The Balloon Man Read online

  Max examined the display with a considering, expert's eye and decided to ignore his wife's suggestion that he check the list she and Miriam had begun as soon as the gifts began to arrive. She'd just said that to keep him out of mischief. Anyhow, he didn't know where she'd put the damned list. Besides, it was impossible to do the job under these conditions, with people coming and going and wanting to talk and getting in the way. The pace was picking up. More guests were coming, more food being delivered, more people wanting to see the presents. Where, he wondered, had all this stuff come from? The glittering array covered the desk, the library table, and the other tables that had been brought in from various rooms and draped decorously in white linen. Six coffeemakers, four blenders, several other gadgets whose functions he was afraid to speculate about, vessels of silver, crystal, china, pottery, plastic, feathers … Max did a double take. They were feathers, dry, molting, faded feathers, covering a bowl the size of a washbasin. Its original function was questionable, its present utility nil. That had to have come from the Kelling side. The Kellings never threw anything away. Maybe this was one of Aunt Appie's family treasures.

  Tearing his incredulous eyes away from the object, Max was pleased to see Egbert, Uncle Jem's aged and invaluable valet de chambre, companion, and all-round good egg. They exchanged greetings that were, at least on Max's part, heartfelt. The room was too crowded. People were getting fingerprints on the silver, and jostling the tables, and picking up those handy white cards and probably not putting them back with the right gifts. Egbert was up to the job. Max watched admiringly as Egbert moved from one group to another, murmuring hints about coffee and pastries on the deck and suggesting guests might care to stroll down to the carriage house for a look at the Thunderbird, the studio, and the upstairs living quarters, giving special attention to the curtains and pillow tops, all embroidered by Mrs. Bittersohn Senior using motifs taken from Tracy's prize-winning pottery, which could already be seen in some of the more prestigious decorating shops.

  Finally the place began to clear out, and Max, who had decided to concentrate on looking elegant and debonair, relaxed. People were drifting toward the big tent, where the bridal couple would stand to take their vows. Egbert tactfully urged the last of the viewers away, leaving Max alone in the library. Max glanced at his watch. He'd better get out there and make like a host until the ushers had got everybody seated. He cast a final glance over the wedding gifts, and froze.

  2

  “My God! Where did this come from?”

  Max knew he ought to be out in the tent by now, but he remained stock still, staring in disbelief at the wealth of gold and rubies that nestled snugly on the worn velvet of a rubbed leather jewel case.

  Max had authenticated many jewels in his career, but he had a particularly intimate acquaintance with this necklace. He'd seen it in Brussels, Amsterdam, Rio, Dallas, Rome, and Hong Kong—and in the portraits and photographs of three successive Kelling wives who had been privileged to flaunt their husbands' wealth and dignity by wearing the Kelling rubies. Sarah's former mother-in-law, Caroline Kelling, had been the last to wear the opulent parure, before she had ruthlessly and efficiently looted her only son of valuables that were rightfully his. She had handed over the Kelling jewels, including the rubies, to her lover, who had sold them and kept the money for himself.

  Sarah had known about the Kelling parure even before she'd married Alexander, but she'd never seen it, although the pieces should all have been hers for her lifetime. Caroline Kelling had ruled her son with an iron hand and hadn't even bothered to swathe it in a velvet glove. Though blind and deaf, she'd run the old house on Tulip Street to suit herself and treated her young daughter-in-law like a servant. Max would never forget the day Sarah had opened the safe-deposit box that ought to have contained the Kelling jewels, part of her inheritance from her dead husband, and had found it filled with bricks. He hadn't been surprised, but poor Sarah had fainted dead away. Small wonder, after losing her husband and learning from him, before he died, that his mother had killed several people, including Sarah's father.

  Max closed his eyes, rubbed them, and opened them again. He hadn't been hallucinating. The necklace was still there. Or was it one of the copies of the necklace Caroline Kelling's lover, Harry Lackridge, had pawned off onto unsuspecting buyers in Brussels, Rio, Dallas, Rome, and Hong Kong, before a suspicious-minded lady in Amsterdam had pulled a reverse swindle and kept not just the necklace, but the rest of the parure—bracelets, clips, chains, tiara, a lavaliere, even a matching opera glass?

