The Balloon Man Read online

  Sarah lifted the necklace from its bed of velvet and held it up.

  “You could fool me,” Jem grunted. “Who made the copies?”

  “I never tracked the guy down. Wish I had, he's probably pulled a few other elegant swindles since. But back then I didn't have the time or the manpower for the job. You remember how Mrs. Kelling's lover operated; he sold the original, had it appraised and authenticated, and then substituted a copy, not once but several times. Some of the victims found out they'd been taken and, being no better than they should be, staged a robbery and put in a claim for reimbursement with their insurance companies. That's how I got into the act.”

  “Some woman in Amsterdam managed to hang on to the original/” Sarah murmured. “Isn't that what you told me? Then how did it get here?”

  “Damned if I know. What's so embarrassing is that Max Bittersohn, great detective, must have been in the room when the unknown donor put it onto the table among the brussels sprouts forks and the snail holders.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Who wasn't? Everybody and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts wanted to check out the wedding gifts. Some of them I knew, most of them I'd never seen before. There were waiters and a couple of guys delivering parcels, and God knows who else. And Egbert, part of the time. Hey, Egbert, did you notice anything unusual?”

  The only reply from the faithful retainer was a gentle snore. Worn out by well-doing and Old Blatherskite, Egbert had dropped off some time back.

  “Don't wake him,” Sarah said sympathetically.

  “I'll ask him in the morning” Max agreed. “Though I doubt if he saw the perp. The place was a madhouse. Our best bet is to start at the other end of the trail, in Amsterdam. Tomorrow.” He was watching his wife. “Try it on, why don't you?”

  Sarah dropped the necklace as if it had burned her. “I couldn't. It's not mine, I don't want it.”

  Max hadn't even got to the part of the story about Louie the Locksmith, but he decided he'd better save that. Sarah looked as if she'd had all she could take for one day.

  “Would you care for some chamomile tea to help you sleep, Uncle Jem?” she asked.

  “I do wish you wouldn't confront me with obscenities while I'm pondering, Sarah. Or was that a tactful hint? I guess I can ponder just as well in bed. Give Egbert a shake, will you? If he sleeps in that chair all night he won't be able to get out of it without a chiropodist.”

  Sarah obliged, and she and Egbert yawned in unison. “Would you mind locking up, Max? I'm awfully tired.”

  “Your wish is my command, angela mia. I'll be along as soon as I've made the rounds. Need any help wrestling Jem up the stairs, Egbert?”

  “Thanks, Mr. Max, but I can manage him well enough. Those martial arts exercises I've been working on lately seem to be helping quite a lot. If you're sure there's nothing you want me for, then, I'll go on up. Good night, Mrs. Sarah”

  “Good night, Egbert. Sleep well, and don't worry about breakfast. I thought we'd have scrambled eggs with some of those muffins and Danish pastries left over from the wedding. Maybe when you get back to town tomorrow you could stop by the Senior Citizens' Recycling Center and give them the rest of the leftovers. If you wouldn't mind, that is.”

  “I don't mind,” said Jem, who hadn't been asked. “So long as I don't have to see Dolph. He and Mary are still in Denmark, aren't they?”

  “Yes, they wanted to get some tips on running an up-to-date recycling center and on various schemes for senior citizens' activities. The Scandinavian countries excel at that sort of thing. I hope they're also having a restful holiday; they deserve it. They've done a wonderful job with the SCRC.”

  “Mary has, you mean,” Jem grunted. “Marrying her was the only smart thing that great tub of lard did in his whole life.”

  “Take him away, Egbert,” Max said wearily, and assisted in the operation. He then ordered his wife to bed. When he joined her, after double-checking the locks on doors and windows and returning the necklace to the safe, she was sound asleep. He was pretty tired himself, but he lay awake for some time.

