Little Feather chomped into her cheeseburger as though she intended never to speak again, but there was a vertical worry line on her brow, and her eyes were thoughtful, so Marjorie said nothing more, just went to work on her BLT.
Little Feather drank some of her diet Coke. “Nobody can help me,” she said.
Marjorie put down the BLT, sipped some seltzer, and said, “Try me.”
Little Feather seemed to be figuring out how to organize her story. At last, she shrugged and said, “You know how I got my lawyer. My other lawyer.”
“Somebody you know out west recommended him,” Marjorie said. “That’s what you said, anyway.”
“Yeah, well, that’s it, only a little more complicated. The guy’s one of the owners at a place in Vegas where I was a dealer. We never had anything like that, you know, between us, you know what I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” Marjorie agreed.
“He’s just a nice guy,” Little Feather said, “so when I needed help, I called him, and he told me to see this other guy who’s in the East, named Fitzroy Guilderpost, so I called him, and he’s the one put me together with Mr. Schreck.”
“Fitzroy Guilderpost.”
“That’s it. There’s something funny about him, Ms. Dawson. I’m not sure, but maybe he’s some kind of crook. I’d like to keep away from him, and the people he’s with, but I don’t know, then I’m gonna be alone again. And now we’ve got this mess.”
“What mess?”
“Well, it wasn’t Fitzroy thought of this,” Little Feather said. “He’s got these friends of his he hangs out with, and they all knew what was happening up here with me, and one of the others, he said the tribes were gonna do what they did, switch bodies so the DNA won’t match.”
Marjorie, surprised, said, “This person guessed that? In advance?”
“I think that’s the way they think themselves,” Little Feather said, and shrugged, then added, “Anyway, they thought they’d help me out.”
“Oh dear,” Marjorie said. “They did something.”
“They switched tombstones,” Little Feather said.
Which was about the last thing Marjorie had expected. She said, “What did they do?”
“They went out there to the cemetery,” Little Feather explained, “and they switched the tombstones over two graves, and they figured to go back out the night before the DNA test and switch them back. They didn’t figure on the tribes getting caught.”
Marjorie said, “So, as of right now, Joseph Redcorn’s headstone is on some other grave.”
“And it’s got a guard on it,” Little Feather said.
Marjorie sat there, BLT forgotten. Little Feather grinned crookedly at her and said, “That’s the way I’ve been feeling, Ms. Dawson, exactly like you look. And we figured, we figured the tribes were gonna go on stalling, so we had time to work this out, and maybe somebody could come up with a solution before the test, but now the test is gonna be immediately.”
“Oh my God,” Marjorie said.
Little Feather nodded. “So that’s it, Ms. Dawson,” she said. “You got any good advice for me?”
33
No more Tea Cosy. Gregory was very sorry, but the skiers had arrived, so the Tea Cosy was full. No more comfortable living room, no more huge breakfasts put out by the cheery Gregory and Tom, no more Odille singing “Frère Jacques” while she changed the beds.
Dortmunder hadn’t realized he’d miss the Tea Cosy, hadn’t realized he’d miss anything in the North Country, but there you are. Stay at the Four Winds motel in December, on the icy shores of Lake Champlain, and you, too, will miss the Tea Cosy.
The Four Winds was also full of skiers, or at least people dressed for the part. Every time Dortmunder opened his motel room door, somebody was going by through the snowy wind with skis on their shoulder and great clomping boots on their feet and huge goggles on their faces and thick wool caps on their heads. Their bodies were dressed mostly in what looked like shiny vinyl duffel bags. Probably some of them were men and some were women, but from anything Dortmunder could tell they might all have been kodiak bears.
Since either someone had stolen the Grand Cherokee Jeep Laredo or some police person had spotted its potential for a good career mark, Kelp had found them instead a Subaru Outback, which, in addition to the standard M.D. plates, also had four-wheel drive, a good thing in the frozen wastes north of New York City. Kelp was happy with it, but apparently the official owner of this vehicle was a woman doctor, with children; Tiny kept complaining that the backseat was sticky.
The only thing about the Subaru that bothered Dortmunder was the fact that it was the only vehicle within a hundred miles without a ski rack on the roof, which made it very recognizable. “We oughta steal a ski rack from one of these people,” he suggested. “Blend in, like.”
Kelp said, “Nah, we won’t be here that long. Besides, next you’ll want skis.”
“No, I won’t,” Dortmunder said.
They’d driven up here this morning, the day after Fitzroy’s call about the Indians getting caught in the cemetery, to see what they could do, even though everybody knew they couldn’t do anything. The wrong body was being guarded, and the wrong body would be tested against Little Feather, who had about one chance in a billion to turn out to be related to Burwick Moody, so that was that, right?
Except apparently not. After his first call to Kelp, Guilderpost had decided he and Irwin would not go down to New York. Since then, he and Kelp had been E-mailing back and forth enough to get carpal tunnel syndrome, and what they’d finally decided on was a meet, a get-together, all six of them, back up in the North Country.
“Why can’t those three come down here?” Dortmunder had complained, and Kelp had said, “Because Little Feather can’t leave until the game is over.”
“The game is over,” Dortmunder had announced, but here they were anyway.
The Four Winds motel was also full. Guilderpost had made their reservations and managed to find all three of them rooms, but they weren’t together. They didn’t feel they should hold conversations on motel room phones, which went through the motel office, so every time one of them thought of something to say to another one, he had to get completely dressed for the wintry outdoors and tramp over through the wind and the snow to the other one’s room, and then tramp back again. Dortmunder really missed the living room at the Tea Cosy.
What they were waiting for was Guilderpost and Irwin, who were supposedly off finding some safe, quiet, unnoticeable location for them all to meet, and a way to get in touch with Little Feather that wouldn’t queer the deal even further than it already was, which wasn’t possible, but they would try anyway. In the meantime, Dortmunder and Kelp and Tiny had settled more or less into their rooms, and visited one another anytime they had something to say, and otherwise watched the ski-toters plod around in the snowy wind. And what Dortmunder missed even more than the Tea Cosy was home.
A little before three, his phone rang in his room, where he was alone at the moment, looking out the window at the ski-haulers. He crossed to the phone and demanded, “Hello.”
It was Guilderpost, who said, “Hello, John. Does your room face the front of the motel?”
Dortmunder frowned at the window. “I got wind with snow in it, and cars with ski racks, and a road, and way over there is a frozen lake. Everything is gray.”
“That’s the front,” Guilderpost said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have Andy come wait with you in your room, because his is at the back.”
“Wait for what?”
“Little Feather. She’s coming over, in the motor home.”
“That sounds real secure,” Dortmunder said.
“Apparently,” Guilderpost said, “the situation has changed. We can all come out of hiding now.”