Read Online Jimmy the Stick by Michael Mayo - Free Book Online Page B

through them, making the ballroom colder than the rest of the place.
    He led me upstairs to the second floor. There was a porch off of Mrs. Pennyweight’s rooms but other than that, no outside doors. Mears had already closed and locked the shutters of the nursery and the empty guest rooms. Servants’ quarters were on the third floor. They had no outside access and small windows.
    Downstairs in the kitchen, there was only one door. Oh Boy was sitting at the table. I asked him to show me the guns.
    The gun room was at the far end of the basement, behind a wooden door thick enough to muffle the sound of gunshots. Like the kitchen, it had whitewashed walls. They were covered with mounted animal heads along with photographs, mostly of a smiling Mr. Pennyweight, his guns, and the dead trophies he’d shot with them. There were also pictures of a girl about twelve years old with a long, ruddy face. I guessed this was the older sister, Mandelina. She wore hunting clothes and posed with a deer or elk with a wide rack of antlers. She held a lever-action Winchester rifle, her father beaming proudly beside her. I studied the picture more closely. The resemblance to Flora was strong. But Mandelina seemed much more confident, almost cocky. You could tell that she was only a few years away from becoming a real looker.
    Oh Boy took a key from a peg and unlocked the doors of a glass-fronted gun case. The racks inside held a collection of expensive shotguns and rifles. A second case held muzzle-loaders and older military pieces. Beside them was a workbench for cleaning the weapons and reloading ammunition.
    Oh Boy opened a drawer and said, “Here’s the pistols.”
    The drawer was lined with green felt, with spaces cut out for a dozen or so handguns. These were the familiar guns of my youth: Police Positive, Browning Hi-Power, and my own favorite, the Detective Special snub-nose .38. Another Mauser, the big broom-handle model, was in the center of the drawer. The largest cutout was empty. It was a simple angled shape meant for a Colt .45 automatic. I guessed that Spence had taken it on his trip.
    I walked to the dark shooting range and hit one of two switches on the wall by the counter. Lights came down the narrow passageway. At the far end, a spotlight was aimed at a paper target already peppered with holes, suspended from an electric pulley-and-chain system. I snapped on the other switch. A motor whirred and the target glided back to me. I started counting the holes and stopped at thirty. There was a coffee can on the counter with a dozen or so .45 shell casings at the bottom. More littered the floor of the range. Spence had been practicing.“Oh Boy, what do you know about this trip?”
    â€œJeez, Walter’s been working on it for almost a year now. We’ve been going into the city to meet with the company lawyers two, three times a week. Sometimes Saturday, too. Leave first thing in the morning, don’t get back until after dark. Oh boy, do I hate those days. And the shysters have been coming out here, too. I talk to the other drivers, who say this is quite the big deal. I’ll be glad when it’s over, that’s for sure.”
    I went back to the pistol drawer and found the cutout for the little Abercrombie & Fitch Mauser. Before I put it away, I offered it to Oh Boy.
    He shook his head and frowned. “No, I don’t like guns no more. You know that.”
    Some guys go a little nuts over guns. They’ve got to have the biggest, shiniest, loudest piece, wearing fancy shoulder holsters and such, making sure everybody sees what they’re carrying, particularly women. You’ve got to watch out for guys like that. Oh Boy was just the opposite. Had been for years and he hadn’t changed.
    I took out the Detective Special. The compact weight was familiar but the grip felt different. It didn’t have any friction tape or rubber bands holding it together. I opened the cylinder.