An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3) by Fred Saberhagen (interesting books to read for teens .TXT) 📗

to marry into wealth. Never have to face the prospect of him as a son-in-law now. Never have to. Never…

   So peaceful Kate had been there on the antiseptic public table. He tried to hold in mind that peaceful, contented look, more like one sleeping than one dead. That look would seem to show she had not suffered. Dying there in that sleazy rooming house. What was she doing there? With whom? Someone must have been there. But Andrew was not ready to face those questions just yet.

   So considerate were all of the officials, holding down the publicity as well and as long as they could. Though in the long run they wouldn’t be able to, he understood that. He couldn’t estimate yet the effect on business, good or bad. Just one of those things that could not be planned for…time enough for that tomorrow.

   …Judy of course went to place herself by the young man when he sat down, and held his prizefighter’s hand. That was her way.

   Meanwhile more police—Andrew lost track of what separate organizations they all represented—were in the house and out again. They talked to Andrew, and ten minutes later he couldn’t remember what they had asked or he had answered. You planned and worked, and built up your business, all for your family, and then…

   Johnny, as red-eyed as the rest of the family and for once subdued, came along in the late afternoon with the word that he was going over to Clark’s for a while, if his parents didn’t mind. The Birches were close friends and it was natural that they would want to share the burden of the tragedy.

   Andrew spoke to his son in a painful voice. “I don’t think you’re in shape now to be driving.” He could not really remember himself driving home from Chicago. “I don’t think any of us are.”

   “I’ll walk, Dad.” The Birches lived only about two hundred yards away along Sheridan Road, where the shoulders, though unpaved, were smooth and plenty wide enough to walk on without having to dodge traffic.

   “All right, then. Tell them we’ll call them later.”

   Shortly after Johnny left, darkness fell.

   The phone rang, rang. Neighbors and business associates who had just heard the news kept calling in to offer sympathy. There were reporters, who could be brushed off for now. But it was in the papers now anyway, and on TV. In the intervals between incoming calls, Lenore began phoning out, talking to relative and old friends scattered around the country. As if it helped her, just to have the phone in her hand and talk. Andrew didn’t know where to look for something that would help him. There was Judy, of course. Thank God for Judy. She came and sat beside her father, saying little, just being there.

   Somewhere along the line Joe Keogh had departed. A time came when all the police were gone. Lenore was on the phone, saying for what sounded like the hundredth time: we don’t know yet about the funeral. After tomorrow, sometime.

   Then the family made an attempt at gathering for dinner. Andrew took over the phone, and rang the Birches. “This is Andy. I think a son of mine is over there?”

   “Andy, good lord. Johnny was telling us…it’s so terrible. What can we say?”

   “I guess there’s nothing.” Andrew hardly knew any longer what he was saying himself. “Is John there?”

   “Why, no, he left some time ago. I think about six. I thought he was going directly home, but he might have stopped in at the Karlsens’.”

   “That’s probably it.” Andrew said goodbye, hung up, and punched for the Karlsens’ home.

   But Johnny wasn’t there either.

   Phone cradled again, Andrew tried to think. The Montoyas?  They were in Mexico. Where else might Johnny be? Somewhere in walking distance.

   Andrew slipped on a coat and without saying anything left the house and walked down the long, curving drive. He felt there was no rational reason for what he was doing, but he was not going to let that stop him tonight. He noticed that some stars were out. Could Johnny be standing somewhere, gazing at them? The boy would do that sometimes. The telescope was put away, back in the small guest house near the lake.

   As he walked down the drive he could hear distant surf behind him, smashing against the icefield, a different sound from that of its impact on rock and beach in summer. From in front came a murmur of light traffic and passing headlights dazzled at him through the fir trees flanking his drive.

   In the light of the next set of headlights Andrew say that the flag on his mailbox had been raised. He himself had brought the Saturday mail in earlier in the day, and he had told the family often enough not to put anything out there over the weekend, not after that time when the checks were pilfered…

   As he brought it back near the lighted house, Andrew’s mind registered that the little brown-paper-covered package bore no stamps, and that it was addressed, ballpoint in an unfamiliar, clumsy block printing, to himself.

   He carried it inside with him, and as Lenore approached, wondering out loud where he had been, he opened it. Paper fell away, revealing a box that had probably once held a gift pen. It opened easily.

   Looking at the object inside, a freshly amputated finger with a ragged, bloody stump-end that had left blood-smears on the inner lining of the box, Andrew felt something like the beginning of comfort. In a moment he recognized the comfort as of the sort of experienced when the nightmare goes too far, and one knows at last that one is dreaming.

   Except that even in his dreams he had never before heard Lenore, he had never heard anyone, make noises like the ones that she was making now…

* * * * * * *

   An hour before