“The Arches and the Pryces aren’t exactly the Hatfields and the McCoys.”
“That’s exactly who they are,” said Tuesday. “In a higher tax bracket.” She jiggled her leg. “And not to be a pedant, but the plural of Arches is Archeses. Feels weird, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Dex drily. “The plural form of their last name is what feels weird about them.”
Lila – or Lyle (“we’re in nickname territory once you’ve seen me in sweats”) – had sketched the details of Vince’s relationship with the Archeses, or at least what she’d been around to witness. They were neighbors on Nantucket. She had only ever heard stories of Edgar Arches; he’d disappeared before she met Vince, but she knew him as “a craven bastard” who had fought tooth and nail to restrict the construction of the Castellated Abbey. The Arches family, when Vince moved to the neighborhood, thought Vince was vulgar, tacky, a blight; Vince thought that reaction suggested the Archeses were “morally bankrupt snobs of the highest order.” Dex said that made them sound kind of fun, which made Bert laugh, which made Lyle and Tuesday exchange a glance.
Lyle, personally, had had the most social contact with Constance and Emerson. They crossed paths at charity events, at galas, at auctions, on sidewalks in the posher neighborhoods. “We’re from completely different worlds,” Lyle said. “Different universes. I think visiting my bereaved ass was the very last thing Constance Arches wanted to do this morning, and yet it was the Thing To Do, so she did it. But they don’t scare me.” She inhaled. “Nathaniel, though – I’ve met him a few times. I always come away with the impression that he doesn’t understand I exist. I mean, I don’t, functionally, exist for him. He doesn’t have to deal with anyone who looks like me or thinks like me or lives like me – I guess lived like me – and what he doesn’t already know, he can’t imagine, so I might as well be – nothing.” She tapped the side of her head with her fingertip. “He’s hollow,” she said. “And he’s always …”
“A dick?” said Dex.
Lyle smiled. “Well, yes,” she said. “But I was going to say he’s always hungry.”
All things considered, all bloody marys consumed, it had been, for Tuesday, a successful research brunch. Her mental file on Archie was getting fatter (and odder) by the minute. Plus, she had fresh details on Emerson – witty – and Constance – taking Pryce’s death harder than one would expect. And, sure, she’d accidentally shown Emerson a picture of her dumb brother making finger guns in the bowels of Park Street, despite having promised Archie she’d keep him a secret. But she also had two shiny new mental files. One on Lyle Korrapati Pryce, and one on Bert Hatmaker.
“So, Bert,” Tuesday said.
“What about Bert?” Dex asked.
“I’ve seen him before. I know him from – something.” She sighed.
“From my vision board, probably,” Dex said. “I projected that Secret, and boy howdy.”
“I don’t trust him,” said Tuesday.
“Oh, good,” said Dex. “That must mean he’s a human being.” He paused. “What was that line of Shakespeare chalked over the raven again, that Lyle said? ‘The prince of darkness is a gentleman’?” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped at it with his thumbs.
Tuesday nodded. “King Lear,” she said.
“Act three,” said Dex, “scene four. Edgar’s ‘Poor Tom’ monologue.”
“Drama nerd,” said Tuesday.
“Huh,” said Dex. “Says here that Poe’s parents, both actors, met in a production of Lear.”
Tuesday slurped her coffee. “The internet takes all the effort out of detecting, doesn’t it?”
“His mom was great. Legitimately talented. His dad was … less great. Total piece of work. Chucked being a lawyer for the stage, then got routed by the critics … huh! He was born here! Poe was born in Boston. I did not know that.”
“I knew that.”
Think like a romantic, theatrical lunatic.
“You know, the theater district is like … right on the other side of the Common,” Tuesday said. She pointed. “Right over there. Boylston and back.” She had officially reached the sleepy stage of drunkenness. Day drinking, while more practical once one reached a certain age, did have the unfortunate side effect of knocking her out cold by two p.m. Her muzzy half-awake brain, however, was often capable of some of her best thinking. Which reminded her.
“Lyle’s pregnant.”
