“You mean my hearse?” Bateman asked. “That’s impossible. It’s in the garage.”
More rapidly than he had ascended the stairs, Bateman rushed down them and directly outside to the garage. He yanked up the door and ran inside, closely followed by the other men.
“Someone did use it,” he exclaimed, peering through the vehicle’s window. “Look at it. There’s dirt on the carpet!”
Neil wanted to throttle the man, to beat the truth from him. How had he gotten Maggie to follow him in that hearse? Or was someone else driving her car?
Liam Payne took his cousin’s arm. “Earl, it’s going to be all right. I’ll go with you to headquarters. I’ll call a lawyer.”
* * *
Neil and his father refused to go home. They sat in a waiting area at the police station. From time to time, Detective Haggerty joined them. “The guy has refused a lawyer; he’s answering everything. He insists that he was in Providence last night and can prove it with phone calls he made from his apartment during the evening. At this point, we simply can’t hold him.”
“But we know he’s done something to Maggie,” Neil protested. “He’s got to help us find her!”
Haggerty shook his head. “He’s more worried about his casket and the dirt in that old hearse than he is about Ms. Holloway. His scenario is that she brought someone with her to steal the casket and bells, someone who drove the casket away in the hearse. The ignition key was in clear sight on a hook in the office. In a few minutes, his cousin is going to take him back to the museum to pick up his car.”
“You can’t let him go,” Neil protested.
“We can’t not let him go,” Haggerty said.
The detective hesitated, then said, “This will come out anyhow, and it’s something you’d be interested in knowing. You know we also are looking into accusations of improprieties at Latham Manor, thanks to the suicide note of that lawyer who killed himself. While we were out, the chief got a message. He’d made it top priority to find out who really owns Latham Manor. Guess who does? None other than Bateman’s cousin, Mr. Liam Moore Payne.”
Haggerty looked around cautiously as though afraid Payne would appear behind him. “I guess he’s still inside. He insisted on staying with his cousin during the questioning. We asked him about owning Latham. Readily admitted it. Says it’s a sound investment. But apparently he doesn’t want it known that he owns the place. Says that if people knew, he’d have the residents calling him with complaints or requests for favors. That kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?”
* * *
It was nearly eight o’clock when Robert Stephens turned to his son. “Come on, Neil, we’d better get home,” he urged.
Their car was parked across the street from police headquarters. As soon as Stephens turned the ignition key, the phone rang. Neil answered it.
It was Dolores Stephens. She had gone home when they left for the museum. “Any word about Maggie?” she asked anxiously.
“No, Mom. We’ll be home soon, I guess.”
“Neil, I just received a phone call from a Mrs. Sarah Cushing. She said that her mother, Mrs. Bainbridge, is a resident at Latham Manor, and that you were talking to her today.”
“That’s right.” Neil felt his interest quicken.
“Mrs. Cushing’s mother remembered something that she thought might be important and called her daughter, who looked up our number trying to track you down. Mrs. Bainbridge said that Maggie mentioned something about a bell she had found on her stepmother’s grave. She asked if placing a bell like that was some sort of custom. Mrs. Bainbridge said it just occurred to her that Maggie might have been talking about one of Professor Bateman’s Victorian bells. I’m not sure what any of this means, but I wanted you to know right away,” she said. “I’ll see you in a while.”
Neil gave his father the details of the message Dolores Stephens had passed along. “What do you make of it?” Robert Stephens asked his son as he started to put the car into drive.
“Hold it a minute, Dad. Don’t pull out,” Neil said urgently. “What do I make of it? Plenty. The bells we found in Maggie’s studio must have been taken from her stepmother’s grave and from someone else’s, probably one of the women from the residence. Otherwise why would she have asked that question? If she did go back to the museum last night, which I still have trouble believing, it was to see if any of the bells Bateman claimed were in that box were missing.”
