13
'D'you think she's sleepin' at a girl friend's?' Dahl muttered.
'More likely a boyfriend's,' I replied, thinking of the Schemer's report on the elder Barton daughter. 'Let's make sure of the Bartons.'
Ellen Barton's disappearance from her room was just one more thing gone wrong in a night notably full of same. We backed out of her bedroom and moved down the hall. The door to the master bedroom was closed, too. I could hear snoring.
There was no need for finesse now. There was no one left to be wakened by a scream. I opened the bedroom door and walked in. Behind me, Dahl flicked on the light switch. Dahl and I were standing on either side of the bed by the time Thomas Barton struggled from the depths of sleep to a sitting position. Thelma Barton snored on.
The bank manager blinked at Dahl's mask. 'What- what-' he stammered.
'Quiet,' Dahl ordered. His eyes on the sleeping Thelma Barton, he picked up the husband's pillow.
At the sound of Dahl's voice, the snoring stopped. Thelma Barton spoke with her eyes closed. 'Put out that light, Tom,' she said. 'You shouldn't have had that last bottle of beer.'
'Dear,' her husband began.
I don't know what it was she thought she heard in his voice, but her eyes snapped open. I could see the scream starting from her toes. Dahl saw it, too. He dropped the pillow onto her face. The scream dissipated itself in a hissing sound. Dahl held the pillow in place till she stopped fighting it. 'Quiet,' he warned again, and removed the pillow.
Thelma Barton sat up. She was the picture of indignation. Her hair was in curlers and her nightgown had slipped off one shoulder, disclosing an undersized breast. 'You two will go to the electric chair for this,' she proclaimed, jerking the gown back into place. She had a jaw-line like a grenadier guard. 'Where are my children?' she demanded, glaring at Dahl.
'In their beds,' Dahl replied. I could tell from his voice he was enjoying himself. 'Except Ellen.'
'Except Ellen?' Mrs. Barton's voice rose an octave. 'What do you mean 'except Ellen'?'
'Her bed hasn't been slept in.'
'Hasn't been-' Thelma Barton's bare feet hit the floor with a splat. Beneath her gown, her long, thin legs scissored toward the doorway. Dahl followed her. I could sense his smirk at the woman's semitransparent dishabille.
When they disappeared down the hallway, I looked at the man in the bed. 'We're going to the bank shortly,' I said.
'The bank!' he exclaimed, his eyes bulging. 'I thought-'
'It's not a house burglary.'
'But you can't possibly hope to accomplish-'
I was listening to Thelma Barton's audible return from her daughter's room. 'Imagine!' she was saying as she burst into the master bedroom. 'That vixen has gone out over the roof again! After all our lectures, Tom! I'll-'
'Get dressed, Mrs. Barton,' I said.
'Dressed? What for?'
'We're all going to the Mace home.'
She got the picture. Her tone lost some of its incisive-ness. 'What about Margie and Tommy?'
'They'll come when Tommy delivers his paper route.'
'How did you know-'
'Evidently they have it all planned, dear,' Thomas Barton said quietly. 'For the children's sake, we must do what they say.' He slid out of bed. He was a short, paunchy man. Both Bartons began to dress.
I moved over to Dahl, who was lounging in the doorway. 'Sure wish I'd brought my camera inside with me,' he said wistfully. He was eyeing Thelma Barton's struggle to dress under cover of her nightgown.
'You stay here and wait for Ellen,' I said to Dahl in an undertone. 'I'll take this pair to the Mace's, then come back and go with the kids on the boy's paper route when it's time. Margie's presence should assure Tommy's cooperation. When I'm ready to take them to the other house, hopefully you'll have corralled Ellen and added her to the collection. Give me your car keys and'-mentally I counted heads-'five pairs of your tie-cords.'
Dahl handed them over. Five minutes later I ushered Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Barton out the back door of their home. I had no fear of antics on their part. They knew that Dahl was remaining with the children.
I drove Dahl's rental to the Mace house and delivered the Bartons to Preacher Harris in the basement. I had time only for a glimpse of the startled looks on four faces as the Maces and the Bartons met under other-than- ordinary circumstances. Rachel was as beamingly nude as before although there was a shredded sheet beside her on the mattress floor. 'I tried to cover her up but she tears everything,' Harris explained.
'So I see.' I handed him the tie-cords. 'You've got enough here now so they might be tempted to jump you. Tie them up. The girl first.' I explained the hangup with Ellen and the fact that Dahl was waiting for her. 'I'll be back with the kids,' I concluded.
I left the house and started down the driveway to the car. A police cruiser was moving slowly through the block, one of the occasional 'irregulars' that the Schemer had warned the police put on to avoid being typed by people like us. I stopped in the shadows. The cruiser's spotlight flicked on and lingered on the rental license plate, but the cruiser kept on going.
The danger would come on the cruiser's next swing through the area, if there was a next swing. Nine nights out of ten all the cops would have been back at the station, drinking coffee and writing up their reports, but this was the tenth night. One more look at those rental plates and the cop in the cruiser was liable to stop and try to find out the reason for its presence.
I went back into the house and called down to Harris in the basement. He came halfway up the stairs, looking angry. 'I'm going to gag that goddam Barton woman,' he declared.
'What's the matter?'
'She's getting everyone upset, running her mouth about the criminal irresponsibility involved in keeping the idiot girl a prisoner all these years. Mrs. Mace is almost in tears, and the two men are sitting there trying not to listen. We don't want Mace upset before he gets to the bank, do we?'
'Suit yourself about the gag, but find out from Mace where he keeps his car keys.' I explained about the police cruiser. 'I'm going to drive the Mace car and put the rental job in his driveway.'
'Good deal.' Harris went down the steps. 'They're in a mixing bowl inside the first wall cabinet as you come in the back door,' he called up to me in a moment.
'Right.' I closed the basement door. I found the car keys and went outside again. I switched cars, although the sound of the Mace Rambler station wagon's engine made me uneasy. The car was unlikely to be dependable for anything but short hauls.
Dahl was waiting for me at the head of the stairs when I climbed to the second floor of the Barton home. He was grinning widely. 'Ellen came in the window ten minutes ago,' he said. 'And would you believe she's stoned on Mary Jane? How do you like these small-town kids?'
'Let's take a look at her,' I said.
Dahl led the way to her bedroom. 'She'd never have made it if a couple of her pals hadn't boosted her up onto the porch roof. You never heard such giggling,' he said. He turned on a bedside lamp. A tall, black-haired, beautiful girl was sprawled on her side in the bed, clad only in a pair of transparent panties. She was breathing raggedly but deeply. I could detect the sweetish odor of marijuana. A trail of feminine clothing extended from the open window to the bed. 'She shed her clothes like they were on fire,' Dahl continued. 'How we gonna move her to the other house?'
'Mummified in a blanket, if we have to.'
Dahl was staring down at the girl on the bed. 'Great pair of teats. Nothin' wrong with the ass, either, even if she has been workin' it overtime tonight.'
'Working it overtime?'