  The rest of the parure. It wasn't until that thought entered his dead brain that Max saw the other velvet cases, modestly concealed under the large open case that displayed the necklace. It took only a few moments to confirm his hunch. The other pieces were there, too, even the opera glass. Glancing uneasily over his shoulder, he closed the cases and refastened them, sliding each small hook into its corresponding socket with fingers that were not as steady as they might have been.

  Could this be one of the copies Lackridge had had made in order to swindle purchasers? Somehow Max didn't think so. The astute lady in Amsterdam was dead; she had passed on earlier that year. Maybe her heirs had sold the rubies, and they had come into the hands of one of Tracy's friends or relations. Her father had enough money to buy all the rubies he wanted; he was CEO of Warty Pickles Inc., and his products could be found on the shelves of every grocery store in the country. Max turned over the white card on which the donor's name and address were supposed to be printed. Both sides were blank.

  The violin, the cello, the oboe, and the flute burst forth in beautiful unison. The bridal procession must be almost ready to process. Max couldn't see his mother, but he could feel her sending some pretty vibrant thought waves. He himself was slated not to join in the procession down the improvised aisle, but to lurk at the back of the big tent and make sure that everything was moving along in strict accordance with Miriam's ironclad schedule.

  What the hell was he going to do with the rubbed velvet cases and their unbelievable contents? They couldn't be left out on the table. In Max's opinion the parure was a particularly repellent example of Victorian tastelessness, but the gold was eighteen karat and the rubies were very large and of the finest color, and there were a lot of both rubies and gold. What about the safe in an upstairs wall of their bedroom? Max dismissed the idea. The bridesmaids had been using that room as a dressing room all day. It was fifty to one that some frantic young bridesmaid was in there now, pinning up a broken strap or doing whatever excitable females did to make themselves beautiful. He reached up and hid the boxes behind a Morocco-bound set of Thackeray on the top shelf of one of the bookcases, made sure the library windows were locked as tight as he could get them, and double-locked the only door to the room before he put the only key into his breast pocket. This was the best he could do on such short notice; it would have to be enough for now.

  The music that had been no more than a pleasant background noise began to swell and soar, gathering families and friends together in one joyful mass. Ushers were finding seats for the laggards, clearing the center aisle once most of the well-wishers were in their places, and going back to escort those who merited special notice.

  Max took up his position at the back of the tent, trying to look as if he'd been there for hours. He was in time to see the bride's mother led to her place. Jeanne brightened up as soon as she noticed what a handsome young fellow Mike's best friend and head usher happened to be.

  Next came Mother and Father Bittersohn, she in light blue silk, wearing a lovely corsage created especially for her by Cousin Anne and the sort of hat that Queen Elizabeth II might have chosen if she'd had Miriam handy to make it for her. The patriarch entered correct on all counts in his light gray suit and tie, his boutonniere, his tallis, and a handsome new yarmulke embroidered by his gifted wife.

  Miriam Rivkin's sewing machine had been busy ever since Mike and Tracy had finally made up their minds to a family wedding with at lea
st some of the trimmings. She'd created Tracy's gown of ivory lace over taffeta, the maid of honors in pale yellow, arid the four bridesmaids' in shades from gold to russet. Just as she'd thought she was finished sewing the last dress, Miriam had happened to spy a wonderful silk print splashed with subtly defined chrysanthemums. She'd sat up all that night at the machine; now she swished down the aisle, looking absolutely gorgeous, as she could when she chose. And now entered the bridesmaids, all in taffeta with matching chrysanthemum bouquets that ranged from russet to amber to brighter gold to the maid of honor's sunshine yellow. Finally, here came the bride, a princess straight out of a fairy tale in creamy satin frothed with lace and veiled in tulle. Even in high-heeled satin pumps and a coronet of charming little button chrysanthemums interspersed with sprays of the traditional orange blossoms, Tracy barely came up to her prospective father-in-law's shoulder. She kept glancing up to make sure Ira was really and truly there. He glanced back, proud as any father could be to show off his beautiful daughter, even though Tracy would still technically be on loan until she and Mike had pledged their vows.

