The Balloon Man (7 page)

He'd meant to get in touch with Brooks and Theonia anyhow, since he'd probably need their assistance. First things first,
though.

“I'd better go out and make sure Davy doesn't get in the way of that truck,” he said, hearing a heavy engine start up.

“Egbert has him leashed,” Sarah said comfortably. “Or
vice
versa. He's being a camel—Egbert, that is—in the caravan of a dashing African explorer. Camels will run away if they aren't
firmly tied to the explorer, you know.”

“I didn't, but I'm relieved to hear it. Are the Zickerys there?”

“No, just the truck and a crew of husky young tent rollers, and an old geezer who seems to be in charge of the balloon. Davy
was sadly disappointed. He still thinks the Zickery twins are Martians.”

“So do I,” Max said. “All right, darling, I'll leave you to keep the home fires burning while I make a few phone calls.”

The office had three phones. The green was the one they used for family calls, the white was the business phone, and the red
had a number known only to themselves and Cousin Brooks, Theonia's husband. Theonia probably knew it, too, since Brooks was
putty in her exquisitely plump white hands. Max couldn't blame him.

Brooks was in charge of the Boston office, a little cubbyhole in a building on the corner of Boylston and Tremont. Since the
nature of their business didn't lend itself to regular office hours, it was more than likely Brooks wouldn't be there so early,
especially if he'd been whooping it up with Anora and company after the wedding. Jesse might or might not be home. Hoping
he was, and that he was asleep, Max picked up the white phone and dialed the number.

Jesse might have been sleeping, but he snapped to attention when he heard the voice of his revered leader. “Morning, Uncle
Max. I expected you'd call me back last night.”

“Why should I? Obviously you didn't find out anything useful. What were you doing, chasing bridesmaids?”

“Not just chasing. Remember the pale yellow one?” Jesse added hastily, “Don't get mad, Uncle Max. I'd already covered the
place like a blanket and hit one dead end after another.”

“You're mixing your metaphors. No luck finding Louie?”

“No, sir. So I got to talking to Jennifer—that's her name, Jennifer—and we, well, we decided we'd split, and some of the others
decided they'd come, too, and we went to the Bucket of Clams, and what with one thing and another … You aren't mad, are you,
sir?”

In fact Max was marveling over the repeated “sirs.” Before he and Sarah had taken Jesse in hand, that word would never have
passed the childish lips of any of Lionel's offspring. A string of obscenities would have been more likely. It was necessary
to maintain discipline, however, which he did by keeping a stony silence.

“Aw, come on, Uncle Max. I'd have told you right away if I'd found any trace of the old geezer. Don't tell me you never got
distracted by a pretty girl starving for clams?”

“Never,” Max said stoutly, crossing all the fingers he could spare. A lie of that magnitude demanded more fingers, and probably
his toes as well, but the latter were inside his slippers and inaccessible.

“What do you want me to do now?” Jesse asked humbly.

“Nothing. I'll let you know Stay cool,” he added, hoping that attempt at modern lingo didn't date him too badly.

Brooks wasn't at the office, so Max tried the Tulip Street house. Sarah had inherited the place from her husband and had run
it as a boardinghouse while the lawyers were trying to straighten out the complex train of illegal second mortgages and general
chicanery instigated by Caroline Kelling and her lover. It was during that period of her life that Sarah had formed close
friendships with Mariposa and her significant other, Charles, who now ran the house for Brooks and Theonia and any other members
of the family who happened to be in Boston.

Brooks answered on the second ring. His first question made Max's hackles rise.

“Is everything all right?”

“Why shouldn't it be?”

“Didn't you read Theonia's note?”

“What note? Damn it,” Max sputtered, “can't we stop conversing in questions?”

“If you prefer,” Brooks said agreeably. “She said she'd slipped a note into your pocket yesterday, before we left for Anora's.”

“It must still be there, then. What did it say?” Realizing he had slipped back into the interrogatory mode, Max answered his
question with the one Brooks would logically have asked. “Why don't I read it? Yeah, right, I will. That's not the reason
I called. Something odd has happened. Remember
that ruby parure that was stolen from the safe-deposit box?”

