like a mansion. It’s never the bosses who end up broke. They’ll make sure they get their bonuses and pensions sorted before the plant closes. You watch.”
She obviously wasn’t as keen on the Schumanns as she had originally implied. After her husband and son are laid off, I thought, she probably won’t have a good word left for anyone to do with Delafield Industries, Inc.
Only one person we spoke to knew of MaryLou Fordham. It was the man in the novelty sculpture shop.
“Nice legs,” he’d said with a knowing smile. I had smiled back at him, but it was not her legs that I remembered. It was the lack of them.
WE DROVE slowly along Lake Drive, staring at each of the impressive residences. This was millionaires’ row for Delafield. Each house sat in the center of its own large garden, with impressive fences, walls and gates to keep out the unwanted. From the road, it wasn’t very easy to see the buildings due to the many pine trees and the bountiful rhododendrons, but Caroline and I had previously driven over to the far side of the lake and had looked back to identify the Schumann home. As the cushion lady had said, it was quite a mansion: a modern, three-story house in gray stone with a red roof, set above a sweeping, well-tended lawn that ran down to the water and a dock, complete with boat.
Was this the home of the true target of the Newmarket bombing? Was this the home of a victim, or a villain? Was this the home of a friend, or a foe?
Only one way to find out, I thought, and I pushed the button on the intercom beside the eight-foot-high wrought-iron security gates.
16
D orothy Schumann was a slight woman. Although she was not more than five foot eight, she looked taller due to her slender shape. She had long, thin hands that were ghostly white, seemingly almost transparent, and they shook slightly as she rested them in her lap. Caroline and I and Mrs. Schumann sat on green-and-white sofas in her drawing room, the view down to the lake as spectacular as I had imagined.
“So you met my Rolf in England,” said Mrs. Schumann.
“Yes,” I said. “At Newmarket racetrack.”
“On the day of the bomb?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I was at the lunch.”
She looked at me closely. “You were very lucky, then.”
“Yes,” I agreed. I explained to her that I was staying in Chicago on business and had decided to come and see how Rolf was doing, now that he was home.
“How kind,” she said somewhat despondently. “But Rolf is not home here. He’s still in the hospital in Milwaukee having treatment.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m so sorry. I thought I had heard that he was well enough to go home.”
“He was well enough to be flown back last week,” she said. “But I’m afraid he’s not very well at all.” She was having difficulty holding herself together. “He has some kind of brain damage.” She swallowed. “He just sits there, staring into space. He doesn’t even seem to recognize me. The doctors don’t seem to know if he will ever recover.” She shook with sobs. “What am I going to do?”
Caroline went across to the sofa where Mrs. Schumann was and sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Dorothy said. She took a tissue from her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes, smearing her makeup and causing her to cry even more.
“Come on,” said Caroline. “Let’s go and sort you out.”
Caroline almost pulled Mrs. Schumann to her feet and guided her gently into the master bedroom suite, which, like in many modern American homes, was on the ground floor.
I looked around the drawing room. There were masses of family photographs in silver frames sitting on a table near the window. I looked at the pictures of Rolf Schumann in happier times, many with a much-healthier- looking Dorothy at his side. There were also images of him at dinners in black tie, and at a building site in a bright yellow hard hat and muddy steel-tipped boots. There were two of him dressed for polo, one of him mounted, smiling broadly, with his mallet in the air, and another dismounted, receiving a silver trophy from a man who even I recognized as a senior American politician with presidential aspirations.
But there was little else in the room that could give me much insight into the man that Rolf Schumann used to be.
I opened a door on the far side of the room from where the women had disappeared and found myself in Rolf’s study. In contrast to the brightness of the white-decorated drawing room, his study was dark, with heavy wood paneling, and a great oak desk in the center. On one wall was a “map” of Africa in which each of the countries was depicted by a different animal hide. Above and behind the desk, a huge stag’s head leaned out from the wall, its magnificent multipointed antlers almost reaching up to the impressively high ceiling. There were more photographs here too: Rolf Schumann, in a safari suit and wide-brimmed hat, in the African bush with rifle in hand and his left foot resting on a huge, downed elephant; Rolf Schumann, in waist-high waders, with fishing rod in one hand and a salmon held high in the other; Rolf Schumann, in hunting pink jacket and hard hat and on horseback, sipping a stirrup cup before the chase. Rolf Schumann was clearly a man of many sports, many blood sports. I felt slightly uneasy, and it wasn’t solely due to the lifeless stag’s glass eyes that I illogically sensed were somehow following me as I moved around the room.
I went back to the drawing room, and just in time. Mrs. Schumann and Caroline came back from makeup repairs, as I sat down again on a green-and-white sofa.
“I’m so sorry,” Dorothy said to me. “I don’t seem to be myself at the moment.”
“That’s quite all right,” I said. “We shouldn’t have disturbed you. I’m sorry to have caused you so much distress. We should go.” I stood up.
“No, no,” she said. “It’s nice to have some company. Please, stay a little longer. You’ve come such a long way. And I would really like to hear more about what happened at the racetrack.”
I sat down again. I explained to her as much as I thought was prudent about the bombing at Newmarket, leaving out the gory details, and the blood. She sat bolt upright on the sofa, listening intently to every word. Once or twice, the tears welled up in her eyes, but this time she was able to maintain her composure.
“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “It has been very hard not knowing anything.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. She smiled wanly at me and nodded.
“Will you have something to drink?” she said. “I have some ice tea in the kitchen.”
I looked at my watch. It was just after twelve. “We’d love some,” I said.
All three of us went through to her kitchen, and Dorothy poured three tall glasses of golden liquid over slices of lemon. I had always preferred my tea hot, but I had to admit that the iced version was tasty and very thirst quenching. Caroline and I sat on stools at what Dorothy called “the bar.” The kitchen was spectacular, with a great view down to the lake and the “city” beyond. The bar, in fact, was one side of a large island in the center of the huge room.
“Dorothy,” I said. “Can you think of any reason why Rolf would be a target for a bomber?”
She stopped in the middle of pouring more tea and looked at me. “The local police told me that Rolf wasn’t the target. They said he was bombed by mistake.”
“I know,” I said. “But how about if they were wrong?”
Dorothy Schumann sat down heavily on one of the stools. “Are you saying that someone may have tried to kill Rolf?”
“Yes,” I said. There was a long silence. “Can you think of anyone who might want him dead?”
She laughed, just a single titter. “Only about a thousand of the locals,” she said. “They all got fired last winter. And they all seem to blame Rolf.”
“But surely…” I said.
“No, no,” she said. “I’m not really serious.”
“But is there anyone else you could think of who might want to hurt him or damage his company?” I said.
