The Silver Ghost (21 page)

It was Lionel, and he was cutting her off again, turning into a parking lot belonging to a convenience store that had a pay phone outside. Much as she’d rather avoid him, she’d better stop there, too. Her clock read almost five, which meant the program would be through, the station’s call letters announced, and she’d know where to reach Max, assuming she could get her call through before he took off.

The instant she heard “This is Station XBIX, Oxbridge, Massachusetts,” she was out of the car and racing toward that lone telephone booth. By now, Lionel was coming out of the store, peeling the wrapper from a chocolate bar and heading for the phone, too. She beat him by a whisker.

Lionel had always been a rotten loser. “Blast you, Sarah,” he yowled, “give me that phone. I have to call Vare. You know what she’s like if I don’t check in.”

Sarah knew and didn’t care. Ignoring his caterwauls, she dialed Information. Lionel would scarcely resort to bodily violence in full view of the road. She had to invest fifty cents before she could get Max on the wire, but it was worth every nickel to hear his voice.

He was as delighted as she. “How did you track me here, for God’s sake?”

“Divine guidance,” she told him. “What’s up? More sabotage?”

Max explained at some length while Lionel danced around the booth and pointed to his watch. Sarah listened almost without speaking until her husband had finished telling her how Bodie had been found and given a somewhat toned down account of Ufford’s death. All she said then was, “I’m glad Aunt Bodie’s all right. Did you find the bicycle?”

“What bicycle?”

Lionel had stomped off now to buy another chocolate bar, and Sarah could talk without his hearing. “Darling, Professor Ufford was a tall man. To pour the syrup over his head, one would have had to take him by surprise, be high enough up not to douse one’s self in the process, and make a fast getaway before the bees started coming. A bicycle’s fast and silent, its tracks probably wouldn’t show on those bluestone paths, it would give the rider a boost up, and it could even have a little carrier on the handlebars to keep the syrup handy. A bicycle also isn’t hard to ditch. I’d look in those woods down by the hidden drawbridge, myself.”

“Damn,” said Max, “I never thought of a bicycle.”

“I don’t suppose I should have, either,” Sarah admitted, “if Uncle Jem hadn’t been telling me on the way down about the tricycle Wouter Tolbathy rigged up for Abigail when she first started keeping bees. It was shaped like a giant beehive, one of those old-fashioned conical straw ones. Abigail was supposed to sit inside with her head and arms and legs sticking out, wearing a black and yellow striped leotard and a fuzzy black hat with little antennae sticking up and a yellow bee veil with big goggly plastic eyes set into it.”

“Simple, tasteful, and practical in the true Tolbathy tradition. Is the thing still around?”

“No, it got wrecked ages ago when the Convivial Codfish crowd were having one of their quiet little get-togethers at the Billingsgates’. They were taking turns riding around in the beehive wearing the bee headdress and somebody got the bright idea of doing wheelies. Uncle Jem wouldn’t say who it was, so I suspect the worst. Anyway, that finished the beehive, but it’s worth considering, don’t you think?”

“I certainly do. I’d better call the Billingsgates right away and see if that jackass Grimpen ever came back. Unless you’d rather give them a ring yourself?”

“No, I wouldn’t. I’m at a pay phone in Milton. I was on my way home from delivering Uncle Jem back to his yachting party when I happened to catch you on the radio. I assume there’s been another blowup, but don’t tell me now because I’m running out of change and Lionel’s champing at the bit to use the phone. Don’t ask me what he’s doing here, unless he’s been over in the Blue Hills communing with the rattlesnakes. About dinner, darling—”

“Forget it, kid. You’ve still got a long drive ahead of you and I’d better get back to the Billingsgates. Why don’t you find yourself a decent restaurant and wait out the traffic? Davy’s okay, isn’t he?”

“Yes, I called Mrs. Blufert from the yacht club to tell her I was running late and she said not to worry. She’ll stay as long as we need her and there’s plenty to eat in the fridge. Oh, Max! Would you believe Young Dork just drove in? I’ve got to find out what this is all about. Take care, dear. See you soon, I hope.”

She’d have turned the phone over to Lionel but he was with Young Dork now, trying to put aside his frenzy and act genial. Young Dork, though he barely knew Sarah, was far the more affable of the two.

“Nice to see you again so soon, Sarah. On your way to the great celebration, too, are you?”

“Actually I’m on my way home,” Sarah told him. “I just stopped to phone my husband. What are you celebrating?”