“The Kelling parure? How could I forget? Don't tell me”

Max told him. Brooks let out a long musical whistle, probably the call of some exotic bird or other, had Max been able to
identify it.

“Well, well, fancy that. I won't waste your time in idle theorizing, Max, since I'm sure the various possibilities have already
occurred to you. Yes indeed, a business conference is definitely in order. Will you come here, or shall we come to you?”

Max had already worked it out. “We'll come there. I want to get Uncle Jem and Egbert back to Pinckney Street; they stayed
overnight, you know, since Egbert doesn't like to drive after dark. I'm not happy about the old boy driving before dark, either,
especially in city traffic, and I'd been trying to think of a way of playing chauffeur without hurting Egbert's feelings.
I'll head on over to Tulip Street after I deliver them, and you and Theonia, or Jesse, or somebody, depending on how the investigation
develops, can drive me home tomorrow.”

“Excellent,” Brooks said crisply. “Is there something you want me to do right away? I had planned to spend the morning cleaning
up the matter of those missing Utrillos, but—”

“No, that's fine. At the moment I don't know what the hell is going on, much less what to do about it.”

When he returned to the kitchen to tell Sarah what he'd arranged, he found her less than enthusiastic. “There's an awful lot
to do here, Max. Much as I'd love to see Brooks and Theonia, I really ought to get the presents packed up and recorded and
taken to the carriage house. I haven't been able to use my desk for weeks. Then there are the tent people to deal with. They
said they'd remove the remains as soon as the balloon was out of the way. I telephoned earlier, and they said they'd come
right away.”

“How'd you accomplish that?” Max asked respectfully. “More intimidation, à la Aunt Emma?”

“Not exactly. I just refused to pay them until they'd finished the job. And what would we do about Davy?”

“Take him along,” said Davy's doting father.

Sarah looked doubtful. “I'd like to get him back on a regular schedule. He's had a lot of excitement the past few days. Speaking
of which, why don't you go out and relieve Egbert? He's been a camel for over an hour, and Davy is apparently refusing to
let him off the lead.”

Max glanced out the window. He could see the small figure of his son running circles around the crumpled yellow-and-white
folds of the tent. The camel was unquestionably staggering.

“Poor old Egbert. All right, süssele, I'll assert my parental authority. Why don't you roust your uncle out of bed so we can
get ourselves organized?”

“I'd rather be chewed by scorpions. Do scorpions have teeth?”

“I doubt it, but I get the idea. I'll send Egbert in.”

Davy didn't want to go in. “Even camels need to be watered, fed, and rested,” Max pointed out. “An experienced explorer takes
good care of his livestock.”

“What do camels eat?” Davy asked curiously.

“Muffins,” Max said. “They prefer blueberry.”

Davy remembered that explorers also liked blueberry muffins and led his puffing steed away. Egbert gave Max a grateful look.

Max watched them with a fond smile. Davy was walking slowly and administering encouraging pats to the camel. He was a good-hearted
kid, once he was reminded of the frailties of animals less energetic than a three-year-old human.

He didn't blame Davy for lingering. It was a beautiful morning, with blue skies and a gentle breeze just cool enough to be
refreshing. He'd have liked nothing better than to spend the day playing with his son, helping his wife with the wedding gifts,
and even listening to Jem Kelling's lies about the good old days. If it hadn't been for that damned parure …

Hands in his pockets, he wandered down the drive toward the road. Should he go to Boston with Jem and Egbert and leave Sarah
to deal with the tent people? He didn't doubt she could, but he hated to leave her alone. Max had the check all written, but
he was planning to let Sarah be the one to hand it over. He'd missed watching her intimidate the tent crew; he could only
imagine what a genuine,
dyed-in-the-wool fifth-generation Kelling might look like when in the process of having to part with a rental fee. Maybe he
should call Brooks back and ask him to come to Ireson's Landing instead. There wasn't much point in going to Boston. He'd
left a message for his man in Paris, Pepe Ginsberg (pronounced “Geens-bair”). Pepe hadn't been in the office; he seldom was,
since he had to cover a large territory—France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia. He'd been instructed to check his answering
machine daily, though, and would return Max's call as soon as he could.

