An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

   “What I just can’t understand is this happening to a boy like John. Not like some of these other kids, pot-smoking, getting girls in trouble. A little driving trouble once, last fall, was all I ever had with John.” Southerland’s countenance convulsed, as if he were trying with all the muscles of his face to squeeze something out of himself. “And Kate,” he added brokenly, and put his face down in his hands.

   “I am a father too, you know.” The visitor’s voice was soft, though without perceptible emotion. “Or I was.”

   “I didn’t know,” said Andrew, as if it couldn’t matter. He looked up, starting to recover from his spasm.

   “Not many do. But you are quite right, my family affairs are neither here nor there. Tell me, have you any dealings with what I believe is locally called the Mafia?”

   “What? Never.” Southerland’s reddened eyes, now shocked anew, proved at the visitor. “Who said a thing like that about me?”

   “No one, to my knowledge. But if you cannot guess who the guilty parties may be, then I must try to do so.”

   “You?” Southerland blinked at him stupidly, but aggressively. “What have you to do with this?” When the visitor stood silent, his host went on, now in a conciliatory tone: “Forgive me, I don’t mean to insult any old friend of Mother’s. But I’ve gone through all these same questions with the police. I don’t know why my children are being attacked. If I knew, don’t you suppose…I just don’t know.”

   The visitor found himself beginning to be convinced of this. But he said nothing, only turned instead to watch the Gothic doorway leading to the hall, where two seconds later there appeared the figure of a man.

   The newcomer was about thirty, sparely muscular, though-faced, fair-haired, dressed with classless American informality in boots, jeans, and a plaid jacket over a plaid shirt of different pattern. He favored the old man with a quick but judgmental glance that to the later once suggested the police. But when he spoke it was to their host: “Andy? Judy said you were back here. I just wanted to tell you—God, what can anyone say?”

   Andy—the European visitor could not really manage to think of him by that name—pressed his lips together and shook his head and looked away. So it was left to the old man to break a slightly awkward pause, which he did by putting out a cordial hand. “I am Dr. Emile Corday, an old friend of Clarissa’s grandmother.”

   “I heard about you from Clarissa. Pleased to meet you.” The young man’s grip was firm, though probably moderated in consideration of Dr. Corday’s age. “I’m Joe Keogh, Kate and I were…” glancing toward Kate’s father, he let his words trail off.

   “I understand. Well, Andrew?” Trying to fit the American style, he could just about manage Andrew. “Shall we all rejoin the ladies?”

   Southerland agreed spiritlessly and came with them, walking now as if he were the aged one of the group. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I think I’m going to lie down for a while…Lenore?” They had just re-entered the newer portion of the house, where his wife met them. “Will you call me at once if anything important comes up?”

   “Of course. Lie down if you like.” His wife, hardly looking at an of them, seemed as distracted as before. “Dr. Corday? Joe? You’re both going to stay to dinner, aren’t you?”

   Corday bowed neatly. “Much as it would please me, Lenore, I cannot. Tomorrow I should like to drop in again, and talk over old times with Clarissa. And of course to do what I can to lighten the burdens on you all. Meanwhile, messages can reach me at the Shores Motel.”

   Joe in turn made vague excuses for not staying, and then put forward the offer, quickly accepted, to drop off Dr. Corday at the Shores. Lenore did not press either of them to remain. Judy, rejoining them at the last moment, did, but desisted when she saw that both really preferred to leave.

   Outside, walking backwards into a gust of wind that howled across the floodlit gravel drive, Joe Keogh had a considerate eye out for the old man’s footing. “Watch out, kind of icy here with these frozen puddles.”

   The old man wondered for a moment if his arm was going to be taken. But that indignity did not occur, and he followed Joe among the parked cars of family members and the police—some of whom were still in the house, listening for ransom demands at one of the telephones. Joe’s vehicle, a small, gray German import, was the most modest of the lot.

   They had driven perhaps half a mile south on Sheridan Road, here fronted mostly by the driveways, walls, and gates of other set-back mansions, before the old man spoke again: “You grieve for her deeply.” Probing, he put a kind of challenge into the words.

   The driver glanced over at him. “I do.” He paused. “Do they get this kind of weather much in you part of Europe?”

   “You have noticed my accent, which I fear still betrays my central European origins. And my French name, of course. But I really do now make my home in London, where these days cold this intense and snow this heavy are rare. Now I see that you do grieve, indeed. Even though you were never formally betrothed, I take it?”

   Joe let a little time and traffic go by. “There were difficulties about that. Maybe you noticed, Kate’s parents aren’t exactly crazy about me. I felt like I was engaged to her, though she hadn’t actually said she’d marry me. You know?”

   “You had, perhaps, a rival?”

   “That wasn’t it.” Pause. “She…just hated to give up her freedom.” A longer pause. “Some of her wealthy acquaintances must have wanted to marry her too.”

   “Which ones?”

   “I wouldn’t know.” Again snow was falling, a flurry of stray