In a voice thick and furry with booze she said, “Kevin.”
Bartlett said, “Marge, for God’s sake.”
“It’s true,” she said. “The little sonova bitch hates us.”
“Marge, goddamn you. You leave my kid alone. He didn’t kidnap himself.”
“The little sonova bitch.” She was mumbling now.
“She’s drunk as a goddamned skunk, Spenser I’m putting her to bed. Drunk as a skunk.” He took her arm, and she sagged protestingly away from him. “Sonova bitch.” She began to giggle. “He’s the little sonova bitch, and you’re the big sonova bitch.” She sat down on the floor still giggling. I got up.
“You need any help?” I said.
He shook his head. “I’ve done this before.”
“Okay, then I’ll go to bed. Thanks for supper” As I went. out of the kitchen I saw Dolly Bartlett scuttle up the stairs ahead of me and into her room. Pleasant dreams, kid.
Chapter 13
The next morning, Saturday, Kevin’s guinea pig turned up. I was sitting at the kitchen table reading the Globe when I heard Marge Bartlett scream in the front hall. A short startled scream and then a long steady one. When I got there the front door was ajar, and she was holding an open package about the size of a shoe box. I took it from her.
Inside was a dead guinea pig on its back, its short legs sticking stiffly up. I looked out the door. A young Smithfield cop I didn’t know came busting around the corner of the house with a shotgun at high port.
“It’s okay,” I said. Marge Bartlett continued to scream steadily. Now that I was holding the package her hands were free, and she put both of them over her face. The cop came in holding the shotgun down along the side of his leg, the muzzle pointing at the floor. He looked in the box and made a face. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
“It came in the mail,” I said. “I suppose it’s the same one the kid took with him when he disappeared.”
Marge Bartlett stopped screaming. She nodded without taking her hands from her face. The cop said, “I’ll call Trask,” and headed back for the cruiser in the driveway. I took the box and wrapping paper and dead guinea pig into the kitchen and sat down at the table and looked at them.
There was nothing to suggest what killed the guinea pig.
The box said Thom McAn on the cover, and the brown paper in which it had been wrapped looked like all the other brown paper wrapping in the world. The box had been mailed in Boston, addressed to Mrs. Margery Bartlett.
There was no return address. They’re too smart for me, I thought.
“What does it mean, Spenser?” Marge Bartlett asked.
“I don’t know. Just more of the same. I’d guess the guinea pig died, and someone thought it would be a good idea to send it to you. It doesn’t look as if it’s been killed.
That might suggest that Kevin is well.”
“Why?”
“Well, a kidnapper or a murderer is not likely to bother keeping a guinea pig, right?”
She nodded. I heard a car spin gravel into the driveway and slam to a stop. I bet myself it was Trask. I won. He came in without knocking.
“Oh, George,” Marge Bartlett said, “I can’t stand much more.”
He crossed to where she was standing and put an arm around her shoulder. “Marge, we’re doing what we can.
We’re working on it around the clock.” He looked at me.
“Where’s the evidence?”
I nodded at the box on the table.
“You been messing with it?” Trask said. Tough as nails.
“Not me, Chief. I’ve been keeping it under close surveillance. I think the guinea pig is faking.”
“Move aside,” he said and picked up the box. He looked at the guinea pig and shook his head. “Sick,” he said.
“Sickest goddamned thing I ever been involved in. Hey, Silveria.” The young cop appeared at the back door. He had a round moon face and bushy black hair. His uniform cap seemed too small for his head.
“Take this stuff down to the station and hold it for me. I’ll be down in a while to examine it. Send Marsh back here to relieve you.”
Silveria departed. Trask took a ball-point pen and a notebook out of his shirt pocket. “Okay, Marge,” he said, “let’s have it all. When did the package arrive?” I didn’t need to dance that circle with them. “Excuse me,” I said and went out the back door. The day was new and sunny. All it needed to be September mom was a nude bathing in the pool. I looked, just to be sure, but there wasn’t any. A scarlet tanager flashed across the lawn from the crab apple tree to the barn and disappeared into an open loft where the fake post for a hay hoist that never existed jutted out over the door.
I walked over to the barn. Inside was a collection of power mowers, hedge trimmers, electric clippers, rollers, lawn sweepers, barrels, paint cans, posthole diggers, shovels, rakes, bicycle parts, several kegs of eight-penny nails, some folding lawn chairs, a hose, snow tires, and a beach umbrella. To the right a set of stairs ascended to the loft. On the first step Dolly Bartlett was sitting listening to a portable radio through an earplug. She was eating Fritos from a plastic bag. The dog sat on the floor beside her with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, panting.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hi.” She offered the bag of Fritos to me. I took one and ate it. It wasn’t as bad as some things I’d eaten. The Nutter Butter cookies, for instance.
“Had breakfast?” I really know how to talk to kids. After that I could ask her how she was doing in school, or maybe her age. Really get her on my side.
She shook her head and nodded at the Fritos.
“You’d be better off eating the bag,” I said.
She giggled. “I bet I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Bags aren’t nourishing anymore.
Now when I was a boy…”
She made a face and stuck out her tongue. “Oh,” I said, “you heard that line before?”
She nodded. I was competing with the top forty sounds in Boston playing loud in her earphone, and she was only half-listening to me. That was okay because I was only half-saying anything.
“You want to see Kevin’s hideout?” she said, one ear still fastened to the radio.
“Yes,” I said.
“Come on.” She got up carrying the radio and headed up the stairs. Punkin and I scrambled for second position. I won. Still got the old reflexes.
The second floor of the barn was unfinished. Exposed beams, subflooring. At one end a small room had been studded off and Sheetrock nailed up. Some carpenter tools lay on the floor near it, and a box of blue lathing nails had spilled on the floor. It looked-like a project Roger Bartlett was going to do in his spare time, and he didn’t have any spare time. There was scrap lumber and Sheetrock trimmings in a pile as if someone had swept them up and gone for a trash barrel and been waylaid. A number of four-by-eight plywood panels in a simulated wood-plank texture were leaning against a wall.
“In here,” Dolly said. And disappeared into the studded-off room. I followed. It was probably going to be a bathroom from the size and the rough openings that looked to be for plumbing. A makeshift partition had been constructed out of some paneling and two sawhorses.
Behind it was a steamer trunk and a low canvas lawn chair The steamer trunk was locked with a padlock. The floor was covered with a rug that appeared to be a remnant of wall-to-wall carpeting. The window looked out over the pool and the back of the house. The wiring was in, and a bare light bulb was screwed into a porcelain receptacle. A string hung from it.
“What’s in the trunk?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Kevin always kept it locked up. He never let me in here.”
“Do your mother and father know about this place?”
“I doubt it. My father hasn’t worked up here since last summer, and my mother’s never been up here. She says it should be fixed up so she can have it for a studio. But she hasn’t ever come up. Just me and Kevin, and Kevin always kicked me out when he came up here. He didn’t want anyone to know about his place.”