Little Boy Lost

by Dell Shannon

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

'My favourite American crime-writer' New York Herald Tribune Twenty years ago the five-year-old Traxler heir was kidnapped from his Hollywood home and never seen again. Now his widowed mother is overjoyed when a plausible young man claims to be her long-lost son, a claim supported by accurate childhood memories. Mrs Traxler accepts him unconditionally, and when her niece Charlotte dares to question him, she is cut out of the will. Charlotte turns to Jesse Falkenstein, who is soon as suspicious of the man's claim as she is. After launching an intense investigation, one lead after another falls flat - and even the original kidnapper refuses to talk . . .

Release date: July 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Jesse drifted into Central Courtroom Three at a few minutes before ten. There were a couple of bailiffs chattering desultorily at one of the rear doors; otherwise the courtroom
was empty except for Bill Carlow, of Carlow and Weekes, sitting at one of the tables before the bench. Jesse went over to sit down beside him, and Carlow nodded at him grumpily.

“And I suppose,” he said, “it’s the same with you. Cut-and-dried divorce, fifteen minutes to get it on file with the court—and I’ve got an appointment at
eleven-thirty. It would have to be Dalrymple. Any bets on when we’ll get out of here?”

“That’s right,” said Jesse amiably. Dalrymple was notoriously late in convening court; gossips said that he had to cure a hangover every morning, but as he was a bachelor
nobody really knew. Like Carlow, Jesse had a cut-and-dried divorce suit to present the court, but he hadn’t anything else on his agenda except the proofreading of a will when he got back to
the office, until an appointment with a new client at two-thirty.

A minute later Carlow said with feeling, “Hell and damnation! Wouldn’t you know!”

Jesse looked up from rummaging in his briefcase. One of the bailiffs was shepherding a man through the rear door of the court, and another man accompanied them, a big man with rough-hewn
features, in a rumpled business suit. “For God’s sake,” said Carlow, “an arraignment. That’s Carney from Central Homicide. They’ll take that first—we
won’t get out of here until noon, damn it.”

“And that’s Honeycutt,” said Jesse. “Suppose the bench’ll appoint a public defender.”

Carlow grunted. Jesse regarded Carl Honeycutt with faint interest. He was a heavy-shouldered, nondescript man in his fifties, neatly dressed in a gray suit and white shirt; he looked morose.
“Funny case,” said Carlow. “I suppose. Handful of nothing, legally speaking. But a funny one.”

It had been a slightly off-beat case, spread in the papers ten days ago. Carl Honeycutt had lived a humdrum everyday existence with a nondescript wife for over twenty years; he had a barbershop
in downtown L.A., and he’d never had so much as a moving violation ticket. Six months after his wife died of cancer last year, he had remarried; and a couple of weeks ago he had gone berserk
with a shotgun and killed his new wife, her brother and sister-in-law, and a neighbor who had attempted to reason with him.

“Never even known to tie one on,” said Carlow. “A funny one all right. Makes you wonder about people.”

Jesse said sleepily, “Catalysts. Like in chemistry.”

“What?”

“A meets B, they have a nice cozy smooth relationship—marriage, friendship, business, whatever. A meets C, or B meets D, bang, there’s an explosion. Like catalytic agents in
chemistry.”

“Oh,” said Carlow. “As good an explanation as any. But damn it, the damn judge is ten minutes late already—I won’t get out of here until noon—”

“Annoying,” agreed Jesse. Three minutes later the judge finally appeared, and of course took the arraignment first; the homicide officer gave brief testimony, and it took some twenty
minutes and delayed the other business of the court. Carlow got his divorce suit on the agenda in another fifteen minutes and departed fuming; Jesse didn’t get out of court until a quarter of
twelve. Over lunch at a coffee shop on Western Avenue, he ruminated vaguely about Honeycutt: a queer enough case and thank God it was no business of his; but people did come all sorts and shapes,
and were set in motion by, perhaps, the catalytic agents as well as other things.

He got back to the office on Wilshire at one-twenty, and the will was on his desk for proofreading; his twin secretaries, the good-looking blondes, Jean and Jamesina Gordon, were eminently
efficient.

