Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998
- Автор: Alexander Gary, Crawford Dan
- Год: 1998
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines/Crosstown Publications
- ISBN: ISSN: 0002-5224
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998». Краткое содержание книги:
“No,” I murmured, suddenly knowing where The Dreamers was. “He didn’t.”
Amazing how much I can miss or can hear but not listen to.
There it was, just beyond Mr. Hornton’s workbench in the far corner of the garage. Of course that’s where the trapdoor going up into the overhead loft was. The rickety wooden ladder he used to have me climb, stowing papers and plans up there, was tucked in a corner next to some brooms and rakes.
I’d seen one of those contraptions before, in a friend’s house going up to an attic. There was a long thin mesh chain, ending in a ring, that was looped around a nail in the wall. If you pulled up on the chain, the door overhead opened, and out popped the bottom of a collapsible set of stairs. You pulled the stairs down toward you, and they kind of unfolded all the way to the floor. The whole apparatus was on a system of pulleys and chains.
And it worked perfectly. I started up the stairs, and a light came on.
I was startled for a moment, remembering that the only light up here had been one bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Then I understood. Mr. Hornton had added new lights and a motion detector; the lights came on automatically. And when I got to the top and looked around at the entire loft, which suddenly had become a real and functional room, I understood a few other things, too.
“I just don’t get it,” I argued. “What do you mean, the investigation’s been stopped? Mr. Hornton was nearly killed!” “Herbie.” Jake cut me off. Although he hadn’t been upset with me for tracking down Mrs. Hunt and finding out that The Dreamers was a painting, he was not pleased about my talking to Buster Holiday. Ed Andersen had gone to see him just after I had, so naturally Jake had given me the old lecture about “interfering in a police investigation.” Except now there was no police investigation.
“Elmer fell off a ladder,” Jake said. We were out on my back steps, a place where we seemed to have a lot of arguments lately. It was going on suppertime, but we could hear the buzz of boats roaring out in the bay, the noisy clamor of the neighborhood kids as they ran out to an ice cream truck in the road. “There’s no reason to think it was anything but that. He fell off. He lost his balance. He’s an old man.”
I glared at him.
“And the message on the tape doesn’t prove much. Someone didn’t want Elmer to put this painting on display, for whatever reason. Maybe he’s the guy in the painting, and the woman’s not his wife.”
“You never let me listen to the tape,” I said bitterly. “I might have recognized the voice.”
“Sorry, Herbie, had to send it to the lab.”
I turned away and heard my mother and her new boyfriend in the kitchen behind us. The guy’s voice was high and irritating. “I don’t know, Em, but I’m not happy with you and Herbie getting mixed up in police business.”
“God, that guy makes me sick,” I muttered.
Jake tried to suppress a smile. “So the investigation, for what it was worth, is over. I’m driving over to see Elmer before it gets too late; then I’m stopping at the library. I spoke to one of the librarians, and she said Mrs. Hunt comes in on Thursday evenings to help with new inventory.”
“Why are you bothering to talk to Mrs. Hunt if there’s no investigation?”
“Just loose ends. I want to know where Elmer painted that picture; apparently she knows. She’s seen it, and...” A shrug, but a highly acted one. “Elmer might have mentioned to her if anyone was trying to buy it, or didn’t want it shown.”
“Yeah, and she’s the only lead you’ve got, right?” I snapped. I turned away and looked out at the driveway where a black boxy-looking car sat next to my mother’s six-year-old Ford Mustang. There was another car in the drive, too, a green and beige Jeep Cherokee.
Now, someone might assume things by looking at those three cars, but then that person might assume things all wrong, too. Assumptions can be tricky and dangerous things.
“Officer Andersen didn’t pick up any other information, did he? From talking to Mr. Hornton’s neighbors?”
“No.” He was too nervous. “I guess no one saw anything.”
I was too mad to respond just then. I’d found out about the stairs in the garage, and where The Dreamers was, not to mention what the darn thing was, plus I’d taken him the tape from Mr. Hornton’s answering machine with Mildred Hunt’s message on it. I’d done all this for him, and what had he done for me?
“You got a new car?” I asked suddenly.
“The Volvo? No, it’s a friend’s. I’m borrowing it while mine’s in for repairs.”
“So your new girlfidend drives a Volvo, huh?” I said flippantly. “Figures. She’s such a lousy driver she needs a car she can’t kill herself in.” I started down the steps with him behind me. “She ought to drive a tank.”
I said nothing, just turned on the radio real loud — to one of the worst, most obnoxious alternative rock stations on the dial — and tapped a pencil I’d found in the glove compartment on my knees, the dash, and just about everywhere else as we drove. I was trying to drive him crazy, I admit it, but wasn’t having much effect. He was too busy watching some guy in the rear view mirror. Tailgaters. He should have pulled him over.
But my heart wasn’t really into annoying Jake Valari, and my mind was on everything else. I simply wasn’t satisfied with anything, including the picture I’d seen in Mr. Hornton’s loft.
The loft had been wide and clean. All the sign plans and papers I’d stowed up there for him were now neatly arranged in a series of shelves along one wall. Along another wall were the thin, vertical compartments Mr. Hornton had built to hold his paintings. Right now, though, most of the canvases in them were blank.
His missing work table was up there and, scattered across it, his paints and brushes, mixing tools, some cans and bottles. Above the table on wooden hooks were a half dozen palettes. But the most astonishing thing — actually the two most astonishing things — were these:
First, above the work table in the slope of the roof Mr. Hornton had drawn a large rectangle in chalk. It was obvious he was planning to cut that part of the roof away for a skylight. A brochure from Big Eddie’s showing all kinds of skylights lay on the table.
And, second, in the middle of the room was an easel, and on it was a painting of two people looking off into a sunset. They were facing away from the artist, painted from the shoulders up, so all you could see was the backs of their heads. The man had short dark hair; the woman’s was long and blonde and fell almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a red tank top, he had on a blue work shirt, and anyone, anyone at all just glancing at the picture, would have known they were in love. Something about it, plus the woman was resting her head on the man’s shoulder.
It was The Dreamers all right, even said so in the bottom left-hand corner: “EH, Dreamers.”
Other things slid into place, too. I left the loft and went back outside. Hoisting the ladder against the side of the garage, I climbed up. I should have done that yesterday, checked to see if he’d been up there, because what I’d thought was mildew on the shingles was actually chalk. Mr. Hornton had drawn a rough line along the bottom row of shingles and started writing X’s on them. Those shingles had to come off in order to cut a hole in the roof for the skylight.
Damn, I’d been so stupid.
Now The Dreamers was safely nestled in the trunk of the Volvo alongside the other paintings destined for the library exhibition. Jake and I had found the other three wrapped in brown paper and string, neatly propped under the work table.