Hunny asked Antoine, “So did you show the Rdq boys Sean’s tat? I know the twins have seen it. Uh-huh. Uh- huh. Well, look around and maybe Ethan there, the one with the crystal ball, has some ideas. Right. Right. Okay, tood-lee-oo.”
“No sign of Mother Van Horn?” Art asked.
“No, but they are going over to the Super Eight where Ethan thinks Mom is staying. The thing is, the desk clerks can’t give out guest information.”
“I’ll bet they would for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Oh, that’s an idea. If I’m so rich, I suppose I should start acting like it.”
“Did the Vermont boys enjoy Sean’s tattoo?”
“They went into the men’s room, Antoine said, and had a quick look-see. But it was hard to make out. Sean had just been in the water, and that lake is cold.”
Art said, “Sean is an excellent lifeguard, but he is not a very good Catholic.”
The phone rang again and Hunny answered it. He had a brief exchange, wrote something down on his Domino’s menu and hung up.
“That’s Mrs. Kerisiotis’s girl calling back. They got Mom’s address book and found Tex Clermont’s number.”
I suggested to Hunny that he give his mom’s buddy a call and ask her if she had heard from Mrs. Van Horn or if she even knew that she was missing.
Hunny said, “This is outside our calling area, but I guess I can afford to call anywhere I please.”
He dialed and soon had an exchange with someone who apparently was not Tex Clermont. Hunny exclaimed a number of times and told the person who answered Mrs. Clermont’s phone about his mother’s disappearance and why he was calling. Then he said he thought the police in both Texas and New York ought to be notified and hung up.
“Eileen Clermont has also disappeared,” Hunny said to Art and me. “This is just incredible. She’s been gone since last Thursday, and the police are looking for her, and everybody down there is just worried sick.”
“I thought she was on a walker,” Art said, “and couldn’t get around.”
“I talked to the nurse that answered Tex’s phone, and she said that one of the home’s aides is missing too. They think he might have taken Tex somewhere because they were always pals and joked about running off and getting married. The aide’s name is Herero Flores, and his family and friends are worried about him, too.”
“It would be useful to know, “ I said, “if Herero Flores has a car and if so what kind.”
I asked Hunny for the nursing home number he had used and then made a series of calls on my cell.
Ten minutes later I said to Hunny, “I think we’re going to get your mom back.”
“I have a feeling you’re right, Donald. I think all our thoughts and prayers are soon to be answered. But just in time, I’m afraid, for the Brienings to work their evil on Mom and on all the rest of the Van Horns. I have only twenty-four hours before the Brienings go after Mom, and I’m afraid I have no choice but to fork over half a billion dollars, tomorrow morning at the latest.”
I told Hunny I had one more idea on how to deal with the Brienings, and it didn’t involve exorcism.
By six that evening I was set up in Cobleskill and ready to take possession of the original document in which Rita Van Horn had confessed to embezzling sixty-one thousand dollars from the Brienings. It was like the situation in The Letter, the Maugham story and Bette Davis movie, except I was not going to pay a lot of money for the letter and then get knifed in the gut anyway. I was going to create a distraction that would lure the Brienings out the front door of their store, and I was going to go in the back door and take away the lock box where they told me the letter had been secured.
The crew I had assembled met me at the McDonald’s on the eastern edge of town. Marylou was there but not in drag.
She was in a business suit and looked like the average middle-aged accountant you might expect to find at the New York State Department of Taxation.
Accompanying her were several people I recognized from the two lottery-prize celebrations at Hunny’s house, the one broadcast on Channel 13 six days earlier and then the Saturday night bacchanal the neighbors had complained about. All of these people were in go-to-work professional or blue-collar gear.
The only thing that might have distinguished them from typical commuters on the way home after a summer work day was this: close up some of the men looked as if they might have been women, and some of the women looked as if they might have been men.
Marylou had on a name tag that read Buzz Beasley, Simon amp; Schuster. Others had name tags, too, that were whimsical — Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, Senator Charles Grassley — and they were all gathered around a van with a big sign on the side that read Sarah Palin Book Tour — Going Rogue in Cobleskill! Climbing out of a Lincoln Town Car was the sensational best-selling author herself, former vice presidential candidate and political phenomenon of the decade, Sarah Palin. Ms. Palin had on a red miniskirt and blue sleeveless top and was wearing shades with white frames to complete the patriotic color scheme. Her big hair was more orderly than it normally appears on television, and both her calves and Adam’s apple seemed to have grown.
Otherwise, Ms. Palin was very much herself, chatty and vivacious.
Some McDonald’s customers gawked and a few began to head our way, grinning and waving, but we had no time for public relations. Anyway, we had just ten copies of the Palin book that somebody had picked up at a discount at the Stuyvesant Plaza Book House, and we were saving those for the former mayor of Wasilla’s biggest fans in Cobleskill.
Our motorcade made its way to the strip mall with Crafts-a-Palooza at one end and Subway at the other. I peeled away from the procession as it approached the Brienings’ storefront and cruised around the back of the building and parked by the Subway Dumpster. Marylou called my cell, and we kept our connection open so she could keep me informed as to everybody’s location in front of Crafts-a-Palooza.
One of Marylou’s crew out in the parking lot had a bullhorn and I could hear it all the way in the back of the building when he began to announce: “Come and meet Governor Sarah Palin! Meet the woman who wants to help you take back your country! Read her great book full of good ideas and big words and mavericky attacks on liberals! Come and get your Sarah Palin tome, and meet the next president of the United States!”
Marylou’s voice said into my ear, “People are starting to come out of the store. Some are walking down from Subway, too.”
“Have your guy with the speaker keep saying Palin’s name until the Brienings appear.” I had explained to Marylou that the Brienings were a small ferret-like couple. I hoped that this wouldn’t be the day when six other small ferret-like couples happened to be shopping at Crafts-a-Palooza and they all raced out to meet Sarah Palin while the Brienings remained inside the store because they were hard of hearing and would miss their opportunity to meet their sociopolitical goddess.
The bullhorn kept blazing away, noisily hectoring people for half a mile around to gather by the Palin van and meet the famous political personage and now best-selling author. I was poised by the metal back door of Crafts-a- Palooza with my lock-picking tools and, if I had to use it, my crowbar.
Marylou said, “Here come Clyde and Arletta. They look excited.”
“I’m going in.”
The lock was easy, and there was a bar inside the door that I used the crowbar on. I was inside the Brienings stockroom and office within a minute. The lights were on and I headed for their desk, an old wooden job with a dusty desktop computer on it and a couple of file cabinets next to it. I didn’t see anything that looked like a lockbox. I had asked Timmy what a lockbox was, and he said I would have to ask Al Gore.
The Crafts-a-Palooza stock room smelled terrible, and my throat started getting scratchy. I guessed it was the potpourri.
There were huge crates of it nearby, shredded dead vegetation treated with an assortment of chemicals, most of them toxic, I guessed, if not lethal. If I hadn’t had a more urgent task, I would have phoned the ePA.
I saw no safe — my chief worry had been that the Brienings had a safe that was locked and too heavy for me to carry — and I didn’t see any “box” either. The file cabinets were unlocked, and I began flipping through the manila folders. There was nothing filed under Van Horn or Rita or confession or embezzler.
