Time Out of Mind (60 page)
Authors: John R. Maxim
Tags: #Horror, #General, #Psychological, #Suspense, #Memory, #Thrillers, #Fiction, #Time Travel
“
I'm sorry.” Corbin stepped back. He raised both palms
as if to promise that he would not touch her again.
She crossed her arms. “I've never seen you like that.”
“
Neither have I,” he murmured. He knelt and picked up the tray. It was something to do. When he stood again she
saw tears in his eyes.
“
Jonathan”—her shoulders trembled—”I don't know what to do. I'm afraid to ask you anything.”
“
It wasn't...” He looked around helplessly. “That
wasn't me.”
Uncle Harry, where are you?
“
Gwen, honey. Please.” He threw up his arms. ”I don't
even know what I'm saying.”
“
Jonathan, how about if I made you a Bloody Mary?”
“
You asked me
...
I don't know that woman's name. I mean, I almost do. If I heard it, I'd know it. And it wasn't
because you asked. She was Margaret's best friend. She
was fine. She was telling Margaret not to worry.”
“
About
what,
for Pete's sake?”
Everything was so terrific here. God! Here
Iam.I
know, I really know, that it's dumb for me to be living up here. It's expensive, it's inconvenient, it's lonely because I
don't have any friends, and even with all that, here I am
still thinking how terrific it is and damn near willing to kill
anybody who screws it up.”
“
And you thought I was going to do that.”
“
No.”
“
Let me make that drink, Jonathan.”
“
Gwen, I'm trying. Don't you think I know how this
sounds?”
Okay.” Gwen crossed to him. She took his hand and steered him to a wing chair by the fireplace. 'I’m going to get you a Bloody Mary and one for myself.” Except the
white stuff floating in yours is going to be two of Uncle Harry's magic pills instead of horseradish. “Then we'll see
if we can figure this out, okay?’'
“
Laura. Aunt Laura was the blond lady.”
“
Your aunt Laura.” Gwen stopped.
There was somebody trying to ruin everything for Til
den and Margaret. Laura was trying to help. When I try to
think who wanted to hurt them my mind starts churning
with faces and names. There's Gould, there's .. . No, Car-ling's not there, I think he's dead. There's Ella, except she's
still alive. There's this fat man a lot of people in Greenwich
are afraid of...There's Bigelow...Oh, shit. Oh, God
damn it.”
“
Jonathan?” She squeezed his hand. “What's wrong
now?”
“
Bigelow.” He looked up at her. “He's one of the men
in Chicago.”
“
So?”
“‘
He never had a name before. I had no idea who those
men were.”
“
I'll have your drink in two minutes.”
Thirteen
ter took her eye from the antique brass telescope that was
trained on her main gate. She was a slender woman, erect
in carriage but for a tilt toward the cane that supported one arthritic hip. Her hair, certainly dyed, was a dark reddish brown, and she wore it cut close to her head. From behind,
where Lawrence Ballanchine stood, she might have been
forty years younger than her true age, the evidence of which was substantially hidden by a long-sleeved dress with black
lace at her wrists and throat.
“
I'm afraid it is, yes.” Ballanchine needed no glass. The
distant shape squeezing out from the unwashed car was
unmistakably Raymond Lesko.
“
What was it you called yourself during your intrigues
with him? Dancer, was it not?”
“
Yes, Miss Beckwith.”
“
That name implies a certain nimbleness. Do you feel that you were altogether nimble, Lawrence?”
”
I did misjudge him,” Ballanchine admitted.
“
You did indeed, sir.” She put her eye once more to the lens, studying the man who was searching the gateposts for
a bell or voicebox.
It's him. It's Lesko.” Tom Burke's voice rasped over an intercom on her desk. “Do I open the gate or not?”
Ella Beckwith turned toward the speaker. ”I hardly think he'll go away if we ignore him. Mr. Ballanchine and I will
hear what he has to say. Is your car out of sight?’'
“
Yes, ma'am.”
“
You stay hidden as well. Remain in the kitchen unless
I buzz you.”
“
Yes, má'am. What about your brother?”
“
Where is he at this moment?”
“
Back in the trophy room. I better tell you he doesn't
look so good. He's had a couple of drinks.”
“
Leave him with his bottle and tell him I said to remain
there. Have you rearmed yourself, Mr. Burke?”
“
No, ma'am. I drove straight out here.”
“
There is a weapons case in the trophy room. Please
choose something inexpensive.”
overcoat pockets, watching the electric gates as they slowly
swung away from him. He hesitated for a long moment.
Then, brazenly, Lesko reached back into his car for what
appeared to be the belt of a trench coat and proceeded to
tie the open gate to the trunk of a small evergreen. He slid
back behind the wheel and started up the long straight
driveway.