“Here they come,” Robert Stephens murmured as Bateman and Payne emerged from the police station. They watched as the men got into Payne’s Jaguar and, for a few minutes, sat in the car, talking animatedly.
The rain had ended and a full moon brightened the already well-lighted area around the station.
“Payne must have taken dirt roads when he came down from Boston today,” Robert Stephens observed. “Look at those wheels and tires. His shoes were pretty messy, too. You heard Bateman yell at him about that. It’s also a surprise that he owns that retirement place. There’s something about that guy I don’t like. Was Maggie dating him seriously?”
“I don’t think so,” Neil said tonelessly. “I don’t like him either, but he obviously is successful. That residence cost a fortune. And I checked on his investments operation. He has his own firm now, and clearly he was smart enough to take with him some of Randolph and Marshall’s best clients.”
“Randolph and Marshall,” his father repeated. “Isn’t that where Dr. Lane said his wife used to work?”
“What did you say?” Neil demanded.
“You heard me. I said that Lane’s wife used to work at Randolph and Marshall.”
“That’s what’s been bugging me!” Neil exclaimed. “Don’t you see? Liam Payne is connected to everything. He owns the residence. He must have had the final say in hiring Dr. Lane. Doug Hansen also worked for Randolph and Marshall, although for only a brief time. He has an arrangement now whereby his transactions go through their clearing house. I said today that Hansen had to be operating out of another office, and I also said that he’s clearly too stupid to have worked out that scheme for defrauding those women. He was just the front man. Someone had to be programming him. Well, maybe that someone was Liam Moore Payne.”
“But it doesn’t all quite fit together,” Robert Stephens protested. “If Payne owns the residence, he could have gotten the financial information he needed without involving either Hansen or Hansen’s aunt, Janice Norton.”
“But it’s much safer to stay a step removed,” Neil pointed out. “That way, Hansen becomes the scapegoat if anything goes wrong. Don’t you see, Dad? Laura Arlington and Cora Gebhart had applications pending. He wasn’t just turning over the apartments of residents. He was cheating applicants when there were no apartments.
“It’s obvious that Bateman uses Payne as a sounding board for his problems,” Neil continued. “If Bateman had been upset because Maggie inquired about the Latham Manor incident, wouldn’t he be likely to tell Payne about it?”
“Maybe. But what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that this Payne guy is the key to all this. He secretly owns Latham Manor. Women there are dying under what seem to be unexceptional circumstances, yet when you consider how many have died recently, and factor in the similarities—all of them pretty much alone, no close family to check on them—it all starts to look suspicious. And who stands to gain from their deaths? Latham Manor does, through reselling those now-empty apartments to the next name on the list.”
“Do you mean to say that Liam Payne killed all those women?” Robert Stephens asked, his tone incredulous.
“I don’t know that yet,” his son replied. “The police suspect that Dr. Lane and/or Nurse Markey may have had a hand in the deaths, but when I talked to Mrs. Bainbridge, she made a point of saying that Dr. Lane was ‘kind,’ and that Markey was a good nurse. My hunch is, she knows what she’s talking about. She’s sharp. No, I don’t know who killed those women, but I think Maggie had come to the same conclusion about their
deaths, and she must have been getting too close for comfort for the actual killer.”
“But where do the bells come in? And Bateman? I don’t get it,” Robert Stephens protested.
“The bells? Who knows? Maybe it’s the killer’s way of keeping score. Chances are, though, that if Maggie found those bells on graves and looked up those women’s obituaries, she had started to figure out what really happened. The bells might signify that those women were murdered.” Neil paused. “As for Bateman, he seems almost too weird to be able to take part in anything as calculating as this. No, I think Mr. Liam Moore Payne is our connection here. You heard him make that idiotic suggestion to explain Maggie’s disappearance.” Neil snorted derisively. “I bet he knows what has happened to Maggie and he’s just trying to ease the pressure of the search.”
Noting that Payne had started his car, Robert Stephens turned to his son. “I take it we’re following him,” he said.