The new client was punctual at two-thirty; Jean ushered her in. She had made the appointment three days ago: a Mrs. Charlene Garland.

Jesse rose to greet her and settled her in the client’s chair beside his desk. She was a good-looking woman, not young, perhaps in her forties, but well and neatly dressed in a navy suit.
She had dark hair sprinkled with a little gray, and a figure just slightly plump. She was carrying a book as well as her outsized navy handbag.

“And what can I do for you, Mrs. Garland?” he asked pleasantly.

She studied him for a moment before speaking. She would have been a very pretty girl twenty years ago; she had a roundish face with a generous mouth, wide-set blue eyes. She said unexpectedly,
“If old Mr. Halliday had still been alive, I wouldn’t be here—he’d have done something whether I went to him or not. But he died last year. And I don’t know but what I
want a private detective instead of a lawyer—but Mrs. Christiansen said I ought to see a lawyer—and I really don’t know what a lawyer could do, but maybe you will.”

“Well, suppose you tell me what it’s about and we’ll see.” Jesse offered her a cigarette.

She took it, bent to his lighter, and sat back with a little sigh. “You see, Mr. Falkenstein, you do have to think about money, don’t you? Without being mercenary or thinking about
it all the time—it is important, isn’t it?”

“You have to think about it.”

“Well—I’d better tell you something about my situation. So you’ll have the whole picture. I’m a widow—Bob was killed on the job two years ago. He was in
construction work. It was the company’s fault—I needn’t go into that—they were very fair, there wasn’t any legal hassle, it was faulty equipment, and they made a good
settlement, paid off the house and gave me a lump sum. Not that anything would be enough for losing Bob.” The hand holding her cigarette was shaking slightly. “I’d gone back to
work the year before—I’m a bookkeeper at Kelly and Howard, they’re a big building materials outfit in the Valley—wholesale to construction firms mostly. We’re getting
along just fine, you see, with the settlement and the house paid for—but you have to think about money. I’ve got two children, Cindy’s eighteen, and she’ll graduate from
high school in June, and Paul’s sixteen. They’ll both want to go to college, and”—she sighed sharply—“I didn’t know any lawyers,” she said,
“except Mr. Halliday. And I went and saw Mr. Holden, and they just don’t care—he as good as said he wouldn’t and couldn’t do anything, and I got mad—and a friend
of mine said you’d been very good at getting a divorce for a friend of hers, so I thought—”

“Yes,” said Jesse. Such were the random ways clients came to lawyers. He was letting her take her time.

“I don’t know whether you know them—it was Halliday, Holden and Wirtz, but since Mr. Halliday died it’s just the other two.” Jesse had a nodding acquaintance with
the firm, an old and prestigious one in Los Angeles.

“Mr. Halliday was an old friend of Uncle Tom’s. He’d have done something—I don’t know what. But at least he’d have been able to get Aunt Ruth to listen to
him. I think. If anybody could.” She uttered a short laugh and stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the desk. “But as it is—Mr. Falkenstein, does the name Traxler mean
anything to you? Do you remember anything about the Traxler kidnapping?”

Jesse spread his hands. “Should I? I’m afraid not—it doesn’t ring any bells.”

“Well, it’s twenty-one years ago, of course. And it didn’t make all the national headlines. I’ll have to tell you all the background—I’m sorry to take up so
much of your time—”

“No hurry, take your time and tell me whatever you think I should know.”

