mashed potatoes. “Would you be interested in who and what you were in a former life?”
“Reincarnation, Mr. Cayce?” Breckinridge smiled. “I thought you were a Christian.”
“There is nothing in the Bible to refute reincarnation,” he said. “Although I can do a reading on Mr. Heller without going to sleep.”
“Oh, really?” I said, lifting a fork of food. “What was I in my previous life?”
“An idealist,” he said, blue-gray eyes sparkling. “All cynics were idealists, once. More pot roast, Mr. Heller?”
In the Dusenberg, I asked Breckinridge what he’d made of all that.
“I’ll be damned if I know,” he admitted. “And you?”
“I’ll be damned if I know, either. I won’t say I’m convinced, but I will say I want to track everything he gave us.”
“A street map of New Haven would be a start. We might be able to get one of those at a gas station, on the way back.”
“Good idea. You know, the first of the two Italian names he mentioned-Maglio-is the name of one of Capone’s top lieutenants.”
Breckinridge gave me a sharp look. “Interesting. And he indicated Red Johnson was involved.”
Betty Gow’s sailor.
“Aren’t we supposed to get a shot at questioning that guy?” I asked.
Breckinridge nodded. “Tomorrow.”
“Do you think he’s a good suspect?”
“Colonel Lindbergh doesn’t like to think his servants might be involved, even indirectly…but after what the Hartford police found in Johnson’s car, I’d say he’s an excellent suspect.”
“What did they find in his car?”
Breckinridge turned his attention from the road to show me a raised eyebrow.
“An empty milk bottle,” he said.
7
It was almost ten o’clock, the next morning, when I stumbled downstairs. The little fox terrier looked up from its perch on the living room couch and began barking hysterically at me. Next to the mutt was Anne Lindbergh, wearing a prim blue sweater-suit, sitting across from her mother, Mrs. Dwight Morrow; the latter was doing needlepoint, the former reading a small leather-bound book.
They began to get up and I asked them please not to.
Mrs. Morrow was a small woman in her late ffties, with her daughter’s delicate features; she wore a blue dress with white lace trim and pearls and a crucifix. Her hair was more brown than gray, though I would imagine it would be getting grayer as the days progressed.
“Wahgoosh!” Anne said sharply. “Be still.”
The dog stopped barking, but he continued to growl and give me his best evil eye.
“I understand you and Henry drove down to Virginia yesterday,” Anne said, smiling, “and back again.” She gestured for me to sit next to her on the couch and I did. Wahgoosh expressed snarling displeasure.
“That sounds like quite an outing for a single day,” Mrs. Morrow said.
“We didn’t get back till the middle of the night,” I admitted. “How worthwhile a trip it was, I couldn’t say.”
“You spoke to a clairvoyant, I understand,” Anne said.
Mrs. Morrow shook her head, barely, as if thinking,
“Yes,” I said. “A sincere gentleman, I believe.”
“Not a faker, like so many of them.”
“No. But he gave us some specific information, including street names that we tried to check, on various maps, without any success.”
“I see,” Anne said, with a patient smile.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“Ben Jonson.”
“Oh.”
“The poet.”
“Right.”
She read aloud: “‘Although it fall and die that night, it was the plant of flower and light. In small proportions we just beauties see; and in short measures, life may perfect be.’” She looked up at me with shimmering blue eyes and a crinkly brave smile. “I like that line…‘It was the plant of flower and light.’”
Jesus. Had she written off her kid as dead already?
“That’s a nice poem,” I said. “Tell me something…”
“Certainly.”
That fucking dog was still growling at me.
“Why do you think your dog was quiet that night?”
“Wahgoosh? He was in the opposite wing of the house. When he’s not on the sofa, here, where we really shouldn’t let him be…or sleeping on the floor in the nursery near Charlie…he has a little bed in the servants’ sitting room. Whately first brought him into the house, you know, and we sort of adopted the little fellow. He couldn’t have heard anything through the howling wind, all that distance.”
“You know…and excuse me for raising this, Mrs. Lindbergh…but there are those who suspect one of your three servants might be involved.”
She shook her head. “No. Betty and the others, we trust implicitly.”
“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
