assumed a last-minute gift had been delivered in person.
There didn't seem to be any point in asking whether anyone had observed such a thing. He couldn't even remember who had been
in the room or when, and a good number of the visitors had been people he didn't know. Maybe Egbert would remember something.
He'd have to have a long talk with Egbert, and with Sarah, but not until after the newlyweds had left and the guests departed.
His wife would consider even the miraculous reappearance of a lost family treasure unimportant if it spoiled Tracy and Mike's
big day. Especially this treasure, with its miserable memories.

He was about to return to his duties when he became aware of a faint but unpleasant odor. It hadn't been there when he'd locked
the room. Had someone had the gall to leave a bag of garbage under a table or in a corner? Max took a flashlight from the
rack in which Sarah kept a few extras in case of downed power lines or other mishaps that people who live close to the sea
are used to, and began prowling. The increasing pungency of the smell led him to the desk. There was something there all right,
tucked away underneath, between the pairs of supporting drawers. Max bent over to inspect it more closely. He wished he hadn't.
Even through the double-thick, man-size plastic bag that covered it, who could mistake the shape and smell of a decaying human
body?

Max felt along the outside of that gruesome heap, hoping
to convince himself that it was not that of a human form or what was left of one. Then he did the only thing he could do under
the circumstances and picked up the telephone.

“This is Max Bittersohn at Ireson's Landing, and I need an ambulance right away.… No, were all fine; it's the corpse I've
just found under my wife's desk that's giving the trouble. Do me a favor and keep the siren mute if you can. We've got about
a hundred guests and relatives attending my nephews wedding, and—What the hellf”

The corpse had moved. Max was more or less accustomed to bodies, but he had had a hard morning. He jumped back, dropping the
phone, and watched open-mouthed as a man crawled out from under the desk, shedding the black plastic bag like a moth emerging
from a cocoon. Moths don't look like much when they first emerge, and neither did this individual, who was extremely unlikely
to spread gorgeous wings and waft off into the blue. He made Max think of a ferret. Brooks Kelling could probably come up
with a more interesting ornithological comparison, but ferret was what came to Max's mind. Some kind of rodent, anyhow. The
man was of medium height, skinny as a rail, with a long pointed nose. The hairs under the nose might have been meant to be
a mustache, but there weren't many of them, and they twitched like a rat's whiskers when he talked.

“Sorry to cause all this trouble, Mr. Kelling—I mean, Mr. Bittersohn—but I'm not dead. It's, er, my brother
who's dead, at least I think he is, but he's not here, so, er, we don't need an ambulance, though it was very kind of you
to—”

“Shut up,” Max said. He picked up the phone, which was squawking agitatedly. “Cancel the ambulance, Jofferty.… No, nothing's
wrong. No more than usual. I'll get back to you.”

The erstwhile corpse was now standing upright. It was clad in black trousers and white shirt and a black bow tie. The hired
waiters wore clothes like those.

“Who the hell are you?” Max demanded. “And how the hell did you get in here?”

“I just came to borrow a shovel. You see, my brother, well, I don't have any money for a funeral, so I thought the only reasonable
thing would be to dig a nice big hole somewhere out in the woods and, er, um, put him in. You wouldn't mind lending me a shovel,
would you? And maybe somebody to do the digging? My doctor says I'm not in condition to do anything strenuous.”

“Your name isn't Kelling, is it?” Max inquired, hoping the answer would be in the affirmative. A hitherto unknown and even
loonier than average Kelling would explain a lot.

The man shook his head regretfully. “I'm Dewey Maltravers—no, that's my brother. I'm Louie, and I'm a stand-in.”

“What do you mean, a stand-in?”

“Well, see, when my brother was alive, which was until a
while ago, whenever that was … See, I never had to know what time it was because all I did was stand there. When I wasn't
sitting down, that is. Or playing dead. Playing dead is my true calling, but mostly I have to stand. I don't know what's going
to become of me now, there are far too many stand-ins around Boston already. You wouldn't care to take on a middle-aged actor
with a case of chronic hiccups, I don't suppose? Right now, I have to tell you, my career, is practically up the spout. That's
why I thought you might be needing a reliable stand-in.”

“You're an actor?” Max was trying to get a grip on the conversation.

“Well, yes, in a way. My brother and I used to do a lot of advertising commercials with collie dogs in them and sometimes
a Peke or an Irish wolfhound, but nowadays it's all just cats, cats, cats. I'm allergic to cats. They give me hiccups. But
I'm a real whiz at holding up lampposts. You know, the nonchalant slouch, the hat brim pulled down over the forehead, and
the hands in the pockets. You've got a real handsome old lamppost out there, so maybe—”

“And that's all you do? You've never tried anything else?”

“Well, I wouldn't like this to get around, but I do have what you might call an avocation. I, er, fix locks.”

“Ah,” Max said, enlightened. “You don't mean you do hairdressing on the side?”

“Not exactly. I do mostly padlocks and dead bolts and things of that nature. Most people, I mean the ones who actually talk
to me, call me Louie the Locksmith. I know,
it's a comedown. I can see you shrinking away from somebody who's not an artiste but merely a tradesman of a certain kind.”

“No,” said Max. “You're the one who's shrinking away, Louie. Or maybe sidling is a better word. You're a skillful sidler,
but if you think I'm letting you leave here without a better explanation for your presence than that string of nonsense, you
can think again. What is that awful stench? Are you sure you don't have Dewey, or part of him, inside the trash bag?”

He had sidled along with the locksmith and was still between him and the door. He wasn't worried about Louie getting away;
the man was six inches shorter and twenty years older.