“Haven’t you heard? Bunny hit the lottery.”

“Bunny Whet? Do you mean that state lottery that’s always getting written up in the papers? How much did he win?”

“A bundle,” said Young Dork reverently. “Something like three million dollars, didn’t they say, Lionel?”

Now Sarah knew why her cousin was in so foul a mood. Bunny Whet had won a bundle and Lionel Kelling hadn’t. She rubbed it in for all it was worth.

“What an utterly fantastic stroke of luck for Bunny. Some people just seem to have all the luck, don’t they, Lionel? You must be thrilled to pieces for him. So you and Young Dork are giving Bunny a surprise party?”

“We are like hell.” Lionel had run out of geniality. “With a windfall that size falling into his lap, Bunny can damned well afford to give us one.”

“Actually it’s Elizabeth who’s giving the party,” Young Dork explained. “Come on, Sarah, I know she and Bunny would love to have you. Follow me if you don’t know the way.”

“But I can’t go barging in without an invitation.”

“Of course you can, the more the merrier. Elizabeth said we should drag along any of the crowd she hadn’t been able to reach.”

Sarah shrugged. She wasn’t one of the crowd and she didn’t want to be, but it would be a chance to do some more nosing around. When Lionel added his own invitation, for Lionel could be hospitable when somebody else was footing the bills, she capitulated.

“Just tell me where to go and I’ll find the house. I want to run into the store for a minute first.” A Kelling might arrive both uninvited and empty-handed, but a Bittersohn surely wouldn’t. She had a new set of standards to maintain along with the old.

Her cheese and crackers were well received, and so was she. “This is a nice surprise, Sarah,” said Bunny Whet.

“It’s a surprise for me, too,” she told him. “I was on my way home from ferrying Uncle Jem to meet some of his friends at Scituate Harbor. I stopped to phone Max, bumped into Lionel and Young Dork, and here I am. I mustn’t stay long, but I simply had to offer my congratulations. This must be one of the most exciting days you’ve ever spent, isn’t it?”

“Actually it’s been a week since I won the lottery,” he confessed. “But Father and I were at an organic pest control convention in Philadelphia and didn’t get home till late Monday night because we’d stopped to have dinner with Aunt Lucy. You wouldn’t know her, I don’t suppose. But anyway, that put me behind with my work and Elizabeth and I were both up to our ears in rehearsals for the revel, so I bunged my winning ticket into a safe-deposit box and didn’t get around to turning it in until today. I knew the money was safe, you know. I expect I should have let it sit for another few days, since Monday’s hardly the best day for a party, but I have to admit I was just too itchy. As it was, the lottery people seemed to find my lack of haste a trifle odd.”

Sarah could see why they might have.

“But how was I to know the customary procedure?” said Bunny. “I’ve never bought one of the things before, I don’t know what possessed me to buy this one. I’m not usually given to reckless impulses.”

“It was only a dollar,” Elizabeth argued in extenuation. “And we did so want a nice, big chunk of money for the Bat Fund. Are you familiar with Bunny’s pet project, Sarah?”

Sarah was about to be, that was clear. Bunny was off and running.

“Bats are grossly underappreciated natural insect controllers. And what’s happening to their natural urban habitat? I ask you, Sarah.” But he gave her no time to answer. “Look at all those wonderful old stone churches we used to have. Getting their steeples lopped off, being turned into condominiums. What’s a bat without a belfry, answer me that?”

She didn’t get a chance on that one, either. Bunny’s normally unimpassioned face was alight with enthusiasm. “So what we’re doing is constructing a series of artificial belfries in suitably insect-rife environments where bats will find congenial living quarters, ample food supplies, and, we hope, fruitful association with other bats.”

At last Sarah got a word in. “Do you have bells in your belfries, too?”

“Bells are a frill we’ve had to dispense with for reasons of economy,” Bunny confessed, “but the bats are adjusting nicely. We do install streetlights at strategic places, to draw the night-flying lepidoptera.”

“Yes, I can see where you’d need to do that.”

“Honestly, Sarah, you ought to go out to one of our bat sanctuaries and see the little beggars flitting around those lights on a balmy summer evening, snapping up moths and mosquitoes. Ifs sheer poetry in motion. Isn’t it, Elizabeth?”

“There is an aesthetic quality one learns to appreciate,” Elizabeth agreed, a trifle wearily.

