Ned mimed a bomb going off in his brain, held his fist to his temple and exploded it with a soft pshhhhhh!
Dorry smiled. So he had a Tuesday too.
“Are you in costume right now?” she said. “Is Ned Kennedy your secret identity?”
“Is Dorry Bones your secret identity?” he said, and Dorry smiled into her chocolate milk. She shifted on the metal bench. She didn’t know what to do next. Sitting next to Ned felt both normal and super-weird, because they didn’t know each other at all and yet it felt like they did. Like maybe they were already friends. She hadn’t been friends with a boy since preschool, and those friendships existed mainly in stories her mom had told her. (“Andrew was your favorite; we had to pack extra snacks because you shared so many with him.”) Would it be different to be friends with a boy now? Like, could you even be friends with a boy without it leading to, you know, sex stuff? Especially when the boy was really cute, and it was kind of hard to talk in front of him, and when you did, your ears got hot?
“This bench is making my butt chilly,” Ned said.
“I’m not on Facebook,” Dorry said. And grimaced. Why had she said that? She could be so awkward it hurt.
Ned said, “You know, if you’re not on Facebook, you’re a ghost. Officially.” He swigged his milk. “Maybe Dorry Bones is your secret identity, and Ghost Girl is who you really are.”
They sat at the bus shelter and watched the light at the corner turn from red to green.
“So,” Dorry said, asking herself, What would Tuesday do? And answering, Tuesday would investigate. “What do you know? How did you find the secret code? What did you figure out that isn’t the code?”
Ned laughed. “Whoa,” he said. “One question at a time.”
Dorry rolled her eyes back. She was half frustrated, half excited, half nervous, half elated. She was too many halves. She was twice as much as she usually was.
“Seriously,” she said. “I’m really serious.” So Ned made a really serious face, pulled his mouth down in a flat line, adjusted his glasses, nodded, blinked, rubbed his chin with his fingers. “I’m serious!” Dorry laughed, and pulled her hand inside her sleeve and smacked him with the empty cuff.
“I know something happened,” she said. “I know you figured something out in the library.” She pushed her voice and her face to be firm, adult, cool, and in control – and it was so sudden and funny and so not her that after a beat they both exploded. And Dorry could sense Ned’s joy bubbling.
“I did,” he said. “It’s kind of against the rules, the Black Cat rules, to show it to you. But.” Ned stared at her, straight at her, without blinking, and Dorry stared back, daring herself not to look away first. “But if I keep it to myself one second longer, I’m going to—” And he made that bomb sound again, only this time he mimed his whole body blowing up.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Okay, so,” he said, “the code was written on the side of a building downtown that’s built in the spot where Poe was born. Which I went looking for because that Shakespeare thing, the prince of darkness and whatever? Poe’s parents met while they were both acting in King Lear. And as I’m reading up about how Poe’s parents met, I find out he was born here. Right here.” He pointed a finger down at the ground, thought better of it, pointed out of the bus shelter in the general direction of the city across the river. “Well, right over there. In an alley between a piano store and a burrito place.
“So I go there. And I find another painted raven and this, like, secret code written in chalk, so I know I’m on the right track. At first I thought you could, you know, crack the code by figuring out what the symbols were, but that didn’t go anywhere. And I was in the library today when it occurred to me to, like, figure out what the building was.” He tapped at his phone and passed it to her to see. Dorry chewed on her lip.
It was a gallery of pictures on a site called Flickr. She tapped the first picture to enlarge it: an old door with a piece of paper stuck to it: NO ENTRANCE. She swiped to the next picture. The photographer had gone through the door. It was hard to tell, on Ned’s phone, exactly what she was seeing. A room cluttered with old-fashioned metal chairs, piled in a heap. She swiped again. Stairs, looking out toward a big dark room. She swiped again, and the room got bigger. The room got huge. It was rounded and orange-red, full of more chairs and boxes, and shadows, and high arches all around the walls.
She still didn’t get it, but she couldn’t stop swiping through the pictures. The room was rotting, dusty, falling apart, but every curl of paint, every tilting three-legged chair, every shadow and scuff, made Dorry’s throat ache, like she was going to cry.
“That’s in the basement,” repeated Ned, “of the building next to where Poe was born. And the raven with the code was pointing down, like it was saying ‘This way.’”
Whatever this room was, Tuesday knew about it, knew what it was. Dorry felt it in her bones. And Dorry knew it now too, knew it separately from Tuesday.
She wondered if Tuesday had gone down there. She wondered what she’d found.
“So.” Ned tapped the screen, still in her hands. He had a dark blot on his right index finger that might have been ink, and he was so excited, he was shaking. “Um.”
Ned jiggled his leg.
“What are you doing?” he blurted. “Right now? Like, do you want to go check it out? With me?”
A spear of adrenaline pierced Dorry’s heart.
“I’m.” Her mouth was dry. “Supposed to go home soon.”
Ned stiffened. “Oh,” he said. “I mean. That makes sense. That’s cool. I can go – by myself, I just thought. You know, if you weren’t busy.”
