Wilson, Paul - The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

Nellie's face brightened. "Then you'll help?"

The hope in her expression pushed the words to his lips.

"I'll do what I can. And as far as payment goes, let's make it contingent on success. If I don't get anywhere, there'll be no fee."

"But your time is surely worth something, dear fellow!"

"I agree, but looking for Vicky's Aunt Grace is a special case."

Nellie nodded. "Then you may consider yourself hired on your terms."

Jack forced a smile. He didn't expect much success in finding Grace, but he'd give it his best shot. If nothing else, the job would keep him in contact with Gia. He wasn't quitting yet.

The iced tea arrived and Jack sipped it appreciatively. Not a Lipton or Nestea mix, but freshly brewed from an English blend.

"Tell me about your sister," he said when the maid had left.

Nellie leaned back and spoke in a low voice, rambling now and again, but keeping fairly close to hard facts. A picture slowly emerged. Unlike Nellie, the missing Grace Westphalen had never married. After Nellie's husband was killed by an IRA bomb in London, the two sisters, each with one third of the Westphalen fortune, moved to the States. Except for brief trips back home, both had lived on Manhattan's East Side ever since. And both were still loyal to the Queen. Never in all those years had the thought of becoming US citizens ever crossed their minds. They very naturally fell in with the small British community in Manhattan consisting mostly of well-heeled expatriates and people connected with the British Consulate and the United Kingdom's Mission to the United Nations—"a colony within the Colonies," as they liked to call themselves—and enjoyed an active social life. They rarely saw Americans. It was almost like living in London.

Grace Westphalen was sixty-nine—two years older than Nellie. A woman of many acquaintances but few real friends. Her sister had always been her best friend. No eccentricities. Certainly no enemies.

"When did you last see Grace?" Jack asked.

"Monday night. I finished watching The Tonight Show and when I looked in to say good night, she was propped up in bed reading. That was the last time I saw her." Nellie's lower lip trembled for an instant, then she got control of it. "Perhaps the last time I shall ever see her."

Jack looked to Gia. "No signs of foul play?"

"I didn't get here until late Tuesday," Gia said with a shrug. "But I do know the police couldn't figure out how Grace got out without tripping the alarm."

"You've got the place wired?" he asked Nellie.

"Wired? Oh, you mean the burglar system. Yes. And it was set—at least for downstairs. We've had so many false alarms over the years, however, that we had the upper floors disconnected.”

"What kind of false alarms?"

"Well, sometimes we'd forget and get up at night to open a window. The racket is terrifying. So now when we set the system, only the downstairs doors and windows are activated. "

"Which means Grace couldn't have left by the downstairs doors or windows without tripping an alarm..." A thought struck him. "Wait—all these systems have delays so you can arm it and get out the door without setting it off. That must have been what she did. She just walked out."

"But her key to the system is still upstairs on her dresser. And all her clothes are in her closets."

"May I see?"

"By all means, do come and look," Nellie said, rising.

They all trooped upstairs.

Jack found the small, frilly-feminine bedroom cloying. Everything seemed to be pink or have a lace ruffle, or both.

The pair of French doors at the far end of the room claimed his attention immediately. He opened them and found himself on a card-table-sized balcony rimmed with a waist-high wrought iron railing, overlooking the backyard. A good dozen feet below was a rose garden. In a shady corner sat the playhouse Vicky had mentioned; it looked far too heavy to have been dragged under the window, and would have flattened all the rose bushes if it had. Anyone wanting to climb up here had to bring a ladder with him or be one hell of a jumper.

"The police find any marks in the dirt down there?"

Nellie shook her head. "They thought someone might have used a ladder, but there was no sign. The ground is so hard and dry with no rain—"

Eunice the maid appeared at the door. "Telephone, mum."

Nellie excused herself and left Jack and Gia alone in the room.

"A locked-room mystery," he said. "I feel like Sherlock Holmes."

He got down on his knees and examined the carpet for specks of dirt, but found none. He looked under the bed; only a pair of slippers there.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking for clues. I'm supposed to be a detective, remember?”

"I don't think a woman's disappearance is anything to joke about," Gia said, the frost returning to her words now that Nellie was out of earshot.

"I'm not joking, nor am I taking it lightly. But you've got to admit the whole thing has the air of a British drawing room mystery about it. I mean, either Aunt Grace had an extra alarm key made and ran off into the night in her nightie—a pink and frilly one, I'll bet—or she jumped off her little balcony here in that same nightie, or someone climbed up the wall, knocked her out, and carried her off without a sound. None of them seem too plausible."

Gia appeared to be listening. That was something at least.

He went over to the dressing table and glanced at the dozens of perfume bottles there; some names were familiar, most not. He wandered into the private bathroom and was there confronted by another array of bottles: Metamucil, Phillips' Milk of Magnesia, Haley's M-O, Pericolace, Surfak, Ex-Lax and more. One bottle stood off to the side. Jack picked it up. It was clear glass, with a thick green fluid inside. The cap was the metal twist-off type, enameled white. All it needed was a Smirnoff label and it could have been an airline vodka bottle.

"Know what this is?"

"Ask Nellie."

Jack screwed off the cap and sniffed. At least he was sure of one thing: it wasn't perfume. The smell was heavily herbal, and not particularly pleasant.

As Nellie returned, she appeared to be finding it increasingly difficult to hide her anxiety. "That was the police. I rang up the detective in charge a while ago and he just told me that they have nothing new on Grace."

Jack handed her the bottle.

"What's this?"

Nellie looked it over, momentarily puzzled, then her face brightened.

"Oh, yes. Grace picked this up Monday. I'm not sure where, but she said it was a new product being test-marketed, and this was a free sample."

"But what's it for?"

"It's a physic."

“Pardon?”

"A physic. A cathartic. A laxative. Grace was very concerned—obsessed, you might say—with regulating her bowels. She's had that sort of problem all her life."

Jack took back the bottle. Something about an unlabeled bottle amid all the brand names intrigued him.

"May I keep this?"

"Certainly.”

He looked around awhile longer, for appearances more than anything else. He didn't have the faintest idea how he was going to begin looking for Grace Westphalen.

"Please remember to do two things," he told Nellie as he started downstairs. "Keep me informed of any leads the police turn up, and don't breathe a word of my involvement."

"Very well. But where are you going to start?"

He smiled—reassuringly, he hoped. "I've already started. I'll have to do some thinking and then start looking."

He fingered the bottle in his pocket. Something about it...

They left Nellie on the second floor, standing and gazing into her sister's empty room. Vicky came running in from the kitchen as Jack reached the bottom step. She held an orange section in her outstretched hand.