Dex did the next best thing to a spit take, blasting air into the lid of the tumbler. “How can you – did she pee on a stick when I wasn’t looking?”
“For a fully stocked grief kitchen, something was conspicuously absent.”
“What the hell. Do you ever turn off?”
“Wine,” said Tuesday. “Booze. Empties. And for a bereft widow, she’s oddly luminescent.”
“But, like, bloody marys. We were drunk,” Dex said. “There was definitely alcohol flowing in that house.”
“Oh, we were. Drunk. But was she?” asked Tuesday. “Did you see her drink anything?”
Dex paused.
“Just a hunch,” said Tuesday.
“The plot thickens.”
“The plot’s the thing in which we’ll catch the king.”
“Wrong play,” said Dex. “And butchered quote. Come on, let’s walk. I have a hunch too.”
Dex had hunches all the time. He didn’t tell anyone about them or test them to see if they were correct, so they were probably less hunches and more oversensitive delusions, but they felt true. Tuesday’s hunches, her leapfrogging trivia brain and lady detective intuitions, were in a class by themselves (though Lyle’s being pregnant seemed – actually – it didn’t seem at all impossible), which might explain why he didn’t bother sharing any of his, under normal circumstances.
But this circumstance was abnormal. This circumstance was Dex joining the Team, because Tuesday was a pathological loner, and though she was slightly looser and chummier than usual, she was never going to invite him. This was Dex, coming off a booze buzz, courting a coffee buzz, made whirrier by a simultaneous Bert Hatmaker buzz, the swirling, possibility-twirling, heart-hammering potential of a crush. Had Patrick ever made him feel this light, even in the beginning?
It was thinking about Patrick that made Dex’s hunch bite.
He stood up.
“Where are we going?” Tuesday sniffed as he pulled her to her feet. “What is your hunch?”
“Wikipedia says Poe was born somewhere on Boylston Street.”
“Do you believe everything Wikipedia tells you?” she asked.
“No, but my hunch does.” He drew her closer, walked a little faster. “The second clue is a line from Lear, the play Poe’s parents might’ve been in when they met. It’s a line of dialogue spoken by a character named Edgar, I mean – think like a theatrical lunatic.”
“Pryce wants us to go to the theater. A theater. But which? There are … a lot.”
“There are only two theaters on Boylston Street.” He paused for dramatic effect. “And only one underground.”
Patrick had told him about it. Patrick knew a flock of musical theater kids from Emerson College. Emerson’s main campus had been expanding down Boylston for years, engulfing the Colonial Theatre, transforming empty commercial spaces into residence halls and classrooms. And at the end of the block, casting an urban legend over the student body, was the M. Steinert & Sons building: a stone-and-brick edifice with a six-foot metal G-clef sign, a piano showroom on the first floor—
“And an old, old theater in the basement,” Dex said. “Like, fifty feet below street level.”
“You’re making that up,” said Tuesday.
It was possible, but not probable, that Patrick had been making it up. He’d mentioned it early in the game, when they were still trying to impress each other with everything they knew, everything they thought was important or interesting or worth sharing with each other. But Patrick, sweet, credulous Patrick, was a wretched liar. Unlike Dex, who’d sold m
ore than a few lies in his time, like that he’d been to the Castro (“Of course I have! What kind of traveling homosexual do you take me for?”), that he’d seen Grey Gardens (he had now), or that he had never, ever, so much as slightly nudged another car in a parking lot and driven away without leaving a note. They had been harmless lies. Flirtations, almost. And Patrick’s wide-eyed gullibility made him especially fun to string along.
“Patrick said he knew a kid who knew a bunch of people—”
“Naturally.”
“—who snuck into the theater to get high.”
“Naturally,” she repeated. “Emerson kids.”
Dex, at the corner of the Common, looked across Boylston to the building on the other side of the street, with its grand recessed entrance, gray cement columns, and the shining street-level windows of a music store showroom. He could just make out the raised edge of a grand piano. Above the first floor, around the side and front, the columns supported carved stone arches.
“Arches,” said Tuesday.
“Don’t you mean archeses?” said Dex.
