Bad News Read online

  “So it’s shut now,” Murch’s Mom said.

  “Another reason we case it on the Web,” Kelp pointed out.

  Page two, as Kelp had promised, was very nice. Among the paragraphs about the art and the history and the architectural innovations and all the rest of it was a paragraph concerning security:

  The Thurstead Foundation maintains its own private security arrangements, with support available from the New Jersey State Police. Motion-activated floodlights encircle the house. In addition, security cameras are mounted in trees about the property, monitored at all times in the security office in the barn, just behind the visitor center.

  “How do you like that?” Kelp said. “They tell us their security.”

  Tiny said, “They don’t say what’s inside the house.”

  “That’s on page three.”

  Page two had been almost completely print, with only one small photo of a hookah at center left, part of Russell Thurbush’s worldwide swag, but page three was half-devoted to a photo of a room so crammed with art, paintings in big frames all over the walls, fur rugs all over the floors, whatnots and knickknacks all over every flat surface, ornate furniture and lamps like hussars, that it was a true relief for the eye to move on down to the words, in which the key sentences were: “Although the private quarters have been modernized, the areas open to the public have been left exactly as Russell Thurbush knew them. Modern heat is delivered through the original grates, and even electricity has not been added to these spaces.”

  Dortmunder said, “All their security is outside.”

  “But it’s pretty good,” Murch said. “Floodlights with motion sensors, observation cameras in the trees. Maybe we oughta do this thing in April, when they’re open, when we can go look it over.”

  “Well, that’s the problem,” Dortmunder said. “Normally, that’s the way I’d like to do it, visit once or twice, maybe take some of our own pictures, see what’s what on the scene. The only reason I’m going along with Andy here on this World Wide Web thing is, we got kind of a deadline.”

  Murch’s Mom said, “Before April, I bet.”

  “Well, yeah,” Dortmunder agreed. “Today is Friday, and we gotta get that hair sample back upstate by Monday.”

  Murch said, “Whoops. You wanna plan it, and organize it, and do it, all this weekend?”

  “No, I don’t want to do that,” Dortmunder said, “but that’s what we got.”

  “Then,” Murch said, “I don’t know we got much.”

  “Well, it could be that luck is with us,” Dortmunder told him. Then he stopped and looked around at everybody and said, “I can’t believe what I just heard me say.”

  Kelp said, “I’m a little taken aback myself, John.”

  “And yet, and yet,” Dortmunder said, “it might even be the truth. See, the thing is, I looked at the weather report, the old-fashioned way, on the television, and comin outta Pennsylvania on Sunday is supposed to be our first winter storm of the season. A nice big one.”

  Murch said, “This is the luck? We’ve also got a storm?”

  “That’s right,” Dortmunder told him. “You know what happens when a big snowstorm goes through? In a rural part of the world? The electricity goes out. And nobody thinks a thing about it.”

  38

  * * *

  Everything that happens with weather in the greater New York City area has already happened in Cleveland two days before, so on Saturday morning, when Kelp and Murch flew from La Guardia Airport in New York to Hopkins Airport in Cleveland, they sailed over the storm, which was then ruffling feathers in Pittsburgh, and landed in an exhausted city that no longer had any present use for the vehicle they intended to borrow.

  In fact, the municipal parking lot where they went looking for what they needed was deserted. City workers had just finished a twenty-seven-hour war against the snowstorm, and they were now all home in bed, with their beepers on the bedside table. The locks on the gate in the chain-link fence that surrounded the parking lot did not hold Kelp’s and Murch’s attention for long, and then off they went, down the rows of garbage trucks, snowplows, morgue vans, and cherry pickers, till they found just the vehicle they’d had in mind.