  He was remembering his and Sarah's wedding. It had taken place on a lovely day in June when the rickety old Ireson's Landing house was still standing but slated for demolition as soon as they could get the wreckers in. Sarah's cousin Dolph Kelling had given the bride away because he'd have raised four kinds of hell if Sarah hadn't let him. Max's nephew, Mike, then a freshman at college, had elected himself Max's best man for much the same reason as Dolph's. Cousin Theonia, by then Mrs. Brooks Kelling, had baked the wedding cake. Miriam Rivkin had baked the knishes. Few of the Kellings had ever tasted a knish before, but they'd been quite ready to eat as many of the bite-size delicacies as they could get. Sarah's devoted henchpersons, Mariposa and Charles, had stage-managed the nuptials in their usual efficient style.

  Nobody had got killed or hurt or drunk beyond reasonable limits. No Kelling had wantonly picked a fight with any other Kelling. The sun had set in a blaze of glory, and the moon had climbed up out of the ocean as he and Sarah watched from the headland. It was a hard fight, Mom, but I won, Max had thought, taking a firm grip on his wife.

  Now he wondered if he would ever succeed in laying the ghosts of Sarah's past. Just when he thought they were gone they rose up from their graves to haunt her. It wasn't nice to hate a dead man, but this wasn't the first time he had cursed the memory of Sarah's handsome, spineless, elderly husband. Alexander had loved her devotedly and had tried his best to protect her from his murderous mother, but he hadn't had the guts to cut the apron strings and face the consequences, unpleasant though those consequences would have been. The train of disaster Caroline Kelling had set in motion was still on track.

  6

  “Where is that damned kid?” Max growled, slamming the phone down.

  Sarah refilled his cup and pushed it toward him. “That's not a nice way to refer to your only son. He's outside with Egbert, watching the removal of the balloon and hoping the Martians will come back.”

  Max gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry, kätzele. You know I wasn't talking about Davy.”

  “Are you apologizing? What a pity. I was hoping we could have a knock-down fight and then make up.”

  “I'd be willing to skip the first part.”

  Sarah slid away from his outstretched hand. “Stop that, you sex maniac. The scrambled eggs will burn, and if I don't get those muffins out of the oven within the next sixty seconds, they'll be leathery.”

  “You made muffins, after all that schlemozle yesterday? What a woman!”

  She didn't look haunted this morning. Her soft brown hair was tied back with a pink ribbon that matched the rose-and-pink print of the caftan he had brought her from Cairo. “So what kid were you damning?” she asked, taking a pan of muffins out of the oven.

  “Jesse. He was supposed to report to me yesterday”

  Sarah popped the muffins into a napkin-lined basket, spooned eggs onto two plates, and joined Max at the table. “We'd better eat while things are relatively calm. As a matter of fact, Jesse telephoned last night.”

  “What? Why didn't you tell me?”

  “Because you knocked me head over hocks with that tasteless bauble, that's why,” his wife said spiritedly. “What's Jesse supposed to be doing, tracing the parure?”

  “Not exactly.” Max finished his first muffin and reached for a second. He wasn't strong enough to begin the unbelievable saga of Louie the Locksmith. “Anybody else call?”

  “I told you about Miriam and the newlyweds. The only other call was from Theonia. It was rather odd, actually. She said she had to talk to you, and when I told her you were putting the alligator to bed she sort of mumbled at me and then Brooks said something I couldn't make out, and Theonia said it probably wasn't important, and that she'd see us soon.”

  Coming from Theonia, that was odd. She was now a Kelling by virtue of marriage to Sarah's cousin Brooks, but all she knew about her own family tree was that she'd been b
orn under one. Her young, terribly frightened mother had given birth to a girl child half Gypsy and half a legacy from an equally frightened young anthropology student who'd got too involved with his homework. Where that had been, and where the young man had gone to, she'd never known and preferred not to guess.

  Nowadays Theonia was the very model of an upper-crust Beacon Hill matron; but she could switch in a wink to a shuffling old woman wearing holey sneakers and carrying a worn-out shopping bag crammed with salvage out of the city's trash bins. Or she might be an ageless beauty wrapped in an aura of mystery and a gown that whispered knowingly of Paris but was in fact a negligee she'd garnished with sumptuous lace from a pair of the late Caroline Kelling's pure silk crepe de chine step-ins, circa 1928. She made her own clothes from outdated garments she picked up at sales, turned them into haute couture, and left professional designers sobbing in their Campari. Her most successful coup had been Brooks Kelling, who had worked his own special magic on his chosen lady with the mating call of the ruffed grouse and a plain gold wedding band.