  The bride's bouquet was Anne's masterpiece, its creams and whites mingled as subtly as the highlights and shadows that Miriam had created out of the lace and tulle and creamy satin, emphasizing the tiny waist and sneaking a little extra padding into the bodice, as many a young bride had done before her.

  The wedding ceremony was neither too short nor too long, but it seemed long to Max, stewing over the necklace, and to the guests who wondered how soon the bar would be open and the food served. As soon as the inevitable photographers began taking the inevitable scads of pictures on the side lawn overlooking the sea, Max looked guiltily around to make sure Miriam wasn't planning to grab him for some reason or other and made a dash for the house.

  With all that joyful noise outside, the library felt almost too quiet when Max unlocked the door. He made sure that the Kelling jewels were still hiding behind Thackeray and stood pondering. The more he thought about it, the more peculiar the situation appeared. How had the rubies got there? Those velvet cases hadn't been there when he'd first entered the library. He couldn't have missed seeing the necklace; its baroque extravagance stood out among the sleek modern shapes of plastic arid silver like an alligator in an aviary. One of the guests must have slipped the parure onto the table while he wasn't looking, shoving aside the surrounding appliances and bibelots to make room for it. If another guest had seen the anonymous donor, he or she would have assumed a last-minute gift had been delivered in person. There didn't seem to be any point in asking whether anyone had observed such a thing. He couldn't even remember who had been in the room or when, and a good number of the visitors had been people he didn't know. Maybe Egbert would remember something. He'd have to have a long talk with Egbert, and with Sarah, but not until after the newlyweds had left and the guests departed. His wife would consider even the miraculous reappearance of a lost family treasure unimportant if it spoiled Tracy and Mike's big day. Especially this treasure, with its miserable memories.

  He was about to return to his duties when he became aware of a faint but unpleasant odor. It hadn't been there when he'd locked the room. Had someone had the gall to leave a bag of garbage under a table or in a corner? Max took a flashlight from the rack in which Sarah kept a few extras in case of downed power lines or other mishaps that people who live close to the sea are used to, and began prowling. The increasing pungency of the smell led him to the desk. There was something there all right, tucked away underneath, between the pairs of supporting drawers. Max bent over to inspect it more closely. He wished he hadn't. Even through the double-thick, man-size plastic bag that covered it, who could mistake the shape and smell of a decaying human body?

  Max felt along the outside of that gruesome heap, hoping to convince himself that it was not that of a human form or what was left of one. Then he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances and picked up the telephone.

  “This is Max Bittersohn at Ireson's Landing, and I need an ambulance right away.… No, were all fine; it's the corpse I've just found under my wife's desk that's giving the trouble. Do me a favor and keep the siren mute if you can. We've got about a hundred guests and relatives attending my nephews wedding, and—What the hellf”

  The corpse had moved. Max was more or less accustomed to bodies, but he had had a hard morning. He jumped back, dropping the phone, and watched open-mouthed as a man crawled out from under the desk, shedding the black plastic bag like a moth emerging from a cocoon. Moths don't look like much when they first emerge, and neither did this individual, who was extremely unlikely to spread gorgeous wings and waft off into the blue. He made Max think of a ferret. Brooks Kelling could probably come up with a more interesting ornithological comparison, but ferret was what came to Max's mind. Some kind of rodent, anyhow. The man was of medium height, skinny as a rail, with a long pointed nose. The hairs under the nose might have been meant to be a mustache, but there weren't many of them, and they twitched like a rat's whiskers when he talked.