“No.” Tuesday squeezed his arm. A little bell chimed inside Dex because Tuesday Mooney – Tuesday Mooney – was not only voluntarily touching him, she was latching. She pointed at the building, at the front door, which was closing behind someone. “Nathaniel Arches just went inside.”
“You are making that up,” said Dex.
Tuesday squeezed his arm again, harder, half glanced at the pedestrian WALK sign – Dex assumed out of habit more than any conscientious desire to follow traffic ordinance, because it said DO NOT WALK and the next thing Tuesday did was walk anyway, dragging him to the island in the middle of the intersection of Boylston and Charles. “Nice hustle,” said Dex, “for a death wish!” and Tuesday said, “Go. Go go go go go” – and they ran across Boylston to the other side of the street.
Dex was gobsmacked. In all the hours they’d spent sitting across from each other’s cubes, all the after-work drinks, the movies, the trivia, he had never seen her act this way. He had never seen her this – emotional. About anything (or anyone). She had enthusiasms, yes; there were things she loved (scary movies, solitude, solving shit), but this was more than enthusiasm. This was electrified. Tuesday Mooney was scurrying – scurrying after a man – and ten haulassed steps up the sidewalk, Dex yanked his arm free and called her on it.
“I am not,” she said.
“You are too,” he said, laughing. “This is textbook scurrying. I can hear rapid-fire xylophones.” Dex grinned at her with every tooth in his head. “He must be really cute.”
“He’s a hell of a lot less cute when he’s going rogue,” she said.
“For God’s sake, you don’t even know that was him.”
It was him.
Dex knew it was him the second he reappeared, sauntering down the concrete steps of the building in question, arms and shoulders and hands all casual, tucked into the pockets of his motorcycle jacket. He was tallish. Thinnish. Darkish. Broadish in the shoulders, with a long nose and the kind of forehead Dex remembered was Tuesday’s kryptonite (“Working Girl Harrison Ford,” she’d explained once, which required no further explanation). Privilege rolled off him in waves. He was walking straight ahead, and for a second Dex thought he was going to cross Boylston in the middle of the street, trusting the traffic to swerve.
“Archie!” yelled Tuesday.
He froze. When he turned, for a second, he didn’t look a thing like Nathaniel Arches, Prominent Bostonian. He looked younger, his face a cold-water smash of excitement and terror, but by the time Tuesday and Dex – who was now one hundred percent on the scurrying bandwagon – caught up to him, that face was gone. He just looked like a rich white douche. An unconventionally handsome rich white douche, but a rich white douche nonetheless. He removed his hands from his pockets. They fluttered, nervous, then settled into the shape of twin finger guns.
Douche or not, he was even more perfectly ridiculous than Tuesday had described.
“I was going to call you,” Nathaniel Arches said.
“Poindexter Howard,” Dex said, grabbing one finger gun by the barrel and shaking. “Friend to the friendless.”
“No, you weren’t,” Tuesday said, ignoring Dex. “What are you doing here?”
Archie gnawed on his lip. “Waiting?” he said. “For … you?” Then he frowned. “Were you going to call me?”
“I might have,” Tuesday said, “if you hadn’t run away before we exchanged numbers last time.”
“Oh, come on, you can find my number. You don’t need me to give it to you. I thought we were partners.” Archie jerked his chin at Dex. “But it looks like you’ve found another.”
Tuesday opened her mouth, stunned.
Dex bloomed. “Sir,” he said, pressing his hand to his heart. “Oh, sir. You flatter me. And to think that I was feeling jealous about the two of you.”
Tuesday turned, her fingertips on his arm. “You were?”
“A smidge,” Dex said.
“Wait, who are you?” asked Archie.
“Dex,” said Dex.
“We just met your sister,” said Tuesday. “And your mother.”
There – it was back, for only a second, the other face that Archie had, the one that popped up like a coked-out gopher whenever he was truly taken aback – but Dex didn’t have time to observe it before the doors behind them, the doors they had come to enter, swung open. A man in a jacket with a security guard patch on the arm walked out. Adjusting his Sox cap against the sun, he turned and headed up Boylston toward Tremont.