“
Wasn't something to have been done about that man
by now, Lawrence?”
“
Not yet, no.” Ballanchine shook his head. “In any
case, not before I had his notes. Corbin was the main pri
ority. My expectation was that Lesko would accept the commission to handle Corbin himself, which would have
been the best of all worlds. We could have disposed of
Lesko at our convenience.”
“
But instead he chose to pocket fifteen thousand dollars
of my money.” Her face grew dark. “Worse, he set about
unraveling this terribly clever web you've woven.”
“
Lesko knew nothing.” Ballanchine lifted his chin. “
Nothing at all that could lead him to the Beckwith name.
He wouldn't have even laid eyes upon the Osborne if he'd
gone to Greenwich yesterday as I instructed. My mistake,
if I made one, was in briefing your brother, never dreaming
that he'd decide to follow Corbin around town and allow
Lesko in turn to follow him back to the hotel.”
“
You were aware, sir,” she said quietly, “that my
brother is unstable. You were aware that your Mr. Lesko
is insubordinate. And yet you expected cheerful obedi
ence?”
”
I don't deserve sarcasm, Miss Beckwith.” Ballanchine
pulled out a handkerchief and touched it to his mouth. “If
I may say so, I believe I'm due some credit for trying to
act decisively in your interest. You agreed, after all, that
we should put the problem in Mr. Burke's hands for his immediate attention. With any sort of luck at all, Corbin
would be dead and disfigured by now, and the Leamas woman with him.”
And if I may say so,” Ella Beckwith hissed, “the mea
sure I agreed to was a good deal more subtle than your alternate plan, which involved no less than a massacre on
the doorstep of an internationally known figure. Had you hoped, sir, that it would somehow escape the notice of the
media?”
That was Burke's idea. I'd only told him the matter
was urgent.”
behind a Duncan Phyfe desk and sat down within reach of
the intercom call button. “Would that Mr. Bigelow were still alive,” she said, shaking her head. “Your detective
rather looks like him, you know. He seems equally efficient
as well.”
Bigelow would be nearly ninety by now,” Ballanchine
said sourly. “In any case, he made his share of mistakes,
as I understand it. Corbin should have been long dead.”
Ella Beckwith arched her brow. “You are saying that he should have divined the existence of a Chicago college girl
who might be carrying a Corbin heir? A pathetic defense,
sir.”
“
He had a second chance,” Ballanchine said stubbornly.
“He had his hands on Corbin twenty years ago, according
to your brother, and he made a hash of it.”
Ella glanced over her shoulder at Lesko's car, which had
slowed and stopped outside her front door. 'Tilden told
you that?” she asked.
He told me weeks ago, when you first saw Corbin
standing out on the road looking up at your house. He told me Bigelow's dying words as well. That the man who did
that to him, to him and his partner, was the man in the
lobby portrait.”
seemed in no great hurry to shut it off or leave the com
parative safety of his automobile. She looked up at Ballan
chine.
Is Tilden yet persuaded that the man Bigelow saw was
not an avenging ghost?”
“
On the contrary, he believes it more than ever. He
claims that on the street yesterday, Jonathan Corbin became
Tilden Beckwith before his very eyes.”
Ella nodded slowly. Behind a sudden weariness in her
expression, Ballanchine thought he saw the briefest glaze
of fear. But she blinked it away and sat erect, her hands
clasped in front of her. Ella's face became hard again.
I have three concerns, Lawrence,” she said quietly,
“aside from Mr. Corbin and his entourage. One is a brother
who is a coward, a fool, and unbalanced in the bargain.
The second is Mr. Lesko, who is clearly not a fool and
who, due to Tilden’s stupidity and your own, knows far
more than he should.”
“
If you are about to say that I am the third—”
“
Heavens no, Lawrence.” She glared at him. “You are
far too greedy to risk the considerable rewards of your position and far too indictable to be anything but loyal. The
third is Mr. Burke, who seems considerably less competent than you represented him to be. He has also seen Jonathan
Corbin’s face, both in the photograph you gave him and in
person.”
Corbin. How was he to do that without seeing him?”
“
The point, dear Lawrence, is that he's probably made
the connection. If your Raymond Lesko made it during one
chance visit to the Beckwith Regency's lobby, do you not
think that Mr. Burke, who has passed that portrait hundreds
of times, might also have noticed?”
You don't even know that Lesko saw the portrait,”
Ballanchine argued. “All you know is that he followed
your brother and he.saw me when I came in. As for Burke,
I gave him a photograph which Lesko had taken through
falling snow and through a pane of wet glass. He never
even got a good look at Corbin outside the Sturdevant town
house because Lesko got in between. And his man Garvey,
incidentally, never had more than the Leamas woman's ad
dress.”