“Not that—” Dorry handed the phone back to Ned. So this, she thought, was probably how it felt to be asked out. She’d never been asked out in her life, and though she wasn’t being asked out asked out, she had to assume it was a similar experience. She felt dizzy. Excited. A little suspicious. She wanted to say yes – she did, she did – and she wanted not to believe the tiny voice in her brain that said: He’d rather ask Tuesday. Tuesday knows how to win. Tuesday has been in this strange dead room and knows what to find there. He’s only asking you because you’re right here, right now. Because you’re the human clue that gets him closer to her.
She was supposed to go home. It was supposed to be Tuesday Thursday. But what if today was a new day entirely, and Dorry could choose what to do with it?
“Not that I always do,” she said, and grinned at him with all the boldness she could pretend to possess. “What I’m supposed to.”
10
TAKEOUT AND DELIVERY
Edgar Allan Arches Junior, comfortable in the knowledge that the deliveryman wouldn’t arrive for at least thirty minutes, stretched out across Vince’s black velvet sectional sofa and reviewed his notes.
They were not conclusive. They were mostly lists of plans he had to perpetually cross out and rethink. He collected them in a small reporter’s notebook; Archie had a deep appreciation for the act of writing something down instead of typing. A love of paper goods and pens. It was a predilection – some might call it an affectation, to which Archie would say, Have you met my family? – that he’d had since childhood. But he had fully committed to leaving only a paper trail for the past six years, years he had spent avoiding most humans, in person and online, making plans and crossing them out, pretending his life had any direction or purpose beyond disappear completely.
That plan had changed only recently, and it wasn’t going great. He flipped back to the first page.
Talk to Vince @ 4 Seasons auction for hope
He knew about the auction. It happened every year. He knew his family, because they were always invited to these kinds of things, would be on the guest list but highly unlikely to attend. And he knew Vincent Pryce, because he was always invited to these kinds of things, would be on the guest list and highly likely to attend. Approaching Vince, after so many years gone, seemed a far less terrifying prospect than appro
aching his sister. Or his mother.
Or his brother.
He didn’t have the heart to cross Talk to Vince out.
Archie couldn’t afford to think about it. The guilt would suffocate him. Instead, he flipped to the next page, where he had written:
—Tall girl
—Researcher @ hospital
—Intel on Nat?
He hadn’t had to write it down, because he would never forget, but his fourth bullet would have been Nice feet. He pictured her bare feet, long and slim, against the swirling maroon and gold carpet of the ballroom at the Four Seasons. Dark red shining toes curling into the plush pile.
Archie stared at the portrait over the gray marble fireplace, of Vince in a canary-yellow cravat and smoking jacket the color of old blood, staring vaguely into the middle distance. I’m sorry, he thought; I am so, so sorry. Then he flipped his reporter’s notebook closed, laid it on his chest, and drummed his fingers on the cardboard cover. His stomach gurgled. He was hungry.
It was Friday. All week, Tuesday hadn’t called. Or texted. Neither had Dex, but Tuesday’s silence was louder, especially since there had been very serious developments. Someone found the code on a wall and posted it to Facebook; it went viral. Other people found the underground theater. Just yesterday, when Archie walked down Boylston Street, the Dunks-jonesing security guard and a cop had been supervising a crowd lined up to get into the Steinert building, though all the envelopes were (reportedly) gone. The Globe began profiling players and teams who self-identified, had even printed the decoded rules of the game. And the formal invitation Vince promised in his obituary had blanketed the city overnight, in the form of beautiful black and red broadsides, stapled and taped and glued on light poles and T tunnels and store windows:
TO THE LIVING AND THE DEAD OF BOSTON:
You are cordially invited to attend the funeral masque of
VINCENT A. PRYCE.
The third Friday of October.
Six o’clock in the evening.
On Boston Common.
All are welcome. Costumes required.
Seekers may request an audience with the Widow at nine o’clock,where they may yet hope to play their hands.
The funeral was exactly one week away. They had been given new, maddeningly obscure information – “play their hands” had something to do with the playing card, probably – and they had forty-nine competitors. They had yet to figure out how to play, how to seek well, where the clock was that was primed to strike, or even to decide what the fuck they were supposed to do with the thirteen thousand dollars Vince had given them – though Tuesday could very well have already spent it, could have figured it all out, for all Archie knew.
Because she was silent.
Deafeningly silent.
Maybe it was for the best. The less he saw of her, the fewer lies he had to keep track of, the less of a distraction she was. And the less danger she was in. The more time he had to contemplate … other things.
There was a knock on the door.
He lifted his head from the arm of the sofa, curious. Delivery guys usually called his cell from the courtyard below. And it was too fast; either House of Thai had discovered a way to bend space-time or—
Another knock, followed by a muffled voice.
“I know you’re in there.”
Tuesday.
Archie didn’t move.
Archie didn’t know how he was feeling, but he was feeling something, all right. Something warm and weird and intense. He sat up, tight.
“I can wait all night.”
She didn’t sound angry. Or like she’d brought anyone with her. Dex. The cops.
Emerson.