  It was big, with big tires. It was red and had many sparkly yellow and white and red lights mounted all over it. It had begun life as an ordinary dump truck, but it had been fitted to a specific use: sand spreader. On the front of it was a big yellow V-shaped snowplow blade, and inside the open bed was a slanting metal floor with runnels that led back to the spigots where salt or sand would be ejected onto the roadway behind the truck, with controls operated by the driver. The rear wall of the truck body was mostly a pair of metal doors that would swing open outward from the center to give maintenance access to the spigots and other equipment inside.

  The spreader’s most recent operator had been too tired to top up the gas tank when he’d brought the machine back from its municipal duty, so that was another lock they had to go through, on the gas pump, before the computer inside it would give them any fuel. Then they took time out for a quick lunch, and were on the road by one.

  It’s just about four hundred miles from Cleveland to Port Jervis, New York, where New York and New Jersey and Pennsylvania meet, just a little north of the Delaware Water Gap. On an ordinary day, in an ordinary car, traveling Interstate 80, they’d have made it in under six hours, but this was not an ordinary car, and straight ahead of them was something that would keep this from being at all an ordinary day. The storm they’d flown over, they would now drive through, which would slow them down a bit. On the other hand, you couldn’t ask for better wheels than this, if what you planned to do was drive through a snowstorm.

  They caught up with it in western Pennsylvania, just as they were crossing the Allegheny River. The sky in Ohio, after the storm, had been pale, almost ivory, with a small cold-looking sun far, far away, its weak beams glaring white from all this fresh snow round and about, but once past Youngstown and into Pennsylvania, the sun faded to nothing, the sky was slate, and the fresh snow in the mountains was deeper, duller-looking, as though it hadn’t settled yet from its recent journey. And then, just east of the Allegheny, the sky turned darker; they could see wind whipping tree branches, and snow began to swirl in the air in front of them.

  Half an hour later, they were in the storm, and Murch had turned on every running light the truck possessed. All about them, cars were sliding, trucks were stopped beside the highway, visibility was not much farther than the end of your nose, snow was everywhere, on the ground, in the air, in the sky above, and they were creeping along at thirty, tops. “I think,” Murch said, “it’s time to figure out how to lower this plow.”

  39

  * * *

  The girls, of course, thought it was an absolute waste to have a big winter storm on the weekend, when school was closed anyway. “Don’t be silly,” Viveca told them. “You’ll have a great time out on the slope tomorrow, you know you will.”

  “We could have just as fine a time on a Tuesday,” Victoria replied.

  There was never any point arguing with the girls. “I’m busy,” Viveca told them, which was perfectly true. “Go on down to the barn, the three of you, and get out all of our winter things. The toboggan, both sleds, the snowshoes. Put them all in the visitor center. Who’s on duty down there today?”

  “Matt,” Vanessa said, and all three girls giggled. They all had a crush on Matt, whom they considered the only member of the security staff who could be thought of as a serious hunk.

  “Well, ask Matt to help,” Viveca said. “And don’t tease him.”

  They all giggled again, then raced out of the kitchen, and Viveca turned back to her list. Here it was midafternoon on a Saturday, a storm was coming, they were actually quite isolated here on this mountain, and, as usual, Viveca had waited till the last minute to see which provisions might be running low. Frank always used to take care of details like that, damn him.

  Viveca and Mrs. Bunni
on, the housekeeper, sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Mrs. Bunnion would drive down to Port Jervis to do the shopping, but she quite sensibly wanted it done and over with before dark, and also before the onset of the storm, so there was a certain amount of hurry in this list compiling. “Milk,” Viveca said.

  “That we have,” Mrs. Bunnion answered. “You don’t want too much of the perishables, in case the electric goes out.”

  “The refrigerator’s on the backup generator,” Viveca pointed out, “but I suppose you’re right, that we shouldn’t bring in too much. Cereal, though, I know we’ll need more of that. And buy some nice soup for lunch tomorrow.”

  “Yes’m.”

