Murch’s Mom said, “Before April, I bet.”
“Well, yeah,” Dortmunder agreed. “Today is Friday, and we gotta get that hair sample back upstate by Monday.”
Murch said, “Whoops. You wanna plan it, and organize it, and do it, all this weekend?”
“No, I don’t want to do that,” Dortmunder said, “but that’s what we got.”
“Then,” Murch said, “I don’t know we got much.”
“Well, it could be that luck is with us,” Dortmunder told him. Then he stopped and looked around at everybody and said, “I can’t believe what I just heard me say.”
Kelp said, “I’m a little taken aback myself, John.”
“And yet, and yet,” Dortmunder said, “it might even be the truth. See, the thing is, I looked at the weather report, the old-fashioned way, on the television, and comin outta Pennsylvania on Sunday is supposed to be our first winter storm of the season. A nice big one.”
Murch said, “This is the luck? We’ve also got a storm?”
“That’s right,” Dortmunder told him. “You know what happens when a big snowstorm goes through? In a rural part of the world? The electricity goes out. And nobody thinks a thing about it.”
38
Everything that happens with weather in the greater New York City area has already happened in Cleveland two days before, so on Saturday morning, when Kelp and Murch flew from La Guardia Airport in New York to Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, they sailed over the storm, which was then ruffling feathers in Pittsburgh, and landed in an exhausted city that no longer had any present use for the vehicle they intended to borrow.
In fact, the municipal parking lot where they went looking for what they needed was deserted. City workers had just finished a twenty-seven-hour war against the snowstorm, and they were now all home in bed, with their beepers on the bedside table. The locks on the gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded the parking lot did not hold Kelp’s and Murch’s attention for long, and then off they went, down the rows of garbage trucks, snowplows, morgue vans, and cherry pickers, till they found just the vehicle they’d had in mind.
It was big, with big tires. It was red and had many sparkly yellow and white and red lights mounted all over it. It had begun life as an ordinary dump truck, but it had been fitted to a specific use: sand spreader. On the front of it was a big yellow V-shaped snowplow blade, and inside the open bed was a slanting metal floor with runnels that led back to the spigots where salt or sand would be ejected onto the roadway behind the truck, with controls operated by the driver. The rear wall of the truck body was mostly a pair of metal doors that would swing open outward from the center to give maintenance access to the spigots and other equipment inside.
The spreader’s most recent operator had been too tired to top up the gas tank when he’d brought the machine back from its municipal duty, so that was another lock they had to go through, on the gas pump, before the computer inside it would give them any fuel. Then they took time out for a quick lunch, and were on the road by one.
It’s just about four hundred miles from Cleveland to Port Jervis, New York, where New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania meet, just a little north of the Delaware Water Gap. On an ordinary day, in an ordinary car, traveling Interstate 80, they’d have made it in under six hours, but this was not an ordinary car, and straight ahead of them was something that would keep this from being at all an ordinary day. The storm they’d flown over, they would now drive through, which would slow them down a bit. On the other hand, you couldn’t ask for better wheels than this, if what you planned to do was drive through a snowstorm.
They caught up with it in western Pennsylvania, just as they were crossing the Allegheny River. The sky in Ohio, after the storm, had been pale, almost ivory, with a small cold-looking sun far, far away, its weak beams glaring white from all this fresh snow round and about, but once past Youngstown and into Pennsylvania, the sun faded to nothing, the sky was slate, and the fresh snow in the mountains was deeper, duller-looking, as though it hadn’t settled yet from its recent journey. And then, just east of the Allegheny, the sky turned darker; they could see wind whipping tree branches, and snow began to swirl in the air in front of them.
Half an hour later, they were in the storm, and Murch had turned on every running light the truck possessed. All about them, cars were sliding, trucks were stopped beside the highway, visibility was not much farther than the end of your nose, snow was everywhere, on the ground, in the air, in the sky above, and they were creeping along at thirty, tops. “I think,” Murch said, “it’s time to figure out how to lower this plow.”
39
The girls, of course, thought it was an absolute waste to have a big winter storm on the weekend, when school was closed anyway. “Don’t be silly,” Viveca told them. “You’ll have a great time out on the slope tomorrow, you know you will.”
“We could have just as fine a time on a Tuesday,” Victoria replied.
There was never any point arguing with the girls. “I’m busy,” Viveca told them, which was perfectly true. “Go on down to the barn, the three of you, and get out all of our winter things. The toboggan, both sleds, the snowshoes. Put them all in the visitor center. Who’s on duty down there today?”
“Matt,” Vanessa said, and all three girls giggled. They all had a crush on Matt, whom they considered the only member of the security staff who could be thought of as a serious hunk.
“Well, ask Matt to help,” Viveca said. “And don’t tease him.”
They all giggled again, then raced out of the kitchen, and Viveca turned back to her list. Here it was midafternoon on a Saturday, a storm was coming, they were actually quite isolated here on this mountain, and, as usual, Viveca had waited till the last minute to see which provisions might be running low. Frank always used to take care of details like that, damn him.
Viveca and Mrs. Bunnion, the housekeeper, sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Mrs. Bunnion would drive down to Port Jervis to do the shopping, but she quite sensibly wanted it done and over with before dark, and also before the onset of the storm, so there was a certain amount of hurry in this list compiling. “Milk,” Viveca said.
“That we have,” Mrs. Bunnion answered. “You don’t want too much of the perishables, in case the electric goes out.”
“The refrigerator’s on the backup generator,” Viveca pointed out, “but I suppose you’re right, that we shouldn’t bring in too much. Cereal, though, I know we’ll need more of that. And buy some nice soup for lunch tomorrow.”
“Yes’m.”
They were comfortable together, employer and employee, though not quite as comfortable as they’d been before Frank left. Viveca knew Mrs. Bunnion considered her a bit scatterbrained, which was of more moment now that there wasn’t a man around to hold the reins, and she supposed Mrs. Bunnion was right, but there really was an awful lot to do here, even in winter, when the house was closed to the public. And particularly with a storm coming.
Thurstead was the only home Viveca had ever known, born here as Viveca Deigh, daughter of Walter and Elizabeth Deigh, granddaughter of Emily and Allistair Valentine, and great-granddaughter of Russell Thurbush, who had built this magnificent pile and then left his descendants the endless task of caring for it.
In a way, it was an easy life. The nonprofit corporation maintained the place and provided the family with an income, in addition to the roof over their heads. In season, volunteers worked as cashiers and docents, so the family never actually had to look at any of the thousands of visitors who trooped through the downstairs every year. Also, Russell Thurbush’s reputation meant the family was automatically welcomed at the uppermost social levels in both Philadelphia and New York; Viveca could attend a museum opening a week, if she cared to.