His mother.
“That’s not true, actually,” she continued. “I have to go home at some point to feed my cat.”
He swung his legs from the black velvet cushions of the couch to the floor. His own bare feet sank into the deep pile of the rug.
“Come on. Let me in.”
Then she said, “Edgar Allan Arches Junior.”
He froze. Every part of Archie stopped thumping, and for a moment he was petrified, fixed, weightless and breathless. On Vincent Pryce’s silly black couch in his silly Hot Topic by way of Architectural Digest apartment. It had been six years since anyone had called him that name.
So she knew. He didn’t know how she knew, but she knew. And, sure, hearing his name always burned, but his name from her lips didn’t make him angry. He didn’t feel the sting of having been made, the fear of being cornered, though Tuesday’s presence meant both of those things were true. This extraordinary feeling that Archie was feeling – now that he thought about it – was relief. He didn’t have to lie anymore.
Well, he didn’t have to lie about everything anymore.
He stood. Shuffled across the carpet, through the living room into the foyer. Wrapped his hand around the doorknob. Turned his wrist. Opened the door.
Tuesday was standing in the hallway, holding a brown paper bag in her arms.
“I brought dinner,” she said.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“You of all people,” she said, “should know how easy it is to look up the real estate holdings of recently deceased billionaires who buy investment properties on Beacon Hill using the limited liability corporation Roderick Usher Real Estate. May I?”
He stood aside. She walked in. His blood, just beneath his skin, felt like it was percolating. He was a little feverish. She kept her shoes on. Which was disappointing, but sensible – the rugs were all black – and Tuesday was nothing if not full of sense.
She crossed into the living room, taking in the heavy purple drapes, the portrait of Vince over the fireplace, the surrounding books and curios in glass cabinets and shelves. The skull with the arrow through its temple on the mantel. The stuffed two-headed bat under the glass dome in the center of the coffee table, flanked by old issues of Vanity Fair and the Weekly World News. Tuesday nodded, like this was what she’d expected, and turned her attention to him. Which was the moment Archie realized he was wearing the same smoking jacket from the painting – Vince’s jacket, the color of old blood – over jeans and a T-shirt, because the condo was a little chilly, and—
She narrowed her eyes at him in a way that he couldn’t decipher.
Then she disappeared around the bend of the dining room into the kitchen. He heard her opening drawers, the fridge, the freezer, closing them again. She reappeared, still clutching the brown bag. She set the bag on the dining room table and rested her hand on the back of a chair.
“We should talk,” she said.
He didn’t move.
He didn’t want to talk.
She sat down first. He took the chair opposite. Out of her messenger bag she pulled a white three-ring binder. She squared it neatly on the table in front of her, interlaced her fingers, and stared at him.
“On Tuesday,” she said, “your brother took me out to lunch.”
Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
“He offered me – well.” She tilted her head. “First he told me you’re not him. Then he offered me a million dollars if I told him where you were hiding.”
Archie’s hands went tacky with sweat.
“So I found you,” she said. “In the patient database, first. It was a little more difficult to find you here, in the city, in this condo, though you’d already given me everything I needed. When you said you were heading home to the Hill on Saturday, and the way you reacted to Vincent Pryce’s seal – I guessed that you, unlike your father, didn’t exactly hate him. So it wasn’t too much of a leap to think that you, intelligent and resourceful, might be lying low in one of the dead man’s vacant properties.” She gestured at him. “And here you are. Lying low in one of the dead man’s vacant properties.”
Archie swallowed. “I bet,” he said, and his tongue got stuck in his dry mouth. “I bet you’re pretty pleased with yourself.”
“I’m terrifically pleased with myself,�
�� Tuesday said. “I solved you. And I was so pleased about solving you, I decided to keep going. To see what else I missed.” She flattened her hands on the binder. “Here it is. Everything I could find. About Arches Consolidated, its filings and financial statements, its press. All of your houses and charitable foundations. Every jerkwad aphorism Nathaniel ever tweeted, every time Emerson showed up on Perez Hilton with a cocaine halo MS-Painted around her head—” She flipped to the end. “In the appendix.
“Everything I could find about you, which isn’t much.”
“What can I say?” His throat was papery. “I’m an offline type of guy.”
“And everything I could find about your mother, and your vanished father.”
Archie’s heart gave a funny little contraction, like it had forgotten how to beat.
“So what did you think?” he said. “Of Nat? The real Nat.”
Tuesday squinted at him again. He was getting better at reading her expressions, and this one clearly meant she was thinking something she didn’t want to say out loud.
“He was exactly the man I thought he would be when I first met you, and thought you were him,” she said. “Acquisitive. Spoiled. Incurious. Vain.” She narrowed her eyes again. “That’s why you hired me, isn’t it? Because I could tell you things about your brother. Things you didn’t know, recent things, because – you’ve been gone for, what?”
“Six years,” said Archie.
Her face flushed deep with sudden satisfaction. He thought of all the things he still hadn’t told her. He might tell her just so he could watch her make that face again and again.
Tuesday Mooney Wore Black Page 20