  Had Theonia seen something or heard something that had aroused her suspicions? Max tried to remember where she had been during the festivities and drew a complete blank. He had caught glimpses of her and Brooks from time to time, during the dancing, and among the people scampering out from under the descending balloon. The last time he'd seen her she'd been standing out in front of the house, waiting for Brooks to bring the old Cadillac around. Brooks and Theonia had picked up Anora Protheroe's stepson, George, and a couple of George's assistants from his atelier in the Back Bay and were heading out to Anora's cluttered ark at Chestnut Hill for one of her little teas.

  If Theonia or Brooks had observed anything of importance, she would have said so. Or would she? It might have been impossible to find a chance to speak in private. He hoped this wasn't one of the occasions when Theo-nia's Gypsy half took over. She'd been reading tea leaves in a run-down café when she moved into the boarding-house Sarah had started after her husband's death. Like most of the men who were privileged to behold her voluptuous contours, Brooks had fallen in love at first sight and wooed her with birdcalls and avian courting rituals. It had been a while since Theonia had had one of her visions. Max didn't believe in them. But she'd been uncannily accurate a couple of times.

  He'd meant to get in touch with Brooks and Theonia anyhow, since he'd probably need their assistance. First things first, though.

  “I'd better go out and make sure Davy doesn't get in the way of that truck,” he said, hearing a heavy engine start up.

  “Egbert has him leashed,” Sarah said comfortably. “Or vice versa. He's being a camel—Egbert, that is—in the caravan of a dashing African explorer. Camels will run away if they aren't firmly tied to the explorer, you know.”

  “I didn't, but I'm relieved to hear it. Are the Zickerys there?”

  “No, just the truck and a crew of husky young tent rollers, and an old geezer who seems to be in charge of the balloon. Davy was sadly disappointed. He still thinks the Zickery twins are Martians.”

  “So do I,” Max said. “All right, darling, I'll leave you to keep the home fires burning while I make a few phone calls.”

  The office had three phones. The green was the one they used for family calls, the white was the business phone, and the red had a number known only to themselves and Cousin Brooks, Theonia's husband. Theonia probably knew it, too, since Brooks was putty in her exquisitely plump white hands. Max couldn't blame him.

  Brooks was in charge of the Boston office, a little cubbyhole in a building on the corner of Boylston and Tremont. Since the nature of their business didn't lend itself to regular office hours, it was more than likely Brooks wouldn't be there so early, especially if he'd been whooping it up with Anora and company after the wedding. Jesse might or might not be home. Hoping he was, and that he was asleep, Max picked up the white phone and dialed the number.

  Jesse might have been sleeping, but he snapped to attention when he heard the voice of his revered leader. “Morning, Uncle Max. I expected you'd call me back last night.”

  “Why should I? Obviously you didn't find out anything useful. What were you doing, chasing bridesmaids?”

  “Not just chasing. Remember the pale yellow one?” Jesse added hastily, “Don't get mad, Uncle Max. I'd already covered the place like a blanket and hit one dead end after another.”

  “You're mixing your metaphors. No luck finding Louie?”

  “No, sir. So I got to talking to Jennifer—that's her name, Jennifer—and we, well, we decided we'd split, and some of the others decided they'd come, too, and we went to the Bucket of Clams, and what with one thing and another … You aren't mad, are you, sir?”

  In fact Max was marveling over the repeated “sirs.” Before he and Sarah had taken Jesse in hand, that word would never have passed the childish lips of any of Lionel's offspring. A string of obscenities would have been more likely. It was necessary to maintain discipline, however, which he did by keeping a stony silence.

  “Aw, come on, Uncle Max. I'd have told you right away if I'd found any trace of the old geezer. Don't tell me you never got distracted by a pretty girl starving for clams?”

  “Never,” Max said stoutly, crossing all the fingers he could spare. A lie of that magnitude demanded more fingers, and probably his toes as well, but the latter were inside his slippers and inaccessible.