“Absolutely. I want to see where Payne is going,” Neil said, then added his own silent prayer: Please, please let him lead me to Maggie.
88
DR. WILLIAM LANE DINED AT LATHAM MANOR WITH SOME of the charter members of the residence. He explained Odile’s absence by saying that she was devastated to be leaving her dear friends. As for himself, while he regretted having to give up something that had been so pleasant an experience, it was his firm belief that, as the axiom goes, “the buck stops here.”
“I want to reassure everyone that this sort of outrageous indiscretion will never happen again,” he promised, referring to Janice Norton’s violation of privileged information.
Letitia Bainbridge had accepted the invitation to dine at the doctor’s table. “Do I understand that Nurse Markey is filing an ethics complaint against you, stating that, in effect, you stand by and let people die?” she asked.
“So I gather. It isn’t true, of course.”
“What does your wife think about that?” Mrs. Bainbridge persisted.
“Again, she’s truly saddened. She considered Nurse Markey a close friend.” And more the fool for it, Odile, he added to himself.
His farewell was gracious and to the point. “Sometimes it is appropriate to let other hands take the reins. I’ve always tried to do my best. If I am guilty of anything, it is of trusting a thief, but not of gross negligence.”
On the short walk between the manor and the carriage house, Dr. Lane thought, I don’t know what will happen now, but I do know whatever job I get will be on my own.
Whatever happened, he had decided he wasn’t going to spend another single day with Odile.
When he went upstairs to the second floor, the bedroom door was open and Odile was on the phone, apparently screaming at an answering machine. “You can’t do this to me! You can’t just drop me like this! Call me! You’ve got to take care of me. You promised!” She hung up with a crash.
“And to whom were you speaking, my dear?” Lane asked from the doorway. “Perhaps the mysterious benefactor who against all odds hired me for this position? Don’t trouble him or her or whoever it is any longer on my account. Whatever I do, I won’t be needing your assistance.”
Odile raised tear-swollen eyes to him. “William, you can’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I do.” He studied her face. “You really are frightened, aren’t you? I wonder why. I’ve always suspected that under that empty-headed veneer, something else was going on.
“Not that I’m interested,” he continued, as he opened his closet and reached for a suitcase. “Just a bit curious. After my little relapse last night, I was somewhat foggy. But when my head cleared, I got to thinking and made a few calls of my own.”
He turned to look at his wife. “You didn’t stay for the dinner in Boston last night, Odile. And wherever you went, those shoes of yours got terribly muddy, didn’t they?”
89
SHE COULDN’T KEEP TRACK OF THE NUMBERS ANYMORE. It was no use.
Don’t give up, Maggie urged herself, trying to force her mind to stay alert, to remain connected. It would be so easy to drift away, so easy just to close her eyes and retreat from what was happening to her.
The picture Earl had given her—there had been something about Liam’s expression—the superficial smile, the calculated sincerity, the practiced warmth.
She should have guessed that there was something dishonest about his sudden attentiveness. He had been more in character when he abandoned her at the cocktail party.
She thought back to last night, to the voice. Odile Lane had been arguing with Liam. She had heard them.
Odile had been frightened. “I can’t do it anymore,” she had wailed. “You’re insane! You promised you’d sell the place and we’d go away. I warned you that Maggie Holloway was asking too many questions.”
So clear. For the moment so clear.
She could barely flex her hand any longer. It was time to scream for help again.
But now her voice was only a whisper. No one would hear her.
Flex . . . unflex . . . take short breaths, she reminded herself.
But her mind kept coming back to just one thing, the first childhood prayer she had ever learned: “Now I lay me down to sleep . . .”
90
“YOU COULD AT LEAST HAVE TOLD ME THAT YOU OWNED Latham Manor,” Earl Bateman said accusingly to his cousin. “I tell you everything. Why are you so secretive?”