“Yes. Well, Thomas Traxler—Uncle Tom—was my mother’s older brother. He made a lot of money. It was—sort of, you could say, inadvertent. He and his partner, George
Coleman, had a little tool-and-die business out in the Valley—Glendale—this was way back in the Depression. When the war started they converted to making small aircraft parts, and the
business really took off—by the end of the war it was booming. And Coleman was a bachelor without any relatives, and he was killed in an accident and left his share of the business to Uncle
Tom. There was—there is quite a lot of money, not just the business. Uncle Tom invested in land and real estate as well as stocks and so on, you see. Of course, the business was sold later
but—there’s still a lot of money. I’m getting ahead of myself, I’m sorry.” She took a breath. “Uncle Tom and Aunt Ruth were married sometime just before the war
began, around there, and neither of them was exactly young then. And they were married for nearly fifteen years before Tommy was born—their little boy. I expect you can guess how they
idolized him. Looking back, I can see how they spoiled him—how maybe he’d have grown up to be an obnoxious spoiled darling—you know? He had everything. They had an English nanny
for him and all the toys—the clothes—I don’t really remember much about him,” said Charlene Garland, “except that he was rather a shy little boy—and so very
polite, in an old-fashioned way—the way he’d been taught. You see, Aunt Ruth is—was—English. Her mother was widowed quite young, and they came here when she married an
American—it must be fifty years ago, but Aunt Ruth’s so proud of being English, she’s—kept it up. Afternoon tea and the accent and everything—everything you can
imagine, English. She taught Tommy little pieces he had to recite for guests—people haven’t done that since the nineties, have they?—but she did—and that’s not
irrelevant. I’m getting to the point, Mr. Falkenstein,” and she gave him a faint smile. “Little nursery rhymes. They—Uncle Tom and Aunt Ruth—gave us the reception when
Bob and I were married, that was—just before it happened, twenty-one years ago. They’d bought the house about five years before, it was when the Mt. Olympus Estates were being opened,
you know that exclusive area—” One of the most exclusive and expensive residential areas, that was indeed, in upper Hollywood, adjoining the equally exclusive Trousdale Estates in
Beverly Hills. “It was a lovely reception, they paid for everything, they’d always been so good to Mother and me—and to get back to the money, you see, I know very well that Uncle
Tom would have left Mother something in his will—and possibly me too, he liked Bob. You see, Mother had been divorced from my father since I was ten. But the month after Bob and I were
married, there was—the kidnapping. Tommy was kidnapped. Uncle Tom paid the ransom, but they never got him back. They never knew what happened to him. It was terrible—a terrible thing to
happen. He was five and a half.”

“I suppose the FBI was on it?” said Jesse.

“Yes, and the local police. They never found out a thing. I don’t really know much about that part of it—Bob was working for a firm in Fresno then, we lived there for five
years before we came back to the L.A. area, both the children were born there. But it was just terrible for them—you can imagine. Uncle Tom paid the ransom, a hundred thousand dollars, but
they never got Tommy back. I think the FBI was sure he’d been killed—well, kidnappers usually do murder children, don’t they?”

“Not always.”

“But usually. And he was five and a half, he could have told something about the people who took him. But—it all came to nothing. It was awful. About six months later, I think it
was, there was a body found—a child’s body—but it couldn’t be definitely identified. There’d been another child reported missing about the same time Tommy was
kidnapped, and the police thought the body could have been his as well as Tommy’s. It was just left up in the air, you see?”

“Yes.”

“Well—” She took a long breath. “I’m sorry to be so long-winded, but you’ve got to have the background. It just about killed Uncle Tom. He’d been in his
fifties when Tommy was born, and it was as if he had lost everything that meant anything to him. He just seemed to lose interest in life altogether, he didn’t care what happened. And to come
to the money, Mr. Falkenstein, I know he’d probably have left Mother something in the will, but you see, they had a row. A fight. They were both quick-tempered people, and they—sort of
flared up at each other. And he—” She grimaced. “It was silly.”

“About what?”

“Well, the psychics. It was silly,” said Charlene Garland. “You see, Aunt Ruth never gave up hope about Tommy. She wouldn’t believe he was dead—that that body could
have been his. And she kept going to all the fortune tellers—calling themselves psychics, sensitives, you know—I suppose one in a hundred of them is honest, but mostly they’re
just telling people what they want to hear for the money, aren’t they? And some of them told her Tommy was dead, but some of them told her he was alive and eventually she’d have him
back—and Mother told Uncle Tom he ought to put his foot down and stop her going to them, it wasn’t only a waste of money but it was so bad for her, and he said anything that gave her
comfort was all right with him, and they had a row—and I know that eventually they’d have made it up, but in the meantime he changed his will and left everything to Aunt Ruth, and then
a few months later he died of a heart attack. He was only sixty-three—but he’d—just lost any interest in life.”

