The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks - lanyon Josh. Страница 25

Nick considered. “I’m not talking about death and taxes, but yeah. Up to a point, yeah. Sure as hell no one can force you to attend some psychic tea party if you don’t want to.”

Perry made a small, bitter, and dismissive noise, turning his face to the steaming window.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nick shot a quick, curious glance his way.

“Nothing.” Nick looked his way again, as they bumped onto the long covered bridge, but Perry’s expression was lost in the darkness of the tunnel. Nick could feel the buzz of his emotions like an electrical field.

“What’s with you?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s wrong?”

Perry said quietly, “People have all kinds of ways of forcing you to do what you don’t want to.”

“I don’t even know what we’re talking about,” Nick said. “I’m not going to let anyone force you to take part in some hocus-pocus bullshit. You can count on that.”

Silence.

The truck exited the darkness of the covered bridge, and Nick risked another glance at his companion. Perry was still staring out the window, his expression oddly cold and removed.

* * * * *

“Verity Lane,” Mrs. Bartlett said with a reminiscent twinkle in her eyes. “I think they’re showing one of her films down the street.”

Perry wondered if the elderly Mrs. Bartlett, curator of the Fox Run Historical Society, just might -- in the words of Jane -- be losing it, but she relieved his mind by clarifying, “They’re holding one of those vintage film revivals at the Players Theater on Dove Street. The matinee is just two dollars. They’re calling it the ‘two-bits matinee.’”

“We were more interested in Shane Moran,” Nick said. He was examining the display of disabled eighteenth-century firearms.

“Oh, but you can’t understand Shane without discussing Verity,” Mrs. Bartlett said, amused. “They were lovers, you see.”

“I thought she was married to Henry Alston,” Perry objected with the naive surprise of the product of a stable, middle-class union.

“She was! It was a terrible scandal. Alston was a stuffy New Englander, but rich as Croesus when he bought the house at the start of Prohibition and set about renovating it. He had fallen in love with one of the Ziegfeld Girls, Verity Lane, and the story is he bought the old Hennesey Farm for her, although why he thought a little butterfly like Verity would want to live in the wilds of Vermont…”

To keep her to himself, Perry thought. But he didn’t say anything, letting Mrs. Bartlett run on unchecked.

“The story goes that Verity originally spurned him -- several times and quite publicly at that, but he persisted and eventually won her over. They moved here in 1923, and became quite famous for their wild parties. I shouldn’t say their, because I supposed that was all Verity, with Henry simply hanging on for dear life.”

“I read an article on the house,” Perry said. “Hot jazz and hooch. And illegal gambling.”

“And that’s where Shane Moran comes in,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “It was Prohibition, of course, and the sale, transport, and manufacture of alcohol were illegal in the United States.”

“Hard to believe they got that passed,” Nick said.

“The temperance movement has a long history in Vermont,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “But you’re quite right. The Eighteenth Amendment was extremely unpopular with the vast majority of people in this country, and that created an enormous market for contraband and served to legitimize the criminal element. Otherwise law-abiding citizens began to do business with gangsters such as Shane Moran. Because of its proximity to the Canadian border, Vermont was a corridor for bootleggers and rumrunners.”

Mrs. Bartlett led them down an aisle, past a series of lithographs of early village life and household utensils to a montage of old photographs.

“This was Shane Moran.”

Perry had been expecting someone who looked like Al Capone -- or at least Humphrey Bogart -- but Moran was a clean-cut-looking young man with rough-hewn Irish features. Perry studied the photo. One thing for sure: this was not a picture of the dead man in the bathtub.

Nick said, “So Henry Alston started buying booze for his big parties from Shane Moran and…what? He tried to double-cross Moran?”

“I see you have a cynical view of human nature,” Mrs. Bartlett said. She was twinkling again, so apparently she approved of Nick’s jaded worldview.

“I’ve been around,” Nick replied.

“Apparently Henry did try to pull a fast one on Moran, but it might not have been entirely Henry’s fault. The story I heard from my grandmother, who was a maid at the Alston Estate, was that Verity fell in love with Shane Moran.”

“Uh-oh,” Perry said.

“Henry’s words exactly, I suppose,” Mrs. Bartlett agreed. “Henry wanted Moran out of the picture, and so the story goes he tried to set up some kind of sting with immigration agents. Moran got away.”

“And then Moran crashed Henry’s private party and robbed him and his wealthy guests,” Nick said. “I’m surprised Moran didn’t just shoot Alston.”

“Oh, Moran wasn’t a killer. At least not a cold-blooded one. And in any case, what he really came for was Verity.” Mrs. Bartlett pointed with one gnarled hand, the golden wedding glinting dully.

“I didn’t read anything about that,” Perry said.

“It didn’t make it into the local papers, although it was quite well known in these parts. Moran showed up and begged Verity to come away with him, but I suppose the role of gangster’s moll didn’t appeal to her. Anyway, he left with a fortune in jewels and valuables -- but without Verity. He was caught in the woods at Witch Hollow a few days later and gunned down by lawmen who, so the story goes, had been bribed by Henry Alston to make sure Moran was not brought in alive.”

“And the fortune in jewels and valuables was never located?” Perry asked.

“Correct. There are all kinds of stories about that. But the most likely answer is that Moran’s confederates took the loot away with them. Although as far as anyone knows, not so much as a pinky ring ever turned up.”

“How would anyone know?” Perry asked. “Maybe the jewels were broken up and sold out of state.”

“Verity was wearing the Alston sapphires. It was a very valuable and well-known collection. There was a necklace, two bracelets, and a ring. It would have been hard to fence any part of that without someone recognizing the stones -- the robbery got a great deal of attention in the media. And several of the other guests lost quite valuable pieces in addition to the usual gold cigarette lighters and silver compacts.” Mrs. Bartlett smiled her sweet, apple-cheeked smile. “I think word would have got out if any of that haul had turned up.”

“Why didn’t Moran leave?” Nick wondered aloud, frowning as he considered the long-dead gangster’s photograph. “Why keep hanging around after the Lane broad turned him down?”

“Maybe he thought she’d change her mind,” Perry said.

Nick gave him a level look. “Sounds like she made her feelings pretty clear.”

“That’s just another one of those things we’ll never know,” Mrs. Bartlett said, apparently untroubled at the idea.

“Who owns the house now?” Nick questioned.

“Now that’s a very interesting question,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “Of course, Mrs. MacQueen has managed the property -- if you can call it that -- for nearly twenty years, but the house has changed hands many times since Alston lost his fortune in March of ’33. It’s currently owned by the Dunstan family in Barre. In fact, one of the current tenants is a distant relation.

“Who?” Perry asked.

“Jim Teagle,” answered Mrs. Bartlett.