bobbing when I get there. Jack Delancey, having himself a fine cigar. Then I hear murmuring and realize he’s not alone. Teddy, in his dark clothing, fully blended into the night.
“Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t realize this roof was occupied.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jack says. He makes a welcoming gesture. “Join us, please. I was trying to explain to young Ted about the Benefactor.”
“Oh?” I sink into a chair, glad of the breeze, which is wafting the smoke elsewhere.
“He was surprised, shall we say, that our mystery guest could be so easily summoned.”
“I doubt it was easy,” I say.
“My point exactly. Just because the boss didn’t leave the residence doesn’t mean she wasn’t working the case, and working it hard. I’ve also been suggesting that, tempting as it might be to peek behind the curtain, it would be a mistake to try and identify the Benefactor.”
“I believe we all signed contracts to that effect.”
Teddy pipes up, “No, no, I wasn’t looking, not like that. Just speculating.”
“Maybe an ambassador, he was thinking,” says Jack, taking no position. “Or someone from the Justice Department.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe an eccentric billionaire using us as his giant game of ‘Clue.’”
Teddy makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a giggle. “That would be cool. Are there secret passages in the residence?”
Jack clears his throat.
I say, “As a matter of fact, there are.”
I like it that he doesn’t ask where. In the dark I can almost feel his young mind racing. It’ll give him something to do, other than obsess on the identity of the person who makes this all possible, and who obviously has the power to move a game piece halfway around the globe.
“Busy day tomorrow,” Jack says, standing up. “The boss has plans.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay for a few minutes,” I say when the two men get up to leave.
“Suit yourself.”
“Good night, Miss Crane. I mean Alice.”
“Away with you both.”
The lights of the city usually have a calming effect, as if some grand purpose is being illuminated from within, but tonight the calm part isn’t working. I keep thinking about helicopters hovering silently, painting targets on a screen, and men in black masks, and an assassin’s bullet crashing into the residence, and a few minutes later I hurry down to bed, if not to sleep.
Chapter Forty-Five
Kathy Mancero has a weapon and a plan. She would have preferred a baseball bat, but none being available she had finally, after many frustrating, nail-breaking hours, managed to pry a length of two-by-four from the inside of a closet. It will have to do. As to her escape plan, it all depends on Joey.
“You want to get away from the bad man?” she’d asked him.
“Yes, please,” he’d answered without hesitation.
“I want you to play your music without the headphones on, so we can all hear it, can you do that?”
“Mozart,” the little boy had said. “I want to play Mozart. Sonata no. 1 in C Major.”
“Good. Lovely. When I say, you unplug the headphones and turn up the volume.”
Night has fallen. The time has come round at last. Kidder is up there, she can hear the dull thump of him moving around on the first floor of the guest cottage. She imagines him getting a beer from the fridge as he settles down to watch the ball game, and the thought of baseball makes her long for an actual bat, one she can wrap her hands around. A Louisville Slugger would be ideal, but the length of two-by-four will simply have to do. She knows from studying Randall Shane’s exploits that things are never perfect, that in order to save a child’s life it is sometimes necessary to use what is close to hand.
Clear thinking and a willingness to act, that’s what matters most.
Kathy adjusts the overhead lighting, bringing the corners and edges of the room into shadow. She positions a standing lamp to one side of Joey’s keyboard, so that his sheet music will be illuminated, as well as the boy himself. Like a spotlight on the stage, it will draw attention to the eye and provide the necessary moment of opportunity. Or so she hopes, most desperately. It will just have to work, she has no other options.
Kathy positions herself to the left of the door, just beyond the inside radius, and leans the two-by-four against the wall. Not wanting to distract Joey from his task. She doesn’t want him looking at her when the door opens, that’s essential.
“Just read your music and play. Look at the keyboard, not at me.”
Sturdy little hands poised above the keys, he says, without looking at her, “We’re going to run away and find my real mommy?”
“Yes, sweetie, that’s the plan. Go ahead.”
At first she thinks something is wrong, that the boy has somehow contrived to turn on a recording. Up until now he’s always played with the headphones on, for himself alone, and therefore she hadn’t been exposed to his skill level. She’d been expecting something childlike, precocious and cute, perhaps, but childlike. There’s nothing childish about what emerges from the keyboard speakers. The sonata, composed by Mozart in the nineteenth year of his life, begins simply, a slow, almost waterlike trickle of notes. Light, graceful, haunting. There’s something of a melancholy waltz about the melody, which yearns to turn and pirouette up through the scale. And yet there’s none of that oom-pa-pa beat of the waltz. Instead it slowly builds in complexity, touching and rising like a butterfly sampling ascending blossoms.
She’s so mesmerized by the sound emerging from those small hands, by the contrast of his fierce concentration with the clear, contemplative beauty of the music itself, that she almost fails to react when Kidder opens the door.
“I’ll be damned,” he says, chuckling, all agog at the boy. “It really is you.”
Joey never hesitates. He keeps playing as Kathy steps out from behind the open door, swinging for the fences. At the very last moment Kidder turns toward her, having sensed something, but the hunk of wood connects with back of his skull and he falls to the floor with a guttural sigh.
“Joey! Now!”
The little boy abandons his keyboard without a backward glance and runs to her, taking her outstretched hand.
No thinking, only running. Up the basement stairs, through the house and out into the night, the little boy keeping up with her, his short legs pumping, not a sound out of him. A glance shows Joey’s eyes as big as silver dollars. He may be only five years old but it’s obvious he knows the stakes, knows his life depends on getting away from the bad man, the monster man.
The thought of keys hits her like a stab wound in the guts, stops her in her tracks, bending her over. Keys, damn it! That was part of her plan. Knock Kidder out, search his pockets for car keys, gate keys, whatever keys might be useful. And yet as soon as he’d gone down, his eyes rolling back, the instinct to flee had been overwhelming. What if he woke up and grabbed her by the neck? He’d kill her with his bare hands and Joey would be next.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. She should have kept beating him with the two-by-four, but she’d been so terrified that she’d dropped the weapon after the one hit. Dropped it like it was burning her hands. Shane would have made sure. He’d have tied the bad guy up while he had the chance. She’d thought of that when escape was still in the planning stages, couldn’t find any rope, but Shane would have made do somehow, he’d have ripped up sheets or found some