Archie checked his watch. “Dunks run,” he said. “Right on schedule.” Then, off Tuesday and Dex’s silence, “I told you I was waiting.”
He took the steps two at a time and caught the door before it closed.
“Come on,” he said.
“Come on,” said Dex to Tuesday, who was squeezing his arm again.
They walked into the lobby – a room that had no business calling itself a lobby. It was a cramped, dark little hall, with windows overlooking the piano showroom on the right and an empty chair – those butt dents belonged to the Dunks-jonesing guard, no doubt – facing an elevator at the far end. On the left was a staircase, marked off with a velvet cordon, that went up into the light of day and down into darkness. Someone nearby was tripping chromatically across a piano’s keys.
“That’s perfect,” whispered Dex. “That’s the perfect music for descending creepy steps. Let’s go.”
Archie swung one long leg, then the other, over the cordon.
“How did you figure this out?” Tuesday asked him.
“I didn’t know that I did,” he said, and offered his hand. Tuesday glared at it and swung her own long legs over the rope without assistance, but Dex took it. “And they say chivalry is dead,” he said, giving Archie’s long, cool fingers a squeeze.
The steps led to a landing, turned, led to another landing, and turned again, the piano growing fainter as the light disappeared. Tuesday pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened a flashlight app.
“Chivalry may be alive, but romance is rotting,” Dex hissed. “Can we not find a femur to wrap in rags for a torch?”
“Who are you, again?” asked Archie.
“Poindexter Howard,” said Dex, “inveterate adventurer.”
“We’re out of earshot even if the guard comes back,” said Tuesday. “So talk. What are you looking for?”
“You mean, out of life?” Archie’s low voice wrapped around them in the darkness. “In a job? In a partner?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t know.”
“Does that answer apply universally?” asked Dex. He hopped, tripping over what he didn’t know. They’d spiraled down a few more flights and now had reached a passage lined on either side with what looked, in the light of Tuesday’s phone, like a burial ground for Bankers Boxes. Everything was wet, musty, funky. “Smells like shin guards down here.”
“Dex,” sai
d Tuesday, “this was your plan. Take it away.”
Patrick had never told him how his friends had broken in, only that they had, the implication being that it couldn’t be so difficult if it was within the grasp of a pack of stoned undergraduates. Dex turned on his own flashlight app and threw light up and over the walls. The floor was carpeted but not plush; the walls were chipped plaster, weeping water. “This can’t be the main entrance, can it?” Dex said. “It was supposedly a real theater, a music hall open to the public, but this is – claustro. This must be for hands, employees, the talent. So we’re not looking for anything grand.”
“We’re looking for a back door,” said Archie.
Dex bit down hard on his tongue.
“You have no idea the amount of self-control he’s exercising right now,” Tuesday said to Archie, “to not make a filthy joke.”
“It would be too easy,” said Dex. “Beneath me. Low-hanging fruit.”
“Well, now everything sounds filthy,” Archie drawled.
“Jesus, he is charming,” Dex said to Tuesday. “Charming like a psychopath. Are we sure he’s not going to murder us down here?” He paused. “That’s a legitimately horrifying thought. Please don’t do that to us, Mr. Arches. I haven’t drunk half of what I intend to before I die.”
“What’s that?” Archie pointed at a break in the wall of boxes, a gap darker than the cardboard-colored shadows on either side. Dex turned his flashlight. In the wall was a door. A crappy old plywood door with a crinkled paper sign with NO ENTRANCE written in shaky capitals, begging for a Sartre joke Dex suddenly hadn’t the heart to make. This was happening. No amount of nervous quipping was going to still the tremor in his hand as he reached for the knob. No amount of patter could distract from the fact that he was opening a door he had no business opening.
He exhaled, wrapped his fingers around the knob, and turned.
It did not move.
“Shit,” he said. “It’s locked.”
He felt a hand on his arm in the darkness, nudging him aside. “Back a little,” Archie said, before pumping one of his long legs into the air and kicking the door open before either Dex or Tuesday could think, let alone shout, What the hell—
Tuesday Mooney Wore Black Page 13