“I see,” said Jesse. “And is she still going to see the psychics?”

“Oh”—she made an impatient gesture—“no, not for years, I don’t think. She didn’t exactly turn into a recluse—she used to entertain a lot, and she
stopped doing that, but she’s still got her bridge club and shopping, and sometimes she goes to the theater—oddly enough she was never annoyed with Mother, and she always treated us
like family, you know? She’s always given the children and me nice birthday and Christmas presents, and she’d invite Bob and me for dinner sometimes. Like that. And after all, we were
the only family she has and—” she hesitated.

“And you were pretty sure she’d have left you a bundle of the money?” he filled in for her. “Do you know how your uncle left it?”

“Yes. It’s all in trust, with his lawyers—Halliday, Holden and Wirtz, only now Mr. Halliday’s dead. He was an old friend of Uncle Tom’s. They handle all the money,
but it’s not tied up any way, she can leave it however she wants. I remember her saying that after Uncle Tom died, when the will was read, and she even said then that of course it should come
to us, she hadn’t any relatives left at all and it was Uncle Tom’s money and we were his relatives.”

“Fair enough,” said Jesse. He slid down a little further in his desk chair, long legs stretched out. “So what’s the snag?”

She looked very angry suddenly. “That’s what I’m coming to. She—I don’t know how to tell you, it’s so absurd—and so wild. She thinks she’s got
Tommy back.”

“And how did that happen, for God’s sake?”

Charlene Garland took the cigarette he offered her. “Oh, it’s wild,” she said. “And he’s got to be—he is—the most flagrant imposter—but he’s
clever, oh, he’s clever. He’s got Aunt Ruth absolutely convinced, and she’s furious at me because I don’t believe it. There.” All this time she’d been nursing
the book on her lap, and now she laid it on his desk and sat back. “It started with that. So he says.”

Jesse looked at the book. It still wore its dust jacket in pristine condition; it was a fairly new-looking, hard-cover book entitled Unsolved Mysteries of the Twentieth Century, by
James Gilchrist, and bore the name of a well-known publisher.

She looked at it bitterly, and then suddenly she laughed rather harshly. “After all,” she said, “I don’t want you to think she’s an absolute fool, Mr. Falkenstein.
She’s got some reason to believe him—only she won’t see—well!” She drew strongly on the cigarette. “That”—and she nodded at the book—“has
an account of the kidnapping. I remember her telling me how she gave an interview to the author—that was a couple of years ago. It’s just a—a—rehash of the facts, the police
work and so on. But there’s a photograph of Tommy, and of the house. And when she had this letter—to put it briefly, he claims that he picked up the book just casually, and the
photograph of the house triggered his memory. He says he’d always had these vague memories of a place and people where he’d lived as a little boy, but it wasn’t until he saw that
picture that they all came together for him and he remembered a lot more. He’s told her—” She was silent and put a hand to her head. “In a way you can’t blame her, Mr.
Falkenstein. Of course she wanted desperately to believe him, but what he’s told her—I saw that letter, and it was clever—he’s so clever. He could tell her things—I
can’t imagine how, where he got the facts—things not in that book, little personal things. The things a child would remember. He told her the names he had for his favorite toys, there
was a big stuffed bear, and a rocking horse—and he told her about the dog they had, a golden cocker named Bonnie, and how he used to play with her. He told her some of the little pieces
she’d taught him to recite for company—he claimed to remember that, when she served tea out of the silver service, and saying verses for company—and he told her what he called the
nanny. A pet name—he always called her Judy because she told him stories about Punch and Judy—and he told her the nursery had yellow curtains with an animal print on them—and
there was a furry rug in front of the fireplace there. And how the nanny read him poetry about the bells of London—and told him stories about when she was a little girl in Barnstaple in
England.”

“Very interesting,” said Jesse. “And I take it that was all true?”

“You just can’t imagine how she reacted to that letter. She’d never accepted that Tommy was dead—and here was a letter from him, she had to believe it was from
him—oh, it was so cleverly done—”

“Tell me what you remember about the letter. You saw it?. . .