“That’s not always a good way to trust.”
“Pardon?”
“Implicitly.” I turned to Anne’s mother. “Mrs. Morrow, how big a staff do you have at your estate?”
The older woman looked up from her needlepoint. “Twenty-nine. But I assure you, Mr. Heller, they’re all trustworthy.”
“I’m sure they are, Mrs. Morrow. But how many of them knew, or could have known, about the change of plans for Anne and her husband and son, to stay over an extra day or two here?”
Mrs. Morrow lifted her shoulders in a tiny shrug, not missing a stitch. “Most of them. Perhaps all of them.”
I thought about that.
“You know, Mr. Heller,” Anne said, reflectively, “there was something else odd about that evening. The evening that Charlie was stolen away, I mean….”
“What was that, Mrs. Lindbergh?”
Her eyes tightened. “My husband was supposed to give a speech that night, to the alumni at New York University. But he’s been so overworked lately, he mixed up the dates. He drove home, instead.”
“You mean, he wasn’t supposed to be here that evening?”
“No.”
I leaned forward. “You realize that only someone within this household—or possibly the Morrow household— could have known that.”
“Yes. But that assumes the kidnappers knew. That this wasn’t all just a matter of…chance. Blind, dumb chance. That’s…that’s what I have so much difficulty accepting.”
Behind us a voice said, “Everything in life is chance, dear.”
It was Lindbergh. He was wearing a corduroy jacket over a sweater and open-collar shirt; his pants were tucked into leather boots that rose midcalf. He looked like a college boy—a hung-over college boy, that is. His face was haggard as hell.
He came up behind his wife, behind the couch, and placed a hand gently on her shoulder. She reached up and touched the hand, but did not look back at him.
“You can guard against the high percentage of chance,” he said, “but not against chance itself.”
She nodded wisely. She’d heard him say it before.
I said, “You’re right, Colonel. But don’t go writing off everything you don’t understand as happenstance. In my business we learn to look at coincidence with a jaundiced eye.”
He nodded, but I wasn’t sure he’d paid any attention. He said, “Have you had any breakfast, Nate?”
“No, sir.”
“Let’s round you something up. I’d like a word with you.”
We excused ourselves to the ladies. He walked briskly and I followed along, till he came to a sudden stop in the foyer, beyond earshot of his wife and mother-in-law.
“This fellow Red Johnson is being brought around today,” he said.
“Yes.”
“He isn’t technically under arrest, you know. The Hartford police have turned him over to the custody of the state police, here. He’ll be held in Newark.”
“Well, that’s good.”
He put his hands in his pockets, rocked gently on his feet. “This is going to be hard on Miss Gow, if this beau of hers was using her for information.”
I thought,
But I said, sympathetically, “Yes, I know.”
“You know, she was badly embarrassed when the papers were full of that Scotty Gow nonsense.”
The first several days after the kidnapping, the press and the cops of several cities had latched onto the notion that one Scotty Gow, a Purple Gang member in Detroit, was the brother of Betty Gow. Miss Gow had worked in Detroit, and Lindbergh’s mother lived in Detroit, so everybody put two and two together and came up with three hundred and five.
“He wasn’t her brother,” I said.
“Of course not. Understand, I’m in general pleased with Colonel Schwarzkopf’s handling of this situation, but this persistent, sometimes boorish questioning of my staff does not please me.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“I’d appreciate it, Nate, if you would do two things for me.”
“Sure.”
“Don’t pester my servants with questions—don’t be part of this inquisition. And let me know if you see Schwarzkopf or his chief bully, Inspector Welch, overstepping the line.”
“Sure. But, Slim…there