It would take even Pepe a while to get results, Max knew. The last known address of the astute buyer of the necklace had been
in Amsterdam, but that had been seven years ago. She might have moved, or been on vacation, when she died. She might not have
left a will. People often didn't.

Max realized that, absorbed in thought, he had reached the end of the drive. He turned to retrace his steps and found himself
blinded by a sudden eclipse.

Max Bittersohn was not a man to panic. After the first flabbergasted second he realized the vast, choking cloud of total blackness
was only some misguided half-wit's notion of a joke. He had recognized the acrid stench of a smoke bomb—not the baby-size
kind he had once, in his distant, misspent youth, set off under the kitchen window when his mother was making latkes, but
a much larger variety, like the simulation hand grenades used by the military in training recruits and by the motion picture
industry in lending an air of authenticity to vampire flicks and burning buildings.

His mother hadn't been amused, either.

One good thing about smoke was that it could not be corraled. The air was still dark as the underneath portion of a witch's
lingerie, but Max could feel the breeze against his face. The cloud would disperse in due course; all he had to do was stay
right where he was, near the bottom of the
long, steep driveway. The real danger from a situation such as this was in growing impatient. One or two false steps might
put him out in the road, directly in front of a car with a disoriented or understandably frantic driver behind the wheel.
Any sensible driver would stop or pull off the road when he found himself unable to see past the windshield, but even a sensible
driver might panic under those hellish conditions.

Even as the thought entered his mind he saw a pair of headlights on high beam pierce the blackness. The vehicle zigzagged
across the road, missing him by about four feet, and bounced off a telephone pole or a tree trunk.

Max started forward, then forced himself to stop. The smoke was beginning to show signs of thinning out and moving on, but
he still couldn't see across the road, and if another car hit him while he was trying to go to the assistance of the driver,
it wouldn't do him or the victim much good. He called out, “Anybody hurt?”

The answer was a burst of sound from the engine and a squeal of tires as the maniac in the vehicle reversed, turned, and roared
off into the artificial night. Max waited, wincing, for another crunch, but heard nothing.

He headed back up the drive as fast as safety dictated. The house was at the top of the hill; it might have escaped the worst
of the smoke. Sarah was bound to be worrying about him, though, and the police had to be notified as soon as possible. Too
bad he hadn't thought to bring a
flashlight, but how could he have known that sudden night would descend?

He ought to have known something would go wrong, Max thought sourly. He'd been a cockeyed optimist to assume that the reappearance
of the rubies was a harmless, isolated incident, to be investigated at his leisure. He'd had enough experience with art treasures
to know that objects so valuable carried a trail of danger and crime. The smoke bomb had to be related to the rubies; it was
too much of a coincidence that some nitwit would pick that morning to play a sick joke. There had to be a reason for someone
wanting to shroud the place in darkness.

One reason leaped to mind. Max broke into a run and immediately regretted the decision when he tripped over something and
fell heavily onto his hands and knees. He fumbled around and found the offending object. It was Davy's alligator.

The next thing he ran into was Sarah with a battery lantern in her hand and no doubt a steely glint in her eye, though it
was still too dark to make out such details.

“You idiot!”

Max heard the catch in his wife's voice as she dropped the lantern and threw her arms around him. “What do you think you're
doing? You could have fallen and broken your leg again. Where did this black cloud come from?”

“It wasn't me,” Max protested.

“I didn't suppose it was. Max, you are limping. What
happened? Did I hear a crash? What were you doing down there?”

Max explained what had happened as they made their way toward the house. “Though I'm damned if I can explain why it happened.
Was there any trouble at the house?”

“Not unless you consider a sudden volcanic eruption trouble. We dashed around closing doors and windows, so the awful stuff
didn't get into the house, but we couldn't see a thing outside.” Sarah managed a feeble laugh. “Davy adored it.”

“Martians?”

“Of course. It's thinning a little, isn't it?”