  They were comfortable together, employer and employee, though not quite as comfortable as they’d been before Frank left. Viveca knew Mrs. Bunnion considered her a bit scatterbrained, which was of more moment now that there wasn’t a man around to hold the reins, and she supposed Mrs. Bunnion was right, but there really was an awful lot to do here, even in winter, when the house was closed to the public. And particularly with a storm coming.

  Thurstead was the only home Viveca had ever known, born here as Viveca Deigh, daughter of Walter and Elizabeth Deigh, granddaughter of Emily and Allistair Valentine, and great-granddaughter of Russell Thurbush, who had built this magnificent pile and then left his descendants the endless task of caring for it.

  In a way, it was an easy life. The nonprofit corporation maintained the place and provided the family with an income, in addition to the roof over their heads. In season, volunteers worked as cashiers and docents, so the family never actually had to look at any of the thousands of visitors who trooped through the downstairs every year. Also, Russell Thurbush’s reputation meant the family was automatically welcomed at the uppermost social levels in both Philadelphia and New York; Viveca could attend a museum opening a week, if she cared to.

  But in another way, as Frank had increasingly felt, Thurstead was a kind of soft prison, an indentured servitude. Frank had his M.B.A., but there was little enough business to conduct, and that was all done by the Thurstead Foundation. The family could never go very far from the house for very long, but, on the other hand, they weren’t free to alter it or add to it or do any of the things normal families did with normal houses. No wonder Frank wanted his own place, in New York City, and his own job, with Standard Chemicals, and his own life, which Viveca believed he was sharing at the moment with a woman named Rachel.

  This so-called trial separation was well into its second year now, with many visits all year long from Frank and summertime excursions for the girls to Frank’s apartment in New York, all the new little systems and rituals in place. Viveca knew that Frank was right when he said he’d left Thurstead more than he’d left her, but, damn it, it sure felt as though he’d left her.

  “There,” she said, pushing the list across the table to Mrs. Bunnion. “I can’t think of anything else, can you?”

  “No, we’ll be fine,” Mrs. Bunnion said, then rose and carried the list with her out of the room.

  We’ll be fine. Viveca got up from the table, feeling vague and a little uncertain, probably because of the coming storm. She wandered through their rooms to the parlor, with its large windows overlooking the view that had attracted Russell Thurbush in the first place. The four hundred acres owned by the Thurstead Foundation covered this entire eastern slope of the mountain, plus land around to the south. From here, the view was southeastward over a roughly tumbling downslope falling away to the deep gorge of the river, and then the rocky face of Pennsylvania on the other side.

  Mrs. Bunnion’s red Ford Explorer appeared and disappeared, heading down the twisty road to the highway far below.

  One of the windows in this room consisted of a large pane of pale yellow glass; through it, even a day like today was sunny. Gazing through that window, the red of the Explorer brighter, the black of the trees darker, Viveca sighed. We’ll be all right. We’ll be all right because nothing ever happens. And which of her daughters, she wondered, would wind up sentenced to this soft life?

  She felt like a princess in a fairy tale, locked in a tower, which for a semi-single mother of three was a little late in the day. She’d already been rescued by her prince, who was now in New York City with a woman named Rachel.

  Above Pennsylvania, far away, she could see the storm clouds coming.

  40

  * * *

  The storm reached Port Jervis at eight, but Kelp and Murch did not. Dortmunder and Tiny and Murch’s Mom had taken rooms at a motel south of town, which, the clerk had assured them, would be full of skiers once this weekend’s storm passed through. “We’ll be outta here by then,” Dortmunder said.

  They’d eaten an early dinner in a nearby diner, partly to be ready when Kelp and Murch arrived, but mostly because Murch’s Mom “got peckish” if she didn’t have an early dinner, and nobody wanted Murch’s Mom peckish. Then, a little before eight, just ahead of the storm, they all gathered in Dortmunder’s room, which he had paid for with a credit card named Livingston Van Peek, and waited for the other two and the truck to arrive.