“Stench?” Louie sniffed. “Awful? Why, Mr. Kelling, I mean Mr. Bittersohn, that is a delectable odor. You don't care for Gorgonzola?”

“Cheese?” Max sniffed, too.

“I left my sandwich in the trash bag when I heard you asking for an ambulance,” Louie explained. “I had to stop you, since
I wouldn't want to put our hardworking police to unnecessary trouble. Thank you for reminding me. I'll just get it. There
is a good half left”

He pulled the trash bag out from under the desk and reached into it.

The next thing Max knew he was flat on the floor with two broken legs. After a dazed interval he decided they weren't broken
after all, but the club or stake, or maybe it
had been a shovel, concealed by the black plastic wrappings had caught him an awful crack across the shins. Luckily it hadn't
hit the healing fracture he had sustained the year before. By the time he got his wits back and his legs under him he knew
there was no hope of catching up with Louie. He reached for the phone. This time he didn't call the police.

“Uncle Max?”

Jesse Kelling, ex-delinquent and Max's apprentice in the detective business, brought his car to a crashing halt and ran toward
the big tent where Max had been lurking, trying to avoid the eyes of his sister and mother and cursing the fact that he hadn't
set eyes on his wife for what seemed like hours. A hell of a wedding this was turning out to be,

He said as much to Jesse, after cautioning him to keep his voice down, and then gave him a quick summary of the situation.

“Louie, or whatever the hell his name may be, must have been after the rubies. He told me a string of wild stories, but he
wasn't lying about his talents as a locksmith. The way he got that locked window open was as neat a job as I've ever seen.
Sorry to interrupt your day off, Jesse, but Brooks and Theonia are mingling and I need some help.”

“You sure do. What do you want me to tackle first, the necklace or the burglar?”

Jesse was quivering with eagerness and raring to go. Max eyed him with some misgivings. The boy was shaping up well, but he
was only seventeen and a bit and still trying to shed the foolishness he'd picked up from his parents. Lionel Kelling and
his wife, Vare, were among Sarah's less appealing relatives, which was saying a good deal. They had raised their four sons
by modern methods—letting the little monsters do whatever they damn pleased, in other words. It probably hadn't helped to
name them after a notorious family of bandits. Jesse was the oldest of the four. Woodson, James, and Frank were his younger
siblings.

“He wasn't a burglar,” Max corrected. “Nothing was taken.”

“You sure?”

“Don't teach your uncle how to suck eggs, you young squirt,” Max growled. His shin hurt. “Part of my job is making quick appraisals.
There wasn't a porringer missing.”

“Would-be burglar, then,” said Jesse. “That's why he had the trash bag, he was going to fill it up with—”

“Espresso machines and wine bottle openers? He was almost certainly looking for the rubies, though I can't figure out how
he knew they were there, when I hadn't known myself until just before the ceremony. Never mind the parure, it's safely stashed
away now. I made sure of that. What I want you to do is look for Louie. He may have made his getaway, in which case you'll
have to question the kids who
were parking cars. One of them may have noticed a guy who was in a hurry to leave. There's a chance he's still hanging around
waiting for a second opportunity to get whatever it was he was trying to get the first time. He could be a waiter or a guest.
Keep an eye out for anyone looking suspicious. And don't look at me that way, damn it. I know the description is vague. Just
do the best you can.”

“Yessir.” Jesse snapped to attention.

Max returned to his hosting. There went Sarah now, dashing from hither to yon, smiling and nodding, being gracious toward
relatives, her own or her in-laws', and some people she probably didn't even know. That didn't matter; Sarah had had so much
practice in on-the-spot grace that she seldom had any trouble sorting out who was which, and where. Max sent a kiss after
her silver heels and wished he could deliver it in person.

By now, everybody except the terminally voracious had done more than justice to the buffet. The dessert table was still in
evidence, with the bride's cake as the chef d'oeuvre. It would be cut soon, before people began to drift away to stroll around
the grounds or get started for their homes. Max wished to hell they'd get on with it.

The cake was duly cut, the bride and groom smiled beautiful smiles at each other, the music started. The tiny girl who had
seemed such an incongruous bride for big, redheaded Mike Rivkin handed her bouquet to the nearest bridesmaid and came floating
across the dance floor, her arms outstretched to her husband. Everybody else stood
aside and let them stay in their private wonderland until the first dance was over. Then Mike dutifully steered his grandmother
onto the dance floor, and Tracy danced with her father-in-law. Ira tried not to keep picking her up off the floor, but it
was hard when he was so much taller than she. They laughed their way through a swoony waltz. Everybody seemed to be having
a wonderful time, Max thought. Everybody except him.

Jesse seemed to be dividing his time with scrupulous fairness between the bridesmaids and the remains of the buffet, but he
managed to cover quite a distance in his seemingly aimless wanderings. He caught Max's eye, shook his head, and went on wandering.

Max knew he ought to be out on the dance floor doing his duty by various female relatives and maybe even getting a chance
to trip the light fantastic with his wife, but he didn't want to go far from the house. He'd been watching the door, thus
far to no avail.

Percy Kelling wasn't dancing, either. Max would have avoided him if he could, since Percy was not one of his favorite Kellings,
but Anne's husband seemed to be in an unusually affable mood. He nodded regally at Max.

“Quite a little charmer,” he remarked, indicating the radiant bride, who was now waltzing with Brooks Kelling while the latter's
wife looked on with a smile. “Elfin, one might say. Who is she? Was she, rather.”

“The name is, or was, Pilcher,” Max said absently.