“I’d appreciate the three million dollars a damn sight more,” Lionel told her crassly. “You must be pretty sick about losing out to a bunch of flying bug-snappers.”

“Not at all.” Bunny’s wife was loyal to the core. “The income tax would have been horrendous. This way we’ll get a magnificent write-off for the next twenty years because they dole it out to you on the installment plan. Besides, it lets Mother Whet and me out of having to run a fund drive.”

It would let them out of having to fight Bunny over that trust fund, too, Sarah thought. It also wiped out Bunny’s motive for having stolen the New Phantom even if he’d had the opportunity, which it now appeared he hadn’t.

Salmon Tolbathy was another washout. Tom and Hester had brought their younger son with them to Milton because he still couldn’t drive his own car and his brother Buck was tied up with a shipment of anchovies. Sal’s problem had turned out to be no mere sprain but a torn ligament. He was on crutches and could hardly move without wincing. His incapacity was beyond question.

The male Abbotts hadn’t been able to come. Monk was back at school and Joe had a meeting of some sort. Joe’s wife, the lovely Lilias, had shown up with her parents, though, and was getting a good deal of ribbing about her kirtle from some people who hadn’t been at the Renaissance Revel but had attended the wedding. They were loudly expressing their disappointment that Joe and Monk had insisted on doing their respective stints in conventional clothing instead of their dags and slitters.

That let the Abbotts out of stealing the Silver Ghost, at any rate. So far, though, Sarah hadn’t been able to give anybody a solid alibi for both the revel and the day the New Phantom had been taken. Was it possible the Morris dancers had worked in shifts? Sarah shook her head, both at the glass of champagne somebody was offering her and at the idea of so much organized malfeasance to so little purpose, and went back to Young Dork.

He’d spent last Monday at Station XBIG in Gibbon, New Hampshire, doing Tick a favor. They’d had problems with a broken cable. That meant they couldn’t play their tapes or records, so he’d taken Lorista and her dulcimer along to do a live program of folk songs. As if one disaster hadn’t been enough, Sarah thought unkindly.

“Done much bike riding lately?” she asked in desperation.

“Who, me?” Young Dork thought the question over and decided Sarah must be joking, so he laughed. “I’ll take one of the Billingsgates’ Rolls Royces over a bicycle any day of the week, myself. Your cousin Lionel’s the boy for the bikes.”

“Yes, I know Lionel rides a lot.” He’d biked all the way from Cambridge to Ireson’s Landing only last week as part of his, or rather Vare’s, relentless keep-fit program. Even fully clothed, Lionel was no great beauty; the sight of him in shorts and a fluorescent green bicycle helmet had been enough to set Davy wailing in mortal terror. Sarah had had all she could do to refrain from climbing into the playpen and adding her wails to Davy’s. “But don’t the rest of you ride, too?” she said doggedly.

“We all used to when we were kids,” Young Dork conceded, “but I don’t recall our ever making a big thing of it. Except Lionel, of course, and Tick Purbody. Too bad Tick and Melly couldn’t come tonight but they’re both tied up. Anyway, Tick was really hot there for a while. He even entered a couple of six-day bicycle races, but Melly put her foot down on that once they were married. Sure I can’t get you some champagne?”

“Not just now, thanks,” said Sarah. “I want to talk to Hester and Tom.”

The elder Tolbathys were sitting together on a straight-backed settee, neither of them looking particularly festive. Sarah could understand why, knowing what Max must have told them during his morning visit. At least she had one piece of cheerful news to impart.

“You’ll be glad to know Aunt Bodie’s turned up.”

That brightened their mood a bit. “I’m so relieved!” said Hester. “We’ve been awfully worried about her. Where was she, do you know?”

“She’d managed somehow to get locked in the honey shed.”

“But that’s incredible! Bodie, of all people. However did she get into a fix like that?”

“Apparently she’d gone exploring.” Sarah didn’t feel this was the time or place to go into specifics. “The room had been sterilized and sealed off ever since last honey-gathering time, whenever that was, so naturally it was the one place nobody thought to look. But anyway, she’s all right. Somewhat frayed around the edges, of course. The last I heard, Abigail and Drusilla had her tucked up in one of the guest rooms, taking turns playing Florence Nightingale.”

Hester even managed to smile. “It’s funny hearing you say that. I never think of Drusilla as playing anything that didn’t involve a stick and a ball. She used to have the most spectacular tennis serve, though I have to admit it never landed quite where she meant it to.”