  And waited. The motel had cable, so at least they didn’t have to watch network television, but, on the other hand, there wasn’t very much out there on the airwaves that this particular trio could all agree on. So they sat around and watched things none of them particularly cared about, and from time to time whoever hated the current program the worst would get up and go over to look out the window and say, “Sure is snowing,” or “Still snowing,” or “Looka that snow.”

  There was no deadline problem here; it was merely that the wait was boring. Just so Kelp and Murch showed up before dawn, at least an hour before dawn, the plan could still work the same as ever.

  They were definitely going to cut Thurstead’s electricity and phone. They had no doubt a place like that would have a backup generator, but backup generators can’t carry the entire normal load of even an ordinary house, so what would they use their limited supply of electricity for? The refrigerator, the water pump in the well, the furnace igniter, a few lights. The exterior motion sensors in the trees might or might not be included, probably not, but even if they were, it didn’t matter. The plan included the idea that they’d be eyeballed from the house. But the electricity and phone being off would mean that the security office would certainly be shut down, and all the people present at Thurstead would be compressed into a smaller than usual space. That was all Dortmunder and the others needed, or at least that was the idea.

  At eleven, they gave up on the wonders of worldwide broadcasting to watch the local news instead, which was all about the storm that continued to rage outside. There were dramatic pictures of trees lying on automobiles, intrepid reporters standing in wind-whipped snow to report to you, snowplows chugging along, ambulances with many flashing red lights, and some cheerful clown with a ski report.

  Eleven-forty-two, according to the clock screwed to the table beside the bed, when the phone rang. Dortmunder answered, and Kelp’s voice said, “I gotta admit, it was kind of fun.”

  “Slowed you down a little.”

  “You should see the other guys.”

  “You all set now?”

  “Sure. When you go out, go way down to the end, away from the office here. I’ll head back down there now.”

  “Right.”

  The idea was, Kelp and Murch couldn’t exactly check in at this motel because they didn’t have a vehicle they could mention on the register card, and if they didn’t have a vehicle, how did they get here? So Kelp had merely walked into the lobby to use the house phone, and now they’d all meet outside. And later, when they were done, Kelp would illegally share Dortmunder’s room and Murch would illegally share Tiny’s room.

  Kelp said, “Bring along the WD-40, we got a squeaky door in the back.”

  “Right.”

  “And don’t forget the tin snips.”

  For cutting the electric and phone wires, of course.
Dortmunder said, “Don’t need them.”

  “But we gotta cut off the, you know.”

  “It was on the news half an hour ago,” Dortmunder told him. “That part of the country down there, they’re already out, electric and phone both. The storm did the job for us.”

  41

  * * *

  The holiday special the girls wanted to watch on television this evening, The New Adventures of the Virgin Mary and the Seven Dwarfs at the North Pole, started at eight, but had barely gotten the dwarfs out of F.A.O. Schwarz inside a shiny new Beetle—bright red—when the power went. “Oh hell,” Viveca said. Now the girls would have to be entertained.

  Around them in the fresh darkness, the house purred almost as much as normal, because the backup generator automatically kicked in when the power went out, but the television set was not part of that grid, which had been installed years ago, at a time when the house was not full of young children. Today, the decision might have been different; too bad.

  Matt, the hunk from security, had gone home at six, so it was Hughie, a gruff, stout, older man, a former New York City policeman who preferred to keep himself to himself, who came from the now-dark barn, grumpily following his flashlight beam. “Phone’s out, too,” he announced when he came tromping up the stairs.

  Viveca had already lit the Coleman lantern and was carrying it by its looped handle as she stood at the top of the stairs, watching Hughie come up. At this point, there was no other light in the house, though they did have candles and flashlights, as needed. “I’m sure they’ll plow us out in the morning,” she said as he came in and took off his pea jacket to hang it on one of the wooden pegs on the kitchen wall near the door. “Do you know Uno?”

  He gave her an exasperated look; but then, all of Hughie’s looks were exasperated. He said, “Do I know I know?”