  “What do you want me to do now?” Jesse asked humbly.

  “Nothing. I'll let you know Stay cool,” he added, hoping that attempt at modern lingo didn't date him too badly.

  Brooks wasn't at the office, so Max tried the Tulip Street house. Sarah had inherited the place from her husband and had run it as a boardinghouse while the lawyers were trying to straighten out the complex train of illegal second mortgages and general chicanery instigated by Caroline Kelling and her lover. It was during that period of her life that Sarah had formed close friendships with Mariposa and her significant other, Charles, who now ran the house for Brooks and Theonia and any other members of the family who happened to be in Boston.

  Brooks answered on the second ring. His first question made Max's hackles rise.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Why shouldn't it be?”

  “Didn't you read Theonia's note?”

  “What note? Damn it,” Max sputtered, “can't we stop conversing in questions?”

  “If you prefer,” Brooks said agreeably. “She said she'd slipped a note into your pocket yesterday, before we left for Anora's.”

  “It must still be there, then. What did it say?” Realizing he had slipped back into the interrogatory mode, Max answered his question with the one Brooks would logically have asked. “Why don't I read it? Yeah, right, I will. That's not the reason I called. Something odd has happened. Remember that ruby parure that was stolen from the safe-deposit box?”

  “The Kelling parure? How could I forget? Don't tell me”

  Max told him. Brooks let out a long musical whistle, probably the call of some exotic bird or other, had Max been able to identify it.

  “Well, well, fancy that. I won't waste your time in idle theorizing, Max, since I'm sure the various possibilities have already occurred to you. Yes indeed, a business conference is definitely in order. Will you come here, or shall we come to you?”

  Max had already worked it out. “We'll come there. I want to get Uncle Jem and Egbert back to Pinckney Street; they stayed overnight, you know, since Egbert doesn't like to drive after dark. I'm not happy about the old boy driving before dark, either, especially in city traffic, and I'd been trying to think of a way of playing chauffeur without hurting Egbert's feelings. I'll head on over to Tulip Street after I deliver them, and you and Theonia, or Jesse, or somebody, depending on how the investigation develops, can drive me home tomorrow.”

  “Excellent,” Brooks said crisply. “Is there something you want me to do right away? I had planned to spend the morning cleaning up the matter of those missing
Utrillos, but—”

  “No, that's fine. At the moment I don't know what the hell is going on, much less what to do about it.”

  When he returned to the kitchen to tell Sarah what he'd arranged, he found her less than enthusiastic. “There's an awful lot to do here, Max. Much as I'd love to see Brooks and Theonia, I really ought to get the presents packed up and recorded and taken to the carriage house. I haven't been able to use my desk for weeks. Then there are the tent people to deal with. They said they'd remove the remains as soon as the balloon was out of the way. I telephoned earlier, and they said they'd come right away.”

  “How'd you accomplish that?” Max asked respectfully. “More intimidation, à la Aunt Emma?”

  “Not exactly. I just refused to pay them until they'd finished the job. And what would we do about Davy?”

  “Take him along,” said Davy's doting father.

  Sarah looked doubtful. “I'd like to get him back on a regular schedule. He's had a lot of excitement the past few days. Speaking of which, why don't you go out and relieve Egbert? He's been a camel for over an hour, and Davy is apparently refusing to let him off the lead.”

  Max glanced out the window. He could see the small figure of his son running circles around the crumpled yellow-and-white folds of the tent. The camel was unquestionably staggering.

  “Poor old Egbert. All right, süssele, I'll assert my parental authority. Why don't you roust your uncle out of bed so we can get ourselves organized?”

  “I'd rather be chewed by scorpions. Do scorpions have teeth?”

  “I doubt it, but I get the idea. I'll send Egbert in.”

  Davy didn't want to go in. “Even camels need to be watered, fed, and rested,” Max pointed out. “An experienced explorer takes good care of his livestock.”

  “What do camels eat?” Davy asked curiously.

  “Muffins,” Max said. “They prefer blueberry.”