“It’s just an investment, Earl,” Liam said soothingly. “Nothing more. I am completely removed from the day-today operation of the residence.”
He drove into the parking lot of the funeral museum, stopping next to Earl’s car. “Go home and get a good night’s sleep. You need it.”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to Boston. Why?”
“Did you come rushing down today just to see me?” Earl asked, still annoyed.
“I came because you were upset, and I came because I was concerned about Maggie Holloway. Now, as I’ve explained, I’m not as concerned about her. My guess is that she’ll show up soon.”
Earl started to get out of the car, then paused. “Liam, you knew where I kept the key to the museum, and the ignition key to the hearse, didn’t you?” he asked.
“What are you driving at?”
“Nothing, except to ask if you told anyone about where I keep them?”
“No, I didn’t. Come on, Earl. You’re tired. Go on home so I can get on my way.”
Earl got out and slammed the door.
Liam Moore Payne drove immediately out of the parking lot to the end of the side street. He didn’t notice a car pull out from the curb and follow at a discreet distance when he turned right.
It was all unraveling, he thought glumly. They knew he owned the residence. Earl had already started to suspect that he had been the one in the museum last night. The bodies were going to be exhumed, and they’d find that the women had been given improper medications. If he was lucky, Dr. Lane would be blamed, but Odile was ready to crack. They would get a confession out of her in no time. And Hansen? He would do anything to save his own skin.
So that leaves me, Liam thought. All that work for nothing! The dream of being the second Squire Moore, powerful and rich, was gone. After all the risks he had taken—borrowing from his clients’ securities; buying the residence on a shoestring and pouring money into it; figuring out Squire-like ways to get other people’s money—he was, after all that, just another failed Moore. Everything was slipping through his fingers.
And Earl, that obsessed fool, was rich, really rich.
But fool though he was, Earl wasn’t stupid. Soon he would start to put two and two together, and then he would know where to look for his casket.
Well, even if he figured it all out, Liam thought, he wouldn’t find Maggie Holloway alive.
Her time had run out, of that he was certain.
91
CHIEF BROWER AND DETECTIVE HAGGERTY WERE ABOUT to leave for the day when the call came in from Earl Bateman.
&nbs
p; “They all hate me,” he began. “They like to ridicule the Bateman family business, ridicule me for my lectures—but the bottom line is they’re all jealous because we’re rich. We’ve been rich for generations, long before Squire Moore ever saw his first crooked dollar!”
“Could you get to the point, Professor?” Brower asked. “What do you want?”
“I want you to meet me at the site of my planned outdoor exhibit. I have a feeling that my cousin Liam and Maggie Holloway together have played their version of a practical joke on me. I’ll bet anything they took my casket to one of the open graves at the exhibit and dumped it there. I want you to be present when I find it. I’m leaving now.”
The chief grabbed a pen. “Where exactly is your exhibit site, Professor?”
When he hung up, Brower said to Haggerty, “I think he’s cracking up, but I also think we may be about to find Maggie Holloway’s body.”
92
“NEIL, LOOK AT THAT!”
They were driving along a narrow dirt road, following the Jaguar. When they left the main road, Neil had turned off the headlights, hoping that Liam Payne wouldn’t realize they were there. Now the Jaguar was turning left, its headlights briefly illuminating a sign Robert Stephens strained to make out.
“Future site of the Bateman Outdoor Funeral Museum,” he read. “That must have been what Bateman was talking about when he said the stolen casket was going to be part of an important exhibit. Do you think it’s here?”
Neil did not answer. A fear so terrible that his mind could not tolerate it was exploding within him. Casket. Hearse. Cemetery.
If Liam Payne had been ordering residents of Latham Manor to be murdered, and then placed symbolic bells on their graves, what would he be likely to do to someone who had put him in danger?
Suppose he had been in the museum last night and found Maggie there?
He and someone else, Neil thought. It must have taken two of them to drive Maggie’s car and the hearse.