  “Sorry to cause all this trouble, Mr. Kelling—I mean, Mr. Bittersohn—but I'm not dead. It's, er, my brother who's dead, at least I think he is, but he's not here, so, er, we don't need an ambulance, though it was very kind of you to—”

  “Shut up,” Max said. He picked up the phone, which was squawking agitatedly. “Cancel the ambulance, Jofferty.… No, nothing's wrong. No more than usual. I'll get back to you.”

  The erstwhile corpse was now standing upright. It was clad in black trousers and white shirt and a black bow tie. The hired waiters wore clothes like those.

  “Who the hell are you?” Max demanded. “And how the hell did you get in here?”

  “I just came to borrow a shovel. You see, my brother, well, I don't have any money for a funeral, so I thought the only reasonable thing would be to dig a nice big hole somewhere out in the woods and, er, um, put him in. You wouldn't mind lending me a shovel, would you? And maybe somebody to do the digging? My doctor says I'm not in condition to do anything strenuous.”

  “Your name isn't Kelling, is it?” Max inquired, hoping the answer would be in the affirmative. A hitherto unknown and even loonier than average Kelling would explain a lot.

  The man shook his head regretfully. “I'm Dewey Maltravers—no, that's my brother. I'm Louie, and I'm a stand-in.”

  “What do you mean, a stand-in?”

  “Well, see, when my brother was alive, which was until a while ago, whenever that was … See, I never had to know what time it was because all I did was stand there. When I wasn't sitting down, that is. Or playing dead. Playing dead is my true calling, but mostly I have to stand. I don't know what's going to become of me now, there are far too many stand-ins around Boston already. You wouldn't care to take on a middle-aged actor with a case of chronic hiccups, I don't suppose? Right now, I have to tell you, my career, is practically up the spout. That's why I thought you might be needing a reliable stand-in.”

  “You're an actor?” Max was trying to get a grip on the conversation.

  “Well, yes, in a way. My brother and I used to do a lot of advertising commercials with collie dogs in them and sometimes a Peke or an Irish wolfhound, but nowadays it's all just cats, cats, cats. I'm allergic to cats. They give me hiccups. But I'm a real whiz at holding up lampposts. You know, the nonchalant slouch, the hat brim pulled down over the forehead, and the hands in the pockets. You've got a real handsome old lamppost out there, so maybe—”

  “And that's all you do? You've never tried anything else?”

  “Well, I wouldn't like this to get around, but I do have what you might call an avocation. I, er, fix locks.”

  “Ah,” Max said, enlightened. “You don't mean you do hairdressing on the side?”

  “Not exactly. I do mostly padlocks and dead bolts and things of that nature. Most people, I mean the ones who actually talk to me, call me Louie the Locksmith. I know, it's a comedown. I can see you shrinking away from somebody who's not an
artiste but merely a tradesman of a certain kind.”

  “No,” said Max. “You're the one who's shrinking away, Louie. Or maybe sidling is a better word. You're a skillful sidler, but if you think I'm letting you leave here without a better explanation for your presence than that string of nonsense, you can think again. What is that awful stench? Are you sure you don't have Dewey, or part of him, inside the trash bag?”

  He had sidled along with the locksmith and was still between him and the door. He wasn't worried about Louie getting away; the man was six inches shorter and twenty years older.

  “Stench?” Louie sniffed. “Awful? Why, Mr. Kelling, I mean Mr. Bittersohn, that is a delectable odor. You don't care for Gorgonzola?”

  “Cheese?” Max sniffed, too.

  “I left my sandwich in the trash bag when I heard you asking for an ambulance,” Louie explained. “I had to stop you, since I wouldn't want to put our hardworking police to unnecessary trouble. Thank you for reminding me. I'll just get it. There is a good half left”

  He pulled the trash bag out from under the desk and reached into it.

  The next thing Max knew he was flat on the floor with two broken legs. After a dazed interval he decided they weren't broken after all, but the club or stake, or maybe it had been a shovel, concealed by the black plastic wrappings had caught him an awful crack across the shins. Luckily it hadn't hit the healing fracture he had sustained the year before. By the time he got his wits back and his legs under him he knew there was no hope of catching up with Louie. He reached for the phone. This time he didn't call the police.